Andrew Ferrier

I no longer use Highrise, but when I did, I used this Python script to back up my contacts. Hope it’s helpful to someone. Updated 2009-12-14: Added license #!/usr/bin/python # # Copyright (c) 2009, Andrew Ferrier All rights reserved. # # Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without # modification, are permitted provided...

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Just come back from the new Winchester Waitrose. Upsides are: Large; decent selection of food. Looks like usual upscale Waitrose food quality. Pleasant, well-turned out, professional staff (Sainsbury’s Winchester, I’m looking at you here). Clean and well-presented store (once again, a glance in Sainsbury’s direction). Downsides: It’s too far out of town. OK, it probably isn’t...

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I recently bought a veryPC AT20 as a more powerful replacement for an aging Debian-hacked NSLU2 that I had serving up files, doing backups, and other such tasks. I thought I’d do a quick review in case it’s of value to anyone considering a machine from veryPC (at the time...

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As I’ve written about before, I use a combination of Vodafone 3G and the AT&T Network Client on Windows to access my corporate VPN. Recently, I’ve been seeing this error a lot when ‘dialling’ the 3G network (I connect it via the Windows dialler, rather than the Vodafone client): This morning,...

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I’ve written before about how poor the Vodafone 3G Mobile Connect client is, and the alternative in Windows. However, it’s also worth mentioning that the card itself is far from perfect. It is very sensitive to the position of the SIM Card – having it off by even a few...

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Been to see two films in almost as few days recently. Slumdog Millionaire was entertaining; perhaps not the classic it could have been – I think it lacked a little clarity in storytelling – but still great. Frost/Nixon was more compelling, certainly for me: I was not expecting Frank Langella’s...

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If you’re anything like me, you hate the Vodafone Mobile Connect client - it’s buggy, unstable, and requires frequent reboots/restarts/taking-the-card-out-and-putting-it-back-in-again to make it work. What I only discovered today – although I should have known from ancient dial-up modem connections years ago – was that you can just use the...

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(This post is probably of most interest to my IBM colleagues – however, since the AT&T Network Client is also available for other organisations, I’ve posted this here in case it’s of use to other folks.) I recently installed Ubuntu 64bit (amd64) on my Lenovo Thinkpad T61. Unfortunately, the Network Client...

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After yet another grumble at jt, I’ve finally broken and will give Twitter a try (my ID is andrewferrier). I’m still struggling to see where the benefit will come from, but he made the valid point that I can’t say for sure ’til I try it – so I’ve given...

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Early this year I wrote about how the French were standing up to anti-smoking legislation. The Dutch are now doing the same. I wish the British didn’t roll over so easily. Forcing pub owners (or anyone else) to enforce your preferences is wrong and a thoroughly illiberal idea. It makes the...

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I don’t normally do plugs on here, but my good friend Ella has just recently completed her first novel: Blood, Sex and Coffee. It’s a mammoth achievement, weighing in at a good 700 pages, and is a campy vampire novel bringing in more themes than you’d think could be fit...

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For some time, I’ve had a Perl script that runs regularly, backing up my Google Reader subscriptions using the standard OPML format: #!/usr/bin/perl # # Usage: # backup-google-reader-opml file-to-write-to.opml google.user.name@domain google-password   use strict; use warnings;   use WWW::Mechanize;   my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();   $mech->get("http://reader.google.com") or die "Cannot reach Google Reader Homepage";   $mech->submit_form( form_number => 1, ...

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I’ve had my TripIt Personal Calendar Feed specified as an iCal feed into Dopplr for some time, to keep the two in sync by adding every trip in TripIt into Dopplr automatically (I’d give up on Dopplr entirely, as it seems a bit overdesigned and buggy – but it is...

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Went to see Burn After Reading with plv last night. It’s a bit of a slow starter, but when it gets going, there are some real solid comedic moments. It’s not laugh-a-minute, and is a little disjointed, but it’s sure entertaining as the plot gets more and more mashed up,...

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Ordered a t-shirt from Threadless. It never turned up. They offered to refund me in full, no complaints needed. They also gave me a $5 voucher for future orders, bringing the whole deal even further into the red for them. This is pretty excellent customer service. I struggle to see this happening in the...

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I went to the see the NBA game at the O2 Arena on Sunday evening on a last minute whim – Chris had a ticket spare. The game was certainly entertaining (everything the Telegraph says about attention deficit disorder is true), even though I know little about basketball. It gave me...

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My work Thinkpad (a T61) was becoming a little crufty, so I decided to reinstall it from scratch. Here are a few lessons I learnt along the way: Making a hot copy of your entire drive onto a USB hard disk with VMWare Converter beforehand is a great idea. This basically...

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Super. After the mean folks at Comedy Central stopped allowing streaming of The Daily Show outside the US, it’s now available again, courtesy of Channel 4 Catch Up. If you’ve never watched it, it’s definitely worth a peek. Jon Stewart is pretty funny, and although it has an obvious leftist bias,...

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I was just about to diversify my savings into a newly-opened Icesave ISA this evening. Boy, am I glad it took me a while to get round to it. Now to try and guess analyse the best place for my money....

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Decent Hamburger restaurant in Kensington. Well worth a try. Another similar option is Tootsie’s, nearby....

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