Secret Codes and Music

Morse Code dashes and dots

It combines music and Morse Code. Sounds geeky, but it wasn’t started by my son Sean. Sean plays base, obsessively. He is almost never with his six-foot friend and when he can’t carry it, he practices by using his arm or chest as a fingerboard.

Sean and I are both very private. I don’t have a lot of friends because I’m too busy working and trying to make the financial ends of life meet. Sean doesn’t like most people. He’s pretty smart and most people don’t understand his interests, so maybe that’s why.

The result is we have developed codes for private communication. Written ones use palindromes and mathematical equations. Visual ones–when we’re in a group and need to say something to just each other–usually revolve around music. Why? Because no one would suspect it. It’s what Sean always does and they always figure, like mother like son. If he pads out music, his mom must too.

We didn’t think this up. Some famous musicians used music to send messages to their in crowd.John Lennon for example. It ‘s rumored he hid his initials in Strawberry Fields Forever. Look at programmers. They always hide Easter Eggs (hidden games, etc.) in their programming  for just those in-the-know to find.

What is musical Morse Code? It goes like this: An eighth note is a dot and a quarter note a dash with an eighth rest between each letter. When Sean fingers his string bass (using his chest as the finger board), I watch the taps and breaks and I can always get his message.

Next time you see someone tapping out a tune silently on their arm or chest, watch more closely.

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, presentation reviewer for CSTA, Cisco guest blogger, a monthly contributor to TeachHUB, columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, and IMS tech expert. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

The Formula for Happiness

I got most of this–a succinct formula for happiness–but the lower left corner, there’s an if-then I don’t get. Can anyone explain?

Unlock Your Front Door with Your iPhone

This is the app that will persuade me to upgrade my phone. I don’t want to because I’m cheap, but the idea that it can unlock my front door if I forget a key–that might be the killer app. Read on.

Where did I leave my iKey? The iPhone app that can unlock your front door

Pay Attention: You Can Keep Your Private Life Private

Much of keeping your private life private is common sense. Don’t post it online. Don’t tell it to friends. Don’t send it in an email.Don’t put your personal details on Facebook and be surprised when your co-workers read them–and use them against you. Don’t even join Facebook (unless you’re a business, then by all means get your presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, all of the social network world).

And still, there are stories like this:

Cryptography: How to Keep Your Secrets Safe

Zack has decided to try out the online dating service Chix-n-Studz.com. He signs up for an account at the Web site and fills in several screens of forms detailing his personal profile and what he is looking for in a potential partner. In no time at all, the service offers him a number of possible soul mates, among them the very exciting-sounding Wendy. He sends her his e-mail address and what he hopes is an engaging opening message. She replies directly to him, and a whirlwind e-romance begins.

Poor Zack. Soon he is also getting numerous unsolicited phone calls from political action groups and salespeople who seem to know things about him, and his health insurance company is questioning him about his extreme-adventure vacations; the unscrupulous owners of Chix-n-Studz have been selling client information. Then there is Ivan, a mischievous co-worker to whom Zack foolishly showed one of Wendy’s e-mails. Zack does not know that several subsequent recent messages supposedly from Wendy are fakes from Ivan.

Beware The Number 23

23 is a fascinating number. Strangely, if you ask someone to think of a prime number, 23 is the most common answer. There have been dozens of movies featuring the number 23 in their titles, for instance, a Jim Carrey flick The Number 23. IMDB cites almost 100 (many of the titles use the 23rd of the month while others are more focused on the number itself). John Forbes Nash, the subject of the Ron Howard movie A Beautiful Mind was apparently obsessed with the number 23.

It’s also an enigma. The 23 Enigma refers to the belief that most incidents and events are directly connected to the number 23, some permutation of the number 23, or a number

related to the number 23.

Want more? Twenty-three is :

• the ninth prime number,
• the smallest odd prime which is not a twin prime.
• the fifth factorial prime,
• the second Woodall prime
• an Eisenstein prime
• the 23rd Psalm
• John McCain was shot down on his 23rd mission in Vietnam

Nazi Codes–Still Uncrackable

Encryption is a fascinating field. Since WWII, when the Allies ability to break secret messages enciphered by the German Enigma Machines contributed substantially to the Allied war-winning intel, it has captured the minds of mathematicians and scientists alike. I’ve used several myself, based on:

• musical codes (i.e., Morse Code Music)
• Palindromes
• Fibonacci Numbers and the Golden String

Up until January, 2006, there were still three uncracked Nazi Enigma messages intercepted in the North Atlantic in 1942. had no idea this was still uncracked. The M4 Project (named for the four rotor Enigma M4 used to encipher the messages), and later Enigma at Home, was created to use the power of home computers to break these last messages. The encrypted messages are:

Not unlike Fermat’s Last Theorem which was only just solved after 358 years of trying by Andrew Wiles of Princeton University in 1993.

Still trying to crack Nazi Enigma messages

Volunteers contribute spare computing cycles to crack old wartime ciphers

By Bob Brown

You can donate your spare PC processing power to dozens of cool volunteer computing projects simply by downloading some software. Enigma@home is the one that called me.

Enigma@home is based on the M4 Project, an effort spearheaded by German-born violinist and encryption enthusiast Stefan Krah. The M4 Project was designed to break three original messages generated by a famed electro-mechanical Enigma machine and intercepted in the North Atlantic in 1942. (The project gets its name from the four-rotor Enigma M4 machine presumed to be used by the Germans for enciphering the signals during wartime.) The project’s method for cracking the ciphers is described as “a mixture of brute force and a hill climbing algorithm.”

Slideshow: 12 cool ways to donate your spare PC processing cycles

Enigma@home provides access to the M4 Project using BOINC software for volunteer and grid computing. The project, which started in January of 2006, succeeded in breaking the first two messages within the first couple of months. Enigma@home is still working on message No. 3. As for why it’s such a tough one, Krah says there could be several reasons:

1. It could be a so-called Offizier message, part of which is doubly encrypted.

2. The message was badly intercepted and some letters are missing.

3. There are some messages that require the algorithm to be applied many times. This is pretty much what we are doing right now.

As for what sparked Krah’s interest in breaking ciphers, he says that in 2005 he started solving the challenge messages of Simon Singh’s Cipher Challenge – long after the actual challenge was over.

“The Enigma message in Singh’s challenge is in many ways relatively easy to break and subsequently I improved the algorithm so that real world messages could be broken. In summer of 2005, a publication by Geoff Sullivan and Frode Weierud helped to refine the algorithm further.(More about decoding)

UK National ID Card Cloned in 12 Minutes

Sample Card

No surprise. There are really smart people out there who like the challenge of a good hack.  Any House fans out there? That’s his middle name–puzzle. Sometimes it’s just about the game.

UK national ID card cloned in 12 minutes | 6 Aug 2009 | ComputerWeekly.com

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You Know You’re a Geek if…

I’m there, with my sister WordDreams blogger.

The Amazing Music of Windows Sounds

If you haven’t heard this before, you must. It uses only the sounds found in Windows and is an amazing piece of music.

This one uses Windows and Vista:

What Everyone Ought to Know about PhD Research

You don’t always get what you want. ‘Research’ is the ‘systematic investigation to establish facts’. You don’t know them when you start. You pick them up like breadcrumbs along the path to the Dissertation.

Because mine involves an AI I seem to have lost control over, mankind’s past which is poorly documented by million-year-old artificacts, and a prodigious lack of money, I have often ended up places I had no intent to be, but must some how be connected to my thesis. How do I know they’re connected? Because that’s what Otto does. He takes a collection of facts and finds connections. Here’s an example Otto found and played for me. Why I don’t know. We know man’s past is violent, dangerous. What’s Otto’s point in throwing this into Lyta‘s search for her family?

What I do know is it’s connected to my research, because that’s how I programmed Otto.

Startrek Science is no Longer Fiction

For those of you wow-ed by the invisibility properties of metamaterials, read this. Yet another University is figuring out how to make them not just hide the truth, but a whole lot more:

Device Makes Objects Invisible In Certain Light Conditions

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going, going gone

If you’re a mathematician, here’s your proof:

Mathematics Of Cloaking: New Analysis Improves Methods To Render Objects Invisible

ScienceDaily (Dec. 26, 2006) — The theorists who first created the mathematics that describe the behavior of the recently announced “invisibility cloak” have revealed a new analysis that may extend the current cloak’s powers, enabling it to hide even actively radiating objects like a flashlight or cell phone.

Allan Greenleaf, professor of mathematics at the University of Rochester, working with colleagues around the globe, has announced a mathematical theory that predicts some strange goings on inside the cloak—and that what happens inside is crucial to the cloak’s effectiveness.

In October, David R. Smith, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University, led a team that used a circular cloaking device to successfully bend microwaves around a copper disk as if the disk were invisible. In 2003, however, Greenleaf and his colleagues had already developed the mathematics of invisibility.

“We were working on improving the mathematics behind tumor detection,” says Greenleaf. “In the final section to one paper, we spelled out a worst-case scenario where a tumor could be undetectable. We then wrote a couple of additional articles describing when this could happen. At the time, we didn’t think further about it because it seemed extremely unlikely that any tumor would be covered with the necessary material to be hidden that way.”

This past summer, however, Greenleaf and his colleagues learned about a paper that researchers at Duke and Imperial College had published in the journal Science, which used nearly identical equations to give a theoretical proposal for a cloaking device. Once Greenleaf and his colleagues saw that their results could also be used to show how to “hide” an object, they decided to analyze and improve the proposed cloaking device, using the techniques they had developed in their earlier work. They knew that a crucial question would be: What was going on inside the cloaked region?

(click for full article)

Secret Codes and Music

Morse Code dashes and dots

It combines music and Morse Code. Sounds geeky, but it wasn’t started by my son Sean. Sean plays base, obsessively. He is almost never with his six-foot friend and when he can’t carry it, he practices by using his arm or chest as a fingerboard.

Sean and I are both very private. I don’t have a lot of friends because I’m too busy working and trying to make the financial ends of life meet. Sean doesn’t like most people. He’s pretty smart and most people don’t understand his interests, so maybe that’s why.

The result is we have developed codes for private communication. Written ones use palindromes and mathematical equations. Visual ones–when we’re in a group and need to say something to just each other–usually revolve around music. Why? Because no one would suspect it. It’s what Sean always does and they always figure, like mother like son. If he pads out music, his mom must too.

We didn’t think this up. Some famous musicians used music to send messages to their in crowd.John Lennon for example. It ‘s rumored he hid his initials in Strawberry Fields Forever. Look at programmers. They always hide Easter Eggs (hidden games, etc.) in their programming  for just those in-the-know to find.

What is musical Morse Code? It goes like this: An eighth note is a dot and a quarter note a dash with an eighth rest between each letter. When Sean fingers his string bass (using his chest as the finger board), I watch the taps and breaks and I can always get his message.

Next time you see someone tapping out a tune silently on their arm or chest, watch more closely.