How to contact Matthew

$Id: contact.html,v 1.13 2004/04/25 17:31:08 mca1001 Exp $

There are other people on "t8o.org" now. Some of them are listed on the front page, the rest will announce themselves to you in their own way.

Which email address?

All the addresses @fruitcake.demon.co.uk still work, and will probably continue to do so for some time.

I'm not quite sure yet. I have lots of addresses that work, but I haven't yet configured any sensible anti-spam tools.

I'm not sure whether I want to keep generating lots of varied addresses and then retire them periodically, or just have one sensible address and some good filters. The latter seems much more sensible. In the meantime, you can point at me and laugh because I "don't know my own email address".

In the running are

SAUCE (provided I can make it work with exim-tls)
Camram hashcash
Whichever ORBS or MAPS domains still work and are useful
Maybe one of the funky new cooperative spam filters; not convinced I like these

For now, just use something that looks sensible or call me root.

Please send only plain text email

Most of the HTML formatted emails I get are spam. If you send me non-text emails, I may bother to bounce it so you know I haven't read it.

Please use GPG or equivalent

I have a GNU Privacy Guard key (0x5892A5C6), which should be compatible with recent versions of PGP. I can arrange 2.6.x if you would prefer it. This key will expire in 2006, though the encryption subkeys will expire more often - you should be able to get updates from here or the keyserver.
0xDD989286 is a key I made at work. It is intended for company business but it causes more confusion among Outlook users than it gives benefit, so I only use it now when the Outlook user really deserves to be confused.
The key is intended for business use, so I may end up making a third key for personal use in the office.
I used 0xF8B6FDF5 under 2.6.3i for a while. I revoked this old key when it was superceded, mainly to avoid confusion. I'm sure if I RTFM I could show you the status message for the revocation... it was nothing sinister.
There is also 0x6551792B. I don't remember making that one, and I've forgotten the passphrase. Best to assume that some stupid person made it. Sadly, I fear it was me... it is well past its expiry date now, so that doesn't matter too much.

You can obtain the useful keys locally. All are available via a search on the key server.

If I revoke any key, the only circumstance in which I will not be prepared to explain my reasons for doing so will be when UK government authorities have stipulated that providing such an explanation would be unlawful. See RIP Act 2000.

On the other hand if the encryption subkey has simply expired and not been replaced with a new one, that's purely down to laziness on my part. 8-/

So what is work.t8o.org then?

The whole domain is delivered to my desktop machine at work. I tend to use it for subscribing to mailing lists which I joined at work (for whatever reason - generally no good reason anyway).

It's nicely independent.
The address is as permanent as any other part of t8o.org. Not that I expect to be changing jobs, particularly, I just like to be prepared.
It should also help to avoid problems with misguided people who imagine that my employer has the slightest control over what I think.

I'm sure I could post rabid opinions to mailing lists with a company email address, and not get into trouble. I'm lucky enough to have a boss who understands that he doesn't own me. The flip side is that there's no point in taking advantage just because I can.

As for why I read mailing lists at work? Well, sometimes I pick up technical skills on these lists. Other times it's just part of keeping a finger on the pulse of the world.

Telephone

I've got one of these (two, actually). They're plugged in at the wall. I'll probably tell you the number if you ask. I usually allow callerid out, too.

I need to grow my repertoire of stupid tricks to play on cold callers. I'm currently wondering whether it would be excessively rude to invite round the (Zenith, as it happens) salespeople who called this morning, just to waste their time. If they'd been 30 minutes earlier they would have woken me up (Sunday).

Oh and I have a phone at work too. Isn't modern technology marvellous?