Christmas trees burning on Ocean Beach

As I stood on one side of the street, a cadre of Christmas tree bearing revellers trotted across the street, passing the ranger’s police car. He came on the PA and meekly said “Put those trees down, we’re going to be arresting people real soon.” The last two words trailed off in that “I wish it were true” tone of voice. He might as well have ended with upspeak. I’m sad that I’m the only person that heard him say it. Corey was in with the cadre and he only heard the first half of the plea, taking the tree I gave him over the hill to the already raging bonfire.

I want to thank Michael Prados for the beer, Jon for the happy wave, Jean and Ben for the conversation, Corey for his blatent disregard for the law, Rick for his balancing tree act and Charlotte for everything.

I wrote this little guide for my aunt. Her email password got hacked a while back. If you don’t currently do something similar, you should!

First, here is how to make a bad password that will get hacked:

• Use a word that is in the dictionary, even if you r3place s0me l3tt3rs w1th number5 (that’s an old trick) or…
• add a 1number1 to a 3word3 (that’s an old one too)
• Make your password a too common phrase like your favorite band, “Flock of Seagulls”, or your birthday “2/2/1980”. There aren’t enough 80’s New Wave bands or birthdays to fool a brute force attack on your password.

Now here is how to make a good password that is easy to remember and won’t get hacked:

Change all your passwords to follow a pattern. Make the pattern something you can easily figure out but a password thief could never do.

1. Start with a basic password that is something you like, but misspell it. For example, “caps” to “kaps”.
2. Change it so that it has a capital letter, a number and punctuation. For example, “Kaps^2”.
3. For every website you go to, prepend part of the website name to the new password. For example, maybe use the first 2 letters and the last letter of the site. You’d get “amn” out of  amazon.com. So your password for Amazon.com would be “amnKaps^2” and your password for Bank of America would be “baaKaps^2”.

That’s it!

Your final password should be between 9 and 12 characters. (some websites stupidly limit the length of your password, and you don’t want to have to use a different strategy on those sites, lest it be harder to remember.

You now have a REALLY GOOD PASSWORD that is REALLY EASY TO REMEMBER and REALLY HARD TO GUESS. And it’s DIFFERENT ON EVERY SITE so when one website gets hacked, the bad people don’t know your password on other sites!

————————————————–

If you have gmail, I strongly recommend you turn on 2-step verification.
How to enable it.
A friendly video that walks you through it.

Yes, it takes a little effort, but so does locking your front door when you go out.

Short story: last year I sat down at a public computer at City College. As I typed in my password, I got this chill, wondering if there might be a virus on the computer, sending my password off to some nefarious Russian hacker den or somesuch. So the first thing I did was enable 2-step verification.
Flash forward 3 months to this ABC News article that starts out “A computer virus found at the City College of San Francisco may have been part of an elaborate international scheme stealing students’ personal information for more than a decade.”

Yes, the bad people got my password. But my password strategy and 2-step verification protected me. Nuff said.

I’d like to teach a class with the Institute of Urban Homesteading. To do to the class, I need a space in or around Oakland that can handle a bunch of people playing with bread dough. Can I use your kitchen? If you have a large oven and some space in or near the kitchen, I’d gladly pay you and/or have you attend the class. Call me!

Here is the tentative class description:
Bread in the Oven
3 hour weekday evening class
Cost $30-50 plus $5 supply fee to be paid on day of class

The focus in this class is making an excellent French bread with just a few minutes of effort. Making bread is easy. It doesn’t have to take a long time or be a lot of work. You can make fantastic bread every day or every week for well under a dollar a loaf with less than 10 minutes of effort including cleanup! We will talk about instant yeast and sourdough, refrigerated dough, crust, crumb shaping, ammendments, the chemistry and biology of bread, and the thousands of varieties of this staple food. Once you have the foundations, you’ll see bread recipes as suggestions instead of steps to be followed. The sky is the limit! We will eat and bring home what we make in class.

There’s a million things I can’t do. But what bugs me is that there’s a million things I could do given the chance. I feel pigeonholed by my work history.

I’ve been fiddling with my blog format for as long as I’ve had a blog. I keep thinking that I’ll develop some sense for how to make a nice layout. I haven’t. I won’t. That is sad. I should move on.

So what should it look like? Or is it fine how it is?

I had a very excellent Christmas eve dinner with the Kosas last night :-)

Erin got me a Christmas present :-)

I baked 2 apple pies :-) The gluten free pie was very well received by the gluten intolerant family members, thanks to Charlotte for suggesting I bake it.

There are times when things just don’t go that well for long stretches of time. When that gets me down, I tell myself “I just need a win”. It’s a way of reminding myself that if I can change one thing about my situation, then the sky is the limit. It’s also a bit of a wake-up call for myself. When I find myself muttering, “I just need a win, just anything, anything!” I know that my frustration level has peaked.

Well, I’ve needed a win for a while. And I just got a couple. They’re small, but real.

I spent much of last night trying to diagnose people’s computer problems on JustAnswer.com; I recently signed up as a paid Expert. The signup process has been a bit of a chore and after hours of trying to answer questions, I came up empty.

Win: I woke up this morning and one of my Answers was accepted. I’m now a couple dollars richer. And he even left a little bonus for me. I now have a rating of “1” on JustAnswer instead of a rating of “0”.

I’ve been throwing my heart into making a web site and video for the T. Pen. I realize I have no graphic design skills… web page layout, color schemes and such. I’ve stared for hours (embarrassingly,  literally hours) at blank sheets of paper and blank screens trying to drum something up. And the video I’ve been working on has taken waaay too long to make.

Win: Last night, I did the video. This morning I’m putting some finishing touches on it and it looks pretty good. I got to  exercise  my video production and  editing skills and my endurance for pushing though technical problems (For instance, did you know that while you can record a 30 minute video on a Canon Powershot SD1000 Elph, there is no way to get the resulting 1.3 gigabyte video onto your computer? Just reshoot it. And WTF is up with Adobe Premiere dropping partial audio during WMV renders?).

I’m going to take these wins and run with them.

Today’s todo list:

• buy the last of the xmas presents
• talk with the logistics guy about SWARM going to Techkriti in India (!!)
• Call the tutoring company about my part time tutoring gig
• Answer some more JustAnswer.com questions
• Get my car looked at so I can take it on a Christmas Roadtrip
• Borrow the website design Mark suggested for the T. Pen site
• Make bread and bring it to the housewarming party for a friend

Ok, I won’t get through the whole list today. But I’m on a roll, I can feel it.

Man, time flies… When I wrote this 8 years or so it was useful, fun stuff. But now I’ll just relegate it to the data pile. I updated it in 2005 but… feh, don’t read this, it’s old and most of my recommendations don’t hold true any more.

Lee Recommends Toys

[last reviewed (poorly) 9-16-05 – Lee]

Here’s a list of many of the “good things” I enjoy.

Tivo – bought 11-01 – It just plain works. This thing has allowed me to watch exactly what I want, exactly when I want. The recorded picture quality is indistinguishable from live tv… Did you hear that? A perfect playback of tv. Your old VCR is going to start gathering a lot of dust. And the program guide is…. why didn’t they come out with this thing 50 years ago?! It’s so intuitive and easy and… gush gush gush! Suffice to say, I like my Tivo. I bought a suped-up one on eBay. It has an extra 80 gig hard drive giving me 80 hrs or recording time on “high” quality. I would get 200 hrs on “basic” but the picture quality there is ucky. I’d say that 50-80 hours of recording time is the minimum you’d want to get your Tivo with. You think that sounds crazy but it isn’t. It’s important to have enough space on it so that you don’t have to watch your favorite programs before they expire… and have some space left over so you can sample new programs, record entire mini-series, movie marathons, etc…
Bread maker – bought 12-96 – Breadman Ultimate. See my cooking page. I -still- use it all the time.

Sharper Image Quadra air filter – bought 1-01 – It really works to reduce allergy problems, it’s quiet and saves money over filters. I sold mine a while back and haven’t bought another because I don’t feel like I’ve needed it.

Pocket PC Cassiopeia E-125 – bought 5-01 – I used to have a Palm III but I got tired of my eyes getting tired with the crappy screen. I’m happy with it. I use it 10 times a day every day. With Avantgo, I get to read the newspaper while I’m on the train every day. That’s cool. 9-9-07 update: I haven’t used it in a while. I just use my cell phone or my home computer. I’m -still- waiting for a cell phone/PDA that fits in my pocket. :-(

Avantgo for the Pocket PC. So there I am reading the newspaper every morning on the train, but my “paper” is this tiny (but legible) thing! The electronic newspaper has arrived! 9-9-07 update: I haven’t used it in a while only because I only used it on my Pocket PC.

Vindigo for the Pocket PC – started 12-01 – Vindigo was the best thing I had for the Palm… now it’s available! Wee! It’s great! 9-9-07 update: I haven’t used it in a while only because I only used it on my Pocket PC.

Canon Ultura mini-DV video camera – bought 12-99. 9-9-07 update. I’m still happy with it. Though I use a digital still camera far more often. I use the still-mode and video mode on the digital camera. It is just more convenient.

Nikon 775 digital camera – 9-9-07 update. This camera went wonky on me a little while back so I bought the 5 megapixel Canon Powershot. That one got accidentally left in the Albertsons in El Cerrito just before Burning Man so I’ll be shopping for another soon. The Nikon 775 was a good camera.

Here’s my original review (with updates)

bought 12-01 – I figure that what I really
want is a 35 megapixel camera (1200 dpi 3×5 photos… a real film camera) and they’ll be available in 5 years, Moore’s law (5 years later and we’re only up to 7 megapixel :-( ). This 2 megapixel camera works quite well enough for now. After having this camera for a while, probably the most important features are:

• small size. If it’s not small enough to bring with me everywhere, I won’t!
• reasonably durable. I passed over cameras that didn’t have automatically closing lens caps and too many protrusions.
• a good case. I’ve got this little aftermarket pack that keeps it safe and nearby. It’s really really worth the $30 and looking around for just the right size.
• easy uploading to my PC. Mine is USB. You plug it in and Zoop! it’s in my computer
• good editing software. I use Jasc Paintshop Pro 7.0 to fix shots with bad color and red-eye. (I now use Picasa for most straightforward edits. It’s easy to use)
• good viewing software. I haven’t found -really- good viewing software yet but I use ACDSee 4.0 (Picasa is the one!)
• good printing setup. I haven’t printed any pictures yet but I might use ofoto.com, fototime.com, or one of the new (as of 7-02) $180 photo printers. I still don’t print photos often. I like PSPrint.com)
• at least a 32 meg memory card. My 32 meg card holds 64 images in 2 megapixel mode. The price of memory is falling rapidly… get a 64 meg or 128 meg card. Remember that when you’re on your next 2 week vacation, there won’t be any place to buy new “film”. (now I have a 2 gig card :-)
• movie mode is kind of nice but not essential. If you get it, it should record sound too. (movie mode is essential!)
• rechargeable battery. These cameras can eat batteries like nobody’s business

FRS Radios –

9-9-07 update: I haven’t used my FRS radios in a long while. They don’t have the range needed to be useful in many places… large events, Burning Man, etc.. Cell phone coverage keeps getting better such that there aren’t many places that aren’t covered any more. And the single-duplex talking gets on your nerves after a while as opposed to a telephone.

Here is my previous review:

Family Radio Service radios are just like the walkie talkies you had when you were a kid, but all grown up. The sound is crystal clear for between 1/2 and 2 miles. Perfect for keeping together on a road trip, at a convention (warning, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, they had a range of like 75 yards. Combined with the ambient noise in there, they aren’t worth it) , festivals, camping, at flea markets, etc.

I like them because they’re cheaper than cell phones. A set can cost you $80, that’s 2 months cell phone service. But these radios will last for years. They work where cell phones don’t, in the country, or when service is flaky.

If you are buying an FRS radio, the most important features to consider are:

• Power button that doesn’t accidentally push while in your bag. It sucks when your batteries are dead before you even get there!
• Rechargeable batteries. Radios last 12-18 hours on a charge, which is a full day. But then buying another 6 AA batteries for tomorrow kinda sucks. You got these things because they are cheaper than cell phones and you want to keep them that way.
• Privacy codes are nice. They keep the random static to nill.
• Call buttons and Vibrate modes are good. Just like a cell phone!
• A good belt holster.

I have a pair of Cobra FRS-305s with rechargeable NiMH batteries. After I put some cardboard over the power switch so they wouldn’t accidentally switch on, they work very well (thanks to the guy in Staples for that suggestion!). The holster isn’t perfect either, but it’ll do. I also have a pair of Motorola Talkabout 250s. They eat batteries, turn on accidentally, turn off accidentally, have a poorly placed Talk switch, and mediocre holster. Wanna buy some radios, cheap?

My good friend Barry is co-owner of a solar consultancy. Pathways Energy Solar Brokers

He goes to businesses and homes and figures out what kind of solar electric systems would work for their situation. Then he shops around to different solar integrators to get the best price. He helps with the whole process, making sure no funny business happens. He knows the solar industry really well and he’s a really great guy. I’d trust him with my roof.

And it’s pretty cool that his services are essentially free for the customer. From his site:

Since the solar companies have to spend very little time competing, they are able to keep their costs down and these savings are passed on to you. We receive our fee from the solar contractor for delivering a sold client to them, so we are able to offer our services to you at no cost.

It’s a little like the old Progressive Insurance ads… “When solar companies compete, you save.”

If you live in the San Francisco North Bay… Santa Rosa, Sonoma, Napa, Petaluma, Novato, Healdsburg, Vallejo, anywhere in the whole North Bay… and you are thinking of putting solar on your roof, call Barry!

This is the followup to 1575 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG

Don’t read this here. Instead read it on the author’s site!

Continue reading ‘1575 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG: Part 2’ »