ocproxy, the lwIP based SOCKS and port forwarding proxy that I wrote a couple of years ago to use with OpenConnect continues to serve me well every day. Kevin Cernekee has contributed various great changes that have improved the reliability, stability and usability, and now he will take over looking after ocproxy going forward.

Most of the significant changes since the original implementation have been Kevin’s, so he is well versed in the code. Get the latest bits from Github.

I’m interested in getting traditional Linux kernels and distributions working on ARM based Chromebooks. There is a lot of information available scattered across the internet, and various kernel trees with different and sometimes conflicting changes. To try and pull some of this together, this morning I set up lionarch. If this is an area in which you are interested or have expertise, please come along and join in.

Update: The linux-sunxi community is a more useful place to go, so lionarch is no more.

Over the last twelve months the battery in my cordless drill has declined noticeably in capacity. This came to a head at the weekend when a freshly charged battery was not sufficient to complete the installation of a single screw, particularly given that I need to drill four 16mm holes into some concrete.

The drill itself seems fine, if a little battered, so I looked into buying a new battery. Amazon sells the battery for £40.76. That’s not so bad - the drill was originally about twice that price.

Just to be sure, I checked what a new drill will cost. It turns out to be £58.94. Hmm - just an extra £19 to have a new drill, charger and case. Seems like a reasonable option.

Oh, but wait - the new drill comes with two batteries.

So, a battery is ~£40 and a drill with two batteries is ~£60. How does that make sense?

On the Telephone:

And so, despite owning a phone capable of video calling, restrictions on using Apple’s FaceTime over cellular networks mean that if I wanted to make a video call, whilst out and about, I’d end up looking around for a phone booth.

This kind of thing really annoys me (similarly, restrictions on tethering, application install restrictions, etc.).