Kember.net

Sterilising water for feeding babies - is boiling enough?

Posted 26 days ago. (Filed under: Life by Andrew)

Our thirteen-week-old daughter had a very slightly dicky tummy, which was enough to make us wonder what the cause might be. One of the first things we needed to rule out was dodgy water in her bottles.

To make up the bottles, we boil freshly drawn water in our kettle. We leave it to cool for about half an hour (boiling water in plastic bottles can apparently release more Bisphenol A) before pouring it into freshly sterilised bottles, which are then sealed.

I remember advice for campers indicating that water should be boiled for some time to kill pathogens. Whilst our kettle boils the water thoroughly, it only maintains a rolling boil for a few seconds. The question is, does this kill the nasty microbes?

According to Survival Topics and The Backpacker’s Field Manual by Rick Curtis

“Boiling is the most certain way of killing all micro-organisms. According to the Wilderness Medical Society, water temperatures above 160° F (70° C) kill all pathogens within 30 minutes and above 185° F (85° C) within a few minutes. So in the time it takes for the water to reach the boiling point (212° F or 100° C) from 160° F (70° C), all pathogens will be killed, even at high altitude.”

So that’s a yes.

An interesting aside: Reading about bacteria lead me to this article discussing how long bacteria survive on dry surfaces. The answer that you didn’t really want to know is that depending on the bacteria, they can live for days, weeks, months or years. So break out the anti-bac surface spray!

Oh – and our daughter’s dodgy tummy was caused by her starting to teeth. You live and learn.

Bash prompt

Posted 30 days ago. (Filed under: Geek by Andrew)

I always forget how to make my bash prompt just the way I like it, so here it is for posterity. In ~/.bashrc:

PS1='\[\e]2;\u@\H \w\a\]\[\e[32m\][\t] \[\e[33m\]\w\[\e[0m\]\n\$ '

This gives me a prompt like this with the time and path:

And a terminal title like this:
username@host path

Here’s the long guide to the codes, and here’s the one I use from IBM.

Dropbox Beta invitations

Posted 52 days ago. (Filed under: Geek by Andrew)

Dropbox is a fantastic new service for sharing files, backing up files and syncing files between computers. It stands out from the crowd because unlike so many other systems, it’s so jolly easy to use.

I’ve got 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 invitations for the beta. Sorry – I’ve run out of invitations for now. If I get any more, I’ll post an invitation here.

CSS by Meyer

Posted 57 days ago. (Filed under: by Andrew)

Just a quick, and probably non-permanent, note to say I’ve just realised that a good proportion of the style on my website has been stolen from Eric Meyer. I decided to use his style resetting style-sheet, and also pasted in a bunch of his code to help me see how it all worked. My intention was to adapt it and replace it with my own unique style (or lack thereof). I must have got distracted half-way through, ‘cause there’s rather a lot of, um, “non-original content” there. So I’m hoping that attribution is a half-way house between theft and copyright. The good bits are his; the bad bits are more than likely mine. When I get a moment in between work, nappy-changing and loafing, I’ll finish ripping out the stuff I’m not entitled to. Sorry Eric.

Final stage of moving email servers

Posted 60 days ago. (Filed under: Support by Andrew)

I’ve completed the final stage in moving email on kember.net to Google Apps. That is, I’ve moved the mx records and set up an spf record.

If you have an email address @kember.net, and have any trouble receiving or sending email, please phone me.

If you have trouble sending email to somebody with a kember.net email address, please phone me, or phone the person you’re sending the message to. If you don’t have any contact information apart from the email address, please try again later, or use the contact form on this website – I’ll be fixing any problems I find as a matter of urgency.