Jim's blog

Another great day on Saturday. My registration number was 40 so there were plenty of people there although there weren't 40 boats on the water. Photos and more later.

The 5th Plimmerton Classic & Wooden Boat Festival
is at the Plimmerton Boating Club, Karehana Bay, on Saturday the 14th March.

This event has been very popular with the public as well as the boaties over the past 4 years, and this year's one is again creating a lot of interest.

As well as old craft that have been restored there are always beautiful new boats designed in traditional style. Both sailing, motor boats and rowing or paddling craft are represented. There will be model boats, traditional boat designer John Wellsford will have a range of plans on display and there will be other displays of related interest. The sail past down to Plimmerton Beach will be at about 1.30pm weather permitting. There is also an open invitation to bigger boats of traditional style to come and anchor in the Bay near the Boating Club and just add to the character of the day.

"Messing about in boats" is the point of all this and if it inspires some more people to get involved, that will be a great result.

The Classic Boat Festival is now recognized as one of the main annual events at the Plimmerton Club and the public are most welcome to come and join in the event and enjoy the clubs' facilities, which include the bistro, restaurant and great areas for viewing the displays in the grounds and on the water. The public are welcome to come and enjoy this event any time from 10am to 3pm.

I have just been reminded of Marcus Ranum's "The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security".

The idea that we should only allow what is necessary for the function we need to deliver is usually only thought of at the level of firewalls and other network level systems. Once we get onto a workstation or server we generally have access to a wide range of services by default - even on a locked down system.
I am going to start taking a serious look at the hundreds of installed packages on my Ubuntu laptop to see what I can remove or disable without stopping me doing what I need to on a day to day basis.

One that comes instantly to mind is the Vodafone Mobile Connect Client. The Gnome Network manager now handles my Vodem 3G USB device properly and I am no longer using VMC. Of course I won't be able to send or receive text messages (unless there is something else to do that) but actually apart from an initial test to see if it works, I never did anyway.

I'll keep a record of my application and executable cleanup activity and update this from time to time.