It turns out after actively trying to avoid it form months/years, I have decided to create a personal blog again. I haven’t had one of these for a long long time, but I plan to irregularly post about cybersecurity, technology and other things I think may interest people.
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For the last week, I have been all-in playing Forza Horizon 6, which was released last week with the chosen location for this release being Japan, and it is gorgeous.
The Forza Horizon (FH) series was one of the main reasons I purchased an Xbox way back when FH 3 was being released, being based in Australia, and it’s been one of my “must have” games ever since.
I enjoyed both FH 3 and 4, though Forza Horizon 5 based in Mexico just didn’t seem to hit the same way with me.
I didn’t really expect to find myself falling back into the Forza franchise so easily, particularly after being burnt by the cease of development of Forza Motorsport (FM). Traditionally FH has been more casual than the simulation environment FM tried to achieve so when it was announced FM was to be discontinued right after I purchased a rig for my wheel and pedals, I was a little annoyed.
One of the things that I find really noticeable in FH6 is that the open world feels huge compared to previous version. FH3 felt like they compressed a lot of things into a much smaller map (as they had to back then), whereas you do actually feel like you are travelling from region to region.
My only real gripe so far is the lack of more vintage cars. I’d love to explore and drive around the maps in some of the fantastic older cars that we have seen in earlier releases, but I am sure will eventually show up – it’s only been out for a week!
Anyway, back to the game!
This is a Mamod SP5 MKI. It is very much a beloved present I received back as a child in the mid 1980s. I’m not quite sure which year or whether it was a birthday or Christmas, but I do know this particular model was discontinued in 1985.
Having a bit of a declutter around the workshop the last few weeks and was able to pull this out of the back of storage, and at that point it was looking a little “tired”, with the brass ad copper heavily tarnished and some signs of mineral deposits around the filling cap and whistle. what followed was several hours stripping down the fittings as best I could before a lot of gentle and not so gentle polishing with the help of a Dremel.
Firing up today, I found that the solid fuel tablets I had were not as effective as the more traditional Mamod branded ones, and as a result you are seeing a lot more condensed steam as seen in the video as it struggled to build up enough heat and pressure to run the engine cleanly.
Looking online, it seems harder to purchase verifiable hexamine tablets (I’m wary of the “drop shipping specials” on Amazon), and where it is available, it’s quite expensive by the time you include shipping.
In an impulsive purchase, now am waiting for a Butane gas conversion kit to arrive, which should be much cheaper and easier to run as I have butane gas already, and it is also cheap and easy to get. I’ll post an update when all that arrives and hopefully we’ll see the engine with less sputtering!
Over the past week (15-17th October) I attended the Australian Cyber Conference (CyberCon) in Melbourne. This was my first CyberCon, and also my first interstate travel since PAX Australia back in 2019.
Continue readingI have been online for the better part of 30 years, and as you might expect it’s inevitable that as some who enjoys making online content that I will have some form of digital footprint as a result. The wonders of the Web Archive can make it possible to look back into much earlier times of the Internet, but is it possible to find my first website? lets start from now (2025) and start working our way backwards.
Continue readingI consider myself lucky to have been part of a generation of humanity that existed before the world wide web and to experience its early years and the transformative effects that it has had on generations since.
One of my earliest memories of “being online” was visiting a local government building and booking a 30min session on a desktop computer running windows 3.x and netscape navigator 1.0 and accessing newsgroups. There was also the ability to apply for an email address, which as far as I remember was username@<subdomain>.<domain>.gov.au. When my application for an email address was approved, I was given a 1.44MB 3.5” floppy disc with Eudora 1.x on it, pre-configured with my account.
I estimated this time to be around 1994-1995. Later, my guess is around 1997ish, this government provided Internet and email service was decommissioned and I was advised I could get another email address for free from the new-fangled “Hotmail”.
Continue readingI am not particularly fond of YouTube. From it’s humble beginning to it’s inevitable enshittification, It maintains a market monopoly of 98% for video sharing services1. Perhaps one good thing that has come out from it though is that it provides a method of distribution for old documentaries and TV series, that would otherwise would never be remastered onto more contemporary media.
It is therefore an absolute joy to discover many TV series that I used to sit and watch as a child with my grandparents now available to watch on Youtube
The Bush Tucker Man was perhaps one of the greatest Documentary TV series produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission of it’s time, with Australian Army Major Les Hiddins travels around northern Australia, describing native foods and survival methods. Two series of Bush Tucker man were produced, with a third series known as “Bush Tucker Man – Stories of Survival” produced a few years later
ABC Australia does not allow embedding of Youtube videos, so please follow the link below to the complete playlist:
Before Les Hiddins and the Bush Tucker Man, you had prolific documentary maker Malcolm Douglas. Based at his crocodile park in Broome, Malcolm went on to produce over 40 documentaries about life and adventures in Northern Australia.
For me, the introductory music has to be one of the most unique and memorable things about all his series, and is instantly recognisable when heard.
It is very pleasing to find the complete playlist of Malcolm Douglas Adventures being available on Youtube.
Less of a documentary, but one of the early forms forms of lifestyle shows, Chris Conroy’s World of Boats, and later Chris Conroy’s Leisure World was recently remembered to me on Reddit as part of an unrelated search where the Fanfare for the Common Man was mentioned.
Admittedly, not much of the show exists on youtube, but a number of short forum segments can be found on the official channel at:
It’s hard not to talk about Australian adventure television and not mention Alby Mangels. Alby Mangels was a household name 1980s, gaining great success with his 3 “World Safari” documentaries, along with many Adventure Bound Series.
Controversial by modern standard, Alby was also known for the often bikini-clad women accompanying him on his adventures.
There is very little in terms of Alby Mangels documentary video on Youtube, as it is still actively markets by Alby on his own website, however I have included a playlist from an interview in 2018 by The Thread.
If you look in the right places, I am sure there are more Australian TV series that have been legitimately published on Youtube. If/when I find more, you may just see another post!
I’m fed up with narrative that current “Artificial Intelligence” development is going to be all things to all people or a major AI breakthrough will be just around the corner, again. Its seems just about every software developer has an upgrade coming out that promises AI, even if the product does not require it.
I started off, like most people, taking a look at ChatGPT and thinking “That’s pretty neat!”, however as time progressed and the hype train left the station, I have grown more and more alarmed about the unscrupulous ethics of the evolving industry and that average users are being sold a lie based on vague promises by those with vested interests in profiting from this new development.
Much has been already written on why generative AI is not the silver bullet it’s been made out to be, and I encourage people to read Ed Zitron’s articles on this (his whole blog is great):
The AI slop has been particularly jarring in the last 18 months. It’s been on of the reasons I have chosen to pay for searching the internet and have made a greater effort to embrace the IndieWeb through independent federated social media.
Should you be alarmed about Generative AI? Maybe. If you’re reading this chances are you are already familiar with the issues:
And yet the hype train speeds on, and the average user laps it right up.
I may be just a single voice screaming into the void of the Internet and the ship has well and truly sailed, but I implore of everyone to take any news about what we are currently calling “Artificial Intelligence” with a healthy dose of scepticism, as the only thing artificial here is the reality that is being reported.
At the end of October, I handed over $11 USD to “Premium” search engine Kagi, partially as an experiment, and partially with a hope for a better search experience.
Why on earth would anyone pay for searching online? take your pick of Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo, right? I’ve been on the Internet since it’s very early days, and searching the web has changed a lot in that time, perhaps even more so in the last 3 years, and not for the better. I needed something to change.
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If you had asked me 3 months ago if I could see myself with an industry-recognised certification I may have chuckled and shook my head – far too expensive to obtain. This morning however I became a certified CISSP.
The ISC2™ CISSP® is the most globally recognised certification for cybersecurity, with it’s practitioners recognised for their deep technical and managerial knowledge and experience to design, engineer and manage an organisations security program.
In terms of passing requirements, I had to receive a computer adaptive test from Pearson-VUE which had a minimum of 100 questions, and ranging up to 150 questions if needed. I also needed to demonstrate at least 5 years experience in two of the education domains for the CISSP®.
So how did this all happen?
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Today was the day of the 2024 TasICT-AISA Cyber Conference – the “big” day of the year for the Tasmanian information/cyber security industry.
This year had a fantastic lineup of presenters and expo hall vendors, though for some reason CrowdStrike had to pull out 🙂
The keynote kicked things off with Dr Deanna Caputo, chief scientist for MITRE who gave a fascinating presentation on how IT teams need to start preparing for insider threats, giving examples of how insider threats may occur and certainly is making me think differently about many of the spam emails I see each day.
I got to attend a a few other sessions throughout the day, including panels on emerging threats, mitigating endpoint attack chains and a panel on insider threats.
Equally important was the ability to speak to vendors and organisations manning to stalls in the expo hall, with over 30 different organisations represented. I was particularly excited to speak with AISA, ACS and the TasGov Digital workforce staff to express how impressed I have been with the modernising of workspace skills by using the SFIA Framework.
Finally it was great to reconnect with some familiar faces and take some time to sit down and see what everyone is up to. Networking is just as an important part of this conference as the presentations as it’s that one time a yea the local cybersecurity industry can get together.
Anyway, it was a fantastic event and I am already looking forward to next years. I’m hoping I might even be able to get to the Melbourne conference in a couple of months too, but that requires finding funds!