I have trying to develop a way to make the encryption of sensitive documents as seamless and effortless as possible for non-techie people.

There are brilliant applications available for people to use and they are very easy to set-up.

The problem is that secure volumes and folders are set-up as separate areas for the storage of sensitive documents, with the result that either they are not used or some sensitive documents are left out.

The solution is to make the secure volume the default area for these individuals to store all of their data and for most windows users, that means the My Documents folder.

I used Truecrypt to create the secure volume. It was setup using a meaningless file name in a non-descript folder on the C: drive. Normally, I would have used a separate physical disk for this volume but it was a laptop with only a single hard drive.

I then moved the My Documents folders for this user into the secure volume after pruning out some default save folders for iTunes and Google Video.

The trade-off for using the my Documents folder is that a lot of non-secure items will be saved to this location (Christmas lists, letters to family and friends) but it will also be the default folder to hold all of the sensitive items that need to be secured. The user does not need to make a decision whether or not the document being saved is needing encryption.

As long as the TrueCrypt password chosen is of a reasonable length and memorable, this fellow is safe from prying eyes for those items that need to be secured.

This is very scary.

Can we now discount the U.S. as part of the first world? Move them down the chain to those groups who pray to jeeps in the South Pacific?

I have just returned to twitter

I joined a couple months ago and let it sit. I have joined and used things like this before and never found them to be beneficial (buddyping comes to mind). I still believe it is a stalker's dream site.

Been working on the new ScotLUG t-shirts for the Paisley Beer Festival.

It was work acheived through a number of people. Mike Quin took my original idea and refined it into a decent piece of work.

I put the fonts I liked past the folks in IRC and they chose the ones they wanted.

Lucinda Sans and Magik.

The t-shirts will be ready in a week and hopefully Linux Format will run the picture again.

I have just found Epica leather bound journals, which is serious notebook pr0n. They look fantastic, straight out of a museum or a Myst episode.

The only problem is that I would never write anything in these journals. I have a problem in marking up a ten quid moleskine, with my thoughts. A £1200 leather bound journal would remain pristine.

Picked up a Nokia N95 from Vodafone. Supposedly Vodafone have killed VoIP on this phone - so it is time to flash the firmware on this puppy and get some functionality back.

We used the Tomtom One a great deal while holidaying down in South Ayrshire. It worked very well and guided us to a number of places, including the remote cottage that we stayed in.

We put the postcode supplied to us by the owner of the cottage into the Tomtom and it took us within a 100 yards of the place. I think the postcode designated the area rather than the individual buildings. Without it, I doubt we would have been there as quickly.

Another situation was when I tried to find the Sulwath Brewery in Castle Douglas. We found ourselves on King Street and as Liz pulled over to park, we were right beside the brewery. It would not have been easy to find since the brewery is actually not on the street.

The Sopranos in 7 minutes and 36 seconds

Easy way to catch up on the Sopranos.

Is there anything cooler than Astronuat Tools

I did not think so.

Combine big ships, large machines and cranes and you have one of my favourite web pages.

What could you do if you filled one of these supertankers with Sun Black Boxes.

Maybe take over the world.

What could be better than sitting in the backyard on a summers eve with a belly full of barbeque and then toppping it off with some Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream

This public toiletis a little intimdating. It reminds of the public urinals that they had at the Edinburgh G8 Peace Rally.

Gmail Manager allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications.

The OpenSUSE team are conducting a survey.

They want to know how people feel about the 10.2 release of OpenSUSE.

If you are using it - go fill it in.

A rear-view mirror made from beercaps and bike spokes that can be attached to your bike helmet.

Beer-view mirror

I have been using the Blueye for about two months now and so I thought that a review was in order.

This handy little device operates very similar to the Apple iPod remote with a few differences. In terms of shape, it resembles the old iPod remote. The clip on the old remote sucked and was ineffective in clipping onto things. The Blueye suffers from the same problem. Too often you look down and see the remote hanging a couple feet down your front. You can't lose it but it is a bit of a pain.

One other point, before we get to the main functionality of the device is the radio button. The old apple remote enabled an FM Radio on the iPod which you accessed through the click wheel. The Blueye uses a FM Radio button on the side of the device just below the lock slider. It is too easy to hit when you are trying to clip it to your jacket or fumbling for the play button. Hauling out your iPod to determine why it will not play your music and finding it tuned to 88.9 on the FM dial is inconvenient.

Finally, the main use of the Blueye is to provide Bluetooth connectivity to your mobile phone. You are walking along, listening to tunes on your iPod, and your phones rings. You hear the ringtone through your earbuds and answer the call. When you hang up the call, your music starts up again.

Setup involved a few cryptic key presses, but the two devices were easily paired up. The connectivity is as good as the in-your-ear Bluetooth devices and it does not make you look like a Borg.

The earbud volume is set by the phone's volume, if you use the phone without the Blueye and then reconnect, it can blowout your ears, . I tend to use the phone speaker volume set on high when walking next to city traffic, and then have unpleasant loud volume in my ears when I reconnect the phone to the Blueye.

You can use voice tags to call people (there is a small voice tag button on the Blueye remote), so this is a wasted feature on me. This never really worked for me when I tried it with just the phone. I feel very silly when I shouting people's names into my phone repeatedly while it dailed no one.

I had one problem in that checking your calendar on the phone will stop your music. If you turn off your keypad tones, the phones will send no sounds to the headset and allows you to use your phone without shutting off your iPod.

All in all, the Blueye does what it says on the box. I tend to use it more often than not. I own an Apple iPod remote, which has been replaced by the Blueye.

I was thinking of getting an Nokia N80 as an upgrade but it seems that for once I have dodged a Mobile Phone bullet, as N80's are being recalled and discontinued by every major phone supplier.

I guess I now need to wait for the Nokia N95.

I found this image of Google’s First Production Server on Flickr, along with a number of decent photoso of amazing technology held at the Computer History Museum.

I love this image. The view of the Shuttle is asotounding and the F-15 in the foreground just makes it better.

Who would not want to build their own Climbing Wall?

This fellow employed the help of a friend but it seems to use treated lumber so the wall could stay outside, if you combine this with marine board you have a sturdy outside structure. I am sure the costs could be reduced if you built this inside.