Personal – Page 4 – John Leach

Organic and fair trade baby shop

My sister has just launched her online baby shop Mia Bambina. Named after her own baby, Mia. You can’t buy babies at it, but you can buy organic and fair trade baby clothes and toys and stuff.

Mia bambina is your one stop shop for organic and fair trade products for babies aged 0 to 12 months (occasionally 12 months+!).

All our products are either organic and/or fair trade and our aim is to make ethical shopping for little ones easy and fun.

We have carefully selected the best quality organic and fair trade clothes, washable nappies, baby skincare products and toys – and put them all in one place to make shopping a breeze.

15/10/2007 5 Comments

My Old Passport

My old passport expired last year – I’m hoping the rfid crap will be nixed before I have to get a new one (unlikely I know). But anyway, I doubt I would have got very far with my old passport photo anyway. I happen to have been wearing my band’s t-shirt at the time of the photo and my band’s name is clearly in shot.

I’m not sure a post “911” USA would have accepted me with the words “NERV GAS” written on my passport. A pre “911” USA seemed fine with it when I went to Las Vegas for Defcon in 2000, but THE WORLD IS A DIFFERENT PLACE NOW as you might regularly have been told by people whose job it is to know about these things.

23/9/2007 5 Comments

Caffeine

I ran out of coffee on Sunday and found myself immediately planning on getting a fresh supply first thing Monday morning, which brought a caffeine addiction to my attention. So, I decided not to buy any more coffee and in fact not to consume any caffeine for a week or so. Here I am two days in and I’ve got a banging headache and feel pretty crap, which is strange considering I only usually have a coffee in the morning and perhaps a cup of tea in the afternoon.

I’m interested to see how this pans out, and how I get on post-withdrawal.

24/7/2007 1 Comment

The chronicles of Lug Radio Live 2007

Me doing a lightbulb gong talk thing LUG Radio Live 2007 was great fun. There was a real community vibe thing going on. A quick random chronicle of the weekend from our point of view:

Arrived Friday evening, dropped things off at the hotel and went straight to the Hog’s Head pub to meet all the other early arrivers, of which there were many. Met quite a few random and not so random people: Patrick Finch from Sun, who is just the nicest tech guy in the world. We met him last year too.

Alan Pope, Neuro – both ELER fans and purchasers of many Geekz tshirts. Johan and Sebastian from Sweden, who noticed my Knuth t-shirt and said his friend had one too and was surprised to learn we make them. He took a photo of me wearing it and sent it to his friend back in Sweden :).

Andy Davidson, he’s from Sheffield and was surprised to learn there is a WYLUG planet and wanted to know how he could get listed on it. Louisa recognised his name and he was then further surprised to learn that he is already listed on it.

Glyn Wintle from the Open Rights Group, who comes in a close second in the nicest tech guy in the world competition. We hung out with Glyn for most of the rest of the weekend, especially since his stall was next to ours (we were selling our geeky tshirts and stickers and badges and crap). He convinced me that I need to do a whole lot more with regard to defending our freedoms (like *actually* writing to my MP! Shock! Horror!) We’re also going to switch our EFF donations to them.

(more…)

14/7/2007 2 Comments

LUG Radio Live 2007 this weekend!

Remember, it’s LUG Radio Live 2007 this weekend in Wolverhampton, UK. As you can see from the schedule here, there are some cool talks by some cool people (and also a talk by me :) and a big party Saturday night.

You can pay in on the door (a measly £5). Details of local hotels to stay in here.

Hope to see you there.

6/7/2007 Add Comment

CIA Freedom of Information – Publish Your Own

CIA seal The CIA Freedom of Information website had the dumbest security hole in it. With all the recent hoo har about the “Family Jewels” documents, you’d expect they’d do a quick once over on this stuff. All the textual content on the document view pages is generated directly from variables passed in the url – with no input validation.

This opens them up to cross site scripting attacks (XSS) and really is just stupid. Lucky they aren’t the GUARDIANS OF THE LARGEST CACHE OF SENSITIVE INFORMATION IN THE WORLD or anything – *phew*.

Anyway, using this bug, I made a website where you can write your own documents and publish them on the CIA FOIA website:

http://geekz.co.uk/cia-foia/

I guess that from tomorrow, any mail for me should be addressed to Guantanamo Bay.

Actually, technically you’re the ones doing the exploiting by using the links my site provides – so, you know, at your own risk and all that.

An example here.

28/6/2007 2 Comments

Schneier Spelled Safely

The t-shirts with our new designs finally arrived the other week from the printers – Che Stallman and Bruce Schneier.

This marks the end of many an hour wasted double checking that we did actually spell Schneier correctly (and we did spell it correctly, hurrar!). Hundreds of these shirts are now in the hands of some reportedly very happy geeks around the world. You can get your own (and other shirts and stickers) at the online shop.

A photo of the Tedesco brothers sporting the Che Stallman shirt follows (face of one Tedesco brother removed at his incessant vanity request).

The Tedesco brothers wearing the Che Stallman t-shirt

8/5/2007 3 Comments

HD DVD cracked

The High Definition DVD encryption got cracked a couple of months back, but recently the AACS licensing authority have been threatening people who discuss it. At the core of this is the processing key, which can be used to decrypt all HD DVDs. The key is just a big number. The AACS assert that the number is illegal to disclose.

If you were counting a large number of something, you’d have to skip this particular number (or whisper it) because the AACS believe they control it.

Anyway, we don’t quite have the DMCA here in the UK, so I can write that number here:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Without this work, you could not play legally bought HD DVDs with free software applications. You could not play legally bought HD DVDs that were from another country. You could not transfer legally bought HD DVDs to your hard disk for easy access, or to your portable movie player.

One might argue that you shouldn’t be purchasing goods from a company that is at war with you. Whilst I agree, it’s not that easy to find companies that aren’t at war with you and I support work like this to take back our freedoms.

2/5/2007 1 Comment

IT techie – available for hire

I’m now full time self-employed. If you’d like to hire me as an IT consultant then drop me a line. I’m well experienced with all kinds of free and open source software with a specific focus on web and database services, security and networking. Some things I’ve been working with lately:

Apache and Lighttpd web services
Ruby on Rails and PHP deployment
MySQL database services
Netfilter firewalling
OpenVPN and OpenS/WAN VPNs

Over the years I’ve worked with many companies with diverse networks and services, including recently: one of the largest NHS software suppliers, an international travel company and an online pharmacy.

I’m local to the Leeds area in the UK but I often do things remotely so can work with any company in the world. Hourly rates are dependent on the type and length of the job.

I’m doing this work under the business name ifup. There is website over at www.ifup.co.uk but it’s a little scant on details at the moment. More to come.

4/4/2007 1 Comment

Emusic.com sucks

I signed up for Emusic.com a few months ago to buy music online, but I’m fed up with them. This is my “why are you leaving?” feedback to them:

I’d like to get what I pay for. I pay for 65 tracks but if I don’t download them within the month, they disappear. I have trouble understanding how this is a legitimate business practice – where do my tracks go? Are they distributed to the poor?

Your business model is based on the hope that people won’t use what they pay for.

Your business model is based on taking advantage of your customers.

26/2/2007 68 Comments

For all your electronic equipment repair needs…

Chris from Ambertronics A friend of a friend (pictured) runs Bingley based Ambertronics. They specialise in repairing electronic audio equipment and they do it so well. Save money and the environment by getting your kit serviced (or repaired if it’s already blown up) rather than taking it to landfill. “A pipe, a pot of tea, and a ponder” – http://www.ambertron.co.uk/

12/2/2007 Add Comment

ELER Italian Transcription

Luca Andreucci has contributed the first Italian transcription of my web comic, ELER. I love how the last pane of the current strip is described.

“Eric ha le sopracciglia di Linus, più le calze e i sandali”

9/2/2007 5 Comments