Welcome to PreshWeb

Thanks for visiting PreshWeb, my own little corner of the web.

This site contains some permanent content, but a lot of new content that I create gets posted to my Wordpress-powered blog, and on my wiki for technical notes etc.

Linux Stuff - I've become a great fan of Linux and Open Source software in general, using it extensively both at work and at home. In this section of my site, I'm going to gather together a lot of useful information, guides, scripts and tools etc. Basically, I want to give back whatever I can to the Open Source community.

My online Photo Albums - I've got quite a few photos online already, and I'll be adding more as I take them, and more older photos as I get time to scan / upload them.

Latest Blog Posts

• Looking for phishing scripts, and other strange searches
  

  A glance at my web stats reveals that I’m getting fairly regular hits from scumbags searching for phishing scripts, with queries like “where to find phishing scripts”, “php mailer by Mr.Brain”, “phishing

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• Subversion ? show commit details when editing commit message
  

  Something I’ve wanted to do for a while is get the list of changed files and a diff into the commit message in my editor when I make a commit with Subversion.

  With Git, you can pass the -v (verbose) option when committing, and the com

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• If you?re having a bad day?
  

  Found out about FMyLife from a colleague. If you’re having a bad day, have a read, and I’ll bet you won’t feel so bad anymore.

  A few class examples:

  Today, I was holding a lit cigarette in one hand and a lollipop in the

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• Exam bosses demand hosts cover up their leaks
  

  Heh, just read this Exam bosses target faster cheat takedowns article on El Reg.

  The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), which is responsible for producing national curriculum assessments and the security of papers, said it was

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• Twatspotting
  

  Just a quick post to link to a couple of new blogs set up by my friends:

  London Fashion Victim – highlighting excellent examples of Shoreditch twattery – the fine art of people around Shoreditch to make a complete and utter twa...
  
• He?s got to be hopping mad
  

  (via Weaselking)

  
  
• ?Swine flu? branded offensive
  

  Oh, do fuck off: Swine flu name branded offensive

  The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed “Mexican” influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, an Israeli health official has said.

  Deputy Health Min

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• Facebook vs Twitter is a flawed comparison
  

  Marshall Fitzpatrick writes on ReadWriteWeb that "despite new openness, Facebook remains fundamentally closed".

  What are people saying on Facebook about the swine flu? Facebook knows, but they won’t tell you. The company ma

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• Craigslist gems
  

  Just been idly flicking through the best of craigslist postings, and thought I’d share a few amusing ones:

  Ferocious attack kitten The loudest vacuum cleaner on the face of the Earth Cat found RANT: Air fresheners The girl who took ...
  
• Obama?s Essex-girl welcome
  

  The US president receives an Essex-girl welcome:

  
  
• Insanely good low-altitude aerobatics
  

  Saw this video in this post on The Wings Stayed On, and just had to re-post it here:

  
  
  Low Altitude Aerobatics… – video powered by Metacafe

  
  
• April Fool?s Roundup
  A round-up of some of 2009's April Fools gags seen around the web.
  
• Re-review: Williams Ale & Wine House
  

  Yesterday I was Googling to try to find the menu for the Williams Ale & Wine House online to pass to a new colleague, and I found my own review of it, written back in 2007.

  That review was done after probably our first visit, and crit

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• Synaptics touchpad under Xorg lives again
  

  I have a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop running Arch Linux, and recently, after an update, the Synaptics touchpad stopped working.

  The touchpad shows up in dmesg as:

  Synaptics Touchpad, model: 1, fw: 6.3, id: 0x180b1, caps: 0xa04713/0x200000 in...
  
• Retagging audio tracks based on filename
  

  I had some audio tracks which weren’t tagged, but did have filenames containing the artist, title etc, so I whipped up a quick Perl script to sort them out – retag-by-filename.pl.

  It takes a regular expression with named capture

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$ grep "beer" /dev/fridge > mouth