10/20/2003: Tholos project

[quzah]

I just thought of some cool shit you could do with this thing:

Project the scenery on it. You walk in, and are looking at downtown Paris or some place.
Project a speeding car coming right for you at like 100mph. Now, with nifty camera work, you could freak people out. Especially if you time it right.

Picture:

You're sitting there jabbering away at some people in Paris, you get used to the surroundings. I mean, it's fully enclosed, they even map the sky and ground to it. For all visual intents and purposes, you are in Paris. People are sitting around you, you've got a table and are sipping a drink.

Suddenly, from around the corner, a car comes flying along, straight for you. People you've been conversing with are freaking the hell out, jumping out of the way.

It's coming right at you.

One of a few things happen:
1) You shit yourself because you can't get out of the way in time.
2) You run and dive out of the way and nail an invisible wall, since after all, you're enclosed in a box.

Think of the fun you could have.

Seriously, the people you're talking to could just as well be sitting looking at monitors. They don't have to be even there. Hell, they don't even have to be in Paris. It could all be done digitally.

The truck that comes flying along could even be done digitally.

Think of the pranks you could pull!

Really though, if you were immersed in this box where it fully in all 360* x 360* of vision (degrees of a sphere), with sky and floor mapped also, you could really forget you were in a box. So you could have a lot of fun with it. And not just by running people over. Heh.

Quzah.

[BrianR]

For the first time recorded since quzah showed up here, I have to agree with him!

I, too, would enjoy (mis)using these things to mess with people's minds and play pranks on hapless foreigners. ESPECIALLY the French.

Will wonders never cease?

Brian

[warch]

I really think that people are just going to be working out ways in which to have sex in front
of the things ...

Well, yeah. And simulaneously, Syc could more deeply explore his fascination with Alaska, while giving Alaska a chance to be fascinated with him.

[hot_pastrami]

Originally posted by quzah
I mean, it's fully enclosed, they even map the sky and ground to it. For all visual intents and purposes, you are in Paris.

Actually that's not the case as far as I can tell... looks like the images are all displayed on the outside surface of the Tholos. It's not enclosed, it's wide open. That's part of the reason it's so nifty. Look at all of the pictures of the thing, they all show imagery on the outside of the cylinder.

[wolf]

But it should be relatively easy to adapt the technology to project in, instead of out ...

Q does have an interesting idea there ... I'd love to have that kind of technology in a room of the house I want to design, but I have disturbing memories of that Bradbury story ... The Veldt.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally posted by breakingnews

Any of you PA/NJ folks hear about the couple having sex in the woods last Sunday?

They were drunk and were having sex in the woods when six men on ATVs find them. Despite them watching, the couple continues their business and puts on a show. After 10 or 15 minutes, the six men call the cops, who report, watch for 5 minutes, and then arrest them for public indecency and disorderly conduct. What a fuckin shame.

Let's see undetermined time + discovery plus 10 or 15 minutes + time it takes police to respond + 5 minutes = Must have been a young couple

[Torrere]

I think that it would be cool.

If I'm walking around a park, I might not talk to the other people in the park. They mind their business, and I, mine. However, if I and some guy from afar walked up to a Tholos cylinder, I imagine that we would probably start trying to chat.

That would be about it.

[breakingnews]

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
Let's see undetermined time + discovery plus 10 or 15 minutes + time it takes police to respond + 5 minutes = Must have been a young couple

It was in Hackettstown.

And not a young couple. She = 50, he = 43. It's been all over the radio - absolutely hilarious.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Ah Ha, the older woman syndrome. Her name wasn't Robinson, was it?

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by warch
Well, yeah. And simulaneously, Syc could more deeply explore his fascination with Alaska, while giving Alaska a chance to be fascinated with him.

You know, had I played my cards a different way, I could be posting this from Alaska instead of Philadelphia.

Back in college, a friend of mine and her grandmother spent their summers in Hyder, Alaska...a small remote tourist town in the far southeastern corner of Alaska, on the BC border. They ran an antique/tourist shop up there.

And we were sweet on each other for about a year...dated a little, messed around a little...nothing serious though. I don't think it would have worked out in the end anyway...she liked the Bible too much.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I don't think you would like Hyder, Syc. You're too cosmopolitan for an unpaved town of less than a hundred people, a million miles from nowhere with feets and feets of rain and snow.
Because there's only one road in and out, there's no American Customs but the Canadians have a post that's about the size of a garage with an overhang over the driveway. There was a pickup with Canadian plates in the driveway and my van wouldn't fit under the overhang anyway, so I parked in the street and walked (20 feet) to the front door. When I pulled up, 3 teenage boys were being escorted inside. One wore a Phlyers jacket so my wife yelled "where'd you get the jacket". Nobody was smiling.
When I went inside they were going through the boy's pockets and curtly told me to return to my vehicle. They searched the pickup thoroughly, 3 times before they released the kids. Evidently the kids in Stewart (BC) get their dope in Hyder.
They went over my van pretty good but didn't find it...er, anything.
That's the only time I've encountered a surly Canadian Border Guard. The American guards are a different matter but that's another story.

[elSicomoro]

You're probably right about Hyder, Bruce. But there's always Anchorage.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by Carbonated_Brains
That'd be a sweet piece of international Tunick art.

Speaking of Tunick...

[wolf]

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
I don't think you would like Hyder, Syc. You're too cosmopolitan for an unpaved town of less than a hundred people, a million miles from nowhere with feets and feets of rain and snow.

Sounds like my and Slang's kind of place though ...

And Alaska just went to no-permit concealed carry.

[warch]

You know, had I played my cards a different way, I could be posting this from Alaska instead of Philadelphia.

Isnt it weird to think about the choices youve made, some cards played more conciously than others, sometimes its just reaction or nonaction, that bring to where you are? There would probably be just as much good and bad with any fork you took, but its just a curious thing. There are so many tiny shifts that add up to where you are right now.