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Happy New Year! Just recovered from the Christmas celebrations (and subsequent hangover), that’s why I’ve been absent ..honest ;) I bought a snake since my last post, here are some pictures:
I’m not entirely sure on a name, so, as a late Christmas present to all my readers, I’d like you guys to make some suggestions. Unfortunately, I don’t know the sex of the snake, so you’ll have to settle on unisex names. I’m humming and harring between ‘Red’ and ‘Junior’, but I’m sure you can think of something better.
As I promised, I would post information on how I installed Linux on my phone, so, here’s a comprehensive instruction manual to get you started on you journey to installing Linux in Linux:
Step 1 – Search for ‘Linux installer’ on the Android Marketplace
I got hit by a car on my way to work in December, stupid bitch “didn’t see me” apparently (even though I was wearing one of these). Anyway, I had to buy a new bike, so I’m going to be asking for compensation from the drunk/tired/retarded driver when I get around to sending the letter.
Ever since then I’ve upped the anti on looking retarded and got me a helmet and some helmet lights. I used to have the attitude of, “Oh, helmets look gay” and “It’ll never happen to me”. Now I realise that the state of mind I was in with regards to safetyware was, in fact, retarded. Nevertheless, my stance on safetyware isn’t as retarded as some drivers and their habits. People seem to forget that when you’re behind a wheel, you have the power to kill people, inadvertently. The chance of killing someone when behind a wheel is greatly increased when you drive like a retard. But I digress, many (not all) drivers scare the shit outta me. You can’t trust any of them to see you on the road.
So I’m back, and about to have dinner – you can start checking up on this blog more often again now, I’m out of hibernation.
Passwords and Patriotism
Followers of Reddit would probably have seen this today, a display of blatant ignorance and old-fashioned thinking. This woman is as uneducated as her kid is on cock and balls (one would hope), and is, in my opinion, being anti-patriotic. Not that I support patriotism, I mean, it caused two world wars (and nearly a third), right? Patriotism is a divider, and this video is a clear demonstration of how to isolate yourself from everyone around you. This woman is pathetic and ignorant of the fact that what makes Britain Britain today is its multiculturalism. In fact, it’s not how long you’ve been here that determines whether or not you’re British, it’s a British passport. So get over the skin colour and the behaviour, and recognise your narrow-mindedness, please.
I believe the only constraint in password creation should be the minimum length of characters. Entities which place restrictions on what characters you can use in a password only serves to reduce the possible combinations of passwords one can have. I have heard that some systems don’t even allow you to use uppercase characters or spaces, and limit you to X number of characters? For fuck sake.. This comic sums up my predicament nicely – we’ve got to the point where passwords are easy to crack by computers, but hard for us to remember. You may remember my mnenomics post discussing how to remember things more easily. So try it with passwords. Think you can’t remember a 16 character password? Think again:
BigFatVaginaFace – 16 characters
HungLikeATicTac – 15 characters
WhatTheFuckPassword – 19 characters
I reckon you could spend 5 seconds looking at these before being able to write them all down. Give it a try. Of course, dictionary-based attacks would be more effective on these passwords than if they were random characters, but to be honest, with a password like that, the weaker ones will be hit first. And if you wanted to make it more difficult (impossible), just replace a character or two with a number or symbol. You don’t have to go full retard with passwords like $#@PUQEIDOPUEI$#%$, because you’ll just end up writing them down. How fucking useful is that?
My other issue regarding passwords is password rotation. Sure, if you use passwords like ‘BigFatVaginaFace’, this probably won’t be an issue for you, because you’re creative and choose ‘sensible’ passwords. But remember, the majority of the population are absolute fucking dip shits when it comes to choosing a password. What’s worse is forcing them to change it every, say, three months. It’s pointless against preventing password disclosure, because a hacker would not need one and a half months (average) to get the information he or she needs from an organisation. And forcing dip shits people to change their password four times a year will lead to weak passwords and high support costs. People will be more willing to write them down, and many of them, giving attackers an idea of how these dip shits people form passwords. If you’re really worried about password leakage, lock down from where people can access certain systems, and when someone leaves an organisation, turn their account off. Simples.
I heard you like spoilers
So it’s been nearly a month since my last post, don’t be mad, I was just being lazy taking a break. What’s changed since the last time you stalked me? Well, I reinstalled Linux on my machine, nearly crashed into the side of a car, watched the new Twilight movie, thought seriously about installing Windows on my Linux box (I know, my thoughts will be justified), started using awesome, and had a wash day (clothes, CLOTHES!).
I was using Fedora out of spite with Ubuntu with their poor justifications for moving away from GNOME in favour of Unity (and moving those buttons to the left), which was fine for a while, but then I realised I wanted bleeding edge. This was partially due to the fact that Fedora wasn’t rolling Linux 3, and partly because the Wine package in the Fedora repo was old. What rolling release could I go for do you ask? None other than Arch, of course. I still remember that night – it was 2300 and I was thinking to myself, I could just install Arch right now – yeah, let’s do that. By 0500 the next day I was done, and got 3 hours sleep before I had to go to work. I knew what I was letting myself in for in trying to install Arch, but I wasn’t expecting to go to bed much past 0200. But I digress, I don’t regret my decision. Arch is amazing, and awesome is ..well, see for yourself.
While you’re probably stuck in ‘windows‘ land, I’ve moved onto tiles. Tiles are suitable for me because they encourage you to use multiple desktops (and you don’t get fucking overlay). They encourage you to use desktops because 500 tiles on one desktop does not look pretty. Awesome also pushed me into using a lot more keyboard shortcuts. So now, instead of moving my mouse 3 miles a week, I perhaps move it 1 mile a week. You’d be surprised at how much a mouse really slows you down, especially when you consider the keyboard alternative to closing a window, or opening an application. I’ve always held that the best machines are those that have the least moving parts; well, this is one step closer for me. Here is a screenshot of my new setup – I’ve moved away from many GUI applications in favour of LUI applications, because it saves resources and makes me look like a fucking hacker =)
I suppose the next topic on the agenda is my brush with death. I was riding to work when I was cut up by a car thinking some proper illogical shit like – “Oh, there’s a cyclist, I’ll just cut across and he can cycle through the car or, something”. Hell-fucking-o? I was having none of it. I slammed on the breaks and he trotted past, with me cussing nothing other than “YOU FUCKING CUNT!”. I hope he heard, everyone else did. I suppose I should start investing in some hi-vis gear, it’s starting to get dark at night and drivers lose their shit when it gets dark at night.
I saw the new Twilight movie I thought it was cool I’m not a homosexual fuck you goodnight.
I’ve been thinking lately that I’ve got this awesome m15x and I’m not utilising the raw power. This is not because Linux sucks at gaming, but because the game designing studios don’t cater for the superior operating system. In light of this, I’m faced with the tough decision of installing this “Operating System” called Windows, and I know it’s gonna do my nut in. Before I even consider installing it, I need to squash my Linux partitions to make room for that big motherfucker called Windows 7, and this means resizing encrypted LUKS containers – well fuck me, I’ll probably need the weekend. But the payoff is potentially sweet. Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Counter Strike, Hidden, WoW, Battlefield 2, La Noire, GTA 5 (when it comes out) – jeez, their is a big payoff.. I’ll think about it.
I’m pretty liberal when it comes to clothes. I’ll wear jeans which haven’t been washed for a week (or three) because they don’t smell (that bad), and washing clothes is a fucking drag. I’ve got to the point where I’m trying to justify my blatant slobbiness, and I’ve settle with something like this: Great minds don’t have time to clean up. I know I should clean up my room, I know I should wear socks and underwear to work, and I know I should clean the dishes when I’ve finished with them (not when I need them again), but come on, I’ve *always* got better things to do. I know my escape plan, my shovel which will dig me out of this mess. One of these (Jesus fuck I’ve just seen the average price) – you see, the other reason I don’t wash clothes perhaps as much as I should is because I have no where to hang them. And when I do do a wash, the percentage of damp in the air increases by quite a magnitude – it’s not nice. So I will hold off on the house cleaning until then, until my saving grace that is the clothe rack comes in – or maybe I won’t.
Sincerely,
Silly Government
With the blocking of Newzbin2 on BT imminent, the pirates of the website have cooked up a piece of software which will let you bypass the block. Though unpolished, this software shouldn’t have a problem bypassing BT’s Cleanfeed, a rudimentary blocking service, targeting child pornography, and, more recently, websites which appear to infringe copyright (where the fuck is the copyrighted material on that site?). But I digress, the Government is fighting a losing battle – and they will lose. The only way to prevent determined individuals from obtaining ‘copyrighted material’ in the United Kingdom is by blocking access to the Internet altogether – something I don’t see happening ever. Meanwhile, the Government will sink millions into the act of trying to block access to websites which apparently contain copyrighted material, only to learn that they will have to adapt to the era of the pirates, not the other way round.
I wish the nob ends politicians the best of luck trying to undermine net neutrality and our freedom of speech, you’ll fuck it up big time boys.
On a completely unrelated note, where’s a good country to emigrate too?
Plogging
Phone blogging is very tedious but I thought I’d give it a go. Not much to say other than we’re in a park soaking up the sun, listening to dogs killing each other. We’ll probably hit the peddlos later :)
My mate’s kid has finally been born. Asian mum plus white boy equals white kid apparently – will be interesting to see if his skin changes colour, as it does sometimes.
Got a remote controlled helicopter yesterday, which is awesome. Cost me £40 and lasts about 6 minutes of a one hour charge, which just shows how far behind on battery technology we are. Having said that, petrol powered RC choppers only last 20 minutes. We’ll see…
Congratulations to the newly parents – maybe I’ll join that group in ten years.
Lag-free gaming
I made a post a while back concerning lag in game when downloading stuff on a small pipe. I looked into a project called WonderShaper, which fixed my lagging issues. The problem with this solution was that it only worked on the machine it was running on. If I had another machine on the same network downloading porn whilst I was gaming, my ping would still spike. I’ve managed to fix this..
Here is a script I’ve made which can be executed on a box to act as a middleman between the router, and all hosts. This script essentially enforces low latency of packets, through queuing disciplines and bandwidth throttling, and works wonders if you can get it right. Please note that, on the box you wish to run this script, you must have set up a DHCP server which sets the gateway router to its own IP address. If you already have a custom DHCP solution, just set the gateway IP to the box running the script. In doing so makes all traffic go to the machine running this script. However, I also had to blackhole all ports to every IP address (except for the server the script was running on) on the router to prevent other boxes on the network just going straight through the router. I don’t get this behaviour so, if you know why this happens, don’t hesitate to speak up.
Here’s a screenshot of a buffering YouTube video against a pinging session. As you can see the latency stays well below 100ms – a good rate for gaming. Kudos to tc on this, I had tried everything else with failure (ZeroShell, Shorewall, trickle and WonderShaper).
The download rate is crap, but this is due to my Internet connection, not the script itself. I would recommend setting the rate and ceiling values to around 70-90% of your expected download rate. If you just set it to your Internet speed, the script will not work.
P.S. This solution works if the middleman only has one NIC, hurray!
P.P.S. You will have to modify the script to make it work with two NICs – I’m sure you’ll figure it out.
