Bletchley Park

We spent Saturday at Bletchley Park. That is a little town north of London where Alan Turing worked trying to crack the code that the Germans were using in World War II. At the peak there were apparently 10.000 people working there, also building a magnificent single-purpose computer, the Colossus, to crack open the one-time pad generated by the Lorenz Machine for use be the German High Command.

Saturdays are wonderful days, as there are volunteers out there enthusiastically explaining how the machines work. The only down side is that the National Computer Science Museum and Bletchley Park are on the same grounds, but they don't cooperate, so you have to pay two entrance fees if you want to see both machines running. But it is worth it! And if you are heading up by train, there's a 2-for-1 coupon that you can print out in advance, that saves 15 pounds.

It was nice to see a lot of material in person and to be able to photograph it. There were live demonstrations of a rebuilt Bombe and the rebuilt Colossus. All machines and material were to have been destroyed after the war, as this was a top-secret operation, but luckily there were a few photos and diagrams, and there were still some of the engineers alive as groups started re-producing the parts.

The Colossus was primarily built out of standard telephone exchange parts, as the telephone engineers built it. When British Telecom was upgrading their analog parts to digital, one of the members of the rebuild team drove around with a truck, picking up all the analogue parts (especially valves) he could. The presenter requested that everyone have a look in their garage and attic to see if they happened to have a few lying around, as they are too expensive to produce any more. They consist of hand-blown glass with metal and plastic parts. I wonder if there will ever be a 3D printer for retro parts.

I must have taken 100 pictures, far too many to post here. I guess I'll have to teach cryptography again only in order to use them - and in order to explain how the codes were cracked. The "unbreakable" Lorenz cipher was broken when a soldier re-used the same one-time pad to resend a message that was slightly different - with abbreviations. And the Enigma was brute-forced after some lateral thinking showed that there was a flaw - a character could never be mapped to itself. And since the Germans love wordy, standard terminology, and had a tendency to send messages at the exact same time every day (like the Wettervorhersage, the weather report, or regular reports that nothing had happened worth reporting - Keine besondere Vorkommnisse) so the engineers could compare the intercepted code with typical words that they expected to be in the text, and were thus able to rule out quite a number of cases. With the Bombe they then brute-forced the rest of the possibilities, using a machine called the Type-X that you could set a possible key and type in the message and see if it fell out in plain text. What a disappointment that must have been to spend all day decoding and then to learn that the Kleiderpauschale had been raised by one Reichsmark or something equally boring.

It was a fascinating day, I could have spent lots more time AND bought one of everything in the gift shop. But I'm flying and already close to the weight limit, so I just purchased some postcards and a DVD.

London Calling

It's been about 30 years since I last visited London. I've been to Newcastle a few times, but avoided being in London. But this year my family (including princesses who are rapidly turning into teenagers) decided to "do" England and Ireland, so we are meeting in London. I'm here a few days earlier with WiseMan in order to do some vacationing ourselves.

The first thing you notice about London is that everyone seems to have earphones on, and half of the people are talking loudly into their shoulders. And I mean LOUDLY. I'd be rich if I wrote a novel about every drama I've half heard just the past few days. And they are addicted to their phones! Even a proper English professor I was meeting for dinner took a "Selfie" with me and sent it on to a friend, sharing the immediate response with me, as we discovered that I had just recently been in correspondence with just this friend.

From the ads I gather that mobile phones are incredibly cheap to use, 10 pounds buys 700 minutes a month and 5000 (!) SMS and 500 MB of data. In Germany you would pay three times that.

I observed one woman at a bus stop, hair set in stone with hairspray, dressed in a very close-fitting black leather top and mini-skirt, with a shopping bag in one hand and a small box with a slice of pizza in the other, yakking away on her phone. She had the phone, a non-smartphone, held tight with her bra strap pulled out a bit from her shoulder. As she boarded the bus, it turned out that she even had two kids in tow. The bus driver called her back to user her bus card to pay for the trip - she had to give the pizza box to her little boy while she got out the card, while continuing to talk on the phone.

That will be enough soccer for now

Yuck.

I've been quite amused by all the soccer fanatics around, most particularly by my nearest and dearest.

But flying back from England to Germany on June 23, the day both played their games and proceeded to the next round, I decided I'd rather had enough.

I planned well for my English getaway. I needed to be at the airport for my 5.30 pm flight, and England started playing at 3 pm (local time). So I had the registration desk order a taxi for me for 4.10 pm (only 15 minutes to the provincial airport). The taxi came on time, we heard the game on the radio, the driver explained his thoughts on soccer, soccer schedules, soccer hooligans, and lots of other stuff in the Geordie dialect. Or rather, I assumed he was talking about soccer, I just nodded occasionally.

The streets were deserted. There were no car, and this during what is normally rush hour. The parking lot was almost deserted. I entered the airport, remembering my last run-in with the check-in folks there two years ago.

The machines are still there, but I can approach a counter (okay, not KLM, but Lufthansa this time). There is one person before me in line. A polite young man takes my bag, attaches a HOT sticker to it, explains to me that this means it will get quick attention for the transfer to the Berlin flight, and gets my seat assignment.

The hall is deserted, so I head for the gate. There is no one in line. A boarding pass checker takes my boarding pass and passport, but his attention is elsewhere. I do the undress dance, both women operating it are busy looking elsewhere. I get my stuff and head on past the security guards, intently watching the game. England is still in the lead 1-0, but there are 10 minutes left to play.

Everyone is watching one of the three screens. The woman pretending to work filling juice bottles is also watching the screen. Notice (in the circle) the door guards. Yup. Could have smuggled a bomb in there, or (gasp!) a bottle of water. No one would have noticed. They were watching the game.

As the final whistle sounded, people clapped, sighed a sigh of relief, and got on with their lives.

We flew to Düsseldorf, where the continuing plane was late. I wanted to have some food in a little bistro, but the servers were so busy watching the Germany game that no one wanted to take my order. Oh well, I had a packet of cookies left over from the conference. Our plane was late taking off, and the pilot let us know the halftime score.

Just after landing the stewardess got on the PA system: "Please remain in your seats with your seat belts fastened until the plane has reached its final parking destination and Germany just got a goal YIPPIE!!"

I retrieved my luggage and decided to watch the last few minutes at Tegel. It was the same scene - everyone intent on the screen. When the whistle sounded I headed for the bus and started to doze.

We had almost reached Bahnhof Zoo when I heard the noise. Those pesky trumpets! And horns honking, and cars all over the place and PEOPLE, people streaming out of the station heading for the Ku'damm. They smacked on the windows, I took a step back, fearful that the window would break. The bus inched forward, finally deciding to dump us. I got out, smiled at the mess, took a few pictures, and headed for the U-Bahn.

Or rather, tried. There was a mass of humanity sweeping up the steps I wanted to go down. I tried to go down, but the waves would not part. I saw the tail end of a train I just could not reach - too many people between me and the train. Disgusted, I resigned myself to wait for the next one. At least they show the minutes.

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-3-3-3-3-3-2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1- Please be patient.

The platform was packed by now, and there was no train coming. I decided to invest in a taxi, and headed back to the surface. Except there were no taxis. None. I tried waiting, but there was none to be had. So I headed up to the elevated train. That would be a horrible detour, but it should get me home.

I pushed up some stairs that had masses of humanity pouring down them. My clue should have been that trains in both directions were stopped. I made my way into one, and it just sat there. And sat.

I got off again and headed out. Still no taxis. So I started to walk, with my little suitcase trolly behind me, through the crowds. They were exploding firecrackers under the bridge. The sidewalks were so full, I had to walk on the streets. People were smacking the busses caught in traffic. There were broken bottles everywhere, and police standing by, waiting for something. They had the Ku'damm blocked off.

Resigned drivers had turned off their motors and were out leaning on their cars. There was singing, dancing, fireworks, fights, stupid chants - I just wanted Out Of There Right Now. Finally, the other side of the Lietzenburger (that had cars parading up and down with flags and people hanging out the windows and roofs), I flagged down a taxi. In a few short, quiet minutes I was home.

If this is the reaction to making it to the eighth final, I don't want to be near (German) "civilization" if they go all the way. I like the comment a friend has on his Facebook page. The niveau of these fans is so low, there is a basement flat free above them.