Category: Uncategorized

and then listen to Little Mouse by Jack Morgan (BSc).

Tags: humour, TV

In June 2004 GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) created a codebreaking challenge which was placed on it’s website as a recruitment exercise. I visited it, as I’m interested in codebreaking and had attempted the cipher challenge placed by Simon Singh in his book The Code Book. But upon seeing the GCHQ challenge I discovered that it appeared to be trivially easy and not even worth the effort of attempting it. I wasn’t interested in getting employment with GCHQ as I suppose I am philosophically opposed to their work of intercepting and analysing communications. I align myself more with the ideals of cypherpunks so that was not a sufficient reason to waste my time solving the cryptograms.

I forgot all about it until a few days ago when following a conversation at work concerning Bletchley Park someone mentioned that GCHQ was running a codebreaking challenge on their website that if anyone was able to solve they would get a job there. At that point I had not recalled that I’d been to the website before so I decided to visit it again. Yet again I found that the challenge consisted of what appeared to be six trivially easy cryptograms that needed to be solved in order to find a secret word. There was however no mention of recruitment on the challenge page perhaps they were no longer recruiting.

The apparent ease of the task got me wondering as to its use as a recruitment tool, surely it wasn’t an effective measure of a potential candidate’s ability. It occurred to me that the challenge is little more than a PR exercise a way of raising the profile of the organisation and encouraging people to make job applications to it. The challenge acts as a filter to ensure applications only come from those individuals with at least modest ability and sufficient interest to crack the ciphers. In the intervening months I felt my attitude to GCHQ had changed perhaps due to having read Cliff Stoll’s book The Cuckoo’s Egg in which he encounters agents of the FBI, CIA and NSA who all turn out to be nice guys much to his surprise. I thought that employment with GCHQ might not be so bad, particularly if involved in securing computer systems and protecting them from hackers with the CESG (Communications-Electronics Security Group), which is a part of GCHQ. With that in mind I made a start on deciphering the cryptograms.

My text of the cryptogram solutions.

Having completed the deciphering the next task was to discover which books the passages of text were taken from to that end I called upon the services of Google. Whilst at Google I searched for more information on the challenge and discovered that the solutions to the six cryptograms had been posted on many websites already and there had been a Daily Telegraph article about it. The Telegraph article explains that GCHQ has been foiled by the power of the internet and has had the solution to its fiendishly difficult challenge placed online.

If the purpose of the challenge was to create a fiendishly difficult challenge to discover untapped codebreaking genius then GCHQ failed before they even began which is why I don’t believe that was the purpose. The publishing of the solutions may have caused GCHQ to be flooded with emails detailing the solution which is why there is no information on the challenge page about recruitment. GCHQ themselves are due to publish the solutions tomorrow Wednesday 15th September.

In any case when I heard of the challenge I was hoping for something along the lines of the Cipher Challenge in the back of The Code Book or the following one used in question 9 of the Test for Exceptional Intelligence compiled by the International High IQ Society.

AFFDXVXAAAGXXDF
XXFGGAFAFAGGXFG
AAXAAXXFXXFFFGG
AFXGGVGGAFFAAFG
VGGAXFXGXXFFAAF
XDFFFAVFDXFDDXF

Deciphering this cryptogram will reveal that the eighth word of the plaintext is DEATH.

Tags: cryptography, security

Fingers crossed that US President George Walker Bush will emulate the performance of his father and only serve one term in office. But the race at the moment is too close to call. Let’s assume President Bush loses the election but having acquired the taste for high political office he seeks to become president or equivalent in another nation.

Which countries would be his best bets? Using the data from BetaVote.com the site which asks What if the whole world could vote in this election?

I’ve compiled a list of those nations where a majority of people have voted Bush along with the associated vote percentage.

Niger – 98%
Liechtenstein – 80%
Mauritania – 77%
Faroe Islands – 76%
Turks And Caicos Islands – 60%
Central African Republic – 57%
Azerbaijan – 55%

What do we know of these nations? Like President Bush I’m sure most of us are in the dark about them so I turned to the CIA World Factbook to discover more.

Niger
With an overwhelming vote of 98% Niger a country of Western Africa, southeast of Algeria would appear to be a good choice for Bush. However, Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world with minimal government services and insufficient funds to develop its resource base. The largely agrarian and subsistence-based economy is frequently disrupted by extended droughts common to the Sahel region of Africa. The good news is that with a climate that is hot, dry and dusty throughout most of the country and tropical in the extreme south he may feel that he is back in Texas. Aside from the climate there is little for Bush here I believe, with very few resources he’ll have to look elsewhere for a base from which to launch his plans to become a world power once again.

Liechtenstein
Next on the list with 80% comes the tiny European nation of Liechtenstein. Situated between Austria and Switzerland it covers an area of only 160 sq km which is probably smaller than his ranch in Texas. The good news is that it is a country with a high standard of living with low taxes much like the US. Unluckily for Bush it is a principality so he would have to settle for merely being Head of Government as the Head of State is Prince Hans Adam II. Perhaps we should overlook Liechtenstein as a Bush prospect much like the Nazis did in World War II.

Mauritania
If Liechtenstein appears too small for Bush how about over a million sq km of prime North African real estate in the form of Mauritania. The good news as the country is a republic Bush would be able to become President Bush once more if he were to run for election. The nation’s coastal waters are among the richest fishing areas in the world, but overexploitation by foreigners threatens this key source of revenue, sounds like a good excuse for war. The bad news is that there are rising ethnic tensions between its black minority population and the dominant Maur (Arab-Berber) populace, as a good Texan I’m sure he knows how to deal with black minorities.

Faroe Islands
So with number four on his list Bush goes back to Europe and once again it is a tiny little nation but this time it’s not landlocked for it is the Faroe Islands. Situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, about one-half of the way from Iceland to Norway it is ruled over by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. Surely an opportunity exists here for a new War of Independence and Bush could set himself up as President/Dictator for Life.

Strictly speaking we should be considering the Turks And Caicos Islands or the Central African Republic but islands and Africa are well represented already in the list so let’s instead journey to Southwestern Asia and to the nation of…

Azerbaijan
At first glance as Azerbaijan is stuck between Iran and Russia, traditional enemies of the US and has a majority-Muslim population this may seem a poor choice for Bush but let us explore deeper. The main advantage that this nation has over the others is that Azerbaijan’s number one export is oil. That’s right OIL, Black Gold, Texas Tea. Azerbaijan shares all the formidable problems of the former Soviet republics in making the transition from a command to a market economy, but its considerable energy resources brighten its long-term prospects. For plain talking Bush that means some excellent real estate that was left to rot by it’s former long-time owners but now a superb prospect with many development opportunities. With tons of oil and enemies on both sides this is I believe the place for Dubya to become once again President Bush.

Tags: politics, US

BBC News: US assault weapons ban to lapse

A ban on military-style assault weapons in the United States is to lapse on Monday, 10 years after it was passed.

The move means that ordinary citizens will be allowed to keep heavy assault weapons in their homes.

The ban needed to be renewed by next week, but President George W Bush’s supporters in Congress refused to make time available for a vote to extend it.

Unfortunately the lifting of the ban wasn’t in time for this dog to do some real damage to Jerry Allen Bradford. Dogs and assault weapons it’s getting a bit too much like Grant Morrison’s WE3.

Tags: comics

I think Vincent Marcone must be the product of some bizarre genetic experiment involving Edward Gorey, David Mckean and Tim Burton.

I don’t know if Marcone created the game A Murder of Scarecrows but his artwork forms the base upon which it is built. Beautifully simple you must keep the crows from “killing” the scarecrows by knocking seeds of the trees which wake the scarecrows who then swipe at the crows to scare them off, the “lifeforce” of the scarecrows is indicated by the tree roots which extend beneath them. The eerie soundtrack compliments the gothic artwork and animation beautifully to form an unearthly delight.

See My Pet Skeleton for further examples of Marcone’s work or visit h2o Magazine for an interview with him.

Tags: games

Jaws in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies. Need I say more.

Tags: humour, movies

Whilst meandering along the streets of the City of London during the reign of our noble Queen Victoria perusing the offers from women of negotiable virtue for a bit of the old in and out be sure to keep your trusty walking stick on hand. One never knows what unsavoury types may lurk behind the next corner so be sure to pick up your copy of Self-defence with a Walking-stick: The Different Methods of Defending Oneself with a Walking-Stick or Umbrella when Attacked under Unequal Conditions (PartI) to ensure artful handling of one’s stick in such conditions.

An excerpt of the publication is produced below for your edification.

It is always most desirable to try to entice your adversary to deliver a certain blow, and so place yourself at a great advantage by being prepared to guard it, and to deliver your counter-blow. To induce your opponent to aim a blow at your head you take up the same position of rear-guard as described in the last trick, but instead of exposing your arm so much, you push your head more forward, leaving it apparently quite unguarded. Your assailant foolishly accepts the invitation, and you promptly draw yourself out of danger by swinging your left foot behind your right. This movement gives an automatic counter-movement to the right side of your trunk and helps you to swing in a very heavy right-handed blow across his wrist, which might thus easily be broken.

Tags: books, humour

From Max Allan Collins the writer of the magnificent The Road to Perdition comes Two for the Money a veritable modern ‘Pulp Classic’. I know very little about this book but I just couldn’t resist the cover. There is a chapter excerpt available to be read online here along with other pulp fiction from the same publisher.

Tags: books

Stumbled upon this site and discovered the art of Japanese melon carving.

I think this crane and tortoise is my favourite.

Tags: photography

BBC News: Kindelan ends Khan dream

Britain’s Amir Khan took silver in boxing’s lightweight division after losing 30-22 to Cuban Mario Kindelan.

The 17-year-old, looking to become the youngest Olympic champion since Floyd Patterson in 1952, took the first round by a point after a cagey opening.

But Kindelan established his dominance in round two, picking off the teenager with supreme counter attacks.

Although Khan closed out in typical aggressive style, he could not stop the Cuban winning a third straight title.

The British public got a little carried away with the success of Amir Khan the 17 year old lightwieght boxing sensation. He’d boxed extremely well throughout the tournament but just didn’t have enough to beat the reigning Olympic champion from Cuba, Mario Kindelan.

The good news for Khan is that Kindelan has decided to go out on a career high by retiring unbeaten from boxing. Having beaten the best of the rest in the world Khan looks a very good prospect for the Amateur World Championship and the Beijing Olympics.

Tags: sport