Easter is the second biggest holiday of the year for confectioners (after halloween) and there’s a fantastic roundup on the (relatively recent) history of Easter sweets and candy over at the Failed Success blog. Unsurprisingly, much of the traditional Easter fayre (hot cross buns, pretzels and so on) is believed to be of Pagan origin (spring rites were as important as harvest rites in many pagan religions).
Of course, a popular belief amongst children is that of the easter bunny, a creature that goes around giving out chocolate eggs and jelly beans. Startling video evidence has since shown this to be untrue…
Posted in Events, Links, News.
By steve
– April 16, 2006
Well we made it back to the UK in one piece, I’m still laggy as anything, but I’ll post round ups of the trip at a later date. In a Toronto shopping mall I spotted this in a toy shop window:
The concept of an ‘Anti-monopoly’ game seems quite intriguing. What kind of tokens would you have? MS? Enron?
Hasbro? I can visualize community chest cards such as “You’ve won second prize in a corporate responsibility contest” or “You have been caught fiddling with the power grid to manipulate energy markets again, go to jail.”
So I decided to look into Anti-monopoly, and it seems that truth is stranger than fiction after all (fiction being the official description of Hasbro’s Monopoly game history).
Continued…
Posted in Gaming, Links, Retro.
By steve
– April 14, 2006
Ok, so we were out at Vancouver Aquarium today (which had some really sweet exhibits by the way such as the dolphins and the beluga whales) and something strange happened whilst we were queueing to get in. Part of the queueing process involves standing in front of a backdrop of Vancouver aquarium and having your photo taken by a photographer. We were told this was a ‘bit of fun’ and that we could view the photo and buy it if we wanted on the way out.
Of course, I declined. I had my own camera, was capable of taking my own pictures and I’m sure we could find people in the aquarium who’d be more than willing to take our picture together for free. The response was one of pure bewilderment.
Continued…
Posted in Events, News, Security.
By steve
– April 9, 2006
Well, CanSecWest Core 06 is over and you can get my SAP powerpoint from here. I ended up severely diluting it in the end for a number of reasons and think I could’ve got away with it being more detailed, but it’s up there anyway.
I had a really great time and met some fantastic people, a lot of really nice people, and a few idiots. Talks of note (for my money, anyhow) included Christopher Abad’s Advancements in Anonymous eAnnoyance, Josh Ryder’s Real Time Threat Mitigation Techniques, Crispin Cowan’s Stunt Profiling: Securing a System While You Wait, Dennis Cox’s Insiders View: Network Security Devices, Major Mal’s Magstripe Madness and Fred Arbogast & Sascha Rommelfangen’s excellent Zen and the art of collecting and analyzing Malware.
I really feel I’ve learned something at CanSec, met some really nice people and hope to be back next year. But aside from the techie bits, I’ve learnt that:
- Falling asleep with the French contingent may get you inadvertently labelled as a sex tourist
- If the abject insanity of the organisers I met are anything to go by, Recon 06 is going to be a seriously sweet con. Those guys are a force of nature, not built for human consumption.
- Don’t organise a ski trip then leave the only guy with the cabin key behind. He will take his time in getting there. Eventually.
Anyway, we’re off to Vancouver aquarium today, then flying out to Toronto tomorrow. Apparently we have wireless at the hotel there so I might do a photo dump of things so far.
Posted in Events, Links, News, Security.
By steve
– April 8, 2006
So my talk’s on at 14:00 Vancouver time, which is about 4 hours from now. CanSecWest 06 is looking good: the hotel is full of geeks, last night we filled out the mill pub on the waterfront. I’m really looking forward to Van Hauser’s, Nico Fischbach’s and HD Moore’s talks. Looks like I’ve got an early slot but it’s just before coffee. Needless to say I’m petrified. Heck, it’s not like any of the other speakers are opening up with rap music!
Posted in Events, News, Security.
By steve
– April 5, 2006
