Eileen and I were lucky enough to attend a cooking class at Dirty Apron recently. The class we were in was Perfect Pairings: Food & Wine pairing, and it was a delightful evening. We made four courses and enjoyed some beautiful wine.

So back in May someone I know mentioned a game about launching rockets and getting into orbit. I asked for more details, he told me about the Kerbal Space Program. Its a simulation (more than a classic game) where you design and launch rockets into orbit, on to the planet’s moon, and beyond into the solar system. I’ve been really busy getting my Kerbals into space, with orbital rendezvous, space stations, and getting rovers onto the Mun.

Best $23 spent in a long time!

We’ve been fans of The Walking Dead since episode 1 and have really enjoyed it. Tonight was the finale of season 3 and it was excellent. Much appreciate the great “no sappy happy ending” writing.

I am really glad to see “season 1 Rick” again – the optimistic yet realistic hero is what we need to see as a sharp contrast to both the general background as well as Carl (the homicidal maniac).

Yeah I’m not a believer in Carl’s speech about “kill or be killed” but introducing that conflict with his father is really great for the story arch. Should be interesting to see what happens in season 4.

And we are big fans of Talking Dead. Who would have imagined that you could make an hour long show about an hour long show? Its really entertaining and very well done. Tip of the hat to Chris Hardwick for putting together a really enjoyable program.

There is zero chance that I would click on this box on a web page. Neither should you.

Its very common for malware to do a bit of social engineering, trying to convince users to download a plugin or application to view special content (especially videos). Its a really bad idea. The most dangerous malware you might face will record every keystroke you make (including your passwords) and send those keystrokes off to someone ready to hijack your accounts. Another type of malicious software will encrypt your computer files and demand payment to release them. Ransomware. This stuff is tough to detect and tougher to get rid of.

Oh yeah, in case you forgot, I work for a company that is very interested in computer security.

Digging into the web page code it appears to be an ad generated from The Rubicon Project, an online advertising platform. Might be legit, but certainly doesn’t look like it, especially the gobs of script code that is attached to the iframe.

This was seen on a Cheezburger site (can’t remember which one). No sane person should ever click on that. Never, ever.

The best advice I can give is to keep your OS and applications up to date, disable Java applets in your browser, and never download programs or plugins from sites you didn’t explicitly visit. And of course never open those files sent to you in email even if it appears to be from a close friend or family member. Spoofing email accounts is a common social engineering trick.

Lastly if you use Windows, upgrade to Windows 7 or 8. If you us Mac OS X, upgrade to 10.7 or 10.8. Really.

The weekend before last we attended the Vintners Brunch event, part of the Vancouver International Wine Festival. This gave us the opportunity to taste delicious food paired with exquisite wines, from various restaurants around town. Here are some pictures of just a few of the treats.