Now on Skype
Against all previous principles, I have now began using Skype. If you know me, feel free to me to your contact list. Just do not expect me to be Online all the time.
Skype Name: andreasolsson.se
…and no, that principle I mentioned has nothing to do with free vs proprietary software. It is more about me not necessarily being a big fan of telephones.
Vacation summary, by flickr and twitter
Now back in Sweden, after my vacation to New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC. For starters I have put a few photos online, in my flickr collection USA Vacation ’10.
Then there are the tweets I wrote (@andol). While incredible incomplete, they do provide some kind of summary.
- Now in New York City.
- “My exit music, please.”
- Highlight of the day: Eating lobster roll in the shadow of the Brooklyn bridge, while admiring the Manhattan skyline.
- Definitely think someone ought to open a Korean restaurant in Linköping.
- Best positive surprise so far: The Bitter End, in Greenwich Village - http://bitterend.com/
- Feels a bit odd that I only have to pay about ten dollars to have someone else to my laundry. No, not complaining.
- Breathtaking beauty: New York City, by night, from Top of the Rock.
- Seven bagels later; leaving New York for Philadelphia.
- Walking the streets of Philadelphia, appreciating the directional maps in every other street corner.
- Also, pretty sure that the Free Library of Philadelphia, at Logan Square, is the nicest library I have had the pleasure to visit so far.
- Philadelphia South Street, by night, almost feels kind of mediterranean.
- Leaving historic Philadelphia for present Washington DC.
- First night in DC: Evening walk in the National Mall, followed by an interesting Ethiopian meal in the Shaw neighborhood.
- Enjoyed the DC Ducks just as much as I enjoyed the Boston Ducks.
- Today turned into Smithsonian day. Visited the Museum of the American Indian as well as the Air and Space Museum.
- Today’s excursion to Theodore Roosevelt Island was a nice break from the city. The shadow provided by all trees wasn’t half bad either.
- Chafed feet –> silly walks –> loads of fun.
- DC beauty: The Lincoln Memorial, and its reflecting pool, during sunrise.
- Goodbye Washington DC. Hello eight hour flight.
- Back home in Linköping. Would like to thank my traveling companions @parwieslander and http://wikitravel.org/en/.
(Anyone who wants the full story will have to buy me and/or Pär a suitable cold beverage.)
birthday reminders, vCard to e-mail
A couple of months ago I wrote a Python script which parses my vCard address book and reminds me about upcoming birthdays. Given that it has worked well for me I figured I would share it with the rest of you.
I have not added any e-mail capabilities to the script, as I find it cleaner to simply let cron pass along the output. For more information, see the README file.
(The actual vCard parsing is handled by the Python vobject library.)
OpenPGP key transition
I’ve recently set up a stronger (4096R) OpenPGP key, and will be transitioning away from my old (1024D) one. To a large extent this is about being able to use the SHA-2 family for signatures.
The old key will continue to be valid for some time, but I prefer all future correspondence to come to the new one. I would also like this new key to be re-integrated into the web of trust. Please see this statement signed with both keys, certifying the transition.
The old key was:
pub 1024D/FAF2463A 2006-11-20
Key fingerprint = 4947 BB72 9192 8645 CC8B F142 8AF2 8D1C FAF2 463A
The new key is:
pub 4096R/13CD4F59 2010-07-11
Key fingerprint = AFEB 2D24 4715 3F0D 9250 8A8B 5882 A0DC 13CD 4F59
uid Andreas Olsson
uid Andreas Olsson
uid Andreas Olsson
uid Andreas Olsson
sub 4096R/9A943D4A 2010-07-11
To fetch my new key from a public key server, you can simply do:
$ gpg --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-key 0x13CD4F59
If you already know my old key, you can now verify that the new key is signed by the old one:
$ gpg --check-sigs 0x13CD4F59
If you are satisfied that you’ve got the right key, and the UIDs match what you expect, I’d appreciate it if you would sign my key:
$ gpg --sign-key 0x13CD4F59
Lastly, if you could upload these signatures, I would appreciate it:
$ gpg --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --send-key 0x13CD4F59
Please let me know if there is any trouble, and sorry for the inconvenience.
Vacation in New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC?
Hello Lazyweb
Currently I have my vacation coming up. During that time off me and a friend will be spending the last two weeks in August visiting the north-east part of the US. More specifically we will be visiting the cities New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC.
Any suggestions on things to do, places to see, etc would be most welcome.
(Yes, I have found my way to wikitravel.org. Great site!)
Linköping Launchpad workshop
Tomorrow evening, Monday that is, I will be hosting a Launchpad workshop in Linköping. It will be held together with “Dataföreningen” and their Ubuntu network. Primarily we will focus on using Launchpad for any (FOSS) project, while at the same time cover a few Ubuntu specific cases.
See Driva projekt på launchpad (Swedish) for more information.
OpenID relying parties
Being a big fan of the OpenID concept I’m quite happy that at least a few of the sites I like to visit are relying parties. Primarily I’m thinking of these sites:
Where do you login using your OpenID?
Using the YubiKey
One of the keys I carry around on my keyring is a YubiKey. This post really isn’t about the YubiKey itself, but more about me sharing a few insights I’ve gained on using the key.
- If you already run a WordPress blog you can easily turn it into an OpenID provider to be used with your YubiKey. What you need is the OpenID plugin and the YubiKey plugin.
- If you decide to personalize your YubiKey I can very much recommend the DuckCorp YubikeyHelp, in addition to the official documentation.
- The new 2.x version of yubikey-val-server-php seems to prefer being part of a group of validation servers, being kept in sync with each other. Failing to figure out how to configure my standalone installation to disregard that synchronization I modified ykval-verify.php (see patch) not to perform those checks.
- The YubiKey WordPress plugin mentioned earlier is hardcoded into using the official Yubico validation server. Apart from the validation URL, set in the function yubikey_verify_otp(), there is also the length of the key id. Just look for the numeric value 12 and you will find where the key id is being used.
No, this post is not meant to make sense on its own. You probably need to be at least somewhat familiar with the YubiKey as well as the services provided by Yubico.
