Cracking the Enigma

Hey gang,

What a fun weekend. I finished Patrick's hat (well it's fun if you are a knitter! and here is the Ravelry link if you are)


On Sunday Chris and I trekked up near Milton-Keynes to visit Bletchley Park where the Brits cracked the Enigma code during WWII. We went with his cousin (also called Christodoulos, but Dakis to the family) and his wife Rowena, who is British by birth but like me has moved around quite a bit and now calls Cyprus home. It was really amazing to see Alan Turing's code breaking machines in action, and the fantastically creative solutions they were able to come up with to crack the codes.

We have passes for a year so I think we'll be going back up there again to see more of the code breaking history. They are even rebuilding one of the computers (named Colossus) they used just from a few blueprints and photos, I would love to be a computer engineer in on that project. It also happened that this weekend was the LGBT heritage weekend (Alan Turing happened to be gay) and we heard two lectures about him, though there wasn't nearly enough math in it for Chris. We wanted some equations, dammit. What I want to know is, what about the hidden Lefty history of the world? The lefty community has been a silent 11% minority long enoough, I want to see Lefty history month celebrated, who's with me?

We went to the "Flying Fox" pub afterward for lunch (not a Freehouse I'm afraid Molly) and I had this yummy nut roast with Yorkshire Pudding (which is actually more like a bread bowl......very tricky to eat delicately). How English to finish up a rainy day walking around historic grounds than with Sunday dinner at the pub. It was really fun to visit "family" over here. I guess I've finally traveled so much I'm starting to cross back on myself! That, and London is a pretty popular place to live and visit. Open invitation still stands!