A few friends and I have just signed up for the Nike Run London 10K in October. We're all in the 11.05 wave, although I think I'm the only one of us (so far) in the South London team. It doesn't matter, we all know South of the river is the best ;-)

As soon as the justgiving.com website sorts it's life out, I'll update with my sponsorship page...

Yes Cat fans, it's true. I've sold my soul and work (indirectly) for the government. Worse than that, I work on a government site, so have to abide by their security policies. We recently had a ban on contractor laptops, so we all have to use 'official' laptops instead. It's incredible - everything takes even longer than it used to (and that was incredibly slow). It's all costing you and me a fortune...

This is deeply techie, but rather important.

All networks have this thing called an 'MTU'. In short, when you download a file, the server and your computer break their communication up into packets. The MTU says what the largest packet size can be until it has to be broken down further by the network. Generally, you don't want to have your packets broken up by the network, as it's very slow. So you want your MTU to be the best it can be, so you can use your broadband at top speed.

Usually, computers and networks work out the MTU by themselves. However, various things can prevent this happening, which ultimately can cause all kinds of reliability issues with your connection.

I had this problem last week, after 'upgrading' to a Linksys WRT54G router. It has an MTU setting of 'auto' which ought to be fine, but I found it wasn't. A look on the Internet found two guides, one at The Scream and the other at ADSL Guide that explain how to change it (although if you have a router, you can probably just change it on there, not your own computer).

Once changed, downloading speed improved by about 10%, uploads started working (yes, they were completely broken!), and because I run a mail server, it managed to send it's mail once again. Definitely worth doing ;-)

It's Sunday: the day after the night before. It's the usual sleepy TV watching, piecing together the usual antics of lost friends, displaced belongings and inpromptue house guests whilst minging about in yesterdays stale smoke and drink smelling clothes.

A special thank you to the Usual Suspects and the others, but also to the two beautiful ladies I briefly spoke to last night. You're great, and I'm rubbish - I'll do better next time.

All the Hoff Goodness at Google Video.

It's cheesy as hell, but has a bit of Kitt, and some truly awful lyrics, but hey, it's the Hoff, so you're gonna love it. Well, maybe...

I currently own the iintel.co.uk domain. It's going to expire in 30 days, so if you'd like to grab it off me (for free!) before the domain parkers get hold of it, drop me a line. Of course, you'll have to get it renewed, but just think of the fun you could have with it!