Dave's Little Bit On the Side: September 2008
30-Sep-08: Awakenings II
Some nice pictures just received... from Xan Alexander
29-Sep-08: Awakenings
Saturday night was a real blast. Jules and I enjoyed the gig enormously though, right now, we're both still very tired and very sleepy.
The adventure did not get off to a brilliant start. Jules left work early on Friday and we enjoyed a lengthy practice session in the afternoon. That went well but then I started to get a little twitchy about a backup of the audio and so set about dumping the contents of the DR8 to CDr. I made a straightforward copy of the whole performance, minus my click track. However, as I only later realised, leaving the click track off would make these pieces virtually impossible to play live and, with hindsight, I should have perhaps left it in or found a more subtle way of disguising the clicks but, well, you live and learn.
We were up early on Saturday morning so that we could get to Sainsbury's for our weekly shop. In the midst of our regular trawls up and down the isles, Jules said "You need a deodorant" , which is exactly NOT what you want to hear coming from your other half. It means "You stink", "You don't wash enough", "When did you last change your socks?" or "Have you even changed your socks recently?". It didn't exactly go down well with yours truly but I accepted her wisdom and picked up some of Sainsbury's own brand smelly stuff, a grey canister that smelled like a mix between a tart's boudoir and a litre of old engine oil. Okay, so why am I telling you about what I bought at Sainsbury's? Stick with the flow. This seemingly insignificant detail will re-appear later on in the story.
Back home, we decided to do a quick run through before I stripped the studio. However, that did not go well. Nerves were a huge issue for me though I was mystified as to why I was getting nervous with only Jules in the room. Just goes to show how illogical the whole nervous process is, I guess. In the end, we decided to just call it quits and strip the studio slightly earlier than scheduled.
First and foremost, I lied to myself about the setting off time. I knew it would take us roughly 3 hours to get down to the venue and we didn't have to be there until 5 pm, say 530pm at the latest but I told myself (and Jules) that we had to be there by 430pm, so that we would have to leave significantly earlier. I did this because I am notorious for leaving everything to the last minute and, in the past, this has badly affected some performances. For instance, when SkinMechanix supported Air Sculpture, we left the house late and rolled into the venue just before the support act was due on stage. That's lazy and unprofessional and I swore I would never do that again. Hence the self-deluding subterfuge.
In the end, we needed the extra time because the directions we'd downloaded off the internet were misleading in the extreme and, somehow, we came off the A38 at the wrong junction and we ended up stuck in the middle of the traffic falling out of Burton Albion's home ground after their 4-2 win against Forest Green Rovers. Eventually, we stopped a couple of pedestrians who very kindly pointed us towards the other side of town. Even on the right road, the directions were utterly misleading. The junction that we needed was marked as a roundabout though it was, in fact, a t-junction. Hardly surprising that we missed it. Thanks, multimap.com. Tw*ts.
Anyway, we found the venue in plenty of time and, better still, there were plenty of helpers to move equipment into the hall. The only other time I've seen a car stripped of so many valuables so quickly was on Richardson Road in Newcastle City Centre around 1997, when an entire Ford Escort was emptied in less time than it took me to find my mobile and dial 999.
We set up and sound-checked with a kind of effortless ease that left me astonished. No egos, no tossers overplaying everyone else, no moody musicians storming about having a precious moment. We just got on with it and, well, everyone seemed very happy.
With all of the gear set up and ready to go, we went off to the loos to change into our glad rags. There were no formal dressing rooms - just the school toilet, which was public and with punters coming and going all the time, it wasn't exactly private. I hadn't bothered to iron my favourite concert shirt, which was now sporting more wrinkles than an elephant's scrotum but, well, it would just have to do. No time to change it now. I gave myself a gentle spray with the Sainsbury's deodorant, dressed and went back to the main whole. I thought little more of the whole affair - until roughly 5 minutes later when my nose began streaming and my wrists began itching. And then the sneezing started.
And this was a real sneezing fit. Not your namby-bamby little atchoo-atchoo sneezing fit. No, this was a full blow sit-in-a-corner-and-start-praying sneezing fit.
10 minutes went by and I was still sneezing. Plus my wrists were red and sore and on fire. I noticed Andy Condon of The Glimmer Room sniffing a bit too so I thought it might be an allergic reaction to one of the punters. (This happens a lot, strangely) But not so, the sneezing (and itching) continued until, in desperation, I went back to the loos and wiped as much of the deodorant off as I could. I must have used half a mile of toilet paper before my skin stopped itching and the sneezing began to subside.
Edge Effect were about to start up so we retreated to the back of the hall. Still sniffing, my head had cleared and I was able to focus on the music, which was, for the most part, drones and ambiences. I quite enjoyed it, probably because it was different, a little out of the ordinary and accompanied by some interesting moody visuals.
The sneezing had stopped altogether by the time The Glimmer Room took to the stage. A good set, some nice beats, excellent melodies and a kind of professional feel that puts others (myself included) to shame.
Sales of Ion discs were going well and Jules was now weighed down by a handfull of notes the like of which I've not seen in many years.
We took to the stage and kicked off with a re-worked version of Future Forever.
Now, before we go any further, here's a word or two about the material for this gig.
The Ion project came about more or less by accident in the summer of 2006. I'd been testing a prototype ZEIT sequencer, recording rhythms and noises essentially to check timing and I forgot to switch off the recorder. The result was 20 minutes of sequenced noodling, just random experiments mixed in with some pads, some leads and some back beats. And it sounded remarkably good. I edited the piece down to something like a useful length, added some extra pads on the fly, a basic lead and some overdubs and, 20 minutes later, the finished track was up on the web for download.
That was the real beginning of the project though I put it to one side to concentrate on another performance and then promptly forgot about it until December 2006, when I hastily re-assembled some tracks for a make-shift compilation album called Voltage Terrace that was intended to serve as a cheap Christmas present.
I realised that there was some mileage in this approach and that, with a bit of care and thought, I could put together something halfway reasonable fairly quickly.
So, in January 2007, I set about making the album that was to become Future Forever. The first track I produced was Eternal Flame, a simple ambient intro with some strings, crudely overdubbed by hand straight into the hard disc recorder. I didn't write anything down because I had no idea that I needed to. Another track, Farscape, came along and this followed by the first version of Tangents. Again, the approach was as simple as possible. Add a sequence, add some pads and build an arrangement of sorts by bolting different sections together using the Cut and Paste technique. That worked okay and became the longest track I've ever written.
Evensong and Future Forever were next. Recorded in just one weekend using multiple takes stitched together over sequence lines with beats and effects added afterwards, these tracks became firm favourites. At no point was anything, except perhaps the key, written down. Sequences were saved away in memory and occasionally I added some notes to my log book but, essentially, everything was put together very quickly and without any real gaps between tracks. The approach was "finish one, start another".
Skip forward to earlier this year when the invitation to play as Ion arrived. Oops!!! I never planned to play this material live. Worse still, 18 months had elapsed and my memory - never the sharpest tool in the box - was just a big, blank sheet of white paper. So, Jules and I set about re-creating those tracks using what fragments were available. I'd used one program, Audacity, to put the whole album together. Now, Audacity has a habit of deleting links to sound files - I have no idea why, it just does - and so one of our first jobs was to restore all of those broken links. That took some effort because multiple takes had very similar names, some of which had actually been lost in various disc crashes and it became something of a detective case to hunt them down amongst the backup discs.
In many pieces, Jules had to step note by note through a piece, working out the notes, trying to figure out chords and progressions, all of which took a great deal of time and patience. The results of that hard work and dedication can be heard in the performance. Putting this performance took a lot of effort and I have to thank Jules in particular for that help.
So, here's the set list, with some notes to explain what went on.
1. Future Forever
A new introduction because the original had been thought lost but was later recovered on a backup drive although only as a WAV file and not at the original Audacity layers. We had the sequencer backing track plus some chords worked out. I improvised a couple of twangy keyboard layers, supplemented by some drones and swooshy pads. Notice that the theme from "Flying" appears first as this track fades out.
2. Logoscape
Included as a thanks to author Stephen Ewan Cobb, who has been playing this tracks on his pod cast in recent weeks.
3. 10000 Maniacs
A surprise piece from the T-Bass album "The Fabulous Neutrinos", included because I've wanted to do this one live for many, many years. A real challenge. Truthfully, the keyboard parts are less complicated than Grade One piano but the challenge is to re-create the track authentically in a live environment where the performer is suffering badly from nerves. I still fluffed it (slightly).
4. Evensong
Re-built from the ground up, using a couple of bits of backing tracks and some re-imagined lead lines. Jules improvised some nice PPG-style twangs over the fading chords.
5. Altitude
Originally entitled Farscape from Future Forever, this track was meant to serve as the introduction to a ZEIT-inspired sequencer piece but used instead as an ambient bridge to reduce the number of tunes to manageable levels.
6. Flying Over Blue Waters
A real challenge to put together because the original Cubase file, one of only two in the whole Future Forever project, had been corrupted. This track began life as a practice piece/warm-up exercise so long ago that I really can't remember when... but I feel it's one of the high points in this album. A delight to play and perform.
7. Recover
A lost track from the original Skin Mechanix sessions recorded back in 2002 and included as our "anything goes" piece. It's different every time we play it although certain patterns and phrases are starting to re-appear over time.
8. The Missing Link
Originally written as a jumble of fragments in 1992 or thereabouts and intended for inclusion in "The Infection of Time", this T-Bass track was re-written/arranged with Ion-style leads and voices only very recently - less than 3 weeks actually. It serves as a bridge between where Ion was 2 years ago and where Ion will go in the near future. In other words, back to the style I pushed with T-Bass - only more relaxed and less solo driven.
9. The Infection of Time
This track, in its original form, was last performed live in 1997 so it was long overdue for an airing. We included it as a reminder, both to ourselves and the audience, that this is where Ion came from and it's where I plan on returning, compositionally, in the next few releases.
Some unusual choices there but they seemed to work, at least to us anyway. We wondered about including The Infection Of Time but, in the end, the choice felt right, natural even. Time to get back to where this whole adventure kicked off. A couple of people in the audience noticed the link between Ion and T-Bass too. Like I said many moons ago, T-Bass isn't dead, merely dormant.
Thus far, the reviews have been terrific with most folk agreeing that this was easily our best and certainly most relaxed performance. I'm thrilled, frankly. A couple of people remarked afterwards that my previous outings as a solo performer were spoiled because I was obviously not enjoying the performance one iota. I wasn't. This was perhaps the first performance since EMMA IV where I can honestly state that I actually felt pleased to be up there playing and, more so, even enjoyed the performance, warts and all.
More than anything, I'm delighted that Jules is back in the band. It feels so natural to have her up there, doing her thing. She knows these pieces better than I do and she worked very, very hard to make this happen. Those efforts certainly paid off. We practiced very hard for this event, driven purely by her insistence that I get off my lazy arse and rehearse, nightly, to make sure that it was right.
So, this adventure comes to an end. Another kicks off in 3 weeks with our performance at Dundee Live. Perhaps for the first time ever, I can start to look forward to a gig.
Photos by Phil Booth.
22-Sep-08: That time of year again
Summer is more or less over, autumn is upon us and winter beckons with all the charm of a syphlytic road-sweeper. It also means that it's spider time. Readers with long memories should be able to remember last year's missive concerning the activities of our 8-legged friends and their annual migration into and around Chez Hughes. If you can't remember or have not been reading these pages for very long then check out the entry for 10th September 2007 wherein all of the ugly details are discussed at length.
Now, last year was bad. Very bad. In truth, by the end of September, my nerves were shredded. Every night was the same. Jules would give off the kind of loud and piercing yell that would put Fay Wray to shame and then attempt to flee the scene. As the man of the house and therefore responsible for keeping the women and livestock safe from predators, yours truly then has to dig around under the bed or under a wardrobe, eyes ablaze, jam-jar in hand, looking for the 8-legged git. Once caught, I don't kill the offending arachnid. It doesn't seem right stomping on another creature just because it's feeling a bit jiggy. Instead I dump them, somewhat unceremoniously, over the wall of the adjacent churchyard or on a nearbye playing field - just far enough from the house to deter a return visit. I hope.
Earlier this year, I spotted their main hiding spot - a lavendar bush at the front of the house, and I began to formulate a plan. The lavendar bush has grown large and unruly and Julie's Bush has been the subject of many, many jokes over the summer, all of which have been in very, very poor taste. However, the bush is considered (by Jules at least) to be sacred and so I have not been able to prune it much without incurring the wrath of the ginger one, even though it is completely out of control. However, this weekend, under the pretext of 'a bit of gardening as a healthy break from all of the studio work', I went at her bush with a pair of sharp secateurs and some shears. I cut away most of the lower branches and stripped away all of the accumulated grass and dead leaves that had been gathering there all year. Better still, I recovered several empty milk bottles that have been waiting, patiently, for the return of our long lost milkman, John Sleeman, who disappeared into the Houghton Triangle one morning a year or more ago.
With Jules watching from a safe distance, I found and removed one nest after another. The little buggers all fled the scene as fast as they could, only to find themselves cornered in one of several jam-jars I'd held in reserve. In the end, we'd captured around 10 spiders, all big enough to be a nuisance though none of the real ugly sods dared show their respective faces. That was a shame. I just know I'll see them in a week or so.
Thoughout the evening, more and more of spiders came out of hiding and appeared on the wall above their former nest and, one by one, they were recovered and then dumped elsewhere. This morning, the hive is empty, as far as I can tell.
What has this got to do with music? Nothing much, except that it was a welcome break from rehearsals, which have been getting on top of me of late. We're getting there but it's been a long, hard slog.
20-Sep-08: Outreach
I took a rare holiday yesterday though this wasn't an ordinary holiday. Walkergate School in Newcastle had asked for an expert in astronomy to answer some questions from their Year 5 pupils and, since nobody else was available, I offered to go along and do my public service thing.
Alas, nothing seemed to go according to plan. I already had a rough version of the presentation in my head so I knew what to say and how to phrase it in a way that was as free of jargon and techno-bollocks as possible, whilst at the same time, remaining scientifically accurate and useful as an excercise in stimulating ideas.
However, it took far, far longer than I expected to get the Powerpoint presentation sorted out and then rehearsed. After that, I had to run up to Houghton Town Centre to pay some credit card bills and then buy some extra milk because we'd run out. That was when I ran into the dreaded Express Checkout Queue at the Co-op. It's anything but Express. There's a sign above the lane that reads "10 items or less" and the fat bint in front of me either couldn't count or was just too stupid to read the sign but there were nearly 20 items in her basket - all junk food too. Jamie Oliver doesn't cut much ice around these parts.
Anyway, the clock read 1130am and I was supposed to be on the other side of Newcastle in less than 45 minutes. A quick shower and an even quicker shave followed, which meant that there just enough time to stuff some dry toast down my throat. I couldn't be bothered with anything else.
After that, it was a quick dash over to Newcastle, all the while watching for Speed Camera Vans, which tend to lurk in these parts, bastards that they are. I found the school very easily though it was not what I was expecting - a run-down, inner city Edwardian workhouse, starved of cash and resources. Instead, this was a bright new swish modern building where everything worked perfectly. I hooked up the laptop to the white board and, instead of the usual unplug this, unplug that dance that seems to accompany anything to do with PC's and digital projectors, it worked first time. I was astonished.
The class had been split into two groups of roughly 40 pupils each. More boys than girls I figured. I did my little presentation - why astronomy is important, what you can see, what you might see - with an emphasis on actually going outside and having a look for yourself instead of just hearing about it from someone like me in a stuffy classroom. On the whole, it went down fairly well. The first group were bright and attentive, asked a lot of clever thoughtful questions and allowed yours truly to get some digs in at Sunderland AFC (which went down particularly well) and those nutters in the US who insist that the Large Hadron Collider will result in the destruction of the Earth. Funny how they have SFA to say a week on from the event.
The second group was a bit restless. 3 o'clock and home time was foremost in their minds and I tried my best but couldn't hold the attention of the more vocal members. As usual, you get one or two troublemakers and they did their best to say "Look at me! Look at me!" and do the old "I'm as thick as pig shit routine and this is just sooooooooo boring..." but I've learned to deal with that with a loud and hearty "Aneone who tells you that science is dull and boring is just an idiot." That line is guaranteed to shut the troublemakers up everytime. It did too.
It always amazes me that there's this meme currently in circulation that science and physics is boring and dull whereas, as you may have already gathered, I think it's exactly the reverse. It's related to that other meme - the stupid meme - that being thick and lazy and not applying your God-given gifts is, in some perverse way, cool, whatever cool is.
Alas, 3 o'clock came and went, the classroom cleared and, my job done, I was left all on my lonesome. Sniff. I packed my stuff together and left just as the school was clearing out. I found a teacher and he agreed that the presentation and question/answer session was exactly what they were after. It's likely that I'll get invited back to do much the same next year, which was enough of a reward in tself. It's always good to know that your efforts are appreciated.
15-Sep-08: What? No blog?
We're half way through September and still no entry in the blog. Blimey! What's been going on?
Sometime ago, Jules (Bless 'er) suggested that I edit these blog entries in Microsoft Word before I posted them, if only to reduce the staggering number of spelling mistakes. Having an intermediate stage also served to create a cooling off barrier - so that I get a chance to think about what I've written before I post it. By and large, this approach has been successful and, generally speaking, the blog is far easier to write and read these days because the number of typos and gramatically incorrect fluff has decreased to an acceptable level. The downside is that whilst I have actually been adding details to the Word file, I have neglected to publish it, for no reason other than an incredible lack of time. Or laziness. Take your pick.
So, here's a brief catch-up of recent events. More has happened in recent days than is detailed below. I've decided not to include certain events even though they were fairly momentous and, indeed, life changing, partly because they're private but also because one or two people who read blogs have very specific, somewhat ill-informed ideas about certain activities and they don't like to have their opinions changed or even discussed. Hence, these events will remain private, for the time being.
I should point out that the above refers to something that is strictly legal and above board - all completely on the level... just in case you were wondering what was going on.
My major pre-occupations this month have been shipping sequencers and sorting out the backing for the gig in just under two weeks time. I'm sincerely glad that I listened to Jules when she first started to push me into rehearsals several months ago. Normally, I leave rehearsals until the last minute but we've been working through sections, piece by piece, for several weeks now. We had a run through of a couple of pieces last night and it's very obvious that the performance is starting to come together. There's still a lot of work to do but at least we're moving in the right direction.
I've spent a lot of time in the studio in recent months, far more than usual. And, by and large, it's been a very enjoyable process but what saddens me is that, based on past experience, once these gigs are over then the studio work will cease for a lengthy period. A 3 or 4 month break is typical following a major gig or album session. I find that I'm simply too tired and too lacking in inspiration to get back on the horse and, if I do, what comes along isn't worth listening to.
So, I'll live with this and do what I can to work around it.
14-Sep-08: A Grand Day Out
Saturday was an open day at Wallington Hall, a National Trust property located west of Morpeth in Northumberland. It's a place we've been to many times before though neither of us could remember when we were last there. Probably 1998 or thereabouts, if memory serves.
Free entry on the door meant that the place was pretty crowded. There was an over-flow car park and a couple of stewards in attendance, all of which appeared to delight in explaining exactly how the over flow car park worked. Err, yeah. Thanks. I know how an over flow car park works. It doesn't need an instruction manual.
Once inside, we made our way to the walled garden, which was a fantastic walk through dark, damp woodlands. I wasn't particularly good company for most of the early part of the walk, frankly because I've been over-doing it in recent months and I was more than a little subdued. Anyway, I perked up in time to explore the garden, which was magnificent. Alas, we were not able to find the statue of Scaramouche, which was a shame. We did find a plaque on a wall near were he stood and that stated "Rebuilt 1998, following a flood" so we wondered if poor Scaramouche had been swept away. (Scaramouche starring Steward Grainger is one of my favourite movies...)
Rain seemed inevitable so we scurried away to the main house, only to be greeted by more overly attentive wardens. "The tour follows round to the left." said one slightly effeminate guide. Being in something of a contrary mood, I went to the right, only to be followed along the corridor by Butch who insisted that I follow the usual path. Err, I know how a house works. I wonder if the original residents had some kind of rule that said that you were only allowed to walk around the house in a clockwise direction? Stupid, really, and yet another sign of the overly intrusive nature of modern society.
We toured the house and enjoyed ourselves, though I was disappointed that the main hall was so barren due, in part, to the activities of the restorers. No worries. Jules was equally disappointed because the paintings she'd come specifically to see were not by one of her favourite Pre-Raphaelite artists, Burne-Jones, but were, instead, by William Bell-Scott.
We were one of the last to leave. Indeed, Butch was locking up the doors before we'd even left so clearly he was eager to get home to see the prequel to Strictly Come Dancing or something equally manly.
I'd under-estimated the amount of petrol in the tank and so the drive home was a nervous affair as we searched, in vain, for a petrol station. All the same, I enjoyed the whole adventure. It reminded me a lot of our earlier adventures, when we first met, and when the world wasn't a particularly complicated place.
12-Sep-08: Hackers
One of my web page customers was plagued by a mystery hacker last week. The symptoms were junk e-mails full of useless web links and nonsense text, which I've since learned are typical of a none-too-subtle attempt to use our contact form as a clandestine means of generating huge amounts of spam. It's a well-known exploit - the idea is that you dump hundreds of web addresses into the from: field and then hit the send button. If the contact form doesn't incorporate some kind of validation then the PHP script behind the Send button merrily bcc's the message to every address in the list, which can be hundreds of pages long, the end result of course is that your host server becomes blacklisted as a source of spam, which obviously isn't good.
Now, I'd put some pretty neat validation into the original PHP script but it clearly wasn't enough so I decided to add a bit more, just to be on the safe side. I added some code to spot illegal characters in the from: field plus some extras to process the contents of the comments field. I also set a flag so that if the contents were suspicious then the PHP script would mail me a warning but would otherwise delete the message. Later on, I added a response field so that the hacker's details were echoed back to him on screen, but without sending the actual message.
Thus far, it's been very nearly 100% successful. My customer is no longer being pestered by bogus messages and, every now and again, I receive notification that Another Quality Zing has been intercepted. That's good news. However, almost straight away, the hacker switched to another of our sites, a site which didn't use the latest, super-duper version of the contact form. Hence, I've updated all of the contact forms we support just to keep this silly twonk at bay.
For a while, I was convinced that the attacker was actually an automated script rather than an individual sitting at a keyboard. Automated scripts are easy to block. You just spot their characteristic pattern and filter against it. Individuals at a keyboard are generally harder to block, especially the hard cases who seem determined to wreck everything they touch. Switching to another contact form was a dead giveaway. It's a real person. Shame he has to be such a total knob head.
Hackers, you see, are generally not very bright individuals. Doubtless there will be one or two of them out there who will be incensed by this statement and will doubtless set out to prove their intellectual muscles by hacking this site. Great. Go for it. See how far you get. Prison most likely.
But there's a reason why I think that most hackers are morons. Why? Because, well, back in the dayÉ anyone could hack systems. Hacking our mainframe at work was trivial and there was no unique special magic or hi-tech wizardry involved. To get access to the highest level of information in the whole company, accessible only to the upper echelons of senior management, you only needed to know the name of the Production Manager's daughter, which was Suzy (capital S an with a zed or zee for you Americans). After that, you could get access to anything that took your fancy, except the salary information that is, which was held on another computer, if it was ever written down at all. Equally, you could break the entire production schedule if you were able to get into the shop floor supervisor's account. Again, this was trivial because his password was the name of his favourite band, 10cc, and, to make matters easier (or worse, depending upon your point of view), he had a huge poster of the aforementioned band emblazoned across the wall above his terminal.
Hacking doesn't really require much in the way of smarts really. You only have to be just a little bit brighter than the average user, which, sad to say, isn't very clever at all. Most users are morons too.
But, back in the day, hacking was fun. You felt that you were doing something ever so counter-culture, ever-so-naughty. A game popular amongst System Administrators at a well known US based corporate multi-national where I was employed was "The Telnet Game", wherein your task was to jump from one system to another, to another and then another, until you circumnavigated the planet. Extra points were awarded for novel routes Ð such as going through an obscure printer server in Outer Mongolia or a desktop on the island of, say, Tuvalu - though points were deducted if you duplicated part of an earlier jump or if the hack was judged too easy by your peers. I managed such a circumnavigation once though the route wasn't particularly novel or interesting and so I didn't earn many points. But it was fun all the same.
Just as much fun was hacking your boss's account, despite his protestations that his system was absolutely bullet proof. Very, very easy actually though I don't claim credit for the creative thinking. That belongs to an enterprising Silicon Graphics employee who was fond of leaving backdoors into desktop systems so that he could debug troublesome applications from the safety and comfort of his own living room. Never underestimate the laziness of systems engineers.
Anyway, enough of this techno-wanking. I first twigged that hackers were, generally speaking, not very clear when we found someone digging around in one of our honey pot servers, which held a large collection of bogus files purporting to hold vital corporate financial data. They were huge files Ð when I say huge I mean several tens megabytes, which at the time, was a big file, especially if you were attempting to suck it down a 56k dial-up line Ð and the idea was that your typical stupid hacker would just hunt out anything that looked important and then try to download it. Attempting to download the gotcha file rang some alarm bells on the System Administrator's desktop and it was then just a matter of getting your friendly neighbourhood FBI dude to run a trace down the phone line to see where the hacker was based. Usually a small town not far from Hicksville, Alabama.
And yet we were astonished at the number of people who fell into this trap. Sure, mostly they were just kids reading The Hacker's Handbook for the first time and a gentle rap on the knuckles was what they deserved and, mostly, received.
Often you would find someone going through a checklist of known exploits, one after the other. A colleague at my former employer's American office was astonished to find someone dicking around in a Unix box and, when he examined the system console log, he discovered that the guy was typing Ôdir', Ôexec' and Ôrun' etc. Yeah, Windows commands. Hint: they don't work on Unix boxes.
But there were other individuals, operating from some place we couldn't identify, who were clearly up to something criminal and that was when you realised that messing around with these people was very, very dangerous indeed. It just wasn't possible to trace those folk. They covered their tracks too carefully but you did wonder what they were doing falling into such an obvious trap. My guess? They were learning the system or trying to fool us into thinking "Oh! Look! Another stupid hacker!" whilst, at the same time, quietly downloading another file or looking around for some other exploit.
Later still, the authorities who had, up to that point, been extremely lazy as far as data protection was concerned, suddenly realised that criminals were making more money from their revenue sources than they were. There's one thing that a government can't stand and it's criminals depriving them of their revenue. So they, in turn, recruited their own brand of hackers, so called white hackers, to deal with and thwart the bad guys. Or so they say. To catch a thief, eh?
Generally speaking, hacking these days is a mug's game. Most of the easy exploits have been removed, most of the less-than-easy exploits require in-depth knowledge of system internals and life is too short for that sort of thing. More than anything else, the authorities are now in on the game and they have the power to deprive one of one's liberty or to export one's behind to another country, which is obviously very bad ideed.
I wonder about all of these recent missing data files that have been mysteriously lost from Child Benefit offices or the MOD. The most recent loss involves the personal details belonging to the country's Prison Officers Ð perfect information for those keen to exploit weaknesses in the system. Security? What's that?
Equally, the government tells me that, for my own good, I need to carry an ID card so that I can prove, to anyone who asks, that I am actually David James Hughes and not someone else. And, because it's for my own good, I have to pay for it myself.
But given the ease with which passports, for example, can be faked, isn't this rather pointless? And isn't it equally pointless to imagine that the little old lady who lives next to me needs an ID card to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that she isn't a risk to national security. She can't even fix a dripping pipe never mind head up a group of international terrorists. Such paranoia in government circles is deeply worrying.
Or maybe it's because she's so busy plotting the invasion of France that she doesn't have time to call a plumber? Maybe the plumber is in on the act too? Maybe the whole I'm a little old lady thing is just a disguise for Houghton's answer to Dr. Moriarty.
I'm worried. I think I'll just get on the phone to the nearest Stazi-like Neighbourhood Watch / Environmental Warden and see what they think.
You can never be too careful.
11-Sep-08: Speeding Ticket
Two weeks ago, I was driving through the road works on the A690 near Houghton when I entered the 30 mph stretch just before the temporary traffic lights. This is a difficult stretch to navigate, partly because the A690 itself is a 50 mph zone and so you have to adjust your speed quickly and also because it's a downhill stretch and the car has a natural tendency to speed up. So, you're forced to sit with your foot on the break and keep an eye out for slow moving vehicles up ahead as well as speeding idiots coming up from behind. Safe it is not.
Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. I'm an old geezer now and my days as a boy racer are well behind me. Normally, you'll find me buzzing along at around 10 mph below the speed limit partly, because my car is very old and no longer capable of warp drive and also because I'm too mean to pay for petrol.
I had my speed under control but I was still just over the limit when I spotted the Tallivan lurking behind a road sign. Even though I stamped on my footbrake, I'm convinced he zapped me. I'm sure my speed was around 34 or 35 mph so I've spent a nervous 14 days or so waiting for the Notice of Intended Prosecution from Northumbria Police to drop through our letter box. Well, the Notice of Intended Prosecution arrived on Friday and, well, that made me very unhappy indeed.
I had intended to fight the NIP for the simple reason that speed cameras are supposed to be put in place to improve road safety and this had absolutely nothing to do with road safety. Why? Because the detector van was hidden behind a road sign, albeit a temporary sign and it wasn't visible and therefore wasn't acting as a deterrent to speeding.
There was no opportunity to slow down, as the guidelines insist there should be. No, this was all about raising revenue for our cash strapped local authority. But local authorities and Tallivan operators in particular are notorious up and down the country for not following guidelines. Remember that these operators are NOT Policemen. They're council employees who just happen to enjoy sitting in a van all day long watching the traffic go by. All they do is set the camera up and watch reruns of Oprah or Montel on their in-car entertainment.
Worse still, they penalise normal drivers who are just a bit over the limit but, at the same time, don't do anything about unregistered or disqualified drivers or those driving without insurance. How can they, because these folk are not on their database?
However, the NIP says that they clocked me at 40 mph, which is pretty bad. Was I really that far over the limit? I don't think so, not for a second. Methinks there is some kind of iffy-ness going on here.
09-Sep-08: Ouch!
The phone rang yesterday morning. It was Jules and she was quite clearly upset. "I fell in Marks and Spencer this morning." She said. "I think I've broken my elbow."
Oh Lord.
I jumped into the car and drove into Newcastle as quickly as I could, then dumped the car and went to find her. She wasn't in her office or in the loo and so I went back to the car... Only to find her waiting next to it. Ahem.
Neither of us are very fond of hospitals. I recently spent a not-very-enjoyable Saturday night in Sunderland Royal's A & E unit thanks to those bozos at the National Blood Transfusion Service and so we were both reluctant to go down that route again. Instead, we figured we could do a better job on our own and so drove home. Sure enough, her elbow was pretty swollen and discoloured but we were both fairly convinced that it wasn't broken.
So, we wrapped it in a bag of frozen peas and Jules swallowed a load of arnica and paracetamol to reduce the swelling and pain respectively. That seems to have done the trick because the elbow is far less swollen than it was yesterday.
Jules is adamant that it was her fault and that she wasn't concentrating.
A week later and it's now a brighter shade of yellow, very stiff and very painful but looks as though it's on the mend.
08-Sep-08: The missing post
Jules asked me to delete this post because she was too upset with the people concerned and didn't want to give them an excuse for getting back in touch - ever - and so I have agreed to remove it.