James's Weblog

Two Factor Authentication

Two factor authentication (2FA) is a good thing.

A password is secure, as far as it goes. Only you know it. So only you can log in.

But if someone else learns your password, they can log in. So you add a second factor. As well as something you know (your password) you need something you have in order to log in. This may be your mobile phone, or a small gadget to generate a passcode.

This is an especially good idea for any website that may cost you something - mobile banking, for example.

Yesterday, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, gave a speech at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference in Manchester.

In many ways it was a very fine speech. He spoke out for the needs of the poorer members of society with clarity, compassion and awareness of the issues:

A few years ago, I posted about the anti-virus software provided by AVG. At the time, their free version was very popular, and maybe still is. My post was about them earning extra money from their free users by changing their privacy policy in a somewhat unsavoury direction.

Here's a problem with Microsoft Word that's bugged me for ages.

Quotation marks in Word

Sometimes I write a document in which I quote either another document (a book, for example), or report direct speech. I might do this with single-quotation marks (') or with double-quotation marks ("). It's useful to have the choice here, because you sometimes quote a document in which something else is also quoted. Having single and double quotation marks allows or this to be made clear.

"She said, 'What's that you're eating?'"

as opposed to

Notes from a sermon preached on 20th May 2018 (Pentecost Sunday 2018), based on John 16:12-15.

Iced coffee is usually prepared by chilling hot-brewed coffee. Cold-brew coffee can taste great if prepared well. Here's my very simple recipe and some commentary.

The BBC reports a fascinating development at this year's Pride march in London, which took place last Saturday (8th July 2018).

Here's the summary from the beginning of that BBC report:

Members of lesbian and feminist group Get The L Out demanded to march behind the rainbow flag, which marks the start of the event, organisers said.

The group argues the trans movement is attacking lesbian rights and said it protested to protect those rights.

Yes, I really am writing a review of a kettle.

For those who don't know, I love my coffee. A kettle is one of the most fundamental pieces of kit you need. The right kettle helps when it comes to brewing with a cafetiere, pour-over filter, chemex or aeropress.

Mid-Range

The AEG EWA7800-U 7 Series Digital Kettle (paid link) is a mid-range kettle. What I mean by that is that it sits between the cheapest and the most expensive.

I'm a big fan of Piwik, an open source analytics suite. Think Google Analytics, StatCounter, Sitemeter, etc. … only self-hosted an open source. There are many benefits of using it:

Yesterday, the Drupal Security team issued a Security Advisory for the Mollom module, SA-CONTRIB-2018-038. The module is now marked as "unsupported".

The security team is marking this project unsupported. There is a known security issue with the project that has not been fixed by the maintainer.