Geek Drivel

I stumbled over an interesting article, from a couple years ago, on passwords. The most interesting part, to me, was a pair of statements buried in the text:

*Cuss words were very popular. Boy, there’s a lot of aggression out there.

*I was surprised about how many Christian-sounding — for example, “Ilovejesus” — log-on names were associated with the worst cuss words.

Just a thought, but if you’re really trying to live a clean life, try using a random password generator/database instead, or learn ways to remember random passwords.

Interesting interview with one of my favorite computer security writers, especially (to me) the part about how he handles passwords:

Q: How do you remember all of your passwords?

A: I can’t. No one can; there are simply too many. But I have a few strategies. One, I choose the same password for all low-security applications. There are several Web sites where I pay for access, and I have the same password for all of them. Two, I write my passwords down. There’s this rampant myth that you shouldn’t write your passwords down. My advice is exactly the opposite. We already know how to secure small bits of paper. Write your passwords down on a small bit of paper, and put it with all of your other valuable small bits of paper: in your wallet. And three, I store my passwords in a program I designed called Password Safe. It’s is a small application — Windows only, sorry — that encrypts and secures all your passwords.

I use KeePassX for the same thing, just in case, but I need certain passwords so often that I’ve learned how to memorize them. I’m surprised that Mr. Schneier hasn’t done the same.

The hardest thing about remembering something is remembering it long enough to remember it.

Okay, that sentence is a little convoluted, but that doesn’t affect it’s accuracy. The hardest part about remembering something is keeping it in your head for more than a few seconds in the first place — once you can do that, you can get better and faster at remembering it by constructing new memory paths to it from all the places you need them. The more you use something, the easier it is to remember it.

I’ve had several nights in the last few weeks where I just couldn’t get to sleep, or woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep immediately. To usefully pass the time, I’ve stayed in bed and practiced memory techniques.
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Yet more memory tricks, courtesy of your local mad scientist.

Now if only they could help me remember things, as well as forgetting them…

As featured in British author Peter F. Hamilton’s A Quantum Murder and the movie Paycheck, the technology for wiping specific memories is on it’s way to reality. This could be a very good thing, in some cases.