Joey's Blog

I’ve been pretty fed up with my file protection scheme on Mac OS X lately. I had a couple of simple text files that I wanted to keep password protected on my Macbook.

The solution I used was to create an encrypted disk image and store my files on it. This solution is good if you have hundreds of files, don’t require regular access to the files, or have non-text files to protect. The drawbacks are that the disk image takes up more space than is necessary and that you must mount and unmount the image each time you use it.

That means each time I wanted to view or edit one of my text files I had to navigate to the disk image, mount it, type in my password, open the file, edit it, save it, close the file, and unmount the disk image. If I forget to unmount that disk image, which is surprisingly easy, the file is just plain text and easy for anyone to read.

I’ve searched and searched for and easy an simple solution to my problem. However, the more I searched, the deeper the problem became. Each search led me to solutions with more and more steps and I wanted as few steps as possible between me and my data.

I finally stumbled onto a very simple solution tonight, vim. Vim is a text editor that was originally developed as vi for the Unix platform and has somehow managed to stave off death for over 30 years despite it’s draconian user interface. Amongst all the improvements and extensions over the years is the :X command. This encrypts the file you are working on with a password of your choosing.

So I downloaded the GUI version of Vim for my Mac, assigned it to those files I wanted encrypted, encrypted them, and saved them. Now if I want to edit one of them I simply navigate to the file, open the file, type in my password, edit the file, save it, and close it. Not only does that knock out 2 steps, it also eliminates the need to interact with the finder and a separate text editor and all the opening and closing of windows that involves. It also means I don’t have to remember to unmount a disk image for my files to be safe from prying eyes.

I am testing out this iBlog thing. It is a neat little OS X app that lets you post to your blog without having to go to the Blogger website. I do not think it allows you to edit your blog, but I am just now trying it out.