The Decipher Machine

Awhile back I posted my Dspeech Cipher Machine created originally to make a fake language (though not really a language) to vex my D&D players.

I realize that working through a word for word cipher on your own is somewhat brutal, so I made an online tool to help make the process a bit better:

http://web.uvic.ca/~liamk/decipher/

It lets you input a bunch of ciphered text and then takes you to a page where you can guess at its meaning. It can also save you a dictionary for use later and you can type in a dictionary if you'd like. This should allow people to build up a common known set of words and rock it out.

I thought it was kind of neat and it shows off what you can do with php and html.

-Liam

Starting Making Some Chainmail

I've wanted to do this for awhile now, but didn't have the time, tools, or know how. Having read up quite a bit on armor in the last few days and even more on how to make chainmail, I pretty much figured it out and bought the only required material: 150ft of 16 gauge galvanized steel wire.

It's not the fastest process, but I'm already much better at it than when I started. The weave is a bit more complicated than I thought and can get a little tricky, but it's coming together. I'm running with a 4 in 1 european weave which was apparently very popular back in the day. I think my rings might be a little too big, but it'll save some time if they're larger than standard.

Anyway, What I really wanted to do was post on my setup:

I think it's slightly more interesting than my finely weaved mail.

You can see I build a new row seperately and then attach them to the previous. I got a long piece of plywood, which you can see at the bottom, and hammered nails onto each side. This helps me keep the chain straight while I'm working on each row and then combining the rows together.

I also got a slightly wider, but shorter, piece of plywood and hammered some larger spikes into it. They keep my rings nicely stacked up, so I grab them easily. The big piece also can fit everything on it, so I'm pretty mobile.

I use the pipe to wind the wire into a spring and the aviation snips to cut it into rings. I've found them to be the best so far. They make a good cut and I've recently discovered you can cut about 13 rings at a time.The needlenose pliers are there to expand and close rings if need be, but generally I just twist them open and close by hand.

Anyway, so far so good. It's actually been a really fun experience. I've learned a fair bit; I'm sure all of it's useless. (unless the Knights who say "Ni" show up)