Christmas 2014

Last night was fun, a group of us met up in the Victorian in Bramhall. Nick Charlotte Helen Ian and Myself. As we arrived to a very packed bar, I saw one of the weirdest sights I have ever witnessed while stood at a bar. A young and very drunk young lad stood behind us guzzling a takeaway including shovelling a pie into his face and a cup of peas, it was very entertaining.

The Victorian was very very packed, and very humid so we decided to switch the venues. Mark and Helen joined us and we strolled over to Beluga. Unfortunately it was ticket only so we ended up sat outside Nappa. Eventually the cold had us move back inside.

Bruce, Wooller and Andy Bruce joined us in there. Bruce was in a great mood, still waiting on Nina to give birth. It was nice to see everyone chat and catch up.

I cadged a lift home with Bruce, and we exchanged our presents.

Today I went to my parents for Christmas dinner, they made the full works turkey stuffing sausage meat. It was delicious, and there is plenty more to have with Kath when she arrives. Kath bought me a new lens for my camera which is awesome. Wanda got me a gorilla tripod, cant wait to get out and try them.

Kath arrives from Poland tomorrow I cant wait to see her, that is the best Christmas present.

It was the night before Christmas

Nearly Christmas, next year I will be spending it with Kath, this year Christmas Day will be at my parents.

I had to work this morning, leaving at lunch in time to get my presents wrapped. I tok my parents theirs round, finding Jono and my aunty there. Was nice to say hello and merry Christmas. Next stop was Phil and Caroline, I dropped off their presents and saw his mum there. We had a quick chat and a coffee before I headed home for dinner and a change.

I am waiting for Ian to pick me up with Helen, we are planning an evening in Bramhall with Nick and Charlotte and maybe a few others.

Using Keybase.io to secure communications

I has been over a year since Edward Snowden first started releasing information on how the American secret service along with the "five eyes" (USA, Britain, New Zealand, Canada and Australia) have been monitoring email, and network traffic of millions of people across the world. Including harvesting private pictures of peoples instant messenger chats and maybe even paying private companies to deliberately reduce security of encryption technology.

In the post Snoden era it pays to secure some of our communications to ensure rouge elements are not snooping.

I have used PGP in the past, however it has always been a  real pain to manage the keys and identities.  Finally it looks as though there is a solution. A new service called Keybase.io enables you to link Social accounts and emails to a PGP key. Basically making sending secure encrypted communications simple. It is well worth signing up, I have associated my twitter and github accounts.

If anyone fancies an account I have some invitations, tweet me a private message to @cookiesworld.