Paul Kuliniewicz

Or, how I spent my Fourth of July weekend. Now with 95% more explosions than the leading blog entry!

Saturday I finally got around to visiting the National Cryptologic Museum. Since I’m obviously interested in information security, it’s the obvious place I’d want to visit while in Maryland. Alas, until this weekend, fate and the odd hours of the museum — 10a - 2p on alternate Saturdays (weekdays don’t count when you’re working) — conspired to delay my visit. But no longer!

The museum has a bunch of exhibits on the history of cryptography and cryptanalysis (don’t be fooled by the small room you’ll enter first) and a few small glimpses of what’s out there today. Exhibits on cryptographic tools range from a Jefferson cipher wheel up through STE-capable telephones. Particularly cool exhibits include a cryptanalytic bombe from WWII and an Enigma machine that’s even set up for visitors to try out. There’s also plenty of exhibits on the role cryptanalysis has played throughout history. And there’s plenty of other neat stuff on display too.

Sunday I went with one of my roommates to the local Best Buy, as he was looking for a new video card. While there, I managed to finally solve my lack of a proper data backup plan for kryten by picking up an 120 GB external hard drive for nearly half price post-rebate. Now I should be able to recover should disaster strike kryten, though I suppose the backup drive should be placed more than two feet away from kryten for maximal physical security.

Monday was, of course, the Fourth of July, and that means going to see the local fireworks show. They had a type of firework the likes of which I had never seen before. It’s some sort of rope with glowing slow-burning fireworks spaced evenly along it, held aloft by a small parachute. The effect is that you see a line of lights slowly drifting downward for an extended period of time. We had a pretty good view of the show, once we moved out from behind of the single tree that, naturally, blocked the view from our original position.