Mysterious apartments and treasure hunts

Stories like these never fail to enchant me. Thank goodness there are more people out there in the world wanting to make life more enchanting. I may just leave a couple clues to the people who live in this apartment after me, but nothing so elaborate.

There are some people who know me through my persona firewall and would know that I love these kinds of treasure hunts. I have created seven of them in my lifetime, even though I only ran five of them and only three of those were solved (one was too hard and one didn't generate enough interest). I even got my pseudonym through the design of my second treasure hunt (the one I made too hard). When I was younger, I ran a few of them, and learned a lot of unique life skills and lessons through them, such as how to build puzzles backwards, how to keep people motivated to solve problems, and how to generate excitement. I even learned how to age paper in a microwave :D .

If you don't know what a treasure hunt would entail, you could go to the crappy Wikipedia page on the subject which I refuse to link to, or you could read about some real treasure hunts. The first one I was introduced to was the book Masquerade by Kit Williams. In it, people had to find a golden hare buried in the countryside, using a series of intricate clues hidden in ornate drawings masquerading as a children's book. It created quite a stir, with treasure hunters scanning the countryside and digging in many plots, some of them private property. Other puzzle books such as The Egyptian Jukebox and stories about fictional treasure hunts such as The Westing Game or Poe's The Gold-Bug fostered a desire to create one of my own.

My hunts were usually in a more linear fashion and involved more diverse puzzle solving aspects, some concepts of which I have liberally borrowed from books (I started one hunt with a puzzle very reminiscent of The Westing Game, where players had to match words together to get the next clue). There is a great movie about hunts of this fashion called Midnight Madness about the Luskin hunts in San Francisco. There are still a lot of groups out there that do these competitions and they pass the organization of these hunts to the people who solved the last one.

Nowadays the fashion has hit the web with the Alternative Reality Game, or ARG for short. An ARG would involve finding usually steagographed clues in web pages that would lead you to another clue with a hint that would make you find another hidden clue in an otherwise innocous site. TV shows have been using these to great effect; the ARGs for Lost (www.ocenaic-air.com, Find 815) used these to great effect in order to enhance the viewing experience.

Seriously, I forgot how much fun it was to run treasure hunts. It's a bit harder nowadays, with Google making it that much easier to look up trivia and puzzles easily mined by properly written algorithms. I could get involved in one of the more recent hunts and maybe use that to get my feet wet again. According to the Wikipedia site on Luskin's hunts, there are three that are hosted in the NYC area, and summer is the right season for these kind of adventures. I'll have to check it out.

(PS -- I just found out that the draft system posts in a way that dated by the creation of the post, not when the post is complete... so this post is actually a duplicate. What a dumb system!)

I can ride my bike with no handlebars...

but I didn't think that I could split the atom of a molecule, since a molecule needs at least two atoms in it.

Or so I thought!

It seems that there's a disagreement on the internets over whether or not a molecule needs two atoms or just one. Some pages have dodged the issue by just saying that a molecule has as few atoms in it to guarantee the chemical properties of that unit. Even Wikipedia splits hairs, saying in one sentence that a molecule needs two atoms, but recognizes that some gases may be formed from atomic divisions of an element and that each division is a single atom classified as a molecule (such as the molecules in a noble gas such as Krypton or Argon).

However, I just think that the Flobots just didn't understand the chemistry or deliberately manipulated the truth to sound better. In any event, the verse sounds better as "and I can split the atoms of a molecule, of a molecule, of a molecule", regardless of whether or not the author was trying to foreshadow nuclear war as it is in the end stanza of the song. It doesn't matter; the song still rocks, and the rest of their album is also pretty good.

Long time no post...

...and this is where I pretend that I haven't been slacking for the last seven months. :D

Actually I have started a new job at TopCoder and that has been keeping me extremely busy. At the time that I post this, I'll have a few posts ready, so I will be posting regularly. Here it goes to posting regularly again.

Music and muses...

I just saw this utterly beautiful video on the Fred and thought I'd pass it along. A little early for Valentine's Day, but for some reason this is the right song at the right time for me. The song was done by Amplifico, and they have more songs and an album release real soon, but to download the songs you have to register (might not be a bad idea, but I'm always cautious about such things). I will be writing a post soon about muses, because I saw this really great exhibit at the Met with my sister during the holiday where the muses and sirens in this piece were competing. I didn't know the siren myth at the time; it's interesting to note that while the sirens are cursed for they transgression in believing that they could compete with the muses, they were put up to it by Hera, so the whole thing is just another cruel joke the muses and the gods play. Short end of the story, our muses are not always on our side. It's a good thing to know, and I'll elaborate tomorrow.

Happy new year!

My resolutions this year are taking a new tack... I already blogged about this earlier in December, and I'm still deciding on which ones to do. I am limiting myself this year instead of going hogwild but I will still be maintaining my 43things account to keep in touch with the long term goals. My New Years celebration was wonderful yet ultimately tiring. I will write more about it tomorrow, but for now I need time to recover from the craziness that was this holiday season. :D

This is the saddest poem I have ever read...

Time for a little perspective...I decided to write about Bukowski tonight. Charles Henry Bukowski's poem Bluebird is the saddest poem I have ever read. It may have a little to do with perspective; Bukowski is one of the most tortured poets of the twenty-first century, having suffered from acne vulgaris, ulcers, and tuberculosis to ultimately die from leukemia. This man faced all of these medical demons and kept on writing, while being inspired by drink and the race track. I recently watched Bukowski: Born into this and was ultimately moved by it, especially when the poem Bluebird was placed in perspective at the end of them movie. I had no idea how so much great art is inspired by so much pain and hatred, such sadness and loneliness.

Honestly, it scares me just a little.

It scares me because Bukowski went through some really bad childhood experiences and some horrible medical conditions to produce some amazing art. And it required the horrible experiences to produce this art. I hate to think about someone who went through so much pain to produce something that enriches society, because deep down, it means that I somehow have to pay this person back, but ultimately there's no way to do such a thing. Maybe this pain and suffering is allay-able; maybe it's something that should be prevented. But, in the prevention of such suffering, it would also prevent the production of such great art.

Seriously, read this poem at least three times. The first time I read it, I wept openly. Does this make me less of a man? Maybe. Does it define me as a human? Maybe more. Does it seriously mean that people must suffer for their art? It could be true. And that saddens me more than anything.

Dudeism?

I listen to "The Big Lebowski" podcast (at www.lebowskipodcast.com) as an entertaining discussion of the philosophy behind this rather creative movie. The most recent podcast as of this writing talks about Dude-ism, and in the process presents a website that details this odd religion (although it is more of a philosophy than a religion, but I like the joke). It really is a thinly-veiled homage to the Dude (semi-title character in the movie), but the site itself really prods some deep questions in me.

Religion for me is a touchy subject, and I don't plan to really expound here on my religious beliefs, other than that I do believe that religion is a very private agreement between you and your metaphysics, and shouldn't be aired, even if it influences your judgment. When a faux-religion pops up I do get concerned though, and maybe it's just a silly thought, but what happens in two centuries when your sarcasm is lost and people take it too seriously? At the same time, this is against the very notion of Dude-ism (from the first Dude-etude):

Confronted with this inflexible and unfeeling existence, the Dude in all of us will acquiesce, slyly scribbling a peace sign where a zero might otherwise suffice. “He who gently yields is the disciple of life,” wrote Lao Tzu. That is to say, he abides.

Let's just say that this is not a religion that encourages evangelical action. I find this encouraging. I agree wholeheartedly with the discussion of philosophy, explanation of theology, and exhibition of faith, but I am aghast towards the amount of religious flaming that is present these days, be it about metaphysics, politics, or programming language.

However, this is also not a religion that spurs action, either. One of the greatest promises of religion is its ability to inspire (literally to breathe life into, interpret the etymology as metaphysically as you wish). Dude-ism is actually void of this inspiration, unless you consider the Buddha (I don't mean the reincarnated one). So it instructs you in posture but not in direction.

When I think of my concept of viviomancy, that is one of the most important parts. I do believe in letting the winds direct me, but I also believe in letting the winds inspire and through serendipity excite me. Not all of that can be undirected and messy; as I discussed in my previous post, some inspired actions do take deliberate steps and discipline in order to accomplish. There must therefore be a balance.

While at first this is just a disagreement between my life-view and Dude-ism, it also for me disqualifies it as a religion, and as a philosophical entity loses its pragmatism. Taoism at least encouraged right action and discipline, even if it was restrained and seemingly lacking in form. Buddhism encourages strict adherence to the Precepts in order to encourage peaceful and harmless action.

Sometimes even action is required to abide.