Tuesday, December 22, 2020

2020 Twilight Summary

This quite strange year is nearing its end, but we're still alive and kicking. It wasn’t easy for anyone. Many lost a bit of personal freedom in 2020, and no idea for how long, but let's put that in perspective. There's always far worse, elsewhere, at any given moment.

1950 winter in Korean very Cold Cold War. Also see video (source: US Army)

So what have we been up to this year? Above all, I was happy to finally start writing again in early 2020, as the long 2019 break was not planned. We did manage to finally arrive at 250 posts.

The blog also had some tweaks. New visitors might get lost, scrolling through all posts, so I created the Recommended Posts page as introduction to this blog, and to highlight posts. This page will change occasionally. There's now an Updates page. Old posts are updated regularly with new information, videos or links, but if you don't know, you missed it. You’ll never miss new bits with the Updates page.

The Internet Archive is another victim of my urge to preserve a tiny bit of history. This enabled replacing many dead links with their archived version, and enabled saving existing links, posts and web pages, also from the Cipher Machines and Cryptology website.

Also, keeping the Enigma Challenge running has always been a joy. Meanwhile, already 311 people from 39 different countries joined the challenge. Over the years, we've registered 1360 solutions. No chance to get bored. The most recent to crack all messages was Matthias Schoop on December 19. Well done! Now there's also a Wall of Honor for the Cold War spy adventure Operation Tinker Bell.

All the best for 2021 to all readers!

Unfortunately, there’s also some bad news about Christmas. It’s not clear whether Santa will make it in time. There’s an unexpected delay, caused by some misunderstanding about his mission. let's hope he gets things sorted out.

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