Category: Geekerama (Page 1 of 4)

Last night, I saw a lecture at the Royal Institution.

It was all about time – a subject that has always fascinated me.

Called “Fragile Times: Why Accurate And Resilient Timekeeping Is Critical”, I found it amusing – and, of course, somewhat ironic – that it started two and a half minutes late.

But it was enjoyable, nonetheless.

Several speakers from the National Physics Laboratory, gave talks covering their particualr fields of expertise: starting off with a bit of history, then some examples of areas where accurate timekeeping is essential; onto the current range of atomic clocks, using caesium fountains and hydrogen masers and finally onto the latest devices which are under development: optical clocks.

With an uncertainty of just a couple of parts in 10¹⁸  these latest timepieces are 100 times more accurate than the best atomic clocks we have today.

To give an example of the level of accuracy they hope to achieve, one of the speakers said that it would be like calculating the age of the universe (circa 14 billion years)… to within half a second.

Boom! Mind blown.

I reckon only 50% of my readership will understand that post title.

The other one will have no idea.

Anyway, I was reading an article last week, about the security of the passwords we all use.

Most of us pick something memorable and use that for everything… which is not a good idea!

I have my own system, which I have always considered to be pretty difficult for the hackers to crack, but as computing power gets faster and cracking software gets better, I wondered whether that would still be the case.  And of course, now that we all have access to AI systems, who knows how much quicker and easier it will be for the naughty hackers  to crack our passwords.

From what I can gather – and put simply – the longer the password, the more difficult it is to crack. But of course, having different 18-character passwords for everything, isn’t easy.  We need a compromise between security and convenience.

As such, I took a long, hard look at the system I use.  All my internet login passwords use a mixture of letters, numbers and special characters as shown in the far right column in the table above. They tend to be of different lengths, but generally all fall into the orange area… which is fine: if some hacker wants to spend three years trying to get into my Cineworld account, then so be it.

On the financial side of things – banking logins, etc – I use a slightly stronger system and it all falls into the the yellow area. Coupled with 2FA, I feel this is probably secure enough.

But, whilst my system makes it pretty easy for me  – and me alone –  to guess my passwords, there are still too many for me to try and remember (bearing in mind, you normally need to remember a login name as well as a password). And so, I use a Password Manager on my phone – with a desktop application – and it currently holds about 200 different passwords.

There are plenty of good ones available – I won’t be recommending any here, just do a search – and even the free ones look pretty good.

With a Password Manager, you only need to remember one master password – so make it a good one and make sure you don’t forget it!

Of course, you may be thinking that if I lose my phone and someone then finds it and manages to guess the sign-in pattern I use, and then also somehow figures out the master password for the Password Manager, then they would have access to all of my passwords.  But no: without that key piece of info about each password, that is known only to me, they won’t get very far.

So, after several days of looking at different password systems and different Password Managers, I’m happy that my current system is up to the job.

So long as I don’t accidentally download a keylogger.

Those of a technophobic disposition should probably look away now.

As with so many others at the time, my very first programmable computer was the ZX81 from Sinclair.
I can remember the stir caused by its predessor, the ZX80, which had me excited to get one, and when I did, in 1981, I wasn’t disappointed. This was all so new and exciting and opened up so many possibilities for someone with a technical bent, like myself.  The ZX81 itself, though pioneering, was a limited machine, especially with its very limiting 1k of memory. It wasn’t long before add-ons came out – one of the most useful of which was a 16K RAM pack that plugged into the rear of the computer.  This made a big difference, as it allowed larger and more useful programs to be run on the machine. However, it was also very infuriating, as the edge connector wasn’t the best at making contact and the slightest knock or wobble would cause it to lose everything. Hours of painstaking typing on that ridiculous membrane keyboard could be lost in a split-second if you weren’t careful.  I purchased a proper keyboard for mine – made by Maplin (RIP), I think – which was so much better.  I then took the computer apart and rebuilt it into a project box – also procured from Maplin – fixing the RAM pack directly onto the board to eradicate the wobble problem and fitting the power supply inside. I then had to fit a small fan to the top, as I found it would get quite hot.  I learnt a quite a bit from playing with that machine.

Inspired by Sinclair’s success in the field, it wasn’t long before other manufacturers started to flood the marketplace with their own machines. My next purchase was a Sharp MZ80K, Which I bought from Lasky’s (RIP) and which had a proper keyboard (well, almost) and a built-in monitor and also a built-in cassette deck for saving and loading up programs. With its huge 48KB of RAM, it was a big step up from the ZX81.  I think it was possible to run programs in Pascal on the MZ, but having cut my teeth on BASIC, I struggled to learn it. However, it didn’t hold me back as I became quite a whizz with BASIC and would write some fairly impressive stuff… if I do say so myself.  I spents hundreds of hours glued to that machine – sometimes even taking sick days from work, just so I could finish writing a program. It became quite an obsession.

The BBC Micro was quite ubiquitous by now, but for some reason I bypassed it completely… maybe I didn’t want to switch from the Z80 processor that I had been using so far?  I don’t know. Anyway, next along for me – and sticking with that same processor –  was the Amstrad CPC6128: a colour machine with a whopping 128KB of memory and – more importantly – a built-in floppy disk drive. Oh yeah!    Loading and saving to tape was slow and laborious, so again, this was another seachange.  This had a better keyboard than the old Sharp and the disk drive was a joy to use in comparison to the old cassette tape. As such, I spent even more hours seated in front of this, than I did with the MZ. This machine introduced me to Word Processing, via a program called Protext that I had on a selectable ROM and an Epson FX80 dot matrix printer which used tractor-fed fan-fold paper. It was bloody brilliant… for those days. The CPC6128 was the last complete desktop computer I ever bought.

In the second half of the 80’s, the Personal Computer (PC) was becoming the standard and I thought I’d have a crack at building one. I’d read about what was involved in one of the computer magazines of the day – and weren’t there some computer magazines back then? Hundreds of different titles. Our local WH Smiths barely had room to stock anything else.  Anyway, by phoning the proprietors of various adverts in these magazines (there was no real ‘online’ yet) I ordered all the bits to build an AT 286… what was commonly known back then as an IBM Clone.  I remember receiving the Hard Drive in the post: a secondhand Amstrad 20MB unit.  Twenty Meg! That was huge! I’d never be able to fill that up!  It took me an evening to figure it out and put it all together, but it worked first time.  Once again, the speed and the convenience over what I’d had before, was a revelation. And I just loved the 5¼ floppy drive.  A ‘proper’ floppy!

From then on, it has all just been a series of upgrades: 286 to 386; 386 to 486; 486 to Pentium, etc, etc. All housed within the same desktop case, so they all looked exactly the same, but each came with a performance improvement.

And then I switched to AMD processors and haven’t looked back: more bang for your buck.

My current desktop (in a newer and bigger case) runs an AMD Ryzen 5 with 6 cores; 16Gb of RAM and a 1TB Solid State Drive.  She fair flies along and has four external USB drives permanently plugged into her, as well as a NAS drive; an inkjet printer; a laser printer/scanner; an SDRPlay RSP and a Kenwood TS-590 HF radio tranceiver.

I currently have no need to upgrade, but with 16-core processors now on the market, and large SSD drives getting cheaper all the time, it probably won’t be too long before I get out the screwdrivers and the thermal paste.