Random Links: Safe Cracking, Marge Simpson, Road Trip, etc.

Matt Blaze answers the question “how does a safe work?” in his thoroughly researched paper on Safecracking for the computer scientist (link courtesy of the crypt-o-gram mailing list).

Marge Simpson got a new hair style. About time, if you ask me!

We are planning a family road trip for this summer. Exact route still TBD, but we want to visit the Oregon Coast, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, the Hearst Castle, and the various tourist attractions around San Diego. We may also head east a bit to Arizona before heading north to Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. If we get to Arizona then I definitely want to visit this airplane graveyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The Pima Air and Space Museum is also on the list.

Right now that route (starting from Seattle) is about 3400 miles, as you can see in the picture o n the right.

This will be our third major road trip — we’ve done Seattle to Utah and back (1600 miles), and Seattle to South Dakota (3100 miles). You can do these things in several ways. You can research them exhaustively, planning out every stop in minute detail. You can hit the road with a general idea of where you want to go, and simply follow your nose. Or you can lay out a general route but leave time for some diversions along the way. For example, driving through Northern Utah we saw a sign for the Golden Spike National Historic Site. We took the turn and drove about 40 miles out of our way to see what this was all about and it turned out to be interesting and worthwhile.

The important things are to have a good time, to realize that it is a vacation, and to create some good memories as you do it.