Tales from the Crypto

I'm about halfway through Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It's a very exciting book about the historical convergence of a WWII codebreaking and protecting unit and a present-day infromation-technology company. At any rate, it includes as a part of its plot the so called "Solitaire/Pontifex" Algorithm. It's pretty neat. You can read about it here. There's a web version of it here, to prevent you from having to do it all by hand. There's also a downloadable version here.

I think it appeals to me because I went to Bletchley Park right before my senior year in high school for a special history class....and well, I love secret-agent stuff. If you like that sort of thing you can send me a message if you decrypt this. You might need to cut and paste a couple times.

Passkey: blogspot

GNXYQYJMUQJVQGPBGGCUQFKARZ
MZHEMONZTHXMUDANNSYCZAIALH
CVVXXRXJOCQACLPMDYNPFSREZWG
FXNBGBCHSLFXNYKHALFQARGIGGG
WBUYBFFFGMZWQORNAMMZZZVQS
CAFTFHHDMQVXIOBZUZNTFZGELYL
APUDXLDSGTQ ZNCCDJXATUFFJUOU
AAHUJOZXBTTDIQ

Onwards and upwards

While it appears that the space shuttle launch is delayed another day, I ponder exactly how amazing it is that humans have built upon their own prior knowledge to create something as complicated as a space shuttle. Sure something is bound to fail in the thousands of individual parts, but it amazes me to no end that something that complicated can be constructed in the first place from raw materials on earth.