They'll try anything

So I got this email full of gibberish that my poorly-trained spam filter wasn't immediately devouring. Just some random letters, with the last line turned into a web link. It took me a few seconds to realize: These guys expect me to be viewing email in a monospace font.

And what could they possibly be selling? Exactly the same [expletive]ing [expletive] they're always [expletive] selling.

ah  us    ty    mm      al  td  ep  vh    ag 
su  ga   zeee   ok      yk  ch  eq  jrg  ymp 
fd  vj  tg  yc  jv      yo  vp  km  zgdadmrv 
dh  kr  lclyea  fp      wv  ja  au  ln bh bn 
 gmdu   nw  vs  he  kb  ay  nq  ak  fa    ko 
  lt    er  pu  kqvyfs  pz   ovsc   dn    oj 

ri  lh  yp    jc     fvzw   zogle     kq 
an  tq  wj   egpk   kz  se  fv  vp   hblm 
cr  ju  ls  zr  ji  uj      jj  ko  nc  ji 
wd  rf  sw  cwwrqj  ui ecx  mvhue   lexkdx 
 evnu   fz  ha  ei  gc  ef  og  py  lc  dk 
  mf    fl  qd  bp   puom   ot  vk  si  po 

 fypp   xi    ze    ki      qz   lwgy 
in  pt  xq   gevp   bq      ke  at  zj 
hp      ym  mh  pq  pe      ur  kik 
tc      lj  ptecon  lt      iq     iui 
nr  qq  nm  it  lo  cw  bt  bo  ly  qt 
 rlpn   is  ii  pk  nteynd  fa   wpti 

rv   lg    pa    dn  gt    jj    hu   wu 
 vf ju    gfmp   xlj bh   bifl    fp ly 
  bfr    wq  ij  xgnbzk  xo  kp    aqx 
  tiu    ffrdpe  btzppp  cbisjv    lus 
 os pa   fq  re  vq zdh  zq  lq   au ac 
ov   db  oh  el  od  nj  qa  qs  ll   mb 

Yeah, somebody call the Mystery Machine and tell them to turn the van around and head home. Tell them to send Captain Obvious instead.

Okay, Zog:

This is your challenge.

The setup is simple: You go to a website and are presented with a one megabyte file, ending in ".ZIP".

You unzip it and it becomes two files, one very small, the other much larger. The first ends in ".RAR" and the other ends in ".TAR". You unrar the first and it becomes ... a ".SIT" file. Oops, now you need stuffit. You untar the second and you get a file ending in ".ISO' That mounts in the desktop. Inside the ISO is a .BIN file. What do you do with this? You decompress the .SIT ... ah, it becomes a .CUE file. Okay, so...

You split the BIN with the CUE and you get a "multimedia" track, and a single "audio" track. The "multimedia" track contains one file, ending in ".ACE", but it's password protected. The audio track sounds like noise ... but you soon realize, no, it's just at a non-standard bit depth! Opening it as 8-bit gives you an even 120Hz tone on channel L... and some creepy noise on channel R. You look at it in spectral view and it's... letters. A password. So you un-ACE the file with the password.

Inside you find... an MP3, and a file ending in ".TXT" You open the TXT and recognize the header: It's a PGP-encrypted block. But where's the key? You play the mp3 file. WTF, it's 30 seconds of total silence! You're stumped until you look at the MP3 in a tag editor and discover: a PGP key in the "lyrics" tag. You try to decrypt the .TXT file with the key, but it asks for a password. After some blundering, you try the filename of the TXT file itself. That works, and you are rewarded with... A uuencoded file. THEN IT STARTS GETTING WEIRD.

Uudecoding the file gives you a file ending in .2MG. Arrgh, it's an Apple II disk image! You fire up Bernie and see two files: One ending in .SYS (research reveals this to be a Prodos 8 application), and one ending in .NES. WTF is a Nintendo ROM image doing on an Apple IIgs 800k disk? Booting into Prodos and running the .SYS clears the Apple II screen and displays a section of piano keys, labeled with letters, and a button marked "reset". Tapping keys plays the piano. Okaaayy...

Meanwhile, you SOMEHOW get the .NES file OFF the .2MG. Running the .NES game gives you what seems like a typical copy of Super Mario Bros 3. You play it for a few hours, wondering WTF the deal is. Eventually you get ahold of the Warp Whistle, but when you play it, the tune is different. This ROM has been hax0red. You break the tune down into notes, and play that on the Apple II... Which then grinds for a bit and spits you back to the prompt. You type "CAT" and see... A third file. Ending in .DOC. It's a Word '98-format document with a file attachment. WHEN WILL IT END?

You challenge is to design a puzzle like this.

Main Fan Turn On(tm)

So I finally maxed out the CPUs on my Macbook Pro without deliberately trying. It happened this evening, while I was doing the following all at once:

• Chatting via iChat
• Reading email
• 4 downloads at 250kB/sec each
• Browsing the web in six tabs
• Converting losslessly compressed CDs between formats over the network
• Installing Windows XP SP2 in an emulator on a dynamically-sized partition from an image of the install CDROM
• A 46-gigabyte file copy over the network, via Windows filesharing
• Locating pictures in an archive of over 14,000 in Aperture, and exporting them in groups.

Well bust my buttons; I guess this makes me a "power user". :D