Tip for the week

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Post it here, Martin ... Then one of us can remind you

MichaelG.

film pots ( remember them) for mixing flux and small batches of epoxy.

Rather than New Skin get some spray plaster, once muck is cleaned off you can rapidl;y cover the area and it's painless(unlike new skin!). Steri strips are useful to seal deep cuts quickly then a plaster over the top.

I keep iodine spray (brands are savlon dry or Betadine spray) in the workshop for rapid antiseptic cover.

Friends nicknames and ages make good passwords and are harder to forget! Enemies nicknames are even better!

A copy of last years phone book or yellow pages.

Put it on the bench when you need a clean dust free surface, such as re-building car brake cylinders etc. When it gets dirty, pull the page out and go onto the next one.

Also useful when filling a bearing with grease, no need to clean up afterwards, just throw the page away and move on.

Spare clean pages also useful for putting under stuff on the milling table to save it sliding round.

Good tip I'm sure be we haven't had a copy of either the phone book or yellow pages for years and years!

Norman

Having worked in the printing trade I can guarantee that paper is the dustiest thing ever invented

Roy

I dunno Roy, anyone worked in a sawdust factory?

I think he means the laminate side but given how little i've picked up a yellow pages, mines got to be at least 1 inch thick layered with dust. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 01/07/2016 23:09:22

Well, everything's relative, and inside a phone book is probably the cleanest thing in my workshop.

Well barring a cup of tea anyway, and even then only the top half, especially if I've been angle grinding.

I've been searching the local charity shops for one of those pottery imitation beer steins with the pewter lid for ages,but can't seem to find one anywhere round our way.

Those product cards that come in magazines? Approx. 3" x 5"? Gather up a stack and staple 'em together. Perfect for mixing small amounts of epoxy... tear off and toss to get a new surface.

Pete

Any advice on a 'wash proof' plaster which stays on after getting damp?

Not so unfortunately - they are too predictable. Whilst it's true that the bad guys won't know the names and ages of your particular friends, they do know that's a very popular way of making a memorable password. Therefore they have lists like this one and a computer program to methodically scan possibilities.

Attacks based on typical passwords are easily confounded by long random passwords (8 or 9 characters) but these are difficult to remember.

One way of generating memorably "random" passwords is to use a phrase or book title to create a character stream, and then perhaps add a few numbers to make it at least 8 characters long.

For example, using the first letter of each word in the title of the book "Down and Out in Paris and London" would give you the stream "DaOiPaL" . As I'm 21 years old (ahem), I would use that to create the password "DaOiPal21", which is extremely hard to guess.

Another example: "My first lathe was a Dean, Grace & Smith", would give you the password "MflwaD,G&S"

Note that passwords made this way can contain mixed case, punctuation and numbers. This massively increases the number of permutations that have to be searched.

Let's be careful out there...

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 02/07/2016 13:29:27

Crikey, that's a low bar!

I use a minimum of 20 characters with upper case, lower case and numeric characters.

- Nick

how about a 36 character password -- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvvxyz1234567890, secure or what?  

Edited By Dod on 04/09/2016 21:03:01

Quite right Nick, I should have said at least 8 or 9 characters. The big problem with long passwords is remembering them though. You must have a better memory than me!

Dave

Yes indeed, but it's even more important that your passwords be random than long. It's too easy to guess what comes next in a sequence like 'abcde...'.

Dave

How many passwords do you guys use? I must have at least 100, no way to remember those!

Edited By DMB on 04/09/2016 23:32:37

Edited By DMB on 04/09/2016 23:40:29

In the same vein: It's interesting to set up multiple email addresses (most ISP's allow at least 20) and use a unique one for each site or business that one deals with. Keep a note of whom got what.

Once the spam starts to arrive it's easy to check up regarding as to who sold your info to the pests.

What you do about it after that is up to you.

For example, I recently signed into Hob**K*ng with a new email address and now the spam is arriving daily - all from China judging by the IP address's of the originators.

At the end of the day, they (HK) have just lost a customer.

* Danny M *

We had the 'emergency skin repair' debate in the pub last week. The young(ish) tradesmen who drink there all swear by superglue- yes, poured straight into the cut and held together until set, usually a few seconds, apparently.

Not sure if I fancy trying that...

Regards,

John.

Cyanoacrylate tissue glues available..essentially the same thing. Theoretically applied as spots along the wound to allow healing between (like sutures). In practice they tend to run along the cut edge and end up as a barrier depending on healing from underneath. Again theoretically an ideal solution to quick repairs on cut pads... but the first time you bond yourself to an unhappy rottweiler then the bottle goes in the bin.

We've had the superglue mentioned in here before, apparently it's poisonous but the NHS uses it sometimes so there much be a non-poisonous type out there

I've used it myself, only tiny amounts are needed and I don't cut myself very often