Hey, I'm Alex.
Insert random self referencing and unbelievably narcissistic statement here.
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Defcon 18 Postmortem
So I just returned from the fabulous hacker conference that goes by the name of Defcon.This was my first time there, so I honestly had NO CLUE what to expect. Basically, I wound up having so much fun that, well, I can't wait to be back next year. My overall trip to defcon was so good that I really can't figure out what day I liked best. I have no pictures to provide as they are looked down upon by the defcon community.THURSDAY: DrivingThis day started with me waking up at 5:30 AM, packing quickly, and turtling in my bedroom waiting for my father to leave. As soon as my father left, I packed up all my stuff into my lovely car and got ready to set off. Of course, my mom decided that she wanted to force me to take the Mercedes. Normally, I wouldn't complain, but this time I did.After getting on the road 40 minutes behind schedule, I sped over to Michael's house and then picked up our two defcon alums for the ride over. We had a fairly uneventful ride fo LV. We talked about defcon, parties, and GPS. A lot of GPS.As soon as we arrived at our hotel, the Riviera, we waited in line for our defcon badges, checked into our room, then went to an unconference called BSidesLV. (which kinda goes along with Black Hat, another conference happening before defcon). At BSides we sat around, talked, and saw a talk.The talk I saw at BSides was nothing short of distressing. The speaker was a wonderfully eloquent speaker talking about hacking Busses, cars, and trains. The bus part was funny to watch and hear (and greatly surprising to see how incredibly insecure they are) but the car part was completely horrifying. The speaker talked about how easy it was to hack MY CAR, a Mercedes S500, via bluetooth. I felt sick after the talk, but the speaker promised me that it was practically impossible to do with my model year. He did laugh at me though.After BSides we strolled onto the Toxic BBQ and Kart Con. Those were both fun. I got 2nd place (out of 10) on a track that I had never raced on before.Then after Kart Con, we went back to the location where BSides was held and we went to a small DC party. That night ended simply. Just met new people, etc etc etc.FRIDAY: DEFCON!Friday was pretty cool. Woke up at 9, got ready, and saw our friends give a talk about hacker CTF. Their anecdotes were nothing short of entertaining to hear. After that, we caught the tail end of Joe Grand's talk about the Defcon 18 Badge. I got him to sign my badge, which was pretty cool.After that, we saw talks on beating lie detectors (a horrible talk BTW), SSL, and the EFF. Mostly uneventful and generically informative. We also spent time walking around the contest area and the vender hall. All cool.I totally forgot what we did that night. I'm sure it will come back to me later. (No, I did not drink, thank you for asking.)SATURDAY: DAY TWO!Saturday was a pretty good day. I saw an ATM being hacked (really easy to do), a talk on the insecurity of physical security, watched a lot of social engineering, and saw another talk about none other than making your own (theoretical) bot net using Tor.I had to ditch this day early because I had to attend my father's birthday party at the Mandalay Bay. That was epic.SUNDAY: ITS OVER?!Sunday was the best day of all. I finally really felt comfortable as a defcon attendee (because it was my first time at anything like this) and really got to do some exploring. I saw a talk on IPv6 and how it was ready to take over the world by storm. (We have less than 300 days people!)After the IPv6 talk, I sat in on a "Hacking ARM" talk given none other than by a Samsung employee. This was incredibly boring and the employee had no idea how to present.After this, I saw a talk about building your own security operations center. I learned a *LOT* by seeing this. It was pretty crazy. I learned a lot about physical lines of defense, testing, etc.Then after this I met up with the super awesome reddit admin Ketralnis and saw two talks. A talk about gaming and DRM (it sucks) and a talk about the Smart Grid (which became a bragging talk about how easy it is to stalk people). After that, we saw the closing ceremonies. Those were amazing to see. They announced that Defcon is cancelled, but it would have been at the rio next year if it weren't.Then we hacked a safe (what?), went to dinner at Treasure Island (I think) then crashed in the room.MONDAY: Drove home.Yeah.So that was my defcon experience. I can't wait to go back next year. And I swear, I *WILL* get a ninja badge.It's been a long, long time friends.
It's been quite awhile since I've cracked open the book that is my website and waxed poetic into it's downtrodden pages.And, of course, I'll start with excuses.I've just returned from two huge vacations. San Francisco and Virginia.- SF: I went with my friend CJ to visit his aunt and (soon to be) uncle. I was there for 4 nights and we visited a good part of SF while we were there. Expect a postmortem post with a ton of great pictures shortly.
- Virginia: I went there for my college orientation. It was awesome.
But, I do have one ultra big excuse that may or may not be worthwhile, and probably isn't surprising coming from me.I'm starting my first real company.Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. Every teenager has "big" dreams of vast amounts of money and success. And what can I say, I do too. But I know how to start, and I'm starting small. I've found the perfect niche, I've developed my product, I've ran it through focus testing, I'm profitable, and I'm ready to run. Tomorrow I send out the first marketing storm to potential clients. If I have judged the niche correctly, I expect to get a pretty good response rate. I'm still in "stealth" mode with the business (the website isn't even done yet), but that isn't essential to the business. This is more of a service that I'm providing, and less of a product.In all reality though, I do want to build this out into a brand. (C'mon, everyone's gotta have a dream.) I'm thinking Richard Branson/Virgin style where he's got so many different niches he doesn't know what to do with them. The name of the company already has a potential brand built in, and I've picked up an amazing 19 domain names last week in logical areas that I could expand to or would want to start up in so that way I could "own" the brand.As soon as the company gets running, I'll be talking a lot more about it in the future, and I'll have some reflective posts on some of the harder parts in getting this whole thing started.For now, peace.-aStarting my 1,348 page book.
I'm reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand... Required libertarian reading
material... HahahaPrepare for the storm. THE STORM!
*boom boom*
Did you hear that? It's the sound of thunder.
No, but seriously, I'm going to be heading off to college orientation tomorrow. Which means you'll see a gigantic influx of movies and pictures on my blog and my twitter feed. Basically, just beware. Its on.
Why never to ask favours from the designers
Why never to ask favours from the designers
Story goes :
Shannon (the secretary) has lost her cat and has asked David (the graphic designer) to help with a lost poster. This is their email correspondence...
Read from top to bottom….This is brilliant. I was in tears. Everyone should see this.
My english extra credit project is coming along fairly well......
Lot of photo shopping to be done still.... its going to turn out to be awesome!
This is why gmail is so awesome.
Sent from my iPad
Why prezi is terrible.
Also called: How our schools are failing.In my anatomy class, we're using prezi (instead of powerpoint) to present a drug presentation. And, well, it just plain sucks. This isn't education. From a massive facebook comment I left on one of my statuses:Prezi simply hides the fact that you can't present. If you can't present your topic in an interesting and effective way, why the fuck do you deserve my attention?
Sure, it's flashy. Yeah, it's an attention grabber. But the key thing is, it's not all the nice animations that you're learning. The exact movement of that 45 degree swipe and 2x zoom is not going to be on the test, or reviewed at the next board meeting.
This is where Mater Dei and EVERY OTHER SCHOOL FAILS. They're not teaching us to be the communicators. They're teaching us to let the computers do the work for this. I don't like that.
I'd much rather listen who knows their shit than listen to someone who is reading off their slide deck. Their own language, body expression, and well, EVERYTHING much better. Much more captivating.
Take Mrs. Anderson for example. She teaches everything twice. When she takes her time standing in the front of the class teaching with no powerpoint, she is amazing. captivating. brilliant. I learn a lot just by watching. But when she opens up her deck, I fall asleep. If I try to pay attention, I won't learn as much.
In the end, your slide deck should accentuate what *YOU* have to say, what *YOU* have to teach, what knowledge *YOU* have to impart.
After all, when all of your data is on the screen, what are YOU really teaching?
Sent from my iPad -
Alex Guichet's Posterous
Hey, I'm Alex.
