Internet

For some time I've considered social netwoking, having up to this point avoided joining any social networking sites. That's right - I'm not a Luddite, yet I don't use Facebook. However, today I was invited to join Google Plus. And so, I decided to take the plunge, and jack into the Matrix.

A SSH Key allows you to log into a remote server without ever having to enter the password for you user on that server. In some situations, you can use this to increase security, by configuring the remote host to only allow SSH to be used when the client has a key. It can also be useful when the remote host does not have a password, such as when using Dropbear on initramfs. Or, if you need to be able to set up a cron job that can log onto a remote host, you could setup a passwordless key (although there are inherent risks to doing so) and use that to allow the log on.

If you are running Firefox on a mobile device and sometimes need to use a proxy (like to get a secure connection on an open wireless network), but other times don't need said proxy, having to open up Firefox's preferences every time this change occurs will seriously inhibit your use of the proxy. Similarly, if you need to use a proxy only or certain websites (especially if you use multiple proxies) the challenge of manually switching proxies for every page you visit would be very arduous.

Connecting an open network and then sending out confidential information over that said network is an invitation to having your information compromised. The best way to ensure that your data is safe is to encrypt the data, but not every site is set up to allow encryption. However, assuming that you have a static IP address and a computer with openSSH configured, you can configure that computer at your home (or elsewhere) to allow you to send web traffic via SSH, in effect making an encrypted proxy.
The command to do this is
ssh -u user -p 22 -D 8080 -Nf hostname

I often come across a long article that I want to read, but can't read it immediately. That's when the Firefox extension ReadItLater comes in handy. It puts a checkmark in the right side of the address bar, which can be selected for any page to save to the list. Although a bookmark folder would be able to serve the same purpose up to this point, the convenience comes from two things. The first is the button that is added to the toolbar, which allows you to access a drop down menu which has all the pages you have saved.

Although its no Internet Explorer, Firefox still has security holes. The thing is, many of these flaws come from the scripting support, such as support for javascript or Flash. The obvious way to fix this is to turn off scripting, but by default that happens to be an all or nothing proposition. That's where NoScript comes in handy. NoScript automatically blocks all scripts by default, which you can then manually white list by site.

Much like those odd spam emails that end up in your inbox, my comment approval queue sometimes gets comments that are made up of random letters strung together. Curiously, none of the links that are put into these are actually valid (I'm not talking I clicked on it - I'm talking I used whois to check the domain).
Now, I do understand why the text is randomly strung together like that - to confuse automated filters (I'm pretty sure at least). What I don't get is the point of posting a spam comment that has no apparent purpose.

After the 2.0 version of NoScript installed on my desktop, I began noticing a curious event repeatedly occurring in my Drupal access logs. Every few minutes I would get a hit on the main page of this site from my IP, despite the fact that I wasn't visiting the site in my browser.

A few weeks ago, a stray lightning bolt managed to create a power surge through our cable - and through that our network - damaging three unfortunate pieces of networking equipment. Two gigabit switches, a cat6 Ethernet cable, and a gigabit card fell before this power surge, of these one of the switches, the cable, and the card were mine. The switch is still managing to limp along - some ports simply don't support gigabit speeds anymore.