Xuebing Du
Claire Keane
Keni
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Show & Tell
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let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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@armaitus
Active Directory: Promoting a DC Loses the Start Menu
Just over a year ago, I replaced our on-premise Exchange Server (2013) with a new one (2019). I run Exchange as a virtual machine (VM) as it is much easier to handle backups that way. Without going into too much detail, I run my domain controllers (DCs) as VMs as well, with one sharing the same VM host as my Exchange VM. Planning to switch off the older host, I created a new DC VM as well as…
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30 Something Years Later
Before I get started, I should state that, no, this isn’t a belated review of Orbital’s album from last year; as much as that album is definitely worthy of your attention. No, this is something a little more personal. 30 something years ago, I left college and went to University to begin an academic career in Molecular & Cellular Biology. Those were halcyon days (another Orbital nod there, I’ll…
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AITA - COVID Commemoration Consultation
AITA – COVID Commemoration Consultation
It’s almost 5 months since I posted anything here. That isn’t to say that I’ve had nothing to post, I just haven’t had “the spoons”. The last 6 years, or so, have not been great to be honest and I would much rather post positive or thought provoking things than angry rants at the world. I’ve also wanted to avoid the pandemic as a subject; it’s an emotive subject, even amongst calm and rational…
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Weights & Measures
Weights & Measures
57 years ago, the misnamed United Kingdom formally adopted the metric system of measurement. The British imperial system of measurement continues to be used to this day but has, in many ways, been superseded by the simpler decimal based system. That was 10 years before I was born, I think 1965 is also the nominal birth of Generation X, so it won’t surprise you to learn that I am a fan of the…
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Four seasons in one hour
Four seasons in one hour
Clifton Beck Ford, June 2018 Hailstones in my hair are melting,cold water trickling down my neck.Salt crusts mark my passing,asphalt and mud from the trek.I sit here passively drying,as the seasons flip, unchecked.I await an angrier sibling,as Dudley’s wrath swells the beck.
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Black Dick's Tower
Black Dick’s Tower
Just under 4 decades ago, I went on my first ever trip away from my family. I don’t remember how old I was, only that I spent the weekend without cutlery and for the first time outside my family, felt that my belief in the paranormal was taken seriously. Full disclosure, my cutlery was packed in my wash bag; I only missed it because I was a scruffy dirty child, away from home without my family…
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Working on a Ley Line
Working on a Ley Line
I’m quickly approaching the 15th anniversary of my current employment; that’s almost a third of my life working for the same business. The other day I discovered that for 2/3rds of that time, I’ve been sat on a ley line! Ley lines have always been something of an enigma to me. Definitely a topic of Fortean interest, I’d never really pushed my interest further than mentions of ley lines in books.…
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Pokémon GO! An Open Invitation
Pokémon GO! An Open Invitation
After a couple of months of waiting, Niantic have finally released the ability to invite friends to raids at Pokémon Gyms… and it’s pretty cool.
The release crept out slowly yesterday evening… possibly to coincide with “Raid Hour”. After seeing news of friends raiding remotely, I decided to try it out with an international gifting group that I recently joined.
Now, where I live, I’m not actually…
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Niantic Wayfarer
I recently wrote about a new feature available to level 40 Pokémon GO players and Niantic‘s replacement to Operation Portal recon (OPR), Niantic Wayfarer.
One of the things that seems to be frustrating many newcomers to Niantic Wayfarer is how the Wayspot approval process works and how to prevent themselves from falling “into the red” when it comes to their own rating as Wayfarers.
As such, this…
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TL:DR – This post contains some of the history behind Niantic’s POI (point of interest) submissions and an overview of how submissions work in Ingress and Pokémon GO.
For over a week now, level 40 Pokémon GO players have been able to submit new POI to Niantic, in the hope that their submissions will become Pokéstops or Gyms in what is arguable Niantic’s most popular AR enabled GPS based game.
I’ve played Niantic’s original GPS capture-the-flag-esque game, Ingress, since December 2013 and my first submission to their POI database was made very early in 2014.
As you can see, it was rejected as a duplicate of an existing submission.
Since then I have made hundreds of submissions, some of which were rejected and some of which made their way through to Niantic’s games. To date I’m responsible for 297 Ingress portals and a single accepted submission via Pokémon GO!
The history of Niantic’s POI submissions has been rocky. Back in the halcyon days of early Ingress, there was no limit or level cap on making submissions. Any and all players weer welcome to suggest new portal locations to Niantic. This led to a massive backlog of submissions to review. IT could take several months for a portal to be accepted or rejected.
Niantic made the decision to remove the feature from Ingress.
Over a period of several months, the team at Niantic slowly worked through the backlog before announcing a new programme “Operation Portal Recon” (also known as OPR). This came around the same time that portal submissions were made available to higher level Ingress players, albeit capped at limit of 14 submissions every 13 days.
OPR allowed Ingress players to review portal submissions, voting on whether a portal candidate should or should not be brought into the game. Players had to be a certain level and to pass a test before being granted access. OPR has since been replaced by a programme called Niantic Wayfarer, I intend to write more on this over the weekend.
Over the year or so that submissions have been available again, I found myself called upon, by players amongst the Pokémon GO community, to submit various POI in the hope that they become Pokéstops or Gyms.
As I’ve written about previously, I play all 3 of Niantic’s GPS based games: Ingress, Pokémon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. So, I didn’t mind going out of my way to enhance the games for other players – I was effectively enhancing the games for myself anyway.
That being said, with a limit of 14 submissions every 13 days, the local backlog had grown quite large, with over 100 suggestions from players across the local community.
Other Ingress players had stepped in also, using their submissions to help other players gain POI in areas close to their daily routines. When Niantic announced that submissions would be coming to Pokémon GO, we were over the moon.
I created a Facebook group to try co-ordinate local submissions, prevent duplication of effort and to help educate people as to what makes a good “wayspot” (as Niantic now refer to their POI). As I’ve already mentioned, I intend to write more on Niantic’s Wayfarer programme, later. The purpose of this post is to discuss the submission of wayspots through Pokémon GO.
What makes a good Wayspot?
In Niantic’s own words:
High-quality nominations are those that help users discover and enjoy their community, such as:
A location with a cool story, a place in history or educational value.
Interesting story behind the location/object
Signboards with educational information
Historical significance (apart from just being old)
A cool piece of art or unique architecture
Statues, paintings, mosaics, light installations, etc.
Venues that showcase fine art (e.g., performance art theaters and museums)
Buildings designed by renowned architects/structures famous specifically for their architecture
A hidden gem or hyper-local spot
A popular local spot that you would take a friend visiting your community for the first time
A popular spot where locals gather, but may be lesser-known outside the community
Tourist spots that showcase local flavor and culture and that make your city/neighbourhood unique
More off-the-beaten-path tourist attractions (i.e., if you weren’t a local, you wouldn’t necessarily know to go here)
Adventurous tourist attractions – think lookout towers, observatories, signs or markers atop mountain peaks, etc.
In addition to using the above acceptance criteria, we often add nominations that are a special nod to industries and networks that connect people around the world. These include:
Public parks
Public parks are great, high-quality places for Wayspots: they are common all around the world and encourage players to walk, exercise and enjoy public spaces
Public libraries
A nod to education and discovery, a cornerstone of Niantic
Includes little free libraries, provided they are not on private residential property; does not include mobile libraries
Public places of worship
A nod to the spiritual
Transit stations
A nod to the transportation industry, which also connects and unites people around the world
Accept transportation hubs (like Grand Central Station), but not every single small transit stop (like a subway station or a bus stop)
I feel bad for lifting that from Niantic’s own description but I genuinely couldn’t put it any better.
How to submit in Pokémon GO
Last weekend I placed my first wayspot submission through Pokémon GO. The process is all but identical to submitting via Ingress, except Pokémon trainers only have 7 submissions every fortnight, as opposed to Ingress’s 14.
Yes, that does mean I get 21 per fortnight as a player of both games.
From the settings menu, I selected to submit a new Pokéstop.
The next few screens walked me through the basics of the process.
Step 1: Choose a location.
I was walking into Huddersfield on my usual weekend route and spotted a King George V era postbox that was ripe for submitting. These never used to be acceptable POI for Niantic but apparently the older postboxes are classed as “historic” and so are fair game.
This particular box is really close to an existing Gym, so is unlikely to come through to Pokémon GO (it has since been accepted as a wayspot).
Step 2: Take a photo
Actually, you’ll need to take two photographs:
The first is the photo that will be displayed on the portal/pokestop/gym/inn/greenhouse/fortress.
The second is used to provide evidence that your submission is safe to access and won’t put players at risk of being run over or assaulted by villains.
I didn’t take a screenshot of my supporting photograph, it was basically a shot of the clear pavement and pillar box. Some people like to use the Google street view app to take a 360 photograph to upload here.
Step 3: Give it a name
The next step is to give your wayspot a name and description. This is what will appear when players click on this POI.
You are also asked to confirm the location at this point.
I called this one “George Rex Pillarbox”. The important thing is to make sure your name is unique. I’ve seen (and submitted) comedy names in the past but always related to the POI itself; comedy names can get a submission rejected.
Step 4: Justified
The 4th and final step is to add justification of why this is a great POI to include in Niantic’s games. Here is where you can explain more about what is special about this submission or how it is safe to play near.
Many new users seem to be using this section to state “We need more Gyms” or “Meets criteria” with little thought put to the intended use of this step.
Here you can see that I have put a great deal of effort into my own submission. Paying little or no attention to spelling or content.
I could have mentioned how George V emblazoned pillarboxes are valid under Niantic’s “historic importance” criteria. I could draw attention to the pillarboxes GR cypher.
Instead, I wanted to carry on walking… Community days don’t play themselves you know.
Once your submission has gone through, you should receive an email, like this:
If you have a Niantic Wayfarer account, you’ll also see your submission in there. It can take a week or more for a response and if successful there is no guarantee that your wayspot will appear in Pokémon GO.
Unlike Ingress and Wizards Unite, Pokémon GO limits the number of POI that can appear within a specific S2 cell. If you ever want to see what’s in an area as base POI, check out Ingress Intel.
S2 Cell? Whatchootalkinabout?
Here’s where things get pretty funky in Pokémon GO.
S2 cells are a mathematical mechanism used in cartography to help computers translate the 3D shape of Earth’s “sphere” into a 2-dimensional map.
Pokémon GO sees the world overlaid with S2 cells sized at L14 and L17. If you click here you can see sunny Huddersfield as it appears with the relevant S2 cells overlaid.
Pogomaps is a community-fed tool used to track POI in an area. There are other tools out there that you can use but some of them are technically against Niantic’s terms of use within their games.
Each L14 cell is made up of 64 L17 cells. Pokémon GO will only allow a single POI to appear within a single L17 cell. If a cell contains more than one wayspot, only one of them will appear in Pokémon GO.
This can be frustrating but there is no way round this, it’s just how Pokémon GO choose to handle the POI available to the game. It can take a day or so for a wayspot to pull through to Pokémon GO. I’ve been told that new Pokéstops pull through at 18:45 Tuesday to Friday with an update of POI across all games around 18:45 on a Monday. No new submissions pull through over a weekend. Any new POI accepted before 08:45 that day should pull through.
There are other mechanics at play when it comes to gyms. When you hit certain quantities of Pokéstops within an L14 cell, a Pokéstop will become a gym. This is usually the oldest Pokéstop but can be influenced by up-voting photographs on portals in Ingress.
If there are 2 POI within an L14 cell, one of them will become a gym; once there are 6 POI, another gym triggers with a 3rd and final gym being triggered at 20 POI. I’ve read conflicting views on a 4th gym, with some sites reporting that 35+ POI will trigger another gym. I have not seen that in my experience however.
All in all, this is an exciting time for Niantic’s player base. Hopefully we’ll see an increase in POI in out of the way places, making it easier to play all 3 of Niantic’s games.
Pokéstop Go TL:DR - This post contains some of the history behind Niantic's POI (point of interest) submissions and an overview of how submissions work in Ingress and Pokémon GO.
Church of Pfizer - New Sacraments
Church of Pfizer – New Sacraments
Over 5 years ago, I wrote about a change in my Diabetes medication and the beginnings of what was to become an incredibly successful year when it came to blood glucose control and weight loss.
As with this post, I prefixed that post’s title with the “Church of Pfizer” tag; a cross link to a much earlier post regarding my belief that Science had become the popular religion of choice and Scientists…
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The Outer Worlds
Say “Hello” to my little friend…
I’ve really missed playing decent console roleplaying games.
Over the last few years there has been a dearth of good RPG content on any platform and I find myself incredulous that the gaming community has become so accepting of the swill being fed to us by the big players in game development.
It took the release of Obsidian’s “The Outer Worlds” to make me realise…
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Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
Mandrake’s one hell of a drug…
Like some kind of bizarre mashup of the worlds of Rick James and J. K. Rowling, “Augmented Reality” game maker, Niantic Labs, release their latest money spinner to the UK today.
Well, actually, I think you’ll find they quietly released “Harry Potter: Wizards Unite” into the UK yesterday.
I still haven’t had an alert from their mailing list but I am already a Level 8…
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Fallout 76: The Adventures of Buck Frexit (Days 5 to 7)
Fallout 76: The Adventures of Buck Frexit (Days 5 to 7)
Buck’s adventures were put on hold somewhat by an impromptu server update that Bethesda ran to coincide with UK workers returning home after a hard day’s working hard to make more money for the people that employ them.
I took a break from the wasteland of West Virginia to finish the latest Laundry Files offering by Charles Stross.
The weekend, however, saw Buck head off alone, following in the…
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Fallout 76: The Adventures of Buck Frexit (Day 4)
Fallout 76: The Adventures of Buck Frexit (Day 4)
Continuing this week’s foray into the Appalachian wasteland, Buck was joined by another friend to explore the mechanics of team work in Fallout 76.
JiggyBeastZero joined me as I was exploring the Mothman Museum. We killed some baddies and looted buildings before deciding to try some public events.
We’re both still low level (Buck is level 15 and Jiggy is now level 9) but the areas we’re…
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Fallout 76: The Adventures of Buck Frexit (Day 3)
Fallout 76: The Adventures of Buck Frexit (Day 3)
After a successful weekend emerging from Vault 76, I was looking forward to seeing what Monday’s Fallout 76 patch would bring to the game.
I should really take a new ID card photo, Buck is now level 15 and a little less handsome than he was at the start.
Unfortunately, as a console player I’m forced to download the whole game package rather than just the patched elements, meaning a 3.5 hour wait…
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Fallout 76: Thoughts from the First Weekend I thought about naming this review "Fallout 76: The Adventures of Buck Frexit" but settled for a more meaningful title.