Looking for site describing 3x3 grid based cipher

[theJ...@gmail.com]

Hi,
A few weeks ago I ran across a web site that described a system for
encoding handwriting based on 3 3x3 grids. Each letter is placed in a
cell of the grids, and then the shape of the cell is used as a
subsitute for the letter (with a dot added to distinguish the same cell
in different grids). The creator of the system then showed how the
cell shapes could be abstracted to form a very elegant flowing style of
writing. There was also some discussion about how to use the system to
write in different directions.

I thought I ran into this page via the 43Folders wiki, but I can't seem
to find it anymore. I think i was in the context of people wanting to
write down secrets in their Moleskine notebooks. Does anyone have an
idea what I'm talking about that could provide a link?

thanks!
_jonas

[Emily Price]

Here you go:

http://www.ccelian.com/concepca.html

[Vicki Brown]

At 15:55 -0400 10/17/2005, Emily Price wrote:
>http://www.ccelian.com/concepca.html

It's pretty.
It's weird :)
--
- Vicki

ZZZ
zzZ San Francisco Bay Area, CA
z |\ _,,,---,,_ Books, Cats, Tech
zz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ http://cfcl.com/vlb
|,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' http://cfcl.com/vlb/weblog
'---''(_/--' `-'\_) http://heatercats.com

[Jonas Karlsson]

On 10/17/05, Emily Price <price...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here you go:
>
> http://www.ccelian.com/concepca.html

That's what I was looking for - thanks!

The response from Jeff also had good advice:

>Remember also, that the secret-keeping potential of any cipher is
related to how many people
>know the solution,

So, nobody else follow that link, ok?

_jonas

[Bob Freud]

Too late! Followed it, learned it and have started using it! Very cool. It looks like Tibetan script written vertically. An artistic diversion for those with too much time on their hands or too much on their plates.

[Jonathan]

Way too late! I also learned it, and am now having a lot of fun writing
messages in it to hapless friends who happen to be nearby. ;P

[Risser]

Jonathan wrote:
> Way too late! I also learned it, and am now having a lot of fun writing
> messages in it to hapless friends who happen to be nearby. ;P

A handy mneumonic for remembering the bottom letters of the grids:
ADaGe JuMP SaVvY

Okay, it's not that handy, but it could help.

Otherwise, it's sweet.
Peter

[Risser]

One other thing I've taken to doing is, instead of a dot for the third
box, which does look nice, I strike somewhere across the letter, much
like the Rx pharmacy symbol. This helps completely eliminate some of
the ambiguity I sometimes found in dot placement.

Peter

[Jeff Kenton]

I wondered why the dot could not go "in the house." Why must the dot be to one side? Though a slash through the symbol somewhere would be cool too.

 

Jeff

 

--
A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.
-- Mark Twain

[Jonathan]

It can go wherever you want. It doesn't even have to be a dot. The
point is that you have some way of distinguishing the third set from
the first two.

-Jonathan

[Andy Jones]

Not really a cipher, just a way of making handwriting harder to read ::grin::

I'm addicted. It even makes +me+ artistic.

--
Give me ambiguity, or give me something else.

[S. William Schulz]

On 10/21/05, Andy Jones <shadowf...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Not really a cipher, just a way of making handwriting harder to read ::grin::
>
> I'm addicted. It even makes +me+ artistic.

Me too... I've spent the morning playing with it... Now I'm just
trying to figure out the best way to commit it to memory.

S

[Dinah Sanders]

A note:
When my mother was in her freshman year at college she loved to write in tengwar, the Tolkien elvish script. It was very easy for her to take notes in.

Unfortunately, when the time came to study for tests she found that she could not quickly skim said notes. She had to spend a lot more time on study prep and abandoned the use of tengwar, except for special occasions.

Readability and scanability are as important as writability.

Dinah

[Erin M_H]

I would think that taking more time to study the notes would actually
have made it more effective, rather than less so.

[Dinah Sanders]

No, no, more time wasn't spent comprehending the notes, more time was spent deciphering them. Rather as if one had REALLY bad handwriting...

Dinah

[Bob Freud]

What a great discussion on using the 3x3 cipher! I too noticed I am much better at writing it than reading it. I've done some thinking about the taking notes/reading them back issues using my training as a linguist and experience as language teacher and learner.

1) Reading and writing (and speaking and listening for that matter) are distinct skills. Practice in writing does not necessarily translate into skill in reading (and vice versa). Probably the writer's mother who took notes in Tengwar (and many of us did in the 1970s) didn't have the opportunity of reading many English texts transcribed in that script and didn't develop that particular facility. There are many learners of Chinese (including myself!), on the other hand, who primarily practice  reading but not writing, and can recognize many more characters than they can write.

It actually shouldn't be too hard to learn to read in Elian script. What's needed is a lot of opportunites to read texts. Preferably this would begin simply and grow progressively more complex. Writing out Hop On Pop or Dr. Seuss titles in the script would be ideal beginning reading practice.

2) We do not really read word by word. To loosely paraphrase Frank Smith, a specialist in pyscholinguistics and reading, What's in your head is more important than what's on the page. As soon as you see a three letter word starting with t in front of a noun, you know it's going to be "the". In the same way that kids learn both phonics and sight words, the 100 or so most frequently used words of English that make up nearly 50% of what's on any given page need to be memorized and not sounded out. The same goes for prefixes and suffixes. Flash cards and lots of sentence writing and immediate rereading of what you've written helps.

3) notice certain frequent combinations of letters P is frequent but so is PL and PR. A skillful reader doesn't soound them out each time. S/he recognizes the shape of the letter combo at one glance. Learn to read the vowels perfectly and easily will also help. I wonder if other people notice how easy it is to learn the letter "o" which appears frequently and wraps nicely around other letters.

4) As far as adding dots, crosses, etc, these are all normal possibilities in the development of any script used for writing. The page by CC Elian describing the author's evolution of the script is insightful. Elian gave up using common "walls" for letters. Seems like an elegant idea in theory; tough to read/write in practice. Think Elian started with numbers inside the letters instead of dots. I tried the crosses and didn't like the aesthetic effect on the flowing letter forms. I particularly like the ability to lengthen any leg of series two and three letters. Lengthening a leg of series three letters is in some sense redundant. As soon as you see the dot, you know it's series three BUT it gives you artistic freedom in writing. The whole horizontal vs. vertical writing method is a nonlinguistic issue. Chinese works just as well written either way/so does Elian. However, your friends at meetings will be more surprised as you write your way down the page. There's also something to be said for staying withing the "tradition".

5. Memorizing the letter forms is tough. I'm still writing out the grid on each page i write on. I think it's learning the fretboard on a guitar in some ways. The " ADaGe JuMP SaVvY " that Peter R suggested helps. I also use AI JR SZ to remember which group something belongs to, but I'm sure somebody here will come up with a good way to learn the letter forms. Learning forms that all share the same position seems to help like "NEW-all central forms".  Anyway, my s.o was convinced this was just usual Bob wackiness when I started to write in this script a couple of days ago. Now I'm telling her about the nineteen messages and other people who are obsessing over it. I'm not alone I told her. Thanks 43folder folks!

[S. William Schulz]

On 10/23/05, Bob Freud <bob....@gmail.com> wrote:

> It actually shouldn't be too hard to learn to read in Elian script. What's
> needed is a lot of opportunites to read texts. Preferably this would begin
> simply and grow progressively more complex. Writing out Hop On Pop or Dr.
> Seuss titles in the script would be ideal beginning reading practice.

We each need several penpals who also use the script. That would
allow us to see variations on a theme. :)

S

[Tom Lieber]

On 10/23/05, S. William Schulz <swsc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We each need several penpals who also use the script. That would
> allow us to see variations on a theme. :)

That sounds like an interesting idea. Or how about a web page with
scanned sample readings? I already have several short ones scribbled
on everything like "Thursday's Assignments" (on my Thursday assignment
folder) and "Mess with the best, die like the rest" (hanging above my
desk). I don't have any longer ones because, hey, few people around
here think it's as cool as I do. :D

> S

Sincerely,

Tom Lieber
t...@alltom.com
http://AllTom.com/

[Jonathan]

Thanks Bob! I learned a lot from that. As for learning the script
itself (as opposed to recognizing words in the script), it is much
faster to learn the basic principles and apply them than it is to
memorize what different letters look like. All you really need to
remember is that the first series starts with a and ends i, the second
series begins with j and ends with r, and the third series goes from s
to z. Then, when you write a letter, just figure out which series it is
in and count up from the bottom left grid (or, once you get good at it,
bottom middle grid, etc). Doing it that way, I started remembering
what the letters themselves looked like in about five minutes. Of
course, that that doesn't do anything to help word recognition, yet no
system's perfect. ;)

-Jonathan

[Risser]

I once developed a simple script based loosely on the Amslan alphabet.
I used it for writing diary entries and I found I could write it
extremely quickly, almost as fast as writing regular text, but it took
forever to read it. This was of course due to the fact that I hardly
ever read my diaries.

With Elian, I find that my caligraphic skills are notoriously lacking
and it ends up looking not unlike some Elvish variation of my normal
cramped and messy handwriting.

Still, it's fun.
Peter

[Jon Hind]

Thanks to all for this site.

I showed it to my daughter - who has artistic tendencies.

And it has opened some kind of tap within her - she's covered page after page with designs.

She was so grateful. Sometimes it's good to be a nerdy Dad !

Jon