[DROP CONTENTS] I Get Around - Santa Cruz [5/26/07]

[TOSG]

Cainam, you were on the right track. I just decoded what was in the second-to-top box to get "2vre6z"

http://tinyurl.com/2vre6z , which leads to http://myspace.com/filiascientis

Looks like we've got a new character!

[Aja]

Cainam, you were on the right track. I just decoded what was in the second-to-top box to get "2vre6z"

http://tinyurl.com/2vre6z , which leads to http://myspace.com/filiascientis

Looks like we've got a new character!

Nice work cainam and TOSG!

I checked the myspace page; so far there isn't much info on it and there are no additional pictures besides the main one.

[Aja]

DROP VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7-zaMNrRlQ

Romy, you might want to add that link to the first post?

[trainer101]

Aja, that was the most artistic drop retrieval vid I've ever seen. Nice work!

[RedRevolver]

Personally, I wouldn't touch the Thoth deck with a ten foot pole.

Well, there is a phoenix in The Tower of the Crowley deck, like in the hand drawn card.

Crowley is also a big part of the LG15 plot.

LOL I meant I personally would not physically touch the actual deck, nor use it for readings. There haven't been any doubts in my mind that someone is using the Thoth deck as a reference (and tie-in to LG15).

Oh, sorry.

.

But your research was very interesting still.

[RedRevolver]

DROP VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7-zaMNrRlQ

Romy, you might want to add that link to the first post?

Awww, your Scottish friend is cute.

And a great video, btw.

[RedRevolver]

Cainam, you were on the right track. I just decoded what was in the second-to-top box to get "2vre6z"

http://tinyurl.com/2vre6z , which leads to http://myspace.com/filiascientis

Looks like we've got a new character!

Sorry for the triple post but great work, guys.

[deagol]

DROP VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7-zaMNrRlQ

Romy, you might want to add that link to the first post?

Wow Aja, that was ARGsome! fantARGstic! mARGvellous! lol

Loved the intro, with morse and Google Earth and even Op-ish sound effects, loved the footage, and the music was perfect! "French-kissed a girl from LA" Yay!

And you're hot! Now I'm all for you destroying "the cure" just to see another video from you. Humanity be damned!

So, I may need a nudge or two here. First, I decoded the morse to something like BC-TA0WBC031BC-TA0WBC ...huh

Gave up on cryptanalysis for that, so now I'm working on the Scottish... I tried analysing the frequency spectrum and applying a hidden Markov model-based speech recognition algorithm. Here's a simple explanation:

In speech recognition, to give the very simplest setup possible, the hidden Markov model would output a sequence of n-dimensional real-valued vectors with n around, say, 13, outputting one of these every 10 milliseconds. The vectors, again in the very simplest case, would consist of cepstral coefficients, which are obtained by taking a Fourier transform of a short-time window of speech and decorrelating the spectrum using a cosine transform, then taking the first (most significant) coefficients. The hidden Markov model will tend to have, in each state, a statistical distribution called a mixture of diagonal covariance Gaussians which will give a likelihood for each observed vector. Each word, or (for more general speech recognition systems), each phoneme, will have a different output distribution; a hidden Markov model for a sequence of words or phonemes is made by concatenating the individual trained hidden Markov models for the separate words and phonemes.

That's the gist of it, although I've used a few more things that are mentioned in the next paragraph of the link above. I've adapted the acoustic model with signature scottish vowel system phonemes, but I didn't change the default language model as I'm assuming Scottish follows a very similar grammar as English.

My most promising finding implies that Scotland is probably a lonely, quiet place.

Don't worry, I'm joking. Of course I did none of that... well, just the morse.

[phipunk]

On the card, enclosing the tinyurl code in both cases, are the morse sequences

-.-.-
and
.-.-.

The first of these has no morse interpretation as a whole, but if you add spaces, can be taken to be any of the following:

TAA
TRT
TETET
NNT
NK
KA
KET
CT

I think this is all of them, please point out if I missed any.

The first of these (TAA) seemed most promising, but cainam pointed out (I think it was cainam; sorry, it was late!) that this is the ochre stop sequence. Perhaps this will be relevant later on, as a vigenere key or cipher, or something completely different.

While the other mysterious sequence (.-.-.) also has no direct alphanumeric interpretation, it does mean '+'. The approach of sticking in spaces gives the following possibilities (again, please jump in if I missed any)

ETETE
ENN
EKE
EC
AETE
AEN
AR
RN
RTE

None of these seem to me like they would be relevant, which makes me think that maybe this isn't the right thing to do with these morse strings. In any case, I wanted to make sure there was a record of going down this path, either to prevent duplication of work or to spark a fruitful brainstorm.

It also strikes me that those two codes are complementary to one another. Don't know what to make of it, but it seems like it could be relevant.


In any case, I'm certain that these ten bits of data are important, since they show up in both places on the card.

[deagol]

On the card, enclosing the tinyurl code in both cases, are the morse sequences

-.-.-
and
.-.-.

From http://homepages.tesco.net/~a.wadsworth/MBcode.htm

PROCEDURAL SIGNALS

__
Wait (AS) __ didahdididit .-...
Understood (SN) __ didididahdit ...-.
End of message__(AR) didahdidahdit .-.-.
End of work (SK) __ didididahdidah ...-.-
Starting signal (KA) dahdidahdidah -.-.-
Invitation to transmit (K) dahdidah -.-
Short pause (for thought?) (II) didit didit .. ..
General call to any station (CQ) dahdidahdit dahdahdidah -.-. --.-
Closing down (CL) dahdidahdit didahdidit -.-. .-..

[phipunk]

On the card, enclosing the tinyurl code in both cases, are the morse sequences

-.-.-
and
.-.-.

From http://homepages.tesco.net/~a.wadsworth/MBcode.htm

PROCEDURAL SIGNALS

__
Wait (AS) __ didahdididit .-...
Understood (SN) __ didididahdit ...-.
End of message__(AR) didahdidahdit .-.-.
End of work (SK) __ didididahdidah ...-.-
Starting signal (KA) dahdidahdidah -.-.-
Invitation to transmit (K) dahdidah -.-
Short pause (for thought?) (II) didit didit .. ..
General call to any station (CQ) dahdidahdit dahdahdidah -.-. --.-
Closing down (CL) dahdidahdit didahdidit -.-. .-..

Thanks. I had a feeling that was all they were. I couldn't find that sort of information on a first pass of searching, and was about to contact a friend of mine in the Navy. Should have known you'd already be on top of it.

[cainam]

This should be our next step I'd say. It's doubtful we will have any more contact until we do.

[Aja]

This should be our next step I'd say. It's doubtful we will have any more contact until we do.

[picture]

Does this mean I should go ahead and open the vial?

[deagol]

This should be our next step I'd say. It's doubtful we will have any more contact until we do.

[picture]

Does this mean I should go ahead and open the vial?

I say you open it. I guess a picture should satisfy him.

[phipunk]

Is it just me, or is the misspelling of "vial" as "vail" worth considering? It seems like someone with the patience to write out morse code hidden in a picture on an index card would take the time to proof and correct a note like this.

But, Vail being a ski town in Colorado, I have no idea how that fits in with anything we've seen so far.