The University of Washington Computer Science Course, C590 Advanced Cryptography, is available online. They offer the assignments, solutions, all the lecture videos, quizzes, etc, on their website. The content is pretty good and would only recommend it to the more advanced audience. Get the content while it’s available!! I’m downloading all of it as I’m writing this post. Get it here:

Course Intro and Assignments

Lectures in MP3 format and WMV format

Download Entire Handbook of Applied Cryptography here

Sample Cryptography Implementations

Most barcodes in the US are 12-digit UPC barcodes, with ten digits at the bottom of the code and one small number to each side. Impress your friends by asking them to select a random item from the kitchen with a removable label and cut the numbers off of the UPC barcode; you can then proceed to read the numbers encoded in the lines.

Steps:

1. Note that barcodes are made up of both black and white lines. The white spaces in between the black lines are part of the code.

2. Understand that there are four different thicknesses to the lines. Henceforth, the skinniest line will be referred to as “1,” the medium-sized line as “2,” the next largest line as “3.” and the thickest is “4.”

Well if you are like me and you like to be one of the first people to experience something new, then check out Yahoo! Mail Beta before everyone else! It’s pretty easy to do if you already have a Yahoo! account. If not then just create one for free and do the following.

To change your content preference, log in to Yahoo Mail, click Options, select Account information from the left panel and then edit Member Information, General Preferences, Preferred Content. Select, for example, Yahoo UK, click Finished. When you go to Yahoo Mail, you’ll see a page that says “It’s the New Yahoo! Mail Beta… and you’re invited.” Click on “Try Beta Now”.

If you need more help then check out a
Get Yahoo Mail Beta

For a long time now I’ve been obsessed with my computer desktop and whether or not it helps me work efficiently. I find desktop eye-candy fascinating yet in the end it always seems to get in my way or distract me from doing serious work. Because I’m always worried that I’m not making the most of my desktop, I always like to ask people what their desktop looks like. In the spirit of my obsession, I thought it would be fun if everyone posted a screenshot of what their desktop looks like. Since the purpose of this idea is to see what everyone’s work environment looks like, it is only fair that you post a screenshot of your everyday desktop not one beefed to the max with eye-candy. Also, if you have an unusual setup or don’t check the site often, please include a description of what environment/programs you use.

I have recently discovered a neat PHP and AJAX powered, Web 2.0 standards compliant, Non-Intrusive shoutbox called YShout. It’s open source and anyone can download and install in onto their PHP supported webserver. Since the Yshout is AJAX powered you do not have to refresh the page, it’s dynamic! I just need to figure out how to format in to be in my sidebar. Anyway feel free to check it out on my site HERE.

I have changed the ability to see the persons IP address in the chat so that a person can not spoof another persons nickname. I also changed the log file extension to .html rather than .txt so that you can view the file correctly in a web browser. Here is a copy of my modified YShout: Modified YShout

To install all you have to do is install the yshout folder onto your webserver and it’s ready to go. Just point your browser to the folder and there you have it!

Ok, so if you made it past the title, you’re doin’ good. The 16F877A is a microcontroller made by microchip, and I just happen to be using it at work.

Pulse-width modulation is a way of controlling the brightness of an LED, not through resistance, but rather through its duration of being lit. For instance, an LED at half brightness would be on for exactly 1/2 of the time. Basically, it would switch back and forth between on and off at an even pace.

Last night, I had to find a way to control the brightness of a strand of LEDs based only on a 0-7 value off of an analog potentiometer. By design, the maximum brightness for the LEDs will be 1/8 of their maximum ability. This was to reduce heat and fire hazard.

With PWM, since the LED’s on-time is inversely preportional to its off-time, the calculation was rather simple. At the maximum setting (7), the LEDs are on 1/8th of the time. So I made the total duty cycle 56 clock cycles. I then assigned ON_TIME = Knob_Setting and OFF_TIME = 56 – Knob_Setting. This created a whole duty cycle where the LED was on and off evenly with the knob setting.