Sorry for the lack of updates over the last couple of months. Things have been crazy at work, plus I've been out of town for a while. Will try to add some new stuff soon...

In the meantime, I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope all of you had a relaxing Christmas (well, as much as that's possible), and your year is already off to a great start.

Even if you don't know what BSoD means, you've undoubtedly come across them before. They're the really annoying blue screens that appear whenever Windows crashes (and lets face it, that's quite often). I just came across a gallery of some very visible (and very funny) BSoDs. Enjoy!

Here's the gallery.

Ever wonder what would happen if you suddenly and unexpectedly lost your internet connection? I know, it's a frightening thought! Fear not, though, this site has the answer. My personal favorite quote:

10. Use Your Emergency AOL Disk
If you find that your connection to the Internet is going to be longer than you can possibly stand, as a last resort, pull out an emergency AOL CD, the one with 910 free hours of connection to the AOL service. Take the CD in one hand...and slash it across your wrist! Suicide will probably be a better alternative than connecting to that service.

Read the full story.

Ever wondered how to create your own bootable Linux distribution? Check it out!

There's a pretty short but to-the-point tutorial on using Qt Designer to create quick and easy GUI apps over on DevChannel (part of IBM's wonderful developerWorks network). This tutorial is primarily intended to give you a quick overview on how to create a very basic application, but it gives you a good introduction to the development environment as a whole, and well worth a look if you've ever considered developing with Qt.

Here's the tutorial

SecurityFocus has a great article on transparent firewalls. It doesn't cover many technical details, but it provides a great introduction to what they are, why they're useful, etc.

Read the full article.

I just came across this very informative article on creating web applets with XUL. It provides an introduction to XUL and Mozilla as a development platform, in the form of a tutorial for creating an online helpdesk system.

Now I gotta tell you, I spent a good many days playing with XUL over the summer, and it can be a real bitch to work with. However, it's a very powerful, cross-platform bitch. It's well worth learning, whether you want to create online applets, or offline applications.

Check out the full tutorial.

Anyone with experience in the IT security field should be familiar with the name Bruce Schneier. Author of Applied Cryptography, he's one of the definitive experts on cryptography, and he's recently been expanding his expertise into the wider world of security in general.

He recently granted an interview to CSO Magazine, in which he discusses various issues facing security professionals, concerns in a post-09/11 world, and several other topics. He also discusses/plugs his new book, Beyond Fear, which seems like it should be a very interesting read.

Here's the full interview.

Robert Cringely has written a fantastic article on how and why Microsoft just doesn't simply doesn't get it, and what that means for consumers. As Cringely says, these ideas are both obvious and old hat to people in or around the Open Source movement, but he does an excellent job of analyzing one of Ballmer's recent spearches, and breaks it down for techies and non-techs alike.

This is a must read. Here's the full story.

This is a really good article on one man's switch to Linux. Instead of focusing on the actual migration, however (as many of these types of articles do), this one focuses on the reasons why he made the switch. It's a short and entertaining read, but he brings up several important points. My personal favorite quote?

It wasn't just the virus, or the thrice-weekly crashes, or the forced upgrades or even the massive, bloated resource hog that Microsoft Office has become. It was the realization that Microsoft is building the Great Eye That Never Sleeps, which, in combination with your government identification number, will be used to track you, verify you and determine if you are a properly obedient little wage-serf.

Here's the full article.