#sidmeyer — Public Fediverse posts

My first meeting with cryptography came along with the game #CovertAction by #SidMeyer some time in my 20s. Everything else in the game was sort of interesting, but code cracking was THE reason i played the game.

I remember being at an interview at FRA (Swedish NSA) when a guy said that "This is the kind of thing you solve with a pen and paper" and that trying to code something was a "waste of time".

A few years later i was playing Covert Action and thought "How can i automate this?" (remembering the words of the cryptographer i spoke to).

I realised that i could recode N-grams into other character sets and brute force them with known words that was in the game. I sat down, wrote some code and i could now break the substitution encrypted messages almost instantly.

In the video below, i break the messages in my head, because i've played the game like 4712623 times and still remember all the encoded messages (Advantage of having #Eideticmemory), it's simple when you have the solution stored deep inside your brain somewhere.

A Book! Sid Meier's Memoir! arrived today. I'm already half through the ebook, but I wanted something nice for the shelf.

Great book. Very interesting so far. Sid Meier was one of the big names of my youth. Being a computer nerd I wasn't hyped by any music- or movie-stars, but names like Sid Meier, Chris Roberts, Richard Garriot or the two Johns of ID Software were my heroes.

And I really love the pun the book title makes.

#sidmeyer #retrogaming #retrocomputing #SidMeiersPirates #civilization