Pirated copies of the new Harry Potter book have hit the streets of Mumbai (Bombay) barely two days since its worldwide release.
 . . .
In its first 24 hours, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold 6.9m copies in the US and more than two million in the UK, beating all previous Potter records.

Because of the sheer size of the novel, I'm intrigued to learn more about how the bootleggers produced copies so quickly. Did they get their hands on an electronic version? Was it a simple case of OCR? Or a team of really fast typists? "You do chapter 1, I'll do chapter 2, she'll do chapter 3...". Cheap labor is easy to come by in Bombay, and fluency with English is common, so my guess is the latter. There's probably even a 'factory' for bootlegged books, copying and reproducing -- so it may have been unwise for them to choose something this high profile. ;)

If anyone learns more about the process of the India "booklegging," please let me know?

Pirated Harry Potters hit Mumbai

It seemed that the new cipher was a strong cryptography and cannot be cracked in an easy way. Therefore, the Ciphers Office of the Polish Army's General Staff decided to ask mathematicians for help. In January 1929, the Dean of the Department of Mathematics, Professor Zdzislaw Krygowski from the University of Poznan, made a list of his best graduating students who could have started working at the Ciphers Office.

While doing genealogy research on my own relatives in Poznan, I ran across this page. It talks about the Polish mathematicians who found the initial crack for the Enigma Cipher, and then they shared information with the French, and the British, which resulted in the forming of the Bletchley Park project.

The Enigma Code - The Polish Connection

The Battle of Normandy was fought in 1944 between the German forces occupying Western Europe and the invading American, British, and Canadian forces. Sixty years later, the Normandy invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord, remains the largest sea borne invasion in history, involving almost three million troops crossing the English Channel from England to Normandy in occupied France.
  . . .
The bulk of German resistance in the region was finally eliminated on August 21, with the successful closure of the Falaise Gap by Canadian and Polish troops. The liberation of Paris by the French 2nd Armoured Division commenced a few days later.

In French, that battle is referred to as "La Poche de Falaise". I just recently learned that one of my great-uncles, Karol Werner, a Polish officer, was wounded in that battle. My uncle died in the 1970s, but I recently tracked down his widow, who is still living in France, and has been delighted to share information about his life. She knows a fair bit of English, I know a fair bit of French, and so we write to each other in our respective native languages, and between that, and Google Language Tools, we've been doing okay!

Battle of Normandy -- The Falaise Gap

I've been getting an increasing number of hits to my websites via this service, so I finally decided to give it a try to see what's up.

The way it works, is that you signup for free, and then you get a "Stumbleupon" toolbar added to your browser. Any website that you go to, you can give it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. You can also click on a "comment" button which will let you post your own comment, and/or view what other "stumblers" have said about the site. Sites can be sorted by categories, and you can also just click on the "Stumble" button which will take you randomly to highly-rated sites that are in categories that you are interested in. I played with it a bit, and nearly every site it took me to was an extremely interesting one. I could see myself wasting a *lot* of time with this....

StumbleUpon

Webpage that shows how fast your current connection is. I checked from my office (T-3 connection), and was told that my download speed is 7.39 Mbps, and my upload speed 6.24 Mbps.

InternetFrog.com: Internet Speed Test

Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

Fun stuff. I especially enjoyed zooming in on certain places that I've visited over the years. Though sometimes their labels were a bit confusing. For example, I had some trouble finding Hong Kong, though Macau showed up when I turned "borders" on. And some remote areas are still very limited in terms of detail (such as Hainan Island). In Peru, I saw where "Cuzco" was labeled, but the label didn't seem to actually mark a settled area, and I could never find the airport. May just be mislabeled though (like the label for the Sphinx is about a mile off, too). Could never spot Angkor Wat. Did see the general location of the Sydney Opera House, but not close enough to actually pick out any detail.

On the up side, the close-up of CIA HQ is as good as is publicly available. And I could zoom close enough to see the house where I was staying last week in a small village (population: 1000) in Croatia. Checking on my office in St. Charles, I could see enough detail to tell that my car was not in the parking lot at the time that the picture was taken. My car wasn't in my apartment parking lot either, so I must have been driving around for lunch or something, or else I just managed to miss the scans of those two areas.

Fun time-waster!

Elonka :)

Google Earth

Guns, Germs and Steel screens across the country on PBS from July 11 for three weeks on Monday nights at 11pm in most cities.

Heh, I find out more about my cousin Jared's work via Memestreams, than I do from family. Thanks Decius, for the heads-up. I'll let various cousins know, and set my TiVo accordingly. :)

Guns Germs & Steel . The Show . PBS

You can search for New York passenger arrivals here from 1892-1924. There are approximately 22 million total records. Keep trying or try later if you get an error message -- this site gets heavy traffic. The site was opened on 17 April 2001.

While here in New York this morning, I'm going to head over to Ellis Island to do some more genealogy research. I just learned at my family reunion last week that some of my own ancestors (a set of great-grandparents and their children) did indeed come to the U.S. through Ellis Island. I have no idea if I'll find anything on them or not, but I figure it's worth a try....

Ellis Island Online Database 1892-1924 | Information & Research Tips

Rattle wrote:
Please do that. You are MemeStreams's woman on the scene...

Not too much to report in the way of eyewitness stuff, but here's my current status:

As I write this, it's 12:30 p.m. local time, on Friday. I arrived at Heathrow around 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon local time yesterday, which was about 7 hours after the attacks took place. Traffic at Heathrow was understandably a mess, near grid-lock. There were temporary signs set up around the airport indicating whether or not trains were running. At the time I arrived, the signs said that trains to Paddington were running "as normal".

Normally I figure out accommodation by going to a "Hotel Board" information kiosk, and they assign me to a local B&B. This time though, when I went up and asked for a local place to stay, they just kind of shrugged. They said everything local was booked solid, except for four high-priced hotels, the lowest cost of which was 100 pounds per night (roughly $200).

The line/queue for taxis was enormous. Fortunately, I had a local friend (one of my GemStone players) who came to pick me up at the airport. But what was normally a 20-minute drive turned into 90+ minutes of wading through traffic. I spent a lot of time out on the curb, in a light London drizzle, shivering with other travellers who were waiting for their own pickup while the cars inched by. I did notice an ABC news crew waiting in the same area. Several men with what looked like literally tons of equipment, waiting along with everyone else for their ride to come get them.

Phones, btw, were working fine, with no wait. I was keeping in regular touch with my own ride by calling from payphones to his cellphone. About every half-hour I'd call him and he'd give me his current location.

We finally did connect at the airport, and then we drove around looking for hotels that might not be on the usual "booked solid" network. Most places we tried/called were full, but we finally found a reference from one of those hotels for a less expensive hotel/B&B in Burnham. They did have a room, at "only" 85 pounds a night, so I took it as best available.

As a quick aside, it's an absolutely beautiful area. I'm off in the direction of Windsor Castle and Eton, about 30 miles west of London, a mile from the River Thames, way way out in the country. I took a walk this morning, and I feel like I stepped into Hobbiton. Lovely lopsided houses, winding lanes through tunnels of greenery, beautiful flowers everywhere, and the lazy clip clop of horses plodding by. I halfway expect to see Galadriel, Frodo, or Legolas come striding by. :)

On the "telly", the news is of course full of the attacks. It's especially an emotional hit, because all of the (yesterday) newspapers had full-page elation about how London just won the 2012 Olympics bid, which they're especially gleeful about because they beat France for it. So it was quite ... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

RE: London Terror Attack - 7/7

I'm currently in transit, logged on from Manchester Airport in northern England (just flew in from Dubrovnik, Croatia). I'm actually on my way to London Heathrow as I type this. The terminal monitors are full of news about the bombings, but I'm being assured that flights are moving normally.

I'm only spending one night in London, and then heading on to JFK in New York.

The timing though, is unsettling. My original plan was to arrive in London this afternoon, then spend the day sightseeing tomorrow, and then fly out tomorrow afternoon.

Or in other words, had I arrived 24 hours earlier, I might well have been within the radius of one of those bomb blasts. :/

Right now I'm keeping an eye on the news, but sticking to my original itinerary. If I run into any eyewitness stuff, I'll blog it as I can, but my internet access is of course spotty as I'm on the move.

Will keep you posted,

Elonka

RE: London Terror Attack - 7/7