Security engineering is about a lot of things, but the best security engineers show the 'hacker mindset' characteristics of curiosity and imagination. Here's an example of how I found an XSS vulnerability in a forum, mostly by accident, and how curiosity was the key.

Wanted a quesadilla. Didn't have any tortillas, so substituted chapattis. It went... only okay. The earthiness of the chapatti pairs with mature cheese less-well than the cornflour-sweetness of a tortilla does. I tried it, so you don't have to!

This blog post's been sitting incomplete in my drafts since last decade. I think it's finally time to share with you... ten weird games (and game adjacent media) you should see.

Colin Gorrie wrote an excellent blog post last month, in the style of a travel blog but where every couple of paragraphs the blogger jumped back a hundred years in time, switching to an earlier dialect of English as they do so, until they become gradually unintelligible to most readers. Fascinating.

A lot of things are hard right now. But I appreciate that Spring has come and I can enjoy a cheese & pickle sandwich and a fake beer for lunch in the sun. All to the sounds of the birds singing... and, somewhere behind me, the dog excitedly demolishing a pile of pine cones. It could be worse, right?

My mum painted a cold giraffe onto a postcard and sent it to me.

My current temporary home - and, necessarily, office - is directly next door to some kind of "horse gym": a contraption a little like a huge revolving door to encourage one or more horses to exercise by walking around it. Every now and then my peripheral vision registers that there's a horse outside the window and, for the dozenth time, I look up from my work and glance around to barely catch it vanishing off on yet another lap.

Another quick find for the sharp-eyed geokid, once we found the right host. Three for three and that's time for us to turn about and go have our brunch. TFTC!

The woods made it hard to get a good fix, but eventually we were in the vicinity of this excellent cache. It took a few different tree hosts before eventually we were looking in the right place. The younger geokid insists that I log that he caught sight of it before me!

Came out for a dog walk from New Yatt this morning. The GZ is deep within thick brambles, but the younger geokid was up to the challenge and soon the unusual cache container was in hand. TFTC!

Spotify's RNG and Pagan Wanderer Lu conspired together to throw The Frosted Pane in my way, causing me to trip up and fall into a blog post I read 15 years ago and can now reflect upon with the knowledge I've gained since (about myself, about psychotherapy, and about what it's like to be displaced by your house flooding).

Andrew Stephens has added Caddy configuration to prohibit HTTP/1 clients from accessing most of the pages of his website. I decided to probe it and see how that works.

This checkin to GCAABPG North Leigh Loop #7 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Completing our loop (minus a couple of DNFs, but plus a couple of nearby caches), this damp geopup and I were really happy to finish with this good-sized cache! TFTC, and for the series, if which […]

This checkin to GCAABNW North Leigh Loop #6 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Tougher than we expected to find – not only is this a stealthy container but it’s hidden unusually-thoroughly too! TFTC I’m increasingly regretting my choice this morning to wear comfortable but not waterproof shoes rather than […]

This checkin to GCAABNV North Leigh Loop #5 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. No sign of this one, despite the geohound and I’s best efforts. Maybe it washed away if the nearby drainage ditch broke its banks this winter?

This checkin to GC1QY29 Can Rabbits Climb Trees?? reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Coming up from Evergreen/Loop #4 the geohound and I made a poor guess about which side the the hedgerow we ought to be on, and – to avoid having to backtrack – opted to cut through […]

This checkin to GCAABN0 North Leigh Loop #4 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. An extremely easy find, although a bit of a spiky retrieval. TFTC!

This checkin to GC1QYPN Back to Evergreen reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. The geopup and I are out doing the North Leigh Loop from New Yatt, where we’re temporarily living while our house is dried and damage assessed by the insurance company following a catastrophic flood a few weeks […]

This checkin to GCAABMN North Leigh Loop #3 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. While the geohound busied herself with the important task of collecting sticks several times larger than herself, I began the search for what I’d figured would be a QEF. Within the circle of uncertainty lay an […]

This checkin to GCAABMJ North Leigh Loop #2 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Clearly I’ve trained the geohound well, because she found the geotrail out to this GZ before I did! This cache is definitely benefitting from its layers of defense against the elements: the log, in its inner […]

This checkin to GCAABME North Leigh Loop #1 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Coming to the “start” of this loop having come from the “end” gave the geohound and I a perfect vantage point to sight this QEF. Now it’s time to find out how boggy the trail to […]

This checkin to GCB1N17 Square root of E/m reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. QEF for the geohound and I. My GPSr can’t connect to the Internet and I’m not retyping a URL into my phone so I can’t comment on the hint, but the cache itself is fine. SL, […]

This checkin to GC7PC86 North Leigh Number 6 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Coming from Leigh Loop 8 the geohound and I figured we had an easy and direct run here, but intolerable mud at the East end of the field path drove us out onto the road and […]

This checkin to GCAABQ1 North Leigh Loop #8 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Since our house flooded a few weeks ago we’ve been living out of a series of short holiday lets, waiting for the floors to dry out and the insurance company to assess the damage, before we’ll […]

Non-exhaustive list of things I'm doing when I'm writing code, that don't look like "writing code": - thinking - researching - contextualising - testing - measuring - documenting - communicating - planning - future-proofing - educating - learning - expressing - anticipating - discovering - inventing - experimenting - debugging - analysing - monitoring For all its faults, an AI agent might "write code" faster than me. But that's only a part of the process. My typing speed is not the bottleneck.

Spring's coming, and with it a stack of cachers either new or else returning from hibernation. Therefore; I'm briefly checking-in on my geocaches to ensure they're in good condition. Today I peeped at this one, and found it happy and well and ready to be hunted. Go find it!

One last outing for the dog and I along the Cotswold lane we’ve been living on, before we move to different temporary accommodation tomorrow. We’re hoping soon to no-longer have to move every week or two, but we’re not at that point yet.

In sympathy for our flood situation, my sister baked and posted us a big batch of her fantastic raisin & oatmeal cookies. I've eaten like six of them already. Turns out I stress-eat. Who knew?

Nineteen days after my house flooded, causing extensive damage on the ground floor, the insurance company has finally accepted the claim and is willing to pay for our temporary accommodation in the meantime (a few days in a hotel, a few days with friends although that's not p...

I keep hearing from developer friends who are 'expected' by their employer to demonstrate that they're using AI, even for tasks at which the AI is demonstrably a suboptimal choice. So - as a joke - I came up with a git post-commit hook that makes it look like they're doing so, even when they're not.