It was the first time I have done a film and found it challenging especially when playing the lead role. The first day went really well and I was impressed by the commitment and professional of the entire crew.

The first day of filming was at the house where Roger’s mother lived, Roger is picking up his childhood pet Parrot and exchanging some banter with his girlfriend Mandy. We also then shot the end of the film which involved driving a car and swerving off the side of the road. I was damn nervous not to swerve to much and slam the breaks to late and then plough into 20 crew members! So thanks guys for trusting me not to mow you all down!

The second day was all done within the car in front of a green screen. It was very exciting and a new experience as you really had to visualise and use your imagination whilst being cooped up inside a garage with 30 crew members trying their best to get the best shots. This I found the most challenging aspect for acting, here we had to create our own external stimuli.

The start of day 2 was a tad slow, until about lunch time when everything started to flow more nicely, however it was a challenge to keep emotions at bay, especially when you want to perform at your best and you know you can do better.

I have definitely learnt allot from the experience and had an amazing time with everyone from the crew. It felt like I had gone an a holiday and had a short term affair with someone special.

Here are some pictures from the day, and would like to thank all those involved on such a great weekend together.

		Roger – Short Film – Central Coast Screen Co-op VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Keep your eyes posted here and hopefully in coming months “Roger” will be ready to watch!

Of course, always good to have the crew list at the end

The sight of all these people in uniforms does not prime creativity

(Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking Fast and Slow, Allen Lane 2011 -  Noble Prize 2002 Economic Sciences).

Let’s rethink our culture so that our society can express themselves in a constructive manner and live a more fulfilling life during work hours. To promote conformity and to stifle expression is one of the intrinsic causes of our societies rebellious sub cultures.

So what do suites, ties and school uniforms do for us?  Another social “Etiquette” that hides the true intention of an individual, What are your thoughts?

I took off form Mount Borah West and the wind was strong, whilst soaring the ridge I got parked and felt very uncomfortable, used a little speed bar to get out ahead and then did some figure of eights to gain height and turn and burn over the mountain to avoid rotor winds and turbulence on the lee side of the mountain.

Once I got over the mountain, it was all about looking at the ground for some trigger points where thermals would be released.

When I finally could see Barraba, it dawned on me that I have made my first real cross country flight and the feeling I had inside was fantastic, it is hard to describe, perhaps some form of euphoria!

I met some awesome pilots and some crazy pilots whilst away on the Christmas season, and learnt as much as I can about the art of flying, there is so much to learn and I am looking forward to learning as much as I can.

Paragliding has opened up a new avenue where you can be at the mercy of natures wrath and meet amazing people who are just as crazy!

Here is the flight path and data, just like life, it has it’s up’s and downs! Sunday, was not as great, but still a lovely flight, the conditions were very thermic on Sunday and stable, bombed out in the north west and had a long walk back for 4 hours in 45 degree heat, lesson learned? Carry lots of water and have a back up plan if you need a pick up!

Barogram

Data

Map

Well, that’s it, if you would like to try out something new and exciting and challenge yourself mentally, then Paragliding is definitely worth a try!

I would highly recommend going to Manilla Paragliding, cool people and an awesome teacher. Check out http://www.flymanilla.com/

Cheers

There are some sad and serious moments in the play to where most scenes are about revealing secrets, some shameful and shocking.

The play is interesting in that you are watching a play within a play, and you get a feeling that it is being done on the fly.

Photo Album contains:

• Scene from a family gathering in the lounge, just before Christmas, a typical couple (MUM and DAD) having an argument, whilst a mischievous before is looking at the presence and wondering what is inside of them.
• One of the old ladies Jennifer having a discussion with close friends (Beverly and Elizabeth) who is revealing, yet another secret.
• Dennis discussing his sexual fantasies and stories of love.
• A discussion about Trust between Paige and Claire
• Meg reminiscing about here “Perfect” boyfriend Silas

		Tears Before Bedtime 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Written and Directed by Malcolm Frawley
CAST: Dahna Cicco, Romiko Derbynew, Tom Dickson, Marcella Franco, Felicity Davey, Heidi Stewart, Camilla Turnbull, Brian Tyo, Matthew Vautin, Sophie Else, Malinda Hayward, Kate Rutherford, Emma Warner Collins

You can download the full play script here:

Performance royalties by negotiation – contact author via malfraw@hotmail.com

https://www.dropbox.com/s/31rdvyxz9ogv9qu/Tears%20Before%20Bedtime%20FINAL.docx?m

Summary

A very enjoyable play to perform and be part of, and received very good reviews from the Audience, moments of laughter, sadness and uncertainty. The scene with Lilly and Blake is absolutely comical and hilarious.

I run OSX Mountain Lion 10.8 (All UPDATES are installed)

• Parallels
• Carbon Copy
• Diablo
• Chrome

MacBook Pro with Retina display, iOS 5.1.1

This is unacceptable big time, and allot of other people are having problems with the MacBook Pro Retina and sleep mode when closing the lid. In fact I would go so far as to say it is a Health and Safety issue and if they don’t fix it asap, a possible mass recall on the laptops, it does not take much for this laptop to overheat in a bag if sleep did not work, and there is no light to verify if it went to sleep successfully.

Lots of people having issues here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4062893?start=30&tstart=0

The thing with VHD’s and Cloud Drive, is that it is a Page Blob, and the VHD has to be a fixed size, so even though I might have 200MB of data in a 250GB VHD, you would need to download 250GB worth of data.

The Solution?

Remove desktop into the Azure Virtual Machine, Mount the VHD Manually, copy the data, zip it up and send it through other means, so in essence, I only send or download the data that is USED in the VHD i.e. 200MB and not 250GB.

This utility can use the concept of a blobsnapshot VHD backup to restore, and what it will do it mount it. This is ideal when you using blob snapshots as a backup mechanism and you need a way to restore the blob snapshot VHD data, as fast as possible to another Azure Account.

Below is the code for the helper and you can download the source code for the project here:

NOTE: This application must be run in a Windows Azure Virtual Machine, it will NOT WORK on a development machine/emulator.

hg clone ssh://hg@bitbucket.org/romiko/mountclouddrive
hg clone https://romiko@bitbucket.org/romiko/mountclouddrive

using System;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient;
using MountCloudDrive.Properties;

namespace MountCloudDrive
{
    public class CloudDriveHotAssistant
    {
        private string restoreVHDName;
        private readonly StorageCredentialsAccountAndKey storageCredentials;
        private readonly CloudStorageAccount cloudStorageAccount;
        private CloudBlobClient blobClient;

        public CloudDriveHotAssistant(string accountName, string accountKey)
        {
            restoreVHDName = Settings.Default.DefaultRestoreDestination;
            storageCredentials = new StorageCredentialsAccountAndKey(accountName, accountKey);
            cloudStorageAccount = new CloudStorageAccount(storageCredentials, false);
            blobClient = new CloudBlobClient(cloudStorageAccount.BlobEndpoint, storageCredentials);
        }

        public CloudPageBlob GetBlobToRestore(string blobContainer, string blobFileName)
        {
            DateTime snapShotTime;
            var converted = DateTime.TryParse(Settings.Default.BlobSnapShotTime, out snapShotTime);

            CloudPageBlob pageBlob;

            if (converted)
                pageBlob = blobClient.GetPageBlobReference(string.Format(@"{0}\{1}", blobContainer, blobFileName), snapShotTime);
            else
                pageBlob = blobClient.GetPageBlobReference(string.Format(@"{0}\{1}", blobContainer, blobFileName));

            try
            {
                pageBlob.FetchAttributes();
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("\r\nBlob Does Not Exist!");
                Console.WriteLine(ex);
                return null;
            }
            return pageBlob;
        }

        public void UnMountCurrentDrives()
        {
            foreach (var driveName in CloudDrive.GetMountedDrives())
            {
                var drive = new CloudDrive(driveName.Value, storageCredentials);
                Console.WriteLine(string.Format("\r\nUnmounting {0}", driveName.Key));
                Console.WriteLine("\r\nAre you sure Y/N");
                var key = Console.ReadKey();
                var decision = key.Key == ConsoleKey.Y;

                if (!decision)
                    continue;

                try
                {
                    drive.Unmount();
                }
                catch (Exception ex)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("\r\nUnmounting {0} FAILED.\r\n {1}", driveName.Key, ex));
                }
            }
        }

        public CloudPageBlob GetBlobReferenceToRestoreTo(string blobContainer)
        {
            return blobClient.GetPageBlobReference(string.Format(@"{0}\{1}", blobContainer, restoreVHDName));
        }

        public void MountCloudDrive(CloudPageBlob pageBlobSource, CloudPageBlob pageBlobDestination, string blobContainer)
        {
            pageBlobDestination.CopyFromBlob(pageBlobSource);
            Console.WriteLine(string.Format("\r\nAttempting to mount {0}", pageBlobDestination.Uri.AbsoluteUri));
            var myDrive = cloudStorageAccount.CreateCloudDrive(pageBlobDestination.Uri.AbsoluteUri);
            var drivePath = myDrive.Mount(0, DriveMountOptions.None);
            Console.WriteLine(string.Format("\r\nVHD mounted at {0}", drivePath));
        }
    }
}

I own a W701 laptop, which is a pretty beefy machine. However over the 2 years of owning it I had intermittent problems with it, where the machine will just freeze up. After several Motherboard replacements and Graphic Card replacement, the issue still exist. I then replaced the stock Samsung drive with Intel 520 SSD’s, and rebuilt the machine, however the intermittent crashes still occurred.

I escalated the issue with Lenovo Customer Service as this machine is critical for my work as a software consultant, and the parts for W701 are being very hard to get here in Australia.

To cut a long story short, Lenovo replaced my laptop with a W520 which I am extremely happy with, and is rock solid stable. I would like to say that I was impressed with their support regarding my issue and even though it took a while to organise the replacement as it needs to be approved by finance, and the machine was a CTO build.

The W520 is an awesome machine:

Below are the specs

Notice the core speed is variable. Also, the battery life is amazing, I can work for 5 hours with no issues, and the CPU can work at around 24 Watts when configured for battery mode.

Windows Experience Index

Windows experience index is at 6.9, this is due to the graphics being benchmarked against the built in integrated Intel graphics, however, it is easy to switch it to the NVidia card when I demand it.

I am sure I can get a better index, if I disable the integrated graphics card, however, I like it on, to preserve power and don’t really need the NVIDA card, unless I am playing a game.

The Hard Disk is extremely fast, I replaced it with an Intel 520 SSD:

Make sure you NEVER defrag a machine with SSD drives, also use the inbuilt SSD tools =D

Processor

I have this processor running at over 3.38Ghz when demanding applications are in use. (Turbo Mode).

Here is the clock speed when running Prime95

M-SATA SSD

The W520 also support M-SATA SSD, which is where the built in broadband module is located (behind the batter). These SSD’s are super tiny, you could basically run this machine with TWO SSD’s and still keep the optical bay! Yes!

I recommend MemoryRight for M-SATA.

http://thessdreview.com/our-reviews/memoright-ms-701-240gb-msata-ssd-review/

Summary

If you need a machine that can have 2 hard drives, awesome raw power and still keep a optical drive, not to mention LONG battery life, then the W520 is the machine to get!

Below is a PowerShell script that can take a file containing the contents of snapshot urls, it also supports the log file output from the backup restore script and just pasting that output in the event you want to restore a complete backup set.

Remember, when using the backup script, ALWAYS save the output of the script to use as a reference so that you have the URL’s of the snapshots you want to restore.

e.g. Sample restore.txt file.
[05:01:08]: [Publishing internal artifacts] Sending build.start.properties.gz file
[05:01:05]: Step 1/2: Command Line (14s)
[05:01:05]: [Step 1/2] in directory: C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\work\d9375448b88c1b75\Maintenance
[05:01:08]: [Step 1/2] Starting snapshot uniqueids
[05:01:08]: [Step 1/2] Found blob container uniqueids
[05:01:09]: [Step 1/2] https://uatmystory.blob.core.windows.net/uniqueids/agencies?snapshot=2012-04-22
[05:01:09]: [Step 1/2] T19:01:10.6488549Z
[05:01:09]: [Step 1/2] https://uatmystory.blob.core.windows.net/uniqueids/agency1-centres?snapshot=201
[05:01:09]: [Step 1/2] 2-04-22T19:01:10.8818083Z
[05:01:09]: [Step 1/2] https://uatmystory.blob.core.windows.net/uniqueids/agency1-clients?snapshot=201
[05:01:09]: [Step 1/2] 2-04-22T19:01:11.0257795Z
[05:01:09]: [Step 1/2] https://uatmystory.blob.core.windows.net/uniqueids/agency1-referrals?snapshot=2
[05:01:09]: [Step 1/2] 012-04-22T19:01:11.1717503Z

So the script will parse any restore file and just find URI’s in it, and then restore them.

#requires -version 2.0
param (
	[parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$AzureAccountName,
	[parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$AzureAccountKey,
	[parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$FileContainingSnapshotAddresses
)

$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

if ((Get-PSSnapin -Registered -Name AzureManagementCmdletsSnapIn -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null)
{
	throw "AzureManagementCmdletsSnapIn missing. Install them from Https://www.cerebrata.com/Products/AzureManagementCmdlets/Download.aspx"
}

Add-PSSnapin AzureManagementCmdletsSnapIn -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Add-Type -Path 'C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.6\ref\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient.dll'

$cred = New-Object Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageCredentialsAccountAndKey($AzureAccountName,$AzureAccountKey)
$client = New-Object Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient
.CloudBlobClient("https://$AzureAccountName.blob.core.windows.net",$cred)

function RestoreSnapshot
{
	param ( $snapShotUri)
	Write-Host "Parsing snapshot restore for $SnapShotUri"

	$regex = new-object System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("http://.*?/(devstoreaccount1/)?(?<containerName>.*?)/.*")
	$match = $regex.Match($snapShotUri)
	$container = $match.Groups["containerName"].Value
	$parsedUri = $match
	
	if($match.Value -eq "")
	{
		return
	}
		
	if ($container -eq $null)
	{
		Write-Host  "Container $blobContainerName doesn't exist, skipping snapshot restore"
	}
	else
	{
		Write-Host  "Restoring $snapShotUri" 
		Copy-Blob -BlobUrl $parsedUri -AccountName $AzureAccountName -AccountKey $AzureAccountKey -TargetBlobContainerName $container
		Write-Host  "Restore snapshot complete for $parsedUri"
	}
}

$fileContent = Get-Content $FileContainingSnapshotAddresses

foreach($uri in $fileContent)
{
	RestoreSnapshot $uri
}

http://clonezilla.org/liveusb.php

Windows 7 bootable USB stick

On the subject, sometimes you need to get an OS on beforehand for Windows, I like using this tool to make a bootable windows 7 USB stick.

http://images2.store.microsoft.com/prod/clustera/framework/w7udt/1.0/en-us/Windows7-USB-DVD-tool.exe

I would like to discuss the concept that we all think our data is safe. If we browse our mail on Google. We see it is HTTPS, and see the nice little padlock and then we feel or fluffy that nobody will ever be able to read our mails as it travels through fibre optics switches across the oceans and many routers and switches.

WARNING: The view expressed here are based on my knowledge acquired from Wired, therefore I cannot guarantee the information on this blog is 100% correct, discretion is advised.

But you wrong?

There are organizations out, specifically in the US that STORE all data traffic coming into various telecommunication hubs such as AT&T.

You might say, so what?

Consider this:

Store Data Now – Crack the encryption later

The NSA (National Security Agency) in the US is storing your encrypted data if it goes via the US. Considering the you do not have total control of how network packets are sent over the Internet, chances are 90% of your data is going via the US data hubs.

You might say that, who cares if they storing your packet level data for encrypted emails. But lets see how they can decrypt it:

Imagine GMAIL:

Look at the size of the encryption that Google mail uses.

1024 Bits.

Ok, so this is a relatively strong encryption of 1024 Bits, which would take the age of several universes to crack on a normal home computer, but on a super computer, things are much more merrier.

Also, if you can get enough DATA using the same Public Key, algorithms on Super Computers can then be used to detect patterns in emails being sent e.g. Hello, Kind Regards etc. With these patterns, the Super Computer and increase its chances in cracking the private key.

Let’s take an example of the RSA 1024 Bit encryption (yes same that GMAIL uses) that was cracked on 7th January 2010. The ONE requirement for the pattern matching to work is that the email messages or data sent is using the SAME public/private key pair.

Source: RSA 1024 Cracked

The RSA crack this time, was achieved by Valeria Bertacco, Todd Austin and Andrea Pellegrini. They varied the voltage levels at the sender end to make faulty encryptions. This helped them recreate the private key by combining a number of fragments, achieved in the process. The complete operation took 100 hours. A quote from the research paper says, First, we develop a systematic fault-based attack on the modular exponentiation algorithm for RSA. Second, we expose and exploit a severe flaw on the implementation of the RSA signature algorithm on OpenSSL, a widely used package for SSL encryption and authentication. Third, we report on the first physical demonstration of a fault-based security attack of a complete microprocessor system running unmodified production software: we attack the original OpenSSL authentication library running on a SPARC Linux system implemented on FPGA, and extract the system’s 1024-bit RSA private key in approximately 100 hours.

This breaks the backbone of RSA which believes that as long as the private key is safe, it is impossible to break in, unless guessed.

Ok, the above is not how the NSA cracks work, but servers as an example. If you can find a PATTERN, then you improve the probabilities of cracking, and this is done by the assumption that your private/public key does not change often.

Data Mining

Ok, so the NSA has your historical emails, online banking etc. So, how do they crack it, first they would collect hundreds of emails sent to a particular recipient and run algorithms for common patterns, then this can get fed into a super computer.

Now, what super computer. Well, they have a few, the latest one is spanned across two buildings, consuming power to light up 200, 000 homes! It is near their current facility on the East Campus of Oak Ridge.

Another super computer ready by the end of 2013 is called CASCADE, developed in tangent with Cray, this new super beast can run at speeds of 20 petaflops!

Government Legislation

What should change, because, ultimately we are supposed to live a democratic society? Laws should be passed to prevent any organisation from storing data and especially prohibit the storage of encrypted data.

What can we do

Very simple. To make the algorithms weak that they use to detect patterns in several messages

1. Prevent the algorithm from using patterns to improve the chance of cracking the encryption key by CHANGING your public/private key pairs often.

2. For very secure data use an email provider that is NOT hosted in the US. Check this with visual  TraceRoute/Tracert tools.

3. Zip the contents of secure data and encrypt that over the HTTPS encryption in your email system

4. Create your own Self Hosted Email System that is NOT HOSTED in the US.

5. Use your OWN certificate server and share the Root CA with the people you need to send secure data to. E.g. Financial Intuitions (Letter of Credits etc.). Then build a PowerShell script to generate new Private/public keys randomly and email this to your SECURE member network. VERY important that they generated at random times throughout the day, since if you pick a specific date/time, then the crackers can use this to ESTIMATE when they change and only using data in that window to run pattern matching. Then use a syncing automate system that sends out the new public key to the recipients that automatically use a script or bot to load it into their KEY STORE.

6. DO NOT USE LAND LINES or Mobile Phone contract SIM cards for personnel/intimate calls via the US, they all get filtered and analysed. Use a Pay as You Go. It is not fool proof but helps. Allot of journalists personnel lives are known to the NSA and many other people that travel, your phone is not safe, remember that, it goes through a network exchange, it is easy to pick voice calls and store it!

By doing the above and changing Private Key often in an automated fashion, you will prohibit the best algorithms from trying to crack your data. The NSA will have no way of knowing what the schedule is of your Public/Private key regeneration is, thus the algorithm will make assumptions that the next hours worth of data is on the same key pair etc., and will just be running down a dead end.

Microsoft’s Cloud

One thing I noted with Microsoft Windows Azure’s Cloud, is even though you can set an affinity for a region out of the US, e.g. Singapore, the data going to and from your cloud hosted site in Singapore is going via the US! Here is the proof.

Consider this trace I did from Sydney to Singapore, it went VIA the US!

The General Public and End User

Not all users of the internet are geeks like us, so how can we help them. We build an Open Source Application that manages dynamic Public/Private Key pairs and a syncing notification system with a secure public key delivery mechanism, which in itself is extremely complicated, perhaps when I have some time, we can come up with a demo.

Summary

I hope I have revealed to you that your data is not safe and secure, there are Organisations out there that break all the laws and are allowed to and one of them is the NSA, your data in the next few years will be stored in a HUGE data centre in the UTAH Dessert.  As we speak the data centre being built in the UTAH dessert is going along smoothly..

PROTECT your most intermit data with the tips I have given here. Just because 0.01% of the population is bad does not mean the rest of use must be compromised and our privacy VIOLATED. It is an absolute disgrace where our society is heading in regards to privacy laws. Nobody has the right to listen in on your private phone calls, emails etc. And NOBODY has the right to store all your historic data, waiting until technology is powerful enough to decrypt it.

WARNING: The view expressed here are based on my knowledge acquired from Wired, therefore I cannot guarantee the information on this blog is 100% correct, discretion is advised.

NOTHING IS SECURE