Jonathan Wilkins

PS: not dead, just busy. I've been writing a ton of code and been climbing a bunch:

http://www.io9.com/367910/show-caves-of-the-nouveau-riche

Also contains an awesome quote from Blake:
"If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise."

I start a new job tomorrow at MySpace. I did some contract work for them last fall and they convinced me to join full time. I am sure it will be amusing.

I've been writing a ton of code lately in support of some research I've been doing on CAPTCHAs (those silly puzzles that make you type in the letters contained in an image). The paper is almost done, but the short version is 'all your base are belong to me'. ;) If you're interested in reviewing the paper, let me know, I'd love to get some more eyes on it before release.

I've also been playing with my DJ gear again after a long hiatus which has been quite gratifying. I've also gotten back into audio electronics after talking to my friend David who's building a bunch of custom synthesizers. I messed around with building a trivial one last week. Quite fun.

I've done a few shoots but haven't had a chance to settle in for a solid run of photo editing as I've been traveling the past month (back and forth to SF).

SF was fun, got to meet a few new friends and catch up with a lot of old ones. Here's a pic from the valentine's day pillow fight:



Also, the iphone kicks ass once you jailbreak it, especially with the cydia app installer.

Good advice from Tynan

I now know far more about cement than I ever wanted to. I've been trying to patch my kitchen floor and achieve a match with the existing concrete. This is trickier than I realized. It didn't make as much difference when I was doing smaller patches such as those adjoining rooms but the middle of the floor is much more sensitive.

A 2'x3' patch in a high traffic area like the middle of the floor requires a lot more strength and the prior owner had redone the kitchen and had removed an island that had contained the stove. To do this they had to cut a large hole in the middle of the floor. Unbeknownst to me before I removed the linoleum, they had taken some short cuts when placing the lino. These included patching cracks with plaster of paris and other unsuitable materials. (Nothing dangerous structurally, just not something I could just seal over and have it look decent.)

Anyway, google and wikipedia came to my rescue and I finally have things under control.

Cement is a term to describe substances that set and bind independently and can join materials. In construction, the term usually refers to portland cement (named due to it's similarity to a type of rock near Portland, UK). There are two main varieties of portland cement, white and grey. White is more expensive due to the ingredients used.

Combining these with fine aggregate (like sand) and water yields mortar. Combining mortar with large aggregate (like gravel) gives you concrete. The strength of mortar and concrete is largely dependent on the amount of water used, but there are strengthening agents that can be added. Pigments can be added to achive desired hues and additives are also available to lighten the color. There are also ingredients available to speed and slow the setting time.

Also, angle grinders rule. Don't use a sander on concrete. Get an angle grinder and a diamond grinding wheel for mortar. They come in handy for all sorts of shit. Like shortening the length of your pliers so you can get in behind a pedestal sink:

The kitchen had pretty awful linoleum flooring, so I decided it would be a good idea to redo it before putting it on the market. The unit has concrete flooring and I'd previously redone the living room by removing the carpet and sealing the concrete. The kitchen has been much harder. After removing the linoleum (with help from grovesphoto) I proceeded to sand through a 1/8-1/16" layer of glue.

I haven't had much to say lately because I don't believe in making relationship details public. If you read punkythecat's journal, you know that she and I are splitting up after 6 1/2 years. Since that's been taking up most of my non-work time and thoughts, I haven't posted in months.

Other than that, here's what I've been up to:
- Burning Man: This year was a blast, my best yet. I have a ton of photos to post, but my RAID array is waiting on a couple of new power supplies before I can do edits on the best pics, but I have a few snapshots at flickr. The only negative points were being rear ended by a moving van when leaving the playa. I wasn't injured, despite the car rolling, but the car was totaled. I also managed to break a finger when I flipped my bike earlier in the week. It's funny, writing this I realize that the above could be read as scarcasm, but it isn't. I met so many awesome people and enjoyed myself so much that the car and my finger are trivial.

- Coding: I've been writing a ton of Ruby and Rails. I haven't liked a language this much since my first exposure to C. I hated C++, despised Java and only put up with C# (a bastardized Java) due to Visual Studio making UI development less shitty (thanks to Anders Hejlsberg). I'm so productive using this language it's unreal.

- Travel: I've taken a couple of quick trips up to San Francisco and Monterey, I have some pics from the Monterey trip stuck on the RAID array that I'll post when that gets sorted.

- Housing: I'm in the process of packing up the condo and getting it ready for sale. I'm planning on moving down to Santa Monica as soon as it sells. Once there, I'm going to spend a while traveling overseas, pretty much anywhere that I can get a reliable internet connection. I'm downsizing as much as I can to make that move and the travel as easy as possible.

I have a Speedotron 1205CX power pack with two 202VF heads and one 102 head. Also included are a sync cord, two snoots and a barndoor.

The power pack is 1200WS.

I bought everything on eBay a couple years ago and used it pretty lightly. I've since replaced it with a Profoto setup. The 102 head is missing a modeling lamp, but everything else is in good condition.

I'd prefer to sell as a kit for a total of $1750, but I might consider splitting it up. I'm posting here and on craigslist before listing on eBay.

I have some lenses and other accessories that I'll do the same for soon.

Via BoingBoing:

Ventner Institute demonstrates genetically converting one species into another

"It represents the complete reprogramming of an organism using only a chemical entity," - Enbright, a Rutgers scientist interviewed for one of the articles on the development.

These developments are to be celebrated, not feared. Science has brought us this far, fear of science is going to predictably push us back to the dark ages, not save us from an unexpected calamity. Science is much better at dealing with the unexpected than ignorance.

Model: Sophie

Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening

'To my left, I find a middle-aged Floridian with a neat beard. To my right are two elderly New Yorkers who look and sound like late-era Dorothy Parkers, minus the alcohol poisoning. They live on Park Avenue, they explain in precise Northern tones. "You must live near the UN building," the Floridian says to one of the New York ladies after the entree is served. Yes, she responds, shaking her head wearily. "They should suicide-bomb that place," he says. They all chuckle gently. How did that happen? How do you go from sweet to suicide-bomb in six seconds?'

It's an interesting read and goes into how these hard core conservatives seem to carry some pretty bizarre contradictory ideas.

For all of you who don't have your own web servers, check out BayImg, a new service by the folks who brought you The Pirate Bay (the bittorrent tracker). Image sizes up to 100MB are ok and they claim that they don't censor images or limit bandwidth.

Model: Frankie

My Portfolio

Model: Frankie

We only had a couple days in London, but they were fun. Flights in and out of the UK now have this insane carryon limitation (1 bag, 10 pound maximum) which is really annoying. We stayed with my friend Anthony and he was the consumate host. His schedule is even more flexible than mine, so he showed us around the town and since I'd been there before, we went pretty much where ever punkythecat wanted to go.

The first day was a lot of typical sight seeing. We wandered by London Bridge right after breakfast

And followed that up with trips to Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar square:

and then did some shopping on Regent Street. Then we grabbed lunch at a little pub before heading to Selfridges.

In the evening we met up with Jeremy (who we met in Amsterdam at the conference) and grabbed supper at a little restaurant and then went to a pub.

The second day was mainly latex shopping. We hit most of the major shops (Atsuko Kudo, Libidex/Liberation, House of Harlot, Honour, Fettered Pleasures) and then met up with some old friends for supper near London Bridge.

We flew out insanely early the next morning, so I chose not to sleep but punkythecat managed to grab a nap.

The flight back to Rotterdam was fine and so was the train ride out to Essen, but by the time we got there we were so tired that we just ordered room service and crashed out.

I got some great responses, so I thought I'd summarize for anyone who didn't read through all the comments. Any mistakes are likely mine.

The suggestions I had were predominately to use a mild dish soap, like Ivory and to be sure that it's diluted. (juliesimone and industrial_grrl)
From reading several latex care notes, the big thing to watch for is any dish soap that contains any sort of grease cutter. Those are known to destroy latex.

An alternative was liquid Neutrogena (rubberbondage)

eddie_offermann suggested bar soap (like Ivory), but tonyawinter said that she'd ruined clothing with this approach.

eddie_offermann also identified the cause of all of the confusion. Apparently what's generally referred to as latex is actually any of a number of types of synthetic extruded rubber such as neoprene, nitrile or EPDM and each of these has a durability rating (durometer). So each of these has different care needed and no clothing manufacturers are labelling their outfits with the exact type and hardness of latex, so you're generally in the dark. He pointed to http://www.quickcutgasket.com/materials.html for info on some of the various types of rubber and their vulnerabilities.

For now I think I'm going to stick with a thorough rinse in water (with a super diluted Ivory dish soap if needed) and hang drying in a dark, cool place.

I've been really busy between work, rebuilding my laptop and guests.

But first, an image:

Model: Mirjana @ Fetish Evolution in Essen, Germany

We got home from the big trip on the 15th of April and two days later I had to fly up to Vancouver, BC to present ProxMon at CanSecWest. This wouldn't have been a big deal, but the day after we got to Essen (Germany), my laptop died. (I had backups - yay for paranioa!). So I got a new laptop (Thinkpad X60 Tablet) from work to replace my old one and spent the two days I was back getting it ready. After that debacle, I've gone to Linux for my laptop. I'm running Ubuntu and everything works, even the touch sensitive screen.

Vancouver was fun, I got to catch up with a bunch of old friends at the conference and also some non-hacker friends who live there now. The demo gods weren't as kind as at Black Hat and one (out of ~10) of my demos died thanks to Vista, but I think everyone got the point anyway. After CanSec, it was off to Whistler for some snowboarding. I went with enthemic and Jesse, though our two days turned into one after Jesse managed a mild concussion at the end of the first day.

Once I was home, my friend Anthony (an Australian residing in London) was passing through on his way from CanSec to Coachella and Mexico and stayed with us on either end of that journey.

Martin (an old friend from Saskatoon) is also in the area and has been hanging out at my place and learning about computer security. I've been giving him a bit of a crash course.

Interspersed has been a pile of early morning surf jaunts to Santa Monica with Dom.

I was talking with someone about a specific soap that was mild and designed for washing latex clothing. Does anyone know of such a thing? Everything that google turned up mentioned using a mild soap, but there were warnings all over about how certain (unnamed) soaps would destroy the latex.

Ideas?

Just for kicks, I did the book meme hadara posted:

1. Find the nearest book.
2. Name the book & the author.
3. Turn to page 123.
4. Go to the fifth sentence on the page. Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.

"Mastering Regular Expressions"
Jeffrey Freidl

"Using Perl's \d as a shorthand for [0-9] , this becomes the more readable
^\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+$, but it still allows things that aren't IP addresses like 1234.5678.9101112.131415.

I'll spare you the rest.

punkythecat and I are home safely from our three week long trip to Europe. We got in Sunday night but I spent all of Monday unpacking and getting ready for the next leg of my trip. I have 2 days at home before heading off to Vancouver for another security conference.

Summary: Good trip. Visited Amsterdam, London, Essen and Milan. A successful presentation. Much was seen and some photoshoots occurred.

Photo Preview:


We decided to turn a 1 week business trip into a 3 week journey since I was going to be over in Amsterdam to present a security tool I wrote (ProxMon) at Black Hat. Since part of our expenses would be covered due to the conference, we decided to take two weeks of vacation afterwards and tour around a little more. punkythecat had been to Europe before, but had only visited Spain.

We left on the 26th of March and arrived on the 27th. We had a couple of flight delays, but they were just mildly annoying and only cost us a little time, though there was a mad scramble to get to our connection in Houston which turned out to be unnecessary since that flight wound up sitting on the runway for an extra hour or so.

We had a really busy schedule the whole time we were there. I was adding features to the tool right up until the day I presented. I think the presentation went reasonably well and so far I'm only hearing positive reviews though there are a couple of bugs to clean up when running under non-english versions of Windows. I would have gotten to them sooner, but I had a hard drive crash a couple of days after the presentation and didn't want to spend a big chunk of my vacation recovering and reinstalling. Fortunately I'd done a full backup before leaving so I didn't lose much data, just a few random snapshots I'd taken the first couple days in Amsterdam.

Since I was mostly writing code the first couple of days, I didn't see much of the conference, but since we were staying a few extra days after and since I'd been to Amsterdam a couple of times before, I wasn't worried. I got to catch up with some old friends and met a couple of really interesting people. We hit the Van Gogh museum, walked all over the place and had a few great meals. I spent more time hanging out with my friend Dom (who lives in Santa Monica) during that week than we'd managed all year, which is pretty funny. We had a great supper at a restaurant at the top of an art gallery that was undergoing renovations. It had some of the most amazing graffiti all over. I'd post pics, but those were some of the casualties of the hard drive crash. I'm hoping I can recover them when I'm home again next week. The restaurant turned into a club after hours so we went back a few hours later and had a great time.

We had planned on heading for London on Saturday, right after the conference but stayed until Sunday since some friends were doing the same. We had some difficulties getting over to London because I'd been hoping to catch one of the cheap flights kumimonster is always talking about. As was, it was looking like we weren't going to find one and so we started looking for alternative ways across. For whatever reason, it was a bad weekend for trains too because they were pretty expensive too. We almost wound up renting a car so we could get the cheaper vehicle rate for the channel crossing, but the rad waitress at our hotel gave us a few sites to check (http://www.vueling.com and http://www.transavia.com). Transavia had a cheap flight leaving out of Rotterdam so we booked that, but it meant we didn't make it to London until Tuesday, which unfortunately screwed up a couple of photo shoots for punkythecat. Another day of shopping and sight seeing and a nice train ride through the countryside brought us to Rotterdam and a quick flight to London.

to be continued...