I miss Paint Shop Pro. The last version I had was 8. The software was originally created by Jasc then taken over by Corel and after that it became just another PhotoShop clone.
I’ve spoken previously about being a graphics artist on the Commodore Amiga back in the day using tools like Deluxe and Photon Paint. When I switched to the PC I continued creating pixel art using Paint Shop Pro. Over time though it seems like all the paint software became variations on PhotoShop; image manipulation and effects.
What I really needed was a tool that would allow me to create pixel art. There are a few web sites that allow you to do this to some extent but you need to be online to use them. You have Gimp, an open source tool, but if you’ve ever used it you will know how awkward and non-intuitive the controls are. I’d rather go to the hassle of running Paint Shop Pro on an ancient PC than having to use Gimp.
I get that most people want fancy high-definition graphics these days but some of us just want to create something old-school using a mouse, free-hand, and maybe on occasion the line tool.
I do miss Paint Shop Pro.
Losing your mojo
Losing your mojo: Losing your ambition, your purpose, your reason for being. A general feeling of being lost without aim or goals.
Losing your mojo is no joke. It induces a feeling of anxiety and stress with an overlay of depression. For those of us that thrive on ambition, losing your mojo is like a derailment of sorts. You no longer know in your mind what the future holds for you as you feel no sense of purpose or direction. It’s like your strings have been severed and each day feels.. samey.
Therapists will tell you that with CBT you can train yourself to be ok, to not need your mojo, just live your life and enjoy each day as it comes. It does work in that you feel less depressed, but your loss of mojo is merely stifled. You know the loss is still there under the surface. You yearn for the you that you once were. Thriving on ambition, knowing where you were heading and how you would get there. Now you are just driving a car with a broken GPS. You can go where you want and enjoy the journey but there’s no overall destination in mind.
Getting your mojo back is challenging and requires a lot of self analysis. What matters to you in life? What makes you happy? Given where you are now, your interests, your passions, where do you want to be? What really really drives you?
If you can figure all that out then you may just get your mojo back. In the meantime try new things and experiment. Maybe you’ll trigger something that will spark an idea, a passion, a driver.
Good luck.
Deluxe Paint
Watching the young ‘uns today playing games like Minecraft takes me back to the late 80s / early 90s when I used to create graphics for the Commodore Amiga using tools such as Deluxe paint and Photon paint. The resolutions we had back then plus the number of available colours were not as great as they are today. We had to learn techniques such as anti-aliasing and cross-hatching to give the illusion of smooth graphics with less rigid edges.
Why people want games with blocky-looking graphics escapes me, but it does trigger memories of nostalgia for the days when I had to create such graphics every time I see such games. Memories of Beneath a Steel Sky, Universe, and Monkey Island. Or the Amiga scene demos.
Now where did I store those old floppies..
Ready player one
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is one of my favourite books. Although to be honest I’ve never actually read it. I have had it read to me, three times in fact, by Wil Wheaton. In my opinion it is absolutely the best way to consume this book. Go try it. Get the audio book and sit back and revel in both the future and the 1980s at the same time. You’ll thank me later.
That’s not the point of this post however. No, I wanted to compare the aforementioned experience to hacking, well ethical hacking obviously. You see, when learning the craft you often spend time exploring virtual rabbit holes getting side-tracked with learning fun tools and techniques. Kind of like Parcival on his egg hunt. Whether he’s learning the lines to War Games or mastering ancient arcade games.
With hacking you can spend days learning a new tool or figuring out how a protocol works. Under normal circumstances that may sound as dull as dishwater, but as part of a gamified hacking challenge it can be a lot of fun. Lots of fun in fact. Especially if it gets you a foothold on a box, or even privilege escalation to root!
Sign up to an ethical hacking platform like Hack The Box or Try Hack Me and you’ll see what I mean. It suddenly becomes fun to learn as you earn points and level up. Plus you start to fill your brain with useful skills and knowledge during the process. Go give it a try. Gamified ethical hacking can be a lot of fun.
Ready player one?
Sorry for your loss
It’s something we say when we don’t know what to say. Someone close to you has passed on. Words can’t make it better. We want to express our sympathy but words fail us so we rely on the old faithful:
Sorry for your loss.
You’ve lost a friend, a good friend. Someone you’ve known for years. Someone you’ve had adventures with, been through stuff with, experienced life with, shared secrets, and dreams. You’ve celebrated their birthdays and anniversaries. Spent time with their loved ones. Had many beers with late into the night, discussing anything and everything.
And now they are gone. Just like that.
Sorry for your loss.
As you get older it happens more and more. You are going to more funerals than weddings and celebrations. You hear it more and more. Loss. Your loss, their loss.
Sorry for your loss.
Don’t ask do
Sometimes you just have to make decisions, take the initiative, go with your gut. Don’t live a life in the shadow of others, asking what they are going to do, what are their plans, what are they going to wear, what time they are planning to turn up, and so on. Be the leader, the doer, the ones others follow.
Create your own mantra.
Take action, make decisions, don’t wait on others. Don’t ask, do.
Throw away culture
I was watching a documentary where people in countries like India and Egypt had lots of these one-person businesses specialising in one thing such as motorbike exhausts, metal cooking pans, mobile phone repair, etc. Where everything was recycled or up-cycled. Nothing was thrown away or wasted. Another person’s trash was something they could re-use to turn into a product or part of a product.
It was fascinating. We have such a throw-away culture here in the UK. It’s far cheaper to buy a new device than attempt to repair the old one, partly due to the cost of spare parts and labour costs plus taxes, and partly because many manufacturers don’t support their products for long and access to spare parts can be limited, if they are available at all.
Yet in this documentary these individuals made their own parts or harvested them from other devices. There was less going into landfills.
This inspired me. I have this all-in-one printer that is sitting at the end of my desk no longer working properly. I had started to research new printers to see what I would buy next. But I really liked the one I had. I could get ink cheaply for it. It had a paper feeder hidden underneath rather than those top-loading ones where the paper can flop awkwardly forwards and needs constant reloading. The scanner worked smoothly and it was a great photocopier. Plus I didn’t want to toss another device in a landfill.
Inspired by the documentary I decided to see if I could repair it myself. I did some online googling and watched a few YouTube videos and then bought some stuff online.
Once it all arrived it took an hour or so but I’m happy to say that my printer now works like new. Everything I bought is either part of the working printer or can be used to repair it in future. I did not consign another electronic device to the local dump.
There’s nothing for you in the past
There’s nothing for you in the past. It’s worth repeating that to yourself once in a while. There’s nothing for you in the past.
Many of us spend way too much of our time thinking about things that happened in the past. How we could have done this or that. Maybe if we made this decision, or chose that job, or that friend. Or maybe we reminisce on the good old times. Ruminate on what it would be like to bring something back, or to revisit something again.
It can become self destructive and can hinder both your direction in life and your mental health. Stop living in the past and live in the present. The past is a lonely place full of memories where nothing can be changed. Move on with your life, focus on the present and the future.
AV Test
I’m occasionally asked what antivirus tool I use, or what anti malware tool, personal firewall software, etc. My answer changes with each passing year. New tools emerge, old ones don’t score so well or become bloated with features I don’t need.
These days I just point people at AV Test. These guys do all the heavy lifting for you. They test the commercial and free security tools, putting them through rigorous testing and benchmarking. They then collate the results and present them to you for free to make your own choices.
So next time you want to know what the best antivirus tool is for your device head on over to AV Test. I check in at least once a year to see if I need to upgrade my own setup.
ChatGPT hacking buddy
I’ve given many talks on cyber security and ethical hacking over the past few years and one of the things I tend to say a lot is: “There is no such thing as cheating in hacking”.
What I mean by this is that as long as you are learning you are not cheating. It’s only when you take shortcuts and learn nothing in the process that you are cheating yourself.
So when attempting a CTF or Hack the Box or Try Hack Me machine and you get stuck and you have exhausted every technique and trick that you know and nothing is working, sure, go search for a writeup or forum posts on how to progress. Read just enough to get yourself unstuck and then keep going. Learn the technique, tool, or whatever you needed to know to progress. Add it to your knowledge-base.
This is learning not cheating. Finding the answer but not learning how and why it worked is just cheating yourself.
Recently I found myself stuck on a CTF that I was taking part in for fun. It was brand new so there were no writeups or forum articles to peek at. And I was stuck. In theory I could just move on to the next challenge and come back to this one later, time allowing, but I was having fun and I wanted to figure out why my solution wasn’t working. I wanted to learn, now.
I decided to see if AI could help. I’ve been playing around with the free version of ChatGPT recently and wondered if I could make use of it in this situation. I gave it a copy of the code from a program I had disassembled as part of the CTF and asked it to tell me what the code was doing. It did, in great detail. I then asked it how I could extract certain data that the program was storing in memory. It gave me detailed instructions using a tool that I was unfamiliar with. I asked if if I could do the same with another tool I was familiar with. It kindly said no and offered to teach me how to use the tool it recommended. I agreed and learned how to use the tool and managed to make progress.
I then continued hacking at the CTF asking ChatGPT for assistance when required. Although technically cheating, I was constantly learning throughout, and allthough I managed to get some virtual points on a virtual scoreboard, they were worthless in the real world, but the knowledge I gained from hacking with ChatGPT was priceless.
So now when I get really stuck and I’ve exhausted everything I know, I turn to ChatGPT as my AI hacking buddy. Only after I’ve finished the challenge, or both ChatGPT and I have failed to come up with a solution do I go looking for a writeup.