Closure

Cryptonomicon:

Just finished reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. The book follows the story of a group of friends that went to Princeton together in the late 30’s, and later split up as the world became at war. The United States invested in technology, and turned Bletchley Field into a cryptographic powerhouse, resulting in the invention of the world’s first digital computer. This computer aided in the cracking of Enigma, Azure/Pufferfish, and Arethusa codes from World War II.

The book also parallels this main story with the more current events of a team developing a new cryptographic system in Manila. The stumble upon some of the same problems that existed in World War II, and end up uncovering a huge secret hidden by Japan towards the end of the war.

Unfortunately, the World War II story is infinitely more exciting than the present day story. The only interest in the modern day story was the author’s detailed and accurate descriptions of Randy’s UNIX and Finnux machine commands. All of the classic utilities get a shoutout, including, “grep”, “cat”, “ssh”, “telnet”, etc. The author interpolated these chapters resulting in mixed the emotions of adrenaline and boredom.

I finally finished though, and I do recommend the book to anyone intersted in computing, cryptography, or WWII.

Grand Theft Auto IV:

In other news, I think that my love for Grand Theft Auto IV is coming to an end. Its not that I beat the game, as much as I am done with the game. I got my fill in other words – the plot isn’t compelling at all (I am not sure if there is a plot), and failing missions is too punitive. I don’t want to have to drive for twenty minutes to get back to the spot to replay the mission…

I am also postponing my GameFly account at the end of the month, so that I can get a chance to play Resistance 2, and Dead Space without feeling like I am burning money buy not playing my rented game.

Movies:

And finally, we have decided to setup a secondary queue in Netflix so that my movie selections don’t wait two years for their turn to be shipped. Within a few months, hopefully I will be caught up with the most significant releases of late, and I will be able to actively participate in conversations about movies!