As a quick glance at the top of this page should reveal, Cipher Mysteries has finally hit the million-visit mark, and without being carried there by any random traffic spikes.
And so to every Cipher Mysteries visitor I send a great big thank you, a million times over. 🙂
But how best to celebrate this (relatively meaningless but numerically pleasing) milestone? For what it’s worth, my plan is to try to complete some of the bigger cipher-related things I’ve been working on over the last few years and put them out there for you all. After all, the whole point of this blog (in my mind, at least) is more about actual cipher history research than about cipher reportage or out-there theorizing.
Just so you know, the things I plan to finish and put out are:
* a small cipher book I was researching and writing back in 2012 (before I ran out of evidence to work with)
* my “block paradigm” analysis of the Voynich zodiac section
* a surprisingly-well-known-but-entirely-unmapped cipher mystery (which needs proper transcribing etc)
* a top secret cipher project (but that’s another story entirely)
Incidentally, The Cipher Foundation now (finally!) has a bank account, so I also plan to put its first microproject (translating Le Flibustier Mysterieux) in motion over the next few days.
Finally, I also plan to set up a celebratory pub meet one Sunday in the next couple of months, where I shall see if I can persuade an historic London pub to put on a barrel of “Enigma” for us (if Robinson’s even still brew it, because it has disappeared from their website), and perhaps stream the meet live on the Internet, so everyone can take part if they wish. Hope to see you there! 🙂
There are recent (August 2015) reviews of ‘Enigma’ as a beer from New Glarus.
Also – this amused. About the ‘Enigma’ hops variety being used in Australia:
“Truly an enigma, our records show that our new girl is a descendant of the Swiss Tettnang hop, but not only does she grow like a North American hop, she throws up a range of flavours that are far removed from her heritage.”
planes, trains, automobiles and ships are ‘she’, I understand. By why hops?
If that reference to a North American hops variety name might include “Cassidy”, we would end up with “Hopalong Cassidy” beer. Not that I’ve ever seen a reference to a beer with that label. Just punning; as usual…….
bd
Of course I buddy to congratulate million visitors.
.. and with an average of .. what, eighteen or so comments per post…
Dr. Pelling, you should soon expect reports of first warbles of the lark.
A million is good. Congrats!
Nick,
your million thanks clogged my email :-). But seriously – congratualtions and many happy returns,
Jan
Live streaming! Great idea! Don’t forget some sound bites (and captioning! Remember that some of us need to be able to read facial expressions and mouth movements . I am SO looking forward to your next ‘live’ presentation!
Lot’s of great arguments. Lot’s of crackpot ideas. Lots of spinning the wheels. And a little progress, for sure.
I have been looking forward to more VMs progress with your “block paradigm” idea, but have failed to find it. It is an interesting concept. And the solution would be quite ingenious, perhaps even elegant, one might say. But it seems to me that the implementation is going to be a horrendous problem.
Compare the VMs text passages to grains of sand held in a small jar. One of them is going to recognizably correspond, in some literary sort of way, to another grain of sand on some other beach somewhere in the world. We do not know which beach it might be. Whether there ever was an actual, matching correspondent. Or whether a once-extant correspondent has been destroyed. That looks like a really big byte.
The heraldry of the Genoese Gambit is much simpler – in comparison. The White Aries illustration is clear enough, (VMs: f71r). And I have already proposed a strong, (exclusive) historical correspondent, just like you suggest. Which part have I invented, the VMs illustration or the record of historical events? Such correspondence with history and heraldry would not be possible if the necessary elements had not been included in the illustration by the artist’s intentional actions.
Double or nothing, the “pairing paradigm”.
Here’s one more bean in the next million.
Congratulations.
D.N. O’Donovan: The hop plant is dioecious (i.e. plants are either male or female) and only the female flowers (cones) are used to brew beer.
Donald,
thank you for the clarification. Good to know.
best beer is brewed here in Pilsen. Urquell and Gambrinus. 🙂
Hi Nick! I really like the new look here and find it much more pleasant to read…
I do miss the longer “recent comments” list as this was my “goto” for surfing activity on the site. Is there anyway to add a “more” button to see more of the recent comments?
Also…Why no tab for Somerton Man? I find it very difficult to find related posts : (.
Misca: both fixed now. 🙂
Incidentally, half the people now visiting Cipher Mysteries are using smartphones or tablets, so I thought it was time to simplify the blog layout a little. There are still a few things that aren’t quite working (the Subscribe button is proving a bit problematic), but by and large it’s all basically for the better. 🙂
Thanks Nick!