Is it JUST background noise?

Most of the background microwave radiation our radio telescopes perceive coming from everywhere in the universe would seem to be just plain random noise.

Some of may not be!

Projects like SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), as portrayed in movies like Contact, expect there to be messages from alien cultures embedded in the background hiss. The expectation is that there would be repetitions of a bit-stream whose length would be the product of disjunct prime numbers. Why that? Well if you get a message which is say 1679 bits long, then the unique factorisation theorem tells us that 1679 has the prime factors 23 by 73, no other factorisation is possible. Thus the 1679 bit message can be seen as a two dimensional array of bits. If you arrange the bits as length by breadth you get a nonsense picture, but the if arranged breadth by length you get a picture like the one shown on the left (just black and white of course, the colour has been added for explanation purposes only).

The picture on the left is the Arecibo message humankind sent tightly beamed to the globular star cluster M13 on 16 November 1974. Assuming some alien receives it after its 25,000 year journey, he still has to interpret the picture. Now I can see the binary numbers for one through ten across the top. And I can see an analogue picture of a parabolic antenna (at Arecibo) near the bottom (the bottom line tells me the size of the parabolic antenna). Above the antenna I can recognise the solar system, the third planet elevated to show that this is where the message came from. I can even recognise an outline of a man above that. But I would not have recognised the atomic numbers of the elements of DNA and the DNA spiral shown, so the message would be even more difficult for an alien to interpret.

With higher dimensions you also have to know how to interpret the values in each dimension. Assume you found a repetitive bit-stream 27,880,327 bits long. The unique factors are 251, 277 and 401 all of which are prime. Now is this a 3D object? Or is it a 2D movie (the other dimension representing time, via the frame number in the movie)? Or is it a 2D still, the third dimension representing colour values? And if it is the latter, how do you know you (the alien) are assigning the colour values correctly?

Then there are the bandwidth issues. In order to minimise the effects of dispersion on the long trip, the Arecibo message was sent using a modulation rate of only 10 Hertz. So the simple 27,880,327 bit message I used in the previous dimensional example would take over 32 days to send. Would you notice a repetition cycle over 32 days long? Or would you have given up and pointed your reception antenna elsewhere? And that was just one medium resolution 2D colour picture we were talking about!

So you might want to compress the message. Note however that you would lose the product-of-primes characteristic of the message length if you did this. Note also that the recipient would have to know, recognise, or deduce the compression algorithm used. We (humankind) have come up with a number of lossless compression algorithms (e.g : CTW, LZ77, LZW, Huffmann, DEFLATE, gif, png, tiff, StuffIT etc etc). Which one of these or some other interglactic standard might the aliens be using?

N ote also, that you cannot compress a well encrypted file. Indeed good encryption and good compression share the characteristic that the output bitstream looks like random noise. As I said in the opening paragraph : "the background microwave radiation our radio telescopes perceive coming from everywhere in the universe would seem to be just plain random noise.". Welcome to intergalactic Babel, where everyone is talking all the time (because they can't reply until eons later due to the limitations of the speed of light), and it's just that we morons can't understand what they're all saying :-( It's like blogging : many blog, few listen ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 27th November 2007 at 06:27 CET permalink Comments Email

---

Commemorating Colossus' Codebreaking

The commemoration event I'm describing today actually took place on thursday 15th, but I've only just got around to writing it up. Sorry, I'm a bit overloaded. Let me try to put the background information on a rough timeline for you.

During WW2 Germany used two major pieces of crypto gear to encode their communications, the widely used Enigma about which most people have heard, and the rare SZ42 which was only used at the very top level (Hitler and his generals and staff). The SZ42 is a Vernam device which uses 10 irregular rotor wheels to generate a pseudo-random bitstream and then XORs this with the plaintext to give the ciphertext. Britain's code-breaking centre - forerunner to GCHQ - then at Bletchley Park, had broken the Enigma using inter alia Turing's Bombe and - unbeknownst to many - had also broken the SZ42 code using Colossus. Colossus was a 2000+ valve electronic computer which predated Eniac, Brainiac, and Maniac. Colossus was used to calculate the Kappa factor of the autocorrelations between text pairs. After the WW2 was over, Churchill ordered Colossus destroyed.

Meanwhile, towards the end of WW2, as the German army was retreating towards Berlin, the Brits overran one of the general's convoys. A bright intelligence officer realised that what he found in the communications trucks was different from the usual Enigma gear and had the lorries turned around and driven to Bletchley Park(BP). Thus did BP come to see a SZ42 for the first time, although they'd been cracking it for some time. [Leaflets telling you how the SZ42 was cracked are listed in the footnotes]. When GCHQ moved to Cheltenham they still had a barely functional SZ42 on their inventory.

Around 1975 (if I remember correctly) the cracking of the WW2 codes was de-classified and inter alia information about Colossus became available. A dedicated british computer scientist (whom I have had the honour to meet) - Tony Sale - set about restoring the Colossus to full working order, a task only recently completed. Tony was so dedicated that he even sank quite a bit of his own money into the restauration.

Some time later Craig Sawyers (Bletchley Park Museum) got permission to restore GCHQ's SZ42, a task which took him over 6 months. I got to meet Craig (photo, right) last week, he is certainly a dedicated man who knows his crypto-history well too.

Last week a commemorative codebreaking took place. Craig managed to bring his SZ42 over here to Paderborn to the HNF (world's largest computer museum). Easier said than done: GCHQ insisted that the German government assure in advance that they would not confiscate the SZ42 as war-booty ;-) The curator of the HNF - Norbert Ryska - is a good friend of mine. Norbert is also a crypto geek, in fact he co-wrote the first book on DES (Data Encryption Standard) in Germany :-) and so the HNF has a good collection of ancient crypto gear all in good working order. At the HNF the local amateur radio group have their equipment up on the roof and can communicate worldwide. And so they got involved too. Now normally it is forbidden for them to transmit in code, so a special government spooks' (BND) dispensation was needed to let them help us just this once. The dispensation stipulated that only 4 pre-defined plaintexts be coded and transmitted.

So what happened last thursday? Well the four plaintext messages were encoded using Craig's genuine WW2 SZ42 and a 5 track teleprinter paper tape generated. This was then transmitted by our radio amateurs (Holger Wolff and Heinz-Peter Bleier, to whom many thanks) for all the world to hear. The coded messages were intercepted by many other amateurs in the know, who immediately set about trying to break the code. The intended interceptors at Bletchley Park (BP) Museum also received the coded message and fed it to Tony Sale's restored Colossus. And sure enough, by friday evening, Colossus had broken the German code and deciphered the four messages. A commemorative code-breaking of great interest to all involved. Well done everybody for this international effort!

When I was there at HNF on thursday there were TV teams seemingly everywhere. There will be a DVD made, including the activities at Bletchley Park showing Colossus running. Incidentally, Colossus reads the paper tape at 5000 cps, when I was at BP to see it running, the tape was being hurled across the room like a huge rainbow, such is the speed it moves (thanks here to Tommy Flowers, who worked for the Post Office in 1942, who designed and built this gear originally). The BBC was interviewing Norbert via our local radio station's studio. A state transmitter (WDR) was also interviewing Rudolf Staritz (Canaris' radio head in WW2). Rudolf is 86 now, I hadn't seen him these last five years, so it was good to get a ½ hour to talk to him between his TV sessions.

Colossus weighs several tons, is about 6 meters by 4 by 2.5 meters high and has over 2000 valves (transistors weren't invented until after WW 2). Although it correctly decoded the messages we sent, an amateur crypto geek from Cologne was faster. He had written his own decryption software especially for this event and broke the code within a few hours. Congratulations man, your future as a spook is assured ;-)

Me? I just let them get on with it. But I couldn't resist going in to watch ;-) That way I got to meet Rudolf again and to meet Craig for the first time. Turns out we both have had crypto papers published in Cryptologia, so we had plenty to chat about. What a great day! And to top it off, the local university were celebrating 60 years of the invention of the transistor, so Klaus von Klitzing was there too, Nobel prizewinner for physics in 1985 for discovering the quantum Hall effect. You meet the brightest and nicest people in Paderborn, a very brainy lot too, I'll have you know :-)

Further Reading : Colossus 1943-1996 by Tony Sale, ISBN 0 947712 36 4, a 17 page leaflet.
Codebreaking with the Colossus Computer by Frank Carter, Bletchley Park Trust Reports numbers 1, 3 and 4.

PS : Norbert has a new book out, co-authored with Prof. F.L.Bauer (who wrote Decrypted Secrets, a textbook on cryptography). The title is Kurze Geschichte der Informatik ( = a short history of computer science).

PPS : And just in case you thought Microsoft's XP random number generator was good enough to provide secure encryption; it isn't, it's predictable. Predictably insecure :-(

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 25th November 2007 at 06:25 CET permalink Comments Email

---

US Thanksgiving : that's one big Turkey!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 22nd November 2007 at 06:22 CET permalink Comments Email

---

The Bloggers' Limericks' Meme

How about we start a new meme?

The rules are simple :-
Blog a limerick characterising (or lampooning) one of the bloggers on your blogroll. Include their name as a link within the limerick. Mail me the permalink (URL) of your limerick so that I can link to it here. Here's mine as an example of what I mean :-

There once was a lady from Wales
Who liked to blog Jesus's tales,
'Till she got in a tizz,
did our own dear ol' Liz,
Before preaching 'bout Isaac in jails ;-)

Make sure your limerick scans correctly, not like this lame effort of mine below :-)

There once was a rather old man
Whose blog was read by a fan
Who said that brevity
Made for longevity
Instead of trying to fit in as many last line words as you possibly can ;-)

Off you go now, write your limerick, blog it and mail me the link!

Replies : Here's a limerick by Doug Alder.

Wendy's was too private to publish, but Four Dinners sent this one, cheers mate!

A fella called Ole Phat Stu
said "My blog I'd like you to view"
So you peered into his head
and collapsed stone dead
'Cause his brain was way over you....

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 19th November 2007 at 09:39 CET permalink Comments Email

---

What can I possibly say?

Well, thankyou would be a good start! Thankyou for your compliments :-)

Several of you have commented positively on the variety of the subject matter in this blog. Wendy has said "... you never know what you are going to get...". Bruce said "..every day a new eye-opener.." and Liz thought I "...must be omniscient...". No, Liz, I stopped being omniscient when I read Gödel's proofs ;-)

Gödel's first incompleteness theorem : "Not even elementary arithmetic can be both consistent and complete", so this blog has even less chance of being so ;-)
BTW: I can thoroughly recommend Doug Hofstadter's masterpiece Gödel, Escher, Bach, a 777-page tome which contains a notable alternative proof of incompleteness (inspired by Gödel), expose´s on the art of M.C.Escher and on the fugues of J.S.Bach. When read aloud in the original English version, the chapter on the ricercar is itself a ricercar! Now THAT is masterful prose (or prosidy?) indeed :-)

Hilary asked sarcastically "Is there no end to the things you (can) write about?"

Well, as we saw above, Hilary, the answer is YES, there is. But it got me thinking about the number of things we (can) say or think. Why do I differentiate between saying and thinking^* ? In linguistics, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis postulates a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world^** and behaves in it. So if we can only think what we can say [there are different Categories in different languages], then counting the size of our vocabulary and the size of our sentences will let us determine the number of things we can say. The relevant equation is :-

Here L is the length of a sentence. In Basic English, aviation english, Hemingway's staccato style or the gutter press this can be as low as 7. In average spoken UK English it is about 20, in advanced and scientific literature it can average 34 [ I counted through several examples of each].

And W is the geometric mean of the number of words which can appear in each position in a sentence. In a 1950 paper, Miller and Selfridge gave 10 as a conservative estimate for W. Examination of various corpora, varying from the strictly formalised aviation English to very 'free' texts gives values for W varying between 6 and 20, but 10-12 seems usual in the better newspapers. Thanks to my students for counting.

The result, S, is the number of distinct sentences we can produce or understand. Strictly formalised aviation English thus has about 6⁷ possible sentences. Highly advanced people might ultimately reach 20³⁴ and normal English would have 10²⁰, or about a hundred quintillion sentences. One lifetime is not enough, we need infinitely many, blogging at infinitely many keyboards ;-)
There's your answer Hilary, ˜ a hundred quintillion sentences ;-)

Now let's look at it from the other side. I have about 7000 books in this house. Assume they average 300 pages, each page has about 20-30 sentences. That makes about 50 million sentences in books read, and although we write less than we read, there's no writer's block, you can't make "running out of things to say" as an excuse.

And so to B.Ed. ;-)

^* : Here in Germany, §130 StGB prohibits you from saying some things you might think. And in your country ? ^** : Recommended reading : George Lakoff's 614 page whorfian book Women, Fire, and dangerous things which explains what Categories reveal about the mind. The ISBN number is 0-226-46803-8 . Written back in 1985.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 16th November 2007 at 06:16 CET permalink Comments Email

---

Currently reading...

Jennifer has asked me to report regularly what I am currently reading. Here is this week's crop, the old paperback in the left is 40 years old and yellowing :-)

On the left we have "1066 and all that", a classically hilarious short history of England written in 1930 (sic!) by two Oxford graduates. My copy is a 1967 yellowing reprint.

In the middle, "It's your time you're wasting" is a current paperback by blogger Frank Chalk (pseudonym). It explains why secondary education is going down the drain in the UK due to a severe lack of discipline in modern comprehensive schools (a consequence of the Nanny-state, methinks). Gripping read, but rather shocking to me.

On the right, one I'm just starting to study. The well known comedian Stephen Fry presents "The Ode less travelled" in which he claims he can teach us to write poetry. We shall see! Mine usually turn out to be Vogon poetry, so bad that you feel like chewing your arms off when reading it [quoting Douglas - Mr.42 - Adams there] ;-) Actually, I feel more comfortable doing a pastiche style, like this. YMMV, folks ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 14th November 2007 at 06:14 CET permalink Comments Email

---

How to recognise a stroke

Our friend Bullymom recently sent me a mail with a shocking story. At a recent party, a woman fell down and then said she didn't feel well, so her husband took her home. Later that evening she felt even worse so her husband took her to hospital. There she died only a few hours after falling down; died of a stroke.

Neurologists say they can save someone and fix the effects of a stroke if they get to the patient within 3 hours of the stroke. Therefore it is important that we all can recognise the symptoms of a stroke and bundle the patient off to hospital w/o delay.

Here are four simple tests if you suspect someone is having a stroke :-

• Ask the person to smile/grin widely. They will not manage it (symmetrically).
• Ask them to speak a simple sentence which involves a lot of mouth movement, "What beautiful weather today, super sunshine, no hail!" They'll not manage it.
• Ask them to raise both arms. They'll not manage it, or only partially.
• Get them to stick their tongue out. If it is curved to one side or waves about from side to side, that is indicative of them having had a stroke too.

Now I'm NOT a medical doctor, but it seems to me if we all knew these 4 tests and mailed the URL of this blog-entry to ten friends to get them to read it and learn these four simple tests too, then we could perhaps save some lives. Do it now, please! Without link-whoring, I would ask other bloggers to link here too please, this once.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 11th November 2007 at 06:12 CET permalink Comments Email

---

Let us not forget The Iron Curtain

On this very day - 9th of November - 18 years ago, the Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain opened. And so there are people who are young adults today - young Jax, daughter of 4D, springs to mind - who were barely born when that deadly border opened. So I would like to show you some photos taken on a recent visit to a local Iron Curtain museum and explain them to you, lest we forget.

You may click on some photos to get to larger originals to see more details I discuss.

The museum has preserved an original piece of the Iron Curtain border. It was basically a double fence on East German territory separating West Germany (top left of photo) from East Germany (right side of photo). The earthen area between the fences was a minefield. In the enlargement you can just see (at the far end of the valley) the eastern fence. This held not only the usual barb wire but also automatic guns on the posts. Anyone touching that fence would thus trigger those guns thus shooting themselves. The actual borderline was the middle of the road shown top left in the photo. On the hillside you can see a thin cross. It was put there after German reunification 17 years ago to mark the spot where a potential escapee from eastern communism was shot dead. The shot was fired from the East German border guards' hidden pillbox bottom centre of the photo. Rest in Peace, man, whoever you were!

Allied personnel were not allowed within a mile of the border on either side. Warning signs such as these were posted along the roadsides and even on forest tracks. I often took my western visitors to see the Iron Curtain, so that they had actually seen it and not just vaguely heard of it. I usually took them to a place where there was a small gate where the communists could let their spies in and out at the dead of night. But the western border guards were sharp too. Within 5 minutes of my parking the car they would be there, hands on holsters, demanding to see our papers and asking in a rough tone what we were doing there. Meanwhile the eastern border guards would be taking telephoto snaps of us, especially my car's western number plate ;-)

The museum also shows things characteristic of the border. The red, yellow, and black square pole seen here in the foreground is the border marker pole used by the East Germans. It was usually 2 to 5 meters on their side of the actual border. The white round pole with the red top was the West German border marker, usually crowded right up against the border (except where this was in the middle of a road or river ;-) . The East Germans also had concrete pillboxes like the one painted green here to blend into the background. Guards were posted there to shoot any potential escapees (see first photo above). Theoretically also any Westerners trying to get in ;-) Yeah; likely!

The hut shown above serves to show the various kinds of signs used on or near the western side of the border to warn you from inadvertently crossing the border. Sometimes the true border was along the middle of a river or a road; you were allowed to use both sides of the road/river in such cases, but be damned sure you had all your paperwork with you and that they were in order at the time. I've been checked and have been interrogated five times in the space of three miles on one such border road!

The airspace was tightly patrolled as well. On the western side there was an ADIZ (Air Defence Identification Zone) about 20 miles wide all down the Iron Curtain. If anyone entered it east-to-west a pair of Phantoms would be scrambled and intercepting within minutes. There were a few airfields within the ADIZ. You needed a flight plan and +/-2 minutes precision to fly to them. The traffic circuit at Lübeck for example even entered East German airspace by special agreement. If you trespassed into their airspace you would be pursued and perhaps forced down by MiG helicopters like the one shown. Especially if you jigged low level at night through the valleys to pick someone up ;-)

And all this although Walter Ulbricht said No-one has the Intention of building a Wall :-(

All a part of my life, but boy, am I glad those days are gone! Lets just hope that the Bush/Rice brinkmanship on the issue of missiles along the Russian border doesn't provoke Putin to another Cold War. Remember Cuba? Kennedy didn't want Russian rockets anywhere near US borders either. Same situation, reversed roles. Take it easy!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 9th November 2007 at 06:09 CET permalink Comments Email

---

Beware of the Oirish Voirus, Begorrah ;-)

With all due respects to the Irish, shouldn't that read "First, send emails to everyone..." and "Then, delete all the files..." ? Trust a Paddy to get it wrong ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 7th November 2007 at 06:07 CET permalink Comments Email

---

Zeke's Groaner Challenge met.

Blogreader Zeke, who hails from Iowa (USA), issues me a challenge on Shaggy Dog Stories. Remember back on October 24th I told you how to make up your own Shaggy Blog Stories, e.g. for Kay's Friday Groaners ? Well, Zeke has challenged me on this "It's easy if you choose you're(sic!) own subject. But if tell you what the subject is to be, let's see you make a double up on the spot, Mr. Cleverdick! You always rantin' 'bout us American Christians. Give us a groaner about us and the dinosaurs. That'll be hard! And to make it even harder, the punchline should be in the Latin you seem to like so much!". Nothing easier than that, Zeke. Here it comes :-)

"I suppose you're one of those bible fanatics who deny evolution?"
"Fer sure, God made all of the creatures, there ain't no evolution."
"What about the dinosaurs then? There's fossil evidence of them."
"God made the dinos too! The little ones are still here, we call 'em lizards."
"And I suppose the big ones all drowned 'cos Noah couldn't fit them on the ark? ;-)"
"Nah! God killed them off for being cross-dressing gays, the dregs of creation!"
"Huh? never heard of that! A cross-dressing, gay, dregs-of-creation dinosaur"
"God hates cross-dressers! And he hates gays. That's why their eggs stinked."
"You mean 'they're extinct' ?"
"Nah, Eggs stinked, 'cos God made 'em turn rotten, so the big dinos died out."
"Well, you have also claimed that God named all of His creatures, but I've never heard of a cross-dressing gay dreg-of-creation dino. What did He call them then?"
"Trannie sore-ass wrecks!"

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 5th November 2007 at 06:05 CET permalink Comments Email

---

The strange house in the woods^*

Peculiar. Most peculiar.

I was charging up the hill on my motorcycle, aiming for the fast inside line through the left uphill hairpin on a lonely road through the local woods, when another motorcycle popped out of the woods on the right, leaving a line of smeared mud across the hairpin. So I had to change my line to avoid the slippery fresh mud. Annoyed, I overtook him to avoid any mud he might leave in the next (right) hairpin.

Hullo, hullo. A camouflaged rider. And his bike has military plates. I wonder what he was doing in the woods? No exercises going on there now either (we pilots get NOTAMs - Notices to Airmen - warning us of any shooting with live rounds so that we can avoid such areas). Peculiar. Not funny peculiar, strange peculiar! Very strange.

My curiousity aroused, I decide to take the dogs for a walk through the woods there next day. Parking the car opposite the old folks' home on the hill, we walk down and enter the woods where the enduro came out (opposite the hairpin) from along a narrow footpath/lane I'd never noticed before. The single track in the mud showed where the bike had come from the day before. No traffic since, nor footprints. So I told the dogs to stop barking and be quiet and we followed the tracks deeper into the dark, dank, woods. They lead us to a house which would have been well hidden had all the leaves been still on the trees. And what a strange house! A strange house indeed!

It's not the forester's house, because I know where that is. There's a stone wall and tall metal fence around it, tall metal gates as well. A doorbell on the gatepost, bearing no name. I take out my bird-spotting monocular. No door bell on the far house. No letterbox. No nameplate or house number (which are mandated by the German Post Office). The track of the enduro starts at a discreet garage which is let into the hillside. No footprints in the mud from the house to the garage though. A connecting tunnel perhaps? Who would build a tunnel here? This is getting even more interesting.

What a peculiar house it is too. Tucked up against the hillside. Two stories. Not one window on the ground floor, just concrete walls on three sides and a heavy door in the front side. The door has one of those little one-way security observation holes in it. Upstairs, no windows at the back, on either side a slitted window you couldn't crawl through, but heavily barred anyway. At the front, a balcony of solid wood so you can't see who is sitting there. For the balcony, a heavily curtained window and door going in.

The curtains twitch! I am being watched! What IS going on here? I pretend to be walking the dogs and we go back to the narrow trail. Curiosity has me in its grip. We walk up the hill, and approach the house from its windowless rear. The darkened moss-covered roof would make it hard to see from the air. No chimney? No holes big enough to lob a Molotov or grenade into. Curious and curiouser, as Alice would say.

Back at the pub next day I ask the postman, but he has never delivered mail there. Come to think of it, maybe that was a messenger motorcycle that came out of the woods there? I consult the land-use building plans at the town council office. The house is not on their map! Most peculiar. Most peculiar indeed! What IS that place?

What do you think it is? I think it is a safe house for some nefarious government intelligence agency or that ilk. Or is that just a mad idea? Let me know what you think. (For obvious reasons, I'm not telling you where the house is, nor providing a photo). And why do I tell you about it? Just in case I get rendered off the face of the Earth ;-)

^* : OTOH, maybe it's just the Three Bears' House which Goldilocks found in the Norse woods? ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 3rd November 2007 at 06:03 CET permalink Comments Email

---

Ye Olde Pubbe/Inn - the older the better :-)

One delightful hobby we have is boozing in old pubs, the older the better. We find the older pubs have a more delightful character than newer ones. One of our local favorites is Ottens Hof, but that's only from 1631. Here are some of their outside views, and here are some of their interior views.

But when our good friend Klaus came to visit from Alaska, we decided to show him his namesake inn, Klausenhof, whose bar dates from 1487 (that's 5 whole years BEFORE Columbus even set sail for India; eat your hearts out, American blogreaders ;-)

But the most ancient pub we've been in lately is the Stolberger Hof whose beer cellar dates from 1282! The beer pump is in the centre of the table, so you pull your own foaming ales and pay by (honest) confession at the end of the evening ;-)

Can any of you beat that (1282)? Have you been in any older pubs in Europe?

If not, from the old boozer and his mates, cheers anyway ;-)

ADDENDUM 7/11/7 : Chip has been to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham(UK) which dates from 1189 AD.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 1st November 2007 at 06:01 CET permalink Comments Email

---