No, the blog is not dead! I have just been really busy. This post is mostly an update on what I have been up to.

So what have I been up to? Well, apart from all the regular duties a life entails, it's three things:

• The Matasano crypto challenges!
• I've started a podcast!
• I'm bootstrapping a start up!

Each of these things has conspired to interfere with a regular blogging regime. Let me explain a little about each.

Matasano Crypto Challenges!

For those of you who are not aware of Matasano I'll let you check them out here. I have followed these guys for a long time, mostly in admiration and jealousy (just read their careers page to understand why). I also follow the commentary of one of their esteemed co-founders @tqbf who happens to be a great commenter on hacker news. A lot of his posts are quite interesting and I seem to learn something new everytime I read one.

While browsing hacker news one day I stumbled upon a blog post which detailed an account of undertaking the Matasano Crypto Challenges (The blog post is here and is quite good). Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, I was hooked. So far I have spent about 20+ hours on the challenges and am currently up to round 3, question 21ish. I decided to undertake these problems in python, mostly as a way of solidifying my knowledge of a language I am relatively new too.

I am hoping to find time to finish the 3rd set at least and I highly reccommend everyone who is interested in programming, security, cryptography or learning new things take up the challenge, it is extremely rewarding.

They do not want people to post their solutions so I wont. But if anyone wants to chat about the problems themselves or compare notes/solutions I would be very glad too. I currently only know one other person doing them and would love to share and speak with more.

I've Started a podcast!

So this one is exciting, myself along with two other programmers based in Brisbane (@darrenrogan and @benedwinmorgan) have started a podcast! The podcast is mostly about tech news, programming and the meetup scene is Brisbane, but may touch on any number of things that interest us.

It is titled Hack and Heckle and the website is at (www.hackandheckle.com). Please check us out and have a listen, we need feedback and questions! We are also hoping to interview some local tech notables, so if you have any suggestions let us know.

I'm bootstrapping a side project!

The final and certainly most significant thing that has begun to develop is the beginning of a side project.

Currently I am the sole backend engineer and have been using and enjoying Django + the very cool Django REST Framework deployed to Amazon Web Services I have also been helping out in the frontend for which we are using Ember.js. Currently we arn't speaking about it in public as we are in full development but stay tuned as there may be more news to follow. I will at least attempt to chronicle my use of the technologies.