Yes, it’s true.  Finally a way to get your personal files on each machine you work with that gets backed up online without any worry of who is rummaging through your data when you aren’t looking!  It’s the secure online backup you were looking for!

Windows? Linux? Mac? No problem.  Installers are available for all three systems.

DropBox (a glorified subversion system for the rest of us) has finally worked its way out of beta and will become the backbone for our project.  Transmission of data to DropBox is via HTTPS, so we at least have half the problem resolved.

The second problem is DropBox’s STORAGE of my files.  If they defect to the goverment faster than AT&T did with the NSA, then you can be sure your private key and personal bookmarks to porn sites will be used against you.  I wanted the storage of my files encrypted. Since I couldn’t trust DropBox, I turned to my good old friend, TrueCrypt.

The solution here is to create a TrueCrypt volume inside of your DropBox folder.  Even though DropBox has a 2GB folder limit, you shouldn’t use all of it for your TrueCrypt drive.  Unfortunately, TrueCrypt creates the encrypted partition to it’s maximum capacity, which means if you create a 1GB encrypted volume, it actually takes up 1GB on the harddrive even with nothing in it.  And transferring a 1GB file many times for little to no content isn’t the best plan.

Since the volume is filled out to maximum filesize even with no data, it’s best to create a few smaller drives (in the 256MB range) as DropBox has to upload the entire file at least once and you have to download the synchronized file on every computer.  TrueCrypt can mount about 12 volumes automatically, so my recommendation is to keep the volumes small and increase the sizes for volumes you don’t modify often.

Don’t feel guilty about using encyption.  Don’t be guilted into the “If you have nothing to hide” mantra; privacy is your right as a human, exercise it.

I was finally annoyed with Ads to the point I blocked them on every single device that accesses the internet through my network. Screw you all, there’s too much, it’s out of control. On the Wii, on the iPhone, in my RSS feeds, punch the monkey, win an xbox… ENOUGH.

With the help of Squid + SquidGuard + Rick752’s EasyList for AdBlock Plus, I broke free from the clutter that is web advertising.

Yes, it’s easy and you can do it. Read on for my scripts.
Read the rest of this entry »

This Alt-TAB replacement is actually an official PowerToy from Microsoft.  It will add function and beauty to your otherwise near-worthless and boring Alt-TAB window.  In addition to seeing the icon of the application window you are switching to, you will also see a preview of the application as it was running.  This helps particularly when multiple sessions of an application are open.

Launchy is the Windows version of Mac’s QuickSilver. It is free and open source (naturally) and a flexible and relatively lightweight alternative to using Windows Start Menu.

By pressing the hotkey (Alt-Space), you bring up Launchy’s main window and type what you want. A quick type of “fire” brings up your most used entry of “firefox” but doesn’t stop there.  If you have other programs (in this example, Fire Antivirus, SoftFire screensaver or Fire and Motion), it will display them as well since it contains the keyword you typed.

Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like I’m always reinstalling and forgetting which files should and shouldn’t be checked in. Here is a good pattern to get started with:

*.suo *.user obj Debug *.pdb *.application *.Cache *.scc Thumbs.db RECYCLER

Some people believe nothing in bin/ should be checked in, however, I use my repository as a software distribution site as well, so I allow bin/Release to be versioned.  This pattern should work for most of .NET but I haven’t fully tested it, I only use C#.

CacheViewer is a plugin for Firefox which allows you easy access to your cache.  It presents a nice easy front-end for your cache directory and allows you the option of saving files from either memory or disk.

Mailbox Map is a USPS mailbox locator that uses Google Maps to be interactive.

Pidgin v2.0(.1) provides no easy way to change the key bindings (this is intentional) so you can use [Ctrl]-[Enter] to send your message rather than just [Enter] to send a message. This is a problem for me as I usually like to make my sent messages intentional rather than typing something I’ll regret and fat-fingering the [Enter] key.

Since I use the portable version of Pidgin the file to edit is: X:\PortableApps\PidginPortable\Data\settings\.purple\gtkrc-2.0

Its contents should be the following:

binding "pidgin-bindings"
{
# enter inserts a newline
bind "Return" { "insert-at-cursor" ("\n") }
# ctrl-Enter sends message
bind "<ctrl>Return" { "message_send" () }
}
widget "*pidgin_conv_entry" binding "pidgin-bindings"

UPDATE: You might also consider installing my Pidgin smiley theme: http://blog.ozmonet.com/2007/forumsmileys-v08-released-for-pidgingaim/

Delete lines that contain string:
:g/string/d

Turn on|off line numbering:
:set [nu|nonu]

Number lines (filter the file through a unix command and replace with output):
:%!cat -n

Sort lines:
:%!sort

Sort and uniq:
:%!sort -u

Set textwidth for automatic line-wrapping as you type:
:set textwidth=80

Turn on|off syntax highlighting
:syn [on|off]

Force the filetype for syntax highlighting:
:set filetype=php

Use lighter coloring scheme for a dark background:
:set background=dark