Having Safe Passwords

Posted on July 10, 2006 by Michael Koby

If you spend any time on the internet, your life is filled with passwords. You need a password for your email account, one for your website, for your bank, for your blog, for your applications, and just about everything else. With so many passwords to keep track of, it’s easy to fall into the trap of having a couple of passwords that handle everything. The problem with this is that if someone gets a hold of one of these passwords, then they can access anything else that you use that password for. The solution, have a different password for every account you might have. This might seem unrealistic but with KeePass Password Safe, it’s as easy as browsing files.

KeePass is a free, open source, password safe that can store your passwords in passphrase protected file. This means you can eaisly have a different password for every login you have without having to remember every single one.

KeePass - Main Window

KeePass also handles password generation. It’s simple interface allows you to chose the length and the types of characters in the password and then allows you to generate the password using random mouse movements and keyboard input. This makes for completely random, thus stronger, passwords. The passwords that work best are the ones that have no personal ties to the user of that password, and having the passwords randomly generated helps that.

Another safe password tip is to change your passwords at random intervals. The length of time between password changes varies from author to author but I believe that a standard 3-6 month rule is effecient enough depending on the password. For example, I change my bank password every 3 months while I change my AIM password every 6 months. KeePass helps with this by allowing you to set a expiration date on certain password. It even gives the options of various intervals from 1 week to 1 year. You can even set some passwords to never expire, though I would not personally recommend this.

With KeePass, having safer passwords is easy and I encourage everyone to begin having safer passwords.

Posted in Technology | Comments Off on Having Safe Passwords

Cloe’s 4th Birthday Party

Posted on July 9, 2006 by Michael Koby

Today April and I held a birthday party for our daughter, Cloe. You can check out some photos of the event here.

Posted in Family | 4 Comments

Cloe's 4th Birthday Party

Posted on July 9, 2006 by Michael Koby

Today April and I held a birthday party for our daughter, Cloe. You can check out some photos of the event here.

Posted in Family | 4 Comments

Weeds

Posted on July 5, 2006 by Michael Koby

Showtime's WeedsOver the course of the Fourth of July weekend, April and I ran out of stuff to watch. That’s probably an over-exaggeration but basically the shows we liked, we were caught up on and were not in the mood for a movie. So after a failed attempt to like HBO’s Rome, April and I checked out some of Showtime’s original programming. The result was Weeds, a show about a single, recently widowed mother in the heart of suberbia selling weed to support her family.

In a town where there are very few secrets and gossip reigns supreme, Nancy, a single mother, is quickly becoming the town’s top dealer of the “green tabacco” and that’s just where the show starts. Nancy, a woman with street smarts but the naievity of “girl meets world” quickly learns the that her choices effect everyone around her, especially her kids. Nancy, finds out what happens when you enter into another dealer’s area as well as the pyramid scheme of supplier, dealer, soilders, and buyers. Learning as she goes Nancy soon finds out that something that seems simple can quickly become very complicated. All this and humor too. The show is hilarious. And not just because of the situations Nancy gets herself into or how she deals with them, but also because anyone who’s done drugs or been around them for any length of time will understand every aspect of this show. It’s so real in some areas that it’s frieghtening.

So if you have Showtime On Demand, be sure to check out Weeds. The first half of season one is up now (5 episodes) with the rest sure to follow before the August premiere of season 2. If you do not have Showtime On Demand, you can click the image to pre-order the season 1 DVDs from Amazon.com. Or you can click here.

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Tags & Tagging in WordPress

Posted on July 5, 2006 by Michael Koby

I’m kind of new to this whole “blogging” thing. While I’ve had a LiveJournal for a couple of years, I never really used it a whole lot and this blog is meant to be more professional than anything LiveJournal could ever really give me. Don’t get me wrong, I like the friends connectivity on LiveJournal, but for a more “professional” feel it detracts.

Since I’m new to “professional blogging”, I’ve been doing a lot of reading about a lot of different topics. Everything from Google page ranks, how to add content, and effectivelly organizing the blog so people can find the information they need quickly. As a result of my search for information, I discovered on “Tagging” in WordPress (the system this blog runs on). This article is very informative while not complicated to understand.

Great read for anyone blogging with WordPress and is somewhat new to all of it.

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Cars

Posted on July 4, 2006 by Michael Koby

CarsToday April and I took Cloe to see Cars, the latest computer animation flick from Disney/Pixar.  Man, they just keep getting better with the computer animation on these movies.  Cars has the smoothest and cleanest computer animation to come from Pixar yet.

As the follow up to The Incredibles, Cars holds its own.  Clocking in at just under two hours in length, this is probably the longest childrens movie yet.  Cloe did manage to get a little restless towards the end but when the big race started her eyes were glued to the screen.  Though, in my opinion, this movie could have been about 20 minutes shorter than it was.  Certain scenes could have been cut shorter and still had been just as effective in the plot.  For example, one scene the main character goes for a “drive” with his love interest for a solid 15 minutes.  This little drive could have been cut to 7-8 minutes and been just as good.

Though overall as a kid movie the plot is relativly simple.  The hotshot main character learns that he, in the end, can’t do everything on his own and needs friends.  A simple message that children of all ages can get easily.  And while the plot may be simple the jokes that the adults are going to get are just as funny as ever.  My personal favorite little funny moment was the first time I heard McQueen’s agent (voiced by Jeremy Piven who plays Ari Gold on HBO’s Entourage), being an Entourage fan that made me smile.  As with any Pixar movie, you will want to check out the end credits, the jokes here are great.

The final word is, this movie is good, but in my opinion, does not come close to its predecessor, The Incredibles.

Posted in Movies | 5 Comments