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I recently learned Morse code. Long story short, for a while my life took a strange turn where I had full reign over someone else's Airbnb, and was free to modi

I recently learned Morse code. Long story short, for a while my life took a strange turn where I had full reign over someone else's Airbnb, and was free to modify the place in my image. We found this big light fixture meant for the ceiling, but in a moment of divine inspiration put it out on the fire escape and ran the wire to the house server as our "semaphore". Originally I was going to add server code to translate messages from some API endpoint into Morse. But just to get things off the ground, I set it up as a normal light switch and started keying in messages by hand. I spent a few afternoons keying out random silly / vulgar messages. Stuff like "- .... . / ..-. -.-. -.-. / .-- - -. - / .-.. . - / -- . / -...", "- .... . / .-.. .. --. .... - ... / -. --- - / - .- .-.. -.- .. -. --. / -.-- --- ..- / .... .- ...- . / --. --- -. . / -- .- -.." and ".. -- / -- . ... ... .- -.. .. -. -.. / .- -... --- ..- - / -.-- --- ..- .-. / -.-. .- .-. ... / . -..- - . -. -.. . -.. / .-- .- .-. .-. .- -. - -.--". At first I had to look at a Morse reference sheet while keying these in, but after a few hours I was no longer looking at the sheet. Moral of the story, it only takes a few bored afternoons to learn Morse. You should do it.

sundarurfriend 5y ago
Your second message would have gotten a chuckle out of me if I'd seen it out in the wild. I think the second word in the third message is supposed to have a couple of `--.` in place of the `-..`s. And the first one's third word I think is meant to be `.-- --- -. -` (`---` instead of `-` as second letter) instead? I've been learning the letters of Morse code via Anki for months now (casually, on and off), but I feel like reading them as words here instead of as individual letters cemented them in a different way in my brain. Maybe it's time I graduated on from the letters deck to a words-based deck, it's a pretty fun task too, decoding these.
- ummwhat 5y ago
  For me, I'm far better at patterns than memorization. Words are superior to letters because I can often think back to an earlier word/phrase to find a letter. Like, suppose you've done nothing but memorize how to key in the curse words. Starting from "... .... .. -" you're just 4 more letters from learning ".- ... ... .... --- .-.. ." And three away from "-.-. ..- -. -". From there it's just 2 letters to "..-. ..- -.-. -.-". 1 more gets you to "-... .. - -.-. ....". 2 more gets both ".--. . -. .. ..." and ".--. ..- ... ... -.--" (obviously can't have one without the other). At that point you've picked up enough of the alphabet that it's just two more to "-- --- - .... . .-. ..-. ..- -.-. -.- . .-." If you ever forget a letter, just think back to the curse words. I also like to organize the letters by complexity/similarity. The least complex are the letters that are the same symbol n times. E I S H for (1-4) dots and T M O for (1-3) dashes. Just ask yourself "IS HE TOM?" The next layer up is letters that are n dots followed by m dashes or vice versa. These are subgrouped into length 4 down to length 2 and ordered from left heavy to right heavy. So the taxonomy is [(1,1) A/N], [(2,1) U/G,(1,2) W/D], [(1,3)B, (2,2) Z, (3,1)V/J]. The third group is actually smaller and thus easier. [(1,1,1) R/K], [(2,1,1)F/Q, (1,2,1)P/X, (1,1,2) L/Y]. The final group is just (1,1,1,1) C. Writing out the table in terms of these similarities helps. Eg I'd often remember letters in terms of other letters that I use more frequently like "k is the opposite form of r (-.- vs .-.)". Or I would know where the letter sat in terms of layer or skew and I knew what letters it couldn't be. Eg for a while I knew N was length 2, I knew it wasnt .. or .- since I use I/A a lot, so it was just a matter of learning the difference between m (--) and n (-.), Which happens to be the same as the difference between w (.--) and u (..-) after you remove the first dot and turn the page upside down. Obviously u is upside down n and w is upside down m. For the occasional clusters of easily confused groups, learning one forces the others to snap into place. .-.. is off balance to the Left, so it must be L (..-.). -.. begins with a Dash so that one is D. .-- has twice the dashes as ..- so that makes it "double the U" aka W. P (.--.) is similar in shape and origin to rho so it makes sense for it to be similar to R (.-.). That's about as dense as I can compress it. The rest is rote learning.
tdeck 5y ago
I had a similar experience learning to send, but learning to copy is significantly more difficult. I can probably send at 20 WPM or more, but only copy (listen) around 10 WPM.

sundarurfriend 5y ago

Your second message would have gotten a chuckle out of me if I'd seen it out in the wild. I think the second word in the third message is supposed to have a couple of `--.` in place of the `-..`s. And the first one's third word I think is meant to be `.-- --- -. -` (`---` instead of `-` as second letter) instead? I've been learning the letters of Morse code via Anki for months now (casually, on and off), but I feel like reading them as words here instead of as individual letters cemented them in a different way in my brain. Maybe it's time I graduated on from the letters deck to a words-based deck, it's a pretty fun task too, decoding these.

ummwhat 5y ago
For me, I'm far better at patterns than memorization. Words are superior to letters because I can often think back to an earlier word/phrase to find a letter. Like, suppose you've done nothing but memorize how to key in the curse words. Starting from "... .... .. -" you're just 4 more letters from learning ".- ... ... .... --- .-.. ." And three away from "-.-. ..- -. -". From there it's just 2 letters to "..-. ..- -.-. -.-". 1 more gets you to "-... .. - -.-. ....". 2 more gets both ".--. . -. .. ..." and ".--. ..- ... ... -.--" (obviously can't have one without the other). At that point you've picked up enough of the alphabet that it's just two more to "-- --- - .... . .-. ..-. ..- -.-. -.- . .-." If you ever forget a letter, just think back to the curse words. I also like to organize the letters by complexity/similarity. The least complex are the letters that are the same symbol n times. E I S H for (1-4) dots and T M O for (1-3) dashes. Just ask yourself "IS HE TOM?" The next layer up is letters that are n dots followed by m dashes or vice versa. These are subgrouped into length 4 down to length 2 and ordered from left heavy to right heavy. So the taxonomy is [(1,1) A/N], [(2,1) U/G,(1,2) W/D], [(1,3)B, (2,2) Z, (3,1)V/J]. The third group is actually smaller and thus easier. [(1,1,1) R/K], [(2,1,1)F/Q, (1,2,1)P/X, (1,1,2) L/Y]. The final group is just (1,1,1,1) C. Writing out the table in terms of these similarities helps. Eg I'd often remember letters in terms of other letters that I use more frequently like "k is the opposite form of r (-.- vs .-.)". Or I would know where the letter sat in terms of layer or skew and I knew what letters it couldn't be. Eg for a while I knew N was length 2, I knew it wasnt .. or .- since I use I/A a lot, so it was just a matter of learning the difference between m (--) and n (-.), Which happens to be the same as the difference between w (.--) and u (..-) after you remove the first dot and turn the page upside down. Obviously u is upside down n and w is upside down m. For the occasional clusters of easily confused groups, learning one forces the others to snap into place. .-.. is off balance to the Left, so it must be L (..-.). -.. begins with a Dash so that one is D. .-- has twice the dashes as ..- so that makes it "double the U" aka W. P (.--.) is similar in shape and origin to rho so it makes sense for it to be similar to R (.-.). That's about as dense as I can compress it. The rest is rote learning.

tdeck 5y ago

I had a similar experience learning to send, but learning to copy is significantly more difficult. I can probably send at 20 WPM or more, but only copy (listen) around 10 WPM.