Author: Duncan

  • Back on the property ladder

    Back on the property ladder

    After a few years of looking, and purchase that I pulled out of due to probate not clearing in time, I’ve managed to find a house I like (and that K likes). I don’t like the price too much, but I’ve not had to move far – my commute in the morning or evening is […]

  • Watching thousands of Euro go up in smoke

    The locals in Germany seem very fond of fireworks. As 2019 was rung in, fireworks were going off across Höchst all through the hours leading up to midnight. From ~2345 until ~0045, I felt sorry for any dogs, or people who have PTSD that can be triggered by loud noises – it was an absolute […]

  • Indexing my books – part two

    Indexing my books – part two

    VBA is a horrible thing to work with; mostly because the development environment (if you can call it that) built in to Office 2013 stinks. You get lovely errors like “Access denied” when using the HTTP request component, or “-91”. So, with a lot of looking things up on StackOverflow and other sources, I’ve re-written […]

  • Indexing my books

    Indexing my books

    I’m currently packing books into boxes, in preparation for January, when I expect to be moving out of this apartment and in to a house a little way up the road. It occurred to me that it’d be nice to have an index of my books – at least the titles. I’ve borrowed a barcode […]

  • Banks and security requirements

    Banks and security requirements

    I’m in the middle of opening a bank account with KBC, and I’m both sadly amused and annoyed with them. Let us start with their security verification questions when creating an account. What is your mother’s maiden name? What is your favourite colour? Where were you born? Rather than rant, I shall quote the National […]

  • Adventures with FreeSWITCH and FusionPBX part drei

    Adventures with FreeSWITCH and FusionPBX part drei

    So, DISA, direct inward system access. Plenty of documentation, sort of, on the ‘net about how to get FreeSWITCH to do it via editing XML. However, if you’re using FusionPBX, then you’re actually writing to a Postgres database, which is compiled to XML on the fly (I think) when FreeSWITCH does something that would access […]