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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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clamatius
Decorated

Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 209
Location: Seattle

Quote:

That would be enormously stupid and alienating to players such as myself who are a good solid 12+ hour drive away (Texas) from any "Axon Point".

Only a few people got the ILB seed mail (the letters in honey), but it's not as though it alienated everyone else.

If something does happen on B-day, it's possible that it's only going to be useful in aggregate anyway and the whole fun will be putting the pieces together.

_________________
Check out my [URL=http://clamatius.blogspot.com/]blog[/URL] for my latest ILB stuff.
The [URL=http://ilb.extrasonic.com]Fireflies Wiki[/URL] is now open!

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:26 pm

sfsdfd
Veteran

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 112

hamatoyoshi wrote:

To quote myself from the Payphone Thread:

Quote:

So now that I can lookup these payphones' numbers and I know what time to call, what's to stop me from pranking every payphone at the given time?

Heh! D'oh! I hadn't considered that!

Well, if you want to get your ass up at 6:11am PDT to talk to me at 9:11am in Cleveland, I'll tty then. Very Happy

- David Stein

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:26 pm

Atoner
Veteran

Joined: 28 Jul 2004
Posts: 136

clamatius wrote:

Quote:

That would be enormously stupid and alienating to players such as myself who are a good solid 12+ hour drive away (Texas) from any "Axon Point".

Yeah, you're missing my point... the OP was saying that it was meant as a reward to those who could show up at the Axon Points. I think that particular theory would suck for those of us who care about the game but not enough to drive for half a day and miss work. I have no problem with puzzle pieces being given to "certain folk", just not some sort of special participation prize.

-Atoner-

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:29 pm

hamatoyoshi
Veteran

Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 127

sfsdfd wrote:

hamatoyoshi wrote:

To quote myself from the Payphone Thread:

Quote:

So now that I can lookup these payphones' numbers and I know what time to call, what's to stop me from pranking every payphone at the given time?

Heh! D'oh! I hadn't considered that!

Well, if you want to get your ass up at 6:11am PDT to talk to me at 9:11am in Cleveland, I'll tty then. Very Happy

- David Stein

I'm EST too. =)

You still owe me my Halo 2 demo when they give one to you. I'll be calling about it.

Though if I know the payphone number, how 'bout I call you at the waypoint like 5 minutes after the fact to ask what went on?

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:31 pm

sfsdfd
Veteran

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 112

hamatoyoshi wrote:

I'm EST too. =)

Whoops, you are, that's right.

hamatoyoshi wrote:

You still owe me my Halo 2 demo when they give one to you. I'll be calling about it.

You just do that. And I'll send you the CD in a tupperware container full of honey. ... it makes good packing material, and I wouldn't want the CD to get damaged...

hamatoyoshi wrote:

Though if I know the payphone number, how 'bout I call you at the waypoint like 5 minutes after the fact to ask what went on?

Or how 'bout you hop on here 5 mins after the appointed time? The first point is on the campus of CWRU, which has a kickass WiFi network, so I expect to be posting the results like immediately after, well, whatever.

- David Stein

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:34 pm

Knight Hawk
Boot

Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 22
Location: Earth

We do have, what about 4 days time till the axons go hot. I think it's definite time to ask the SP what to do. DM and the others whos questions she has included in the 404 page should send new e-mails asking her if being at the GPS locations of the axons will reveal anything.

_________________
Yesterday is just a dream I don't remember...
Tommorow..still hope I've yet to indulge..

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:34 pm

clamatius
Decorated

Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 209
Location: Seattle

Quote:

We do have, what about 4 days time till the axons go hot.

Hmm, wasn't there a handy countdown somewhere so we can keep track?

*ducks and runs* Razz

FWIW, I did email her asking whether she knew what the Queen wanted to do with her shiny new patchwork body.

_________________
Check out my [URL=http://clamatius.blogspot.com/]blog[/URL] for my latest ILB stuff.
The [URL=http://ilb.extrasonic.com]Fireflies Wiki[/URL] is now open!

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:40 pm

GunsmithCat
Unfettered

Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

Re: I give up.

sfsdfd wrote:

(sigh) Common response from someone who's proven wrong on an issue they've taken too personally - lash out at the other side. I will note that you've been rude throughout our discussion - to the point of asking me to leave "your" thread. I think you're taking this game too seriously.

Quote me being rude. You wanted to debate a priori knowledge of the PMs and I asked if you wanted to do that to make another thread.

Most of your posts to the radio thread made it clear you hadn't thought about the spec and probably didn't even bother reading it. Your first post completely ignored one of the main points. You had just made a decision that such specs were silly, that you knew what the PMs were thinking and we shouldn't be wasting our time.

As for being wrong, at least I tried to speculate. I'm happy to be wrong about something which is rationally brought forward and rationally debated.

Quote:

Then it would have been a lousy puzzle with a high chance of failing and thereby turning off the entire audience for this game.

Actually what would turn off this whole audience is not to have something to chew on and think about. You're suggesting we don't have to think about it, just take all the data at face value and show up. If that's all there is to this ARG, I'll be turned off quickly.

Quote:

Heh. If I showed up in a designated 10-foot radius in Cleveland, and at exactly 9:10am a pay phone five feet away started ringing... you believe I wouldn't think to answer it? Interesting.

Ever been on Clark street in Chicago at noon? Interesting.

Quote:

I, otoh, trust that everyone here has a brain sufficient to catch whatever the PMs are going to toss us next Tuesday.

I see, and people who might just be standing in the wrong place or missing the wrong detail are morons. It couldn't possibly be because they're in a busy place. Or didn't think about going into a building.

Quote:

GunsmithCat wrote:

If I'd listen to you and the thread just died, probably never would have gotten the connection between pay phones and the theory.

Yes, thanks to your discussion of radio frequencies, we're all on the lookout for pay phones. Otherwise, we would just have let them ring, and not thought to answer them.

I guess the several other threads discussing pay phones would have had nothing to do with it, either. It's just because of your thread about radios.

- David Stein

See, even now you refuse to admit that having additional data would help the hunt.

And did was I taking credit? No. I said I wouldn't have made the connection, and I'm a lot more solid about the pay phone idea now because of it.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:43 pm

Extrasonic
Decorated

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

Re: I give up.

sfsdfd wrote:

Also, keep in mind that even the original coords were extremely well-fit to population centers. If visiting these locations wasn't part of the plan, why bother with this? Why not choose them in arbitrary spots, like the middle of the Appalachians?

You're drawing me closer and closer to working on this puzzle again... must... resist... Smile

Seriously, though, this could just as easily be because the locations themselves might be significant even though visiting them isn't. I actually floated a theory a while ago that, for all of the reasons implied by the great GPS-education you provided in your post, all of the points should be in the U.S. for ease of finding data about them on the web, not for ease of visiting them. This is consistent with the GPS inconsistency problem you mentioned, the increasing precision of the GPS data, the references to roads and seas that imply Earth's geography is important, etc. and it lets everyone play.

Anyway, I said I was done with this puzzle and I mean it. Really. Smile

sfsdfd wrote:

Extrasonic wrote:

I don't think it's that far of a leap to say that two consecutive blog posts which both have the format of "wow, I thought something was X and then it was Y - let's talk about axons now!" is meaningful.

Yeah, I think this is what the literary criticism books call an "unreliable narrator".

Heh - you can't have it both ways to support two separate arguments - not simultaneously, anyway. You can't simultaneously say she doesn't know what's at the coordinates, and thus can't knowledgeably encourage us to visit, and that she does know what's (not) at the coordinates, and thus is implying that we shouldn't consider them event locations.

I don't think the logic here is inconsistent. I'm saying that Dana, the character, is saying she has no idea what's going on and that Dana's weblog posts, the PM tool, are structured in such a way that say "Things aren't what they seem... now here's some discussions of axons."

I'd be really very curious to hear your opinion of the stuff you didn't quote from my post, which was:

Extrasonic wrote:

Making the comparison between the blog post structure and Rand McNally is unfair and flawed. I don't think it's that far of a leap to say that two consecutive blog posts which both have the format of "wow, I thought something was X and then it was Y - let's talk about axons now!" is meaningful. If you disagree, then either you're only adhering to your "the simplest answer is right" dogma when it's convenient, or you have a much, much higher tolerance for coincidence than I do.

Do you disagree that the blog post structure of a parable where things aren't what they seem introducing a passage about axons is meaningful? If so, then why?

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:48 pm

Jacqueline
Boot

Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 23

Yikes. Looks like it's getting pretty ugly here, so I'll keep this brief.

Quote:

Kind of creepy how many of them turned out to be near my hometown (and your hometowns, too, from what I hear!)...

This tells me that the PMs did make an effort to make the locations halfway accessible to the players, or at least the more 'active' players who were e-mailing Dana or the Princess; I kind of wish I'd gotten onboard with this a few days earlier so I could have had one near me. (oh well, I probably would've been stuck at work anyway)

*slowly backs away from the thread...and goes for a bucket of popcorn*

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:54 pm

sfsdfd
Veteran

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 112

Re: I give up.

GunsmithCat wrote:

As for being wrong, at least I tried to speculate. I'm happy to be wrong about something which is rationally brought forward and rationally debated.

Likewise, and I'd never fault someone for it, right or wrong. It is inappropriate to get hostile and aggressive when people suggest reasons why your theory is implausible, or logistically impossible.

GunsmithCat wrote:

You're suggesting we don't have to think about it, just take all the data at face value and show up. If that's all there is to this ARG, I'll be turned off quickly.

I just don't get what you are expecting. Must every step in this game involve a leap of sheer brilliance? Isn't it more likely to involve a range of puzzles - some easy, some hard, some little more than experiences - all of which are designed to be solvable without arbitary logic?

GunsmithCat wrote:

Ever been on Clark street in Chicago at noon? Interesting.

Oh, come on. You're not even trying now.

99.99999% of the people on a busy street are headed somewhere, and aren't looking for anything unusual. They're often in a hurry, so they wouldn't even stop for anything unusual.

We, otoh, are being precisely positioned at a certain point, and told to watch for something unusual at a precise minute. Our expectations and awareness are likely to be a bit different than your typical pedestrian.

GunsmithCat wrote:

I said I wouldn't have made the connection, and I'm a lot more solid about the pay phone idea now because of it.

That's great... except, if I remember correctly, you're not hitting any of the coordinates. :shrug:

I get the sense that this particular conversation, thankfully, is winding down.

- David Stein

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:56 pm

GunsmithCat
Unfettered

Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

Re: I give up.

sfsdfd wrote:

Never said it did. I'm just saying it doesn't harm things by letting different people take different angles at different assumptions. I never really though the puzzle group would pan anything out, because I couldn't see why a puzzle would need a deadline. But they might have found something which helped out something down the road, or explained something else. For all I know, they had the radio frequencies I had been looking for. They didn't.

Quote:

GunsmithCat wrote:

Ever been on Clark street in Chicago at noon? Interesting.

Because you aren't bothering to think about what I'm saying and you have no experience with what I'm talking about.

I lived in Wrigleyville for 5 years. Probably been on Clark street thousands of times. Never really noticed a pay phone, never really looked for one. Without a GPS tracker, if I had been given these coordinates, I would have been outside looking for some clue.

On noon. On Clark street. Cars, people, cell phones. Easily able to be distracted from a ringing phone a couple closed doors away.

The Sun-Times one is at least outside. Course, it's a lot busier downtown. But then again, I think it's early AM for that point. Lot less busy then.

My point isn't that if people hadn't spec'd about it, we would have failed this puzzle. Yes, I think the PMs have our backs.

My point is that with the spec, more people are likely to succeed and have fun with it.

Quote:

That's great... except, if I remember correctly, you're not hitting any of the coordinates. :shrug:

Yeah. I have a job. What's your point here, exactly? I scouted the sites I could, I spec'd the theories I thought had some merit and I did a good deal of research.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 7:18 pm

sfsdfd
Veteran

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 112

Re: I give up.

Extrasonic wrote:

You're drawing me closer and closer to working on this puzzle again... must... resist... Smile

Heh - just bottle up your enthusiasm for the weekend, so we can crack it open later.

Extrasonic wrote:

Seriously, though, this could just as easily be because the locations themselves might be significant even though visiting them isn't.

A striking number of these spots do have some sort of bee-related connection. (But a whole lot of them don't.) So that kind of analysis may be in store next week.

Extrasonic wrote:

I said I was done with this puzzle and I mean it.

[giant] Anybody want a peanut? [/giant]

Sorry, couldn't resist. Very Happy

Extrasonic wrote:

:shrug: I can't respond to this without repeating myself (i.e., if the PMs can speak through Dana's posts, then their clearest message has been to direct us to visit each coord at the appointed time), but your point is taken.

Extrasonic wrote:

I'm just generally skeptical about inferential conclusions as the basis for ARG speculation. I've seen a flood of it in this game, and in the Evan Chan/A.I. game, and very rarely has it panned out to anything meaningful.

I think there's a good reason for that: because PMs don't tend to utilize inference as the source of puzzle-solving information. It's a very subjective vector. This results in low yield from both ends: if you rely on it to send a message, there's a good chance no one will get it; and if you trawl through messages looking for inferences, you're likely to reach a whole lot of baseless or incorrect conclusions.

Extrasonic wrote:

Do you disagree that the blog post structure of a parable where things aren't what they seem introducing a passage about axons is meaningful? If so, then why?

I can't agree that it must be meaningful - how's that? Maybe so; maybe not.

Perhaps the better question is: Taking into account the message that "things are not as they seem," how would we make any practical use of it? How a statement this broad, general, and vague be specifically used? Do we start requestioning every fact that we've been given? That would only serve to muddy the game by shattering the group into a thousand small camps, each with its own theories of which facts are correct and which aren't.

So - as inferences go, the post structure is a good one. But I'm generally a huge skeptic of inferential conclusions like this. And I think it's completely possible that the donut instance was just a funny story, and that the second was more intended as: "Prepare to find something cool, and neat, and unexpected."

- David Stein

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 7:23 pm

Shad0
I Have No Life

Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2180
Location: Southern California, USA

Re: I give up.

sfsdfd wrote:

Extrasonic wrote:

I said I was done with this puzzle and I mean it.

[giant] Anybody want a peanut? [/giant]

Dang. Now I have to stop reading the forums and get to work "right quick on the double," because everyone here is wondering why I just spurted water all over my monitor through my nose. And it's all your fault.

"Inconceivable!"

_________________
These were the puzzles that would take a day, these were puzzles that would take a week, and these puzzles they'd probably never figure out until we broke down and gave them the answers. ... The Cloudmakers solved all of these puzzles on the first day.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 7:28 pm

sfsdfd
Veteran

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 112

Re: I give up.

GunsmithCat wrote:

I'm just saying it doesn't harm things by letting different people take different angles at different assumptions.

Absolutely. But it's also essential to look at those ideas critically, from several angles: Would this fit the story? (yours does, pretty well.) Can we act on this speculation? (not easily, and it's riddled with problems.) How can we expect this to play out in the event? (with great difficulty, given the logistics.)

I know that you know this. The reason I bring it up is because that's what I was doing: suggesting reasons why the PMs probably haven't included radios in their Axon Day machinations. The more I discussed the flaws in the theory, the more hostile you became - and, admittedly, that made me more motivated to demonstrate those and other flaws.

GunsmithCat wrote:

On noon. On Clark street. Cars, people, cell phones. Easily able to be distracted from a ringing phone a couple closed doors away.

:shrug: So it's a busy street intersection. It's hardly the only one in America. Cleveland has two or three of those, too.

I have three responses:

1) Not every coordinate is at a horribly busy intersection.

2) Fortunately, even for those that are so located, we're not being told to wander around a crowded city block and look for something unusual. We've been given GPS coordinates with six decimals of precision. Sure, that's probably way overkill - but it's good enough to get us to a pretty specific location. Based on my geocaching experience, I can tell you that a decent GPS device will give you maybe a 20-foot radius area. With some trial-and-error triangulation, it's probably even more precise. I would hope that someone standing on a busy street corner, waiting for a precise event at 9:11am, would notice a pay phone ringing 10 feet away, walk over, and pick it up.

3) I'm as certain as I can be that this puzzle must involve some heavy fault tolerance. Only a fool would design a 210-piece puzzle where every piece is needed. Even if one guy misses a phone call because an ambulance drove by on the busy street, it should not be catastrophic to the puzzle.

GunsmithCat wrote:

Without a GPS tracker, if I had been given these coordinates, I would have been outside looking for some clue.

Then that would've been your mistake.

I actually tried geocaching without a GPS device once. Even the most precise, zoomed-in map available can give you only a crude approximation of the GPS spot - maybe 100 feet, and that's if the map is really detailed.

I have to believe that the PMs expect us to use (at least some of) the precision given in the coordinates, by tracking down a specific, small area with a consumer-level GPS device.

- David Stein

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 7:41 pm

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