Facebook gets linked account support.

Now you can logon to your Facebook account through several providers such as Google, Myspace and OpenId which IMO is great (I'm lazy). Just go to Settings, Account Settings and Linked Accounts. You can even pick multiple providers. One cool part is my openID provider VeriSign can be setup to use two factor authentication to help provide a little more security amongst all of the chaos. See https://pip.verisignlabs.com

Update 1 - As of now Google as a Linked Account is not logging me in though pip.verisignlabs.com is still working well.

Update 2 - My Google account will log me into FaceBook once I have authenticated via Gmail.

Installing Sun Java on Debian Lenny

The Sun Java JDK is available in the Debian Lenny non-free repository, therefore you must modify /etc/apt/sources.list...

vi /etc/apt/sources.list

and add non-free to the Debian Lenny repositories:

deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ lenny main non-free
deb-src http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ lenny main non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main non-free

Run

apt-get update

Install the Java JDK as follows:

apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Make it available system wide:

update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun
echo 'JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun"' | tee -a /etc/environment

MySpace lite view

I was recently on MySpace (it's rare) and I noticed a nice new feature called lite view. One of my main annoyances with MySpace is that most of the profiles that are "spruced up" with various decorations, modified text elements, various photo galleries, and etc actually break basic site functionality with many browsers. Numerous times have I wanted to comment on a friends MySpace wall just to find that the comment link is unavailable because the code didn't play nicely with the browser I was using. MySpace lite view disables all of the special modifications users have made to their profiles so you get to the point from a communications stand point. The other benefit is that pages load a heck of a lot faster then traditionally since there are not 5K photo galleries loading with music and everything else. I know, kind of a rant but it's finally a feature that I can say MySpace got right.

Evidently I'm now a "Certified Information Systems Security Professional"

In my quest to become a ninja, well that is a digital Jedi of some sorts I have recently obtained the (ISC)2 CISSP. This was a tough certification at 250 questions and 6 hours but some how I survived it and actually passed. I really found the CISSP for Dummies and the Shon Harris CISSP Certification All-in-One Exam Guide to be the most useful points of reference where as many of the other guides seemed to be overly complex but that's just my 2 cents... Either way a great addition to my short IT career to date :-).

Debian backup and/or update script

This Debian script is forked from another Gentoo script that I was previously involved in. From a basic stand point it can update the software repository, backup the file system, and send the backup to another machine via SSH. If you're interested in checking it out then great. If you find any bugs or think it could use some added functionality the please let me know!

New RSS feed

Tinkering as usual I was check out my FeedBurner feeds for accuracy since I have heard through the grapevine that a number of users are having problems with incorrect feed statistics when using FeedBurner. My statistics seem to be fine (not like anyone subscribes anyhow :-). It was interesting that Google has acquired FeedBurner and are planning on migrating the FB user base to Google though I have yet to receive any notification which was disappointing... The migration was painless enough and if you feel inclined my new feed is available at: http://feedproxy.google.com/rsreese.

TrueCrypt on my Dell notebook

So I recently acquired a new notebook and I of course wanted the notebook to be secure. When I say secure I'm not just talking about preventing someone from exploiting the notebook from the wild but the problem of physical security with regards to someone stealing it. There are a number of commercial tools out there to provide whole disk encryption (WDE) but I really did not want to spend the money so I decided to get TrueCrypt a shot. I've been using it for sometime to encrypt data on a few backup drives I have but never a system drive. The process is completely painless. I decided to stick with the AES algorithm since it's less hardware intense but be aware there are stronger encryption schemes available from the product. I also recommend making a backup disk and testing it! Secondly do NOT lose your key or you will not get into the system so it may be ideal to make backups and place them on another medium just incase...

At this point I'm rather happy with TrueCrypt the performance is great and how cool is it having the piece of mind that if someone decides to take your hardware it's currently impossible for them to retrieve your data.