Categorie: Tech talk

De laatste release van Thunderbird (31.0) heeft een SSL/TLS certificaat fout (en ook hier). Dit betekent dat met deze release het niet mogelijk is om boks.com IMAP emails binnen te halen.

Tijdelijke oplossing :

• Voorkom dat Thunderbird zichzelf naar versie 31.0 opwaardeert. Ga naar Voorkeuren/Gevanceerd/Update en schakel Updates uit :

• Indien Thunderbird zichzelf al geeft opgewaardeerd, herinstalleer de laatste stabiele versie (24.7) .

• (Af te raden) Gebruik een andere mail client (Apple Mail)

De Mozilla gemeenschap is bezig een fix te schrijven, dus daar moet op gewacht worden.

 

 

A “good login policy” dictates the usage of strong passwords. When a website or other access system asks you to “Enter your new password” you must come up with something that is hard to link to you or the login.  Although a good starting point, in practice this is mitigated by the fact that nobody can remember more than a handful of random passwords – you see that a typical person will enter the same password everywhere, rendering the “good login policy” useless. Once the password has been discovered or retrieved, all logins of this person are compromised.

Muninn resolves the memory problem for passwords, and in this new version the “good login policy” is also served – Muninn now has its own random password generator.

I incorporated the APG password generator (which is present on my FreeBSD system but not widely known in the Windows world) into Muninn. Normally , I would use APG for generating passwords, but it involves starting a shell and typing the apg command. In Muninn, things are easier:

When the account fields entry dialog window  is modal, an APG button is present. APG generates passwords based on the preferences presented in the dialog window.

Coming up with yet another inventive password is now easier than ever !

Munnin Binaries can be found on my FTP server in the muninn directory.

My Birthday and events calender (called “Kalender” after the Dutch word for calender) was released as version 2.0 today.

The program now sports a detached picture window, as opposed the old picture window in the main program. His was done to accommodate different picture sizes and formats more easily.

The languages features were updated and the program can be used in Dutch, German or English now.

A column indicating the age of the event has been added.

And a number of small bug fixes have been applied.

Kalender 2.0 is released on :

– Apple Mac OS X 10.6 and higher

– MS Windows 7 and higher, in 32 and 64 bit variants.

– FreeBSD 10.0 64 bit variant. Please not you will have install wxWidgets and SQLite3  yourself on this platform (no port mechanism has been introduced yet).

Please take notice that Kalender’s database file structure is completely platform-independent. The makers of SQLite3 have done a very nice job of maintaining binary compatibility for SQLite databases and this application can take advantage of that fact (SQLite3 excels in many other aspects too…. it is a super database). This means an event database which was created on Apple Mac OS X can be used without any issues on Windows or other platforms, or vice versa.

Kalender Binaries can be found on my FTP server in the kalender directory.

My account and password database Muninn, was released in version 1.1 today. This is a bug fix and language extension release.

– The program can now be used in three languages : Dutch, German and English.

– Various small errors were fixed.

– Entering password is now easier. The copy and paste buffer can be used to paste a password from another source into the password fields. Be careful though, pasting a wrong word isn’t checked using this way.

– When the general password hasn’t been entered, the system beep is heard.

– column sizing is now automatic and stored in the application configuration file.

Muninn is released on :

– Apple Mac OS X 10.6 and higher

– MS Windows 7 and higher, in 32 and 64 bit variants.

– FreeBSD 10.0 64 bit variant. Please not you will have install wxWidgets, SQLite3 and Botan yourself on this platform (no port mechanism has been introduced yet).

A Linux variant will be released at some point (I prefer FreeBSD to Linux so I do not have a Linux system at my disposal).

Please take notice that Muninn’s database file structure and encryption/decryption are completely platform-independent. This means a password database which was created on Apple Mac OS X can be used without any issues on Windows or other platforms, or vice versa. You must however, maintain the same master password if you use the file on multiple computers.

Munnin Binaries can be found on my FTP server in the muninn directory.

Munnin versie 1.0 is klaar voor gebruik. Ik heb encryptie en wachtwoordbeveiliging toegevoegd, zodat de opslag en het ophalen van de gevoelige delen van de applicatie (de wachtwoorden) nu versleuteld gebeurt.

De applicatie is te vinden op mijn FTP server.

Muninn, mijn nieuwe applicatie om logins en passwords gemakkelijk te onthouden, is bijna klaar. Een beta versie heb ik al  geplaatst in op de FTP Server.

Muninn is een snelle gemakkelijke login en password database. In tegenstelling tot anderen heb ik deze geschreven met het oog op :

• Maximale eenvoud. Geen poespas met vele mogelijkheden en invulvelden.
• Modern. Geen archaïsche GUI interface, maar gewoon wxWidgets 3.0 .
• Cross-Platform :
  • Apple Mac OS X 10.6.8 en hoger
  • Microsoft Windows 7 en hoger, in i386 en x86_64 variant
  • Linux x86_64 Debian installer
  • FreeBSD 10 x86_64
• Niet web-gebaseerd. Informatie die over het internet wordt verstuurd is kwetsbaar. Muninn bewaart de informatie op de lokale schijf.

Een afbeelding van de beta versie is hier :

Dit is de Mac OS X versie, anderen volgen nog.

Ik heb een WIN32 installer gebouwd voor de kalender applicatie, dus de kalender draait nu ook onder Windows.

Verder een voorzichtig begin gemaakt met vertalingen, de kalender kan meer of minder worden omgeschakeld naar Duits en Engels.

Hier is een screenshot van de kalender (Apple versie) :

Alle bestanden zijn te vind op de FTP server.

Recently I purchased a new calculator because someone pointed out to me the truly amazing capabilities (natural textbook display) of Casio’s new fx-115ES calculator. Costing under €30, the calculator offers an astounding 403 functions, conversions and solvers. It also displays fractions as true fractions, in addition to the standards floating point display format.. It can handle tables for linear or cubic interpolation for which the data entry is pretty easy. It performs numerical differential and integration, and solves equations with Newton-Rapson. It can even do (limited) vector and matrix calculations.

Even though I am a big fan of Texas Instruments integrated circuits (especially  their MSP430  microcontrollers, their ADCs (ADS1178) and power ICs (TPS84620) ) I prefer Casio’s calculators over TI’s. They are not as bulky, you can get your results more quickly and they cost a lot less.

When I got the new calculator , I realised I had purchased the fx-115 before. The first model I got was the fx-115 in 1985, when I was in school. Later, it also served me well as a student at Delft University of Technology.  Looking for a model that would help me with complex numbers, I bought  the fx-115W when I worked at Oresis Communications in 2001. This was my main computational workhorse in the new millennium. And, this year I purchased the amazing fx-115ES. In a way I have been quite intimate with the fx-115 family for 26 years!

All calculators, including the 26 years old fx-115, still work flawlessly, a testimony to Casio’s build quality. Begin solar driven, I never had to replace a battery. The fx-115 now lives in a kitchen drawer and is used for domestic purposes.

My calculators are  (running [math] sqrt {2} /4 [/math]: