More Password Security Help

As a follow up to the password post a while back, I came across an article in Fast Company magazine that provided some more helpful advice to keep your stuff safer. Titled Work Smart: A Single Trick for Remembering Countless Passwords, it talks about things like using song titles to help you come up with a memorable, but strong password.

dot-a-dot

I recently came across an article at WeeWonderfuls that describes an "artistic endeavor" that I used to partake in. Essentially, you drop a pencil or marker tip first onto blank paper in random places. Then you go back and connect the dots to form an enclosed shape. The you let your imagination run wild and turn that shape into something - a dragon, a bird, a witch, a monster, anything you can imaging - by adding other details like eyes, feet, mouth, etc. You end up with a wonderful Dr. Seussical creation. Give it a try next time you're bored and need to let some of your creativity spill out.

Hint: use a felt tip instead of a pencil if you do it in meetings as the pencil tends to be a little too loud hitting the table :-) Lesson learned.

More unusual business cards

I'm not sure what it is about business cards that I find interesting, but I've always been drawn to interesting or unusual business cards. I even used to collect them for a while. Maybe it's my dream that one day I will have a job cool enough to warrant such an art piece, or maybe I'm envious of the creativity of the nameplate. Apparently, I'm not the only one who finds these fascinating. I've posted several collections here and here before, but Odd Stuff Magazine came up with quite a few I hadn't seen before. Take a gander...

PS. Have a cool business card of your own? Let me know!

Expectations are high

Before my sons and I went for a bike/jog last night, my eldest wanted to map out the route on Google Maps to plan the distance; he's "training" for a run at school next week. He used the satellite view and the distance measurement tool. As he was doing this, my younger son asked if we could see our cat (who wanders outside all day) on the satellite view. I had to explain to him that the pictures being shown were taken over a year ago (average age is about 3 years from what I'm hearing) and that it was not real time. He was slightly disappointed, but understood.

As we got to about the half-way point of our travels, he asked how they took the pictures that were shown on-screen earlier. I explained that they used satellites, airplanes, and then even cars with cameras on top for the closer shots. I could tell that he had been thinking about this for a while.

I'm glad he's interested in this kind of stuff. He may one day be in the position to work on real-time satellite images, or at the very least, is likely to be able to experience it in his lifetime. I know that privacy advocates, et al will cringe reading this, and yes they have valid points, but I still think it would be cool technology!

You're just as insignificant as me, so there!

The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it's just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth's surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we've ever known.

The pale blue dot.

Want a better view?

Don't Mess with Math Nerds!

In yet another tale of David, er um, Mike versus Goliath, the little guy wins, and shows there is value in staying in school and doing all your homework!

"Would you please join me in saluting Mike Mogil, a math tutor from Collier County, Fla.? Mogil is clearly that rare man who puts his math where his mouth is. And, indeed, where his wife is."

Make 'em move!

Someone had too much time on his hands. Let the site load; it'll take bit. :-)

Password Safety

Passwords are a necessity of life...at least for now, but this article on password security from LifeHacker shows that you may want to rethink that go-to password you use on your accounts. Make sure to follow the useful links in the article for even more ways to protect yourself from the scary stuff you read.

This snippet from the article should give you something to think about while the whole article loads:

"Pay particular attention to the difference between using only lowercase characters and using all possible characters (uppercase, lowercase, and special characters – like @#$%^&*). Adding just one capital letter and one asterisk would change the processing time for an 8 character password from 2.4 days to 2.1 centuries."

Non-profit

According to Wikipedia,

A non-profit organization (abbreviated as NPO, also known as a not-for-profit organization) is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals. Examples of NPOs include charities (i.e. charitable organizations), trade unions, and public arts organizations... They are in most countries exempt from income and property taxation.

Hospitals and churches also generally fit this definition.

Listening to some of the debate about the health care reform being debated in the US recently reminded me of the hospital inclusion in this category. More specifically, listening to some of the hospitals complain about potential "decreases in revenue" got me thinking about how flawed this "non-profit" system really can be. While I'm sure that there are many organizations that are truly using this status to the benefit of their customers (providing lower cost health care, or more healthcare in more places, etc), some of these organizations seem to be taking a different kind of advantage of the system. Gaudy hospitals that make Trump jealous. Over-paid executives. More money spent on advertising than on patient care. This is the kind of stuff that really makes me jaded about our country.

My understanding is that non-profits just can't have any funds (profits) left over at the end of the year. If they "accidentally" make "too much" money one year by increasing their rates, they just need to spend it on something (a large sculpture, painting, new desks for the executives, a "team building event in Hawaii", etc) so that it doesn't have to be recorded as profit. Heaven forbid that they don't raise rates instead.

I don't begrudge corporations that make a lot of money, so long as they do it legally, and I'm not suggesting that we collect it all in one big pot to make sure that we all have an equal share. Maybe I'm jealous that I can't seem to break out of permanent debt while all of these others are living higher than I think that they should be, and crying when they're made to pay taxes, or fines, or have to abide by the same laws that us lowly plebes need to. Maybe it's their arrogance. Whatever it is, I'm sick of seeing it on the news, in the papers, in the magazines, on the Net. How about reading about someone that gives all their hard earned money to someone that needs it more than them? How about reading more "pay it forward" stories? How about remembering the little guys that do the work that you take credit for?

Just a thought...

Circumstances

Quarterback Kurt Warner recently announced his retirement from professional football. Throughout his eleven-year career in the NFL, Kurt has been known as a man of faith and generosity.

He started a family tradition he calls “The Restaurant Game.” The night before he heads out for a road game, Kurt and his wife take their seven children out to eat a family dinner. Once the Warner family is seated, one of the children will scan the dining area like a quarterback looking for potential receivers. When the Warner child picks a table, Kurt asks the waiter to add that table's dinner tab to his own—anonymously.

The idea for “The Restaurant Game” came to Warner and his wife after Warner led the St. Louis Rams to a Super Bowl victory in 2000. They remember the days before Warner's NFL career—when Kurt was working a night shift at a grocery store, and they only had food stamps to feed their family. With that in mind, giving is a joyful tradition for the Warner family.

"We want our kids to grow up knowing that because of football we are blessed," Warner said. "We never want them to lose sight of what it's really about. Our circumstances are not the most important thing. It's what we do with those circumstances."

-Source: Rev. Dale Miller, www.nardinpark.org

Do you know who YOU are?

My wife and I (and the kids too actually) have been watching NBC's Who do you think you are? that follows several celebrities as they explore their genealogical history. It's actually a well done show, mixing the stories of the stars, the aspects of genealogy research and the excitement of "the find." Not everyone who searches their roots will find out that they're related to English royalty, or a commander in the Civil War. Some might actually document their relationship to Kevin Bacon. But whatever the discovery, it's the road, not the destination, that makes it fun.

Ancestry.com sponsors the TV show, and though I've used their site in the past, it had been a while since last I really did anything there. After getting engrossed with the show, my wife decided that we should once again pick up our proverbial digital shovels and go digging for our roots again. This time, we set off in search of her relatives. Through my research in the past, I've documented connections on my side of the tree to Samuel L. Clemens (aka Mark Twain), and a General in the War of 1812, as well as a story about land sale by a relative to Abraham Lincoln's grandfather. I was curious to see where this new journey lead us.

I've used Family Tree Maker in the past for documentation and a number of on-line sources for research, but I was interested to see what, if anything, I could find that would bring me closer to Web 2.0 than the dated version of FTM I had been using. An updated FTM version might be OK, but I wanted to see if there was something that was cloud-based that I could access without the local software install.

A quick Google search yielded a few hits, but nothing really promising...except Ancestry.com. What the hey! Guess I'll give them a try again and see what's new...

Armed with only a couple of recent generations from my wife's tree that we had previously documented, I started inputting her tree. No subscription fee, no commitment. Just an email address and quick registration to track all my work against. I started with her father and then his father. By the time I had entered her grandfather and moved to continue on to her grandmother, I saw a little leaf on her grandfather's entry (literally in less than 1 second). It indicated, I would learn, that the site had already found additional information about her grandfather. Clicking through would yield birth and death records, census data, and other public docs as well as links to other family trees contributed by other members who chose to make their research public (mine is still private for now). BINGO.

Though we had only a couple of generations of her ancestry documented (thought I think I have more that had not been typed in yet), in about 5 hours total work, with great kudos to Ancestry.com we've added 962 people and gotten her lineage traced back to the 1100's! There are many interesting people mixed in there (and we're learning about them via stories others have attached to their trees), but so far, no one that you would know :-(

One interesting thing about Ancestry.com though, is that if you contribute your tree to the OneWorld Tree (and you possibly need to subscribe as well), they'll do the research for you and identify the "famous people" in your tree. What that means, I'm not sure, but once we've gone as far as we want to for this time, I might just see what it spits out.

There are certain things that the FTM client software does much better than the site (full graphic family tree navigation, maps, showing relationships between two specific person, etc), so we'll likely end up upgrading the software as well. But the Ancestry.com site is certain a boost as far as filling out the tree.

With my lineage, finding Twain has led to a stronger interest in history, and Twain himself, for my kids. We've read about William the Conqueror and other figures related to our trees too. I can't wait to see who else we find.

Happy digging!

Social Media

Trompe L'oeil

If a garage door sticky is too simple for you. Maybe you can hire John Pugh instead...

3D murals painted on the sides of buildings by
Trompe L'oeil (trick-of-the-eye) artist John Pugh
Main Street , Los Gatos , California . Even the woman peering into the ruin is part of the mural.
Taylor Hall, California State University , Chico , California . The Doric-style columns are actually nothing but paint.
Honolulu , Hawaii . This mural took two months of studio work to plan and another six months to execute with the help of 11 other artists. Featured are Queen Liliuokalani, the last monarch of the Hawaiian Islands , and Duke Kahanamoku, the ultimate father of surfing.
This mural at the Cafe Trompe L'oeil, San Jose , California , is entitled "Art Imitating Life Imitating Art Imitating Life". This customer doesn't leave at closing time (she's part of the painting - hard to believe).

Twenty-nine Palms, California . "Valentine" the bull and a patient buzzard are waiting for the artist to awake (again - they are all part of the art)!

'Bay in a Bottle', Santa Cruz , California . The passer-by is part of the mural.

Looks like a nice spot to rest your weary feet on a sidewalk in front of the Sarasota County Health Center, Florida.

"Slowin' Down to Take a Look" in Winslow , Arizona .

Included, of course, is "a girl, my lord, in a flat bed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me."

What's in your garage?

These make it a little easier to keep up with the Jones, or just have a little fun... Just cover your old boring garage door and leave them wondering...

See more at the ToolMonger site.