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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.

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Coding along

I decided a few months ago to pursue coding more deeply, and to that end I purchased a bunch of courses on Udemy.com (fortunately, I found a deal, because they can get expensive!). The one I am currently working on teaches you how to build a clean, gorgeous website using Bootstrap. I love Bootstrap, it is so fast and fun. The class also taught me how and why to start using GitHub, and I just set up my first public repository, meganclancy.github.io. I think I actually said “Eeee!” out loud when I first saw that it was working! I know it is pretty nerdy, but I love learning this stuff.

I can’t decide if I should do the in-depth Javascript class next (I have some experience with Javascript, but it’s been a while since I used it for anything, so I need to brush up), or instead dive into the course for dynamic websites, which involves scripting with PHP and mySQL as well as Javascript.

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Big data, little data

As part of my learning-new-things endeavor (I don’t think you should ever let yourself become stagnant), I’ve been doing a little bit more with Python. Specifically, I am working through this Codecademy course on using APIs in Python. The reason I have for wanting to learn this stuff, besides personal enrichment and keeping my brain busy and blah blah blah, is that Marvel has recently released their API to the public. I am a big ol’ comic book geek, and I think it would be cool to pull their data together in interesting ways. Do sales go up when Marvel teams up Cloak and Dagger with Spider-Man? How many times did Jack Kirby draw Uatu the Watcher? How many times do Marvel characters attend Empire State University? et cetera. See? Data can be fun, I swear.

Speaking of data, another thing that looks interesting is the Introduction to Data Science course by Dr. Bill Howe on Coursera. I’m a little hesitant to sign up because it notes that you need to have the equivalent of two courses on Python and SQL, and I haven’t had formal coursework on either of those topics. However, I have a month to get up to speed, so I’m going to give it a shot. What are you learning these days? Have you ever taken a Coursera course?

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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.

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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.

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Programs

I am doing so much EndNote training these days! So. Much. It’s actually pretty enjoyable, though. EndNote is a citation management program (there are lots of them out there, see Zotero, Mendeley, Papers, Reference Manager, etc.), which is an application that lets you keep track of what you’ve read, organize the reference or PDFs of the papers themselves, and then insert those citations into a paper. It can update your bibliography according to style type on the fly. As you’ll know if you’ve ever tried to create a bibliography by hand, this is incredibly useful.

I like teaching EndNote more than most of my other subjects because it’s practical–I know that when I send someone off into the world with more EndNote knowledge, that’s going to help them in a concrete way. If I teach a student how to use a database, that may be helpful…or they may never use it again. Everybody likes productivity tools, though.

A colleague and I are also working on a systematic review. I’ve never done one before, but I’m learning a lot. You have to do a huge amount of reading before even beginning to understand the question that the review is trying to investigate. This is actually pretty fun, as it turns out. Then you have to come up with an exhaustive search and think of ways to replicate that search across different databases (this part is not so fun). We’re embarking on the next step, which is abstract reviews, next week. It’s interesting to see the whole process in action, it’s very (wait for it) systematic.

Recently, I moved across town. Moving is so stressful and exhausting, but I’m closer to most of my friends now and live in an actual house instead of an apartment. Perks! Next up on the list is getting a new-to-me car to replace my aging, beloved miata.

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Back to the land of the living

I have not posted here since October! This is because my job has become very, very busy. I’m my library’s trainer for EndNote, Zotero, and Reference Manager (although people here only seem to want to learn about EndNote), which takes up some time. I’m also training nursing students on CINAHL, and learning a lot about genetics. The most interesting thing I’m doing these days is answering clinical questions for various physicians and researchers–this involves doing a thorough search of the medical literature and summarizing the most relevant and important articles. In order to do this well, I’ve been reading about what goes into making really solid experiments and how to tell when articles are leaving out important details when reporting the results of those experiments. To be clear, I don’t think that the authors are being dishonest! I think it is sometimes hard to tell what your own project may be missing, or how you *should* have set it up in an ideal world versus how you actually did set it up in the real world. It’s interesting, seeing research in action.

I’m also spending a fair amount of time learning about our Special Collections, which is fantastic fun. The history of medicine is so strange and fascinating, especially the local history here in the south and in Nashville in particular. I’m looking forward to designing an exhibit later this spring, as well. In the meantime, I’m spending time familiarizing myself with the collection, which includes all manner of medical texts from the 1500s onward. I’m particularly fond of our copy of Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica, which is a second edition.

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CINAHL

I’ve been teaching myself how to use CINAHL, the database of nursing and allied health literature from EBSCO. I’m not doing it because I am inherently interested in the database, but I’m learning it so that I’ll be able to teach a class on it. A class that’s this afternoon, gulp.

But you know what? CINAHL is actually pretty interesting. There are of course some things that I don’t like about it, but overall I think it’s built in a way that makes sense, and it can be used by people who are Good At Computers as well as by people who have to work, dammit, and can’t spend a lot of time learning a particular database.

While I am a pretty bush league teacher at the moment, I like teaching. And I’m pretty good at picking up something quickly in order to be able to teach it to other people. That’s a skill I didn’t even know I had until I recently started learning EndNote/Zotero/Reference Manager–I’m the new trainer for those programs at my library.

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Power searching with Google

I’m teaching a class about how to become a strong searcher using Google. I thought I knew a lot about Google’s search tricks, but I have learned an enormous amount in the past few days. For example, did you know that you can find a huge amount of local information merely by entering your zip code or city? So if I wanted to see what time the sun rises or sets in my neighborhood, I could just type “sunrise 37206” or “sunset Nashville.” You can also do this with movies and other kinds of events. There are so many ways to use Google, it’s pretty amazing.

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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.