FTLR – calculating omphalabyrinth strength

A couple of people and I have been drawing city-sized labyrinths to form our knot in the omphalos net. (For a list of the 27 cities and their knot details, check out the excellent wiki page.)

I came up with a couple of big but asymmetrical and ugly designs, and jasper in Austin drew up some truly beautiful, evenly-spaced circuits. After sending them off to Eli Hunt, he selected two – one as a main labyrinth, and one as a second, bonus option. Here is how I calculated their strength as knots in the net:

- Using this Google Maps distance calculator, I measured the widest parts of the labyrinths (as per Mr. Hunt’s instructions) and converted the miles to kilometers
- The next step is to convert meters to stadia, an ancient unit of length. For our purposes, we use the Olympic numbers, meaning that 185 meters = 1 stadia
- The omphalabyrinth strength formula is (Stadia x number of Circuits)/6
 
 

Jasper’s labyrinth (dubbed “elegant” by Mr. Hunt) is 7 circuits, and 1.757 miles across (or 2827 meters/15.281 stadia) – making its strength 17.82.
 
 

This semi-wonky four-quadrant labyrinth (dubbed “charming” by Mr. Hunt) is also 7 circuits (measured after the method of the Sao Paolo labyrinth), and is 5645 meters (or 30.5 stadia) across, making its strength 35.6.

According to sapagoo in IRC, “if we have 27 omphalabyrinths with an average strength of 11-13, we should be good. so I would classify a strength of 17.8 as “Great” and helping to offset the small omphalabyrinths we are bound to have.” So, good news overall! I’m sure the whole Dallas team will want to do both; we have yet to schedule a date, but I’m hoping the people from other Texas cities will be able to travel in for the event.

Amazing Message Plant – day 13

Success!

Behold! A new mission

I published new mission on PMOG, Housing solutions from the FUTURE, today! “Global warming, melting ice caps, overcrowding…these innovative homes offer solutions to problems encountered in our changing landscape, draw attention to how we inhabit modern spaces, and address vital human needs.” Go sign up for an account, install the toolbar, and have a look.

(As an aside, my goal is to include an exclamation point in the title of every mission I publish. Four and counting!)

Edited, June 11, 11:30 AM:

Yay! \o/

A Slow Week In Gamey Town

I haven’t had time to sink my teeth into anything particularly meaty of late, but in the spare moments I can grab, I have been playing Picross.

My strengths do not lie in mathematics or logic (for example, I can do algebra, but not geometric proofs), and I have avoided the subjects as much as possible since leaving school. This type of puzzle (known as a nonogram) helps me exercise those little-used areas of my brain. In fact, I was feeling so good about my puzzling ability that I (successfully!) tried my hand at a few of the traditional-style logic puzzles on Puzzlers Paradise.

But after two sessions of “whose wife with which last name prefers what sport” and “which puppet show discussed what topic at what time”, I had to give my brain a break, and clicked on over to Orsinal’s soothing pastels and gentle background music. I love how balanced these games feel; they’re never complicated or strenuous, and they tend to loop, so as long as you’ve got enough skill, you could continue playing forever.

Speaking of forever, that’s how long I could gaze at this gif of a panda rolling down a hill:

Good luck, Marc!

My friend Marc of The Digital Demons is presenting his graduate work on Alternate Reality Games at the “Made In Brunel” exhibit on Monday. He created and ran the game Project Ophiuchus which developed a strong and dedicated playerbase. Check out his portfolio here, and keep an eye on him, as he has some great stuff coming up.

Best of luck tomorrow!!

Internet Dance Party! or, how I spent my Friday night

I logged into SmallWorlds on Friday intending to pull ten random people into the Peach Pit to complete the Dance Party mission, but while hanging out in my house, my pal Monsanto portaled in to tell me that there was a party-hopping crew already together, making this (shockingly) among the easiest missions so far. Witness the resulting madness:

For the sake of completeness, here’s a clip of the Peach Pit party:

I didn’t catch a video of it, but I had no music in my house, so early revelers produced a pretty hilarious “song” using the world’s sounds (whistling, “lol”ing, clapping, and so on).

Lessons learned:
- create a less lame dance (mine is basically doing the moonwalk in place)
- purchase boombox for home
- even zombies can dance, although they will still crave your brains while doing so
- close down all other programs when more than five people start interacting in one house, because your MacBook Pro will overheat and burn you

PMOG comic, Shoats for Breakfast #1

I am very happy to share the first strip for the brand-new PMOG-based comic, “Shoats for Breakfast”. This comic was written by tuguy, drawn by tonedef and masterminded by Zous. I’m going to help contribute to future strips, so stay tuned!

Finger cushion

These photos are showing up all over tumblr but I hadn’t read the description until just now, and it is truly lovely. From downstairs studio:

“pilo pilo mini cushion ring
designed by Sae Shigeto and Ming Lo
2008

Pilo-Pilo ring is a finger ring with a mini cushion attached to it, and is designed to be both stylish and useful. Since alot of people have the tendency of resting their cheek on their fist when they are thinking, daydreaming or even falling asleep, a fashionable yet portable cushion might just provide the companionship that you’ve long seeked in those long, boring hours in school, at work, or when you stood you up in a restaurant.”

Amazing Message Plant – Day 8

Jey surprised me with a lovely gift last week – an Amazing Message Plant. It arrives pre-planted in a nice little pot; all you do is water it and place it in the sun. As the plant grows, a little pod on a vine emerges with a message etched onto it!

It’s a present that’s really suited to me. I enjoy growing things, and hidden messages, and the element of playfulness that goes with a pod popping out of the dirt to say something to you directly. Plus, I needed an indoor plant for my office.

According to the packaging, the seed will germinate in 7-14 days, but as of today there’s no sign. I am keeping the soil moist and will report again when the plant starts showing some green.

Losing myself in Find The Lost Ring

Since this blog is relatively new, I haven’t yet written about ARGs in general, and Find The Lost Ring specifically. My experience with FTLR has been something along the following lines:

1. Very fast and intense learning curve as I worked to catch up with about a months’ worth of information . Find the Lost Ring is a complicated immersive fiction with roots in Greek history. Long story short: an Olympic game that was banned has been revived in order to convert the world into a giant portal to allow six people to return to their own worlds, which exist parallel to this one.
2. Fun period of making lots of posts and emailing with characters
3. Realizing I was immersed in the world after seeing a cement truck on the expressway and catching myself thinking, “That shape would make a great omphalos, and it’s even hollow!”
4. Some small frustrations due to lack of activity, somewhat appeased by guessing that things would pick up at about three months before the Olympics (three months being a typical, solid length of time for a game).
5. Becoming totally overloaded by a sudden flood of in-game information and activity, but not being able to keep up due to real-life activity taking priority, and so retiring away for a few weeks

And now,
6. Catching up again and settling back into the comfortable space I had carved out earlier on

I have just received a Trackstick from one of the characters, so that we can trace out a traditional labyrinth shape among the city blocks of Dallas; twenty six other cities around the globe will be doing the same thing. Each of these points represent knots in an omphalos net. Then, like the oracles at Delphi, whose hallucinatory visions were actually a peek into parallel worlds, the multiverses will be aligned and our traveling friends will be able to return to their homes. Not bad, for a half day’s work and a tank of gas.