Secure Passwords and Passphrases

There are 95 typeable characters to use in your passwords.  A nice long random string of those 95 characters is probably the most secure password.  Secure, but hard to remember.  Here’s a webpage I wrote to generate secure passwords and passphrases.  Passphrases are actual words, which are easier to remember, and a string of them can be as secure as hard-to-remember password with mixed cases and special characters and all.  Here’s anxkcd comic that illustrates the basic problem.

There are three tools on that page, one to generate a string of words to make a passphrase, one makes a crude attempt to make a valid sentence with random words, and one that just gives you a traditional strong password.

How did I make them?

1. Get some words.  I downloaded some books off the internet and extracted all the unique words and compiled a long list.  I think there was about 13000 words.  Those utilitarian steps I coded up in C# since it’s nice and easy to work with, and Visual Studio is awesome.
2. Pick some words at random.  I read the dictionary in at the webserver (that step in php) and picksome at random.  That’s all there is to it.
3. What about the random sentence?  I found a list of nouns and verbs and adjectives and whatnot online.  The potentially readable passphrase is of the form:

the [adjective] [noun] [adverb] [past tense verb] the [adjective] [noun]

Q: What was the hardest part you ask?  A: The list of verbs I found was in the present-tense, but the sentence sounded better if the words were in the past-tense.  So I translated them all manually.  That was a pain.  By the end I got the brain fuzz really bad.  You might find some mistakes in there.  There might be something in there like taked, instead oftook.

Here’s the link again:  Generate passwords and passphrases.

Sincerely, Warmest regards, Best of luck,

Keith.

more stuff available at my brain annex. http://3options.net/brainannex/

P.S.
the merciful hydrant unimpressively stamped the quarrelsome war

blog moved

Hi old friends,

How is everyone?  Is anyone still following this old blog?  If so, I've imported all this stuff and put it over on my new site, which I call my "brain annex."  I've been neglecting this blog for a long time, and I'll likely neglect the other one too.  It might be more sciencey or more geeky and less runney, but most likely I'll write about all three.

Anyway, here it is:
3options.net/brainannex

Also, here's my linkedin page:
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=231405189&trk=tab_pro
join my network!

And here's my facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/keith.kelleher.7
be my friend!

Love, Keith.

Hi America, Did I mention...

Hi America, How are you?

It's been a long time since I've blooged. Did I mention that I graduated with my Ph.D.? I'm not sure if I blooged it. It is called blooging isn't it? I can't even remember that.

Did I also tell you that we moved to California? I'm sure I blooged that one. I may be lazy, but even I wouldn't forget to bloog that.

Here's a nice picture of the sunset from the cliffs here in sunny San Diego.

I'm sure I already told you that I got a post-doc at the Salk Institute. Did I tell you? Maybe not. Maybe I'm terrible. Anyway, here I am at the Salk. On the equini the sun lines up with the river that runs through our central courtyard, so that's pretty cool.

Here I am being silly.

Here's a seal that lives down the street from us.

Here I am when I first wake up. Seriously though, you know it's cool to have wild seals and sea lions nearby, but what people don't tell you about that, is that seals and sea lions are actually quite smelly.

Here we are when we went hiking at Mission Trails Park.

Perhaps the most exciting thing was when Claudia made empanadas and one of them contained a greetings of love from a UFO alien.

And another contained a fossilized dinosaur bird.

Oh did I mention that we are training for the half marathon in the Avenue of the Giants? And we're also registered for the AFC Half Marathon here in sunny San Diego. Also we're registered for the Marine Corps Marathon. It will be Claudia's first marathon, and my first in a while. So, I've got that going for me, which is good.

Anywho, that's about all that's going on here. I miss my friends back in Houston. You guys are very cool. You should come visit. You can sleep on the futon.

Best, Keith.

working / teaching

Hey America,

How have you been? You look good. Well, you don't look bad anyway.

I am here, writing my dissertation, which may be the reason why I find it urgent to update my blog. Yeah, I was brainstorming what is the best way to formulate the model by which I analyze my data, and it occurred to me that I have not blogged anything in a really long time. I haven't read any blogs either, so I really don't know what my old friends are up to.

Mostly I have been only working these past months, and not much time for anything else. I am also teaching two lab classes in Introductory Biology, which is a class full of young Science majors, ready to take the world by its ear and shake it up. In truth, most of them are not very enthusiastic about Science, which is a little sad, at least from my point of view. This is the business of many awesome people, and awesome questions. The biggest questions there are. The human brain, and life, and big bangs, and nanobots, and cancer, and climate change, and evolution, and self-organization, etc. I think I'll try to get them to focus on that big picture in the few remaining classes.

Anywho, I should get back to my writing.
Best, Keith.

lets get dirty.

Hey America, how are you?

Let me tell you something America, and please know that I'm talking directly to you, and only to you. Nobody else is included, not even England or Canada, or anybody else. You look good.

I'd like to talk about my running. Let's get dirty and let it all hang out. My motivation for running is a bit low at the moment. I go through some periods of enthusiasm, and I strung together a small (12 day) running streak that ended last week. I found a nice race called the Flying Monkey Marathon that I think I can get excited about, but it comes in fits and starts for now.

The point I want to make is that, life is difficult for a young and healthy white man. Who is there to feel my pain? Nobody cares what we do, since we're young and healthy. If we train like crazy and run a marathon, it doesn't mean that much because we're young and healthy, and that kind of thing should be no problem for us. And things are especially problematic for young and healthy men like me who are generally well below average in athletic endeavors. A couple years ago, I trained like crazy and even ran every single day for more than six months and I ran a marathon in 4:17, and a half marathon in 1:49. These times were great for me and I'm proud of them, but they're below average for someone my age.

But what people don't know about me, is that I've had a bone in my leg since the day I was born. I don't like to talk about it since I don't really want any pity. Please consider that when you see my race times. I'm doing all this with a bone the size of a full-grown ferret in my right leg.

Thanks for your time.
Love, Keith.

Texas Independence Relay - March 1-2, 2008

I don't need a very long race report since probably all my readers were there, on my team. I'm proud to have been a part of the Battling Bloggers of the Texas Republic. You guys ROCK!

I had a great time, running, resting, seeing the small towns, running again, rooting for my teammates, crashing on the floor and sleeping harder than ever before, and then running again.

I apologize for anything I may have said when I was itchy and jonesin' for some sweet sweet gummy bears. I think I yelled at Manny to "keep the water and just get me some f--k--g gummy bears!" I realize now that not having my gummy bears wasn't the end of the world. Sorry Manny.

I'll post the pictures I took soon. For posterity and clicking ease, here is an exhaustive list of the team members with their blogs.

Dave
Adrienne
Katy
Holden
Keith
Sarah
Edwin
Jon
Karen
Joseph
Tommy
Cassie

Keith out!

TIR running / recovery plan

I've been working out the ideal recovery plan for my running, since I think the TIR is going to be a test for how fast we recharge everything. Here's what I've determined, through exhaustive experimentation, to be the ideal plan for running / recovering. Some of the tasks require some assistance from one or more teammates.

## Prior to run
3-4 hours prior to run - start drinking lots of water
1-2 hours prior to run - 100 - 150 calories of carbohydrates, more water
30 minutes prior to run - less water, so nothing will be sloshing around on the run

## During the run
mile 0 - I drink a little water but spit it out
mile 1 - I eat five or seven gummy bears
mile 1.5 - One small cup Peachy Keen Cytomax - more gummy bears
mile 2 - no liquids at all, I need lots of positive reinforcement
mile 2.5 - only red gummy bears, but I dont eat them, just chew and spit
mile 3 - I'll raise my arms and say 'whoop whoop whoop!'
mile 3.5 - I need negative reinforcement at this point - no gummy bears.
mile 4 - A light slap to the face/ eye poke is ideal at this moment.
mile 4.5 - A little childish mockery, one gummy bear
mile 5 and beyond - please provide various surprises to keep things interesting. intermittent gummy bears.

## After the run
- a little pretend stretching
- some flexing of muscles
- talking about how I was tired for a while and felt better for a while and then tired again
15 minutes of groaning
30 minutes of staring into space, gummy bears ad libitum

This plan has proven to be the most effective at recharging my glycogen stores, which I think will be a key component for maintaining energy in the later legs of the relay. You might take issue with the necessity of some elements, but the data are the data. Bottom line is that it works.

Ran 3 miles last night, 2 more on tap for tonight.

Keith.