The search for free Wi-Fi is one that I know too well of late. I managed to lose my trusty stock-Android phone by crushing it in a car door. I was upset to see the old boy go, but happy that it suffered less than my previous one. That old fella was cooked alive on my Kmart hotplate whilst trying to make a hot chocolate in the unacknowledged darkness that descends over a mammoth gaming sesh. Whatever it may say on the autopsy report though, I was without a phone. The following month has seen me trouncing around this city with a Samsung tablet in my backpack, looking like a Galapagos turtle in desperate need of a plastic bag. Yeah, nah, pretty tough time in my life frankly. About as low as a man can be brought.

However degrading my nomadic digital existence may be, it has given me a new appreciation for the many free Wi-Fi hotspots of Wellington. More specifically, I have come to notice the diversity and vibrancy of Windy Wellington's many Wi-Fi passwords. There really are endless possibilities in this space: they can be as rib-ticklingly humourous as eua2DGY6%@XugK!, as darkly intriguing as P>728G?6685:w^Ee, as disarmingly profound as t#]Q-b=1DAAyq; or, as the ever baffling @!30ciHF@7YbF will attest, just downright bizarre! 

I am Campus Dogman Esquire. These are the free W-Fi passwords of Wellington. You will join me, won't you? Splendid.

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Dear Reader, before we embark on this journey to the WPA-WPA2-PSK protected heart of the nation, I should make clear that I wrote the introduction above years ago. Since then much has changed. The country has gone through three Prime Ministers, I have gone through three more phones, and the humble password no longer reigns supreme as the necessary and final barrier to digital entry. In this dystopian vision of the future from which I write, even the most seamless password entry prompts a 2-factor feel around for the phone, and the One Time Password (OTP) makes a mockery of the once lauded art of remembering passwords (the smug self importance of the One Time Password is exemplified by it's parenthesized insistence that both it's initialism and expanded form are acknowledged at every instance of it's existence). 

Even in the realm of WiFi entry, the QR Code now bypasses the once customary practice of graciously asking for the WiFi Password. So tailored to the entrenched social ineptitude of the zoom educated generation are these checkered, monochromatic quadrates, that upon seeing one in a home I immediately lose all respect for the host. 

Sadly, there remains just one area of digital authentication that refuses these developments. That is the shockingly low security world of cafe internet. Hence why I have returned to this abandoned project so many years later. We must celebrate this dying art form. So, if you are still so inclined, let's get to work.