Category: General Tech

This is more of an introspective blog post than anything else. I’m really just noting down my thoughts on the entire process which has been interesting (to me) to say the least.

I first started using Windows when I was around eight years old with, of course, Windows 3.1. Up to that point I had only ever had experience with DOS systems (and that was mainly limited to ‘cd C:/Games’ and running .bat files to launch Test Drive II!). Windows at that stage of course was a heady mix of File Manager, Minesweeper and of course the old faithful MS-DOS Prompt. It felt like the future, and over the next 15-20 years I lived through each iteration of Windows like most people on the planet. Delighted by Windows 2000. Horrified by Millenium Edition. Main stayed on XP for longer than I care to admit. Avoided Vista. Loved 7. Disliked 8 (although 8.1 was marginally better). Whilst most recently I’ve come to the same conclusion as most technical people across the globe in that Windows 10 is … probably … the best and most well rounded Operating System for the masses that there has ever been. Probably. 🙂

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Quick one, because it’s the type of thing I tend to forget easily. I recently upgraded a VM of mine from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS. I mainly use the VM as an SSH Web Proxy for tunnelling traffic that I’d rather not originate from my machines IP, and also to get past some fairly arcane URL blocks. Ubuntu’s upgrade is quite neat in that it recognises you’re running the upgrade from a shell and splits the process out to a screen session for you lest you become disconnected for Reasons(tm).

That said, the upgrade went smoothly and without issue and my shell session remained connected and everything was fine for a few days.

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Don’t look now, but there appears to be a post on this blog of a mildy technical nature! I know. I was surprised too.

The Internet is a truly wonderful place for children. There are games they can play, videos they can learn from and a plethora of other things that can excite and maintain their interest. I’m 28 years old and have been online since I was around 13, back in the heady days of Dial Up Pay Per Minute and Napster (the less said about the £600 BT Phone Bill for one month the better …). As I was growing up I seen things on the Internet I had never seen before, some of it was a little less than savoury. You can imagine. Thinking back on it now, it was awesome probably a bad thing.

As a ‘growed-up‘ parent, I’m relatively relaxed about the Internet. I work for an ISP. I spend upwards of 70% of my free time in front of a computer. I have no less than 10 Internet connected devices in my home at any one time. I fully understand the Internet and the beast that it can be. Which is why, it came as a bit of a surprise when I had such serious issues with one of it’s core members. YouTube. Not YouTube in itself, but some of the content on there and how difficult it was to stop little eyes and ears seeing and hearing things which are just not appropriate.

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