Graphics Editing a Coded Manuscript.

So since I found out last year about this one never-uncoded manuscript in an unknown script from the mid-15^th c., I’ve been dying to get print-outs of it somehow, so I can start treating it like a puzzle and see if I can figure it out, since I already like puzzles and already do them in my spare time, and since I already know Latin, the primary suspect language (or at least one of the primary ones; Hebrew and maybe Greek would be the others).

Anyhow, a friend had somehow found a pdf file of the entire manuscript online, and sent it to me in 3 chunks.

At first, and this was like this fall or winter, I tried hiring the (female) (African-American) graphics artist who has done work for my one lawyer friend from Missouri.

She came highly recommended and a few people who I know had jobs done by her were satisfied, but I gave her 2 jobs, and on the 1^st one she didn’t follow instructions and then tacked on 30min. of time in order to correct the mistakes she made (!), and then on the 2^nd one (the manuscript), she didn’t follow the page range, pages she split were out of order, and there was other stuff too, but I didn’t feel like getting her to correct that, since she had been dishonest with me about the other corrections.

So, I told her I wasn’t paying for the 2^nd order, since I’d start all over myself, and she wasn’t happy...

In fact, one time, getting on the subway, I passed her as she was getting off, and she didn’t see me (purposefully?).

I haven’t run into her since.

Anyhow, the other week, I decided to start editing the pdf file from scratch while I have the resources of the art school available, and so I went in to the art school’s printing office and got set up on a computer near there and kindly asked the student workers if they could help me by showing me what to do, and I’d do everything they told me like a monkey, and then eventually submit the file as a print job that their office would take care of.

The one student, this Asian-American 18 or 19y.o. with a dyed blonde hair, was very kind and helped set me up on the right programs to split the images, crop them, and increase contrast.

At first, too, when I explained to her what the project was, and how I wanted a file to doodle on while I read a 15^th c. Latin astronomical text to compare and look for patterns in the unknown script, she kind of got quiet.

Then, she was like, “Wow, you’re like Dan Brown.”