My enjoyment of fravia's philosophizing led me to try my hand at the crackmes and other stuff. I could get a few but never really got the hang of it, it was a great educational exercise.

I highly recommend anyone who's interested (particularly people who don't remember a pre-Google, pre-Facebook internet) in bold (and crazy) ideas about technology reading his work.

Edit: I suppose many if not most of the essays aren't strictly "pre-Google" but they are from its much earlier days when it was a very different service.