Alan Turing is largely credited with breaking Enigma and it is quite unfortunate that not many sources give as much credit to Marian Rejewski. Rejewski and his team in Poland had cracked Enigma almost a decade before they shared this with the Bletchley Park code-breakers. Turing was the one who later identified the vulnerabilities of Engima and designed the automated systems to speed up the decipherment.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day at the International Spy Museum. I share everyman's fascination with the spy business and the museum did not disappoint. It has a treasure trove of spy gadgets from all over the world and with some exceptions, does a pretty good job of documenting the exploits of spies throughout history. I especially liked the section on Enigma. Not only is the machine's working explained for the technically proficient, but there are also some nice interactive applications that allow the lay person to be amazed by its magic.

I didn't think much about Rejewski until I passed the Polish Embassy on my way to Starbucks. The museum exhibit had focused quite a bit on Turing, but I seemed to recall from reading on of my favorite books -- The Code Book -- that Poles were involved in cracking Enigma. Looking at the chapter on cracking the Enigma, I found that my memory had served me right for once. Simon Singh does a much better job at giving credit to Rejewski than does the museum. His team did the pain-staking task of developing the techniques that were later used by the Allies.

Unfortunately, that's how it always is, isn't it? History is in the eye of those charged with documenting it. Credit to both -- Rejewski and Turing.

I had paused my DasBlog conversion to DotNetNuke as Omar had hinted that an upgrade was in the works and had many bug fixes and trackback spam protection. Just saw the post that 1.8 is now Gold. Way to go. Time to get the migration done and crank out the best blog module for DotNetNuke.

[Edit: Installed and worked right-away. Good job DasBlog team.]

Even though I think Podcasting is great for time-shifting professionally produced material, it's getting a little out of control in Podcast land with everybody taking a shot at being their own radio station.

First of all, not everyone is fun/interesting/tolerable to listen to. Secondly, why would I want to listen to someone drone on about a topic for 10-20-30 minutes when I could have skimmed and digested the same material in a few seconds or a couple of minutes had it been available in written form. Third, how am I supposed to find relevant material within the audio.

Until Google can accurately transcribe and make audio streams searchable, and...

Until the technology can somehow take a person's insipid commentary and make it into an interesting broadcast-quality piece, and ...

Until the technology is there to listen to audio streams at high speeds without the chipmunk effect...

... I will keep my 0.5 sec. attention-span on Podwriters (a.k.a. bloggers).

This morning as I took in the shuttle landing, I did so with a recently acquired sense of amazement and appreciation for this most amazing of human machines.

My young nephews are visiting us in D.C. from Indianapolis and last week we spent a day at the Dulles-based National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center checking out the huge planes, missiles, rockets etc. that don't fit in the D.C. NASM. I have always loved planes because I grew up in an airline family. (My dad worked for Air-India for 40 years, my sister is currently a stewardess for the same airline, and just about every family friend and many relatives work for an airline.) Given my fascination with planes, the visit to Udvar-Hazy was a special treat. I was especially looking forward to seeing the shuttle as I have constructed many shuttle models ever since I was a kid, but have never seen a real one.

I was not disappointed. Seeing the shuttle close-up I was totally mesmerized. This is truly an awesome piece of hardware. I had to walk around it a few times to take in all the details. The one they have at Udvar-Hazy is the Enterprise (named after the Star Trek ship based on public votes). This shuttle has never been out in space and has only been used for testing on Earth. This in no way takes away from its magnificence. Large, graceful and majestic, I can only imagine how fantastic it must be to ride in one of these after years of grueling work and training. (Sorry the pic is a bit fuzzy...it came off my phone camera.)

At the museum, I also spent some time paying special attention to two other very famous planes.

The first was the SR-71 Blackbird -- the world's fastest and highest flying plane (>2000 mph; 80,000 ft.). I had no idea how big the plane was because I had never really seen any photos of it next to any person or thing. Take a look...the freakin' thing is huge (see people to the left of engine for comparison).

The second was the Enola Gay. Knowing that the anniversary of the day on which this silver monster unleashed atomic fury on Hiroshima from its belly (Aug. 6) was only three days away, I couldn't help but feel an incredible sadness for the innocent lives that this plane had caused to be destroyed. Today is the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing and I feel even sadder. I was Googling the subject and came across Paul Tibbets website. If you have some time, check it out. It gives some deeper insights into the bombings.

I have not yet released a DNN 3.x-compatible version of my SkinWidgets suite. This is because my vision for this suite exceeds my current ability to do it justice. Ultimately, I want to merge SkinWidgets, Skinergy and a few other skin-related goodies I have as the ultimate skinning toolbox for DotNetNuke along with a large number of high-end skins created by professional graphic designers.

My idea of skins is a little different from most skins found in the DNN realm, so I want to clarify. For me, a skin should be more than just a visual layer for a DNN portal. I think skins should have a personality and the necessary bits to fully support that personality. For instance, if the skin is for a teen portal, it should not only have graphics that appeal to such an audience, but also widgets, doodads, etc. that instantly give the portal U.I. elements that fit the usability requirements of that audience.

Since it will take some time to work on this, I have prepared a DNN3 compatibility release of SkinWidgets. Existing customers can obtain it by emailing support at speerio dot net. It's the same as the DNN2 package except that it works on DNN3.