This book is the latest incarnation of things I’ve produced relating to HTTP/3. The first was a conference talk I first gave at ConFoo 2024 in Montreal. That went down pretty well, and I was asked to do the same talk at the International PHP Conference 2024 in Berlin. The room was so packed for that talk that they have asked me back to do the same task again at IPC Munich 2024 later this year!
S&S Media, the German company behind IPC, publishes lots of magazines for developers, and I was approached by their representative in Berlin about writing an article on this subject. So after a little negotiation (particularly about rights!), I sat down to turn my talk into an article. This was made quite easy given the framework I had from my talk, but I was pretty pleased and surprised to be able to crank out a decent 4,000 word article in a bit over 2 hours. It’s not been published yet, but I’ll amend this post when it has.
I’d enjoyed writing this article so I wondered about expanding it into a short book. Asking around on Mastodon suggested that the easiest way to go was self-publishing on Leanpub; I didn’t want to get pulled into writing some monster tome for a publisher.
It took about 2 days of writing, plus another day or so learning the ins and outs of the Markua markup format, tweaking, proofreading (thanks to my mum!), drawing diagrams, and building a site to demonstrate the difference in network activity across different HTTP versions.
A week on from my first thoughts of doing this, I’m very happy to find myself with a freshly published 54-page, 12,000-word book! I’ve of course publicised it across all my social media, but need to put a bit more effort into marketing, perhaps look into Leanpub’s translation services. Anyway, we will see how it goes, but it’s been a good experience so far.
In the world of penetration testing, as I’m often involved in with ROS, those taking on the role of attackers are referred to as the “red team”, and those defending as the “blue team”. Red team people are often regarded as the rock stars of INFOSEC, but one key difference is that red-teamers only have to succeed in their efforts once, whereas blue-teamers have to succeed every time. Unfortunately, when the blue team succeeds, nothing notable happens, so they don’t get much of the glory.
This song is a tribute to the unsung heroes of the blue team; Gotta keep out the bad guys, baby!
Unsurprisingly, the “gotta keep out the bad guys” line was about the first thing I thought of, and everything stemmed from that. There were lots of blue-teamy things I could have written about, but I preferred to keep it short. The string-bend bass riff was the first bit of music, then the funky guitar parts, though I ended up dialling them back a bit in favour of some chuggy rhythm guitar. As in my other tracks, I was keen to use Synthesizer V for vocals, and the backing vocals came out really well. I wrote the lead guitar solo, then thought a higher vocal part alongside it might work, and it was also a chance to have a dig at the red team; it’s my favourite bit of the song.
There are a lot of guitar parts overall (all played by me), and only some small pad and organ keyboards for backing. I was especially happy that I managed to pull off the more aggressive bass parts and the lead solo. As usual, the drums were all done with Logic’s Drummer instrument, which does a great job without getting drunk and falling asleep during rehearsals, and its excellent “follow” mode meant that the drums could match what I’d played on the bass, rather than being some disconnected pattern.
As usual, I’m not too happy with my vocals (PRs welcome!), but Logic’s Flex Pitch editor works enough magic to get the job done. This track could really do with someone that can get a bit more grungy in the verses, with a hint of Elvis for the chorus.
[Intro]
Don’t break a sweat
from a constant threat.
We’ve got the tools to meet them
and firewall rules to defeat them.
[Verse]
We’ll take our time
to build our defences.
No need to be concerned,
we know the consequences.
They’re going to attack
our networking stack,
but we can keep them guessing as
their port scans come to nothing.
[Chorus]
Because, I’m on the blue team, baby,
we’ve got to always win.
Gotta keep out the bad guys,
can’t ever let them in.
Come join the blue team, baby,
we need your awesome skills.
Come watch that bad actor
try to guess my second factor.
[Solo]
Oooh red team stays outside,
don’t want you here.
Just go away
and don’t come back.
You’ve gotta find another way.
[Verse]
Alarm bells ring
from a tripwire’s string.
Logs tell a sad, sad story
of a search for a way in.
SOC screens flash
for a matching hash
We’ve seen this one before
and there’ll be many more
[Chorus]
That’s why I’m on the blue team, baby, (ooh yeah)
we’ve got to always win. (blue team, blue team)
Gotta keep out the bad guys, (ooh yeah, gotta keep out the bad guys baby)
can’t ever let them in.
Come join the blue team, baby,
we need your awesome skills.
Show your strength, let it shine,
help take those APTs offline
We’re on the blue team, (ooh yeah)
got to always win. (blue team, blue team)
Gotta keep out the bad guys, (ooh yeah, gotta keep out the bad guys baby)
can’t ever let them in.
We’re on the blue team, baby,
we’ve got to always win.
We’re the unsung heroes.
(gotta keep out the bad guys, baby)
If you found this entertaining, please check out my other musical efforts, and spread the joy on social media (I’m @Synchro@phpc.social and @SynchroM). More usefully, if you can sing (or play something) and would like to be involved in musical projects like this, please get in touch, as I could really use your help!
