Walking around and painting the town

[bernorange 8344]

Over a month ago, I downloaded an app called Silencio.  It's a relatively new (roughly a year old) "DePIN" app that records ambient decibel levels with your phone's microphone and uploads the recording levels to the Silencio cloud/servers.  They are building a database of ambient noise levels for the whole world I guess (you should see their coverage of Europe right now).

The app includes a feature that displays a map (like google maps) that is overlaid with a grid of hexagons.  When a decibel level has been recorded for a given hexagon, the hexagon gets colored from green to yellow to orange to red representing how loud the area is (or was at the time of the recording).  The app encourages you to walk around taking new paths to get recordings and color/paint new hexagons.

The app is kind of fun to use and helps motivate you (at least it did/has for me) to walk around more and explore a bit more.  If you have an unlimited minutes mobile plan and either enjoy walking around, walking a dog or just want to get more exercise walking around, you should give it a try - doesn't really cost you anything and it's possible that it might one day actually pay you some dividends (beyond the walking exercise).

Download the app:
🍏 iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/silencionework/id6444363412
🤖 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quickkonnect.silencio

You can use "pmbug" as your invitation code when creating your account.

[bernorange 8344]

 

[RDCanecutter 26196]

I would be too tempted to walk around screaming.

[ztejas 43176]

52 minutes ago, bernorange said:

 

I too would be embarrassed for wearing FILA in public. 

[RDCanecutter 26196]

OK, my ass needs some exercise, I signed up. Let's hope it's digital crackrock.

It's terra incognita for about a mile around my house. It shall be MINE.

[bernorange 8344]

Awesome.  It's really pretty simple to use.

A few tips I've developed from my experience:

• Turn off wifi if you are walking around a suburb/neighborhood.  It seems like sometimes when the phone transitions from a wifi hotspot, it loses internet for a few seconds and that can cause an active recording session to end prematurely
• Check your recording sessions periodically and end them (claim your tokens) every 5-10 minutes instead of going for 25-30 minutes.  Sometimes the app crashes for whatever reason and it sucks to lose 15-20 minutes of recordings
• there are "quests" on the rightmost tab.  Claim them when you complete them.  I didn't notice them until after I had been using the app for a couple of weeks

[RDCanecutter 26196]

Yesterday after dark, when I'd normally be lounging around like Jabba the Hutt, I went out and claimed my first conquest. A nice rectangle like starting out in that old Tron motorcycle video game. My plan today is to add another "box" to the north, touching on the nearest rival exploration.

I should be able to add hexes to already-explored streets by walking on alternate sides of the streets.

I have to remember to set my phone so it doesn't go into sleep mode.

I notice people have cheated and have used the app while driving, you can tell by how the paths are disconnected dots instead of braided hexes.

[bernorange 8344]

Yep.  I also have been walking sidewalks on both sides of the street.  Even walking in the middle of the street if it's safe to do so.

And yeah, there's no penalty to using it in a car.  It's fine if you are a passenger.  It just cuts off after 15-25 seconds.

[RDCanecutter 26196]

I noticed that the app is a little wonky when first powering up, and will show me standing 20 yards off one way or the other. I have been using this to get credit for hexes that I couldn't get to without trespassing. Stand by the neighbor's fence, turn it on, and zing I'm in their back yard or maybe in their house.

It will be mine it will be mine it will be mine mine mine.

[bernorange 8344]

Last week was raining every day.  This morning was cool with no humidity - awesome.  I went for a 2 hour walk between 5am and 7am.  Made to 48.5k hexes covered with 36k hexes unique. I should get 50k hexes covered in the next day or two if things work out.

[RDCanecutter 26196]

3 hours ago, bernorange said:

Last week was raining every day.  This morning was cool with no humidity - awesome.  I went for a 2 hour walk between 5am and 7am.  Made to 48.5k hexes covered with 36k hexes unique. I should get 50k hexes covered in the next day or two if things work out.

I recruited Mrs. Canecutter. Gonna put her on the street earning me some NoiseCoins.

[bernorange 8344]

Nice.  I went for another long walk this morning.  I had intended to walk a nearby neighborhood that I've never visited before.  Looking at the map, I had planned a route/pathing for walking both sides of every street in an efficient manner (no wasted backtracking).  The plan fell apart when I got there this morning as I found a long paved sidewalk trail that went around the back of the neighborhood along some woods and a creek that was really quite cool.  I'll have to get the neighborhood another time.  I've discovered a lot of little things like that while walking neighborhoods that I've never visited before.

A while back I was walking through a nicer neighborhood (expensive homes) and when I got near the back, there was a dead end street that had those big signs in a brick wall announcing the name of the subdivision as some high falooten "Estates" something or other.  Seemed strange to me that a subdivision would merit a sign like that when it was just one dead end street (even if the street was 2-3 blocks long).  As I walked down this street I was admiring the huge houses - all of them easily somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 sq. ft. - when it dawned on me that every one of the houses on this street were essentially the same floorplan.  There were only minor differences and it was one of those "once you see it, you can't unsee it" things.  It looked ridiculous.  Cookie cutter construction McMansions.

~~~

So I managed to complete the 50k hexagon quest this morning on my 2.5 hour walk.  Awesome weather.  Anyway, redeeming the quest bumped me up to the diamond 10 tier.  There are something over 300,000 people using the Silencio app (you can see this on the "home" tab of the app - it calls us "sensors").  The rightmost tab shows you what tier you are in.  There are 10 leagues and 10 levels within each league.  The leagues are supposed to represent 10% divisions of NOISE tokens earned (and the levels within each league presumably represent 1% divisions within the league's range).  I made it to the top/final tier - top 1% with around 130k NOISE tokens earned so far. 

Silencio is supposedly developing (or has already developed, but not yet released to the public), a layer 2 crypto token built on the layer 1 PEAQ crypto token.  PEAQ is a crypto system that is being built (with features) specifically for enabling DePIN projects.  PEAQ itself appears to have numerous DePIN projects (like Silencio) that are building crypto reward systems on it.  PEAQ is supposed to officially launch (go public) sometime this month.  Silencio is going to distributing 5% of their Silencio tokens (or whatever they are going to end up calling them) to Silencio sensors (users) in batches according to whatever league/level you have attained as part of what they are calling a beta airdrop.  They will do another (post-beta) airdrop sometime later (also based upon league/level) if I've understood correctly what they have been saying in their roadmap and X/Twitter posts.  I'm guessing the beta airdrop will soon follow PEAQ's launch.

I have no idea if that will ever amount to any real world value or not, but I've been enjoying the walking anyway.

[gofuckyourself 8098]

Will this help stop businesses and restaurants from playing non-stop music as shitty background noise pollution in their stores?

If so, I'm all in.  

[bernorange 8344]

That's the end goal if the app takes off.  This is still a young project though, so there's a bit of growing to be done before then.  They are hoping to get their noise data integrated with Google Maps, Mapquest, etc. so folks see noise levels as another data point when viewing venues.

[RDCanecutter 26196]

Today I figured out how to check in to locations. Basically just use the "check-in" option while standing next to a large business, Then BANG same number of coins as walking 40 minutes. Which I still do. Established a big square and now I'm noodling around inside it. The map appears to show some ghost roads that have been built over, I'm still getting tricksy to find and walk them.

Tall buildings appear to exert a force field (no doubt blocking one direction of sensors) that knocks the tracker off, which is how I ended up inside the jail earlier today.

It'd be cool if the NoiseCoins turned into some sort of funny money down the line, but the real value is the exercise. I mean, I was decaying before I started playing with this app.

[bernorange 8344]

I managed to grab ~40 unique venue check ins in an hour or so at a local shopping mall that had a large outdoor shopping area  develop in the last few years.  Lot's of restaurants and such.  I think whoever developed or manages the property must be submitting all tenants to the google maps thing.

[NorthLoop 14051]

Count me in. This shit is right up my alley. Teenage daughter doesn't care for geocaching anymore and the 5yo boy only has the patience for a little bit of it. Downloaded the app and looks like New Braunfels is pretty virgin territory. 

[bernorange 8344]

Nice. 

Got another 2.5 hour walk in this morning.  Last day of good weather before Francine arrives.  My legs felt like jello when I got home.  It was difficult to hold a stretch on my right hamstring post walk.  It sucks getting old.

~~~

I posted a pic/tweet earlier about my broken shoe adventure, but didn't elaborate on the constrained caption.

Those shoes were some cheap walking shoes I had bought at Costco for around $15 some years ago.  I only ever used them for walking - never for running/jogging/sports.  They lasted at least 5 years for me.

For about 4 days prior to the disintegration, I did some long 2-3 hour walking sessions and the soles of both shoes started to separate at the top/front of the shoes (by the tip of the toes). 

The day of the event, I had started my walk around 4am.  I had been walking for a little over 2 hours and was on my way back home.  That day happened to be the first day of this new school year.  The shoe disintegrated while I was a block away from a local elementary school (which was on my route back home).

It was around 6:30am when I had to walk by the school with my broken shoes and holding the sole of my right shoe.  There was very heavy traffic around the school as parents were lining up to drop their kids off for the first day of school.  I hobbled by and I'm sure I looked like a vagrant or something.  It really was embarrassing.

[Prepuce of Doom 20954]

If you are someone who enjoys this type of exploratory "reward-based" undertaking but wish that it fostered even more interactivity and/or obsessive compulsiveness, you might also enjoy adding Pokémon Go to your walks. 

Doomlet talked me into playing with him one night last summer and we're both still hooked. It can be complicated as shit or fairly straightforward, depending on how deeply involved you care to get and how far down the rabbit hole you wish to go.

It's been a very rewarding father/son activity. 

Edited September 10 by Prepuce of Doom

[RDCanecutter 26196]

4 hours ago, Prepuce of Doom said:

If you are someone who enjoys this type of exploratory "reward-based" undertaking but wish that it fostered even more interactivity and/or obsessive compulsiveness, you might also enjoy adding Pokémon Go to your walks. 

Doomlet talked me into playing with him one night last summer and we're both still hooked. It can be complicated as shit or fairly straightforward, depending on how deeply involved you care to get and how far down the rabbit hole you wish to go.

It's been a very rewarding father/son activity. 

@MaybeACoordinator told me I'd like that, as he wandered my neighborhood seeking critters, as part of a trip winding across several states based partly on Pokemon Go hotspots. He showed me a critter lurking near my front lawn, kinda spooked me.

At the time I was rocking a very early iPhone that barely kept a charge, so I never tried it. Between Silencio and Duolingo and actually trying to finish art commissions, I would probably fail the SAN check if I took on another.

[RDCanecutter 26196]

4 hours ago, bernorange said:

Those shoes were some cheap walking shoes I had bought at Costco for around $15 some years ago. 

The children who made those shoes may have children of their own, making shoes, by now.

[bernorange 8344]

Francine tracked further east than anticipated and barely dropped any rain on us, so I was able to go for a morning walk today.  I had a route planned to finish capturing hexes in a subdivision that I had already walked roughly 60%.

Twenty minutes into my 2 hour walk, my bowels started growling - announcing an urgent need to release the hostages.  So I'm faced with a choice of either heading back and taking care of business (and aborting the morning walk) or powering through.  I chose the hexagons.

Powering through was a case of mind over matter.  Thankfully, this isn't a Ryan's Steakhouse tale, but the last 40 minutes of my 2 hour walk was not pleasant.  My bowels were working hard to revolt against the tyranny of the mind.  When I finally got home and claimed my throne, there was much rejoicing.

 

[RDCanecutter 26196]

I stayed in today from the drizzle, but did turn it on to preserve the streak. Yesterday my wife was free, so like good geeks we both powered up the app and swept the terrain between us and a local diner.

When we got to unmapped land, I let her walk about ten feet in front so the family would earn more coins. Her coins plus Mine plus my cut of hers. On the way back we dorked out, walking on the sidewalk holding hand while leaning out from the middle with our phones stuck far out so as to cut a double swath of hexes. It actually worked.

Best part was exploring an alley next to a parking lot. She burst into a frenzy, running a zigzag among the cars. I bellowed at her in my best Faulknerian 1920s pimp style, "Gawn Girl, You make me that munny Girl..."

[bernorange 8344]

Woke up a bit early today and walked for 3 hours.  The sky was clear and Orion the Hunter watched me from just above the southern horizon.

Some random thoughts regarding walking around before sunrise:

- It's a small blessing when you are walking a sidewalk and you come upon a yard with an active sprinkler system and all the heads are actually spraying water into the yard instead of the sidewalk.

- Surprisingly, the most common critters that I've spied in many hours of walking the early morning hours are rabbits.  I would have thought cats would have been more common, but they are actually fairly rare to see.  I see at least 4-6 rabbits every morning.

- When I was a kid, you could hardly walk around when the sun was down without running across a toad every couple of minutes.  These days, I'm surprised when I see one.  Either the population has been severely diminshed or they have learned to avoid human suburbia.

- Most folks that own expensive vehicles (Lambos, etc.) keep them out of sight in their garages.  The big exception to this are folks that own Tesla Cybertrucks.  Either they are wanting to show them off, or they are afraid of the vehicles combusting and burning their houses down.

[RDCanecutter 26196]

5 hours ago, bernorange said:

- When I was a kid, you could hardly walk around when the sun was down without running across a toad every couple of minutes.  These days, I'm surprised when I see one.  Either the population has been severely diminshed or they have learned to avoid human suburbia.

Most likely suburbanites get rid of everything that toads eat.

[NorthLoop 14051]

We have toads but they mostly only come out at night..... mostly. 

[bernorange 8344]

Got a late start today and walked virgin territory in a new neighborhood.  Saw a couple of possums (one crossed the street in front of me like a boss - ignoring me completely).  I also was attacked by a single, solitary mosquito - the first and only one that has bothered me in all the 80+ hours I've been walking since I installed the Silencio app.  I guess the county's mosquito spraying dept is doing work - I would have thought they would be ubiquitous following Beryl.

A few more "deep thoughts" from my walks:

- It's rare to see a newspaper of any kind (even the free local rags) in yards/driveways.  I never see any of the delivery people either.  It's a far cry from my youth when every driveway would have a Houston Chronicle, Houston Post or both.

- Very few homes have political signs up this cycle.  And of the homes that do have signs, 99% are for local races (mostly for positions on the local school board).  I believe I've seen less than 10 signs for the POTUS or US Senate races.  That's across numerous neighborhoods and probably 2,000+ homes.  

[RDCanecutter 26196]

Last few days I have been going less for distance and more for completion of my claimed domain. Gotten some odd looks as I noodle around parking lots and alleyways.

[bernorange 8344]

Lol.  Yeah, I've gotten odd looks while I map out parking lots before too.  Once had a off duty cop that was apparently moonlighting as parking lot security at a Sam's club park at the end of the lot and watch me for a good 5-10 minutes.  I'm sure he was quite confused as to what I was doing.  Parking lots are better mapped in the early morning.  Not only for the limited audience, but the concrete isn't yet an open air convection oven.

[bernorange 8344]

Went for another ~3 hour walk this morning.  There were no clouds in the sky and the harvest/super moon was really large and bright.

I'm not really clear on how the gates of gated communities work.  They generally have a pedestrian gate next to the gates for cars that has a keypad lock on both sides of the gate.  Do you have to enter a code to exit the neighborhood?  I generally avoid entering these neighborhoods if I see the gate open when I'm approaching, but this morning I came upon one where the car gate was stuck open, so I chanced it.  Very nice homes back there.  Two homes at the end of two different cul-de-sacs had a single political sign in their respective yards for some local candidates for something or other.  I wonder why they bothered.  I can't imagine they are getting any traffic, so who is the intended audience?

[RDCanecutter 26196]

13 hours ago, bernorange said:

Two homes at the end of two different cul-de-sacs had a single political sign in their respective yards for some local candidates for something or other.  I wonder why they bothered.  I can't imagine they are getting any traffic, so who is the intended audience?

Wait until you see the US political signs at their vacation houses in Cabo.

[bernorange 8344]

I walked an old neighborhood this morning and heard roosters crowing from two different properties.  Who raises roosters in the burbs?  

I saw a doctor yesterday.  The nurse checking my vitals before I saw the doc was really amazed at my numbers (weight and blood pressure given my height and age) and told me to keep doing whatever I'm doing.  My blood pressure (117 over 78) was the lowest I've recorded in a long time.  I also seem to have trimmed off ~5 pounds since the last time I stood on a scale.

[RDCanecutter 26196]

8 hours ago, bernorange said:

I walked an old neighborhood this morning and heard roosters crowing from two different properties.  Who raises roosters in the burbs?  

French people.

Though these are probably hipsters with pet chickens.

Odd as it may seem now, one of the earliest appeals to suburbs was having the room to make a garden and keep some small livestock. People were very fixed on not running out of food. When my Granddad came back from WW2 he bought 10 acres on the edge of town, built a house and a greenhouse, and they turned it into a mini bean farm for a while. By the time I came along beans were no more and now it's in a forest in the middle of town, but I remember wandering the agricultural ruins out back.

[Elvis 3353]

Do you have to walk around while holding your phone up in front of your face the whole time like a dork?  The idea sounds fun, but loathe people that walk with a phone held up in their face.

[bernorange 8344]

No.  Once you start a session, you can just hold the phone in your hand and walk normally.  

[bernorange 8344]

The Silencio folks have been exhibiting at some conference in Singapore and apparently demoing the new app they will be rolling out shortly.  One enhancement for the new app will allow you to see the hexagon map live while you walk and record.  They also posted this recently:

Quote

We know you’ve been asking “Wen TGE?” “Wen airdrop?” “Wen updates?” and we hear you loud and clear. It’s time for an update on where we’ve been, where we’re heading, and how you can get the most out of being part of the Silencio community. Today, we’re here to spill the alpha and outline the exciting path ahead.

In this article, we’ll break down our journey so far, give you the inside scoop on the 5% beta airdrop (which is just starting!), introduce the new features in our latest app update, unveil our brand-new website, our upgraded referral program and last but most certainly not least, the plans for the TGE!. So grab your coffee, sit tight, and let’s dive in!

...

https://silencionetwork.medium.com/silencios-roadmap-to-the-future-airdrop-tge-new-app-referral-program-and-beyond-c37ff30827b0

TGE = token generation event

[capnamerca 568]

So everything is just a crypto grift?

[bernorange 8344]

9 hours ago, capnamerca said:

So everything is just a crypto grift?

What grift?

[bernorange 8344]

Walked another old road I've never traveled before this morning.  Like most old roads in my town, This road has no curb, no shoulder and no street lights.  The edge of the pavement immediately slopes into a culvert.  On one side of this particular street there are typical subdivision neighborhoods.  On the other side were huge custom homes set way back off the street on 10-15 acre lots.  Some of these lots have some wild woods hiding the homes from the street.

This morning I was reminded of when I was young.  There was no internet, cell phones, or video games.  As kids, we wandered around outside and found things to entertain ourselves.  There were a lot more undeveloped tracts of wild forest back then too and I used to wander around in them.  I had the more or less typical young boy fascination with small critters like lizards, frogs and snakes - happy to catch any I found in my wanderings.  Part of that fascination was learning about the four types of venomous snakes in Texas.  Around the coast where I grew up, there were really only two that were common to see - the cotton mouth/water moccasin and the copperhead.  And I saw my fair share of cotton mouth snakes and to a much lesser degree copperheads.  While I was a dumb kid, I was smart enough to avoid dancing with them.  Supposedly, there are also coral snakes around these parts, but they are reclusive and reportedly very rare to see (I never saw any as a kid).  Even so, I still learned the handy rhyme that helps folks distinguish between the coral snake and the king snake:

"Red on Yellow kills a fellow.

Red on Black [venom lacks | friend of Jack]"

So as I was walking back on the wild woods side of the street this morning, I found this roadkill:

 

[NorthLoop 14051]

So i've noticed that most squares are green (low decibel) but whenever I go for a walk, even a very quiet mid-morning walk, my hexes are always red. Is my phone's mic too sensitive? Not that I truly give a shit since it doesn't matter to the user in the end, just curious. 

[bernorange 8344]

My mic is also sensitive.  I've experimented a bit and there are some things I've found that help generate quieter measurements:

- Mind your footsteps:  My mic picks up on my footsteps if I'm not mindful of them.  Stepping on dried leaves or twigs, kicking a rock, a mistep on an uneven sidewalk, etc.  Even the pair of shoes I wear - some pairs are quieter than others

- Empty pockets are best: keys, coins, reading glasses, etc jangling in the pockets are picked up in my mic

- How you hold the phone: If you hold the phone and your letting your arm swing freely, air flow over the phone (mic) is like situating the mic in front of a fan.  Holding the phone steady, flat and face up seems to work best for me in getting quiet recordings.

Terrain: walking in grass is louder than walking on pavement.

When you start paying attention to the noise meter and trying to make quiet recordings, you really become aware of the ambient noises: traffic (even from busy roads far away), birds, crickets, air conditioners, water fountains, sprinklers, wind, etc.

[NorthLoop 14051]

Yeah I was wearing flip flops and swinging my arms with the phone. 

 

However I did record a check in at a Texas Med Clinic while sitting in the waiting room. Dead quiet, just sitting there, and it was still yellow. 

[bernorange 8344]

Was the A/C blowing on the phone? I don't know, but there was likely a reason.  I have recorded green while walking outside, but it takes some perfect circumstances.  It usually stays yellow when I'm going for quiet recordings.

[TexasEd 8058]

On 9/10/2024 at 8:35 AM, Prepuce of Doom said:

If you are someone who enjoys this type of exploratory "reward-based" undertaking but wish that it fostered even more interactivity and/or obsessive compulsiveness, you might also enjoy adding Pokémon Go to your walks. 

Doomlet talked me into playing with him one night last summer and we're both still hooked. It can be complicated as shit or fairly straightforward, depending on how deeply involved you care to get and how far down the rabbit hole you wish to go.

It's been a very rewarding father/son activity. 

Lol, if you guys like these kind of games the crack version of it is called Ingress.  You capture territory by going to waypoints and creating triangles to cover the ground under the premise of mind control.  Pokémon Go was built on the network of waypoints from Ingress.

Edited September 25 by TexasEd

[RDCanecutter 26196]

8 hours ago, NorthLoop said:

Dead quiet, just sitting there, and it was still yellow. 

Probably the tortured spirits that follow you everywhere screaming again.

I also learned the coral snake ID rhyme. Years later, it occurred to me they could have just taught us "Leave snakes alone."

[bernorange 8344]

Went for a walk this morning before the sunrise.  The sky was clear looking straight up - stars and moon clearly visible.  Closer to the horizon I could not see any lights in the sky.  To the north and east, I could see clouds, but to the west the sky just looked like a slightly milky haze - what I assume was some thin/diffused cloud layer reflecting some light pollution from off in the distance.  I was walking along staring at the road in front of me when a light in the western sky lit up, streaked westward and then disappeared in the span of a second.  If the sky had been clear, I would have assumed this was a comet.  I'm wondering if what I saw was ball lightening, which I have heard about, but never witnessed first hand.  It happened so fast that it was over/gone before it even registered on my conscious thought.

Edited September 26 by bernorange

[NorthLoop 14051]

On 9/24/2024 at 11:16 PM, RDCanecutter said:

Probably the tortured spirits that follow you everywhere screaming again.

I wen to the library yesterday and sat at a table. Put my phone on the table. No movement. Dead silence....... yellow lol. 

I guess I'm just gonna paint the town red. Maybe it will discourage growth in NB which is fine with me

 

 

6 minutes ago, bernorange said:

Went for a walk this morning before the sunrise.  The sky was clear looking straight up - stars and moon clearly visible.  Closer to the horizon I could not see any lights in the sky.  To the north and east, I could see clouds, but to the west the sky just looked like a slightly milky haze - what I assume was some thin/diffused cloud layer reflecting some light pollution from off in the distance.  I was walking along staring at the road in front of me when a light in the western sky lit up, streaked westward and then disappeared in the span of a second.  If the sky had been clear, I would have assumed this was a comet.  I'm wondering if what I saw was ball lightening, which I have heard about, but never witnessed first hand.  It happened so fast that it was over/gone before it even registered on my conscious thought.

Congrats on your future abduction. 

[NorthLoop 14051]

Also - like 2/3 of the business I go to aren't registered on their map as venues. Kind of annoying. 

[bernorange 8344]

I've had the best luck with big box retailers and fast food restaurant chains.  Newer shopping complexes might be more savvy with internet marketing, but I've only tried one shopping mall complex (I don't get out shopping very much).

[NorthLoop 14051]

Today was the county fair parade. See if you can tell where we parked and where we watched the parade from.