Channel

[lysander]

I went snooping on the main Omeostat page again and found this page.

omeostat.com/channel.html

It seems to be linked to the machine countdown, and also refers to an IRC chat channel, #vlbqopdlv on the Freenode network. I logged in as soon as I found it, but I'm the only person on there right now. Sad face. What does it mean?

[lysander]

The large box that links to the "channel" page is actually not just a blank image, it's some kind of low-contrast symbol (as was pointed out to me by jeffer). Here's what it looks like with the brightness pulled all the way down in photoshop:

i53.tinypic.com/bi78d2.png

[pulkk]

lysander, what do you mean about a large box that links to the channel page? when i go to the omeostat.com/channel.html page, all i see is the following:

Now!
freenode; #vlbqopdlv

anyway, for those of you who (like me) had never heard of IRC before this, here's how you get into the chat channel:

go to webchat.freenode.net
make up a username
type in #vlbqopdlv as the channel name

this will get you into a chat room type of thing that i think anybody can enter. maybe we are supposed to be here at a specific time?

[lysander]

Go to the omeostat.com page and select the links on the page by using "tab" to cycle through them (I actually do this all the time since the mouse on my laptop doesn't work, which is probably the only reason why I noticed it). You'll see that there's a large "image" in the lower left corner that's linked to the "channel" page. The image looks like a big white box, but it actually isn't, it has an image in it. I can't make anything of the image, except that it's geometric and, you guessed it, symmetrical. i53.tinypic.com/bi78d2.png

I think that the IRC channel was perhaps where we were supposed to meet the person when there was the first timer, which was eventually replaced with the "Now!" page. After I got the email I posted about in the other thread (the one that said they would "try again") I decided it probably wouldn't hurt to test out the theory. Someone named XVMVX (who may be our "stranger") met me there and confirmed a bunch of stuff that adornohatesdubstep, liber, & myself had discovered from the tapes: Allen and Marie were married, Marie had tried to build a machine (XVMVX called it an "oscillator") but something went wrong and they were both "killed" (but apparently are not totally dead, since some of us got another email from her last night). He was asking after our machine, but I couldn't really tell "him" anything about it since I'm not on the email list. I am assuming it was soldered together via the information we found in the bookstacks.

XVMVX didn't say much more besides what was reiterated in the later email that most of you probably received: he's very skeptical of Dr. Skargaard and doesn't seem to think it's a good idea to try to reunite cyber-ghosts with their bodies in quite the way she envisions. He also mentioned the possibility of using the veves in the "thin places" to communicate.

It's still very difficult to discern who's right here. I think our next step ought to be to examine these "thin places" (could these be related to the "slim panels")? Can whoever had the note about the swimming pools please post the text of it?

[pulkk]

some attempts at figuring this out:

[14:16] <Lysander1> did you get the sparks email with the weird coordinates?
[14:16] <pulkk> yeah
[14:16] <pulkk> those are definitely coordinates, you think?
[14:16] <Lysander1> no
[14:16] <Lysander1> I tried them as UMT coordinates because that's what they looked like
[14:16] <Lysander1> But they don't work
[14:16] <Lysander1> At least not in the Chicago zone
[14:16] <Lysander1> I don't think UMT coordinates are ever negative, are they? I don't really know
[14:16] <pulkk> i don't know, either
[14:17] <pulkk> i wonder if there are any geography people doing this
[14:17] <Lysander1> I forwarded it to my friend with a GPS but
[14:17] <Lysander1> I dunno
[14:17] <Lysander1> the "s" is kinda weird
[14:17] <pulkk> yeah
[14:17] <pulkk> on the other hand
[14:18] <pulkk> don't forget that there were junk digits in the library codes, too
[14:18] <pulkk> they could be doing that again
[14:18] <Lysander1> oh, really? I didn't know that
[14:18] <pulkk> yeah
[14:18] <Lysander1> well
[14:18] <Lysander1> the areas around UChicago in UMT all start with 4s
[14:18] <Lysander1> like I'm on a geocaching site
[14:18] <Lysander1> and my apt is near like
[14:18] <Lysander1> 16T E 449791 N 4627963
[14:19] <Lysander1> so if it were a UMT coordinate set it ought to look something like that
[14:19] <pulkk> ok
[14:19] <Lysander1> but that's kind of really a stretch
[14:19] <pulkk> this is also maybe helpful:
[14:19] <pulkk> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_coordinate_conversion
[14:19] <pulkk> another thing i would say
[14:19] <pulkk> is that there is a possibility of some symmetry thing going on
[14:20] <Lysander1> oh good call
[14:20] <pulkk> if these are coordinates, maybe they point to the "opposite" of the place we want to find
[14:20] <Lysander1> i just went to UMT coordinates because they are longer, but you know
[14:20] <Lysander1> it could just be that they're missing some punctuation
[14:20] <pulkk> right
[14:21] <Lysander1> so the center of the uchicago campus is like... 41.789577, -87.599687
[14:23] <pulkk> hmm.. can you look up 58.3424, -61.7856?
[14:23] <pulkk> that's if we throw out the first four digits from each
[14:23] <Lysander1> the labrador sea, between greenland and the US
[14:23] <pulkk> lol
[14:24] <pulkk> oh wait
[14:24] <Lysander1> and if I just move the decimals over in both, that gets me a place off the west coast of africa near cape verde
[14:24] <pulkk> what about
[14:25] <pulkk> 43.854051, -87.163513
[14:25] <pulkk> that's if you read the numbers backwards
[14:25] <pulkk> and throw out the last two digits
[14:25] <pulkk> seems sort of close to where you were
[14:25] <Lysander1> yep let's see
[14:25] <Lysander1> oh dear, I hope they haven't left anything there
[14:26] <Lysander1> It's in the middle of lake michigan, between appleton and green bay

[pulkk]

lysander, here's the notes we found in the library.

imgur.com/a/wQAI9#IpXUw

[dreamskyboner]

Long story short, looks like the coordinates were in seconds and merely had to be converted to degrees (divide by 3600 for those who were wondering).

Anyway it looks like someone wants us to go to the Smart Museum (search 41.793984, -87.600496 in google maps).

Lysander mentioned that the Smart Museum is open late tonight, so I'm not sure if that's a "coincidence" or not. There may be some more clues hidden around there for us.

[lysander]

I looked through all of the rooms in the Smart Museum. I didn't find anything. I checked all of the galleries, looked behind the display cases, and asked a couple of docents and the desk people if they'd seen anything. I also asked after the lost and found and watched as one of the staff members went through it for me.

Either I missed whatever it was because I'm looking for the wrong kind of thing, or someone else already picked up whatever was there. Did anyone go earlier today?

I also didn't look outside at all.

[interdudial]

I received an e-mail today from Sparks consisting of only the following:

oJopowodpomodoro

In the e-mail thread, Lyndsey had this idea, which seems to link the the Smart Museum with this latest info. Maybe we're supposed to go there when the countdown reaches zero? (FYI, countdown currently happening on the wall-medina and (i think) omeostat sites) about 4 hours left...

Any thoughts?

My reactions: it's the Italian word for tomato, and this time it's not mirrored, but also rotated 180 degrees, so that the reflection is upside-down as well as backward. Whether that's a set of instructions by itself...

This is probably a stretch, but I'm going to run back to the Smart Museum and check the Andy Warhol exhibit one more time. That guy did a lot with symmetry and tomatoes (albeit in pureed, canned form).

-L

[lysander]

Sorry if I momentarily broke the internet by accidentally posting life-size images. I totally thought tinypic resized automatically. Apparently not.

I was so so wrong. Patrick texted me and pointed me toward this guy: (click)

It's a statue just west of the main statuary area, between the Smart walls and Court Theater.

i51.tinypic.com/2lbdfu1.png

i54.tinypic.com/n12lnr.jpg

i55.tinypic.com/2njvaed.png

My original email, for those who aren't on the thread (if there's anyone at this point):

"If there was anything to be picked up, it was already gone by the time I got there, or else I'm too short to see it. If someone picked something up here, can you let us know?

It looks like a giant radar dish of some kind. Could this be one of the "thin places"? (Radar is also radar backwards, but I think that's, again, me reading too much into this.)

[Moira]

Hey Guys, I am one of the creators of this game. Whoever has been sending emails from the wallmedina address is not one of us and this is NOT PART OF THE GAME. Do no go to washington park. We are actually having a really dope party for you at 5 in hutch courtyard (remember the email you got from Marie?) and you would be bummed if you missed the free pizza, cake etc. that will be there for you.