Capricious Me

Lyra’s not really a lap kitten. She’s more of a leg kitten, in that she doesn’t like sitting in your lap but she will sit and lie down on your extended legs, usually around the knees. She makes a great leg warmer. Back when she was younger, she used to climb on my lap and we’d watch nature documentaries together. Now, she mostly sleeps. And holds on by digging in with her claws.

I was watching a documentary on the Franks (part of a Barbarians! series) and they describe how Childeric had to flee for his own safety. He split a gold coin in two, kept one piece, and gave the other to someone he trusted. The point was that when it was safe for Childeric to return, the trusted party would send him a message with half of that coin.

My first thought: primitive public key crypto applied towards signatures! It’s smart, because the cut was done by hand and unlikely to be replicated with great accuracy (esp. if the coins produced in the casting process aren’t identical) with the technology of that time. However, assuming that the half piece of coin cannot be forged (which is a rather big assumption), this scheme is still very much susceptible to the man in the middle attack… in which a 3rd untrusted party intercepts the coin and uses it to pass along whatever message he chooses. Hmm… but there’s no actual distinction between the two coin pieces, so perhaps it’s more comparable to a one time pad?

Instead of packing like mad… I’m watching Lego versions of songs. :)

In no particular order, I present:
Les Mis Preview
One Day More (From Les Mis)

The Les Mis series song by song (chars are usually blurred and not pure lego stop-motion animation): Look Down, Valjean Arrested/Valjean Forgiven, At the End of the Day, I Dreamed a Dream, Come to Me (Fantine’s Death), The Confrontation, Master of the House, The Thenardier’s Waltz of Treachery, Look Down (Reprise)/Stars, Red and Black, Do You Hear the People Sing, A Heart Full of Love, Attack on Rue Plumet, One Day More, and I’m looking forward to more…

On to Phantom of the Opera:
Phantom of the Opera

All I Ask of You
Lego of the Opera 1(Sounds like it’s from the movie version)
Lego of Opera 2
Lego of the Opera 3
Another prologue
A preview of what I hope will lead to more clips…

And enough linking… after one last tidbit of Lego Sweeney Todd. There’s a ton of awesome stop-motion animation done with legos. Including Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Monty Python… and the list goes on. :)