Mick

Author's posts

a graphical web of trust

I recently stumbled upon sig2dot, a gpg/pgp keyring graph generator. In fact this seems to have been around for some time, but I’d never come across it before. It can be used to generate a graph of all of the signature relationships in a GPG/PGP keyring, and, like other visualisation tools, this graphical image producing …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/09/12/a-graphical-web-of-trust/

kseniya simonova

This has absolutely nothing to do with my usual topics but I make no apology for posting this because the artistry is stunningly beautiful. I was sent a link to Kseniya Simonova’s sand art by a correspondent on a mailing list I subscribe to. Apparently the artist is telling the story of a ukrainian family …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/09/04/kseniya-simonova/

it’s not that I’m anti google

I’m just pro privacy. And google just happens to be one of the worst offendors when it comes to breaches of my privacy. El Reg yesterday ran an article pointing to the consumerwatchdog.org ad depicting Eric Schmidt as a “privacy pervert”. Deliciously, that ad is hosted on youtube. But consumerwatchdog have long campaigned about google’s …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/09/04/its-not-that-im-anti-google/

phone home

image of etherape capture

Google’s chrome browser first appeared back in 2008, since when many commentators have sung its praises. Apparently it is “blindingly fast” (well, let’s face it firefox can be a tad slow, particularly if loaded down with a swathe of plugins) “clean”, and “simple”. Until recently I had not tried chrome (for some fairly obvious reasons) …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/08/29/phone-home/

update to autossh – or how ServerAliveInterval makes this unnecessary

I had a couple of comments on my earlier post about autossh which suggested that I should look at alternative mechanisms for keeping my ssh tunnel up. Rob in particular suggested that setting “ServerAliveInterval” should work. Oddly I had tried this in the past whilst trying out various configuration options and I swear it didn’t …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/08/27/update-to-autossh-or-how-serveraliveinterval-makes-this-unnecessary/

they are taking over the entire net

Some time ago I disabled my wp-recaptcha plugin because it had the unfortunate side effect of marking all comments as spam. I don’t have a particularly high comment rate, but the ones I do get, and which get past akismet, are usually OK. Apparently a flaw in version 2.9.6 surfaced when wp-recaptcha was used in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/08/02/they-are-taking-over-the-entire-net/

autossh – or how to use tor through a central ssh proxy

Since I first set up a remote tor node on a VPS about this time last year, I have played about with various configurations (and used different providers) but I have now settled on using two high bandwidth servers on different networks. One (at daily.co.uk) allows 750 Gig of traffic per month, the other (a …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/08/01/autossh-or-how-to-use-tor-through-a-central-ssh-proxy/

the “awesome power” of the apple brand

I have been following the unfolding tale of the faulty antenna on the new iPhone4 with some amusement. Apple’s complete inability to admit to any possibility of a mistake is hugely entertaining. Apple (or is it Jobs?) seem to be unable to contemplate the possibility of the need for a recall. Such hubris is bound …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/07/25/the-awesome-power-of-the-apple-brand/

there are more than 10 kinds of people in the world

A correspondent on a mailing list I subscribe to uses the .sig “There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand Vigesimal, and 9 others.” Even after checking what vigesimal was, I had to think about this for a bit because initially I thought he was wrong. If I understand correctly, I …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/07/04/there-are-more-than-10-kinds-of-people-in-the-world/

scroogle is having a problem

I posted a note about scroogle back in January. Scroogle offered an SSL interface to the google engine, and, moreover, didn’t lumber its users with google cookies and sundry other irritations. Since then, however, google themselves have started to offer an SSL interface and, coincidentally, scroogle seem to have started to have some problems. If …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/07/04/scroogle-is-having-a-problem/

this is a politics free zone

Well, I have cast my vote. Let’s hope we get the result we need.

Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/05/06/this-is-a-politics-free-zone/

email address images

Adding valid email addresses to web sites is almost always a bad idea these days. Automated ‘bots routinely scan web servers and harvest email addresses for sale to spammers and scammers. And in some cases, email addresses harvested from commercial web sites can be used in targetted social engineering attacks. So, posting your email address …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/05/03/email-address-images/

ubuntu 10.04 – minor, and some not so minor, irritations

If and when the teething problems in 10.04 are fixed and the distro looks stable enough to supplant my current preferred version, I will be faced with one or two usability issues. In this version, canonical have taken some design decisions which seem to have some of the fanbois frothing at the mouth. The most …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/05/02/ubuntu-10-04-minor-and-some-not-so-minor-irritations/

ubuntu 10.04 problems

UNR 10.04 desktop image

The lastest LTS version of ubuntu (10.04, or lucid lynx according to your naming preferences) was released to an eagerly waiting public on 29 April. Long term support (LTS) versions are supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server instead of the usual 18 months for the normal releases. My …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/05/02/ubuntu-10-04-problems/

where are you

I have added a new widget to trivia – a map of the world from clustrmaps which gives a small graphic depicting where in the world the IP addresses associated with readers are supposedly located. Geo location of IP addresses is not a perfect art, but the map given corresponds roughly with what I expect …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/04/18/where-are-you/

there are 10 kinds of people in the world

With grateful thanks to xkcd.

Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/04/02/there-are-10-kinds-of-people-in-the-world/

webDAV in lighttpd on debian

I back up all my critical files to one of my slugs using rsync over ssh (and just because I am really cautious I back that slug up to another NAS). Most of the files I care about are the obvious photos of friends and family. I guess that most people these days will have …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/03/31/webdav-in-lighttpd-on-debian/

what a user agent says about you

I get lots of odd connections to my servers – particularly to my tor relay. Mostly my firewalls bin the rubbish but my web server logs still show all sorts of junk. Occasionally I get interested (or possibly bored) enough to do more than just scan the logs and I follow up the connection traces …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/03/30/what-a-user-agent-says-about-you/

unplugged

My earlier problems with the sheevaplug all seem to have stemmed from the fact that I had installed Lenny to SDHC cards. As I mentioned in my post of 7 March, I burned through two cards before eventually giving up and trying a new installation to USB disk. This seems to have fixed the problem …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/03/30/unplugged/

psp video revisited

image of handbrake gui

I last posted about ripping DVDs to PSP format back in November 2007. Since then I have used a variety of different mechanisms to transcode my DVDs to the MP4 format preferred by my PSP. A couple of years ago I experimented with both winff and a command line front end to ffmpeg called handbrake. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/03/21/psp-video-revisited/

16 is so much safer than 10

I am indebted to a colleague of mine (thank you David) for drawing this to my attention. The Symantec Norton SystemWorks 2002 Professional Edition manual says: “About hexadecimal values – Wipe Info uses hexadecimal values to wipe files. This provides more security than wiping with decimal values.” I suppose octal or (worse) binary, just won’t …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/03/15/16-is-so-much-safer-than-10/

plug instability

I’m still having a variety of problems with my sheevaplug. Not least of which is the fact that SDHC cards don’t seem to be the best choice of boot medium. I have had failures with two cards now and some searching of the various on-line fora suggests that I am not alone here. In particular, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/03/07/plug-instability/

from slug to plug

image of sheevaplug

Well this took rather longer than expected. I intended to write about my latest toy much earlier than this, but several things got in the way – more of which later. About three or four weeks ago I bought myself a new sheevaplug. The plug has been on sale in the US for some time, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/02/28/from-slug-to-plug/

homeopathy

I can’t recall how I got there, but this made me laugh enough to want to share it.

Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/02/26/homeopathy/