Woohoo!

Senators lead Lightning 3-1!

Popcorn Quotes

My favourite quote for this hour anyway from a popcorn show I'm not in:

Rargh! Hi, I'm a dragon.

Edited to reflect the actual line, courtesy of quingawaga.

Coding Silliness

Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, was sued recently by someone who wrote a non-fiction book and claimed that the ideas in the two books were too similar. The judge threw out the case, but amusingly inserted his own secret code into the judgement. It was cracked the other day, and below is his statement:

British justice's statement on coded message

LONDON — Statement by British Justice Peter Smith on the coded message inserted into his ruling in The Da Vinci Code suit, which was released Friday the Judicial Communications Office:

———

Da Vinci Code Hints

1. HBHG refers to the Dossiers Secret and the hidden message. It is revealed by spotting that certain random letters appear to be different in form from the majority of the text.

2. Applying that to the judgment reveals the following highlighted letters:

SMITHYCODEJAEIEXTOSTGPSACGREAMQWFKADPMQZVZ

(the first part reveals there is a message)

3. There is no significance to the placing of the letters in the text

4. DVC also uses codes. The most liked one is apparently a numerical one (p. 255 The Fibonacci Sequence). In the book it is changed.

5. The correct sequence up to 21 is: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21

6. The code is created by letter substitution.

7. The letter change is creating by applying the Fibonacci Sequence numbers above letter by letter.

8. The relevant number shows where you start for each letter to substitute. Thus the first letter is identified by rewriting the alphabet stating at the first letter in the alphabet i.e. for the first letter A

A. The second letter is also started at 1; the third at 3. When 21 is reached the code reverts back to 1 etc. and repeats that until all the letters are substituted. A message ought then be revealed (there is a deliberate typo to create further confusion). The message reveals a significant but now overlooked event that occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the trial.

9. The preparation of the Code took about 40 minutes and its insertion another 40 minutes or so.

10. I hate crosswords and do not do Sudoku as I do not have the patience.

Peter Smith

28th April 2006