Author: staticsky

Not food poisoning – POV v2

/ staticsky

Adit here – We just said it was the food, but I caused her a bit of a seizure, well not a bit, I mean any seizure is a seizure but it was mild.  It was an absence seizure, she went blank for a second and then just got really nauseous.  She made it to the bathroom on time.  

I got a little board that you can easily tuck away on one of the goggle’s straps.  We tested it on Kaitlyn to see if she could get the video feed of the goggle’s camera to go straight to her brain.  POV was mapping the simulation’s data to our brains, there was no original visual at all until our brain visualized it.  I was mapping the real visuals captured by the goggle’s camera to a data format similar to how the simulation processed.  

I tweaked that process to make it more efficient, but what I did contained a mistake, but I am not sure which change was the route of the problem.  We’ll go back to exactly the same method tomorrow. 

I guess my mistake was subconscious revenge for all the seizures you two gave me when making Adit 2.0.  Yes I know about Adit 2.0 terminology – I’m not mad, it fits.  I’m not mad about the seizures either, I am definitely not seeking revenge.  I know you know this, but I want it on the record.  Our record. A record only we read?

This does mean that the frequency method of triggering the neurons isn’t as full proof as we thought.  When and if things are a bit more calm around here I’ll work with Janice and see if she or one of her team members has an idea of what happened.  I don’t like being restricted to a method I know isn’t as efficient as it could be.  But I don’t like giving folks seizures even more, so I’m in no real rush to figure this out.

Chen and Makda are also basically done with the old style VR set up, but they made a custom kernel to run their system that isn’t just an old VR unit but is easily extensible, that can support input from the simulation and export data to alter the simulation, and, ahead of schedule, can support any type of security we develop.  There’s your writing on a white board Rob.

Magic Markers and violent world

/ staticsky

I remember in 5th grade it was campaign season for student council & student body President. For the campaigns no one was allowed to use pre-printed boards, every campaign poster was hand drawn – suddenly the halls were no longer swimming in the smells of poor hygiene, but rather that smell plus Magic Markers.  You’d almost get a buzz going to the cafeteria. 

I walk into the office and discovered the smell of magic markers haven’t changed and I wonder if the giddiness I feel is from its brain alerting effects of its smell or just good memories of childhood.

So the supplies for the science fair arrived today.  And the Cela seems to be taking the “science fair” concept surprisingly literally.  Markers, boards, scissors, tape.  And if I was to make a unscientific observation but the nostalgia of these items has given everyone a giddiness and suddenly there is interest in this project.  Either that or the smell of magic markers also has give them a bit of a buzz.

A stack of personal slates had arrived, one each.  We all now have some access to the Intecela, basically The Sims Corner of the local grid.  There is a “read me” file (how retro) that let us know we’ll be getting wider access after the fair and any materials we develop should be place on our corner so that everyone can access.

This morning’s meeting started with the non-project statuses, because everyone seems to be jonesing to talk about what they’ve learned even it is things like the fact that two floors below us they have turned their cafeteria into an amazing curry place.  Hopefully we get access to move about soon, maybe after the fair.  Other folks say they’ve heard that there are other themed cafeterias and even hang out rooms on other floors.  Stan said there are a set of “pillow rooms” in the floor above us, which raised some eyebrows.  

Chen presented some posters he printed out last night, and they were not for the fair.  they were like tests for color blindness, in color you could clearly read “This Cela Sucks” and “I Enjoy The Outdoors What Abzu?” He had to say Abzu like “about you” to make the “joke” work.  It didn’t, it don’t work.  Chen’s idea was to put them up everywhere because unreadable if viewed with the B&W monitors.  Sam from anthropology noted that there was probably full time staff somewhere monitoring us, and with color monitors.  The B&W ones I saw were probably just a show of power, alluding to the archetype of surveillance being B&W monitors.  Lisa, the biology team lead, chimed in that depending on the contrast settings on the B&W monitors the messages might actually be visible since the color blind tests concentrate on hues and not brightness of the colors.  I think they were ganging up a bit on Chen, probably because of that “what Abzu” joke.  Chen seemed unbothered and noted he was putting them up around the office anyway.  Respect.

Now to the projects.  I asked if the Tangent team would be able to present today so that tomorrow we could get more folks on the science fair team and they said they were ready already.  If you’re just basing a presentation on hunches and memories of data, as there is no data, a presentation can come together really quickly.

Kim from Geology and Otto from Chemistry made the presentation.  Very professionally they started with a long list of caveats that they wrapped up by stating that their conclusions were basically “maybe.”  None the less everyone was in rapt attention.

We took what we thought was a minor change (7 millimeters) and saw the changes quickly and dramatically.  The “ape” that didn’t die on tangent kept leading wars and battles, changing a culture of a species that really didn’t have much of one.  Since we were looking at so much in aggregate we didn’t notice that these small things let to smelting for weapons while other ape communities hadn’t even developed agriculture.  The CO2 in Tangent was higher our “feelings” that storms were worse, likely were true.  Environmental lead increased, Tangent’s apes and lizards were getting dumber, their executive functions muted.  Quick violent reactions were more common.  Weapons of war became the technological drivers in the northl.  It wasn’t a feeling – Tangent was more violent, weather to war.  To say this is just a theory though is being generous.  There isn’t any data to point to – just memories of data.  Victim to the Big Boom.

There was a quiet, I didn’t want to call status to close on what really seemed like a downer, though what they were saying was fascinating.  Then from the back someone shouted “holy shit that’s a lot of goggles.”

Boxes and boxes of old school VR goggles were opened by the entrance.  One thing to say about Abzu is that they don’t have supply chain issues.  You put it in the Sacred Form and it appears the very next morning.

I got to spend a little time with Janice today.  We didn’t talk about “us” if there is such a thing for us anymore, but we did talk about Sally.  Sally is excited about her “field trip” to another cela next week, but Janice is rightfully terrified.  She is trying to talk herself down of course.  Sally spent a lot of the evening on her slate talking with her new acquaintances, friends?  Janice met some of the kids and briefly their parents, it all seemed normal even if the conversation with the parents started with the screen started with a disclaimer dialog box noting the rules of the communication:  No real names (except for the children), no discussion of what you or anyone in your cela are doing, no discussion of any personally identifiable information of anyone in your cela, etc. etc. The faces and voices of the adults were obscured digitally, though they seemed and sounded like normal folks and not like obscured witnesses on an old time TV investigative show.  Okay it didn’t seem normal at all, but really what choice did Janice have, and this all was so important to Sally.

Janice also said that Sally had skimmed what was on the shared slate, maybe I should call that the Unicorn Slate, and was not happy with Latin as a new subject. 

Over to you Adit – How’s Kaitlin? I heard she had a reaction to the cafeteria’s food.

Adit here – adding Latin to Sally’s lessons

/ staticsky

Adit here, Rob – I’ll be blunt – I know too much about you anyway, and it seems important to you that you keep a personal journal – I could always come up with a way to have another secure area, but honestly I’d like to limit that for security sake, not that I can foresee it being a problem, but just because I’m getting a little paranoid. 

Callout for your use of tabula rasa though – hilarious you didn’t think of me when you offhandedly said that.  Anyway, it made me realize I should add some Latin lessons on this slate for Sally.  I’ve always found it a good foundation for understanding words, sometimes it even introduces implications to a word’s meaning that are lost in its modern usage.

And Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England for 9 days in 1553, but you might know of her from all the movies, shows, etc. that bear her name.

Distraction does set the mind at ease

/ staticsky

As has been the case before, our team lives and relaxes by doing the work – work on our project (or project adjacent) – work they hopefully still love, and especially now when there is nothing else.  Again this morning, and I think perhaps every morning from now on, begun with the team gathering in our central area.  The status brief portion of the status meeting was indeed brief – as work on anything at all had just began. It was mostly teams announcing what hardware they need immediately and that for what items they would be filling out additional sacred forms.  

Next, and perhaps in reality the most important part of the meeting, was the status about – us.  Our people, this place, what we have learned.  Janice started by first thanking everyone who had volunteered to help with Sally, i.e. being Sally’s escorts, guard the bathrooms for her, etc.  And she made an announcement that got a cheer, Sally talked with other kids yesterday.  As much as Sally loves us and has fun with us, let’s face it we are all adults, perhaps not in maturity, but definitely in age.  So a lady named Jane (wait, why does Lady Jane sound familiar?) stopped by Janice and Sally’s room short of breath and told Sally she had rushed over because she realized that Sally had never been invited to the meeting which had just started. Since she noted Sally wasn’t online she had rushed over to let her know.  [there were chuckles amongst the team about this glorious example of Abzu’s high tech organization].  What meeting?  Oh, it was Sally’s introduction to some of the other kids in Abzu.  Sally’s slate (Abzu supplied, not this one) had been configured with the, get this, The Intecela – the Abzu wide grid.  Sally had more access than anyone on our team.  The call went well – it sounds like, surprise, surprise, the other kids are pretty geeky too.  None of them are in our Cela so Lady Jane (I’m sticking with that) is going to arrange a field trip soon for Sally to meet them all in person.  More cheering all around.

After that great news the meeting got pretty lighthearted. Chen noted that he and Erik had a chat with some folks from another group that works on our floor.  They didn’t tell Chen or Erik what their projects entailed because supposedly our team is supposed to go into the science fair all “tabula rasa.” Yeah, that won’t be hard.  Anyway they did let Chen and Erik know that our team is nicknamed The Sims around the Cela. While we don’t know anything about anyone, it looks like they know what we do, I wonder if they know more about what we do than we do.

The general reaction to the nickname was met positively by the folks that had even heard of the old game. When Chen started explaining the game he went off on a tangent about putting all the sims folks in a pool and then building a fence around it so they couldn’t escape and they all would swim themselves to death, there was an uncomfortable hush until Alice chimed in with a very loud aside “guess I better double check his code.”  Chen laughed the hardest.

“Sims it is” I ended the meeting with, and then called out folks to work on the early stages of Visual POV.  Kaitlin and Adit of course because it eventually will segue into POV but also Chen and Makda to work on a basic VR device so we can quickly get private communication happening outside of just Sally’s slate.  Makda is part of Kaitlin’s team and seems to have an affinity for retro-tech like Chen – once they have the parts we’ll have our private chalk board up and running in a day (or two)

I desperately want to talk to Janice about “us” and that seems incredibly selfish with everything else going on.  I just have to wait.  And how does “us” work in a Cela anyway?  The truth is this is a prison for us, certainly a very interesting one, but it is a place we can’t leave – and it is weird that fact seems to be normalized already.

I think this is why my entries have been longer and more regular – I have internalized I have nothing else I can do, which is a lot more restricting than my previous situation of just not doing anything else.

And Adit, this is weird.  This “blog” has always been a semi-personal journal, the fact that we are also now formally using it as communication between us makes it awkward.  Just wanted to put that out there.

Corrupt old jpegs

/ staticsky

Hey Rob, Adit still here.  

Visual POV aside, using “Sally’s Slate” for communication between us two works and is available now.  Given what was said today I realized having encrypted files on what is ostensibly her homework slate is a dead giveaway that there is something to read here.  And though I’m proud of the encryption I put in place, I’m sure they have the horse power and tricks to decrypt it in ways that I don’t know about.  So I’ve put a bit of security through obscurity up in here.  I’ve created an images folder of thousands of old Jpegs that cover any course work she might have, maps, photos of ancient structures, animals, science, etc. etc.  And a few of them are “corrupt.”  They scan as corrupt images, so no one would try to decrypt them, hopefully I mean, but why would you, its just an old corrupt image.  Those are our entries.  Though some are legit corrupted photos too.  The files go back to physical hard drive days so I didn’t even have to try hard to find some corrupted files.  

I’ve also got a lot of real classwork for her.  It’ll be good to get in the routine we had at the old place of giving it to Janice every morning for her to give to Sally, and then we “grade at night.”

Oh, and you might want to mention to the team that not only will we know what we are doing here in two weeks but we’ll need to start working on “it.”

Have a good night.

Adit Here

/ staticsky

I like the Visual POV idea.  It makes sense.  Your little scope creep is significant though, this isn’t a case of us just reusing some of POV here to save time. I don’t know if you noticed you added a whooper of an enhancement kind off-handedly.  Your “writing notes” implies manipulating the simulation real time with some know of interface.  So this isn’t an Alpha lite with manipulation added on.  This is a new project, and if we look at it that way are really talking about using old VR game’s mechanics and pretending its using our simulation tech.  That would get you to our true objective, communication, quite quickly.  

The idea of taking how we used to render images and make it work real time with a simulation on the scale of Alpha is a bigger lift, but not crazy.  And since you said that out loud it probably should happen and could be done in parallel with other team members.  But since we have two weeks before the real work begins I’m thinking we combine your VR throwback with some of POV’s interaction of the visual cortex, that might be useful if we want to scale the use of POV in the future.  We could build a version of the mesh net that works from on top of your head, I assume we will need to up the juice to make up for what the hair diffuses and make it part of the goggle’s strap.  I mean the back strap sits right on top of the occipital lobe anyway.  Hopefully that will work like it does for me and the other parts of the brain ascribing meaning to the images will kick in automatically.  This is fun, and will be useful.  Good idea Rob. 

Handing it over to Adit

/ staticsky

Adit, I think you probably know where I’m going with the visual render thing.  We need a way for us all to communicate without Greystyle or Absu or whatever listening in.  And I figure we can get that from this Visual POV.  A white board where we write down notes to each other.  Our sign in can bring us to the team shared sim, in case Stan wants a look, and another to this little bulletin board.  Yeah, I know, a day hasn’t even passed yet and we’ve got some serious scope creep.

Smile for the camera

/ staticsky

Big Day, Long Post.  Yesterday’s meeting with Stan was a good reminder that we need to be on our best behavior.  Otherwise, I guess its jail.

But I don’t even know what good behavior is.  I’d assume it would be doing a good job, but I don’t know what we are supposed to be doing.

The best way we can behave is just to make sure we don’t get caught saying something bad.  We are definitely being watched and I think it is safe to say that whatever we say is being heard.  As Greystle turned this project away from our goals I know a lot of the more esoteric disciplines in our team was starting to feel ignored, unfortunately none of us are being ignored now.

When the full team had shown up, and started to unbox some of the items that had arrived from the sacred forms, I whistled and gathered everyone over.

“Hey guys, I wanted to give you an update.  Let me start by saying I don’t know exactly what we are doing, so this isn’t going to be the best update.  There is a huge cloud infrastructure available to us that is more than we will ever need, and when I say cloud I mean some cave a couple of hallways away.

But first, and this is important, look anywhere in this room and wave.  Know that there is a monitor somewhere here that just displayed your wave.  Now with your best ASMR whisper say hello to Stan.”

I couldn’t think of a subtle way of letting everyone know, and if I whisper it to everyone or write it on a note to show it surreptitiously, I think that’d just be worse.  But the reaction was very unhappy.  And the only way to get them happy was to give them work, really work.

“While we are waiting on what the new job is, there are still some things I think we should continue some of our old work.  I know all the data is lost, or I assume it is, but I’d like it if the task force on Tangent could plan for a presentation to us this week.  Honestly, just say where you think the data was leading you to conclude.  Obviously, no charts, or real data.  Just what you learned.  I think it would be good to know.  Like, why was, if it really was, Tangent more violent.”

I divided the teams into three groups, the Tangent task force, folks to set up their equipment as it was starting to pile up.  And then a third group consisting of Kaitlin, Janice, and Adit, but before I could explain my really good idea (Visual Point of View – and I’m seriously proud of myself) over an intercom Stan’s voice boomed.  “Rob, come see me at my office.”

I know Chen thought better of it the second he said it, but I’m sure it was a hard idea to suppress, he looked at me and said “oooooh, you’re in trouble.”  I should have been worried about whatever repercussions to my announcing our surveillance state was, but truthfully I was worried I might have forgotten how to get to his office.

Even though I knew what I was walking into, the wall of monitors and the window to a cave of servers caused me to make a, hopefully inaudible, “oooof” exhale.  Though I admit I really was freaked out about how hard the push back would be for my “smile for the camera” bravado.

But… nothing.

Instead Stan barely gave me eye contact beyond acknowledging that I had come in.  He was just putting a slate in a shoulder bag.  “Hey Rob, just wanted to let you know that we’ll be ready in a couple of weeks for you all to begin, in the meantime just keep your team busy.”  

Then as he walked me to the door he mentioned the most hilarious thing, “At the end of the week every team in this Cela is putting together little presentations of what their broader project is.  Think of it is a high school science fair, put up a poster or two of what you are doing on a fold out table and just talk to folks and answer their questions.”  And then he finally looked at me.  With a smile he said, “seriously this is a lot more effective than it sounds.  You get to mingle around see what other people are doing and start riffing off each other.  Then full docs and info are up on their corners of Abzu’s grid for more detail. “  Stan stopped, “you all are stuck here, try to have fun.”  And then out he went through a door into one of the long hallways. I had thought that door was just a closet.

The team hadn’t left the central meeting spot.  I stepped back down into the center.  I looked at Chen and gave a thumbs up.  “Okay, change of plans, 4 groups:  1 unpacks and builds up our local infrastructure, the Tangent presentation group, and 2 new projects.  Who here misses high school?”  I knew there would mostly be groans, but it almost seemed exclusively groans.  “I need some folks to work together and whip up infographics and handouts.  We’re going to a science fair on Friday and we need something for our booth.”  Crickets.  “It’ll be a good opportunity to find out what other people are doing here behind their closed doors.  There might be some good ideas we can use.”

And as I started to say before, we’re going to need some of the department heads to work on a new simulations feature.  I never liked how we need to set some time aside and make a special effort to render a visual of what was happening on Alpha.  What if we could just type in the camera location, put on goggles and look around and see from our own eyes what was happening in real time?”  Janice’s face had a look of distress, I smiled in her direction to try and reassure her.  “We can use one of our slates to run the lamest simulation possible.  One of these conference rooms, we can just move around objects in the simulation for testing.”  

Afterwards we kind of all just milled around in our little office center.  Then there was a mass exodus to the cafeteria and I got to hear the team talk about work again.  We all had something to do.  I heard Chen volunteer to be the “eye candy” at the booth.

Stan’s the Man

/ staticsky

Stan came into “my” office today, luckily after I shook myself awake. The request forms they used here have such a horrible layout that the brain wants to shut down in revolt. I assume this is purposeful as it probably cuts down on the amount of requests that are made.

He wanted to talk to me “in his office.” For some reason I had flashbacks of high school whispers of “ohhh he’s in trouble….”

Stan has an office in the simulations lab too, behind what I had thought was just door to an electrical closet was yet another hallway (seriously, how massive is this place?). The hall ended with another door that opened into a very roomy office. On one wall sat his desk with oak cabinets behind him. That scene would have been at home in any office park office building. Another wall however was all monitors, each monitor flipping through video feeds that seemed to cover the entire simulations lab floor. I’m sure Stan wanted me to see that both as a threat and a warning. We were watched. It was a given, but it was something else to see it in living black and white. Seriously it was black and white. This place seems to have no limit to its budget and scale and they can’t be bothered to spy on us in color?

But as spectacular as the wall of monitors was, the wall across from it was a wonder. I think it was a window (or an amazingly clean video monitor) to the server farm. But it was massive. They aren’t doing just a hundred or so tangents, they are doing thousands, tens of thousands. Server rack after server rack in a warehouse sized hole in the rock. We must be on the outer edge of Abzu because the server farm was sitting there surrounded by bare rock. It looked so fake honestly, like an underground factory from an old sci-fi film back when they used matte paintings instead of digital imagery.

Stan just wanted to reinforce the importance of this project, and how seriously “everyone” was taking this. It’s far beyond Greystle now.

I didn’t get to discuss what was of most interest to me: What “this” is. He just showed me his office and then pushed me out the door since he just “wanted to show me around a bit,” but that he had another meeting to go to.

Game night again tonight. It looks like we are using proper Abzu etiquette because our game is exactly where we left it. Adit would know if any piece had been moved.

First day at the office

/ staticsky

Wow, it’s amazing how spreadsheets can bring you back to reality.

Today I learned where the sacred form is. There was a stack of them in my office. Now I can requisition anything from toothpaste to all the computers we’ll need for the team. In fact I can request more forms with the form.

Today Stan Winston escorted me and Adit to the Simulations lab. I guess we work weekends. Abzu is a surprise behind every door. Down one flight of stairs and down yet another identical hall was a door labeled “simulations” (yes – in lower case). You open the door and zoom you are in a glass corporate office building, without the windows to the outside world. Rows of offices with glass walls, a cubicle farm that went on and on to the point of parody; this was going to be big.

“Welcome home,” Stan said with all honesty. I think I had just witnessed some kindness. I was allowed a few minutes of acclimating before the rest of the team showed up: Janice, Alice, Kaitlin, Erik, Chen, everyone.

In the middle of the cubicle farm there is a clearing and a sunken open space. Though there are meeting rooms, this is probably the only place large enough to hold all of us if there is a team wide meeting.

I introduced everyone to where we would be working and I showed them the sacred form from which all things derived. The assignment over the next couple of days was to fill out the forms for everything they needed. Each group was to get a meeting with me to go over their needs (and their forms) and I’d approve them. We were starting from scratch. Most of the cubicles had no chairs and none of the offices had desks (which made the chairs seem so lonely).

There were lots of questions I couldn’t answer, the most important being of course how we were to access the server farm or if there even was a server farm or were we to spec it out all over again. Other questions centered on how to get Alpha back up, did we have any access to earlier backups of the Alpha code with which to jump start this project. And of course, my favorite: What the hell was this project. I didn’t know that either.

I did have one piece of hardware though, and it held the only piece of information I had. Stan gave me a laptop with access to my corner of the Abzu grid. Nothing there except a meeting on my calendar for Thursday to discuss servers. Hopefully that will answer some of these questions.

The highlight of the day was the mess hall on the simulations floor. It was massive and had an Italian Market theme, and it was the first time we got to “mingle.” Yes, we got to mingle with other inhabitants of Abzu. In fact Stan instructed all of us as to the importance of this. This cela was the ultimate think tank, and information, thought, and retention only grows when it is expressed face to face.

A nice theory and the people I met seemed nice, but very reserved and cagey about what they were working on. It actually was pretty uncomfortable. Hopefully communication and sharing will gain with time (as will our access to other research areas). Maybe to increase mingling we should have a mixer. Deck out the mess hall with ribbons and mirror balls. Serve bad punch. Bring up the awkward another notch.