SoatDev IT Consulting
SoatDev IT Consulting
  • About us
  • Expertise
  • Services
  • How it works
  • Contact Us
  • News
  • December 28, 2023
  • Rss Fetcher

There are techniques that can enable anyone to memorize much more than may seem possible. This post will show how I generated and memorized a 256-bit encryption key this morning using the approach explained here.

TANSTAAFL

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. This saying is abbreviated TANSTAAFL in Heinlein’s novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It takes effort to safe effort.

Memorization techniques make it easier to remember new things if you invest effort into the techniques. The more you invest into the techniques, the easier memorizing new things is.

Whether this investment is practical depends on the person. I find it more interesting than practical; I rarely need to memorize anything. But I know of people who have used these techniques to great advantage.

Generating a key

First, I’ll generate a 256-bit number using Python.

>>> import secrets
>>> s = secrets.randombits(256)

This produced the following:

14769232028620221959695310712392700269168526908419649910136349315042507303581

If you were to run the same code you would not get the same number, which is the point of the secrets module. It seeds a random number generator with entropy extracted from the state of the computer it is running on.

Parsing digits

The number above has 77 digits, so I split it into a two-digit number, 14, and 25 three-digit numbers: 769, 232, …, 581. Then using Major mnemonic system encoding, I associate each number with a letter of the NATO phonetic alphabet.

I encode 14 as “tar”, and the NATO word for the letter A is “alpha,” so I imagine an alpha male covered in tar.

I encode 769 as “ketchup,” and the NATO word for B is “bravo,” so I imagine a brave bottle of ketchup, arms akimbo, and wearing a superhero cape.

…

I encode 581 as “elevator” [1], and the phonetic word for Z is Zulu, and so I imagine Shaka Zulu riding in an elevator.

Using this process I memorized the random number above in a few minutes.

Just for fun I asked DALL-E 2 to produce an image of “Shaka Zulu, spear in hand, riding in an elevator” the image below is one of the ones it created.

Shaka Zulu, spear in hand, riding in an elevator

Related posts

  • ARPAbet and mnemonics
  • Mnemonic images using Midjourney

[1] Strictly speaking, “elevator” decodes as 5814. But I use a common convention of only considering the first three consonants in a word. This is a good trade-off because it’s not likely you could encode a 4-digit number in a single word.

The post Example of memorizing a 256-bit private key first appeared on John D. Cook.

Previous Post
Next Post

Recent Posts

  • Valla raises $2.7M to make legal recourse more accessible to employees
  • Console raises $6.2M from Thrive to free IT teams from mundane tasks with AI
  • Former DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg co-leads $15.5M Series A for AI video ad platform
  • Microsoft Bing gets a free Sora-powered AI video generator
  • Snowflake to acquire database startup Crunchy Data

Categories

  • Industry News
  • Programming
  • RSS Fetched Articles
  • Uncategorized

Archives

  • June 2025
  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023

Tap into the power of Microservices, MVC Architecture, Cloud, Containers, UML, and Scrum methodologies to bolster your project planning, execution, and application development processes.

Solutions

  • IT Consultation
  • Agile Transformation
  • Software Development
  • DevOps & CI/CD

Regions Covered

  • Montreal
  • New York
  • Paris
  • Mauritius
  • Abidjan
  • Dakar

Subscribe to Newsletter

Join our monthly newsletter subscribers to get the latest news and insights.

© Copyright 2023. All Rights Reserved by Soatdev IT Consulting Inc.