Wǒ hěn hǎo, xièxie

Some time ago I had a peek into The Other Side and didn't take it any further - but maybe that's because I didn't have a purpose or reason to take it further but I couldn't see a reason to progress, so I didn't. It just came across like a hobbyists environment with a community of snobs driving progress.

Wind the clocks forward another year or more and the landscape is vastly different. I've moved on to learning about network security, information management and have trained myself to think like a black hat (a good defensive strategy). I'm working on some exams that will give me the foundation to absorb that within my work as an architect too and because of the nature of this research I've been working on Linux.

There's some aspects of Windows (e.g. restrictions on packet injection / tampering) which the Linux community seems to lambaste Microsoft for. To me - as a noob at least - it looks like this is by design for commercial reasons. Whatever the reason it just isn't feasible to do a lot of this research on Windows.

So I created VMs through Hyper-V and researched distributions and their capbilities, settling on Debian as my initial preference. It's used as a basis for a number of other flavours including Kali, Raspbian and Ubuntu. KDE is nice and the apt system makes sense to me at this stage.

But then, of course, you start discovering limitations in the virtualised environments leading to one conclusion: You need to deploy to hardware to gain direct interaction with that hardware (and mitigate problems with networking especially). I started beefing up my knowledge of networking stacks and how to analyse network traffic, creating sandbox WiFi networks on my test router and trying to see how to break them / break into them. I found that Kali was a great place to look at this as it contained all the tools and was designed to run OotB so stuck with that on a Pi B+ for a while.

After a while I was using Archimate to design the domains of our house network and started building a HIDS and IDPS, then a DNS server, then spent a bit of cash at ModMyPi getting all the bits I needed. I set up high-grade SSH keys and improved security - I may add a VPN server in the DMZ at some point too. I've got DD-Wrt on the inner router and a custom network set-up which provides additional protection for everyone in the house.

ATX Mid-tower was replaced and needed a new use. Stick a PiRack in there and all the cables.

I suddenly realised I'd become one of the hobbyists I'd turned my nose up years ago. Now our house provides media services so the kids can fire up a film of their choice on any Surface or XBox, iPhone or Windows Phone. We have network protection running in the background emailing me when it detects or fixes a problem. The kids came up with the idea of an underwater camera so they can see the fish even when they hide (yet to be designed and built). None of this involves a Windows server.

Of course I've made significant progress in my learning and research - the next pot of which will be a short study on effective WiFi passwords vs. advice from the pub - but as a by product I've gotten far more technical than I'd expected; you end up finding things to investigate that you'd never considered before and research topics or techniques far from the original purpose.

For example, I've moved my trust away from BitLocker and am testing alternatives, using local accounts for BAU and my Microsoft accounts for connected services (such as OneDrive and XBox). It's not about tin-foil hats, the X-Files or any part of government; it's just a simple case of protecting your assets against criminals or other similar attackers.

I went with Ubuntu because it is Debian-oriented and it seems to have the most support for things that Surface Pro needs. If Debian covered a lot of it I'd have just gone straight there. I don't like the whole Amazon / internet integrations on Unity; the volume buttons don't work; the SP pen buttons don't work; sometimes the left-mouse / pen touch / finger touch just stops responding at random. There's too many suggestions out there on the forums that don't explain what each command suggested actually does (do people just copy and paste these suggestions without understanding the implications first?).

Today is the first time I've used Windows in a week - I love Windows 8.1, especially on Surface Pro. It's beautifully designed, easy to use, makes the switch between keyboard-oriented and tablet seamlessly and OneNote /OneDrive / Office is pure brilliance in design and productivity. LibreOffice and Evolution do Office well but the UX is far clunkier. There is no OneNote outside of Windows and I miss the right click pen button (I only use a mouse on Ubuntu for apps that use context menus a lot). Office365 means I get proper Powerpoint instead of the terrible LibreOffice Impress. There's no Visio equivalent though I'm learning to use Camunda Modeller and Archimate instead. I can operate on client site without Windows now though.

For me Windows 10 is a disaster as it stands. They've ruined OneDrive (where is "Available Off-line Only" for files?) although are promising to rectify the situation and I think they've been led by too many Windows XP-ers in their UI-design-by-community instead of holding their ground and pushing 8.1 on to the next level. Continuum is awesome though - the new W10/Xbox dash is great (game streaming is by far the best add-on here), W10Phone looks superb and I hope they iron out the creases on W10. None of the privacy issues bothered me because you can turn off the telemetry services and disable the data sharing but the OS itself just doesn't feel as coherent or as well thought out as 8.1 on my SP3 or Windows Phone 8.1 on my Lumia.

I'm now in a position where I've had to remove Windows 10 from my replacement Surface Pro 3 as the software licensing service locked the whole machine out (Access Denied); despite this being the default build as supplied by Microsoft. USB boot won't work even after changing the UEFI settings to enable it - I suspect something to do with the Win10 installation - but I've now copied the 8.1 Enterprise installer to a new partition on the SP3 SSD and hacked the Grub2 bootloader to give me the option to boot from it and I'm going to get Windows dual booting on it for OneNote and firmware upgrades. Encrypted SD and data partitions allow sharing between OS-es and decent OpSec can ensure Windows only knows how to access one of those for transfer.

Phew. If you'd suggested and of that to me a year ago my eyes would have glazed over and I would have probably just sent the device back to manufacturer.

But the thing is I'm still afraid to install Win8.1 in case it fudges up all the work done installing and configuring Ubuntu. I know Windows will install its own boot-loader (I've modified the same on my desktop to add back the Ubuntu option enabling dual boot again). I like Ubuntu, Raspbian and Debian - I also like the Windows ecosystem and the journey is never over but I'm reaching the point where I have enough foundation to build on for the security architecture courses. In order to design an architecture or provide solid options for businesses I still feel it's beneficial to understand the inner workings.

It's good to be bilingual between Windows and Linux and none of this has been as difficult as learning Mandarin (as I originally thought it might be). It just sounded more tricky to get started than it was.

Science-Fact

Picture the scene: We've all had a few and are sitting in a pub garden in Cheltenham, talking about everything from Formula 1 and business to fish tanks. We've all done it.

Just bear in mind the Guinness-science Influence Scale™ ... After about 2 pints, having a wild stab at some scientific solution or how some new technology works is a must. After four pints, you've got your honourary doctorate in your pocket amongst the subway loyalty cards, odd five dollar bills and Irish Punts. You're just not wearing your labcoat today.

After eight pints you're practically giving lectures to lesser minds at CERN and need not be bothered with actual sober facts.

So eventually conversation turns to the Higgs-Boson 'god' particle, detours off into socio-political discussion about the theocracy of the southern United States, eventually meandering back to this new particle discovery.

Now the explanations start; we're all firing wildly - [please imagine a vodka induced slur on top of commentary] "It's like, it's like, when you're building a house, and the fire department turn up. No. Wait. Mortar. Yeh. That's it."

One of our group points out that her dad is a retired particle physicist and may possibly know better than us mere mortals.

Asking an actual expert is a long shot, granted, but worth a punt. So to the question "Can you explain what  this higgs-boson god particle is in only one text message?"

He replies:

"As I haven't kept up with particle physics I can only give you a few basic principals and guess about the Higgs boson. All matter is made up of fermions and bosons. You can only have one fermion in any one energy state but you can have multiple bosons, so fermions (e.g. a proton) provide the structure and bosons provide the forces of nature (eg photons are the agent of electromagnetic force which is responsible for most of what we perceive in the world...chemistry, light, electronics, etc). Most particles have a mass which can be converted to energy (E=mc squared) and their conglomerate mass makes them subject to gravity, a very weak force but obviously effective on cosmological scales. The big question is where does mass come from and the Higgs boson was postulated as being responsible for giving particles their mass. Hope that helps.
Love Dad xx
Can I get back to cooking my risotto now?"

Every single person in the conversation then exclaims that they were right all along.

That avenue of conversation securely closed, we resolved grand unified theory and the definitive history of life itself over chasers.

Thanks to Sezzle and Das Fletchenberger for the great night out (and lack of hangover this time).