A solution came suddenly, when I saw some CCFLs on sale in an online hardware store for €4,99. One trip to the shops and 7€ spent later I’m sitting here in the dark, typing this text and having my eyes not stressed at all

The CCFLs I bought were from Sharkoon, and came with a switch, transformator and a Y-cable to connect to the PC’s power supply, obviuosly aimed at the casemodding scene:

“That’s all very nice”, I thought, “but firstly, how do I power it (my PC is under the table, and the monitor sits above it), and secondly, where do I put the switch so I can turn it on and off?”. I decided to elongate the power cable by 5-6 feet and to put the switch (together with the transformator and the cables) on the back of my screen, where the CCFLs themselves would go. After thinking that, I went to a hardware store and got the following stuff for a total of 7€:

My plan required: a plastic box to put the switch and cables in, cable binders and connectors (because I do not have the tools for soldering), isolating tape and some cable.

I cut the Y-cable after the split from the Molex connector, and reconnected it with 6 feet of my cable using the connectors. Then I put th switch in the side of the plastic box, and put the cable and connectors inside.

After that I connected the transformator and the CCFLs, connected the Y-cable inside my PC, and turned it on. It worked!

A little detail remained – the whole thing had to be put onto the screen. I put the box with the switch on using double-sided tape near the bottom of the screen, so the switch can be easily reached and cannot be seen. For the rest (transformator and lamps) a set of stick-on pads was included in the package, so I used that.

Result: a nice working backlight for 12,99€, that anyone can build.

                          

Introducing my new Android app. Read fun internet quotes from a variety of websites. Perfect entertaining while waiting in queues, public transport and similar.

Quote sources:
- bash.org
- qdb.us
- ibash.de
- bash.org.ru

… and other sites in English, German and Russian.

                          

If we try to describe anything known to us with our words, there will be no word deficiency. One description will be good, another one not so – that will tell the difference in the describer’s skill. But noone will stop looking for the next needed word in a simple story.

An “idea crisis” can only happen, if the designer sets out aiming to think of something new and unusual.

Something new and unusual cannot be thought up – it can only be discovered while working on a specific, defined goal. It’s the same difference as there is between recitation of words and a story.

A writer’s block is a dead end of a senseless way.

© art.lebedev, my translation from Russian

                          

In every folder that is managed with SVN, it creates a hidden .svn subdirectory. In it, a list of all files and subdirectories in that folder are stored, together with technical information about their history as well as every file itself. The file .svn/entries contains a list of all files and directories in the folder where .svn is located, and the directory .svn/text-base contains the recent revisions of all files, with .svn-base added as an additional extension.

project
  |- index.php
  |- config.php
  |- dir
  |    |- .svn
  |    |    |- entries
  |    |    '- text-base
  |    |         '- file.ext.svn-base
  |    '- file.ext
  |- .svn
  |    |- entries
  |    |- text-base
  |    |    |- index.php.svn-base
  |    |    '- config.php.svn-base
  |    '- ...
  '- ...

Now, normally the .svn is hidden, and doesn’t bother anyone much. However, with default settings, the webserver will treat the files inside it just like any other file – if requested directly, those files will be served. Using the entries file, a list of accessible files can be obtained – among which there might be configuration files or others containing confidential information. And since the files in the text-base directory have their extension changed they will not be processed by, for example, PHP – the sourcecode will be shown as it is.

This vulnerability was discovered some time ago by a group of Russian programmers. They did a scan of a large amount of websites, including some fairly big names in the .com, .de and .ru zones, and the results were staggering. Owners of hundreds of websites were notified of the vulnerability, and after it was closed, some details were disclosed on a large Russian IT blog Habrahabr.

There are multiple ways of securing against the vulnerability. Among the most simple and efficient are:

• Blocking web access to the .svn directory altogether using, for example, the .htaccess file for Apache.
• Using the svn export command instead of the usual svn checkout does not produce the .svn directory in the first place.

While those solutions might seem obvious (and they really are), I was very surprised when I did a simple check among a few websites from my bookmarks list. So webmasters – if you haven’t yet known about this, beware.

                          

A good idea soon came from a friend: a client for the menu of the Mensa, university’s cafeteria of sorts. So one can look, while walking from the lectures (or sitting in them), what there is to eat today, and whether one doesn’t rather want to walk straight home. And so, a day, lots of coffee and a lot of googling later, I present you this wonderous Android app to see and download:

The app is available from the Android Market, and can be found easiest by scanning the following QR Code (if you don’t have the Barcode Scanner app, go and install it from the Market now, it’s a must on Android):