Posts Tagged ‘convention’

OK so, this update could have come a little earlier, and I apologize for the delay, I’m just wore the fuck out, so after getting home, cleaning the house and setting up my control center, I went to bed and dreamed of the demo scene. So let me tell you my thoughts on Notacon5. If you have the opportunity to goto this event, go. There were so many things to check out and take in that you really wish that you could sit in for all of it. The hotel it was hosted at wasn’t really that bad, once we got into our rooms and got some sleep. Here is a look into the world we lounged, smoked and slept in during our weekend.

Sitting on the foot rest there is my DVR as well as two Nortel Networks 24 port Ethernet Switches that I picked up from some guys across the hall from us for whatever reason. I’m sure I will find a use for these things eventually.

Jeremy Anderson who’s personal website can be found here presented a very interesting albeit humorous talk on DIY construction and how you can save money by doing things like adding a 2nd story to your garage yourself. There was a lot of chat on safety and tools of the trade which Jeremy went to point out that the basic tools you’ll need have not changed in the last 2000 years. I work in home maintenance and carpentry, and he’s right, the basic tools haven’t changed. However you would be very surprised how much LESS you would spend, by building or doing something of that nature yourself, compared to hiring a company to do it. Check out Jeremy’s website to keep updated on his various projects.

So as I mentioned the other day Dual Core had a great set. I managed to pick up a couple of their albums at their table and got the chance to talk with Int 80 a few time, who is just a hell of a talented person, I give props to those out there who have the ability to juggle as much as this guy seems to, keep up the good work guys.

Below is a character that popped into the room to do some dancing. I don’t know who it is, but I thought you’d like to see a picture.

Going on. If you’ve ever wondered how people on television pick locks, well, in all honesty they probably can’t. But you can learn how to. And yes it can be a difficult and frustrating ability to learn and be real good at, but let me tell you what, lock picking is a survival trait as we all learned from the Gringo Warrior contest at the lock picking pagoda. I didn’t participate in the contest because I know I utterly suck at lock picking, but watching some of the other people do it and succeed in picking a bunch of locks within a certain time frame was pretty cool. To add to that note Dosman from the Packetsniffers had a great presentation on lock picking where he also went into lock types, some history as well as gave us all a look into some of the new age locks coming out.

Flyninja.net and Veryangrytoad.com got some really great video as well from the event, I know I could of taken more pictures, but I didn’t. We got some interviews with people from HacDC and Packetsniffers, as well as Int 80 and some general non crowd goers from our wandering. Stay tuned for more posts soon when we make the videos available!!!!

Well here I am after a superb night hanging with a bunch of the coolest people I have ever met. The evenings events were excellent renditions of music, color, and some really funny improvision. Security Compass a professional services firm specializing in application security gave a great talk on XSS and SQL Injection and went over some great new tools they have recently released that can help you ‘pentest’ a site for those kinds of vulnerabilities. Head over to their website to grab these up.

Dual Core rocked the evening with some of the best rhyme and beat shit I’ve seen in a long time. You simply can not beat awesome rhymes being spat out about hacking, programming and hehe, wargames. Head over to Dual Core’s website and check out what they’ve got going on, your sure to be impressed. Pick up their old and new albums, put the music on the box or in your vehicle and turn the volume up.

Thats not even half the fun…I ended up getting so incredibly trashed last night, I about pissed in the corner of my hotel suite. Not to mention I locked GraphiK from VeryAngryToad.com out of the room on accident and passed out on top of every single pillow we have. He got to sleep on the chair. Thats what he gets for passing out yesterday and missing some talks.

We are alive at Notacon. My engine is about to shutddown from lack of a mental condition we all call sleep. Arriving in Cleveland sooner than expected and waiting longer than expected is very time consuming and disgruntling. The plain fact that the HOEtel still has not allowed us to book into our room was such a kind gesture we had no choice but to twiddle our thumbs listen to some talks and talk shit to each other.

So in the act of nothingness but contemplate new ideas and share them with new found friends, we decided to get on the ball.

Among some of the morning talks besides the opening ceremony was Jason Scott’s very interesting talk on editing, where he went into some detail about how the human brain has changed to handle information between the generations, how we process visual data and a small talk on how MTV mistakenly decided that they could produce massive amounts of money by giving music artists a fast way to give an audience a sound and visually enhanced view of music. To sum it all up, the amazing way producers of art and media – clip, crop, mix, combine and replace sections of data to get our minds to fill in the blanks correctly without loosing the quality of the media.

The time nears now for me to quit while I’m ahead, and get whatever kind of rest I can without having QWERTY imprinted on my forehead. stay tuned for more Notacon 5 stuff later.

What: Notacon 5

When: April 4th-6th 2008

Where:Holiday Inn, Select City Centre 1111 Lakeside Avenue Cleveland, OH 44114

NOTACON, an annual conference held in Cleveland, Ohio, explores and
showcases technologies, philosophy and creativity often overlooked at other
“hacker cons”. Our desire is not to supplant other events, but complement them and strike a balance that has gone unnoticed in our community for far too long.

Thats right this year I am heading to Notacon 5 in Cleveland, Ohio. I plan on teaming up and hanging out with GraphiK and others from Veryangrytoad.com plus others you may find familiar, such as the creator of Fark.com Drew Curtis. This year will be a blast because it will be my first convention, and it’s close to home, not to mention as part of registering for Notacon you also get full access to Blockparty, which is smothered in awesomeness.

I will keep daily updates and photos from Notacon 5 during the weekend of the event! More to come! Stay Tuned for updates and projects for and of the event.