Archive for the 'useful stuff' Category


poor man’s disaster recovery

And one day something terrible happens.
The server which this site was running on (and a few others) had a few problems with the mainboard power module and started shutting down every now and then. It is a mini-ATX system using some kind of proprietary power supply (which was replaced promptly for an identical one – [...]

image spam spam spam spam spam

Sorry about that… Most spam I’ve been getting in the past few weeks has a bunch of random text (specially designed to look like a legitimate email) and the such and then a .gif attachment with text advertising stocks, casinos, viagra and xenical and dog knows what. I was tired of watching the Thunderbird bayesian [...]

Sudo for Windows

Now, an interesting piece of software. I wonder why did it take so long for someone to come up with this. Sudo for Windows (sudowin) allows authorized users to launch processes with elevated privileges using their own passphrase. Unlike the runas command, Sudo for Windows preserves the user’s profile and ownership of [...]

How to peel a boiled potato

Most probably from the guys who brought you “how to fold a t-shirt in half the time” , here’s “how to peel a boiled potato in half the time”. Cute.

complete idiots guide to GnuPG

Once in a while I am asked to give someone a crash course on PGP (or its free software implementation GnuPG), encryption and authentication. I usually push these poor souls into GPG with Mozilla Thunderbird and Enigmail, following a few well delimited steps which are stored on a text file somewhere which had their command [...]