(And, yes, I REALLY like to be overly-bombastic in my grammatically-crippled word-creation when I do these things. It's my little "cherry on top".)

I do this silly thing when I get into large crowds. I "shut down" the fast spinning, erratic, multitasking hard drive that is my brain and go into "navigation and evasion" mode. It sounds very technical and like I'm programming a navigation computer but, in many ways, that's how I treat my brain.

I then pretend to analyze the traffic flow, predict the gap lengths and times and program a route that will enable me to keep moving at my present speed and manage to avoid plowing into someone. This is mostly done in T stations on the Green and Red lines, sometimes in Malls and, recently, walking through Times Square from The Roosevelt Hotel to Penn Station.

Anyway, the visualization seems to work well for the most part and unless I'm incredibly overtired it's one of the few times I can fully override my ADHD. The other is when something puts me in "incident response" mode but when that happens, it's VERY, very hard for me to "stand down" and focus on my usual tasks.

Times like those, I would KILL for augmented-reality, gesture-recognition, multi-input touch interfaces containing a symbiont AI that almost predict what I want to do before I move my hands in place. But I digress.

It occurred to be on the Green Line between North Station and Government Center this AM that, really, all I needed was an implant that translated the signals my brain was sending out to my various body parts (and vice-versa) and converted them to imagery sent to my visual cortex.

Think about it: you see the calculations, a message saying "go now" based on your instinctual urge to go. You see someone you think you recognize and the implant captures, sharpens and enhances the weak memory solidifying it into something recognizable.

In work/infosec terms - I need a good dashboard and reporting GUI for my Body Event and Information Management (BEIM), e.g. my brain. I mean, what does one's brain do but correlate the various events and information going on in your body in order to manage fast remediation and incident response. It just happens to be able to do it far faster than any SEIM correlating across a WAN EVER could (Security Event and Information Management and Wide Area Network for those still playing along). I wonder how many events-per-second the average adult human brain can manage.

(I can't believe I'm thinking about this from an information security perspective. It takes ALL the fun out of it.)

Since we don't truly understand our own bodies and rely on doctors to "diagnose" such an interface may be valuable to help us understand everything from when our blood sugar is low to some other impending or current medical event is occurring that needs addressing. It wouldn't hurt to map out what's going on in the body and basically providing our conscious self with insights that would allow us to make course correction for self-repair. Don't want it in live mode? Bluetooth/RFID/Broadcast-your-own-protocol to an external device for storage and later reading.

Based on your Personal Privacy Preferences and the degree of urgency for each potential issue, you could immediately upload certain information to your doctor for translation and action. Of course, with such diagnosis tools at your disposal, the need for a doctor to fully manage your health would become far less. I wouldn't say irrelevant but who knows.

I just don't know enough about the feature set of current nanoprobic body sensors (do any actually exist yet?) to see how much information we can gather about the body with something microscopic and untethered. heck...has any research even been done on broadcasting signals from a nanoprobe deep inside the human body to a device on the outside? Perhaps relaying through the nervous system? What if that's compromised? Maybe a set of waypoints along the way?

Ah, mad science. Love it.

I so should be going to bed instead of writing this but I've been trying to get this out of my head since at least Monday and having no success whatsoever.

Techno-futuristic transhumanist daydreaming

Why bother with cutting one's hair shorter when you could rely on a nanophyte cluster that first changed the hair to translucent and then, depending on the temperature settings, would control their color to be anything from black to pure white. The latter for cooling and the former for the need to warm up a bit.

Being an amature futurist and transhumanist, I allow myself to make non-scientific based speculation such as: these nanophytes could potentially inhibit the production of melanin to the point of rendering the host an albino. Then the control of both skin and hair pigment would be left to the nanophyte clusters which would collectively turn whatever shade programmed to based on temperature needs, desired look, and location (skin vs hair) in a near instantaneous manner - as long as it would take for each nanophyte to realize it's location in the body and process the color instructions.

This brings up all sorts of questions and thoughts including what albinism would do to discussions of color and race and how much of a role facial features play in that argument.

I'm also curious what the concentration of subdermal nanophytes would need to be in order to fully display a homogeneous color across particular zones of the skin and hair. Would it be possible to make them dual use and thus have melanin inhibition and color reflection be a mere feature of a standard body nanophyte tasked with perpetual monitoring and repair duties?

Would melanin inhibition destroy the body's resistance to the Sun's ultraviolet rays and necessitate the additional task of processing UV light? Or would these nanophytes take the place of cellular melanosomes to protect nuclear DNA from UV mutation?

What about the absence of melanocytes in stria vascularis of the inner ear resulting in cochlear impairment? Would non outward-exposed melanin production be left intact?

I'm sure I'm missing quite a few other questions based on my lack of scientific and medical understanding. Not to mention what happens if pockets of nanophytes fail in their melanin-like duties of pigmentation and protection?

Ideally whatever nanophytes I'd allow in my body would be self-repairing and self replicating bringing up the ever-present argument of nanotech AI and "gray goo".

But then.....I did title this post a "BrainStream" which is what it sounds, fairly direct and unadulterated.

Cross-Social Network Trust Relationships

I rant on this topic enough as it is. There is a need for some unique identifier across social networks to easily determine similar accounts and locate friends across services. Currently email addresses seem to have this role except for the inconsistency as those change, the desire for one NOT to have all their different social network accounts linked across social networks for their coworkers or family to find what they do in their social and virtual lives.

For instance, there are people who do not want their Match.com profile with there Livejournal, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter accounts. They may instead create an additional sockpuppet to allow them to socialize using this non-public personae instead. Of course, there are people whose online personae is the same across Match.com, LJ, and Twitter with no need to "hide" anything because no one knows who they are online except for people they've allowed. And the final category of folks who are fully open in who they are to everyone. Bravo.

The purpose of this segue is the fact that my attempt to Vlog (video blog) has been an utter failure partially due to vanity and self-consciousness and partially due to the fact that I am very carefully in what I share with who these days.

Twitter is a perfect example of this- I have allowed an open follow policy so in addition to spammers, follower-addicts, and advertisers I have various PR and Sales folks from companies in industries I work in and post about watching my ever move, now making my Twitter feed more and more boring by the day as I continually remind myself that not only can everyone read what I'm posting but I am being actively monitored.

So in Facebook, I've started doing a decent job of creating Friend Lists for every category I may interact with a person in - Social, Work, School (previously), Geo, Family, and Content (e.g. what parts of my profile they can see). One step I have not taken is to create a personalized set of levels regarding how much I trust a person. I don't do well enough with "the maths" to come up with such a scheme so I am abstaining. However, I will most likely use these lists as the standard and duplicate them in LiveJournal and Youtube with the hope of recording Vlog postings, applying the permissions to varying groups depending on the content and then posting them to a LiveJournal post "filtered" to the appropriate Custom Group POSSIBLY making a "Note" on Facebook that only that group can see (if a person happens not to be on LiveJournal).

This is all horribly manual and if I'm not blogging now, what are the chances of me following through with this? Probably very little. I'm surprised, however, that with Google and Facebook APIs combined with LiveJournal scripting that this hasn't been done yet.

I'm finding I need to share parts of my life with friends I only see online for emotional support, for commiseration, for helping them better understand me, for allowing closer, stronger relationships. I'm not having time to do email, blogging en masse isn't happening so I'm starting to more and more be at a loss, feeling isolated while almost desperate for weekend interactions with local friends with whom I can decompress.

I tried weekdays and frankly while I have been able to stay awake for longer lately, the aggregation of lack-of-sleep leaves me extremely emotionally vulnerable, obviously overtired, with a complete lack of focus. I have to severely cut down on that and save the in-person interactions for the weekend when I can catch up on sleep while balancing my duties as a father and husband. Yay?

So the next step is to finalize refining my Facebook Friend Lists. I will probably add groups for segmenting out subject matter/content of interactions. Then copying those groups, mapping them against LJ friends. Finally, I'll try a few topic-specific Vlogs and apply the same group/topic settings to them, post them to the LiveJournal filters and a note to Facebook (can I actually post a FB note that only certain Friend Lists can see?). The problem I'll run into is very few of my "friends" on either service appear to have discoverable YouTube accounts.

Now for your thoughts. Do you care? Does this sound interesting? Would you make more use of these services if it had these features? Am I making things too complex?

I'm taking the noon Acela and should arrive around 4pm. I'm staying in Midtown at The Roosevelt Hotel. Anyone want to go out for dinner, drinks, a movie or all 3?

Tuesday and Wednesday are directed at work. I should be free in the evening after dinner on Tuesday - around 8pm if anyone wants to go out.

Unfortunately, Wednesday is really out as I'm taking the 6pm Acela home.

Anyone around and about?

A great weekend thus far started by jetting right back into Boston to hang out with my friend Julia, munch on burritos, watch a little Countdown and backseat drive GTAIV. What an amazing game - the canonical detail is amazing and it's got such an incredibly rich feature set.

Up late, took the Little Man out to McDonalds for lunch as promised (a treat), got the car inspected a month or two after deadline, and then off to the bikeshop to get his third-hand 12in" bike some air and raise the seat.

After I got him down for his nap it was off on my errands - arranging a day at a nearby spa for Mothers' Day and picking up my new phone - my first Blackberry (a Pearl). It's really my first PDA ever....surprising for this early-adopter but folks may realize I only ever dig into social networks and Web 2.0 that is free. I don't have a gaming console, fancy computer, iPod Video (or iPhone Touch for that matter), huge entertainment center or any of that. Not to say that I don't covet it greatly but I have other obligations.

Unfortunately, what I figured would take an hour at the VZW store took almost 2.5 - and I went grocery shopping for 45min of that. Apparently my phone didn't want to activate. Thank the gods I figured this out while still parked in the store lot because it would take another 1.5 hours for me to get it. They trouble-shot the first phone for 30min, then tried to exchange it with another phone and had the same problem. They asked me to "come back in 30min" so the techs could get some sort of key from VZW support.

I had one hour to get home and get ready to take my wife to see "Iron Man" at that point so not even remotely enough play time with it. Got home and was in a frenzy trying to get the groceries away, play with the phone even a little, check email, get something to eat and help get Will ready for bed. It didn't go well.

Once I was in the car I kept fiddling (and got car sick). Finally, after sitting down in the theatre I was recovering a bit from said earlier frenzy and car-sickness to enjoy the trailers being shown.

Hulk looks pretty good - like something Marvel "fixed" this time around. Indiana Jones is a MUST see. It comes out on the Little Man's birthday but I'm tempted to get a babysitter for once we get to bed and take my wife to see it. She wants to see Speed Racer as well. I could dig this babysitter thing.

But "Iron Man", oh Marvel.....John Favreau , Avi Arad....I don't know which of you are responsible for this masterpiece but damn that was an amazing experience. The acting was really good and the special effects truly awe inspiring. It was a comic book movie without the cheesy, exclamatory schlock we've come to expect Hollywood to ruin such adaptations with. And the hardware and software CGI was so believably realistic.

I hope Hollywood looks closely at this movie, its success and figures out the magic combination for all future adaptations. This is a way to do it right.

Off to bed!

Anyone doing anything interesting? Would anyone mind me tagging along? This big house gets quite lonely and since most folks are out on a Saturday night I'd like to be one of them. I'm tired of being tethered to my computer staring at the TV.

So Comment, Tweet, IM, Text me via Facebook or Call me on the cell / at the house.

Lemme know what's going on.

I wish.

I was home from work today, the unfortunate victim of an accidental overdose of medication. After putting Will to bed and waiting for my wife to return from her class, I went to The Asgard in Cambridge for karaoke with friends. This is my 3rd time at DJ Paul's karaoke and first time singing.

I got home and took my meds before going to bed at 1am. I woke up at the unfortunately-usual time of 5:45 and took my meds again at 6am. Did I mention the technicality that the "one pill twice daily" should be spread about 12hrs apart? Yeah, didn't ever really get that. I always took one before bed and one in the morning - but that was when I usually get to sleep between 9-10pm.

The usual 1hr of slight dizziness turned into several hours of said dizziness, extreme nausea and miosis - the latter incredibly NOT helpful to someone who does 90% of his job with his eyes. This did not hit until 15min after I was at my desk followed by an hour of trying to get work done while taking several breaks of closing my eyes and putting my head down. Not good.

My system seems mostly clear and it has run its course. This happened twice while I was at SourceBoston and up late....only today did I determine it wasn't the flu bugs that had been savaging SXSW, ShmooCon and now SourceBoston attendees but stupidity and lack of pharmaceutical instruction.

I will be going to bed early tonight - as soon as I finish this post. (Hopefully quickly.) So apologies for the lack of polish, hyperlinks and grammar checking but I am spent.

Karaoke

I sang my first song at public karaoke last night! I've sang at karaoke before but it was at a studio with only 8 or 9 people who I mostly knew at a friend's birthday party (I started with "Its the End of the World and We Know it" followed by U2's "One").

Last night was a very important song and sadly, two of the three people I performed it for were not there. (They shall not be named). It is a long and pretty easy song to sing -"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot. I am a HUGE singer-songwriter and folk fan but this one was extra special due to an additional affiliation: I dedicated the song to my friend Kevin, Paul Gross, and Callum Keith Rennie. (\o/ FTW)

You see, I have always been a big fan of the TV show "Due South" as I watched it when first aired with family and again in reruns with my girlfriend, now wife. There was a great episode called "Mountie on the Bounty" involving well, Mounties of course, pirates and awesome cheesy camp.

The music for the whole series was awesome since my Mom raised me with a healthy liking for all forms of Celtic music (including much originating from Canada) but the aforementioned Due South episode had a song called '32 Down on the Robert Mackenzie'. However, that wasn't an option to sing at karaoke. Fans of the show know that Paul Gross (one of the main actors and an Executive Producer) wanted to use "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" but Gordon Lightfoot said that could only be done if Gross received permission from the survivors of those who perished. Gross, hesitant to bring up the painful past, chose instead to write a ballad of his own.

So very long story short - that's what I sang. Loved it.

The second song? "Birdhouse in your Soul" by "They Might Be Giants" - my son is already a fan of theirs due to their prolific sound appearing all over Disney TV. Unfortunately I had a hard time hearing the music and was a bit offkey, starting late. Those who know my music history are aware how much of a snob I am about rhythm, tone and key...so it was very nerve-wracking to be off.

There may have been some rumor of a poor attempt to show up some non-dancing friends by cutting in – let’s just say two leaders do not a dance couple make. FAIL.

Second Shift and Escape Pod

Oh. My. Gosh. So, I've had an iPod shuffle for a while now. I haven't really downloaded podcasts all that much as it was too much of a pain, I didn't want to deal with syncing and I simply didn't have time.

I made time and boy am I glad.

In addition to catching up on quite a few PotterCasts that I've missed due to being out of Leaky Cauldron circulation for 4 years, (funny that I registered the domain and tried to push for a launch prior to Book 6. We ran out of time but when they did....boy did it ever rocket to the top. Amazing.) , I've started listening to two podcasts.

The first is Escape Pod which is a great show by Steve Eley wherein each week(?) listeners are treated to a reading of a Science Fiction or Fantasy (until they launched PodCastle), short story. They have the grand old authors of Sci-Fi and several new ones - most of which I like. Steve is a great reader and often has guest readers that are also entertaining. Not only does it kill the massive doldrums of the work commute but boy am I catching up on a lot of missed reading in my lifetime. There are some stories I don't care for but most of them I truly enjoy. I'm still behind in the stories - I think I have worked my way up to Spring 2007.

I haven't hit up PodCastle yet because Escape Pod does a good job feeding my futurist and transhumanist ponderings quite well.

The second is, well, Second Shift - a fantasy podplay written, performed and produced in the Boston area. I was introduced to this by a new friend and actress in the troupe. The story is about 3 college friends who get transported into a fantasy world of magic and their attempts to get back home. Sounds like disappointing de rigueur for fantasy fans but the story and canon/magical setting is incredibly well-detailed and very well performed - they even went so far as to create a new language. It seems to surpass the cheesy cliché my above plot summary might invoke and the story is filled with hilarious pop-culture Sci-Fi/Fantasy nods as well as plenty of opportunity for shippers and fan-fiction with the well-developed characters.

As with anything I get quickly obsessed with, I find myself running around the house, playing with my son and speaking to him in the accent of the Amirand people even using some of the words from the Charendraen language they created.

I'm rapidly running out of time to still be in the realm of "going to bed early" so a few more quick notes:

Potter Play
I'm sticking my nose back into the Harry Potter fandom. With news that the final movie will be split into two and continued promises of The Scottish Book (which I strongly believe will contain a decent amount of new canon to keep the fandom going for a bit while longer), I'm ready to come back and am digging through the archives to write up a small history of The Leaky Cauldron fansite from when I joined as Editor in December 2000 to when Melissa Anelli took over a few years later. Mostly for my own edification since I have all the emails and want to remember my time as part of it.

I am aiming to attend Terminus in Chicago this summer and hope to contribute to the planning of LeakyCon 2009 in Boston.

Security, SourceBoston and BeanSec

I seem to be getting more and more re-involved in the information security community mostly due to my job but also through participating in industry events (such as the recent SourceBoston and BlackHat this summer) as well as gatherings such as the local BeanSec held the 3rd Wednesday of every month. I suspect the more time I spend researching information security issues, the faster I will move to creating a separate "work" blog for my musings. Stay tuned for "Secured BrainStream" which presently has no ETA for launch.

I think that covers everything for now. Still lots of BrainStreams jammed in my head trying to find egress points for release but almost no time to post about them. Spending this coming Easter weekend with family in NW CT and "The Happy Valley" of WMass.

In the meanwhile, I still find myself using Facebook and LinkedIn quite a bit as well as Twitter for more up-to-date, quick musings. I can always be chatted up on any number of the IM services as bkdelong or using my email address.

"The new privacy controls, which will launch on Wednesday morning, allow users to do more with Friend Lists. Users can now set specific privacy controls for different friend groups, said Naomi Gleit, a Facebook product manager. Users can create a friend grouping for co-workers, for example, and share different profile information, updates and other information with that group. Users can put friends into multiple groups."

Although it occurs to me that even despite the Oscars going on some of you might actually be close enough to join me for a drink downstairs.

Alas.

For the record, I'm here in the Hilton Garden Inn on 14th St. and will be at our (IANS) DC Forum at the Reagan Center during the day. Text or tweet me - I'm around.

In order for this to happen, grouping needs to be more explicit - Livejournal continues to do this very well with "Custom Friend Groups" with the exception that we're missing a good set of standard groups we can pull from. Those "groups" might be based on the core XFN values or the vocabulary terms of the FOAF "relationship" schema. At least if every (major) social network utilized one of these as a base, we could get closer to having initial uniformity across the Social Networks (SNs) we use.

[Continue for How Social Networks could be way, far better than they are today.]

Each person (or friend) would first be assigned a relationship based on how I know them i.e. friend, spouse, parent, sibling, cousin, in-law, colleague (work), social friend (through hobbies or interests)...the above base standards would work well for that.

Each friend would then be placed in a group or series of groups. Each group would be assigned a trust metric as well. They'd go in more general groups like family (spouse, child, sibling, parent, cousin, in-law), social (SCA, Harry Potter fandom, security community, Transhumanism/Futurist), work (clients, collegues, peers), educational (schoolmates from elementary through college) and other, more custom groups.

That's two levels of metrics - then many of the people in the above categories may be broken down into subgroups. There's always some folks in a large group we may trust more than others or small breakout groups we'd be working with on particular things.

Finally, there's the "bonuses" (yay D&D) that get applied due to various factors and attributes that I can't currently think of a category for. People who you've let into your life regarding a particular matter due to a shared experience or values. Ideally, these would also be standardized in some means whether it be mental health, raising children, physical health, politics, religious beliefs etc.

My trust could/would then be further informed by friends. If I trust one friend Alice n + 4 and trust another friend Bob only n + 2 but they were friends with each other then I'd use Alice's trust metric to at least help inform my own. I should, in theory, be able to set the degree to which a friend's trust metric of another friend will change my trust in that other friend. ;)

Unfortunately I am absolutely abysmal at math so this is going to have to be made easy by whatever system managing said social network information.

Anyway, what you then have is a final metric for each individual that should give you the ability to set a trust threshold on certain segments of information in order for people to read it. You may categorize a "post" on Livejournal or your blog based on your relationships, groups, subgroups/projects, and bonuses as well - automatically setting the metric for you and ideally reducing the amount of effort you have to put into constantly creating custom groups.

Personal information would also be classified - date of birth, where you were born, information about your family - specific data points that every social network wants access to but gives you very little granular control over protecting.

Information Protection and Encryption

On top of that, I believe to truly protect the privacy of each other we should add a level of encryption to everything. So on each social network, I'd be assigned a key and that key would be used to encrypt each point of data or post that has a privacy preference with the keys of those I've chosen to allow access to. Ideally, a project like OpenID could eventually be used to have a single key that transverses multiple OpenID-compatible networks.

Corporations are tackling this data classification and encryption scheme to protect information in the increased awareness of data loss through theft and accidental breaches. Once information becomes classified, it becomes far easier to apply security to it as not only do you know to what level it needs protecting but you can also setup means of knowing where it is and where it's going.

But here's the rub with regard to encryption - in order for this to happen on social networks , the user base of these social networks are going to have to push for it. This user base is already mostly comfortable sharing their information publicly. It's the rest of the huge population NOT on certain social networks and NOT sharing their information because of their lack of trust of these networks.

It is these people who would then become social network participants if a robust trust relationship system were in place, seamlessly allowing for them to assign metrics to both people, relationships, groups, projects and a threshold for privacy preferences. Alas.

The other problem, (obviously), is how most major corporations and large organizations are struggling themselves to create a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that works for them. How will social networks do it? Especially social networks that want to remain free to their user base, encouraging widespread adoption and use? That's where the potential sharing of said information with....advertisers and for-profit entities that want it.

Sharing Information with Advertisers

The discussion here can then branch off into a much larger conversation about privacy. More and more every day the government and corporate America continues to discover and implement new ways to get access to our personal information to sell to add to their bottom line.

Some don't care about the information itself except that they can get money for it. Others (like Amazon.com and the local supermarket) seek to utilize the information to better sell to the consumer - Amazon on a more individual basis and (I think and hope) the local supermarket to figure out what they need to keep in stock and purchase more of.

This is one of the reasons I like working where I do. Many organizations out there that put on events produce tradeshows where they try to get anyone to attend. This presents a large amount of prospects that "hopefully" will go to the booth of one of the vendors and "possibly" have the ability to be a buyer of the product they are selling. My company takes a different approach reaching out to only those who actively work in the industry we support and would most likely be buyers of the products participating vendors sell.

Before I stray too far from the point - I know if I'm going to be using an ad supported why not see ads for things I'd most likely consume?

Though I have to admit, I'm surprised Amazon / IMDB hasn't gone poking around my public "Must See" My Movies list or my votes to determine what movies I like and therefore use those preferences to feed Amazon ads. I mean, it already does that with purchases and gifts and anything I rate... but not really just "movies" as an instance as opposed to the DVD or VHS its on.

They do have some in-theatre information that I started transferring my IMDB votes from to but that got tiring fast. I did some of the same with Flixter/Facebook - further information I'd like to standardize. Use this information to push me new trailers for movies I want to see or might want to see. Create metrics to determine based on the genre and subject of movies I rate (in addition to the ratings themselves) and "learn" further about what movies I will like.

The Wrapup

So, to wrap this up (I've been writing this in and out of a few hours with breaks to clean house), let's start with further standardizing relationship groupings on social networks. I'm toying with going back to my LiveJournal groups and defining based on the categories mentioned above and then re-assigning various posts to them as a test. But I want to be able to do this on Facebook and Flickr and other sites that currently have limited, often binary means of denoting privacy preferences.

I want that private information encrypted so if there's a system glitch or criminal penetration of the service my information is protected and still only available to those it is keyed to.

I still don't want to have to pay for social networks but I'm willing to continue to deal with ads - however as long as you're sucking in all of my personal information, it's time to get much smarter about using it. I want to see ads personalized for me and - who knows - I may actually start clicking on things if they're actually something I may consider buying.

Between Tivo (television habits), Amazon (purchasing habits), Fandango, Netflix, IMDB (movie habits), supermarket cards (shopping habits), Google (online searching and emailing habits) there ain't much left to be secretive about - especially with a warrant.

The technology is there, the skills are all around us, we're still consumers but we still want our privacy. At least, those of us who choose to - I'm completely discounting those who want to be off the grid.

So what's the hold up?

With Google knocking out FOAF (Friend-Of-A-Friend) I'm trying to come up with a better trust metric with certain segments of my life that I'm willing to share and then add people to groups according to that metric/subject matter. The current list style is abysmal to try and work through.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I suppose I can build my own through Excel / Word and C&P. It's so FRUSTRATING not being a programmer. So many ideas and absolutely no way to implement them. Are there still sites out there to "hire" programmers' time for quick projects?

Because of this new passenger connectivity, the proposed data network design and integration may result in security vulnerabilities from intentional or unintentional corruption of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane. The existing regulations and guidance material did not anticipate this type of system architecture or electronic access to aircraft systems that provide flight critical functions. Furthermore, 14 CFR regulations and current system safety assessment policy and techniques do not address potential security vulnerabilities that could be caused by unauthorized access to aircraft data buses and servers. Therefore, special conditions are imposed to ensure that security, integrity, and availability of the aircraft systems and data networks are not compromised by certain wired or wireless electronic connections between airplane data buses and networks.

Absolutely unbelievable. In theory, someone could access the systems controlling the plane from the seats and crash them or possibly even control them. It's also possible that someone could access the Airline Information Domain on the ground and hack into the same in-flight Aircraft Control Domain. They're all on the same network!

From what I gather, the only plan is to put in a "firewall" rather than to "air gap" or put the systems on different networks. It says the flight crew will be able to disable passenger access to the other two systems but I'm not impressed. This article from earlier in the year showing how to crash all other Inflight Entertainment Kiosks from a single one does not make me any more confident.

I am far from a person who would spread FUD but this is ridiculous. I'm guessing (hoping) that the release of this information will pressure Boeing and airlines to air gap the systems from each other. Then we can cease the speculation that such vulnerabilities could crash a plane or allow a plane to become a remotely-guided bomb.

ETA: I told my wife this story with what I can only guess was wild eyes and flailing (Paul Gross) arms her response was: "oh - so they can track what you're watching?" focusing on the clear invasion of privacy angle. I assumed that was part of the package re: inflight entertainment.

So I explained that no - it was the chance that evil hackers could break into the Aircraft Control Systems from the Inflight Entertainment! (sounding like many vendor companies and security charlatans I've interacted with). Her response again? "Eh - highly unlikely". So I sputtered a bit declaring loudly that the systems should be "air gapped" and that there have been similar critical infrastructure vulnerability scenarios declared "highly unlikely" usually shortly before someone (usually benevolent) finds a glaring hole easily exploited or some stupid idiot kid blunders into some Flood Control System or Air Traffic Control system of a small airport and unwittingly causes minor damage.

I don't really want to wait to be in the air for some security researcher to figure out if they can cause the flight controls to crash due to a buffer overflow initiated via the seat-based inflight entertainment. Please, no. Thanks.

I must admit the advent calendar has been fun with the trailers and flash games.

This is a fandom I think I could embrace. Where are the best hangouts?

Feed my addiction!

*sigh*

Kirky picked me up from the Cambridgeside Galleria at 1:45pm ET. WE GOT HOME AT 7:00PM!!! Unbelievable. First mistake, (though based on news reports and calculations it wasn't too far off), was taking Rt. 28 to the Lynnway up to Rt 1 instead of getting on Rt 1 from the get-go. Either way it took about 2.5 hours to get up Rt 1. 128N was running OK and we figured we were home free.

Rt 114 in Peabody was running extremely slow. In fact, it took us about 45min to go 1 mile. We opted to have Kirky park at a gas station after letting me off to run down a steep driveway to pick Will up from daycare and walk back to the car. We made the shrewd choice to stop at McD to grab a bite to eat 0p because it took about an hour and a half to go the next mile home.

None of the roads looked plowed let along sanded or salted. IMNSHO they should have been salting and sanding BEFORE the storm started and kept it up.

I must pile absolutely huge amounts of kudos to Kirky who chose to drive home, deal with my mumbling anxiety from the passenger seat the whole 5 hours and as Will fell asleep the last hour home, she unloaded the car and SHOVELED while I got him up to bed. She is a saint and wonderful woman.

Meanwhile, I want answers from the State and the various cities and towns I drove through on what the hell happened and why the ball was dropped.

If you read my previous post, you'll note that we spent it at an SCA Yule event. The morning of the event, it was starting to flurry outside and there was a dusting of the white as we left the house. Because of his early rising, he also was stuck in front of the digitally animated claymation "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer II" while Mommy and Daddy tried to catch a few more Z's behind him.

On the way back to our place, I finally relented and we switched between two all-XMas tunes stations. I found myself longing for the true classics - Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire/Danny Kaye or the Revels, Chanticleer and other traditional holiday music. Wasn't going to find but a slight few on those stations.

We got home and started settling in. We did watch Shrek the Halls but I'm not sure he really "got it". Before long, it was time for bed so I took up some of his winter/holiday books to read. I think we chose an adaptation of the original Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer story (he did correlate it to the horrid video he watched on Sat morning), and Clifford's First Snow Day.

After I turned out the lights, we hit the bathroom one more time and looked up at the skylight to see another light coating of show. Then we ran back into his room, carefully opened the blinds and side-by-side pressed our warm noses to the cold glass. As we steamed up the clear view we were looking for lights upon which to see the snowfall and reveling at the dusting on the rooftops below.

This holiday season is interesting. I found myself getting very frustrated at the ads and festivities happening before Veteran's Day and plowing through Thanksgiving. I wasn't going to acknowledge it until Thanksgiving was over but as I thought about it, I really want Will to understand the true history behind the holiday.

I am not a Christian but I think it's important for him to know as much as he can understand about the original Christmas Story. He hasn't gone to church or sunday school yet but that day will come as I know it's important to his mother and I think it's important for him to begin his path of learning towards an end of choosing himself.

I also want to differentiate between the birth of Jesus and Santa Claus but I suspect he's too young. I think introducing other winter holidays such as Hanukkah and Kwanzaa will only serve to confuse as well so I think I'll start simple. I'm still looking for the right books for his age. Any thoughts?

I think for now I'm just enjoying being with him, talking to him, asking questions and listening as he becomes more and more awakened to the world around him. He's into Hot Wheels and Monster Trucks but he's learned a lot from Magic School Bus and Diego that he's applying to his environment and it's fascinating to watch.

I'm such a happy dad.

Early last week I sprung the idea of going to Western Mass to visit my mother and attend the SCA Yule event for the area Barony - Bergental. After agreement, I then approached my mother who was suffering from a lack of housecleaning assistance since the summer but she still welcomed our visit. What a weekend it was - and I spent most of it in a kitchen:

Best that I can recall, I haven't been to an SCA event since Coronation held at the same place - Trinity Church in Springfield, MA. While it's nice to do events on my own, I don't like leaving Kirky to entertain Will all day on a weekend when she could use both a break and rest as well. So I haven't really been to any other events because of this. The location would ideally be kid friendly or otherwise be outdoors allowing for plenty of room for him to be physical. Then he naps better and doesn't get antsy and cranky. I don't believe in bringing him to events and "inflicting" him on others and am overly conscious of how he behaves around others. However, as I continue to tell everyone, he spoils us with his good spirits and behavior.

With Bergental Yule, I knew there would be activity outdoors as well as places for him to run around. There was also children's activities to some degree and Lady Henna's son also entertained Will as he has for last year's Yule and Coronation. That allowed my mother to be playing music, Kirky to help with gate and me to be in the kitchen without worry though available should Will need our attention. He's growing up so fast.

I've been to about 8 events since I started last year at Carolingia's "Falling Leaves" but I still continue to feel very new. I am thankful to those who have endeavored to make me welcome.

Anyway, we arrived in Springfield late on Friday night as I had somehow scheduled a dental appointment that late afternoon in Boston after having the day off. The reason I "allowed" myself to go to Yule at the last minute was because I did laundry and cleaning before I headed out for the weekend.

Will woke up around 4:30am due to unfamiliar surroundings so getting up "early" wasn't an issue. We arrived at the church around 8am and I presented myself to one of the co-autocrats - Lord Detharlion. We started setting up merchant tables and Kirky joined in. I went outside in the surprisingly frigid, windy weather to help a book merchant carry about 30 boxes and crates of her wares up two flights of stairs.

Let's just say I need to make a doctor's appointment to get my asthma medication re-proscribed. Between the "athletic" induced through carrying heavy objects, cold inducing frigid temperatures and weight inducement....I was hurting. So I "retreated" into the kitchen for a breather and offered my assistance with the staff breakfast. While I was there, I figured I'd stick around and see if I could help with feast.

I did some dishwashing for breakfast and the dayboard (lunch) crew and found that would be an easy task I could keep up for the rest of the day. I added in a few prep tasks - defatting and cleaning out 10 geese, washing grapes for the stuffing, cutting oranges etc. But it appeared keeping up with dishes the prep team was using seemed to be the most valuable. I tried to keep a turnaround time of 1-2minutes on the knives and cutting boards.

The church had a professional kitchen dishwasher - looks like a big metal box on top of the sink area. However we just used it for sterilization and I had a big sprayer to get food particles off. Things really took off around 4pm and I think I stayed at the dishwasher for the next 3-4 hours straight.

Towards the end of the 2nd remove I found my energy plummeting, unable to keep up with the influx of dishes and not properly understanding expectations on turnaround - I think I tried to go far faster than I needed to and also was doing drying myself up until the 1st remove was finishing.

I finally, (somewhat ashamed), told the kitchen manager and her apprentice stepped up and cruised actively and quickly through the rest of the meal and cleanup at the dishwasher. I was truly amazed (and thankful) for her energy and speed.

I limped home a physical wreck livened by positive words from the Baron as I headed to my car and hit the bed as soon as I got back to Mom's. Well, after some advil and chatting.

It was an incredibly wonderful, satisfying, and fun event. Some folks have warned me about balancing participating and working - which I agree with to some extent: burn thyself out and the enjoyment may wane. Can't have that.
I did acquire a seat to the feast nonetheless and found time to sit with my mother during the 2nd remove and 3rd remove (I wanted to try some of the goose I helped prep) if not to save my body for a little while longer.

But the people in the kitchen - I knew I was in the presence of some incredibly sharp cooks - many of them from a group known as Compaignie des Cuisiniers. They were funny, smart and constantly offering scholarly advice regarding methods of prep and cooking - a wealth of humor and knowledge making the working in the kitchen an event in and of itself. I hope to find myself working with these folks again soon.

My next event will be Quintavia's Yule next Sunday afternoon after a weekend of helping Kirky bake her 80 dozen + cookies as gifts for friends and family.

And for those who were curious about my previous post, I simply wore a black longsleeved shirt, black slacks, and black clog-like dress shoes underneath the bliaut/tunic and all was well. Aside the fact from waiting too long to ask for an apron and getting wet and dirty. Need to check wash and care instructions with the maker and consider some basic kitchenesque wear that I can throw in the washer/dryer if I'm going to do this more often.