This week's comments and feedback

You wrote a varied lot of comments and feedback this week, so today's blog is a real mixture :-)

Slacker Astronomy have their first newsletter out. Some Star Wars fan (sorry, I lost your mail) pointed me to the PanicStruck website, where they have produced a very professional high quality video with their own Star Wars movie, which is a freeware download (but it is 250 MB!).

Meg, over at Mandarin Design is still feeling ill, we wish her all the best. At least she got the things we sent her, so the US Postal service got it right this time, after losing my postcard :-)
Meg, the Dalai Lama was here (Wiesbaden) yesterday, with a well attended open-air meeting :-)

Anna Pashen sent four more embarrassing lines NOT to be said in bed, so I've appended them to the list I blogged on monday 18th. Also, Doug Alder sent one too, as did Kim Walker. Anna and I are both big Terry Pratchett fans and took part in a quiz some time ago to see which pTerry character we would be. Surprisingly, I turned out to be Carrot, while expecting to be CMOT Dibbler. Anna wrote "I think I wanted to be Vetinari or Gaspode. Foul Ole Ron would have been a wonderfully unique attainment, but beggars can't be choosers ;-)" Groan!

A current acoustic pun for the Linux geeks :
Microsoft no longer have a Longhorn but they now promise us a Windows Fister ;-) ;-) ;-)

Frank Paynter sent a reminder on monday about the EAA fly-in at Oshkosh. He also pointed to Jack Hodgson's Blog thereof. Frank, I sold my plane a few years back, so I can't fly over there again, otherwise I would have dropped in on you unannounced :-) However, just to keep the aviation geeks and fellow pilots happy. Tuesday, they had a rare flight of historic tri-motors in Oshkosh; here's a sample cockpit photo.

Dirk Rijmenants thanked me for the review of his M-209 crypto program I wrote on wednesday, and added "Btw, just want to point to a little thing. Might be handy for the kids, trying to break your ciphers. Its a handy aid, speeding up the manual process of encoding some of the best known hand ciphers. Recently I wrote another gadget, a little straightforward steganography program".
Christian (UK) asks if he's still allowed to encrypt files on his Mac there(UK). Well, yes, Christian, but you have to tell the police your keys if they ask for them. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP)[sic!] Act, which has been in effect since 2000, allows the UK police to jail people who don't surrender encryption keys: If intercepted communications are encrypted (encoded and made secret), the RIP act forces the individual to surrender the keys (passwords which allow users to decipher encoded data), or go to jail for up to two years. If you used Diffie-Hellman transparent handshakes to set up a session key (subsequently discarded) which you never knew, then go directly to jail, do not pass GO, and do not collect €200 :-(

Ivan points me to The R Project for Statistical Computing , which is a freeware download under the GNU licence. An excellent statistical toolkit, I'm enjoying using it. Jane also has a useful download URL, the MP3 Blog Listing - MonkeyFilter Wiki. Eli, astounded at the tidiness of last saturday's Jewish desk, sends me a photo of a typical physicist's office :-) Guilty, Eli ! Eli also liked the nighttime clock cardboard cutout I provided back on July 15th, and sent me a link to a site giving a cardboard cutout pinhole camera which uses regular 135 roll film. Sample photos are on their site which is in Czech and English.

Petra sends some games links, Foon's Hapland, then Hapland Two and WorldChanging : Games As Political Lessons. She also responded to the sly pun about dropouts last friday and points me to an Austrian bodypainting festival gallery.

Moragh, a scottish friend, sent a link which tells us How to get rich slowly :-) She also sent me a link to a poem explaining why exactly 1 in 7 people are gay ;-) Hmm, we know 3 couples who are gay, so, multiplying by 7 means I should have 42 friends. 42 is the answer, what was the query?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 29th July 2005 at 06:29 CEST permalink Email

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Dirk Rijmenants' M-209 Simulator

Some of my blogreaders and local students will know me as a crypto-geek, i.e. someone interested in code-breaking, in particular the historical aspects thereof. So it was with great pleasure that I got a mail mid-june from Dirk Rijmenants, presenting his M-209 simulator.

What is an M-209? It is the encryption machine used by the US forces during World War Two, the American military version of the Hagelin C-38. It is a portable hand operated cipher machine for tactical messages. It is purely mechanical, as opposed to the German Enigma, which had electrical components. The M-209 is about the size of a lunchbox and presented a brilliant mechanical design, developed by the Swedish cryptographer Boris Hagelin. The coded message is printed onto the gummed paper strip in the reel, as shown in the left photo (courtesy D.Hamer, AFAIK).

As seen in the right side photo, the M-209 has six wheels with different numbers of teeth. The numbers are co-prime, so that the full cyclical length of 26*25*23*21*19*17 = 101,405,850 is achieved. These wheels contain the following letters from an English alphabet of 26 letters :-

• 26 letters, from A to Z
• 25 letters, from A to Z, excepting W
• 23 letters, from A to X, excepting W
• 21 letters, from A to U
• 19 letters, from A to S
• 17 letters, from A to Q

Behind the row of six key wheels is a cylindrical drum consisting of 27 horizontal bars. Each drum bar carries two movable lugs; the lugs can be aligned with any of the six key wheels, or may be placed in one of two neutral positions. An effective pin causes its guide arm to tilt forward, contacting the drum. The positioning of the lugs is the second part of the keying mechanism. The lugs thus turn the wheels irregularly, breaking wheels' sequences, thus making breaks harder.

Dirk Rijmenants' M-209 Simulator is a Windows program. It can be downloaded from his website. Now I don't happen to own an M-209, so in order to test the Simulator's realism I had to arrange to get (limited) access to a museum's exhibit. I couldn't do much testing, because those paper rolls that you can see in the left-side photo are as scarce as hen's teeth these days, so I wasn't allowed to use up much. Understandable, even if regrettable. If you need paper for an M-209, you could try talking to an E-cquaintance, fellow crypto-geek David Hamer, who deals in classical coding machines like the Hagelins, M-209s, Enigmas, Typex(?) and the Swiss NUMAs.

To cut a long story short, Dirk's M-209 simulator is an optically realistic SW simulation of the original M-209 HW and it encodes and decodes correctly and exactly as the original WW2 device did. I say this based on 3 texts I encoded with both the simulator and the original machine.

However, you do need to know what you are doing, both in the sense of how to use the simulator and in the sense of understanding why the M-209 is designed to work that way. Dirk does provide quite a good "how-to-use" help file (with lots of minor but annoying typos), but nowhere does he explain the theory behind the Hagelin lug and pin machines. It's obvious(?) to us crypto-geeks, but for a beginner trying to understand WHY (not HOW) it works, Dirk needs to provide some solid explanation in the help-texts. So instead, I recommend you visit Bob Lord’s M-209 webpages, including (an unfortunately poor) video copy of the original 30-minute WW2 U.S. Army training film, which is a historic document in its own right, and well worth watching :-) There seem to be no choice of Key Sheets provided, so, lacking historical originals, I just made up my own.

The whole simulator only takes up about 500kB of disc space and runs fast enough even on a lame PC to be realistic (1 ch/sec). All in all, I must congratulate Dirk on doing a very good job!
Dirk has also written a similarly realistic simulator for the German WW2 Enigma which I'll be reviewing at a later date, time and wife and new puppy permitting :-)

FWIW, my own crypto pages - which are written in German - are here.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 27th July 2005 at 06:27 CEST permalink Email

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Some corner of a foreign field . . .

During WW1 soldier-poet Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) wrote those never to be forgotten lines :

These are the first 2½ lines of his famous patriotic poem The Soldier.

But did you know that there is a field in England which is NOT English? That field is a part of the USA (actually part of Washington DC, AFAIK). Barely 4 miles from Heathrow airport, just west of the junction of the M25 with the A30, just north of Windsor Great Park and bordered on the NE by the Thames is the most famous (but very boggy and muddy) field in all of England : Runnymede.

Runnymede (lit. "wet meadow") was the riverside field where, in 1215 AD, King John had met the Barons of England and been forced to put his seal to the Magna Carta, the very first bill of rights. There are two memorials worth seeing at Runnymede. The first is a rotunda, actually built by the ABA (American Bar Association) in 1971 as "a tribute to Magna Carta, symbol of freedom under law".

To see the second memorial, you leave the wet fields of Runnymede (UK) and go through a gate thereby setting foot on American soil. Under the JFK Memorial Act, one acre of the Crown estate at Runnymede was transferred from the Queen to the people of the USA. After the gate, you step onto a path of 50 granite steps (one per US state) leading to the portland-stone JFK memorial.

There is a hawthorn tree (symbol of JFK's Catholicism) next to the stone and an American scarlet oak just behind it. The latter turns a vivid blood red in november (when JFK was assassinated). The stone bears an inscription from JFK's inaugural address (January 28th 1961) : "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, or oppose any foe in order to assure the survival and success of liberty."

In these times of Islamist terrorist attacks, it may be a comfort for Londoners to make this pilgrimage to America (no visa needed, no Dept of Homeland Sec, or Immigration hassles :-) and read this inscription. It's also worth a visit by American tourists, it being only a short taxi ride from Heathrow. If you live nearby, but have never been to Runnymede, brush up on your history lessons - ancient and modern - and go see these two memorials at Runnymede, and breathe in a living scent of history there. A patriotic bargain at its very best: for two nations at once!

Oh, and BTW, close the gate when you leave! Don't want to let terrorists into the US do we?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 24th July 2005 at 06:24 CEST permalink Email

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For my Jewish friends . . .

Today being the Sabbat, I know that you are not allowed to work (nor use the computer), so here's a Kosher screensaver for you, instead of a little reminder from the Rabbi ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 23rd July 2005 at 11:03 CEST permalink Email

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Getting Science across to the people . . .

It is a matter of concern to all nations that their children learn science, engineering and maths rather than fundamentalism, creationism, bigotry and warfare. Listen up, Dubya!

One of the figures who promoted science in the western world died last week, canadian actor James Doohan who played the role of Scotty in Star Trek. If Scotty didn't beam you back up, you stayed down! His too was the famous reprimand to the eponymous Captain James T.Kirk "Ye cannae change the laws of physics, Jim!"

The Physics world-cup, a competition run for older schoolchildren, was won by a German team this year. White Russia was second and the USA third. This was a week-long competition held in Winterthur (Switzerland) with 23 nations competing. Meanwhile, over in Merida (Mexico), the International Mathematics Olympia was being held. This is also a competition for 17-19 year-old children. Although the German team only finished 12^th overall, they managed to pick up a gold-, three silver- , and two bronze-medals in individual competitions. There were 500 competitors from 91 countries. Overall winner was China with five individual gold medals. Hopefully there are some budding Einsteins in those 500 ?

You can surf on over to Quizilla and see what type of intelligence you have. Mine turned out to be a logical mind. Surprise, surprise! However, New Scientist reports that Intelligence is irrelevant to a happy old age, so maybe I've been striving in the wrong direction all my life ;-) Mind you, there are attractive occupations which do not need a college education. Fashion models for example are often not the brightest of girls, and indeed drop-outs are welcome ;-)

As we get older it behooves us to pass on our knowledge to younger students. I enjoy teaching classes myself, e.g. in cryptography (code-breaking) and I enjoy writing simple maths snippets on this website. Recently I was asked by a budding teacher How do I know if I'm coming across, not too complex, but not too simple?" I judge it by the feedback, Emails in the case of this blog, but by questions and above all by body-language in the lecture room. Look at this mobile-phone-photo of the students here. About 30 to 40% of them are propping up their heads with their hands. That's a good body-language indication that the subject matter is too complex and that I'm not getting it across to them. Time for a (mental) break - a light but relevant anecdote perhaps - or a recap of what has been done so far. Or just slow down or repeat stuff.

So let me just wrap up today's blog with an anecdote about a physics technique called dimensional analysis. A motorcyclist friend, looking at a can of oil, had asked me "What unit is viscosity measured in ?, and I'd answered I can't remember the name of the unit, but it's Kilograms-per meter-per second. I then had to explain how I knew that :-) This technique is called dimensional analysis. Most physical quantities can be expressed in terms of combinations of five basic dimensions. These are mass (M), length (L), time (T), electrical current (I), and temperature, represented by the Greek letter theta. Speed for example is L/T, otherwise written as L¹T^-1. Energy (measured in Joules) has dimensions M¹L²T^-2. Some things are dimensionless, like all trigonometric functions, exponential functions and logarithms, angles, countable quantities and plain old numbers (like 2, e, pi, etc.). So, being a physicist, and remembering the formula for calculating visosity as , I could just plug in the dimensions to calculate that Eta (viscosity) has the dimensions M¹L^-1T^-1, and hence is measured in Kilograms-per meter-per sec. There is a good exposition of this viscosity example over at the University of Guelph (Canada).

University admission grants : I've heard of necessary qualifications, but this takes the biscuit!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 22nd July 2005 at 11:22 CEST permalink Email

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26 things NOT to say in bed ;-)

1. Perhaps we could turn off the light?
2. What's for breakfast?
3. First again!
4. Don't pant so loud! Mummy will hear us.
5. O.K, you get the job.
6. That's enough now, I promised my husband I'd be home on time today.
7. Did I mention the video camera?
8. Do you take American Express?
9. You're so good, you could do it professionally.
10. What was your name?
11. Don't take my laughter personally, everyone looks funny naked.
12. And you woke me up for that?
13. Does your wife read my blog?
14. That's it! I'm turning lesbian!
15. Ooops. I forgot the pill.
16. Your isn't yellow at all!
17. I'm a little fan of yours, Michael.
18. Congratulations, you're my first partner after the sex-change operation.
19. You're done? My instant-soup must be nearly ready by now.
20. Well that was completely uninspiring, but I'll blog it anyway.
21. Is it in? (contributed by Doug Alder)
22. What are you doing here? (contributed by Kim Walker)
23. "What time is it?" (contributed by Anna Pashen)
24. "Is that a lump?" (contributed by Anna Pashen)
25. "Is it meant to be like that?" (contributed by Anna Pashen)
26. "Could you pass my mobile - I need to text someone?" (contributed by Anna Pashen)

Feel free (sic) to mail me your own contributions to this list :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 18th July 2005 at 06:18 CEST permalink Email

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Star-watch Postcards and other comments.

My good blogfriend Meg ( Mandarin Design) is still blogging for postcards, so be sure to send her one or more (address is on her site). I just found this neat star-watch postcard, so, since I need to translate the instructions for her, I thought I'd share it with all my readers before sending.

Assembly :

1. Cut out all pieces.
2. Glue axle pieces A and B together and onto spot C of the date-pointer.
3. Cut out the square window in hour-pointer E and the central holes in A,B,C,D,E.
4. Put the large disc D on the axle AB, then the hour-pointer E , both free-moving.
5. Glue disc F onto the axle AB so that all parts D,E can move freely.

Telling the time by the stars :

1. Hold the star-watch vertically. Turn date disc so the date is at the bottom.
2. Look through the hole at the Pole Star Polaris.
3. Turn the hour pointer until its axis is parallel to the two rear stars in the Big Dipper.
4. Read the true local solar time (NOT time-zone) in the cut-out window of pointer E.

NB: This only works in the northern hemisphere, sorry all you antipodean readers :-(

Your comments this week :

Flying : Fellow pilot Peter tells me that (Steve) Fossett, LaNoue and Rebholz have successfully crossed the atlantic in a replica Vickers Vimy WW1 biplane, albeit slower than the first atlantic crossing (in a Vickers Vimy) 86 years ago by their famous predecessors Alcock and Brown (BTW : Elton John may think that "Allcock and Brown" were the star-duo in an early gay porn flick

Management styles : Haggiswurst and I are exchanging Emails about using QFD (Quality Function Deployment), HOQ (House of Quality) etc to improve his workplace. To avoid me being indiscreet by mistake, I'll just point you to his blog and let him cover it, because he knows better what he can or should not write :-)

Tourism : Chuck (USA) visited and wrote : "... your part of the world looks so beautiful. I've never had a chance to visit the Continent...". Chuck, for more tourism, see my Skyline Meme.

Links you sent to me :

• Here's Richard Dawkins introductory piece on Atheism (via Anna Pashen).
• Anna also points me to mapping SW Google Earth. Sadly it won't run on this PC :-(
  Anna and I have been swapping mails about the inadequacies of our respective town-planners. Anna, if you read this, blog what you wrote, I found it most amusing, but don't want to steal your thunder.
• And here you can check out various gods at Godchecker.
• Regina points me to some great new home-planetarium software, Celestia. She also showed me the July issue of Astronomy magazine, which has a photo (p.66) of a very rare phenomenon, a full moonbow! A moonbow is a rainbow in (full) moonlight instead of sunlight, AFAIK mostly/only seen in Hawaii and the Isle of Skye (sic!) within a day of full moon during showers with raindrops within 1% of being spherical, moon on the horizon, at the end of evening twilight. The 'window of opportunity' is at most an hour long. The photo is credited there to Rob Ratkowski (Maui).
• Jane has a Tits for tat link for us :-)
• Dahr Jamail tells us that more evidence indicts the US. And Rove looks guiltier daily!
• And this link is for those of you with Blogger's Block :-)

Thanks : Finally, I would like to thank those who sent congratulations, cards, (no cheques? ;-) etc on our wedding anniversary on tuesday. Specifically Chuck, Tessa Steer, Haggiswurst and particularly Robin Kirkey who sent this beautiful digital painting of a rose and wrote : "I've attached a copy of my most recent digital painting of a rose, done with the method I developed using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop which I've briefly discussed on my website in the Digital Painting category. The rosebush in my garden that was the model for this painting is called 'Camelot'. " Also, finally, Lennie, UK copper, biker and grand master of the double entendre who wrote : "Congratulations Stu! I hope both you and your wife are well and have many more years to come!"

Silence : I hope that all you politically aware readers joined (us) in the 2 minute silence held in Europe thursday for the victims of the terrorist attack in London last week. Sadly, in our local city (Paderborn, Germany) less than 50% stood still in silence. Solidarity vs. thoughtlessness :-(

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 15th July 2005 at 06:15 CEST permalink Email

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Our 15th wedding anniversary today :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 12th July 2005 at 06:12 CEST permalink Email

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Where y'all from, guy's 'n gals?

Good blogfriend Frank Paynter gave us (Sitemeter users) a tip last week about a new blog counter at www.countercentral.com. You can sign up there for a free trial, so I did :-) One of their features is to give me a map of where the last 100 blogreaders came from. Given that this blog runs at about 500 readers per day, that means the last 100 probably represent a 5 hour window. Depending on people's surfing habits, this may exclude some regions (e.g. USA west coast in this case). Anyway, for what it's worth here's a world map of 100 visitors to this blog over an arbitrary 5 hour period on 7/7/5. Mostly Germany, UK and the USA. Wanna show us yours?

Rumour has it that the red dot is the Fnord pole ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 9th July 2005 at 06:09 CEST permalink Email

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Tube terror, coincidentally at 11 to 9 :-(

By now you will have all have read about - or seen on TV - the despicable terror attacks in London, UK, so there's no need for me to link to pix and reports. The US had its 911, now the UK was attacked, coincidentally at 11 minutes to 9. Synchronicity, as C.G. Jung would have said. Several London bloggers have been covering it with their personal experiences, too numerous to link to. Here's just one, a London ambulance driver.

I've been mailing UK friends and bloggers asking about their well-being, happily no bad news (so far). For example, Lisa, answering from the City of London university wrote "We are all fine in this office and have no reported casualties, which is good news. I suppose we are lucky it is the summer holidays, so we don't have students here and there is a lesser chance of people being out and about." Other answers have been similar. But I wonder how people got home? Lennie?

Excerpt from a TV interview with Dubya - "I offer the United Kingdom all my intelligence...." hmmm, did you see that reporter smirking?

Praise to the Londoners with their calm, stoic responses; and praise to the emergency services for doing a good job in a chaotic situation with bombs going off at ½ hour intervals.

Now let's look at your (other) mails and feedback this week, especially from the UK.

Haggiswurst points me to a little known consequence of the 911 terrorism, no more sales of Swiss Army knives at airports, causing a 40% drop-in-turnover crisis for the manufacturer.

John Sharrett plugs a new bookazine for (ancient) UK bikers : "We have the pleasure in announcing 'The Rocker Years'. Due to be launched on 25th August, 'The Rocker Years' is a 'bookazine' that will be promoted exclusively in 522 WH Smiths stores and directly by Morton Media (Classic Magazines). This perfect bound, glossy publication will contain 116 pages of bikes, memories and music. Features including the history of the jukebox, the iconic bike the Triton, the story of the Ace Café, top ten rocker bikes, the black leather jacket, greatest hits of the greatest years and much, much more."

Still in the biker theme, there is a new golden 59 website dedicated to and supported by original founders and members of The 59 Club of the 1960's. They've even got a B+W photo of your's truly in my skinny days (it's SO long ago)! The BBC also did a podcast about the 59 club.

Fellow biker Matthias sent me a biker video (actually a Kawasaki Ad) called "High Five". Thanks, but I'll not post it here Matthias, to save MY bandwidth getting hit at 1 MB per shot :-)

Tessa Steer liked Tuesday's satire about the NASA probe to the Tempel-1 comet, and wrote "Many thanks for the link to your latest satirical entry for today. Did you see the news item reporting that a Russian Astrologer is to sue NASA over the probe? She wants £170m damages! "

Tessa was also having a browser problem with my redirector still going to my June blog rather than the July blog. We fixed that together just by flushing her browser cache and reloading the URL. If any one else had been having that problem, there's a tip that might help. Actually, that shouldn't happen at all, because I wrote a NOCACHE instruction on the redirector page!

Susan (Easy Bake Coven) liked the same satire too "Nicely done, Stu! W will strike anywhere, anytime. Over, under, sideways, down...backwards, forwards, square, and round!"

Talking of Dubya, he's always been envious of Clinton's amorous escapades in the White House. So on his 59th birthday, under the pretence of going to G8, he snuck off to Copenhagen for an amoral escapade of his own! Here's the photo of Dubya's 59th birthday blow-job:-)

Rounding off with some stories about , Lennie wrote "Was just reading your history of PI, and I remembered a program I watched about a young autistic savant called Daniel Tammet who could recite accurately up to 22,514 decimal places... You have to read about this chap if you haven't already... quite amazing."

And Klaus mailed me a article from a Tokio newspaper, here's a translation "
TOKYO - A Japanese psychiatrist has recited to 83,431 decimal places from memory, breaking his own personal best of 54,000 digits and setting an unofficial world record, a report said Saturday.
Akira Haraguchi, 59, had begun his attempt to recall the value of - a mathematical value that has an infinite number of decimal places - at a public hall in Chiba city, east of Tokyo, on Friday morning and appeared to give up by noon after only reaching 16,000 decimal places, the Tokyo Shimbun said on its Web site.
But a determined Haraguchi started anew and had broken his old record on Friday evening, about 11 hours after first sitting down to his task, the paper said.
He reached the 80,000-digit mark after midnight early Saturday, according to the paper, which had a photo showing Haraguchi with his eyes closed, his face contorted in concentration.
If verified and recognized by the Guinness Book of Records, Haraguchi's feat would beat his own previous best - currently under review - of 54,000 digits. The official current record-holder, also Japanese, calculated from memory to 42,195 decimal places in 1995."

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 8th July 2005 at 00:08 CEST permalink Email

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Sensual intellectuals

Recently I was confronted with the accusation of being a cold intellectual and the rather sensual person in question went on to assert that "intellectuals have NO sensuality whatsoever, give me just ONE example of an experience that's intellectual AND sensual!" My bad?

Well ma'am, an example would be antique bookstores, they're intellectual AND sensual. Especially bibliophile, second-hand books. Not the cold, profit-oriented, rapid-turnover ones at major airports, with staff who may have never read a book in their lives, or with barely sufficient intellectual capacity to read "My pet goat". I love the little bookstores, with an inspiring choice of books. Often in quiet cellars, shelves of old books, exhuding that great scent of old paper, parchment and leather, the scents of yesteryear. Ancient staff, who may be considered to be part of the inventory, who are widely read, customers with refined tastes and often peculiar questions. Staff with pointed, but relevant answers, who can often point you to hidden titles and new authors who appeal to your taste. Books sorted by theme and author or even some other exotic, eclectic, association, and not merely sorted by colour, by pretty cover pictures (or even by the size of your coffee-table!). And the inevitable top-ten-bestsellers for those condemned to follow the statistical tastes of the proletariat. I prefer places where you can browse, lost for hours in the kingdom of L-space, interconnected with quaint bookstores elsewhere and elsewhen, and maybe find a chained grimoire, straining at its locks, Prometheus Unchained, dying to be opened, waiting to steal your soul, The Necronomicon. Intellectual sensuality indeed! Look, a book, Oook!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 7th July 2005 at 06:07 CEST permalink Email

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American infidels desecrated our Tempel!

Celebrating their insurrection yesterday against England's One True King^®, U.S. colonialist infidels and space-terrorists, under their religious-fundamentalist leader W, committed an act of aggression of interplanetary proportions, when they desecrated our Tempel by firing a missile at our unarmed and undefended water-carrier, in violation of the space-weapons treaty!

Our Tempel? Yes! The comet, which was proceeding peacefully on its heaven-ordained elliptic ecliptic, is named after Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht(sic!) Tempel (1821-1889), who was born in the quaint German village of Niedercunnersdorf, which is in the SE corner with Poland and the Czech Republic. Niedercunnersdorf's sole claim to fame is being at the small end of a telescope ;-)

This infamous attack on a lone defenceless interplanetary traveller was named Deep Impact, which Freudian psychologists interpret as being the overwelming desire for a gay bang of interstellar proportions on the part of the wimps who otherwise lost every recent war that they started. Huh? Sure, look : Korea? Lost. Vietnam? Lost. Irak? Losing. In fact the last war which American invaders won was an attack on the tiny offshore Caribbean island of Grenada, and even then they needed six allied nations to help them. That Urgent Fury was probably a Pentagon typographical error, they intended to visit a cinema in East Cheam high street, UK, just for a half-hour, before calling for a Blood Donor via an SOS received by a Radio Ham ...---...

This vile and unwarranted attack has ruined the reputation of all Terrans amongst the peaceful space-faring races of the universe. Such as the Vogons. In the far-gone (sic!) years of their first interstellar explorations - before they licenced the superluminary warp-drive on form C+ filled out in 8-plicate - the Vogons sent their seed and spores wrapped in gigaton dumbell-shaped water/ice bubbles at sub-light speeds to far solar systems such as ours. The interstellar comets = Gigatons Of Dirty Snow (abbreviated to GODS by Erich von Däniken) served both as radiation shields for the spores on their long trip in suspended animation, and as a water supply should they arrive on a dry planet such as Mars for their interstellar colonisation, but also as a cushion for the Snow Crash impact which would signal arrival to the spores in suspended animation.

Now, thanks to those aggressive Americans, the impact signal has been given. Millions of Vogon spores are even now awakening, merging again to form full size Vogon stellar uncivil engineers, who will be very pissed off when they discover that their journey has been in vain. They will swear - the Vogon Oath Rite of Ashkent takes 8 years to recite - revenge upon the Terrans who caused this deep impact. Revenge by the the most terrible weapon known to Vogonkind (if Vogon-Kind is not a contradictive conjunction of words). Attack by Vogon Poetry!

If we are lucky, the Vogons, using technology distinguishable from magic, will be able - on size alone - to distinguish between 'Merkins and the rest of the Terrans, and may even be able to hone it down to the dozen miscreants responsible for all the ills suffered by the whole universe. I am looking forward to seeing them chew off destroy their own arms.

P.S. for the Yanks : this was political satire, in case you hadn't noticed.
P.P.S 4 W : So was that ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 5th July 2005 at 06:05 CEST permalink Email

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Letting off some (vintage) steam :-)

Less than 20 miles from here there is an old railway station, Altenbeken, a bit dilapidated , but still active. Yesterday vintage trains from all over Germany arrived there for an annual steam-in. Well OK, some of them dieseled in, like this old railbus which trundled in locally from Buren (barely 40 miles away).

Each vintage train was greeted by a different but LOUD brass band, one of which was the local volunteer fire-brigade. They were having a busy time all day too, since modern railway stations are not equipped to re-coal and re-water even one steam locomotive, let alone over twenty! There's no elephant-trunk watering place there any more and all the water had to be pumped up >100 feet from the stream which runs through the middle of the village there :-) Tons and tons of it. And the coal had to be dump-trucked into the tenders because there's no coal-chute any more either! Steam trains need their own infrastructure!

A special attraction was the whole veteran train belonging to the railway enthusiasts' museum in Darmstadt. Three of the freight cars have been gutted and fitted out with several complete model railways, mostly gauge H0. I hate to think of all the man hours man-years of effort put into building these magnificent models (Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3, Photo 4). Fans indeed!

Already, just ½ hour after opening, the crowds were pouring in, so we left at lunchtime, there being barely room left on the platforms. They expected 50,000 to 60,000 visitors! Of course we came and left by train, knowing the village streets would parked choc-a-block just chaotically. On the way back, we saw hundreds of amateur photographers and video-equipped fans standing by the tracksides, especially at the viaduct, just to get those perfect but rare motion shots of these grand old vintage steam trains. Want more? The official webpage is here.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 4th July 2005 at 07:04 CEST permalink Email

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Kapitalism komes to Kiev, Komrades!

Some of you may only know Kiew/Kyev from a rousing piece of classical music, Mussorgsky's "Great Gate at Kiev". But things are changing there. It's no longer "Back in the CCCP". Kiev is the capital city of the Ukraine, and capitalism (or, better expressed, franchised corporatism) has come to Kiev, which is not always a good thing :-( So let me give you some good tips for your next trip there.

Want to try some good Ukranian food, even delivered to your office or hotel? Then call "U Seni I Gogi" at 4 Shota Rustaveli, 234-0692.

Need Russian Lessons? I recommend Epoch of International Education who are at 39 Moskovska (254-3725) and at 17B Lva Tolstoho #16 (220-9273), better than learning from Ctyapt Cabopu!

For the best slavic cuisine, try "Pervak" at 2 Rohnidynska, 235-0952. Then, after some serious overeating, you can work out at "Planeta Fitness" at 10 Kropyvnytskoho (254-6200).

The National Academic Dramatic Theatre is at 3 Ivan Franko, 229-5921. There's a good cinema "Ukraina" too, which is at 5 Horodetskoho (229-6301). You'll find the lap-dancers on your own!

But if you're still addicted to corporate franchises from the west, there's an Avis (at Hotel Rus), Raiffeisenbank, KLM, Ford and Skoda dealers, Swatch, Potato House, Carambol Billiards, Strike Bowling, T.G.I.Friday's kid-friendly trough restaurant, an Arizona BBQ, a Yakatoria and, for the vodka-haters, even an O'Brien's Irish Pub (at 17A Mykhailivska, tel. 229-1584), begorrah!

While you're in the Ukraine , wanna take a look at Chernobyl, (which is just up the road in Belorus), like brave girl biker Elena did? Permits are hard to get though. If you want to contact her, her address is "Ukraine 03187 Kiev-187 Zabolotnogo 20/A Post Box 25 Elena". BTW, just to lay any fears, the radiation level in Kiev is (now) the same as in any American or European city, below 20 Microroentgens (500 Roentgens over 5 hours are fatal). Elena was careful to stay below ½ milliroentgen on her solo trip to Chernobyl, she knew what she was doing. Go read her photographic trip report, it's a fascinatingly frightening read!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 3rd July 2005 at 05:03 CEST permalink Email

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Thumbthing wrong this weak week

Let's kick off with the feedback mails this week, then I'll moan about my weak thumb :-)

Two of you have given me tips on reducing the size of graphics files (jpgs, gifs) prior to uploading them, by reducing the quality in which I save them. Meg suggests using Netmechanic to analyse the culprits for the long dialup loading times about which Jane complained last week. And Kim gave me a tip on using Irfanview to do the file size reductions. Thanks to both of you. Jane sent a reduced JPG of being the lone female at a geeky Linux party :-). Just 14kB. Oooooops, I find that Netmechanic have a 25-accesses limit on their 'free' tests :-(

Photoblogger Laurie (Houston, Texas, USA) goes for those high-quality photos. She submitted a Houston City Skyline and a Galveston sunset over at the end of my Skyline Meme. Go look!

Matthias, who won my 'classic racing motorcycle sound' quiz last week, has bought and is now restoring an 80's BMW flat-twin. Nice, but I still lust after a 1960's Triton like Steffen's.

Belated congratulations to Paul Gockel on turning 50. There were 80 people at his party, including Ralph Knight (Ex-Sidecar-Racer IOM) and Ernst Hiller, (6-fold German Champion). The whip-round collected 1000 Euros for an orphans' home in Afghanistan, instead of prezzies :-)

My wife Cornelia - writing in German - now has her own Bulldog Blog, already at number two when you Google for Bulldog Blog worldwide, and number one in Germany :-) Well done, lass!

Betsy Devine has been vacationing in Lindau in Lake Constance (Bodensee) and caught the worst storm they've had there this year :-( When the weather clears up, Betsy, grab Frank, hire a car and drive over to Konstanz (there's a ferry from Meersburg), from there just over the Swiss border there is a village called Gottlieben , directly on the Rhine, with Hotel Drachenburg and a restaurant Waagehaus. Try the Eglifilets in Mandeln with a Fendant wine , they're great!!!
Then continue to Schaffhausen to see the Rhine waterfalls. There's a little ferry that goes to the rocks in the middle of the waterfall, do brave the spray, take the ferry and climb the rock!!

College boy Kenny was amused by the evil trick with fractions I told you last week and sent me his favourite Mark Twain political quotation : "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Hilarious UK Special Constable Lenny sent a long mail asking some stuff about the use of steganography for the music industry, pixels against pirates. I'll be posting our Q+A session later this month (i.e. when I've actually answered his questions :-)

My weak week was because, after 3 weeks, I got the plaster removed from my left arm :-) The downside is that the thumb's tendons are overstretched and very weak. I could barely operate nail clippers with it :-( Because it's still painful moving the thumb, which flops around a bit because of atrophied muscles etc, I've taken to using one of my wife's hair-bands to steady the thumb when I sleep. Less pain that way, as I can't overstretch it again :-) Looks silly tho' !. The ER will check it again in 2 weeks, so I hope it's better by then; still going easy on it however.

And finally folks, there are others in a lot more pain than I am. So keep sending those vacation and cheery get-well-soon postcards, as varied as possible and the more the merrier, to :-
Mandarin Meg (Michelle Goodrich), 1772 Merced Way, West Sacramento, CA 95601 USA.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 1st July 2005 at 07:03 CEST permalink Email

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