Wellington is quite far away from many other places and thus knowing the correct time where our colleagues are, when we can reach clients or when we can schedule a server outage is a necessity.
With today’s new fangled technology viewing predefined time zones is just a mouse click away. But it doesn’t look as cool as actual clocks on the wall as in a news room, does it?
Some of the times are not your standard locations, but they are of importance to us in the E-Learning team at Catalyst IT.
One of our developers is going to be a dad real soon. His waiting stirred the creative juices among the other developers. Brett came up with the following “from conception to birth” scenario à la version control system (used with permission):
git is a very popular open source version control system that we use for I guess all our proejcts. I also started using it for reviewing Mahara code and for writing the Mahara user manual.
Blackhat, whitehat, rootkit, cyber security, and bugs are just some of the terms that flew around my head the past weekend because I went to Kiwicon V. Having gone already last year, I kind of knew what to expect and was very much looking forward to 2 days of technical bombardment interspersed with demos of how the talented hack into the system of their choice.
Mind you: hacking is not just the bad, bad guys. There is also a lot of good coming out of hacking: software / web site producers are made aware of security holes in their systems that could be exploited by not so kind people.
It was amazing that some companies don’t care at all: vt for example took down 5 software packages frequently used in Hollywood and only 1 company really talked to him. Others were not as willing and still haven’t fixed their bugs.
I learned:
how insecure the iPhone is and how easily you could read the RFID information stored on an EFPOS card by using a mobile device.
that poop has an ASCII signUTF8 character Unicode code point but in contrast to the snowman sign, it cannot be used in a URL. Go figure.
Poop can't be used as URL
not to say CyberWar if I didn’t want to start on a drinking binge.
that I didn’t understand Erlang and couldn’t defile MacOSX on my own.
how to go rogue.
how to hide images in images.
about the National Cyber Security Center.
how not to go about your first hacking job and that if you do you better know some people in high hacker circles.
and was reminded of the security fails of the last year.
and much more
This year’s Kiwicon was the largest so far. There were over 600 participants, and we were in Wellington’s Opera House as the previous venue would not hold as many people. Just imagine 600 people mostly clad in black in the middle of Wellington on a sunny weekend.
Kiwicon is not just a conference, but it is an experience. The pre-conference emails are the funniest ever, the registration process produced random quotes as comments that made you laugh, name tags were not your typical plastic around paper, but laser engraved leather and VIP had hand-made ones. Participants can also learn how to pick locks and handcuffs, and how to work in a team to hack a big organization who does evil.
I am already looking forward to Kiwicon VI to learn even more and be awed by the things that some people find when they look more closely.
While listening to talks on exploiting RFID technology and hiding information in pictures via steganography, I was wondering how secure EyeFi cards were. Could somebody put malicious code on them which would alter images put on the card so that when they are transferred they would not just include the image taken by the photographer but also some hidden information, possibly code that could endanger the computer / server where these images can be uploaded immediately wirelessly?
Today, the cre?me de la cre?me of (New Zealand) cricket, other sports and actors played the charity Twenty20 match “Fill the Basin for Christchurch” in beautiful Wellington summer weather. New Zealand’s premier and traditional cricket ground The Basin Reserve in the city was an ideal place to hold this match.
12,000 tickets were sold (2,000 more than initially planned), but I was fortunate to get one as a few were still available at the gates right after the game had started. YEAH! This was also finally the time that I sat through an entire game – albeit a Twenty20 one
The game participants were high-powered and they had fun playing themselves entertaining the crowd.
The teams are:
Wellington Legends XI (team black)
Coach: James Nesbitt
Martin Crowe (captain; cousin of Russell Crowe), Andrew Jones, Bruce Edgar, Chris Nevin, Ewen Chatfield, Gavin Larsen, Jason Wells, Jonathan Millmow, Matthew Bell, Richard Petrie, Roger Twose, Tana Umaga
Canterbury Invitation XI (team red)
Coach: Russell Crowe (yes, the actor)
Stephen Fleming (captain), Nathan Astle, Geoff Allott, Marc Ellis, Mark Greatbatch, Sir Richard Hadlee, Rod Latham, Craig McMillan, Dion Nash, Adam Parore, Justin Vaughan, Shane Warne
Match Referee: Sir Ian McKellan
Umpires: Richie McCaw, Conrad Smith, Martin Freeman, Mark Hadlow (who also bowled one ball)
Wellingtonians have ingenious ideas when it comes to coffee, serving it, and finding cool locations for a cafe. This coffee shop “Flight Coffee” in an old fire truck is the latest addition to the coffee shop scene in New Zealand’s capital.
