End-of-year notebook
Christmas-week notebook post. The end of three years of writing. Some closing observations on what the discipline has and has not produced.
Notes from the field
Writing
Long-form thinking on cyber defence, detection, and resilience — from Slackware-era honeypots through to AI-driven SOC analytics.
Showing posts tagged personal — 14 results.
Ahead in 2001
A short look ahead at 2001, with the more rigorous prediction discipline I committed to last week. Specific predictions, with probabilities and deadlines.
Predictions, scored
A formal scoring of the predictions I made in 1999 and through 2000. The discipline of reviewing predictions honestly is more useful than the discipline of making them.
A first conference: a small UK gathering
I committed earlier in the year to attending at least one conference. I have now done so — a small UK information-security gathering. A short note on the experience and on the people I met.
A small DDoS, my own
Last week my home connection went offline for six hours. The cause turned out to be a small DDoS aimed at my own honeypot's IP range. A walk through what happened and what I learned about response.
Midyear reflection: six months into 2000
Six months into a year I expected to be busy. Time to take stock — what has happened, what has surprised me, what I want to do over the next six months.
A small note on the dot-com bubble and security funding
An off-cadence post on the financial weather. The dot-com bubble is producing strange effects on what security work gets funded and what does not. A few observations from where I sit.
Two years on, and the notebook continues
A short birthday post. Two years of writing this notebook in public. The discipline has worked better than I had any right to expect, and the year ahead has the shape of being interesting.
Last post of the millennium
Two hours from midnight in the UK. The year is closing. The decade is closing. The millennium, by some accountings, is closing too. A short note, mostly to put a marker down.
Final Y2K notes: what I am doing on the night
Two weeks out. The systems are patched. The plans are written. Here is what I am actually doing on the 31st, and the small list of things I am still slightly worried about.
A small note on humility
An off-cadence post. After six months of confident writing about defensive computing, a reflection on the limits of my own current understanding and the things I have written about that I am no longer sure I had right.
Looking ahead to 1999
A short note about the year ahead. The shape of the things I expect to spend my evenings reading about, and the open question of how this all changes when the calendar finally turns to 2000.
A year of Slackware
Looking back on twelve months of running a Slackware box and trying to learn computer security through it. The end-of-year notes I want to remember.
First post — why I am writing this down
A birthday resolution, a borrowed modem, and a Slackware floppy stack. The opening note for what I am calling a notebook of practice — written so that I remember.