Archive for July, 2006

Against voting computers

Monday, July 31st, 2006

It is not only the lock industry that we upset from time to time.

Recently Rop Gonggrijp and myself decided to set up a campaign against
voting per black-box computer in The Netherlands. The campaign is
already a success. Instead of calling them ‘voting machines’ now
everybody is talking about ‘voting computers’. Because that is what
they are: computers. And we all know computers can make mistakes and
can be manipulated. So we want the paper ballots back!

We are retrieving documents from Dutch Government concerning voting
computers trough ‘WOB‘, the Dutch FOIA. Documents we have retrieved
are already on our site. It now seems the Dutch producer of Black-Box
voting computers SDU is unhappy about some of them. And they should be
because they clearly show voting per computer is more expensive and
less reliable. Introducing voting computers in Amsterdam was 1 million
euro more expensive compared to voting on paper ballots. A lousy 3
euro per vote extra for a completely non-transparent system.
Wonderful.

But tough luck for them… The information remains on our site and
(worst of all) is generating a lot of publicity and awareness…

 
gris

Our site is written fully in Dutch, including a comic by Koen
Hottentot. Even without understanding Dutch I think you will
like it and get the point.

Lockpick Village

Friday, July 28th, 2006

At lockpick village you can learn the art of lockpicking and other clever way to bypass locks.

Maybe one day there will be a real lockpick village on this planet.
For now it is a mobile village, that travels from conference to
conference. The village does get more professional over time and so do
the people that run it. Thanks to people like Eric Michaud, Eric
Schmiedl, LSI, Renderman, Deviant Ollam and many others the Hope
number Six lockpick village was a great success.

For those who missed it some exclusive video. If you are on this video
and would like to be edited out please send me a private message.

lockpick village hope number six 

(Video WindowsMedia, 17 Mb)

 

 Next stop for the mobile lockpick village is Defcon

13 song’s tool

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

It is a funny company name, 13 song’s tool.

But these Korean people know what they are doing. Their website is
simple and basic, and I only recognized the quality of their tools
when I met them a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas.

They developed some nice and elegant picktools for the most modern
‘laser track’ car locks. The tool on the images is for opening Opel locks.

opel pick by 13 songs tool

 
More close up, high resolution images of the tool can be found here (zip 4 Mb)

close up of 13 songs toool 

I like their design of the hollow car key with the drilled holes. This
will prevent you from from slipping between the levers while picking.

All I need now is some Opel locks to start practising …

Hope number six pickset

Sunday, July 23rd, 2006

The Hope number six conference in New York is great and it is a pitty
today is the last day.

The lockpick workshop with Marc Tobias went ok. Not the best ever (due
to bad video display) but it still went fine.

 

(Image by Jake Appelbaum)                       The conference deserves
a compliment for outsourcing the camera work to www.ncrsusa.com.
Trough magic these folks sell a DVD of the presentation the moment it
is finished. And for just $10. A great service. It is nice to hear the
lockpick workshop sells real well. I did not have time to visit all
the presentation I wanted to see so I bought some DVD’s myself.

At hope number six there are lots of nice people who are into locks,
and there even is a complete lockpick village set up. But more about
that later.

And I wanted to share the design of our new pickset. It was made to my
specifications, and people who know me will tell you I like
hook/finger picks. The more finger shapes and sizes the better. But
you can not live without rakes for speed-opening, so I threw in a
couple of them too. And four different size tensioner ends on the
classic Toool tensioners. 

hope number six pickset

The steel if the best material I have seen so far. Thin yet very strong.

Hope vistors seem happy with it. And so am I ….

Artikel: Sloten en het gemak van inbreken

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006

Eindelijk.

Na meer dan een jaar research verschijnt Sander Terbrugge’s
slagsleutel artikel in het technologietijdschrift ‘de ingenieur‘.

 part of article

Lees een voorproefje van: “Sloten en het gemak van inbreken”

Video: Mechanical key machines in the US

Sunday, July 16th, 2006

In Europe lots of locksmiths use computerized key cutting machines, or
machines to make one on one copies. I am currently visiting the US and
find that most locksmiths can not live without their mechanical key
punch machine
. This machine mechanically makes code cut keys instead
of one on one copies. The design of the machine is nice. It is very
easy to operate and from what I have heard and seen the device is very
accurate and fast.

 bluepunch by pro-lock

I just had to shoot some video of a friendly locksmith who was kind
enough to demonstrate his ‘Blue Punch key machine’ for you and me.

http://blackbag.toool.nl/video/bluepunch.wmv (5 minutes, 18 Mb)

New logo by Eric Schmiedl

Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

It’s not fair.

I have spent many hours fighting PhotoShop before I came up with a half decent logo.

And it only took Eric less then 45 minutes to make something that was much, much better.

Thanks Eric!

And I owe a big ‘Thank You’ to Elisa for setting up this weblog.

Thanks Elisa!

Article: Drumm Geminy lock

Monday, July 10th, 2006

Han Fey finished yet another article for the toool website.

This time he wrote about a special and exotic lock, the Drumm Geminy shield.

 image051.jpg

This lock actually is protecting the original lock in the door against
vandalism. It’s a very clever design and the article is well worth the read.

Han always spends a lot of time writing his articles and I am sure you
will enjoy it.

Other articles from his hand are:

Cutaway locks
Abloy classic (part1)
Abloy Disklock/Exec (part2)
Abloy Protec (part3)
Abloy special products (part4)
DOM IX dimple lock