Go change your passwords
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/a_really_good_a.html
The Maxson Homepage on the WWW
Go change your passwords
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/a_really_good_a.html
Encrypt everything?
http://m.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html
Neat study on american English differences
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jakatz2/project-dialect.html
Currently, I’m on a shared hosting plan with my hosting provider. I’ve farmed out email to Google with Google Apps. I use Amazon’s Cloud Drive for their cloud music player (+20GB online space). I use flickr to host my pictures. I’d like to combine everything into one provider. However, my experiments in self-hosted pictures haven’t turned out so good (and I’d need about 300GB space). And I’d need another 200 GB or so for music. Any ideas on how I could do this on my own?
I’ve thought about using AWS with their EC2 compute cloud and S3 for storage, but there’s no easy way to talk between the two (Why not, Amazon??).
I’ve looked into VPS solutions, because most of the time, everything will sit idle. But I can’t get the disk space I want.
I’ve thought about buying a QNAP NAS device, but I’d prefer to NOT have it at home.
That leaves getting a physical server somewhere. But the price is about $100/month. For $1,200/year, it seems like I should be able to buy my own server and put it in a data center somewhere. Has anyone else out there tackled this sort of problem? How have you overcome it?
[Update 2013-06-23 07:19:22] I’ve been thinking about this, and I think co-location of a server is the only way to go. That is the ONLY way to guarente that my data isn’t shared with anyone. Sure, the police could come in and take the server…but I could set it up so the disks are encrypted and can’t be read without a password. Going this route would also let me get rid of:
It would let me get (with no known men-in-the-middle):
I think my plan is going to be to set this stuff up at home, see if I can do it, then decide from there what to do.
Image from amy nievera via flickr
…more security theater. For another point, look at this article. You can see past things I’ve written here and here.
As I write this, I’m sitting air-side at Heathrow Airport. I’m drinking my coffee and waiting for them to announce what gate I leave from. And I didn’t have to take off my shoes or belt. Why am I all gripey about this? Well, it is the inconsistencies that get me.
I never take my shoes off, unless I get asked. Why? First off, I wear just about the same thing every time I fly. I certainly wear the same shoes 100% of the time: lace-up short hiking boots. About 1/2 the time, I make it through the metal detectors without getting beeped. The other half, I make the machine beep, have to take off my shoes. The same with the belt….about 1/2 the time, I’m asked to take it off…the other half no one seems to mind.
Are there standards or not? Why does something make it through once but not another. Come on people….
Image from danjo fing via flickr
One of the blogs I read regularly is The Art of Manliness. I forget where I first found it, but it is a great blog. Great advice for men, teen boys, and anyone else looking to become a well-rounded person. And it avoids the sexual angle that is so prevalent on so many other “lad-blogs.”
Anyway, this week, I finally got around to reading their article on your first day and week at a new job: Hit the Ground Running: How to Ace Your First Day and First Week at a New Job. Here’s a summary of the main points (and my thoughts on one of them)
1. Before your first day
Do your research
Set out what you need the night before
Brush up on your business etiquette
Dress for success
Aim to arrive ten minutes early
Carry yourself with confidence
Take the initiative in introducing yourself
Take notes
2. How to Ace the First Week
Ask lots of questions
Listen, observe, and research
Decorate your space
Set up a calendar
Create a to-do list notebook
Don’t talk about how things used to be done at your old job
Send your first Friday Update
That last one is one I really like. A Friday Update. The article says
The Friday Update is a short email that “functions to communicate your progress and the status of your current projects and tasks.” Here’s what they [Bennington and Lineberg] recommend including in the update:
Accomplishments this week
Challenges or stumbling blocks (areas where you need direction or input)
Noteworthy opportunities, suggestions, and insights
Issues that need your boss’s input or approval
Your schedule and goals for the coming week
I work on a 5 person team spread out geographically (and in different timezones). My supervisor/boss isn’t in the same country as me. I really like this idea to summarize what I did and what I plan to do. I think I’m going to start doing that.
Image from slworking2 via flickr
In my job, I travel to lots of places where people are having meetings to work on their computers. We do this because we get the most “bang for the buck” so to speak by going where people are then working on their computers. But, that means we don’t have control over the environment we find ourselves in. Or what resources are available. We can get around this by taking hard drives with software and updates for our use. However, there are cases where wifi is spotty (that’s being nice). An example would be a meeting I recently went to in Morocco: wifi was available in the lobby but not the meeting room. But, in one corner of the meeting room we could, occasionally, leech wifi off another hotel. That corner was really popular.
Enter my quest for a router I could take with me places. A colleague suggested an Apple Airport Express (he has one). The size was right but it didn’t do everything I wanted. I then thought about getting a stock router and installing DD-Wrt. Well, after looking, I didn’t think DD-Wrt did everything I wanted. So, I kept looking. But, before I go farther, I suppose I should tell you my requirements:
#3 turned out to be the hardest. After looking, I didn’t even think that ddwrt would do what I wanted. I kept looking. And looking. And looking. Finally, I stumbled on the Asus WL-330n3G. This thing does everything:
I haven’t taken it any place with me yet, but I think this little guy will come in very handy!