Crazy Or Genius?: Tag review

The Sushi Showdown of Ultimate Destiny

Sean — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:58:00 +0100

This is the Sushi Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
Good rolls, bad rolls, and assorted pieces of sashimi
and only one will survive, I wonder who it will be
this is the Sushi Showdown…
this is the Sushi Showdown…
this is the Sushi Showdown…
of Ultimate Destiny

It really just started off as a joke. Kate was torn between going to two restaurants (she had a gift certificate for one, but liked the other better), when I suggested the obvious solution: eat at both and compare the tastes! Better yet, eat at other sushi restaurants too and do a comparison across all of them! And thus the event ‘Sushi Crawl 2008’ was born.

Quickly, however, people began to think that a sushi analog to a pub crawl was not the greatest of ideas, due to amount of time sitting around for food preparation, and the fact that we would be ordering very little from each place in the grand scheme of things (you don’t want the sushi places you will potentially populate in the future to be mad at you). The event quickly evolved into a sushi potluck. Everyone would be responsible for a take out order from a restaurant, which would consist of no fewer than 4 items; spicy salmon roll, tuna sashimi, house roll, and whatever other item you wanted. Targets were selected, participants gathered, and we went off to do battle.

The original roll of opponents:

Hamachi House (Eventually skipped)
I Love Sushi
Sushi Nami
Dharma Sushi
Sushi Shige
Ichiban Sushi (Eventually skipped)
Minato Sushi
Doraku
Momoya (Dismissed due to ‘suckitude’ long before the day of the event)

The day of the event, we ran into a few minor problems, such as a torrential downpour, last minute decision of who goes where, dead phones (which hampered ordering), power losses (Hamachi lost power due to the storm), restaurant closures (Ichiban doesn’t do dinner in March), and potentially sick people. Despite these issues, the event was oh so good. 10 participants * ~4 items * ~6 pieces per item = ~240 pieces of sushi to be delectably savored and compared. Long ago, friends of mine told me that the best way to eat sushi is to gather a group of people and all order various things on the menu and share, and I have to say, it certainly has its benefits. A healthy amount of ‘safe’ selection (that is, items you have tried and enjoyed previously), along with a variety of new stuff without the disadvantage of being stuck with additional rolls if you don’t like it.

At the end of the night, Sushi Shige was declared the overall winner. The sashimi was moist and rich in flavor, the spicy rolls weren’t overly spicy, the pieces were all well proportioned. Of course, Sushi Shige was also the most expensive overall, so you are paying for what you are getting. For more budget concious sushi goers, it was generally agreed that Doraku was also a very solid choice for a reasonable price. Ironically, the two places are just a block a part.

The overall loser of the night was I Love Sushi, which was generally below the quality of everything else. Whether it is the worst of all in Halifax is debatable, however, since Momoya is apparently so bad that it wasn’t even worthy of ordering from, and since Hamachi House (from my own experience in the last year) has been more of a hit or miss situation.

Obviously, this event needs to be repeated (for a proper data comparison set of course) and I am already looking forward to the next one.

Buskers - Part 1

Sean — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 10:46:00 +0200

Halifax International Buskerfest is once again in motion. Quite a few interesting shows were performed this year. On the first day I went down, I basically ended up watching a series of finales, so I really don’t know how good the entire acts were. As always, the waterfront areas were PACKED with people.

Chaulkmaster Dave

Everyone in Halifax knows of Chaulkmaster Dave. Chances are you have seen his work in front of the Library on Spring Garden. As always, he was down at thje Buskerfest, showing off his talent. His renditions of Spiderman and Batman are simply amazing, as usual.

Matty Blade

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to wait around 10 minutes while you are saying you are going to swallow a sword, before you actually swallow the sword. Also, I am getting tired of finales where you get 4 guys to hold a pole while you climb it and perform your 30 second performance.

Scot Free

One of two escape artists that I managed to see, Scot Free managed a constant stream of jokes, puns, and wit while being wrapped in a roll of saran wrap for his grand finale. That’s right, not the traditional straight jacket escape, but sarran wrap. His non-traditional approach, and constant humor made him one of the better shows I managed to see.

According to his website, he is also an extreme skateboarder, and a chainsaw juggler….... while the chainsaw is on.

Stephen Elway

Another escape artist act, this time with the traditional straight jacket. The performer came across as eccentric, and since he escaped while ‘I’m Too Sexy’ was playing, and turned it into a dance routine, it was quite entertaining. The setup to the event, where he had two members of the audience tie him up, was filled with the busker wit I enjoy so much.

USA Breakdancers

This was the best performance of the day, in my opinion. Despite the fact that I couldn’t see some of the breakdancing, due to the sheer number of people watching, the moves that I did see were spectacular. At one point, they pulled some people from the crowd and got them to dance for the crowd. To my (and I am sure the crowd’s amusement), one of these people actually did some breakdancing himself. The look on the face of the leader was amusing. I swear, he was thinking “Off all the people in the crowd and at this festival, I had to pick the one white dude in Halifax that can actually breakdance to a degree”. The famous busker wit was also present here, with such lines as “We will accept any donations, so if you can pull out your wallet, take out 5 or 10 dollars…........ and give us the rest….” and “We are trying to pay for our educations, so if you could give us 5 or 10 dollers, that would help a lot. On the other hand, if you give us 20 or 50, we won’t have to go at all!”

Jeff Collins

Take Matty Blade, have him eat fire instead of swords, and you have Jeff Collins. I liked (or disliked) there shows the same amount in the same way. After 10 minutes, I was thinking “Eat the damn fire already!!!”

Review - Security Warrior

Sean — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 16:32:00 +0200

Security Warrior labels itself as the “most comprehensive, up-to-date book covering the art of computer war�?. Having been on my To-Read list since it was initially released a year and a half ago, I was interested to see how accurate this claim remains.

Obviously, some topics you might expect to be covered in a comprehensive security handbook are missing. No where to be seen is discussion of vulnerabilities in MD5 and SHA, as these hadn’t been published yet. Also missing is any reference to the Linux 2.6 kernel, as the first version of that was released barely a month before the first publishing.

However, this items discussed in this book are general enough that they are still valid and highly valuable. Discussion is platform neutral where possible, with further discussion on platform dependencies where needed. There are some very nice examples and case studies, which make the book a more interesting read than strict discussion. The Advanced Defense subsection is spectacular and well deserving of the designation Advanced. A lot of the ideas there, while simple in nature, are things that I haven’t come across before, or even thought of, especially their discussion on intrusion detection and log aggregation.

There are, however, a few problems with the book. First and foremost, I have a problem with the Social Engineering section. While I agree that social engineering is an important aspect of network security, 10 pages does not even begin to scratch the surface on the topic. Thankfully, this is offset by an amazing set of references at the end of the chapter, including the excellent “Art Of Deception�? by Kevin Mitnick. Another problem that ties into this, is the fact that the Reconnaissance chapter comes AFTER the Social Engineering chapter, when reconnaissance is usually a precursor to a social engineering attack. I felt that the logical order would have created a smoother reading process here. Finally, the author’s repeatedly mentioned that some tools were standard on Linux distributions, but not commercial unix systems, and as a result might have to be installed manually. I felt this repetition for most of the tools discussed was distracting from the core information I was trying to read.

One area that deserves its own discussion is the section on Reverse Engineering. This section was highly interesting, showing a wide variety of techniques for not only the Unix operating system, but Windows CE as well. A plethora of information regarding techniques, tips and tools are contained in these chapters….... but really only for the Unix and Windows CE environments. Out of 175 pages, only 20 of those discusses reverse engineering on the actual windows platform. With 2/5 of the book actually being devoted towards this topic, I feel that this section might have been better off being an entire book of its own, with expanded discussion for all environments and additional examples.

Overall, Security Warrior was quite an interesting read. I fully plan to take many concepts I have learned here and incorporate them into both current and future plans. If you want a detailed look at network security concepts, this book is a very solid starting point, before branching out into other works.

Final Rating: 3.5/5

“Security Warrior�? is available from O’Reilly Media, Inc. for CAN $65.95. Sample chapters can be obtained @ The O’Reilly Catalog