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Author Topic: Progress report etc.  (Read 12128 times)

f0dder

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Progress report etc.
« on: March 25, 2006, 09:08 AM »
Hey everybody,

thought I would give a little status/progress report on the next version of fSekrit. I had originally planned to have the next version ready by the end of March/start of April so it could be included in the DC newsletter.

Unfortunately, the last two weeks have been really shitty. Last week, my VISA credit card was stolen at work, and has so far been abused for about $85 (I discovered the theft and blocked the card within 12 hours, but international credit card use sometimes take a week or two to show up on bank statements). My bank will cover this, but it took over a week before I got a new card, and you realize how dependent you are on those things.

A month ago, I sent in my phone for repairs - the "joystick" on it was fubar, something that appearantly happens with all k500i phones (happened to both my brothers, they got theirs repaired for free). But appearantly mine was damaged due to moisture (as if! it's a mechanical problem!), so I'd have to pay $45 just to get the phone back - unrepaired!

Tuesday I fell down from some packages and bumped my head and trashed my arm. Not too bad, I could work again the next day, but bad enough that it's still a bit stiff and strained so heavy lifts are a bit painful. Unfortunately, heavy lifts are what I do most of the time at work.

Thursday, my old "backup" cellphone was stolen at work. I switched clothes at a toilet, and had left the phone near the sink while I switched. Of course I forgot it there, and 15min later after talking with my boss, I realized I had forgotten it... and it was gone. Not a big deal either, it was a crappy phone that only cost me $1, I needed another phone anyway, and I had all my contacts stored on my PC anyway.

At least I got a nice amount of cash in tax refunds, so I went to buy a new phone, some clothes, and other misc. stuff. After 50min I returned to where I had parked my bicycle, and... it was gone. Which really sucks, since I don't have insurance yet, and I have to bike to work since it's so early in the morning there's no buses.

On top of this, I have had a pretty tight schedule the last week; mum's birtday a couple days ago, and celebrating my dad's birthday later today. Both involves an amount of hours of train travel, and unfortunately I don't have a laptop, so the travel time can't be used constructively.

All this has drained my energy, and all the administrative crap involved in talking with bank people, the police, finding an insurance company etc. has taken a lot of time. I'll do my best to have something ready soon, but I'm not sure I can get it done in time for the newsletter.

The upcoming version will have a few bugfixes, menu items for functionality already there in form of keyboard shortcuts, and probably some mouse right-click stuff too. The main new features will be search and replace.

For a future release, I have unicode/utf-8 support planned, as well as some features that will make fSekrit even safer than it is now, while at the same time making save more convenient (none of the exit-reopen stuff that makes the window "flash" and forget cursor position). I'm also thinking about a "mass-conversion" tool for text files, but that will be external to avoid code bloat. And I've been pondering about making fSekrit a "suite" of small useful encryption tools, like self-extracting encrypted files.

So, just a little update so you don't think I've been slacking off.
- carpe noctem

Carol Haynes

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Re: Progress report etc.
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2006, 10:06 AM »
Hmmm -- the phrase 'walking disaster' comes to mind. At least things can only get better.

I had my credit card details stolen (online) a while back - the first I knew of it was hundreds of pounds debitted from online gambling sites. Luckily the bank believed me!

f0dder

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Re: Progress report etc.
« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2006, 10:16 AM »
Another guy from work had his VISA stolen as well. The guy who abused it has been stupid enough to walk into a bank and withdraw from it, so it should only be a matter of time before he's tracked down. Also, it was abused online for about $1000 - it took him a few days before he realized it was stolen.

I hope it's the same guy that stole mine, it would be nice having the guy tracked down and fired. From my bank statements, I can see that my card was abused for Denmark's largest ISP's music-download service. TDC is known for having pretty skilled technicians (and facist logging), so I would think their music service has fascist logging as well. If a guy is dumb enough to walk into a bank with a stolen card, he'll be dumb enough to order online stuff from home (thinking that "I'm safe if I don't order physical stuff to my home address").

- carpe noctem

f0dder

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Re: Progress report etc.
« Reply #3 on: April 02, 2006, 05:04 PM »
Here's a little something without too much of a spectacle...

fSekrit-1.1-beta, a few bugs fixed, added menu items, and added text search. Please give it a thorough beating, be nit-picky on the text files, and generally give me ideas and suggestions.

I've not forgot about unicode, mouse right-click etc., but feel free to re-post suggestions to make sure I remember everything :)
- carpe noctem

allen

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Re: Progress report etc.
« Reply #4 on: April 06, 2006, 06:20 AM »
Yikes, what a time! -- My my brother in law recently cost my wife and I between 200 and 300 dollars via ebay.  I'm not sure the final numbers, as I'm still trying to get things ironed out.

Anyway--fsekrit. Great to see a new version, and the find/replace will be great.  Here's a little something -- upgrading the version of fsekrit.   A utility would be handy, as upgrading a bunch of files is going to be a bit tedious!

f0dder

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Re: Progress report etc.
« Reply #5 on: April 06, 2006, 01:37 PM »
Here's a little something -- upgrading the version of fsekrit.   A utility would be handy, as upgrading a bunch of files is going to be a bit tedious!
This is something that I have been thinking of myself. I'm already considering a "mass convert .txt -> .exe" utility, perhaps that could be suitable for version upgrading as well. I'm not entirely sure on how to construct it, though... I can understand that many people will be using the same password for all files, even if it's somewhat of a security risk. Oh well, once I add salt and random-block-prefix, it will be much less of an issue.

Btw, please take the beta version for a spin and see if you can find any bugs, weirdness, unintended behaviour, or things that could be improved upon - thanks :)
- carpe noctem

allen

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Re: Progress report etc.
« Reply #6 on: April 06, 2006, 04:44 PM »
I've downloaded it and replaced the 'emtpy' copy I keep on my c: drive -- I'll take it for a thorough test later on.

As for converting, perhaps even something as simple as an 'upgrade' option in the menu of an already opened file where it prompts you for the location of the new exe and upgrades from there.  It would still be easier than opening two side by side, copying one into the other, closing the old one and overwriting it with the new one.  Would save a few steps.  The obvious downside there, would be the upgrade mechanism would be increasing the file size, eh?

I have fewer than a dozen to upgrade at the moment, at least, so it's not like I'm going to lose any sleep over it.  :)

mouser

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Re: Progress report etc.
« Reply #7 on: April 07, 2006, 06:31 AM »
this is a really interesting issue i hadn't even considered..
looking forward to hear what you come up with.