27th March - VTR Open Day
The annual VTR open day was today, and I was helping out at the Melbourne Perl Mongers stall as per usual. We did a lot of coding on-site for some 7-digit displays controlled via the parrallel port, with many thanks to Scotty for both the hardware and drivers.

It appears that programming retro hardware is much more impressive than flashy websites and graphics, so we had a steady stream of people wanting to find out more.

28th March - Portsea Pier
Went for a couple of dives off Portsea Pier with Jacinta. This was our first time diving in Victoria, so we were wearing quite a bit of neoprene, and consequently quite a lot of lead.

The first dive involved a lost weight belt upon entry to the water, and a lot of fumbling around to get it back. I swallowed some seawater and when we surfaced I was feeling pretty crook. I now know that ginger tablets before diving are a really good idea.

The second dive went a lot smoother, although we had a bit of a scare when a boat decided to go over the top of us.

On the dives we saw weedy seadragons (very cool), globefish (very cute), a clam, and numerous fish that I didn't recognise. I also discovered that shiny fishing flies work just as well at attracting divers as fish, and there was a moment of concern when a fishing line got snagged (not the hook, thankfully).

I was attacked by a large jellyfish but managed to escape by swimming like crazy.

The staff at Dive Victoria, who helped us out with gear, change rooms, and so on were extremely helpful. Full marks for customer management and satisfaction. We had our gear trollied back and forth to the pier, and almost everything done for us. Very nice.

29th March - Visiting Friends
An old high-school friend is back in Australia having spent some time in France. We caught up for both lunch and dinner, and discovered that Tam was as cool as she's always been. It's a bit strange having someone re-appear after 10 years of hardly seeing each other, only to dissapear back again overseas, but I had a fantastic time nonetheless.

Weddings
Zoe (my sister-in-law) and Ben (her now husband) got married today. Ian and Sofie are getting married tomorrow. It's a popular time of year to be getting married. ;)

Accountancy
At last, my joy of numbers has returned, a little bit of good techno and I'm making sure everything balances for the quarter...

Actually, I'm peeved at the amount of paper sitting on my desk, and clogging up my wallet, so I'm clearing it all out.

Banks and OTP
Apparently my bank offers an additional security mechanism on their internet banking facilities where account holders are issued with a device that generates one-time-passwords (OTP) for identification purposes. It appears to be time based, so one would assume that it's time-synchronised to the bank's computers, and also contains an account-specific shared secret. Enter a PIN, push a button, and get a token which is valid for that particular minute of the day.

The use of such a device changes internet banking from depending upon "something you know" (account number) and "something you know" (password), to the much more secure "something you know" (account number/password) and "something you own" (OTP device).

If all the banks moved to such a system then we could expect the incidence of password phishing for bank details to significantly decrease. Scammers could potentially harvest a single, short-lived token for an account, but would be unable to recover the physical device itself. The would significantly reduce the value of an account to an attacker.

It appears the bank hardly mentions this additional security mechanism to standard clients because they charge $99 for the device in question, and most clients are likely to complain and claim they can go to a different bank which doesn't need OTP technology for internet banking.

I'm comforted that banks are providing these facilities to their customers.

Conferences
My tutorial on Perl Security has been accepted to the SAGE-AU 2004 Conference. Hurrah.

Course development
Work doesn't get much better than this. I'm listening to some superbly remixed tunes (thanks di.fm), drinking a hot cup of english breakfast tea, relaxing comfortably in my bedroom with a cute rabbit to keep me company while I prepare slides and play with Google's image search to find strange and interesting images.