CassieIsWatching theory

It wasn't intentional, but recovering LGPedia has managed to turn this into CassieIsWatching week. I'm sure I've shared at least part of what follow, but I'm also sure I haven't shared other parts. Regardless, below is my CassieIsWatching theory, most of it fairly random thoughts:

My CassieIsWatching Theory - The End

First, let me start with the end. The Anagram From Hell. For all the other anagrams, Cassie helped us out with additional clues, such as blurred-out images of the solved anagram, so we could tell word count and get a general idea of the length of each word of the poem. I believe our failure in Second Life caused Cassie to disappear, and that anagram was her farewell. I'm sure everyone would likely agree with that overall conclusion. If not, I'd love to hear other ideas in comments.

The Beginning

I believe that The Creators, despite their denials, were somehow involved, at least in the beginning. How involved, I do not know, but I suspect the original puppet master at least had their blessing, if they weren't outright running it to begin with.

Swimming!

I think Swimming! contained a clue that should have launched the ARG. I think This Is My Story Now was an explicit invitation to play.

When I Get To The Bottom Where I Stop

I believe the backlash from the images in the second video was unexpected, so The Creators publicly distanced themselves in order keep that backlash from impacting LG15 itself. I do not know if there was someone else involved with the production in the very beginning that is still unknown to us, who maybe took over the reins of CiW once The Creators distanced themselves, or if they continued to run it in the background.

Frank. Poor Frank

I think when we finally failed Frank a couple of days before the ceremony, Kaye's message contained another clue that we had missed. I think from Kaye's phrasing, that clue may still be out there. What good would it do us now? Who knows? Closure for those of us still obsessed after all this time?

The Ceremony

If The Creators continued to run things, then why did the story lines of CiW and LG15 diverge? Quite possibly, our failure caused The Creators to face a choice. Either Bree died, or they diverged the story lines, leading to the fake ceremony Daniel witnessed in LG15. If Bree had died that early on, due to our failure at CiW, LG15 would have come to an untimely end. While the series survived Bree's eventual death, I'm not sure it would have had it occurred that early. I'm not 100% convinced The Creators were involved after the backlash, but it is a possibility.

Glenn Rubenstein

Even though it's been speculated that Glenn was the PM despite his denials, I do not believe this to be the case. I believe his gamejacking attempts frustrated the PM, though. What impact that had on the game itself is anyone's guess.

Final Thoughts

I believe our failure to solve early clues within LG15 led to the creation of CiW. I believe the backlash caused The Creators to want to end their association with CiW, but ending the ARG abruptly at that point would have outed them as the PMs, even if they were merely collaborating with the PM. I believe our failure gave them the perfect out from CiW, while allowing the main project, LG15, to continue.

I know some of these theories are a bit out there, and some cover old ground. I'm still not 100% convinced of anything related to CiW at this point, so I'd love to hear your thoughts :)

Brute force anagram solver

Quite some time ago, I had posted the source code to a brute force anagram solver I had written. And by quite some time, I mean May 3, 2011. Unfortunately that post is long gone, as it the source code. :( Did anyone happen to grab it? I would love to get it going again to solve the Anagram from Hell. Unfortunately, my old standby, archive.org, didn't archive it. I may start working on a new version, since that version was a bit of a hack ;)

Did we miss a huge CassieIsWatching clue?

Did we miss a huge CassieIsWatching clue? I do not know for sure, but I suspect we may have. What drives me to this conclusion? Well, I was plunking around the CassieIsWatching page of LGPedia, and decided to check to see if Frank's blog was still up. Yes, his blog, A Voice Within is, indeed, still there. As I'm sure everyone recalls, the last entry was from his wife, Kaye, telling us of his passing. It was posted on October 10, 2006. If I recall correctly, the ceremony was to occur October 12. (Is that also when the SecondLife event took place?) This gave us two days until endgame, which may have been plenty of time to discuss what I just noticed, and realized may have been a clue:

Per Frank's wishes, there will be no memorial service or grave marker. I will be spreading Frank's ashes througout the East Fork trail in the San Gabriel Mountains, so he will always be there.

Was that a clue? I believe this is the area of Swimming! and This Is My Story Now and the same area Cu Roi found at least one other clue related to Frank, but did we miss something? Or was there another drop in the area at that time? Was it something that would still be there, given ...so he will always be there? Or am I full of wishful thinking? Please discuss in comments...

CassieIsWatching

Y eyeeu estew h ceoovrneht l irwu
fyaugtbov tn ihalwp e T osaer iseh
nskvseYe adep euiaw d nhetdroe o
m hsddo yAeh n sodadu lewy aobec lnwdi
ud ieosih tuyrla svtuI tlvty glgje he
I oef gyaun laild ltd ay, esvKui o
fu 'oye o el oomlte enmomlYy dvt
wo ddooeeyTh oteth re- ehm r oine
ehr' st ceTsit o tri aoenbei t,mu s
ltnsIolB ruseur uyufft'o o e e
,lewab ooLk ownov oe dnad bpu
k oahw emtu y Tslng i onaliso'
eT we'ttae dsrho thos,ieat nl b n
o i 'tbeko Yneohpo tuo ug ehdvtzny rwou
oruu t e tw'o mloeiflYt ernt osabi
,cler oIre rmit ttii ur lknte ltwhu
hdoltau ey e tm i awwaIoh imr g
e y to h ad eiau oIhraet glrnteml
w oho lgiw'sne tsre ahaeer Im l
eeao siaC epnesrAto dns d nestc i
esnnCsietpsre eea o dios at c

LGPedia

An unofficial version of LGPedia is now live at http://lgpedia.nitemarecafe.com/wiki/. I will take it down if/when the official one goes back up and redirect my URL to the official one at that time. Until then, this version is up for the community to enjoy. I'm sure I'm not the only person who would rather see the official version running, along with the phpBB forums, but I hope this version has the community's support until then.

A couple of DIY cpu / computer links

Here are a couple of links to homebrew cpu and computers that I thought my readers might finder interesting. The first is a homebrew CPU that I found on Hacked Gadgets. The Nibbler is a 4-bit CPU, hence the name (a nibble is half a byte).

The second link is a 3-chip retrocomputer via Hack A Day. It uses a 6502 CPU, much like the early Apple computers. I wonder if something similar could be done for the beloved 6809, as used in the Tandy CoCo...

Questions about LGPedia and mediawiki extensions

I was considering importing all the old CassieIsWatching stuff from the Wayback Machine version of LGPedia, but ran into a bit of a snag. I don't know what mediawiki extensions The Creators had installed. One, in particular, is going to really cause issues. It's used to link to articles in wikipedia itself, with a tag such as "{{wikipedia|MMORG|MMORPG}}" (minus the quotes). I don't know what extension they used to do this. Anyone have any ideas? I'm aware that the current version has inter-wiki linking built in, but it uses a more standard wiki tag, and {{ }} is used to indicate a template is used. So, in my version, it looks as if I am trying to use a non-existent template, which is not at all what I wanted.

edit: Actually, after further research, it does appear that they had used a template to link out to wikipedia articles. Problem solved :)

Spam user registration solution

One of the problems that drove me away from Wordpress to begin with was the number of spam user registrations. It was getting downright insane. To combat that, I thought installing WP-United, and integrating user accounts, might stem the flow if I installed anti-spam measures in phpBB. That didn't really happen. It just meant that I had to remove these spam accounts from two places now instead of just one, as, even though users should be registering through phpBB in general, they can still register via Wordpress as well. So I installed WanGuard to see if that helps.

Let me know in comments if you have any other solutions you've tried, or have any experience with WanGuard.

Hannahs Attic And Place

Apparently, Hannahs Attic And Place has never heard of the Streisand Effect, or they wouldn't have gone so crazy over a negative review on Amazon.com. (I think that's the review in question. If so, they have deleted their storefront and changed their name. Maybe because the other 18 reviews that aren't negative appear, at first glance, to be shills? Hmmm...)

Anyhow, here's the feedback, followed by the seller's response:

"Order was canceled for some error in the pricing. Very unprofessional seller if they can't keep their orders on track they should honor their price. WILL NEVER BUY FROM THIS DISORGANIZED SELLER AGAIN. Real waste of my time. F+"
G., February 6, 2014

AV Linux

Over the weekend, I had a little bit of time to play around with AV Linux a little bit. Unfortunately, I did not have a ton of time to play with it, but was able to use this guide with a live USB stick to play a little guitar, using my netbook as an effects pedal/amp. Worked great, but what I'm really looking forward to playing with is using my netbook as a DAW (digital audio workstation). The live environment ran incredibly smooth for the limited resources of the netbook, and I'm guessing an actual install might run a little better yet. Screen real estate is a bit tight, but that's OK. The inverter in my LCD screen is going out, so I can't use the netbook for much without an external monitor anyhow.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to the love of my life! I love you, Kim!

Comcast buyout of TWC

There is a lot of talk about the purchase of TWC by Comcast the past couple of days. I have no inside knowledge because I'm too far down the food chain, but I have two thoughts on the matter.

First, assuming is passes FCC muster, it will take time for any potential impact to trickle down, so things are BAU for now.

Second, when can I transfer to Seattle? I wasn't out there long, but fell in love with it when I lived out there. I would love it if this gives me the opportunity to move back out there.

New theme

I found a theme similar to the one I was already using, but which had already been converted to a mediawiki style, so I installed it. I'll tweak the mediawiki version of it a bit, and tweak the phpBB style as well, to get everything even closer in appearance. There is still the issue of having to create the account in phpBB, but having to log in to the wiki separately, but that's not a show-stopper. At least they use the same user database :)

Content on the forums and wiki are forthcoming :)

Wiki

I am currently working on installing mediawiki and integrating users with phpBB3 and WordPress. I have them somewhat integrated, in that you cannot create a new user under the wiki, just under the forum, but logging in to one does not automatically log you into the other. I had this working years ago, but much has changed since then and many of the mods/extensions haven't been updated. There's one more phpBB3/mediawiki SSO extension I need to try. If it works, I'll use it, as it is MUCH better, but if not, I'll use what I have for now. At least it gives me a starting point.

Also, I need to integrate the themes. The phpBB3 theme integrates fairly well, but I still need to tweak it just a little bit. The wiki is close as well, but still needs considerable tweaking to make it fully integrated. I'll work on that once I get the functionality finished.

Integration

Some of the improvement are coming along, the first two of which are a better theme (that I've used in the past) and phpBB integration using WP-United. I've already got Chat, and I'll likely throw in a Wiki soon as well. Updates to come...

Unskinny Bop

Here's a song we're currently learning:

Improvements Coming

I am working on some improvements to the blog. One major overhaul is visual. Despite everything else about Blogger, I certainly liked how my blog looked under that platform. In that vein, I plan on doing a complete overhaul of the look-and-feel, perhaps building a new WordPress theme from scratch (or, as a child-theme to an existing one).

The other planned improvement is content. I've been all over the place content-wise, from a quick link elsewhere with no commentary, to full-blown essays (which were much more rare), over the past year or so. I plan on finding a nice balance between the two. When I post a link, even without commentary, it's something I want to share and I think people who read this blog might enjoy or otherwise find useful. The problem of posting them without commentary is that I'm giving up an opportunity to add value, simply by explaining why the link might be useful. I plan on changing that...

As a result, posting frequency, such as it is, might change. My goal has always been one post a weekday, even though I've often fell short. I'm still working on a strategy for posting frequency. I may experiment with it a bit. It certainly won't be more than once a day. It might be every other. Or it may be a set type of post on any given day of the week. We'll see what works :)

Google Now

If you use Google Now, Stepcase Lifehack has a somewhat dated list of 60 Google Now commands you should know.

Back to WordPress

I am back to Wordpress, with a bonus of lots of old content being imported back in! Some items might not work quite right, and some might work fine. I'll fine-tune everything over the coming days, but it's good to be back :) Also note, I've integrated the posts of my old running blog here, too, and will be decommissioning that blog completely soon.

One-word review of Captain Phillips

One word review of Captain Phillips: Intense.