Using Privacy Enhancing Technologies in the real world

I’ve been consistently pleased with my BlackVPN service (see my previous reviews), which allows me to use a variety of VPNs geolocated around the globe and configured with a no logging policy. When connected (through the excellent Viscosity OpenVPN client) I can maintain an encrypted tunnel from my location to a high traffic, high bandwidth server that effectively obfuscates my Internet use, as well as tunnels past any malicious or privacy-impacting middlemen. As I discussed several years ago, Privacy Enhancing Technologies—like VPNs—may be an effective tool in the fight against bad laws (#sopa) and bad corporate policies (#rogers). If you sign up with BlackVPN use my promo code for a free month of service: ZQMCTCX

Enhancing productivity with OS X tools

The Internet is a distraction. Without its perpetual pull of diversions I would find other ways to ignore my work, yet, it offers a particularly powerful challenge. Previously, I used Rescue Time to monitor my application and website usage history, and blocked distracting websites with its “concentrate” functionality. It worked fairly well (I was never that satisfied with the web GUI’s usability—it would frequently get confused when I wanted to see various usage reports), but it was expensive ($10/month). Rescue Time’s website blocking technique was, arguably, better than something like Freedom, since it would permit useful websites and only block distracting websites, but what’s useful one day is not necessarily useful the next, and it only permitted one (master) blacklist. 

Searching for a cheaper alternative, perhaps that addresses some of my issues, I have come upon a new set of applications that, after a limited amount of use, seem to be working well. 

For blocking websites I decided on Self Control. I had considered Freedom, but Freedom is an all-or-nothing blocking application (though the developer also offers an additional application, Anti-Social, that blocks distracting social networking sites). Further, a person I know uses Freedom and has experienced some issues with it not shutting down properly, and even a kernel panic. Self Control offers the option to block all Internet traffic (including port blocking), but it can also be configured to use self-defined whitelists or blacklists (which are managed with a simple save and open functionality). And, unlike Freedom, Self Control cannot be stopped once it is set (Freedom simply requires a restart). Best of all, Self Control is open source and free (Freedom is $15, and Anti-Social is an additional $15). Self Control is dead simple, works, and has a couple of subtle features that really impress.

For tracking my application and website usage I purchased Time Sink for $5 from the Apple OS X  App Store (also available as Free Trial on their website). It records websites usage per browser, but the details of how much time was spent on a particular website is only available in the exported data. This doesn’t too much concern me, and I like the option to export data for slicing and dicing on my own. It records application usage per open window, exactly as you would expect. The application sits in your menu bar or dock and offers two views of your time spent. You can also group applications into “pools” for sub-sorting, so that you can, e.g., see how long you have spent on “writing” versus “web browsing”.

In addition to these two excellent applications, I have downloaded the free, handy menu bar application Menubar Countdown to prompt me back to work from breaks. Once my Self Control countdown has expired I  permit myself a set amount of time for a break. Menubar Countdown ticks down for the set amount of time and then offers a few alarms (including speaking text) for when my break is up.

Automatically updating Chromium daily snapshots on OS X

I’ve recently been smitten with Chromium for OS X (I use plain vanilla Chrome on Windows XP at work now). As of this post only Chromium will allow extensions on OS X. I’ve wanted an easy way to update to the daily snapshot. I’m sure there are people who have done something similar to what I have done, but in the interest of recreating the wheel, here’s my solution.

The script is pretty simple, and is not well tested or up to snuff in terms of security (some nasty exec exploits are the first of the problems). Further, since it does (attempt to) copy the Chromium.app package to your Applications directory there is possibility for some serious problems if Chromium is running and the tests to check this fail. Really, if anything fails, it could be ugly. This is only intended for running on your own local machine, and I assume no responsibility if things go south.

With the procedural matters out of the way, here’s the script (download):

Copy this script to somewhere convenient and run in your command line (Applications->Utilities->Terminal) using the following syntax :

php -f updateChromium.php

The script will check to see if Chromium is already running (and abort if Chromium is running). If Chromium is not running it will download the latest snapshot from the Chromium build bot and then copy the application into your Applications directory.

You may want to put the script on your crontab, as such:

(in your command line)

crontab -e

Then type i. Now that we are in “insert” mode, type:

0 0 * * * php -f <locationToUpdateChromiumScript>/updateChromium.php

(This will set the script to run every day at midnight)

Then press ESC, and type wq. You should be issued a message that a new crontab has been installed.

Update on Saturday, January 2, 2010 at 4:36PM by Quinn

I’ve updated the original php script slightly to better reflect use with the following Automator workflow/application. If you want to trigger the Chromium updates manually save the Automator workflow (zip archive), unzip the package, then open the workflow, change the default script location if you want (it will prompt you when you run it), and then click File->Save As and change type value to Application. To start the update simply click the resulting application. Voice and Growl notifications will notify you of script completion.

Download Automator workflow