Over the past few years there has been a big push to replace proprietary formats with open formats. For example Open Document Format and Office Open XML have largely replaced the legacy binary formats, we’re now seeing HTML5 + JavaScript supplant Silverlight and Java applets, and even the once venerable Flash is on its deathbed. This…
Category Archives: Free Software
Something about free software
How to easily forward Firefox traffic through an SSH tunnel (Android edition)
Similar to my previous post about forwarding browser traffic through an SSH tunnel, this time I’ll show you how to do it on Android even without root access. Please note that while I’m sure there are a few ways to accomplish this, the following is just one way that has worked for me. I’m also…
Hash Verifier now on GitHub
I have taken the time to create a GitHub repository for my old Hash Verifier software which you can now find here. I’ve even created different releases to reflect the evolution of the software as found on this website. Hopefully this will make it even easier for you to check out and play around with…
Linux alternatives: Mp3tag → EasyTAG
A big part of my move from Windows to Linux has been finding replacements for the applications that I had previously used day-to-day that are not available on Linux. For the major applications like my web browser (Firefox), e-mail client (Thunderbird), password manager (KeePass2) this hasn’t been a problem because they are all available on…
GnuPG crowdfunding easier crypto
I came across a crowdfunding site for GnuPG with the tag line: The world needs GnuPG encryption more than ever – a new website, new design, and new content will make strong crypto friendly. If they can actually do something to make GnuPG, and computer security in general, more user friendly and approachable than it…
KeePass: The Cross-platform Password Safe
These days you really need a strong, unique password for almost everything you do online. To make matters even worse for the average user, security nuts will tell you that you actually need a different password for essentially every account you hold. Why? Consider the following scenario: Little Timmy signs up for Facebook using his…
Automatically put computer to sleep and wake it up on a schedule
Ever wanted your computer to be on when you need it but automatically put itself to sleep (suspended) when you don’t? Or maybe you just wanted to create a really elaborate alarm clock? I stumbled across this very useful command a while back but only recently created a script that I now run to control…
Mount entire drive dd image
It is a pretty common practice to use the command dd to make backup images of drives and partitions. It’s as simple as the command: dd if=[input] of=[output] A while back I did just that and made a dd backup of not just a partition but of an entire hard drive. This was very simple…
How to test hard drive for errors in Linux
I recently re-built an older PC from a laundry list of Frankenstein parts. However before installing anything to the hard drive I found I wanted to check it for physical errors and problems as I couldn’t remember why I wasn’t using this particular drive in any of my other systems. From an Ubuntu 12.04 live…
RSA-768: Nothing to worry about
I have been meaning to write up a short post about this for a while, but thanks to the start of a new school term I have been a bit busy. If you have seen the security news in the last month or so you will know that RSA-768, a 768bit or 232 decimal digit…