Only Use Luggage Locks That Have a Red Diamond

The red diamond signifies it’s a Travel Sentry lock that is security-friendly.  This means the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) has a master key to open and re-lock your bag after inspection.  That’s the key – re-lock.

All bags are screened, but sometimes a bag requires a physical search.  You would unlikely be present for this search, so your lock would be cut off.  Now your luggage has un-secured zippers, and you could be that guy whose belongings are strewn across the tarmac.

You do lock your luggage, right?  Not just to prevent it from opening in transit, but for the bad baggage handlers, smugglers, bell hops, you get it.

You’d lock your front door, no?

 

 

Back Home in Canada

Don’t you love when this happens?

I go into “travel mode”: silent and spacey.  I won’t have much memory of today.

Airports are a pretty secure place, you can let your guard down and wander around glued out.  My thinking is no one’s going to do anything super stupid in a closed system.

This has bewildered me for a decade.  

Here’s the horizon of Washington DC, and the arrow is pointing at… an Egyptian obelisk?!

Placed in the the heart of it all? Painstakingly shipped from Egypt and resurrected?

Not just here though, there’s a similar set-up in Paris, New York City, London, and my favourite… the centre of the Vatican. Figure that one out.

Nice to be back in Canada, nice to have Internet on my phone again.

Big week ahead.  Not going to tell you too much (you know how jinxy I am), but send good luck.  Thursday we’re going to test drive the new Ford Escape, I have to retrieve my bike from where I stored it in December and totally forgot about that till last week, and lots more.

TTYT, here’s to a great start to your week!

 

 

This is Black Hat Security Conference 2012

The Black Hat Briefings – the world’s largest computer security conference.  In its 15th year, it’s held each year in Vegas at the end of July.

Me and my press badge.  Proud.

Same as when I attended last year – it’s bad manners to wave your camera about. This conference attracts all kinds.

There’s a little trick:

embedding text in a photo still gets your message out,

but without it being crawled and picked up by the bots.

There are briefings and trainings. Not much point to me attending the latter, I’d be so lost, the biggest brains give these. The briefings are very interesting though, here’s my report on Apple’s first ever talk, where not enough went over my head.

I listened to cyberpunk author Neil Stephenson interviewed by Brian Krebs, who is awesome. If you ever are stuck for security help check his site.

Neil’s book ‘Reamde’ is a neat premise: a virus is unleashed through a popular online game that encrypts the player’s hard drive, and holds it for ransom.

See the yellow * above? I joined the taxi line, oh wait it’s Neil, hi great talk! Know we know he has duct tape on his old-school phone, which he keeps in a pocket I’m not sure is the most secure place.

It’s okay to take photos here, this is the other half of Black Hat – the vendor area.

All the top security merchants selling their wares.

I did the same thing I did last year: started in the far corner and walked up and down every aisle, every booth. This stuff isn’t for us though, it’s for enterprises and large corporations.

Thanks for a great time Black Hat, see ya next year!

 

 

 

The Most Nature Ever Seen On My Blog

It’s gotten much more consistent around here eh, my best for certain.  After 5 years of videos and 3 years of blogging, I think finally have figured out a system, and almost have the hang of running it. Exciting for sure!

I’m managing my time better, getting less burned out, finding a balance with my new 5-blog-categories approach, and I still have the same amount of passion that I started with in 2007, which is a lot.   I’m feeing good.  The next step is to add money, start selling some real estate around here.  And look into the auto-journalist avenue.  I’d like that.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been daydreaming about this weekend.