I'm currently working on getting my thesis proposal into shape and laying out my next experiments, and in the process of describing the threat model today, I discovered that I wanted to make two references to the same footnote. Thankfully, I'm using LaTeX, which is, generally speaking, good at weird tricks that other programs have difficulties ( Read more... )

As many of you know, I have a less than positive opinion of our online learning/assignment submission systems at the university. My major issue is that they make simple tasks take a lot longer, for no apparently good reason -- just bad design ( Read more... )

I went to an Ottawa Canada Linux User Group (OCLUG) meeting for the first time in... well, a while, anyhow ( Read more... )

For the past few months, I've been doing work in web security. Nothing wrong with this at all: I find it strangely fascinating, both my supervisors are on board, and there's a LOT to be said in this space ( Read more... )

Ages ago, someone told me that there was an algorithm that could tell if you were male or female based on text you'd written. But I finally tried some samples of my own writing in this simplified version, and it turns out that I'm quite male, whether I use recent blog posts or the article I'm working on... Except for that pesky part where I'm ( Read more... )

I've been tasked with setting up a mailman server for work. This is pretty simple, in theory, but I'd never had it set up so that the web server and the mailman server were not the same machine. In this case, my mailman machine is behind the firewall, and I wanted our already public-facing webserver to show the web interface to the world ( Read more... )

For the first time ever, I gave a presentation where I really wanted a remote control. I've always wondered why so many people use them, given how they often have technical problems and waste more time than they save someone from walking over to the laptop. But the VGA cable was just too short to put the laptop within my reach when I stood at the ( Read more... )

Javascript's sort(myfunction) function needs a function which returns a number, NOT just a boolean "is this bigger" -- of course, given that I'm comparing composite numbers, there is no easy numeric return value. A is smaller than B if A.x < B.x or A.x == B.x and A.y < B.y. So subtracting the x values isn't going to work, and subtracting the y ( Read more... )

Project proceeds apace. I have a paper written without any results right now, but I may actually have something workable for when it has to be handed in tomorrow. There is definitely a glimmer of hope.

I had a weird craving for fresh white bread today. kenky, the big sweetie, brought me some. He was only slightly ulteriorly motivated by the fact ( Read more... )

I'm learning in leaps and bounds, but i still haven't figured out how to fix this particular problem which is basically essential to me moving forwards with this project. I suspect the answer is so simple that I've missed it ( Read more... )