Woodruff Research

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Road Runner: Dial Access in OS X - How to

Posted at June 27, 2008 8:58 pm | In Research | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Research, Software, Technology

I’ve blogged twice before about my frustrations with Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner Dial Access (here and here).

Reading those posts I’ve found it’s not very clear on how exactly how to accomplish connecting to the Road Runner network via dial-up using an OS X system (namely 10.5 Leopard).

I decided that the best way to explain how to do this is with a video.

Video: Dial Access in OS X ZIP (25.6MB) [Compressed - Recommended]
Video: Dial Access in OS X MP4 (30.2MB)

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Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Posted at June 25, 2008 12:43 pm | In Media | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Books, Media

I’ve been listening to Little Brother by Cory Doctorow in audio book form for the last couple days, and I have to say: it’s awesome. If you haven’t heard of this book you really should check it out. You can download the text format for free from Cory’s blog.

“Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.” - Cory Doctorow (more…)

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TUAW Interviews 1Password Developers

Posted at June 18, 2008 11:47 pm | In Media | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Apple/Mac, Software

You knew I couldn’t get by without posting at least one thing about WWDC this year.

Brett at The Unofficial Apple Weblog interviewed Dave and Roustem from Agile Web Solutions about the future of 1Password (namely on the iPhone). See the interview here: http://www.tuaw.com/2008/06/18/wwdc-08-agile-web-solutions-1password/

I can’t wait until I can get an iTouch so I can actually start playing with this stuff. No iPhone for me, but an iTouch wouldn’t be out of the question.

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Lock the 1Password Keychain with a QuickSilver Trigger

Posted at June 4, 2008 12:58 pm | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Apple/Mac, Research, Software, Technology

Earlier today I was looking for a way to lock the 1Password keychain using a keyboard shortcut. The easiest way I could think of doing this is with QuickSilver (namely, a QuickSilver trigger). I found this forum post that describes a terminal command that can be used to lock keychains. I put together the attached script so that this can easily be setup as a QuickSilver trigger. It’s a really simple script, only one line of code:
security lock-keychain 1Password.keychain (more…)

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My Experience With Time Machine

Posted at May 28, 2008 3:56 pm | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Apple/Mac, Research, Software, Technology

Last night I ended up having to do a full restore of my MacBook Pro using Time Machine. I was trying to uninstall libusb, SANE, and some other utilities that do not have proper uninstallers. I wrote a shell script that got a list of all the files added by the installer (using the lsbom command line utility) and deleted them. Unfortunately it somehow also deleted my entire /Applications folder, and who knows what else. My bad.

Luckily for me, Time Machine had just finished a backup before I started. I didn’t have much confidence / hope that it would do a good job of doing the restore, but it did much better than I expected.

I booted from the OS X Leopard install DVD and chose Restore System from Time Machine Backup from the Utilities menu. It found my My Book hard drive that is attached to my AirPort Extreme (and has my Time Machine backup on it). Logging into the drive and starting the restore was very easy and straight forward.

The restore took about 3 - 4 hours (over 100Mb ethernet). Everything looked good when I started the laptop. I logged in as usual and everything seemed to be OK. I only ran into a couple of issues. (more…)

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Favorite Commercial (currently)

Posted at May 21, 2008 12:29 am | In Media | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Commercials, Media

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The Latest

Posted at May 13, 2008 12:32 pm | In Personal | By Ben Woodruff

As some of you may have noticed I started micro-blogging on Twitter again. I just recently setup a Wordpress plugin here to have my posts there imported automatically once per day. Pretty cool stuff.

If you’ve been watching that space you may have noticed that I recently decided to leave my position at SideStream Media. This is mostly due to the amount of time I was able to dedicate to SideStream projects. I felt I was doing the company a disservice by staying on and holding a position with any real responsibility with the lack of time I was able to invest. My official last day is going to be July 23^rd, 2008, unless we amend our partnership agreement before then. It was a difficult decision to leave, but I think in the end it will work out better for everyone.
It sounds like Jordan will be continuing on with the business, and I wish him the best. There aren’t any hard feelings on my end and I would be willing to help out on future projects.
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Why I’m Crazy: Part 1

Posted at April 16, 2008 12:50 am | In Personal | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Personal, Security, Software, Work

Right, so my life currently in a nutshell.

I recently accepted an offer by Agile Web Solutions to start helping out with their support email. I’ve been doing that for about a week and a half and I love it. Their product, 1Password, is amazing. I use it all the time, and it saves me a lot of frustration and headache.
Basically the idea is you store all of your passwords in it (mainly website logins, but it also handles whatever other text data you want to secure) and it encrypts them all using OS X’s built-in keychain.
So I’ve been answering support emails for them, and continuing to help out on the support forums. I finally set myself up with a proper avatar, haha. (more…)

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Research Papers: Topic Summaries

Posted at March 17, 2008 2:35 pm | In Research | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: NAT, Networking, OSPF, Research, RIP, Security, Technology

I’ve attached some of the research that I’ve done for my Advanced Networking Security class. Included are topic summaries on NAT, OSPF, and RIP.

Topic Summary: Network Address Translation
Topic Summary: Open Shortest Path First Routing
Topic Summary: Routing Information Protocol

If you notice any errors (especially in citations - I want to give credit where credit is due) send me a message or leave a comment.

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Use DenyHosts to Allow More Secure SSH Access

Posted at February 7, 2008 4:40 pm | In Research | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Networking, Research, Security

The FLOSS project DenyHosts is designed to make it safer to allow SSH access to hosts. The basic idea behind it is that when there are X number of unsuccessful login attempts from an IP/host it will block that host from connecting via SSH.
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