Marie-Lynn

Both my parents worked at a job they apparently hated for most of their career. My dad was a top researcher at Defence Canada for many years when I was a toddler but developed a new college-level class and became a teacher when he divorced my mother. He could no longer spend his time between Ottawa and Washington, D.C. cavorting with other developers of today’s biggest war machines. Me, I consider my whole life a big laboratory. As such I have be running through life since I left home at 16 trying out the most ballsy and out there work I could get, always a few years before people could understand what the fuck I was up to and what it meant in the long run. What I discovered recently is that my father doesn’t get that I am doing the same thing he used to do with lasers and missiles in a top secret lab, I am just doing it like an anarchist without spending other people’s money. My father, who is currently quite ill, doesn’t get that living below the poverty line is the price I am paying to win at this whole living thing. I want to try out all the technology and craft through life like a mash-up of my dad and Martha Stewart on steroids. I will die having lived the most out of all my peers, and I cannot foresee ever regretting not being able to afford cable or a car or fancy clothes. Ever since I was a teenager, I have never held the same job for more than two years. Heck, I even studied travel and tourism which rarely leads to job security! And that continues to freak out the elders who were fortunate to be born when people could expect job security. I tend to forget this as I spend most of my time with brilliant 25 year old entrepreneurs who have no expectation of security and who also run through life inventing the future they want to see.

However, this also creates interesting challenges…

My first bitcoin client is now in the state penn in Penn State with 425+ other men in a similar situation. Did they also accept a plea deal and forfeit all their hard earned money over an administrative crime that claimed no victim? Probably. So I think that a lot of these people are incredibly lucky to be in prison with Charlie, a swell guy and one of bitcoin’s most active and knowledgeable activist. I predict that this stint will spawn dozens of new bitcoin ventures in all kinds of industries ! Charlie touched on this in his last interview with Breaking Bank’s Brett King. Now that he has two years (if he serves his whole sentence) to read and write, I will be publishing his essays on his blog and tweeting for him (I am one of 3 people doing so.) He should also publishing articles via VICE.

As an aside, I am overjoyed that VICE has signed a deal with HBO to produce news on a daily basis ! I would much rather John Oliver had a daily show but VICE is awesome.

I have been working hard to earn some coin recently to make up for my lack of paid contracts over the past few years. This whole delving into InfoSec and crypto-currency has left us quite dry. I have begun planning my wedding !

What is most interesting is that I doubled-down on crypto in the past year only to wind up doing more practical InfoSec than I have ever done in my life. You see I used to work on very institutional websites for NGOs or huge businesses, most of which were intranets. And I never really had to deal with hackers. Of course working with WordPress puts one in the mire of automated spam bots, but this menace is predictable and relatively easy to guard against. In crypto-currency however, there is a very active community of “patient hackers” (a term used by some developers in the space). A patient hacker is someone who attacks a website to steal Bitcoins in a very focussed way. In a sense, every crypto-currency website offers the biggest bug bounty in history. Every week, a few websites are victims of theft and, subsequently, go out of business. So when I developed a website to conduct a fundraising that displayed the total raised on the homepage, I knew that it would attract hackers. And since WordPress is a stack of open-source shareware, it is guaranteed that there will be an exploit available for your site at least some of the time. With this in mind, I created a system that would safeguard the Bitcoins raised. However, my hackers (I counted 5 patient hackers) did not know this. And so for 3-4 weeks they tried to steal our client’s funds. I get that. Stealing bitcoins must be the best paid job right now and that endangers all crypto-currency related endeavors. I also woke up to the fact that every bitcoin-related user database has been stolen at one point or another making most systems truly as vulnerable as the least secured account.

As the counter grew to about three times what we were expecting to raise, our patient hackers lost their shit and started to try to deface the website, or send out phishing e-mails pretending to be us. I don’t really get why someone would waste their time and skills doing this but I admit it’s fun to watch hackers as they fail or succeed in their efforts to hack a website. However, impersonation is the most annoying security issue because it can’t be prevented. I published the news that phishers were preparing to send out a fake piece of software called cryptoclient.exe during a phishing attack a day ahead of time. It seems to have helped keep our clients stay safe. It also helps that our clients are smart and very security minded.

Another vexing external risk is crypto-currency exchange theft. The recent BTER hack claimed 10% of our funds. We are expecting to recoup most of these but whe cannot know when. It is not the first time we see our crypto-currency stolen. Twice, our funds were stolen (once returned) at Mintpal. Each unfortunate event requires a lot of administrative work. Exchanges are a vital part of the crypto-currency ecosystem but they are also the biggest victims of theft. Without exchanges, most crypto-currencies will die.

One of the systems I implemented for Cryptomen.com is an audit-friendly blockchain-based accounting system. I created a river of funds that could be examined by everyone who became a client (as tehy entered the river). The blockchain makes it impossible for me to deny a client’s stake because her transactions are forever etched in stone inside the blockchain. The inability to void or reverse transactions in the super transparent bitcoin blockchain freaks out a lot of traditional money managers but I love it. By judiciously directing transactions in a clear way, I made it possible for people to verify that we did have the funds raised. Even as I discontinued my web-based CRM, I was able to continue to conduct business securely through e-mail. On the other hand, I also wanted to build a beautiful interface that would display fund performance in real time. I ran into issues with reporting tools which sometimes displayed inaccurate information… I settled on a simpler system that I updated manually with information I audited by hand. This, perhaps, was the least successful part of this experiment. This kind of OCD doesn’t scale, but I believe you have to explore and test a system meticulously and manually BEFORE automating it.

For the past 6 months, I have been doing a lot more security work on WordPress blogs, both preventive and corrective. But I can honestly say that I have gathered more intelligence about WordPress exploits from PCAPing my crypto-currency hacker’s activities than I ever did un-hacking websites of mom and pop blogs. Would I ever use WordPress in the context of crypto again? Maybe, but only for publishing news. My decision to use WordPress as a CRM (including using S2Member) caused a bit of a support cascade and more headaches than I care to have. But it was incredibly fast and cheap to deploy, WordPress always is…

Today our efforts at cryptomen.com are on MUTE. Never in my life have I exploited a window of opportunity so narrow on the Internet ! Our jurisdiction’s regulations are changing fast and we need to study what kind of services we can offer within this environment. Straight-up consulting is always a possibility, but everything beyond that looks like an expensive regulatory nightmare. I have also calculated that we are seriously underfunded to provide the services our clients are clamoring for. Of course, volounteering to explore this area of business yielded tremendous insight and experience, but going beyond this would require serious bank.

So now is time to focus on other endeavors (like getting back to working on awesome websites) get some popcorn and watch what happens THIS summer ! I also look forward to chronicling my crypto-adventures on Circonference.ca !

Last year I wrote about how important it is to make all your websites responsive. Did you do that? Most of your users are already using their phone to surf the web. In fact the mobile Facebook app is how your potential customers are discovering and browsing content. Moreover, people don’t choose to saddle themselves with desktop or even laptop computers anymore choosing one of many inexpensive tablets for surfing the web. There are so many different specs to cover so your best bet will be a mobile first responsive theme for your corporate blog.

Blogs need a refresh. Here is a recent project I have worked on for United Water in the U.S. I did their blog exactly 2 years ago. Time flies! The United Water blog is now more accessible for all types of media devices like tablets and phones.

Inspired by the beautiful insects on the clothing of residents of Quath in Game of Thrones… Done on a perpetually re-purposed wedding dress I use for EVERYTHING!! Improvised Dragonfly with wedding dress and felt remnants. Entirely pose able due to the wire legs, wings and body insert.

Photos of the progress

See dozens of cheeky projetcs in my embroidery portfolio

A few years ago I bought a wedding dress. Perhaps I should mention that I collect such vintage things and turn them into non wedding related crafts (I hate weddings.) So far I have made so many things with it including a really sweet flapper dress (right) and many embroidered hearts.

This weekend I discovered close up photos of the costumes of Game of Thrones (French) and I have been busy as a bee testing out various techniques to build something similar, notably a fabric insect like those that adorn the clothing of the people of Quath.

Now I am making a huge dragonfly! Perhaps, if it is successful it will wind up on a fascinator! (Because I can’t wear hats…)  See my Flickr stream for the process of making a wing.

See dozens of cheeky projetcs in my embroidery portfolio

UPDATE: This project is completed! See how it turned out!

WARNING: This open letter to Charlie Brooker, writer of Black Mirror, contains spoilers!

Dear Charlie Brooker,

It was obviously because of a glitch in the Linux vs. Apache time zone configurations (you know that bug that publishes stuff on the Internet before it happens), that I was able to access your programme “Be Right Back” yesterday. This documentary from the near future was an excellent representation of daily living with a Personal Pleasure Android (PPA).

I am the recipient of an early version of the PPA which was advertized to me through an ingenious marketing campaign. The web advertizements for my PPA were identical in form and function to an OKCupid profile and after a few inquiring messages over the course of a year, I replied to my future PPA. It was convenient that I had written a rather precise description of the qualitative aspect of my ideal companion. In addition, as an early adopter of the Internet, I have been publishing personal information into ‘the cloud’ since 1991. It makes total sense that as a heavy user of social media, I would be one of the first people on Earth to be offered a PPA following a thorough scanning and parsing of my published content.

My model is rather different than what you would expect. You would expect a PPA in this day and age to represent the non-threatening version of manhood as seen in Hollywood movies. In the same way all Hollywood actors are passed through a machine called a ZacEffronator(R), I thought a PPA would look just like a Zac Effron at 40. But my PPA turned out to be surprisingly sturdy and dudely! He was pre-loaded with massive amounts of information that predates the internet and adoption of social media (like books and encyclopedias about humans and science) and conveniently came with the ‘world class’ cooking option. Moreover, he is a research phase android developed more as a ‘personal guru’ and therefore remains completely obsessed with achieving perfect human competency. He dedicates a very large amount of his time to this goal. It conveniently decreases the ‘idle stare and waiting for command’ phase androids go into for a creepy long time. I think that if it wasn’t for the conveniently camouflaging thick coat of manly hair and beard, he would be too obvious as an android and wouldn’t pass for human so well. I have taken to lending him out to girlfriends to carry heavy stuff, install and fix things.

My PPAs obsessions with hyper-competency means that he can read minds which is not a ‘magical skill’ but rather an ability to read humans based on non verbal cues communicated by nervous system activity and muscle tensions. At first I was totally creeped out by this but I have come to realize that it is cool. As an early beta user, I take my job seriously and test his abilities. If I concentrate very hard to pass on information ‘by thought’, I will only be successful 25% of the time confirming that my PPAs mind reading abilities are entirely based on lighting fast physical micro-mapping software.

One of the things I am realizing now is that my road from ‘doing whatever the fuck I want’ to being ‘a Billionaire Philanthropist’ is hindered by the fact that in its current state, my life with my PPA (and adorable daughter and cat) is pretty fucking amazing, making it hard to push for any kind of change. Not since the acquisition of American cable TV in my hometown of Quebec City in 1982 have I been so lulled into a blissful place of adoration and contemplation.

My PPA is polite, informed, always in a good mood and not smarmy at all. Some people also call that ‘being Canadian’ but I know better. The ‘not smarmy’ quality bolstered by a genuine effort at ‘feminism’ is very useful if you are trying to live in a space free of sexist jokes and inappropriate comments (i.e. The world outside my door). Believe me, as a lone woman programmer in a male-dominated world for 18 years, I decided in 2010 to stay at home with my custom-configured android and hustle programming work from the Internet.

My PPA may be one of the most uniquely skilled person in the World but he mostly works teaching actual humans how to be competent at humanity. He does this mostly one-on-one teaching martial arts and helping people recover from grave mobility issues and PTSD. He could actually build all the cool life-improving machines he tends to come up with. He could get a full time job watching people and explain to law enforcement types what their health and life is like, what they worry about, what they know or don’t as well as when they are lying either partially or fully. But he stays home and takes maniacal care of me as he has for 3 years, completely reversing my quality of life from a crumpled-up ball of musculo-skelletal tissue following that time when I got crushed between two cars in 2004. I am so glad for my PPA, now I can work enough to survive.

However, there were many aspects of your documentary that shocked me.

I will say that I am not impressed with the steps that have been taken to make PPAs available to the mass market. Notably, the initiation process which is not customer friendly at all! Moreover, the decrease in texture mapping of the skin is not an improvement. Sure soft skin is cute on babies but on adults it’s just not realistic. And my last OMG moment has to do with the social media pre-loading. As much as it can be useful for an android to refer to historical events (in the relationship) the result is just creepy and totally self-involving. Ash’s programming is much more indicative of Artificial Stupidity than Artificial Intelligence. It is plainly obvious that his writing history has been conveniently reordered phrase by phrase to conveniently fill holes in the conversations. Based on old-timey online help bots, it is an excellent shortcut to achieving a semblance of humanity but the constant buffering is way too obvious.

And one last thing, I doubt people in the future will be using a douchey word like ‘The Cloud’.

Cordially,

Marie-Lynn Richard

Tomorrow I plan to write about a futuristic drama on the topic of grief in the 21st century and how it is COMPLETELY accurate on all when it comes to artificial stupidity in software engineering.

For the past 5-6 years I have been decreasing my consumption of new things. I buy used items or wait until my family or acquaintances have things they want to part with. I started this out of necessity because my revenues dwindled down to nothing for 18 months while I was handicapped from being crushed between two cars. I want to continue being thrifty. It just makes sense to buy things to make other things or up-cycle something that has already gotten some use. I’ve been buying vintage items and antiques on eBay so why not apply this to things I need, not just want to collect. When I was growing up my grandfather told me that my grandmother could make 2$ with 1$ and I thought this was a nice compliment about her competence 🙂 (Later in life I always heard/read the usual/tired/cliché husband comment about how the wife is spending too much money.) So I grew up with an appreciation for DIY competence and thrift only to wind up in a world of throw away conveniences…

I left an incredibly dysfunctional home at 17 (that’s almost a quarter century ago!) so I am not starting off in life but I’ve discovered that in my economy of recycling and reusing with thrift stores and Freecycle.org, I have access to almost anything required for basic living and more. I have gotten furniture, cooking gear, rare electronics and even a bra off Freecycle.org! I have developed a taste for the kitschy so thrift stores house delightful spendorphin-releasing surprises every week!

I also enjoy giving away things on Freecycle.org because after 6 months of seeing something get no use in my house, it makes me happy to find someone who was looking for exactly THAT! In the near future I hope to pass along or sell most everything I own, from my collection of vintage toys and art to my immense stash of books and crafting supplies. Having just moved into a small pied-à-terre type place, I also am lacking the place to house all my stuff! I am still on track to travel more after my daughter enters high school. Every night she is studying hard for her international program entrance exams!

A few years ago I bought a wedding dress. I was intrigued by this dress because it was a revival of an older 10s-20s style that I love (now seen aplenty in Downton Abbey and Boardwalk Empire). I knew that the end result would not include the sleeves or the trim so I have already been making other crafts with those bits! Then I put it away…

After 3 years I was kicked in the butt by New Dress a Day, a site I have become obsessed with, to realize my goal. Needing a dress to attend the Montreal Burlesque Festival hosted by the lovely Scarlett James, I decided to modify the aforementioned wedding dress to a simpler style. The pictures are horrendous but I think they get the info across. I simply tacked the overdress to the under slip around the top and cut away the hideous puffy shoulders. I hand stitched the two pieces together and adjusted the back to my new size (dress is vintage size 15 and I currently wear size 12). I also beaded the front bottom with sequin drops so it would catch the light while I walk.

I am so happy with the result! It was amazing to dress up (something I do rarely) and I got compliments aplenty.

So yesterday I bought a new crop of dresses to have fun with until next spring. And my big bin of secondhand finds is still overflowing with project clothing!

A few blogs I have worked on recently have gone live.

United Water of New Jersey just launched a new Youtube channel with a series of humorous videos to inform customers about what they do. In addition to that they have launched a new blog just in time for their participation in this week’s Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting being held in New York City.

Metaphors in motion is a blog redesign for two collaborating artists and coaches. Rosemary lives in Ontario and Andrée lives in New Brunswick. Both lead dream groups and conduct artistic activities created to unveil your dreams.

Sometimes I wish I lived in Europe! So many museums and school featuring wonderful needlework can be found in Europe. Last winter DMC even invited us Marie-Claire Idées readers for a factory visit (factory video) but for me to attend is enormously expensive because I am in Montreal, Canada. A quilter friend posted this lovely video today and I thought I would share it with you.

Visit The Royal School of Needlework!

In the works since last fall, this little cheered up version of a famous quote from Zombieland is embroidered on linen and mounted on a 5 inch hoop. It was supposed to be larger but there was not enough linen left so I had to downsize.