Empty Faces – Ciphers and Cryptography

I thought I would provide some info on a few of the ciphers we’ve encountered so far in the game, as well as ones that we may encounter in future game installments. A lot of this information can be found on the excellent website Practical Cryptography. Most of the ciphers we’ve encountered are classical ciphers.

Simple Substitution Cipher & Frequency Tables

The magic language. We could tell from the way this code was written that each symbol likely represented a single letter, which means it was a simple substitution cipher (one symbol/letter = one letter). More complex substitution ciphers can use a letter or symbol to represent groups of letters or phonemes, but fortunately this first code didn’t do that to us!

Darby used the frequency of the symbols to crack the magic language. With this method, you examine your sample text to see which letters appear most frequently–those are likely the letter E. Second is likely T or A, etc. Here’s a frequency table that can help us if we encounter this again.

Caesar Cipher – ROT13 – Shifting/Transposition Ciphers

We’ve encountered this several times in the game. Simply shift the letters of the encoded text by a certain number to get the message. HI GUYS with a shift of +4 would be LMKYCW. There’s an encoder/decoder on this page.

Vigenère Cipher – Running Key Cipher

The bane of Box 3 was the Running Key cipher! The running key cipher is a variant of Vigenère. Both are polyalphabetic substitution ciphers that use tables to encode/decode messages. The main difference between them is that the running key cipher uses a long string of text to encode messages, while Vigenère uses a single word that repeats. They both use that big crazy table, the tabula recta. If we encounter another set of letters that don’t appear to be shifted in any discernible pattern and we have a keyword that seems important, we should consider using a Vigenère cipher. Here’s a good explanation of how it works.

Ciphers We’re Likely To Encounter

I wouldn’t be surprised to find any of the following ciphers in future installments. There are, of course, many more ciphers than these, but these are all easily worked by hand and relatively common. Some others can be found here.

Codes

We’ve already seen semaphore flags used. I am looking forward to seeing binary, Morse code, Braille, and possibly ASL!

If we do encounter Morse Code I highly recommend using the Morse Code Decoding Tree instead of trying to use a table. It is way easier.

Clinical trials

One thing I forgot to mention–through my work, I was given the opportunity to take a class with the amazing Dr. Yu Shyr, who has so many titles that I am afraid to refer to him by just one of them. The class was on clinical trials, and it was an intensive course that covered many things that go into clinical study design, the phases of a trial, biostatistics, etc. I learned a lot, although the short timeframe made me feel like my brain was overclocked.  I now have a healthy respect for those researchers who design studies, especially large, multi-site ones. It would be such an enormous undertaking.

Quick update

Work stuff: I’m now working primarily in technical services/collection development. Going back to my roots! Thankfully, this part of my roots does not involve updating digital library records all day long, every day. That drove me crazy. I like maintaining access and making sure that everything is running smoothly–I think there’s a part of me that likes having tasks with endpoints that I can cross off a to-do list. “This journal isn’t accessible” –>”this journal is available” makes me feel accomplished. I’m also leading a small team of folks to work on a technical services project. Lucky for me, they are all smart and willing people, so coordinating the project is not painful at all. Training is also a part of my work life, but it’s no longer a major focus of what I do–still some EndNote/Zotero, a lot of PubMed/CINAHL/miscellaneous databases. It’s always good to pick up new skills, but I’m a little bummed to be spending less time training. I’m an introvert, so I find it draining, but I also (surprisingly) really love it.

I was just profiled informally for my departmental newsletter (not just the library, but the larger department that we are part of). I managed not to sound like a complete bubblehead, but am definitely nowhere near as serious as most of my coworkers. Oh well. There’s never any use pretending to be someone that you’re not.

Life stuff: I am moved across town to Inglewood and am planning a garden. I am also extraordinarily lazy when I’m at home, so we’ll have to wait to see whether or not said garden actually materializes. Second, I did get a car! I got a Hyundai Elantra, which is spacious and lovely and so modern, at least when compared to my old-but-beloved Miata. Fortunately, the Miata retired to Florida to live with my parents, so it’s not entirely lost to me. Third, the decoration of my bizarre extra living room (the Black Lodge or the lodge room) is continuing. I’m going for a “Victorian-era Lady Explorer” vibe, we’ll see how that goes. I already have too many huge wooden masks and maps.

Changes

A ton of stuff has happened in the last month! I passed comps (yay!) and graduated (double yay!) and got hired on at my library as a medical librarian (all the yays!). My start date for the latter is October 1st, and I am tickled to death about it. I’ve already started taking on more responsibilities at work, including teaching a class to some of my coworkers on a variety of health resource topics, and assisting with a literature search on acute kidney injury. I’m also learning a bit more about SQL and genetics resources. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge, but it’s all very interesting. Work is so much more enjoyable now that I’m learning new things.

Now that school is over I have a lot more time on my hands. I still haven’t adjusted to the idea that I don’t have articles to read all the time, papers and projects to work on, or classes to attend. I am tempted to start a thousand new projects, because I’m not good at sitting still, but I think I should take a while and think things over before I embark on a new venture. What should I do next? I’m thinking of beefing up my coding skills, getting back into knitting, and writing more.

Comps

I have been AWOL for a while because I’ve gotten busy–my end-of-degree comprehensive exam is going to be on Friday. I’ve been stuffing my head full of information science theories, people, and models. Everything will be fine, I know, but it’s still stressful.

After the exam is over on Friday, though…I can’t wait! I have some books to read, friends to hang out with, and movies to watch. I still have a few weeks left in my databases class, but they won’t be too bad. I just have to learn some baby SQL and I’ll be good to go.

I can’t believe that I’m so close to finishing. I feel like I’ve been plugging away at this degree forever. Even though Forbes says that a masters in library and information science is the very worst masters degree you can get, I still feel pretty confident in my choice. The lack of job growth across the board is worrying, of course, but I know that the skills you learn in library school can be applied in many different kinds of work outside the traditional library–for example, in usability, information architecture, or records management. I’m sure I can find something I’ll be happy doing.

Presenting

Two days ago, I delivered a presentation about my practicum experience to a group of colleagues at my library. Although not many of them were familiar with DiscoverLibrary, they were all very supportive and were an excellent audience. The more I present this material, the less nervous I get. It helps that I am familiar with the material and with basic questions about usability, the testing process, and the guide I created–it gave me a sense of confidence to be able to answer the questions that I got at the end of my presentation without straining to think of an answer.

I would recommend doing a practicum to any MLS/MSIS student. Although I’ve gotten a lot of out my classwork at UTK, I learned a ton about project management, becoming a subject expert (or at least not a total noob), interviewing and testing users, and presentation skills. I didn’t realize when I started that even though I might put in a ton of effort on a project, it wouldn’t matter unless I could communicate my findings to the people who could implement changes. That’s a good thing to learn, and I’m glad I got to figure it out during a practicum instead of on the job.