This checkin to GC9GTV3 Drive Slowly; Fox Crossing reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Maintenance check while walking the dog. Cleared some overgrown plants, but watch out because the nearby nettles ate still a little fierce (cache can be retrieved without a sting though!). Cache itself intact and healthy.
I’ve long been a fan of Hugh Howey‘s Wool series of books (especially the first and third; the second’s a bit weaker); in fact I’ve been enjoying re-reading them as a bedtime story for our eldest!1
Naturally, when I heard that it would become a TV series I was really excited! I’m enjoying the series so far, especially thanks to its epic casting. It diverges a lot from the books – sometimes in ways I love, sometimes in ways that confuse me – but that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to share how cool the opening credits sequence is!
Spoiler warning: even if you’re following the TV series there are likely to be major spoilers below based on my recollection of the books!
We open on the sun shining above a thick layer of all-obscuring clouds, tinted sickly yellow like poison gas, then descend into the darkness below. This hints at the uninhabitability of the world above, foreshadows Lukas stargazing through gaps in the clouds2, and foreshadows revelations about the argon gas used to flush the airlocks. The descent feels representative of humanity’s migration from the sunlit surface to the underground silos.
Looking down, we see the silo from above in a desolate landscape, introducing the world and its setting. The area around it is shrouded and hostile, reflecting the residents’ view of the outside world as unsurvivable, but also masking our view of the other nearby silos that we might otherwise be able to see.
Descending “into” this representation of the silo, we get a view for only a split second that looks distinctly like the platter and spindle of a magnetic hard disk drive, broken-up as if to represent corruption. This reflects a number of major plot points in the first season relating to the destruction and recovery of secret information from ancient storage devices.
Truly within the silo now, we see the spokes of landings radiating out from the great stairwell. The shape is reminiscient of a cog: a motif we’ll return to later. Humanoid shapes made of light, like you get in a long exposure, move around, giving both the idea of a surveillance state, and setting us up to think of all such “glowing spots” as people (relevant later in the credits).
A representation of the stairwell itself appears, with a lit gaseous substance whipping up and down it. Given that we’ve just been shown that this kind of “light” represents people, it’s easy to see this as showing us the traffic that grinds up and down the silo, but it also feels like looking at part of a great machine, pumping gas through a condenser: notice that there’s no landings any more: this is all about the never-ending traffic.
A landing appears, and the gaseous forms are now more-clearly humanoid, almost as if they’re ghosts (perhaps pointing to the number of generations who’ve lived before, in this place, or else a reference to Juliette’s investigation into the lives of those who lived before her).
More swirling gas-people, this time below an empty balconette: perhaps a nod to the source of Juliette’s uncommon name (in the books, it’s taken from Romeo & Juliet, a possibly-illicit copy of which is retained by the silo and performed prior to Juliette’s birth and for at least a short while afterwards: she writes mechanical notes on the back of a playscript), or perhaps a reference to George’s death after “falling” from a balcony.
Seen from a different angle, the colour shifts, and the gas/ghosts become white like the argon spray of the airlock. The people are all part of a machine: a machine that sends people outside to clean and die. But more than that, the blue comes to represent a clean/perfect view of what a silo can be: a blueprint representation of the goals of its creators to shape the inhabitants into their vision of the future:
We refocus on the shape of the silo itself, but just for a split second the view looks more like an x-ray… of a human spine? As if to remind us that it’s people who upload the system of the silo, just as its concrtete uploads its physical structure. Also a reminder that the silo is treated (by those who manage it, both within and beyond it) as an organic thing that can be nurtured, grown, or if necessary killed.
This becomes the structure of the silo, but it almost looks architectural: a “clean” look, devoid of people or signs of life, like a blueprint, perhaps foreshadowing Donald’s role in designing the structures that will eventually become the silos. The “space” between the arms is emphasised, showing how the social system that this structure imposes serves to separate and segregate people: classism is a recurring theme in both the books and the TV series, and it eventually becomes apparent that the silos are specifically organised to reduce communication between interdependent groups.
Returning to the “populated” silo – swirls of gas spiralling away down (or up: it’s no longer clear!), we catch a glimpse of a nautilus shell at the centre. The nautilus is a “living fossil”, a creature from a bygone era that continues to survive in our modern world, which is an excellent metaphor for the population of the dead world who go on living beneath its surface. The nautilus shell is a recurring image within the TV series: Gloria’s visions of the world that came before see her clutching one and tracing its shape, for example.
We cut to what appears to be a seed, representing both the eventual conclusion of the story (Juliette, Charlotte and the Silo 18 survivors’ discovery of the cache of supplies that will allow them to begin rebuilding the world) and also the nature of the silo3. The seed we see initially appears to fail and degrade, becoming nothing at all, before eventually growing into the beginnings of a strong new plant. This could represent the eventual and inevitable collapse of silo 18, among others, but the eventual flourishing of those that survive, or on a broader scale the collapse of modern civilization to be replaced by the silos, or even of the silo system to be replaced with that which follows it after the conclusion of the story. Lots of options!
It’s also possibly a reflection of the harsh and opaque eugenics/population control mechanism imposed by the “lottery”, which becomes a major plot point in the TV series much earlier than in the books.
We cut to trees, thriving despite a yellow fog. The sky can’t be seen, which is a reminder that all of humanity’s resources must now be produced underground (trees are especially rare and prized, leading to a shortage of paper4. It seems to be deliberately left unclear whether the trees we see are on the surface before the fall of humanity, on the surface after the fall, or grown underground.
A fruit falls from the tree, which links back to the seed we saw geminate earlier but also seems likely to be a representation of the concept of original sin. The grand idea of the silos was to create a better world on the other side of a man-made catastrophe, but this idea is inherently flawed because the systems that are constructed by the same people who are complicit in the destruction of the world that came before. The structure that’s put in place through the Pact carries the weight of the sins of its creators: even though the inhabitants of silo 1 ultimately intend to destroy themselves, they’re unable to create a new world that is both better than the one that came before and free from their influence: it’s an impossibility.
It’s also possibly a representation of the religious beliefs of some inhabitants that the creators of the silo should be revered as gods. This was a recurring plot point in the books but has been somewhat muted in the TV series so far.
The metaphor continues when we see that this falling fruit is already beginning to rot, degrading as it tumbles towards the earth. We don’t see it strike the ground: it almost seems to hover in the air, uncertain and undecided, and reflective of the eventual end when the inhabitants of the silos break free from the shackles of the system that’s been constructed for them and can choose their own destiny. Or perhaps we don’t see the collision simply because the camera continues to fall down into the earth and below the surface again?
This time, wer’e very deep: all the way down in the depths of Mechanical, at the bottom of the silo: home to our heroine and source of many aspects of the story. In the centre, a shaft descends, connecting us back to the “spine” of the silo – the great staircase – but it’s harder to see as a wealth of machinery appears to support it, occluding our view. From down here in Mechanical it appears that the machines keep the silo running, whereas further up it looked like humans pumped through it like blood, which reflects Juliette’s disagreements with many of those up-top about their priorities during her time as Sheriff and, later, as Mayor.
We see a cloud of steam, like that used to drive the generator that brings life to the silo, and for a moment it’s impossible to differentiate it from the cloud of people we saw earlier, rushing up and down the stairs. Look closely at the steam, though, and you’ll see that it too contains the ghosts of people.
Deeper still, the cog motif returns and we’re buried in an impossible number of interconnected gears. The machine that they support is impossible to comprehend from within: How big is it? What is it for? Who made it and why?
The final cog mutates into the staircase again, winding away from us and hammering the point home.
The staircase changes again, first becoming an outline of itself (a callback to the “blueprint” design we saw earlier, reminding us that this thing was designed to be like this)…
…but this becomes a double-helix, representing the chaos of life. Again, the metaphor is of a perfect idea constructed to achieve a goal, but the unpredictability of humans leads to a different outcome.
Seen from above, the staircase now looks like an enormous clock, a machine of cogs each turning slower than the one beneath, counting down until the end of the silo experiment in accordance with the whim of its creators. Except, of course, if something were to break this machine.
Seen from the side, the silo is a hive of activity, but the shape the levels form in this depiction are exactly like the rotors of a steam turbine, and this is reflected by an image of steam, almost in the shape of a growing tree – passing behind it in the background. The generator and its rotor blades is a significant early plot point in both the books and the TV series, and the books in particular use engine metaphors to explain Juliette’s interpretation of different situations she finds herself in, even those which are distinctly interpersonal rather than mechanical.
Looking back up the silo, towards the light, we can now see its shape and structure for what it is: just another cog – a part of an even bigger machine that is the whole Operation Fifty silo network. The people are the lifeblood of this machine, but they’re as replaceable and interchangable as any other part.
Finally, we crossfade to the title, looking like a stencil. Each letter is more-degraded than the one before it, representing the impossibility of building a perfect system.
The credits sequence is less than 90 seconds long, but so much is packed into it. It’s just great.
1 We’re into the final act of Dust now and it’s been amazing to experience the characters – loveable and hateable – of the series.
2 Curiously, in the TV series Lukas is only ever seen stargazing on clear nights, which is one of those confusing choices I mentioned. I suspect it’s for aesthetic reasons and to help add some romance to Juliette and Lukas’s courtship.
3 A silo is, of course, a place to store something valuable through the hard times. This is exactly what the silos in this story are for.
4 The shortage of paper shows up many times in the books but is somewhat glossed-over in the TV series. I’m not sure how they’ll reconcile that with the impact of the discovery of the Legacy, later.
I have minus 26 new articles in my RSS reader! Either I’m a time traveller, or there’s a wraparound bug when you neglect your unreads for long enough.
Both seem equally likely, if I’m honest.
My second day of the main conference part of WordCamp Europe 2023 was hampered slightly by a late start on my part.
Still, I managed to get to all the things I’d earmarked for my attention, including:
This checkin to GC5KBK3 ISAP: Omonia reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Found! Took a bit of a search, because I had looked at the hint image which shows several trees at the GZ that are no longer there, so I was left thinking I must be in the wrong place for a while! TFTC, and greetings from Oxfordshire, UK!
The first “full” day of WordCamp Europe 2023 (which kicked-off at Contributor Day) was busy and intense, but I loved it.
This post is basically a live-blog of everything I got up to, and it’s mostly for my own benefit/notetaking. If you don’t read it, nobody will blame you.
Here’s what I got up to:
Among the many perks of working for a company with a history so tightly-intertwined with that of the open-source WordPress project is that license to attend WordCamps – the biggest WordPress conferences – is basically a given.
It’s frankly a wonder that this is, somehow, my first WordCamp. As well as using it1 and developing atop it2, of course, I’ve been contributing to WordPress since 2004 (albeit only in a tiny way, and not at all for most of the last decade!).
Today is Contributor Day, a pre-conference day in which folks new and old get together in person to hack on WordPress and WordPress-adjacent projects. So I met up with Cem, my Level 4 Dragonslayer friend, and we took an ultra-brief induction into WP-CLI3 before diving in to try to help write some code.
So today, as well as meeting some awesome folks, I got to write an overly-verbose justification for a bug report being invalid and implement my first PR for WP-CLI: a bugfix for a strange quirk in output formatting.
--no-color.
I hope to be able to continue contributing to WP-CLI. I learned a lot about it today, and while I don’t use it as much as I used to in my multisite-management days, I still really respect its power as a tool.
1 Even with the monumental stack of custom code woven into DanQ.me, a keen eye will probably spot that it’s WordPress-powered.
2 Perhaps my proudest “built on WordPress” moment was my original implementation of OpenID for WordPress, back in 2005, which is completely obsolete now. But I’ve done plenty of other things, both useful (like the multisite installation used by the University of Oxford) and pointless (like making WordPress a CMS for Gemini, Gopher, and Finger) too over the last 20 years.
3 WP-CLI is… it’s like Drush but for WordPress, if that makes sense to you? If not: it’s a multifaceted command-line tool for installing, configuring, maintaining, and managing WordPress installations, and I’ve been in love with it for years.
This checkin to GC1B0P5 The Runner reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
What a great statue! Cache was very easy to find; despite its camo it was very visible as I walked along the adjacent path. Thanks for bringing me out of my way on my walk from my hotel to the conference I’m attending, and TFTC. Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK!
This checkin to GC2K167 Petraki Monastery - NIMTS reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
QEF once I found the right hiding place! TFTC, and for the excuse to divert my morning walk this way. Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK!
This checkin to GC97N64 Under the Bridge reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Walking from my hotel to the site of a conference I’m attending, this morning, I stopped to find this cache. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to spot this sneaky little container! Greetings from Oxford, UK, and TFTC!
This checkin to GC9WD6N Peter's reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Saw the notification when this cache appeared near my house, which would normally be the point at which a race was kicked off between me and Go Catch for the FTF, before he inevitably got there first!
But this time around I was overseas when the listing went live and only found time to cycle out here from Stanton Harcourt this evening, after work. I’d visited the church here once before in service of the nearby multi, but it was nice to see a different side of it as well as an excellent hiding place.
TFTC!
I just spent a lightweight week in Rome with fellow members of Automattic‘s Team Fire.
Among our goals for the week was an attempt to strengthen the definition of who are team are, what we work on, and how and why we do so. That’s basically a team-level identity, mission, vision, and values, right?
Fellow Automattician Ben Dwyer recently wrote about his experience of using a deck of Dixit cards to help his team refine their values in a fun and engaging way. I own a Dixit set, so we decided to give it a go too.
Normally when you play Dixit, you select a card from your hand – each shows a unique piece of artwork – and try to describe it in a way that’s precise enough that some of the other players will later be able to pick it out of a line-up, but ambiguous enough that not all the other players will. It’s a delicate balancing act. Even when our old Geek Night was in full swing we didn’t used to play it often because our well-established group’s cornucopia of in-jokes and references made it trivially easy to “target” your descriptions at specific players1, but it’s still a solid icebreaker activity.
Perhaps it was the fantasy artwork that inspired us or maybe it just says something about how my team sees themselves, but what we came up with had a certain… swords-and-sorcery… even Dungeons & Dragons… feel to it.
Ou team’s new identity isn’t finalised, but I love the fact that we’ve been able to inject a bit of fun and whimsy into it. At our last draft, my team looks to be defined as comprising:
I think that’s pretty awesome.
This checkin to GC7FB9H From Canterbury to the cache reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Well that was quite the adventure!
The first wayoint is right across the road from where some work colleagues and I are staying for an “away week”. I decided to dash out during a break in the weather to try and solve this multi between meetings. But I was quickly confused because… this isn’t the way I was taught to do Roman numerals. I’d always been told that you should never have four of the same letter in a row, e.g. you should say XIV, not XIIII. Once I’d worked out what I was doing wrong, though, I was okay!
The second and third waypoints had me braving some frankly scary roads. The drivers here just don’t seem to stop unless you’re super assertive when you step out!
Once I had the final numbers and ran it through geochecker I realised that the cache must be very close to where I’d had lunch earlier today! Once I got there it took me a while to get to the right floor, after which the hint made things pretty obvious.
Great trail, really loved it. And just barely made it back before the rain really started hammering down. TFTC, FP awarded, and greetings from Oxford, UK!
This checkin to GC9QCKH When in Rome live as the Romans do (bb Tribute 05) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Took until the fourth hiding place before I found the cache. Out for a walk with work colleagues on the way to dinner. Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK!
Now that travel for work is back on the menu, I’ve been trying to upgrade my “pack light” game.
I’ve been inspired in part by Beau, who I first met during my trip to South Africa in 2019 during my Automattic onboarding. Beau travelled from the US for a two week jaunt with nothing but hand luggage, and it blew my mind.
For my trip to Vienna earlier this year for a divisional meetup, I got by with just a backpack and a laptop bag. Right now, I’m waiting to fly to Rome for a week, and I’ve ditched the laptop bag in favour of just a single carry-on backpack. About 7kg of luggage, and well within the overhead locker size limit.
I’m absolutely sold on this approach. I get to:
As somebody who’s travelled “heavy” for most of my life – and especially since the children came along – it’s liberating to migrate to a “pick up a bag and go” mindset. To begin with, the nagging thought that I must’ve forgotten something essential was challenging, but I think I’ve gotten past that stage now.
Travelling light feels like carefree: like being a kid again, when all you needed was the back on your back and you were ready for an adventure. Once again, I’ve got a bag on my back3 and I know that everything I need for an adventure is right here with me4.
1 If you’ve travelled with me before, you might have noticed that I sometimes have trouble at borders on account of my damn stupid name, as predicted by the Passport Office. I’ve since learned all the requisite tricks to sidestep these problems, but that’s probably worthy of a post in its own right.
2 A little smart packing goes a long way. In the photo above, you might see my pre-prepared liquids bag in a side pocket, my laptop slides right out for separate scanning, my wallet and phone just dump out of my pockets, and I’m done.
3 I don’t really have a bag on my back right now. I’m sat in a depature lounge at Gatwick Airport. But you get the idea.
4 Do I really have everything I need? I’ve not brought a waterproof coat and, looking at the weather forecast at my destination, this might have been a mistake. But worst case I can buy a cheap poncho at the other end. That’s the kind of freedom that being an adult gets you, replacing the childlike freedom to get soaked and not care.
