After two weeks, I’ve left Kigamboni behind (for now) and started to travel north-west. First stop: Usambara mountains. A friend recommended a good guide, Subira from Kigamboni-Eco-Cultural Tours. She is native to the Usambara region, and you can reach her via phone/WhatsApp at +255627944103 or via email at kigamboniecoculturaltours@gmail.com. Here’s some of our impressions… Bus …
Author Archives: michael
Kite Kigamboni [en]
I’ve brought my kite equipment to Tanzania, so I can do some kiting over on Zanzibar in a couple of weeks. Originally I didn’t plan to kite on the mainland. But when visiting the beach in Kigamboni, I was happy to realize that it was somewhat windy. I didn’t see any other kiters or wind …
Africa! [en]
I’m gonna be in Tanzania for the next few weeks. This is my first time in Sub-Saharan Afrika. Let’s hope that I don’t turn into this mamafat guy. I’ve arrived almost 2 weeks ago and I’ve been staying with a friend in Kigamboni. That’s a suburb of Dar es Salaam, but separated from the city …
Fall of Civilizations [en]
A while ago, the YouTube algorithm suggested an episode of the Fall of Civilizations podcast. Not exactly sure why, because I rarely watch history topics online. (I do sometimes read up on history topics on Wikipedia, so maybe that’s why? Although I cannot see any obvious 3rd-party tracking code on Wikipedia.) Even more rarely do …
DIN vs Denkmalschutz [en]
The most German thing I’ve seen in a while: The stairs are closed, because the steps do not comply to the DIN standard.But they cannot be reconstructed, because they are under a preservation order. That’s almost as German as Stackenblochen, but probably more authentic.
XSS Demo [en]
Finally some good use for my new infrastructure. I’ve had this small Angular app lying around, which I wrote for a presentation/demo on XSS a couple of years ago. So far, I’ve run it locally to demonstrate XSS vulnerabilities and how to exploit them. Now I have a place to put it and share it …
The B in BYOK stands for Bullshit [en]
I’ve recently encountered someone, who insisted on a Bring-Your-Own-Key (BYOK) setup for compliance reason. I’ve always been skeptical about that and I didn’t have to search long for confirmation. This is what the Wikipedia article on BYOK has to say: […] a cloud computing security marketing model […] […] gives the enterprise the perceived control …
Let’s Revoke! [en]
Getting TLS certificates from Let’s Encrypt is easy, but that’s just part of the story. It may sound paranoid, but being able to revoke certs is almost equally important. The premise is that there’s always a chance that your private keys will leak. Maybe it will never happen to me, but it will eventually happen …
Let’s Encrypt! [en]
… is where I’m getting the TLS certificates for this blog nowadays (after moving away from CAcert). I’ve been using Let’s Encrypt at work now and then. Many colleagues in my department are heavy users and my employer is a sponsor. So I knew what to expect and how to get started. Nevertheless, here’s a …
Goodbye CAcert [en]
When I started this blog back in 2010, I wanted HTTPS, but I didn’t want to pay extra for it. Back then that wasn’t as easy as it is today. So I compromised and got my TLS certificates from CAcert. Problem was that almost no OS or browser vendor trusted their certs. Debian and Ubuntu …
OK, Boomer [en]
Looking for a web security challenge? I recommend this XSS Game. Frankly, I’ve even struggled with some of the “easy” warmups. Let alone the challenges. Luckily, they’ve published solutions, too. Kudos to Pwn()!
Die Stones leben noch [de]
… aber MCA ist tot. Keith Flint ist tot. Sebastian Hackert ist tot. Und jetzt ist auch noch einer meiner Lieblingsmoderatoren bei FM4 gestorben: Martin Blumenau. Er bleibt mir vor allem als Moderator der Wunschsendung FM4 Zimmerservice in Erinnerung. Er hatte da diesen gewissen Wiener Schmäh. (Zumindest erschien einen außenstehenden Piefke wie mir das so.) …
DNA replication lifehack [en]
I’ve recently posted about these talks on “DNA: The Code of Life” that I found. I really enjoyed them, even though most of the contents were not fundamentally new to me. However, I want to highlight one specific topic that I did learn, and that kinda blew my mind… I had not even been aware …
Biting my style [en]
So I’m working at a huge software company and in my department we have this nice tradition of lunch-talks. The company buys pizza and we all eat it, while one hungry person gives ~1h talk. (Well, that was before the pandemic, now everything is remote and we have to fend for ourselves.) Most of the …
It’s been a while [en]
My last post here has been over 4 years ago. I’ve really neglected this blog. Let’s see, if I can change that… Part of the problem was the rotten technology underneath. Even apart from WordPress. It was running on some weird virtual server at a local hosting provider. Weird, because it was neither full virtualization …
The xkcd guy nails it again [en]
This time, at the intersection of computer science (my occupation) and biology (my hobby): According to Randall, we’re still 2 years ahead of the hype cycle. Anyone willing to join me in switching to CRISPR/Cas9 by then? Update: Thinking about it, told you so.
April, April [de]
“Die Infrastrukturapokalypse geht weiter:” Leider ist selbst diese Notfallseite komplett unzuverlässig. (Daher auch kein besserer Deep-Link an dieser Stelle.) Meist bekommt man statt dessen nur zufällige Textschnipsel zu sehen. Befürchte fast, die Seite macht es nicht mehr lang über den 1. April hinaus.
So it has come to this… [en]
… I’m posting food recipes now. Next up is random pics of my food. Well, I have a couple of nice recipes lying around in text-files on my computer. This is my way of putting them in the cloud. Mostly for looking them up from anywhere. But I’m also willing to share;) So maybe there …
Thai Pumpkin Soup [en]
2 Onions 2 tbsp Olive Oil 2 tbsp Green Curry Paste 4 cups Vegetable Stock 2 Carrots 1 kg Pumpkin (peeled and seeded) 2 Kumara (a.k.a. sweet potato) 400 ml Coconut Cream 1 tbsp Soy Sauce Coriander Leaves Instructions Chop and sauté onions using olive oil. Add curry paste, boil and stir for 2-3 minutes. …
The weather in Tunisia [en]
So I’ve spent waiting for wind on the island of Djerba, Tunisia, for almost one week to no avail. (With one exception yesterday, that is, when I finally got the opportunity to go kite-surfing. For about 30 mins.) All forecasts for today looked equally bleak: around 5 knots in the early morning, afterwards nothing for …