Tag: sydney airport

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Weekly Wrap 342: The rush to the end of 2016 begins

Rain approaches Sydney: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 12 to Sunday 18 December 2016 was a funny beast. It started slow, but ended productively.

Podcasts

  • The new Corrupted Nerds podcast, Conversations 17: The Ruxcon 2016 Panel, was posted on Sunday. It’s also available on SoundCloud and Spreaker. The panel was Barry Anderson, a security solutions architect for Cisco Security Solutions, Asia Pacific; Prof Jill Slay, director of the Australian Centre for Cyber Security (ACCS) at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA); Meths Ferrer, a malware engineer at the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC); Richard Johnson, Manager of Vulnerability Development for Cisco Talos; and myself. Our moderator was Dr Suelette Dreyfus, journalist and research fellow at the University Of Melbourne.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

On Monday morning I’m flying to Adelaide for a family funeral on Tuesday. On Monday evening I’ll be at the Exeter Hotel on Rundle Street from 1730 ACDT, and you’re welcome to join me. I return to Sydney on Wednesday evening, when I’ll migrate to Ashfield for a couple weeks of cat-sitting over the holiday season.

On Thursday and Friday I’ll be finishing some geekwork and writing, before Christmas Eve and Christmas Day on Saturday and Sunday.

Further Ahead

I plan to stream an episode of The 9pm Edict on the evening of Wednesday 28 December, but watch out for the formal announcement.

Next year’s calendar is staring to fill already. It seems I’ll be covering the APRICOT 2017 / APNIC43 conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, at the end of February. Stay tuned.

[Photo: Rain approaches Sydney. An aircraft on approach to Sydney Airport runway 16R on a gloomy afternoon just before the rain begins on 14 December 2016.]

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Weekly Wrap 193: Mid-month surge, then rain and planes

Sydney airport before dawn: click for original imageMy week of Monday 10 to Sunday 16 February 2014 isn’t quite finished, but today is effectively the start of a new working week so… well, here we are. Before breakfast at Sydney Airport. Or right next to it. Call it a wrap of Monday to Saturday.

It seems that I switched from early-month torpor to late-month productivity around mid-week. We’ll see how that pans out over the next few days. But I do think I’m starting to identity a clear pattern here.

Articles

Media Appearances

5at5

I suppose I should give better prominence to 5at5, the “email letter” that I started two weeks ago. I’ve actually managed to stick to the daily routine — albeit with some wobbliness in the “around 5pm Sydney time” part of the deal — and it seems like people are liking it. Enjoy.

Corporate Largesse

  • Today I’m heading to the Gold Coast for the three-day Tech Leaders Forum 2014, formerly known as Kickstart Forum, an event I’ve attended in previous years. The event organisers cover my airfares and accommodation, and there’s usually plenty of food and drink and various freebies from the vendors who pay for it all. I’ll list all of the largesse next week so it’s all in the one place.

The Week Ahead

I’ll be on the Gold Coast through until Tuesday evening, fully occupied with the aforementioned event. I’ll then return to the Blue Mountains for a solid week of writing. There’s nothing locked in for Sydney at this stage, but of course that may change.

[Photo: Sydney airport before dawn, taken shortly before the post was published.]

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Weekly Wrap 177: Fire, travel, hacking and alcohol

The view from 29A: click to embiggenMy week Monday 21 to Sunday 27 October 2013 was just insanely busy, including everything from bushfires to fine food to hacking, little sleep and far, far too much alcohol.

In the one week, I felt guilty for leaving the Blue Mountains when the locals were about to face what looked like a severe bushfire threat, especially when the very next day I enjoyed a luxury lunch, and spent four solid days absorbing deep, deep information security information and, in the evenings, alcohol.

I survived.

Articles

Podcasts

None.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I went to a lunchtime media briefing by Amazon Web Services at the O-Bar, the restaurant at the top of Australia Square tower. The food and wine was delightful.
  • On Thursday I had dinner with Michael McKinnon from AVG Technologies AU and a chap from a government agency at Syracuse Restaurant and Wine Bar in Melbourne. AVG paid for that one.
  • On Sunday I had dinner with Michael McKinnon from AVG Technologies AU at Ishiya Japanese Stonegrill. I can thoroughly recommend the “sake degustation” options. But McKinnon again? I know. He even acted as my driver for an errand on Saturday afternoon. People are starting to talk…

The Week Ahead

Well, it’d almost over now. All I’ll say is that tonight is Thursday night and I’ll be returning to the Blue Mountains tomorrow. The weekend is unplanned, at least in detail, but I’ll be producing some media objects between now and the end of Sunday. Stay tuned.

[Map: The view from 29A, taken at Sydney Airport on 23 October 2013.

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Sydney Airport passes the buck

Photograph of jet aircraft approaching Sydney Airport

Sydney Airport has responded to my email about interference with our Wi-Fi and Next G reception. In standard corporate style, they begin by reminding me that “aviation safety — both in the air and on the ground — is paramount”. It gives some useful information — but passes the buck firmly to Airservices Australia.

The full text is over the jump.

Yes, the email arrived a day later than their 3-day stated turnaround time, but that’s OK considering I did say this would all be published.

Airservices Australia runs stuff like air traffic control so, yes, this does perhaps belong in their court. As they’ve been suffering some problems themselves, it’ll be interesting to see their response.

Continue reading “Sydney Airport passes the buck”

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Where are your manners, Sydney Airport?

Photograph of jet aircraft on landing approach for Sydney Airport runway 16R

Our home in Enmore is under the approach path to Runway 16R at Sydney Airport. We can cope (just) with the noise, but the electronic interference annoys the shit out of us. Time to fix that. Here’s an email I just entered into their website contact form.

Dear Sydney Airport,

We live in Enmore. When you turn on your electronic stuff to help the heavy jets land on Runway 16R, it often knocks out our Wi-Fi network. (It also overloads the pre-amp of our digital TV receiver, but since we’ve pretty much given up on broadcast TV this is less of a concern.) We can even predict the imminent arrival of a heavy because the network goes down about 15 or 20 seconds before we hear the approaching aircraft.

This happens on two different 801.11g 802.11g frequencies, two different brand wireless access points, and on whichever computers we’re using. Your comms or navaids, or maybe the aircraft themselves, can also interrupt a Telstra Next G data connection, so even switching to our alternate data link is problematic.

I understand that, for obvious practical reasons, we can’t shut down the airport. So I assume you’ll be sending someone around to resolve this interference with our legitimate use of the radio spectrum?

The disruption has of course been more frequent since the work on the cross runway has increased the daytime traffic over our home. Again, I understand that this work needs to be done.

However, like someone doing noisy renovations or holding a noisy but perfectly legitimate party, the polite, neighbourly thing would be something a bit better than sending us generic corporate propaganda. The polite, neighbourly thing would be to make good somehow. Give us the keys to your holiday shack while work’s in progress. Invite us over to see the new family room once it’s done. Send around a slab of beer and some grilled chicken breast fillets.

Or, just fix the problems you’re causing.

I look forward to your response. Like this email, it’ll be posted at stilgherrian.com. If it’s a bunch of legal or PR jargon which fails to acknowledge that the problem even exists, we’ll laugh.

Regards,

Stilgherrian

I’ll keep you posted if and when they respond.