Alan Turing Bletchley Park War Winner

"The Code Book" by Simon Singh is still teaching history, but now it is going into the workings of the Enigma machine. Simon has moved on to Alan Turing and the codebreakers' work at Bletchley Park, with the observation that if the army had known of Turing's homosexuality, we would have probably lost World War II.

At Bletchley Park, the work was important, and sexuality was whatever you were. Remarks were made that the codebreakers, who included porcelain experts and crossword solvers, were scruffy and never shaved, washed or ironed their clothes, but without them, we would have fallen to Fascism. 

Ironic that many of our idiot electorate want to vote in the Fascist Reform/Restore parties today.

History

The Enigma machine was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius in 1918. He patented the design and founded a company in Berlin in 1923 to market it for commercial use, before it was adopted and modified for military use by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Also on TV, I am watching "Dark", which is also twisting the melon of my mind with its time jumps and people meeting their past and future selves.

Still reading "Imajica" by Clive Barker on my Kindle. This is a book I never want to end. When I finish it, I just restart it.

Books

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog, which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est la vie.

The music is "The Code" by Alkimizta

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal, but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
2. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
4. The King Of Elfland's Daughter - A Wonderful Book By Lord Dunsany
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
7. God Knows I'm Good (I Really Do) - Thoughts on Vocal Writing
8. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
9. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer, and this is her Instagram

Codes and Ciphers

Why am I writing at 1AM on a school night. I've woken up to prevent another coughing fit, as well as feeling queasy still. Yesterday was spent in bed sleeping so I was expecting to be fit and back to work today, then about 5PM I woke and started coughing again.

I've finished my course of antibiotics, but none of the standard remedies seem to be working for me. The worst thing is I'm sort of able to do things (I can write this) but then when I start coughing, feeling sick then I get out of it and am not fit to do anything and would certainly not be appreciated in work.

When I am trying to occupy my mind I am reading Simon Singh's "The Code Book", possibly his most unassuming title. THhs is third of his books that I have read, the first being "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets" which is an entertaining observations on why The Simpsons is jammed for of mathematical asides, the second being "Fermat's Last Theorem" which is a remarkable detective story about a conceptually simple but complex theorem and much of the side effects of of that area of mathematics then there is this....

"The Code Book" means to read it and understand it you have to think, it explains the development of codes and ciphers from the beginning of time to the present day, though I am only half way through the book. One of the things the book does explain is the difference between a cipher and a code:

"The difference between a cipher and a code is: a cipher changes a message on a letter-by-letter basis, while a code converts whole plaintext words or phrases into other words or numbers. That’s it, question answered."

Full explanation here. The book has taken me through the story of Mary Queen of Scots and the continual development of more and more complex code/ciphers each time with accompanying examples of how these work up to the Enigma machines and how Alan Turing drove the team that broke it, developing what became the computer I am typing this on on you are reading this on today, and probably shortening World War Two by two years.

Ofne very frightening part of this is that if the authorities that be had known of his homosexuality, Turing would have been jailed and Britain would have lost the war, remember that when someone is not the same as you. Society still drove him to suicide after the war.

Essentially this is another excellent Simon Singh book, and the work of Turing is leaving my tiny intellect floundering and I am only half way through.

I was trying to think of an accompanying piece of music for this and thought maybe something from Public Service Broadcasting's "The War Room" and a tribute to another major contribution to Britain's War Effort, "Spitfire".

Right now time to try and get some sleep.

Morning Darker

Looking out my window the sky is full of grey clouds scudding across the skyline. Yesterday I was feeling very down, I'm not sure why, but I'd run out of some of my tablets unexpectedly and they were are related to blood pressure so maybe that was something to do with it. Also valious friends are suffering from physical and mental pain and barring supportive texting there is absolutely nothing I can do for them.

Added to this I had various meetings and things that needed to be sorted at work and an, at times, painful hacking chesty cough.

When I got home I got by drugs stash replenished and loaded up with chocolate to ease my throat and started watching "Spectre", which is rather enjoyable but the title song is half decent but ruined by the strangled cat vocals of Sam Smith. Still that was just a couple of minutes at the beginning.

I also finished "The Fourteenth Letter", the debut novel by Claire Evans, I didn't think it was my cup of tea, it wasn;t it was the whole teapot, highly recommended despite recommendations on the back cover from Heat and Good Housekeeping which would have put me off. I suggest to you get yourself a copy.

That's been replaced by "The Code Book" by the excellent Simon Singh, the choice may have been influenced by me watch the brilliant "Imitation Game" the incredible story that showed how the British Government drove the genius Alan Turing to suicide and it's the sort of thing that would happen under today's US and UK governments.

Looking out of the window and there is now blue sky appearing and the clouds blow away.

Spo what to play, maybe Jonathan Richman's "I'm A Little Dinosaur" which is a cuteness injection for a fairly downer post, but I know today wiill be an improvement on yesterday for me, I hope it is for all my friends.

Have a great Wednesday.