Now that university classes and exams have finished for the year, I have a lot more free time on my hands. Today I decided to make chicken stock. A few days ago we bought a roasted chicken from the supermarket to use the meat in sandwiches. We also got a chicken pasta bake from the meat as well. I wanted to use the entire bird (waste not want not). Also, stock is delicious. Especially home-made stock.
Note that this is just what I did… I’m not saying this is a perfect recipe.
At the start of cooking.
Ingredients:
The bones and skin from one (preferably free-range) roasted chicken.
A large onion.
About eight baby carrots. You could use one large one.
A stick of celery.
A few peppercorns.
A small handful of herbs.
Method:
Break any large chicken bones into small pieces (this will help get the good bits out of the marrow) and divide the carcass up a bit smaller as well. Chuck it all in a large saucepan.
Cut up the carrots and celery into small chunks. Chuck those into the pot.
Cut the onion (with the skin still on) into quarters. Chuck that in the pot.
Add enough cold water to the pot to cover the other ingredients well.
Add a few peppercorns and whatever herbs you have handy (I used a small handful) into the pot.
Put the saucepan on to boil, covered.
When the saucepan is boiling, reduce the heat to low and remove the lid. Skim off any foam that rises to the surface.
Leave it to simmer for three to four hours, then remove from the heat.
Leave it to cool, then strain liquid and discard solids.
Use the completed stock within four days, or freeze it.
Note that one bird doens’t make a huge amount of stock (probably about a litre), so it’s probably worth stockpiling the bones and skins until you have two or three. I was just impatient.
I will admit upfront that I’m probably not the most unbiased person in the world when it comes to what is really a review of a review of Google. If you dislike bias, go watch the Pakistani cricket team instead.
I’d always been a bit hesistant to use Google products (or any cloud product) because of lax privacy. How do I know that Google won’t be using my information against me? This book (partially) confirmed my suspicions. They are using my information, both for and against me. Every time somebody performs a Google search, Google stores the query and information about me (my IP, my location, browser, etc) and uses that to tune search results for me. This appears on the surface to be fine. I like it when I search “cat” on Google and Google knows that what I really want is the first result to be whatismyip.com (I use the “cat” Google search as a quick method to test Internet browser connectivity, I don’t know why). But Vaidhyanatham (the author) raises other points about this. Firstly, how long is our data kept? And who else is it being shared with? But perhaps most disturbingly, Google might prevent me from seeing new information because it’s too busy telling me about what I think I want. For instance, if a new species of cat was discovered in the jungles of Peru, I might miss it because Google is too busy customising my results with Internet connectivity tests. While that not matter much, on other (more important) subjects the splitting up of information based on what we think we want to see is disturbing.
Vaidhyanatham raises many other points in his book too. The Google Books project is designed to give everybody in the world access to out-of-print books, instead of having them sit on dusty shelves in university libraries. It’s a nice goal. However, the program is structured in such a way that nobody else could possibly compete with it, due to arcane copyright law and out-of-court settlements. Do we want Google to be the sole provider of this service? Shouldn’t this be done by a public or community organisation instead? They’re difficult questions, and the fact that we haven’t even started considering them should warn us.
Another similar situation exists for Google Scholar. Google has obtained agreements with universities to provide academic articles for inclusion in Google’s archives. The idea, similarly to Google Books, is to allow more people to see things they wouldn’t have otherwise seen. A noble goal. Again, however, there are several problems with the project’s implementation. Again, arcane agreements and laws prevent universities from easily collaborating with an alternative archive agent. Even more worrying is the fact that to most users (those without access to the paywalled sites that the articles actually reside on) only the abstract of an article is available. This results in a broadening but a shallowing of the information available to most people. This is another of those projects that might be better taken on by the people, for the people. I know of one user on an IRC channel I frequent who is collecting datasheets and manuals from PC components from the 1980s, before these datasheets become extinct. While not legal, and while he hasn’t made this public, it’s the right direction to go in.
Then there’s the shallowing of our knowledge due to Google. This is a huge topic, and so many authors have covered it in so many various degrees of rigour that I won’t even begin to scratch the surface. However, here’s the gist of the idea: Because we have access to the largest library in human history (the web) at our fingertips at any point we’re in front of a computer (which for those of us with a smartphone, is constantly), we don’t remember information like previous generations did. I’m still not confident that this is a bad thing; I am a lot more knowledgeable than I would be if the only learning resource I had was a paper encyclopædia. I don’t know a lot of facts, but I know where to find them. In today’s world, that’s what counts. Still, it’s something we should look into further.
A good portion of the arguments put forward in this book are more general than Google and apply to the Internet at large (such as the shallowing of our knowledge). Most of the other arguments could be taken directly to Google’s legal department in a court showdown (which would almost certainly be the court case of the century). Whichever way you stand on the issues, more information is never a bad thing.
This summer, like last summer, I’ll be travelling to linux.conf.au. This year it’s being held in Ballarat, which presents the opportunity for one of my favourite modes of transport: TRAIN! Here, tentatively, are my plans for that week:
On Sunday the 15th I’ll awake early, catch the 8:45am Jetstar flight from Hobart (HBA) to Melbourne Tullamarine (MEL). That arrives at 10:00am. I’ll then make my way into the city, have lunch at a trendy café with friends from Melbourne. I will then catch the 3:08pm train from Southern Cross Station to Ballarat. My good friend Michael Wheeler will join me for that leg of the journey. I will then be in the conference city, ready for finding all thecoolpeople to annoy.
I will stay at the on-campus accommodation, for maximum NCSS-style bonus points.
I will attend the Penguin dinner.
The next Saturday (the 21st) I will do the same journey in reverse. I don’t have lunch plans that day, so if you’d like to catch up in Melbourne (and prevent me from spending all my money in stationery shops) let me know!
I’ve also recently re-installed Debian on my laptop. Running Windows 7 last conference was embarrasing. I ran PuTTY full-screen the entire time just to cover up the fact.
First of all, the usual warning: I take no responsibility for any harm done to yourself or your equipment if you decide to take my lead and mod the fan on your switch. It’s your fault for listening to some guy on the Internet you’ve never met.
A little while ago I acquired some old 3550 switches from a friend, and I haven’t used them much because they’re horrifically loud. Recently though, I decided to try and make them quiet enough to leave on in the living room. While I didn’t succeed, I made enough of a difference that I thought it might be worth sharing.
Please note that this mod isn’t going to work if your switch is a) under warranty; b) installed in an equipment rack with hot/cold aisles; or c) you don’t like taking the cover off equipment that has 240v inside.
Basically, the gist is this: The fan inside the switch has a cover on it. By removing half of the cover (the half that isn’t attached to the fan motor) and then mounting the fan upside down, you reduce the vibrations of the fan’s casing. Please also note that the outlet fan is thus turned into an intake fan; it takes cold air from the back of the router and blows it over the power supply unit.
The finished fan installation. Much quieter!
Research on the Internet (#cisco on Freenode and some forums) led me to decide that complete removal of the fan wasn’t an option, due to the switch overheating. I then wanted to replace the fan with a quieter computer fan, but the connector, though the same, is wired differently. Though I own (and can operate) a soldering iron, I’m also quite lazy. Turning the fan upside down (as suggested by a friend) was much easier!
Update 2011-08-17: I initially tried this with my non-PoE switch. Today I tried this with my PoE switch and tested it running a few PoE devices. It quickly overheated, so I don’t recommend this with the PoE (inline power) models.
We all know a good password is necessary for good protection of our computer systems and our personal/business data. They are however one of the most annoying inventions in human history. The biggest problem of course is not that we need a good password, it’s that we need tens or hundreds of good passwords, ideally one for every single computer system and website we visit, plus more for banking, encryption and other miscellaneous tasks. For me, that’s at least 100 different passwords that I should have. Guess how many I used to have for all of these different things?
Three. Not thirty or three hundred, just three. One for encryption and banking, one for system logons, and one for all the miscellaneous websites I visit every day. Not ideal. Not even close to decent. Woefully inadequate. So I decided to change that, slowly and surely, until I had a unique password for every system and website. But how? I’m not stupid, and my memory is pretty decent, but the thought of remembering a hundred different passwords is boggling in and of itself!
So how on earth am I to solve this problem? I found a couple of inadequate options:
I could write the passwords down on a scrap of paper and keep them in my wallet. If I lose my wallet, I’m pretty much screwed anyway, so being a little more screwed probably isn’t going to matter. On the other hand, there’s no reason to put myself in more of a pickle than necessary.
I could use one of those handy little password-keeper applications. I take care of remembering one difficult password, and the program takes care of remembering all my other passwords (which are suitably encrypted, using my master password as the key). The God of computer security, Bruce Schneier, has written one of the best applications for this: Password Safe. There are a few problems though:
If you’ve been reading my blog long enough, you’ll know that I don’t like trusting people I’ve never met. And handing over all my most secret passwords to some application written by a dude I’ve never met is pretty trusting, if you ask me. I’m not good enough at cryptography to write my own, so that’s out of the question too.
I need to have the password safe on me whenever I need to access my passwords, which isn’t always the case. Sometimes I access websites via my smartphone, where most password applications won’t work (which is especially the case on Symbian). Synchronisation becomes a problem. Multiplatform support is lacking.
I could keep on using my three passwords, and just deal with the fact that it’s not ideal. Most other people deal with it, so in theory I can too.
After a bit of research though, I stumbled across the answer. Password algorithms! The central idea is that like a password is put through an algorithm to produce an encryption key which unlocks your data (or a website), you are taking something you can remember (a normal dictionary word) and using it to produce a password.
The really clever element of the idea is that you can write your password algorithm down, because without the starting words the algorithm is useless. The amount of stuff you have to remember is greatly reduced! It’s genius! Here’s how it works:
Take a plain, simple word that you can remember (like ‘Jack’ or ‘Banana’).
Apply a series of steps to the word (I’ll use ‘Banana’), like so:
Start off by adding an exclamation mark after the sixth character. We end up with ‘Banana!’.
Replace the fifth character with the ASCII value of the character. We end up with ‘Bana110a!’.
Swap the capitalisation of the first and second characters (lowercase becomes uppercase and uppercase becomes lowercase. We end up with ‘bAna110a!’.
Swap the third and fifth characters. We end up with ‘bA1an10a!’.
Put the resultant password into the website or application where it does it’s magic and unlocks your data.
For all the sites that you visit often, you’ll be able to remember the password in it’s complete form (via muscle memory). For sites that you don’t visit so often, you can take your simple word and produce the result password in only a couple of simple steps. It makes it even easier if you use a pool of common words (like fruit), as you can just keep guessing your way through the common fruits if you happen to forget even the simple password.
There are things you can do to make the passwords even stronger, too:
Use phrases to begin with instead of words. This makes things a bit harder to remember though.
Use longer algorithms. This makes things more annoying to generate a password though.
Use different pools for different purposes. One pool of words for work, one pool of words for banking, one pool of words for websites, and so on. If work ever figures out my algorithm and my work pool and decides to be a bit malicious (unlikely as that may be), they still have to figure out the pools of words I use for other purposes. That buys me a decent chunk time I can use to change the algorithm.
There are a few drawbacks, however. You still have to remember something (although remembering ‘fruit’ really isn’t that difficult). If somebody figures out both your pool of words and your algorithm, you are pretty much screwed. But those are fairly low-risk prices to pay, I think.
I’ve recently converted to using this sort of algorithm-based password mechanism. I think it’s great. I’d be interested to hear other people’s thoughts too: have you been using it for years? Do you think it’s a stupid idea? Should we all just be using biometrics instead? Let me know!
