Foundation was slow. A lot of dull dialogue. Really not much happening. I’m hoping someone will set me straight, and explain to me what I was missing while reading this novel.
Anyway – I didn’t finish it. I don’t often give up on books, but this one I had to.
We’re all told to have strong passwords for everything. Long, good, complicated passwords with symbols, numbers, capital letters. Passwords that are a pain to enter without a passwords manager, in essence. Because password managers exist, that’s all good for nearly every situation, except when it comes to logging in to your desktop.
I know this kind of thing exists already, but I don’t think they exist quite as simply (and potentially as un-securely) as this.
What I’ve made, using an old Digispark ATTiny85 arduino board with a built in USB-A plug, is a device that, when plugged in to a USB port, and the button is pressed, will type in a pre-determined string of characters followed by the enter key. There are two use-cases I can think of for this. Logging in to your desktop where there’s no password manager available, and entering your long-winded password into your password manager when setting that up.
There are obviously security issues with this – it’s a single factor authentication system. And you’re keeping the entire password available to anyone who picks up the doodad, plugs it in, and presses the button. There are things that could be done to make that safer – like only keeping part of the long-winded password on the device, requiring user input for to complete the password. But as a little one-hour project, this was fun.
My soldering is a mess, but it works. The button circuit includes a pull-up resistor, to stop any erratic button behaviour when there isn’t a definite high or low signal, as per a tonne of tutorials online. Like this, straight from the Arduino source: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/BuiltInExamples/Button
Here’s the completed product:
The code that’s running it is as below. Firstly, import the HID library from Digispark (there are tutorials on how to get that happening on the Digispark website). Initialise the button state, configure the required pin to wait for signal, then repeatedly wait for button press. If there’s a button press, send the defined string to the computer, and to prevent multiple entries, wait for a second before moving on.
#include "DigiKeyboard.h"
int buttonState = 0;
void setup() {
pinMode(5, INPUT);
}
void loop() {
buttonState = digitalRead(5);
if (buttonState == HIGH) {
DigiKeyboard.sendKeyStroke(0);
DigiKeyboard.println("notmyactualpassword");
DigiKeyboard.delay(1000);
}
}
At the end of April (2022) there was a burn-off in Gandy’s Gully. A few weeks after, I walked through with Bear and took some photos. I was surprised to find some trees still smouldering. I heard that the burn-off got a bit hotter than expected thanks to a surprise change in wind direction during the burn-off.
“Every body is a cycling body.”
The benefits of bike riding are enormous. I rely on it pretty heavily for the health and fitness benefits, along with the mental health benefits. BetterHealth, a branch of the Victorian Government, lists the following benefits to regular cycling:
Read the entire article here.
For many years, I didn’t really think that there was any benefit to cycling-specific clothing, but I am absolutely a convert. But this is where the problems start.
People who ride bikes are all skinny whippety mountain goats, right? It would certainly seem that way if you look at the clothes available for bike riders. Me, a verified “big-fella” who normally wears XL clothing, has to go and hunt through the slim pickings in the XXXL section at the bike shop to find bib-shorts that fit – and I feel lucky if I find something that fits. And there are many people bigger than me out there.
The problems for bigger bike riders don’t stop there, though. Bike frames and bike wheels are designed to a weight limit. A weight limit I’ve been close to hitting, at times – which is particularly scary when it’s a carbon frame. And again, there are many people out there who are bigger than me.
The solution here is having a positive, noisy, inspiring person to advocate for us fat cyclists. Someone who can convince the bike industry that they need to start being inclusive. Bigger clothes. Stronger frames. Stronger wheels. All bodies on bikes.
This positive, noisy, and inspiring person is Ebbe Silva, and his brand XL biking.
Ebbe has been selling jerseys on his website for quite some time, but wants to expand the range to include more sizes (S-10XL). He is also going to design larger cycling bibs, a gravel collection, and a road cycling collection. But all this design takes time, and costs money. Which is why Ebbe has launched a Kickstarter campaign. Read all about it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/xlbiking/xl-biking, and if you’re able to, throw some money his way.
We need Ebbe’s advocacy for an inclusive cycling industry!
Links:
If you’re looking for a moderately long hike with gorgeous views that’s also very dogs-off-lead friendly, give the Pioneer Women’s Trail from Beaumont up to Mt. Osmond a go. It’s a winding 7.2 km out-and-back walk with about 180 metres of elevation change. At a brisk pace it takes about 80 minutes for me, but it’s worth slowing down for the views of the city, suburbs, coast, and airport.
Start at Brock Reserve (///moving.dangerously.deeply, OpenStreetMap) on Dashwood Road, then follow the signs until you get to the top. If you’re walking next to the golf course, you’ve gone too far. There are plenty of shortcuts if you want to go for a steeper, but shorter variant of the walk – you’ll probably see plenty of people coming up Bayview Track, Centre Track, and Travers Track when you’re out there.
