Sunny Spain

I recently took a trip to Spain with my wife. Amazingly sunny and hot ... a welcome change to the weather in the UK at the moment ... rainy and cold. The weather in the UK is not always like that, despite the attention poor weather receives, but I have to say I enjoyed feeling the heat of the sun on my face and lounging around by the Mediterranean Sea.

TGIS

I love Saturdays ... for British people, not The Saturdays, no, the day itself. What a marvellous day Saturday is. It is a day of rest, of contemplation and hopefully relaxation.

Good quote on social status

Social ambition is not wrong in itself: it becomes wrong when it involves condescension, cruelty, or indifference towards the poor and blind admiration of the rich.

Taxes for the Rich

Considering companies like News International did not pay one penny in tax to the US government in 2010 (due to a considerable amount of offshore businesses and tax breaks), it's probably high time the government decided to tax the rich.

Obama hints at new taxes

If every country did this, there would be a limited amount of options to where these individuals could go. Already Richard Branson in the UK is moving to Switzerland. I'm sure he loves the climate, chocolate, cheese and nice watches. Perhaps not?


This photo of Switzerland is courtesy of TripAdvisor

The Kite Runner review

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The Kite Runner is an interesting and insightful look into Afghanistan before the various wars that have engulfed it. It is seen through the eyes of Amir, the protagonist. Numerous themes abound in this work: war, loyalty, racism, sacrifice, forgiveness and redemption. However it is really the last theme that will provoke differing opinions. Does the reader feel that the protagonist has achieved redemption by the end of the novel? Is this something that could in fact be achieved?



View all my reviews

Why to have a Firewall

I've already supported the use of firewalls and fortunately with the latest editions of Mac OS X and Windows 7, these are turned on by default. It's a good way to prevent the inevitable to happen to your system ... slowing down, being used as a 'bot' to launch attacks against other websites.

I was looking at my router logs this morning and saw blocked attacks from:

87.116.247.172 -> Poland
87.101.156.155 -> Saudi Arabia
87.122.156.21, 178.162.244.187 -> Germany
41.141.136.201, 41.234.103.173 -> Mauritius
213.27.229.166 -> Spain
87.116.138.40 -> Serbia
and
85.17.146.193 -> The Netherlands

And that's within the span of a few hours. Good thing I know something about technology!

A great way to check the location of an attack is to use this website: IP Address Checking.

Checkout the videos below for installing a firewall on Windows ...

on a Mac ...

or on Ubuntu Linux ...