Blog & White

Durant les années 1920, des navires disparaissent dans la Manche. Simon Dubocs, qui s'était enfuit avec sa fiancée Isabel Bakefiled, échappe de justesse au naufrage. Isabel décide de rentrer chez son père avant que le scandale de sa disparition n'éclate, ne laissant à Simon, pour convraicre le Lord Bakefiled de le laisser épouser sa fille, que la possibilité d'effectuer un acte de bravoure. Quelques jours plus tard, un événement géologique soulève le fond de la Manche et relie l'Angleterre à la France, laissant apparaître les navires coulés, et attirant toutes sortes de pillards. Lord Bakefiled et Isabel sont enlevés, et Simon, accompagné par un groupe d'indiens, acteurs de westerns dont un membre a été assassiné par erreur à la place de Simon, partent à la recherche d'Isabel. Après moultes péripéties, ils arrivent au repaire de la bande ; Simon est fait prisonnier et condamné à mort, et ne doit son salut qu'à Antonio, le meneur des indiens, qui s'était fait passer pour un des brigands. Simon délivre Isabel et son père, et obtient finalenent la permission de l'épouser.

“inspired by Iron Maiden… malt flavours and citric notes from a unique blend of Bobec, Goldings and Cascade hops”

Just another ale, not bad but nothing special. Contains malted barley and wheat.

Frederic Robinson Ltd, Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. 4.7% alcohol.

Richard Forthrast, former smuggler between the Canadian and US border, is now the creator of a MMORPG named T'Rain; the game is designed to be friendly to chinese gold-diggers (selling characters and artifacts to westerners who don't want to spend the time building up their character). He has hired Zula, his niece, to work in his team. During a week-end at Richard's ski resort just north of the Canada-US border, Zula witnesses an exchange of data-against-money between her boyfrend Peter and a strange man, Wallace. Back in Seattle, the Wallace storms into Peter's appartment because all his files have been locked on his laptop by a ransomware virus named Reamde, written by "the Troll", spreading through T'Rain, asking to put gold pieces in a given location in T'Rain in exchange for the key to decrypt their files. Soon after comes Ivanov, Wallace's boss, who forces Peter and Zula to find the identity of the Troll. They find out that the place where to put the gold is full of thieves attacking the players bringing their gold, but also helped by mysterious characters. Thanks to Zula's colleague, they find the IP address where these characters (working for the Troll) are connected, some place in Xiamen, China. Ivanov, helped by his hired bodyguard Sokolov, kidnaps Peter and Zula and takes them to Xiamen in a rented jet. They meet Csongor, a hacker working for Ivanov, and while scanning the city for the given IP address, are helped by Yuxia, a girl who just wants to help the foreigners. They eventuall locate the Troll in an abandonned building, but Zula, unwilling to let Ivannov coldly kill the Troll, lies about the floor where the latter lives. Sokolov and his men then storm into the wrong place, where islamist terrorists led by Abdallah Jones happen to be making explosives. In the confusion following the explosion of the building, Ivanovov kills Peter for escaping and leaving Zula behind, and gets killed by Jones before he could kill Zula. Jones takes Zula as a hostage and escapes in a taxi. Csongor is saved by the Troll (who's name is Marlon) and follow the taxi in Yuxia's van. In the meantime, Sokolov escapes to the next building, where he briefly meets Olivia, an MI6 agent who was spying on Jones'. Marlon, Csongor and Yuxia reach the taxi at the harbour, and while Yuxia is kidnapped by Jones and leave on a fishing boat, Csongor and Marlon escape and follow the boat with a smaller boat. While Jones and Zula go and kidnap the pilots of Ivanov's jet, Marlon and Csongor attack the fishing boat, free Yuxia and escape to the sea. At the same time, Sokolov finds Olivia's address (from her handbag lost after the explosion) and saves her from Jones' men (the latter had found her address, lost by Sokolov) and they both escape to Taiwan. Zula, with Jones and his men, fly to North America (the goal being to bomb Las Vegas), but crash in British Columbia in the middle of nowhere after Zula has shot Jones' lieutenant who wanted to rape her. Knowing Richard's reputation, Jones wants his help to cross the border and enter the USA, so they travel toward the ski resort, joined by other terrorists on the way. Meanwhile, MI6 guesses that Jones' destination was Manila; in there, Olivia meets Seamus a CIA agent, but they find no trace of Jones. Olivia is convinced that Jones is in North America, where she goes but without full support of her superiors. She meets Richard in Seattle and through his investigations at Peter's place, learns that Sokolov has arrived in Seattle as well (on a cargo ship, arranged by MI6) and picks him up. In the meanwhile, Marlon, Csongor and Yuxia have reached the Philippines in their boat and when Marlon logs into T'Rain again from a cybercafe, Richard learns about his location, tells Olivia, who asks Seamus to investigate. He meets the three and arranges to take them to the US; being a T'Rain player and discovering that Richard suddenly logged out without putting his character in a safe place, he deduces that Jones has abducted Richard. Four groups converge: Jones and Richard, going south to the US border; Zula who was left behind and who managed to escape, following them to the resort, then across the US border; Seamus, Marlon, Csongor and Yuxia, exploring the area south of the border in a rented helicopter, but crashed, shot by the terrorists; Olivia and Sokolov, going to Jake Forthrast's place, which is at the other end of the path across the border, a cabin isolated in the woods (she had met Jake is Seattle) to warn them that Jones is coming. A long battle in the woods ensues, ending in Richard shooting Jones while the latter is distracted by the cougar who was following the long trail of dead men.

Après un autre coup raté, les Daltons se séparent ; le premier à réunir un million de dollars pourra être le nouveau chef du gang. Joe part attaquer des banques, Averell ouvre une chaîne de pizzerias, Jack ouvre un casino et William se lance dans la politique, avec le soutien de financiers véreux. Ils parviennent tous en même temps à réunir leur million, que Lucky Luke leur vole et donne à Joe sans que ce dernier n'en connaisse l'origine. Grâce aux indices laissés par Luke, les trois autres frères se précipitent dans la planque de Joe, accusant ce dernier de vol. Ma Dalton arrive alors pour les séparer, et Luke les ramène au pénitentier.

Lu à la Librairie Kléber.

Neuvième volume du Collège invisible. Guillaume se réveille chez ses parents, et toute trace de magie ou du collége invisible ont disparu. Il réussit tout de même, sur une indication du roi du Petit-Peuple, à retrouver le principal du collége qui lui avoue qu'une entité maléfique, attirée par la magie, traverse les plans parallèles de réalité. Guillaume ayant réussi à utiliser des sorts pour retrouver le principal, il est chargé par ce dernier de choisir un plan, y lancer un sort pour y attirer la créature. La réalité, choisie au hasard, est celle où habitent les Drims, qui ne veulent pas que leur réalité soit détruite. Avec l'aide de ses amis, Guillaume parvient à lancer le sort à retourner dans sa réalité.

Lu à la librairie Kléber.

Vingt-troisième album de Jérôme K. Jérôme Bloche. Jérôme est chargé de trouver la personne qui fait chanter les paroissiens afin de les forcer à faire un don pour la rénovation de l'orgue de l'église. Le curé, premier suspect et ami de Jérôme est mis hors de cause. L'histoire est compliquée par la réapparition du père de Babette, que l'on croyait mort depuis vingt ans. Le coupable est finalement une assistante ménagère polonaise, trop fervente catholique au point d'avoir été exclue de son monastère, recommandée par le curé à ses paroissiens, et qui déniche les secrets de ses employeurs.

Lu à la Librairie Kléber.

Alfred Hitchcock has decided that his next movie would be a horror movie based on the serial killer Ed Gein, instead of making yet-another movie like the previous one. Paramount refuses to finance it, so he and his wife Alma mortgage their house and finance it themselves. Meanwhile Alma tries to convince her husband to read the script that a friend, Whitfield Cook, has written. Hitchcock finds it bad, and Alma, annoyed by her husband attitude and slowly folling in love with the writer, decides to work with Cook to improve his script. Meanwhile, Hitchcock is obsessed by his blonde actresses, a fact that Alma quickly discovers. But she also finds out that Cook has been only seducing her in the hope to get his script made into a movie by her husband. In the end, Paramount hates the movie; Hitchcock edits it with Alma's help, and by some marketing trick manages to make the premiere a success (Paramount initially was showing it only in two theatres).

Onzième volume de Wayne Shelton. En Argentine, Shelton est arrêté pour une viol qu'il aurait commis quarante ans auparavant. Il s'agit en fait d'une ancienne petite amie qui le fait chanter afin de le forcer à se déguiser en curé et de débusquer un véritable curé qui a gagné le gros lot à la loterie nationale. Ce dernier a honte d'avoir tué un vagabond qui a voulu le détrousser en apprenant sa bonne fortune et se cache dans son village natal. La maîtresse chanteuse tente de tuer Shelton, mais est finalement arrêtée par la police grâce à l'aide d'Honesty qui a agit dans l'ombre.

Lu à la fnac.

Neuvième volume de Wayne Shelton. Honesty devient la doublure d'une princesse et Wayne est chargé de la protection de la princesse. Honesty se fait alors kidnapper et, sous hypnose, annonce son abdication en faveur de son cousin. Wayne part à la rescousse de son amie malgré le fait qu'ils sont poursuivis par la police du pays. Au moment où l'acte d'abdication est signé (encore une fois sous hypnose et par Honesty), Wayne intervient et révèle que c'est le premier ministre qui a ourdi la machination ; le cousin de la princesse se range alors du coté du bon droit.

Lu à la fnac.

Premier volume de Michel Vaillant – Nouvelle saison. Le fils de Michel fugue de son internat, alors que Michel fonde sur lui l'espoir qu'il reprendra l'entreprise familiale, en perte de vitesse. En apprenant juste avant une course qu'on avait retrouvé de la cocaïne dans la chambre de son fils, Michel abandonne rapidement la course et part à la recherche de son fils. Grâce à une amie de ce dernier, il le retrouve finalement, mais il lui fait savoir qu'il n'a aucune intention de servir la dynastie Vaillante, et qu'il a travaillé ces derniers mois sur un projet personnel avec des amis.

Lu à la fnac.

Dixième volume du Collège invisible. Après avoir sauvé le monde dans l'épisode précédent, Guillaume est dans un état second. Une entité d'un univers parallèle a pris le contrôle de celui-ci et fait règner la terreur, et cherche à retrouver Guillaume en utilisant les ressources du collège. Thomas parvient finalement à réveiller Guillaume, et ces derniers s'introduisent dans le collège. Ils retrouvent Dragounet figé dans la pierre, depuis son passage manqué entre les deux mondes. Guillaume parvient à requinquer l'esprit de Dragounet dans la plan astral, et ce dernier revient à lui juste à temps pour neutraliser l'entité. Tout redevient peu à peu normal et le souvenir des événement s'efface.

Lu à la fnac.

Cinquante-troisième volume des Aventures de Spirou et Fantasio. Suite à un procès perdu et sur les conseils d'un détective, héros de Spirou dans sa jeunesse et en qui le groom fait confiance, le journal de Spirou passe aux mains de VIPER, un investisseur fou qui collectionne les super-héros et les fait prisonniers sur une île perdue. Grâce à l'aide de ses amis, Spirou parvient à rejoindre l'Europe et se réfugie à Champignac. Il est est pris en chasse par les chasseurs locaux, soudoyés par VIPER ; Spirou décide alors de se rendre pour que son journal puisse continuer à vivre, mais le détective (qui travaille pour VIPER) refuse de coopérer, se fait renvoyer, ce qui déclenche la chute des actions VIPER et le rachat de l'entreprise par un concurrent qui n'est autre que Vito Corleone.

Lu à la fnac.

Onzième volume du Collège invisible. Guillaume trouve Excalibur dans une poubelle, et devient donc le nouveau roi Arthur. Tous les enseignants du collège veulent contrôler ses actions, mais Guillaume décide de partir seul à la recherche du Graal. Grâce à Google, ils trouvent un endroit d'où rayonne de la joie et du bonheur, un organisme qui distribue de la nourriture aux pauvres et dans les locaux duquel la magie est inactive. Guillaume et ses amis se présentent alors comme bénévoles et partent distribuer de la soupe ; ils se rendent compte que la soupe est faite de viande humaine, et découvrent que le Graal a pris la forme d'une marmite géante dont la soupe hypnotise les consommateurs afin qu'ils viennent se jeter dedans. Grâce à Excalibur, Guillaume détruit le Graal et tout rentre dans l'ordre.

Lu à la fnac.

“chocolate toffee malt flavour, moderate bitterness… fruity character”

Quite sweet, malty and kind of fruity, but not really chocolaty. Contains barley malt.

Wychwood Brewery Co. Witney, Oxfordshire, England. 5.2% alcohol.

Deuxième volet du Voyage d'Ishtar. Franka est très affectée par la mort de Rix. Laura vient lui tenir compagnie et lui apprend qu'elle va épouser Karat. Pendant ce temps, Karat veut se débarasser de Franka lorsqu'elle commence à enquêter sur la mort de Rix, en relation avec l'épée. Elle apprend que l'épée aux propriétés coupantes étonnantes avait été découverte par un archéologue, mari d'Agatha Christie, et que cette dernière l'avait convaincu de cacher l'épée pour protéger sa réputation. Prévenue par son amie Furora qui enquête sur les détéctives qui suivaient Franka à Amsterdam, cette dernière échappe à son assassinat et se rend sur le yacht pour assister à la fête d'inauguration…

Premier volet du Voyage d'Ishtar. Laura est engagée par Karat, un riche diamantaire, pour décorer le yacht qu'il vient d'acheter. Laura engage Franka pour aller chercher à Istanbul une épée qui aurait appartenu à Alexandre le Grand, pièce centrale de la décoration du yacht. Elle est suivie à son insu par des détectives engagés par des agents secrets russes ; ces derniers surveillent Karat dans le but de l'assassiner à une date donnée. Au moment de l'échange, Rix s'empare de l'épée et est tué immédiatement après par un commando russe qui était venu s'assurer que rien de facheux n'arriverait, afin d'éviter à Karat tout soupçon.

Dixième volume des Arcanes du Midi-Minuit. Après avoir disparu pendant quelques jours, Marnie se marie avec un homme qu'elle a rencontré à peine une semaine auparavant. Beltran, son ancien petit-ami, lui tire dessus pendant la cérémonie et révèle qu'il s'agit en fait d'un androïde fabriqué par Dwaïn. Ce dernie apparaît peu après dans un engin et sème la panique sur la ville, avec Marnie comme otage dans l'engin. Beltran et Jim sauvent cette dernière et arrêtent Dwaïn qui se révèle être un androïde de plus. On découvre à la fin que le véritable Dwaïn est celui qui s'apprêtait à épouser la fausse Marnie…

Au cours d'une tempête, Léo et son tonton échouent au chateau d'If, loué pour un séminaire d'entreprise. Le PDG, rereneur de l'entreprise, meurt au cours du pot d'ouverture, empoisonné à la cannelle, à laquelle il est allergique. Plus tard dans la soiréé, une des participante au séminaire est retrouvée pendue, porteuse d'un mot l'accusant d'avoir détourné de l'argent. Peu après, le cadavre de la première victime est retrouvé criblé de balles. Léo se rend compte que le PDG comptait en fait observer ses employés au cours de la murder party qu'il a organisée, au moyen d'un réseau de caméras installées dans le chateau. Chaque participant est en possession d'une note accusant un autre de malvesation. Le véritable assassin est un participant de dernière minute qui, pour venger le suicide de sa femme causé par le PDG, aavit décider de faire couler l'entreprise.

Christian, Île de Grenade 70% : un peu acide, cuir ?

Christian, République Dominicaine 71% : fumé

Christian, Xoconusco 70% : grillé, intense

Christian, Ocumare 75% : frais, un peu mou, chocolaté

Christian, Chuao 75% : grillé (café), intense

Belgian, Dark 72% : grillé, pas terrible

In a future time where Shanghai is a republic independent from the rest of China, where nanotechnologies are commonplace and where simple goods are free and produced through nanotechnologies by machines powered by a proprietary network called the Feed, John Hackworth is bulding for his employer the Primer, a book-like device that can speak and tell stories, aiming to teach Elizabeth, the employer's granddaughter to think outside of the lines of her very strict, asceptic neo-victorian education. Hackworth builds an illegal copy of the Primer for his daughter, Fiona, thanks to the help of a Chinese hacker and gang leader, Dr. X. Soon after receiving the device, he is mugged by a gang of kids, and the Primer ends up in the hands of Nell, a small, poor and uneducated girl. Hackworth is caught by the local justice, who, manipulated by Dr. X, forces him to build more Primers to educate a quarter million small Chinese girls who have been abandonned by their parents due to an economic depression and currently raised by Dr. X's gang. These primers use speech synthesis, contrary to the original Primers, which make use in real time of human actors specialized in interactive plays; in the case of Nell's, the narrator's role all along Nell's childhood is played by Miranda, an actres who has effectively become Nell's mother. Hackworth is then forced by Dr. X to join the Drummers, a secretive tribe who has achieved a collective mind, in a search for the “Alchemist”. During ten years, he thus participates in the collective and although he episodically remembers communicating with Fiona through the Primer by storytelling, but does not know what he has been otherwise doing during this time. Later, he remembers working on the Seed, an open-source form of Feed that would allow China to be independent from the three only Feed providers. In the same time span, Nell gets self-educated through the Primer's pre-programmed interactive stories of Princess Nell and, following the book's advice, soon flees from their home. She is then adopted by the community to which belongs one of her mother's former boyfriend, gets a neo-victorian education, and befriends Elizabeth and Fiona. In the middle of her adolescence, she leaves the school and finds a job as a playwright in an interactive erotic theater. When Shanghai is attacked by fanatics who want to reattach it to the Chinese empire, Nell is joined by her Army of Mice, depicted as such in the Primer's stories of Princess Nell, but actually made of all the orphaned chinese girls raised by Dr. X and their own Primers. They help all the non-Chinese flee from Shanghai. In the end, Nell joins the Drummers in their undersea tunnels and saves Miranda (who had joined the Drummers in the hope of finding Nell through the collective mind) from being killed in the creation the Seed, as a part of the process invented by Hackworth.

Flowery, lightly bitter but sweet with a honey-ish aftertaste. Contains barley.

BrewDog Ltd., Ellon, Scotland. 4.7% alcohol

The head of the russian mafia, Konali, has released a video game that is played worldwide. Unable to find proof and arrest him, the head of the Moscow police asks Lassard to come and help him with a team of his best men. They are set up by Konali and forced by the head of the police to leave Russia by the next airplane, but instead start chasing Konali's men, and eventually find Konali at his video game factory, where version 2 of his game, if released worldwide, would have allowed him to break into any computer system and take control of it. Konali escapes them and flees to his restaurant where Lassard, who had been separated from his team the whole time, arrests him.

Kirk is relieved of command after having violated the Prime Directive to save Spock's life. Soon after, a secret Starfleet weapons's research facility is blown up by a mysterious captain Harrison. The latter then attacks the building where all high-ranking Starfleet officers are gathered to discuss the first attack. Harrison transports to a uninhabited area of Kronos, the Klingon homeworld, and Kirk is sent there to blow him up with a set of top-secret, advanced photon torpedoes. Kirk then decides to catch Harrison instead of simply blowing up the whole area. Harrison reveals that his is actually Khan, a bioengineered super-human created 300 years ago and revived in secret by admiral Marcus to develop weapons. The latter belives that the war with the Klingon is unavoidable and that Starfleet must become an armed force. Khan also reveals that he had hidden in the torpedoes the bodies of 72 other super-humans that he tried to protect from Marcus, who was using them as hostages to force Khan to work for him. Soon after leaving Kronos, Enterprise is attacked by a mysterious Starfleet ship, heavily armed, and commanded by Marcus. The latter wants Khan and the super-humans back. After boarding the ship with Kirk, Khan takes control and sends Kirk back to Enterprise in exchange for the torpedoes. Enterprise escapes towards Earth, chased by Khan who has discovered that the torpedoes are empty but armed, and disable the ship. Khan then crashe onto Starfleet's headquarter, while Kirk, in an attempt to prevent Enterprise to do the same, dies from radiation poisoning repairing the engine. Spock then chases Khan (who had survived the crash) to take a sample of his blood, ther latter having regenerative properties, and saves Kirk's life. Some time later, Kirk and Enterprise leave for a five year exploration mission.

Just another beer. Contains malted barley.

Adnams, Southwold, Suffolk, England. 3.4% alcohol.

La ville-état de Cerclon I sur une lune de Saturne est un modèle de société apathique entièrement sous le contrôle invisible des média et du gouvernement. Un petit groupe de rebelles appelés la Volte tentent de faire bouger les choses, sans succès, jusqu'à ce qu'ils se décident à une action d'éclat qui leur vaut rapidement d'être étiquetés comme terroriste. Ils tentent plus tard de détruire la station de télévision, ce qui vaut à un de leurs meneurs, Capt, un professeur de philosophie, d'être capturé. Refusant le poste de ministre de l'éducation que lui propose le président, ce dernier fabrique des preuves montrant Capt tuant sauvagement un gardien lors de l'assaut sur la station de télé, et fait voter le peuple sur le rétablissement de la peine de mort, à laquelle avait été condamné le précédenet meneur charismatique de la Volte. Capt est alors enterré vivant dans le cube de 800m de coté servant de décharge à Cerclon, mais parvient miraculeusement à en ressortir. Selon la constitution il est alors pardonné, et son retour incite des centaines de milliers de personnes à sortir de Cerclon pour créer des villages à l'extérieur de la zone habitable. Les conditions sont difficiles et trois des cinq membres du groupe central de la Volte meurent dans ces circonstances étranges. Capt finit par découvrir que depuis sa capture il est manipulé par le gouvernement qui a facilité son évasion du cube, et que la création de communautés extérieures à Cerclon a permis d'évacuer les indésirables de la ville. De plus, il a été un pion du gouvernemtn dans les assassinat de ses amis. Avec l'aide d'autres membres de la Volte, ils détruisent par vengeance le siège du gouvernement.

“brewed with British and German malts to give a deep ruby colour… five varieties of US hop from the Yakima Valley in Washington State… fruit and citrus flavours with a restrained bitterness”

Just another ale, but very red. Contains barley.

Meantime Brewing, London, England. 4.1% alcohol.

“wheat beer combined with grapefruit… citrus aftertaste”

The taste of grapefruit is so subtle that, hasn't it been marked on the label, I'd never have guessed what this beer is flavoured with. Otherwise this beer is a bit sweet and only very slightly bitter. Contains wheat and barley.

St. Peter's Brewery, Bungay, Suffolk, England. 4.7% alcohol.

When Janus, a small moon of Saturn suddenly leaves its orbit and dashes towards the Spica star 260 lightyears away from the sun, the Rockhopper and its crew of comet-ice miners is sent by its mother company to intercept it and gather as much information as possible before it leaves the solar system. The crew splits into two factions when Svetlana, chief engineer, discovers that the company has been lying to them regarding their chances of making it back to Earth. Bella, the captain is not convinced, and the mission continues. Near Janus, the Rockhopper is caught in the slipstream of Janus' engine and all hope of escaping is gone. After a succesful mutiny lead by Svelana agains Bella, the crew settles on the surface of Janus. They travel at almost the speed of light for thirteen years, during which they are forced to learn how to use Janus as a source of energy and discover a strange black cube with a simplified version of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man engraved on one face. Janus then reaches Spica and enters one chamber of a gigantic structure, several light-minutes across. Unknowingly, they travel faster than light for another subjective year, before arriving to their final destination, another similar chamber. There they meet a new species they nickname Fountainheads, who give them technology such as artificial gravity and rejuvenation. For nearly eighty years, they live inside the chamber, until one day they meet another species nicknamed Musk Dogs, who seem willing to trade technology for the right to tap into Janus' energy. Despite the Fountainheads' warning, Svetlana, who had been replaced by Bella as a leader of the settlement, decides to accept the Musk Dogs' offer. The latter's plan however was to explode Janus and break a hole in the chamber to escape the structure and see what is outside. Thanks to the black cube (a message sent to Bella by a human civilization, in the form of a very large amout of cubes containing an artificial intelligence, dispersed all over the galaxy; the civilization is 18,000 years older than Rockhopper's Earth, but still long extinct) and the help of the Fountainheads, they manage to escape the chamber before Janus' explosion. Svetlana and some of her followers then decide to leave through the hole and explore the outside. On their way out, they send back pictures of the structure, which is a torus composed of myriad of needle-shaped chambers, thought to be a kind of zoo collecting specied from all over the galaxy/universe.

“Brewed with lime and lemon zest…”

Not too sweet, slightly bitter and definitely ginger. Contains malted barley.

Adnams, Southwold, Suffolk, England. 2.5% alcohol.

Malagant used to be King Arthur's first knight, but he now seeks power for himself and harasses the small country of Leonesse, ruled by Lady Guinevere. To protect her people, she decides to marry Arthur. On her way to Camelot, she is attacked by Malagant's men and saved by a wandering knight, Lancelot. They fall in love, but denies her feelings for him since she is betrothed to Arthur. Lancelot's steps take him to Camelot where Arthur notices his bravoury during an obstacle course. After Arthur refused to share Leonesse with Malagant, the latter kidnaps Guinevere, who is then delivered by Lancelot. Arthur then makes Lancelot a knight of the Round Table, and when they hear that Malagant had attacked Leonesse, they go to war and fight for restoring the small country's freedom. Lancelot then announces his intention to leave Camelot, and Guinevere and him finally kiss, only to be discovered by Arthur. The latter accuses them of tresaon and organizes a public trial Camelot. Malagant takes the opportunity to attack Camelot, but Arthur exhorts his people to fight. He is severly wounded at the beginning of the battle; Malagant is killed by Lancelot. Before dying, Arthur makes Lancelot first knight of the round table and forgives him and Guinevere.

“aromatic hops and Scotch distillery peat smoked barley”

Quite surprising, smokey, fruity and a bit sour yet slightly bitter. It reminds me more of wine than pale ale. Contains barley malt and wheat, as well as honey.

The Isle of Skye Brewing Company, Uig, Scotland. 5.0% alcohol.

“Optic malted barley and 1st Gold hops”

Just another ale. Contains malted barley.

St. Peter's Brewery, Bungay, Suffolk, England. 4.1% alcohol.

Fruity, with something of pineapple. Contains barley malt and wheat.

Black Isle Brewery, Black Isle, Highlands, Scotland. 5.6% alcohol.

“Oats are used to give body and smoothness. Roasted barley provides flavours reminiscent of dark chocolate and coffee. These are balanced by a fresh hop bitterness”

Reasonnably sweet stout, otherwise nothing special. Contains barley and oats.

Beer Counter Ltd., South Stoke, Oxfordshire, England. 4.5% alcohol.

“a mixture of Maris Otter variety pale ale malt, pilsner malt, crystal malt, amber malt, black malt, roasted barley and malted oats… Challenger, Golding and Progress [hops]”

Sweet and very strong, with something like apple juice. Contains barley and oats.

Ridgeway Brewing, South Stoke, Oxfordshire, England. 8.0% alcohol.

“brewed with pale malt, Saaz and Cascade hops. It's the re-pitched with Champagne yeast and finallly given a dosage of rare and fragant Nelson Sauvin hop”

Made by a winemaker. Citrusy and flowery, slightly bitter. Nice pale ale. Contains malted barley and wheat.

Chapel Down Winery, Tenterden, Kent, England. 4.7% alcohol.

Dans ce troisième roman du Donjon de Naheulbeuk, les aventuriers acceptent d'escorter l'Elfe, devenue reine de son peuple, vers la forêt de Folonariel. Pendant ce temps, divers villages et tribus sont attaqués par des membres de peuples avec qui ils n'ont normalement pas de problème. Étrangement, aucun de ces peuples ne revendique les attaques. Les humains de Glargh et de Waldorg, généralement ennemis, décident d'organiser un conseil à la tour de Suak pour essayer de comprendre la raison de ces attaques et éviter une guerre en Terre de Fangh. Lors du conseil, on découvre que des sorciers métamorphes ont perpétré les attaques, et qu'ils sont probablement au service de Gzor, qui cherche une fois de plus à semer le chaos, chacune des attaques ayant en fait pour but de récupérer une des sept couronnes magiques qui rendraient son armée invincible. Les sorciers attaquent de conseil, une grande bataille s'ensuit, et le Nain et le Ranger sont fait prisonners par des orcs, alliés des sorciers et de Gzor. Ils sont délivrés par leur camarades et s'enfuient dans un donjon souterrain abandonné, sous les cavernes des orcs. Ils évitent de nombreux pièges et divers monstres peu courants, et tombent par hasard sur Zangdar, dont le plan pour refaire parler de lui est de libérer les monstres dans Glargh via un portail magique. Les aventuriers profitent du portail, et laissent Zangdar se débrouiller avec les monstres. On apprend à la fin que le Nain a volé par hasard une des couronnes magiques aux sorciers de Gzor juste avant de s'enfuir de chez les orcs, l'armée de Gzor ne sera donc pas invincible, mais la guerre contre ce dernier reste cependant inévitable.

“Crystal, Black & Pale malts… Golding, Styrian & Cascade hops… with a further late addition of whole Cascade hops”

Fruity (peach?), sweet, strong beer. Contains barley malt.

Brakspear Brewing Co., Witney, Oxfordshire, England. 6.7% alcohol.

Andy is going to college in a few days and does not play anymore with his old toys. Woody is the only one he plans to take with him. The toys (including Woody) are by mistake donated to a kindergarden (instead of being put into the attic as Andy planned). Andy manages to escape and ends up being picked by Bonnie, a little girl, while the other toys are savagely handled by kids too small to be able to play with them. They discover that the toys are ruled by Lotso the pink teddybear and a few goons, who assigns the newly donated toys to the smaller kids and keeps the toys prisoner at night so that they wouldn't escape. At Bonnie's place, Woody learns the truth about Lotso and decides to go and free his friends. They neutralize Lotso's goons and prepare to escape through the waste disposal system, but they are caught and end up in the trash bin and taken to the city dump. There they saved in the nick of time from the incinerator and manage to return to Andy's place just before he leaves to college. But Woody writes a not that convices Andy to give all the toys to Bonnie, who really knows how to play with them, the way he himself used to.

Passwords are difficult to generate and to remember, and once you finally know how to type yours quicky, you don't want to change it. That's usually the time when someone is forcing you to change it… Here is a synthesis of what I've found out about how to generate secure passwords.

Entropy as a measure of password strengh

The strength of a password is usually expressed as its entropy, measured in bits. In a nutshell, it expresses the total number of different passwords that can be created (given some construction rules), represented as the base 2 logarithm of that total number. For example, if you know that a password is composed of a single character which may be a letter (uppercase or lowercase), a digit, a white space or a period (which conveniently makes 64 different symbols: 26 lower case letters, plus 26 uppercase letters plus 10 digits plus 2 punctuation symbols), the entropy of that password is 6 bits (because 2⁶ = 64). Non-integer entropy values are valid, so for example a single lowercase letter has an entropy of approximately 4.7 (because 2^4.7 ≈ 26). The addition of one bit of entropy multiplies the total number of different possible passwords by 2; a password made of 2 characters (64 symbols: upper/lowercase letters, digits and 2 punctuation signs) has therefore an entropy of 12 bits and a password made of 8 lowercase letters has an entropy of 37.6 bits.

The human factor

The above entropy measurement is true only if the password is truly randomly generated, and that each symbol has an equal probability of being selected. Humans seem to be rather bad at generating random passwords, and in Special Publication 800-63, the entropy of a human-generated password of length 8 is estimated to have an entropy of 18 bits.

Moreover, if the password is a word from a natural language, the number of possible different passwords is equal to the size of the vocabulary in that language; for English language this is estimated to be between 250,000 words. The entropy of a password made of a single English word is therefore approximately 17.9 bits.

Forcing more entropy

To increase the entropy of human-generated passwords, it is quite common to enforce rules, such as a minimum length, the use of more symbols than just the 26 lowercase letters and forbidding the use of common words. The NIST report above estimates that the additional symbols add 6 bits of entropy and the dictionary check adds 5 bits. An 8 character password following all the rules above is therefore estimated to have an entropy of 30 bits. For comparison, a randonly-generated password of 8 character chosen amongst the most common symbols on a computer keyword (80 symbols) has an entropy of 50.6 bits

Such password become however difficult to remember, especially if you have to memorize several of them and are forced to change them every few months.

And they are still pretty insecure.

Cracking passwords

There are two different methods for cracking a password.

The first method consists in connecting to the service asking for the password, and trying passwords until the right one is found. This method is slow, one can expect to test at most a few dozen of passwords per second (let's say 100 passwords per second). Using the entropy to measure the strength of the attack, that represents 6.6 bits per second, or 23.0 bits/day, or 27.9 bits/month, or 31.5 bits/year.

This gives the following times:

• 18 bits password: at most 45 minutes
• 30 bits password: at most 128 days
• 50.6 bits password: at most 560,000 years

The thing here is that reasonnably secure services will not allow that many trials.

The second method for cracking passwords requires a list of encrypted passwords e.g., stolen from a badly secured service. Depending on the encryption algorithm used with those passwords and the hardware at hand, one can expect an attacker to try between 2,000 and 15,500,000,000 passwords per second (between 11 and 33.8 bits/s) with a standard desktop computer (equipped with a modern GPU).

This gives the following times:

• 18 bits password: at best 128 seconds, at worst a few microseconds
• 30 bits password: at best 6 days, at worst less than a second
• 50.6 bits password: at best 274 years, at worst 32 hours.

How many bits are needed?

The times indicated above represent the maximum time needed for cracking the password. There is a 50% chance of cracking it in half that time, and a 10% chance of cracking it in a tenth of that time.

So if a password needs to be safe for at least 1 year, the time needed for cracking it needs to be at least a year i.e., 33.8 + 24.9 = 58.7 bits (entropy of the number of passwords tested per second plus the “entropy” of the number of seconds per year). There is however a chance that the password will be cracked in less time. Adding 1 bit of entropy will reduce the attacker's chance of finding the password in a given time by half, and adding 10 bits reduces it to 1 chance out of 1024 to crack it in that time. 7 bits would reduce it to 1 chance out of 128, which may be sufficient as well.

How to generate such a password?

A 68.7 bits password means 15 lowercase letters, or 11 common-keyboard-symbols. These have to be selected by a true random process, such as dice rolls, nuclear desintegration or electronic thermal noise. 6-sided dice are easy to come by, and the Diceware method is probably the easiest one for generating secure and easy-to-remember passwords. A rolls of 5 dice allows to select one word in a list of 7,776, providing 12.9 bits of entropy. The strenght of the password therefore depends on the number of words that are selected (by repeatedly rolling 5 dice):

• 1 word: 12.9 bits, cracked in less than a microsecond
• 2 words: 25.8 bits, cracked in less than 4 milliseconds
• 3 words: 38.3 bits, cracked in less than 30 seconds
• 4 words: 51.6 bits, cracked in less than 2 days
• 5 words: 64.5 bits, cracked in less than 55 years
• 6 words: 77.4 bits, cracked in less than 423,000 years
• 7 words: 90.3 bits, cracked in less than 3231 million years

The Diceware method also allows to add a random non-letter symbol to the password, adding about 9.5 bits of entropy for a 20 character password (about 5 words). Therefore a 5-word password with one random symbol can be considered secure for at least a few years.

How long will the password be safe?

Between 2002 and 2011, CPU and GPU computing power has been multiplied by 10 and 100 respectively i.e., +0.37 and +0.74 bits/year regarding password cracking. The rate of growth will probably not remain that high, but if one wants to keep a password for more than a year or two, it should be taken into consideration. For example, if a password must remain safe for the 4 next years, add 3 bits. The 5-word password with one random symbol will therefore be safe for the next 7 years.

One must also consider that computer clusters become affordable, and that a 25-GPU computer has been built exactly for the purpose of cracking passwords. This type of machine adds about 4 bits to capacity of cracking encrypted password (the “second method” above). That makes the 5-word diceware passphrase safe for barely over a year. Finally, cloud computing and parasitic computing using cloud-based browsers may reduce the safety period even further.

Conlcusion

The only truly secure passwords are long and truly random; any other method for generating passwords will lead to easily crackable passwords, and is therefore giving a false sense of security. Long enough passwords need to be changed, but not too often; 3 years is a reasonnable lifetime. The Diceware method allows to generate such password in a simple way.

Finally, memorizing a lot of passwords is difficult and induces people to reuse the same passwords. There is a simple solution to that, promoted by Bruce Schneier: write down your password and keep it in your wallet.