Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 by Leo Marks

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Good grief, what an excellent read. I'd settled down for what I assumed would be a dry but interesting read. Not at all, it was all about the characters, brought to life in a superb way. I was enthralled from start to finish, and only realised at the end that I had also been learning code breaking. Wow, will read again.


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The Right Stuff

I happened upon this draft speech inside the internets, it would be an understatement to say that the fact that it remained a draft pleases me enormously.

"Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel
as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of
man. In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search
will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."

— 'In the event of Moon disaster,' speech drafted by William Safire for President Richard M. Nixon to give to the nation should Neil and Buzz not be able to rejoin the command module and be faced with death on, or around, the Moon, the memo to H. R. Haldeman was dated 18 July 1969. This text remained secret for thirty years.

http://www.skygod.com/quotes/spaceflight.html

Roof Ladder

Here's a nice little anecdote from one of my previous lives, my telephone engineer phase.
The job involved the installation of a payphone and telephone line into one of Oundle School's boys boarding houses. This was a two man job due to the size and age of the building (100s of years old with no modern infrastructure) and the necessity for multiple overhead wire spans to get the line into the building.
The internal work is completed without drama, payphone installed, internal wiring completed. I cannot recall if it was the case here, but previous boys houses had their payphone bells disconnected and mains powered flashing lights used instead, "to avoid disturbing the boys during prayer".
The external wiring is a bit more physical, thankfully there are poles erected to carry wires from the rear of this building round to the front and the road. This initially goes fine, some clambering about with the dropwire dispenser between poles, but the spans are going up ok. Then the sticking point.
Two spans left to go, pole to a chimney on a bungalow, from the chimney to the final pole and connection to the outside world. Ah, a chimney. Other wires are already attached and we can share of one of their brackets. But, how to get up on the roof to it? This needs a roof ladder, which we don't carry as routine. This isn't good, 45 minutes back to base, paperwork, and return. Is there another way?
Well, we only need to be up there for a couple of minutes. Attach clamps, tension and clamp first span, clamp second span, and down. Hmm... this isn't a tall bungalow, I can reach up and touch the rain guttering. Ok, a plan. We extend our 3 section ladder to 2 sections. Stand it at the bungalow front, lean it against the roof edge, with one section now pointing into the air. I will climb the ladder, as it pivots the bottom will lift and my partner (the heavier of the two of us) will grab the end and take the weight of the ladder and me. I will climb up the now flat on the roof ladder with clamps and wire between my teeth, at the top I will sit astride the roof and do the job. Easy.
Not quite so easy, here's what happened... I climb, the ladder pivots on the roof edge. My partner grabs the ladder, I start to climb. He yells out, "I can't hold it...!" The ladder slides down the roof, I do the cartoon-like scrabbling my way up the ladder without making any headway. As the ladder disappears beneath me I throw myself up and forwards onto the roof. This could still work, I am now on the roof, just need to clamber up...
Nope, the roof is old. Wooden tiles, covered in moss, slippery moss. I am sliding backwards, no grip, fingernails scraping their way down. I stop with my legs hanging over the edge, not high up, only 8 feet or so. Looking down I assess the situation and politely ask my partner to get out from lying under the ladder and put it back up for me.
After a hearty laugh we consider our options. The proper roof ladder will have to be brought to the site, no doubt about that. But first, hmm... I seem to have kicked down a huge section of this innocent customers rain guttering. We spend the rest of the day fixing the guttering, nobody was home, we did a good job.
The job is finished the next day, with an official roof ladder. And yes, I did get my current job based on my excellent health and safety knowledge...

Wild Country

Wild Country, this film was a pleasant surprise. The film was rented as a speculative try this new to DVD low budget horror movie. The selling point was that it was Scottish made with a cast of unknown actors that had received good reviews.
I've seen a lot of horror movies, ghost movies, slasher movies, etc. It's not necessarily a favourite genre of mine, but is the preferred genre of a family member. Which I guess means for the most part I have seen it all before.
The film was at its heart a teens roaming in the dark being eaten one by one by an unknown beastie affair. But it managed to be a lot more than that. The performances were very good, the fear believable, the camera work setting the mood just right, definitely scary in parts. The low-ish budget animatronics could be off putting, but I've seen worse. It managed a couple of good twists too resulting in an ending that should have been predictable but caught me by surprise.
The mood of the film must have caught me just right. This is only the second film to have me feeling quite uneasy when walking the dog in the dark immediately afterwards.
Nice one, has to be an 8 out of 10.

I Eat Brains

I eat brains, once weekly, on a Wednesday.
Well, what I'm really referring to is faggots. The brand, Mr Brain's Faggots. I am an absolute faggot fan and have renamed Wednesday, Faggot Day. (No sniggering from over the pond, please.)
I was reminded to blog this weekly treat of mine by a Wikipedia article. I am a plodding WikiGnome at Wikipedia making small edits throughout many articles, and had popped into the faggots slang word article to correct a misspelling of the word argument.
Reading the article confirms that the version I eat is made of liver and onions rolled into meatballs and served in an oh so delicious West Country sauce/gravy.
The traditional recipe though has faggots made from pig heart, liver and fatty belly meat or bacon minced together, with herbs added for flavouring and sometimes breadcrumbs. The mixture is shaped in the hand into balls, wrapped round with caul (a membrane from the pig's abdomen), and baked. This isn't quite the basic version I'm used to, but I think I'd try them out given the chance.
They're more of a niche product nowadays, but have had a book written about them, and a most unique advertising campaign.
And the ultimate test of how great they are? My 7 year old German Shepherd dog Buddy, who will eat dead things on the street, gets a faggot of his own on Faggot Day. He sniffs it, walks away, repeats a few times then eats it because it's there and he obviously feels obliged. It takes all sorts I guess...

No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog

No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog by Margaret Mason

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
I liked it. Yes, just a list book, but each entry is given plenty of detail. Of any use? Yes, it gave me 8 recurring usable ideas and 12 ideas I could use one-off. Along the way it gives good advice to both current bloggers and bloggers to be.


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Energy Security

I recently read an interesting article in Time magazine (25th Feb edition) by Baron Lawson former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for Energy. He describes how discussion of energy in Europe is dominated by environmental issues; carbon emissions, global warming, etc. But this is happening at the expense of security of supply. Europe's sources of primary energy are potentially unreliable; oil from the endemically unstable Middle East, and the increasing dependence on Russian gas to fuel power stations. Alongside this is the growing gap between demand for electricity and the capacity of power stations to supply it. This gap grows ever larger with decisions such as Germany's to close down all of its nuclear power stations which will lose it 25% of its generating capacity by 2023. You can also add to this the reluctance to build new coal-fired power stations until carbon-capture and storage technology is in place; a technology that doesn't yet exist and according to some, never will.
All of this points to the likelihood of of the lights going out in Europe at some point in the next 20 years having never been greater.
But, all is not lost. With industries migrating to China and India and electricity prices rising substantially the gap between supply and demand will shorten.
We will have huge utility bills and no jobs, but the lights will stay on, cool...

wikiHowl Gadget

I'm pleased to see the full listing in place now for wikiHowl's Google Gadget. Well, the screenshot's not in place yet, but will be soon.
This is the full version of a trial we completed using the form created gadgets tool. That's one heck of a handy tool, but turned out to be limited with regard to sharing. Email sharing was cool, but directory listings turn up broken and there's no control over listing entries.
Creating a gadget turned out to be a good lesson in reading the instructions properly. The process is very well documented with full API documentation and access to the source code of any previously created gadget. Oh yes, and the backup of the very helpful regulars at the Google Gadgets API discussion group.
As for reading the instructions properly, I am male and am excluded from having to do this. Dropping the framework code onto a blank XML page was easy enough, and the same with copying in directory listing parameters. Easy stuff this, now there's only some basic HTML needed for showing our content. (No fancy fetching of data needed at this point.) Aha, it's been a while since I've not used a fancy web page editor, so what's the format of these tags again? It was trial and error all the way, painstakingly correcting error after error, and all the time looking across the room at my HTML Bible book which I knew I didn't need.
It was the adding of Google Analytics code that threw up that my framework was wrong too, very funny. I managed an error in every part of this coding, and of course loved every moment of it.
Thanks go out to KiS for her work on the thumbnail and screenshot images, just don't tell her that I used MS Paint to grab the original screenshot image, I could never live it down (she's a pro PhotoShop user).
So, a labour of love for our wikiHowl readers, and thanks to Google Analytics I can say "Hi" to our 19 gadget users as of an hour ago.

Tutorial

I am a part-time student with the Open University, Europe's largest university with 200,000 students. I am currently studying Computers and Processors (T224) an interesting module that covers the fundamental components of computer systems, practical issues in the design of processor-based systems, the use of a simulated processor-based system to perform simple tasks, and much more of a geeky nature. All great fun, and part of the slow slog toward my bachelors degree, BSc (Honours) Information Technology and Computing.
Distance learning with the Open University isn't a totally solo affair. Every course/module is backed up by online forums allowing interaction with fellow students, all very good for moral support and quick clarification of the what on earth does that mean elements. Tutor support exists on a location basis too. You are geographically assigned a tutor who provides support by email or telephone, and is the chap/chapess who marks your regular assessments. Courses also have tutorials assigned, fixed location/date/time meetup events. These are great if you can get those three aligned to your RL. While the forums seem quite the panacea with regard to extra explanations and moral support they are nothing compared to the tutorials. Putting faces to names, course content discussion, practising assignment questions, all great stuff.
My first tutorial was last Saturday at a local college. It's an interesting building with room location being worthy of a degree level qualification in its own right. (My first ever tutorial there had me arrive at the named room fifteen minutes late in spite of arriving thirty minutes early.) This time was easy, four of us arrived at the same time (check out the books people are carrying), and hit the room just five minutes later.
There were five students and Terry the Tutor (I love how that name fits). The content would be kind of dry for blogging, but it was nicely relevant and was a good opportunity to find that everybody has similar thoughts regarding what is as clear as mud. The chance to practice past assessment questions with guidance is a huge plus, and has to be the main reason to try and attend these things where possible. One thing I need to watch out for with Terry is how he picks on people to supply answers. After a coffee machine nearby is mentioned I fly through a flowchart question to get the heck down there. All is cool till my return, "As you finished so quick, you can come to the front and draw and explain your answer for everybody..." Cool, I got to practice my non-existent presentation skills. I scaled my flowchart wrong to fit on the board, I spoke to the board, and stood in front of my chart while explaining parts of it. Loved it.
It was a fun meet-up and had a really sweet ending, the following post was made to the course forum afterwards. I had no idea we were making this impression (and I was the book sharer).

i would just like to say that after going to the tutorial, my very first one, i found it very welcoming, friendly and helpful, it was nice to meet the tutor face to face and it was nice to meet other people doing the same course. i dont get to meet many people so that felt good too and for the people who were there thankyou, i thought you were all very friendly and helpful, especially as i hadnt taken my book in and you let me share yours. i hope i will be able to attend the next one but unfortunately wont know till nearer the time