History

If there’s ever a book that you can say is pure geek indulgence, it’s Cryptonomicon. No other book I’ve seen takes the abstract concepts of topics as varied as UNIX, cryptography and normalising preferences between siblings for Grandma’s inheritance through a distribution on a cartesian plane formed in a parking lot. You can tell this isn’t your daddy’s war novel. Stephenson weaves together two stories, interlinked through blood - in the 1930s, Lawrence Waterhouse, a borderline-Autistic mathematician encounters Alan Turing shortly before World War II is due to break out; Bobby Shaftoe is a U.S. Marine stationed in Asia, retreating from Shanghai ahead of the march of the Japanese through China, while Goto Dengo is Bobby’s counterpart of sorts on the Japanese side, a soldier who dares to think of self-preservation ahead of the Emperor’s wishes. ...

Who’s your first crush? (via) I told Kirsty I’d tell these stories one day, so here they are. The first My first - proper - crush was ‘A’, and she didn’t look at me at all; I adored her for all the wrong, infantile reasons. We would have conversations which I would take away, manipulate and make myself feel good about things, and pretend like there was something reciprocal there. Hah, what a lie. She crushed any such ideas swiftly, and I haven’t spoken to her in years. I got over it quick. Looking back now, it’s very much a “what were you thinking?” feeling. She taught me to recognise shallowness, and that I should avoid it like the plague. The second My second crush was also an ‘A’ (but a different ‘A’). She was as cute as a button, and I assumed that her ever-smiling face was her, and that it was all very chill. It was a time at which I could devote my time to obsessing over these things, and so I did. ...