Spammity spam

by niddler on 11th September, 2017 at 07:20

I used to get a lot of spam – particularly to random email addresses@niddler.com (sales@, marketing@ were among the most common) – I ended up creating a spam-sink; an email account I never used, which took all the most common spam-targets and effectively dropped them into a black hole.

When signing up for stuff I tend to give them an email address which is their company name at my domain – it makes it surprisingly easy to find emails from a particular vendor AND it means I know if their database has been hacked. Initially I tried contacting these companies to warn them that their email database had been compromised, but I’ve long since given up as it took forever to get to anyone technical, and they ALWAYS said the problem was at my end – not theirs. Needless to say, those companies no longer get my business.

Anyway, finally I found I was getting more and more spam to my email address that all my friends use. With the significant rise in malware, my address was being harvested directly from their accounts… and I can hardly start blocking them (well, it would be a little unkind).

THEN I started getting spam purporting to be FROM those friends – I even blogged about it.

…it turns out their accounts hadn’t been hacked by the usual means, but by something a bit more obscure – specifically from yahoo addresses – where yahoo had been hacked (the biggest ever… probably).

Anyway, I’ve got a google apps account, and for all the bad stuff said about the mountain view chocolate factory, they are really very good at differentiating spam and ham. There’s the odd bit of low-grade marketing emails that go into my spam, but I’ve not had a genuine ‘ham‘ go there for years.

I keep an eye on the volume of spam that I get, largely out of curiosity, and google delete it after a month – so it’s a kind of rolling monthly score. There was a time when it numbered in the thousands… and today I had a peek. It turned out I could unsubscribe from mailings from reputable companies that were sending out low-grade marketing junk, so I tried that and deleted the emails (never unsubscribe from something you didn’t sign up to – it’s just a way of saying ‘yep, someone reads the emails sent here’, and will get you much MORE spam!)… that left me with 10 (ten).

…I can’t work out if it’s the global fight against spam (which has had some fairly major victories) or something to do with the DKIM signature I’ve added to my domain somehow frightening off the spammers (on the bright side, as I’ve done that, it means you’re much less likely to ‘lose’ my emails into the spam folder… not that I have the time to email anyone anyway!).

Anyway, long rambling way of saying “anyone else noticing less spam these days?”. Perhaps the global market for Viagra has dipped…

International Day of Happiness

by niddler on 20th March, 2017 at 12:12

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_of_Happiness

…it’s nice of you all to join in celebrating our wedding anniversary too!

Something of a legacy

by niddler on 26th March, 2016 at 14:02

PIC_20160325_110703

I’ll cut to the chase: I bought mrsniddler a new car this week.

Well, I paid for it this week. We actually ordered it back in January: it’s a brand-new car. That feels pretty weird to both of us as we’re not in the habit of spending lots of money on things, especially cars. We eventually decided it was the right thing to do – watch this space if we still think that in the years to come! I say “I bought” rather than “we bought” because we needed to be sure that the credit rating would be acceptable… and no offence mrsniddler, mine’s likely to be better (and if we’d tried under her name and then switched to mine, it would have caused all sorts of red flags)… so my name was all over the money-related documentation, hers on all the ownership-related bits… I think someone got the better half of that deal!

Pictured is mrsniddler with her previous car and her new one – we liked the colour* of the Astra, but it wasn’t available from SEAT and so she opted for blue. The Astra turns 25 years old next month. It’s done just over 90,000 miles, which isn’t a lot for a car that old, but it was owned from new by my granddad who took great care of it, and didn’t do huge distances most of the time. He gave it to me when he stopped driving, and I in turn gave it to mrsniddler when we got an estate as our ‘family car’ (which had more than 90k miles on it when I bought it!).

The aforementioned granddad died last year – we’d been hanging on to the Astra partly as a symbolic act of not wanting to let go of him either – he was always astonished when we told him it had passed its MOT without a hitch (far more often than my much newer car). We decided it was fitting to use the inheritance from him to help replace the Astra, given all the modern gadgetry in the new car we can’t be sure it’ll last 25 years, but if it lasted 12 years then nano could have it as her first car… scary thought.

The new car is lovely, it’s very quiet, should be very fuel efficient (at least, when I’m not driving it) and is very easy to drive – although mrsniddler is understandably taking a little time to get used to it, as she’s only driven the Astra over the last 12 years – so it’s definitely a new experience! I’ve not yet managed to get mrsniddler to trigger the traction control by dumping the clutch, or use the cruise control – but she’s all over the media system (in which there is a teeny-tiny USB stick, containing all her favourite tunes… pre-prepared without her knowledge; I can be a romantic when I want to be!) and she nearly fell out of the car laughing when I parked it extremely badly outside Sainsbury’s Local last night, despite raving about how easy it was to park.

We’re now passing the Astra on to mrsniddler’s mother, who has promised me she’ll only use it for running around town… and she’ll be up to our house to borrow the new car if there’s any need for serious driving – as I think the Astra needs to be treated gently in its old age, and I do have a cartoon-style picture in my head of it falling apart if it was required to brake suddenly.

Granddad: Thank you for the car, both times round, I hope we’ll make you proud with how we use it. Mrsniddler: you might want to wash it more often than the last one.

*the black patch above the wheelarch on the astra isn’t gaffer-tape: it’s hammerite. We asked for the rust to be repaired as cheaply as possible – our wonderful mechanic obliged and took us at our word – he cut it out, welded in some new steel and painted it with hammerite as it’s cheap and does the job. The rust hasn’t come back, and it didn’t lower the re-sale value, as that’s only determined by how full the petrol tank is… so we were very happy with the new look!

A Point of View: The tyranny of the selfie – BBC News

by niddler on 12th April, 2015 at 20:24

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32248538

What a wonderful rant against the selfie.

Eclipse

by niddler on 20th March, 2015 at 13:16

This morning I spent 90 minutes teaching year 4 (offered to the school in general, the year 4 teacher said yes) about the solar system, the earth, moon and sun… And of course eclipses!

Nano got to join the class from year 1, all very exciting for us as a family (Mrs Niddler helped out too!).

We didn’t see the eclipse itself, it was just too darned cloudy. Had a lot of fun though, kids seemed receptive, and responded well to the PowerPoint I wrote in 2 hours between 4 and 6 am this morning… I am sometimes my father’s son when it comes to preparation.

Oh and happy wedding anniversary Mrs Niddler. Having lunch in 7bone to celebrate.

Sit!

by niddler on 7th March, 2015 at 22:19

I should add to the previous post that while Nano was cycling on the common (actually she’d spotted for a snack), a smallish dog (terrier maybe) approached her at spotted, she said “sit!”, and it did – much to the surprise of the dog’s owners!

What a week

by niddler on 7th March, 2015 at 18:41

Nano has had an amazing week.

Monday she was star of the week at school for writing an excellent poem about summer.

Thursday she got a Blue Peter badge for drawing a picture of the new Blue Peter dog.

Today (Saturday) she (having previously struggled without much sign of cracking it, inducing great pain in my lower back) started riding her bike – literally free-wheeled to the common and then started riding without support, and rode well over 2 miles with only a few stops for sustenance! I think I might need to get bike to keep up with her.

Funniest moment – earlier in the day we’d bought her a new helmet in halfords, and she’d asked for a “baby carrier” (for dolls) that she could fit to her bike… I’d said “only when you learn to ride your bike without support” – so after demonstrating she could for about 15 metres, she turned round and said “so I can have the baby carrier now?”.

Oh and I’ve bought a solar observatory so we can watch the eclipse on 20th March, possibly with Nano’s class at school.

Sleepover

by niddler on 9th August, 2014 at 06:45

Blog posts are like buses, none for ages, then 3 at once.

We’ve just had Moo, Nano’s cousin, stay over for the night – Nano’s first sleepover coming to her (Moo stayed on the top bunk, as that’s where she sleeps at home) and Moo’s first sleepover other than with her grandparents. Feels like something of a rite of passage / coming of age thing, so I thought I’d blog it for posterity.

They didn’t get to sleep until 9pm – and only then by Mrs Niddler reading to them until they zonked out (I was at my work laptop –  had stopped for tea and bedtime, but didn’t finish until 10:30pm – see previous post, not a great week at work). Obviously they slept in late… 06:20 when there was whispering and a brief discussion with Mrs Niddler.

To be fair, they were pretty quiet until Nano’s clock said it was time to get up – and they came and found me (working on blog post #1). Moo was up at 02:00 with something about being scared of the dark, so I put on the bathroom light and tucked her back in bed, not a bad night IMHO. They’re now watching telly together – normally I don’t get a chance to get on the computer first thing in the morning, as Nano wants someone to watch telly with her… problem solved!

From my point of view, it was a success – now we just need Moo’s little sister to want to stay as well, and my brother and his wife can have a break “just” being with the new baby. Then again, brought in on yourselves, didn’t you bro? 🙂

Time off work

by niddler on 9th August, 2014 at 06:39

I’m catching up a bit on my blog posting.

I’ve had just over 2 weeks (11 working days) off work, and have just finished the first week back (which has been a difficult one) – it’s the first time I’ve had more than 5 working days off in about 5 years… the last time was when Nano was born, and that wasn’t exactly a relaxing holiday. One of my goals for this year was “not be at work for 2 weeks straight” – so at least I’ve ticked one thing off my list.

I had a week of doing not very much at home while Nano finished school (managed to make it to The Kohinoor of Kerala twice – my favourite Indian restaurant) and then we zoomed off down to Cornwall for a week in Rock, where we’ve stayed several times before.

It was great being in Cornwall, it was the first time in living memory when I spent considerable amounts of time just sat on a beach. Obviously when I say “just sat” what I mean is, going into the water, coming out of the water, finding seaweed, picking up shells, making sandcastles, digging holes, eating snacks which weren’t very covered in sand, buying ice creams etc. There were a few moments where I sat down, and on the first day I even had a snooze while the amazing mother in law took Nano down to the water (which was quite a way away, as the tide was out), but it was mostly fairly frenetic.

We did do things other than sit on the beach (including our annual pilgrimage to the Eden Project), but it was actually Nano’s choice to go to the beach a lot – as she loved it – can’t argue with that.

I think I relaxed at the very end. Mrs Niddler says it’ll have to be 3 weeks next time, so I can have a week of being relaxed and see how it feels.

Meeting the hero

by niddler on 9th August, 2014 at 06:31

[bit belated] Nano met her hero two weeks ago. Most kids her age, the hero is Mr Tumble or Katy Ashworth. Nope, not either of them – Nano’s hero is an A&E Consultant – Dr Gareth Davies, (blimey, he has a Wikipedia page – I’ve just felt the need to update it to include the TV series I knew about).

Gareth (as the wikipedia article now says) featured as a mentor in the CBBC series Hero Squad, and also appeared in the BBC1 (post-watershed) series An Hour to Save Your Live, which is after the watershed as it’s so flipping graphic with real people’s blood.

Nano is not in the least bit perturbed by blood, or indeed anything else graphically medical – as she has a habit of watching open heart surgery on YouTube (when she’s not watching Barbie Life in the Dreamhouse, or Frozen videos).

Anyway, it turns out my old man knows Gareth from when they set up London’s Air Ambulance, so he arranged for us to meet him. It was all a bit complicated as Gareth was actually working in A&E that day, but we managed to get a visit to the LAA helipad and Gareth came up from A&E to see us, Mrs Niddler’s got photos on Flickr/Facebook of Nano with Gareth and stood by the helicopter.

It was quite a mission as we had to catch the train to London, find something to entertain ourselves (Spitalfields City Farm – excellent) and got caught in a thunderstorm walking from where we had lunch (in ‘1001’ – a terribly hip club venue in Brick Lane) to the hospital. We got rescued by a bus, dried out waiting for the helipad coordinator… and the sun came out, which was fortunate as we’d not have been allowed on the helipad if the weather was bad – in fact, another massive storm was coming in (clearly visible from the helipad, and for that matter, shortly after we came back down it was banging against the windows).

Nano was absolutely made up to meet Gareth, so thank you to him, and my dad, and to CBBC for creating a hero of someone who does such a different job to those normal TV presenters.

One final comment – being on a helipad 17 floors above London, where it’s just what you’re stood on, stretching out and then (as far as you can see) nothing except the London skyline (no barriers like you’d normally get high up – for obvious reasons) is a bit of a weird feeling. Flipping good view though, and I have to say, what a great group of people – saving lives across London on a daily basis.