Playing "Solitaire"...

One of the features of the plot of Cryptonomicon is a low-tech crypto system that can be implemented with an deck of playing cards. Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography and other works, developed the algorithm for the book. (A complete description of the algorithm, with other links, can be found at the Counterpane web site.)

The idea of the system is to be able to generate secure messages without having to resort to a computer program or any sort of high-tech. For the paranoid, it represents a method of assuring secure communications that leaves no intrinsic "residue" that points incriminating fingers (as does, say, having an encrypted file or encryption program on a hard drive).

Anyway, my curiosity got the better of me last night and I started to play around with the algorithm, with a real deck of cards. After doing the required manipulations for a really short message, I compared it against the output of a Perl script I got from the Counterpane site.

I encoded the first letter of my message correctly... the rest... well...

I tried the procedure again, with the same initial setup of cards. I noticed immediately that I was getting different results while I was manipulating the deck, but again, after the first letter... well...

Third time was a charm, though.

Apparently, practice is called for before sending any messages to Garcia (or anyone else, for that matter).

Cheers...

Quieter cooling, and more work...

Taking a page out of bandicoot's book, I attached a 5.5-Vdc power supply to my jury-rig fan, to see if it operates more quietly. It does.

I fired up the VAIO at an ambient room temperature of 74.1 def F and the fan running. After 20 minutes, the temperature of the air coming out of the machine's exhaust vent had edged up to 76.6 deg F, and after almost 5 hours of operation, the temperature stands at 78.4 def F.

Not too shabby, but I still prefer using the eSlate.

My next step will be to try to find some better Cyrillic fonts for X Windows and a keyboard handler so I can type in Russian. Yesterday, while researching a term, I fired up Mozilla, homed in on rambler.ru, and then - when I realized I really had no way of typing in Russian - I opened up a separate window displaying my LJ friends page, and composed my query by cutting and pasting Cyrillic letters from the LJ window into the Rambler window. The procedure is somewhat inconvenient and cumbersome, but it eventually got me the results I needed.

I translated and sent off some material related to water quality monitoring in the Caucuses. The concept is interesting, considering the political and ethnic issues in the region. As soon as I sent that job out, I got a call to do some editing, due Monday. I also got a call asking if I could go to Houston next week instead of the week following, but I had to decline that one... there's too much to do before Ieave as it stands now.

Off to find fonts and a keyboard driver to Russify X...

Cheers...

Going on about the fan...

Eventually, the tape holding the fan in place against the back of my VAIO gave way, enough to let the cracks aroung the fan/computer "interface" supply most of the air being blown by the fan. As a result, the VAIO overheated. Repositioning the running fan saw an almost immediate jump in temperature of 10 deg F in the air going past the thermocouple. I've turned off the computer and let the fan continue to draw air through it, to help it cool down faster.

The cooking can't be good for the CPU or the components near it. Then again, this is the longest the machine has been on in some time. If I had been paying more attention...

In other news, an e-mail correspondent told me she had received the ATA Chronicle, the one with my article. Then Galina came home with a large envelope filled with about 10 authors' copies. As a result, I've had to accelerate the renovation of my "professional" web site. The files are ftp-ing to my server as I type this. Next step: go check the links and make sure everything works and that there are no stupid spelling errors on the pages!

Conventional wisdom says (as does conventional experience) that such a publication will increase calls coming in to ask about my services. I don't really have a great baseline right now to compare against, but what the heck... it's not as if I'm going to write a technical paper on the subject.

In still other news, I got a nearly illegible assignment to do for Monday. The good news is, though, that it's newspaper-speak about government issues, so the redundancy in the text is astronomical. Still, it'll be a bear, not to mention I have an editing assignment also due on Monday.

Off to relax... away from these computers!

Cheers...