Meeting a friend here after work before meeting Clare later, and staying in a hotel, how decadent. Tomorrow, lunching and shopping.

Camera update: it just sent me an email, the first in days. Always a bit nervy receiving a mail saying "motion detected IN YOUR HOUSE WHEN YOU'RE NOT THERE", but it's sensitive, was probably a seagull flying past the window. I checked in, it's silent and still and the telly's still there so I think we're OK.

Work update: still absolutely chocka, too busy to write much.

I had a burst of five emails in a row from the camera, not sure if it's when I'd tweaked with the settings or not so no idea if it's working or not. Might try turning off the video attachment see if that's any easier on the email. Found lots of stuff here, stuff that I wish I'd seen before choosing this camera really.

Poor Clare is stuck on a train back from London, they're stopped at Tonbridge, this page is predicting she'll only be ten minutes late in (ten minutes later than the train she's on is meant to be in, which is later than normal because she missed her normal train) but that's probably rubbish.

Ah it is rubbish, she got off at Tonbridge to find out what was going on, people at Tonbridge station have been told there are no trains going anywhere and busses are on the way, but they weren't announcing it on the trains yet so as not to cause a crush. Her folks are going to drive to Tonbridge and pick her up. On the plus side she is working from home tomorrow, and she will go sit in the pub and wait for her folks, but we'd both rather she was home. Time to stop working in London monkey!

Outgoing mail server is mail.btinternet.com, and username is just the username, not the email address. I authorised another email address on my own clarkeology.com domain to send from my btbroadband in the end, but don't think I really needed to do that. At least if I reply to one of these messages, or Clare does, the mail will come back to me and not some unchecked yahoo / btinternet account.

Now all I want is for someone to burgle my flat!

Looks like this might be the modern equivalent of my camera.

UPDATE: and it's gone again, sent one mail and now it's back to erroring again. The mail did arrive, seemingly from my own domain so I know that bit worked. Once. What on earth did I do to get it working?

Dug out my wireless camera, to see if it could be used as a web cam - it's good quality, with sound, but more for security monitoring than sitting in front of the screen and talking. Don't think it can, but it's good to have it up and running again after about a year... It seems a little slow to respond when setting it up, like changes take a few minutes to take effect so it seems like it's not working correctly occasionally, but I got there. Even my old dyndns account was still running so hopefully I'll be able to use the camera from work today, and maybe give the address out so you can monitor my home security for me.

Only really had problems with one bit of it, and that's the "send an email on motion detect", one of the main features of this camera (pointless still linking to it, I don't think you can buy it any more). You need an smtp server for your outgoing mails, your ISP certainly provides one. I hoped to use gmail, as I use it for all my mail and have never used the email address that came with BT Broadband, but smtp.gmail.com insists on some encryption and an alternative port number that the camera can't cope with, so no go. In the end, some messing about changing settings and trying things it seems that at some point since I last used this BT made changes to not let you set your "from" address in your emails without authenticating that you really own that address. Definitely reasonable and I guessed this so I was already trying to send the emails from what I thought was my real bt broadband address, and what had been my real email address when I registered, let's say it's foo@btinternet.com. I logged on to my btinternet.com address and worked out it had been changed to foo@ btopenworld.com. Oh and there was a mail waiting explaining what had gone on, I didn't need to google round the houses after all.

Urgent – emails you send from non–BT Yahoo! Mail addresses via our SMTP servers may be blocked

Dear Customer,

You've received an Error 553 message because we've upgraded your BT Yahoo! Mail security to help prevent identity fraud and spam.

These enhancements will help protect you from 'spoofing' – when people use alternate addresses to disguise an email's real sender, possibly to commit fraud.

Making the improvements work

For the security improvements to work, we need you to take a few minutes now to verify each of the alternate email addresses you use in BT Yahoo! Mail. This will confirm that these email addresses are genuine.

Please verify addresses now to avoid any further blocking of your outgoing emails.

Simply follow the step-by-step instructions at www.btyahoo.com/verify. You won't be asked for any personal information, but you'll need to log in to your account to make the changes.

UPDATE: I've got the theory of it anyway, but no emails sent as yet. If I suddenly get an email from the camera at work today, that will be a bad thing, as it means someone is moving about in the flat...

Bit slow off the mark on this one, but our new nephew Luke Mahon was born to Kevin and Guiselle late on Friday night. This was in the US of States, so we didn't find out until the next day, have seen some pictures already and hope to get moving video this evening when he's home and propped up in front of a webcam.

From xkcd.com.

Wow this makes the blog content nearly as long as the ad-stuffed sidebar! Still haven't heard back from Ebay about their new affiliate scheme. I'm chucking free links to them left right and centre to them at the moment and not earning a bean!

Have a nice weekend, I think I will, been a pretty tiring week at work, good though.

Do these people not have blogs? See the comments