The Fryhole

So, we’re here in an internet cafe (in Kyoto) for the second time, writing up posts, uploading photos and cleaning things up so that we can continue on with all of our fun times (Kyoto again tomorrow and then Nara the day after that). I thought I should post some of this stuff before I forgot about it though, so here we go.

In preparation for this trip, I took a few steps. First I allocated a Gallery2 area in http://gallery.fryhole.org/ which is dedicated to the photos for the trip, and I figured out where I was planning to log/blog it (obviously, http://www.fryhole.org). Then I got ahold of a USB mini-drive (4GB), and installed GalleryRemote to it (along with a fairly annoying-to-write batch file to execute GalleryRemote, as it isn’t good about being installed in a “roaming” way), along with a port knocking suite, puTTY, WinSCP, and other essentials. Finally, I went out and got a 15-in-1 USB mediaGear card reader, to get files off of CF/SD/whatever cards and onto the computer in the first place. It all worked flawlessly at home, and then it (of course) all got bolloxed up when we got to Japan; and all my carefully-laid plans were ruined.

The main problem is that the USB mini-drive that I had setup for all of the fancy scripts/applications/etc. that were going to make it oh-so-easy to connect to this server from anywhere doesn’t work on any of the systems over here. It should simply show up as a USB mass-storage device, but it doesn’t. Hasn’t worked once.Ever.  I don’t know if we jostled it wrong and broke it on the way over; or maybe it just doesn’t work on computers running in the Japanese region for some arcane reason.

What I do know is that it made things a royal pain, although hopefully that is at an end now, as I have (just now) managed to rebuild some of it on a recently-purchased SD card (which is readable through the mediaGear card reader). Which brings us to my list of tips:

1. Limit points of failure - There is no reason for a USB thumbdrive/mini-drive if you are bringing a card reader. Use a card that the card-reader can read. Then you only ever need to have a single thing that works on the foreign systems (the card reader), and you should be fine.  If it doesn’t work, buy one that does on-site at your travel location (which should work great for things like card readers).
2. Publically accessible backup for convenience and recovery - Rebuilding my convenience scripts on the SD card would have been child’s play if I had compressed a copy of what was on the USB minidrive and put it somewhere publically accessible. I could’ve downloaded it, decompressed it onto the card; and been completely done. Now, I’ve munged up a quick-and-dirty workable solution; but it isn’t as clean or elegant as the copy that I originally had setup. And it took quite a long time (comparatively). Clearly, be careful with this if you are including SSH keys or passwords in it. This will also be useful if you do have a card and it gets destroyed (get a new card, uncompress to it, and you are done).
3. Simplify Passwords - Extended characters can be extremely hard to get out of keyboards in foreign countries. Simplifying characters to letters/numbers can help you type them immensely. This is less secure from one perspective; but think about what happens if a computer in a internet cafe has a key monitor running? Change your passwords back to your normal ones when you get back; and you’ve made it easier on yourself and protected against others having found out your password (albeit with slightly weaker passwords during the interim).
4. Use Throwaways - Use throw-away keys and port-knock sequences. Allocate them, use them while on your trip, and then disable/change/expire them when you get back. This also protects against losing a thumbdrive or other storage medium that contains them.

That’s all I have right now; I might update later if I think of other things. I want the list for the next time that I need to do this.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 11:48 am and is filed under Reality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.