ERROR!

I had just spent the vast majority of my waking hours for two straight days on my first photogrammetry project. Photogrammetry allows one to build a virtual reality environment from digital scans or even high quality digital pictures of real life places and things. And while the field is generally in its infancy, people have already used it to recreate famous historical places in exquisite detail and made them available for free for people with the right equipment to visit. I was trying to recreate my very messy office. OK, not as noble as the Parthenon, but it seemed like a more accessible starting point.

Along the ordeal of my first attempt I had hit many stumbling blocks, several points that felt like complete endings, but had always, through much Google searching and even, when necessary, by wading deep into super specific discussion forums, had overcome all and finally gotten the incredible VR model of my office loaded into the program where it would now be viewable on my headset. With much excitement I threw on my HTC Vive goggles, fired up my SteamVR home environment, and then toggled through to the screen where I could load the Virtual version of the office I was actually standing in and boom, it lit up and surrounded me, in perfect 360 degree virtual reality: “ERROR ERROR ERROR.” It was a perfect XYZ axis world made of red E’s, R’s and O’s. ERROR was all I could see in every virtual direction, like some kind of terrible “Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich” moment of my own creation.

ERROR!

I tore off my goggles in frustration, and then quickly realized, “HAHA”, I had found my way to my office after all, the actual real messy one of course, not the VR one I had worked so hard to recreate for the last 48 hours. I shook my head as I felt it again, what a strange Ministry I have found my way to. But whether in Virtual Reality, or actual reality, the same truths have a way of finding you. And for me, the truth of the idea that failure is the path to success was once again rearing its head in the form of a virtual room made out of an error message. Indeed, I had been here before a thousand times. Every insight, lesson and learning I have ever squeezed out of life has come after a mistake or screw-up.

Re-creating my cutting board in VR

So, after taking a walk with my dog to recenter, I decided to start again with a clean slate. Instead of my office I would try and recreate the cutting board and sliced oranges I found on my kitchen counter. Slowly and deliberately plugging away once again, but with new determination, I did it. A short few hours later I was actually goggled in and walking around a rough but giant sized version of the cutting board and sliced oranges. And it was sweet!

Yours in the unfolding,

Rev. Jeremy D. Nickel