noon · no shade but what you stand in
behind the Watering Hole door at Cavendish Coworking · a pan in the desert, at noon
The Watering Hole
The Watering Hole is for open, come-and-go, group Watercooler chat where random and off-topic are on-topic. This is a casual, drop-in space where people come together without any particular agenda.
How it goes here
Watering Hole Norms
- Video optional.
- Mute when you’re not actively talking.
- Quietly lurking with camera and mic off is perfectly fine and accepted.
- Come-and-go as you please. If you need to drop out suddenly, no need to worry with goodbyes. We understand.
The screen by the water
Somebody usually leaves something on. These are the Jungle Room’s cams, the desert, the otters and the jellies, read out of that room’s own list, and they are live, so each one runs until you close it and the picture may be darkness, an empty pan or a cam between streams. Play one here, or put it on the screen; each is yours, at your own pace. In the call, anybody can put a YouTube video on for everybody from the call’s own menu, under Share video, and then whoever shares it plays and pauses it for everybody.
The cams: the desert, the otters and the jellies
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Live stream in the Namib Desert
NamibiaCam, on YouTube
Desert, a pan of water, and long stretches of nothing at all. Oryx, springbok, jackals, and at night whatever the infrared finds.
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Sea Otter Cam
Vancouver Aquarium, on YouTube
Sea otters in the water, being extremely busy about nothing in particular.
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Sea Otter Cam 2
Vancouver Aquarium, on YouTube
The second angle on the same otters, which is a different room to them and therefore a different cam to us.
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Live Sea Otter Cam
Monterey Bay Aquarium, on YouTube
Monterey's otters. Grooming, mostly. An otter spends an enormous amount of its day on its own coat and is not embarrassed about it.
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Live Sea Otter Cam (second view)
Monterey Bay Aquarium, on YouTube
The alternate Monterey feed. This one is often between streams; when it is, you get the last one instead, which is still otters.
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Live sea otter and fur seal cam
Seattle Aquarium, on YouTube
Otters and fur seals sharing a frame. The fur seals are louder about it.
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Live Jelly Cam
Monterey Bay Aquarium, on YouTube
Moon jellies, lit from behind, drifting in a circular tank. The slowest thing in this room and the one most likely to still be on an hour after you meant to close it.
Talking
The call in here is for people signed on to the CB. Anybody can come in and look around; to talk, and to be in the call, you need the CB, and the Community Center says how to get on it.
You are not signed on to the CB in this browser. Sign on at the Community Center, then come back and the way in is here.
A Note on Communication Access. We support multiple modes of participation including text chat, audio, and video — whatever works for your communication needs on a given day. You do not need to speak to belong here.
The call is run by 8x8’s Jitsi as a Service. Your camera and microphone start off, the name you are called by goes to 8x8 inside your pass into the call, and we keep nothing about a call. What goes where.
Why a pan at noon
A watering hole is a pool in a dry place, and whoever turns up. Nobody arranged to meet there; everybody needed water. At noon there is no shade anywhere but what you stand in, so nothing hides and nothing is in a hurry. Come in, drink, stand about, and go when you like. Nothing in this room moves, at any setting.
Whose words
What goes on in here, and the norms, are Ryan’s words, as he wrote them for the Hang Suites; caves, campfires and watering holes are David Thornburg’s.
The cams are the Jungle Room’s, from our Watering Hole Hangs page, each one its own channel’s. Epilogue is Tyler Finck’s, with ETC, and Readex Pro is Thomas Jockin, Nadine Chahine, Bonnie Shaver-Troup, Santiago Orozco and Héctor Gómez’s, both under the SIL Open Font License; the room is ours. More in the liner notes.
Job marker — an ostrich feather, blown up against a stone
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: Whose cams these are
Before the code: Which room on the street are the Watering Hole's cams read out of?
Hint 1
It is named in the first sentences under The screen by the water.
Hint 2
It is up the street, under a roof of leaves.
Last hint
The room Elvis's Den is behind.
Give me the answer
The answer is The Jungle Room. The Jungle Room. The cams are read out of that room's own list, not copied, so the two rooms can never say two different things about one camera, and a cam that goes dark there goes dark here too.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: OSTRICH
That is the one.
The Jungle Room. The cams are read out of that room's own list, not copied, so the two rooms can never say two different things about one camera, and a cam that goes dark there goes dark here too.
Quest code: OSTRICH