Code is cracked

When I had first heard about the riddled San Jose Sephamore, the public art mystery message being flashed in a series of four changing symbols from atop the Adobe tower on Almaden Boulevard, I thought it’ll take a geeky teeny bopper with a lot of time and lot less worries in life to solve it. Who else can spend hours staring at a communication mode that uses moving flags or lights to send messages – especially if the reward is just bragging rights and an acknowledgment at its website?

Recently two guys -Bob Mayo, an out of job computer scientist together with Mark Snesurd, a chip designer had solved this mystery in a “classic way” as has been recognized by Ben Rubin, the New York artist who designed the project.

My reasoning was not entirely wrong. It helped that Bob Mayo, 47, had plenty of free time since his job as a computer scientist at Hewlett-Packard labs had ended, to spend snapping hours’ worth of patterns. The pair even thought of setting up an AM radio to pick up low-wattage broadcast from the building, but gave it up since the contraption would look more like a bomb.

Lesson learned - curiosity is priority….!

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