Home
Welcome to my blog. This is mainly about IT, information management and Cyber Security with occasional forays into general technology, science and maybe even politics and beliefs.
I welcome feedback on this site and its content. Please use the contact form if you spot anything amiss with the site and use Disqus to talk about any of the articles.
There are 299 pages currently on this site. 235 blog posts, 58 knowledgebase pages, 6 about pages and 0 project pages.
Latest posts and knowledgebase articles
Automatically updating Hugo
Hugo is still changing very quickly. So it is helpful to be able to easily download and install the latest version directly from GitHub.
Windows 10 1803 Timeline Feature
The May 2018 version of Windows 10 has an updated alt-tab view called the timeline. While it will eventually be more useful, its current implementation is poor.
Office 365 Autosave
I am sure that whoever in Microsoft came up with the idea of an autosave flag, they thought it was a great idea. And indeed it is. However, when they made it default to on, they made a logistical nightmare for the majority of users. This post discusses why and what you could do about it.
Cloud Automation for IoT
Having just brought a Google Home, I’ve quickly realised that, although Google are supposedly fairly open about allowing people to develop for it, there are still far too many limitations. To try and get round these, I’ve been looking at automation tools. In this article, I will list some of the key tools and their strengths and weaknesses.
📖 Posts | 📎 Blogging, Development | 🔖 security, security threats, threat management, vulnerabilities, web
Cloudflare Now Active
After the recent high-profile vulnerabilities, I decided to turn on the free version of CloudFlare for this domain. CloudFlare provides a reverse proxy service that sits in front of your domain. It will serve content where it can on your behalf (caching), optimise content where it can (e.g. minimising JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc.). But even more important from my perspective is their ability to protect against a number of vulnerabilities.
📖 Posts | 📎 Enterprise, Linux, Microsoft, Operating Systems, Software, Windows | 🔖 configuration, cross-platform, enterprise systems, group policy, microsoft, microsoft intune, microsoft windows administrators, mobile device management, operations, software delivery, system center configuration manager, windows desktops
DSC vs. GPO vs. SCCM vs. MDM (Intune)
Microsoft Windows administrators now have a number of ways for managing their estates. Group Policy (GPO) Allows very fine-grained control over every aspect of Windows. Primarily aimed at Windows desktops. Requires Active Directory (AD) and very careful configuration. Requires well trained specialist staff to get it right. System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) Allows central control over software delivery. Also requires AD. Configuration of delivery packages can be complex and very careful change control is required.
Home Broadband
This page shows data about my broadband connection. Current ping results 2018-05-01 06:58 2018-04-30 20:31 Other Tests ThinkBroadband Labs Ookla Speedtest
Hugo Snippets and Code Examples
A somewhat random collection of code for Hugo so that I don’t have to keep looking things up all over the Internet.
iTunes Finally Hits the Windows Store - What Does it Mean?
iTunes on Windows has always been a horrible application. It is highly intrusive, installing many background services. It also has a terrible UX/design. So, now that it is available in the Windows Store, is there a difference? Improvement?
Macro to open a web URL from Outlook
Many of us spend most of our work time in a few applications such as Outlook (email) and a web browser. This example macro for Microsoft Outlook will let you add a button to the Outlook Ribbon that will open a specific website URL.
Outlook 2013 URL Protocol Handler
Outlook has a custom URL protocol that allows interaction with different elements such as folders, mail and calendar items and contacts, Since Outlook 2007, this has been restricted for use only within Outlook itself but there are some tremendous opportunities for use from simple web systems. This post explains how to turn it on, even for Outlook 2013 (Office 365 version). It also gives pointers to other articles on how to use the protocol.
Privacy Policy & Disclosure
Privacy Policy for it.knightnet.org.uk This privacy policy is valid from 1 April 2018. If you require any more information or have any questions about this privacy policy, please feel free to contact us via the contact form. You can also contact Julian Knight via Twitter (@knightnet). At it.knightnet.org.uk, the privacy and security of our visitors is of extreme importance to us. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by it.
Windows 7 supports IPTC in JPEG Picture Files! (Not quite – Adobe XMP actually)
Update 2018-04-22: Reformatted after move from WordPress to Hugo. Wow! I’ve just discovered by accident that Windows 7 beta supports a few IPTC XMP attributes in picture files. At last, Microsoft supporting standards! Above is a screen shot from the properties of a test picture. The Description and Origin sections seem to be standard IPTC fields and I checked them out using iTag. In iTag the Title attribute comes out as both the Title and the Description.
How-to show a Message of the Day (MOTD) at the Windows Command Prompt
One of the features available under UNIX is the Message of the Day (MOTD). This is run every time you start a command prompt and displays the content of a file. In addition, the UNIX shells allow all sorts of stuff to be run and configured every time you start a new prompt using the .profile and .bashrc command files. Windows users don’t generally expect that kind of flexibility from their command prompts.
Migrated from WordPress to Hugo and Netlify
The migration from WordPress is now completed. This blog and the new Knowledgebase are generated using Hugo and hosted with Netlify.
