News - Neil Armstrong, Lions, Car security

Neil Armstrong got it right

( Read more... )

Of course, I was brought up with the "Small step for man" phrase, so in my head it's firmly lodged as an idiom no more strange than many others dotting English. Mankind lands on the moon for the first time exactly once ever -- whatever you said then is just what you always say in that circumstance, by definition :)

De Bruijn sequences

There was a short flurry a week or so ago with several people rederiving De Bruijn sequences. Ie. the shortest sequence of digits (or set of M characters) that contain every possible sequence of four (or N) digits. It's easy to show this length is 10^4+3, but not so easy to prove that.

And apparently, people are still producing locks to which this is a good attack, link borrowed from Schneier. It's good, because if you get the first digit wrong you don't have to work out how to reset it, an annoying feature of some combination door locks. But bad if someone can hold the sequence in their head and divide the length of a brute force attack by N.

Pride of lions discover they can hunt elephants

The office kitchen has the Times, amongst others, mysteriously appearing every day. I was heartened to see the front page pictures were from an article in one of the supplements that I found interesting, but didn't think anyone else considered front page news.

Black and white infra-red pictures of a pride of lions bringing down an elephant. They are disturbing but evocative.

The front page (and front website) also had a couple of other articles worth commenting on:

EU court upholds right of employers to base pay on length of employment, indirectly paying less to mothers who take maternity leaves

( Read more... )

Pope oxmoronically abolishes limbo

( Read more... )

Ceilidh this weekend (sat 7th)

For those of you who like ceilidhs, but always manage to miss the round's announcements, the next is coming up this saturday. I feel put upon this week for a couple of reasons, but shall certainly try to go for most of it.

For that matter, I recommend it to anyone wanting to give it a go -- they explain what to do as it goes along, I have n left feet and picked it up ok, if you feel you may enjoy it, why not come along?

Ben Elton -- The first causalty

I've read a few Ben Elton books. Some have been enjoyable, and some haven't grabbed me -- like many authors I feel they orbit one book which shows off all the best aspects and is a classic, which may or may not have been or ever be written.

The First Casualty is about inspector Kingsley of the metropolitan police, who refuses to fight in WWI, but is then chosen to investigate the murder of an officer in Ypres.

I love Kingsley, he has the arrogant intellectualism and bastardry that appeals to me. Of course I like a book about someone being arrested for a point of logic, who is later shown to be as brave and effective and patriotic as anyone who wasn't when he ends up in the war anyway, and just happens to save two attacks.

However, the morality of things, and Kingsley's opinions, all seem to be dispensed with an exceptionally heavy hand. Be it his thoughts, or his defense at trial, whatever he's thinking is belaboured. That the average German soldier hasn't done anything worth being killed for (other than, perhaps, killing average British soldiers) is a reaosnable position, but "it isn't logical" is repeated over and over, as if this will make it into some sort of insight.

The plot is decent, enjoyable, but nothing special. The ending is fairly sweet.