Over the past week, UMSwing has had a recruitment table up in an attempt to get new members interested in the club. During that time, we do a lot of dancing (a couple hours a day), hoping that some people will be impressed by it. We think it’s working, but we’ll have to wait until the open house to see.
As always, I welcome your comments. Add a comment below!
My Cactus V2 Flash Triggers
Recently, I bought a set of Cactus V2 remote flash triggers off of a friend for my camera. These allow me to use a flash off-camera, which can give me a number of different lighting effects based upon position and intensity. I’ve been trying them out a lot so I can get a grasp on how to use them, and it’s been an interesting experience. Below I’ve got a few sample photos, as well as some of my learning experiences.
The first photo I ever took with an off-camera flash was of my living room. Needless to say, my first shot was not impressive. It wasn’t even good. Hell, it’s barely worth posting, but it was a step forward. I was learning, and also testing the triggers to make sure they actually worked. If nothing else, I was really interesting at this point with some of the potential effects that I’d be able to do with it.
My first off-camera flash shot. Hardly anything good.
As with anything, practice makes perfect, and despite the rather bland first photo, I stuck with it, trying a number of different effects. I looked around my house for things to photograph that might make for some interesting photos, particularly with some different lighting. An improvement came when I took a photo of a decorative house and Christmas scene that my mom had set up on an antique radio. A bunch of random adjustments and a dozen-or-so photos later, I came up with something that looked decent. Again, definitely not a masterpiece, but a step forward in the right direction.
A small Christmas scene that was set up in our living room.
Eager to try out my new toy at a swing lesson, I decided to try my hand at photographing moving targets. Looking back at the photos, very few of them turned out well at all. Some turned out okay, and two of them are below. A few turned out well, and ended up in this week’s gallery entry, which I hope you’ll check out. I think jumping into the deep end was a little too hard for me; there were far too many variables to juggle, including the flash position, flash power, camera focus and zoom settings, and the position and orientation of the people I was photographing. It was simply too much to handle all in one shot when I’m still learning the basics when it comes to the lighting, and I’m still learning things about my camera. In retrospect, I should have waited a while before bringing them along.
Tiffany at the swing lesson. I think the lighting is much too hard in this.
This I'm a little happier with. It turned out better, and the light isn't as harsh.
But, some of my stuff did turn out well, and they’re in this week’s gallery. Some of those are shot with an off-camera flash; others are not. As far as cost-worth purchases go for aspiring photographers, these flash triggers are the best purchase I’ve made (just surpassing the 50mm EF 1.8/f lens). If you have an external flash, pick yourself up a set of these and a cheap camera tripod; you won’t regret it.
If you’d care to see some of my better photos (ie. this week’s gallery), you can take a look at the Jan. 8/10 gallery here.
Just for the heck of it, I decided that I would post a screenshot of my desktop right before I start programming (ie. before too many windows get opened and clutter my workspace). Those of you that are sharp might notice that it looks a little…wide. That’s because I have three monitors on my desktop — two 19″ and one 22″ LCD monitors. That gives me a total resolution of 4560×1050: far bigger than a single monitor could reasonably give me.
Extra brownie points go to those who can answer the following questions about the screenshot:
Anyways, I have some new photos that will be going up tomorrow, as well as some of my experiences with using an off-camera flash. Stay tuned for that!
Although I posted them last night on Facebook (they won’t stay up there forever), I’m also posting some photos that I took in the past month here, most of them being from last night.
I just picked up a new Sigma 70-300mm 4.0-5.6/f telephoto lens for my Canon XTi body, and decided to try it out at swing last night. I’m also starting to use my external flash more now, and it’s taking some getting used to, but I’m liking some of the results so far. Thus, take a look at the gallery or the Dec. 29/09 album for some of the shots that I took. Let me know what you think!
Recently I made the decision that I would try to switch keyboard styles. Almost everybody I know uses the standard QWERTY-style keyboards because they are so common, but because I use a keyboard so much, I want to protect my fingers.
A bit of background knowledge before I go any further: the most common style of computer keyboard is the QWERTY keyboard, named such because of the first six letters in the top row of the keyboard. It was initially designed during the typewriter days not to improve typing efficiency, but to prevent the keys from jamming up. DVORAK, on the other hand, was designed with computer keyboards in mind, focusing on efficiency and ergonomics. As a result, those who are comfortable with DVORAK typically type faster and cause themselves less repetitive stress injuries.
Now, I think that those are both two very good reasons to make the switch to this different style. There is, though, the obvious drawback of having to learn a new keyboard layout. Thankfully, I don’t need to buy anything to get started; any newer operating system has the ability to remap a keyboard to a new layout. The problem with this is that the writing on the keyboard doesn’t match what I want to type, so I can’t look at the keys to help me learn.
So the goal at this point is to work on my typing speed and hopefully get it to a speed that is reasonable. On a regular QWERTY keyboard, I can type at about 75 wpm (words per minute), but on a DVORAK keyboard I’m at a lowly 20 wpm. In order to help improve my speed, I’ve decided that I will type all of my blog posts on my DVORAK layout. After all, they say practice makes perfect, and if I plan to keep up with my blog posts on a regular basis, I should get better pretty quickly.
So, if anyone else out there is on their computer a lot, I challenge you to try out DVORAK some time and give it an honest shot at becoming comfortable at it. It’s certainly a challenge to pick up, but would be beneficial to preserving the life of your fingers, and when you’re in the Computer Science industry like myself, it’s game over if I can’t use my fingers. So to make things a little easier, instructions are below to enable the DVORAK layout on both Linux (Gnome) and Windows:
Linux (Gnome): System –> Preferences –> Keyboard, then go to the Layouts tab.
Windows XP: Add the Language toolbar by right-clicking on the bottom bar, then go into the Settings section under there to add a keyboard.
Well, after the massive spike in traffic to my site after writing the blog post on GNU Screen and Byobu Made Easy, I decided to do another quick tutorial on another Linux command-line tool, ViM. ViM, or “Vi Improved”, is a command-line editor that has been around since the dawn of Linux command lines, and is deceivingly powerful. Although we won’t get into the more powerful parts of the program today, stay tuned for some power tips later.
Now, anyone that has been around two or more Linux command-line junkies I’m sure has heard the Emacs vs. ViM argument at some point. Regardless of which one you like, they’re both great editors. Give them both a shot and choose your favourite.
Vim can be very overwhelming to start off on, but is great once you get used to it. When you first open ViM, you will be presented with a blank document and you will be in Normal mode (see below). Soon, we will be able to start writing text, undoing a mistake, perform cuts, copies, and pastes, as well as some search-and-replace.
A quick note that almost everything is case-sensitive!
There are six main program modes in ViM, listed below. We will only cover three of them in this tutorial for the time being.
You’ve just opened up ViM, but every time you try to type text, nothing seems to happen? What gives?! Well, right now you’re in Normal mode, and ViM is waiting for an instruction. In order to start typing text, just type “i” (for “Insert”) or “a” (for “Append”). The Append mode will move your cursor one character forward before you can type, so keep note of that. After you’re finished typing what you want, just hit Escape to get back into Normal mode.
Let’s say, that you just wrote “ViM is awesome!” in your spiffy new document, but saying it once just isn’t enough! You want to say it over and over again, but typing it out so many times just seems like a waste, doesn’t it? Time to go into Visual mode! Move your cursor to the beginning of your text using the cursors, then type “v” (lower-case). This puts you into Character-Select Visual mode. Move your cursor to the end of the text, and press “y” (for “Yank”), which copies the text into it’s built-in clipboard. Move your cursor to where you want to paste, and type “p” (for “Paste”). Note that “P” will paste BEFORE your cursor, so keep that in mind.
Whoops! You pasted it one-too-many times, or you pasted it in the wrong spot! Never fear, the Undo tool is here! Make sure you’re in Normal mode (just hit Escape if you’re not sure), and press “u” (for “Undo”).
What if, for example, you ended up typing “ViM is awsemoe!” (hey, your fingers got tied up; it happens). It doesn’t make sense to undo all of that, so let’s just do a search-and-replace. Go into normal mode and type “:%s/awsemoe!/awesome!”, then hit enter. Poof! Problem solved! I’ll discuss the search-replace a bit more in the cheat sheet. If you just want to search for text, type “/your-text-here” in Normal mode, then hit enter. “n” will move you forward through all the findings, and “N” will move you backwards.
Saving and exiting is really easy. “:w myfile.txt” will write the file to myfile.txt. If you opened an existing file, you don’t need the file name, so “:w” is all you need. To do a save and quit at the same time, type “:wq”.
What if you want to quit but don’t save your changes? The best way to do this is “:q!”, which will quit without heeding any warnings about the file not being saved.
- a - Append
- i - Insert
- /<your-text-here> - Search for <your-text-here>. Does NOT use regular
expressions
- dd - Delete the entire line that your cursor is on
- x - Delete the character your cursor is hovering on.
- :42 - Move to line 42
- G - Go to the last line in the document
- :s%/<search>/<replace> - Regular expression-compatible search-replace.
- :s/<search>/<replace>/g - Same as above, except replaces everything on a
single line. Remove the "g" to replace only the first occurrance.
- :s42/<search>/<replace>/g - Same as above, except replace on line 42.
- V - Line-select Visual mode
- v - Character-select Visual mode
- y - Copy (yank) the selected text
- d - Delete the selected text
- :w - Write the file to disk
- :wq - Write and quit
- :q - Quit
- :q! - Quit without saving
Some days, it pains me to see how woefully insecure some web browsers are. Every day, it seems that ten new browser-based exploits (or client-side attacks, as my presentation will tell you) are publicly released, and just because you’re on a site that you think is legitimate doesn’t mean that somebody hasn’t compromised it.
For those of you using Internet Explorer (IE), I pity you. IE, still being the #1 most commonly-used browser in the world, is the target of the most attacks by far out of all the major browsers. If you’re smart enough to use another, better browser, then you’re already one step towards protecting yourself. I’m going to assume, though, that you’re using Firefox or one of it’s derivatives such as Flock, since the plug-in libraries are huge.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3456
My Web of Trust (MyWOT) is a plugin for Firefox that warns you about potentially risky sites. It can alert you to known scam sites, spam sites, and pages that are known for hosting malware. It’s great for getting an idea of how trustworthy the site you are visiting is, and is a great extra level of protection against attacks against your computer.
AdBlock Plus: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
NoScript: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722
The most common form of browser-based attack is cross-site scripting, or XSS. XSS uses Javascript (a scripting language that websites use) in order to force your browser to do something. Typically, Javascript usage is legitimate; when you post something on somebody’s wall on Facebook, Javascript is used there to push the new message to their wall without refreshing the page, and to create that cool sliding effect as the old posts move down the page. You can also use it for malicious use, though. Stealing login credentials is a common one, but I’ve seen Javascript sophisticated enough to hijack your browser, forcing you to visit sites without you having any input or even downloading and running malware and viruses against your will. NoScript will block all Javascript, and then you can tell it what you want to enable. It takes a while to configure properly, but after a week or so of setting it up, you’ll be a lot more secure. XSS sometimes propagates through ads, so AdBlock is nice to have as well.
This always seemed like a no-brainer to me, but I know many other people who won’t do this. Using the same password for multiple sites is just stupid. If somebody manages to steal your password from one site, what’s stopping them from going to the other site (and no, having a different user name isn’t going to prevent anything). Instead of using the same password, use different ones, minimum 8 characters, and random characters. If you can’t remember all of those, take two 4-character random strings, and take the domain name, and put each random string on either side of the domain; there’s your password. For example: “4n$sFACEBOOKn4%l”. Swap “e” for “3″, “s” for “$” or “l” for “1″ – think L33T!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623
Although you may not realize it, tracking cookies are used to track your movement around the internet. Although you may visit very different web pages, the company that displays ads on the sites may be the same. Beat these cookies with BetterPrivacy, which removes tracking cookies and LSOs from your browser cache.
I hate to have to reiterate common sense, but sometimes it escapes us. If you didn’t expect to get a link from somebody, or they sent you a file that you weren’t planning on getting, don’t open it. I don’t care if it came from their MSN account; if you didn’t follow rule #3, there’s no reason why their account couldn’t have been hacked. If someone sends you a link, do yourself a favour and just ASK the person what it is before you click it; if you get a reply that is something that your friend would say, then you’re probably okay.
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted; about three weeks, actually. To the one or two readers I have, my apologies that you don’t have something to waste your time on twice per week. I’m getting back into the writing mood, so I should be building up a buffer of things to write in the near future.
A lot has happened since I last talked about the IPAM presentation that I took part in. To start with the related topic, I was approached to do the presentation again, this time internally to other departments. Thus, the other co-op student and I set about cleaning up the presentation a bit, fixing some errors, and making it flow smoother. It went much better the second time, thankfully, both from a public speaking perspective and a demonstration perspective. As fun as it was to work on that, I’m glad it’s over and done with right now.
Speaking of work, the number of days that I have left at IPC are dwindling quickly as the new year approaches. I work until December 31st, at which point I’m back in class. It’s been a fun past couple of months, and the paychecks have been very nice, but I’m also looking forward to getting back on campus to get some more studying done. I’ve decided that I won’t get a job during the winter semester so I can concentrate on my studying; I’ll have more than enough money to get through four months, and then I’ll be working in the summer again.
After that presentation was done with at work, I found that I had a fair amount of spare time, as there weren’t too many tasks to work on. I spent that time learning Ruby on Rails, and putting that knowledge towards the new UMSwing site. Although on the outside it will look almost the same as before, this new site will have an extensive backend that will make UMSwing virtually paperless. Although you may not think we use that much paper, think again; I have a full 3″ 3-ring binder in our office that says otherwise. All of our memberships, attendance, and transactions will be tracked on the web application, thus eliminating the need for those pieces of paper to be printed in the first place. Anyways, I’ve been working very hard on the site, and it’s almost ready to be tested by some other people. So, if you’re interested in testing some software for an eco-friendly cause, let me know in the comments section and I’ll keep you informed.
That’s a quick update on what’s happened in the past few weeks at work. I have a few more updates to spew out in the coming days, one of them involving my server upgrade (*cough* RAID *cough*), and some involving some extra-curricular activities (including some new photos to go up soon).
Last Wednesday, myself and the other co-op student working with me did a presentation to the Information Protection Association of Manitoba (IPAM) about attacks on web-based applications. It was certainly an interesting experience. Although it wasn’t a stellar performance, I think we did okay considering our presentation skills. Unfortunately we were expecting a slightly larger percentage of technical-minded people rather than business-minded people, and thus I got the impression that some of the talk was a little over the heads of a few of those in attendance. Regardless, it was a learning experience, and something I learned a lot from.
I was approached twice after our presentation was over. The first gentleman, to paraphrase, suggested that the presentation would be more useful had it included a mitigation strategy to prevent and (hopefully) eliminate the possibility of attack. I thought he might be on to something here. After all, wouldn’t it be great to have a check list to go through, and making sure each item is checked off would result in a secure application? For the rest of the day, I spent a lot of time going back and forth on this idea. On one hand, this check list would be nice, but I also firmly believe that a large amount of the prevention relies on the skill level of the programmer, debugger, and penetration tester, and a check list simply wouldn’t be sufficient to protect yourself from attacks. But, having the check list would be a good start. Sort of an “if you’ve done these things, you’ve covered the basics” check list. It would be a good reminder sheet for pro programmers, and a good stepping stone for those who are just starting off. To that person, your suggestion has been heard, and the check list has been added to my to-do list, hopefully to have a first draft out within a month or so, so stay tuned for that.
The second gentleman asked if the slides to the presentation would be online for later viewing. At the end of the presentation, although we took almost an hour, I was well aware that we were rushing; we probably had too much content that we wanted to cover. Before the presentation I had already planned to put the slides online as a reference; although it’s nice to see the slides during the talk, it’s also nice to go back and view them at a later date. Thus, my slides will be online here for anybody to take a look at. I will also be posting my source code, but that will be a bit later (ie. probably next week), since there’s a few sections that are a little finicky right now.
So my twice-per-week updates seem to have fallen a bit behind as of late. To those one or two dedicated readers, my apologies for not giving you something to burn a couple minutes from your day with.
I have three culprits to lay the blame for this lack of updates. One of those has been a savage case of writer’s block. Another of those has been a very busy schedule for me. Busier than normal, even. As such, the third and final culprit goes by the name of “Sleep Deprivation”, which always seems to tag along with culprit number two. In a possibly vain attempt to get myself back on my writing pedestal, I figured I’d fill you all in about the past two weeks.
As those of you who are involved in the Winnipeg swing scene may know, UMSwing had two events to demo at last weekend, the first being the Gilbert & Sullivan Gala Fund-raiser, and the second being the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra’s performance. The fund-raiser involved a couple of demonstration songs, and the WJO performance involved dancing for 20 minutes during their intermission, as well as the opportunity for one or two couples to dance on stage during one of their songs. Although they took place over the weekend, I’ve been in talks with organizers of both events for quite some time, and the last week became crunch time for me as I made sure everything went as expected. I’m really glad that we were invited to both events, and we’d certainly be interested in doing it again.
To swing (no pun intended) from one quirky interest to another, this Wednesday a couple of us took advantage of the day off and planned for a session of Dungeons & Dragons. I need to take a minute here to explain this:
Anyway, in this group (which has yet to receive a name), I am the DM; I’m the one who tells the story, plays the non-player characters (NPCs), and guides the other players through their adventures. Although very fun to DM, it also requires a lot of work to create your own adventures; dungeons, the global map, encounters, and NPCs all need to be planned. Thus, that chewed through a fair amount of spare time that I had. On the plus side, I over-prepared, so I have everything I need for the next time around.
This weekend, I have plans to go out to a friend’s cottage for some much-needed rest. It’ll be nice to get away from it all, and hopefully take some great photos, which I hope to put up for Monday’s post. I also have some ideas for another Linux command line tip, so those of you reading my previous post regarding Byobu: stay tuned.
“I’ve never seen you here before. I like that in a woman.”
– Renaldo ‘The Heel’, Crimewave (1985)
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