RobotSkirts

I finally got around to looking at the Python tutorial today. I didn’t make it past page one because I was shocked to discover that Python is named after Monty Python instead of… you know… THE SNAKE. I figured this fact would be more obvious had O’Reilly chosen a more appropriate beast for their cover, so I decided to throw this cover together for them. Apparently Perl books have similar issues.

Nathan Ball let us try out his neat rope ascender while we where in Boston. I wrote a short post for Hack-A-Day and you can find more pictures on Flickr.

CCCamp is essentially over. I’m currently at Fabienne’s in Berlin and wanted to get something up quick while I’m on a decent internet connection. You can check out my pictures from camp on Flickr. Pictured above is one of the camps ubiquitous Datenklo. It’s the ethernet wire closet found at the ends of camp’s fiber optic runs built inside of a water closet.

The next couple weeks are both busy and exciting for me. I’ve got more stickers (black too!) on order and new tshirts on the way. Aug 1-2 is Black Hat, a computer security convention, followed by Defcon 3-5 then on the 6th I fly into Dusseldorf, Germany for CCCamp August 8-12th. After the camp I’ll be touring a few hacker spaces with a group: Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Karlsruhe, Cologne, Bonn, and Darmstadt. I return on August 20th (another direct flight). Then I think I’ll sleep for a week to make it a solid month (I’ll probably need to by then).

I’m really looking forward to this next month and it’s going to start off with lots of great people coming to town this week.

I was at ToorCon Seattle last weekend. It’s an invite only event and the badge was wrapped like a Wonka bar. Inside was a golden ticket that provides entry to next year’s invite event. I went through my badge collection from the last couple years and uploaded all of the hacker ones. There’s a bottle opener, laser cut puzzle, and a integrated circuit amongst others.

I really dislike April Fool’s day. Especially people whose April Fools joke includes the phrase “this is not a joke” which they later retract. That type of person doesn’t understand how humor works.

My April 1st post from last year.

I was at ShmooCon last weekend. I thought their choice of free bags was interesting. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t see anyone carrying it like a clutch.

There were a handful of interesting talks. A common theme was using statistical analysis to find out what’s actually interest in a large block of data. I think we’ll see even more of this in the future. The web is growing every day and we’re going to need tools to plow through all of that data. Sergey Bratus gave a well received talk on the Kerf project. One use is telling you what the statistically interesting packets are in a long packet trace instead of you guessing what’s there with filters. (I’ve known Sergey for a couple years, but never knew what he was working on)

I’m guessing the Hack-A-Day contest entrants wouldn’t mind winning this pile. It’s not for them though. I made a run to Fry’s today to buy everything that I had been borrowing from Lane while he was in Peru. Now that he’s back I need my own Dremel and iron. New gear is fun but I think I’m done buying stuff for this year.

I picked up a DVI-HDMI cable and a 1/8″ optical cable while I was there too. Now I can hook up my Macs to the home theater. I wasn’t planning on doing this, but I sold my 360 only to discover the digital audio out of the Playstation 2 was completely flaky. I’d buy a PS3 if Sony would just give me a way to do it.

Oh yeah, the electrical issue has been solved. A wire wasn’t completely seated in the panel. I’m beginning to realize how these houses get built so fast.

I’m safely home in Vegas (sound weird to anyone else?). My passport arrived in the mail while I was gone which makes the turnaround less than 4 weeks. The first thing I wondered was whether I got an RFID one. Instead of just throwing the thing in the microwave I googled. The mark of the beast is on the front cover if you’ve got RFID; I do not. I had gotten the passport now to avoid RFID and to give me the possibility of going to the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. It’s wedged between Christmas and New Year’s which is pretty hectic so I think I’ll skip it at least this year. I’ll probably need the time to prep for my first CES anyway.

If you’d been following Hack-A-Day, you would have notice that I recently relinquished the reigns to fellow hacker Will O’Brien. I’ve been posting on Hack-A-Day nearly solo for a solid year. I love HAD, but it was taking a lot of time that I should be putting into Netscape. What really surprised me (and probably indicates how disenchanted I’ve become) is that Will is actually excited to work for us. I’m staying on as managing editor and we have site redesign/more contributors planned in the future.