I just stumbled onto Facebook (it wasn’t my fault!) and when I wanted to leave I had to press an “are you sure you want to leave Facebook”-button.

So, I checked and still today Facebook isn’t part of the standard model of physics and it doesn’t seem to be part of any of the big religions… so yes, the universe WILL survive without Facebook.

I clicked, “YES I want to leave” and I’m still here!

Do you have an anti-virus program for your phone?

You may not think of it as such, but if you have one of the more modern Smart Phones out there (iPhone, Android) you’re carrying around a small computer with more capacity than a desktop or laptop computer with a few years under the belt.

The threat are definitely real. Hacking a phone would make it possible to read your e-mails, use the phone as a listening device and hear your conversations or make it call a high price number in Bahrain. What you see happening to phones on TV and movies are not really so far fetched – although it usually requires more than just being near the phone like the guys in Person of Interest, before it gets hacked.

Part from these basic actions cracked.com lists the following things that can be done with a hacked phone or how a phone can be hacked:

• The tilt sensor can be used to figure out what you’re typing on your keyboard, if the phone is placed on your desktop.
• Your credit card information can be stolen, if the phone is just near the cards.
• Your phone can be hacked by free charge stations.

So, what to do?

Install anti-virus software

However, think of the following:

• Always install the software from a trusted source (I.e. the app-store, or app-market or Google Play). Do not download an anti-virus program from some website!
• Make sure you get software that does what you want it to do, there are a few variations. Read the specs!
• If you suspect your phone has been hacked, you may not be safe unless you do a total factory reset of the phone before you install any anti-virus software. Services like Gmail, Google Drive, etc might help you keep your important data even after a reset.

I’ve been running Avast Anti-Virus, and Avast Anti-Theft. The anti-virus software scans applications I install (which, in a contrary of the popular depiction in TV series, is the most common way of infection). The anti-theft software makes it possible for me to locate or wipe the phone if it gets stolen (I have linked my phone up with Dropbox, so wiping it on theft is probably a smart thing to do).

Of course, part from having a good anti-virus software installed, you also need to follow a few rules:

• Do not install software from unreliable sources if you can avoid it. Just because you have anti-virus installed you can still get infected simply because your virus definitions may not have been updated. Continue to use caution.
• Bring your own charger.
• Do not leave your phone unattended, or at least put in a lock password or lock pattern. Android has both, I am not sure what iPhone has, but it shouldn’t be too easy to just pick up your phone and install a Nanny-app just before the big board meeting.
• In fact, if you have a really important meeting, you might want to turn off the phone, rip out the battery and leave it in the next room – Belorussian (I think it was) rebels used to do that when the government used the mobile network to spy on them.

If you’re a fan of the TV series Pretty Little Liars, where a mysterious person, or group of persons, called “A” seems to have a magic ability to know everything about the main characters and what they are doing in exact that moment. You might want to think “hacked phones” and “A” may not seem so mysterious anymore…

One can only hope this only happens in TV, but a few irresponsible app installs later you may be monitored by NSA/China/your jealous ex… Or… well… I think we’re monitored by those three entities regardless of a hacked phone, but you get my meaning!

I decided, after some “experiences” to add a blog post about adding a link to the WordPress RSS feed of your site.

I may be missing something, or may not have come across the right plug-in or something else, however, I was unable to add RSS to my site. Either I got my feeds full with garbage and (I think) advertising from the plug-in author, or the simple little itsy-bitsy tiny RSS feed plug-in managed to make all my “Edit” buttons and links unreachable in edit mode (like when you wish to change the Publish date or the post slug).

Now there is a built in WordPress RSS feed widget, however it imports some one else’s RSS feeds while I want to have a link on my page that exports my RSS feeds. And, no, using the built in plug-in on your own site does not seem to make anything else than a list of links to your posts.

Either someone forgot to explain RSS feeds to the WordPress coders or, as I said before, I may not understand it.

Anyhow, I finally did it myself instead.

This is how I did it:

1. Add a Text Widget to your theme’s widget area
2. Put some HTML into the Widget
3. Check out WordPress’s RSS Codex page

1. Add a Text Widget to your theme’s widget area

You do this via “Appearance > Widgets” from the admin menu in WordPress.

The exact name of the widget is simply “Text”. It comes built-in with WordPress.

I used the text “RSS Feeds” as Title.

2. Put some HTML in the Widget

Here are two variants, one for the twenty eleven theme and one for the twenty twelve. The only difference is that the twenty eleven looks better as a list. This text goes into the larger text field of the widget.

Twenty eleven:

<ul>
<li><a href="http://YOURSITENAME/feed/"
  target="_blank">Posts</a></li>
<li><a href="http://YOURSITENAME/comments/feed/"
  target="_blank">Comments</a></li>
</ul>

Twenty twelve:

<a href="http://YOURSITENAME/feed/" target="_blank">Posts</a>
<br/>
<a href="http://YOURSITENAME/comments/feed/"
  target="_blank">Comments</a>

Replace YOURSITENAME with the name of your site (e.g. http://www.example.com).

The ”target=”_blank”” section of the “a href”-link ensures that the link is opened in a new window.

3. Check out the WordPress RSS Feed Codex page

http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Feeds

The codex page contains some more links, for instance to posts in categories and tags.

It may also be good to check that page to see that the links used here are still correct.

If you want to try other links simply replace the URL in the href=”URL“ part of the a-tags above.

The Linux watch command is a nifty little tool that can be used when you want to keep the result of a command under constant watch.

Here’s a sample for watching the /proc/mdstat file.

watch -n1 cat /proc/mdstat

The “-n1“-switch tells watch to refresh every “1” second (“-n2” would consequently mean, “refresh every 2 seconds” and so on).

The “cat /proc/mdstat” is the command to keep an eye on. “/proc/mdstat” is a process file that displays the state of md-raid drives in the system.

Press “ctrl-C” to stop the running command.

This is an example of “watching” the free memory:

watch -n1 free -m

If you add the “-d” switch, watch will mark differences between the runs.

watch -d -n1 free -m

And with the “-d=cumulative” switch the differences will be marked cumulatively between runs:

watch -d=cumulative -n1 free -m

You may also watch for directory changes:

watch -d ls -l

If you do not specify a watch interval (using “-n“) the default is set to 2 seconds.

For more info, see the manual pages for the watch command.

For watching files see the related “tail” command.

In IT-support jargon the expression “PEBCAK” (meaning “Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard”) is used to blame the user of the system for any computer-related problems they are experiencing while using said system – since they are located “between the chair and the keyboard” in most usual situations…

PEBCAK can be found long before the program reaches the end-user

I had a fun thought about the expression PEBCAK. Given my many years in IT development, I have observed two things:

1. Few programmers write their programs without sitting on a chair in front of a keyboard…
2. PEBCAK is just as likely to start way before the software reaches the end-user.

If you think the Project Cartoon is a gross exaggeration (you are probably an ordinary, unsuspecting computer user, and a victim :P…) I have to inform you, it’s not… The sad truth is that programmers have never been in control of systems, and even the most stable and dependable systems have flaws.

Even NASA has PEBCAK

Did you know that up until 2007 the space shuttles never flew missions over the new year… why? Because their computer systems, programmed in the 70ies, had no stable support for year changes…

Searching to find my source on the above statement only produces two Slashdot articles with links to, now non-existing, articles on CNN and Reuters. (Although I just came across this fact a couple of months ago, so either the conspiracy is recent, or my Googling skills are decreasing…) Anyway, here’s the Slashdot links:

• NASA Avoids “Happy New Year” On Shuttle
• Computer Date Glitch May Limit Next Shuttle Launch
• And the forum post “NASA Computers? Happy New Year – NOT!!!” goes into it in some detail. It, in turn, quotes an article in “Florida Today” from Nov 7, 2006, titled “Glitch may force NASA to launch shuttle early; Dec. 6 slotted for Discovery”

I’m not going to search for pacemaker system errors or similar, but I can guess the mitigating circumstances are that you’re not in space when the problem occurs and might actually get into the hospital in time…

If you like to read more about programmer initiated system errors (and errors initiated by IT projects) you should check out The Daily WTF.

If you feel like your Ubuntu is way to benevolent, you can always go Satanic.

Of course, I thought this was the edition I had installed, given Unity’s behavior, and the fact that my raid-devices are dropping like flies (they passed a badblocks scan, and as far as I can tell they are working again), but alas, perhaps I need more goat blood, hell fires and ritual chants?

The versioning of Ubuntu SE is less time constrained. Instead of using the year and date, like Ubuntu does, the numbering is simple: 666.8, for instance is the version number of “Undead Legion”, followed by 666.9 “Microsoft Massacre”, and 666.10 “Necrophiliac Necromancer”.

On the plus side, I may be able to scare my computer into submission by burning a CD of satanic edition…

OK, seriously. I fear Ubuntu Satanic Edition may be way too old to do anything with… (um although upon closer examination, they seem to have a news item from 27th of uhh January, 2012… that’s a year ago…) but on the other hand… Isn’t the current edition way too satanic? I think I could get a break from all the unholy shit going on if I installed this one with goat heads, flames and blood and everything else that belongs!

Another way to go would be Ubuntu Christian Edition, but unfortunately, I do not think Jesus will be downloading it any time soon…

Not only doesn’t it work, it laughs at you while you try using it… or well, it’s being scornful. I’m talking about Microsoft Outlook, that gave me the following comment (underlined red) when I tried to use it today.

So was the information helpful?… uh… I guess compared to faking that it can do the work and then tell me in about a week that sorry, I was just kidding, it is in fact helpful to get to know it cannot be done already on Monday…

Happy Monday!