What did you do today?

[Dusty Chalk]

as a fan of the book Cryptonomicon, that is pretty friggin' sweet.

x2. (My copy's signed.)

[spritzer]

Too cool Craig, just too cool.

[Dusty Chalk]

I startled cutegirl. I bought these frozen dinners that were Indian -- but they didn't have any rice, and they felt incomplete, so today, I went downstairs and bought a little rice (it wasn't basmati, but it would do)...and a Nantucket Nectars Half & Half (mah favorite). Went to pay, cutegirl started to bag my order, and I said something I've said probably a hundred times to her -- "I don't need a bag" -- in the way I always say it. I think it was at that point that she recognized me, but she didn't look too happy.

The bald guy who worked there said something in solidarity though, expressing his approval. So that was cool.

[laxx]

Finishing up merging some code before taking off. Need to pack for my camping trip tomrorow.

[aardvark baguette]

Made a first draft of a web banner, something I wish I could do more often , & loaded my new ipod classic with music

[Knuckledragger]

Made a first draft of a web banner

Nice. What is it for?

[aardvark baguette]

a pathology society

I'm going to make a few more and pick whatever is the most science-y looking

[boomana]

Today I had an official I Suck Day at work. I think we're allowed one or two a year. I was tired, cranky, emotional, and good for nothing, and that was before I got warmed up. The more I tried, the suckier I got. I saw three patients for individuals, but had other other therapists do my groups. It's 6:30 and I'm in bed. Best quit while I'm ahead. Thanks god vacation is around the corner.

[Augsburger]

Beats mowing the lawn I guess, glad I hadn't opened the wine yet. I am pretty sure it is way over three feet long.

Not that anyone cares, but I just found a second one of approximately the same length. So far I am at three for the year. Should be an interesting summer.

Edited May 29, 2010 by Augsburger

[n_maher]

Crikey Greg, I get freaked out when I see the little 2' garter snakes in our yard and they don't even bite.

[Knuckledragger]

[Dusty Chalk]

'Crikey' is an understatement.

[Augsburger]

Well I can't build an amp, understand a schematic drawing or know how to populate a pcb but I can damn well handle a venomous reptiles.

If I do say so myself, I am very photogenic in that pic.

Edited May 29, 2010 by Augsburger

[shellylh]

Damn Greg!

I just got back from the theatre where we saw Kenneth Lin's "Intelligence-Slave." It was good.

[Edwood]

Stopped by the Print Shop to check the progress of these:

[Fitz]

Hay lookit that I'm on top for once.

[episiarch]

Cleaned and descaled the espresso machine, which had surprised me by going from perfectly fine to slightly slow to a labored dribble over the space of a few days. This California boy is not used to the hardness of Thames River water. Last time I descaled wasn't that long ago, and there wasn't too much in the boiler, but the boiler outlet was well on its way to being truly blocked.

Despite the hardness of the water here, the marvelously fast-acting Durgol I always used at home is practically unknown here. Used up my remaining bottle -- a few seconds, then fwoosh, a nice solid jet from the pump -- and will have to hit eBay to get some more.

After that, devoted the rest of my not-very-productive day to starting to get caught up on all the new Amazon Web Services stuff they've added since the original S3 and EC2 came out. I have got a lot of reading to do.

[Craig Sawyers]

as a fan of the book Cryptonomicon, that is pretty friggin' sweet.

I've put a paper that I wrote about this beast here http://www.tech-enterprise.com/tekstuff/LorenzSZ42/Paperupdated.pdf . Also Tony Sale's website has lots of other information about BP's code breaking efforts here WW II Codes and Ciphers . Tony is the guy who spent 14 years rebuilding Colossus starting with 7 black and white photos.

Tony is really getting on now - must be in his 80's - but a fascinating bloke.

The thing that really made my neck hairs rise up was when I realised the significance of this particular SZ42. Before operation Overlord, false intelligence was placed with the Germans to the effect that the main attack would be to Calais. An intercepted SZ42 message from Kesselring showed that they had fallen for it and withdrawn quite a number of troops to defend Calais. That crucial message went through the SZ42 that I restored.

And yes - I've read Cryptonomicon twice. I think the thing that frustrates me about the book is that there is a ton of details about how Captain Crunch should be eaten, and similar heavyweight detail about codes etc etc - which is all absoutely great reading. But the end, when the gold is extracted from the mountain, is all shoved into the last couple of pages. It is almost like Stephenson got bored with the book and finished it off in a rush.

To those who get a chance to visit Bletchley, definitely do so. It is incredibly "amateur" in a way - the Bletchley Park Trust has nothing like enough money to properly restore whole chunks of the site, and parts of the original site are now housing estates. In fact it is only during the last ten years that the site was saved from developers, who wanted to buldoze the lot and build houses over the whole site.

[Craig Sawyers]

Beats mowing the lawn I guess, glad I hadn't opened the wine yet. I am pretty sure it is way over three feet long.

Not that anyone cares, but I just found a second one of approximately the same length. So far I am at three for the year. Should be an interesting summer.

Jeeze - you guys have got some heavyweight pests! And here was me thinking that Florida was the worst place - I hadn't associated California with snakes that big. We have only three titchy snakes in the UK, and only one slightly poisonous one (the Adder) which grows to a maximum of two feet or so. They are all pretty difficult to find, with a habitat of wild and remote places - I've only ever seen one Adder in the wild.

[justin]

i dont know anything but snakes but i'd be surprised to find one that big in the suburbs unless it was a pet that escaped or was let go

[Dusty Chalk]

And yes - I've read Cryptonomicon twice. I think the thing that frustrates me about the book is that there is a ton of details about how Captain Crunch should be eaten, and similar heavyweight detail about codes etc etc - which is all absoutely great reading. But the end, when the gold is extracted from the mountain, is all shoved into the last couple of pages. It is almost like Stephenson got bored with the book and finished it off in a rush.

You've heard the story, haven't you? I've heard him speak (it's why my copy's signed) -- the book exploded. He turned in an interim manuscript -- as the publishing company is wont of him to do -- and they told him, you must stop, you're done, aren't you? And he said, "no, not by a long shot, haven't you read it?" And they said, "no, but there's a physical limit, beyond which, if you write one more word, we'd have to separate it out into two volumes -- and we could do that, but the economics of sales of the books is such that, ...well suffice it to say, it'd be more worthwhile if'n you actually wrote two books". He looked into it. Hence, the Baroque Cycle, and why the hardbacks are printed on such exquisite parchment. And why the paperbacks are in -- what is it, 8 books, rather than the hardback 3? And why it's called a 'cycle', rather than a 'trilogy', because he intended from the beginning for there to be a completely different number of paperbacks than hardbacks.

But at the time, he just said, "well, alright, I'll drop the fourth storyline, and finish the other three".

!!!

[Craig Sawyers]

You've heard the story, haven't you?

But at the time, he just said, "well, alright, I'll drop the fourth storyline, and finish the other three".

!!!

Ah - thanks for that Dusty - that explains why the book just sort of goes phut right at the end. I didn't know the story behind the phut-ness.

Now that means that I'll have to buy all his other stuff - which is just fine

[episiarch]

I never knew that about Cryptonomicon. But it explains a lot.

Related: CMAP #5: Why books are the length they are - Charlie's Diary

In the USA, paperbacks are perfect-bound, but hardcovers are still frequently bound as groups of signatures (blocks of 16, 24, or 32 pages), which are stitched into a cloth binding. It's a higher quality technique, but it seems to be a bit less forgiving of large bundles of pages. In particular, I am told by my editors at more than one publisher that if the page count in a US hardcover goes over roughly 424 pages, this causes no end of problems: they have to outsource the binding to a bindery that uses a more expensive technique, disproportionately raising the production cost of the book. You can work around this to some extent by typesetting with smaller margins, less leading, and a smaller typeface ... but that'll only take you so far.

If Stephenson ever had spare writing time on his hands - which he won't - I would happily pay whatever it costs to get the equivalent of the Director's Cut of Cryptonomicon. That would be a treat to look forward to.

[swt61]

Hay lookit that I'm on top for once.

Too easy

[morphsci]

Just finished having a chest x-Ray. Now waiting for an antibiotic prescription. Joy.