Chris Gerling

What a whirlwind!

I’m a bit late to the punch again but as you all know, Hak5 signed an agreement with Revision 3 networks.  You can find the press release here.  This is huge for us, and lets us focus our efforts on getting the show made without having to worry about marketing or distribution.  We film, send the footage to Rev3, who then does their thing with it, and releases it for us.  The first episode will be September 8th, at midnight, followed by the second episode 2 days later on September 10th, at noon.  From then on, every single week there will be a new Hak5 show, always at noon on Wednesday.

I guess a benefit of not getting around to writing that until now is that we filmed 401 and 402 yesterday and already I can see the benefit of having Rev3 onboard with us.  Filming 2 episodes in one day seemed daunting, and initially was, but mainly because we hadn’t filmed an entire show in many months, so we had to spray a little WD40 and work out some kinks.  Once that was done, we were able to start rocking and rolling, and the technolust was strong.  Yesterday’s experience tells me that within a month or two, we will be so comfortable in creating the shows, that not only should we be able to complete our shooting faster, but everyone involved will be very comfortable with one another, and it will show when we throw back and forth to each set.

One problem with the way things were done before, was that we were trying to shoot a good hour or more of stuff one weekend a month.  This, along with some procrastination, had us waiting until the weekend before the 5th each month to shoot everything and edit it to get it out the door.  You would think that switching to a weekly release format would be too much for us to handle, but the opposite is true, and here’s why:

• Totally redesigned set:  There are now 3 different sets in the house.  The “China” set in the corner, the “main” set on the same wall the monolith used to be, and then the “side” set (I apologize if I don’t know the official names for these sets, it just isn’t something my brain cares to remember) which is usually where I will be, along with any guests we have.
• Segment schedule, calendar, and scratchpad.  We now have dedicated documents that we can all go in and edit that have the segment listing for all of the upcoming shoots, who is doing what, how long their segment is roughly going to be, along with notes, links, and all that good stuff.  We had a mailing list before, but this time we’re serious about it and everyone is participating and communicating much more effectively.
• Experience:  Darren, Matt, Paul are the seasoned warriors of this trade and it really helps.  I’m inching along and getting better, and I think it showed last night when I did my segment.  I was the most comfortable in front of the camera than I had ever been before.  Standing in with Matt on his segment was still something I need to get better at though, in terms of asking questions and taking charge of the flow, as a “watson” seems to have to do.  Christine and Shannon are picking this stuff up extremely well, and probably have a better camera presence than I do, of course they’re social creatures.

I’m very much looking forward to these next 2 years.  There is a TON of good content lined up, and we’re eager to show it to all of you!

  We recorded Ep 5 last night, and will hopefully have it out faster than last time.  I experimented with using logmein.com to remotely connect to my desktop at home, and using an alternate Skype name added into our conference call, recorded a backup steam with MX Skype Recorder.  I stopped the recording at around 1 hour 40 mins (the show isn’t that long.. haha) and the file was around 1 gig.  The quality blew away my expectations, if after editing it sounds good enough we might forego having folks record on their end (although it may be a good backup plan should the world explode), and may result in faster turnaround.

I had the crew down last weekend and we did the traditional Rock Band stuff, but also spent awhile at the beach, as well as Jillian’s arcade at the Waterside in Norfolk.  I hope to always have friends like these throughout my life.

In other news, Christine’s moving in this weekend, I’ll be driving up tomorrow and after a farewell party at her apartment we’ll be packing every last thing she owns into both of our vehicles.  Some would say it’ll be an interesting change, but I can’t really say that considering how much time we’ve spent together over the last 10+ months.  I’m very much looking forward to not having to drive 4-5 hours every other weekend, at least, alone.

Here are some recent pictures:

Head on over to http://www.securabit.com to listen to episode 4.  We had a few audio hiccups, but overall I think it came out great.

We have forums/IRC up as well, and hope the community starts building up.

I’m pretty happy with what we’ve managed to do with the SecuraBit show so far.  Other than some audio issues and getting too drunk, I think we’re on the right track.  For the next show I plan on changing the format slightly to have a better flow to things.  I think the correct mix of alcohol to show was Ep 2 though.

I do still manage to jump on Tabula Rasa here and there, although my subscription will be ending soon and I won’t be renewing.  Another MMO bites the dust for me, I can never actually keep playing the things for any length of time, and when I do it’s an hour a week if I am lucky.

The job search is on.  I think one of the more important things for me when I look at companies is what sort of management structure is in place for what they are doing, how well communication flows up and down, and whether there’s been any thought put into the actual environment people work in.  I wouldn’t mind getting into something with a lot of R&D-esque work, provided there was a proper setup for it, space/equipment/etc.

Christine will be moving down soon, which should make the summer a lot more fun, and probably less costly on gas as well.  

Head on over to http://www.securabit.com to check out episode 2 of our show.  It should be quite the riot, and far more entertaining than the first.

Please leave feedback if you have any. 

We’re recording Ep 2 tonight, slight possiblity of live streaming, and we’ll get that out to everyone if we do.  We have some interesting topics lined up, and if we’ve figured out our audio like I think we have, Chris Mills will be able to join us.

There’s also a contest we have going on to come up with a good slogan for which we’re giving away a yubikey.  Head over to http://www.securabit.com!

 I’m going to be meeting up with my friend Anthony this week to do a pilot show for the security oriented “podcast” I want to fool around with.  We’re still trying to nail down a format that will be unique enough for me to be satisfied, as well as the length, but I think that will all come together soon.  He has some hosting for the site I want to put together for it, but there are some issues to iron out with that before we can go public with the site/show.  Regardless of whether or not that gets figured out there will be a site/forums to go along with the show when we launch it.

This past weekend I did the visiting Christine routine up in MD.  We did the 105 degree variant of Yoga on Friday, and that was sure something.  90 minutes of sweating, stretching, and slurping down water so you don’t pass out.  I probably wasn’t the best candidate for it because I am a bit out of shape, but I did feel pretty damn good afterwards.  The teacher could’ve been a little nicer, as we had a totalitarian dominatrix it felt like.  You can find a yoga mat/towel for under 40 bucks combined in most places.  It was $8 per person for the actual session where we went.  A gym membership is still a better deal for general workouts.

While I was up there we went to the Orioles vs Yankees game on Saturday, where Baltimore triumphed 6-0.  There was nearly a fight in front of us where about 25-30 people got ejected from the game after at least 5 cops showed up.  It would’ve been 5 vs 20ish though, which would not have been very pretty.  I guess it’s quite a rivalry, although I wouldn’t know as I don’t really follow baseball.

If there’s filming this coming weekend for Hak5 3×10 I will most likely be doing some more reverse engineering type stuff.  I’m going to see if I can’t get what I have in mind working. 

So the live show was interesting Sat.  Thanks for all that tuned in.  I need a better way to manage the incoming callers and stuff

I’m listening to dubstep, an offshoot of my buddy Greg’s freshsets site that has listeners this time around.  Really good music.  Check em out at http://www.dubterrain.net/

In other news, I won’t be able to go to Defcon this year.  So I will likely see all the security types at Shmoocon once again next year.

I just got done doing a podcast with the guys at secthis.com, whom I met at Shmoocon this past weekend (although there were so many faces and once you have a few drinks it’s a little hard to remember that many faces) which ran about an hour.  I had a lot of fun discussing a variety of issues with them.  I’m glad they let me connect up and throw in my 2 cents.

Once it’s all edited up you’ll find it at http://www.secthis.com.