Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

October 3, 2006

Dying with your Passwords

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 12:50 PM

Interesting post about problems that can be caused when a person dies without sharing their passwords. I have posted about this earlier over here

The main issue I have with sharing passwords is privacy, do I really want people to be able to access my data when I am dead?

Lets say I share my password with someone with instructions to only use it when I am dead, how can I be sure that one they they won’t get bored and start going through my emails/documents… Before you say anything, yes I have a low opinion of everyones honesty (including mine). I wouldn’t want to be the one that someone decides to share a password with.

Another issue is that I change my passwords constantly and at any given time I have ~ 5-6 (Probably more) different passwords in use. I have a hard time memorizing them so I expect others will have a harder time and since no one wants to memorize anymore useless data they will probably write it down somewhere. Now if their system gets compromised my data is also at risk because they wrote the passwords down which is not cool.

One of the solutions people suggested was to use a dead mans switch. Basically in that case if you don’t do something for X no of days your info/password is sent to someone. Its an interesting idea but the problem with this approach is that; what if I don’t log on to the system for X days because I got busy or forgot or was on vacation. It would still send out the data to everyone because I didn’t log on. I guess in the future we can have a device that can monitor a person’s heart beat or brainwaves and then when all activity stops it opens up the information but for now we are stuck with a manual process.

When I am dead people can feel free to go through my documents and most of my computer files. The stuff I don’t mind sharing is already unencrypted but the stuff thats encrypted has been encrypted for a reason. If I wanted to share it, it would have been unencrypted. The same goes for my email. I can think of no reason why someone would want to go through my emails when I am dead and no I don’t think I will get murdered with the one clue to identify the killer in my email.

What are your thoughts about this? Do you have a dead mans switch or something that will open your data to everyone when you die? If so why? If not, are you planning to?

Source: Schneier on Security: Dying with your Passwords

– Suramya

October 1, 2006

2 years and counting

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

Well, its 1st Oct again and its been 2 years that I have been maintaining this blog. Over the past two years I have realized the following things:

* Blogs are a good way for people who you don’t regularly interact with a way to keep up with whats going on in your life. You have no idea how many people told me that they regularly visit my blog to keep up with my life..

* Blogs allow you to present your thoughts to the public and have a good discussion on topics that you feel strongly about.

* Blogs are like a online archive of your life, a few years down the line you can come back and revisit old memories.

* Good Blogs are hard to maintain. 🙂 Yup its true, so many times I think about posting something but then decide that its not good enough or I don’t have enough time to make a good post. People who post regularly on their blogs have a great amount of dedication.

If you have been following the blog from the beginning you will probably have noticed that in the beginning I had a post almost every day then it sort of tapered down and recently I haven’t been posting at all. Its all to do with inspiration and time/desire/energy to post. I think I got tired of maintaining a blog, but now I think I will resume again. Lets see…

And if you actually read all that then thanks for being a dedicated reader and for visiting my site.

– Suramya

September 29, 2006

Some Site/Software updates

Filed under: Website Updates — Suramya @ 3:04 PM

Here’s a brief update on the various portions of suramya.com and various projects I have been working on:

  • mirror.suramya.com has been temporarily shut down till I fix some issues with it
  • Found a bug in photo gallery that causes it to display photos in random order when viewing individual photos. Am working on a fix for this.
  • Gimpshop package for Debian had an issue and I need to recreate it on my system. Will probably do it over the weekend.
  • email2IM and IM2email projects haven’t been worked on for a while but since I got a few requests asking about their status I will be updating them. Have a lot of cool ideas for stuff to add to them, lets see how much time I get to work on it.
  • gWiFi is on hold till further notice. Have to rebuild it from scratch to incorporate the new stuff the updated API’s offer and thats going to take time. Don’t know when I will get to it
  • Have sorted through a lot of photos over the past few days, will be uploading them to the photo gallery over the next few days.

    • Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

    – Suramya

September 17, 2006

Niagra Falls Trip photos posted

Filed under: My Life,Website Updates — Suramya @ 2:12 PM

Posted some of the photos taken during my trip to Niagara falls last weekend. Will post the remaining when I get them from Aarti and Amit:

– Suramya

September 13, 2006

Updated the photogallery after a long time

Filed under: Website Updates — Suramya @ 11:08 PM

Today I went through my image folder and sorted it out properly, so now I can actually find photos I am looking for without searching in multiple locations (My desktop, laptop and website).

Once I was done with that I uploaded the following photos to the photogallery:

Still have a lot more pics to post. Will do that when I get some more free time.

– Suramya

September 4, 2006

Experiences on my flight to the US

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 8:39 PM

As promised here’s a brief writeup on my flight to the US and what I saw during it…

This time I flew in Business class on Aeroflot because due to the late date tickets in Business class in Aeroflot were cheaper that tickets in Economy class on other airlines. So mom and dad dropped me at the airport at ~ 1 am, and I walked up to the check-in desk where this one guy asked me if I was a business class passenger and when I told him yes, he told me to follow him and really speeded up my checking by letting me bypass the queue. Then I got the pass for the first class lounge in Delhi which was nice. They have complementary food and drinks over there so I had a couple of sandwiches and then after waiting for a while went through security and waited for the flight to board. They changed the departure gate a couple of times but then they finally let us board.

The flight was ok, as they didn’t have any in flight entertainment for some reason. So I listened to music and read my book. The best part of that flight was the meals. While in the economy class they give you a weird looking/tasting meal, in the Business class they literally give you a Five course meal and the service was awesome. Basically as soon as I sat down I was offered champagne with unlimited refills. I had a glass and then switched to orange juice and I drank a lot of it. Basically anytime during the meal if my glass was empty they would refill it without my asking.

Landed in Moscow and had a 5 hour halt over there.. Moscow airport has this weird rule that they only give you access to the Business class lounge two hours before the flight so since I had about 5 hours to kill I spent 3 hours roaming around the airport and reading a book and when I finally got access to the lounge I was hungry again so had sandwiches and juice. They had a cyber cafe also but the internet connection was down for some reason.

Then I boarded on the flight to NY on time and we departed pretty much on time. The service again was awesome and this time they even had in-flight entertainment. The thing was that they didn’t have the standard LCD displays mounted on the back of the seat, they gave out these portable players which had the movies/stuff stored on it so you could lie down and still watch the movies. I saw V for Vendetta. The seats recline to ~20-30 degrees from the floor and are flat so it was easy to sleep. They even had power sockets where I could plug in my laptop and work on it.

I arrived on time in NY and since I was in business class I missed most of the rush at the immigration and customs. Surprisingly even my bags arrived on time and without getting lost. In total it took me less than 35 mins from the time I got off the plane to the time I was out of the airport.

It was an interesting trip, and if the tickets didn’t cost so much I would fly business class again. But prob not Aeroflot.

Well this is all for now. Will write more later.

– Suramya

September 3, 2006

Arrived in one Piece

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:15 PM

Arrived in one piece in the US.
Details on my trip when I am not so tired/sleepy.

– Suramya

August 31, 2006

Desperate people on Orkut

Filed under: My Life,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 10:36 PM

Well this is just one of those things that I find funny. I mean how desperate can a person get to have a female friend? Apparently a lot from what I have heard…

A couple of days ago I was talking to Tarini and she was telling me that she is sick of ‘weird’ people scraping her/mailing her asking to be friends with them. Then she told me that due to a mistake another friends of ours posted a list of phone numbers on Orkut with her phone number in it and she got flooded with calls from weirdos (her words) wanting to be friends… It got so bad that she stopped answering her phone if she didn’t recognize the number.. So I agree that there are a lot of desperate people on Orkut..

But the Desperate person of the year award goes to Prafull from Dehradun. He left a message on Surabhi’s Scrapbook asking to be friends and this is what their conversation went like: (My comments are in ()’s)

prafull: u dont know me but i want to introduce me and also want to know you….i wanna be ur friend
(Ok, Decent enough approach. Should have told more about himself, why he wanted to be friends etc)
Surabhi: why?
(Good Question)
prafull: bcoz i know u can make my good friend
(Stupid answer)
Surabhi: How do you know that?
(Exactly what I was going to ask, and the question he should have answered earlier)
prafull: bcoz my heart says that u r true…..why u don’t want to be friend like me dr whats the problem am i not good………
(This is where I started laughing… Can’t this guy take a hint?)
Surabhi: Why does your heart say that I am true?
prafull: dr plz dont be quessioning be my friend.. if u think u r really true.
Surabhi: I dont know what true means- You said I am true. Why does your heart say I am true?
(I guess Surabhi was having Fun… I would have ignored him a long time ago…)
prafull: hey what happend
prafull: true means u can make a good friend means never be false.. it means u can say trust worthy bcoz dr friendship depends on only trust and understandability. and i think u have both quality even i know you ..
(Now the desperation shows)
prafull: now plz tell me we r friends naaaaaa
(Ok… Here’s a suggestion for you.. When a girl says no she doesn’t want to be friends she usually means it. Posting messages like the one above after being told no, will only make you look like a fool and then people like me will make fun of you)

I am sure there are others worse than this but this is the most recent example I could find… If you have other stories do tell…

– Suramya

August 30, 2006

Biblical curse generator

Filed under: Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 11:36 PM

Really funny stuff. A sample of some of the curses I got from the site:

“Listen, thou sulphurous nonentity, for you will become as popular as a boil on the king’s backside!”

“Behold, thou shalt be trampled by a herd of stampeding pigs, O ye offspring of a squashed cockroach!”

“I pray thou shalt beget difficult teenagers, thou armpit of Satan!”

For more interesting curses visit: Ship of Fools: Biblical curse generator

– Suramya

August 29, 2006

Side by side or miles apart, dear friends are always close to the heart

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:17 PM

Don’t remember who exactly said this but its true. Friends are always close to a persons heart no matter how far apart you might be at the time. These past few weekends have been really awesome because I got the chance to meet some old friends some of whom I didn’t meet for over 8 years.

On the 19th we had a get together at Yash’s place for AFBBS (Air Force Bal Bharati School) 12C 1998 batch. This get together was planned at the last meet we had where seven of us met at TGIF for lunch. This time 12 of us showed up (Plus +1 for Nora) which was a big achievement as it was the biggest get-together for our batch ever. We spent the whole time talking, catching up with each other’s lives and generally having fun. We were up talking till I think about 1:30 am thats when every one left as they had to drive back home…

The pics from that party are at: http://photos.suramya.com/GetTogether_19thAug2006/, I will be putting them up in the photogallery sometime soon. (No really I will)..

Since this party was so much fun and there were a couple of people who couldn’t make it to Noida we decided to have another one at Ankur’s place in GK-I on the 26th. This party was even better as a lot more people showed up: Ankur, Arundhati, Aditya, Gautam, Gaurang, Kashif, Kunal, Praveen, Samarth, Tarini, Me, Vivek and Yash along with Rahul (Tarini’s fiance) and Parul (Vivek’s fiance). So it was a lot more fun. This time we managed to convince Samarth to sing for us (Which he did and was pretty good at it), Vivek and Parul to dance for us. Once they danced all of us also decided to join in, and it was surprising that Ankur’s neighbors didn’t come knocking asking us to turn the music down.

The pics from this party are at: http://photos.suramya.com/GetTogether_26thAug2006

Apart from school friends I have also gotten in touch with friends I had in 8th standard (~1994) and hadn’t seen/spoken to since. Ricki and Saurabh are two such people I have gotten in touch with on Orkut after having no interaction at all with them since 1994. Thats over 12 years!

Lets see if we can meet up some time…

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

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