Year: 2011

Think one down side of work is that I keep freaking wake up around then, even on my days off! Dreamland at least was refreshing, although the progression infantry->zombies->aliens is rather tiring, especially when the aliens are bullet proof :|.

On the upside though, I was reading about nVidia’s GTX560s, which pretty much makes me retire my intention of  going with an ATI/AMD {5,6}8{5,7}0 grade hardware with a comparable nVidia card. Eh, what can I say, I’m more partial to Intel and nVidia than their competitors. I also have a rather poor opinion of ATI’s stuff, or should we say I’m not fond of them.

In looking at the prices of hardware and how sharply it has fallen, I also feel rather old. Even worse when I consider that in 3-4 pay cheques of saving I could built quite a nice computer. But I would much rather pour that towards putting together a vacation plan than replacing SAL1600. Although, I do admit that if Dead Island requires newer hardware, I’m buying it. But I only expect to require a better graphics card, unless like a Quad Core is required lol.

*Groans*.

Hmm, I just realised that come 2011-09-09, this September is going to be roughly the fifth anniversary of when I began keeping my journal via weblog. Facebook rather entered the mix after a friend decided to run one of his projects off it, as opposed to more traditional mailing list/forum structure.

Still have files littering my home directory, since at least 2007. Either private thoughts or project notes that I’ve recorded. Most things generally end up here on my journal, because that’s the sense of one. Facebook for me is utilized more as a hybrid of things. Friends generally prefer Facebook, so it’s a practical consideration. Me, well, I rather prefer something like Blogger or Instant Messaging. But what can I say, people tend to be attracted to such monoliths.

Over the years, I have rather amassed a large sum of time around computers: virtually since diapers! I don’t think that I can even remember not having a computer, and my memory does go quite a far ways back. In the pat ten years, I really don’t want to know how many more hours I’ve spent on/around computers, than doing something else. So yeah, it makes sense that I would use a computer for recording my thoughts.

Some people use paper, and hide it away someway. Me on the other hand, I’ve few things to hide, and am too cheap to buy a larger hard drive than the cloud.

or why I’ll never walk across a bridge built by my mother.

It’s Common Knowledge either by experience or paying attention, that if if smooth something (nail) goes in, enough force makes smooth something come out the hole. That’s why screw’s screw in instead of *push* in. I’m not the most handy person on earth but even I know when to use a nail and when to use a screw. Unless you want to get screwed by physics,

Writing the previous entry, made me recollect something that I was thinking about on the way home from work Thursday or Wednesday. Are passwords outdated when it comes to logging into a web service? Really. I think they are to be honest.

At work and at home, I use ‘keys’, not passwords. My ~/.ssh/config and /etc/hosts files are configured so that I can run ‘ssh pcname’ and log into machines automagically; no need for a password. I do it this way, because while I can set a passphrase on SSH keys: the ratio between chance of theft and frequency of logging in, is wide enough that I’ve little need to worry. If someone walks off with my computer, the SSH keys to my other PCs are the least of my worries, assuming that they didn’t take those too!

Quite readily one could just adapt something like the SSH2 public key authentication to browsing the web; and maybe improve on it while they’re at it. Even better, rather than relying on the browser to “Remember passwords” it can simply be made to ask a key agent. While Windows out of the box has always lacked something comparable to my knowledge, GNOME and KDE have had keyring management services for as long as I can remember; Konqueror was the first web browser that I ever used that integrated with something approximating one (KWallet). Although I rather prefer the GNOME keyring stuff, hehe.

This could then if desired, be linked to your computer login. For example, login to your desktop can unlock the keyring and allow pre-authorized requests to utilize it’s services. There are obvious implications for such things but I rather would like to see what it could do in like the next ~20 years.

All that of course, still means that if you leave your computer unlocked and your bank account open, you deserve what you get ^_^.  For what little I consider it worth, my systems are usually programmed to auto-lock after a short delay, and I frequently lock them before going AFK, if there’s any sense to it. I.e. at home, the PC is more likely to get carted off by a thief, then the one at work, lol.

Today’s the last day for one of our more skilled hackers, so the powers that be decided to cart Engineering out to lunch for the send off. While I’m happy enough to accept the invite, I’m also, well, I just eat a quick lunch and go back to work lol. Asked one of my peers whether he thought it would be rude if I brought the netbook along to get some work done and he thought nothing of it. The guy that’s leaving the company, I’m surprised we could pry him off work long enough for the gathering. Yup.

So of course I’m working remotely off alice by the time the like ~20 of us are filtering out of this Mexican restaurant up the road. What brought a smile to my face however, was when Steve remarked something like, “You just couldn’t leave work?” and then realized we had wifi access the whole time xD.

My closest friends know that I’m kind of a workaholic at heart…. and that I am also insane lol