Author: Vic Cross

He's had bumps on the head, tumbles from prams, and other assorted spills, but today Nicholas spilled claret for the first time.  Just to prove that you can NEVER truly be prepared for all eventualities, he managed to find something sharp to cut his finger on.I blame myself, of course.  As soon as he started crawling and … Continue reading Nicholas’ first “bleeding injury”

We have a furry four-legged house guest for a few weeks: Molly, the Pembroke Corgi pup.While my in-laws go on vacation for three weeks, we are minding their dog.  It will be very interesting to see how our Corgi, Chelsea, handles this -- given that she's already being a bit displaced by the new-found mobility of … Continue reading Furry house guest

I've just been having a bit of a play with this.  Wow, it does a lot, and it looks to be really great -- but it's not a blogger, so Crossed Wires will probably be safe on Polarblog for a while yet.It really looks to be an impressive piece of programming.  It's produced by a company called … Continue reading Metadot Portal Server

For too long I've been committing the Systems Programmer cardinal sin -- advocating proper backup strategies without doing so myself.  Apparently I'm not alone (but that doesn't make it right, of course).  Having read about this things called Bacula, I decided to do something about my backup un-preparedness.  Now, not without some pain, I have a working Bacula … Continue reading My name is Bacula, wha-ha-ha-ha-ha…

As a text-mode browser it's just that little bit better than Lynx (my old favourite), but I found its graphical mode today, and once I fix a couple of little niggles I'll be hooked. Really, nowadays you can only be stubborn and use text-mode for some really simple browsing.  Try using Google text-mode: the search part … Continue reading Links is my new favourite browser

Part of Christmas celebrations here, the twice-yearly trip to the roof (once to install them, once to bring them down) was commenced this evening. Maybe if you're really lucky there will be photos on the gallery!  Actually, they look quite good.  This year a Santa silhouette is a new addition to the usual coloured and plain lights.  

This is a little weird (only a little, you say?).  "Music to watch a plane crash by".  Indeed.It seems that sometime (possibly in 1998), NASA did a CFIT (that's Controlled Flight Into Terrain, aero-speak for "a good and working plane bumping into the earth for reasons other than safe landing") test using what looks to my untrained eye … Continue reading Plane crash testing footage set to music

Well not really, but how many reasons would they have to take a cat and toss it around in one of their zero-G experimentation platforms (colloquially known as "vomit comets")?Not 24 hours after creating the "Stranger than Fiction" topic here and wondering if I'd ever find anything to post in it, I stumble over this.  Look … Continue reading USAF trains zero-G feline attack squads

I can't promise you bleeding-edge updates from the LKML, but if I hear about something funky you'll see it here soon afterward.