unforum

[Nuleren]

Ok, so I took the first video and after a good bit of wracking my brain I decided to just throw the video into a video editor so that I could see exactly how long the light is on at each instance, and the length of time in between each flash. These are the times (in seconds) I got:

[donstobbart]

Thanks for that Nuleran, would really appreciate if you could manage the rest. Will have a tinker with what you transcribed, and let you know. Going to see my nana, and she knows morse, which is a help when I'm not sure!!!


Don

[psyche]

OK, I've taken a leaf from Nuleren's book and chopped up video 1 in Premiere to create a visual representation of the timings.



The top line is when the light on, the bottom line is when it's off. So, the top line is our dots and dashes. Unfortunately it does appear to be gibberish. The first letter is a promising W, but the rest doesn't match, although it could be that the W was the end of a word, the next could then start with an M, but then there's what looks like a 5 bit sequence which doesn't match anything. It's quite close to the morse for a question mark, though.

I'll try and do the same with the other videos.

(Excuse the crappy, crappy jpg, but since there's no detail needed I thought I'd squish it as much as I could.)

[psyche]

Here's video 3:



The bit after the marker (little grey 0 at the top) I'm relly unsure about. At first I thought there was nothing there, but then I decided that there were lights, it was just that they were really faint. For those it was really hard to tell whether the light was going on and off, or just twinkling slightly due to shaky hands and distance. Then the camera started moving and I couldnt make any lights out after that.

The spacings seem to be even more ambiguous on this one, though, I wouldn't feel confident about grouping any of these. Still at least there seems to be a clear difference between dots and dashes.

[joePM]

For what it's worth, that 5-bit sequence in Video 1 is interpreted as è by this translator: http://www.qbit.it/lab/demorse.php

Something tells me you folks weren't being morsed in French, though.

Since I wasn't there, I've got to ask: is there any possibility that this was just some random OOG coincidence? I've been assuming that you all were told to expect some sort of message, but just wanted to be sure.

Regardless, breaking up the video in that way is very helpful for those of us who weren't there, Psyche.

[European Chris]

[psyche]

[donstobbart]

OK, so the work for today:

By combining what Nuleran, Psyche have done and watching the videos I get the following:

For the first Video:

[NickF]

[joePM]

A few random thoughts as my brain begins to gently simmer in its own juices:

1. If I were trying to transmit a morse message to a recipient who I wasn't sure was prepared to receive it, I'd repeat it, probably two or three times, with long pauses in between. I'm not noticing any repeating patterns from what I'm seeing, but then I wasn't there so I have no idea how much of the message is here.

2. Looking over the challenge sheets and questions from the event, I notice morse popping up in a lot of places, including in the sample text-trivia response (particularly interesting since Inspector Morse's creator is apparently a huge puzzle fan). Made me wonder if this message can be decoded using information from elsewhere in the event.

3. After watching the videos, I've come to the realization that that is the WORST morse transmission I have EVER seen.

-j.

[buzman]

Here's a pic of the sample text-trivia response joePM's referring to

http://www.flickr.com/photos/85268853@N00/104585990/

B

[European Chris]

[Daffydil]

Did anyone else go prepared with sheets on morse code, semaphore, signalling flags and braille, or was that just me?

[Mima]

[myf]

Along with a London street map and route planner (including the Underground), I had braille, morse code and signalling flags on my PDA. And a couple of programs for cracking codes & ciphers as well. I love my gadgets