Author: rolfje

There’s life without Google. Or iCloud. Or Facebook.

2014-03-08 rolfje 5 Comments

Regular readers of this blog already know that I am not using dropbox, and I was an Evernote user, but recently decided it became to dangerous and replaced it with my own scripts. I had an interesting discussion on Twitter which made me decide to show you how I run my digital life without the help of Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Whatsapp or iCloud, and still be able to have all the functionality these services offer.

The search was hard and sometimes I need to reconsider some of the choices, but the last few years the selection of products was very stable and the setup has worked flawlessly. Searching for a secure replacement for Whatsapp or Google? It’s in here.

Software

Replace Evernote with Spidernote

2014-03-02 rolfje 8 Comments

In the past I have used Evernote extensively, it really helped me in my research for this blog and keeping track of meeting notes, todo lists and even making pictures of whiteboards at work searchable. As a product, there is no note taking app that can beat Evernote. But there is a little problem that has become a deal breaker for me, and that is basically the NSA and the way Americans, and particularly the American government seems to think about people’s privacy and online security.

Evernote is an American company, which sadly has to comply with whatever ridiculous request by the U.S. government to turn over data of innocent people all over the world (yes, even outside the U.S. border, I know, it’s amazing). This, combined with the fact that Evernote clearly can not use zero-knowledge encryption because of the services it provides, makes that all the data you and I put into Evernote are at NSA’s fingertips at all times. If you find that as scary as I do, and you have a Mac, there is a way to solve this.

Software

From the Finder to the Shell (and back)

2013-12-20 rolfje No Comments

A quick tip for OSX users out there who frequently need to open a Terminal window for the current location in the finder, or the other way around:

Go2Shell and Back

Install the free application from the App Store: Go2Shell. It will give you an icon on the toolbar of your Finder, and pressing it will open a Terminal window and automatically change it’s directory to match the Finder’s location.

The other way around is easier; you can already do that on any Mac. Simply type “open .” (that’s the word “open”, followed by a space and a period). This command will open a Finder window for the directory location your Terminal window is in.

Bonus tip: Also check the “open -t [filename]” command, it will open your system’s default text editor with the given file.

Apple, Software

Anonimatron: Quick Start

2013-11-032026-05-07 rolfje 18 Comments

After reading my last blogpost on Anonimatron, you must have asked yourself “Great, but how do I actually use Anonimatron to de-personalize my database”? I tried my best to make basic Anonimatron configuration as self-explanatory as possible, just start it without any command line arguments and it will tell you.

Less adventurous or in a big hurry? This blogpost will show how simple it is to install and configure Anonimatron on an example MySQL database.

Read More “Anonimatron: Quick Start” »

Software

Anonimatron: Overview

2013-10-31 rolfje No Comments

In every software project, there comes a time where a bug pops up, nobody knows how to reproduce it, and somebody says “I know, let’s test this against a copy of the production database”. Even with the best intentions, once production data leaves the production machine with all its safeguards it becomes really hard to do access control on that data.

Most of the time, it’s not even needed to have that data. Developers just need a data set which resembles the production scenario close enough. Some brave souls have mixed succes with data generators, but those generators usually are tedious to maintain and die a slow death under the pressure of the daily grind.

In some ambitious projects automated integration testcases are built on top of the data which was inserted by the data generators. As the generators die, so die the tests. If you recognize this pattern, Anonimatron might be the answer for you.

Read More “Anonimatron: Overview” »

Software

iOS7 hidden features

2013-09-28 rolfje 2 Comments

If you’ve just installed iOS7 and like it as much as I do, you are probably interested in all the new features of it, and where to find them. On behalf of Apple, I’ll be happy to point out where all those neat new features are, and share my happiness about this wonderful new magical market-leading mobile OS.

Non-Java Binary Dependencies in Maven

2013-07-18 rolfje 9 Comments

Suppose you have a Java Server application, and some of the runtime binaries in that application are external to your application. Generated image files, compiled Silverlight components in your pages, or resource files which are managed by an external team.

Much like the jar files used by your application, these external binaries can be seen as dependencies, with versions. This blogpost assumes your project is built with Maven 2, because the real world isn’t always a greenfield project.

Because Maven is designed around jar file dependencies, and a lot of it’s internal decisions are based on file extensions, it looks like this problem can not be tackled with Maven. But there is a way to do this. It will decouple your sub-projects and make version and dependency management much better.

Software

How big is 5 Zettabyte?

2013-06-23 rolfje 3 Comments

Since the interview of Edward Snowden with the Guardian, the discussion about privacy and companies storing and sharing unencrypted private data is picking up. Particularly Americans are worried about what it does for their National security and their private data. But that’s actually a naive thought, given the NSA stores worldwide data.

In a recent coverage on theblaze.com (a rather tabloid-looking news station in the U.S.), the interviewers are shocked to see that the NSA spies on “every American”.

This is a limited view of the world and failing to see the importance of spying on people outside the U.S., but lets start with technical side of things first. What data are they storing and how big is their hard-disk?

Read More “How big is 5 Zettabyte?” »

Uncategorized

Script: Text-to-NATO-spelling

2013-05-27 rolfje No Comments

In my morse training adventure on lcwo.net, I hit a slight bump in the road. At Koch lesson 33 (of 40 lessons total), I can’t seem to copy with 90% accuracy, which is the criterea for moving to the next lesson. See my downward trend here. It is partly because of gradually speeding up the Farnsworth timing from 10wpm to 12wpm so I can be on 20wpm at lesson 40. It is also because of shorter, less focussed daily training sessions, I must confess.

I experimented a bit, and it seems I can recognize characters easily at 37wpm, but I can’t form the words and recognize letters at the same time. More accurately: I can’t seem to be able to remember 3 to 5 characters, form a word and listen to new characters at the same time.

Fun

BaseCamp Import problem [fixed]

2013-05-03 rolfje 2 Comments

On Mac OSX, when installing Garmin BaseCamp 4.1.2 from the Appstore, there is a chance that importing downloaded routes in gdb or gpx files from your local machine will not work. The error you’ll get is “[filename].gdb not found”, in a popup much like the one shown here. If you open the console app, you’ll see the following error in the logfile:

sandboxd[28092]: ([27931]) Garmin BaseCamp(27931) deny file-read-data /Users/rolf/Desktop

This means that the OSX Sandbox mechanism does not allow Garmin BaseCamp to read files in that folder. I have briefly searched documentation on how to grant BaseCamp the rights to read files there, but I couldn’t find anything that would work. I did find a way to work around this problem though: Garmin BaseCamp does have rights to read your Garmin device. So here we go:

Temporarily copy the files you want to import in Garmin BaseCamp onto your device (or in my case: the extra SD card in the device).
Start Garmin BaseCamp, and select “File” -> “Import…”.
Browse to the Garmin SD card and select the gdb file to import. Voila. That will get it into BaseCamp.
Delete the gdb file from the Garmin. We don’t need it anymore, the Garmin was just a place where BaseCamp could read the file.

From here on, everything should work as normal. This is just a workaround. If anybody finds out how to really fix this problem let me know.

Software