S.K. Dunstall's Blog, page 14

Electronic money

It’s traditional, at work that when someone leaves you sign
their card and put in a couple of dollars into the envelope for a going-away
present.  The other day, as I signed a
card for a workmate who’s leaving, I realised I had no money.  No money as in no coins (or notes).  I hadn’t had, in fact, for at least two
months.  I’d been paying for everything
by card.

I scrambled around in my bag, and then in my drawer, and
finally found two dollars that had dropped to the bottom.

Then tonight, on a trip up to Sydney for work, I noticed that
nearly all the passengers who tried to buy alcohol, bar two, changed their mind
when they were told it was cash only.

They didn’t have any cash.

Neither did I, until I stopped at the ATM on the way, but it’s
amazing how quickly, as a society, we’ve come around to being almost cashless.

ARCs for Stars Beyond

Friday night we arrived home to find these on our doorstep. Advanced
reader copies (ARCs) for Stars Beyond.

Aren’t they beautiful?

It’s a funny thing with writing books, but by the time the book comes out you’ve been working on another story for months, so it’s like something from the distant past coming back to visit, but you get enthused all over again.

Even so, you still can’t read the book dispassionately yet.
It’s only a few months ago that I found could reread Confluence—book
three of the Linesman series—all the way through and enjoy it the way we enjoyed
it while we were writing it.

ARCs for Stars Beyonf

Friday night we arrived home to find these on our doorstep. Advanced
reader copies (ARCs) for Stars Beyond.

Aren’t they beautiful?

It’s a funny thing with writing books, but by the time the book comes out you’ve been working on another story for months, so it’s like something from the distant past coming back to visit, but you get enthused all over again.

Even so, you still can’t read the book dispassionately yet.
It’s only a few months ago that I found could reread Confluence—book
three of the Linesman series—all the way through and enjoy it the way we enjoyed
it while we were writing it.

Biometrics–minority report is here

I went to the Romance Writers of Australia conference this
weekend. A great conference, with lots of interesting talks. There were too
many good presenters and interesting topics to mention, although I do have to
mention Amy Andews’ closing talk. It’s a hard place to be but Amy gave an
entertaining talk to a packed room. That’s a feat in itself. Normally any
conference or con you go to is pretty empty by the last session. She deserved
her standing ovation.

But the session I wanted to talk about was A. J. Blythe’s Biometrics. Think Minority Report type identification. Or any science fiction story where you have to ID yourself, really.

It was a fascinating look at identity, and what can or can’t
be used to identify you.

Fingerprints, for sure. And for forensics, fingerprints means
fingers, toes, your palm and your foot. What I didn’t realise is that each finger
and toe is unique. Nor that fingerprints can be temporarily rubbed off in some
trades, like bricklaying, with the excessive rough mortar. Or by someone who
handles paper all day every day, because paper acts like a very fine sandpaper.

Your face is unique, and even if your face changes, the
points security systems measure stay the same, so it can be used to identify
you. Unfortunately, it’s also easy to hack, especially given the photos people
have on social media. Some university ran a study where a group of people who
used photo ID on their phones gave the researches their phone. The researchers were
able to hack the phone just from stalking the people online.

Your ear is also unique. It, too, could be used in security.
Except, I suppose, you’d have to press your ear up to the phone.

Weirdest moment of the session was when A. J. put up a photo
an ear—just the ear—and someone in the room immediately recognised it as Hugh
Jackman’s.

Your voice isn’t as unique. Under the right circumstances an
identical twin can fool voice ID.

After that we got onto the various ways you can
change your appearance, including an interesting video from the CIA former Chief
of Disguise (how’s that for a cool title?), showing of a man changing his
clothes in the street (not literally, but taking off his tie, and his jacket),
putting on a fisherman’s hat, and dark glasses, and how he suddenly wasn’t the
same person any more. I mean, if you were watching you could see him change,
but it’s still amazing to see the transformation.

This is the full YouTube video. [from the Wired channel.] The quick change starts at 6:43, but the whole clip is worth watching.

Staying sane at writers’ conferences

We’re going to the Melbourne RWA conference next weekend. The person who recommended it to me so many years ago said, “It’s one of the most professional writers’ conferences I know,” and I’ve been meaning to go ever since.  Sherylyn went once, a couple of years ago, and said it was good, but I couldn’t make it.

We’re both going this year.

Sometimes it’s nice to chill out and simply talk to other
writers.

Sometimes it’s nice to sit alone and read your iPad or write the story that wants to come out.

That’s okay.

When we get to a conference we’re often exhausted, usually because of work, but sometimes for other things.  Sherylyn, for example, is down with a bug this week, and hopefully will just be over it in time for the weekend.

Beginning writers are so often told conferences are all about the networking. That’s what you go to conferences for.  Don’t you?

Network, network, network.

I think that you don’t get much value out of conferences
until you get over that ‘network’ mantra. Go because you want to listen to
other writers. Go because you want to be inspired. Go because it’s lonely in
your cold writer’s office and you can’t possibly write another word without a
recharge.

If you want to sit somewhere quiet for a while, don’t feel guilty about it. Do what works for you. Take the conference at the pace you can manage. Coming back with fifty new friends isn’t what conferences are about. Learning and recharging while enjoying yourself are.

Let go of the guilt and enjoy the conference on your terms.

How I won the possum snore-off. Or maybe the possum did

Road sign in suburban Sydney. Possums in our Melbourne suburb use the ‘high way’ to cross the road. After all, what are electricity wires for, if not to allow possums to cross the road safely? (Admittedly, the occasional one does zap him/herself.) One scientist called the suburbs possum heaven. Where else can they get such plentiful food without having to forage?

I’m not the best person to share a room with on a trip,
because I snore.  In fact, the general
consensus is that if you share a room with me, you need to be super-tired, so
you go to sleep first, because otherwise my snoring will keep you awake all
night.

I deny this, of course. People do exaggerate, you know.

It just so happens that I haven’t been sleeping well. No
reason, just one of those things. You wake up one night at three o’clock and
can’t get back to sleep.  Do the same
thing next night, and suddenly you’re doing every night.

By Saturday I’m exhausted. 
Saturday afternoon I can’t take any more. So tired I don’t even go to
bed. I lie down on the bench seat in the kitchen (squeezy, but I’m short) and
take a nap.

When I wake, it’s dark.

But I’m not really awake, only semi-awake.  There’s a possum outside the window, making the ‘cthcth’ screeching sound they do when they’re preparing to fight other possums.

We get a lot of territorial fights around here. This area is possum nirvana.  Trees, gardens, lots of fruit ripe for the taking. So there’s overcrowding, which leads to lots, and lots, of fighting.

This possum is really close, probably on the cable that runs
from the house to the power pole, and while he’s making fighting noises,
there’s no fighting noises being returned.

I lay there in a hazy, half-awake way, listening, trying to
work out what on earth he was doing.

I finally realise. 
I’m still snoring.

That wakes me up rather more quickly than I planned.

After a final, loud ‘cthcth’, the possum leaves, convinced
he’s vanquished the intruder.

Website changes

The website has been super slow recently. Slow as in five minutes to save a page slow, and a full minute to load a page slow.

There’s something wrong, we need to work out what it is. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to trace it yet. Rather than pull the website down altogether, we’re trying to reset everything in the background, and slowly eliminate any issues.

Over the next week we may revert back to the default website for a time. Pages may go temporarily missing, links not work properly, or images in weird places. Bear with us please. It will better when it’s done. (Even if we have to build a brand new website). More importantly, it will be faster.

Meantime, if any links go missing:

The newsletter is due out this week. If you want to subscribe and are having trouble finding the subscribe button, try this link, instead.

If you’re trying to contact us and aren’t sure if the contact box has worked, drop us a line at skdunstall@optusnet.com.au.

Thanks for your patience.

Two views of the same city

This isn’t Bourke Street. This is Hosier Lane, which is further toward Flinders Street station. And because there were no building works, Hosier Lane had more pedestrian space, and was far less crowded.



Bourke Street, 4pm. East side

The few completed buildings were tucked in amongst the rubble
of the rest.  Flat, uniform, narrow grey
shopfronts. Featureless and anonymous, and almost as drab as the building sites.

Melbourne was a building site.  Black-painted or raw pine veneer hoardings took
up half the footpaths, with huge industrial scaffolds crowding in from the
road, making the walkway so narrow that people had to pass each other in single
file.  The pedestrians on the path
competed for space with the electric bicycles of the food delivery people.

Bourke Street, 8pm. West side

The bike shops were gone. 
Instead, the whole street was a row of tiny restaurants.  Tantalising scents wafted out of each.  Here something sesame, there a spicy chilli
that got up her nose, over there a spice she didn’t recognise.  Inside patrons crowded together on stools, so
close they were almost touching.

Quick, fast food. In one store she saw huge bowls noodle
soup.  In another, dumplings.  In a third a rice dish served with something
she couldn’t identify.

There were queues outside every tiny shopfront.  Good-natured couples laughing and talking as they waited to be fed.

Going through a stage—thieves in spec fic

Another famous robber, not quite fantasy, but almost. Robin Hood. This one looks a bit like Alan Rickman when he played the Sheriff of Nottingham, don’t you think.

A book, which shall remain unnamed, had come well
recommended.  A thief on a job stumbles into
trouble and gets caught up in a plot to save the kingdom.  I read the blurb, and wasn’t sure about it, so
I read the blurb out to Sherylyn.  “What
do you think?”

“No,” she said.  “I’m
over thieves in fiction.”

She’d nailed the problem.  No matter how good the reviews were, it sounded like a fantasy we’d read a hundred times before.  Is it just me, or does every second book you pick up in the spec fiction area nowadays have a thief as the hero?

A week after that, we went and saw Aladdin.  Will Smith as the genie was great.  (Certainly one of my favorite Will Smith roles.) 

The movie was okay (especially the genie), but I found it hard to warm to Aladdin, and came out thinking, ho hum, just another movie about a thief.

Which is totally unfair, because that’s what Aladdin is
about.

Security is a full-time business

When I looked at clip art for this week’s blog nearly all the hacking images were predominantly blue or green. They were also dominated by faceless hooded characters. I went for the hood but chose a little red to go with the mix.

One of the things I find surprising with running a website
is how often people try to hack it. I mean, it’s not a big website, you can’t
order anything on it, we don’t take money. So why do people bother?

But they do.

The security checker on our website reports how many times
people try to log in, but can’t, and the number of times people look for a page
that isn’t there.

You wouldn’t think that second one is problematic, but
apparently there are known pages with security issues, and the hackers try to
see if you have one of these pages on your site. If it’s there, they use it to hack
into your system.

As for the log-in attempts. Yesterday, for example, we had
eighteen attempts to log into our website. That’s right, eighteen.

This particular batch is multi-national. Some people (or
bots, rather, because I expect it’s a program) are hacking in from London, some
from the Netherlands, and quite a lot this time from Sydney, Australia. This is
unusual, for hack locations seem to come in batches. For example, there’s a
region in Ukraine where a lot of hacks come from, a couple in China, one in
Argentina, one in Brazil, and one in the Netherlands. You’ll have days of, say,
Ukraine-based hacks, then a break (because you’ve locked them out), then maybe
days of attempts from Brazil, and so on.

My security program shows me who they are trying to log in
as.

They try a lot of standard logins, like ‘admin’ and ‘test’. They
also try ones associated with the username posted on the pages. For example, we
get a lot of people trying ‘karen’, and ‘sherylyn’, and ‘skdunstall’.

Here’s a tip. Do not, ever, make your login name the same as
the sign-off name you use on your posts. You’re handing hackers half the information
they need to hack your system. Don’t make it easy for them. Likewise, don’t use
‘admin’. Or ‘test’.

Another thing we do to reduce hacking attempts is block the
user on a single invalid login attempt. It’s a little inconvenient when I’m away
from the home PC (which has the password stored) and I have to type in the password
and get it wrong. There have been times where I’ve locked myself out of my own
website for 24 hours. Even so, I wouldn’t change it.

If you don’t stop the hackers, they swarm, so right after
this, I’m going to block eighteen IP addresses. My banned IP list is so long,
it’s a wonder there’s anyone left to block.

Have a good week.