Hey Elonka, I had just listened to your lecture earlier today about kryptos and the CIA headquarters at Edwardsville High School for the Saturday scholars program. It was deffinetly the most interesting topic I have ever heard about and I was very impressed at what you do and how it's done. I was overwhellmed by your presentation and would love to hear back from you about any upcomming presentations around the st. louis area.

Thank you so much, I learned alot and might even continue learning about it.

About Code Morse, I think at Holy Bible :
Lucid Memory: Luke 22-19:”Do this in remembrance of me”
Shadow forces, Luke 23-44:” and darkness came over the whole land”
Virtually Invisible, Luke 24-3:” but when they went in, they did not find the body;”
Digetal interpretatu : John 20-27:” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here.”

Read my decodind on
http://groups.google.com/group/kryptos97solution

I wonder if artist James Sanborn has spoofed the CIA by getting them to put a statue on their property which actually refers to their experiments with LSD as a "Philosopher's Stone" that could divine truth.

Here's a paragraph from an article I found on the subject at
http://www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/ciacid.html

"The whole concept of a truth drug was a bit farfetched to begin with. It presupposed that there was a way to chemically bypass the mind's censor and turn the psyche inside out, unleashing a profusion of buried secrets, and that surely some approximation of "truth" would emerge amidst all the personal debris. In this respect the CIA's quest resembled a skewed version of a familiar mythological theme from which such images as the Philosopher's Stone and the Fountain of Youth derive -- that through touching or ingesting something one can acquire wisdom, immortality, or eternal peace. It is more than a bit ironic that the biblical inscription on the marble wall of the main lobby at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, reads, "And ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free".

Archimedes ran through the streets of Syracuse naked. Artists like the "naked truth". Archimedes was working on a "crown of gold". He was trying to separate the base metal from the gold. What is true from what is not.

That's what the CIA is supposed to do.

There are many ways to disguse a message, but an artist is restricted by the fact that there are only so many messages worth encoding in a legacy work.

Parts of the Rosetta stone translation refer to gold crowns of Ptolemy. "with them. And in order to make this new shrine to be easily distinguishable [both at the present day, and in future times, they shall set] upon this shrine [ten royal double crowns, made of gold and upon [each of the double crowns there shall be placed the [serpent which it is right and proper to make for the [double crown of gold], instead of the two Uraei"

I'm curious to see what kind of web-traffic boost that I get from the PBS show. Other TV/radio shows have generally been a small bump -- they don't compare to the huge traffic that I get from something like a Slashdot or Wired article.

Google is still the search-engine-of-choice. However, hits from Wikipedia are also a steady presence -- they seem to come in more or less equally from multiple pages, but are only about 5% of my traffic. The majority comes from StumbleUpon, with my "Famous Unsolved Codes" page being the main draw. That's about 25% of traffic, followed by about 20% from search engines, a few percent from miscellaneous articles here and there (like Kim Zetter's "Wired" article sends me a steady stream of traffic). Also, not reflected in those numbers, are those visitors who aren't "referred" to my site, but just come in directly.

Anyway, here's the current summary:

VISITS

Total 1,036,534
Average Per Day 412
Average Visit Length 3:52
Last Hour 25
Today 187
This Week 2,887

PAGE VIEWS

Total 2,326,425
Average Per Day 809
Average Per Visit 2.0
Last Hour 49
Today 343
This Week 5,661

Referring domains

1,070 stumbleupon.com 26.8%
735 google.com 18.4%
226 en.wikipedia.org 5.7%
131 wired.com 3.3%
109 search.yahoo.com 2.7%
97 google.co.uk 2.4%
71 dailygalaxy.com 1.8%
50 images.google.com 1.3%
46 google.ca 1.2%
39 elonka.com 1.0%
38 google.co.in 1.0%
35 google.com.au 0.9%
19 npr.org 0.5%
18 google.de 0.5%
13 google.com.br 0.3%
12 search.live.com 0.3%
10 artdc.org 0.3%
10 google.com.ph 0.3%
10 google.fr 0.3%

Referring webpages:
1,021 http://www.stumbleupon.com/ref...lonka.com%2FUnsolvedCodes.html 25.5%
76 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos 1.9%
70 http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_...g/2007/07/angley-va----th.html 1.8%
69 http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/01/66334 1.7%
37 http://www.wired.com/culture/l...ws/2005/01/66334?currentPage=3 0.9%
34 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beale_ciphers 0.9%
34 http://www.stumbleupon.com/ref....elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html 0.9%
23 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography 0.6%
18 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5356012 0.5%
15 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=kryptos 0.4%
12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_ciphertexts 0.3%
12 http://www.google.com/search?q...n-US:official&client=firefox-a 0.3%
10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Agapeyeff_cipher 0.3%
10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithy_code 0.3%
9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Sanborn 0.2%
9 http://search... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Acidus wrote:
Elonka is hardcore! At least you are making the best of it.

Heh, thanks.

As an update, things are slowly returning back to normal here. All of my co-workers' homes have services restored, though the utility company website is still showing about 10,000 homes without power. The weather outside is dry, but bitterly cold (around 10 degrees F, with wind chill).

Things at our office are slowly coming back up to normal speed. We still have blankets and pillows strewn around, plus there's a flu bug that's now working its way through the building, but other than that things are returning to routine.

Next on my "backlog" list is catching up with various internet projects, such as an ArbCom case at Wikipedia, and some Kryptos stuff.

Thanks to everyone that sent along well-wishes,

Elonka :)

RE: St. Charles storm update - Monday

My third time co-hosting the Binary Revolution webcast with Stankdawg. :) Subjects on the 90-minute program this week include Kryptos, the Smithy Code, Treasure Hunters, Lost, and Wikipedia (the place where I've been spending a lot of time recently).

Elonka :)

Clicking on the link below will take you straight to the MP3 ...

Binary Revolution, Episode #156

Happy odometer day to elonka.com

Site statistics, courtesy of Sitemeter:

VISITS

Total 872,795
Average Per Day 771
Average Visit Length 4:16
Last Hour 33
Today 244
This Week 5,397

PAGE VIEWS

Total 2,000,790 ***************************
Average Per Day 1,643
Average Per Visit 2.1
Last Hour 67
Today 477
This Week 11,504

Top referring domains
1,132 google.com 28.3%
461 stumbleupon.com 11.5%
236 en.wikipedia.org 5.9%
149 google.co.uk 3.7%
113 google.ca 2.8%
98 search.yahoo.com 2.5%
59 images.google.com 1.5%
58 matt-thornton.net 1.5%
57 blackstump.com.au 1.4%
57 elonka.com 1.4%
52 google.co.in 1.3%
50 demon.twinflame.org 1.3%
48 google.com.au 1.2%
39 wired.com 1.0%
28 google.com.ph 0.7%
22 google.nl 0.6%
22 search.msn.com 0.6%
16 google.co.nz 0.4%
15 ask.com 0.4%

Top referring webpages

461 http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.html 11.5%
71 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Kryptos 1.8%
66 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code 1.7%
57 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos 1.4%
50 http://demon.twinflame.org/arc.../2003/08/the_da_vinci_code.php 1.3%
49 http://www.matt-thornton.net/topics.php?topic=14&subcat=94 1.2%
43 http://www.blackstump.com.au/anew.htm 1.1%
41 http://www.google.com/search?h...n&q=kryptos&btnG=Google Search 1.0%
23 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=KRYPTOS 0.6%
22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci_Code 0.6%
19 http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=kryptos&meta= 0.5%
18 http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,66334-0.html 0.5%
16 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=king tut CIA 0.4%
15 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=king tut cia 0.4%
14 http://elonka.com/kryptos/ 0.4%
14 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beale_ciphers 0.4%
13 http://dir.yahoo.com/Social_Sc.../Cryptology/Codes_and_Ciphers/ 0.3%
13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithy_code 0.3%
12 http://www.blackstump.com.au/new.htm 0.3%

Top referring search engines

1,118 google.com 28.0%
149 google.co.uk 3.7%
113 google.ca 2.8%
98 search.yahoo.com 2.5%
50 google.co.in 1.3%
47 google.com.au 1.2%
28 google.com.ph 0.7%
26 images.google.com 0.7%
22 search.msn.com 0.6%
22 google.nl 0.6%
16 google.co.nz 0.4%
15 ask.com 0.4%
14 google.se 0.4%
10 google.pl 0.3%
10 google... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

My elonka.com site is closing in on the "2 million page views" mark. At normal traffic levels it'll happen sometime during the summer, though if another big media blitz happens it could roll over in a few days. We'll see!

VISITS
Total 840,457
Average Per Day 1,233
Average Visit Length 4:26
Last Hour 53
Today 383
This Week 8,628

PAGE VIEWS

Total 1,928,104
Average Per Day 2,739
Average Per Visit 2.2
Last Hour 110
Today 882
This Week 19,173

Referring sites: - Wikipedia keeps climbing, and has overtaken stumbleupon. And Digg is no longer showing up in the top list

1,296 google.com 32.4%
264 en.wikipedia.org 6.6%
230 stumbleupon.com 5.8%
212 google.co.uk 5.3%
166 google.ca 4.2%
104 search.yahoo.com 2.6%
92 matt-thornton.net 2.3%
56 google.com.ph 1.4%
51 google.com.au 1.3%
44 search.msn.com 1.1%
42 demon.twinflame.org 1.1%
42 elonka.com 1.1%
41 wired.com 1.0%
38 google.co.in 1.0%
37 images.google.com 0.9%
28 npr.org 0.7%

Referring search engines: (Google google google)

1,729 Not referred from a search engine 43.2%
1,282 google.com 32.1%
212 google.co.uk 5.3%
164 google.ca 4.1%
104 search.yahoo.com 2.6%
56 google.com.ph 1.4%
51 google.com.au 1.3%
44 search.msn.com 1.1%
37 google.co.in 0.9%
24 images.google.com 0.6%
20 google.com.sg 0.5%
17 ask.com 0.4%
14 google.co.za 0.4%
11 google.be 0.3%
10 google.ie 0.3%
10 google.de 0.3%
10 google.co.nz 0.3%
9 google.nl 0.2%
9 google.es 0.2%

Search words: - The "king tut" and "one who knows" terms are from the webquest trivia quiz at danbrown.com

1,728 Not referred from a search engine 43.2%
547 kryptos 13.7%
181 king tut cia 4.5%
72 king tut and cia 1.8%
59 kryptos the one who knows 1.5%
51 king tut and the cia 1.3%
36 decrypted text of kryptos 0.9%
29 the one who knows 0.7%
27 the one who knows kryptos 0.7%
26 king tut, cia 0.7%
23 ciphers 0.6%
21 kryptos code 0.5%
19 kryptos "the one who knows" 0.5%
16 kryptos sculpture 0.4%
14 kryptos exact location 0.4%
14 cia and king tut 0.4%
14 37 57 6.5 n 77 8 44 w 0.4%
13 cia king tut 0.3%
12 king tut cia 0.3%

"Now there's a decline in morale, its capability has not been optimized and there's a hemorrhaging of very good officers," Brennan said. "Turf battles continue" with other parts of the recently reorganized U.S. intelligence community "because there's a lack of clarity and he had no vision or strategy about the CIA's future." Brennan added: "Porter's a dedicated public servant. He was ill-suited for the job."

Bring back William Webster. To my knowledge, he was well-liked. Plus he's got a lot of public goodwill at the moment via his association with the Kryptos sculpture. People will be more interested in what he knows about K4 ("Only WW knows"), than worrying about CIA SNAFUs.

Elonka :)

The Fix-It Man Leaves, but The Agency's Cracks Remain