Life

Julius Malema has exploded into political prominence by making himself hard to ignore. Inheriting a platform that drew attention to the accidental outrages he tripped into, he quickly learned to stoke outrage and roar back at any responses he provoked. For the media, trying to gauge the state of the nation’s health from moment to moment, this makes him a much more attractive candidate than the business-as-usual official announcements of the ruling party proper. But Malema’s sound and fury signify little, and his disproportionate voice in South Africa’s public conversation is only hurting our ability to speak to one another, and to speak sense when we do. We think it’s time to ignore Julius, and invite you to join us.

For the week of 7-14 April 2010, we undertake to talk about this country, its challenges, its promise, its news, and to ignore Julius while doing so. Join us in this initiative. If you blog, join the roll. If you Tweet, add the hashtag #ignoreJulius to your daily output.

However you communicate, take a week off from Julius.

Today my blog turned six, and I tweeted that fact with the following:

My blog http://singe.za.net/ turned 6 today. The fact that I'm tweeting this rather than blogging it is probably significant.

While blogging remains more a more satisfying and useful means of exploring a thought, twitter let's you skip the work and move onto the conversation (sometimes) a bit sooner, but without any decent record of that conversation occurring (twitter's searchable memory is too short). I'm certainly going to continue blogging, but I don't see my throughput increasing much. Luckily, subscribing to an RSS feed is only a cost if there are too many updates ;).

That being said, I think there's been some fun stuff on the blog in the last year, my favourite posts have been:

• Using Maltego to Data Mine Twitter
• Conficker Claims it's first Human Life
• My first guest post - Efficient extraction of data using binary search and ordering information
• Deloitte -> SensePost for a personal milestone (there was another personal milestone, my marriage, but that wasn't much of a blog entry).

Today is the last day of my first week at SensePost, so far the number of:

As of the 4th of Jan, I will conclude 4-years of service to Deloitte's Security & Privacy group in South Africa, and be moving to SensePost. I have lots to say about it, but didn't want my perseverations over what/how to say it to get in the way of marking the move. My relationship and view of Deloitte is very positive and I learned a massive amount from incredible people. However, I've long wanted to work for SensePost and a combination of a great opportunity offered by the Post'ers and a "time to move on" feeling at Deloitte sealed the deal.

We loved every moment, if only there was more time. Some photos are up courtesy of our photographers. Our informal engagement shoot, and photos from the wedding.

In the meantime, we're off on honeymoon!

In 17 hours. Finally, I can't wait.

Five years ago I started this blog to keep my then supervisor up to date on my academic progress. It's interesting that at the same time five years ago Facebook was launched, and I think the last five years have been particularly interesting for computer security, and it's been fun. I've also grown a lot over the years, and it's funny to read my early entries with hindsight.

I've never had a massive readership except for the odd case of big blogs linking to me (SANS, F-Secure and Washington Post were my most memorable). Although, the feedback I've received over the years has really helped to refine some of my stances and ideas, and hopefully a few of yours dear reader. For example Ben Nagy once scared me into a whole new tack leading from this to this. Last year was particularly fun with Roberto Preatoni and Dan Kaminsky both getting involved in some discussion. It also marked a return to more active blogging for me, after a drop off in the move from academia to consulting. I hope to keep it up.

To my regular readers, thanks for reading, to any new readers welcome. My goal has always been to encourage debate and discussion, so if you've never argued with me before  but always wanted to, know that I welcome the chance.

While taking my drugs this evening I noticed something interesting; vs. . Is this rampant plagiarism? If so, somebody at SensePost better sue the arse off those Schering  guys ;)

It's Christmas 2008 here in Africa. Hope you all have a blessed Christmas with some quality time with your families. As for the security geeks, I hope the break gives you time to think, and we come back with new ways to combat crime and defend data ala the spaf.

Donn is being bullied by QVC for their Carlswald based marketing. He is being sued for defamation. Now I'm no lawyer, but I'm sure truth is a defence to defamation, as is it being in the public interest. If someone asked me whether to buy services from QVC, I would strongly recommend against it for the below reasons based on my experiences (and reiterated by a wealth of negative complaints on hellopeter, even with them diluted through their user of different company names, and several blogs).

Donn Edwards is being sued by QVC, the group who appear to be behind the less-than-honest "You've won a car" scheme I previously blogged about. Read his story, and press statement, and send in an affidavit, legal support or donations if you can.

Update II: It appears these guys get your number after applying for insurance quotes. If you comment, please indicate if you have recently applied for insurance and through whom you applied.

Update: This page originally documented my experiences, but given the number of commentators and changing tactics, it is regularly updated. I can't vouch for the accuracy of, nor take responsibility for, the commentators information, or that of HeloPeter's. Also, while this fits my personal definition of a scam, until that is tested in a court, they are at most using disingenuous marketing tactics. Either way, don't waste your time.

I got a phone call from 'Divine' today telling me I was one of 15 lucky people who had made it to the final draw for a Cheverolet Spark. This appears to be part of a possible ongoing scam (or network marketing) run by a company that keeps changing it's name. They are currently EcoWorld and appear to have been previously Prestige Business Solutions, which others claim use the trickery to try and get you to buy a time share at the Quality Vacation Club.

Divine told me that Anna, the "events coordinator" would be phoning me tomorrow morning to give me the address. She did phone, but I declined to go, and I advise you do the same.

I was interested to see if my political leanings (as described by the Political Compass test) had shifted since having left University, gotten a job, started paying taxes, converted to Catholicism and having grown older.

It is interesting to note that my results are very similar to what they were in 2004, and less libertarian and economically right wing than they were in 2006. Me and Nelson Mandela are still home boys though.

Economic Left/Right: -7.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.13

Apparently Forrester reckons Information/Data Architects and Information Security Experts are the Hottest roles in IT (note 'Hottest' is hotter than 'Extremely Hot'). 

You know who you are :)