This is the final Captain’s Log of 2020. I think I will keep doing this monthly but go me. I have managed this for 12 straight months.

The Good

10k Step Challenge – I have plodded 10 thousand steps a day. Every single day for over a year. The vast majority of that in a locked down flat. It has been a grind at times. But I am happy I have done that.

While several people have been great about my tweeting about this I have to give a special shout out to David Carson. In September I was at a low point as I was sick. I pithily put it out to the universe on Twitter that I was going to just lie down but they dropped a dash of encouragement at the exact right moment if you want to read the thread here:

Thanks to David I got the whole year done and so this video of the final steps on Christmas Eve is in part his responsibility:

150 active minutes a week challenge – December bit hard so my active minutes basically fell by the wayside as I focused on taking care of my family picking up some slack. We will get back to this after the chaos dies down in the new year. I have to set some new targets.

Audiobooks – A recommendation from the Stephanie Hill over at Ascent Cyber was to check out Social Engineering: the science of Human Hacking written by @humanhacker. I have never been into social engineering. I see its value (which can be huge) and understand the basics. Listening to this audiobook has removed some of the fog of war from the social engineering map and has been a worthwhile use of an audible credit. I would recommend it.

Weegiecast – I was invited by fuzz_sh and zephrfish to go onto their Podcast WeegieCast. This was my first ever podcast. It was fun. Though I think some bits of it are clunky now I have listened back to it. I am new to being recorded saying stuff so please forgive me. If you want to hear it then you can get to the links to it via the tweet thread linked below:

Christmas – with the miserable 2020 coming to a close it is worth taking a moment to grab hold of anything that is good and pure. We are each here for whatever time we have in this life. With whatever skills we can learn. Within whatever capabilities we can train our bodies to deliver. Some start with a shittier deck of cards but the player can overcome the odds in some respects.

2020 has had many of us walking up to the edge and peering over into the oblivion. Christmas serves as a circuit breaker for me most years where I unplug. This year I went for it. I ate rather a lot of ALDI’s Christmas related sweets and chocolates (you really should go there as zee Germans really know their confections). I haven’t been to a work Christmas do in years as I cannot travel so actually the remote nature was a nice change of pace:

Genuine Blog Posts – In December I dragged three actual blog posts out of my drafts folder:

• https://cornerpirate.com/2020/12/02/preload-or-gtfo-middling-users-over-tcp-443/
• https://cornerpirate.com/2020/12/16/api-testing-with-swurg-for-burp-suite/
• https://cornerpirate.com/2020/12/21/firefox-add-ons-that-you-actually-need/

I do enjoy blogging about technical things and that is the real mission of this blog overall. So December was actually a productive month for this site.

Music Time – I know I spam you all with this shit all the time but I do enjoy recording music even if it is on a mobile phone.

• Rudolph (the Red Team junior) – I was asked by two groups of lovely people to make a sort of novelty Christmas song which was actually pretty good to be asked for! Neither actually panned out but as it happened I delivered a report and had a spare 30 minutes to bash out a version of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer over lunch. I think it is notable for featuring me using several layers (not a hallmark of my silly ditties). Two guitars with different tones, my mouth drum :D, vocals, and even jingle bells via my Christmas Jumper’s embedded bells. Yes the pun is “SamT” instead of “Santa/Samty Clause”. Sam T is our Director of research and I love him:

• Merry Whatever – Appropriate for new years. A couple of points here. I have never had a piano lesson in my life. I got a keyboard about a year ago but quickly found out I had to hide the power cable or the kids basically refused to do anything BUT discordant noise experiments at maximum volume. Therefore I haven’t actually had time to practice. I bought a poster with the common Piano chords on it and fired into that early on Boxing day to achieve this:

In 2021 I can only guarantee more stupid songs because I get a kick out of them at least.

The Bad

A panic attack (late on Christmas Eve) which ensured I was exhausted for Christmas Day. Nothing much to write home about here I am getting ever better at spotting them coming, dealing with them in the moment, and recovering from them.

The kids didn’t sleep great so by the time I was downstairs with them at 7am I was a total mess of a human. Yelling at them for stupid things such as not eating their breakfasts etc. To be fair it is the biggest fight we have – around them not bloody eating. It just takes on a rather ludicrous dimension when you just want to get through the fucking meal to play games or do absolutely ANYTHING else. I’d look forward to a session of hammering molten nails through the tips of my fingers, if it just meant I didn’t have to fight over the next three bites of toast!

Seriously this was clusterfuck of a day. But after a full nights sleep I declared Boxing Day as Christmas mark 2 and we had an excellent time.

Highlights of the month