Monthly Archives: May 2020

May 4, 2020

Secret Code II

‘X’ is for… ??

I’ve written about secret codes before. The Pigpen cipher was pretty simplistic, almost more a child’s game, but the Playfair cipher was a bit more interesting. That one came from a murder mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers. Today I thought I’d show you another simple code from another mystery novel.

1829 2125 0038 2226 1600 2125 0027 1722 4200 1829 1600 4219 2518 1617 1900 4122 3916 3200 3700 4019 0025 2016 0028 1724 2718 2241 4400 2118 0020 2516 2500 1829 1600 1819 2316 1517 2118 1617 0038 2226 1643 0015 2921 3829 0030 2025 1800 2425 2521 2841 2500 4120 4240 1617 2500 1822 0018 2916 0031 1619

Stop! See if you can decode the above before continuing.

8 Comments | tags: Bernie Rhodenbarr, cipher, code, decipher, Kinsey Millhone, Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, secret codes, substitution cipher, Sue Grafton, V.I Warshawski | posted in Books, Mystery Monday

May 3, 2020

John Conway’s Life

By Wyrd Smythe

Recently I mentioned that mathematician John Conway died last April. To his eternal disgruntlement, he is most famous for his “game” of Life — something he considered trivial and inferior to his real mathematical work. That fame is largely due to a Martin Gardener column in Scientific American — the most popular column the magazine had published up to then.

I said I wasn’t going to write about Life because it’s such a well-covered topic, but I thought I might whip up an implementation in Conway’s honor. (Went there; did that; videos below.) Getting into it made me realize Life connects back to my virtual reality posts.

So it turns out I am going to write about it (a little).

4 Comments | tags: computation, computer generated images, computer model, computer program, Conway's Life, John Conway, Turing Halting Problem, Turing Machine, virtual reality | posted in Computers

May 2, 2020

Storyteller Yin-Yang

By Wyrd Smythe

One of the older notes on my board just reads: “Armageddon (1998) vs Deep Impact (1998)”. On weirdness points, the note could just as easily have read: “Antz (1998) vs A Bug’s Life (1998)”.

The coincidence that both coincidences take place in 1998 (ah, the good old days) does makes it a bit weirder, but weird coincidences aren’t the point of my note or this post. The point is how audiences reacted to the films.

For this Sci-Fi Saturday, I thought I’d ramble about some SF Yin-Yang pairs that have struck me over the years.

9 Comments | tags: Frank Miller, George Lucas, Michael Bay, Mimi Leder, Peter Jackson, Robert Heinlein, science fiction movies, SF, SF Movies | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday

May 1, 2020

Triscuit Mystery Solved!

By Wyrd Smythe

Have you ever lain awake at night wondering where the name Triscuit came from and what could it possibly mean? No? Me either, but apparently some people have, at least a little, and now they can finally sleep easily. It seems that, due to some intrepid detective work (by a comedian), the mystery is solved. It wasn’t ghosts after all but the work of humans.

The punchline is that the name stands for “electric biscuit” — because back in the early 1900s, when Nabisco invented the Triscuit, electricity was a Big New Thing. Everyone was into it. So, they presented biscuits baked to perfection using that new-fangled electricity stuff which was clearly superior to any old-fashioned source of heat.

And now, like Pringles and potato-chips in general, they come in lots of flavors and some variations. I don’t know if they’re still electric biscuits, though.

12 Comments | tags: ATC, coronavirus, Friday Fun, laser light, Nabisco, Scientific American, Triscuit | posted in Life