Monthly Archives: October 2007

Go @TEAM!

Chris sent me this funny email he received this morning:

From: terptix
Sent: Mon 10/22/2007 1:38 AM
To: Chris
Subject: Ticket Notification

This is just a reminder that the Request and Claim period for student
tickets for the @Sport game vs. @Opponent on @EventDate will begin
shortly online. Please check the student ticket website for exact
schedule information.

Somebody needs to put some data behind that template!

The cold case that just won’t die

I was surprised tonight to discover that somebody posted my little Zodiac cipher webtoy on Digg recently, and it has been getting some significant traction there:

http://digg.com/playable_web_games/Can_You_Crack_The_Zodiac_Killer_s_Code

I had a lot of fun making it, and I am glad that folks are getting some use out of it. Thanks for the support! I hope we can sustain the Digg Effect!!

I’ve been getting a lot of good feature suggestions from people, such as adding frequency analysis, allowing multiple letters per symbol, and supporting cipher transpositions. I hope to make some of these improvements to the app in the near future.

Use an ashtray!

A few weeks ago, I brought Iris to her preschool, and we were alarmed to see that a fire crew was there. It turned out they were just putting out a small fire in the nearby woods. Someone must have dropped a cigarette there or something. I walked Iris into the school, and we talked about the fire for a while. I mentioned to her that I thought it was caused by a cigarette thrown from somebody’s car. But Iris had another theory. She said: “I think a bad birdy did it.”

She may be right.



(illustration unceremoniously lifted from Dave Shelton’s site).

An unrelated Iris story:

Iris has a pair of pants that have little embossed hearts attached to the botom of the legs. After several washings, the hearts started the crack a bit. So, one day, she takes a look at the pants, and says to us, “my heart is broken!”

oranchak.com – new look

There must be a law of blogging that says you will inevitably get tired of the look and feel of your blog. I’ve succumbed to this law, and the result is I’ve installed the Silver Light 0.1 WordPress theme. Have a look at the new oranchak.com — dig the less gaudy and more simplified layout.

Dry academia

Despite its rigorous, almost unapproachable mathematical foundations, Doug Zongker’s groundbreaking academic research paper remains one of the most important scientific studies you will ever read.

Doug Zongker himself presenting his paper:


Awe-inspiring.

Source.