If you are reading this blog, I suppose you know about window managers and desktops. But for those who don’t; on GNU/Linux the graphic environment (named Desktop) is just one more piece of the operating system which can be changed or modified as any other. So there are several options and the user can choose. Desktop environments can be very different.

Mobile phone technology is a very complex topic which nowadays is mainly on the industria’s hands, far away from the citizens who only have the possibility of becaming a plain/passive user. For most of us a phone modem is just a black box where we don’t know what is going on.

If you have a server somewhere in the Internet, IMO, it is important to have the full data encrypted. Specially if it is hosted on some third party location. If you do not have access to the HOST machine (for instance you are running a virtual private server), you can never be 100% sure of the privacy of your data. Even if the virtual disk is encrypted with LUKS, in runtime the decryption key is placed somewhere in the RAM. An addvanced attacker would (in theory) be able to scan the RAM for key-like strings.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is something which has many utilities when playing with small computers. In addition to the Geolocation it can also be used to synchronize the exact time and date with the satellites. For Arduino this feature is quite important since the only way for having the correct time (without network) is by using an external RTC module. So I decided to take a look on the current GPS chips and its compatibility with the Arduino board.

Having a backup of my local data (photos, keys, documents, etc.) is something mandatory for me. Loosing it would be a really, really big mess and literally a huge part of my life would be gone.

PanStamp is a low-cost, low-power and small Arduino device. IMO the most beautiful feature is that it includes a Wireless module which can operate at 400, 800 or 900 MHz in addition to an accelerometer for just 16€ (the whole device). So recently I bought two of them to test and have some fun. The first impressions are very good, it accomplish all my spectatives. The Wireless protocol implemented (SWAP) is quite powerfull, minimalist and very well designed (of course it does not implement the WiFi-802.11 stack).

I’ve created this new blog using the platform Jekyll now and the Cheatsheet Markdown syntax.