Aurora
A tale of three text messages The first message, from auroraplus: Hi, we have a request for ADDRESS to complete a Meter Exchange. We expect to interrupt the power at your property for approx. 30mins, and on a date to be confirmed soon. We are obliged to exchange your meter...
Digitising a PDF
The task I was recently asked to take a PDF plan of a quarry that was produced in 2007 and turn it back into a GIS or CAD type format. The backstory was that the surveying company that did the site survey and produced the plan no longer had access...
COVID No. 1
Why now? Read to save yourself from ignorance. Write to save yourself from confusion. orangebook_ I’ve got some stuff to get off my chest. The title, COVID No. 1, implies there may be follow-ups to this post. That may or may not actually be the case. If you go on...
Immediate garbage
A glass that does what? We get food from McDonalds sometimes. The kids like it and I don’t mind it; no-one is pretending it’s a healthy choice but every now and again is no big deal. Sometimes, McDonalds give you ‘collectables’ when you buy food from them. As an example,...
A (kind of) short history of the modern ownership of the Rosebery mine
Tailings dam protests The #politas twitter hashtag these days consists of an inordinately large number of tweets complaining about the proposal to build a new tailings dam for the Rosebery mine. A large number of those tweets make specific mention of the ownership of the mine; like this one: Tarkine...
I was hacked! No, not me.
The hackers did it If you’re on this blog (why?) you’ve probably realised I’ve got an interest in infosec. If not, go look at the hacking section of this blog and then come back here. We’ve probably got a federal election coming up soon; the Prime Minister was in town...
Bad takes on ransomware
Face, meet palm. It’s currently being reported that Federal Group are the victims of a ransomware attack that has: impacted its pokies machines and hotel bookings system for more than a week. Which has, perhaps predictably, led to some really bad takes on the #politas hashtag: Excellent news, and some...
Not worth it
Oldshovel Oldshovel is a YouTube channel where the guy restores old mountain bikes from the 1990s mostly. It hits a nice combination of basic mechanics, nostalgia and just cool shit, and it’s part of the inspiration for my GT. The channel must do okay, because it’s got pretty good production...
Into the void
Writing more I haven’t written much here that isn’t about hacking; certainly not recently. However, writing is a skill like many others and there isn’t any real skill development in hacking posts that are essentially a description of how I pwned a box (or occasionally, didn’t). So I think I...
2020
2020, amirite? So much has happened this year that it’s hard to know where to begin. People will remember 2020 for plenty of bad reasons for a long, long time. This isn’t a recap article; there are plenty of those already (and thousands more yet to be written). You know...
A predetermined outcome
Wasting time I don’t have much in the way of themes that run through my ramblings here, but if I did, one of them would be about time. Basically, I don’t have enough of it. Now that’s not to say that I always use my time wisely; I procrastinate sometimes,...
A Quick Note
Busy bees This is just a quick note because I’ve got 5 minutes. I’ve been super busy these past few days, and haven’t spent much time hacking or made much progress. I’m working on a couple of different vulnhub boxes. One is all about enum and honestly it’s kind of...
Nostalgia - GT Part 1
Nostalgia: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition When I was at university about 20 years ago, I purchased a brand new 2000 GT Outpost Trail rigid mountain bike from a bike store in Hobart - I’m pretty sure it...
Time
No Zero Days No Zero Days is a famous comment on a reddit thread. It’s worth reading, so check it out. One of the points it makes is that you should do something, no matter how small, towards your goals every day. Sometimes it feels like there is no time,...
Imhof-style Tasmania
Tasmania
This Imhof-inspired map was made in QGIS based largely on a State Government digital terrain model. The full sized version on A2 is 22Mb, so this is scaled down.
Mineral Exploration Licence Visualisation
Mineral Exploration I’ve previously written that this blog won’t probably have much to do with geology (or mining for that matter), but the other day I saw a tweet on the #politas hashtag that got my interest piqued. It was a media release from Labor in relation to declining levels...
On Roses
Roses Some people love roses, and grow gardens full of them. They feel that they the beauty and scent of the rose more than outweights the occasional thorn prick. From a twisted, thorny bush springs great beauty. And to appreciate that beauty, we must accept the accompanying barbs. Is this...
Dodo: Why are you like this?
Return to Sender So regular readers [lol, I know there aren’t any] will recall I recently cancelled my NBN service with Dodo and switched to Kogan. Well Dodo do this thing where they tell you that if you cancel your service, you have to send back the router they gave...
A Grey Goshawk in the tree
Grey Goshawk
Despite the name, the Tasmanian Grey Goshawks are all white. They are endangered, and although I’ve heard of them being sighted around here I’d never previously seen one myself.
Dodo - What Happened?
Dodo So I’ve been using Dodo as my ISP for the last ~4 years, and I’ve been happy with their service. For the last ~2 years I’ve been on the ‘Supercharged Unlimited Data Plan’, which was supposedly $79.90 per month, but which they were actually promoting for a long time...
Corflutes
I wonder…? Ever drive/walk/run/cycle around during an election campaign and think: ‘Gee, candidate A seems to have a lot more signs than candidate B?’ No? Must be just me then. Election season We’ve got an election coming up for the Legislative Council division of Rosevears, and I’ve noticed that there...
Voicemail
TLDR Don’t leave me a voicemail. Okay, but why? Someone recently left me a voicemail but I’d never actually set up the service on my phone. So I dutifully called 101 and the helpful robot insisted I had to set a PIN before I could do anything else. Not just...
These birbs ate my apples
Birds eating my last winter apples
I’ve also seen Rosellas and Wattle Birds doing the same thing.
White Eye (aka Silvereye)
House Sparrow
Yellow-Throated Honeyeater
Little Wattlebird
Bluey (not the cartoon)
JUST WHAT IT IS. In the Tasmanian back blocks the “Bluey,” a sort of disreputable colonial offspring of the Irish “stone of frieze,” made “cheap and nasty,” without a particle of the artistic grace and beauty of its revered ancestor, is the overcoat a la mode. Nobody goes out without...