Go Away PLA!

Took loads of stupid calls at work. Some crazy woman came in wanting career advice. She left after a while. I nice woman from Osaka came in asking about courses. Soon we will be good friends. I must improve my Japanese.

Listened to a lot of Phone Losers Of America stuff at work today.

A Time To Die?

It's probably time for me to kill off a bunch of stuff in my life, and just concentrate on tech.

Still felt ill today. I drank tea, time passed. More tech is needed.

Saturday

Tried to study Microcrap Active Directory.

Found out that my friend and colleague Emily has quit work. It will be very strange to go in to work and know that she is not going to come in ever again.

Had a very pleasant afternoon sitting outside a street cafe with my friends Jan and Luzie, discussing various tech and social topics.

Spent the evening chatting on the SDF public access unix system, and on various instant messaging networks. I *may* have an exciting interview for my blog soon. I'm approaching several people to do interviews on the redistribution of fame.

Talked to a friend in the US about the history of the UK phone system and about the state hacker-scenes world-wide.

War Plan UK

My copy of War Plan UK arrived today. Although I have held it in my hands, it's still difficult to believe it's real. Amazon is currently selling it for around 100 UKP. My copy cost 1 penny. Is it a dream? Will I wake up soon?

War Plan UK is a very important book. It details the UK government's plans for continuing governmental control after a full-scale nuclear strike. A perfect companion to the films "Threads" and "When The Wind Blows".

Waterloo Sunset

Watched the first two episodes of 3x3 Eyes, a Japanese anime series. Lots of exploding streets, demons, blood etc. The bit in between are very good though. 3x3 Eyes was made in 1991 so it bears all the hallmarks of classic anime; very big eyes, static backgrounds, big hair...

Started to think seriously about returning to Japan. Looked into the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, an exam held once a year. I will take the first exam, which although pretty basic will still require a lot of revision for me as I haven't studied Japanese for so long.

A friend came over for tea and chat. We went for a walk in the evening sun. Norwich suddenly looked very beautiful.

On The Buses

Got nmap to work on my Powerbook at 1:30 this morning with lots of help from the people in SDF's chatroom.

Had a very strange dream this morning. I was caught by some police while taking some books from a skip. I was not arrested, and was chatting with a friendly policeman, thinking everything was ok. A police woman then said that it had just gone past midnight, so I had to be arrested. I was taken somewhere on a bus with lots of other people who had been arrested. There were other buses with us, probably 5 or 6 in total. At one point, all the buses stopped for a break. One of the people on my bus broke free and drove the bus away from the police. It was so exciting to escape, but frightening as well. At some point I woke up.


Played around with my Apple Powerbook for most of the day. Getting to love my Apple more as I get to know it.

Ice Cream For Crow

Work sucks at the moment. I feel tired all the time and wish I was doing something more fun like playing computer games or swimming. Thank fuck for Captain Beefheart, I'm listening to Ice Cream For Crow at every possible opportunity so it stays in my head.

My boss is taking us to a really shit restaurant tonight. This is in an attempt to impress an organisation that we sometimes work with. I can't think of anything less impressive than being taken to a shit restaurant.

BrumCon Con

Got an email today saying I've been accepted to speak at BrumCon. My talk will probably be called "What's On The Cards: Security Issues Surrounding Card-based Authentication" I'm really looking forward to it as BrumCon is always a great event. The atmosphere there is very laid back and everyone always has a lot of fun.

Up The Garden Path

Made a path in the back garden. Good to be doing physical work outdoors. My lifestyle has become increasingly sedentary recently, and my body is becoming weaker. This has to change.

Watched Suede videos on YouTube. Suede is rapidly filling my head again, after years of silence. I used to listen to early Suede almost every day while at school. I would close my eyes and see concrete.

Chewin' The Fat With Dr Bearskin

My good friend Dr Edward Bearskin came over in the evening. Dr Bearskin is about to embark on a six-month trip around the world. You can read about his adventures here: here. We looked at maps of Japan and of the world. We reminisced about our epic one-month Interrail tour of Europe. We talked about films. We talked about Suede. It was the best of times.

A Damp Bank Holiday Monday

Listened to a bunch of HOPE talks. The audio of all the talks is available at
www.hope.net The streaming doesn't work well so it's best to download the talks.

Went swimming in the evening. As usual, my time at the pool was mainly spent in the steam room, the sauna and the jacuzzi.

Train Back From London

At about 7 am I decided it was time to get a bit of sleep. There were a couple of people asleep on sofas in the living room, I was lucky enough to have one of the bedrooms and was thus able to get good quality sleep on a very comfortable double bed.

I had set the alarm on my mobile to wake me up at 10:30 am. When I woke up, my watch said 3 pm. After almost a minute of panic (I had to get a train at 1:30 pm or pay 40 quid+ for another ticket) I realised that my watch actually said 9 am.

I left while Ed was still asleep and made my way to London Liverpool Street station. Slept on the train home.

Part-Time Party People

Got into London at 10:30 am. My friend Makiko was waiting for me in the station. We took a gentle walk into central London, talking and enjoying the quiet streets.

Makiko and I had lunch in an Indian restaurant. The food was very good, but the cost bought tears to my eyes. London is double-fucking expensive. And crap.

When Makiko went home, I walked back to Covent Garden to sit in a church courtyard, and read a book on codebreking.

Shortly after 6:30 pm I traveled by Tube to Tooting Bec in order to attend Dr Edward Bearskin's leaving party.

I had been slightly apprehensive about going to an all-night party where I would only know 2 people out of 30. My worry turned out to be unnecessary as everyone was very friendly and I had some fascinating conversations. The food at the party was very good. There was nothing exotic, but everything was good quality and very tasty.

Old Friends, New Friends, Dead Friends

Had lunch with my friend Andrew. We discussed many things, mostly centred around corporate culture.

Bumped into my friend Akira in the city centre. It was good to catch up with eachother.

Good Norwich 2600 meetings are now becoming the norm. There was a new person at the meeting, and we had a lot of tech stuff to play with.

Chatted on SDF. Managed to make several people leave the chat room, mainly by talking about cable-ties:)

Wondered how many of my friends are now dead. All of them?

Cisco Disco

Spent the afternoon reading and studying in the library. Went for a drink with Richard at a coffee shop. The coffee shop was so bad that I felt pain in my spine. I managed to leave before my eyes started bleeding.

Richard and I went to my house where we played with a Cisco router that he recently bought off eBay. I sometimes wish I had more friends, and was happy.

Clear Yer Desk, You're Out!

Spent a big chunk of the day tidying my desk at work. It was quite theraputic...

On the way home from work I stopped at the library to borrow "Security Engineering" by Ross Anderson. Read some of it on the way home. The book has a reputation for being about the best text book on security ever written. From what I read, the reputation is justified.

Back At Work

Spent all my spare time reading about cryptography on Wikipedia and websites of leading cryptographers. Will Karamoon quit his job soon? Only time will tell. And maybe a blog post saying I've quit my job.

Tat Down

I can still smell camp in my hair, on my jacket and on my bag. I'm starting to unpack but I really don't want to because it reminds me that I'm not at camp anymore.

"Tat down" is a term used to describe the process of taking down camp and packing everything up and leaving. I left the camp before Tat Down, whcih was probably a wise move.

Spent the day sorting out my stuff from camp, and trying to remember how you live in a house.

Homeward Bound

Woke up at 7 am and took down the tent. Left camp shortly after 8 am.

Went to the Centre For Alternative Technology. There was a distinct lack of alternative technology but it was still a pleasant place to be. Most of my time was spent eating various plants. I hope that my friend Gemma feeding me plants knew what she was doing.

Lunch was very, very expensive. When I was told the total cost of the handful of food on my plate, I had to use all my self-control in an effort not to destroy the world. The food was ok, but not great.

Spent many hours on the train with Helen, John and Gemma. Finally got home and went straight to sleep.

Thursday At The Gathering

Gate shift this morning was really fun. Sat on a sofa with my friends from 4 am to 8 am, making new friends and talking about everything.

Ran a personal awareness workshop in the morning. There were about 14 people there, and everyone seemed to enjoy what I taught them

Attended the daily Morning Meeting. The atmosphere was fantastic, about 50 of us together in a marquee discussing the camp. Being in tents with good people, sitting on strawbales and feeling good are all things I will try to do more often.

Went to a workshop on the Faslane 365 campaign which aims to close down the Faslane nuclear weapons base in Scotland for a whole year. After a few minutes it became evident that I knew as much, if not more, about the campaign as the two women running the workshop.

Although the Nukewatch workshop was run by one of the women who had run the Faslane workshop, it was much better. After the workshop I talked with the woman, Anna, for 2 hours straight about the future of activism in the UK.

Gemma moved into my tent because the friend she was sharing a tent with was planning to stay up quite late each night. Suddenly my tent seems quite a bit smaller, but it's lovely to have some company.