Resources for Computers and Technology

UKUUG is the UK's Open Systems Group and the Summer Conference is the highlight of our year. It brings together Free Libre and Open Source Software developers and users from all over the UK and Europe to share knowledge and discuss the latest trends in Free Software.

I will be running a Drupal workshop on the Friday.

An interesting opinion piece from the CEO of netflix on why Obama's plan to cap the pay of CEOs of US public companies is the wrong move.

Rachel Rose Reid has kindly shared this recipe - a delicious alternative to mulled wine. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Smoking Bishop

“A Merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge. "I’ll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a bowl of Smoking Bishop"
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

This week a couple of friends of mine asked me to teach them how the web works, and the basics of what they'd need to know to commission their own websites. So I found myself in the strange position of being their teacher for the evening. I think I did okay, so here's what I did, and what I learnt:

1. I asked them what they wanted to learn. (Easy to miss this one.) They basically had enough questions to build a clear map of the lesson, and it meant I could use examples from their lives to illustrate my points.

I have been trying to get my head around ssh tunnels lately as I need to be able to access a development web server on our private network that doesn't have an IP accessible from the internet.
It's taken me a while to understand what is going on; it can be pretty confusing.

I'd recommend the following for a good explanation of what ports are used, e.g. when your browser requests a page:

http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_TCPIPClientEphemeralPortsandClientServerApplicatio.htm

And I thought this was probably the best single page explanation of tunneling:

Whether it’s replacing car keys with complex wireless authentication technologies, or grafting endless functionality onto otherwise perfectly usable software - innovation is becoming synonymous with new things you can do, rather than doing what you want more easily. Can we have too much of a good thing?

I've recently started re-reading a book I've had for many years now and I'm enjoying it just as much the second time around.

It's called "The Code Book" by Simon Singh:

http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Code_Book.html

It's about the history of cryptography and it's very readable. It is written at just the right level in my opinion, not too basic, so it keeps your interest, but not full of mathematics that might be frustrating.