Ancient Logic

For a night, I got to join the Resistance. My friends have been playing Ingress, the augmented reality game Google launched a few months ago, nearly non-stop. As more and more of their time and attention bends towards a game that plays like a mash-up of capture the flag and geo-caching, I've become interested in the issues the game raises. And more than a little jealous that I went with an iPhone 4S in my last upgrade. But whatever. Our raid last night began the way any clandestine effort does, a covert marshelling of forces at a local safe house, in this case the apartment of one of my friends. Two smartphones fully charged and stocked with a supply of virtual munitions, +Morgan Rushing   and +Matthew McComb   set out onto the streets of Somerville, brazenly walking up to a quartet of portals (two Zipcar lots and a pair of local landmarks) and hacked them, flipping them from green 'Enlightened' control to the blue of the 'Resistance.' These factions h...

I really wasn't planning on posting anything today but then I found this amazing picture. Basically this is a map distributed by Paramount in 1927 suggesting stand-in locales for movies. It hits many of my favorite obsessions: Maps Movies History Created Realities I would love to do a map of New England with locations that could stand in for the rest of the world. Is that even possible? My sense of this region is that it is in itself a coherent place with its own specific atmosphere but I guess you could find some pretty convincing arctic tundras. Saharan deserts might be a problem, however. This might be more relevant than it actually appears. We the increasing popularity of augmented reality games (see Ingress ), might there not be a push for realistic environments for certain parts of the game. How else would you do an ice level on an AR game without actual ice? Credit to scientologist2 on r/movies

My friend Matt has recently become interested in the Google Augmented Reality game Ingress. I knew about as much as anyone else does by virtue of the promotional video: But apparently there's a lot more to it. At the moment the game is in alpha, which in typical Google SOP means you have to get an invite to play the game. Atypically, acquiring an invite is less about finding someone you know who has it (ala Google+) and more like passing an audition. Basically, you can wait at one of the metered portals for an invite or send a cool picture, tagged with "Ingress" or one of the other popular hashtags for the game. This is my friends work: https://plus.google.com/101002632394819121609/posts/XxQHHo6HEeQ So it appears he was successful, nice work! The actual play clips I've seen make it seem like a combination of geo-caching and Layers and also a bit of a road hazard, but still...very interesting. Seriously I'd check out all four of the links below, t...