Sailing

Death and Sailing

Happy Birthday A Team! It’s been far too long since I last wrote an entry. Hello to everyone out in Internet land. Have you heard the story of Dan Eldon? I am not fond of the site, but you can get an idea of what an amazing photographer and artist he was before his untimely death.

A-cat RacingRacing my cat in the Kickoff regatta was great. Rob Howe took a photo of me outpacing a Prindle 19 in flat water and a stiff breeze (that’s me on the right). You can see the BIG version of the photo here. I also found a photo that shows me preparing to round the leeward mark. In the end, the race committee was smoking crack and robbed Julian of a first place, but the conditions were ideal. Division Three [used to have] more information online.

I sent a message to Sailing Anarchy asking if they had any articles on the A-Class cats…they responded by asking me if I wanted to write one for them. They MUST be anarchists.

Sailing

A blustery day on the water

Do you care what the weather is up to o’er ‘ere? Check out the local met station webpage. Julian and I discovered yesterday it is fairly easy handle the cats in fierce conditions, although I confess we had the sails completely de-powered. The wind was similar to today’s reading:

   $ finger met@sealion.ucsc.edu 
        Wind Speed:             +14.592 m/s     (+32.642 mph)
        Maximum Wind Gust:      +16.376 m/s     (+36.633 mph)

Whoa Bessie!

Security

The cost of VPN deployment

Had an interesting talk with some folks from Nortel and IBM this morning about managing VPNs. I was told that an insurance company in Northern CA recently spent $1.1 million, more than double their investment in hardware and software, installing remote VPN clients and pushing out updates.

The IBM rep also told a funny story. He said someone had to drive all the way to a branch office to receive the new VPN software. The person became very annoyed, however, when they found out they were expected to bring their PC with them for the update. Apparently they said “Someone should have told me I needed to bring my computer here to have the software installed!”

Push software was tried, but it was inconvenient to end users. Since many of them relied on v90 dial-up connections, they did not appreciate a 3MB push to their computer, especially when they were trying to upload files to meet critical deadlines. They also complained about having to leave their computers running overnight. Clearly any push solution that claims to be efficient, easy, and nonintrustive has to take into account the behavior of recipients, and not just the needs of IT management.

Also discovered that the W3C allows you to easily validate my cascading style sheets.

Poetry, Security

This Old Weblog

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Euclid
I have setup my webcam to be able to prove that Euclid sits in the window all day watching the ocean and the birds.

It is hard not to notice bloggers are taking over the web. They are easy and fun, but I do not think I could put it in perspective any better than This Old Weblog.

Speaking of links, SecurityFocus has a radio interview with Jennifer Granick regarding digital forensics and the law. She explains why investigating computer crime is different from regular forensics and gives some basic legal advice for companies. Digital evidence is more “fragile” she says. This is definitely not rocket science.

Salon ran a story called “The price of milk (and sex) in Cuba” and I had to write a somewhat prosaic letter to the editor in response. This letter, as well as the constant urging of friends and family, has led me to create a more dynamic writing section where I will more frequently put my own thoughts.