Roaming Monkey

I recently finished reading Cory Doctrow’s most excellent book, Eastern Standard Tribe.

It turned out to be a real page turner, although not in the classic sense of the term. I’ll explain more about that later.

Doctrow’s vision of a not-so-distant and not-so-far-fetched society where people live, sleep, and socialize with one another across the street and around the world, joined by only common interests and syncronized circadian rhythms is foreign to many, but an affirmation for myself and many others.

Bloggers and denizens of message boards and chat rooms are intimately connected to their fellows. There’s always someone around who knows the answer, or knows someone who does. There’s always someone around to banter with, someone trolling, and many private conversations as well. People feel connected to each other in a tribal sort of way, even though some of them may be half a world away.

Why not, then, federate yourself with the people in your tribe?

Why not help them get their feet in the door, and afford them some measure of trust?

While it’s not the only theme, it underlies everything else. Loyalty to, and betrayal by, members of the Tribe.

And now, back to turning pages. This book, along with Doctrow’s first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and a collection of short stories called A Place so Foreign, is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which allows, as he puts it, “anyone in the world to make any non-commercial adaptations of [this] book that s/he can think of.”

This being the case, I proceeded to download a user-prepared html version of EST. The formatting was minimal: paragraphs, chapter titles, and not much else. The default serif font on a stark white background was very hard on the eyes, which is what I think turns a lot of people away from reading books in their electronic form. However, with a fairly minimal amount of effort and some CSS magic, I was able to transform the text into something much more pleasing. A sans-serif font, and text in boxes with a pleasing shade of grey for background. In this form I was able to read the whole, albeit short, novel in two afternoons.

For those interested, I have uploaded the versions of “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” and “Eastern Standard Tribe” that I hacked together. They are available here and here.

After a recent discussion, some of the members of the Grand Traverse Linux Users Group and I came up with an interesting idea for our monthly social event. We thought that it might be interesting to hold a Fox Hunt of the WiFi kind in our local downtown area. After a fair amount of discussion, I was able to draw up a specification and a set of rules.

Although I’m sure that people have done this sort of thing elsewhere, I was not able to find much information about it, so I thought it would be a good idea to post it here. This exercise is similar in practice to the DEFCON Running Man contest, but on a larger scale.

Here are the rules * There will be one event official, hereafter referred to as the “Game Master” or GM. The Game Master will be responsible for organizing the event, and is the sole authority in disputes. The Game Master may choose to delegate responsibilities to other participants if necessary. * One participant will be named as the “Fox.” The Fox will have at least one wireless device operating and broadcasting a specific SSID. If driving, this device must function without operator intervention, as the Fox may not operate this wireless device while the vehicle is in motion. This is for the safety of all involved. * A team will have no less than two members. This is for the safety of all involved. The number of members on a team is will be limited by the capacity of the vehicle, or by the discretion of the driver. * Only two computers my be in active use by a single team at any time. * If driving, the driver may not operate a computer at any time. This is for the safety of all involved. * Each team will have at least one cellular telephone available for use for the duration of the event. This phone should be used only for event-related communications. The number will be given to the Game Master at the beginning of the event. * If driving, all speed and traffic regulations must be followed at all times. This is for the safety of all involved. * The teams will be provided with at least one map of the playing field. More maps may be provided upon request.

There are many possibly variants, but a few suggestions follow:

Quick Fox and Lazy Dogs variant

The Fox will be allowed to move freely within the playing field, and to actively evade the Hunters. The Fox will actively broadcast packets on his wireless interface. The teams' objective will to gather the largest number of packets from the Fox. GPS and Directional antennae may be allowed at the discretion of the Game Master. At the conclusion of the hunt, the teams' data will be collected and verified by the Game Master, and he will process the data and announce a winner.

Hunter and Hunted variant

The Fox will remain stationary in this variant. The teams' objective will be to triangulate the position of the Fox in the limited time provided. GPS and Directional antennae may be allowed at the discretion of the Game Master. If any team determines the exact location of the Fox, they should call the Game Master. After the GM verifies that the team has indeed made positive identification, that team will be declared the winner. If no team is able to make contact, the team that is able to triangulate the Fox's location most closely will be declared the winner.