Categories
bondi douglas kastle hoax shark

Phew, No shark in Bondi (well alive at least)

There was a bit of a buzz around bondi over the week end when it was reported that there had been a shark attack. There hasn’t been an attack in Bondi in 70 years. It sounded a bit suspicious, even from the outset, with the guy in question, Scott Lawrence Wright, coming up with a story of been attacked on Friday night, passing out in a cave on the rocks over night and been found by a girlfriend the next morning. Today the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the whole thing as a hoax :

…that Wright’s wounds, which required dozens of stitches and a night at a Sydney hospital, were not caused by a vicious shark, or even by a relatively docile wobbegong, as was reported yesterday.Rather, they were the result of Wright’s arm going through a pane of glass – an incident that occurred several days before the supposed shark attack.

Mr Wright has subsequently been arrested and the story has come out with regard to the alleged shark attack.

…by Tuesday night Wright was no longer basking in the glory of his new found fame. He was busy answering questions from police after being arrested outside Redfern RSL.

He was charged with various theft-related offences and faced Central Local Court on Wednesday.

It will come as a bit of relief as there has been a lot of shark sitings along the NSW coast including a 2.8 metre dead grey nurse shark from the shark nets off Bondi just yesterday, roughly the same place as the alleged attack. Grey Nurse shark are supposed to be harmless. However if I saw one in the water I don’t think I’d be hanging around to count fins (Nurse sharks have two).

picture taken from Aquabumps

Categories
douglas kastle

Princess Val Slave Bikini

Princess Val Slave Bikini, originally uploaded by LeeSouth.
Categories
douglas kastle eye planet

Planet eye

Taken from an interesting gallery. Each eye looks like a planet or some other deep space construct.

Categories
douglas kastle

Storm troopers army


Storm troopers army, originally uploaded by ntr23.

Categories
douglas kastle

little fett


little fett, originally uploaded by BEY CHUA.

Weird

Categories
douglas kastle

AT-ST


AT-ST, originally uploaded by ilesino.

Categories
douglas kastle

Son of Ceiling Cat


cats hate vaccuum cleaners, originally uploaded by John Gusky.

I don’t know why but this reminds me of Ceiling Cat

Categories
australia douglas kastle eReader iliad irex

eReader arrives in Australia – at a price

I was surprised recently when I heard the the Australian book chain, Dymocks, was thinking about getting into the digital book world. Today it announced that it would be selling the iliad in it’s stores, for AUS$899, wow! That’s a bit rich!

I had been dying to get my hands on an eReader for years. So 6 months ago, when it didn’t like one was going to be released in Oz I bit the bullet and sourced a the Sony e-reader from the US for AUS$500. Then and now I thought I was getting slammed. I have to admit I like it a lot but I think I would have baulked at paying nearly 900 bucks.

It’s great that eReader are finally in Oz but there is going to have to be a major price drop before they can rope in enough early adopters to make it worth their while.

There is one good thing about the Dymocks choice at least the reader they picked can support open formats like HTML and PDF. Amazons offering, the Kindle, is fairly locked down at the moment and may be the reason it fails.

Categories
aunt beru charred douglas kastle figure star wars uncle owen

Uncle Owen! Aunt Beru!

Does any one remember collecting names from Star Wars boxes to send away for the Emperor figure because you couldn’t buy him in the shops. Ahh the memories….

Here are figures they never released. My favourite is the matching smouldering corpses of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.

Categories
bruce schneier douglas kastle password security

Q&A with Bruce Schneier


Bruce Schneier as Chuck Norris
Originally uploaded by massdistraction

There is a very interesting Q&A with security expert and internet meme Bruce Schneier over at the Freakonomics page. While the page is a bit lengthy it is a good read and should be read by all, particularly the less internet savvy as there is a lot to take away.

He describes a very effective way of storing and using passwords. It is a technique I have been using for years and usually recommend to family and friends.

Q: How do you remember all of your passwords?

A: I can’t. No one can; there are simply too many. But I have a few strategies. One, I choose the same password for all low-security applications. There are several Web sites where I pay for access, and I have the same password for all of them. Two, I write my passwords down. There’s this rampant myth that you shouldn’t write your passwords down. My advice is exactly the opposite. We already know how to secure small bits of paper. Write your passwords down on a small bit of paper, and put it with all of your other valuable small bits of paper: in your wallet. And three, I store my passwords in a program I designed called Password Safe. It’s is a small application — Windows only, sorry — that encrypts and secures all your passwords.

Here are two other resources: one concerning how to choose secure passwords (and how quickly passwords can be broken), and one on how lousy most passwords actually are.