Vinegar - refined Vigenère - can you break my cipher?

I'm idly interested in cryptography, the art of scrambling a message so that it can be transmitted securely, and only someone with the magic key can understand the message.

When I was young, I designed a cryptographic algorithm. I thought I was so clever, but just because *I* couldn't break it, that doesn't make it secure.

In this article, I present my naive cryptographic algorithm. It's very flawed, so please don't use it for anything important. Can you find the flaw?

This article will start with some background on substitution ciphers and the Vigenère cipher, which my method was based upon. Then, we'll look at my big idea itself, Vinegar. To keep it interesting, there's a little code breaking challenge as well. Enjoy!

The cult of 140

Apparently, women don't understand the offside rule. At least that's according to some TV sports pundit who lost his job recently.

I don't really understand the offside rule either, so I wrote this on my facebook page in response to the news.

The key to understanding the offside rule is that it doesn't really matter what the rule is.

Make up any old rubbish, like "Goal keepers must be pipe smokers" and call that the offside rule. It is just as meaningful.

Meh. Hardly my best work, but I thought it just about good enough to post it on my twitter feed too.

That's where I met... the cult.