July 7, 2023 – Bless the Maker and His water
- Brush: Declaration Grooming B1 Franklin “Star Spangled Blue”
- Razor: Gillette “Hecho en Mexico” Tech
- Blade: Bic Chrome (1)
- Lather: Barrister and Mann – Mélange
- Post Shave: Barrister and Mann – Mélange
- Fragrance: Chatillon Lux – Biblio
Started off the day with a 4 mile run in the swampy swampy swampiness. Had a glacial lemon chill shower and then proceeded to my spicy Fremen Friday shave.
BaM Mélange is the obvious choice for today. It’s got a sandworm right there on the tub. I lathered up with my B1 Franko and had a quick single-pass shave with the Made in Mexico Gillette Tech. Biblio is a natural match for Mélange. It echoes both the dryness of the Arrakis desert and the pages of that old copy of Dune you found at the second-hand bookshop.
As for today’s challenge, I have a couple of “other” hobbies. Y’all hear enough about my running, so I’m going to talk to you about #BadgeLife. I’ve been working in computers for a couple of decades and my current job is InfoSec/CyberSecurity related. Since joining my current company, I’ve been attending InfoSec/CyberSecurity/hacking conferences like DEF CON and Security B-Sides. Where most conferences would have relatively simple paper badges, the hacker community has opted instead for wearable, often hackable, electronic art. Last year’s DEF CON badge was a working synthesizer. The year before that it was a 4-key keyboard that could play Simon or work as a programmable plugin keyboard for your computer (I turned mine into hot keys for Zoom meetings – mute, unmute, camera on/off, etc).
But it’s not just the cons that hand out electronic badges. Folks from the community build their own badges to sell and trade. This year, a very creative hacker in Texas is making a Back to the Future themed badge. The PepperCon folks (hackers who love spicy stuff) did a really simple badge kit last year that I brought home so my kid and I could assemble it together. And in the last 48 hours, we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to design a new badge for this year.
Maybe next year I’ll feel confident enough to move on from just doing stickers and do a wetshaving badge.