Gadget of the Year 2014

1 January 2015

It’s been a funny year for gadgets. I tend not to acquire a gadget unless I’ve got a really good use for it, and it fits in my bag. After something of a drought for a year or two, I’ve found myself picking up more than usual this year. But... [Read More]
Tags: gadet review
Categories: LifeTrack

72 Hours Later With The Chromecast

13 April 2014

So, we’ve had the Chromecast the better part of a week now. It’s interesting to see how easily it’s slipped in to every day usage. Want to watch a thing, load up on phone, cast to TV. In general, it still “just works”. We even had a few friends around... [Read More]
Categories: LifeTrack

24 Hours With Chromecast

8 April 2014

Over the past few years, we’ve used a number of solutions to stream content from various sources around the house. We started out with a classic Xbox running XBMC (when the X really did stand for XBox), then we upgraded to a dedicated media PC which streamed content from our... [Read More]
Categories: LifeTrack

Lenovo X1 Carbon and Ubuntu 13.04

14 July 2013

I’ve had the Lenovo X1 Carbon for a few months, and in all honesty, it’s the best laptop I’ve ever owned (including Macbooks). Under Windows, everything works flawlessly, and I’ve had no problems. In Ubuntu, almost everything works out of the box with 13.04, but there are a couple of... [Read More]
Categories: LifeTrack Comment

Living With Migraines

17 June 2013

I’m … exhausted. I think that’s the right word. When one of these finally passes, it feels like I’ve been competing all day. Before the feeling passes, and I just go back to thinking they’re minor things, I’m going to write about it. [Read More]
Categories: LifeTrack

Treating A Sore Throat

9 February 2013

Disclaimer: I claim no medical training. All advice given here is based on my own, highly personal opinion of going through a few days of hell. If any of it helps, great. If some of it happens to kill you, I accept no liability. [Read More]
Categories: LifeTrack

Leeds Hack 2011, Or That Was The Hack That Was

10 August 2011

LeedsHack 2011 has been and gone, and again was the flurry of excitement and frustration we’ve come to expect from the event.  @the_hodge, @heathervamp and the rest of the team managed to organise an excellent venue, a world class pic ‘n’ mix and the world’s largest simultaneous takeaway order –... [Read More]
Categories: LifeTrack Code

Tips for Contractor CVs

11 February 2011

I spend quite a bit of time recruiting for clients, helping place contractors and full time placements for them. As such, I sift through rather a lot of CVs. CVs are notoriously hard to get right, you’ve got to get a potentially complex personality and skill set across in a... [Read More]
Categories: LifeTrack

Abel and Cain (Surely Cole? – ed)

1 April 2009

It’s a well regarded fact that geeks often live off a combination of pizza, Coke (Dew for our Merkian and enlightened home bretheren) and foodstuffs that generally come with an immediacy. Quite a few of us are also food-geeks, but our planning faculties tend to let us down in having... [Read More]
Categories: LifeTrack

Beefing up Mail.app

21 December 2008

Mac OS X’s default mail browser, Mail.app, is a pretty straightforward e-mail client with a few bells and whistles. But for those coming across from e-mail clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook, especially from daily workflows that revolve around e-mail, they may find the out-the-box functionality a little lacking. Cleverly... [Read More]
Categories: LifeTrack
Navigation bar avatar

I'm Kian Ryan

TLDR; I sport, code, make stuff, and play adventure games.

Stay safe. Go Make. Trans rights are human rights. Still get f-ed Putin. Might need to stock up on milkshakes.

There are no ads on this blog and as far as I can remember, never have been.

☕ If you want to support any of the work done here, or elsewhere, you can buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Our latest ko-fi supporters.

No coffees purchased since we put this little widget live (or in the last two weeks). Others have kindly donated and you can see their donations here.