I have just finished reading the book The Shack. Through its powerful narrative story, The Shack presents the most powerful images of God that I have seen for a long time. The book challenges the reader's assumptions and views of God and the bible. I'd highly recommend it to anyone remotely interested in God, Jesus and the Trinity. When making this recommendation, I'd only add that this is a book of fiction, that doesn't have everything perfect about God.  IMHO the best place to understand and learn about God is the bible, it is the direct source.  Reading the accounts of the life of Jesus for yourself as an adult will challenge mosts peoples perceptions and understandings of Jesus. The Shack been touted as a modern day successor to The Pilgrim's Progress, a title which (while somewhat bold) is at least partially justified. It's a fresh, unique and thought-provoking book that manages to touch the heart in very real ways

My father-in-law is experimenting with selling his home privately. I’m not sure how it will go, but it will be interesting to see how the internet helps make it all happen. He’s started with an early launch of the website, before sending it out to some of the relevant Real Estate sites soon.

If you are interested in having a look at the site he put together, or if you are interested in buying a house in the coastal suburb of Wynnum, in Brisbane, Australia, take a look at Bayside House For Sale.

Another UCSB iCTF is over, and I'm once again wishing that the earth was flat.  It is a fun competition, but entering from Australia is a pain when the competition starts at 2:00AM AEST.

Thanks to the guys at UCSB for a very different image, and competition again.  The imagination and effort that goes into creating the images is always great.  The delivery of a PCDos image to start the competition off was a nice touch.  It was somewhat frustrating that the preparation work put in by our network infrastructure team went to nothing, but the idea of each team having an independant network to work on was good.

My biggest lesson for the night was that google is a great tool for looking up the sources for md5 hashes. google: md5hashstring will often return the source string for the md5 hash.

My other discovery was the power of nc, and just how bad allowing shell code to be executed is (php exec combined with system and nc allows really nasty attacks — especially when the server is configured to allow them).

A combination of firefox plugins, and Java with HTTP Client were my primary attack tools this year. I was pretty happy with the setup, missing one or two plugins that some others on my team had, but overall it worked pretty well for me.

Overall it was a good night out.  I'm shattered now, and off to bed.  I might either update this or post a followup after getting some sleep.

After seeing Kristin’s blog make it to planet Ephox (welcome to the team Kristin), and her post on some great pictures from Houston, I had to share some of the ones I came across…

First of all The Boston Globe has some nice pictures, but this one really takes the cake.

The Australian Capital Territory can be considered to have two parts. The first (well known) part is halway between Sydney and Melbourne, and is the site of Canberra (see below map of the ACT).

View Larger Map

The second is Jervis Bay. (see below map of Jervis Bay).

View Larger Map

It was only a matter of time, but facebook phishing scams have hit the wild in a big way.

At work we saw a number of emails from a facebookmail.com address (that’s where facebook e-mails come from), suggesting that you might want to add a friend.

The add a friend link actually sent you off to an isgreat.org domain, which had a facebook look-alike login page.

This was the closest that I’ve ever come to clicking on a phising link. I only stopped for two reasons

1. my work e-mail isn’t associated with facebook at all.
2. the name didn’t tempt me at all.

If it went to my real facebook account I might have been tempted (but sure won’t now).

The security adage – Don’t click on links in e-mails is definitely true. Even for facebook sending nice helpful e-mails with links.

This isn’t the only way that phishing is happening for facebook. See here, and techcrunch

With an increasing push for Ephox to have a European presence based out of England, I’ve been reflecting on some of my favourite things of my time there. These are the bits that are slightly more uniquely me, than the standard tourist things. Out of the varied experiences and things to do in London and the UK, these are some of my favourites.

All Souls

Christianity and church is an essential part of life for me. Finding All Souls was a great discovery, and the times and people there form some of the fondest memories of our time in London. Before going there I had no idea how good pipe organs could sound. I was also thankful for the opportunity to be a part of Christianity Explored, and some of the other ministries of the church. It was great hearing John Stott preach, and we were also blessed and challenged by the other preachers there. I still listen to sermons from their sermon library (which dates back to 1966), which is available online (All Souls Sermon Library).

British Library

Of all the great museums, historical and cultural places and sites, my favourite was the British Library. It was great to go and see some of the extant manuscripts, especially some of the early new testament artefacts. Seeing some of the early versions of Beetles songs, some of Leonardo DaVincis writings, and Handels work was cool too.

Bletchley park

I took a trip to Bletchley Park one week-end with my Dad. Given Dad’s background in Cryptology, and my interest in IT, and security, visiting the home of where the British government was attacking German ciphers in World War 2 was a must. It was great to be able to go around on a tour and see the rooms which were filled with people attacking Enigma codes, and to see where the first computer was created by Turing. The computer history museum they had there was cool too.

Cheap Flights

Ryanair and similar flights for a penny + taxes are too hard to refuse. Even though you end up miles from anywhere, and have to pay for transport to obscure airports at both ends, as well as taxes the trips are good for a week-end, and are a real part of the England experience. It really is worth doing this at least once, and taking advantage of these cheap flights for a great week-end away.

Travel

On the subject of cheap flights, travel generally is an Aussies initial reason to go to London. It is definately worth doing a fair bit while there. If nothing else, going on organised trips makes for a decent way to see different places. Suzanne and I ended up doing a bunch of travel with Oak Hall, visiting Turkey, and doing their Europe tour. Their holidays have a bit of a reputation for being a place for singles to meet, but Suzanne and I had fun as the old married couple :).

Cosmopolitan Living

We lived in inner London, on the tube, and definitely enjoyed being in the centre of it all. Staying on top of a French Patisserie was definitely nice, as was the Organic Butcher next door.

Overall I have many fond memories of life in London, and would definitely recommend the experience.

My Mum and Dad were members of the Mountainers association in Washington State. They always telling me that there were 10 essentials to take with you. You had to make sure you had the 10 essentials. Of course there was also the eleventh essential for mountaineering—toilet paper :).

As I sit here typing this blog (of all places I’m in the labour ward), I am reminded of Mum and Dad’s lists. For us coming to labour, there have been many lists as well. Suzanne did a google to help get some good ideas of what to bring, and had a nice suitcase that she packed. The lists didn’t include the eleventh essential, which for us has been my laptop ;).

It has been really great, allowing us to watch a DVD to pass the time (the epidural made it possible for us to be enjoying the experience). It has also has been nice for me to be doing something while Suzanne rests. Overall a laptop with some decent media definately ranks as an important thing to bring in your overnight bag when giving birth.

ps—by the time I post this, the baby will have arrived, and we will once again be proud parents. If I’ve missed sending you a photo, and you are interested, send me an e-mail.

I'm sitting here doing some work on my thesis (obviously procrastinating by blogging), and enjoying listening and watching Suzanne and Isaac on the main desktop going through the results of a images.google.com search for Thomas the Tank Engine on safe mode :).

Hours of fun for the young one, even better than the junk mail :).

A question for the Mac gurus out there.

Is there an option in mail to stop it from automatically choosing the account for you, instead forcing you to choose what account you want to send the message from.

I'm using mail actively at the moment, and would like to be forced to choose to stop me from sending mail using the wrong account (which I have a bad habit of doing).

Please give suggestions in the comments.

ps - yes I am too lazy to work out which list I should post this question to.