You are used to me publishing something on this weblog every sunday (or when I am busy on Monday). Well … don’t worry, I will keep that up. But las weekend was a true demolition derby, and on sunday I was fully wrecked, I just could not write sooner. And I am still recovering (and very busy with my daytime job as I will fly to Dubai on Friday for a trade show).

First of all I would like to thank all that attended and helped out at LockCon! As always it was quite the experience and we did mange to make it the best Sneek event ever. And I am already wondering what we can offer next year….

For me the ultimate LockCon experience was the impressioning championships on Saturday evening. You might remember six weeks ago I finally managed to become ‘Meister’ at the German games in Cologne. And now my German friends were out for revenge (in a very sporty manner). SSDeV president Steffen Wernéry prepared packages filled with fifty blanks and practice locks, and send them out to the members that could help stop the Dutch invasion. The message to the members was clear: bring back the title to Germany! On top of that he offered the SSDeV member that would beat me and my record time (5:13 minutes) a rare and beautiful watch made by Abus in the shape of a discus lock. All this caused the games in Sneek to be the one with most participants ever (around 35?). And all the big names were there trying to win the title and watch.

As I wrote before, I did not lose any sleep over all this. The sleep I lost was about the many other worries as the event needed my full attention to bring it to a happy end. So I did not get a chance to practice impressioning at all and just had to rely on my basic skills. The only thing I could do was arrange an hour orso in private just before the games to do some sort of warming up (opening a few locks).

To keep a long story short: I won again! And again it was the first time ever a ‘non-German’ won a locksport game in the Netherlands (yes, that is a shame ;). In 5:32 I managed to open the lock. Second was lockpick legend Arthur Meister in six minutes and a little bit. The third person was André Matuschek in little over 15 minutes something. Fourth was Dr. Manfred Bölker and fifth was Eric Schmiedl (toool.US). Please excuse me for not having the exact times and people opening the lock present, but things have been pretty hectic here and I can’t find the notes I made …

What was really special is Steffen Wernéry showed the ultimate proof of true sportsmanship: He was kind enough to offer me my own bounty and gave me the Abus watch at the closing ceremonies on Sunday evening. A very nice gesture that I appreciate a lot! And since I like a little challenge, I am offering the watch myself now to the person who manages to win a game and break the speed record in one of the two 2009 impressioning games. To be continued …

And I apologize for being selfish and just write about the impressioning games for now. I will soon try to write a follow up on the unforgettable LockCon event, and report about the many presentation and Dutch Open lockpick games (Medeco locks in the finals). And Steffen Wernéry shot some spectacular video of the impressioning games. It will take him some time to edit it, but I am looking very forward to seeing and sharing it ….

But for now I just need to catch up lots of sleep ….

Pffftttt …. just a few days till the Essen Security show and LockCon, and I am already wasted. Lots of things are going right. And we got more support in organizing this event then ever before, but unfortunately there are also some things that don’t go right:

The worst one that gives me a small headache: the privileges we used to have at the hostel are melting away. A new and more expensive building, and new management that does not know us make life a little difficult. But we will all do our best to make the best of it.

Something else: St.John just mailed me about the Lab and Fee not in time for LockCon. He mailed: “The tools are now being made but unfortunately they won’t be ready for Sneek. I really tried my best but finding the right guys with the right machines took a bit of time. The tool we have designed is a pin and cam with changeable tips so that it can be used for quite a few different locks. Fingers crossed I will have a sample for Sneek (they are making the sample now and I have to ok it before the CNC production run), it should arrive any day this week. Finished items will likely arrive within the next 2-3 weeks. If you want I will send them out to the people who do the class as soon as I get them. This is the best I can do but if you think it is acceptable I think the people will be very happy as the design is very nice.”

Not to mention that for the last 5 hours orso, I have been trying to edit the video of the impression championships in Cologne. But somehow I run into black-magic voodoo bugs and can’t get the audio to be in sync. Very frustrating and I just made the decision to quit video-editing for now and just type this posting and share my feelings with you …

And about Lockcon: We will make the best of it, and I am convinced people will have a hell of a time! (as always …)

But personally I will be happy when it’s Sunday this time next week 😉

The more busy I am, the less time for you, loyal visitors of the blackbag weblog.

Most people think I am busy full time with organizing LockCon these days, but that is not true. More and more Han and I are being invited by people and organizations all around the globe, and this weekend was no exception. Sometimes we are invited by manufacturers to test their locks, or because we found a flaw in it, on other cases organizations want us to teach courses and classes. We traveled quite far this weekend, and had a very intense but interesting time.

The funny thing is all the people that invite us have something in common: they love to read the latest news on this blog, but prefer not to be mentioned on it.

It will be a great relief when we have LockCon in 10 days orso. An event we can write about in full 😉

We are getting a better and better idea about the safe-tech corner at LockCon. The latest suggestion from St. John Goldfinger is to have a small pin-and-cam(wmv) system made especially for the presentation at LockCon. This system will of course only open one specific kind of (popular UK) safe lock, and it will be ideal for study, demonstration and practicing the pin and cam system. The fee for this pin and cam tool will be 100 euro or less (including the safe lock). Of course there will be some of these tools be available to play with for people who can not afford to buy one or do not want to make the investment.

Time is running out, and preferably St. John, Paul and Jord would like to hear from you asap if you want to accept their offer for ‘lab and fee’.

What we also determined is what kind of locks we will use at the lockpick championships on sunday. This will be a mixture of popular Dutch locks. The locks were collected from Rob Zomer’s 24-hour lock service, and I will make sure the locks are clean and tested.

As I am busy with 1001 things … sorry for the short posting …

It is straight forward yet elegant … the new LockCon logo is here (thanks to Charlotte Wels):

The idea is to have LockCon t-shirt (and other merchandise) made, as well as a special edition t-shirt for people who do some volunteer jobs….

I was already given a ‘golden SSDeV’ pin because of my work in promoting locksport. But in general the only people wearing these pins are champions of one of the German locksport disciplines. And up till yesterday, nobody outside of SSDeV earned one that way….

For more then ten years German based SSDeV is organizing championships, and for all that time nobody outside their community managed to win one.

Until yesterday, when my dream came true. I finally won a German SSDeV game. In his case the impressioning championships (but frequent readers of this blog could have guessed that). And I really earned and deserved my golden pin the right way!

Besides winning the games, I also managed to break the ‘time record’ that was previously owned by Peter Danilov (05:35). I opened my lock in 05:13. And … in this time even managed to file two keys! My first key was cut too deep, so I had to remove it from my handle and change it for a new one. I still do not understand how I managed to file two keys and break the ‘fastest time’ record, but it for sure explains the blister on my finger.

Looking back on it, I must say I relatively quickly mastered impressioing. My first serious blogbosting dates from January 17, 2007. I admit I invested a lot of time, and must have files at least five hundred keys from that day on. The moment of pure bliss yesterday was worth the efforts …

For level of completeness: The second place went to Ronald Mayer in 10:51, followed by good old Arthur Meister in 10:52. That is only one second between the second and third place. Fourth place went to Dörthe Clemens who was really thrilled by opening her lock in 13:00. Fifth was the person I feared most at the beginning of the games: Dr. Manfred Bölker had an off day and opened his lock in 15:24. Sixth was André Matuschek in 38:40. Last one to open the lock in the 60 minute limit was Micheal H. in 43:54.

At the ceremonies, SSDeV president Steffen Wernéry publicly congratulated me and said he was very happy for me. One sentence later he said (with a smile) that the outcome of this event was a disgrace for the German organization. For the first time ever, a “non-SSDeV’er” became ‘Meister’. He promised ‘a nice reward’ for the person who would bring back the impressioning title to Germany at the Toool.nl organized LockCon event next month. In other words: there is a price on my head 😉 Well … I am not loosing any sleep over that. On the contrary, it is one of the biggest compliments I received in a long time.

Lets see if at LockCon this tradition of ‘non Germans’ winning lockpicking championships can be continued. I know for a fact we have some good (and fast) lockpickers at Toool.nl, and the list of highly skilled lockpickers coming from other countries is quite impressive too. And we all know it can be done now….

It was hard work, but the LockCon site is up. Most information is available now, and we will update regularly.

So visit http://www.lockcon.com to find out more about the event ….

Ok, domains are secured, so here is the name for the new event: LockCon
Another domain I collected is: blackbag.toool.nl 😉

Currently the toool.nl site is undergoing extreme maintenance. As LockCon will be part of this new and improved Toool.nl site, I am asking a little more of your patience….

And for those curious about the keyway king upgrade: there is progress …
(I think you can now see what the modification is going to be).

We filed the domain names for the event on Friday, but so far we have not gotten a confirmation yet.

So hopefully the site and schedule will go live tomorrow (Monday) ….

Organizing an event the size of the (formerly known) Dutch Open takes a lot of my time. So still no official updates on that, although the outlines are getting clearer and clearer by the minute….

I still receive a lot of feedback on my keyway king milling machine. Many people are curious what the modification is, and if the device is already in Amsterdam. I can be clear about that: it is still work in progress. My good friend modifying the devices sends me pictures from time to time. The idea behind that is to make some sort of ‘modification manual’ for other keyway king owners. The last image my friend mailed me was called ‘destruction‘ …. ahum … I assume it will take some time before the device will be in Barry’s blackbag lab. But knowing my friend, it will be worth to wait …

Furthermore I learned audio of all ‘last hope’ presentations is online now (for a little while already). A great (free!) service, allowing everybody to learn from the wonderful speakers and presentations. If you want to hear the story behind the ‘skin-pression’ image you see above, you can listen to the presentation by Han and me at the last hope in high quality MP3 and find out.

At DefCon I was interviewed (in Dutch) by Brenno de Winter from ‘ICT roddels‘ (ICT gossip). Click here to listen to the Dutch interview.