A resident addressed me: "It would be interesting to set up a time-lapse camera here." I was walking at Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito, a big houseboat area. Specifically, I was stepping off a temporary ramp that connected two parking lots, the old path being covered up with construction tape. What kind of construction goes on at a parking lot? I couldn't think of anything to build. But the resident gave me the skinny: During winter storms, waves had lapped at the tires of vehicles in the lots. Since then, one of the lots had been raised; soon, the other would be, too. Folks were thinking about next year's storm; folks were thinking about rising sea levels in the next few years. So it was time to shore up the shore.
It would be interesting to set up a time-lapse camera at the edge of the parking lot for a few days to watch it rise. It would be interesting to set up a time-lapse camera at the shore to watch the sea level rise year after year. It would be interesting to point a time lapse camera at human civilization as we try to figure out what we can hang onto and what we must return to the sea.
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I watched the new Studio Ghibli film, "From up on Poppy Hill" and of course all I could think about was the marine signal flags. In the movie, our heroine, who lives in portside Yokohama, hoists signal flags each day saying UW. Why UW? Was she a fan of the University of Washington? University of Wisconsin? Was she sad that her father, lost at sea during the Korean War, was Under Water? Was she cheering on Yokohama's boats as Under Way?
Then I read some wiki that said those flags meant "I wish you a pleasant voyage" which didn't seem to have anything to do with UW. But that's because I didn't know about The International Code of Signals. These are protocols by which folks on one ship can contact folks on another ship and convey the notion "I would like to communicate by means of semaphore flags." You could just start waving semaphore flags, but if the folks on the other ship want to use some other method, how do you work that out? The Code of Signals isn't just a code-as-in-protocol. It's also a code-as-in-encoding. It defines some things like "UW" means "I wish you a pleasant voyage."
There are also shorthand ways to say, "We are going to jump by parachute" (BO), "Further explosions are possible" (JD3), and "My vessel is a dangerous source of radiation" (MS). You know, the kind of everyday shipboard phrases you don't want to have to spell out each time. I guess?
I'd seen books of merchant codes. If you were a New York manufacturer who wanted news from your traveling salesman in Omaha, you wanted him to telegraph you. But since telegraph companies and clerks were often into industrial espionage, you wanted to use a code. So each big company had a code with boring shorthand ways to say boring things like "5 bushels of oats at the agreed-upon price." But the International Code of Signals has more drama. "I have to cut the warps. The trawls are entangled" (TU). That's some delicate news to convey, right there.
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I'm just back from GC Summit 2013, in which Game Control folks talk about how to run games without going crazy...crazier than necessary. Folks presented on a cool variety of games this year. Well, they were all puzzlehunts of course. But there was the Doctor When weekend game, the MIT Mystery Hunt marathon conference-room game, BANG 33 the runaround and/or online game, and the JoCoCruise puzzlehunt on a boat. A lot of thinking about setting audience expectations, fitting the game to the audience. Since some of that was about fitting a game to a newbie audience, you better believe I was scribbling down ideas to steal^W use. It was really awesome, I learned a lot.
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Book Report: The New New Thing
It's a biography of Jim Clark, a high-tech entrepeneur. This book talks about a period of his life after he helped found SGI and Netscape, when he was working on health-service software and designing...
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If LASER stood for Liquid Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Ripples http://goo.gl/Mdb2p. ...
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Comic Report: Syncopated #3
It's an anthology of comics. Some are about New York City; some are about history; some are about New York City history. Special bonus: an interesting article about heading out to Staten Island to lo...
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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, including water-related places in the SF Bay Area
I was sooooo sure that the Shinteki Aquarius Remix water-themed puzzly treasure hunt game thingy would send us to the Pulgas Water Temple. I remember a few years ago, back when I started playing thes...
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Book Report: Seaworthy
What does "seaworthy" mean? It means something that can survive being out on the sea. But "worthy" is a word with interesting connotation. It doesn't just hint at toughness, but also at a sort of rig...
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Zine Report: Giant Robot #66
It is another issue of Giant Robot. There is an advertisement for Android figurines decorated by Andrew Bell. There is an article about MSG advising you should use it even though a few people have ...
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Book Report: The Battery and the Boiler
You think you've seen cultural imperialism? The Battery and the Boiler shows you what cultural imperialism looked like in 1880s England. I read this book because it's an adventure story about the l...
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Book Report: Offshore
It's a novel; it's litrachaw. I tend to approach a book of litrachaw as a puzzle: spot the theme, spot the metaphor, that kind of thing. I was feeling all clever for having figured out this novel, ...
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Zine Report: Giant Robot #65
In the new issue of Giant Robot (available at fine periodical stores and the Giant Robot store on Shrader just off Haight), there's an interview with Eric Cheng! He doesn't talk about The Game, only...
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Seattle 2010 Trip Notes
Remember how I went to Seattle months ago? I finally got around to writing down some Seattle 2010 travel notes. Time-saving tip: you can write up your travel very quickly if you first procrastinate f...
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