Tech Samurai - Honor, Principles, Results: Tokyo Rocks & Samurai Lessons Abound - Recap

Tech Samurai - Honor, Principles, Results: Tokyo Rocks & Samurai Lessons Abound - Recap

Tokyo Rocks & Samurai Lessons Abound - Recap

Japan Recap 30 March 2010
Well... today was... today. I will be positive.
Miscommunication, (for the 2nd time on this Japan adventure), was the root cause of missing our long-awaited "Samurai Sword Action" activity! I felt like crying. But I couldn't cry in front of the boys. I did vent for a couple of hours. But we did learn several lessons from today:

• Samurai are meticulous, and so if we want to catch the spirit of the Samurai, we need to be meticulous. That means we need to double-check all of the plans well in advance not trust what other people tell us. This trip was planned 4 months ago! All of the challenges have come down to execution of the plan.
• A family that prays together, plays together. My son woke up early enough and prayed. But he didn't wake me up. The night before, I planned on waking up,praying, and then checking the Samurai Sworn Action itinerary again. It actually had the correct time, which was different from what the tour-group told me. So that was the lesson God taught us, worship Him, on time, and the way will be easy.
• Move on. When you face a set back, yes, its good to talk it through to work it out of our systems. But then we need to move on. When we did finally let it all out, we got a call from InsideJapn Tours letting us know that they had found another Samurai experience activity in Osaka. YEAH! So although we missed the "Kill Bill" dude... we still get to learn the way of the Samurai. I forgive you InsideJapn Tours.
• Tokyo at night is great! We counted at least 5 areas that were like Time Square. Well, actually only 1 (Shibuya) that had all of the people, but 5-6 that had all of the bright lights and building-size advertisements like Time Square. But the whole city, seems very cool.

Tomorrow, insha Allah, we will catch Sushi breakfast, after Salatul Fajr, and then change hotels. Then we are planning on spending the day at Shinjuku, where they have the famous "people pushers" pushing people into the over-crowded trains! LOL.
Pray for us, we are praying for you. :)
btw... I know I promised pictures... we didn't make it to the electronic district today. Sorry. Insha Allah, tomorrow, I will try very hard to get pictures uploaded.

tokyo 1st 24 hours recap

Everyday that goes by, we are more convinced that we are just in a parallel universe. We are in New york, except everything is in Japanese! Oh yeah... and its a lot cleaner and the people are lot more calm and, well, kind.

Today's recap...

• We woke up and prayed the Muslim's morning prayer here in the hotel room.
• Got breakfast at the hotel restaurant. The food wasn't too bad, for runny eggs and pancakes. But tomorrow, we're definitely skipping the hotel's breakfast and we're going to try to do a sushi breakfast at Tokyo's famous Tukiji Fish Market.
• Although it was drizzling, it wasn't as cold as Sunday night when we arrived.
• We walked 5 minutes to the Asukusa Kannon Temple also known as the Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺) Temple. Besides the shrines to false deities (no offense intended but Buddha never said worship him or any other human) the temple was full of history, traditional Chinese architecture, and a cemetery garden.
• To battle the cold, we stopped at this quaint coffee shop called Sunny Cofee. The owners spoke a couple of words of English. But we were able to communicate that we wanted three hot chocolates. It was perfect from a taste and warmth perspective. It was just enough to chase away the samui (cold).
• Then we followed a different path towards the hotel. I designated Hassan Ibn as the official map-reader and location finder. Soloman is the official language guru. And me... well, I am coordinating :p
• We stumbled upon a department store called ROX. Behind it was mini-caged-soccer field, a bike parking lot, a building size arcade, and a 3-story casino. This, mind you, is within two blocks of the Temple!
• We then went to Akihabara where we marveled at the 6-story department store filled with electronics! They even had a bookstore in there. We didn't venture into the backstreets where, reportedly, the best deals on bootleg gear and anime (Japanese comics with a very adult male audience in mind). I forgot that the area had that stuff too... but fortunately, it wasn't "in your face". I was reminded later that the area has a lot of porn. Well... we didn't see it. Alhamdulillah. We did take our lunch at a Sushi restaurant who atmosphere was like Johnny Rockets.
• Before the day was over, we partook of the Shibuya shopping district, and the Maronuchi center. At the Marunouchi Building, we had dinner a at chic Chinese spot called "So Tired". The foot, ambiance, and service were all great and all of the waiters and waitresses spoke English! I was really impressed with one of the waitresses English... so much so that I concluded that she wasn't Japanese. And wouldn't you know it, she was a Korean student studying to be a translator (Korean, English, and Japanese).

Hopefully, I can get some pics up tomorrow. I guess I will have to go back to the Electronics district to get a new USB cable for my phone since it was liberated earlier (its a long story).
Tomorrow... Insha Allah, we get trained in the way of the Samurai from a the guy who did Kill Bil, Tetsuro Shimaguchi

We landed in Tokyo to fanfare.

We finally made it to Tokyo! It turned out that this was the 1st time that Emirates has flown into Tokyo Narita airport. They had a big ceremony and the media was there interviewing people. I got interviewed! How's that for a Japanese welcome!?

The driver arranged by our Tour company (InsideJapn.com) was great too. He spoke good English and he was patient with us. The Hotel (Asakusa Sunroute Hotel) is nice. Small... but nice. We had our first dinner out at a restaurant across the street from the hotel... we had a dish called "supa" It was like wheat noodles in miso soup with Chicken pieces. Delicious! It put Hassan Ibn right to sleep and Soloman went to sleep within 3 minutes! A world record!!!

Tokyo is cold! 4 degrees Celsius! Our 1st impression though... NYC with Japanese signs and people driving on the other side of the road. Asakusa, there area in tokyo where our hotel is, is very quite. The people seem friendly though.

Peace,
Hassan in Tokyo... chasing the spirit of the Samurai

Japan Hotels -Springtime in Japan 2010

Insha Allah, If I get a chance, I will, post a review of each of these hotels here.

• Tokyo - Asakusa Sunroute Hotel.
  
  
  We arrived last night. I think this hotel classifies as a capsule hotel. Meaning... the living space in the room is only about 12 feet by 12 feet. They fit three beds in the room! The bathroom is about 5 feet by 6 feet! But we read the reviews on tripadvisor.com before coming so we were prepared. THe staff is friendly. They cleaned our room while we were out... and apparently they liberated my usb to nokia cable. :( I guess they figured that I didn't need it! Good thing I left my laptop with the reception desk! ARGH. Alhamdulillah, I brought a traditional wall charger too with an all-in-one travel adapter. The room is definitely NOT a non-smoking room. But te 3rd hand smoke in the hotel is not as bad as the taxi (pronounced tack-a-see, in Japanese). Location-wise, this hotel is aw
  
• Tokyo - Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku.
• Yudanaka Onsen - Yudanaka Seifu-so.
• Osaka - Ark Hotel Osaka.
• Hakone - Ichinoyu Hatago Sengokuhara.
• Nagano - Zenkoji Tokugyobou.

Japan Trip Plans - Springbreak 2010

Insha Allah... we will eventually get to Japan. When we do, we have the following things planned:

• Taiko Lessons
• Sushi Breakfast at Tsukiji Fish Market
• Sightseeing In Tokyo
• Samurai Sword Action


The way of the samurai is one of the legends of ancient Japan which retains its romance and mystery to this day and the soul of a samurai was of course, in his sword. We are planning on trying to learn some of the basics of this ancient art, starting with basic movements, such as drawing, posing with, and swinging a sword. The two and a half hour session will be led by Tetsuro Shimaguchi, a master sword fight choreographer who is best known for his work on Quentin Tarrantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 (if you have seen the movie you are sure to remember the dramatic sword fight in an idyllic snowy Japanese garden between the Bride and O-Ren Ishii). After studying the basic moves we will see breathtaking choreographed sword fighting performed then we get to practice! We are going to try take videos. They will even let us put on the hakama, the traditional wear of the samurai.



• Bullet train rides
• Visit to the Japanese Alps
• Visit a Anime film production company - Studio Ghibli. Its like the going to 20th Century Fox or something.
  
• Hang out in Osaka
• Sightseeing In Kyoto
  
• Check out a Kyo Odori Geisha Dance show
• & last but not least.... Tokyo Disney
  

Please keep us in your prayers

Headed to the land of Samurai and Ninjas

OK... so we've been planning this trip to Japan for months. What happened to keep us from leaving the land of oil and Bedouins last night as planned? VISAS! So now I am stuck on the Saudi side of the King Fahd Causeway


But the Bahrain side of the causeway was oh so close...






OK... So let's study this situation and see what can be learned from it. I blame myself. I attempted to deal with things like a Ninja and not using my normal tedious, meticulous, thoroughly checked Samurai methods. ARGH!

Discouraged!

Excited about NAC

Notwithstanding that the Network admission control acronym N.A.C. actually is an Arabic slang that means, ummm, copulation, I am more excited about NAC today than I was when I started evaluating it a year ago. Today, we see a market with some very mature solutions being offered by mega companies like Juniper and niche players like Bradford & Advensys. My wish list of NAC features include the following:
* Support for 802.1x authentication to an out-of-band RADIUS server
* Multiple enforcement methods, not just VLAN ID (i.e. ACL's etc).
* Passive and active network profiling/classification of all devices that connect
* Central management interface to manage infrastructure and view all connected users and devices
* end-point compliance checker client (persistent and dissolvable)
* Integration with TNC IF-MAP

But the market rumblings do give one reason to pause. The following issues have me scratching my head and waiting for whats going to happen?
* The break-up of Aruba and Bradford Networks,
* 3Com/TippingPoint acquired by HP... but HP recently dumped its own NAC product to more closely work with Microsoft.
* McAfee getting into the OOB-NAC market

Security Flaws in Chrome

The techies (myself included) really jumped on Google's new browser, Chrome, as soon as it came out. However, maybe we should have waited to versions two or three. I say this due to the new security flaw (a buffer overflow) discovered in Chrome's "Save As" features. Researchers at the anti-virus company, Kaspersky discovered a bug in Chrome's rendering engine, WebKit. The security flaw becomes apparent when Java is installed. Since Almost all end-user systems have some form of Java installed, this basically means that just about everyone with Chrome is vulnerable. My rating... I would initially give Google 3 Samurai stars for meticulously studying security before release but I have to take one back since this discovery. Bottom line... until Google comes out with a fix, don't use the Save As feature unless you are on a trusted site.


UPDATE Sep 5 night GMT+3
I just read a more accurate story from ZDnet. Apparently, this wasn't the first security bug in Chrome. Not only that, Google has removed the link to download it it from their main Google splash page! That's a testament to the seriousness of the problem.
The ZDNET blog can be followed below.

Google Chrome vulnerabilities starting to pile up by ZDNet's Ryan Naraine -- [ UPDATE: See below for Google’s official response to these issues ] Security vulnerabilities in the new Google Chrome browser are beginning to pile up. Following our coverage of the carpet bombing combo threat and denial-of-service crashes, several readers have sent pointers to Chrome exploit code floating around the Web: First up is an automatic file download [...]

Security Experts Highlighted in Regional Newspaper

We're finally starting to form a Chapter in Dhahran of ISACA (previously known as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association) . below you will find a clip from an article from the Arab News.

New ISACA Chapter for Eastern Province
Molouk Y. Ba-Isa I Arab News — ALKHOBAR: The first organizational meeting of the ISACA Dhahran Chapter-in-Formation was hosted recently by Saudi Aramco. ISACA has a membership over 75,000 strong worldwide. Members live and work in more than 160 countries and cover a variety of professional IT-related positions — to name just a few, Information Security (IS) auditor, consultant, educator, IS security professional, regulator, chief information officer and internal auditor. Some are new to the field, others are at middle management levels and still others are in the most senior ranks. They work in nearly all industry categories, including financial and banking, public accounting, government and the public sector, utilities and manufacturing. Previously known as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, ISACA now goes by its acronym only, to reflect the broad range of IT governance professionals it serves.

...

Juniper STRM Faces Technical Challenges in EMEA

by Tech Samurai, June 24, 2008

(Riyadh) - Although the Q1 Labs QRadar (Juniper Security Threat and Risk Management - STRM ) tool looks promising, from a vision perspective, there are several items that, if not in the confirmed road map for delivery in Q408 or Q109, may cause issues on some major tenders that its OEM partners (including Juniper) may have in the Middle East in 2008. The appliance based STRM provides a visionary approach to forensics and security event and incident management. However, some of its most glaring technical short-comings combined with a finicky EMEA market makes its short term revenue prospects in the Middle East questionable.

Functional Issues
Reading logs in real-time from a remote file system - The Q1 vision seemed to be focused in the wrong direction to have missed the need to read log files from a local or remote file system. Only network-only environments expect the file source to exclusively be syslog whereas most enterprise applications write logs to disk. All major SEIM players support this.
Manually opening and adding items to an investigation case - It is really odd that Q1/Juniper doesn't have the ability to manually create investigation cases. Many of the challengers don't provide the ability to create cases automatically. But it appears that only Q1 Labs' STRM might be the only serious SEIM tool on the market that does not provide manual incident creation ability.

Product Support
Fully functional CITRIX Server and gateway log processor - EMEA customers rely heavily on CITRIX and, if not supported by Q408, EMEA customers would have a hard time justifying a purchase of STRM.
Fully functional SAP log processor - Several major and influential enterprises in EMEA rely heavily on SAP and, if not supported by Q408, EMEA customers would have a hard time justifying a purchase of STRM.

Copyright (C) 2008 Tech Samurai.