-- --- .-. ... . -.-. --- -.. .

I've decided to learn Morse Code. It will probably be useful if I'm ever stranded on an island somewhere like Tom Hanks in Castaway, or Brian in Hatchet... wait - learning to build a fire or catch my own food would probably be more useful in those situations.

Morse Code would be useful if I were Jack Ryan aboard the U.S.S. Dallas trying to communicate with the commander of a Russian nuclear submarine who wished to defect. And that could totally happen.

The trick to learning Morse Code, as originally described in the book Cheaper By The Dozen (great book, btw, totally hilarious), is to assign each Morse letter an English word wherein the stressed sylables in the word correspond a "dash" in Morse Code, and the unstressed sylables correspond to the "dots."

For example, the letter 'A' is represented with a "dot-dash" [ . -], and assigned the word "about" [a-BOUT]

Other nice examples are:

D [ - . . ] DAN-ger-ous
I [ . . ] aye-aye (ok, that doesn't really start with an 'i', tough)
O [ - - - ] OH-MY-GOD! (more than one word is ok)

Anyway. I've written out the Morse alphabet and tacked it up next to my computer. Now all I need is a telegraph machine to practice with.

-.-. .- ... -.-. .- -.. .. -. --. .-.. -.-- -.-- --- ..- .-. ... --..--
- --- --

(Cascadingly yours,
Tom)

Once I get this down I'm going to move on to Braille.