Passwords

/

I checked my site stats this morning to see a rather unusual metric — 3,200 page views in the span of a few moments, while unique visitors remained at a normal, more rational number. I then checked to see which content was being viewed, and lo and behold, it was the login screen to the admin of my site!

Then I checked the access log to see that all the attempts were from a single IP located in Turkey (using Firefox on Win XP, at that). I’ve since blacklisted that IP from ever being able to view my site, and made a more unique path to my login page, since I’m the only one who needs it.

The attacker was unable to gain access to my site largely in thanks to 1Password. If you’re the kind of person who uses the same password for everything, you either desperately need 1Password or would not be interested in it at all. Trust me, you should be the former.

I used to rely on only two rather weak passwords for everything. As of a couple years ago, I jumped on 1Password’s bandwagon (thanks to my good friend Samantha) and now have a unique complex password for every site I use. 1Password keeps track of all of them, and is easy to use with its browser plugin. And I always have my passwords handy thanks to the 1Password iOS app.

Your identity (and bank account!) is so important. Don’t trust it to feeble passwords. Get 1Password, because it is awesome.

P.S. Also a major hat tip to my host, Squarespace for their awesome stats, logs, and IP filters. Love you guys.

Apple to Live Stream Fall Event

/

From Apple’s press release:

Apple® will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 1, 2010 at www.apple.com.

The last time Apple did this was in the late 90’s 2002, I think — you know, back in the day when most folks didn’t have enough bandwidth to even stream video.

Needless to say, I’ll have a live blog or two open in tabs in case the stream goes down, but I am very excited to see it in action.

Also, if you’ve followed any of the rumors swirling about the Apple TV possibly getting live streaming support, then the text of Apple’s press release is interesting, as Andy Ihnatko pointed out earlier.

Rearranging the Furniture

/

I thought I’d give a quick update about some minor refreshes on the site. I moved some of the layout elements. The slightly hideous black navbar is gone and navigation has moved to the sidebar to be a little bit more bulletproof design-wise. Also, the sidebar has taken a leap from the right side of the page to the left, just for fun. The social section has also been thought out a little better (I stole the idea from Kevin Rose’s redesign. As Steve Jobs has said, “Great artists steal”).

You’ll also notice that the site itself has a twitter account. I’ve had the account since I relaunched with the techese name, but hadn’t publicized it until now as I was trying to come up with an idea for an avatar. Well, I finally sat down and made one in Pixelmator.

The twitter avatar also doubles as the favicon for the site (yeah, at 16px square, it’s hardly legible). Also, I designated the original image as the iOS homescreen icon, in glorious 512px square, 326 ppi awesomeness. So if you add techese to your iPhone’s, iPod touch’s, or iPad’s homescreen you’ll have a properly rendered icon — and it looks fantastic on a Retina Display.

Lastly, I added the brand spankin’ new Tweet Button to the bottom of every post. Use it to share my words with your friends. Real content is resuming shortly, I promise.