Reflections on living out in the sticks

Five years of living in the remote regions of Mendocino county has,
like anything else in life, been a mixed bag. I can definitively say
that this place has become our sanctuary from the bustle of the
world.  Being the slow learner that I am, it has taken some time to
adjust to a slower pace and learn some of the skills required to
live in some semblance of harmony with the location.

I have had some opportunities, to build upon my quite limited set of
woodworking/carpentry skills by rehanging some doors that were
binding in their jambs most likely due to settling of the house.  So
I began with one door by marking it where it seemed to be
binding in the jamb, then removing the door and planing the edge
with a recently purchased Harbor Freight bench plane.  Admittedly, I
have little experience bench planes, so after about 15 - 20 minutes
of sweat, panting and very little progress, I took the blade out and
sharpened it with a whetstone thinking the blade must be dull.
Again, another 10 minutes or so of sweat and panting, still little
if any progress.  Finally, collapsing in a heap on the floor from
exhaustion and about ready to admit defeat, I examined the plane and
realized I had the blade in upside down. :-P  Looks like this time I
will not be able to lay the blame at the feet of cheap Chinese junk.
While cussing my own incompetence, I flipped the blade over,
reinserted it, and now nice neat ribbons were peeling from the door.
As the old saying goes, "As long as I live, I learn."

###Encryption on the ropes

In a disturbing trend in Australia with likely worldwide
implications in data security. [^1]

>"Australia‘s government signed a bill into law last week giving law
enforcement agencies the right to force technology companies to
reveal users’ encrypted messages. Another way of putting it:
Australia‘s tech scene will soon be located on the Wayback Machine."

It remains to be seen how this will play out, but I suspect this
might encourage more use of steganography [2^] to conceal any
evidence that encryption has been employed.  The mere presence of an
encrypted file, say in an email attachment, seems to arouse the
attention of AI algorithms in a variety of governmental snooping
programs.  Governments have been waging a sustained campaign against
the use of encryption to the point that they have been arm twisting
companies to provide "back door" access to encrypted devices.

As we make our long slide toward the death of the internet as we
know it, creative minds might go back to tried and true methods of
encrypted communications.  The one time pad (otp) [3^] encryption
used for decades is unbreakable IF EMPLOYED PROPERLY and can be
employed even with pencil and paper.  It is still used even now by
government spooks.  Consequently, I am not sure current government
measures to circumvent encryption is going to be all that effective.
More on this in a future post.

[^1] https://tinyurl.com/y9oscvd6
[2^] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
[3^] http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/onetimepad.htm