Rubenerd

Posted last today, so it would appear as the first post on my site for a while :)

Live from bed

It was a warm early morning in Sydney when I stayed up late to watch the launch of NASA's Curiosity rover. Staring into my iTelephone screen in the pitch blackness of my bedroom, I watched in awe and child-like excitement seeing the rocket blast off into the sky. From the original post:

Whereas during STS-135 I watched with baited breath on my MacBook Pro, this time I elected to witness the event on my iTelephone, which the NASA site accommodated with an iOS link next to the primary video feed.

Despite being roughly half a minute behind the live picture during the feed, I got a quiet, giddy thrill from watching the launch in a darkened room, from my bed, with my iTelephone in hand. For the first time in ages, I felt like I was living in the future.

Now here we are six months later and…

We have photos!

From the NASA site:

This [image shown at the top of this post] is one of the first images taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars on the morning of Aug. 6, 2012. It was taken through a fisheye wide-angle lens on the left “eye” of a stereo pair of Hazard-Avoidance cameras on the left-rear side of the rover.

The logistics of launching such a massive vehicle into the sky, sending it millions of kilometres, have it land safely with a hovering sky tethering system, rebroadcasting images and commands via a satellite previously launched and placed into orbit around the Martian planet… so this guy can include this image on his weblog. Well, among other uses, but you get the drift. There's a pun about Martian dust storms there somewhere.

The preciousness of those pixels. Once again, I'm at a loss for words.

Science is beautiful.

I got this irritating message on Firefox and SeaMonkey constantly, mostly because I don't have Flash. Fortunately, it's easy enough to disable.

Go to about:config and set this option to true:

plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin

There have been so many password "hacking" stories lately, I thought I'd write this post so I can refer back to it. For added security, I've included the above image of Makise Kurisu, the scientist in my anime harem.

Covering my behind

Crypto is an exact science, so before I go any further I will make these clear.

• When I say random, technically I mean pseudorandom. Algorithms are deterministic, and computer order and logic can’t strictly speaking produce "true" randomness. Contemporary algorithms are an order of magnitude better than the BASIC RND() function of yore though.

• When I say impossible and one way, I mean practically speaking. Our current algorithms would take the birth and death of several universes to brute force with current hardware, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Just very very very very improbable!

How passwords are supposed to be stored

When you create an account with a well designed, secure website, your chosen password is not stored anywhere. Instead, your password is put through a one way cryptographic hashing algorithm which converts it to random gibberish, along with some salt or random information only the web server knows.

When you attempt to log into your site, the password you give is hashed and compared to the hash on file. If they're the same the server knows you have the right password.

It's a proven, tested technique and it works… provided everything is implemented properly. No doubt you've seen plenty of news stories suggesting sound security is harder than coming up with some snappy alliteration on a blog post.

Why go to the trouble?

Rather than storing a hash of a password, you could simply store the password and compare it when someone logs in. It's simpler, and a worryingly large number sites still do this.

The problem is, if the database is broken into, the malicious hacker has access to all your customer's passwords. People like conserving energy (politically correct way of saying lazy!), and are probably using those same passwords for all sorts of stuff including their banking sites, email, social networks and so on. You can see what a disaster this could be!

If you store them as hashes, all anyone ever sees is random gibberish… even the site owner!

How to tell

Short of asking the site administrator, there are two main tells that a site is storing your passwords instead of a hash:

• They’re able to provide you with your password. This could happen when you first create your account and they send you a welcome email, or if you’ve said you’ve forgotten your password. A secure site should always direct you to a page to reset it, because they don’t know your password either.

• Hashes take any password length and adjust them to a uniform size (such as 128 bits). Not always, but often if a site puts a limit on your password length, it’s because they’re storing it as plaintext in their database.

There may have been (bad) excuses for these practices in the past, but not any more. If a site you access does either of these, it's time to question how important they are and whether they're worth risking your data and security over. Blunt, but true.

If you suspect a site you access is storing your password in plain text and you have no choice but to use them, complain, and make sure you pick something random and unique to that one site. If/when they get broken into, you'll be glad you did.

Via my very evil awesome friend JamieJakov. One of my new favourite things in the world, and a contender for the world's second greatest song behind The Bird is The Word.

I'm also getting fashion ideas.

In the future
Everybody will be famous anonymous
For 15 minutes

Given I only have a limited amount of time back home, I've been attempting to cram as much stuff into each day as I can! My limited funds means I've also abstained from any cabs, and taken the MRT. It's fast, cheap and clean, but sometimes takes a little longer than a taxi would ;D

Upshot of this: I'm too tired each evening to write up a post, and publish all my SLR shots. I'll do this when I get back to Sydney.

Cheers!

Patrick Wintour reporting for The Guardian:

Britain and America are willing to offer the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, safe passage – and even clemency – as part of a diplomatic push to convene a UN-sponsored conference in Geneva on political transition in Syria.

And yet Julian Assange, who has not been charged or convicted of any crimes, is asking Equador to protect him from Britain and America. This whole farce would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

On the second day of my sister's and my Singapore trip, I corrected a grave packing mistake! Fortunately without too much fuss, and without getting rained on!

Camera DERP

I have a Nikon D60. It's a camera. It takes pictures. It's not the fanciest SLR, but I have a few lenses I love, and it does the trick. Only catch is, like many digital cameras (except those fancy ones with perpetual motion machines in the grip) it requires an energy cell to operate. Or battery, in typically flawed English.

Not only did I realise I left this vital part of my camera back in Singapore, I left the charger behind too. Such n00b travelers mistakes caused me such anguish I was able to mutter an entire sentence of gibberish. Normally my sentences lack cohesion, but this lack any semblance of English whatsoever. Not even Singlish. Aiyo.

Fortunately, this numbskull was able to use this dumb oversight to check out camera shops! After seeing Elke off, I hit Peninsula Plaza and The Adelphi near City Hall. As a fan of retro architecture these places hold a certain charm compared to the brand new or just renovated super-buildings now along Orchard Road and Raffles Place. As I commented on Twitter, they kind of look like the sets of old Star Trek movies; I'm sure their architects thought they looked super futuristic at the time!

These shopping centres have tons of little family run camera shops with all sorts of amazing wares. My favourite is The Camera Workshop at #01-31 in the Peninsula Shopping Centre; my dad and I have been going there since I was in primary school. The owner even recognised me, and gave me an amazing price on a new charger. Across from there I was able to get a replacement OEM battery for much less than an official Nikon one, which means I didn't waste too much of my Chinese food or cargo pants budget!

In the morning Elke and I hit the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Somerset 313, then for no reason later in the afternoon the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Ion. Both these shopping centres along Orchard Road were finished in 2010, only shortly before my sister and I left for Sydney. Still, all Coffee Beans have the same kind of feel, and we reveled in having the same free flow cawfees in their distinctive wide coffee cups and Ice Blendeds!

We headed back to the hotel (dubbed "home" for now!) in the evening to freshen up and charge all our phones, iPads and cameras, then headed to Suntec City to look at glasses for Elke. I love Suntec City, for the same way I love those other centres. People in the 1990s thought they were building something futuristic, now it has that sort of retro modern feel, which I really like. Ever since I was a kid, my dream was to start my own IT consulting firm out of Suntec, the buildings and the world's largest fountain in the middle are just too cool. That and I used to hang out in the shopping centre downstairs growing up :')

We also went to Carl's Jr, one of the few fast food places I can stand because the food is actually… really good! It's probably a good thing Sydney doesn't have them, I'd probably put on far too much weight eating their Sante Fe chicken burgers, or Elke with her Double Bacon Guacamole Cheeseburger. What a monstrosity XD;

In lieu of my actual camera, I took a bunch of fairly crappy phone pictures. Most centred around travelling on the MRT, Singapore's metro system that's so refreshing after dealing with CityRail in Sydney. It's not fair to compare the two per se, given the former is a metro and the latter a suburban system, but the difference in service, cleanliness and affordability was striking! They'd also finished the Circle Line since last time we were here, and some of the new stations are just GORGEOUS!

We also paid homage to the now-closed Borders in Wheelock Place that both Elke and I used to hang out at. Got my first O'Reilly programming book there :(. At least it's replacement was something awesome, the Marks and Sparks Food Hall had TONS of English sweets, crisps and biscuits! :D

Finally, I was able to get a micro SIM for my iTelephone 4! My dad still needed my post-paid SingTel card (with the number I've had since I was in primary school!) for convoluted reasons, but having been to four separate StarHub stores that told me they were out of stock of the tourist Micro SIMS, I went to their branch at 1 Raffles Place and got one for $18, $7 of which was used as credit towards 1GiB of data. Suddenly I was wandering around again with 5 bars everywhere, including rail tunnels, lifts, shopping centre basements! Curiously enough, I got 4 bars while wandering around Raffles Place.

Productive day! Here's hoping tomorrow I'll be able to actually take proper pictures again!

I'm back in Singapore for the first time since my sister, dad and I moved back to Sydney. Have a raging headache, so today's entry will probably be as cohesive as… something that isn't. Aiyo!

Scoot

We arrived at the Sydney Airport late in the morning and checked into our Scoot flight without any trouble at all. Scoot is Singapore Airlines' new budget long haul carrier mostly serving Australia and Asia.

The tickets were so cheap and the initial checkin so simple, my sister and I kept waiting for the catch to come up! When we boarded and the staff were super friendly and the chairs comfortable enough, we still kept waiting for the catch! Given it was a budget airline we had to pay for food, but even that was easy enough and the chicken biryani I had was surprisingly tasty.

The catch came in the time it took them to get the food. I ordered around 13:30, and by 15:00 I'd been served! This despite the fact I'd ordered it already, and pushed the staff call button and asked two more times.

Lesson learned: Scoot is a surprisingly hassle free budget airline, but eat a huge meal before you get on board because you could be waiting a while!

We have a scary person here!

I've often joked that Singapore immigration treat me better than Australia's, despite being a citizen of the latter.

This time around was quite the adventure; having gone through the horrid claustrophobia-inducing immigration hall in Sydney Airport, we were naturally called over for "random" secondary screening.

My sister maintains that because our dad has been to Iran dozens of times, we're on some sort of black list! Given what I've heard other former expats have gone through, I reckon the Australian government must just have a record of deserters who naturally can't be trusted! Whatever the case, either Elke or I ALWAYS (and I really do mean that!) get called for secondary screening. ALWAYS.

I won't go into the details of the secondary screening here, but suffice to say my sister triggered alarms. They cleaned the machine with alcohol then scanned again which turned up clean, but for a few brief moments we had people staring at us as though we'd tried to carry TNT with us.

As for the Singapore side? We were off the plane, didn't queue at all in the gigantic, breezy Changi Airport immigration hall covered in indoor plants and flowers, got our bags from baggage claim, and were in the public area of the terminal in less than 15 minutes ^^.

7-11 F&N Seasons Soya Milk Drink!

We went down to the Airport MRT station, waited 2 minutes, boarded, transferred at another station, waited less than a minute, got off at that station, then were at the hotel :).

For reasons I won't get into here, my father has my Singapore SingTel SIM, with the number I've had since I was 12 :D I gave the one I bought myself to Elke for this evening, and will look into getting another tomorrow.

In the meantime, off to sleep so I can be up early to go to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf or ToastBox for breakfast! Ironically enough, most of the things I want to do involve either taking pictures of things, exploring nostalgic places, and eating good breakfasts XD;

Thank you to @Adasifs for capturing my slightly better side! ^^;

Where are the photos?

Having taken my DSLR and lenses to every convention before, I decided to eschew (gesundheit) them this year, putting my trust into the far more talented members of the UTS anime club. They all were using Canons not Nikons, but I forgave them ;). I'll post links here to public galleries once they start appearing.

Being without a camera was quite a different experience. Rather than watching people wandering and doing things through the viewfinder, I was doing… all… the things! I think I'll go back to taking it, but I'll admit it was nice not having this heavy kit weighing me down, getting in the way of photo requests and so on.

The Bird is The Badge!

As for the con itself, I built a Gundam[head!] in a workshop, sat in on the seiyuu interviews (blush) and part of the cosplay competition (before other commitments had me assigned to Starbucks, WiFi and a conference call for an hour!), went to stall after stall after stall and talked to artists, supported our UTS Anime club with a ton of swag, watched some of our club members sing Karaoke (and really well, wow!), stared in wonder at the Gundam building contest and the people in their ridiculously detailed and spot-on cosuprey, caught up with folks from some of my other uni classes, chatted with some of the lovely staff at Japan Airlines about flights via Singapore, and topped it off with a hot coffee on a cold night with friends :).

I'd been tempted to become a volunteer for this year's SMASH, but I had insufficient time and energy. I watched in wonder at some of my friends who were volunteers pouring their heart and soul and energy and time and and and and… into it this year, and I think it paid off handsomely!

Speaking of handsomely… well okay, it definitely wouldn't be the first term I'd use, more like… passably? XD I'd felt so dejected and sat having lost all my sci fi and uniforms, but with the help of the super friendly @hanezawakirika (who also had the best cosplay there!) who flew in at just the right moment with a wonderful save, I cosplayed as Yoite from Nabari no Ou! He was the perfect character for someone of my relatively meek but tall build to do, save for the hair! I vaguely remembered the series from 2008, and on the night before watched several of the anime episodes again to refresh myself and help get into character :). Overall I was asked for photos 24 or 29 times, I have it written down as one or the other. In any event, a lot!

Had a great time, and the UTS Anime club peeps were far too much fun to hang out with. Thanks guys! :D Ghibli group cosplay next time, for sure!