Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

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Cleaning up Prairie’s old G4 #iMac to be given away. These were such adorably cute machines! And it’s fun to be using MacOS 10.4.11 again, with its stylish brushed chrome UI. Kind of sad to be letting this go, really, but we haven’t used it in six years, so it’s better to let it go in the downsizing.

Linkdumps are Back

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For quite a while in the past, I used the del.icio.us bookmarking service to save bookmarks, which were then automagically gathered and posted here as occasional “here’s what I found interesting recently” posts. Unfortunately, del.icio.us went through some changes a few years back, things fell over, I got distracted by other projects, and the whole thing fell apart.

I’ve been missing that aspect of my blog, though (along with the ability to quickly search through a list of bookmarks to find that thing I know I read a while back that I’d love to refer someone to while it’s on my mind), and have finally resurrected the system (with a few changes).

Rather than using the del.icio.us service again, I’m instead using Pinboard. It’s essentially the same thing that del.icio.us was “back in the day” — simple and fast saving of bookmarks, complete with a field for descriptions or excerpts, and tagging for categorization — with some extra niceties that either weren’t part of del.icio.us or that I just don’t remember, such as being able to designate particular links as “private”. Plus, there are a few iOS apps for easy mobile use of Pinboard, and after finding this review of a few, I’ve installed Pinner.

I’ve set up an IFTTT applet so that if I tag a link on Pinboard with the “.twitter” tag, that link will automatically get posted as a Tweet to my Twitter account for quick sharing that way.

Finally, I was quite happy to discover that Postalicious, the WordPress plugin I used to collect and post my del.icio.us links, still works (even though it hasn’t been updated in six years), and works fine with Pinboard.

So, as I find interesting stuff, I’ll toss links into Pinboard, and every so often (when there are at least five new links since the last time Postalicious checked), a Linkdump post will show up here on Eclecticism.

I’ve started off by tossing a few of the many Tumblr posts I’ve liked into Pinboard (both as a test of the new setup, and because there’s a lot of discussion on Tumblr that I’ve found and enjoyed over time, but which is nearly impossible to find again without something like Pinboard to keep track of them). More links will come as time goes by.

It’s not quite the same as if I were actually posting here as regularly as I used to (or that, ideally, I would like to), but at least it will get some movement here between my all-too-infrequent “real” posts.

Eclecticism is Now Secure (HTTPS)

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Thanks to Dreamhost’s Let’s Encrypt initiative, plus a little nudging while setting up the iOS version of Ulysses, the (simple but very powerful) editor I’m using for writing posts here, my site is now HTTPS enabled.

For those who don’t know the terminology, all that means is that all traffic between my blog and your web browser is encrypted, and cannot be read by anyone who might intercept the data stream in transmission. You don’t have to do anything, it just happens automagically in the background.

While there’s nothing here that really requires the transmission to be encrypted — I don’t sell anything or have any reason to ask for sensitive information, which is the primary use case (and why HTTPS is used by financial institutions, shopping site, and so on) — I’m increasingly of the opinion that it’s just good practice to encrypt whenever possible.

Think of it like sending a physical letter to a friend via traditional snail mail; there might not be anything in the letter that needs to be kept private, but I’d still be pretty disturbed if I got a letter from someone and saw that the envelope had been opened so that someone else could read the contents.

Of course, with electronic communication, there’s no ripped envelope to let you know that someone’s taken a peek at what you’re saying or reading. Unsecure websites (or emails) are more like sending postcards: while for most people it’s pretty unlikely that anyone between the sender and receiver would be reading the postcard, it’s entirely possible that it could happen. Adding encryption means that not only is there an “envelope”, but it’s an envelope that can’t be opened by anyone but the receiver.

Good security isn’t paranoia. Just a good idea.

(Incidentally, I’m also set up with PGP encryption for my email, and would use it more often if I knew my contacts were similarly set up. Just contact me for my PGP public key if you’d like to securely email me (I’ll get it posted here eventually, I’m just finding bits and pieces of my site that need to be recreated after letting it lie fallow for so long, and that’s one).)

In Regards to Our Company’s New Phone Plan

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Brilliant piece from McSweeny’s: Now is not the time to criticize the Galaxy Note 7.

We all have a lot of work to do if we want to get this company to be the best in the world, and I believe that if we work together, we can accomplish just that. However, I do have a message for those of you who have been complaining about our new company phone plan the past few days: Now is not the time to criticize the Galaxy Note 7.

Now, I’m not going to stand here and pretend like this phone doesn’t have problems. After all, the proof that it gets overheated and explodes for practically no reason at all has been evident for months, but now, we need to focus on its positive aspects and wipe the slate clean. It is our company phone now, and there’s no use complaining about it anymore.

Thank you, Wen Powers, for finding a way to actually make me laugh about this mess.