eBirdseed.com Wild Bird Feeding Blog

Well, I give you fair warning... The end of this post contains a link to a popup which shows a picture of a coyote gulping down the last of a gray squirrel. There's no blood, and no guts, but there is a squirrel foot sticking out of the coyote's mouth. If that sort of thing disturbs you, don't click on the link.

Onward...

Early yesterday morning, I gave thought to setting up the automatic NovaBird camera, and simply letting it run all day. And just before I started to rig the system, I looked out and saw a beautiful coyote with half a squirrel in his yap. (Keep in mind that I like squirrels. Also, I think they serve as a good alarm system for the birds - this is especially true when one of them gets devoured under the feeders.) It wasn't a pretty sight and it probably wasn't a pleasant sound either. Still, that's the name of the game, and we all need to understand that.

Let's be careful around the feeders...

Ok, on to happier stuff... In the last post, I introduced a puzzle for a recipe. My hope was that you guys would mess around with it, seek out help from your geek friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc., and maybe come up with a solution. Well, I've gotten some feedback, and quite frankly, I'd like to save you a little time. Here's how the encryption game works...

1. Understand that a computer character is typically represented by a unique pattern of eight 1s and 0s, (known as binary ASCII). For instance, the letter "A" is "01000001". (The Web is loaded with conversion tables.) Take note that each "1" or "0" is called a "bit".
2. An unknown "key" is converted into binary ASCII. (You have to find the key... Something about 1775... Obviously, I know what the key is.)
3. Next, I used a simple math operation called XOR to encrypt the recipe by meshing the key with the recipe. How is the meshing done? Well, each eight bits of the key are sequentially compared with each eight bits of the recipe to produce the mish mash in the last post. (An XOR operation is simply a measure of uniqueness. A "1" XORed with a "0" shows variety, and results in a "1"... Whereas, "0" XORed with a "0" demonstrates no variety and produces a "0"... A "1" XORed with a "1" also yields a "0".)

So how do we undo the XORed mish mash in the last post and find out what the recipe really was? Very simple... We XOR the mish mash with the binary ASCII equivalent of the key and poof! The recipe reveals itself. I'll get you started... The key begins with the character "T", and that breaks down to: "01010100". Now, if you XOR that with the first 8 bits of the mystery mess ("01100111"), you'll get "00110011", or the binary ASCII code for the character "3". (Yes, the recipe begins with the number "3" as in "3 eggs,".)

But the problem still remains... What is the key? (Hint: Keep in mind the phrase "the earth has many keys", and the number 1775.) Also note that once you understand the XOR process and have the key, the actual decipher is just an extraordinarily boring, simple, tedious process. Hmmm...

And with the hints out of the way... Again, warning! Coyote picture follows:

See you by those annoying feeders,

CapeCodAlan