Introduction

Why Bother?

As should be abundantly clear from my prior writings I am about to leave on a trip for a year. During that time I’ll likely be making use of numerous public Wi-Fi access points, not to mention whatever dodgy cellular providers are available in each location I travel to. As part of my overall stance on privacy, its essential I take steps to secure my communication while traveling, the primary of which is using a VPN for basically everything on both my laptop and my phone. To do this, I’m using a droplet from DigitalOcean that’s just $5/mo and doesn’t have to be shared with anyone else (from an IP/network perspective anyway).

Howdy all. This will be a mixed post today. The first part will cover a quick update to all the things I previously had in flight preparing for my trip, and the second part will be a summary of the intensive research I’ve done on insect and mosquito repellents and other precautions. Several folks on the RY Facebook groups have been asking questions about what to do for mosquitos while in South America, and I have also fielded some direct questions from folks about the Permethrin-embedded clothing that I bought. In addition, I’ve now agreed to join a hike of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu while we’re in Peru, which means I need to step up my research game and be definitively sure of my choices before I leave. But first, the update.

I apologize for how belated this trip report is. Several people have been clamoring for a more complete write-up of the trip than I gave on Facebook. We’ll start with the beer and end with some interesting photos and a story about one forlorn Camaro and a fragmented wild turkey.

Beer

During the course of my trip, myself and my buddy Jon Kelley managed to hit several breweries and get t-shirts from the tourism folks in Grand Rapids, which apparently styles itself as “Beer City”.

Just a quick post to share this with anyone else that needs it. I spent hours using Google and reading posts from random people on the net, including bug comments from Dan Walsh on a never solved Fedora bug specifically related to this. The conclusion I came to was that hardly anyone uses SELinux and the ones that do just hack around the problem rather than solving it.

In this particular case, the fault is really with the terrible implementation of Google Authenticator, which I found out during the course of this by reading through the source code. Long story short, it creates a new file named $HOME/.google_authenticator~ and renames it to $HOME/.google_authenticator. This of course plays havoc with SELinux.

Introduction

My apologies for the delay in posting part 2. I encountered a few chicken-and-egg problems in that I wanted to write this update from my new Macbook but needed complete the remainder of the setup in order to have a comfortable and secure environment to do so from. Without further ado, on to the meat of it.

Organization

I’m breaking this article up into several parts to both assist me in the process of writing it and to make it easier to digest. I’m taking some steps out of order, but am making an effort to organize them into the most logical order possible.

I apologize I haven’t posted the later parts of my Macbook setup instructions yet. I ran into the chicken-and-egg problem of wanting to use my new Macbook to write my posts. I am happy to report that I am now writing this post on my new Macbook and it’s to a point where I can start writing the rest of the article. I will do that later on. First though, a quick update regarding trip preparations.

Introduction

That time has come again, and I have acquired a new Macbook Pro. In this case its primarily in preparation for my trip so that I can edit photos effectively on the go. It replaces my aged 2011 Macbook Air (which has served me well). It seems an opportune time then to write up my process for setting up a Macbook, and with a particular focus on security.

Organization

I’m breaking this article up into several parts to both assist me in the process of writing it and to make it easier to digest. I’m taking some steps out of order, but am making an effort to organize them into the most logical order possible.

This post was originally a response to a question I received from a friend via email, with some additions. I’m not going to try to get very in-depth here, this is more of a high-level overview of what you should be doing to secure a server running Linux. This is mainly focused on a business environment where you have multiple users and multiple servers (and are hopefully using configuration management software).

Itinerary Update

First, before I get into the rest of what I’ve got sorted out this week for my trip, the itinerary has changed for Darién. The Remote Year staff reached out to everyone who has been accepted to Darién to notify us of the change earlier this week, citing safety concerns about Turkey and Bolivia. The new itinerary is below:

1. Prague, Czech Republic
2. Belgrade, Serbia
3. London, UK
4. Lisbon, Portugal
5. Rabat, Morocco
6. Valencia, Spain
7. Mexico City, Mexico
8. Bogotá, Colombia
9. Medellin, Colombia
10. Lima, Peru
11. Córdoba, Argentina
12. Buenos Aires, Argentina

Preparing to Travel

When I left you last week I was still figuring out insurance, waiting on my US Passport to be sent to me from renewal, and considering my options for some other essential items for travel.

I’m in!

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve been accepted to join Remote Year as part of the Darién cohort starting on June 1st, 2016 in Prague, Czech Republic, and returning to the US in June of 2017. I’ve been looking forward to doing international travel and participating in the digital nomad lifestyle for many years, and since I now work remotely its presented the opportunity to make that dream a reality. I’m overjoyed to be part of what is surely going to be an epic experience.