Return to Unfiction unforum
 a.r.g.b.b 
FAQ FAQ   Search Search 
 
Welcome!
New users, PLEASE read these forum guidelines. New posters, SEARCH before posting and read these rules before posting your killer new campaign. New players may also wish to peruse the ARG Player Tutorial.

All users must abide by the Terms of Service.
Website Restoration Project
This archiving project is a collaboration between Unfiction and Sean Stacey (SpaceBass), Brian Enigma (BrianEnigma), and Laura E. Hall (lehall) with
the Center for Immersive Arts.
Announcements
This is a static snapshot of the
Unfiction forums, as of
July 23, 2017.
This site is intended as an archive to chronicle the history of Alternate Reality Games.
  

The time now is Sun Nov 17, 2024 5:26 pm
All times are UTC - 4 (DST in action)		 View posts in this forum since last visit
View unanswered posts in this forum
Calendar
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » ARG: Find the Lost Ring
[RING][PUZZLE]Eli Hunt/Secret site
View previous topicView next topic
Page 15 of 32 [470 Posts]   Goto page: Previous 1, 2, 3, ..., 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, ..., 30, 31, 32  Next
Author Message
riquardo
Decorated

Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 280
Quote:
The one thing I keep wondering about... there are a few data points on the secret site, out of the thousands, that are marked differently than the others. But what makes them different? I have a feeling that we have to figure out exactly what location they represent in order to unlock the real purpose of the site...


Ariadne updated her last blog post with info about the "secret" of Eli and the website with the rotating globe. This last (quoted) piece is hinting at us to find other cities like Stephenville.

So some people are trying danish cities, others german ones... we should start organizing and write down each city we try (exactly as input in the log) so we don't waste time and resources trying things others haver already failed. This way we can cover more ground (literally!).

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 8:57 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
aliendial
Unfictologist


Joined: 29 Sep 2002
Posts: 3438
Location: Far Far Away. Nowhere Near You. Really.

 		*waits patiently for Ariadne to act on the information Ariock sent her*
_________________
aliendial

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:21 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
sapagoo
Charter Member


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 1213
Location: Atlanta, GA
Rogi Ocnorb wrote:
That globe makes more than just my head spin.
Which Dongying was it that sapagoo found?
Do we have coordinates?
There are several in China and I'm just trying to do some measuring with this site to see if it's coming out anywhere near factors of 110km or in roughly "even" kilometers. Incidentally, it reports 3,799.9 km for Stephenville to Stuartfield.

I was checking the Dongying that lies Southeast of Beijing, in the Shandong province.
Wikipedia lists it as 37° 27′ N, 118° 28' E

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:23 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
ARG Whor
Guest
aliendial wrote:
*waits patiently for Ariadne to act on the information Ariock sent her*


LOL!

So here's some spec--First something obvious, but I'm mentioning it because it hasn't specifically been posted yet.

The location of each green dot will need to be associated with one of our agonothetai's locations (e.g., Stephenville/Cardiff.) I've tried Dongying and Lunglei with each of the agon's locations, and none worked (I'm sure others have done this as well), so I guess we're missing something, or maybe it just doesn't work with the red dots.

Perhaps there is more than one green dot now (although personally I've never been able to see ANY, only the red dots.) But maybe (pure spec): Once Ariadne finds the artifact at the Town Hall in Cardiff, whatever's inside will "confirm" another artifact, which will hep us unlock one of the red dots--Omphalos 2. Perhaps Eli Hunt's initial artifact had already turned Stephenville green when he found it?

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:34 am
 Back to top 
xnbomb
Unfettered


Joined: 13 Oct 2003
Posts: 660
Location: J302B S8JDC
AUZ505 wrote:
Very nice, xnbomb. What kind of tool do you use, especially for the loxodromes? It might be very useful in future, now that e know that loxodromes are the clue.

The maps I posted above were made in ArcGIS, which unfortunately is not free (I have access to it from my work). However, I did find a loxodrome calculator that looks to be pretty good at marking the spot.

Trying to construct representations of loxodromes of a particular length was a real pain though, and this got me thinking about what may have happened here. When you're working in the Mercator projection, making a rhumb line is easy enough (since the property of the projection is that it is simply a straight line), the problem is figuring out how long it should be. This is because measuring a distance along a Mercator projected map is pretty problematic: The nature of the projection is such that it preserves constant bearing, and this distorts the three other major figure characteristics (length, area, and shape). This becomes the case for Mercator moreso the greater the latitude in question (thus Greenland looks much bigger than it should be) because the parallels of latitude get further and further apart and meridians on longitude never come together (transforming the poles from points to lines) to maintain the property of true bearing.

The only way you can measure a length accurately on a Mercator projected map is to compensate for the distortion, as a function of latitude. And as it turns out, the math for that is not so much fun, because to do it really accurately it must be integrated over the range of latitudes of the line in question to account for the fact that the distortion is continuously variable by latitude (this is a good reference). If you search around a little (under Mercator Sailing mostly, the real practical use of loxodromes is if you want to get somewhere by following a course of constant bearing because you have a compass and steering a Great Circle course is a pain because of the continuous bearing change) you'll find a couple of common approximations, one that uses the initial latitude to calculate the correction factor, another that uses the mid-point latitude, and still others that will break down the loxodrome into a series of meridional parts, and calculate the length of each part. As usual, this kind of thing matters more when you are traversing long distance and a significant amount of latitude.

This got me wondering how the folks who constructed this loxodrome did their compensation math. And the fact of the matter is that I think that they didn't: Based on Lysithea's post, I bet they took stadia to be 190 meters in length, used a Great Circle calculator to come up with the distance, and some sort of loxodrome-styled method (probably measuring an angle on a Mercator projected map) to come up with the direction. Using a Great Circle notion of distance in combination with a loxodrome notion of direction is really weird; as the maps show on the previous page, over that distance the two are not even remotely the same. I still wonder why they would have come up with a bearing of 84 degrees rather than 85, but some things are not meant to be known.

For my part, I finally came up with the length of my loxodromes for display by constructing them in the Mercator projection such that they were longer than they had to be, reprojecting them to a projection that does have a property of accurate length, and cutting them down to size. I was pleased to find that my method pretty much agrees with that loxodrome calculator that I am guessing does the fully integrated latitude distortion compensation correctly.
_________________
My location is a little tricky, but sooner or later, you'll get the knack.

{J302B S8JDC, 8996N M8L4W, 92D40 Q1JX5, 4PPRN R2B97, 8DC7C NZJNV, 8CH7V Q891H}

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:44 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Weezel
Unfettered


Joined: 01 Sep 2006
Posts: 420
Location: National Park, NJ
xnbomb wrote:

Trying to construct representations of loxodromes of a particular length was a real pain though, and this got me thinking about what may have happened here.


Which means you're nominated for the next one too. Smile Yeah engineers....

.W.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:49 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
xnbomb
Unfettered


Joined: 13 Oct 2003
Posts: 660
Location: J302B S8JDC
Weezel wrote:
Which means you're nominated for the next one too. Smile Yeah engineers....

Engineers? No sir, I am a Geographic Information Scientist!

/me puffs up his chest in mock pride

As imbri has observed on occasion, there are a disproportionate number of GIS types who frequent these forums. Two of them even have GIS inspired usernames Wink .

EDIT - Grammar, tense agreement, spelling ... that stuff
_________________
My location is a little tricky, but sooner or later, you'll get the knack.

{J302B S8JDC, 8996N M8L4W, 92D40 Q1JX5, 4PPRN R2B97, 8DC7C NZJNV, 8CH7V Q891H}

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:53 am
Last edited by xnbomb on Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:58 am; edited 3 times in total
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Avatrix
Unfettered


Joined: 20 Aug 2004
Posts: 413
Location: Boston, MA
xnbomb wrote:
Weezel wrote:
Which means you're nominated for the next one too. Smile Yeah engineers....

Engineers? No sir, I am a Geographic Information Scientist!

/me puffs up his chest in mock pride

As imbri has observed on occasion, there are disproportionate number of us who frequent these forums. Two of them even have GIS inspired usernames Wink .

Ha! I was going to say, VectorB seems to do that, and I know he's GIS. I haven't seen MapMaker around in a while, though I haven't been in IRC in ages.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:55 am
 View user's profile AIM Address Yahoo Messenger
 Back to top 
danteIL
Unfictologist


Joined: 08 May 2006
Posts: 1990
xnbomb wrote:
Based on Lysithea's post, I bet they took stadia to be 190 meters in length


Wow!! I love getting edumacated on stuff like this! Great job.

Also, apparently the length of a stadia can vary a lot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadia

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:55 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Lysithea
Unfettered


Joined: 04 Feb 2004
Posts: 468
Location: Australia
xnbomb wrote:
The maps I posted above were made in ArcGIS, which unfortunately is not free (I have access to it from my work). However, I did find a loxodrome calculator that looks to be pretty good at marking the spot.

Trying to construct representations of loxodromes of a particular length was a real pain though, and this got me thinking about what may have happened here.
...

Excellent post xnbomb. Very Happy
Thank you for taking the time to explain things to those of us who aren't Geographic Information Scientistists.
_________________
"Some people grow into their dreams instead of out of them." - Miles Vorkosigan

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 11:23 am
 View user's profile Yahoo Messenger
 Back to top 
ariock
Has a Posse


Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 762
Location: SF East Bay

 		I'm attaching the email I sent to Ariadne. I didn't know if this was the best place to post this, but didn't see another thread and it's a little early to make a new thread for it.

Ariock wrote:
Subject: FOUND IT!
My friend rangerd mentioned an email you'd sent, and I made a guess. I typed in:
STEPHENVILLE/CARDIFF

And it responded:
Artifact Location Identified
City Hall
Entrance Hall
Bureau
Affixed underside top drawer

I think you might need to go there and see what is waiting for you!
I can't wait to hear!


No response yet. Hopefully she's either on her way or already there and making a video or editing it or posting it on YouTube and is too busy to write an email.

EDIT!

Just got a response!

Ariadne wrote:
Oh my god i'm on my way!! I think it's still open!!

_________________
"It says, 'Let's BEE friends'...and there's a picture of a bee!" -Ralph Wiggum
When the Apocalypse comes, it'll be in base64.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 12:14 pm
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
kosmopol
I Never Tire of My Own Voice


Joined: 27 Aug 2007
Posts: 3167

 		Wow, ariock! And another people - you do great things!

I wonder what she'll find....

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 12:37 pm
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
Lysithea
Unfettered


Joined: 04 Feb 2004
Posts: 468
Location: Australia
ariock wrote:
Just got a response!

Ariadne wrote:
Oh my god i'm on my way!! I think it's still open!!
Nice work ariock. Very Happy

[SPEC]The artifact could be a DVD (given that it fits under a drawer). It might have a video of the next artifact location.
Or there might be an envelope bearing the number 15874 containing a small amount of wheat.[/SPEC]
_________________
"Some people grow into their dreams instead of out of them." - Miles Vorkosigan

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:15 pm
 View user's profile Yahoo Messenger
 Back to top 
backspace124
Boot


Joined: 11 Mar 2008
Posts: 15

 		man i wish i was as smart as you guys

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:21 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
sapagoo
Charter Member


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 1213
Location: Atlanta, GA
Mirkomick wrote:
Mirkomick wrote:
I yesterday focused on the german baltic coastal side, from Lübeck to Stralsund and had no hits (actually sorry for not mentioning that I guessed the red dot actually appeared to be in norhtern germany to me Smile ) I will later try some cities form Lübeck northway to Flensburg, it really looks like it is somewhere in that area but then again, it might be anywhere in a 500km radius there, and that is a huge place to cover


Still haven't found any match

I created a wiki page http://olympics.wikibruce.com/Denmark_Attempts
That you can access from The Secret page
It's got everything I've tried to check.
Most of it is northern Germany.
If any wants to help they can
a) re-attempt all my attempts, make sure I didn't mistype or skip any
b) get out a list or map, and make your own attempts & add to the list
c) find the German/Danish spellings and try
d) plot all on a map, to see if any small cities were missed.
(Lunglei is a town, population 47,355
Dongying is a city, population 1,768,116
Stephenville is a town, population 6,500)

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:45 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Display posts from previous:   Sort by:   
Page 15 of 32 [470 Posts]   Goto page: Previous 1, 2, 3, ..., 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, ..., 30, 31, 32  Next
View previous topicView next topic
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » ARG: Find the Lost Ring
Jump to:  


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum
You cannot post calendar events in this forum



Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group