2019-10-05 Encryption

Today I created a encrypted hard drive using Veracrypt. This will be my offline non cloud digital life. Of course, I will need a decent backup plan too. I have decided to do this as I'm fed up with all of my personal data, especially photos being sprayed across the internet into various data servers. Sure here i am blogging in the wild and writing this onto a data centre somewhere out there. But these words are public, I intended them to be that way. I no longer want my personal writing or photos to be on public data centres. That will suit me just fine.

I'll just have everything available on a little netbook that I can take around with me. I'll type my private journal up there and all will be golden.

I also encrypted a little 32GB microsd that nicely slots inside my netbook (which has awful storage - like 4GB left after the operating system is installed. That's cool with me as I'll just store everything on that encrypted SD drive.

I don't know if I'll continue to use standard notes. I do like that it's cross platform and cloud sync, but I'm trying to spend less of my time using cloud services and just want to use simple offline encrypted text files. I want to spend less time online overall. That's why I love this tiny underpowered netbook. It really is pretty shit, 2GB ram and some underpowered processor. It's still way more powerful than my first desktop, but somehow struggles with the web these days. I like that, less multi-tasking, more focused on what I want to do, which is writing and reading and 'thought taking'. It's a case of only firing up a web-browser to check something then closing and moving on. Any more than 10 tabs open in a browser and this little netbook will creak. I'm also getting used to the little keyboard and it's actually pretty sweet. I think I'll write more about this keyboard sometime in the future as although it's probably worth £10 now, it's one hell of a machine that I would have killed for back in my early 20s, so why dismiss it now as some little computer toy, which is what it really is. It's a toshiba satellite cl10-b-100, which is a joke of a laptop compared to my MacBook, but somehow I'm really loving the portability of it. I think I'll install linux on it at some point, just for fun and to see what I can do with it. Although having said that I think that it could be impossible to go back to windows after as I don't have any recovery usb etc. Windows is ok for me for now, so I'll probably stick with it.

Loving my books again at the moment. Just finished - Permanent Record by Edward Snowden. Loved the short easily readable chapters. I powered through this book in no time. He really seemed a genuine kind of guy that was trying to do the best for citizens of the world. I didn't learn too much more about the secrets he revealed. I took a bunch of highlights so need to go back through those. It was good to read his account of things, and the kind of book that passes the time well, but I wouldn't say it was a 'must read'. I might change my mind as I reflect on it a bit and read the highlights again.