Pebbler

Fixing TeraStation Pro's Samba to Work with Lion

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:56:00 +0000

One of the biggest annoyances of upgrading my home iMac to Lion was the fact the smb and afp mounts to my TeraStation Pro stopped working. It appears that in Lion the smb and afp protocols are now using DHCAST128 authentication. This breaks the authentication mechanism on the TeraStation. Since my TeraStation is pretty old I had little hope that Buffalo would fix the issue. So it was up to me to get it fixed.

Luckily I already rooted my TeraStation and had the OpenTera packages installed. There are a few different options for rooting your TeraStation. I tried some of these methods but I was on firmware version 2.14. I found that the "/www/cgi-bin/ts.cgi" method to be effective but still slow and tedious. Luckily there is a utility named acp_commander. It is available here with instructions here and Readme here. Be warned that if you do not know what you are doing you could really mess up your TeraStation. Depending on your firmware version Your Milage May Vary.

Using acp_commander I was able to enable ssh access to my TeraStation. I edited the /etc/sshd/sshd-config files and the init scripts to start ssh on boot. Once that was done it is very easy to add packages to your TeraStation. The packages come with an install script. all you need to do is copy the package link down to a temp folder using wget (you may need to install the package first)

wget package_name

Unzip the package (you may need to install this as well)

unzip package_name.zip

Then make the install script executable

chmod 755 install_script.sh

After that you can run the install script to install the package.

sh install_script.sh

or

./install_script.sh

Looking at the OpenTera packages I noticed that there was a Samba 3 package available. This was exactly what I needed to fix the TeraStation issue I was having because Samba 3 has implemented DHCAST128 authentication. I used wget to pull the samba3 package down. Unzipped it. Then ran the install script. I used the Samba 3 without AD integration since I don't use AD on my home network.

Once the install script was done I restarted my TeraStation for good measure and was able to connect to my smb shares again! I did not need to mess around with the config files. You also might want to consider enabling nfs on the TeraStation but that tutorial will have to wait for another time.

As always if you have any questions let me know in the comments.

Moving to Disqus for Comments

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:57:00 +0000

The Blogger commenting systems sucks. So I will be using Disqus for all future comments. Hopefully it will work better than what is currently in place. I'll just have to wait and see.

--ian

Back Track 5 on VirtualBox

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Fri, 13 May 2011 19:44:00 +0000

One of the best ways to keep my mind off my health is to dig into tech and write about it. I can't begin to say how excited I am about the release of BackTrack 5. It has really come a long way and from the days of WHAX and Auditor. I would first like to thank the developers for all of their hard work.

As much as I would love to run it as my primary operating system I have a work supplied laptop and I am required to run Windows 7. Still that does not mean I can't run it in a VM. That's where VirtualBox comes in. This tutorial is VirtualBox and BackTrack 5 specific it is done on Windows 7. Your mileage may vary on OS X and Linux.

Requirements:
Working VirtualBox installation: http://www.virtualbox.org/
BackTrack 5 iso: http://www.backtrack-linux.org/downloads/ <-Download the Torrent and Please keep seeding!

I'm using the 32bit KDE version.

Installing BackTrack 5
Start up VirtualBox and Click on the New Button in the upper left hand side of the Window. Or just press Ctrl-N
.
Be a good user and read the blurb then Click Next
Give the new VM a good name Maybe BackTrack 5. For the Operating System drop down box select: Linux. For the Version drop down box select: Ubuntu. Then click Next.
Select the amount of RAM you want allocated to the VM and click Next.
You will want to create a new Hard Disk. I am going with the default 8GB. Make sure you have Book Hard Disk checked and click Next.
Read about the Hard Disk Wizard and click Next. Now select if you want a dynamic or static sized hard disk. I went with a Dynamic 8GB disk (for the tutorial) but if you intend on using the VM a lot I would consider making it at least 15GB. If you also intend to make a lot of use of the VM I would also partition the disk into at least a /boot, /home and / partitions. I might come back and go over that but I don’t have the time right now. Select your hard disk size then click Next. Now read the Summary and make sure all the info is right. If it is click on Finish. Once you do this VirtualBox will create the hard disk, If you chose a large static drive it could take a while.

The Wizard will now kick you back into the main VirtualBox window. You should also see your new VM in the list on the left hand side of the window.

Now we need to get the VM set up to boot the BacktTrack iso.

Right Click on the VM or click on it and press CTRL-S.
When the Settings window comes up click on Storage. The one issue I have with VirtualBox after working with VMWare is that mounting an External CD or DVD is not that intuitive.
First under IDE Controller click on the picture of the CD that says Empty.
Now in the upper right hand corner click on the CD icon and select: Choose a Virtual CD/DVD Disk File. This will bring up an explorer window. Now find the BackTrack 5 iso you downloaded earlier click on it and then click Open.
When the window closes click on OK at the bottom of the Settings window.

Luckily the default boot settings for VirtualBox will boot the CD before the hard disk. So we won’t need to screw around with the boot order.
We are now ready to boot the VM. Click on the Back Track 5 VM and the click the Start button at the top of the window.
A new Window will open and you will come to the BackTrack 5 boot screen. We will go with the default and select: BackTrack Text – Default Boot Text Mode

You will now be brought to the command line. To get to the GUI/xserver you will need to type startx and then press Enter.

In the upper left hand side of the window now click on Install BackTrack. This will open up the BackTrack hard disk installation dialog box.

Select your language and click Forward
Select your Location/Time Zone and click Forward
Select your keyboard preference US, Dvorak etc and click Forward
Now you can specify partitions is you want or you can be lazy like me and just install to the whole disk by selecting: Erase and use the entire disk. Then click Forward.

The VM will now be ready to install. Go over the summary and make sure everything is in order. Then click on the Install button. The install takes a while so go and get a well deserved beverage, preferably one with a lot of caffeine.

When the install is done you should shut down the Virtual Machine by clicking Restart Now and then clicking the close button in the upper right hand side of the window. and select: Power off the machine.
Now remove the iso from the CD/DVD drive by going into the settings for the VM, Selecting storage. Clicking on the BackTrack-5 iso then under Attributes select Host Drive ‘D:’ <- In my case it was D: it may be different depending on your setup. Then click OK. Or select Remove virtual disk from drive.
Now Click on the VM again and click the Start button.
At the login screen type in: root for the username and toor for the password. These are the default passwords for all BackTrack releases. So since just about everybody and their mother knows them it would be prudent for the first thing you do is to change the root password. Do this by typing:

   1: passwd

Now enter your new password make sure to keep it in a safe place if you decide to write it down. I suggest against writing it down and store it in KeePass.
You should also install any updates by using apt-get or aptitude. I’m a little old school and have apt-get ingrained in my head so that is what you will be getting.

   1:apt-get update

now

   1:apt-get –y upgrade

Installing VirtualBox Guest Additions

The VirtualBox Guest Additions are a set of kernel extensions and configuration changes that will make the BackTrack install a bit more user and GUI friendly. It allows for screen resizing as well as the ability to automatically move the cursor from the VM to the Host OS without having to press the release cursor short cut.
Before we can install the Guest Additions we will need to get the kernel sources installed and configured on the VM. Do this by running:

   1:prepare-kernel-sources   2:cd /usr/src/linux   3:cp -rf include/generated/* include/linux/

FYI - The above was taken verbatim from the Backtrack-Linux wiki. I want to make sure to give credit where credit is due. They have a great wiki over there and I highly suggest looking at their tutorials.
You will need the following environment variable as well KERN_DIR. To get it in place type:

   1: KERN_DIR=/usr/src/linux   2: export KERN_DIR

Now that the prerequisites are met we can install the Guest Additions. Let’s do it from the GUI. Start the xserver with

   1: startx

In the upper left hand of the VM window click on Devices –> Install Guest Additions. This will mount a virtual CD drive that contains the Guest Additions script. Mine was mounted under:
/media/VBOXADDITIONS_4.0.4_69151/
An easy way to do this is to click on the USB symbol in the lower right hand side of the BackTrack VM and click on VBOXADDITIONS_4.0.0.xxxxx under Optical Disc. This will open it up in Dolphin. Now you can click on the VBoxLinuxAdditions.run shell script.

This will compile and install the Guest Additions. When the script is done press Return/Enter to close the shell. Now restart your VM.
That should be it, You should now be all set up to run BackTrack 5 inside VirtualBox.
If you have any issues or find any error with the tutorial let me know and I'll do what I can to fix it ASAP. Enjoy!

Photobooth + The Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:45:00 +0000

They are as crazy as ever. Little man loves to run around with his shirt off and his sisters are as sweet as ever.

Weather Geek

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:09:00 +0000

I am somewhat of a weather geek. It all stems from growing up on a farm. Weather is extremely important in the flower business. Too much rain can cause the flowers to rot on the stem. At the same time too much hot weather can cause the blooms to wither before you get a chance to pick them. I fondly remember waking up early with my father to watch the satellite radar weather station to see what the day and days to come will be like.

I have been a huge user of both The Weather Underground and Intellicast. However, I have found a new site that is amazing WeatherSpark. All I can say is wow. It may not have all the bells and whistles of the other sites, but it has an amazing interface. It is not a replacement for the aforementioned sites. Wunderground has an amazing group of local stations and a community of users of which I want to join. However, my neighbor 100' away already has a station set up so there is really no need to. Intellicast still has an amazing animated radar page. I really like the interface of WeatherSpark. Hopefully they will keep developing it. A few more features and it could become the only Weather site I use.

On a parting note does anyone else have any Weather websites they would like to recommend to me?

Setting up Kippo on an AWS Linux Micro Instance

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:35:00 +0000

I came across a medium interaction honeypot named Kippo recently. It is written in Python and relies on the Twisted framework for most of its networking. I signed up for the free AWS micro instance (http://aws.amazon.com/free/)and was thinking of moving my blog over to it. However, the last thing I wan to do when I get home is administer my own server. So I decided I might take advantage of the micro instance by running a honeypot on it. I have done honeypot research in the past for my Masters degree and have always liked studying the bots and skiddies that break in.

The micro instance is running a stock 10GB AWS Linux image. I am running ami-08728661 like other micro instances it is a boot from EBS ami. AWS Linux is built on Red Hat sources so it is really a lot like running a CentOs server (without the huge repo). AWS Linux has a smaller repo and the instance itself is really stripped down. I think this is great from a security perspective. However, when it came to installing Kippo there were a few packages that were missing. Most notably Twisted.

Download the latest version of Twisted at:

http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/

In order to install Twisted there are a few python module dependencies that need to be met. The easiest way to install these modules is to use python-setuptools easy_install. So from a command prompt run:

Another package that is needed is python-devel so run:

Now install the needed python modules pycrypto and pyasn1

and

Now you can install Twisted first un bzip and un tar the bundle:

Enter into the Twisted directory:

Now run the python setup script:

Once Twisted is installed it is time to get Kippo and get it running. You can download Kippo from:

http://code.google.com/p/kippo/

I used wget to pull it down:

Ungzip the package:

Now you can move the Kippo driectory to wherever you want I chose to move it to the /opt directory:

By default Kippo runs on port 2222 so in order to have ssh access to your server I suggest moving the ssh port to another higher port. You can make this change in your /etc/ssh/sshd_conf file. Once you change the port you connect to restart the ssh server with:

Reconnect to your micro instance on the new ssh port.

Now you can use IPTables to redirect all traffic to port 22 to port 2222 by using the following IPTables command:

Now everything should be in place. Make sure you do not run Kippo as root. Now you can run the start.sh script in the kippo-0.5 directory.

If everything works correctly you should now see kippo running. Now try to connect to your new honeypot and verify it works.

Take a look at the kippo.cfg file to get a good idea about all of the configuration options. You can also add more commands. However, that will have to wait for another blog post. Have fun and be safe. If you et any interesting results please don't hesitate to share them with me.

Learning Python via Scapy

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:37:00 +0000

t my new job some of the things I need to do is network mapping and interface mapping so we can figure out where potential risk lies within the network. I have been looking for a framework in Ruby that can help me programatically map a network. I thought I found what I need in Scruby. However, it seems like Scruby is not in development anymore and is really just a proof of concept of Scapy. Recently I saw a post by Chris Gates on the Carnal0wnage blog about exactly what I need. I have also been trying to diversify when it comes to my programming languages and python is first on my list. So I decided to give Scapy a shot. The out of the box network visualization tools in Scapy are amazing (if you get all of the correct dependencies installed). You have multiple choices when it comes to outputs. I don't think I have even begun to scratch the surface of the visualization capabilities of Scapy.

One of the best things about Scapy is that it allows for low level packet manipulation. For those of us who know and care what tcp flags and ttls are there is a lot of power in Scapy. The Scapy demo page has a lot of greate demos to go through to get a feel of Scapy. This has helped me get a better feel for pythonesque formatting. So far so good. So if you ever need to craft packets, analyze pcap files or do some network visualization Scapy is the way to go.

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Sam loves swimming and ribs

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:24:00 +0000

Here is a few pictures of Sam at our last swim and BBQ in the backyard. He loves his gator floaties and is pretty fearless. He likes to go down the slide all by himself with Mommy waiting to catch him. Still with skin like that I feel I need to invest in a 50 gallon barrel of sunscreen at Costco.

Smiling for the camera.

MMMM Ribs and BBQ Sauce.

It’s time for the Security Industry to grow up

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:02:00 +0000

It’s time for the Security Industry to grow up. Most of us have been drawn to the security industry because of the fun things we get to do. We like finding problems with security controls and love being paid to break into systems and networks. However, as much fun as those things are information security has become a very important part of businesses and industry. As more and more businesses digitize their business information and assets the more important information security becomes. Whether we like it or not information security is quickly becoming a critical part of the business process.

In that light it is important for us as information security practitioners to learn more about business processes. I know that it feels great to get a shell on a box. However, that shell might not be attacking a critical business process and therefore is a potential waste of effort. By understanding the underling business processes of the company you are testing you can identify targets that are critical to the business as a whole.

This approach however, requires an understanding of business processes. A great way to begin to understand general business processes is through education. I know that business classes can be uninteresting and even boring at times. I will admit that during my education the business classes were the least interesting classes I took. I still can barely remember the content I went over even though I did very well in the class. Recently I have realized my shortcoming in understanding business processes and have been going back over my business classes’ textbooks. If I take more of a “hackers” view at business processes I can begin to see critical places in the business process of where a successful attack could be critical to the business as a whole.

There are many obvious targets such as high-level executives, payroll, and data warehousing. However, some targets could be just as critical. Imagine targeting the PR department and having the ability to send out press releases that could immediately damage the businesses’ reputation with their customers. All it takes is one factitious press release going viral and the company’s reputation could be irreparably damaged.

By understanding the business process we as “security professionals” can begin to see these cracks in them and begin to design stopgaps to protect them. I still believe that the hacker mentality can thrive in a business environment. However, in order to do that we need to grow up, educate ourselves and take our rightful place in the business world.

I am writing this in hopes to spark a discussion on this topic. If you don't agree with me please feel free to let me know why. I am a firm believer in open, uncensored and frank discussions.

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Western Tracking Institute Tracking Class

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:53:00 +0000

1 I spent last Saturday at an animal tracking class provided by the Western Tracking Institute. The instructors Rick, Lee and William were top notch and we were able to learn a lot about gaits and animal identification.  2 You have no idea how many ways a rabbit track can present itself. Our Tracking location was very interesting. We spent all day under the 805 and 56 merge underpasses and bridges. The first part of the day was spent under the big overpasses. The underpasses were a great place to see many different types of tracks. The substrate was very soft in places and that allowed us to analyze the gaits and tracks fairly easily. We saw raccoon, skunk, bobcat, deer, opossum and the ever present cottontail tracks.  3  4 The second part of the day was spent under the bridge in the muck. Luckily I brought a pair of rubber boots to keep all of the mud and water at bay. We found some really interesting tracks under the bridge including crawfish, deer, bobcat, a ton of raccoon tracks and a mystery track that no one could identify. In all it was a fun day of tracking even if you could barely hear each other talking over all of the traffic noise. I'm looking forward to the trailing workshop later on this summer and hope to get through the entire curriculum. In all it was a great experience and I highly reccommend taking any of the classses offered by the WTI.

1          See the full gallery on posterous

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Mini Golf

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:55:00 +0000

See the full gallery on posterous

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Morning Light

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:45:00 +0000

Sunrise in San Diego

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Defcon 17 PCAPs and CTF Game Binaries are now available

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:45:00 +0000

FINAL DEFCON 17 RANKING

Congratulations to VedaGodz on winning the DEFCON 17 CTF. Stats and more later -- here's the rankings:
1. VedaGodz
2. Routards
3. PLUS@postech
4. Shellphish
5. Sexy Pwndas
6. Song of Freedom
7. Sapheads
8. lollerskaterz dropping from roflcopters
9. WOWHACKER
Those of you that stayed around for the awards ceremony know that sk3wlofr00t had a slight conflict of interest making their contrived score irrelevant.

DDTEK HPUTM TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCE

DDTEK is happy sunshine to presenet Hyper Parallel Universal Thret Management (HPUTM). Successful tests of HPUTM teknologee were made during the happened qualifications. These quantum predictive techonlogy using temporal acceleration of hardware constipated all attacks known, unknown, unknown known, known unkown, known known, and unknown unknown using hyper turing NP engine completion. Demonstration of HPUTM at Defcon CTF is the prove that DDTEK defense ever stands time and its tests. Techmology all other are not the comparison. The rainy doom spank ass of other monkey software triumphs over oall including poor ruinners Juniper, Sonicwall, Microsoft, Checkpoint.

Graphs all blockage shown for DDTEK HPUTM:

CTF Qualifications Complete! Top 9 plus sk3wl invite to Vegas!

Qualified teams:
1. sk3wlm4st3r (CONFIRMED! as sk3wl0fr00t)
2. Team Awesome (aka VedaGodz) (CONFIRMED!)
3. Sexy Pwndas (CONFIRMED!)
4. PLUS@postech (aka PLUS) (CONFIRMED!)
5. Shellphish (CONFIRMED!)
6. Song of Freedom (CONFIRMED!)
7. lollerskaterz dropping from roflcopters (CONFIRMED!)
X. Underminers (deadline expired)
8. Routards (CONFIRMED!)
9. WOWHACKER (CONFIRMED!)
10. Sapheads (CONFIRMED!)
alt. sutegoma (CONFIRMED!)
alt. CLiP (CANT PARTICIPATE)
alt. pebkac (unconfirmed)
alt. ACMEPharm (CONFIRMED!)

With final confirm that sk3wlm4st3r represents the champion of DC16 then WOWHACKER is 10 and Sapheads_ is number 1 alternate.

Final Team Standings
All Submitted Answers
All Submitted Answers by Team
All Submitted Answers by Challenge
Correct Answers by Challenge
Time to Solve by Challenge

Teams above need confirm there intent for playing in Vegas.

Use the email address your registered for qualifications.

Thanks for fun times weekend!

~ddtek cr3w

DEFCON 17 CTF Qualifier can starts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

5 JUNE 2009

DEFCON CTF QUALIFIER GO GO

Defense Diutinus Technologies Corp (ddtek) is pleased to starting the round of qualification for DEFON 17 CTF.

QUALS GAME: http://quals.ddtek.biz/quals/board.html

IRC: irc.oftc.net #ctfquals

DEFCON 17 CTF Qualifier announced dispite conficker

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

1 APRIL 2009

DEFCON CTF QUALIFIER ANNOUNCED

Defense Diutinus Technologies Corp (ddtek) is pleased to announce the round of qualification for DEFON 17 CTF.

The competition will be held on 5-7 June - without a stop, participants can be located everywhere. All are to play, but only the 9 best groups will be invited to join us in Las Vegas for the annual DEFCON ninja square off. We also intend to honour the code of the former CTF host and automatically qualify last years champion, the sk3wl of r00t (although we sincerely hope them to participate in qualifications).

The qualification round will be in the style of game board, but answers need not be in the form of a question. Categories will require teams to demonstrate the superiority of hacking into a vast relm of security.

You must be registered for participate.

Registration site: CLOSED
Registration opens: 01.04.2009 00:00:00 UTC
Registration ends: 04.06.2009 00:00:00 UTC

Qualifications open: 05.06.2009 23:00:00 UTC
Qualifications ends: 07.06.2009 23:00:00 UTC

More information that will follow via your registered email address.

Bring all your l33t haxor skillz just leave your Kiddie toolz behind.

Vulc@n Difensiva Senior Engineer Diuntinus Defense Technologies, Inc.

DEFCON 17 CTF Organizer Is Chosen

Today announced that Dark Tangent DEFCON 17 CTF Organizer is chosen. We are a group give the a proposal 1.

Much exciting for us because of our company startup departure from stealth watch soon announce that the technology to the test of time against the current and future attacks. We look forward to our technology, demonstrat their superiority against the security work people and hackers during CTF quals.

We see those who are came before us and creat an experience that defaies all the concerned parties. KenShoto and Ghetto Hackers make beuatiful hard work for CTF over the years, CTF not have be the world cup security attack and defense.

via ddtek.biz

For those of you who are interested the pcaps and game binaries for the DEFCON 17 CTF are now available via bittorrent. Study up and get ready for next year's quals.

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Tired of Getting Things Done? Me too. Less is more.

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:40:00 +0000

via zenhabits.net

Good post on how doing less can help you get more done.

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Quote of the day (QOTD)

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:26:00 +0000

Watching Diners, Drive-ins and Dives I heard the quote of the day. Chef Guy Fieri said "That's not grease, those are tears from a flavor angel." <- Total Win!

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Back at it

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:08:00 +0000

Well after a year and a half hiatus I have been well enough to get out bouldering. The treatments have been going good and the immune-inhibitors have worked wonders for the vascullitic neuropathy. I figured that since I can now feel my feet and hands again I might as well try to get back into bouldering. The vasculitis really did a number to my left arm (especially the triceps and wrist extensors/flexors) and the muscles in my left leg so I was not expecting too much. We went to Mt. Woodson and I started out and ended at boulder 1 and 2. I remember walking almost all of these problems in my prime and now they were at my limit. Still I had a great time and was able to climb quite a few. Hopefully next time I'll make it further up the hill and up a few more problems.

After the sit start.

Right before the crux.

My future little climbers.

This problem was a lot harder than I remember it being.

Got to love the undercling.

Paranoid Linux

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:37:00 +0000

A few resourceful people have begun to make a Linux distro that is modeled after the Linux distro Paranoid Linux, envisioned in Cory Doctorow's excellent novel Little Brother. The Alpha build was released on the 11th of October. It is still in a very Alpha state but it is a start to a very good idea. Check it out at ParanoidLinux.org.

I think that this distro is a great idea. I am thinking that with oslrd or even Netsukuku this distribution could easily create an anonymous network seperated from the Internet. The distro is based on Ubuntu so I can even see a stripped down version that could run on a Linksys WRT54G that automatically create a p2p network with adjacent routers running the custom firmware. The possibilities are endless.

12 of 12

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:34:00 +0000

I just started this little project where you are supposed to take and post 12 pictures on the 12th of every month. It is called the 12 of 12. So with the IVIG infusions in full swing I decided to take my camera along with me to the infusion center and take some pictures. The results can be seen at my Flickr 12 of 12 set for this Month.

--Ian

Baby Sam's Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 03:19:00 +0000

I have posted some pictures to Sam's own baby blog. You can check them out at http://samallison.blogspot.com
Let us know what you all think.

--Ian

Hello World

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:14:00 +0000

Little Samuel Allison was born yesterday at 2:37pm. He weighed 6lbs 10oz (not bad for being 10 days early) and was 20" long. Here is a quick picture of him. I'll post more once I convert all the RAW formatted photos to something more web friendly.

High Plains Drifter

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:41:00 +0000

One of my goals after getting better is to send this climb. It has some of the most amazing moves on it and tops out at around 35 feet. My hands are starting to sweat just thinking about it.

The photo is by amabelley from flickr hope they don't mind if I use it.

Taking a Little Time Off Bouldering (a.k.a. CIDP sucks)

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:59:00 +0000

Well I have had to take a little time off from climbing because I am lucky enough to have come down with a case of Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy. The short of it is my immune system has decided to attack my nervous system. I have lost a lot of muscle and have very little energy so climbing and sometimes even walking is out of the question. Being a chronic disease there is a chance I may never be able to climb at my previous levels ever again. So it looks like I may have to take up trad climbing ;) The good news is that I start treatment on Monday. I'm getting IVIG infusions and will have to spend some serious time hooked up to an IV for the next week. Luckily I will be able to work from the infusion center and that will keep my mind off the fact I am receiving hundreds if not thousands of other peoples antibodies. I will leave you with a few pictures I took while I was in Fiji a few years ago. Wish me luck!

A shot of a restaurant in Fiji.

If you can't tell already, I love sunset shots.

This little guy is an endagered iguana that lives on a single island off of Viti Levu in Fiji.

The Ladder Boulder at D.L. Bliss State Park

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:48:00 +0000

I did not get to climb a much as would have liked on our trip to Tahoe. However I did get to go to a great boulder a couple times. The boulder is located in D.L. Bliss state park and is on the west shore of Lake Tahoe. This is one amazing boulder. All of the climbs are pretty moderate and are in the v0 - v5 range. The thing that sets the Ladder Bolder apart is that just about every climb on it is a quality climb. The photos below show me on a few of the climbs. The Traverse is amazing and I highly recommend it. The first series is a fun climb that starts with a dyno to a decent hold and then up on ok holds. The last sequence is

The Cave at Mt. Woodson

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 05:25:00 +0000

It's getting pretty hot here in SD so I think this will be one of the last Woodson sessions this summer.

Climbing the Church of The Lost and Found

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Allison) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:15:00 +0000

I found this amazing picture of a climb named Church of the Lost and Found in a guidebook about Bishop area bouldering. All I could think of was how much I wanted to do this climb. So I talked my Dad into a weekend road trip to go up and find it. The climb itself is pretty much in the middle of nowhere and requires some pretty good searching. I found it and here are the pictures of the climb.

This climb has an amazing setting overlooking the Owens River Gorge

The climb is rated at a v1 and is pretty solid at that grade.

Notice my Dad's knee in the next few pictures ;)

Luckily the climb has a rock at its base so it gives you the needed inspiration to not fall.

The climbing is on perfect small crimps and pockets in the volcanic tuft. The rock on the climb is surprisingly smooth thanks to water polishing.

The Crux involves stepping up on a bad foot with a bad left hand pull and moving to a perfect half hand pocket.

Whew, got it!

The jug at the top is bomber

Here comes the mantel.

There is a hidden pull on the lip that took a little while to find.

Pressing it out.

Looking down at an amazing climb. I give it 5 stars and would recommend it to anyone climbing in the Bishop area if they can find it.

One last view of one of my favorite boulder problems