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| Cryptography, steganography, movies, cyberculture, travel, games, and too many other hobbies to list! |
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Russian Frequency Analysis |
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| Topic: Cryptography |
5:29 pm EDT, Jul 17, 2003 |
Bar-graph showing the relative frequency of Cyrillic characters in the Russian language. For example, when dealing with English, the most frequently-used letter is "E". In Russian, it's "O". Russian Frequency Analysis |
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Hidden Images with Ctrl-A |
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| Topic: Cryptography |
5:15 pm EDT, Jul 16, 2003 |
] If you are on a PC running Internet Explorer, you can see
] the hidden pictures.
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] Just highlight the pictures with your mouse or hit CTRL a
] (performs a "select all").
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] Normally, that just makes an image look tinted, but these
] images are different. Interesting and very easy-to-demonstrate method of hiding one image in another! Hidden Images with Ctrl-A |
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Jenny Holzer 'Living' Series Quotes |
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| Topic: Arts |
2:55 pm EDT, Jul 16, 2003 |
On a recent trip to Minneapolis, I visited the Walker Sculpture Garden. One part I especially liked was by Jenny Holzer: A series of benches placed around a garden, with truisms engraved on each bench. Some of them I very much identified with: ] IT TAKES A WHILE BEFORE YOU CAN
] STEP OVER INERT BODIES AND GO AHEAD
] WITH WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO DO. Jenny Holzer 'Living' Series Quotes |
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John Scalzi: 'I Hate Your Politics' |
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| Topic: Politics and Law |
11:28 am EDT, Jul 16, 2003 |
] In the spirit of fairness, and of completeness, let me go
] down the list and tell you what I hate about each major
] branch of political thinking. ] Conservatives don't actually bother to spend time with people
] who are not conservative, and thus become confused and irritable
] when people disagree with them; fundamentally can't see how
] that's even possible Liberals:
] Defensive and peevish even when they're right. Libertarians:
] Unusually smug for a political philosophy that's never
] gotten anyone elected for anything above the local water board. A thorough slam of liberal, conservative, and libertarian views. Equal-time. ;) John Scalzi: 'I Hate Your Politics' |
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| Topic: Cryptography |
9:02 pm EDT, Jul 15, 2003 |
Nice collection of puzzles to test someone's cryptanalysis mettle. You can get points and post your name on a high-score list, too. Cryptanalysis Puzzles |
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WWII Code team cracked Soviet's ciphers |
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| Topic: Cryptography |
8:08 pm EDT, Jul 15, 2003 |
] The codebreakers of Bletchley Park not only broke into
] the secrets of the German Enigma machine, but also
] succeeded in cracking the main Russian machine ciphers. Interesting mention of one of the non-Enigma ciphers from WWII. WWII Code team cracked Soviet's ciphers |
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Vigenere Auto-Key System (in French) |
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| Topic: Cryptography |
11:36 am EDT, Jul 15, 2003 |
] Le chiffrement dans l'histoire. De 4 000 ans à nos jours,
] du Carré de Vignére à la PGP Translation: Cryptography in history, from 4000 years ago until today, from Vigenere's square to PGP. Even though it's in French, I'm linking to this site because they have a nice example of an "auto-key" table, which is another system created by Vigenere (and may help with cracking Kryptos...) Vigenere Auto-Key System (in French) |
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| Topic: Relationships |
6:02 pm EDT, Jul 14, 2003 |
There's a URL for *everything* these days ... breakup-songs.com |
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| Topic: Cryptography |
3:10 pm EDT, Jul 14, 2003 |
(from http://www.memestreams.net/thread/bid7273/ ) ] Looks like if I want an online double-key Vigenere decoder,
] I'm going to have to write one... Stay tuned. Okay, I wrote a Vigenere table-builder (in Flash MX Actionscript) that'll handle English and Cyrillic alphabets. I also included the keys needed to build the tables that appear on the Kryptos and Cyrillic Projector sculptures, along with the keys to solve parts 1 and 2 of the Kryptos code. The utility *doesn't* do automatic encoding/decoding (yet), but will eventually. In the meantime, it's useful (IMHO) as a timesaver to build the tables, or a teaching device to understand how the tables are put together. Vigenere Table Builder |
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| Topic: Arts |
4:00 pm EDT, Jul 7, 2003 |
Last week I saw the movie "Legally Blonde 2". The movie was so-so, but one of my favorite parts was when Reese Witherspoon's character was working on a bill to send to Congress, and the soundtrack at that section was the tune from America Rock: ] I'm just a bill.
] Yes, I'm only a bill.
] And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill.
] Well, it's a long, long journey
] To the capital city.
] It's a long, long wait
] While I'm sitting in committee,
] But I know I'll be a law some day
] At least I hope and pray that I will
] But today I am still just a bill. To this day, I can still recite the Preamble to the Constitution, with the melody from "The Preamble" playing in my head. Or from "No More Kings": ] Rockin' and a-rollin', splishin' and a-splashin',
] Over the horizon, what can it be? Gawd, I loved those tunes. Schoolhouse Rock |
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