Have you taken any good pictures lately?

Just a reminder that Project X continues. Every day you look for a box, go for a hike, or watch a sunset, Project X is happening. For those of you who aren't familiar with Project X, you always find a link it to under the 'Toolbox' menubar option.

Project X is the code name for the annual AQ letterboxing calendar. And it would not happen without member contributions. Yes, I know, I take amazing pictures. =) But I don't take enough of them from a wide enough geographical area to actually turn them into the world's only letterboxing calendar. I like to think it's the world's best calendar as well, but that's just my opinion.

Upload your submissions today, and keep your eyes open for that picture that will WOW everyone. Insects, flowers, views, waterfalls, animals.... whatever.... There are amazing photos lurking around every corner, just waiting to be noticed.

I took this photo (which I've uploaded as a calendar submission!) while walking back from a letterboxing gathering near Tampa, Florida. It found ME! I wasn't even looking for photos when I came upon this scene. *nodding*

The Most Popular Letterboxing Blogs

It's been a few weeks since I rolled out the new and improved blogging feature on Atlas Quest, and it looks like quite a few of you have been making use of it.

This blog, I'm happy to report, has the most subscribers, although 12 people have decided that my musings were not important enough to read and will not be seeing this post.

THAT'S OKAY, though! I'm not bitter in the least. After all, I do have the world's most popular letterboxing blog. =)

Yeah, I know, it's not really a fair comparison. After all, every new member on Atlas Quest is automatically subscribed to it. On top of that, it's a blog with news, trivia, and information about Atlas Quest that you can get from no where else. Even those who aren't inclined to read my musings might at least want to know that I'm musing.

This is a State of the Blog Address. Atlas Quest keeps track of subscriptions, but until there are at least 50 subscribers to the blog, the exact number of subscribers is kept secret. Mostly for the sake of harmony. I don't want people to get hurt feelings if more people subscribe to someone else's blog than your own, or be disappointed if only two other people subscribe to your newest blog a day after you list it. I figure by the time a blog has 50 subscribers, that's pretty darned good.

My own blog, And I Will Say It Again.... is the first to break that 50 subscriber number. No, I'm not bragging, but rather I wanted to point out that even a 'celebrity' like me only has 50 subscribers when the auto-subscriptions aren't helping out the subscription counts. My Walking SLO blog only has 26 subscribers. So there are at least 24 people who looked at all of my available blogs and decided that Walking SLO had no interest for them.

But back to the subject at hand--my mind is wandering, as it often does. =)

Perhaps you haven't explored the blogging feature, or aren't sure which of the 62 blogs would most likely interest you. So I thought I'd point out some of the more popular blogs that people have signed up for. Perhaps one or more of them will interest you.

The following blogs are in no particular order. Actually, they're in the order they were listed on Atlas Quest, but for all intents and purposes, it will seem random. They are not sorted by popularity, by name, or by author. They might be popular because the person has lots of friends who've signed up for their blogs, or perhaps because they blog about a topic that interests a large section of society. Nitch blogs--those about specific geographical locations or about hobbies that cater to a small demographic--by definition won't have a lot of subscribers. That does not make the blogs any less worthy or interesting--they just won't get a lot of attention.

So, in no particular order, the ten most popular blogs (without auto-subscriptions and that are not owned by myself) on Atlas Quest:

• drgdlg by drgdlg
• Dorks Anonymous by dem xx men
• Knot a Lot by Celtic Quinn
• Letterboxing Tales by Team New Hampshire
• CQ's Movie Reviews by Celtic Quinn
• Gramatrick Letterboxing by dewberry
• true indigo adventures by true indigo
• Mr. Yuk's Life, Boxed by Mr Yuk
• Boxing with a Buddy by The Yorkshire Tortoise
• As the River flows by chunna

Be sure to check out other blogs from the Blog Directory and, if you have your own blog, be sure to add it so others can follow in your adventures. And if you have any questions, be sure to Ask an Adams.

The most common searches....

A number of months back, I added a small piece of code to keep track of the number of times a search for a specific city was done. Right now, it doesn't get used for anything, but ultimately, my idea is to incorporate that information into a "smart search" so when you start typing in the name of a city to do a letterbox search, AQ can automatically include a drop-down list below it of the most common searches done using the first few letters you type. Don't know when I'll actually implement THAT particular feature, but out of curiosity, I finally took a look at the counts to see.... Atlas Quest's most popular searches.

So here it is:

1. Portland, OR (4649)
2. Seattle, WA (3203)
3. Syracuse, NY (2893)
4. Charlotte, NC (2780)
5. Atlanta, GA (2715)
6. Houston, TX (2570)
7. Columbus, OH (2351)
8. Sacramento, CA (2214)
9. Asheville, NC (2066)
10. Philadelphia, PA (2061)

The 100th most common search city is Cary, NC, with 657 searches. =)

Get Your AQ Patches!

You've been asking for them for years. And finally, they have arrived. It's the invasion of the AQ patches! Stitch them to your backpacks and jackets. Give them to friends as gifts. Be the first on your block with the official AQ letterboxing patch! The pricing and payment details can be found in the AQ Patches section of the Marketplace.

How Not To Make Money From Letterboxing

Occasionally, I hear about someone grumbling over premium membership. Pay for a feature? Someone would dare to profit off of our beloved hobby? I know it's only a tiny minority of you out there who grumble about this, but this message is for you. I'd like you to look on the other side of the fence and explain why this really is not just a greedy attempt by me to profit off a beloved hobby.

The technical term is opportunity cost. I've made Atlas Quest my full time job for the last 3 1/2 years now. Granted, I don't work normal 9-to-5 hours. I might still be in bed, asleep at 9:00, but you might find me working at 2:00am in the morning. I usually work every day, weekends and holidays included, for at least a small period of time. It's a job, and yes, I do make an income from my job, but lest you start throwing stones, I don't see many other people working for free.

The fact is, this job has cost me--and this is just a rough estimate--about $200,000. That's how much I likely would have earned from a regular 9-to-5 corporate job for the last 3 1/2 years. My actual income from Atlas Quest during this time is about $15,000. While it's not money I paid directly out of my pocket, I can assure you, it's a very real cost I've paid to create and develop Atlas Quest.

I know AQ is often compared to LbNA, but sometimes I feel the comparisons aren't very fair. A handful of folks like to criticize me for profiting off of you, while from my perspective, I've already given up hundreds of thousands of dollars to make this site possible. And I'm the one branded the greedy traitor by 'commercializing' letterboxing.

Most features on Atlas Quest are completely free, as it should be. A handful of perks, none of which I consider 'essential' for letterboxers, are reserved for the premium members who pay to keep this site running.

I've given up a lot of money to create Atlas Quest, and will continue to do so for a long time to come, because some things are priceless. I like the freedom it provides, working when I want and from where I want. I enjoy the satisfaction of working on something I feel is important--a quality of life thing I never had experienced from my previous jobs. Sometimes I get the most wonderful messages, by a mom who tells me how letterboxing and Atlas Quest have brought their family together like nothing before. It's moments like those I would never want to trade for all the money in the world. Financially speaking, Atlas Quest is an unmitigated disaster, but there's not another job in the world I'd rather be doing, except perhaps for thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. ;o)

This message is not to convince everyone that they should become premium members--I'm happy to report, late last year, an amazing thing happened. For the first time since I was laid off in 2001, my income exceeded my expenses. At first I thought it was a fluke, but then it happened for a second month. And a third. And it continues to this day. It's a huge milestone--I'm actually cash flow positive! Granted, not by much. And I still want to purchase health and dental insurance, and eventually start funding a retirement account. I'm sure critics might consider such needs primal and a waste of money, but they're important to me. I have no intention of raising the cost of premium membership anymore except, perhaps, to account for inflation, because I don't need to anymore.

In any case, it's always bothered me a little bit when I hear about someone saying how greedy I am and how I'm ruining letterboxing through my greed. It's true, I probably earn more from letterboxers than just about any one person in the world, but only at an enormous opportunity cost that I suspect a lot of my critics have not considered. If it was just about the money, I'd have shut Atlas Quest down years ago--assuming I even started it at all.

Time for Some Hostility?

Okay, I have to confess, I'm not feeling especially hostile at the moment. I'm only posting because of Mark & Sue Pepe's blog, title Time for Some Civility?, which was posted earlier today, and I thought it would be hilarious to get a contrary headline next to it in Letterboxing News. =)

Just so this post isn't a total waste of your time, though, check out these Posting Guidelines I wrote a few years back. There's a Civility version, and a Hostility version to choose from. =)

Hacking Accounts, Part III

What a firestorm of suggestions I've gotten since my second post about hacking accounts, many of them very good. The months of the year, hobbies, religious themes, and I even tried a couple of very UN-religious words to hack into accounts, and they're all working. Three people even use 'geocache' as their password!

Growing tired of trying all of these excellent suggestions myself, I've now automated the process. Want to play Guess that Password? Now you can.

So far, we've been able to "hack" into about 10% of the accounts on Atlas Quest. Have you chosen a poor password? Change it now. Really. Chances are, nobody is trying to break into your account, but it only takes one person to make your life miserable. Choose good passwords. It's worth the extra thought.

Hacking Accounts, Part II

So I've updated Atlas Quest to reject the most common and easily guessed passwords. New members and those who try to change their password will be expected to think up some better passwords in the future. While it's unlikely nefarious people will try to hack into an Atlas Quest account, at least let's not make it too easy for them! So not only are the most common passwords no longer allowed, but neither are many variations of them.

This morning, thinking about easy-to-guess passwords, I thought of something that wasn't on the top 10 most common passwords from yesterday's post. The word letterboxing or some variant of it. Makes sense, don't you think? It was just my gut instinct, but I had a hunch I'd find more than a couple of accounts with that password. I was right.

letterboxing: 24
letterbox: 47
letterboxer: 1
letterboxes: 0
boxes: 1
boxing: 3

Running with this theme, what if someone thought about being even more specific? What if they used atlasquest as their password?

atlasquest: 9

What if someone wanted to get very clever and use ryancarpenter as a password?

Alas, nobody loves me that much. No passwords match ryancarpenter. ;o)

Still, I managed to crack open another 85 accounts today. So to add to my growing list of "too easy to guess" passwords, anything with the terms letterboxing or atlasquest or a variant of them will no longer be allowed. For those of you who already use it, you won't be forced to change, but it's highly recommended.

For kicks, I've started typing in random words that come to mind, just to see how easy it is to guess passwords. I've tried snake, yahoo, hotmail, facebook, geocities, google, firefox, intel, microsoft, takeahike, search, inkpad, logbook, keyboard, mouse, monitor, speaker, phone, cellphone, cordless, computer, laptop, camera, digital, stereo, turtle, flies, puppy, kitten, goldfish, finch, chick, and chicken.

There complete guesses on my part, but I'm thinking if people want to think of a password, you'll use an object they might see around them as their password (thus, all of the computer related terms I tried or the websites they might have used before going to AQ), or they might use an animal (for some reason, I suspect a lot of people might use animals as passwords). I was right on both counts and among all those words was able to crack open another twenty or so accounts. Not all of the words had success. Two of the words cracked three passwords each. I'm not going to ban all of those words, though--it's not a complete list of computer accessories or animals and there are probably others I haven't tried.

But animals and computer accessories or websites probably won't be very secure passwords.

Just some more food for thought. =)

Has Your Account Been Hacked?!

I was reading PC Magazine this afternoon, and they had a list of the 10 most common passwords people use. I've seen lists like these before, and they always amuse me. Who would USE such OBVIOUS passwords? The potential for hacking such accounts are enormous!

And I wondered--how accurate are these lists? There are nearly 10,000 accounts here on Atlas Quest, and I wondered how many of them would use such obvious passwords?

Passwords, I'm happy to report, here at AQ headquarters are always encrypted using a one-way encryption algorithm. Encryption is a fascinating topic in it's own right, but the interesting thing about this one is that it cannot be unencrypted. You might wonder what use is something that's encrypted if it can't be unencrypted. How can Atlas Quest possibly verify the password you type in is correct if it can't lookup your actual password? It doesn't. Not exactly, at least. It takes the password you type in, then encrypts it using the same algorithm that generated your encrypted password. If the two encryptions match, the same password was used. If they don't, the passwords don't match. At no point does Atlas Quest actually have to store your password in an unencrypted format.

Even if a hacker could get into Atlas Quest, they would never be able to see your real passwords. It's all very slick, and I think it's ludicrously stupid for companies to store passwords in anything but an encrypted format using a one-way only encryption algorithm. After all, what good does it do to encrypt a password if a hacker can just unencrypt it later? I always have my doubts about the security of any website that is able to re-send you your original password. It's either not encrypted at all in their databases, or they use an encryption algorithm that can be undone. There's never a good reason to allow this.

Anyhow, a good, encryption algorithm does nothing if people pick a terrible password to begin with. Atlas Quest doesn't really check for bad passwords. It expects a password to be at least five letters or numbers long, but that's about the only constraint. Out of exactly 9,887 account on Atlas Quest at this moment, let's see how many passwords I can "crack."

Here's the list of the ten most common passwords, and how many accounts I could crack using them:

1. password - 48
2. 123456 - 14
3. qwerty - 4
4. abc123 - 4
5. letmein - 3
6. monkey - 14 (say what?!)
7. myspace1 - 0
8. password1 - 1
9. blink182 - 0 (okay, I know this has to have some meaning, but I have no idea what. If you do, please let me know!)
10. (your first name)

I'm leaving that last one blank for now--there's some commentary I want to do with that which I'll get to in a bit. The nine most common passwords, though, could get you into 88 different accounts here on AQ. Are you one of them? I'd suggest you change your password so it's not so easy to guess.

I once read that "god" and "money" were two common passwords. "god" won't work since it's not at least five characters long, but "money" does so I tried that one as well and could break into one more account with that password.

Now back to that #10 on the most of most common passwords. It asked for first names, but I also wondered about last names and trail names, so I tried all three. Additionally, I figured most people type in their passwords in all lower case, but some people might not. Passwords are case-sensitive, so I tried both versions--with the name as all lowercase and exactly as the member spelled it on their account.

Holy jumpin' junipers, people!

First names: 99!
Last names: 62!
Trail names: 118!

Grand total, I was able to "break into" 368 accounts on Atlas Quest. That's nearly 4% of all the accounts on this site.

For kicks, I tried variations of the most common passwords. What about adding "123" to the word passwords? Like "qwerty123" instead of just "qwerty". Bang! Got into another account. What about "first name" + 123? Figured out another person's password. The last name plus 123 got me into two more. And the username plus 123 cracked another member's account.

The lesson to be learned here, if you really want your accounts to be safe, stay away from those passwords you see on this top ten list. I imagine I could break into many more accounts if I had additional personal information I could compare such as birthdays, pet names, children's names, etc.

The best passwords I've heard of people using do not use real words, include upper and lowercase characters, and include numbers. (Not numbers that's just a 1 at the end of the password, or 123 for that matter!)

For instance, think of your favorite song, then turn the first letter of each word of it's name into your password. For instance, I Love a Rainy Night, could be turned into Ilarn. It's by Eddie Rabbit, so I'll add his initials to the end as well and get IlarnER.

Nobody is going to guess that password, but it's still very easy to remember. It doesn't have to be song titles. Any easy to remember phrase can work. "A penny saved is a penny earned" could turn into "ApsiapeBF". Throw in a couple of numbers for good measure. "ApsiapeBF1776" perhaps.

I'll update the site to reject these easily guessed passwords soon, but I won't force those of you with poor passwords to change. But it's highly recommended, though. You can change your password at any time from the Account Info page.

Be safe. Choose your passwords wisely.

*** This public service has been brought to you by Ryan. No accounts were harmed in the making of this announcement.

Plant-a-Letterbox Day is around the corner!

Yes, the 2nd annual International Plant-a-Letterbox day is just around the corner. Next Thursday, May 24th, to be exact. Last year, was thrown together at the last minute, all in a feeble attempt to crash Atlas Quest. ;o)

This year is a bit more organized, even including an event listing for your planting pleasures. Additionally, for those who want to follow minute by minute with the number of boxes being planted and how many people are planting, I've created the official Plant-a-Letterbox Day page on Atlas Quest. The countdown has started. Just 390,530 more seconds before the event begins, at least at the time I write this.

Some of the eagle-eyed readers out there may notice that the numbers won't necessarily match the What's New? list. The What's new list is based on the most recently listed letterboxes, while the Plant-a-Letterbox page is only counting the boxes as being planted on May 24th. So technically, even if you plant your letterbox on the 24th but don't have a chance to list it until the 25th, it would still count towards Plant-a-Box day.

For those of you wondering about the discrepancies between last year's counts that I announced last year and the counts listed on the Plant-a-Box page, I've counted only boxes that were planted on May 24th of last year to be consistent with how the numbers are counted this year. Last year, I added both the boxes that were listed on May 24th and those that were planted on May 24th, and those were the numbers I announced. To simply the counting this year, I'm only counting boxes based on the plant date and not the listing date.

Did that make sense? The listing date is the date a box is listed on Atlas Quest while the plant date is specified by the person who listed the box and is supposed to be the actual day the box was put into place. Two dates, same box, but this year, it's the plant date that counts. If you're planting a box for Plant-a-Box day, be sure the plant date is May 24th.

Now.... I need to get cracking myself. I haven't carved any stamps or found any hiding places for my contributions this year, and OH MY GOSH! I'm down to 389,578 seconds before the 2nd annual International Plant-a-Letterbox Day is here!