Archive for March, 2012

Trip to Sicily

Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

Mount Etna is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, close to Messina and Catania. It is the tallest active volcano in Europe, currently standing 3329m high, though this varies with summit eruptions.

Mount Etna, view from greek theatre of Taormina

Mount Etna, view from greek theatre of Taormina


Mount Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world and is in an almost constant state of activity. The fertile volcanic soils support extensive agriculture, with vineyards and orchards spread across the lower slopes of the mountain and the broad Plain of Catania to the south.
Mount Etna, view from Catania

Mount Etna, view from Catania

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National Railway Museum in York

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

I visited very nice museum in York – The National Railway Museum. It is the home of the national collection of British railway vehicles. Displays a collection of over 100 locomotives and nearly 200 other items of rolling stock, virtually all of which either ran on the railways of Great Britain or were built there. It is the largest museum of its type in Britain.

Harry Potter Steam Train

Harry Potter Steam Train

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Taking Screenshots in Mac OS X

Monday, March 12th, 2012

There are several keyboard combinations that can be used to take screenshots in Mac OS X:

  • Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
  • Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
  • Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
  • Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
  • Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
  • Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

Posted in Guides and tutorials | Comments Closed

List open ports on your machine

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

To show which processes are listening to which ports on a Linux machine you can use:

netstat -atp | grep -i "listen"

On Mac OS X you can use:

lsof -i | grep -i "listen"

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Stop Big Brother Google from spying you

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

Google are clearly gathering information about us but refuse to tell us why. They records everything they can. You can limit this by turning off search history personalization:

  1. Go to https://www.google.com/history
  2. Click “remove all Web History.”
  3. Click “ok.”

Note that removing your Web History also pauses it. Web History will remain off until you enable it again.

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