Tag: patch monday

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Weekly Wrap 119: Ducks, ducks, sheep and bull

The bulk of the business end of my week Monday 10 to Sunday 16 September 2012 was spent at Microsoft’s TechEd 2012 event on the Gold Coast, and the weekend at Parramatta.

Microsoft’s event, like all major vendor conferences, began with an intense burst of frustration thanks to the inevitable series of overly-long overly-staged buzzword-saturated propaganda events — “keynotes”, the industry has decided to call them — designed to hammer the new technology’s marketecture into your head while preventing the opportunity for critical thinking.

And, like nearly all others, it eventually settled down into something sensible once all the vice-presidents and managing directors and pointlessly-animated PowerPoint presentations and bass-heavy music had been stage-managed out of the room and actual engineers and designers and other geeks started talking through specific details.

I’ll have more to say about that in due course.

Parramatta, by comparison, delivered a delightful spring weekend full of ducklings and food and wine and almost no pretension whatsoever.

I’ll have more to say about that in due course also.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 154, “Good-guy hackers and other infosec anomalies”. A conversation with Michael Montecillo, a threat research and intelligence principal with IBM Security Services, covering good-guy hackers (well der!), click fraud, his views on the profile of hacktivism following the arrest of key Anonymous and LulzSec members, and more.

Articles

Media Appearances

  • On Tuesday I did a spot on ABC 105.7 Darwin, but it wasn’t recorded my end so I can’t bring it to you today. That’s a remarkable similar statement to last week, except that one was a pre-record with Richard Margetson and this one was live with Kate O’Toole. I’m annoyed that the recording didn’t happen, ‘cos I managed to give a coherent exposition of my thoughts about online bullying.
  • On Tuesday I did another regular Balls Radio spot with Phil Dobbie, talking about the High Court rejecting an appeal in the Optus TV Now case.
  • On Friday I spoke about the new iPhone 5 and the utility of smartphones for journalism on ABC Radio National’s Media Report.

Corporate Largesse

I attended Microsoft’s TechEd 2012 on the Gold Coast as their guest.

  • Microsoft covered my airfares from Sydney to the Gold Coast and return, airport transfers, three nights accommodation at Jupiter’s Hotel and Casino on Broadbeach Island, and all the food and drinks.
  • The conference backpack was a high-quality Targus job, containing marketing material from sponsors and other vendors. The former I’ve kept, because my The North Face backpack is starting to wear out. All the latter I’ve thrown into the recycling bin, unread.

Also:

  • On Monday evening I attended the SANS Sydney Community Event “Your Security Monitoring — An Attacker’s Perspective”, where the food and (soft)drinks were sponsored by Shearwater Solutions. An article about this will appear in due course.

The Week Ahead

It’s a busy week of (mostly) writing for me, with around five articles already committed to various mastheads, as well as my presentation at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. I think my original plan to win the first annual Orkney Short Crime Fiction Prize will have to be dropped. I has disappoint.

I’ll be heading from Sydney to Wentworth Falls this afternoon (Monday) and will return to Sydney for the school holiday period on the coming weekend. I also plan to be in Sydney on Wednesday morning for Symantec’s announcement of their Australian expansion plans. How will that turn into an accommodation schedule? I’ll figure that out this evening.

[Photo: Ducks at Parramatta, a delightfully pastoral scene photographed on the banks of the Parramatta River on Saturday afternoon. I managed to get quite close to this family of ducks before they raised the alarm and took to the water.]

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Weekly Wrap 118: Planes, pains and delays

My week Monday 3 to Sunday 9 September 2012 began pleasantly enough in San Francisco, but ended badly in Sydney — at least until I escaped to Wentworth Falls

I’m way behind schedule, so I’ll only briefly mention the two annoyances.

On Friday I woke up early with a massive pain in my leg. Since I’d just done a long-distance flight I naturally thought of deep vein thrombosis, so I figured I’d better check it out. It turned out to be simple delayed onset muscle soreness, but of course I lost half a day in the hospital.

Then on Saturday I woke up to the news that Prussia.Net’s shared hosting server was dying. I lost eight hours on that. While the wonderful engineers at ServePath did the actual work, I still had to hang around to approve each step and keep clients informed.

As a result, this is all a little thinner than planned.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 153, “App.net’s radical social network strategy: charge money”. A conversation with App.net founder, technologist and entrepreneur Dalton Caldwell. Will App.net be Twitter’s successor?

Articles

None. Though I’m working on a couple today for publication tomorrow.

Media Appearances

  • On Tuesday I did a spot on ABC 105.7 Darwin, but it wasn’t recorded my end so I can’t bring it to you today. However it was a pre-recorded spot, so with luck I’ll be able to get a copy from the ABC. Stand by.
  • On Tuesday night I did another regular Balls Radio spot with Phil Dobbie, talking once more about online bullying.
  • On Thursday afternoon I was on a security and privacy panel at the ACCAN National Conference. I’ll bring you a recording in due course.
  • On Thursday night I spoke about government data retention plans with Dom Knight on ABC Local Radio.

Corporate Largesse

  • VMware covered my travel back to Australia, which included a limousine from San Francisco to San Jose, and flights from San Jose via Los Angeles to Sydney.
  • On Thursday I attended the launch of Symantec’s Norton Cybercrime Report 2012 at Sydney’s Justice and Police Museum. They provided food and drink.

The Week Ahead

I’ll head to Sydney some time tomorrow, Monday, after having filed stories for Technology Spectator and CSO Online, as well as producing the Patch Monday podcast.

On Monday night I’m attending a SANS Sydney Community Night, with a presentation entitled “Your Security Monitoring – An Attacker’s Perspective”. Should be interesting. I’m not sure where my write-up will appear yet.

On Tuesday I’m headed to the Gold Coast to cover Microsoft’s TechEd 2012 event, which runs through to Friday. I’ll post more about that as I go. I’m not sure whether I’ll return to Sydney immediately it’s over or spend the weekend in Brisbane.

[Photo: Embraer EJR-140 belonging to American Eagle at San Jose Airport gate 10. This is the aircraft I flew in from San Jose (SJC) to Los Angeles (LAX).]

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Weekly Wrap 117: Cheese, booze and virtualisation

My week Monday 27 August to Sunday 2 September 2012 was spent in San Francisco, and as I write this on their Labor Day holiday Monday I’m still there. Here. Whatever.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 152, “Geo-engineering: fixing climate for just US$6 billion?” A conversation with Dr Caspar Hewett, visiting researcher at the University of Newcastle in the UK, and Danish author and political scientist Dr Bjørn Lomberg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre in Washington.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

VMware’s VMworld was such a large bunch of stuff that it deserves its own section.

  • VMware covered the travel and accommodation, including flights Sydney to Los Angeles to San Francisco, and back again San Jose to Los Angeles to Sydney. A car is being provided for today’s drive from downtown San Francisco to San Jose airport. Four nights accommodation was provided at InterContinental San Francisco.
  • Food ranged from the truly frightening breakfasts in the conference’s media rooms Monday through Wednesday to gorgeous canapés and cheese platters like the one pictured above at the evening cocktail parties. The latter were held at the InterContinental on the Sunday before this week commenced, the St Regis Hotel on Monday, and the Temple Club on Tuesday.
  • On Tuesday night I also went to the Sourcefire cocktail party at the Marriott San Francisco. That’s their cheese platter pictured above.
  • The big VMworld party was Wednesday night and featured Jon Bon Jovi, but I didn’t go because I was exhausted and the last thing I needed was to be in a room with 15,000 drunk nerds. Sorry.
  • The conference backpack contained a VMworld-branded t-shirt, hardcover notebook and ballpoint pen, along with a sheaf of sponsor-related crap on paper. Pretty much all of the latter was thrown out.

I think I gained about 20kg in weight, 75% of which was my liver.

Also this week:

The Week Ahead

I leave San Francisco on Monday evening. That’s tonight. The limousine is scheduled collect me at 1745 PDT to take me to San Jose airport for a 1945 flight to Los Angeles, from where I take the 2250 Qantas flight to Sydney. I arrive in Sydney at 0740 AEST on Wednesday morning and will be heading straight to my hotel to collapse.

Wednesday night is the conference dinner for the ACCAN National Conference. I’m speaking at that event on Thursday afternoon.

Symantec is launching the Norton Cybercrime Report at Sydney’s Justice and Police Museum at 1100 Thursday morning, and I plan to be heading to that.

The rest of the latter part of the week will be full of an awful lot of writing, I imagine.

[Photo: Cheese platter at the Marriott San Francisco, courtesy of Sourcefire.]

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Weekly Wrap 116: Porn, planes and presentations

Here’s my week Monday 20 to Sunday 26 August 2012. Once more it’s nothing but the facts, ma’am, because I’m so far behind in these posts.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I attended the launch party for the Samsung Experience Store in Sydney, where of course they provided food and drink.
  • On Thursday through Saturday I attended Consilium at the Palmer Coolum Resort on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The Centre for Independent Studies covered by flight from Sydney to Sunshine Coast, accommodation, food and drink, a limousine from the resort to Brisbane airport, and a flight back to Sydney — but I wasn’t paid for my appearance at the event.
  • On Sunday I flew from Sydney via Los Angeles to San Francisco to attend the VMworld event at VMware’s expense. I’ll list all of the freebies from that event on the next Weekly Wrap.

[Photo: View from Millers Point, taken from my room at The Sebel Pier One Hotel in Sydney. On the left is Pier 2/3, and across Sydney Harbour is Harry Seidler’s controversial Blues Point Tower.]

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Weekly Wrap 115: Four trains and too much food

Today I’m catching up on a fortnight of blog posts, so for now my summary of the week Monday 13 to Sunday 19 August 2012 will consist of nothing but the facts, ma’am.

Personal observations about the last fortnight or so will follow within the next 48 hours or so.

Podcasts

Articles

I wrote two articles, one for ABC’s The Drum about media coverage of the Natonal Broadband Network, the other for CSO Online about the hoax “hack” on the Sony PlayStation Network, but neither has been published yet. Stand by.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday I had lunch at Rengaya in North Sydney on Websense’s tab.
  • On Tuesday I attended IBM’s Security Symposium 2012 in Sydney. They provided accommodation at Sydney’s Sheraton on the Park hotel the night before so I could make the 0800 start, and plenty of refreshments during the morning.

The Week Ahead

The schedule for the next few days is being shaped by my impending travels, to the Sunshine Coast on Thursday 23 August to present at Consilium, on Sunday 26 August to San Francisco to cover VMworld, and back to Sydney by Wednesday 5 September to present at ACCAN’s national conference.

So between now and Thursday lunchtime I have to write two presentations and finalise two episodes of the Patch Monday podcast, as well as wrap up some other bits and pieces of writing. And get a haircut. And buy some new clothes.

At this stage I plan to be in Wentworth Falls until Wednesday morning, then hit Sydney that afternoon for the opening of the Samsung Experience Store (indeed) and an overnight stay before the real travels begin.

[Photo: The Blue Mountains Hotel, in Lawson, photographed on 13 August 2012 from a passing train.]

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Weekly Wrap 114: Screeching and grinding, mostly

Today I’m catching up on a fortnight of blog posts, so for now my summary of the week Monday 6 to Sunday 12 August 2012 will including nothing but the facts, ma’am.

Personal observations about the last fortnight or so will follow within the next 48 hours or so.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 149, “Does the internet really need new laws?” Why do governments keep wanting to make special new laws for the internet? Surely a crime is a crime, no matter where it’s committed? The answers come from high-profile geek Pia Waugh, with strong interests in free and open-source software and open government; IT lawyer Kay Lam-McLeod, from Brisbane-based practice Idealaw; and Kate Carruthers, founder of Social Innovation.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

[Photo: Ready in TARDIS 1, a photo taken in one of the TARDIS audio booths at ABC Radio’s Sydney headquarters in Ultimo.]