As the old adage goes - attacks always only get better, especially computer related attacks. I consider myself a very tech savvy user - I cannot recall that I have ever fallen for a phishing attack (yet). However there were times that I almost got caught.

Today I have read an article about a new attack that tricks a user into believing they are on a certain web site - all with green SSL icons - when in fact they are on an imposter's site. Looking at the URL field of the browser will not reveal anything useful. The only way to be sure is to actually view the SSL certificate detail to see that the SSL certificate is for a different domain. Almost nobody does that... The whole point of the green SSL bar is to perform that check automatically.

This attack uses unicode encoding in URL domain names to obscure the real domain name by substituting letters for other letters that look the same. In unicode, there are more than one letter a, letter b and so on. Some browsers render them the same, making this almost impossible to spot.

Every year Vancouver transforms spectacularly into spring when all the cherry trees start blossoming around the city. Here are some photos I took last weekend.

I recently purchased 2 packs of Verbatim White Inkjet Printable BD-R TL 100GB Media (20 disks). Of those disks, three were coasters. Needless to say, I was not happy. These disks are expensive. Toast Titanium failed with:

The drive reported an error, Sense Key = HARDWARE ERROR, Sense Code= 0x44, INTERNAL TARGET FAILURE

So I reached out to their customer support, and after verifying my receipt they sent me a new 10-pack free of charge. Even though I am still disappointed that 3 disks failed to write, this more than makes up for it. Great support I think.

Everyone buys from Amazon. Or has in the past. I have been inundated with advertisements from Amazon recently every time I purchased something - all for items related to what I bought. This is just downright stupid. I bought a vacuum cleaner recently, only to get an ad via email a week later for the same base model but other variations of the unit I purchased. I cannot fathom anyone buying a vacuum cleaner just to buy another one in a week's time.

But recently they have upped their game, and even though I am aware of this being done, having it done to you always feels personal. Look at this ad I received:

Every couple of years I get an itch to remodel my website. I guess part of the reason is due to advances in technology.

When I created the website before this one five years ago, mobile devices were not nearly as prominent as today. The old site did not render well on mobile devices, and image scaling was quite poor to say the least.

The new site is mobile and desktop friendly. On a mobile device you should never need to scroll horizontally (except in code blocks), as this is considered the most user friendly experience when consuming content on a small screen. Switch to landscape mode and the content will reflow to fit the new width of the device, allowing you to see images in the highest possible resolution.