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How to get BBC iPlayer working abroad

Posted: Sun 4th Jan 2009@18:19

I live in Ireland, I pay for and get BBC channels with my Cable subscription, and was a licence payer in the UK when I lived there, but want to watch some of the online material that BBC iPlayer provides, and found that I was not able to access it from my location.



I have access to a server in the UK, and figured I could use it as a proxy serve, but found an easier way to do it using an SSH tunnel.

You will need an account on a server in the UK that supports SSH connections.

For Windows you will need - PuTTY (easiest bet is to download the windows installer), and a web browser that supports proxies, for this example, firefox.

Open putty, and put the address of your remote server (e.g bigbadweb.co.uk), then click on Connection->SSH->Tunnels, where you should add '1080' in source port (it can be any unused port number you like, but remember which one as you will need this later), then select 'Dynamic' from the radio buttons below and click 'ADD'. You can then save the session if you like, then/or just click open. Optionally you can also select 'Local ports accept connections from other hosts'.



You will then be connected to your SSH server where you will need to login. Keep the putty window open for as long as you want to use it.

This sets up an SSH tunnel connection to the server, which can be accessed using local port number '1080'. This means that you can connect to the local port and make it act like a local proxy server, making any host/site you connect to think that you are connecting from your server.

In Firefox, select Tools->Options->Advanced->Network->(Connection) Settings, then select manual proxy configuration, under SOCKS add localhost, and port number '1080', then 'OK', 'OK'.




You should now be able to access BBC iPlayer!


For linux, to open an SSH tunnel, you simply need to run the following command in a terminal.

ssh -D 1080 username@sshserveraddress.com

Have you seen Colin?

Posted: Wed 17th Dec 2008@17:43

Oh my Deity, I've just realised, Colin is missing!!!!

Has anyone seen him skulking around the printer area, or pestering the tea lady? Perhaps you've seen him knocking around coffee area shaking the vending machine? Maybe you've even seen him trying the locks of the bikes in the rack?

If you do seem him, please return him to Cube 3H, in the CASL :S

Thanks .....

Mad Matt, beyond procrastodrome

Posted: Tue 16th Dec 2008@09:43

So I've not posted for a while, as I've been fairly busy with this whole PhD malarkey, I have to present my PhD topic and plan for the next three years to the postgraduate studies panel on Friday, and I'm struggling to nail down exactly what I am going to focus on.

The general topic area, as it stands (which tends to waver over time) is Intermittently Connected Networks (ICN), more specifically, opportunistic networking, with the side effect of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN). I have a whole lot of reading still to do, but I think something novel may fall out of the synergy of DTN, Context-awareness and Social Networking. I intend to apply this to (perhaps) environmental monitoring, or something similar....

I also somehow have to explain my PhD topic in 25 words at lunchtime today ... but first, Coffee :)

By exploiting the features of social, ad-hoc, mobile networks, opportunistic movement of sensing and messaging data, can be efficient and delay tolerant, with guaranteed delivery in most cases, without reliance upon installed infrastructure.

Halloween 2008

Posted: Sun 9th Nov 2008@12:28

A little belatedly, I have uploaded my pics from Halloween this year :) for which I attended Steve Knox's house party :)

Picture are here here

80th Birthday Party

Posted: Wed 24th Sep 2008@08:59

Last weekend I travelled home for my Nan's 80th birthday party, there were quite a few of us there, and it was a really nice day!

I couldn't help thinking that I hope I manage to stick it out till i'm 80, and stay in as good shape as my Nan, Grace, and her older brother Tom!

I've put some picures online here

Getting Things Done and Remember The Milk - Organising One's Life

Posted: Fri 19th Sep 2008@12:28

I'm currently reading Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen, I'd heard of it a few times in the past and never really got around to buying it.

I have found that already it's helped me to organise things a bit better. GTD isn't software, its a way of doing things to keep you organised. However, as a lot of the things I do are digital I sought a simple way to organise my digital life and I found a great post which describes how to use the principles of GTD, with the online task management system Remember The Milk (RTM), which is particularly useful as it has some really goods hooks into Various Google Apps, and has many access points (Web, Mobile, Offline support with Google Gears, API etc.), the only thing it doesn't seem to have is synchronisation with Outlook, which more importantly means I can't synch with my PDA, however if it all works out the PRO version (@ $29/year) has a PDA app for just this purpose.

So I've spent some time, finding the open loops in my life (both personal and work), and putting them into RTM, tagging things properly, and adapting to the GTD paradigm. I've even managed to empty my email (and other) In boxes for the first time in years!! (however, there is a whole load of 'stuff' rotting in archived folders all over the place - waiting to be referenced, deleted, deferred or delegated - a project for another day methinks!)

Hopefully, this will improve my productivity, prevent uncertainty about what I 'should' be doing right now, and perhaps even kerb my excessive procrastination.

DO NOT LICK - Just in case you were tempted

Posted: Thu 11th Sep 2008@09:40

Guess who's idea this was...