Sounds like a good name for a band. But I’m referring to a smell. I’ve been furloughed for quite a long period now (nearly half a year now I work it out). It’s been difficult keeping my brain focused at times, seems like it will never end. One thing I have steeled myself to do…

At work we started having a problem last week where people were calling our desktop direct dial numbers saying they were returning our calls. We don’t advertise our direct dial numbers. It quickly became apparent that the people calling were not part of a scam, were returning calls they had genuinely received and missed and…

I’m back at DEFCON again, it is difficult to stay away once you’ve been… I seem to be going through the usual re-discovery of how to make life easier here, so I will blog notes here which will hopefully be useful to others too. Eating: Breakfast is probably best at McDonald’s at first. I remembered…

Dear Dad, You left us in 1999, it happened to be on 20th July, the 30th anniversary of the first moon walk. Thirty years before, I remember you sitting in a chair in our new house, a 405 line black and white tv on, watching what seemed like a never-changing picture of those moon walkers….

We had a good one today. Initially it was noticed a new install of Exchequer (accounting and stock system) on a brand new laptop would not allow dcuments to be emailed. Said MAPI was unavailable. Office 2013 had been installed from a standard ISO and a mail account and so profile was setup, available and…

I wanted to make a comment about how damn good the monthly Hackerbox from hackerboxes.com is. I had seen them online, but it was only when I was at DEFCON last year that I was able to peer inside the boxes they were selling there. Irresistible. As soon as I returned home I subscribed. They…

I have not managed to post about my OU experiences as much as I would have liked. Last year I studied MST124 – Essential Mathematics. I did also begin S141 but very quickly found I didn’t enjoy it so stopped that. I seriously enjoyed MST124. One reason for beginning this degree in Astronomy and Planetary…

This is an indulgent post, so forgive me. I have categorised it under Personal so that does explain it away. Since I lost my wife last year, I keep getting these sudden, crystal-clear insights into ideas. One that frequently hits, and hit they do, is the concept that in a sudden moment, all of your stuff,…

So, I’m in one of the many queues here at defcon, but never has queueing been such fun. Everybody talks to everybody else and then there is the blow – up world ball acting as the crowd volleyball – great community. Not sure what I will purchase when I get in but need to see…

I can’t quite beleive that I am off to defcon 25 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Booked it on a whim last September and it’s arrived., quite scary. Being a newbie at defcon isn’t for the feint hearted I understand, so it will be an education. I will endeavour to write here as it…