Category: Oxford

Posts about living and studying in Oxford, the Oxford system, etc

Major vulnerability of mechanical locks

Open pin and tumbler lock, from Wikimedia

To those who retain faith in mechanical pin and tumbler locks, a bit of information on the bump key as a means of picking them may unsettle you. It’s a hot topic on many of the news aggregation sites online at the moment (Metafilter and Engadget 1 and 2, for instance), but those who don’t frequent such sites may find it helpful to know. Perhaps the biggest issue is that this technique does not produce signs of forced entry, which may cause problems when making insurance claims.

This Dutch television segment shows how absurdly easy it is to open even quite expensive locks using a key cut in a particular way, an object to whack it with, and no skill whatsoever. Definitely enough to make a person fearful for their laptop, music equipment, etc. That is especially true in an area that has as high a burglary rate as North Oxford. Just last night, Emily saw someone trying to get into her flat. Thankfully, the front door of our flat uses horizontally-oriented “dimple” keys (Mul-T-Lock brand), that are somewhat less vulnerable to this attack (see the last PDF linked at the bottom of this post). Even so, our internal doors, as well as basically all the ones in Wadham College, use the pin and tumbler design vulnerable to bumping. Here is another video on how to make and use a bump-key. Apparantly, anyone with a file, a reasonably steady hand, and a bit of time can make their own.

The alternatives generally advanced to get around such vulnerabilities are other sorts of mechanical locks, electronic access control systems, or systems that use both mechanical and electronic elements (a system used increasingly often in cars). While they do have problems of their own, electronic access control systems do have many appealing features. In particular, if one were to use low-cost RFID tags or simple swipe-cards with a pre-set code as an authentication token, it would be easy to maintain a database of allowed and disallowed keys. If you lost your keys, you could disable that one and issue yourself a new one. Likewise, temporary keys could be issued to people, and restrictions could be placed upon the hours at which certain keys could be used. Features like these are what make keycard based systems so appealing, as well as common in commercial settings.

The first downside of such conversion is cost: replacing locks is expensive. Secondly, such systems are open to other kinds of attacks that people may not understand as easily. Thirdly, if an electronic lock fails in a profound way (no longer responds to authentication tokens), you have little choice but to break down the door or saw through the frame and bolt. Once again, the nature of security as a perpetual trade-off is demonstrated.

More detailed information (PDF) on key bumping is available from Security.org. Also, from The Open Organization of Lockpickers (TOOOL) (PDF).

Early thesis fatigue

Most people in the program seem to be eyeing the thesis with a mixture of apprehension and regret. The difficulties of making an original contribution to an academic discipline are not to be underestimated. On the one hand, you can opt to find a distinct gap in the existing literature and fill it. The first problem with that is that you need to know the existing literature well. Secondly, you risk being pre-empted by someone else. Thirdly, it may not be a terribly interesting task to mechanically fill in a box that has essentially been defined by someone else.

An ambitious lot, most people in the program seem set on answering a big question. The biggest (like mine) are more a nebulous question-territory than a question itself. For this approach, the most demanding task is the generation of a precise question and an interesting argument. Everything beyond that is just argumentation and commentary, requiring effort but little vision.

Vision, indeed, is that essential commodity that everyone is seeking: whether in the pages of academic journals or those of novels, whether in the libraries of Oxford or the internship cubicles that line the corridors of power. May each of them find it, and thus have one more highly worthwhile achievement to file under the heading of ‘the Oxford M.Phil.’

Work and sleep

Celtic musical instrument

Having returned from Ireland, I am feeling rather physically and intellectually exhausted. While I have several solid days of work lying in various piles around my room, the energy required to begin tackling them hasn’t yet come together. It is going to need to do so quickly, since I am leaving for Vancouver in less than two weeks.

The first order of business is to rebuild my sleep schedule. I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep since August 14th. Once that is done, I can stop living from coffee cup to coffee cup. I can edit the chapter I need to, read the two untouched issues of The Economist that arrived in my inbox, process the re-scanned Scotland photos and put them online, have my Ireland photos developed and printed, write two letters to groups of family members, set upon the task of shortening the eternal fish paper, finish a timeline on the genesis of the Kyoto Protocol, sort out the finances for the Irish trip, read a half-dozen books, complete my student loan application, and buy birthday gifts for family members prior to my return. Oh, and there is always the thesis to think about.

I have also been thinking about future academic choices. Emily tells me that completing a D.Phil at Oxford would only involve another two years work. I gather that doing a PhD in the states would take about five years. That said, competition to get into the D.Phil program somewhat constrains what you can do your thesis on and how. These things, as well as whether to take a break between degrees and what to do during it, continue to orbit me life dwarf planets. A more well-slept mind will be better able to sort them out.

[Update: 30 August 2006] The following are among the items I must read:

  1. Bernstein’s The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism
  2. Karen Litfin’s Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation
  3. Mukund Rajan’s M.Phil thesis

Back in Oggs-Ford

Nick Ellan's cat Minko

Minko: the cat portrayed above, is a member of the Ellan family. For many years, he has also been dubbed ‘My General’ for reasons long forgotten. Of all the non-human creatures I am hoping to see in Vancouver, Minko tops the list.

I finished Joyce’s Dubliners while waiting for my plane today. It was enormously more comprehensible than other pieces of his I have read, but not particularly engaging. While it was interesting to see so many street and place names from my recent experience, these short stories weren’t quite to my taste. All told, I am enjoying my Wilde anthology more.

Returning home, I found more than forty emails in need of responses, a collection of letters from the student loan people, my official (free) Ubuntu Linux CDs, replacement scans for the Scotland photos, and other things besides. As always, returning from even a short break means rapidly lengthening to-do lists. For a trip as excellent as this one, it is naturally well worth it.

Sweetness in the belly

Puccino’s coffee shop, off Cornmarket Street in Oxford, makes an effort to be a distinctive place. One way in which it does so: humorous little messages written on the sugar packets. You see one that says something pleasantly absurd, like “Sprinkle onto shoulders of enemy,” so you drop it in some obscure pocket. My standard style of pants have seven.

That’s fine – the packet becomes a lump in a place you never notice… Until you get patted down at airport security, Gatwick. Then, having a lump of white powder with such instructions becomes something of a liability. Good thing you can assuage their fears with relative ease, though the obvious means of doing so might be a bit bad for your teeth.

Oxford summer theatrics

Amidst the drilling and pounding in Wadham today, I realized that Oxford University during the summer is much like a theatre between shows. The set undergoes modification and repair; the wiring and lighting gets tweaked and redone; and nearly everyone present is out of character. As such, it is unusually interesting for the kind of person who likes to learn how magic tricks are done, and unusually challenging for those who would rather not know.

Luckily, I fall within the first grouping. I suppose it is somewhat ironic that the great flood of tourists see the colleges while they are being sandblasted and re-paved, the quads while their grass is dying from the ban on lawn watering, and the gardens while they are kitted out as theatres for summer productions of Shakespeare and Wilde.

Perseid shower peaks tonight

Lost Lagoon, Vancouver

Taken during a walk with Astrid in late April 2005, this photo shows Lost Lagoon in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. Nearby, to the southeast, is Vancouver’s central urban district. Equally close, to the north and through the park, is the southern end of the Lions Gate Bridge to North Vancouver.

In an announcement particularly relevant to those who live outside of big cities, the Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak of intensity tonight. Generated from dust and fragments from comet Swift-Turtle, the Perseid shower occurs annually. The comet in question was discovered in 1862 and is notable for being the largest object that regularly approaches the earth.

The best time to see the shower is in the hours immediately before dawn, but there should be more than eighty meteors per hour visible to the naked eye for most of the night, for those in reasonably dark places. Because of the way in which the planet rotates, the rate at which the meteors appear is about twice as high right before dawn as it is shortly after sunset. This is because, at that time, the particular part of the planet’s surface where you are is both hidden from the sun and facing in the direction of its the planet’s around the sun. Because of that combination, the most visible collisions with material from the comet will occur.

The shower is called the Perseids because the meteors appear to be coming from the constellation Perseus. Those who are going out to watch may find it worthwhile to familiarize themselves with how the constellation looks and where in the sky it appears.

If anyone has a particularly dramatic experience, I would be glad to hear about it here. I continue to look up with dismay at the thick rain clouds over Oxford.

[Update: 13 August 2006] On account of the constant presence of rain clouds blocking the sky and reflecting back city light, I saw not a single meteor. I hope others did better.

Reading and Sin City

Vanier Park at sunset

I called the repair centre today and they said that a technician hasn’t even looked at my dust-laden digicam yet. They say they have a backlog of several weeks. As such, we are going to have to see how long I can keep finding suitable photos of the day in my archives. Within the collection that lives on my hard drive, most of the good photos have already been put online somewhere or other. Apologies to those diligent few who may have already tracked these down.

This photo was taken during the summer after my first year at UBC. It was taken in Vanier Park, near the Vancouver Planetarium.

Aside from zipping around on a number of administrative projects, today largely comprised sedate reading. I am two thirds of the way through John MacNeil’s Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century. I picked up a surplus hardback copy from the county library in excellent condition for £1. Mostly, it is familiar reading, though it may be useful to have a source to which so many stories I might tell in the thesis can be attributed.

Later in the evening, I watched Sin City with Kelly. The atmosphere of the film was definitely well-assembled, with good cinematography, costumes, and general verisimilitude. The plot is a triptych of very classic revenge tales: all bound up with underlying assumptions about roles people play and the duties that attach to them. Actually, the extent to which these stories are so automatically comprehensible makes you question the bases according to which you assign social expectations.

The most startling moment was near the end, when I finally realized why one character was so familiar looking; she is the same woman who played Rory in the many episodes of Gilmore Girls that I watched with Nick’s sisters over the years. Not quite the same as seeing the farmer from Babe become the hardbitten chief in L.A. Confidential, but a somewhat similar instance of contrast. To say more risks ruining plot elements. In essence, the film is well worth seeing. Because of the heavy visual focus, it would probably have been especially worthwhile to see in theaters.

Ka-Boom!

A few minutes ago, something happened above me that was exceptionally loud. I was wearing my Etymotic ER6i headphones with the foam eartips, which boast a 35 decibel reduction in ambient sound. In spite of them, the noise was painfully loud for several seconds.

I assume it was a supersonic patrol of figher aircraft, maintaining some defence of London, nearby, and other potential targets. Definitely unnerving.