Archive for category Uncategorized
Taking a moment out of Winter Solstice to say “Thank you”
Posted by Mike Beach in Uncategorized on December 22, 2011
Tonight is the Winter Solstice — the shortest day and longest night of the year. Tonight is also the first time it feels like I’ve been able to take more than a few relaxing moments for a while. We closed on the house last Friday, and wow — so much happened so quickly after that [...]
How to retrieve EXIF data from the command line in Ubuntu Linux
Posted by Mike Beach in Uncategorized on December 17, 2011
If you want to make use of the EXIF data stored in a JPEG (.jpg or .jpeg) or TIFF (.tif or .tiff) file from the command line in Ubuntu Linux — or most other Linux variants — here’s how. This was tested on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot). First, you will need to have imagemagick installed to [...]
Why good password practices are no longer optional — Part 2
Posted by Mike Beach in Uncategorized on December 14, 2011
In part 1 of this two-part series, I mentioned some of the fallacies and misconceptions in password practices. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you click here to read it now. In this part I’ll discuss a few methods for storing and securing your strong passwords themselves. It’s not as hard as it sounds, and [...]
Set up an encrypted VPN using DD-WRT
Posted by Mike Beach in Uncategorized on December 13, 2011
DD-WRT is feature-rich alternative firmware for a large number of home router models. It adds a wonderful array of new features, VPN being one of them. This walkthrough will show you how to quickly and easily configure a PPTP VPN server on your DD-WRT-powered router, so you can connect to your home network from afar, [...]
Why good password practices are no longer optional — Part 1
Posted by Mike Beach in Uncategorized on December 12, 2011
This is the first part in a two-part series in password security practices and storage. Be sure to click here to read part two if you haven’t already! If you — like many people — are in the habit of using simple passwords, or even the same password over multiple sites, you’re setting yourself up [...]
Bash script to automatically sort photos into folders based on EXIF data for Ubuntu Linux
Posted by Mike Beach in Uncategorized on December 10, 2011
If you — like me — take a lot of digital pictures, you probably have a hundred folders full of images on your hard drive or external drives, and not nearly as sorted as you would like them to be. you have probably gotten to the point that you don’t know what’s in them or [...]
How to enable BitLocker TPM+PIN after encrypting hard drive
Posted by Mike Beach in Uncategorized on December 8, 2011
BitLocker by itself is great drive encryption, but unfortunately it has some shortcomings in its default configuration. Namely, there’s no safeguard at boot time preventing the drive from being accessed. If your computer is stolen or physically compromised, the drive is ready and willing to give access to your data. Fortunately BitLocker supports a PIN [...]
Does the number of downloads of an app or software reflect on its quality?
Posted by Mike Beach in Uncategorized on December 7, 2011
We’ve all seen apps which tout their usefulness, relevance, or popularity by their number of downloads, but does it really mean anything? “Number of downloads” means exactly that — the number of people that have downloaded your app — it doesn’t even attempt to represent the number of people who found it useful or continue [...]
How to create a multi-page PDF from multiple image files using OpenOffice
Posted by Mike Beach in Uncategorized on December 6, 2011
I ran into a scan a document to send it via email. PDF format would have been preferable, but Windows Scan and Fax wouldn’t export as a PDF. Fortunately OpenOffice is quite capable of converting a multi-page document to a PDF, and does it quite easily. I had already scanned my documents, so I wanted something [...]
What we have here is a failure for Comcast to communicate.
Posted by Mike Beach in Uncategorized on December 3, 2011
In a digital age, customer service should be first and foremost, especially when companies are using services such as social media to provide technical support. So read below for a detailed demonstration of clearly faulty communication and a failure of one hand to know what the other is doing. The end result in these types of [...]
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