Well, There Goes The Neighborhood

Ingress has been released for the iPhone.

Prepare to see leigons of Fanbois hacking up the scenery.

*sigh*

TBG - 107 degrees today. Ugh.

Expensive Weekend

TL;DR
My shits f'ed up, yo.
Working on correcting it.


Longer:


The weekend started well- the Friday night Ingress get-together was good right until the end when I tried to do an equipment drop with Steve from Houston...
I couldn't get my Samsung S2 to synch up and behave enough to do the swap.
This should have been a harbinger of Things To Come. 

(I hear you saying: What?! An S2? No one uses the S2 anymore. This is 2014, Dumbass. 2010 called, they want their phone back.)

Saturday started a bit late, but good- I met up with the crew for breakfast and we got to work. Good times, good times.

Checking messages during the day, my phone was still acting up- never a good sign..
Worse- it felt like it was running hot... Well- hotter than usual.

Well- screw it. No time to worry now-the project waits for no man. I'll have to do with what I have. 

As we were knocking off for the day, my smartphone dies.
Like dead.
Completely dead - screen black.
And hot? Holy crap it's burning hot.
Like can't-hold-it-without a 2d6 damage roll.

Power?
No- it's on the external battery. 4 blue lights.
It is vibrating now and then, just slightly. Like a mackerel laying on the dock- twitching occasionally as it slowly expires.

Great. What the hell else can go wrong?

Everyone has taken off- so I head back beach-bound...

I missed my turn off one street heading for the bridge out of downtown (not paying attention, wound up in wrong lane, dumbass move 1) and just figured I'd circle back by going around the block. (Typical 'downtown' layout, lots of one way streets.

This is when it really got fun. And expensive.

Coming up to a stop, Soccer Mom was in front of me in her MiniVan- taking the right on red...
I'm looking left after seeing her pull into intersection- all still clear so I start to roll on the throttle and look back right....
Soccer Mom was only halfway into the intersection and I was .000002 inches from her bumper.

BANG! Ow!

Oh. Shit.

F'ing lovely...

She pulls up into the parking lot...
I push my FUBARed bike up to the curb.

Bike's not rolling anywhere anytime soon. Left fork is mangled, front fender is in 4 pieces, cracks in faring. Front left brake is toast.

Personal physical harm... Yeah- there's damage.
Deceleration trauma where my cojones hit the gas tank as the bike impacted the back of Soccer Mom's car.
There is going to be some swelling... And not the good kind.

Damage to Minivan- a bare scratch in the vinyl of her back pseudo-bumper.
Virtually nothing.

Me- I'm screwed...
And it hits me... I am in Dark Territory. No cell phone. No camera to document damage.
Shit... no contact list (it's on my phone) of people to call.

Soccer Mom lets me use her phone-
"But only for a minute- I have to go pick up the kids!"

I find an old receipt with the number to the bike repair place in my case on the back of the bike...
I call them, explain the situation and ask them if they can send their truck and bike trailer to pick up my heap of twisted metal...
No- truck is out on another pickup. They'll send a wrecker.

Great.

I got Soccer Mom's info and she took off.
I'm on the curb, pissed.

It was especially frustrating as I have no way to alert anyone as to my predicament...

Have you noticed a dearth of payphones now days?
Used to be one on every corner.
Now you can't find them for love nor money.
Besides- even if there was a phone, I didn't have any numbers memorized, they're all on my contact list on my phone... (Or my iPad back home.)

I'm screwed.

90 minutes (or thereabout- I was about to pass out from the heat)
the tow truck showed up.

We wrestled my FJR up on to the flatbed and strapped it down, then headed off to the cycle repair shop in Atlantic Beach.

On arrival I realized Dumbass Mistake #2 - I hadn't latched my "trunk" on the bike. it had blown open and all my shit was strewn along I-95 & Atlantic boulevard...
Things like my riding glasses, gloves, some of my tools, and my bike manual.
Just #$%@*&^!ing lovely.

At the shop, The Mechanic looked at the remains of my bike as one would a bad cheese.

"Yeah, well- the one fork we can fix with new seals.
That other fork and brakes- pretty sure I can get those used locally.
Prolly gonna be 500 in labor and parts. Git it back to ya on Wednesday.
The fender and the other plastic- yeah- that's really gonna cost ya.
Gonna be around 1500 for the new fender & farings.
Lucky the headlights and lenses are ok- that's grand right there."

Lucky?

That's my middle fucking name today.
Lucky.

I left the bike at the shop (duh) and got a ride home from The Mechanic. It was almost 5:30.
Had a looooong chat with Captain Morgan, with an icepack on my crotch the rest of the day and most of the next.

I didn't leave the house again until Monday morning.

Epilog:
Wednesday AM. I am mostly phoneless...
The S2 screen is FUBAR as are some of the comms features- I can plug into it into my laptop and see the device - so it looks like the data is intact.
It can't make or recieve calls.

I've moved my SIM into an old Samsung phone our Phone Maven had on hand for emergencies.
I'm eligible for a new phone (according to our corporate package) in July...
I've already been assigned a new Galaxy S5.
(Phone Maven: No choice- you'll get that one and you'll like it. Or you can go buy your own.)

Picked up my bike Wednesday AM-
Cosmetically, it's bad - duct taped fairings, missing fender, etc.
But I'm back on two wheels, and the swelling has subsided enough that riding is not uncomfortable.

The new farings are ordered and will be here in 3 weeks.
Yay.

So-
Between parts, labor, taxes, towing, etc...
About a $2500 weekend for me...

The Moral of the story:

PAY FUCKING ATTENTION WHEN YOU ARE ON THE ROAD.

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Roadtrip

Just a little 2-wheeled jaunt this weekend...

- Friday 11:00 AM -
Jax Beach
Lake City
Live Oak
Mayo
Perry
St Mark's Lighthouse
Crawfordville
Panacea
St. George's Island
Apalachicola
Port St. Joe
Mexico Beach
Panama City
- Saturday -
DeFuniak Springs
Florala AL - (Rain)
Paxton AL  - (Rain)
Andalusia AL
Paxon - (Rain)
Florala
DeFuniak Spgs
Panama City  - (Rain)
- Sunday -
Panama City
Fountain - (Rain)
Tallahassee
Live Oak
Jax Beach - 2:10 PM

1029 Miles
I've got to get a different saddle- these long trips kill me.

The purpose of this little sojourn?


Nope, I'm not in the picture-
I was still on my way back from my Andalusia portal attack...
Long story... Damn Frogs.

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Hitler Wants An Ingress Invite

h/t Croc

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Geocaching + MMOG + Cryptography + Augmented Reality

a/k/a - The thing that has been occupying my time lately...

Ingress

Ingress is a near-realtime augmented reality massively multi-player online video game created by Niantic Labs (Google) and released for Android devices. The game has a complex backstory that Google is revealing piece by piece.

Players of the game belong to one of two factions, “Enlightened” (represented in green) and “Resistance” (blue). Players attempt to enclose regions of territory on Google Maps of Earth with virtual links between virtual portals; these maps are displayed on the players' smartphones, laptops and tablets (which function as mobile game consoles), with territory gained designated as "control fields". The ultimate goal of the game is for one’s faction to control the largest number of “Mind Units”, the estimated number of humans within the regions of territory controlled by the faction. The game has attracted an enthusiastic following in cities worldwide.
 (from Ingress Wiki)

The game is in beta right now, but you can request an invite from the website...There is no official iOS app yet, giving the existing players quite a smug feeling about their Android smartphones...

The game is a high-tech augmented reality geocaching experience. It revolves around XM-emitting portals - originally Post Offices and libraries, now including permanent structures like statues, monuments and plaques, but not limited to these things... One of the portals I visit all the time is the WaterTower in Jax Beach.

One of the most interesting aspects is that the game involves 2 novel concepts:
First, you HAVE to get off your ass to play... You can immerse yourself in the Intel portion, but in the end to really participate you have to get away from the console and head out into the cold cruel world and actual go to the Portals to progress in the game.
Also- you have to work as a team in real life, especially when you get to be higher level.
When you are low level you can completely activate a Portal solo, but when you are higher level you can destroy enemy hardware, but only partially activate a Portal- you need other players to finish the activation... Lots of strategy and tactics come into play.

Obviously there are large opportunities to participate in Ingress communities,
Google + and  hangouts, and there are real-time status line updates as play is underway.

A this moment the Resistance has control of the Beaches, as indicated by the blue portals and fields... But that can change like the weather. A team of the Enlightened can come in and convert all our Portals and leave the places covered in green like pond scum in a matter of minutes...
Those green portals at the bottom are in the Mayo Clinic area...
They can be tough to get to, but they will be turned over on Tuesday...

I was kind of amazed at how widespread the game is being played...

Check out London, where you can't swing a rat on a string without hitting a portal.

Even over in Kazan Russia (where I'm heading next month) there is a large player contingent...

 And this is a small sample of the Portal density in Shanghai...

 It's quite an interesting game...
It will be interesting to see what happens when it goes out of beta-
Lord knows, since I'm enjoying playing it, Google will probably cancel it...
That's what happens- if I like a show (Firefly, anyone?) or use a particular program (**cough**GoogleReader**cough**) it goes away...

On the Niantic Project website they release clues daily- and let me tell you, they are top-notch puzzles...
Example:

Codephrase:
4tnrspp5daep3tr2
Solve:

re-group in 4′s
4tnr
spp5
daep
3tr2
Read first row down
4sd3
go to second row, step 1 then read down
pat–then go back to top for last t
Go to third row, step down again
er–jump to top  np
…
In the end you get the passcode:
4sd3patternp2r5p

Are you f'ing kidding me?
Let em tell you- that was nothing...

Here's another that is completely insane...

http://www.nianticproject.com/?id=02wod14
View source the page and you will notice the following in a <span> tag at the end:
22111114421152212212111241132213221312221
412123311111212111221111421222123222213143
The style=” font-size:0px; letter-spacing:1px; is a hint on what needs to be done.
The numbers are the number of repetitions of 0 or 1 that are in a string when a run-length encoding is involved. Lets start with the first 2 as 00, which means the next 2 will become 11 and, the following 1 will become 0 and the 1 after that 1. Thus we get:
2(00) 2(11) 1(0) 1(1) 1(0) 1(1) 1(0) 4(1111) 4(0000) 2(11) 1(0) 1(1) 5(00000) 2(11) 2(00) 1(1) 2(00) 2(11) 1(0) 2(11) 1(0) 1(1) 1(0) 2(11) 4(0000) 1(1) 1(0) 3(111) 2(00) 2(11) 1(0) 3(111) 2(00) 2(11) 1(0) 3(111) 1(0) 2(11) 2(00) 2(11) 1(0) 4(1111) 1(0) 2(11) 1(0) 2(11) 3(000) 3(111) 1(0) 1(1) 1(0) 1(1) 1(0) 2(11) 1(0) 2(11) 1(0) 1(1) 1(0) 2(11) 2(00) 1(1) 1(0) 1(1) 1(0) 4(1111) 2(00) 1(1) 2(00) 2(11) 2(00) 1(1) 2(00) 3(111) 2(00) 2(11) 2(00) 2(11) 1(0) 3(111) 1(0) 4(1111) 3(000)
This gives us:
00 11 0 1 0 1 0 1111 0000 11 0 1 00000 11 00 1 00 11 0 11 0 1 0 11 0000 1 0 111 00 11 0 111 00 11 0 111 0 11 00 11 0 1111 0 11 0 11 000 111 0 1 0 1 0 11 0 11 0 1 0 11 00 1 0 1 0 1111 00 1 00 11 00 1 00 111 00 11 00 11 0 111 0 1111 000
Arrange in groups of 8. We get:
00110101 01111000 01101000 00110010 01101101 01100001 01110011 01110011 01110110 01101111 01101100 01110101 01101101 01100101 01111001 00110010 01110011 00110111 01111000
Converting binary to Hex this gives us:
5xh2massvolumey2s7x
This won’t work as the passcode yet, we need to find a keyword. Mass and volume form matter: 5xh2mattery2s7x

The guys who solve these have waaaaay too much time on their hands.


But if you enjoy this kind of thing and you have the time and inclination- join in the game...  It is a very interesting twist on today's "computer" games.

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE