As a child who gravitated to the sciences at school, it wasn''t so much that I found engineering but rather that it found me. Engineers don’t sit passively and observe the world – they make things happen. Using innovation, creativity, scientific, mathematical and computational knowledge, engineers are impacting the world unlike any other group. Im proud to have made my career in engineering. Its a field of endeavour unlike any other.
Our world is in a state of constant flux and those behind this incessant motion are almost always the engineers. Almost everything we see and use today has involved some component of engineering in their inception at the very least. Changing lives for the better is its raison d etre.
Engineers must be visionary yet creative; imaginative yet grounded; always ready to grapple with the incessantly changing demands the world throws up.
This part of my website spans the enormous variety of the engineering landscape covering primary areas in which I am involved. And yet there are areas in the rubrik in which I am not yet involved but have more than a passing interest. These areas too are often covered. I hope you enjoy browsing through this collection of curated interest and can garner some value from it along the way.
Engineering
Let it rain!
Who cares?
I've a train
Upstairs,
With a brake
Which I make
From a string
Sort of thing,
Which works
In jerks,
'Cos it drops
In the spring,
Which stops
With the String,
And the wheels
All stick
So quick
That it feels
Like a thing
That you make
With a brake,
Not string....
So that's what I make,
When the day's all wet.
It's a good sort of brake
But it hasn't worked yet.
Duplicate element ID's in the DOM
Short post today folks since its Friday :) I've been developing quite a lot lately using Angular JS and React JS as I'm currently heavily involved with a startup preparing to release a new IoT produc...
The Web By Proxy
The world of WAN optimisation is a highly interesting and potentially complex one and it is in this bailiwick that network proxies have become essential tools. Companies like F5, Allot and Ipanema, a...
Curved Text In Gimp
1. The first thing you need to do is to import the image itself into GIMP. Ill assume you have the skills to get this done for yourself and that you've already downloaded and installed GIMP. If you...
Hardening The Joomla Backend
When it comes to defence against brute force attacks, few tools are better than Fail2ban. In the words of Wikipedia: "Fail2Ban is an intrusion prevention software framework that protects computer ser...
Passing Dynamic Arguments to Bash Scripts
For instance, if the username to be graphed is "ASmith", you would enter the following command line: sh graph.sh ASmith Any arguments passed to the file are accessed internally within the script by u...
Spread Spectrum Modulation Techniques
Spreading the Spectrum The first major application of Spread Spectrum Techniques (SST) arose during the mid-sixties, when NASA employed the method to precisely measure the range to deep space probes....
Isn't Satellite Communication Old School Now
Space travel has and continues to fascinate us. As humans it will always be our intrinsic instinct to explore and discover whatever lies over the next horizon. Such was the motivation for the space r...
The Rise Of The Machines
One of the hot topics of the twenty teenies that was totally expected is the examination surrounding the ways in which AI or artificial intelligence will affect our lives and most specifically how AI...
Set up BIND as a DNS Server on Ubuntu
Introduction DNS is important. The Domain Name Service is perhaps the most overlooked component of routine Internet services. When it becomes compromised or fails, the consequences can be far reach...
OSPF DR and BDR Election
Participating routers in an OSPF network have varying roles to play in ensuring that the processes which route the data around the network maintain a true and accurate picture of the network topology...
The Latest Referrer Spam - Semalt and Buttons For Website
So, you manage some websites, you're a fan of Google analytics or even just use a local server log analyser to view your site stats. If this is you then you cant fail to have noticed that your sites ...
GIMP plugins that stand out from the crowd
You may well be wondering what GIMP is. GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Quite simply it is one of the most useful programs I have used throughout the last 10 years. Its an open source...
What on earth is making my home network so slow! (Part 1)
Let's face it, we've all been there. Sitting wondering why on earth a network connection that, up until 5 minutes ago had been working just fine was now all but useless. Less tech savvy individuals m...
Enhancing Oil,Gas and Power Operations - SCADA via Rustyice Satellite Solutions
Oil and gas operations are located in unforgiving environments, from the blistering cold of the arctic to the scorching heat of the deserts and the storming conditions out on the open sea. To sustain...
The Chirpsounder / Ionosonde
Anybody who has ever set up a working international HF link will know it can be a tricky business. You see there's a pesky movable thing called the ionosphere which is pretty fundamental to the whole...
Configuring 3G Wireless WAN on Modular and Fixed ISRs (HWIC-3G-GSM, HWIC-3G-HSPA, PCEX-3G-HSPA-x)
Cisco Integrated Services Routers are branch routers which support the new paradigms of network traffic delivery in the cloud and on the move. They provide Internet connectivity to teleworkers, and m...
Cisco Open SOC
So a couple of days ago Cisco, it would seem, have finally released their new open source security analytics framework: OpenSOC to the developer community. OpenSOC sits conceptually at the intersecti...
Too Much Information - Hadoop and Big Data
Hadoop, a free, Java-based programming framework that makes it possible to run applications on systems with thousands of nodes involving thousands of terabytes, supports the processing of large amoun...
Cisco Banners
A banner is a useful tool for sending a security message to selected visitors to the equipment. Cisco equipment uses four different banner types to provide different messages at different times and t...
Network Functions Virtualization on the Software-Defined Network
In the modern Telecom industry, driven by the fast changing demands that a connected society makes of it, a huge number of new applications are emerging such as IPX, eHealth, Smart Cities and the Int...
Classful IP Addressing (IPv4)
IP addressing is among the most important topics in any examination of TCP/IP. The IP address is a 32 bit binary identifier which, when configured correctly, enables each machine on an IP network to ...
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
Sometimes traditional network engineers who arrive at the networking industry via the world of telecommunications can often find themselves unfamiliar with certain facets of the industry. Such facets...
An Introduction to layer 4 handling of RT traffic on satellite networks.
Satellite telecommunications is, by its very nature, prone to long propagation delays and higher error rates which can impair the performance of the TCP protocol and most specifically the use of TCP ...
The EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) metric
EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) is a network protocol that lets routers exchange information more efficiently than was the case with older routing protocols. EIGRP which is a propr...
Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol
The IEEE 802.1D Spanning Tree Protocol was designed to keep a switched or bridged network loop free, with adjustments made to the network topology dynamically. A topology change typically takes 30 se...
An examination of DHCP Snooping with option 82 on Cisco.
DHCP snooping is a DHCP feature that provides security by filtering untrusted DHCP messages from hosts or other devices on the network. DHCP snooping accomplishes this level of security by building a...
Could ants power Web3.0 to new heights? OSPF v's ANTS
Having recently completed my latest M.Eng block on the subject of " Natural and Artificial Intelligence ", I became aware of advances made in the recent decade towards a new paradigm of network traff...
Spotify SpotiFM Lastify Last.FM
As someone already devoted to another music platform my introduction to Spotify was met with not a little scepticism. ‘Surely this can’t be better than Last.fm , I thought to myself as I curiously do...