On September 11, 2022, I boarded a VIA Rail train at Toronto Union Station, headed for Montreal, Quebec. After having spent more than three months travelling in North America from coast to coast while doing remote work for my job in Paris, I was about to start the last week of my trip before returning […]
Continue ReadingSummer 2022, Part 6: Vancouver Island to Ontario
Over the course of June and July 2022, I had ridden my motorcycle on a very indirect route from Nova Scotia to California (with a number of short and long stops on the way), then north through the Pacific Northwest of the USA to reach Vancouver Island. On the first day of August 2022, I […]
Continue ReadingSummer 2022, Part 5: The Three-Legged Dog Goes North
After having spent a few weeks travelling west from Ontario to Alberta, then through British Columbia, Montana, Idaho, and northern California, I had been very excited to drive south down California’s famous Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to Los Angeles and eventually all the way to San Diego. However, upon reaching the west coast, […]
Continue ReadingSummer 2022, Part 4: The big trip west!
On the morning of July 13, I was finally ready to begin the long journey from Port Dover, Ontario to western Canada and the United States. I was due to watch a good friend perform in the South Country Fair that would take place on July 16 and 17 in Fort Macleod, Alberta, which gave […]
Continue ReadingSummer 2022, Part 3: Southwestern Ontario
After bouncing from Paris to Boston to Halifax over the course of a couple of days, and then travelling through Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and New England, I returned to Ontario to spend some time there for the first time since the summer of 2020. I had just arrived in Port Dover, Ontario. I would […]
Continue ReadingSummer 2022, Part 2: Atlantic Canada, New England, and the arrival in Ontario
After having spent over a day getting from Paris to Halifax via a very indirect route, I was thrilled to have finally arrived, having just met my uncle and aunt at the airport. However, there was work to be done, and straight away: I had to recover my trusty motorcycle! Motorcycle? What motorcycle? Most people […]
Continue ReadingSummer 2022, Part 1: Paris to Halifax
Our story begins in an apartment in Paris. In 2022, one of the most common things to do immediately after waking up – sometimes even before heading for the toilet, depending on how thirsty you were before getting into bed – seems to be checking your phone for notifications. What exciting things could have happened […]
Continue ReadingWhy I use an ancient phone: a tale of money and things.
In September of 2012, with a UPS tracking number in hand, I excitedly walked into the office of Housing Services at the University of Lethbridge. A few weeks earlier, I had moved into the student residence at the university and started my first year of postsecondary education. I discovered that when ordering packages, this office was the final destination, thus the reason for which I was charging into the office to try and retrieve my precious cargo. Names were exchanged, recent deliveries were rummaged through, and a box emerged. […]
Continue ReadingNot all public DNS servers enjoy serving private addresses.
Recently, I encountered a situation where employees working at home while connected to our corporate VPN were unable to access a certain network resource which would normally be accessible only to on-site and VPN users. Let’s call that resource importantserver.example.com. importantserver.test.com has an RFC1918 address, let’s give 10.51.0.7 as an example. This address is only […]
Continue ReadingCisco UC 320W – Use as an FXO adapter (or, the struggle of making devices do things for which they were not designed)
Recently, I decided to try setting up a test phone system (that will also be my actual apartment’s phone system) at home. This system, based on the tiny Raspberry Pi 4 computer running RasPBX (a customised version of FreePBX for the Raspberry Pi), was easily able to connect with two SIP telephones (an Aastra SIP […]
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