Today the DNA kit came for the Genographic Project from National Geographic after many many months of waiting. The problem was that it was shipped to the wrong address so I never received it. I e-mailed National Geographic and it was sorted right away and a new kit was shipped. 

 The kit contains a DVD with a National Geographic episode detailing the human genome project and information on how the test works, such as what DNA markers the test looks for. It also contains the necessary cell sampling equipment. There are two swabs and two tubes to store them in.

The idea is to scrape the inside of my cheek on two different occasions to gather enough cell samples to get enough DNA to test with. Then it’s time to place the swab inside the container, and tomorrow do it again for the second sample.

The rest of the pictures are here…

I came accross a cryptography page recently, and decided to give it a shot. This was a basic letter replacement one, which was made fairly simple because word spaces were included. Here is the first one I did.

MTF IWNNXK ZJ TZM HZO DWQI GVQ ZWM.  TWQOGK JVQI TVH MZ TZXH MTFYG HZOI YQ HYIPVGHFH EWMWFX MYPUFMI.

It took me a hour and a half to solve, but was happy that I did manage to do it. Here is another interesting thing I found, it seems Poe enjoyed Cryptography a fair amount.

http://www.bokler.com/eapoe_challengesolution.html 

So I have decided to do my part for humanity and sign up for the National Georaphic Genographic Project. It will be interesting to discover the roots of my DNA, what parts are present that created the person I am now. I will update this post as the kit comes to me and I do my swab and recieve the results.