Lighten Up With Celebrity Pet Home Goods | Apartment Therapy Boston

I am having a really hard time choosing between Chairman Pug and Spock. I am only posting Chairman Pug here because I know it’s going to make Karla go ballistic. 

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Image via CrunchBase

From Web Photo Geotags Can Reveal More Than You Wish:

When Adam Savage, host of the popular science program “MythBusters,” posted a picture on Twitter of his automobile parked in front of his house, he let his fans know much more than that he drove a Toyota Land Cruiser.

Embedded in the image was a geotag, a bit of data providing the longitude and latitude of where the photo was taken. Hence, he revealed exactly where he lived. And since the accompanying text was “Now it’s off to work,” potential thieves knew he would not be at home.

The problem with idiot proofing is that idiots accidentally defeat it. I don’t mean this in an offensive way, it is just an article of faith to those of us that build things, be it software, electronics, whatever.

If there is a right way and a wrong way to use X, it doesn’t matter how many protections you put into place, how many disclaimers you put in the packaging and the manual, etc., people will still end up using it the wrong way, completely by accident.

This is how people still manage to shoot themselves with guns that are designed to not fire accidentally. Shit just happens.

That said, the level of idiot proofing for geotagging functionality seems to be adequate. None of the photo services I have tried online renders geotags by default. They read them, sure, but you need to turn on the location services. Every phone I have used with either GPS, or cell tower-based location, asked me if I wanted my location to be known. Yes, this includes two iPhones, three Blackberry Curves and one LG Rumor Touch. They all ask you about this.

The problem is that in most cases you can default the service to be on at all times, and then you will forget to turn it off, which is what happened to Adam Savage. You may think this is harmless, but think about it the next time you post photos of your kid’s school functions online, and think who you want to know where your kids go to school to. Or that they always go to the same Burger King, etc.

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• Applied Geotagging: Where Locals And Tourists Shoot Pictures (crunchgear.com)

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“The National Wharrgarbl Service has issued a warnings of an upcoming Category 5 Derpstorm, noting that due to the lunar calendar, the celebrations marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, will occur 28 days from now- on Sept 11”

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FARK.com: (5550136) The National Wharrgarbl Service has issued a warnings of an upcoming Category 5 Derpstorm, noting that due to the lunar calendar, the celebrations marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, will occur 28 days from now- on Sept 11

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Image by pvera via Flickr

It’s so funny how we are creatures of habit. I am 39, and for the past 25 years or so there has been one pen that is the only thing that makes writing bearable. I know others that have picked a specific pen model many years ago and stick with it no matter how many newer cooler things show up in the market.

In my particular case, that pen is made by Pilot, the Precise V series. When you buy these, the number after the “V” is the width of the pen tip in tenths of a millimeter. My favorite is the Precise V5, with a .5 mm tip.

Over the past few weeks I started doing Sudoku on paper as a stress relief mechanism, and I was annoyed by the odd collection of pens I found around the house. None could do the job right, and I was too lazy to drive the mile to Office Depot and pick up a box of Precise V5s, to replace the previous box I bought years ago that mysteriously disappeared one pen at a time. 

From my fire safe. Yeah.

Today we were at a shopping club and they had a full aisle of nothing but pens in bulk packages. And every damn pen had a .7 mm pen. It took me half an hour to find a package that had .5mm tips, and to my delight it was a model of the Precise V5 series I had never seen before. Pilot took a perfect pen, added one feature and made it even better: they added a retractable tip.

25 frickin years using the same pen model and not once did I think about how nice it would be to not have to worry about losing the cap. Just amazing, and still very affordable.

They also added a rubberized grip, but to me that’s not as interesting as the retractable tip. I bet this started as a cost-cutting measure on their part (betting that the added complexity would be cheaper than the additional material of the cap) but it did result in an improved product. 

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I am starting a preemptive funds drive for my annual campaign to buy myself newer and flashier electronic toys. Sadly, the two Blackberry Curve 8900s that we had with AT&T (DIAF AT&T DIE DIE DIE) for less than a year need to find themselves a new home before PJ drops one into a toilet by accident (for some reason he is not as attracted to the Blackberries as he used to be to the iPhones).

Or something like that.

The listings are 290464146511 and 290464134796 (update: 290464146511 sold within the hour, 290464134796 less than a day later). The happy bidders will score themselves really cheap Blackberries, while helping me buy even more electronic toys. And yea, I still have a Crackberry, the Curve 8530. Ivette, on the other hand, is not really a phone person, so she is now an LG Rumor Touch. Ironically, she has sent me more SMS from this new phone in the last month than the last 6 months that she owned the Blackberry. 

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This is really simple and only took maybe 10 minutes of thinkering:

The problem:

You want to take advantage of the auto login functionality in KeePass, but it keeps appending the username into a previously saved username.

The solution:

You need to do two things (this assumes you can find the right menus in KeePass 2.x):

1. In the advanced tab, create a new string field called Email, set its value to {USERNAME} . This means that whenever you use {s:Email} as a tag it will use the value that you stored for the username.
2. In the Auto Type tab, override the default sequence and use ^a{DELETE}{s:Email}{TAB}^a{DELETE}{PASSWORD}{ENTER}

The way this works is whenever you try to auto type, it will execute a “select all” (^a means Control A), it will then hit delete, this will clear the field before typing. It will then enter the value of the username into the form field named Email (this is what Google calls the username text box), tab sends the focus to the next field, then it does the same for the password. 

Things that need work:

1. This only works if focus is on the username field, if it is in the password field it fails. There’s obviously a way to force the focus back, I just haven’t figured it out yet. 

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Sample output from http://www.passwordmeter.com/

I fed it a really long password that I generated with KeePass. 

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Image via Wikipedia

There is a feature of OSX that I actually miss: the passwords keyring. Basically this is a centralized location for passwords. Windows doesn’t have that, but I was turned to a program called KeepPass (I know it was a coworker but I simply can’t remember who). 

This program provides functionality similar to the passwords keyring in OSX, and adds a lot of crazy goodies:

• A really cool password generator
• Most of the times you can make it type your username and password into the active browser tab (more on this later)
• It has sync functionality (more on this later)
• It is Free and Open Source
• It runs on a multitude of operating systems, portable devices and cell phones
• It lets you copy a password without displaying it on-screen, and after X seconds it cleans the clipboard.

Since this package is open source and free, I was not expecting everything to run 100%. For example, it won’t always detect the login fields automatically, it requires more tweaking.

There are two sync modes, you can simply point it to a different database and it will sync the changes. The second mode is not part of the application itself, but is doable by storing the key database in any kind of folder that has automatic remote backups, etc. 

For example, you can store your key database in a dropbox folder, which means every time you update it, it will be sent to your dropbox account. If your computer gets fried, or you are away and you need access, you can download that key file and all is well.

I just started experimenting with the Blackberry client. Installing it was not 100% foolproof, but I managed to do it without screwing up the phone or the key database. And it is also designed to take into account mirrors, it uses a sync add-on for Blackberry Desktop. And yes, that particular feature works extremely well.

Why bother?

If you don’t trust yourself to remember hard passwords, you will love this program. You can assign horribly long and complex passwords and rely on the application to log in as needed. If you don’t save your passwords in your browser, this gives you more security. 

Most of the “hacks” you see nowadays can be blamed on people using shitty passwords, the definition of shitty being either too short, or a word that can be found in a dictionary, or a combination of personal data that can be stolen elsewhere. The easiest way to foil such an attack is by using a long password that doesn’t contain real words, just as close to gibberish as possible. 

If your password is gibberish, it means your credentials can’t be attacked through brute force unless it is somebody with alphabet-type government agency budget at his/her disposal, and all they could attack is your passphrase, attacking the key database is simply not possible with the current state of technology.

If you don’t save your passwords in your browser, it is one thing less that can be exploited. 

And yes, all of this is worthless unless your key database has a decent passphrase, otherwise it can be exploited by brute force.

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(created with the Proppian Fairy Tale Generator)

“How did you get here?” the man asked.

All of the people’s voices came prying into me, digging through the hairs of my scalp to find answers to their questions.  They sifted through my body like water sifts through rice.  I felt their presence probing through the deep recesses of my head until they discovered what they longed to know. I told them how I was searching for my father.  I told them that his shoes brought me here.  I told them about his satchel and the magic that was inside.  That magic would take me back home whenever I needed to leave.  

The mists grew heavy.  When I stretched my arm out I could not see past my hand, but it did not matter.  When I closed my eyes my feet moved along with the rhythm of the mountain and its soils. Faster and faster I could almost feel myself fly.

“And who are you boy?” Mother asked me.  Her weak eyes did not recognize my much-changed face and form.  I told her I was her son but she did not believe me.  ”If you are the son that left so many days ago, and if you are the one who brought back this jade figure of father, then you are the one who will be able to restore him to his normal shape.”  She flicked her wrist and flung the jade piece at me.

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Simple Desks

This is my kind of desk, but the view is all wrong. I would spend all day staring outside instead of getting any work done. This would probably work better for me if the desk was reversed and I had my back on the glass wall, then I could swivel around as a visual break. 

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