Lockpicking: Part One

I decided I am going to do a couple of posts on how to pick a lock.  This part is going to focus on the mechanisms of a lock that make it possible to be picked.


Lets talk about what happens when a lock is unlocked.  First the key is inserted in the lock.  This pushes the pins so they are now positioned above the cylinder.  The line that the pins need to be pushed up to in order to successfully unlock the lock is called the sheer line.  Now that the cylinder is pin-free the cylinder is free to move, and the lock may be unlocked.  Here is a picture to give you a better idea of what the parts are.

Now that we know how a lock is supposed to work we can learn we can exploit it.  In order to unlock the lock we need to get those annoying pins out of the way.  However we have no way of knowing how many pins there are, or how far they need to be pushed to exceed the sheer line.  Luckily for us there is a is a really simple way to get around this.  When tension is applied to the cylinder, it causes it to move slightly, creating a kinda shelf.  If the pins are pushed up while tension is being applied the pins can rest on this shelf, even what the object pushing them up is removed.  If all the pins are pushed up on the shelf then there is nothing stopping the cylinder from moving and the lock can be opened without a key.  

So thats pretty much the basics of how lockpicking works.  Next post I will describe how you can apply this knowledge and common tools that are used.

100 Followers

Now at 104 followers!  Thanks to everyone who comes to this blog for making it so successful. Please enjoy this comic of a dog on acid.

Really Bizarre Video

Really weird funny and creepy video I found.

Another Dream

So over the past couple of months I have been having a series of recurring dreams.  As far of the events of these dreams, they are nothing out of the ordinary.  In fact they could not be anymore mundane.  They all start the sam.  I am in bed, extremely tired, just lying there thinking about what time it is and whether I want to get up.  At this point I generally grab my phone to check the time and see that it is two to three hours before I have to get up.  In reality it is only five to ten minutes before I get up.  Now generally I have kinda insane dreams, so in comparison these are so normal that I tend to think they are real until a couple of hours after I get up.  This makes it extremely aggravating when all of a sudden a my remaining sleep time is ten minutes as opposed to two hours.  One interesting thing that I have learned from these dreams is that, in a dream you can check the time without opening your eyes.  

My face getting up

    

Something to Share

I found this comic yesterday and thought that I might as well share it.  It wont show the comic at a reasonable size so just click on it to open it in another window and then your browser should let you zoom in.  If that doesn't work try saving it to your hard drive and then you can adjust the size more freely.

My Green Screen

Weekend I finally got around to making that green screen I mentioned a couple posts back.  It is made completely out of bright green poster board that only cost sixteen dollars in total.  While it is not perfect, its great if you have a video project that you would like to add some depth to.

Some pics:

Building materials

I had no empty wall space so I ended up hanging it from the ceiling 

Finished project, works better then it looks.

So overall it was easy enough to make just tape some paper to a wall and your done.  However I would strongly recommend using a tripod while filming, unless you want the background to be having an earthquake.

 

An Alternative Way to Get Audio Files

Say you here a unique sound on the internet but you can't find anywhere that allows you to download it, and its not in a video format that you could easily rip it from.  You could accept that you will never have this sound or, alternatively you could download a program to record any sound that is currently playing through your computer speakers.  The one that I use is called handbrake and it works well at capturing high quality sound.  The only downside is that it requires a bit more work on the users part because you need to hit record on the program while letting the sound play simultaneously.