We completed the mission!

We were able to send the allies home! (Or, at least, we discovered how so that they could get home anyway). Diego, Noriko, Mei Hui, Markus, and Lucie have returned to their home worlds and James has traveled to find Toria (he got a tattoo that reads "Trovu Toria"). Ariadne is still here.

In addition, Gaea kicked butt at the Multiversal Olympics (we took all the medals!) Dav Flamerock and Team San Francisco got silver in both the 3 Circuit and 7 Circuit competitions. Congrats!

~Hikaro

Congrats!

Good job Team Agonothetai! We've completed the mission that was tattooed on the Six's arms: we trovis la ringon perditan. We found the lost ring and have the info we need to send 'em home! We found all the chapters of the Codex. We've won against TheO and stole the five Rings before they knew what was happening! We've helped reduce the number of worlds by synchronizing by competing in the lost sport and doing personal labyrinths. In one summer we've assembled Olympic-class labyrinth runners, breaking the training records the omphaputer gave us even though we're up against athletes who've been running labyrinths forever! In fact, Dav Flamerock is going to be the runner for Team San Francisco in the Multiversal Olympics! Congrats!

Now all that remains is to compete and then send the Six home (well, actually, Eli and the Six minus Alex (Ariadne)! Does anyone have a copy of the transcript of the Lost Ring chat where they actually deciphered the 5 rings to find it? The file Alex provided is corrupted, and I'm confused as to what the Lost Ring actually said. :P

Sorry that Chapter 2 of the Agonothetai696 podcast isn't up. Dav sent me the file but it wouldn't work on my computer.

~Hikaro

So Ends The Reign Of Pangaea

That's right--we beat Pangaea at the seven-circuit labyrinth. 1:25.25. Team Wellington never ceases to amaze.

A World I'd Rather Not Live In

On the day after the Summer Solstice, June 22, Cineball and I were going to meet at Grace Cathedral and do a personal labyrinth together. Much to our chagrin, however, Cineball had serious MUNI trouble (MUNI is the San Francisco bus) and thus didn't arrive until after I had to leave. However, each of us DID do a personal labyrinth. I made a video of me explaining it, but my computer seems to have decided to reject my video camera as of late, so I haven't been able to get it to work. I'll try to get it to work but I'll probably just end up writing it all out here in the meantime. Check back soon for a full writeup--I've run out of time for blogging.

Competition

I don't know if you've seen it yet, but over at http://www.thelostsport.co.nz/ the Wellington team videotaped their most recent run... and of course their resident runner, Atalanta, has beaten me by a good 1.35 seconds, setting the record at somewhere around 14.09 seconds. I now officially challenge the Wellington runner Atalanta to a friendly competition that will last until the closing ceremony of the Olympics. May the best... runner win.

I said this several posts ago. Of course I didn't blog it at the time, but only a few days later someone in London beat both of us, setting the Gaea world record to 13.59 seconds. Am I going to ever beat that?

Upon learning about the Multiversal Competition Ladder, located on the SECRET SITE at http://164.109.150.213/, we also have the times of the other worlds--and I'm happy to say that we're annihilating the competition in the 3-circuit labyrinth. Unfortunately, we're losing depressingly at the 7-circuit, since the highest time (other than ours) is 1:50... and we're still up at 2:15. We somehow need to get it under 1:30. Looks like I know what I'm shooting for now. Seven-circuit labyrinths, here I come.

James Mission, Parto Tri

Yes, I know I finished this a long time ago, but whatever. Here's the third part of the James Mission, wherin James tells us about TheO.





In the end the mission was a resounding success. We got the Codex page, we got the maps of TheO cities, and we got James on our side. I'm totally psyched about the final Omph strength--we've only got 6 knots and our strength is already 86.3. At this rate, we'll be able to send everyone, even James, Kai, Renata, Larissa, Kentaro... everyone. This is going to be one summer Theo will NEVER forget.

lern 2 blog

And if there was ever any doubt why I'm not a blogger, it's gone now. Hah, I really need to remember to keep up with the blogging. I KNOW I'll steal a trick from a friend of mine. Someone needs to poke me in a week so I post again. I'll see if I can get posts up on Thursdays, because otherwise I'll put it off forever. Which isn't a good thing.

So I suppose now I'll blast my way through like three or four overdue posts. Here goes nothing.

Episode 1 of Agonothetai696 is posted!

Check out the podcast page here.


Hope you enjoy!

I'm back... sorry for the long absence!

It's been hard to find time to help Ariadne when I just moved twice and finished finals week :P Hopefully now I can contribute again. I had a really busy and stressful finals week and moved from college to home and then from home to the beach where I am working for the summer. And now I am working full time as part of the waitstaff here at CBCC.

Expect the first episode of the Agonothetai696 podcast soon-ish. I don't know how much time it will take to get it up but Dav's first recording went well and so I just have to get it ready for the web (maybe converting it from wav to mp3) and posted online.

~Hikaro

The Competition is On

I don't know if you've seen it yet, but over at http://www.thelostsport.co.nz/ the Wellington team videotaped their most recent run... and of course their resident runner, Atalanta, has beaten me by a good 1.35 seconds, setting the record at somewhere around 14.09 seconds. I now officially challenge the Wellington runner Atalanta to a friendly competition that will last until the closing ceremony of the Olympics. May the best... runner win. (can't say man on account that Atalanta is a woman.) I will be training in my backyard, because I see that I am not the only one who knows the turns by heart.

It makes me sad that I can't go to the San Francisco practice tomorrow, but I will help run the Omphalabyrinth and I'll be around for as many of the others as possible. This competition is going to be truly epic. Wellington, THE GAUNTLET HAS BEEN PUT DOWN.

James Mission, Parto Du

If you're wondering what this is, see the post below first. Otherwise this won't make any sense.







A few brief explanations: The 646 reference that Shad0 makes at one point is his attempt to figure out where James called before we ambushed him. We had taken his phone and Shad0 had found the number. We were trying to figure out where the number was to pinpoint James's TheO allies. Unfortunately, it was only a voicedrop... and we did learn that it was New York.

I did not subtitle the final video because it is 100% James telling his story and that would get tiresome (as well as delay the release of the highly-anticipated videos). So instead I posted my transcript on the wiki here.

James Mission

As many of you may already know, I was in San Francisco assisting Kai and my fellow Agonothetai friends in our capture, interrogation, and conversion of James Mutters, well-known TheO activist and Kai's best friend. I've been busy all week compiling videos of the event, since it's best to see what happened firsthand, through footage gathered the day of the event. Sometimes it's wonderful being a Mythopoeia. Anyway, I'll post each video here as I get them, and I'll also give some brief explanations of the video.



I created the beginning of this video because I knew people would want to know who each person in the video and the photos was, and I figured that knowing their ancient strengths would be helpful. I also used it as a time to make it known what color each person was for their text, since I knew I would be color-coding the subtitles.

I had to use subtitles because the wind was horrendous, and even I, who remembered most of what was said, couldn't understand half of what was being said. So I added subtitles--that's what's taking the videos so long.

We were so nervous before that, and I was grinning like a maniac because I was so nervous. I'm glad it didn't get that for the most part--I look like a complete fool XD

At the end, the papers that were blowing away were the pages from my Kodekso--I brought along my copy of la Kodekso de la Perdita Ringo in case we'd need it. I guess a clew isn't good enough to keep papers weighted down. An unfortunate side-affect of that was that in the blowing-away papers my scroll tube vanished. It had my scroll for James and a spare in case we needed it, and the tube itself was really awesome. But it vanished, and we had to use a backup scroll. Oh well. Work on #2 is underway, but it's 3 times as long as #1. So I'm uploading it in 3 segments roughly 7 minutes each. I expect #2 part 1 will be up at about noon tomorrow.

Hikaro's Personal Labyrinth

I did my personal labyrinth today. I wanted to talk about what I learned about my parallel selves on the video, but I also wanted my video to be accessible to Esperanto speakers, and I'm simply not good enough at speaking Esperanto to do an Esperanto voiceover (I actually tried, but I wasn't very good and I wanted English subtitles, and I couldn't make them work). In any case, writing's my best medium anyway.

I know my labyrinth is lopsided... that's what I get for freehanding it! I did my labyrinth in the back of Parking Lot J, which is very empty on the weekends. (WOU dies every weekend because everyone leaves town for the weekend!) I wanted sidewalk chalk, but WOU's bookstore only had regular chalk. It took more than one whole stick of that chalk to draw that labyrinth!

I did three runs, actually, of my labyrinth. It was actually kind of annoying because after the first and second runs, I realized something was wrong when I was back in my room so I had to scrap the run and do another, walking back to the parking lot where I set up my labyrinth. The first time went fine but my head was cut out of the shot for the entire video. The second run was seemingly good, but when I was editing the video I realized I forgot my scroll! (No wonder I got nothing on that run from the parallel selves!) The third and final run is the one I published the video of.

The first and third runs I got differing impressions of my parallel selves, so I've concluded that I was seeing two different parallel selves. My world-creating moment was March 30th, 2008, when I committed to going to college at WOU instead of Pacific University.

The first run, I got the impression that my parallel self (the one that went to Pacific U) was a lot more lonely than me. I didn't know anyone who was going to Pacific, but I knew several who were coming to WOU, and I hang out with them all the time here. Even though one of my best friends from elementary school went to Pacific, my parallel self wasn't really friends with her. However, my parallel self was working for the student newspaper at Pacific, something I haven't really had time for here.

The third run, I got impressions of a similar, but different parallel self. This parallel self was on the newspaper staff, yes, but this me was a dikaiosune, not a sofia, and he was organizing synchronizing labyrinths and was a runner for his labyrinth... not something sofia-me would do! I guess this means that WOU has stimulated my intellect while Pacific would have stimulated my leadership skills. I didn't get the impression that this me was lonely like the first one at all. It's good to know that I'm not the only me that is helping Ariadne!

Overall, I think it was a good run. I completed a mythopoeia mission by writing "Findthelostring.com" below my labyrinth so that anyone who happens to pass by the labyrinth might get curious and join our cause!

I'm going to do a personal labyrinth

I have signed the unofficial personal labyrinth register at omphaloi.com today to run a personal labyrinth tomorrow. I will use chalk on pavement to make my labyrinth and will write "findthelostring.com" nearby it to promote our cause by hiding it in plain sight at the same time ;-)

The weather is wonderful here so hopefully it will be excellent tomorrow so I can actually do this!

~Hikaro

Hey there

Well that was wierd. Forgot about my other as-of-yet unfinished blog for a ... different project. It required that I name myself A.I. Professor. Funny result here though. Hopefully Hikaro will fix that and set my name to Dav Flamerock. Anyway, Dav is me and I am Dav and I am a fellow blogger here. I only have a few minutes, so my intro will be short.

I found out about Ariadne when one of my friends got a strange package that had a clew (no joke!) leading to findthelostring.com. It wasn't until we started finding Codex pages that I decided to learn Esperanto. I began, but recently I haven't been able to study because of Finals. Now that school is over (as of tomorrow, actually) I'll be studying more reliably and I might actually become fluent!

Anyway, I'm also in on this Agonothetai podcast project thingy, so you'll probably hear my voice from time to time. I'm from the San Francisco Synchronization team, their resident runner, so I wouldn't be surprised if you hear from me again. In the meantime, I'm going to go make James ditch the Opposition and join our side! (because you know TheO is completely misguided.)

How I Found About Ariadne

To get some housekeeping out of the way first, hopefully this podcast project will get off the ground. Some of Ariadne's other friends and I are planning on collaborating on the Agonothetai696 podcast project, but so far nothing has come of it (save Dave Flamerock's addition as an author of this blog).

When I was working on the first episode of the podcast (before I found people interested in collaboration) I told the story of how I found out about Ariadne. Since that is no longer the plan for the podcast, I may as well tell it here.

I was on the Esperanto learning site lernu.net and was on the English language forum. I saw a thread titled "Trovu la Ringon Periditan" (Esperanto for "find the lost ring"). I clicked it and read the thread, which talked about Ariadne's situation. From there I went to the website listed, findthelostring.com, and the rest as they say, is history. I was one of the people who got Eli's email sharing the secret podcast and once we first got the personality test from the Codex, I found out I was a Sophia. I haven't been good at all about working on Sofia missions because the Sofia missions haven't been playing to my strengths (math and science, like the waveforms and pan-cosmology) are not my forte. But I have contributed my own theories (several of which turned out to be right, like that the "House of Salomon" Eli mentioned was alluding to Bacon's The New Atlantis) and I have helped translate several chapters of the Codex into English.

Se vi povas paroli Esperanton, bonvolu skribu al mi Esperante! Mi bezonas la praktikon. :)

~Hikaro

My impassioned plea to Ariadne

I just sent off an impassioned email to Ariadne's address, hoping she will read it. (Read the latest blogs written by Ariadne to see what I am talking about: Ariadne is MIA by her own choice).

I took more of a Chariton/Dikaiosune route than my primary strength of Sophia, because I felt it was more appropriate (and a recent Sophia email didn't really help). I shared some things about myself that I wouldn't really call "personal", but it is a parallel between her situation and my own. I thought this personal connection would help her. My main point was not "synchronization doesn't kill"; it was a plea for more open communication so that we can accurately assess what she saw. I fear she is caught up in her own emotions and viewpoint and thinking the worst, so I asked her to explain what she meant by "I'm different than the other allies" and "By seeing I killed them." because I have a hunch that she only thinks she is different and only thinks she killed them because of a sort of victim's fallacy (that everything is her fault). I also shared a quote from LotR:FotR the movie because I thought it was perfectly applicable to her situation (and ironically the movie also involves mysterious rings). It is what Gandalf says to Frodo after he says he wishes the ring had never come to him: "So do all who see such times. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that we are given." I asked her what she was going to do with the time she has been given. ;-)

Hopefully this will snap her out of whatever funk she's in!

~Hikaro

PS: As a side note, we will soon have another author for this blog! Woot!

The Worlds Need Our Help

The idea of a multiverse has existed in philosophy for some time; just last year I read part of a book by David Lewis for a philosophy class, in which he asserts that there are a near-infinite number of worlds, where everything that is possible happens. Thus to say something is possible is to say something happened in at least one of the worlds in the multiverse.

But when I say that I am now a believer in this theory, it isn't because Lewis convinced me. It's because I know people who have come from other worlds. Ariadne, Markus, Noriko, Lucy, Diego and Mei Hui. I've been following their blogs, and they woke up in labyrinths all over the world with amnesia and a strange tattoo that says "Trovu la ringon perditan" (Esperanto for "find the lost ring"). Since they have amnesia, what we do know about the multiverse is thanks to the Codex of the Lost Ring, which we were able to find with help from a historian named Eli Hunt and his "omphaputer." The Codex warns that unless we can synchronize the worlds within the multiverse by playing the lost sport of the Olympics (called labyrinth-running) and running personal labyrinths, the multiverse will reach its limit of number of worlds, and all the worlds will collapse into a single world, starting the universe over. The multiverse has a natural method of reducing the number of worlds (created by each choice made by anything) by merging worlds with only very trivial differences and by drastic, rapid continental movement on "outliers" (worlds very dissimilar to the others). Our world, unfortunately, is an outlier, and we must synchronize or risk putting the multiverse in further danger of collapse.

The three methods of synchronizing the Multiverse are outlined in the Codex (which I have helped translate from the original Esperanto): labyrinth running, which consists of a blindfolded athlete navigating a labyrinth whose walls are made by people standing and humming; athletic alignment (remaining perfectly still in a position, which aligns you with parallel versions of yourself); and personal labyrinths, which involve reflecting on a life changing decision made within the last four years while walking a labyrinth, which also synchronize parallel versions of yourself. Synchronizing merely merges worlds and people instead of collapsing them.

Unfortunately, besides the six agonothetai (game keepers of the Ancient Olympics and now refer to those who help synchronize the Multiverse) we have enemies in the form of Theo (likely an organization rather than a single person), who has been sending threatening messages to the agonothetai and claim to have converted Markus, and possibly Ariadne, to their side. Also, La Sekto (Esperanto for "the sect") is a mysterious organization independent of Theo but who mistrust the Six and is trying to make contact with Theo.

Please help us! The best thing to do would be to get caught up on everything by checking out the handy beginner's guide and timeline that some of us at the Wiki have put together to help new--and old--friends of the Agonothetai. Take the ancient strength quiz to see what kind of agonothetai you are, and then help with your strength's missions, posted on Ariadne's site (graciously put together by her new (rich) friend Kai, who helped her back when she first was found in the labyrinth).

Together, we can save the world!

I will go into more detail in subsequent posts :-)

~Hikaro

Useful links:
Ariadne's Blog
Movie clips with Ariadne and Eli in them: a communication from the another world?
Eli Hunt's site
The Wiki, a resource of all the information we have collected