Archive for November, 2009

Me on BNR radio today

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Some security company is big in the news here today. They hired a marketing company to do a security audit to prove hospitals need better security … even against terrorist threats.

Business news radio asked if I would be interested in talking with the director of the company on the radio. Of course I was interested and I think it turned out pretty well (8 minutes of streaming audio in Dutch).

Interesting times we live in … update on ELF/LockCon

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

The ELF conference in Turkey, First european lockpick championships, Lockcon … not to mention work and family life … it is a bit much at the moment…

So I took a rather dramatic step: I decided to officially take some time off from work. Meaning that from January 1st 2010, I will be no longer working full time for CryptoPhone and create some more time for the ELF conference and locks in general (although working at CryptoPhone remains my first priority). There already is a pile of requests for workshops, presentations and other lock related fun. Seems like 2010 is going to be an interesting year ….

I receive a lot of questions about LockCon and the ELF conference. People want to book flights early (while it is still cheap). If you do want to book please let me know (drop me a mail) and make sure to arrive in Istanbul on May 26 (or earlier) as LockCon will officially start on May 27 at 09:00 AM. And maybe (if we can get a lot of high quality content) we might change the opening of LockCon to May 26 20:00 PM. So please make sure you are in Istanbul by then….

On Friday May 28 the first official European lockpick championships will take place at the ELF conference ground. On Friday we will do the first rounds in the lockpicking, impressioning and safe dialing competitions, and on Saturday there will be the finals for these three disciplines. In the evening on Saturday the 29th the champions will be honored at the gala dinner. On Sunday evening most of us will travel back…

The biggest challenge we are currently facing is to find cheap places to sleep for the lockcon attendees. Istanbul is a nice place and in 2010 it is even the official european capital of culture. Meaning that all hotels are booked (or are not offering low prices) because it is ‘the place to be’. We are exploring options to get beds for a low price but can not make any promises yet…. work in progress …

To be continued shortly …

Strike three … Julian Hardt is at it again …

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Faithful readers of blackbag know that if I am neglecting my blog only when I am really busy. Somehow this always seems to happen at the end of the year (last year I even closed the blog for a couple of weeks). But I will not do that this time.

Julian Hardt ... unstopable?!?

Here is my delayed blogposting on the German ‘Handopening’ championships. It was won by … (you could have guessed it): Julian Hardt. Imagine: he won three out of five games he competed in to win a ticket to the ELF European lockpick championships and LockCon. I only hope for Julian he did not peak too early and will also win some prices in Turkey …

In the German games, it works a little different then in any other competition I know. The attendees need to bring their own lock to the competition and pick it in five minutes. If they succeed they are allowed to compete in the games and try to pick the locks from the other contestants. For these other locks they get fifteen minutes. If you did not pick a lock in this time you will get some extra seconds as a penalty added to the fifteen minutes. Julian brought an ASSA Twin 6000 to the games. Up to this date nobody has been able to open it besides Julian …

And since Julian won the handopening games, the ticket goes to the second place winner: Gerhard Hepperle. Gerhard is a very experienced picker who always ends up high in the list of champions. There will be an update on ‘Turkey’ real soon now. Hopefully within one week (two weeks max)….