This week I found myself looking into a phone line issue. I used to deal with a lot of these. This post aims to provide a reminder of useful numbers to use when diagnosing a UK phone line issue. For these events, I always try to have a small analogue phone handy to test the […]

I got an “Unauthorized Request” error when trying to download the VirtualBox 6.0.6 ExtPack (Extension Pack). There appears to be lots of people seeing the issue, but no published solution, so I thought I’d post my solution. Quite simply: replace the domain name “VirtualBox.org” with “Oracle.com”. The reason for this is that VirtualBox is owned […]

Fix for using an Atheros network adaptor when running Linux, if you have found that Wake on LAN (WOL) doesn’t work.

I recently borrowed a Kärcher K5 Premium Full Control Plus pressure washer, to clean some granite paving blocks. I was super impressed, so wanted to share my experience, along with a video of before, during and after washing, for anyone who is considering purchasing the Kärcher K5 pressure washer. I tested the pressure washer cleaning […]

Workaround for the current Filezilla error: “GnuTLS error -50 in gnutls_priority_set_direct: The request is invalid.
Error: Failed to initialize TLS.”.

This error appears in Ubuntu due to a GnuTLS in the current Ubuntu repository version of Filezilla.

Whether you have a blog, business card or e-commerce website, getting the basics right can make sure search engines like your site. This ensures you get a natural flow of traffic, with minimal effort and cost. Whilst this article is focused on cost-free search engine optimisation tips, it would be remiss of me not to […]

My host had a database outage this morning, which caused all my databases to disappear completed… needless to say, I thought I might have lost any post since my last backup. So this post is to share how I recovered web pages from the Chromium cache, as ever post on the Internet seems to talk […]

As a keen YouTuber, I regularly embed my videos in this site. Sometimes it’s relevant to start the embedded video at a specific time, to avoid wasting the readers time. It’s simple to do… so if you find yourself needing to embed a YouTube video that starts at a specific point in the video, here’s […]

Hi, This week I want to look at the use of 7zip in creating an effective backup routine. We all know we should backup regularly, but it’s a pain to do, and most of us have been burnt by the loss of data from time to time, caused by a lack of backing up. Since […]

I’ve been using Ubuntu as my primary operating system for a couple of years now, but choose to support the default Unity shell which has recently been announced to be ending. This guide documents the simple steps I’ve taken to install GNOME without reinstalling Ubuntu. To install GNOME itself: sudo apt install gnome gnome-shell During […]