In my opinion, forcing yourself to remember the strong password means you will use the same password in multiple places. This will leave you very vulnerable if your password is ever compromised. This also brings the “weakest link in the chain” effect into play. Your banks computers may be strong and your account information may be very secure on them. That internet message board or website you register with may not be as secure with the password to your electronic vault.

I carry a journal with me that has my passwords. I also guard the journal the same as I do my wallet. A journal may be overkill for most people so you could also write down your passwords and a single sheet of paper and store them in your wallet. Make sure you make a copy and stick it with your other valuable papers in a safe or safety deposit box. I create unique passwords for all of my sites and I write them down on a dedicated section of the journal as soon as I create a new account. I also don’t use words or dates in my passwords. Those are a lot easier to brute force than tougher passwords. For example, your name and birth date isn’t a good password. #eL9~ukl5f$ is a good password. EDqz~!)Oy$R:>jp;sd80_xCY}P=1^NVi41{.%GwPB”Dfqo4P,gentAG is an even better password. That last password is a 63 random printable ASCII character password generated by GRC’s Ultra High Security Password Generator. If someone can break that password, they were going to get your info anyway. I know some people have a tough time generating their own passwords so use that site. Steve Gibson of GRC is a legend in computer security.

It is ok to write down your passwords as long as you protect them and make sure you use different passwords for every logon you need. That way if one password is compromised somewhere you only have one password to change.

I had been using the custom FTP settings and had plenty of trouble getting it to work after the upgrade. This is what I did to make it work. First, set up your custom FTP server address. I could never get Foxmarks to work when I put in the URL to my FTP server. I had to put in the IP address on several different computers and it would finally work. That looked like this:

ftp://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/foxmarks.json

Not sure why Foxmarks is having DNS problems but that seems to be the case. The FTP server answers to the url just like it should. The only thing I can think of that could be causing it is the server is is using 1 ip for different websites and using the host header to forward the traffic properly. If that is the problem, it explains why so many people are having trouble with the custom FTP settings after the upgrade but some say theirs works fine.

The second part is getting the .json file up there. You have to go to a computer with the old bookmarks up to date. Then manually upload that set of bookmarks after you have upgraded Foxmarks. Now you have a .json file on your ftp site. Go to your other computers and configure their Foxmarks settings. Now you can force download the new Foxmarks file.

The back of my house has gutters that are at least 30′ off the ground. So you can imagine my glee when I saw an ad for the iRobot Loojâ„¢ 120 Gutter Cleaning Robot. I’ll report back when I actually get one.

1. Command S = boot into single user mode
2. command V = boot using verbose mode (all messages)
3. X = Reset startup selection and boot into OS X server
4. Shift = Boot into Safe Mode (press as soon as mac is on and hold down)
5. option = boot into open firmware target disk mode
6. Command + Option + Shift + Delete = bypass internal hard drive on boot
7. T = boot into firewire target disk mode
8. C = Boot from CD or DVD drive
9. N = boot from network
10. Command + Option + P + R = reset PRAM
11. Hold Down Mouse button = Ejects any removable media

Bonus Commands After Boot is complete

1. Command + Shift + 3 = Full Screen Shot
2. Command + Shift + 4 = Adjustable Area Screen Shot

The problem I ran into was not allowing enough room on the Windows Partition when I created it. I thought I would not be adding much to it so I didn’t want to waste precious space. I made it 10 GB and went on with the install. In the back of my mind I knew that was a bad idea and would be a problem someday, but I did it anyway. Well sure enough the day came when I needed more room. I didn’t really want to delete the Windows partition and start over so I needed a better solution. The one I came up with was a piece of software named Macdrive7 from Mediafour.

MacDrive 7 installs as a Windows program and allows you to see the Mac volume while logged on Windows. This treats the Mac volume with it’s 100 GB of free space as a second hard drive. This allows me to install my Windows games on Windows but actually use the Mac Partition to store the 5GB worth of game files on. Perfect remedy.