Still not better. Still look like hamster. Bonus though… am able to eat. Mostly. Now I’m off to watch CSI. Yey. CSI=wellness.

Perplex city players (including me) are trying to break some really tough encryption. This is one of the biggest maddest things to come out of this revolutionary Alternate Reality Game (ARG). So… please can you lend a tiny bit of your computer to help. A combination of puzzle cards, storytelling, and live events, the game has thrown some incredibly complex tasks at the players - including a card called 13th Labour. This high-scoring card requires the decoding of an RC5-encrypted plaintext which, to quote the designer of the game, “would take about 30,000 computers running in tandem several months to solve”. Code-minded players have created a client, compatible with Windows, OS X, and Linux, to attack this task - and are seeking people to run this software on their computers.
Support the 13th labour

…I’ve got mumps. This sucks. Lots. I look like a hamster. I hope that I don’t get any more symptoms other than a very sore neck. Worst of all is the fact that I am probably going to miss Dad’s big adventure: the Maggie’s monster bike and hike 2006 (unless I can go alone with my tent and not breathe near anyone!) The big event is next weekend and I know that he is going to do just fine. Good luck to him and the rest of “Oliver’s plodder’s”. In other news… it doesn’t look very likely that I am going to be becoming a primary school teacher any time soon (thanks to not getting a place at Aberdeen and everywhere else being full). Oh well, life goes on and life will be different and most likely better because of it.

I remember reading this in Wired last year - there are masses of unemployed nuclear scientists in Russia. Somewhere around 35,000. Scary.
More here