The Lifehacker website has a great article on using GAIM to send/receive encrypted IM messages.

An interesting thing about IM without encryption is that any packet sniffer application (ethereal is the one I use most) can pickup and read the entire conversation without any difficulty at all; most IM programs send the entire conversation in plain text for the entire world to see.

I tend to like reading MAKE’s blog often to get ideas for future projects and came across a blog post recently about using your electronic skills to help celebrate the Holiday season.

I’m thinking of trying my hand at programming one of the character LEDs and building a menorah from scratch. From what I can tell about the project, the following psudocode is a good guess at how the programs work:

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For those out there who don’t know what to get their friends or relatives for the upcoming holiday season, MAKE Magazine provides a list of popular open source projects that is filled with interesting gift ideas for the techies on your list.

The list includes everything from an open source Atmel AVR programmer, to an installer of portable open source applications for USB thumb drives, and even a home automation web interface that talks to most commercially available home automation products.

One idea that I had seen elsewhere on the internet is to burn Ubuntu or Knoppix LiveCDs for people as an added stocking stuffer. It’s relatively cheap to do that and would provide added exposure to LINUX without permanently getting rid of their current OS and data.

Today, I took the plunge just to try what the dark side had to offer… I downloaded the latest incarnation of the browser from hell, Internet Explorer 7.

I know; I betray the browser gods by tasting the forbidden fruits. In repentance, I will perform 5 Hail Linus’s and confess my sins at the Church of the Fiery Vulpes (their website).

My argument to support my actions is, how do I truly know I don’t like something until I try it for myself?

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After getting back into biking and attaching my GPS to my bike to track my various trips, I was left with one last missing way of viewing the information: seeing the tracks on Google Earth so that I can maintain each route that I’ve taken while biking.

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