Marble runs (by )

We were in a pound shop once that was selling marble runs for a pound each. We picked up three boxes, and they've sat around for ages, until this evening when we had a play.

Two sets combined:

Two boxes of marble run combined

Three sets combined:

Three boxes of marble run combined

But it looked too wobbly, so we tried again:

Three sets combined better

If they still do them, we want to go back and spend twenty pounds and get enough to make a marble run that fills the room...

.Mac silliness (by )

Syncing with .Mac will add 215 contacts to your address book, delete 217, and modify none

.Mac is a suite of online tools Apple sells to go with their Mac computers. I use the thing purely because it lets my desktop and my laptop both synch various useful bits of data - bookmarks, mail accounts, stored passwords, address book entries, and my calendar.

However, sometimes the synch messes up, as the picture above suggests. When I confirmed the above change, my address book was reduced to a few contacts, plus pages of ones called "No Name" that had no details in them.

Luckily, I had a backup...

Not Good! (by )

House Guests who shall remain nameless are in big big disgrace!!!

Me and Al had to go into London today and said guests werent leaving until later so up I got this morning and dug out the trangias - as there wasnt going to be any electricity and one is a tea feind! And put out stuff for breakfast for them. I also left a note pointing to various items and listing certain things.

a) Brekki b) Guest book for signing c) Trangias and location of the matches d) Keys for house and instructions on what to do with them once they had locked the house e) Make sure the kittens are out of the house

We return to find - well 1) the front door is unlocked with my laptop sitting on the setee 2) the book isnt signed - no big deal 3) a match is found on the floor 4) two kittens scamper out of the house as soon as the door is opened - there is a delicate whiff of cat egg in the air - then to mine and Als horror we find a puddle of kitten wee on Jeans little blue bouncy chair - including the toy arch that was laying on the seat instead of in its normal 'arch' position over the seat!

We are now finding out if said seat cover can survive a boil wash and weather the toy arch will survive being soaked in boiling water with detergant and then disinfectent >:( We need to hose the metal frame too and as it is a vibrating one we are hoping we dont fry the electrics! We may have just lost this lovely little bouncing seat becuase of this - plus we only shapood the carpet a week ago 🙁

We are currently training the kittens to go a loo outside - therefore there is no litter tray inside and the kittens are turffed when we go out or go to bed - know it wasnt their fualt they messed in the house this time - but we have been struggling with this concept with them anyway and now all our hard work is probably for nothing - as this event will have reawakened the fact that they can go a loo in the house 🙁

On top of this - we have used all the 'free' carpet shampoo and are waiting for the stuff I ordered yesturday to arrive - so its going to be awhile before Jean can go crawling around down stairs again >:(

Not happy.

Ok rant/moan over.

Cryptanalysis 2 (by )

In a previous post, I discussed the analysis of an initially robust-looking combination of S-boxes, then suggested two potential extensions of the algorithm to examine.

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Getting Home (by )

Today, we went down to Bristol to visit Costco and stock up on baby supplies, and to have an outing in the city centre itself.

It was a lovely place to explore, but I was a bit sad - I remember visiting there about 15 years ago and there being a road with loads of big academic bookshops on near the University; but when we went there today, there was just a single small Blackwells. The others had been replaced with clothes shops, shoe shops, and hairdressers, it seemed.

Still, at the end of the day, we headed back up the M5 with Jean asleep. As we approached junction 11A, I commented that we were nearly home - it was just about ten minutes from there. We took the junction, went along the A417 one junction to the A46, but at Crosshands Roundabout - the exit to continue up the A46 was coned off. "ROAD CLOSED - ACCIDENT".

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