Just a quicky adminy post, lots of loose nails all needing tapping in, you know how it is.
(1) Happy New Year to you all! (…unless associating happiness with a particular Western calendar is far too politically incorrect for you, in which case I don’t really know what to say).
(2) A big Thanks! going out from me to all you Cipher Mysteries visitors and subscribers, as the blog has now had 600K visitors and more than a million page hits! I know it’s just a number, but it’s a nice number and it’s mine.
(3) Right now, I’m optimistic that 2014 will be a genuinely productive year for cracking cipher mysteries – specifically, I’m more positive about the Somerton Man and d’Agapeyeff Cipher than I have been for a long time. I’ve also got lots of interesting posts planned, though Real Life will inevitably intrude on the fantasy image of Cipher Mysteries Mansions that people seem to have, hence these will doubtless take me much longer than I expect.
(4) I’ve just yesterday sold my last copy of the most recent batch of The Curse Of The Voynich, but another box of books has already been ordered and so the price of copies on Amazon Marketplace etc should be back to a practical level (i.e. not £123, ha!) within a fortnight or so.
(5) I’ve recently published a fun interactive chess ebook some of you may like, called “Chess Superminiatures” (on Amazon UK, Amazon US, etc. It contains a hundred really super miniature chess games (all under ten moves!) and a whole load of what-happened-next mini-quizzes, which are particularly good for trains or planes. If you have a Kindle and like a little bit of chess, I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy this! 🙂
(6) At the moment, I’m vaguely thinking about arranging a Cipher Mysteries pub meet some time in February, so if any of you are aiming to be visiting London around then, drop me a line and I’ll see if I can arrange it to coincide: it’s always nice when we manage to make that happen.
Moore’s law is catching up with you ,Menno and Rene. This should be a great year for historical ciphers.
USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering (Kevin Knight) has a paid position open for a Voynich researcher to work with the latest super computers. Who will make the biggest strides to understand these old mysteries?
xplor: do you mean the summer internship position? http://nlg.isi.edu/jobs.html Interesting… but for the Voynich, I somehow doubt that supercomputers will prevail any faster than brains and a mid-price PC. 🙂
w.h.s
Nick I share your enthusiasm for the D’Agapeyeff cipher. I’ve generated a few more testable hypotheses. ….just need Real Life to get in the way less.
Jim
Nick, remember that I’m committing to purchasing a set if you get a round tuit (‘Curse vol 1 & Curse vol ii). 😉