Marco's Blog

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How I Became the World's Best Wordle Player

2022-02-07 10 min read Programming marco
Wordle 233 1/6 đźź©đźź©đźź©đźź©đźź© The world is gripped by a new game: Wordle, which is an odd and addictive combination of a word guessing game with MasterMind, a game involving color created in 1970. You have six tries to guess a five letter word, and for each guess you get in reply which letters of your word are correct, which ones would be correct in a different location, and which ones are plain wrong. Continue reading

Threshold Chunking

2021-02-05 15 min read Programming marco
The Problem How do you distribute a file in pieces such that you need exactly a given number of the pieces to rebuild the entire file? This article was inspired by the Shamir Secret Sharing Scheme (SSSS), a cryptographic scheme (process) by which a secret key is shared between $n$ fragments, any $m$ of which can be used to recreate the entire key (n and $m$ being determined at the beginning of the process). Continue reading

Steamboat During the Bomb Cyclone

2019-04-05 9 min read Snow Updates Travel marco
It was (and still is) an amazing snow season, one of those you can tell tall stories about to your grandkids surrounding the fireplace. But the crown of the worst storm of the many definitely goes to the one that dropped a blanket of white from Aspen to Chicago. It marked the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in Colorado, with some of the worst winter winds recorded. What a better day to do a road trip? Continue reading

I Can Tell-u-ride!

2019-04-04 10 min read Snow Updates marco
Yes! We finally had the most fantabulous snow season of the (this) century! 2018-2019 will forever go into snowboarding history as Colorado’s most fun, especially with the future being warmer and the snow trending towards occasional more than regular. In fact, I haven’t been updating this blog for a long while because I was having way too much fun on the slopes. Now the season is winding down and it’s time to recap almost six months of awesomeness! Continue reading

English-based Creoles, Esperanto, and the Quest for the “Perfect” Bridge Language

2019-04-04 29 min read Esperanto marco
Meet Mom and Dad See the man at the bottom with the jet-black hair? The lady in the chair to his right? The bundle of joy in her arm? Those are respectively my father, my mother, and myself. Both my parents sadly passed, but their story is remarkable. He was Italian, she was German. The official story is that they met on the freeway, passing each other repeatedly over hundred miles. Continue reading

CyberSecurity Done Right

2018-04-16 2 min read Security marco
I received an email. It came from TaskRabbit, a company about whom I don’t know much. I used them to get moving help when my containers were delivered and had a really strongly positive impression. Also, they had some heavy-handed product placement in Unbreakable – Kimmy Schmidt, which still was endearing. While I know little about the company, I know something about their handling of a cybersecurity incident. Here is what they had to say: Continue reading

Spring Has Sprung! Or Has It? The Math Behind Seasons

2018-04-05 12 min read Science marco
Yawn! That’s not my reaction to the title, but to the sleepiness that comes from giving up Lent, eating chocolate (provided at half price by Safeway on Easter Monday), and sleeping in after a sugar rush. Easter, is a Spring holiday – not by chance, but by design: Spring officially starts on the Spring equinox, and Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox (unless bla bla). Continue reading

My Private Keystone

2018-04-01 7 min read Snow Updates marco
The previous post I spent dissing the EPIC Pass, but praising its mountains. Vail will always be one of my favorite places on Earth, despite being sick of high prices and breaking-down lifts. Breckenridge will always be my go-to place for a party (waiting for the Plunge!), but I’ll never reveal my secret stashes there, not even if you tortured me with a ski stick (yes, that’s what they were originally called! Continue reading

Good-bye RMSP, Welcome IKON!

2018-03-25 7 min read Snow Updates marco
Last year I decided to splurge and buy both major season passes available in Colorado: EPIC, which is Vail’s offering and includes access of some kind to A-Basin, Keystone, Breckenridge, Vail, and Beaver Creek; and Rocky Mountain SuperPass (RMSP), which is good at Eldora, Winter Park, Copper Mountain, Steamboat, and Crested Butte. Of course, just as I decide to do that, we get one of the worst snow seasons on record. Continue reading
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