Every new system we encounter ask us to choose a password. There is always a ruleset attached that it must be a minimum amount of characters, capitalized and non-capitalized characters, numbers and sometimes even special characters as explamaition marks, dots and commas. Most of us see this as something very frightening and looking at a seaming random password as W1cmp;7ac5h! we feel there is no way we could ever remember something as complex.

There are a few techniques we can use in situations like this and I would to share with you my favourite way of chosing and remembering complex passwords. This is a technique I daily use when I need to create passwords and since I started I have not yet needed to create yet another password like qwerty1234 or 123qwerty. Instead I can keep passwords of ten characters or more with mixed capitalization, numbers and special characters.

This is how I do it.

It all start with a sentance which can be connected to the password I am to create to simplify my way of remembering it. If I was to create a password for my Facebook account for example I could use a sentance like:

The place where I go to meet Ally and Bob; twice per day!

We now have created our source of randomness which we then can use to create an actual password. By attaching a ruleset to this sentance we can make it look more complex but still for ourselves completely logical.
First of all we can try to find all numericals which we can exchange with numbers. The word “twice” can be changed to a singe letter “2″. By using only the leading characters in all words together with the number two we now have created a password with upper- and lowercase letters, special characters and numbers!

The place where I go to meet Ally and Bob; twice per day!

become

TpwIgtmAaB;2pd!

More information/Disclaimer

• This is a commonly used technique which you can find more information about it in many places but I do recommend an article by Microsoft which I found to be very useful.

At first you might think that it is hard to remember a full sentance instead of just a few characters but I was amazed how much easier it was for me to do it this way. Next time you are to login to your Facebook account all you have to do is to remember what Facebook is all about – The place where I go to meet Ally and Bob; twice per day!

I got my hands on an 16Gb Wifi iPad a couple of weeks ago when I was on vacation in New York. Not only did I get my iPad, I got the opportunity to visit the wonderful store located just next to central park, the glass cube, which made my creative mind jump because of the stunning architecture. Almost make me drool a bit even now when I think about it. But, enough about that, let’s jump straight into the usage of the device.

The reason I bought the iPad was to use it as a casual device to use at my couch when watching TV in the evenings together with a portable movie player for when I travel. The idea of reading magazines and books on the device also tickled my imagination and I wondered whether or not I would like this over a good old book. The reason I did not buy the Amazon Kindle a year ago was that I feel that it was a bit to locked down and the ways it could be used seemed very limited. Since I’ve used the App Store for my iPhone for quite some time now I knew that this would not be the case with the iPad. I find new ways of usage for my iPhone every day thanks to it and the feeling is exactly the same with the iPad.

The screen is bright and have a high amount of detail, I never feel that it is blurry on text or on moving media so I can without any problems read text on it without any tired eyes. The touchscreen features is just as quick as one would want it and the response I get when using it is wonderful. Books with black text on white background is rendered very smooth but also colorful magazines (I use an app called Zinio to get magazines, recommended) is rendered very nice and vivid and the move, pan and zoom is working in a natural way. There still exist a few things I do miss on the device, some things might seem like small things while other are bigger. First of all the home button on the device is not lit in any way. When using the iPad at night in the dark I often find myself to spin the device around every time I put it away for some reason which leads to that every time I need to press the home button, I do not know on which side of the screen it is and I have to start fumble about to find it. Small thing, but I think of it every time. Lack of Flash need to be mentioned since it has been a very hot topic in media ever since the release. I personally have not really missed Flash-support during the time I have used the iPad so in my personal opinion, no loss. The battery is drained faster then I’d like it to but still I know that I have been using the device heavy. I have been watching a few movies on it in a row without any problems and that’s about what I need.

So, what is it that I actually use my iPad for today?

More information

• For more information about the Apple iPad, App Store or iBooks, visit apple.com.
• For more information about Zinio, visit zinio.com
• For more information about WordPress, visit wordpress.com

I must agree that I have played quite a few games on it since I got it in my hands. Just as I did when I got my iPhone. But part from the gaming I have also found myself to use it for most part of all random surf I do when I’m home. I no longer find a reason to start my desktop machine if there isn’t something special I need to use it for. I’ve been using it for movies and TV series also, the ability to watch what I want where ever I am is just great. And last but not in any way least, papers and magazines is made for the iPad. For quite some time I have been wondering how the media would look like to get me to see the benefit of digital editions of paper magazines, and this is it. Good size and wonderful screen makes reading and watching great. Of course the iBooks application makes it easier then ever to find something to actually read as well.

I do love the iPad more then I thought I would and I find myself using it more and more every day passing. My desktop computer is feeling ever more alone as I find out that I can do almost everything I need on the iPad instead.

Oh and by the way, I wrote this article on my iPad using the WordPress application available from the App Store.

###

THE GOLDEN GOD
by Martin Karlsson
1221 words

More then a hundred years had passed.

Greymahne dropped his jacket which landed with a soft thud against the hard and cold iron floor. His entire body ached. Every muscle felt like it was on the verge of dying or just done so. Just as the entire body landed in the bed his hand reached for the face. A loud and deep sigh was released from the man. His hand felt a thin crest which felt a bit like mud, but as it mixed together with the sweat on his forehead he noticed that it turned dark red in his hands. This was not mud, it was blood. He did not remember if the blood was his own or belonged to someone else. It did not matter.

#

For many years he had been one just like millions of other slaves, working on a mining-barge, loading and unloading Veldspar mined just outside the Amarr homeworld. Born as a child of slaves into a life of slavery. Grown up in labor-camps and forced to worship the golden Gods – Amarrians. Exposed to the harsh reality with no bond to the warmth of his people and the tribes. When he reached seventeen years of age he had almost forgot all about it and accepted his standing in this world as a slave, but also now a proud miner. Just as most slaves he dreamed of wealth. Income which could buy him freedom. The world was a dark place and the only way a slave could ever become something else was by buying a life using hard cold ISK. All could be done and everyone could be taken care of as long as you had the correct amount in your wallet. It was the dream of the this that kept him going every day, every week and every month. Until the day when everything fell apart and his life once again was smashed into pieces. The slave liberation.

The order sounded so good. The order sounded so fair. The politicians who made it an reality received a great push forward, up the social ladder, and the rest of the universe hoisted them as diplomats of peace. Slaves were free and got the opportunity to return to their home-world and start a new life, no longer in shackles as slaves – instead as free men and women of EVE. As equals. It all sounded so right, so humane, so true. For all the ones who took the decision it did. And it was a wonderful day for all those who had a home to return too, for all the slaves who still had memories left of what they had been taken from. Greymahne however no longer remembered anything of his old life or who his own family were. Not even where his actual home was, never had he lingered in the same place for a time so long as to call the place a home. Suddenly, he had nothing and was nothing. Not even a slave.

The little structure his life once had in his life crashed to pieces. Long hard days of labor instead became long hard nights of drinking, paying for his poisoned lifestyle by doing the dirty work of scum. Slowly, his last reminiscent of humanity washed away. The deeds he fulfilled was extortion against drunks and outlawed fist-fights against other roughnecks. The only thing which stayed the same what ever he did was the fact that the ones who payed him for his deeds or placed bets of money at him during fights; was rich Amarrians in fine cloths. His life felt ever more rotten for each night that passed. He hated them all. Amarrians was all that surrounded him. Looking at him in despise.

#

-”Aren’t you ashamed, being a filthy smelling drunk?”, the woman sitting next to Greymahne asked. He had not even noticed her entering the bar, even less sitting down. She was looking all to common to be noticed.
-”Speak to me again and I’ll spit in your drink.”
-”I would like to give you an opportunity to make a change in this world. To revenge what was taken from you. To do what you want to do against those who have deserved it.” As she spoke Greymahne got the feeling that she knew more of him then he enjoyed. She had been watching him. He had seen her before. Many times. Not just that, as he gazed his eyes upon her he noticed that she wore the face of a Minmatar. She was of the same blood as him.
-”Who are you and why should I listen to you?”
-”I know who killed your brothers and sisters, your father and your mother. Who raped and pillaged your world and left you here to rot. I have sworn my own life to make them pay. And I want you by my side”
Greymahne felt that his concentration was lacking in quality at the moment. Drugs was rushing through his veins and he was not completely sure that this even was reality and not a dream.
-”Try me.”

This was the first contact of many. At first the assignments he did for the women was in the means of simple tasks. As time passed by the assignments he received become all more of a physical nature. Things that asked more of him then simply talk to people, delivering things-Greymahne went from being a no-good slave into being a full roughneck. Instead of taking orders he was now giving them. Instead of delivering information he was not receiving it. Not just that, he acted on the information, pushing out plans and orders which was sending pod pilots towards certain doom. He had never piloted a ship or even been into the cockpit of a ship, still he ordered operations performed by others from this cold and vast champer of steel and technology. All for a chance of inflicting a scar in the Amarr society. He was here to fulfill a destiny created by his forefathers. He became not only a soldier of the Minmatar, he became a commander. Placed deep behind enemy lines he had a chance to set in motion operations which had for a long time been unthinkable. His task was to wreck havoc, gather information and lay the foundation for a great battle to come. A battle which had been planned for years and years. Finally the time was closing in. His name would never be known, he knew this. No one would ever know that it was he who gave the plan momentum. His name would never be taught to children in schools or mentioned in the history-books. He was yet another sacrifice for the greater good to bring back the old ways. What had been taken from them so long time ago must return. Soldiers die as heroes on the battlefield, while commanders die in bunkers.

Retaliation, revenge, vengeance. They are all nothing but empty words in times like these. More then a hundred years have passed since the last rebellion, when the heroes of the past was forged out of blood and suffering. The new day of reckoning was closing in fast. The rise of the Minmatar and the fall of the Amarr.

Burn the golden God.

<<<<>>>>

The movie let us follow 9 (voice by Elijah Wood), a torn and rugged doll created out of burlap and with lenses for eyes. 9 enters the world without any understanding for why he is or when. Soon it become obvious for him that he does have a purpose in the time to come, not alone however. Together with the eight other dolls (voices by Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer and Jennifer Connelly to mention a few) the path clears on the task at hand. The movie has a few parts which may be a bit to strong for the younger audience and it seem that it is created more for an mature audience just as the movies of Tim Burton often are.

A post-apocalyptic wonderland

The first thing that did amaze me was the wonderful but eerie environments created in which the world exist. The destruction of the world just occurred and all that remain is scorched homes and wrecked cities, all entangled by sandbag-shelters and dug out trenches. The destruction becomes almost beautiful even though the entire setting is created out of darkness.

All the characters we meet throughout the movie has an arsenal or personality, which make me as a view to completely surrender the thought on small dolls who can speak to be something out of this world. Not many minutes pass until I can enter into the world which I’m seeing.

The only downside of the movie which I did notice would be a somewhat lack of crescendo. The later part of the movie could be even more dramatic to intensify the feelings of the characters. The movie still make sense but a more intense later part of the movie would have raised it even further.

9 gives us a very good start of the new movie-year and I highly recommend it for the more mature audience. Tim Burton has become one of the greater creators of our time in my opinion.

Resources
9 at IMDb

I own a HTC Hero which was delivered with a branded system using Android 1.5 as main operating system. At almost the same time it was released there was also a release of Android 1.6. Since then version 2.0 have emerged and the rumour is now of a soon to be released Android 2.1. At this time HTC have updated their branded version of the system and are today running their HTC Hero on – Android 1.5. They have not had the time or want to keep the device updated with the system as the later continued it’s life-cycle which is a shame I say. I still have to linger in the shadows with my old and grey version 1.5 in my phone when I see what shiny bits are out there in the updated version.

Ever since the iPhone was released every technology-magazine and their dog have written articles about what device is the iPhone-killer and listed the specifications for hardware and that it runs Android and what not. But it seem that most articles forget what it was that I think is one of the biggest aspects on why the iPhone did manage to get a wide range of people to cherish it like they do. It brings no fuzz, you run it and it works. If you need to update it then do so at the same time you synchronize it. And if there is a new version of the iPhone operating system released, then you can just grab it and continue the ride. No thoughts and discussions about whether this update is for my device or not. It simply is. And here the Android system lacks a bunch.

Last I heard was that my HTC Hero should receive it’s longed for update for Android now in the spring. Before that it was said to come for Christmas. Before that sometime in early December. Somewhat I’ve stopped to wait for this update. I guess it will come eventually.

I decided to start writing a journal about two years ago and as always I set out to find the best tools and applications which i could use to do this. I tried a lot of applications but always got stuck on how to use some specific functionality or why something did not work as intended. Quite soon I did realize that I was focusing more on the tool then the content and due to this I started to write in Google Documents using my Gmail-account. If this is good or bad is a completely different story but my main point here is that I choose a very simple tool with high availability to be able to write from all locations where I had a computer. I also decided to write without any formatting at all so that the text could be exported very easy by just copy and pasting. This so that if I did find a good tool later on I would not be facing a problem of compatibility.

When the tool was chosen I set up a goal to write a new post in my journal on a weekly basis at first. I tried to set out not to have a set agenda on what to write but just try to write to get that old writing-block out of my system. At first it was quite hard to get started but after just a new posts I got a feeling that the writing part really was not as hard as I thought it would be. As soon as one start writing down feelings and thoughts it becomes more or less an addiction to get it out of the system. And very fast I did realize that by writing it down I had a all new way of handling my own thoughts, almost like I was my own shrink trying to get an understanding on what was going on in my own life. I totally understand that my experience in all this writing is very personal and there is no set out course that it would be the same for anyone else. But hey, perhaps it will.

So as a conclusion I will list some of the best tips I would liked to see before I started and which might be of some use for anyone else going down the same route as myself. As with all new areas the most important thing is to keep it personal and do what feels best for you, not what other has done before.

1. Ignore tools and applications and start writing in just about anything. Notepad in Windows works as a charm as well as TextEdit on Mac. To increase the availability you can also use online word-processors as Google Documents or Soho.
2. Do not setup an agenda for what to write on, just write. If you do not have anything in your mind you want to write about, write about you not being able to write. Ignore if you might have written the same things before. Just write.
3. Never erase what you have written. Of course a spelling-error can be fixed while writing but after a post is written. Let it remain just as it is. By doing this you can revisit what you have written and see if you in any way change over time.
4. Show your journal for other people, or keep it private. It is all up to you and you should do just as you feel. For me the knowledge of my writing being strictly private lets me write about things I never would have discussed with another human being. I write for myself and myself alone.
5. Go back and read what you have read after some time and try to revisit old topics. Especially when you feel that you have a bit of writers-block in your head.
6. Last but not least I need to stress one point once more. Just write.

The photo used on the front-page for this article was taken by Markus Rödder, you can find his Flickr-page here.

The change from Windows to Mac introduce a few problems though due to the fact I use the computer for mainly three things: Development, Writing and Graphical work. The application used for these are as always heavily dependent on shortcuts. And shortcuts on Mac is not like those on Windows even though you quite often can change just the CTRL against a CMD to get shortcuts to work. There still is a few shortcuts which really is different.

Tonight I finally found out where PgUp and PgDn was hidden on my MacBook-keyboard. And for those out there perhaps in the same seat as me: fn + Up Arrow and fn + Down Arrow is your friend! Also, one of the best shortcuts I use on Windows (at work) all the time is Windows + E to open a new Explorer-window. For some weeks I was under the impression this did not exist on Mac until I found out about ALT + CMD + Space.

Now everything rocks.

A little while ago I came across a flash-tool in which one can test out regular expressions on a specified text. All you do is to paste an example-text into the text-box in the tool and then you can start typing a regular expression and see what that specific expression will hit in the pasted text.

Easy and fast, use it all the time nowadays. Check it out!
http://www.gskinner.com/RegExr/

Note: You can also find this link under xds.se > Cheat sheets > Links often used

To make this list as easy as possible to over-look I tried to categorize them for usage: Everyday tools, GTD, Graphical and Development.

Everyday tools

Launchy

Application launcher so that you don’t need to have manus organized or tidy. Hit a shortcut and write the name of the application you would likt to launch and press enter – done! Takes a litle time to get use to but when you have, you wont be able to work without it.

Miranda IM

Instant Messaging-client which can be used for ICQ, MSN, Yahoo etc.

Chrome / FireFox

Personally I use Chrome as my favourite browser nowadays but I would recomend both Chrome and Firefox, they do deliver so much more then Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari currently does to mention a few.

Related:
Chrome instead of Firefox

Spotify

For all countries where Spotify have been allowed to operate, the service has opened the door to music for the people.

Total Commander

Better controll over files and folders, integrated ftp-client etc.

Dropbox

A network-based service where you get 2GB of space for free at a remote server to store your files. Secure and swift!

TrueCrypt

For times you want to remotly store documents which are personal at places which can be in-secure you can encrypt them in a “vault” to increse security.

Putty

THE SSH and telnet client for windows.

Filezilla

Sftp and ftp client.

Open Office

Replacement for Microsft Office, free if course.

uTorrent

When it comes to torrents, this is the most minimalistic client I’ve found.

WriteMonkey

Zenware for writing which let you focus on the task of writing and nothing else.

GTD (Getting things done)

Remember the Milk

Task-manager which can remind you on the thing you should do.

Evernote

Take notes of everything! Text, photos, sound or files.

Graphical work

GIMP (GimPhoto)

GIMP is the open source alternative to the comercial Photoshop. By many said to be a complete alternative. Anapplication called GimPhoto also exist which is more specialized on photo editing (based on GIMP).

Inkscape

Vector-drawing and illustration-tool. This is a good alternative for Illustrator for the happy amateur.

Related:
Inkscape 0.47 released

Development

Notepad++

Minimalistic editor with syntax highlighting for multiple languages and support for addons.

Eclipse

A full development-studio with packages for almost all languages.

Cygwin

Get you favourite *nix-tools on the windows platform by using this console in a box.

The article was pushed by a whole bunch of magazines yesterday and have continued to show today as well. And the more readers of the story, the more theories pop up in the blog-sphere. I’d bet my money on the Russians though.

Svenska Dagbladet (English translation) reported that experts had said it might been a stray-missile going bad after a problematic launch. But at the same time other sources say that this was not the case. Hopefully the scared people who saw this phenomenon will get an answer though. I guess it might feel a bit strange to have things emitting light at your roofs which none will explain.

Resources:
Full article at Mail Online