I first got into programming through a real-life card game—which I realized I could play much more cheaply, frequently, and competitively online through IRC. Once on IRC I discovered client-side scripting and started writing my own. Hanging out on IRC led me to other channels, including file-sharing channels where people traded these things called ROMs—memory dumps of old arcade and console games—and played them on emulators. Then I became interested in how all that worked and that's about the time I bought my first book on C. So yes, video games were a catalyst for me to learn more about the inner workings of computers.
Invest in a durable, compact laptop preloaded with Linux and only the necessary software to view the data. This should be fairly cheap because you won't need a WiFi card or ethernet port, nor a high-end graphics card. The bulk of the cost should be spent on a reliable hard drive. Once you have everything documented, encrypt the drive and stick it in a safe-deposit box next to your will. This way the data never has to be transported anywhere.
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I first got into programming through a real-life card game—which I realized I could play much more cheaply, frequently, and competitively online through IRC. Once on IRC I discovered client-side scripting and started writing my own. Hanging out on IRC led me to other channels, including file-sharing channels where people traded these things called ROMs—memory dumps of old arcade and console games—and played them on emulators. Then I became interested in how all that worked and that's about the time I bought my first book on C. So yes, video games were a catalyst for me to learn more about the inner workings of computers.
Invest in a durable, compact laptop preloaded with Linux and only the necessary software to view the data. This should be fairly cheap because you won't need a WiFi card or ethernet port, nor a high-end graphics card. The bulk of the cost should be spent on a reliable hard drive. Once you have everything documented, encrypt the drive and stick it in a safe-deposit box next to your will. This way the data never has to be transported anywhere.
Drupal.org is built on Drupal 7 and therefore stores passwords salted and hashed with SHA-512. See user_hash_password() in the Drupal API docs.