Poojan (Wagh) Blog

Mid-2020 Recommendation

So if you are in the market for a mesh WiFi solution, which one should you get? It depends on whom you trust.

WireCutter rated Eero the best. But Eero is owned by Amazon, so consider whether you trust Amazon. Synology also has a good name with tech enthusiasts; and it has a good upgrade path. WireCutter considers it their 2nd best WiFi router (outside of mesh), and you can add up to 6 mesh devices later; that said, WireCutter says the setup is more complicated than Eero.

If it were me, I would probably go with Synology. They are well-known in other network device markets. They also have a good track record of updating their routers (for security, etc). While the setup may be more complicated, I like that you can add more devices in the future.

I have seen many other tech-enthusiasts go with Google/Nest WiFi. (I bought my WiFi equipment from someone who was selling it because he bought the Google WiFi solution.) But Google has a history of dropping products, and I worry that WiFi could be next. Finally, WireCutter said it was behind Eero in performance.

Gory details and discussion follows.

So, I’m basically making this post so I can share with friends/family. In this post, I will explain what I do for managing passwords, including two-factor authentication (2FA), and give some options for getting 2FA. Before I do that, I will explain how I got to the conclusion on what I am using.

For those that don’t know me, I am not a security expert. You should do your own research (and maybe consult the security experts out there). I could be wrong about some of my conclusions. And more generally, what might work for me might not work for you.

Also, the scope of what I explaining here is only for my personal accounts. My company (and most out there) has an IT policy for work accounts.

You can skip past the Intro, if you don’t need convincing on why reusing passwords is insecure. Also, I put my recommendations right up-front in the Bottom Line section, if you don’t want to read the whole article.

I recently detailed the high-level setup of my latest GTD roll out. This follow-up post has a high “geek factor” and contains the details of how I do this using computer automation (Python scripts).

Read the rest of this entry »

Over at CNN: “Microsoft’s Zune HD to debut this fall” – SciTechBlog, John D. Sutter asks why anyone would chose the iPod Touch over the iPhone. I’ll tell you exactly why I bought my wife an iPod touch rather than an iPhone:

1. Monthly fee: The $70/month the AT&T bill for the iPhone is steep. It’d be worth it if she needed that connectivity…
2. Tethered mobility: … however, she doesn’t really want connectivity when she’s not around the house. She’s cool with checking email when she gets home.
3. I’ve heard the iPhone is great device, but not a great phone. Yeah: it’d be more convenient to have the all-in-one portable device platform and phone together. However, I’ve heard from numerous people (none of whom are allegiant to Motorola) that the iPhone isn’t terribly good as a phone. In truth, I never really found out why: call quality, user interface, etc. However, the suboptimality of the phone stuck in my head.
4. It pretty much runs everything the iPhone does: the iPod touch pretty much runs every app that the iPhone runs, so she’s really not giving up anything.

In fact, I wonder if people tend to by the iPhone because they don’t know how capable the iPod touch is.

Update: I recovered my lost commit by following the directions here. In addition, I had to create a branch from this commit using chekcout -b. I then switch to the master branch and merged the temporary branch into master

It has been written posted that git revert is not the same as svn revert. That’s true.

However, there have been suggestions that the equivalent is git reset --hard commit. I just did this. It isn’t good. Luckily, I didn’t lose muchany data. However, doing a --hard means that you reset the index back in time, too–not just your working copy.

I’ll admit that I don’t understand git very well. I’m not entirely sure (now that I’ve gone back in time) how to bring myself back to the future.

Essentially git reset means that you want to get rid of changes in your repository: not merely go back in time, see what things looked like, and move forward in time.

Anyway, a safer thing (for me to have done) would be git checkout commit.

The git manual specifically says:

–hard

Matches the working tree and index to that of the tree being switched to. Any changes to tracked files in the working tree since commit are lost.

Wonder if I’m too feeble to be MacGyver and need a James Bond. On the other hand, now that I’ve learned this lesson, maybe I’m better off sticking here.

I’m personally using Git to version-control my WikidPad files. However, Mercurial (and especially TortoiseHg) is equally well suited for this function. In many respects, Mercurial is simpler to use than Git. The only shortcoming I had with Mercurial is that there’s no managed branches; to branch, you create an independent copy of the whole repository (clone it).

Nonetheless, for most people, Mercurial will not only suffice but give quicker rewards than Git.

I don’t use Subversion for this purpose, because subversion has a centralized approach which requires a repository, separate from a working copy. Importing, merging, branching, etc., with subversion is a bit of a hassle. This “hassle”, of course, is purely personal taste; others will (strongly) disagree. In fact, for many other purposes, I strongly prefer Subversion to Mercurial/Git/etc.

Goal

By the time you’re done with the following steps, you should be able to:

1. Place a WikidPad Wiki under version control
2. Commit changes as files change
3. Revert to prior versions Read the rest of this entry »

I use Google Talk at work mainly to post to social networks (army.twit.tv, identi.ca, twitter.com, yammer.com). It is possible to receive notification using Google Talk (which is just a Jabber/XMPP instance), but I find that too intrusive to what little work I get done.

1. Run pidgin (if not already) and select Accounts->Manage

   

2. Select Add to add another account:

   

3. Select XMPP for the protocol type:

   

4. Fill out the form as follows with gmail/gtalk username & password; domain is gmail.com; Resource is (optionally) Work:

   

5. Click advanced button. Select old (port 5223) SSL. Select 443 for port number. Server is talk.google.com. Fill out http proxy (for example, wwwgate0.example.com, port 1080) & http-proxy username & password (not likely the same as your gmail username/password):

   

This works because http proxies generally allow ports 80 (http) and port 443 (SSL/https) through. They generally disallow other ports. Luckily, google’s jabber server (talk.google.com) accepts connections on port 443–and they are SSL (encrypted) connections, so that’s good, too.

Just for kicks, I’ve been brainstorming whether I can replace FireFox with Google Chrome.

The answer is no, but more accurately, almost. I’ve made a list of FireFox extensions that I live by. Namely: Read the rest of this entry »

I was quite excited to adopt Google Chrome as my primary browser. Immediately, I missed the “Read it Later” extension. I looked into whether an extension communicty had sprung up yet. (Who knows; there are apparently themes available already.) Unfortunately, I found the following in the Chromium (the open-source group formed to develop Chrome) FAQ:

FAQ Chromium Developer Documentation:

Q. How can I develop extensions for Chromium like in Firefox?

A. Chromium doesn’t have an extension system yet. This is something we’re interested in adding in a future version. Note that Chromium does support NPAPI-style “plugins”, such as Adobe Flash and Apple QuickTime.

Unfortunately, this is a deal-breaker for me (and likely for a lot of people). Guess I’ll have to be patient.

From Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Details:

Runs Intel Atom N270 & Intel GMA 950.

$350 for Ubuntu 8.04 w/ 4 GB SSD.

$400 for XP Home w/ 8 GB SSD

$450 for XP Home w/ 16 GB SSD