A lot of personal issues have come to a head in my life this past week. As a result, this blog is temporarily on hold until I can work through some personal matters.
I will return to you I promise. For now enjoy all the great content that is already here.
I was raised conservative my whole life and as I have grown up I have accepted many of the conservative stances as my own. Not simply because I was raised on them but because I understand the the other side just as well and I dislike it a bunch. However, after being introduced to the concept of Ron Paul, I have finally seen a politician that I am willing to donate money to. And when I get paid on Saturday, I will be donating to Ron Paul’s campaign fund. I encourage anyone who has not looked at Ron Paul, to watch the video below and then go look at his voting record. He has actually voted for what he says he believes and that right there means a lot to a guy like me.
This week, we bring to a close the music of Poor Old Lu with a track off of their last CD, The Waiting Room. Released just six years after what was suppose to be their final album, The Waiting Room easily contains some of the best Lu songs to be recorded and released. What is interesting is not that the songs are well written (they are) but the overall sound and feel of the record shows a band that moved out of their early twenties and was pushing thirty. Do not mistake this as something that is a bad thing. You can really hear that the band and the musicians involved have grown up. The sound is tighter, more coherent, as well as linear. The record has an overall consistent sound to it that really shines through.
The song I want to focus on, is the opening track titled, “Revolve” because I feel that it is one of the best openers the band has ever used. Sure, “Rail” for the Eighth Wonder album is an awesome opener with how it comes in and builds and plays out through out. But “Revolve” starts out with the nice palm muted chunks that really bring you right into the song, grabbing your attention almost immediately and refusing to let go for the entire three minutes and forty-seven seconds of the song.
The song content focuses on sin, and the power it can have in one’s life. This is established early on in the song with the closing line of the first verse “Has the light gone dim, in light of this sin…” so you know right away he is focusing on the issue of sin and how it can bring you down and not even realize it until it is too late. The chorus though, “I’m pushing this out and pulling You in” while obvious is quite simply awesome but when it is followed up later with “I’m throwing this out and hoping in” it totally ties the whole song together. Yes, sin can get you down, and it can drag you through the mud for its own enjoyment but there is hope all you need to do is see that hope.
Overall, it is a great song, it opens the album extremely well, and it shows that the guys in Poor Old Lu did not lose anything in their time apart but instead grew from it and brought it all back to the table to show us something new but familiar because that “Lu sound” is definitely there in the song as well as the album.
Next week, we begin looking at Aaron Sprinkle’s (Poor Old Lu’s guitarist) solo work.
You know where the lyrics are… Continue reading
This week, we bring to a close the music of Poor Old Lu with a track off of their last CD, The Waiting Room. Released just six years after what was suppose to be their final album, The Waiting Room easily contains some of the best Lu songs to be recorded and released. What is interesting is not that the songs are well written (they are) but the overall sound and feel of the record shows a band that moved out of their early twenties and was pushing thirty. Do not mistake this as something that is a bad thing. You can really hear that the band and the musicians involved have grown up. The sound is tighter, more coherent, as well as linear. The record has an overall consistent sound to it that really shines through.
The song I want to focus on, is the opening track titled, “Revolve” because I feel that it is one of the best openers the band has ever used. Sure, “Rail” for the Eighth Wonder album is an awesome opener with how it comes in and builds and plays out through out. But “Revolve” starts out with the nice palm muted chunks that really bring you right into the song, grabbing your attention almost immediately and refusing to let go for the entire three minutes and forty-seven seconds of the song.
The song content focuses on sin, and the power it can have in one’s life. This is established early on in the song with the closing line of the first verse “Has the light gone dim, in light of this sin…” so you know right away he is focusing on the issue of sin and how it can bring you down and not even realize it until it is too late. The chorus though, “I’m pushing this out and pulling You in” while obvious is quite simply awesome but when it is followed up later with “I’m throwing this out and hoping in” it totally ties the whole song together. Yes, sin can get you down, and it can drag you through the mud for its own enjoyment but there is hope all you need to do is see that hope.
Overall, it is a great song, it opens the album extremely well, and it shows that the guys in Poor Old Lu did not lose anything in their time apart but instead grew from it and brought it all back to the table to show us something new but familiar because that “Lu sound” is definitely there in the song as well as the album.
Next week, we begin looking at Aaron Sprinkle’s (Poor Old Lu’s guitarist) solo work.
You know where the lyrics are… Continue reading
Lets review real quick. Passwords, check. Secure passwords, check. Preventing phishing, check. So by now you are secure right? Probably not completely. Here is a real quick question. Are you sending emails? Are you sending those emails via encrypted means? If no, then anyone can read your email. If you did not know, I will tell you now, emails are sent in clear text. That means that anyone who packet sniffs a network that your email is flying across, can read that email. Same is true for most instant messaging applications. Your messages are sent out in the open and anyone with the correct software can read them as if they were the one sending them.
So how do we fix this? Well, the answer is both simple and complicated (as it usually is with security), and the answer is data encryption. There are a lot of kinds of data encryption, some that you use without ever realizing it. For example, when you make a purchase from Amazon.com, when you enter your address and credit card information, you are doing that over an encrypted connection (https). We are going to go over some of the various kinds of encryption today and then next week, we will look at a couple of programs to help you encrypt your important data and communications.
The way that “Public Key” encryption works is simple in that there are 2 keys, a public and private key, for a person. They post the public version of their key on the internet somewhere and others can download it and add it to their key ring. If Person “A” encrypts a message with their PRIVATE key, then anyone with the public key can decrypt that message. Now, if Person “B” encrypts a message with Person “A’s” public key, then Person “A” can decrypt it with their private key. This is a very popular form of encryption, made such by PGP (which we will get into next week).
Unlike asymmetric encryption where the key to encrypt is different from the key to decrypt, in symmetric encryption the two keys are tied together in some way. It could be trivial or it could take multiple steps. Symmetric encryption is also known as secret-key, or shared secret. That means that all parties that can decrypt can also encrypt.
Well, that is a question better left up to the purpose. Each one has a specific use but if I had to pick one, I would go with asymmetric. I like the idea of public/private keys. But this is personal opinion and they both do serve their own purposes just fine. There are systems that utilize both, and these are called “Hybrid” systems.
That is pretty much it for this week’s write up. Next week we will look at various programs that use some of these encryption types. Be sure to check back to learn how to encrypt your data.
Michael Koby 