iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

The highlight of this year’s race was a Castrol coloured hatchback that was having trouble breaking for the single lane iron bridge (pictured here) that is the modern icon of the rally. My brother and I where standing behind the barrier that narrowed the road from two lanes to one. The Golf hit the barrier just to the right of us, hit the other side and then got wedged on a 90′ angle in the bridge (pictured here). The spectators where eventually allowed to go out and help push (pictured here) and after they worked out how force and levers work they where able to push the hatchback off the bridge and the stage was re-oppened (pictured here) .

My Flickr gallery of the event can be found here and the video of car about to slide off the edge of a corner in the dark (and into a lake) can be found here.

Steve Gibson, of Gibson Research (GRC) which brought us Sheilds Up and Spin Right, has created a password generator for WEP and WPA Keys. It’s tough to compete with a big name in security, but passnerd.com does offer passwords created on the user’s end for stronger randomization. GRC offers SSL to get around this, but in theory (but never by Steve Gibson) someone could look at the passwords the server was sending – but I’m sure Steve has one of the most secure servers on the net.

All that said, there is this site: grcsucks.com.

You still get a better password when you deal with the passnerd   .com.

The broader Anglican church is upset over the recent appointment of a gay bishop in the US and the marring of gays by a minister in BC. Also the UK may soon join the gay marriage club and the church is exploring what that will do to their spousal benefits, etc.

In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury by almost half the world’s presiding archbishops suggested that the church “cut away dead branches that had failed to bear fruit”. A veiled reference to the BC and American dioceses.

Is it just me or are these the only two dioceses that are bearing fruits?

PassNerd.com is a web page that will generate a random password that is unique to you. It’s a quick way to get a password that you know is random (as opposed to mouse34, desk12 and appl33) and it can’t be intercepted by hackers while in transit.

Other features of the site are a virtual password keychain that uses AJAX (the latest WWW fad) and one-way password hashes to generate random passwords for every site on the internet that are unlocked by your one master password.

RSS feeds of random passwords of various lengths (8 characters to 62) that can be syndicated to any site via XML.

Future plans:

• Create a cut n’ paste code to have a random password added to your site.
• Write up a random password guarantee that covers how no computer can create truly random information… pseudo random…untraceable, etc.
• Move the logo/look of the site towards just the tie and away from the web site’s current model. Working with talent is too tedious.

I recently helped my brother get “his computer” up and running on someone else’s.

Let me explain, his Hard Drive died (an unfortunate habit of 12′ Apple portables) but he did have a backup and even had a few moments to copy his most recent files as the machine died. Since he had access to another Mac he wanted to get “his computer” back on it. This isn’t too hard to do with the UNIX-base of OSX and the principles of UNIX file layout it follows.

Here’s what to do:

• Boot up the ‘other’ Mac and create a new account with the same short name (ie. same folder name as your home).
• Launch the Terminal and type cd /Users to enter the Users directory with all the homes on that computer.
• Now you need to remove the folder your just created, so if your short name was Adam then you’d type rm sudo -rf Adam/, you will be prompted for the user’s password.
• Next you need to connect the external drive to your computer, take note of the drives name, if you’re not sure type ls /Volumes to check.
• To make a link to your old Mac’s home folder type sudo ln -s /Volmes/DriveName/Users/Adam and that should re-create the folder you just deleted as a link to the external drive.
• The last step is to make sure the new system feels that you own all those files, that’s done by doing a recursive changing of ownership, sudo chown -R Adam Adam/

— That’s it, you’ve moved into this new machine.

Recap:

Create account through System Preferences > Users with the same short name as other Mac
Launch Terminal and type
cd /Users
sudo rm -rf Adam/
sudo ln -s /Volumes/DriveName/Users/Adam
sudo chow -R Adam Adam/
Read more... (322 words, estimated 1:17 mins reading time)

It’s the end of the second period of the Toronto v. Montreal game and Toronto is winning 3-2. Isn’t it great that we can play horribly and still win? Don’t get me wrong, it’d be better if we had a better team, but I just like how The Maple Leafs can look like total goons for 30 minutes and be totally outclassed by the other team and still win.

It’s one of the main reasons the rest of Canada hates Toronto.

It has a lot to do with Toronto’s star goalies over the last two decades – but it also has a lot to do with Toronto always getting what they didn’t earn.

A little luck will go a long way, maybe not all the way to the cup, but Ottawa knows how much further it will get you than talent.

You may have heard about the article on beer I got submitted to Slashdot – that was a good story about health research at Western, and I’m glad I was able to share it. Today I submitted a story to digg.com, with a less noble motive.

digg.com is one of those new Web 2.0 sites (if you don’t know < < that's a big buzz word right now). For at least the last six months I've found digg to be a better geek news source than slashdot because it's the users who submit stories and the users who dig(g) the stories to promote them to the main page. This is a very quick and effcient system, but it's not perfect.
Today I submitted the story Hawaiians considering independence (digg.com/science/Hawaiians_considering_independence.).

Today while talking online with my brother who’s in NYC right now and he mentioned that his current residence is beside the Chinese consulate. I made a joke that he might soon lose his sovereignty and find himself living in exile in a small corner of the Indian consulate. I wasn’t sure how to spell sovereignty
at the moment so I gave it a quick Google. Hit three was a web page about Hawaiian sovereignty. I shared this with my brother and mentioned that it was the kind of link that gets 200 diggs on digg.com. His response: prove it.

Almost six hours later and the story has 11 diggs. So I was wrong, but the good news is the concept of user-edited content (like a Wiki) is proven viable again.

Incidentally, digg is a one of those Web 2.0 sites that use that other new buzz word: AJAX. I plan to announce my AJAX based project in the next week or so

My brother and I are planning to make another trip to the Bancroft Rally of the Tall Pines. This is one of the best stops on the Canadian rally series and is always a good time. This year’s rally is November 25^th and 26^th with all the action on Saturday the 26^th.

We’re not sure where we’re going to stay up north, or who’ll be in the car, but that’s what this post is all about. If you want to go or even have a place up north to crash (as in to sleep – neither the Saturn nor the Acura are actually entering the rally) please let me know.

If you’d like to know more about the event you can check Adam and my pictures from two of the recent events on Flickr:

• 2002 Rally of the Tall Pines
• 2003 Rally of the Tall Pines