The Latest from Boing Boing

Bletchley Park kicks so much ass Posted: 21 Jul 2008 05:14 AM CDT Yesterday, I got one of the best and most memorable birthday presents of my life -- a trip to the legendary Bletchley Park, site of the British WWII codebreaking effort, where Turing and co invented modern computer science and cryptography. The site is just as I'd imagined it -- a rotting, lovely old mansion surrounded by modest, slope-shouldered sheds with a variety of exhibits staffed by knowledgeable, friendly geeks who clearly find it all every bit as exciting as I do. The exhibits are a nice mix of technical and historical, ranging from a truly impressive collection of memorabilia related to Winston Churchill (who visited Bletchley and congratulated the women and men there on their excellent work), including his school report-card that makes him out to be a villainous, disruptive and scattered child; to a series of exhibits of vintage wartime toys. There's a museum of ancient cinematographic equipment complete with a beautiful little theatre that shows reels of vintage newsreels and propaganda films. And of course, there are the computers and related devices. The cipher machines and radio equipment naturally form the centerpiece of the museum, and there's an entire computer history museum onsite (it was closed, with the strangest sign I've ever seen, words to the effect of, "This site is closed for maintenance. Enter at your own risk. You may be escorted off the grounds by security if you are caught here." Huh?) along with the notorious Nazi Enigma machine that was kidnapped in 2000 and ransomed back (the crime was never solved). The historic material on the Enigma (which began life as a commercial product before the war!) is really excellent, as are the technical explanations of how it worked. But best of all are the "rebuilds" -- reconstructions from plans of the bombes (parallel decoding machines) and Colossus (the massive and gorgeous machine that was one of the earliest general-purpose computers. These hulking beasts are real artisanal pieces, with the hand-crafted, prideful look of devices built by loving and obsessive engineers who really, really care about their work. Walking the grounds, I got a real sense of the lives of the people who'd worked at Bletchley, through a series of exhibitions that included quotations from oral histories about the dress, romance, food, family life and internecine conflict that characterized Bletchley Park during the war years. The exhibit on clothing was especially memorable, if only because it could bring home the gold for Britain in the 2012 Scariest Mannequin event, as was the astoundingly cool room devoted to the wartime use of messenger pigeons, including replicas of the awards given to especially brave and dedicated birds. We spent three hours on site and barely scratched the surface. We had hardly any time to look at the war-plane, didn't get to the gigantic model railroad exhibit, didn't see the whole film presentation at the Enigma theatre, and only got the most hurried of walks around the American Gardens -- and we missed the mansion tour altogether. I could have easily spent eight or more hours there, and still wanted for more. Just the tantalizing mini-lecture I got on the Colossus rebuild from one of the electronics engineers who worked on it was enough to pique my interest, and I could have spent an hour looking at the details in Turing's office. The Trust that runs Bletchley Park has done a really fine job, and is clearly thinking creatively about the best way to continue to fund their operations. The mansion's slate roof is in need of a multi-million-pound replacement, and they're selling "genuine fragments" of the existing slate -- holy relics of crypto's formative years, as well as soliciting donations and selling memberships. But most intriguing was the idea of renting out part or all of the site for parties and weddings -- maybe for my 40th birthday in three years... Link, Link to my photos

Hams of Bletchley Park Posted: 21 Jul 2008 04:46 AM CDT I've always loved amateur radio enthusiasts, and many's the time I wished I had a Ham license and a set of my own. But as cool as Ham is as a hobby, it is infinitely cooler for the Hams of Milton Keynes, UK, who are within spitting distance of the legendary Bletchley Park, the site of the famous WWII codebreaking effort that decoded the Nazi messages captured by intrepid Hams from across the UK using giant, beautiful computers. The Milton Keynes Amateur Radio Society actually meets at Bletchley Park on Mondays, and volunteers from the society staff a booth in the museum, surrounded by postcards and certificates from other Hams around the world. In 1993, Radio Club Members Warren Backhouse, John James, Eric Simpson and David White, who had been meeting every Wednesday at the Bletchley Park Social Club for many years, decided to assist in a recently set-up project to save the Bletchley Park code breaking centre from demolition. Their (unspoken) objective was to secure a toe-hold on the Bletchley Park site, with the intention of obtaining premises which would be suitable for use by the Radio Club. Warren Backhouse became the Chairman of this unofficial group, which attended many meetings for volunteers, held between mid 1993 and 5th February 1994 when Bletchley Park opened to the Public for the first time. The group constructed a working replica of a Middle-East "Y" Station[1], which at the time was the only operational exhibit on the site. Link

Pocket Enigma Machine in a CD jewel case Posted: 21 Jul 2008 04:33 AM CDT Bletchley Park, the "home of the codebreakers" -- where Alan Turing and co cracked the Nazi Enigma machine -- sells "Pocket Enigma Machines" made from a clever cardboard disc inserted into a CD jewel case. It comes with a very good booklet explaining the basics of ciphering and deciphering with Enigma, and with a bunch of fun Enigma-related activities. Proceeds go to the nonprofit that runs the excellent Bletchley Park museum. The instructions supplied explain how Pocket Enigma works and take the user step-by-step through the process of coding and decoding. Worked examples and carefully annotated figures illustrate how the Key and Message Setting are used, and there is a trouble-shooting table to help with common errors. For young readers there is also a simplified way of using it called Junior Pocket Enigma making it suitable for all ages who can read and write their own messages. Link

Tor.com: a blog, a social network, a zine -- totally clueful big publishing website Posted: 21 Jul 2008 12:37 AM CDT Hurrah! Tor, my US novel publisher, has launched Tor.com, its major, fantastically awesome website, which is part sf zine, part group-blog, part social network. They're publishing great original fiction -- they've got stories by John Scalzi and Charlie Stross up now, and I've got one coming soon, called THE THINGS THAT MAKE ME WEAK AND STRANGE GET ENGINEERED AWAY -- with original illustration by the talented Tor art team. They're running fascinating blog-posts on diverse subjects from a team of bloggers that includes in-house people from across the business and outside "friends of Tor" including novelists, fans, critics, and sundry others. And there's a social networking system that ties it all together. Oh, and for a short time, they're also hosting all the free ebooks they gave away to entice you to sign up for the launch-announcement. Run, don't walk. Link

Spamwar's worst mistakes being recapitulated by the copyright wars Posted: 21 Jul 2008 12:30 AM CDT My latest Guardian column, "Copyright enforcers should learn lessons from the war on spam," looks at the fallout from the failed tactics of the spamwar and asks how the entertainment industry plans on doing any better trying the same tactics on an even grander and more savage scale: Content-based filters These were pretty effective for a very brief period, but the spammers quickly outmanoeuvred them. The invention of word-salads (randomly cut/pasted statistically normal text harvested from the net), alphabetical substitutions, and other tricksy techniques have trumped the idea that you can fight spam just by prohibiting certain words, phrases or media. Unintended consequence: It's practically impossible to have an email conversation about Viagra, inheritances, medical conditions related to genitals, and a host of other subjects because of all the "helpful" filters still fighting last year's spam battle, diligently vaporising anyone who uses the forbidden words. Link

Night of the Gun, a new book by David Carr. Posted: 20 Jul 2008 11:51 AM CDT Every time I try to explain David Carr to a friend, I say something like "That dude is the real deal." Carr is a media/culture columnist for The New York Times, and he's a better writer and a tougher human than I'll ever be. I've corresponded with him a few times over the years about stories he was working on, or whatever, and I met him in Los Angeles when he came to visit Boing Boing tv for a piece he wrote about our launch. So, I've been eager to see his new book come out, ever since I learned he was writing it -- and I'm excited to say that it's out in a few weeks, and there's a preview in the NYT today. The Night of the Gun recounts David Carr's life as a crack addict, pieced back together through interviews with people who were part of his life at the time. It's an amazing book. You have to read this thing. I hope I'm not revealing any spoilers here, but when I asked Carr about the project last in LA year, he told me about reconnecting with one of those old friends, and trying to recover the facts about one night when he was out of his mind high on speed, something about jumping through a window and police showing up and a huge fight with the friend, the sort of high velocity drug-o-drama you'd see on COPS. In the hazy, semifictional way an addict can try to remember things that happened when he was high -- he's always remembered his friend pointing a gun at him, at one point during the climax of that crisis. But when Carr went back years later to interview that friend for this project, the friend told him something like, "No, you were pointing the gun at me." I believe that's where the title comes from. Here's a snip from the excerpt in today's NYT: Where does a junkie's time go? Mostly in 15-minute increments, like a bug-eyed Tarzan, swinging from hit to hit. For months on end in 1988, I sat inside a house in north Minneapolis, doing coke and listening to Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" and finding my own pathetic resonance in the lyrics. "Any place is better," she sang. "Starting from zero, got nothing to lose." After shooting or smoking a large dose, there would be the tweaking and a vigil at the front window, pulling up the corner of the blinds to look for the squads I was always convinced were on their way. All day. All night. A frantic kind of boring. End-stage addiction is mostly about waiting for the police, or someone, to come and bury you in your shame. After a while I noticed that the blinds on the upper duplex kitty-corner from the house were doing the same thing. The light would leak through a corner and disappear. I began to think of the rise and fall of their blinds and mine as a kind of Morse code, sent back and forth across the street in winking increments that said the same thing over and over. W-e a-r-e g-e-t-t-i-n-g h-i-g-h t-o-o. They rarely came out, and neither did I, so we never discussed our shared hobby. Continue reading excerpt; photos and multimedia stuff here too. Me and My Girls [New York Times] Buy the book: The Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own. [amazon] Website, with first-person video. Flash required. Night of the Gun [Simon and Schuster]