The other day, the question came up: What does the Revision logo mean?

I am curious about that, too – I had already been pondering about the deeper meaning in 2013 (see the source code of doppelhirn):

// I always assumed the revision logo contains an encoded string in
// the 5 bits used. Either I am missing something, or that string is
// "FDLNDFEAEMLFDF DLFBRSP".

var logo =
  "   0                 000000         "+
  "000000000000000000000000000000000000"+
  "   000000      00  0       0  0   00"+
  "                                    "+
  "000000000000000000000000000000000000"+
  "       000000  000000000  0000000000"+
  "         0          00        000   "+
  "  0000                              "+
  "000000000000000000000000000000000000";

IIRC, when I asked around back then, the answer was “it’s nothing specific, it should just look cool”.

Anticipating, nay!, fearing a definite answer in the Revision orga chat where the question came up again, I wanted to have another shot at it before the mystery was revealed.

Break the cycle, erm, circle

The logo consists of concentric circles and looks like it may contain a bunch of rotary encoded bits:

I was already halfway into writing a tool to extract the possible bit combinations when it dawned on me: Un-circle an image to a rectangular representation? That’s a polar coordinate conversion, and there’s a Photoshop filter for that!

What the bits

First observation: This doesn’t seem to be very regular, neither horizontally nor vertically:

Second observation: My code representation was all wrong! Well, at least not completely accurate, but I think nobody noticed…

Thirdly, I’m really starting to think there’s no hidden message encoded in the logo… But let’s look at the bits.

Errm… Which bits, exactly? Shall we omit the columns full of ones resp. zeroes? Do we ignore the slight overlap in the center?

What are we even looking for? An ASCII string? Relative to which character, shall we interpret 00001 as A?

You decide! I think I’ve spent way too much time on this, and all I got was “EGOWUQUMEGOGEMABZJIMOGEAEM”. :)

Bit fiddler

Search for a deeper meaning yourself if you have JavaScript enabled…

Bits to use	A B C D E F G H I J K
Invert	Switch 0 and 1
Reverse	Reverse bit order
Flip	Change scan order (clockwise, counter clockwise)
Offset	Base character (hexadecimal, 41 = A etc.)
String	...

Manual recalc (should be automatic, though)

Source bits	Effective bits	Hex	Decimal	As character
01001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
11001111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
11001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
11001000010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
11001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001000010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001001110	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
11101001110	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101001110	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101000010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001111010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001000010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01001100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A
01101100010	0000000000	00	0	00 = A