Hello, I return! For another post (obviously).

No it’s not. I just like Hamilton. But this post is about Destination Imagination (again). But, this year, it was different. I went out of my comfort zone to do the Scientific Challenge. And…. how do I put this.

I don’t science.

Let me explain. I do fine in Science. It’s just the challenge itself is very difficult. Let me break it down for you.

We have to:

1) Have two different codes. One using steganography  and one using cryptography. One of them we design the code and the solution ourselves. But the other one we only get to make the code. The workers give us a sentence with three words, that we have to encrypt and decrypt on sight.

2) Have a disguised character. We need to have one of our characters in our presentation be disguised, whether that’s through acting, lines, costumes, or any other method

3) Have a gadget that looks like an everyday object, but preforms an unexpected task. This has to use technical methods, and can either actually work or use theatrical methods to ‘work’.

4) Have 2 Team Choice Elements. This means two parts of our presentation that use the Team’s interest to create it. I’ll go into more detail on this later.

So, that sounds simple, right? Right?

Yeah, it got quite difficult. So, we got to work. And by we, I mean Tyler, Quinn, Makyla, William, along with myself. It started with a team name. We went though many names, including ‘Double No Seven’, ‘00420’, until we decided on….. H2.0.

Something about water being scientific? Ask Quinn, I don’t know. Then it was on to research. We researched the two different codes, and what they meant. It eventually got down to deciding on a storyline.

We decided on a futuristic setting. Kind of like Terminator, evil Robots are taking over the world. It’s up to a secret spy base to shut off the robots. But, one of the spies is working against them to keep the robots up and alive, to destroy the world.

Its an interesting plot, and a lot to make it into a reality. We started with the gadget. It was up to Tyler to make a remote spray water, that we can pretend was toxic gas to knock out myself and Makyla. But…. well, Tyler was a bit late with it. We asked him to have it done, and it was never done. But…. it turns out he didn’t even make it a remote. He used a chewbacca mug, and the inside of a water gun. It worked, which is what matters.

Then the Disguised Character. We decided that Tyler would be the Disguised Character. So, he was going to be the secret agent, who is trying to keep the robots alive. We used acting and dialogue to disguise Tyler.

Our first code, the Pre-Crypted one, used steganography. It was a skip code, which means that every second letter of each word makes up a word. For instance: this example from Sherlock. Ours was saying that Tyler was the enemy. It was:

Our second code, we didn’t get much control over. We used Cryptography to make our own code, but they gave us the sentence, which Tyler encrypted backstage, and we had to decrypt onstage, without knowing what the sentence was. Our key for this was:

It was complicated to decrypt on stage, but we did it.

Then came the Team Choice elements. One was the background, which could hold two iPads, and was completely black

 

We also had an animation. I am quite proud of this, as I did HAND DRAW IT FRAME BY FRAME. Well, I drew on an iPad, but hey. Still, it took three days. I do really enjoy animation, so it was fun.

 

Those were our Team Choice Elements.

We practiced, and practiced, and practiced, until it was the day before Regionals. And…. I got sick. And I’m not talking about a small cough. I was throwing up…. you don’t need to hear about that

So, I couldn’t go to our final practice. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make it to regionals, Makyla was memorizing my lines. But, luckily, I made it.

Now, let’s talk about Regionals. First of all, we orgot our Team Sign. Great start. Then, we couldn’t go to the opening ceremonies because we had our Instant Challenge. So we did that, it went well. Can’t say anything though.

And then it was time for our Team Challenge. I felt like I was going to be sick, but it certainly wasn’t nerves. We started…. and things started going wrong. Well, there was some awkward stalling as Quinn and Tyler dragged Bill behind stage after he ‘died’. Then, Tyler had to encrypt the code. And…. we hadn’t planned for him to take long. So we hadn’t to improv. And, let me tell you, I CANNOT IMPROV. It was awkward stalling, and lines about Bill being dead.

Then Tyler didn’t put the code back into the drop zone. The drop zone is where, once encrypted, the code should go. And Tyler didn’t put it there. We scrambled, finding it among the other props backstage.

We decrypted it, everything went good from there. And then I went home and was sick.

So that was DI! But….. it’s not over. No, after all of that…

Provincials.

But that’s a different blog post

Read ya Later

Ruby