I've always been fascinated with locks and lock picking, ever since high school. I got my fist set of lock picks off the internet a couple of years ago. Apparently, there's this long tradition of hackers picking locks (c.f. The MIT Lockpicking Guide) . Anyone else into this?
Here in The Netherlands there is Toool, <a href="http://www.toool.nl" rel="nofollow">http://www.toool.nl</a>. They are an officially registered sport club with contests and 'practice'. I think most of their members are computer hackers too. It's all perfectly legal here also btw.
I'm into it, a little bit. I'm good enough that I never get locked out of my apartment, but I couldn't crack a safe or anything.<p>There's a weird and compelling sensation you get when you successfully pick a lock you've never picked before. Especially if there's some practical goal involved.
Many of the hackers in the Felten group at Princeton (www.freedom-to-tinker.com/) are good lockpicks.<p>One of my cofounders is one.<p>Once I was locked out of my apartment and knocked from door to door to find a coat hanger to try my luck. I wasn't terribly successful, though.
I bought a cheap set of picks and got a copy of the "MIT Guide to Lockpicking" and tried to get into it. It was kinda fun at first, but I never had much success. How long do you have to work at it before obtaining any proficiency? All I ever managed to do was bend my picks.
Lock picking and safe cracking are pretty much wet equivalents to computer cracking. It's a very hackerish hobby as long as it's done in a mature, non-destructive way.<p>I don't put a lot of money into it, but working on new locks is a nice way to kill time and relax my mind.
lockpicking is a lot of fun. I haven't been practicing much recently but I own a set of picks and live to stay up to date with the latest locks and attacks. I've been meaning to master lock bumping but never got around to it.<p>I'm curious if more people here are into this.
I have half a dozen locks behind my monitor. But I made a starter kit for my niece by removing pins from four locks and gave her my picks. Need to pull another tine from the the lawn rake and make a new pick.
Yes, I'm one.<p>I almost always have my HPC lockpick set with me, although there are really only 1 or 2 tools that I use regularly.<p>Comes in handy at times...