Cryptography | TIL Technology

Happy Feet!

Mumble, from Happy Feet, via YouTube.com It seems obvious in retrospect. Look at the way penguins walk, then watch Happy Feet , and tap seems like the inevitable style for a dancing penguin. But maybe that’s just because of the masterful dancing (via motion capture) by the amazingly talented Savion Glover (who was also co-choreographer). For any not familiar with him, Glover got his start on Broadway at age 11, appeared on Sesame Street in his teens, and was called “possibly

Dec 17, 20255 min read

Eine Kleine Alptraummusik!

Nachtmahr (“The Nightmare”), by Johann Heinrich Füssli TIL that the German translation of the word “nightmare” is “alptraum”, which led me to the wonderful painting above. While “ alp ” is the German cognate of the English word “elf”, the creature in question bears little resemblance to the Tolkienian Elves most of us are familiar with. Instead, they appear to be more closely associated with the vampire, or incubus, and attack sleeping people, either by giving them “elf dream

Nov 12, 20254 min read

Bombes vs Bombs!

Wartime picture of a Bletchley Park Bombe, via Wikipedia.org I’m mentioned Alan Turing and (some of) his contributions to computer technology, and still managed to not even mention the work which probably had the greatest influence on the world at the time. For a bit of background, the Enigma machine was a cipher device that was developed in the years after World War I. To simplify dramatically, it used three rotors (four, in some models) which turned in sequence after each

Nov 5, 20254 min read