I’ve finally started cabling my house (by alaric)

In our house, the telephone sockets are downstairs, at one end of the building, while my office (where my office telephone and computers sit) is upstairs and at the opposite end of the building.

So to get working quickly amongst the hubbub of moving in, I ran Ethernet and telephone cables from the phone sockets (the ADSL router that provides our Internet connection sits rights by the phone sockets, since the DSL signal quality is so bad anyway I wanted to maximise signal strength by not putting the ADSL router on the end of a cheap telephone extension cable) up to the office. The longest Ethernet cables I had were ten metres long, so I put the core router in the airing cupboard, more or less exactly between the phone sockets and my desk, and also conveniently having a power outlet to run it - then ran a ten-metre cable to it from the ADSL router and another one from my desk.

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More on n2n (by alaric)

I've been discussing n2n with my friends, and one of them raised an interesting point.

He pointed out that since n2n offers access control only at the network level - you need to know the network key to join a network - it works like the Internet of old: once you're in, you're in and fully trusted, and people can't get rid of you; they can just ignore you.

If that's a problem, then you have to do what the Internet had to do - set up local firewalling and access control.

This struck me as an interesting point about the trust model you're using.

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Keysigning party – South Kensington, London, 2nd of June 2008 (by alaric)

I now have a venue for the keysigning party...

If you're interested in building a web of cryptographic trust (or just want to meet some interesting people), come along to Da Vinci's Cafe Bar, Imperial College Union, Beit Quad, Prince Consort Road, South Kensington, London. More detailled directions are available on the web site

Turn up around 7pm - but be there before 8pm, since that's when we'll actually authenticate ourselves to each other and swap key data.

Then an evening of socialising!

I saw something sad today (by alaric)

My train to take me to London for the week leaves from Stroud, a small town near us with a train station. It was me, Jean, and Sarah in the van; Sarah's father was coming down on one train, then my train was heading back about an hour and a half later, so we'd hang out in Stroud for a bit, then he'd take my place and drive Sarah and Jean back in the van.

The journey from our village down to Stroud goes via Painswick, a picturesque village frequented by tourists. Because of this, it has a commercial area along the main road through it, with lots of tea shops and pubs. Well, that makes it sound like a thriving metropolis - it has a few tea shops, two pubs, a post office that also functions as a stationer and newsagent, an excellent little chemist, and various antiques and crafts shops. Which is a thriving metropolis compared to our village of Cranham, which has a single pub and a post office that opens two mornings a week (soon to close).

If you don't want to read a graphic account of a cat being seriously injured by a vehicle - stop reading here.

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Poor spotty Jean… (by alaric)

Jean seems to have yet another case of chicken pox - the third one since the flood...

Oh well. At least it's the weekend so I don't need to be working, and can sit with her in her bedroom and play with cars and watch films all day while Sarah does the gardening and continues to work on sorting the house out... I think I've got the easy side of this...