Every year at Defcon they assemble a huge computer network and populate it with machines of all kinds as part of a competition. The objective is simple: Crack as many of the system on the network as you can, find the flag (it's a Capture the Flag competition), and defend your turf as best you can. The game requires the competitors to think fast on their feet because they don't know what they'll run into on the CtF network, and they'll be faced with network services that they may never have seen before. The challenge is to find vulnerabilities in …
The retrocomputing enthusiasts over at briel.com are developing a desktop case that I really, really would like to get my hands on after they start producing them: It looks like the chassis of an Altair 8800, from the late 1970's. That's right, the very first 'personal' computer, complete with LEDs and toggle switches on the front panel. It's an ATX style case with a power supply that can drive up to a Pentium-4 system, and has enough quiet cooling to keep it from catching on fire. The drive bays are hidden behind the front panel, which has its own …
About four hours ago the few of us in NOVA who weren't utterly under seige by the zombies managed to make a break for the minivan in the parking lot. I ignited one of the thermite charges we'd constructed with a blowtorch and used it to blow the gas tank of an abandoned Volkswagon Beetle down the block by hurling it with an improvised atlatl. After the blast took out most of the pack that had piled up outside of the building one of the others in the apartment unlocked the doors and started the engine via her remote control …
Here are the pictures I took at the Skinny Puppy concert on Monday. The first dozen or so are those yahoos I've been calling Attack of the Cyborg Hamsters. I'll be making Gravatar/forum/Livejournal icons out of some of them for fun later.
It's getting worse out there - the building that Lyssa works in has been sealed by the US military to keep the invading forces out. They've got a small stockpile of supplies, but the facility is running on backup power. Environment control will probably be turned off soon, if it hasn't been already.
I don't know how much time I have to write this.. I can hear them outside, pounding against the brick and steel. The staircase of my apartment building rings with shambing footsteps and the sound of.. things.. hitting the floor and bouncing downward. The sick little child inside me wonders if they're rotting body parts coming loose. The wards I've spun around the doors and windows will hold, at least for now. A hastily constructed reactor supplies sufficient power to keep them out, but it's fragile. My neighbors, mostly religious folks, are wondering what all of the glyphs and Hebrew …
A few folks across the pond with a taste for Victoriana decided to give a steampunk twist to a classic (or classically bad) geek flick of some notoriety. It's got steam; it's got cogs; it's got wheels; it's got street kids battling over clockwork automata.
Lyssa and I got home on Sunday afternoon safe and sound from Walking the Thresholds. We also got home from the Skinny Puppy concert tonight about an hour ago.
Last week some very good friends of Lyssa and I (Heron61 and Teaotter) stayed with us for a couple of days, and then we headed out to the Four Quarters Farm for the gather called Walking the Thresholds - camping for three days in the middle of the woods of Pennsylvania, completely off the grid, with good friends and extended family, eccentrics one and all, for company.
Sounds like fun... and it was, for the most part.
Teaotter went to stay with Laurelinde and family around the middle of last week, so there were only three of us who packed up …
