Black Chamber ep. 000f00 - Introduction to Ciphers in Fiction

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Introduction to the "ciphers in fiction" videos. Please like and share. I need the friends.

Black Chamber ep. 07 - Turning Grille Encryption and Decryption

Encryption and Decryption for Turning Grille.
Includes Ciphers in Fiction for Cardan Grille (William Thackeray's Henry Esmond, Esq.)
And, the Neil Patrick Harris playing cards grille.

Can you solve these on your own?

tg-1 Boomer Complaint (drag)
RGOAG WEGLH TASTT IIDAN DRTIS

tg-2 Inevitable (Japanese)
TIMEA NAPDT IDITA NEWFO RESEE NOMTR AITAN INHER DNXOE SAJA

tg-3 Oscar Wilde on himself (sometimes)
DMOIR SEMST TOFCW AIHLA NMDEE ASSTV IDIAI OEMRS NTAHN GTYAU LNEIT WONSO RDGE

tg-4 C.S. Lewis on himself (enough x2)
YUGUO GHPOU HOFCT ARTNO AENSU EAVLE IBRAO TOMKR GLEGE OEENL GETNE WIAON SCUO

Black Chamber ep. 6 - Caesar Shift encryption and decryption

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Introducing Caesar Shift Substitution. If you have any helpful comments or suggestions, please share them on the youtube page. Go to the youtube page to get the practice crypts from the pinned comment. 

 

Black Chamber ep. 5 - Fixed Distance encryption and decryption

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Introducing Fixed Distance (AKA - Jump, and Skip) Transposition. If you have any helpful comments or suggestions, please share them on the youtube page. If you want to play with the practice ciphers, they're pinned in the comments on the channel.

Black Chamber ep. 4 - Incomplete Columnar encryption and decryption

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Incomplete Columnar Transposition is just the broader case of Complete Columnar. Encryption and decryption are very similar, but it's the solving process that sets them apart.

Black Chamber ep. 003s01 - Solving Complete Columnar

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Here's the video for solving Complete Columnar Transposition. If you have any helpful comments or suggestions, please share them on the youtube page.

Black Chamber ep. 3 - Complete Columnar encryption and decryption

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Introducing Complete Columnar Transposition.  If you have any helpful comments or suggestions, please share them on the youtube page. Practice ciphers in the comments on the youtube page.

Black Chamber ep. 002s - Solving Railfence ciphers

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This is the video on solving the Railfence cipher type I described in the blog post yesterday. If you have any helpful comments or suggestions, please share them on the youtube page.

Black Chamber ep. 2 - Railfence encryption and decryption

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Introducing Railfence. And try out the practice ciphers in the comments on the channel.

Black Chamber ep. 1 - Basics and Terminology

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Ok, Shawn voted yes, and no one else said anything. So, here's the first Black Chamber video in the series. Please like and subscribe to the channel at youtube, I need the friends.

Should I run the Black Chamber videos here?

I've run out of new material to post on the blog here. However, I've been spending a lot of my time working on videos for my Black Chamber youtube channel, and I think I have close to 20 videos uploaded there. The channel is dedicated to recreational cryptography, or the making and solving of ciphers and secret messages. If there's an interest, I can run the videos here to have something on the blog until I start getting normal material to post again.

Heron, June 18

Just a heron I found down at Kotsuki river.





And its chick.

Not-so Bright update

One of the places that has had some of the best chalk art advertising has been Bright, men's used clothing store.  About 1 week ago, I was walking by the shop up at Streetcar Street, and noticed the interior was being gutted. At the time, I couldn't tell if this was a remodeling, or a new shop moving in. Then, yesterday I was back up at Streetcar street, and the shop was back open, with "Bright" still on the front sign. But, the blackboard next to the door had been painted over in white. Looks like they've decided to stop hosting the chalk art. Aww.

Shiro Chalk Art - Frog

"Raindrops keep falling on my head..."

Twisted Wonderland

I got one of these Twisted Wonderland chocolate wafer cards before, but this time it's 50 yen...



Certainly didn't get it for the styro wafer...



Casket roses! Get yer redhot casket roses here! They're red! They're hot! Get yer red hot casket roses here!

Gaoroad Wafers

The grocery store near me was unloading these trading card packages for 100 yen for two (normally like 160 yen each) and I decided to get an example for the blog. There's actually 2 series, and they're similar. Both have the trading card, and both have a styrofoam-like wafer cookie.



First out, something called Gao Road, which the Bandai announcement claims is something of a monster card battle series. Supposedly, the initial run was only supposed to be 20 yen each, so I feel cheated. There are 2 different kinds of cards in the set - Scopers and Beasters. Placing a scoper over the grey block on the beaster card causes a variety of monsters to form (depends on the combination of scopers and beasters).



I got a beaster... (after getting 8 cards, ALL I got were beasters...)

Desqual

Found this sign on the side of a building. Can't tell if the name is "De-qual", "De-equal", "Desqual" or "Desequal." Also, the place is on the second floor of the building, where I couldn't see into it, so I don't know if it's a hair salon, an advertising office, or an architectural design office.
Marketing - Connecting various things to other various things. Since 2020.

Tagayama Fastwalk, part 2

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Second part of a visit to the old Tagayama castle site, across from Ishibashi (stone bridge) park, in Kagoshima city.

Tagayama Fastwalk, part 1

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First part of a visit to the old Tagayama castle site, across from Ishibashi (stone bridge) park, in Kagoshima city.

Ishibashi Fastwalk, part 2

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Second part of a visit to Stone Bridge park, and the remains of the Gion no Su cannon battery in Kagoshima City.

Ishibashi Fastwalk, part 1

Direct youtube link

 

 First part of a visit to Stone Bridge park, and the remains of the Gion no Su cannon battery in Kagoshima City. Includes a brief side trip to the landing site of Saint Francis Xavier.

 

Thinkrun

Japanese company names confuse me. I recently saw this truck with the "thinkrun" name on it. There's no company logo, and no indication as to what the product or service is. If they sold running shoes, I could accept this as a "Just Do It" thing. If they were a package delivery service, and the logo had the customer thinking and the product being immediately delivered, that would be ok. But, as it is, I'm just left thinking that someone picked random English words out of a dictionary, and that customers use the service because they're easily manipulated.

Shiro Chalk Art

New chalk from Shiro hair salon. I assume this one is a tie-in to Boy's Day (May 5th). Kintaro (Golden Boy) is a very famous folklore story, and some ukyou-e prints show him fighting giant carp. I think this one is just during a lunch break.

Cie'na Chalk Art - Birds and Flowers

Birds...



And flying saucers.

Black Ice

Thanks to ko-kun for suggesting imgur. It's clunky, but it works. Last week, I sent an email to MediaFire asking how to bypass their new stupid system, but there's still no reply. I tried using Photobucket again, but they've gone full-subscription, putting a 250 file total upper cap on their "free trial" service, which is useless.  There's no upper limit on the number of files total I can have on imgur, but there are limits on the sizes of the files themselves (fortunately, I resize my files to keep them under 250K, usually), and there's a limit of 50 files a day. This last limit might be a pain if I go to another free live concert, or do a photo montage of some scenic trip, but that's not likely right now (if I have to, I guess I can spread large batches of files over the course of a few days). And now, back to your regularly scheduled blog post. Note: I only have 4 day's worth of posts backlogged right now, and it's been raining a lot the last couple of weeks. There aren't any events going on this month that I know of, so I may run into another dry spell here on the blog again soon, anyway.

There's a frozen snack bar called "Black Chocolate Ice Bar." It's basically just frozen chocolate ice. Not even ice milk. It's cheap, so I'll get it occasionally. This time, they're advertising a tie-in with Yu-gi-oh Sevens. But, the trading card can only be obtained on-line.



What happens when you don't practice safe temperature control.