My Windows 7 laptop’s hard drive recently died, and after replacing it (with an SSD! yeah!), reinstalling all of my software including iTunes, and restoring my iTunes library, iTunes refused to play any music through my Logitech USB headset. The speakers plugged into my audio port worked just fine, but when I tried to play… Read More: iTunes won’t play through USB headset (songs stay at 0:00)?… »
My employer uses Oracle Financials to manage its books. The user experience of Oracle Financials is truly awful. We’re in the process of upgrading to a new version of the application, after using the old version for several years. One would think in the interim Oracle would have hired a decent UX designer and some… Read More: Bad UX example of the day »
UPDATE [2012-12-10]: I’ve updated the script with the new login URL shown in the comment below. UPDATE [2012-12-10]: I’ve added a new “–import” option to the script for importing a text file listing to-do items into a project. UPDATE [2012-12-10]: I’m not using Todoist anymore. I’ve switched to Toodledo, which I’m much happier with. You… Read More: Don’t lose your data if Todoist goes away »
Long-time readers of my blog may remember my multiple postings about Honda Village in Newton, Massachusetts. You can read the whole series of Honda Village postings here.
I’ve fixed the comic “That’s Life”, which was broken in my comics aggregator.
By popular demand (i.e., somebody asked), the following comics have been added to my comics aggregator: Banana Triangle Birdbrains Dog Eat Doug F Minus Ink Pen Luann The Other Coast Overboard Pluggers Rubes Scary Gary Strange Brew Enjoy! P.S. If you find the aggregator useful, please consider making a donation. Thanks!
In the past, securing SSH on the public internet has been pretty much as easy as (a) keep your OS patched, (b) don’t let root log in with a password, and (c) run fail2ban to stop brute-force attacks. Unfortunately, it looks like the bad guys have finally figured out how to put their bots to… Read More: Ongoing large-scale distributed SSH brute-force attack »
Someone forwarded me a chain letter today about how offensive it is that a blatantly antisemitic web site, JewWatch, shows up at or near the top of the search results when you Google the word “Jew”. Here’s my response: http://blog.kamens.us/jew-is-not-a-bad-word/.
The last time I looked, there were no options I was happy with for backing up my Linux PC in the cloud for a reasonable price. That may have changed, and perhaps if I were less stubborn I’d pay CrashPlan a few bucks per month to back up my system, but I feel compelled to… Read More: Free Linux cloud backups for cheap bastards »
On the afternoon of September 15, I started getting some strange email messages from cron on my Linux server, which hosts my email, blog, DNS, and several web sites for various non-profit organizations I’m involved with. (Background: One of the web sites, an old Drupal installation, handles scheduled tasks through a cron job that periodically… Read More: Post-mortem of security breach on my Linux server »