On August 13 2005 I got my second tattoo. My first tattoo was personal (but err quite public after slashdot and other sites got hold of it!) and about me, this one is too, but it’s also about lovely Joanna my partner of many years. Getting it was more than just settling on the design and booking an appointment as I decided to use it for a bit of post-modern romance. In short I used the tattoo and an ARG (online “Alternate Reality Game”) I made, to ask her to “marry” me. Read this page for more!
An FAQ to save myself from all of the questions!
What does your tattoo look like?
A band of text around my arm, linking up with my first tattoo
Only a few hours after being inked. (Hence a little redness and the anti-fur collar on my wrist!)
More pics of it at the same time. This tattoo is the arm band only, the two lines of code on my forearm are my first tattoo.
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How do your first tattoo and this one link? (physically)
The final symbol in the code (BxwOHw0SUxgOBAkSUx4OUgoOAREXFx4=) is an = (equals) sign, which were not tattooed for it this time, instead the end of the tattoo was matched up to the letters “ll” (of the word “hello”) in my first tattoo.
What is this tattoo of?
A cipher. A cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption (and the reverse, decryption). Encryption is the process of obscuring information to make it unreadable without special knowledge. That is, this text hides a special message, which, if you know the method and key (password) to unlock it is revealed.
What is the “secret message”?
“thomas loves jo for ever”. I am Thomas and Jo is my wife.
What form of encryption is used?
A simple bitwise XOR encryption on the ASCII phrase and key, with Base64 encoding used to make the result printable. XOR is not particularly strong as far as encryption goes but it is easy to explain and do by hand which my ARG concept necessitated. >
Can I see the encryption work?
Sure, check out a quick web-app I put together called Jo’s Lil’ Decrypter which uses the encryption method I employed for the tattoo. Make and send your own coded messages!
Why did you get this particular tattoo? (yes we know you love Jo forever but…)
To declare my love for Jo in a suitably geeky, post modern/ironic fashion (that being Jo and my senses of aesthetic and humor) and to commemorate our Civil Union (see below). The tattoo is a play on the “traditional” idea of having your lover’s name emblazoned on you in a heart or some such. Also known as the cursed tattoo because doing so leads to the tricky problem of what one does when you break up with them. How to explain it to your next love! (And did the tattoo jinx the relationship etc?) With this tattoo, if I break up with Jo I can just explain it away as decoding to something else (you need to know the secret key to decode it) or just being any random nonsense. How’s that for hedging my bets?!
But wait, now everyone knows what the tattoo means?
Yes, now _that_ is ironic. I’d better stick with Joanna eh!
You said Marry before? Aren’t you already married to Jo?
Yes I am, as my site says “I married the wonderful Joanna Eaton on the 9th of February, 2002 after a 7 month engagement.” So actually what I asked Jo (in all honesty, we’d already both agreed to do it, just like we agreed to get married with no actual proposal as such) was if she’d “be my civil union partner”. Essentially we are changing our marriage to a civil union, very similar, but different enough to make us want to change.
What’s a Civil Union?
A Civil Union is a legal relationship recognized in law in New Zealand. The Civil Union Act 2004 provides the criteria, rules and processes for two people to have their relationship solemnized as a civil union (by way of a formal ceremony) and officially registered in New Zealand. A Civil Union may be entered into by couples of the same sex or by couples of different sexes. The NZ Government website has more information on it. And a FAQ about it is here. To us a civil union is all the commitment of a marriage, without the centuries of baggage (sexism, homophobia…) that marriage means to the many bigots who tout the “family values” banner and have an unhealthy idea of relationships stuck in the past and in scripture. If you want to know more, well talk to us!
If you’re married doesn’t that mean you need to get divorced first?
Nope, “A married couple who wish to continue in a relationship with each other may change the form of that relationship to a civil union without being required to formally dissolve their marriage. For them, the process begins with a ‘Notice of Intended Civil Union, change of relationship from marriage’ form.” as per the government site here
How’d you use the tattoo to ask Jo?
By integrating the text of the tattoo into an ARG I designed and implemented for her.
What is an ARG?
As Wikipedia explains, “An alternate reality game is a cross media game that deliberately blurs the line between the in-game and out-of-game experiences. While games may primarily be centered around online resources, often events that happen inside the game reality will “reach out” into the players’ lives in order to bring them together.”
How did this whole ARG thing work?
So, the basic idea of the ARG and this whole ordeal was to surprise Jo with a proposal. We’d already agreed to do it, as we had with getting married originally. But I felt like Jo would enjoy the surprise/experience of an ARG (she is quite a fan) and traditional romance not being our thing at all, she’d appreciate the post-modern take on it that the ARG and tattoo injected. Plus, very importantly, the idea amused me.
In essence the ARG was a way to introduce Jo to the encryption methods used in the tattoo, which would reveal the tattoo’s meaning (just before she finds out I have got it) and which would then also be used to ask her to be my civil union partner. the specifics of how the ARG worked are below.
- I registered the domain name BxwOHw0SUxgOBAkSUx4OUgoOAREXFx4.com, that is the cipher I was to have tattooed, under an alias.
- I sent Jo an email from the domain under a false name. Inviting her to take part in an ARG. Upon visiting the site (which used a password that was given obliquely in the email) she just had to agree to accepting a week of online training to qualify for the ARG. Luckily she did!
- I planned 5 lessons, Monday through Friday which would teach Jo a different aspect of ciphering, which culminated in her using them to decode the domain name. Each day’s training consisted of some information, examples, suggestions to do some net research and then a test question which determined if she had taken the info in. If she got it right she was told she would hear from the ARG trainer the next day. Luckily she got them all right, despite some fairly hastily written training material on my part!
- Joanna undertook each day’s lessons and my system logged her as having done it so I knew. I sent her an email under the alias in the morning of each weekday to get her to continue. The lessons were: 1) Base64 2) Binary 3) XOR 4) Encoding 5) Final Decoding.
- On Thursday of the week I sent Jo a small package to her work, purportedly from the ARG. It arrived on Friday. Friday’s online training told her not to open it until she had finished that day’s task.
- When she finished she got the answer “thomas loves jo forever” and was then told by the system to open the physical letter, which containing the following (her picture):
- What this consisted of was 2 pages, 1 of instructions and 1 of partly unencrypted information. The first page told her that her last task was to decrypt this final item fully to receive a message. Which was a question. She should open one letter of the two that were enclosed (one marked “yes”, one marked “no”) depending on her answer to the question.
- The question was when decrypted, “Will you be my CUP?!”. CUP standing for “Civil Union Partner”. On opening the “yes” envelope she found a message saying that I had booked a time for our ceremony and signed by me, if she had any doubt who was behind it all at this point!
- This final message also told her to come home after work for one last surprise. Which was me with the cipher tattooed on my forearm. End game.
For Jo’s take on the ARG while it was happening, see these ARG fan message boards here.
So it all worked and stuff?
Yep! We solemnized our civil union on August 22, 2005.
Who did your Tattoo?
Adam at IllicitHQ in Auckland, New Zealand. Great guy, great business, highly recommended.
Are there any “typos”?
hehe no! Adam was particularly careful, for which I am most grateful!
