from what I know of Hugh puzzles, unusual word choices usually mean there's something hidden in them

anyone up for chess? i'm bored and can't think the best right now :P

perfect conditions for a chess game? hehe

exactly

Don't you love it when your last name is 24 characters long and half of the websites on the Internet won't accept it?

why would someone even limit the last name field to 20 chars only u.u

lol

@ffao , couldn't resist: We all need surnames with both uppercase and lowercase . . . and a digit!

(the 9 in my name is silent . . . old joke)

The 8 in my surname is pronounced "hate"

* that the way it goes?

(oyoyoyoy that was meant completely keboardimpishly)

Now I look like an *

Not the first time.

Surely the last.

... Rubio, I did clean up one mess you brought up the other day. Thank you, it was time . . .

stack reader deserved more than a bounty. Keep me honest.

Some things get sucked under the current.

(From one who often sucks, with or without a current, at present)

"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do!" (quote from Curly Howard, misspellings or not)

I don't doubt one of my parents came up with this awesome passphrase, then set it as my last name. I do wish they'd made it 4 characters shorter, though.

Change the system, not your name!

Were it only that easy.

If I could change the system every time I've changed my name . . .

@humn I noticed - looked good :)

Time and again, on a good day

Now get busy and solve the day and night of those two timers!

Nobody will notice, You don't need the points.

But you might feel a turn unlike another.

(As you have provided nonstop!)

I haven't the foggiest on what to do with the timers, alas. :)

Hey, maybe it'll be a classic, never know, it could happen.

Mabe it'll fade off. It has happened

NNNNNNNNNNNy case, I'd better go answer some new ones in order to garner more bountiable points just so I can tilt vote counts. Ain't that the system?

(unintended moment of honesty. <--- as well)

Hehe :)

The computer spewing these keystrokes will break down at some point soon (2 yr beyond warranty) but, until then, Rubio, you have made these batteries worthwhile.

O! That was a compliment!

Had it been an insult I might've used the same words. Not this time!

O!

(always re-reading every adjective, consecutive consonants)

Really, no parentheses.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

What in tarnation

I should've just been quiet.

Hogwash. There's no should or should not. I'm just real confused because I don't speak humn language.

It's a language between worlds. Between intention and Earth.

It's a music with a rhythm that tries to overachieve its choice of words

As you said, it's hogwash.

Let's wallow!

(Really, I agree that it's hogwash.)

Wallowing seems to be the default state of the Sphinx lair

Slop a dee!

Any inscrutable splatter will be deciphered.

Then proceed with the dee-slopping.

Easy as it sounds . . .

(rrrrr, now I've gotta solve an indoor feral cat surrounded by the constraints of an outdoor shopping trip)

(if only that cat would jump into my shopping bag)

(solved. Puzzle to be posed to come)

(it relates to knitting) (bye for now)

@humn I am humnbled to receive such a compliment. Alas I was busy elsewhere and did not see it sooner.

What a coincidence, Rubio, in timing and elsewise.

(I just got back from another multilingual interchange, with two puzzles in the works, both to do with tone of voice and what isn't said. One involves a common language and the other doesn't.)

Anyone want to chime in? The better puzzle has to do with how much can be conveyed by nothing but denials.

(Courtesy of USA directors, heads, and other, of covert information.)

The less-good-for-puzzling (come to see it writing, maybe better!) but still one-to-solve-every-day is how to facilitate a conversation between two persons without a common language, when your own language is third afield.

I'm not marking these puzzles and honestly hope that someone else will take the baton.

If not, no problem, if as much even need be said.

@humn No. :)

Before I forget, @humn have you ever tried Blindscape by any chance?

Nothing but denials!

It's a cool game with a very interesting approach to storytelling. When I played it, it felt very humnish.

How to keep up?

If you have a phone, earphones, and 15 minutes to spare, I recommend it.

No phone, but a stereo to share with the neighbors. And a twitchy curiousity to match. Let's see.

Heh

Talking with you is always an adventure

Didn't realize how ironic "Let's see" is. But now I've found 100s of demos and trailers. Care to narrow it down?

This one

Tha!

Wel

Am getting more and more, but that site won't spill. Is that the spirit?

(I'm on Firefox)

That's strange

That seems to be the Google appstore page to install it ...?

There's not much on it that I can see either

If the idea is to imagine what isn't shown, I'm onboard!

It's a game to install on your phone

And then imagine what you're not shown

Oh. So it's literally a visuals-free experience?

yep

All audio, so it seems?

If I had a phone, you would be suing me for stalking.

But the idea of wending through a blind landscape is tantalizing!

A friend and I amuse and challenge each other by going out at night just to do so.

One of these nights one these fools won't pull it off.

(So far so good.)

Think I'm ready for a world without sight. Think I know many who are.

For them I try to make my pictures as borderline-friendly as possible.

And for my future self too.

You should give some thought to your past self also.

Who dat?

If you mean I should retreat to the innocent whom others loved without my knowing? ... Could I do that and know it this time?

All I (think I) have done is ratchet beyond the comfortable.

Always beginning with the comfortable.

A great place to start.

What borders the comfortable is not meant as harmful, need that be said.

@Rubio Yes, and some touch

I only meant you should think of yourself in past, present, and future. Rather Dickensian, if you will. Who knows, you may one day transcend Time itself - you want to make sure your posts would be accessible to you in any frame of time-reference. :)

@Ankoganit Touch? How does that work, on a mobile device? Or does it just, like, vibrate the phone or something

Word heard.

@Rubio Well, not touch touch

You do the touching job; the phone doesn't touch back

I see

(which is, perhaps, why I might not be all that good at this game) ;)

I want smelltop. (and want to be funny again)

It's not a game to be good at; just need to immerse yourself.

(Sorry if my descriptions are getting confusing; it's pretty hard to describe)

What game?

(oops, another confusing description)

@Ankoganit Sounds like a sensory deprivation tank experience. Immersion and nothing to see. ;)

Blindscape? Never heard of it.

@Rubio Heh, but there's a lot to listen to

@Sid You just heard of it, you liar :P

My lie has been caught! :P

> Features: • Stunning HD graphics

Such honesty there

Err.. @Rubio there is no image on Rabg9 on stack imgur

No. there's not.

A! I've been following links to blindscape for half an hour now and all that comes up are commercials and gnome narratives.

@Sid I don't think you're getting the right letters

@humn Huh?

Is something wrong with my broswer?

What link did you get to?

Got it. facepalm

Sorry, I was trying to play it cool but the thing has been spammed.

I am guessing our user is Mith/Gareth. Mith because he is secretly Rand..(:P) Gareth probably because he solves everything.

now that we're onto that subject, why is the hint image dark green on light green

Takes a half hour or more, usually, before I blow it.

I was wondering what to do with capitals too, but now that Rubio said that was misleading I'm less inclined to try stuff with it :P

I realized shortly after posting Hint 1 that, well, it might actually do more harm than good. Oh well.

I think the new one will be a bit more useful.

Is the point of blindscape to trust senses other than sight?

What a great premise!

s/trust/use/ perhaps

Wow, 9 people are being watched.. I better watch out for anyone following me in buses/trains. :P

Watch out for those who might see you!

Sniff out those who might suspect.

Spare a clue for those with less.

My lips are biting my teeth.

And, yes, my nose smells awful.

Pure poetry!

@Rubio I can see Hint 2. But, no idea where it's leading..

When a hint needs a hint? hintception

(For anyone who can understand)

Haha

Hintception!

May be it's an imgur maze then

(giggling and jiggling)

(and grateful for your refocus, user Techidiot)

Did I divert the focus from something to something else?

I don't see any music. So, I think I am good. :)

(No need to think. Perhaps even not to thank. It was voluntary.)

^ lol.

my helpfulness level 0 hints are, well, generally stating the completely obvious. and thus, not helpful. (yet, technically, helpful.)

@Rubio How did you find the panda? Can you give me a source to the utility to do the image splitting thing?

perl -e '$x=join("",<>); $x =~ s/^...*(.PNG)/\1/s; print "$x";' MXmZe.png > embed.png

there's the exact command I used. :)

:p

Is there a variant in python? :p

(cheers from the peanut gallery)

Or an online compiler with image input?

I'm sure someone can whip one up in a hurry. I like perl; I can slap something together on the command line, just like shown.

there was a puzzle like this earlier

I remember I just opened it in Notepad and deleted everything until the second PNG header

Hmm..Let me check

$ tail -c +33140 MXmZe.png > testing.png

that will also work, for this specific case

As long as you're using an editor smart enough not to discard crap it doesn't know what to do with (does Notepad actually qualify here?), then you can do that

the above command just lops off the first 33139 bytes, which happens to be the right offset to find the embedded image

Hmm, the second PNG seems to be the panda. But, unfortunately, editing the text didn't helped

Good point about Notepad and crap it doesn't recognize, I might have Sublime Text instead.

@Rubio Tried running the code here but gives compilation errors. Any ideas if it can be ran here?

use strict; open (IN, "MXmZe.png") or die "missing MXmZe.png"; open (EMBED, ">embed.png") or die; my $x=join("",<IN>); $x =~ s/^...*(.PNG)/\1/s; print EMBED "$x"; close EMBED;

upload MXmZe.png there, run ^ that version. it should create the output as embed.png

Is this right?

Syntax error at IN,

Ok got it

Works!

Thanks.

(It would have worked all one one line too btw. hehe)

the magic of perl

Yeah. I'm used to Shell.

you can tell a perl code is good when it becomes indistinguishable from hash

like join("",<>); $x =~ s/^...*(.PNG)/\1/s;

It's been year's since I have tried to run a perl code. I've took some small course years back. Must have enhanced a lot after that

I've written much more insane stuff :)

I am not into product dev so, don't get much chance to do "real stuff". But, I like to take some time off and try things out. The recent fondness was Shiro. And, I am tempted to ask @ffao the way I can run it on my machine.. and check the function calls.. unless that is a completely stupid question to ask :)

I don't know what "checking the function calls" means, but running should be just a matter of downloading python, pip, then running pip install about 5 times to get all the dependencies

I lost some sleep over Shiro too, quite literally :)

I've python installed already.

Need to check what dependencies do I need

But what then? I am sure it won't run just by executing bot.py right?

@ffao Oh yes. I know :)

puush.py, pyv8, pillow, beautifulsoup4, requests, websocket-client

it should run just by executing bot.py

then it will ask you for passwords to the SE account, imgur account, puush account, and one-time secret account

Okay. I will give it a try. By looking at the code, it looks like it interacts with the webpage. So, I may need to have imgur account/puush account/etc..

Yes. ditto

the SE one has to be real, but for the rest you can just type some gibberish and it should still run, but when it tries to use those it will raise exceptions

Okay.

@{$d[$ns]}=sort {$a<=>$b} @{$d[$ns]};}else{$fail[$ns]++;} my ($N,$sum)=$#{$d[$ns]}+1; grep{$sum+=$_}@{$d[$ns]}; printf("%${NSD}.${NSD}s : %3d%% :%6d/%-6d%-5d%-5d%-6d%-4d | %s",$ns[$ns],$N?(100*$N/($N+$fail[$ns])):0,$N,$N+$fail[$ns],$d[$ns][0],$N?($sum/‌​$N):0,$d[$ns][$N-1],$fail[$ns],"${_im}$text ${_ei}${_ho}"); sleep($DELAY);} print "${_ho}refreshing dns...${_ce}"; for my $ns (0..$#ns) {my $NS=inet_ntoa(inet_aton("$ns[$ns]$dom")); $NS eq $NS[$ns] and next; $NS[$ns]=$NS;}}'

SE account password for Shiro?

^ that's about half a script i built on the command line

Will I need that?

that's the kind of nonsense Perl I sometimes write :)

if you're just testing, you can run it under your own account

Okay.

Good. I will need to do some tweaking in the code.

Oh that script.. :p

if your tweaking is generic, you can submit it as an improvement

I've only tried to run it in my computer, so I don't know if there could be problems in a different environment

Hmm.. I hope you run Windows :)

@n_palum Well, there's a kind of rabbit hidden in the riddle.

I do run Windows, Linux goes a bit over my head :P

Okay. Let me set it up.

@Rubio were you pruposefully trying to be obscure with that? o_O

I haven't the faintest clue what that does

well maybe refresh dns, because that's in the print

It's a (nonfunctional) snippet out of a much longer scriptlet called dnsping

which basically hits the nameservers you tell it to use with a set of queries you tell it to use, and reports how long it takes them to respond (or if they fail)

@MOehm I have no idea what you are trying to say there.

I think he meant it quite literally, as in there is a word that represents a kind of rabbit hidden in the riddle

@Sid I refer to n_palum's comment that Hugh Meyers's puzzle "Could Hobbs Bait ..." has a steganography tag.

And ffao apparently knows what I'm talking about. :)

I actually don't, I just trust that you do :)

Apart fom the hidden word, I haven't found anything.

Okay, anyone has got anything on the CCCC?

@ffao What if I am using Google account to log into SE?

It's failing to connect with gmail email id and password in that case.

with the way it's coded currently, you'd probably need to get an SE password for it to work

I don't know how chatexchange works exactly, but that would be my guess

Hmm..I can see browser.py causing issues while logging in

And, I am not sure if I can add SE account and connect it to my google account

Is there any minimum rep required now? To get it working?

you could try to do a password recovery, if you don't mind adding a password to this account

otherwise you'll need to farm 20 rep in a different account to get it working

it's only two upvotes, so it doesn't take that long

Okay. Let me write an answer to Rubio's puzzle. I think I have a partial thing to get atleast 20 :)

@ffao puzzling.stackexchange.com/a/52489/30887 Can you give 10?

OK, that was a lot faster than I expected

Hehe

Thanks. Lets try again

someone should make some more progress on Rubio's puzzle, I'm so curious

You have no idea how much I want someone to make headway :)

for now, though, sleep calls and I am off to answer it

GameN all

huh

maybe I need to take my phone off silent

And, it's still failing to connect :-/

Nothing else hard-coded right?

Oh, tech, that's you?

Yes :D

nothing should be hardcoded... it asks for your user id, password, and tries to connect

how exactly does it fail?

Something goes wrong in client.py

can you talk in chat with that user?

What should be the API key? I am entering a gibberish key right now

if it's a code problem I'm in trouble because I didn't write that part :)

`Also, do I need to be logged in with that account?

the API key? that's just for puush, right?

no, you don't

Yes, the API key for puush.

I am just entering xyz

I think you can enter any string

can you try to chat with the other user?

using a regular browser

Yes. Trying now

Yes. It works

eh, try running bot.py again, if it doesn't work then I don't really know what the problem is :(

Ok.

One more thing, this warning -

I get this when I enter SE email id. Pretty sure it's not an issue.

doesn't look like an issue, it means that when you type your password it will show on the console

when I type mine it's hidden

but anyway login shouldn't fail because of that

you can try printing the id and password it's using to try to log in to confirm

Yeah. I was running from GUI.

Yes

Just tried. Print's fine

Interesting..the attempts are getting authenticated as well

well, that's definitely weird

do you want to try ignoring the exception and seeing if it works? :P

commenting out the response.raise_for_status() line should do that

Let me check

but you're getting a 500 code, that (should be) used to indicate that the problem is in SE's end

Nice. It actually logged in. But then failed

that error is basically telling you that you did not in fact log in

Actually, I am tracing it. And, it went ahead of the client.login() function

of course it did, you ignored the exception raised in login

May be the exception was not letting it pass ahead.

Hehe yes

what I would do if I really wanted to check if it's borked would be sending the request myself and seeing if the 500 error comes up

if it comes up even when you try it manually, then the error is on SE's side, and there's nothing we can do about it

Now, this looks weird

This is what I am getting randomly while logging into SE using SE id

SE's system is confused by the fastest account to ever reach 20 rep

looks like it's indeed a problem on their end, then :/

@ffao Haha

Let's wait for a while. Will check back later

May be their DB's are not yet updated

Something like that

you'd think they'd use a better error page than that if it were such a common problem

if their DBs need time to update, then every new user is going to hit this, right?

Hmm, may be the DB's related to the Open ID maintenance or the API's

Not sure what is the volume of new users utilizing the API.

Don't think their app is using it.

Also, I see a place to improve here. Instead of the user/password thing, their is also a direct open ID url, which can be used to access SE

May be the developer can use it instead as an alternative to user/pass

the developer probably thinks user/pass is as simple as it gets for most users (and I would agree with that), so if you have to implement one method that is a good choice

but FRs for that should be directed at him, not me :P

Hehe, no. Not an FR. Just a though.

I am now, 200% sure it's SE causing the problems

The error page I showed you has this URL

stackexchange.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/users/authenticate

And my console shows the same URL in the error

HTTPError: 500 Server Error: Internal Server Error for url: stackexchange.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/users/authenticate

@Techidiot you here?

Yes.

It's done.

(If you are asking about the image)

It's not, really.

Edit, then delete; otherwise it's still accessible.

Oh. But, I can't. It's already deleted.

I gotta run right now but I'll try to mop up the rest when I get back

Hmm. Right. Please take care of that if you get a chance. Thanks in advance :)

@BeastlyGerbil No idea. I guess I'm just there a lot, and have the time to research and write up lots of long answers as well as posting plenty of questions.

@Emrakul Do I? I'm not sure if that's true. I do have the highest score in 1984, but those answers are all from way back in the first days of private beta.

@Randal'Thor Figure out "your" stalker puzzle yet? :)

@Rubio I haven't been working on that one.

Like I said, no comment ;-)