Mozilla Add-ons T-Shirt

I was having lunch when the postman came with a "mysterious" bag meant for me. When I saw that the sender address indicated that the bag was from the UK, I wondered if it could be a friend from the UK. However, when I touched and felt the flimsiness of the content inside the bag... it suddenly occurred to me that it was Mozilla T-Shirt (for my work on making Fireclip compatible with Firefox 3b4)!

Wow. I never received news that Mozilla will be sending this t-shirt to me, so it came as a surprised. This t-shirt is definitely cool! Thanks to Mozilla! and thanks to all who helped on Fireclip!

Flickr Photo of the Day: Roller coaster planet

...attached a Ferris wheel. At Tokyo Dome City.
It's stereographic projected version of this pano.

See where this picture was taken. [?]
[MAP by ALPSLAB]

Roller coaster planet, originally uploaded by heiwa4126

The Howling of the Gods

It was so loud it was so quiet we didn't sleep we slept.
We didn't dream. We dreamt of panthers and hatpins, orchids and ashbins.
There was no moon; no moon was there
Ever so magnificent. Even the dogs were mesmerized.
Make that: the gods—even the gods were mesmerized.
There were no dogs; no dogs were there.
Even so, sleep was impossible—
All that howling! We dreamt of panthers and hatpins, orchids and ashbins.
Didn't we? No; and if we did,
We weren't dreaming.

-- The Howling of Gods, A New Book of Common Days by Jay Hopler

Debian-OpenSSL Fiasco

I couldn't comprehend today's XKCD comic...


... so I decided to google around for answers.

So what is this Debian-OpenSSL fiasco? I was surprised when I read that openssl's random number generator had a vulnerability that has affected the security of RSA keys since September 2006. This bug has gone unnoticed for more than a year!

However, surprise turned to shocked as I began to understand the bigger picture in layman's terms.

Instead of using random data to generate basic "seed" values for keys, the OpenSSL PRNG used the current process ID, a unique process identifier. The problem is that, in Linux, the default maximum process ID is 32,768, meaning the seed value could be overcome by brute force, or systematically applying different values in the range 0 to 32,768.

This is a security catastrophe. The experts are saying that "ANY cryptographic material created on vulnerable systems can be compromised."

Time saver for Ubuntu: Gnome Do

I just installed Gnome Do on my Ubuntu Hardy and I am impressed. Gnome Do is inspired by Quicksilver.



$ sudo aptitude install gnome-do gnome-do-plugin-rhythmbox gnome-do-plugins
I love the fact that you can open apps and stuff right from the comfort of your keyboard. This is an immense time saver and it is a must-have for an serious Ubuntu user.

After installing, remember to read the user guide.

Tip 1: Get gnome-do to run at startup by going to (Menu)System->Preference->Sessions and adding the command gnome-do -q
Tip 2: I didn't like the shortcut "Super + Space" so I changed it to "Control-Space" as the control key was the left most button. You can do this by opening Configuration Editor (run gconf-editor) and changing the key binding to "<control>space" in "/apps/gnome-do/preferences" inside gconf-editor.