Island in the Net by Khürt Williams
Technology and Photography Musings. Established circa 2000.
Entering my least favourite time of the year. Wet, overcast, cold, miserable. Yuck!
It's also the most photographically challenging for me. What do I shoot? Dying, fallen things? Grey?
Fall is also the time of the year when I start complaining to my wife about "the misery" and that we should move to California. We've had that conversation for many years, but I guess I'm not moving.
I take part in a look meetup, New Jersey Foodies, that enjoys food prepared at various restaurants around the Princeton zip codes. Last night's event was one such meetup. Or so I thought. We were going to take part in a bread-making the event at Eno Terra and the proceeds for the event were being donated to a cause. I was excited because Eno Terra is one of my favourite restaurants and has also been the subject of some of my photographs. I love the rustic look of the building and every spring and fall they plant the front area of the property with lovely flowers. I also wanted to see how much had been rebuilt since the rains from Hurricane Irene had pushed the waters of the nearby Millstone River into the basement. My wife agreed it would be a fun thing for the family to do together.
When we arrived we greeted with a wide smile from our humble host, Nadezhda Savova, an anthropology PhD student at Princeton University. Nadezhda offered each guest a piece of bread dipped in honey. She explained to us that in her homeland, Bulgaria, this traditional greeting is meant to express a loving welcome.
The first time I saw pre-sliced bread was when we moved to the United States back in 1986. Before that, I grew up in the Anglo-Caribbean. We ate freshly baked bread almost every day. Growing up close to my grandparents I can still remember the smells coming from my mama's1 kitchen when she baked bread. She would take the hot bread out of her coal-fired oven while slapping my little hands away from the heat. I would sit impatiently while the bread cooled. My grandmother would use that time to prepare hot cocoa2 "tea"3 pour the liquid between two tin cups to allow it to cool. My mouth would water as she cut off a thick slice of bread, spread butter on it, and placed it on a plate with a cup of that hot cocoa. Grandma's kitchen was full of love. I miss my grandma.
The top floor of the restaurant started filling up but my kids could not wait. They went over to the bread-making table and started kneading the dough. They had a great time doing this while making new friends which of course was the core point of the event.
I did not know it at the time but we were part of Nadezhda's Bread Houses Network project.
The Bread Houses strive to encourage inter-religious dialogue, coöperation among different generations and professional and ethnic groups as all participants knead together around the same table.
Apparently this is [Eno Terra] first event since Irene and proceeds will be donated to Nadezhda's Bread Houses Network. Brother's Raul Momo and Carlos Momo, owners of the Terra Momo Restaurant Group are helping her enable her project as a 501c and had graciously donated their time and restaurant space.
“Nadia’s vision for the Bread House is global,” says Carlo. “It doesn’t take a village, it takes an oven, or rather, the oven creates the village.”
I washed my hands and got to work kneading dough next to a couple from Titusville and two young women from the Princeton slow food community. When my bread work looked a bit in need of some TLC, the little girl across the table "loaned" me a bit of her dough.
Near the end, I bumped into Bonnie Schultz, a freelance writer for All Princeton. Bonnie has written a more informative article about the event.
One of the least mentioned features of the new Mail app in iOS 5 is encrypted email. iOS 5 allows the user to send digitally signed or encrypted email to protect your electronic communications. I've written about digital certificates before on this blog. The idea is to use a unique key — a digital certificate — to sign and encode your email so that only the intended recipient can read it. I've wanted this feature in iOS for a while. Encrypted email is a great way to send confidential information — passwords, social security numbers etc. — without worrying about who might intercept my email.1
I use free digital certificates issued by certificate authority Comodo, but you can also get a paid one from Verisgn. Getting a certificate issued is quite easy. Fill out the form on the web site with some basic information and wait for an email. Follow the instructions in the email to download and install your certificate. On Mac OS X that means downloading the certificate file and opening it in Keychain.2
On Mac OS X digital certificates are stored in the Keychain. I want to use the certificate with my iPad or iPhone so I need to bring that certificate over to the iPad. This means I'll need to export the certificate from Keychain and import into the iPad.
Once your certificate has been installed, launch Keychain and find your certificate in the Certificates section of Keychain. Right click the certificate and export it to somewhere on your hard drive. I exported the certificate from Keychain to my Documents folder. Make to protect the certificate file with a string password when prompted.
To install the certificate onto the iPad we'll need the help of the iPhone Configuration Utility3. The iPhone Configuration Utility is used by corporate information technology engineers to manage the configuration parameters of corporate iOS devices. It allows them to create, maintain, encrypt, and push configuration profiles, track and install provisioning profiles and authorized applications, and capture device information including console logs. We'll be using it to create a configuration profile to install the certificate.
Download, install and launch the iPhone Configuration Utility. Select the Configuration Profiles tab and then press Command-N on the keyboard to create a new profile.
Now you will import the cert you exported from Keychain. Select the Credentials tab and then click the + symbol. Find and select the digital certificate file to import. Enter the password you choose earlier when you exported the certificate.
At this point attach your iOS device to your computer and you'll see the device appear in the left hand of the configuration utility. Select the device and then click the Configuration Profiles tab. Find the profile you just created in the list and then click install to push the profile to your device.
On the screen of your iOS device you should see a prompt to confirm the installation of the profile. Once you click install to confirm, you are done.
New profiles entries will be visible in the General->Profiles section of the Settings app on your iOS device.
Now that you have a digital certificate on your iOS device you'll need to configure Mail to use it. You'll do this from the Mail, Contacts, Calendars tab in the Settings app on the iOS device. Select the email account from the list. Select the Account tab.
Enable the S/MIME switch and then turn on Sign and/or Encrypt depending on what you want to do and then tap Done. That's it! You can now use the Mail app to send signed and encrypted email.
