Kittens being Cute (by sarah)

Yes they are cute but they are in the bad books and no mistake!

We had been slowely training them to go a loo outside - we thought we were almost there but alas no! It turns out that the reason they were using the litter tray less and less was that they were in fact messing in the stable and Babara was cleaning it up so we didnt have a clue until she came round and said she was fed up with cleaning it up 🙁

So now they have a litter tray full of mole earth which we hope to slowely migrate away from the house - sigh!

Marble runs (by alaric)

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:

Three sets combined:

But it looked too wobbly, so we tried again:

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 alaric)

.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 sarah)

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 alaric)

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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