Fridge, bed and IoT

Last Thursday I had a problem with my bed. It broke. I've asked for a repair, but no one was able to fix it on Friday. So, until Monday, I was sleeping with the mattress on the floor. I was also having troubles with the fact that there are not enough space in the fridge.

Well, a friend of mine just changed place and I got myself a new bed and a new fridge. When you have friends...

And about classes, I'm having a blast. Every day I learn more and more. And I can't say I'm not happy about it. Just see what I've been doing in classes.

Schiev, Bike and Portugal

Fall break is one week only, and it's gone. Since I'm doing classes worth 18 ECTs and don't have Project class (and this week is fully dedicated to Project!), I have another free week. How boring! :)
There is not too much to talk about Erasmus these days... So, I'll say some random things about last week.

Schiev
I've been listening to Zamilska and noticed she would be playing in Brussels in a festival Schiev.
Since I'm in Bruges and not Brussels, I had to take a train. The cool things are: each train trip cost only 5€, and it is 40 minutes away. (Can you imagine going from Porto to Lisbon for only €5 ?)

Bicycle
After three weeks of recovery and 70€ later, I'm ready to take my repaired bike again. In fact, all this post was written in the city center.
Almost had another accident today, though. With the autumn season, leafs fall from trees and lay on the ground. Leafs, rain and brakes. Guess what could happen...

Portugal
Portugal had elections on October, 4th. One month later, Portugal had a government. Yesterday, they were kicked out of government. Why? Because left-wing parties joined forces to kick the government out. (Quick reminder: Communist party wants Portugal to leave the European Union and get back to our old currency, Escudo. How proud :) )

Fall break

In Flanders, there is a fall break for one week. That being said, no classes for this week and a lot of travels have happened so far. I've met with an old friend of mine and went to travel four cities: Oostende, Kortrijk, Lille and Brussels.

Oostende is located near the seashore. On weekends, trains to Oostende from Bruges cost only five euros for both trips. Nothing better than being on the beach, enjoying the sun and only thirty-five minutes away.

Kortrijk is near the border with France. From Kortrijk, we can take a thirty-minute train to Lille, that costs about six euros. I've seen some places, but the most amazing thing that I've seen was the contemporary art exhibition "tu dois changer ta vie!" (You must change your life!) that explored the idea of Renaissance - from brain (binaural beats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats ) ) to daily life (random situations in someone's life; different people playing music in different locations) to the unknown/unexplainable (myth-based animals, fake mirrors). Four euros for this exhibition for under 26. (I really recommend this exhibition. I spent an amazing amount of two hours there.)

"Some books act as electroshock:
they turn our lives upside down,
helping us define who we are as a person.
There are books that have the power to change our lives!"


Well, I'm spending too much time now in this post. I'm just going back to my assignments due next week.

Amsterdam

If you're going to be judgemental, stop right away! Go back to facebook.

On Saturday, I began my first trip to Amsterdam. Fourteen international students and I went on a 4-hour long train trip in which we changed trains in Antwerp and Rotterdam. Our room was booked through AirBnB. For 2 people, we paid €115.

As an overview, I think that this city is the most liberal city I've been: same sex marriage, soft drugs, and hookers are allowed by law.

At McDonald's, I tried a milkshake.  We were in the so acclaimed coffee shops, where we can buy and smoke weed as long as we're eighteen and for a maximum of 5 grams. We were in a sex museum where every kind of fetish we're exposed. We were in a hemp museum where we could learn about the history of Marijuana, the products made with it and the history of the liberal laws. As you go to the red light district, you would be amazed how the sex business works.

There is also live porn shows and condom shops, but we haven't been there... There is more that I can tell about it, but it is better for you to go see for yourself.

Photos:

What happened?

"What happened?", everyone I've met in the past days have asked me.

"bicycle broke. Stering wheel and wheel went into different directions and fell on the ground", my answer.

And that's it.

Backstory: Friday I lost my ultrabook's charger. Didn't know where it was. Maybe in a classroom, maybe in another one. Maybe someone stole it, maybe someone took it. Either way, I had to had a charger to work on the weekend. Saturday morning went to Media Markt in a 5 km bicycle ride. After getting home, the charger I just bought didn't match my ultrabook needs. Time to go back to Media Markt to get a refund. Got the money back and got home. While thinking where I could buy a Samsung charger and talking with friends, I realized that FNAC might have a charger and it is open on saturday. Time to go to city center get my charger to work in the weekend!

On my way to city center, going under a tunnel, my bicycle broke. Stering wheel and wheel went into different directions and fell on the ground. After five minutes of pain and not knowing how bad I was, someone called the energency number, got in an ambulance and headed to the hospital. After two hours filling forms and taking x-rays on my right hand, a nurse took care of my wounds. One hour later, I was home. Outcome: Broken bicycle, broken glasses, lost money and didn't get my charger back.

When I checked my email account later that day, saw a message from a teacher saying that he has my charger. :)

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Some photos of this experience:

BruCON

Today I'll be talking about BruCON, a security conference hosted in Ghent for two days (October 8 and 9).

What do you expect in a security conference filled with professional hackers, security companies and students? Passwords being leaked live, hacking challenges, and an insecure feeling? Right! That's what really happened!

As an overview of BruCON, it was like this: free T-shirts, retro games (Duck hunt anyone?), hacking challenges (an IP address was all we knew), talks (some of them boring), workshops (learned a lot) and, last but not the least, Belgian beers.

On Thursday, I had planned to go to one workshop and all remaining talks. (In big events such as this, there's always different venues with different talks/workshops going at the same time; and you plan your own day.)

The first talk on Thursday was given by Chris Nickerson and it was called "Nightmares of a pentester", in another words, how to keep your systems secure. (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ufBtLw6QgY ) After a workshop on effective communication in a company, went for lunch where they were also having a DJ workshop with Count Ninjula and Keith Myers. (Amazing stuff!) For the evening, I was trying all talks on the main venue, but they weren't as good as I expected. So, I would go to a talk, left fifteen minutes later to have a chat with other students, teachers, companies and making sure I had some beer.

On Friday, after the not-so-interesting-talk-leave-the-room lesson, I choose to be in a 4-hour workshop named Hands-on Incident Response (with my Forensic Analysis teacher): we were given a compromised windows virtual machine. This was a set up pretending that we were playing the role of the information security guy in a company where one guy had been hacked. We only knew that one file was encrypted. Some time later, and after using different tools, we knew that this guy had a ransomware on his computer, he was surfing Russian porn website that downloaded the malware into his computer (Yes, just by accessing a website, you can get a virus on your computer!), we could read the Java code in which the malware was written and understand how this guy was infected. After three hours and a half, we were really close to solving the problem. In the end, no one other than my teacher was able to get the file decrypted. The feeling of accomplishment amused me. For the rest of the afternoon, I was talking, once again, with some security companies (got some business cards!), students and the Linux Security teacher.

Overall, the BruCON was a nice experience: No classes, all security students and teachers were there, and learned a lot about all different people I've met in the conference and the workshops.

The BruCON talks are online and can be found in here: https://www.youtube.com/user/brucontalks

Accomodation

In Porto, I used to have a big room for myself, a kitchen where I could cook, and 4 other people living with me. My internet connection was a commercial one and I could use my connection as I please. My commute time was about 15 minutes.

Now, in Bruges, I'm living in a dorm with about 25 other people (studying computer science, psychology and architecture), and we have a kitchen with no frying pan, pot or dishes. (Every student has to have their own.) This dorm is 2 minutes from the university by foot. My internet connection is university's internet and some services are unavailable, but has unlimited usage.

Quick overview of my place: I have a room for me, with a nice view for the sunset :) ; I have to use a shared bathroom with 25 other people; I can use the common kitchen but there are no pans and such to prepare my meals (I'm not being precise here. There is ONE pot that everyone uses, so, most of the time, I have to wait to get it clean.); we have an area with 6 nice sofas and a bunch of tables where we can socialize; There is a waste container and a place for the bikes just outside of the building.

I've been talking about how I don't really enjoy my place with other international students. I asked them what their rooms are like.

They have shared rooms (2 people per room), they have no sofas, and don't have a shared room where they can talk with other students. Their internet connection is limited to 50GB per month. Also, they don't have a waste container near their building but have a pickup system every Tuesday (if they fail to do it, or do it improperly they may get a 250€ fine).

What I mean with this post is that we shouldn't be so picky with the stuff we don't have. Be grateful and humble that you have a nice place.

Last but not the least, the accommodation costs €250 for both of these two examples.