lifeasdaddy

So, where's Australia's chemical plant security programme?

"The Department of Homeland Security has preliminarily labeled more than 200 chemical facilities, including university laboratories, at highest risk for a potential terrorist attack.

DHS has winnowed this number from a pool of about 7,000 facilities under review in its chemical plant security program."

Read the article in Chemical & Engineering News here.

So far as I can tell, in Australia the National Counter-Terrorism Committee is responsible for this stuff.

Just to set your minds at ease, here is the National Counter-Terrorism Plan (second edition, September 2005)  Concerns regarding chemicals are addressed in section 3.7 on page 17 of the pdf.

Fun @ the Powerhouse Museum

Last week Edward asked to go to the Powerhouse Museum, which if I had to categorise it, I'd say is a museum of technology, science, decorative arts and design.  So today we made the trek to Ultimo and met up with Ben and Lauren and Edward's cousins Thomas and Eloise.

We especially got Ed excited about visiting the zero gravity simulator  which is part of the Space exhibition.

The Zero-G simulator is comprised of a stationary platform upon which the astronauts (kids) stand surrounded by a cylindrical shaped mockup of the inside of a space station.  The cylinder slowly rotates to simlulate a space like experience.  To the astronauts, nothing much seems to be happening, but when you walk out onto "earth" again, it is quite disorientating.  Thankfully there is a rest area, which I suggest you use.

On the way to the Zero-G experience, then kids also had the chance to be photographed looking like space travellers as they stuck their heads through the painted backdrop.  An oldie, but a goody.

Later the boys had the chance to dress up in astronaut costumes.  There were alien costumes too, but they didn't have the same attraction.

Apart from these obvious novelties, they had some great fun in the Experimentations area which displays pratical examples of some of the fundamental physics of electricity, light, and magnetism.  In this pic, Edward is using a hand cranked generator to power a toy electric train and send it around a small track in the enclosure.

I know that when Ed said last week that he wanted to go to the Powerhouse Museum, he had in his mind seeing the steam engines on display.  The museum includes on permanent display Locomotive No. 1, which was the first steam locomotive in Australia.  Made in England by the Stephenson works, it was transported to Australia by ship and put into use in 1855.  I see from the nameplate data, that it was in fact No. 958, as far as they were concerned.

There is also an engine built in 1882, Locomotive No. 1243 on display and Edward was able to stand on the footplate and operate a few controls.  the display is interactive, and as buttons are pressed the voice of a driver or fireman explain the workings.

There's a section called Zoe's House, which is a contruction and building activity for kids aged 3 - 6.  Ed, Thomas and Eloise all loved this.

The Powerhouse Museum is well set up to light the imagination of children, and as you can see has lots of things for them to do, see, and in which to be invovolved.

But there's also rareities to interest military historians like me.

This enigma machine is part of an exhibition, and was used to create coded messages by the German Army in World War II.

Breaking the codes made by these machines was a turning point of World War II.

There are two other known specimins of these machines in Australia.  One is held by the Australian War Memorial, and one held by the government information security (cryptological) agency Defence Signals Directorate; although both are owned by DSD.

To see inside an Enigma machine, you can check this series of photographs (not from the Powerhouse Museum)

The children all enjoyed taking a break in the courtyard cafe which has some state of the art play and climbing activites, including this giant climbing frame which can be enjoyed by kids of all ages, including this 40ish man who could not resist climbing to the top. 

I managed to control the climbing impulse.

Now, it wouldn't be a visit to a museum if we didn't manage to find an error in a curatorial plaque, and here's the result from today.

There's a display about the work of violin maker William Auchterlonie (perhaps part of the famous golfing family?) and the plaque says that," This page is open to 1924, the year the violin on display was made."

But it is clearly a page from 1934. 

He had been using a day-to-a-page diary from 1930, and the day for that page, Tuesday January 28th, 1930 is crossed out.  Auchterlonie's note begins, "Started in 1934 Beginning of November ..."

SUMMARY:

Edward asked to return to the Zero-gravity simulator, and the engine Locomotive No. 1243 - so I guess they must be the best things in the museum today.

mucking around with the template again

My blog provider, typepad, are offering some limited edition blog templates provided by HP.

I thought I'd try them out, but as with most of the typepad templates, I'm finding the font size too small.

But because it's from HP - well, I just love the brand!

[ One of the consequences is that the layout of old blog posts gets a bit higgledy piggledy.  See how you go ....]

"Somebody is trying to use pro-Tibet themed emails to infect computers of the members of pro-Tibet groups to spy on their actions."

So says F-Secure in this piece.  It's well worth reading.

I have little interest in the pro-Tibet movement, so I'm likely neither to receive one of the targeted emails, nor to click on the contents - but it's educational to find out how these things are done.

The tip comes from my favourite security expert, Bruce Schneier. There's also a lively debate about the possible source of the malware in the comments to the blog post there.

Sometimes my blog's referrer log keeps me awake at night.

Eleven years ago I was working for a large retail department store.  I received a telephone call from someone who said there was a bomb in the store, and in which room of the store the bomb was located. 

In my long career working in hotel and retail store security departments I had received several bomb threat telephone calls.  This call seemed different.  Amongst other things we did, the security team and I searched the room mentioned.  We found no bomb.  The caller rang back 15 minutes later and gave a more specific place to search.  Then we found the bomb.

The following day, as part of a complex extortion ploy, the bomber was caught by police.  Turns out he was following a scheme he had read about on the Internet describing how to extort money from a large business.   So, the bad things which can be found on the Internet are quite really dangerous.

Checking my blog statistics log today, I found this Google query for "bomb manufacture" brought someone to this blog's post about Churchill's cabinet meeting to discuss the H-Bomb.

That worries me.  Obviously nobody will learn how to carry out a criminal enterprise from this blog.  But they are looking.

So, what did Bill Murray whisper into Scarlett Johanson's ear during the final scene from Lost In Translation?

Lost In Translation is one of my favourite movies of all time, and certainly my no. 1 of the last decade.

Some dude has done some work to clean out the background noise to detect the previously unknown snippet which the Bill Murray character whispered in Scarlett Johansson's ear during the final scene of the flic. Do not click if it's going to spoil the ending for you. Here it is on Youtube.  Look and listen.

A mystery solved.

[ pointer from Kottke ]

You may also like to know that the result from the audio analysis is NOT the line in Sofia Coppola's shooting draft script for the movie.

And here's a verbatim transcript of the movie dialogue.  Of course the inaudible line is not included.

lifeasdaddy - A Second Life scam?

I've never visited Second Life, but I've got a little bit of an idea about what goes on there.

For those of you who are intereested, Cameron Reilly has bravely related how he has been taken down by a little SL scam.

lifeasdaddy - That Dove campaign. Real beauty, etc.

I've noticed that feminists generally seem quite in favour of the now year-old Dove "campaign for real beauty".

Dana Boyd is quite proud of the part she unwittingly played in creating the viral buzz about the Dove evolution advertisment.

But Liz Funk wonders if ... well ... if the girls just haven't been had and

... or is Dove just taking advantage of a generation of young women without a solid grasp of media literacy who are eager to embrace a corporation who seems to be on their side?

I'm with Ms. Funk.  What do you think?

lifeasdaddy - I think there's a trend here ...

You know that tipping point thing?  Well, there's one happening right now.  What do you reckon is happening when a boy in the USA and a girl in UK both prefer to watch YouTube rather than television?

From Jeremy Clarkson's piece in The Sunday Times :

Now my daughter only really watches YouTube. There’s no plot. No Attenborough explaining stuff. No tedious instructions on how to make a space helmet out of a squeezy bottle. No adverts. Just loads of people falling off their bicycles and catching fire. And when she finds one she likes a lot, she watches it over and over again. For nothing.

From Doc Searls Weblog:

The main reason I’m posting this is to pass along what the kid said after we did a scan from one end of the “dial” to the other.

“There’s nothing on”, he said. And walked away.

What would “something” be?

“Oh, you know. Like on YouTube”.

There's something going on ...

lifeasdaddy - "IT problems will cause a bank run within a decade"

So says Tyler Cowen, anyway.  He thinks IT traboules which affect ability of consumers to access their deposits could cause a crisis in confidence and hence a run.

For those who may be unaware, there was recently a run on Northern Rock in the UK - a problem which was unrelated to IT matters.

Looks like banks need to get their IT house in order - and they are generally pretty good in my experience.

  More testing and tuning software required.