Irony

For a while now, I've been working on a plain-text compression\encryption program as a bit of a hobby. I don't think the program will ever be worth anything to anyone but me, it's just something I do when I'm bored, or when I need to take a break from other programming projects for a few minutes.

Working on this program has taught me a lot about compression and encryption on computers - and I've gotten reasonable results from my efforts, being able to compress plain ASCII text to levels comparable to commercial programs such as WinZip. This pet project is also helpful in other situations, such as when I'm trying to pick up a new programming language, and I think to myself, "How can I duplicate my encryption algorithms in this new language?" That gives me a baseline for teaching myself the new language, since I'm familiar with my own algorithms, I can concentrate on the language rather than the program.

Here's the thing: I wrote an outline of the program with some notes a little over a year ago, and I put it in a word document called "Encryption Program.doc" Haven't looked at the document since, because I can recite most of the algorithm off the top of my head.

I password-protected the word document.

I don't remember the password, so the document is encrypted.

It's the digital equivalent of writing the combination to a safe on a piece of paper and locking the paper in another safe. Why I would have password-protected this document, I don't know, but that only makes me want to open it more.