I'm well over a week late with this post, but better late than never. The Truecrypt Foundation announced on 8 July 2008 that v6.0a of Truecrypt, the cross-platform disk encryption package was released to the Net, along with its source code. Judging by the changelogs, it stands head and shoulders above the last releases (v5.1 and v5.1a) in several important respects. First and foremost, the new release takes full advantage of systems that have more than one CPU in them (like many laptops these days), so if you're using whole disk encryption storage I/O will be …
Work's had me running around a bit more than usual lately, which has put a serious crimp in my time to write, let alone keep up with current events. I don't know how much time I'll have this week because I have wedding-type running around to take care of, on top of getting ready to travel to the city that never sleeps - good old New York City to attend what could be the last HOPE conference organized and thrown by 2600 Magazine. As one might expect, available time allocated to sleeping, resting up, or getting other stuff done has been …
Contrary to most years, my Fourth of July weekend was far lower in impact and more relaxing this time around than it usually is. I've been running short on sleep for a while now and made up for all of that by sleeping as long as I possibly could, over thirty hours in total spread over three days (plus a two hour power doze (like a power nap, only I never actually fell asleep but instead elfnapped, the way I do when I'm on the road) on Saturday afternoon). I actually feel refreshed and clear-headed for the first time in …
Late on Friday afternoon, Lyssa and I hurriedly packed our bags, jumped into the TARDIS, and set course northward once again for southwestern Pennsylvania and the general direction of home. As I've alluded to a few times, we're getting married in October and thus there are many plans to make, things to get, and arrangements to hammer out. In the early twenty-first century we can do many of these things over the net or on the telephone, but sometimes matters require the up close and personal touch. Things like tasting samples of wedding cake and taking recon photographs of the …
A couple of weeks ago, it came down the wire that Peter Murphy (best known for his work with the band Bauhaus) was on tour again and would be making a stop in Baltimore, Maryland to do a show. Lyssa and I, goth kids that we are, decided that we should fill a hole in our musical histories by going to see one of the de facto founders of the gothic music genre perform live. Laurelinde, on the other hand, just about hit the ceiling when she found out; she's a huge Peter Murphy fan, as it turned out, and …
Last Friday afternoon, the guys from work and I went for one of our infrequent lunch trips offsite because our PM is leaving for another project in a few weeks, and it's tradition to take the outgoing folks out for lunch sometime before their last day. After some discussion about who liked what, what was within comfortable driving distance, and what kind of transportation was available to us (thank you again to A-, whose minivan carried most of us at the same time). We eventually decided to go out for barbecue at Red, Hot, and Blue BBQ in Alexandria (6482 …
While out and about running errands last night, Lyssa and I found ourselves running dangerously low on blood sugar but trapped in a Whole Paycheque that just didn't have anything we particularly wanted for dinner in the form of takeout, which to date isn't anything that's happened within recent memory. After stowing our groceries in the trunk of the TARDIS we cast our eyes about the strip mall in search of a nearby restaurant for a quick dinner. The local Thai restaurant didn't particularly appeal, but then our eyes fell upon a hole in the wall tex-mex joint called Burrito …
A moment of silence, please, for comedian, satirist, and renegade intellectual George Carlin, who died on Sunday afternoon at the age of 71 of heart failure. Carlin was one of the first hosts of Saturday Night Live and an outspoken voice against censorship, stemming from his famous "seven deadly words" skit, which culminated in an indecency trial that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Since then, he had been arrested a number of times for performing that particular set, but every time the charges were thrown out of court. Over the years, he released many stand-up comedy recordings …
At more or less the last minute last week, I decided to attend Walking the Thresholds 0x0B at the Four Quarters Farm, just over the Pennsylvania border, in the lands I simultaneously love and fear because they're so far off the grid that you're fortunate to get three GPS satellites to lock on to. After co-ordinating with Hasufin, Mika, and Sarah for a bit it was decided that I'd head over to their place, leave the TARDIS behind to save on fuel costs, and ride up with them. Our colleague in arms and all things nerdcore Jason would be going …
