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Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates

[NEW UPDATE] Dana's blog 8/20

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sfsdfd
Veteran

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 112

missphinx wrote:

I am getting a little pissed off at this Dana person. I was hoping she'd tell us today that she was coming back early from China. To help. She's the one with the computer infected by planet-killing aliens, and she's wandering around eating doughnuts.

In her defense, they're probably really good donuts.

Seriously - taking this game at face value, we have less to lose than she does. A few weeks ago, Melissa was plotting to kill her, and we don't know her intentions for sure. Melissa seems to have no hostility for us, so we can investigate a lot more safely.

- David Stein

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 2:33 pm

vpisteve
Asshatministrator

Joined: 30 Sep 2002
Posts: 2441
Location: 1987

Oooh. Like an Ilovebees Dana calendar?

_________________
Making the world a better place, one less mime at a time.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 2:54 pm

Extrasonic
Decorated

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 233
Location: Suburban Chicago

I give up.

I give up. I am at the limits of my patience with this thing.

Speaking from a meta perspective, we don't know what the hell the coordinates (or whatever they are) on the links.html page mean if they're a puzzle, the PMs know we don't have any rock-solid theory other than showing up at those locations and times, and today's update from Dana is "I'm going to repeat/reinforce the 'things aren't what you think they are' theme of last week's post, but good luck and let me know how that whole 'visiting the axon' thing works out for ya."

So, swallowing my pride, I won't be ashamed to admit that I completely give up on the axon puzzle/evite/whatever it is. If this is what the PMs are giving us, then we're either not smart enough, the puzzle isn't clear enough, or basically they're telling us to sit around and wait until Tuesday. In any of those three scenarios, I'm done with axons.

Maybe the SP will keep things interesting in the meantime...

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:23 pm

johnny5
Entrenched

Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 995
Location: Elysian Fields

GunsmithCat wrote:

We also get:

Quote:

You guys are the ones on the frontlines. So it's your call. Do you want to be there when the axons go hot?

Which could be interepted as "that's nice, but not necessary".

I don't think the current data we have validates any theory. I suppose in the face of no new update, there's no choice but to "go and see" - but I'm skeptical until we get some more info. This is way too vague for me.

Good Googly Moogly!!

Here's the clues I'm going with:
1. The lyrics to T-U-R-T-L-E Power (a clue from the SP) include references to pay phones.
2. "It's your CALL" !!!!
3. I looked up the point closest to me at the payphone lookup and lo and behold there's one right on the corner.

I'm going to be there at the appointed time by gum.

--john--

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:25 pm

johnny5
Entrenched

Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 995
Location: Elysian Fields

johnny_Nitro wrote:

GunsmithCat wrote:

We also get:

Quote:

You guys are the ones on the frontlines. So it's your call. Do you want to be there when the axons go hot?

I guess I won't. The payphones wont accept incoming.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:47 pm

sfsdfd
Veteran

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 112

Re: I give up.

Extrasonic wrote:

I give up. I am at the limits of my patience with this thing.

That is the unfortunate consequence of overanalysis.

I look at the coordinate set, and I see locations and times. Fair enough. The message seems clear to me. I'm happy to spend some spare cycles considering deeper connections, but unless a much clearer message presents itself, I know what to do with the information I've been given.

Yet we've seen heaps and gobs of theories on which people have burned serious brain power:
* Coordinate numbers as encoded message
* A whole lot of really scary-deep math analysis hinged on the number 7 (or 323)
* Mathematical analysis of the address street numbers most closely associated with each coordinate
* Time specifications as Z-axis (altitude) coordinates
* Distances between the coordinates, or between a coordinate and an interesting location (e.g., the location of the ilovebees.com webserver, or Dana's home)
* Roads and highways
* Cell phone towers
* Radio broadcasts
* Television broadcasts
* Wireless computer network broadcasts
* The structure of the Internet backbone
* Constellations
* Satellite fly-bys

I couldn't help but shake my head at most of this. It's true that we have encountered some fiendishly difficult puzzles in the past - but many, perhaps most, puzzles were pretty straightforward. Those that were difficult were never arbitrary, like "We're going to guess that the Beekeepers can take a blind guess that we're giving them a starmap, and let them trawl through a hundred billion galaxy maps to find the right one." We could usually tell what we had to do, even though doing it was difficult.

So when the PMs throw us a data set that has one obvious usage, why not see if that usage works before exploring a thousand other usages with much more speculative links?

Again, it's fine to consider this kind of passively, in the interest of finding something interesting. But people have been fierce about pursuing alternatives - and many are getting personally invested in their specific, deep-left-field theory of choice. Extrasonic is not the the first to express great furstration if if the answer turns out to be as simple as it seems.

My point is simply this: When considering alternatives, try the easiest one first. Don't try the most difficult, unguessable solutions first, and then get frustrated when they don't work. And you (collectively) have no real basis for vitriol if the answer is straightforward... since no one suggested it wasn't.

The PMs want us to succeed at this game. They want us to solve every puzzle. Therefore, they can't make them so arbitrary that we probably won't find the solution.

To rip off Freud: Sometimes a coordinate is just a coordinate.

- David Stein

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:11 pm

Extrasonic
Decorated

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 233
Location: Suburban Chicago

Re: I give up.

sfsdfd wrote:

My point is simply this: When considering alternatives, try the easiest one first. Don't try the most difficult, unguessable solutions first, and then get frustrated when they don't work. And you (collectively) have no real basis for vitriol if the answer is straightforward... since no one suggested it wasn't.

The PMs want us to succeed at this game. They want us to solve every puzzle. Therefore, they can't make them so arbitrary that we probably won't find the solution.

To rip off Freud: Sometimes a coordinate is just a coordinate.

Not to contradict myself, I am done with the axon puzzle - this is just a little AAR. (Although the "action" hasn't really begun yet, but you get my meaning.)

I disagree strongly that "no one suggested" the axon list wasn't straightforward. My opinions:

The axon list was put on the only other page where we've had an honest-to-goodness "go look something up and think about the relationships" puzzle. (links.html)
Not to re-open arguments on other threads like this one: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=57099#57099 but suffice it to say there's not much which can happen at these coordinates that would be compatible with the in-game story, let alone make in-game sense. If I was given a list of GPS coordinates and times with no context whatsoever and asked what I thought it implied, then of course I'd say that the implication is that something will happen at those locations at those times. But since I "know" that these coordinates were written by an AI's helper program and then revised by an AI under the influence of some other virtual being, then the context, backstory, whatever you want to call it makes a physical presence requirement for interacting with virtual beings very, very far-fetched.
Finally, maybe I'm reading too much into Dana's blog posts, but I do believe the moral of the "chocolate-filled donut having meat in it" story and the "cafe that was actually a pirate DVD shop" story - especially when axons are mentioned in nearly the same breath - was to suggest that there are possibilities beyond the obvious one most people are banking on. I don't think there's anything that's on Dana's weblog that's accident or filler - maybe you'd consider this, too, over-analysis?

Disagree as necessary.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:29 pm

msekolpsu
Veteran

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 119

Re: I give up.

sfsdfd wrote:

My point is simply this: When considering alternatives, try the easiest one first. Don't try the most difficult, unguessable solutions first, and then get frustrated when they don't work.

I don't want to speak for Extrasonic and everyone, but I think the puzzlers (especially the numeric - of which I am a member) didn't like the amount of time we had to wait until August 24th just to go somewhere when we could be investing time in working towards a solution.

We want challenging puzzles, not answers given to us for which we just appear. I'm kinda disappointed. I wish I had to triangulate the location based on the coordinates or something.

I stick by my post, that if no one solves this by August 24th, the date passes uneventfully until we figure this out. Still I'm leaning towards the disappointing phone booth solution.

_________________
"Oww! They're defending themselves somehow." � Homer, while being stung by bees

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:31 pm

GhaleonEB
Kilroy

Joined: 20 Aug 2004
Posts: 2

Extrasonic wrote:

I knew something was bothering me about her post. It's thematically consistent with last week's post:

On 8/13 Dana wrote:

Lesson learned: Looks can be deceiving here, even when dealing with something as simple as the donut.

On 8/20 Dana wrote:

So the caf�, of course, was just a cover. And I was amazed. Dumbstruck.

First she tells a story in which she thought something is a donut by looking at it, but it wasn't. Now she's told us a story in which she thought something was a caf� by looking at it, but it wasn't. In my mind (as I've said before), this strongly suggests that the PMs are telling us "you're not looking at what you think you're looking at".

It still doesn't seem like we have enough information to do anything else with the coordinates (unless we get yet another update other than the blog post and the 404 page) but there has to be more to this. There has to be!
_{Or maybe I just really want there to be...}

I agree with this. I've been following this saga closely, and though I would register to throw in one suggestion. Do these points correstpond closely to any star-maps? Such as near earth, or including our solar system? Do the big cities correspond to large stars, etc?

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:37 pm

Extrasonic
Decorated

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 233
Location: Suburban Chicago

Re: I give up.

msekolpsu wrote:

This is also true - for better or worse, this community has been focused on the axons since they appeared, almost to the exclusion of all else. If all there is to this whole subplot is "show up", then it seems to me like it's the PM's equivalent of a "gone fishin'" sign (and therefore, disappointing).

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:39 pm

GunsmithCat
Unfettered

Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

Re: I give up.

Extrasonic wrote:

msekolpsu wrote:

While I agree somewhat ... if this does end up being a series of phone calls made by an AI:

If we hadn't spec'd about it, people might not have looked for it when they got. Granted, it some of these hours, it might be the only thing you hear. But I think one of the Clark St. Chicago ones is around noon. About that time, if you were standing on the wrong part of the street you might not even notice the phone ring.

I definitely agree there's been too much focus on the Axon problem (which I why I ignored it until the awareness/age threads ran out of some steam) - but I'm thinking that just "show up and wait" might not have worked at all locations.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:44 pm

551
Guest

Re: I give up.

Extrasonic wrote:

My point is simply this: When considering alternatives, try the easiest one first. Don't try the most difficult, unguessable solutions first, and then get frustrated when they don't work.

Don't forget, a lot of people were working on the obvious solution, spending a great deal of time scouting out the locations and speculating on minute details which got us nowhere. Also remember we weren't given these times to begin with, and some of the original coordinates made no sense whatsoever (which still stands).

What do you do when the obvious solution doesn't work? Scratch your head bare 'til something useful pops out.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:45 pm

dreamless
Greenhorn

Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 3

Here's my hope: that once the axons catch fire we won't have time to be disappointed that visiting the locations was all it was--that whatever happens there opens the door for a much larger puzzle and actually kicks the game into gear.

Cut them some slack. Whatever happens, this isn't the end.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:46 pm

sfsdfd
Veteran

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 112

Re: I give up.

Extrasonic wrote:

The axon list was put on the only other page where we've had an honest-to-goodness "go look something up and think about the relationships" puzzle. (links.html)

Sure, but again, that puzzle is straightforward. You see a URL. What do you do with it? You visit it and see what's there. Given coordinates and a time, what do you do with it? You visit the location and see what's there.

Focusing on the mathematical relationship between coordinates would have been like Netcrafting the servers hosting the provided URLs, and focusing on the number of servers running IIS vs. Apache. It's much more complex and arbitrary than simply using the data provided in the usual way.

The more complex methods should be considered if the simplest one failed. If we visit the coords on Axon Day and find nothing at all interesting, then that is the time to break into the more speculative theories. Burning yourself out on them before then is kind of pointless. (That's a hypothetical "yourself," not you, Extrasonic.)

Extrasonic wrote:

Not to re-open arguments on other threads like this one: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=57099#57099 but suffice it to say there's not much which can happen at these coordinates that would be compatible with the in-game story, let alone make in-game sense.

And while I don't want to re-open that discussion either, I'll just reiterate that making the in-game connection isn't our job. Our job is to find and solve puzzles. The altitude map at the end of the AI ARG wasn't solved by pondering its in-game connection (in fact, there wasn't one.) We were given a map and told to use clay. If you did that, you solved the puzzle (er, kinda... it didn't work too well.)

Extrasonic wrote:

Finally, maybe I'm reading too much into Dana's blog posts, but I do believe the moral of the "chocolate-filled donut having meat in it" story and the "cafe that was actually a pirate DVD shop" story...

And a whole lot of people have leapt overboard to amazing conclusions, based on sketchy links to a few unrelated pieces of text. Consider the spec that since SP once described the axons as "roads," we should all bust out Rand McNally and intricately analyze highways between coordinates.

But Dana clearly sets forth the point of the story: "I guess I feel like, in a way, you're all being invited to a mysterious back room, too." The point of the story seems plain: it's setting the stage, building up tension. Half of the fun of these games is in the atmosphere they create, via techniques like mysterious phone calls. The anticipation makes the payoff more fun.

If you want to read into it an implicit message, like "don't expect anything there" - you'll have to overcome the explicit messages:

"Those coordinates... and now the times that go with them... they're beckoning to some of you, aren't they? When the axons go hot, you're going to be there. I think that's very brave. And I'm incredibly grateful. ... You guys are the ones on the frontlines."

- David Stein

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:59 pm

GunsmithCat
Unfettered

Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

Re: I give up.

sfsdfd wrote:

What annoys me about this is your smug attitude that all you had to do is sit back and wait (while all the time you couldn't help "debating" these theories you're chastising us for thinking so much about).

Problem is - your method leaves you with no idea of what you're looking for. You're just assuming the PMs will make it obvious for you because it's in their best interest.

What if it hadn't been obvious? And what if it wasn't in their best interest?

We're not going to have people at all 210 places. So whatever message or clue or present is probably going to be the same in every place. So why do the PMs care if everyone get it? They probably don't.

Yes, I assume if all of us are still wrong and it's still some unexpected thing, at least one of us here would have found/heard/seen it and reported back.

Chances are - even if all of us had taken your attitude, we'd probably still be OK.

But it turns out to be something like pay phones, or something that spec'ing has thought of - then people are better off knowing what to look for, more people will probably find it, and we're probably better off as a community for it.

I guess my point is - if people want to go speculating X about Y, just let them. On the radio broadcast thread you bascially bludgeoned your mantra about your belief in the PMs. If I'd listen to you and the thread just died, probably never would have gotten the connection between pay phones and the theory.

Maybe you think your assumptions are "safe". But then again, if we all followed that assumption and on the 24th turned up empty handed simply because we didn't look hard enough for evidence, we'd be "screwed".

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 5:01 pm

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