derp

Things I did today:

So I started off doing a little more on my chess program. It's using an algorithm to generate a map of all pieces, then for each piece you select, it lists all possible moves for opponents pieces for all possible moves for your piece. This way, it prevents against discovered checks; at the end, it presents you with a list of legal moves each piece can make (or none, if you are already in check). I haven't done much coding yet, as I'm still figuring out the best way to organize/order the algorithms. Also, I want there to be a non-standard i/o component to this, and possibly graphics. Installed Box2D but am having trouble making it (with cmake). Bah.

Then I got really interested in network security while trying to access the homepage for Palestine Islamic Jihad (having gotten a 403 message). I was thinking about trying to mask my IP address (whatever that meant at the time) to access it, thinking U.S. IP addresses were on a blacklist. I may have been thinking in the right area, cause when I started private browsing (the equivalent of clearing my cache?) I got in fine. And was promptly disappointed by their lack of English and...generally repetitive propaganda.

I guess from there I really wanted to learn how to crack into a website, but I didn't know who to ask or where to look. I decided to go to IRC, cause I had heard it's anonymous (lol), and read some more to discover there's essentially no such thing as 100% complete internet anonymity. Maybe if you had a computer without any PII, cracked someone else's wireless network, then you'd be anonymous. However, Tor/privoxy sounds like a pretty substantial alternative. It's not that I want to learn how to crack with the intention of doing it, I'd just like to know more about network security. Also, I'd like to maintain privacy - I'm probably already on a watchlist just for visiting that website.

Finally, I got some good reading materials on Python, Perl, and Networking. I got really interesting in TCP/IP, as well as the whole IP suite, and found the wikipedia article on SSL/TLS very interesting (i.e. public key encryption).

Tomorrow I'd like to...maybe get back to the chess thing. Right now I have zero desire to read any further in Brothers Karamazov, and I also feel like abandoning my awesome idea to build my own house in favor of becoming really tech-savvy. It's bad news if I want to change my life's goals in the course of one night, so I'm just gonna go to sleep before I learn any more & do more damage.