Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Some Pics

Got some pics of my room here :-). Everything still most excel­lent. Set my alarm for 8.15 this morn­ing as I had a lec­ture at 10 and wanted to shower; alarm went off, I thought “Meh, I’ll have a couple minutes more here,” next thing I know it’s 9.45. Shit. Still made it on time tho, in some semb­lance of cleanliness.

Met a bunch of people on my course yes­ter­day, who are all pretty cool; met my Personal Tutor today, that’s all good too. We were going to go out last night — four of us from my flat (the four that are here for more than 10% of the time) — but we ended up talk­ing about all sorts of deep stuff for about three hours after I cooked pizza — all sorts of top­ics. Just what stu­dents are sup­posed to be good at :-D.

Departure

10.20am
Well then. With DJ Shadow’s “The Private Press” in one ear, and the rust­ling of dozens of loosely-packed bags in the other, I’m off. As I type this, my iPAQ and key­board wedged between my legs, we’re head­ing through East Grinstead with a truck full of my gear, wend­ing our merry way towards Coventry.

The get­away was smooth, no last-minute repack­ings or frantic hunts for miss­ing items; boxes were duly filled and lists duly checked. It really does feel like I’m mov­ing out. I can only assume that when I actu­ally move out, it will feel more chaotic than this.

So, my University career starts here. I can only hope it isn’t marked by upper-body injury sus­tained while hoof­ing all this stuff up the inev­it­able flights of stairs to my room.

11.27am
We’re about halfway up. Sights so far include a con­tinu­ous stream of Smart cars head­ing South on the M25, pre­sum­ably to some rally or some­thing; and some cun­ningly con­cealed gantry speed cam­eras ruin­ing a lot of people’s shit.

More and more cars we pass con­tain boxes and duvets and student-like people, looks like mine isn’t the only enrol­ment day today :-).

12.16pm
Almost there. Just stopped at the first Oxford M40 ser­vices to get some cof­fee. The place was full of apes and anxious-looking stu­dents. As we got back onto the motor­way, rain announced itself with a sound like the high-speed demise of hun­dreds of insects on our wind­screen, but that seems to have passed now. Which is good, because I don’t envis­age shift­ing all my stuff in piss­ing rain being much fun.

Just occurred to me that I man­aged to fit my entire ward­robe, plus coats and din­ner jacket, into one massive can­vas bag. Granted, the bag is as big as a good-sized fridge, but I sus­pect it wouldn’t be so easy for some of my more pop-fashion-oriented peers.

12.53am
How fast things move. Just got back from the SU with new friend Josh; taken in the sights and sounds there. It’s a pretty amaz­ing place; I’m going to have to try get­ting it through a lens at some point this week. Walking through the cam­pus at night, it feels like a city, though oddly once I got inside the SU and looked out, it felt like a ski resort — very strange. Everyone’s friendly though — had a few frames of pool, a few drinks, headed back. My accom­mod­a­tion is about 8 minutes walk from the SU, and it too is pretty amaz­ing. Big room, nice ensuite bath­room, big desk, nice bed, the works.

But now I’m exhausted, so it’s bed time.

devi­ant­PRINTS Update

Earlier in the week I finally got up to date with my Print sub­mis­sions on devi­antART — I’ve now sub­mit­ted Prints for all the major­ity of pho­tos I pos­ted since July, when I got my new cam­era.

Prints are avail­able from 6×4 upwards, at excep­tion­ally good prices. Get ‘em while they’re hot!

The Hunt Is On — Basic Internet Reconnaissance

Whitedust Security just ran this little art­icle on find­ing out more about a tar­get on the ‘net with WHOIS — nar­row­ing down someone’s geo­graphic loc­a­tion from their IP address. Not exactly revolu­tion­ary stuff, but still worth a look.

Skype Security and Privacy Concerns

Scott Granneman’s new column on SecurityFocus showed up on their security-basics mail­ing list earlier today. In it, he writes about his wor­ries fol­low­ing eBay’s aquis­i­tion of Skype earlier this month.

The main points he makes are that for one, Skype claims to be pro­tec­ted by “strong encryp­tion” but as it’s a closed-source product that uses a pro­pri­et­ary pro­tocol, that can’t be inde­pend­ently veri­fied. Secondly, his­tory has shown eBay to be ridicu­lously glib with law enforce­ment agen­cies — not requir­ing a sub­poena or court order in order to hand over most of a user’s inform­a­tion. In fact, a simple fax on “offi­cial let­ter­head” is all they require. When a com­pany with atti­tudes like this is put in charge of the private com­mu­nic­a­tions of mil­lions of people, this can only be bad news.