Browsing the ‘Guides’ Category
Rush Proxy Bookmarklet | 9th Mar 2010
Graham Walker, a tech-savvy ER Resident who blogs over at The Central Line, recently posted a really nifty little solution to a problem that plagues higher education. Many academic journals require subscriptions to view their contents, and although most school libraries offer proxy accounts to facilitate student access from home, these accounts are often cumbersome [...]
Amazon MP3 on Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit | 19th Dec 2009
I recently reinstalled Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) on both my desktop and laptop. When I went to buy an album on Amazon MP3, I remembered that Amazon only offers a 32-bit version of their MP3 downloader. Unfortunately, there’s not a very intuitive way to install the Amazon downloader on a 64-bit system, and you need it [...]
Medicine in an electronic age | 28th Aug 2009
The following is the fifth (and probably final) post in a series entitled, “Securing your Email.” I’ve spent the majority of the series talking about logistical things like why secure email is important and how to get started with public-key cryptography. If you look back at my first post, you’ll see that the reason I [...]
Safety Dance | 9th Jul 2009
The following is the fourth post in a series entitled, “Securing your Email.” So far in this series, I’ve done a lot of talking about the theory of secure email and why you might want to make your email more secure. If you’re not familiar with these concepts, I strongly urge you to go back [...]
Who do you trust? | 26th Jun 2009
The following is the third post in a series entitled, “Securing your Email.” If you’re just tuning in and you’re not very familiar with words like “digital signature” and “public-key cryptography,” you may want to take a few minutes to read the first two posts in this series. After reading my earlier posts, hopefully you’ve [...]
Fixing the Holes | 24th Jun 2009
The following is the second post in a series entitled, “Securing your Email.” Throughout the post, I am going to be referencing an analogy about mailing a letter that I described in the first post of the series. If you’re not familiar with it, you may want to take a minute to read it. I’ll [...]
Please, Mr. Postman | 23rd Jun 2009
One of my friends has the following “signature” attached to all his outgoing emails: The materials in this message are private and may contain Protected Healthcare Information. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that any unauthorized use, disclosure, copying or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of this [...]
Breathing Life Into An Old Machine | 26th Mar 2009
Sadie’s family has an old Gateway desktop in their basement. Up until last Spring, it was the only computer their family had besides Sadie’s college laptop, which was starting to show its age. The desktop was probably purchased before the turn of the century, and it came with the lovely Windows ME operating system. By [...]
Now an OpenID | 14th Nov 2008
I used a nice piece of PHP software called phpMyID to make encephalosponge.com an OpenID. If you’re not sure what that means or if you never understood OpenID, you’re not alone. Up until recently, I didn’t either. I always saw the opportunities to use them, but I never had a full grasp of what they [...]
Browser Shortcuts | 29th Jul 2008
I remembered reading an article on ifacethoughts a few months ago about keyboard shortcuts in web browsers. One or two of them stuck, and I keep wishing that more had. I really like using scroll click (press down on the scroll button of your mouse to click) to open links in a new background tab. [...]
I'm Jonathan Blackhall, a 4th year medical student at RMC. This is my blog, where I ramble about technology, medicine, free software, and other random stuff. 
