HCoder.org

Today I was playing with GnuPG, trying to add a couple of public keys to an “external” keyring (some random file, not my own keyring). Why? you ask. Well, I was preparing some Debian package containing GPG keys for APT repository signing (like debian-archive-keyring and such).

The point is, I was really confused for quite a bit because, after reading the gpg manpage, I was trying things like:

gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring keys.gpg --import ...     # Wrong!

But that wouldn’t add anything to the keys.gpg, which I swear I had in the current directory. After a lot of wondering, I realised that gpg interprets paths for keyrings as relative to… ~/.gnupg, not the current directory. I guess it’s because of security reasons, but I find it really confusing.

The lesson learned, always use --keyring ./keys.gpg or, better, never use keys.gpg as filename for external keyrings, but something more explicit and “non-standard” like my-archive-keyring.gpg or whatever.

Today I have had a gigantic e-mail spam attack. And by “gigantic” I mean something like one every couple of seconds. It seems to have stopped by now, though (maybe until tomorrow, sigh). However, there is some small tip that I used in the meantime, and I have found it helps me filtering spam so I thought I’d share with you. It’s very simple: ordering by subject instead of by date. Of course, you have to filter your view to only unread messages, but it works surprisingly well.

This is very easy to do in mutt, my mail reader of choice (for personal e-mail; I have found that, at least for work e-mail, Opera’s M2 works quite well too). You just have to limit to unread messages (pressing lowercase “L” and then using “~N” as filter), and then sort by subject (:set sort=subject). I have even created too “macros” in mutt to switch back and forth between “spam filtering mode” and “normal mode” :

 macro     index     \Cs     ":set sort=subject<return>l~N<return>"
 macro     index     \Cq     ":set sort=threads<return>lall<return>"

Let’s hope it doesn’t begin again tomorrow :-S

Some time ago (probably a couple of years) I learned about a couple of TMNT issues that I wanted to read. Yes, that means “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”. I never thought I would want to read a TMNT comic, let alone paying for it, but there you go. The reason why I wanted to read those issues were some amazing drawings by a very talented artist. Also, that apparently the story was much more “mature”. Presumably it just got the idea of four turtle-like creatures (anthropomorphising them in a somewhat natural way, a bit like Blacksad), and he added some amazing art to support the story.

The problem was, I had forgotten about the title of the comic and the artist name… and I didn’t have the bookmark (if I had had Opera Link at the time, that would not have happened; but I digress). So, a couple of weeks ago I got really obsessed with it, and I decided to look for it again. After a couple of hours to fruitless search, I finally found it. It was Soul’s Winter, by the incredible Michael Zulli (official page, Wikipedia), also author of “Delicate Creatures”, The Puma Blues and some work on The Sandman. Have a look at the art in the issues themselves.

Once I had the title of the comic, I started looking for it. Unfortunately, in the first couple of shops I tried, it was out of stock. Then I found it on Hill City Comics, and I decided to buy two more comics (some weird Indian-God-themed ones). The site doesn’t look completely professional to me, so I decided to pay via PayPal instead of giving my credit card number. However, I didn’t receive any information as to which address should I make the payment to. I waited for a couple of days just in case, and then I sent an e-mail, but it seems that the SPAM problems they talk about are really serious ;-)

I think I’ll pass on the telephone call, so I decided to just go to another shop. I won’t have the indian comics, but what the hell. The second shop I found is called MARSimport, and it looks much more professional than the first one. Also, they have “From Cloud 99: Memories Part One” from Yslaire, so I think that’ll compensate for the indian ones ;-)

I haven’t ordered yet, but I will soon. Wish me luck :-)