spass-2.0 – Secure Password Generator

This is a complete rewrite of my secure password generator. The new version uses my a true random number generator (and here).

The major change was using the new true random number generator in order to ensure strong passwords. Less significant changes include an easy way to specify password’s strips, and some calling convention changes.

Usage examples:

$ ./spass
E5pT35Fg
$ ./spass -l 14
R$tfOm4g_yRQ2J
$ ./spass -s 0-9a-f -l 32
8b5f14a1eeaabe58c2878ab5416a9ebb

Download the tarball spass-2.0.tar.bz2. The program depends on Boost‘s program_options (it was tested against version 1.37 and 1.42 and should work with other versions too).

Statistical Tests for My Audio Based Random Number Generator

In May I’ve written about a way to generate random number from audio noise. Basically it went like this:

  1. Get audio sample from the microphone.
  2. Push the least significant bit to a buffer.
  3. Repeat steps 1-2 until the buffer is full (buffer size == block size for the hash function).
  4. Apply the hash function on the buffer.
  5. Get random bits from the digest.

In order to continue developing this random number generator (RNG), I’ve written a C++ class that simplifies working with it.
Continue reading Statistical Tests for My Audio Based Random Number Generator

Audio Based True Random Number Generator POC

Few days ago I came up with an idea to create a true random number generator based on noise gathered from a cheap microphone attached to my computer. Tests showed that when sampling the microphone, the least significant bit behaves pretty randomly. This lead me to think it might be good source for gathering entropy for a true random number generator.
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An Early Release of the New cssrtl.py-2.0

It has been three years since I’ve released the original version of cssrtl.py (and two since it’s re-release). The old version did a nice job, but experience gained during that time led me to write from scratch a new version. I’ve detailed more than a month ago, the basic principles and ideas that guided me to design a better tool to help adapting CSS files from left-to-right to right-to-left.

The guidelines weren’t just empty words, they were written while working on the Hebrew adaptation to the Fusion theme and in the same time writing a new proof-of-concept version of cssrtl.py. The original intent was to release a more mature version of that code when it will be completed. However, due to the apparent shortage of time in the present and foreseeable future, I can’t see myself complete the project any time soon. So following the “release early” mantra, I’ve decided to release the code as-is. As I said, the code is in working state, but not polished, so it may be of benefit but may contain bugs. If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, I would be glad to hear.
Continue reading An Early Release of the New cssrtl.py-2.0

Simple AI Engine for the Oware Game

Sometime ago I worked with a friend on building an Oware game. I was supposed to build the AI engine, and he was supposed to build the user interface to it. Unfortunately, while AI engine interface I designed and a simple alpha-beta pruning engine was implemented, the project was never completed.

Screenshot of game session
Screenshot of game session

Continue reading Simple AI Engine for the Oware Game

Simple Histogram Widget for wxWidgets

When working on Open Yahtzee 1.10 (or what ever I’ll call the version after 1.9), I’ve written a simple histogram widget to be part of the new statistics dialog. I should emphasize the simple part, this widget was mean to display a simple histogram without requiring any special bloated ploting libraries. It doesn’t support all the fancy stuff, just plain histogram.

I’ve figured that a simple pie plot would better serve Open Yahtzee’s needs, so unfortunately this code will not be released as part of the program. While the code is not perfect, it’s functional and serves a good example of a custom widget. So I’ve felt pity letting it fall into oblivion in Open Yahtzee’s SVN repository, and I’ve thought it might come handy to someone else (or at least for me) if it will be easily accessible.

simple_histogram
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Designing a Better a CSS RTL Convertor

About a year and a half ago I’ve released cssrtl.py, a script that translates CSS code to RTL. The script was designed to be fully autonomous, however translating CSS code is a complex task, as not all the information needed to make the translation is available in the CSS files. While cssrtl.py did a very good job on some tasks it lacks on several issues:

  1. When a design update is released, one cannot use previous translation work.
  2. When things don’t go smooth, it’s hard to find out why.
  3. Complex CSS can’t be translated automatically, as it requires understanding of the structure of the corresponding html files and how the CSS will be used by future code.

Continue reading Designing a Better a CSS RTL Convertor

Hash Puppy – A Qt Checksum Calculator

I’ve decided to give Qt a try after long time of wxWidgets programming. When I learn to a new language or how to use a new library I always like to build some small projects to get my hands dirty with. This time I’ve built small checksum calculator – Hash Puppy (in fact, first I had the name then I’ve decided I must use it for some new project).

hashpuppy
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tarsum-0.2 – A read only version of tarsum

When I first scratched the itch of calculating checksums for every file in a tar archive, this was my original intention. When I decided I want the script in bash for simplicity, I forfeited the idea and settled for extracting the files and then going over all the files to calculate their checksum value.

So when Jon Flowers asked in the comments of the original tarsum post about the possibility of getting the checksums of files in the tar file without extracting all the archive, I’ve decided to re-tackle the problem.

Continue reading tarsum-0.2 – A read only version of tarsum