These are posts that show LeMasney Consulting’s experiences with contemporary technology, services, innovations and computers of many kinds.
This is the 2013 series premiere of Technology and the Arts, a webcast exploring the connections between technology and art. Co-hosts Brian Kelley and John LeMasney discuss Arduino, Raspberry Pi and a study on how technology can be used to teach young people about creating art. For more information, visit http://technologyandthearts.com.
At 7 pm, on Monday August 5th, 2013, I’ll be at Princeton Public Library, I’m going to be giving an introductory overview of open source hardware, the Make movement, and the ideology of openness. In particular, I’ll be talking about Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and related hardware projects.
(post event note: Thanks to everyone who came out, and here is the link to the presentation)
The Arduino is an electronics learning platform. The instructions for how to make one from scratch are freely available, which is why it is considered open source hardware, though many people find it far easier and supportive to the platform to just buy one. You can get them at your local Radio Shack. Once you have it connected to a computer, you can begin to program it or run programs that others have made for it, called sketches. The key idea with Arduino is that you program it to accept input from sensors or scripts, and to produce output in the form of light, sound, and other signals. With this basic idea, you can use the Arduino to solve little problems like knowing when the Dryer has stopped, feeding your animals reasonably while you are away, or making sophisticated environment based games.
The Raspberry Pi is perhaps a simpler idea for the uninitiated: a computer capable of doing most anything your laptop, desktop, tablet or phone can do (given the monitor, keyboard and mouse) available for $25-$35 dollars, depending on model. Because of the incredibly low price but relatively strong computing power, you can use the Pi to do all kinds of interesting things that you would not consider doing with your desktop or laptop machine. Running home automation, media servers, dedicated graphics workstations, an email terminal, a streaming media interface for your TV, and much more.
This is rather abstract. A more concrete example of technology security is to choose great passwords. If you choose a great password and keep it in your head and not on paper or in anyone else’s head, you immediately offer yourself more security against someone using your devices and services as though they were you. You might be tempted to write it down on a note in your office, or share the password with a trusted friend, but the minute you do that you immediately offer a chance for the password to get into the wrong hands, eyes, or ears. Also, if you believe that you are not important enough to be targeted for password theft, or that it’s about money or fun, you are overlooking the possibility that your account might be used to simply disguise the activities of the person who uses it, making it seem as though you did something illegal, immoral, or sinister instead of them.
For example, let’s look at creating a great password from a not so great one.
‘06011960‘ is a horrible password. It’s a birthday, and anyone who can find out your birthday (not as hard as you might think) can try to log in with it to your accounts.
‘jimmy‘ is also a very bad password, for a few reasons, namely I probably chose it because it is significant to me, and anyone who knows me might be able to guess it. Even if they don;t they might use what’s called “brute force attacks” with dictionaries of common words, names, and strings used for passwords to automatically get into my account. With simple passwords like this, they emphasize the ease of you remembering it, rather than the difficulty of bypassing it.
‘JimmY‘ is a better password, because I have introduced shift characters (capital letters), which extend the time that someone would need to brute force attack and discover the password. It’s still kind of short and common, though.
‘JimmY&jAne‘ is better yet, because it is longer, uses shift characters, and uses a non-alphanumeric character.
If we take this to an extreme, we might choose ‘!32%tRuH&k*9‘, which would be incredibly hard to guess, and difficult to crack, but there’s a problem in that there is little chance that you will remember it.
A good compromise, and a great password, is something like ‘The4WallsOfMyR00mAreFriends‘ which introduces some great features.
It’s both memorable and nonsensical. It’s long, which makes it harder to crack. It has alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric characters, making it harder to crack. It mentions a personal keyword (friends) for the site that I am using the password for (facebook), because I am choosing a different password for each site or service. This is a good thing for when someone guesses one of my passwords, they would not necessarily know my other passwords. It uses many shift characters. This password would be very hard for others to guess or crack, but very easy for you to remember. You might choose a favorite song lyric, quote, or statement as the basis for your password. If you are a Rolling Stones fan, perhaps ‘DidY0uGuessMyName?’
One last point: If you are using public WiFi, such as at a Panera, you should be extra careful about logging into important sites (e.g. banking, email, social networks) unless the URL for the site begins with https:// because otherwise someone could capture your password as it travels to the site over http:// using what’s known as ethernet sniffing software. https:// is an encrypted protocol, and provides some (if imperfect) protection from password capture and other activity.
If you want to know more about how you can stay protected while you are using technology, please contact me at lemasney@gmail.com. The first session with new clients is always free.
Last week, I was fortunate to meet for four hours with a company that wanted to learn how to use PowerPoint 2010 more effectively, make better, more engaging presentations, learn a bit about design tools like Inkscape and the GIMP, and develop a base of design skills. We all learned a lot about color, look, feel, design success, and more. Thanks so much to the company in question, and I love Hoboken‘s view of NYC. I can’t wait to go back.
Here are the presentations I used to walk the group through the issues.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iC0N-C2xRgH6xlvB6Gt0RXb6HcefgoGh0JrmtaEMrLk/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/121kHFLhNGrP85vKdR5ti1tRFVzMbwRmboBRuzRLFg7A/edit?usp=sharing
In this session, John LeMasney will show you how to use Google’s Hangouts feature to video conference with up to 10 people, share screens, broadcast yourself, and archive the recording, all from your computer, tablet, or phone. John uses the technology to create a series of shows on using technology in customer service, educational technology, and graphic design, known as Neckbeard Networks on YouTube.
Come and learn how to use this great free technology to connect with people about your favorite topics.
When: Wed , 3/20 from 7-8:30 pm
Where: Princeton Public Library Technology lab
Skill Level: Intermediate
No registration necessary
In this session, I talked with new, excited WordPress users about the various ways they might want to use WordPress, including content management, subscription, sharing features, video and image publishing, discussion, and more.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-UtuHCCsOalOZRicHFTBlVIW-Phpq5GWCJ1GZIoVlwQ/edit?usp=sharing
We’re back…August 5!
PiCast Offers Chromecast Functionality for Raspberry Pi
Getting Started with Nodebots
Death by Powerpoint
What to do with Charts
Design beautiful PowerPoint slide decks with Slidevana