Research Log

Live Video Feed for Orientation

2005-07-30T04:48:00.000-07:00

As you all know the EVA Orientation Seminar is this Sunday, July 31 at 5pm PST (see announcement below).

The presentation will take place inside SecondLife - but if you can't make it, you can still watch the video stream arranged-for by our in-world team leader and intrepid site admin.

If you missed the recent free account offer (why?), don't despair -- you can still get a free trial membership at secondlife.com.

Visit the EVA Portal -- the stream will be posted there as soon as the URL is available.

EVA Portal Unveiled, Orientation Announced

2005-07-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

EVA Portal Unveiled

The EVA portal has finally been opened and those research candidates who made the cut have been provided with access. If you have not recieved your account notification, please contact support:

support@unvirtual.com

Of course, some applicants were denied for various reasons including collboration with external parties. Researchers and candidates, remember that you can be dismissed at any time if Tactical Operations determines that you have been involved in one or more of these external investigations!

Visit the portal for more tips on how to handle these situations.

Orientation Announced

A schedule and location have been announced for the EVA Orientation Seminar -- don't miss it!

July 31st, 2005
5pm PST
Vaoetere/96/200

This presentation will take-place inside SecondLife, in the "Vaoetere" sim at the coordinates shown above. Materials and information from it will also be made available "off-world" as soon after as possible, for those of you who won't be able to attend in the "virtual" person.

Nodeless Nonsense

2005-06-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

An admin from URI called me this morning to inform me that EVABase is down. Apparently it's been down for some time now.

This is nice information to have, since the team has been debugging the nodes for weeks, trying to understand what the issue might be. At least that explains why logins aren't working.

This was the same guy that called me about those diag images, I could tell. So I bugged him about those. He says they need to restore the entire image database to retrieve them, I guess this is taking him awhile (he says he admins several sites).

He mentioned he posted an EVA calibration template, I'll have to direct the project team to it.

He also mentioned that several other people had asked him about the template. I found this curious so I checked over the node failed-login logs and found some activity there as well.

What's going on with that? Is the home office checking-up on the project and its resources?

Or perhaps...Is it possible that old ghosts walk again?

I should contact tacops.

In a little while. I'd like to see how this develops.

Delayed, Denounced

2005-06-11T23:14:00.000-07:00

This afternoon as I was leaving the lab with some of the newest reports, I received a cell phone call from a tech for our image processing service. More great news - ugh.

He told me the entire set of diagnostic images specially prepared for the EVA core alignment has been misplaced. He's having replacement sent from their headquarters but they won't arrive for another 2 weeks.

Yeah I know, 2 weeks - I could order a print the size of a house through Walgreen's and get it sooner - but this is very specific material, prepared for very exacting work.

And I realize the additional overhead is likely the security required by URI in explicit agreements with partners such as these. No doubt they've provided armed guards to escort the EVA core we sent them for test calibrations. The 16 hours that TI had access to the core was like a space mission, every moment choreographed, timed, inspected and re-inspected.

In fact I have to admit: Their constant scrutiny, combined with these endless complications, are beginning to take their toll on me. Not all at once. Just slowly chipping-away at me a piece at a time.

I retreat back into the work.

Some days it feels like all I have left of myself.

Aging Disgracefully

2005-06-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

Well it's official, I've gone and gotten old on you all.

I've been using a new eMac for project data analysis (the graphics are just incredible) so I put I-Tunes to work.

It didn't take me long to find a station or two, but I was disappointed to find all the music I like is now "classic".

Punk 45 Radio: "Streaming Punk Rock & New Wave Classics"

So this is how it happens, I just become a "classic" overnight?

I think I'll go to the record store tonight - get up-to-date, you know?

They, uh - they still have those, right?

Wishing you were there

2005-06-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

I took note of the observations of Dr. John Suler of Rider University in his "The Two Paths of Virtual Reality". On this point of human visceral involvement in these 'virtualizations' of reality we are in complete agreement.

Psychology of Cyberspace - The Two Paths of Virtual Reality: "The amplification of physical vigor and the minimizing of discomfort is more fantasy than reality. It doesn't live up to the definition of 'virtual.' People who WANT the exertion, the thumping heart, the sweat, the feel of the branches in their grip, will be disappointed. It ain't nuthin like the real thing, baby."

By the way the entire article is excellent. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the complexities of human virtualization and extended avatarism.

The limitations of virtualization were precisely the impetus behind the Extended Virtual Agent architecture. In order to achieve any true virtual existentialism, a much lower-level interface is called for.

The EVA is the answer to this dilemma.

Unfortunately implementation brings with it a host of its own issues, but I was always taught that all puzzles have answers - if one is willing to look carefully.

And in the right places.

VR and Meditation

2005-05-30T22:28:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the time has finally come for the public's introduction to the metalayers of virtual supraexistence?

Science & Theology News: "Virtual reality, meditation blend in Cape Cod course "

I like to think so - increasing public awareness of the work in these fields by the likes of Mr. Spira suggests the world might finally be ready for the future Doc and I had sketched out so long ago as wild-eyed young men.

Pushing Ahead

2005-05-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

What are these discrepencies that plague the EVA??

Is it the original URI architecture? Is it my implementation?

Years of my life - years - I have pursued this, my own grail, through a labrynth of math and logic. At times, turned-about and disorientated I've stumbled - and yes, I've fallen, too.

But I have never surrendered . . . never. Not to the limits of my technology, not to my own limits and not to the limitations of my short-sighted 'colleagues' regardless of their questionable 'qualifications' or 'authority'.

Unlike others I could name.

And yet, my reward at every turn is disappointment - illogic, chaos and anomalies trouble every implementation, every single project based on EVA technology. Today the logs were chattering away about Beta spikes for a solid 10 minutes around 6pm.

More of that damned Beta business.

Even as far back as the 03 tests with Doc, URI archive logs show fluctuations in the Beta bands that I simply cannot account for. These same anomalies were, in fact, part of his excuse for abandoning the original project.

Pfft - his reports were the killing blow to EVA's first incarnation, oh so many years ago it seems. He and others on the original board moved to kill the research just as it was cresting the usability tests.

Well this time things are different. With a new URI board behind me, these Beta fluctuations are not an issue. And regardless of the strange circumstances, my former partner's disappearance means there will be no one to stand in the way of my technology.

Well, mostly mine, at least.

EVA proceeds as per plan - spike to 160 or or above I will hold her steady.

Level 2 Testing Complete

2005-05-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

Level 2 testing is complete - the results were positive and the project will proceed to Level 3 on-schedule.

Some in the new project team are a little 'skittish' - first-time EVA users, I chalk it up to Fear of The New. A couple of them have even claimed to sense some sort of 'contact', just an artifact of my beta interface code.

There have been some - discrepencies: Spikes in the Beta range continue to occur, seemingly without pattern. I know, of course that there is one. Nothing occurs without cause.

Actually, I've just noted when combined with my earlier solo in-world results...there is a steady increase in the upper 150-160EVA range.

Level 3 testing will proceed nonetheless.

Team (dis)Harmonics

2005-05-07T03:30:00.000-07:00

It's unfortunate I can't leverage the capabilities of the EVA toward building the EVA itself.

A pun, of course. :)

But a distortion-free and instantaneous mode of interaction would cut through so much of this "overhead" that interaction in spoken language introduces. Hopefully with that, the task of working with and managing (bargaining!) with others should be greatly eased as well?

Our coder has quit us, or left us, either way we're left weeks into the project hunting for an entirely new lead programmer. No - this is not an optimal position. I believe this excerpt from our "in-world" chat conveys my discomfort:

Gary Bukowski: well I hate to tell ya this mu-man, but it looks like our scripter is a gonner
Shakuhachi Muromachi: you don't mean [omitted], "the stable one"? the prodigy as you called him?
Gary Bukowski: the same, sir - it saddens me to report that the milkman does not appear to deliver in our neighborhood
Shakuhachi Muromachi: well did he quit? what exactly is his status?
Gary Bukowski: MIA man. said he'd be back in 3 days.
Shakuhachi Muromachi: And
Shakuhachi Muromachi: ?
Gary Bukowski: well that was like ...
Gary Bukowski: 9 days ago
Shakuhachi Muromachi: ah
Gary Bukowski: yeah, soooo...
Shakuhachi Muromachi: well. yeah...that's gone
Gary Bukowski: yup - toasted. a phantin[
Shakuhachi Muromachi: so then we g
Gary Bukowski: *phtanmo
Shakuhachi Muromachi: wait, he's a what??
Gary Bukowski: *phantom
Gary Bukowski: stupid fingers
Shakuhachi Muromachi: well what the hell did you do to him?
Gary Bukowski: i didn't do it!
Shakuhachi Muromachi: alright, whatever
Shakuhachi Muromachi: so what you're telling me is we need another coder
Gary Bukowski: afk a sec
Gary Bukowski: k, back
Gary Bukowski: eh - I can code alot of this myself ya kno
Shakuhachi Muromachi: uhhhhhhh - you are not going to
Shakuhachi Muromachi: !!
Gary Bukowski: i'm scouting for a new one tommorow, sir
Shakuhachi Muromachi: of course you are
Gary Bukowski: same terms as before?
Shakuhachi Muromachi: begone, you!

Project Approval at Last

2005-04-26T20:43:00.000-07:00

Our project has finally been approved by the money folks and their constituents. This means we'll have the resources necessary to realize our Extended Virtual Agent technology within their extensive "metaverse".

My whole team is very excited, as we declassify a subset of our research for use as a "cross-world" intellectual entertainment. Obviously I've had to scale-back the technology a little.

The original work was not specifically entertainment-oriented - but this smaller implementation gives me a chance to publicly prove the EVA's solid technical foundation.

I believe we've seen the last of the strange anomalies encountered in some of our earlier research efforts. This time I've got solid sponsorship, partners with cross-world experience and some of the best artisans in the metaverse.

Soon we'll open our doors to the many eager early adopters.

I can hardly wait to see what wondrous advancements may develop when our systems succeed in joining the virtual and unvirtual in cooperative harmony.

Presuming I've finally nailed this damned puzzle by then.