Strong (long) passwords
REMINDER: PASSHPHRASE SHOULD BE 24+ (42+) CHARACTERS LONG TO BE EQUIVALENT TO A 128 (256) BIT KEY. This xkcd comic brought forth a lot of discussion on the internet regarding how to choose your...
View ArticleMKV on PS3 using Showtime
I’ve described how one could play MKV files on the PS3 before. Another method is to play them using Showtime, a media player that can be installed on a jailbroken PS3; it supports MKV natively. This...
View ArticleS5 Reloaded themes with Sigma’s emacs org-mode method
In the past, I’ve described the benefits of a slide show based on html. I used to prefer the html5 method over S5, but after some use, I’ve come to realize that the html5 method (at least the one...
View ArticleRemote unlocking LUKS encrypted LVM using Dropbear SSH in Ubuntu
I recently performed a full disk encryption on my server using dm-crypt + LUKS. I did not address remote unlocking of the disk then because I did not know how. Remote unlocking is highly desirable I...
View ArticleParallel Programming Crash Course at Linux Journal
This is an excellent post from Linux Journal giving an overview of parallel programming.
View ArticleKeep slides short and tell a story
I enjoyed this post. What did I learn? Don’t immediately jump to making slides when you have to give a presetation. If you have to use slides to help facilitate your presentation, start out by writing...
View ArticleBackup, re-install Ubuntu with full disk encryption, and restore all files...
When doing serious work like surfing the internet, writing, or programming, I like to do so from a single user interface regardless of whether I’m at work or home. Currently, this takes the form of a...
View ArticleLightweight Portable Security Linux Distribution by the US Department of Defense
While on the topic of security (been blogging about [[][encryption]] and such pretty often in the last month), I remember reading about a basic, secure linux distribution for web browsing created by...
View ArticleInstall and update multiple Linux distros using NetbootCD
This post on lifehacker introduced me to NetbootCD, a live CD that allows me to install the latest version of popular Linux Distros (e.g, Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, etc.) using a single live cd or usb...
View ArticleHow to ship shoes for cheap
I recently sold shoes through Ebay to relieve my room of clutter. Since I wasn’t getting much out of them, I wanted to ship them out as cheap and as fast as possible. Some things I learned: you can...
View ArticleAnonymous web-surfing with Tor
I wrote about Tor in the past but I never tried using it. I installed it on my Ubuntu laptop and tested using it via Firefox and [Torbutton]. Now that it’s set up, when I want to surf the web...
View ArticleSSL for Pan News Reader via Stunnel
It appears Pan is the only decent GUI usenet news reader on Linux. It doesn’t support SSL by default. To get SSL to work, one must rely on Stunnel according to this post.
View ArticleSome modifications for WordPress
I recently changed my WordPress theme to Reflex+, a theme that resembles the current look of Google+ and other Google related services. I had to make some manual modifications. Excerpt vs. full...
View ArticleCreate a website instead of a blog from WordPress using the right theme
WordPress is no doubt a great blogging platform. However, it is also a user-friendly Content Manangement System (CMS) that can be used to run a website. However, you have to tweak it to not look like...
View ArticleAutomatic email notifications for Google Docs Forms
I use Google Docs to collect data using the Forms feature. People can just fill out the form and data will be automatically entered into a spreadsheet for me. It really makes data collection easy in...
View ArticleEmail boot log at startup in Ubuntu with bootmail
I’ve been searching for a way to save the output of the console when my Linux system boots up because I can’t spot errors fast enough at startup and I don’t notice errors on headless (no monitor)...
View ArticleSkip disk mount errors in Linux
I automatically mount disk drives using /etc/fstab. However, when I boot a system with a disk removed, the system will give a mount error, giving me the option to skip (S) or manually (M) mount the...
View ArticleShutdown in CentOS requires halt argument
To shutdown in Ubuntu, I issue as root shutdown -P now. However, in CentOS, the computer does not shutdown and I get the message <pre class="src src-sh">Telling INIT to go to single user mode....
View ArticlePBX in a Flash + Incredible PBX makes setting up FreePBX + Asterisk easy
Asterisk is a very powerful open source telephony platform. I’ve described how to install it and configure Google Voice with it in the past. Setup is quite complicated for a newbie to get started. I...
View ArticleLog output for screen
The one thing that annoys me when I use screen is that I can’t scroll up after a long output has printed. To log outputs, add the following near the top (required!) of your screenrc file...
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