Efendi Nearly Complete
In accordance with my somewhat obsessive efforts lately to clear my personal to-do list, my fabled blog software is quickly reaching version 1.0. The Picasa and Google Code integration is working just right, and I only have a plugin to handle Cluster’s RSS feed left to complete tonight or tomorrow evening.
Actually writing Cluster is next on the to-do list, besides setting up a dropbox account to handle file serving for the blog (saving the need to develop a file manager for Efendi). I am kind of relieved to be writing content finally, given that this weekend featured two different projects both providing technological lily-gilding without ever touching actual story material.
I finally got a TrueCrypt volume set up to my liking to hold business documents, and I scanned quite a few new things in. I should have done this years ago: having a PDF of your birth certificate, passport, etc. can come in quite handy when you’re filling out forms online or otherwise.
My scheme for TrueCrypt is very emergency-focused, meaning I didn’t want some ridiculous 25-character password between an authorized someone and the data. So I took advantage of the “keyfile” functionality in the program to use a small encryption key placed on a tiny USB flash drive. If the drive is plugged in, the volume decrypts. If the key is absent, the program forbids access.
A cryptography expert will likely say this is kind of insecure. I tend to take what I feel is the ultimate pragmatic view on encryption, so I’m cool with whatever “risk” I am assuming here.
I plan to improve the process using this creative method, which makes sure my little key drive will always bind to drive K:. This could prevent some mix-ups if multiple drives were plugged in.