MacHeist 3:Mission 2

From WikiHeist, the unofficial MacHeist wiki

Another Edit: People have gotten confused on a couple things with the walkthrough. I've included a list here with their fixes grayed out (highlight to see), and the walkthrough will be updated with their hints. (I've had plans with the folks for months now and I can't stick around and put these updates in the actual walkthrough right now.) Citing is incomplete, I will name the users that mentioned the more complicated fixes. Notice that many problems can be solved by reloading your browser or switching between Firefox and Safari for the problem area. Also, most of the browser-generated problems don't exist in Safari 4 Beta!

Tips from users (highlight):
(Contain spoilers for the rest of the walkthrough, somewhat out of order!)

1. The gesture: You must start from the outside and spiral in! Also, the gesture pad is hidden on the homepage under the number pad, you have to click the number pad to find it. And sometimes, in some browsers, the gesture doesn't register correctly. Try reloading the page, that should fix most of your problems. If necessary, a different browser may help. (Some report problems in Firefox 3.)
2. The Smileys + Clocks: There are several algorithms, but the simplest method suggested was by Cyberpawz: move the minute hand clockwise, making sure you always leave a trail of smileys: http: //cyberpawz.com/movies/Clock/howto_clock.html. (This link doesn't work on purpose so it will be invisible unless highlighted. Type it into the address bar and it'll work!)
3. With the fortune cookie and the regular smileys you need to put into the 4 corners, you may have to resize your browser window to get it to work. Most people could solve this problem by using a different browser - one reported problems with Safari 3.
4. The morse-code clocks: One user reported the correct clock to follow is in the bottom left, not right. I will verify later, when I have time.
5. Geolocating the images: Deep_dark_blue suggested using preview, hitting [command/clover]+i, going to the "More Info" tab and click the "Loocate" button, which puts a pin on google maps in your browser. Another user suggested publishing a Picasa album of just the images to your Google account, which then geolocates them for you automatically. This second method is MUCH easier, I will update the walkthrough when I have time. Not only does it pin them, but there is a link that'll take you to a map with the images on the map! Much better than my Google Earth method.

This is how it goes, in general:</p> <p>1. Open the links they give you.
2. Find a hidden part of the webpage that obviously has something to do with MacHeist - usually by clicking a smiley.
3. Solve a puzzle - obtain an image file as a reward.
4. Place the image file on a map - I figured this out in two seconds before we were supposed to know that's what we were going to be doing with them.
5. One final trick to get the gesture.

Part 1 - Briefing

There are two links.

First: http://chris.pirillo.com/

The smiley is on the right side:

Click on it and it takes you to http://sirhc.ollirip.com. There's a backwards video. If you type in the url backwards, it becomes "/fdd08002c.jpg". Append this to the site, and you get:

http://sirhc.ollirip.com/fdd08002c.jpg.

That's our first image. We'll save it for later, and plot all the images at once.

Second: http://iusethis.com/

If you go to the "About" part of this page, there is a cryptic story. Highlighting it gives:

This is then a new link:

http://osx.iusethis.com/EF7DE3F48.jpg

Second image, save for later!

Part 2 - New Intelligence

Check back to the briefings and there's a New Intelligence section with new links.

First: http://blog.freeverse.com/monkeyblog/archives/2008/10/moto-racer-reac.php

Scroll down and click on the giant smiley!

This takes you to:

http://freeversedl.com/lolls/

This takes us to a puzzle page. There's a fortune cookie in the middle, covered up. Move a couple of the smileys out of the way (click and drag) to click on it. Keep clicking until it cracks open:

Your goal is to move 4 "regular smileys" to each corners. This is a regular smiley:

Put them in a corner and they'll stay! One in all 4 reveals a picture you can click on with the link:

http://freeversedl.com/lolls/img/2b531f8aa.jpg

Save for later again!

Second: http://mollymcford.com/

Go to tour. By now you should be getting the hang of this - there's another smiley!

http://img.skitch.com/20090228-b7ihisstgcgbe8cwcm541rdg1y.png

Clicking on it takes you to a page with a folded origami something.

http://mollymcford.com/folding/

It starts looking like this:

We're going to unfold it by resizing the browser window. If you make a mistake, the origami will crumple and you'll have to start over. First you need to resize your browser sideways, making it smaller. If you're using Safari 4, it'll change as you move. If not, you may have to release and play with the window size. Step 1:

Next, resize the window sideways again, making it larger:

Then, resize up-and-down, making it smaller:

This part's tricky - resize it diagonally by dragging the bottom corner:

Keep resizing diagonally and we're rewarded with our picture to save for later:

http://mollymcford.com/folding/dc3d3b1a3.jpg

Third: http://taptaptap.com/

Scroll down to the bottom and go to the About part of the page:

http://taptaptap.com/about

The smiley is obvious:

Now you notice a TON of Emoji in there. User stevecopley has been kind enough to lend a file: <a href="https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/21921/MacHeistEmoji.pdf">https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/21921/MacHeistEmoji.pdf</a>. Or, since his link seems to have stopped working, <a href="http://creation.mb.softbank.jp/web/web_pic_01.html">http://creation.mb.softbank.jp/web/web_pic_01.html</a>. If you find all the emoji there and use the second letter of the corresponding code, you can translate the emoji. But AceIsAGeek was kind enough to get it done for us, *in public*:

http://taptaptap.com/ba323c3f5.jpg

Save and continue!

Fourth: http://www.macmerc.com/article.php?sid=4682

Scroll down to find the smiley:

This takes you to

http://macmercfiles.com/e322a/

This part is tricky - I haven't found a formula. You need to move the clock hands around until all the smileys are showing. I've found it's easiest to get as many faces as you can showing with one gap on one side of the clock, and then move the hands, always filling in the gaps you leave behind as you go. If somebody has an algorithm, I'd post it, that'd be awesome. But anyway, when you're done a picture shows up and it's:

http://macmercfiles.com/e322a/e322a7975.jpg

Part 3 - Urgent Information

Back to the briefings, and there are 3 more links!

First: http://www.macworld.com/search.html?cx=003198751674731024891%3Aovffo1orlum&q=time+machine&sa=search&client=idg-cse&cof=FORID%3A11

We notice that this isn't just a page, it's a search page. Click on the first result:

http://www.macworld.com/article/131534/2008/01/tmeye.html

Scrolling down to the bottom of the article, we find another smiley:

This takes us to:

http://mwstatic.com/87c46/

If you print the page, you don't get the map, you get - instructions! They are:

1. Head south on Pwnage place
2. Turn left after you pay the Domo a visit
3. If you happen to see a lip-syncher, avoid like the plague
4. Turn north on Wb way
5. Head north until you approach the badgers, and head left.
6. Make sure to leave britney alone
7. Head South on the old blue screen, then turn left onto Ttfn trail, and shun the non believer (shuuuuuuuuun)
8. After you leave candy mountain head south, but before you fail turn right.
9. Participate in the drama, then take the second left.
10. Go nuts.

(I apologize to all the memes I am about to slaughter.)

This is the Domo - click on him:

Don't click on the Mi-Ya-Hi guy! (I love that song, I don't know why.)

Next is the Badgers:

I wish you didn't have to click on Chris. But this is him, and he wants us to just "leave britney alone":

Head south on old blue screen refers to BSOD Vista, as in "Blue Screen of Death".

Don't click on the unicorns. Shun them!

Don't click on the poor puppies that fail to get through the door.

The drama refers to the squirrel. He's real intense about something, probably nuts. Click him:

Which is a nice segway to Mr. Peanut:

And finally, we're done! We're taken to our precious picture:

http://mwstatic.com/87c46/img/87c46735a.jpg

Save and continue!

Second: http://embraceware.com/

Once here, we find the smiley on the Products page:

http://embraceware.com/products/awaken/

masquerading as a CD:

This takes us to:

http://erawecarbme.com/tock/

I'm not even going to try to tell you how to do this one, because I don't know morse code. But! I'll tell you how roth2 did it - by clicking on the lower right-hand clock (some claim it's the left-hand clock, I will verify when I have time, it's a busy weekend for me right now) to hear only it, and translating the morse code (Maybe Wikipedia will help? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code):

roth2 wrote:

The lower right clock is ticking in short long patters like morse code if you translate the short long into dot and dash then from dot and dash to abcd...
you get /TICK/AA6A476D2.JPG But that returns a 404</p> <p>erawecarbme.com/tock/AA6A476D2.JPG on the other hand does not.

That means we should try:

http://erawecarbme.com/tock/AA6A476D2.jpg

Another picture! Save and continue!

Third: http://appshopper.com/

Try looking for the best free apps: Switch to the "Top 100" tab and change to "Free" apps, and you'll find yourself at:

http://appshopper.com/bestsellers/free

Scrolling all the way to the bottom reveals a tiny icon that's a smiley that is NOT an app!

This takes us to:

http://holding.macheist.com/item3b/

Click in the middle of the blackness and be rewarded with sudoku! The faces correspond to runes. There's a bug I found here, but it's not a bad one:

Two glowing squares? That's not supposed to happen! You can see I was putting the yellow smiley in that row. Anyway, moving on, the solution is:

Once they're all in place, we get our final image:

http://holding.macheist.com/item3b/d3bd9bf4b.jpg

Time to map!

So here are all of our beloved pictures:

http://sirhc.ollirip.com/fdd08002c.jpg
http://osx.iusethis.com/EF7DE3F48.jpg
http://freeversedl.com/lolls/img/2b531f8aa.jpg
http://mollymcford.com/folding/dc3d3b1a3.jpg
http://taptaptap.com/ba323c3f5.jpg
http://macmercfiles.com/e322a/e322a7975.jpg
http://mwstatic.com/87c46/img/87c46735a.jpg
http://erawecarbme.com/tock/AA6A476D2.jpg
http://holding.macheist.com/item3b/d3bd9bf4b.jpg

If we open up all these pictures (and they are in the order that we found them), we'll notice that they all look like letters. Let's try them as an internet address:

http://www.coalgotee.com/

Another fortune cookie! Notice that we have an "UNSCRAMBLEFAIL" as the title of this webpage - "coalgotee" becomes "geolocate" through this process:

Number "coalgotee" with the lucky number as such (apologies, the quote block is necessary to see what I wrote and have it aligned):

c o a l g o t e e
6 5 7 4 1 3 8 2 9

Putting the numbers in order gives:

g e o l o c a t e
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

At this point we're supposed to say, "Oh! We can map these pictures!" Well, I (and a bunch of other people) figured this out on the first image when the first thing we did was see if it had anything interesting in the properties, and it did - GPS data.

Now, if you number the original coalgotee with 1-9 as such:

c o a l g o t e e
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Then rearranging to geolocate gives:

g e o l o c a t e
5 8 6 4 2 1 3 7 9

(Yes - there's some ambiguity, but as we'll be able to see in a bit, this sequence makes the most sense.) Now, after all this time, here's where I reveal my dirty secret that I've been hiding - I'm doing this on Windows. So I have Picasa 3 and Google Earth. You can find the info by viewing the image properties in iPhoto and painstakingly translating to google maps, putting pins as you go on your own map, but Picasa 3 in Windows will automatically plot them for you if you click the nifty Geo-Tag button.

Now after you've all groaned, my MBP is in the mail, and if Apple had shipped the 17" as quickly as they said they would, I might have it right now. And have an OSX-friendly solution. But pushing forward!

Importing these pictures into Picasa and using the nifty Geo-Tag button, and my poor numbering with paint in the order we received the pictures, we get:

Edit: Alternatively, although I don't know how well it works as far as being able to number the resulting pins:

ddemeo wrote:

Sorry if this has already been said (I didn't read through everything) but there's a very easy way to do the last part on a Mac also. If you have the latest iPhoto, import all the images (into one event to make it convenient). Then click on Places. You'll see all the pins on a map. Voila!...

Awesome, yes? Now let's use that final code (the one from rearranging coalgotee into geolocate, 586421379) and draw lines between the numbers:

That looks like a gesture! Go to the homepage and do it!

And that's the way they INTENDED it to be solved, minus the crappy Windows. Please oh please let my MBP get here soon!

And johnred - please don't be too mad at me that I used Windows and dock points. I don't have a choice. I can only wait.

Edit: Just realized I did a horrible job of citing who helped in here. Whenever I needed explicit help, I went to main Mission 2 forum thread, where I was able to find what I needed eventually. Those I did cite helped with particularly tricky or tedious parts of the heist. But the public forum deserves pretty much all of the credit! Even if I did figure it out on my own, it turns out 99% of the time somebody else had beaten me to it.

MacHeist 3:Mission 2

From WikiHeist, the unofficial MacHeist wiki

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