This web site features an extensive section concerning cryptography:

A Cryptographic Compendium

And here is a direct link to its index page.

Originally, I had among the pages on other topics, a single page about a map projection of my own. Now, having once again written, this time to run on a PC, a program to draw maps in a variety of projections, this site now also contains:

Map Projections

an extensive series of pages describing several map projections and how to construct them.

Note that there are some other topics addressed within the section on cryptography as well. Error-Correcting Codes have a page, and the section on teletypewriter ciphers illustrates many codes used with teletypewriters; more on this topic is at a page within the section on data compression. Particularly intriguing may be the proposal for representing a large repertoire of characters within 5-level code.

For quicker loading, the section on Featured Images which addresses a number of topics for which I have created drawings, but not a full page concerning the topic as yet, has been taken off the main page. It includes an image showing the purported relation of pi and the golden ratio to the Great Pyramid, and a new item, showing a solid with both faces having octagonal symmetry and faces having pentagonal symmetry.

As you may have noticed, there is now a link banner to the right on this page. Except for a nice desktop background, no compensation has been received for placing the banner on this page; thus, try not to think of it as advertising, but as information about a very enjoyable webcomic (which is also available for a reasonable price in the more convenient form of a TPB (trade paperback edition) at a comics store such as is likely to be near most viewers of this page). As the comic concerns mad scientists, somehow it felt appropriate to provide a link from this page.

A brief page with a few annotations about the series is now on this site.



Latest New Additions

Major additions have been made to the page about using the roll of three identical ordinary six-siced dice for a greater number of purposes in such applications as role-playing games.

On the page about the games of Chivalry and Camelot, descriptions of the game of King's Court (also known as Supercheckers) and of the Strand War Game have been added.

On a page within the section on unit conversions, a discussion of the standard tournament sizes for boards for a number of different games has been added, as well as a note on the length measures of Barsoom.


Also for quicker loading, a page about What's New on the site, but from which I haven't had the heart to remove links to some of the older new things from, is on a separate page.

I will keep one highlight from the site on the front page, however:

this heptagonal tiling is from a section of the web site that discusses such matters as Penrose tilings.

Other attractive images on my site include one of the Riemann Zeta Function, what I think is a very nice map on the world based on Lambert's Conic Conformal Projection, a really colorful series of pages with drawings of computer front panels (of course, if you use Google, you can find actual *photographs* of nearly all the computers presented).

It's difficult to summarize the content of this site, but from the table below, you can see that in addition to the major sections on cryptography and map projections listed above, mathematics, board games, and computers are addressed here.


In brief, the available topics are:

Mathematics:
The Slide Rule
Infinity
Archimedean Solids
The Fourth Dimension
Rotations of a Dodecahedron
Examples of Groups
Two Famous Equations
(HTML version: page itself displays on all browsers; MathML displays on Amaya, recently updated)
(XML version: required for MathML on IE with the DesignScience MathPlayer plug-in in addition to Amaya)
(XHTML version: required for MathML on Firefox in addition to Amaya)
Euler's Constant
Sphere Packings
Gödel's Theorem and the Halting Problem
Magic Squares
The Mandelbrot Function

Tilings
Pentagonal Tilings
Octagonal Tilings
Dodecagonal Tilings
Heptagonal Tilings

Calendars:
Perpetual Calendars
A Luni-Solar Calendar
A Simplified Calendar Proposal
Julian Day Numbers
A Martian Calendar
A Modest Proposal for the Abolition of the Leap Second
Happy Easter!
Happy Hanukkah!
The Mayan Calendar

Science:
A Space Habitat Design
Travel to Mars
Lining up the Planets
The Equation of Time
The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiments
The Fine-Structure Constant
Punctuated Equilibria

Telescopes and Eyepieces:
How a Telescope Works
Kinds of Telescopes
Telescope Mountings
Eyepieces
Special Bonus Section:
Introduction to Geometrical Optics

Chess:
Comments on the Rules
The Immortal Game (Anderssen-Kieseritzky)
Dynamic Scoring
Leaping Bat Chess
Random Variant Chess
Three-Dimensional Chess
Engagement Chess
Five-Player Chess
Four-Player Chess
An Unusual Board for Three-Player Chess
Spectral Realm Chess
Half-Shogi Chess
Temporary Marsellais Chess
Well-Known Forms of Chess
Traditional Enlarged Forms of Chess
Warring States Chess
The Game of the Three Kingdoms
Hexagonal Chess
Hexagonal Chess, Part 2
S. Waider's Chess for Three Players
Enlarged and Improved Chess

Computers:

How Does A Computer Work?
What Computers Are Made From
Computer Arithmetic
The General Layout of a Computer
The Old Days: Computing Without RAM
The Old Days: Decimal Computers

A Computer Architecture:
Memory-Reference Instructions
Additional Instructions
Alternate Instruction Modes
Variant Alignment Modes
Basic Architecture
Restricted Functionality
Off-Chip Processing

The Perfect Computer?
A Historical View of FORTRAN
Remembering APL
Computer Keyboards
Keyboard Scan Codes
About a Computer Language (EXALT, see below)
Computer Architectural Preferences
Computer Front Panels
The Punched Card
Print Train Trivia
Printing Terminals and Proportional Spacing
Digital Magnetic Tape Recording

Introduction to EXALT

Miscellaneous:


Signal Flag Systems
Introduction to HTML
Color Charts
The Musical Scale
Building Blocks and the Pythagorean Triangle
Efficient and Flexible Text Encoding
Design for a Tall Building

Movie and TV Aspect Ratios
A Limitation of Color Photography
Color Filter Array Designs
Unit Conversions

Board Games Other Than Chess
A Few Board Games of Interest
Comments on Wei Ch'i (or Go, or Baduk)

Checkers
Two-Move and Three-Move Restrictions
Other Forms of Checkers
Hasami Shogi, Seega, and Other Related Games
Ludus Latrunculorum
English Gothic Double Checkers

Other Uses for a Go Board
The Greatest Modern Board Game of Skill
Making Wargames More Complicated
Making Full Use of Three Ordinary Dice
The World is Round
Making Board Games More Complicated
Space Battles in Three Dimensions

Don't Touch That Dial!
Color Television Madness
Four Speakers from Two Channels?
A Problem in Applied Geometry

A Phonemic Alphabet
Two Schemes For Elections (New!)
Probability
Patterns in Nature and Myth

A Note on Large Numbers
A Unified Architecture for Telephone Numbers
On Philosophy and Ethics (Recent Additions!)


When this page had a counter, the number of visitors recorded on the counter had reached about 107,000.


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Back again, after a long absence:


Contact Information and Notes

Needless to say, any trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners, and are used here only for purposes of identification.

As this series of web pages contains some ideas and speculations about how to design and implement ciphers, readers are notified that I am not engaging in providing professional advice in these pages, and are advised to seek the direct advice of a competent professional before embarking on projects using cryptography.

Also, inventions or algorithms described on these pages may be covered by patents other than those directly noted.

This site is not approved by, sponsored by or affiliated with either Studio Foglio LLC, Airship Entertainment, Phil and Kaja Foglio, or any other present or future assignee of the rights to the creative works of Phil and Kaja Foglio.

Girl Genius is a registered trademark of Studio Foglio LLC. Agatha Heterodyne, Moxana, and the Silverodeon and all Girl Genius art, characters, design elements, logos, and related indicia are trademarks of, and copyrighted by, Studio Foglio LLC. The link banner above, containing items among those listed, is used by permission.


Copyright (c) 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2008 John J. G. Savard

The term QUADIBLOC is the designation of a family of block ciphers described on these web pages; the description of these block ciphers, and a claim of trademark rights to the term QUADIBLOC is to be found on this page.