Category Archives: movies

May 2, 2021 · 21:11

Brain what?

Today I stopped (via YouTube) to watch one movie that I had not seen for some time. Who could pass up the chance to watch Natalie Wood again, in this movie with Louise Fletcher and Christoper Walken it is all about recording the brain. The movie Brainstorm (1983) is all about what is not possible and it is done well, the story takes a little dip when the military gets involved (like it was in the 80’s) but overall still an entertaining movie. I wondered what would happen if some young upstart (new director) gets to talk to a decently financed producer and makes this into a mini series for whatever streaming service takes it. A friend of mine (yes, I actually have those) wondered why I am not going that distance myself. Well, I turned 59, I am not a director, I do not feel that I would make a decent director and starting a new career as well as getting schooling at 59 is not my idea of retirement preparations. 

So as I was pondering that field we were not meant for show business, apart from the optional new anime by Ridley Scott where I am considering to do the Dutch voice over, there is no real flame to go that distance. Yet, in that same setting I was wondering the advances that Electroencephalography has made (if any), you see that is still an important part, if there is to be any real AI in computing, a better recollection and parsing systems is required and Electroencephalography might be the only technology that gives (at some point in time) a more human (or is that humane) setting towards AI. That drive could be part of the brainstorm mini series. It is not the weirdest idea, the writer Bruce Joel Rubin did make a real good script, he was also behind Ghost, Jacob’s Ladder, and Deep Impact (and a few more), as such this man has earned his stripes. But the nagging feeling that the movie left behind beckons exploring. The 80’s was a great era for loopy ideas, but not one for deeply thought through options. I reckon that these movies are all under investigation by the streaming houses as remaking IP tends to be a lot cheaper than making new IP. The fact that this movie is almost 40 years old gives it the forgotten tender group.

Yet in all this we need to wonder if this all we are, are new IP settings (Harry Potter, Game of Thrones) so rare that remaking is all we can do? There are almost 130 million books out in the open, is finding new IP that hard? The producers seem to clamp down on the bestseller lists and when the going gets tough they fold (example: Percy Jackson series), yet in all this the world has so much more to offer. It had one additional thing to offer, because my mind got the better of me. It started with me reading a part wrong ‘One idiot abroad’, this was accentuated with the slightly ‘psycho’ look of Stephen Merchant. It showed two additional people and the thought came ‘One won’t make it out alive’ and I giggled. That is a popcorn moment, it is reality TV that I would watch, especially when death becomes a factor. Consider all these celebrity survival games. We all get it, there needs to be a winner, but let’s be honest, should the losers survive? 

There is no way that you haven’t had  similar thought at some point. It is almost as corny (and perhaps essential) as letting an anti-vaxxer Twitter influencer die of Covid-19, some things are just meant to be and should that person be allowed to deprive actual victims of essential oxygen? We are setting the stage that the makers have given us and we twist that setting a little more. It is almost like walking into a bookshop and placing some of the Stephen King books ‘the Stand’ in the non-fictional section, there is a little demon on our shoulder whispering “You can do that, do not be the pussy you usually are”, and at some point we just give in.

If we are out thinking patterns, is it not equally so that intelligence will be shaped by the quirks we give into? Yet what is the stage where we record these impulses and can they actually be recorded at present? If electroencephalography is the way to that, is it not also the way towards an actual AI? If a biochemical computer can be mapped and truly be understood, is that not a first step in creating a silicon version to do something similar? Yes, I understand that they are not the same, but to get the other version working, it needs to be able or an effort needs to be made to mimic the other version, that has been true for the longest time. You see, mimicking also shows what goes wrong and when we understand, truly understand why it is going wrong, we can work towards new levels of innovation.

The path to innovation is never a straight line, only according to some person with a business degree and basic knowledge of Excel, they think it is a simple formula, but the rest, those treading innovation will tell you it is something different entirely, perhaps a new Brainstorm might reveal a lot more scientific paths than we give the art credit for.

Speaking of credits, those who follow me, let it be known that a certain counter is at 21,447, as such certain revelations will not take much longer.

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April 20, 2021 · 17:05

Both sides against the middle

This is not some wannabe setting, not some educated evolution of events, this is pure fiction, this is purely the idea for a script, for TV (or movie) and none of it is real in any way, or if it is, I am seemingly unaware of it. A “Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental” quote is added, so the neighbours wife (and the neighbour) need not get alarmed when I write about seeing her coming out of the shower naked and me as. Result masturbating, it’s purely coincidental (that was a funny). So the setting is a stage where the world, most nations are now in a setting where the military are set into a station where they have become the police, a sort of governmental Helpdesk and a facilitator of services. In this there are the opportunity seekers that have a balance between the military and the people, not unlike the setting in the Third Man. But here we see that the new military are at the mercy of the marketeer, all whilst the veterans are given the goods at near cost price, all whilst the people pay for the matter, with the exception of children, they get their needs at cost price. By setting these margins the dealer gets to swim through the mazes of the law and through the nets of the facilitators in reasonable safety. Yet the path is changing, a new officer is sent into the field taking care of the exploiters, in an age where resources are dwindling down, the exploiters are ending with too much and the military wants it to stop. As such the dealer gives up whatever black market fish there is to keep himself/herself safe. Yet the stage is even larger than the officer realises when a stage evolves where the large corporations are employing their own black marker dealers to keep the private needs of their board members satisfied, the dealer however knows too many of them and as such a larger stage of cat and mouse begins, a stage the officer dreads and loathes as his bosses need these corporate players as well, as such a larger stage of equilibrium is created and basically nothing gets resolved, for the officer it was a lose-lose proposition from the very beginning, so he sets a premise of safety for the dealer to get the goods on the larger corporate exploiters and all whilst he is trying to document the larger goods on all players including the dealer. 

It is a stage that is purely fictive, yet when we look at todays world, we see these element in play and the media is playing a dangerous game in the middle of share holders, stake holders and advertisers. So what happens when one media member jumps the fence? What happens when that person states enough is enough? We see the impact of FIFA and Sepp Blatter when we see “Blatter was found to have accepted undue economic benefits totalling 23m Swiss francs (just under £18m) and approved payments or bonuses of a further CHF46m to other officials” (source: The Guardian), and all whilst the alarm bells were rung by Andrew Jennings in 2006, it took close to 14 years to get that ball seriously rolling, why that long? As I stated before the media had too much power stating all kinds of facilitating settings all whilst it was the share holders and stake holders pulling the puppet cords, so is that setting that weird? We can see (and accept) the headline ‘Parliamentary inquiry into media diversity is ‘a sham’’, yet in that same setting we also get ‘The Biggest Risks to Big Tech’s Continued Dominance’, we want to be clever and hit out against one or both of the two (big tech and media), yet everyone seemingly forgets that the stakeholders are in the middle keeping the seesaw in a position that profits THEM the most, and everyone is ignoring that part of the equation. This is not a new setting, this has been going on for close to a decade at least and we are given news article after news article, by those who want to flame the audience, because emotions are set into profits, into clicks and into $$$$. A stage ignored by most as the media is at the centre of things, now consider the officer in the story when you have these elements available to you, do you think that the stakeholders in the story will give that officer even an inch? The seesaw is there to unbalance opponent after opponent and the officer becomes a tool of the larger players, because the image and documentations were whatever they allowed to get out into the open. 

A stage that remains a lose-lose for anyone offered that position, with a large promotion as incentive, so when we know that, who do the bosses of that officer serve? That is the stage we see unfold in the story, but the story remains slightly illusive. Because in that setting as the officer is keeping balance on a river standing on an ice-plate as it goes down the river hitting other ice-plates. The result being that the ice-plate with the officer diminishes in size the longer that officer is on the river and the more it hits other ice-plates. The premise of a lose-lose situation, so what can that officer do?

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April 18, 2021 · 21:40

The knife to use

The stage is not a real one, the stage is a speculative one, one for the silver screen no less, optionally what some used to call the boob-tube, no matter where it goes, perhaps it goes nowhere, it does not matter, it served the purpose for those it was meant to be, and they now know that I knew, so we leave that up to the historians to consider. There is a man, he walks with his little boy, they are on route to some event, we only know that the event was on military grounds. They go through the gateway, we see all the scanners working, but they set off nothing. This was how it was supposed to be, in the mean time the crowds gather more and more. And as the to had walked for about half an hour, they were closer to the airfield. The man asked if the little  prince wanted an ice-cream, the first show is almost an hour away, the boy smiled and nodded. He bought a large cone and made sure that thy were sitting next to a couple of ladies. “Excuse me ladies, I really have to go to the bathroom, can you look after my little prince for a couple of minutes?”, they all nodded and he told his prince that he was off to the bathroom and that he would be back soon, and told him to just enjoy his ice-cream and the ladies would look after him whilst he was away. He walked quickly in the directions of the toilet signs, but the moment he turned a corner, he repositioned his gaze to the floor-plan in his mind, he quickly passed two buildings and entered a third one. He snuck up to the second floor and past a few doors, there as the door he needed to be. He got a knife out of his pocket, one made from rubber, one that would not set off any detectors. He ripped of a slither of the spine, it showed a piece of plastic, almost like the tape of a cassette, only ten times stronger and sharp as a razor. He carefully entered, there was no one, he quickly looked though the desk, and found what he was looking for. The paper were exchanged and then he heard the footsteps down the hall, exactly like anticipated. He had left the door ajar for that reason, he hid behind the desk and waited for the person to come inside. “Hello? Anyone here?”, the man seemingly looked in the office but did not go all the way. As he turned around the man stood up and moved swiftly, he sliced the neck artery and pushed him to the floor hard, the blood never reached his side and he quickly departed. Walked back and into the first bathroom he saw. He dropped the knife in the toilet and added the chemicals from a hip flask. The knife dissolved almost immediately, he flushed and left the toilet, he went back to his little prince, he hd been gone less than 15 minutes. He shrugged at the ladies “Sorry there was a queue”, he looked at his prince, his alibi. Wanna see the planes now? The boy nodded and they left both holding a new fresh ice cream. 

This is as far as the story goes, but consider that some weapons can never be retrieved, some investigations are closed because they were politically inconvenient and for the most the players deal in pieces of paper that they often do not completely understand, they are attracted to the number on that piece of paper (most often with a $ sign). So as we see the truths of political inconvenience, how long until we are told that sources are not as reliable as some stated they would be and in all this we see a continuing wave of people filling their pocket, so where does that leave the people who do not get a voice or a vote in the setting? As such how much faith can we have in the statement ‘China-Iran 25-year deal not aimed at any country: Iranian envoy’, or perhaps ‘Iran admits saboteur derailed nuclear program and escaped scot free’, so as such should we give value to ““There is no credible explanation or civilian justification for such an action on the side of Iran,” Stano said. The narrow scope of the new enrichment provides Iran with a way to quickly de-escalate if it chooses, experts say, but time is narrowing. An Iranian presidential election looms on the horizon as Tehran threatens to limit international inspections. While 60 per cent is higher than any level at which Iran has previously enriched uranium, it is still lower than weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent”? Yes what they are stating is true, yet any dirty bomb is happy to blow on the premise of 60% and that I still a very large danger, the situation is not merely the 60% marker, it becomes a time scale that if that goes correct, how far will 90% be from reality? Th political powers in the US and the EU are sitting on their hands, way too much. So when we are given “European Union spokesman Peter Stano called Iran’s decision “a very worrisome development” we see a quote absent of action. So when they give us “Talks will continue “for a few days and then I think the two most relevant delegations will go back home to receive more precise instructions and then, I don’t know when, we will resume,” the EU official told reporters in a phone briefing”, talks all talks and still no plan, even though Iran has broken pretty much every accord on a whim, that is why they are too dangerous to continue. And when Israel faces that dirty bomb, will we see strong words without action from the EU, they let the Jews be pushed into genocide once, the second time should be easier. The problem is that such a bomb will make most of the Mediterranean countries a danger to live in and for that matter, it will end options for Malta, Cyprus, Crete and a few other places, then the currents take that irradiated dust to Italy, Greece and Turkey to options are gone, Iran will blame some sod in a high place and the EU will smile because they got an Iranian accord, they merely had to be willing to sacrifice a few nations no one cared about. So is this how it is going to be?

A knife does not need to be metal, ceramics or even mistletoe to cut and slice, anything sharp will do and when the right people figure it out it will most likely be too late, the wrong people will relocate to a safe place holding on to riches they were never meant to have, so how many people were investigated, not merely them, but the bank accounts under their mother-in-law maiden name too. I wonder what that will result, if that person was working from the EU, the chances are that it will go nowhere. 

Those who wield a knife in the house of kitchen, they are all aware that the knife is a tool and/or a weapon, but the one element that we tend to forget is that a knife optionally extends the reach of a person, did you consider that? It might not seem much, it might not be much, but at times it is enough.

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April 17, 2021 · 20:15

Y branch with exits

Yesterday was a day like most other, OK, I gave a new weapons concept to a representative of Saudi Arabia, but all other things were pretty much on par. I watched the movie Bloodshot, saw the trailer and got curious about the movie, which I have watched. There is nothing wrong with watching a Vin Diesel movie, who was also one of the producers. It was a 30% rotten tomato rating and a 43% metacritic rating, this is not a great setting, the movie costed 45 million, took home 37 million and there is no great setting in that remark either, I was pleased to see that there will be a sequel. There are options for Bloodshot. 

The movie got my attention because it has flaws and it has overwhelming moments of great. None of this bears on the cast, the cinematography is good and I never read any of the comics, so I have that against me, I am not aware of the comics, so I cannot see how the stage is set against the movie, you see a comic is not a movie and no matter how close we get (Marvel series), there will always a gap. So we see that there is a gap, Marvel took half a dozen high end actors, Bloodshot has 3 upper level actors, the rest also did a fine job, a great job actually but the nagging feeling was already there, there were flaws (as I personally see it). From my point of view the movie was too much like a comic book. Even as John Wick had the same setting, they did not make that mistake, they optionally created a wave of people interested in the comics, I reckon that this group will be massively larger than Bloodshot will enable. That is not negativity, it is not critique, it merely is. 

So as we see the movie, we realise that we are on a road with a Y-branch, the makers decided to take the left branch, I would have selected the right branch, they both lead to the suburb of Success in the city of Tinseltown, but the end whether they take us to Grab Loot avenue or Desolation Row remains open for debate.

The left branch is all about high end special effects and as many as possible, this is a choice, but I see that this might not be accepted as an outcome that the comic book fans were hoping for. That point is seen in the initial attack in the tunnel. Vin Diesel a hardened veteran is taking shot after shot, yet I do know that these hardened soldiers get out of the line of fire at the all time, as I personally see it the sequence was shot wrong, the stage is for the most right and the shot at the end is perfect, it is the in-between part that bothered me. It is not a bad thing, I still enjoyed the movie, but the right branch is more visceral, it shows how dangerous and how deadly Ray Garrison was in the first place and these people are all about muscle memory, they are about evasion every moment of the day. My old sergeant major used to say. I see no meadows, I see no houses. I see point of concealment, ambush and fire points, I see them everywhere all the time. I cannot tell if he was telling the truth, I was 18, what did I know. I am willing to accept his point of view, those with 15+ years can answer that better than I can. But when you consider those truths, and when we see comic books, we see the need to overcompensate. Art visceral constraints in cinematographically designed visceral constraints are not the same. I think the makers of the movie overlooked that part. 

In all this we accept that this is a movie and that reality is taking a backseat, I have no problems with that, but the stage to add some level of ‘realism’ to the forefront is not too much to ask for. Yes, the elevator fight is nowhere near real, but it is part of the story and I actually loved it, well choreographed and no complaints. The story was gripping and I reckon that the only reason of revenue loss was Covid-19, plain and simple. 

So when the sequel comes, what exit will they use? What choices will they make and which choices are free to select and which are not? The constraints of the comic book remain in place as I see them, it is that group the makers would want to cater too, I get that. Yet what will come remains to be seen, a stage we will have to wait for, and it needs contemplation. In a stage where domestic revenue is a mere 30%, the international revenue becomes increasingly important. 

I reckon that the second movie will do better, even as (with DVD sales) the movie broke a little better than even, I reckon that Vin Diesel is sitting on another franchise, one that could make him a lot of money, yet the way this is achieved is out in the open, part will be artistic choices, part will be the choice of allowing common sense to be part of the equation. In this, I get it, common sense is not the best choice of words, but it sets the premise of the tunnel scene, looking good through special effects is nice and part of it was essential, but in the end, we saw a trained veteran ignore bullets, muscle memory should have kicked in, and it would have made the last scene even more impressive. I saw part of this coming because the trailer gave too much away, a flaw seen too often, not a killing blow, but still a blow where we expect certain matters to come. If you knew the comic books you would not have this option, but I was partially in the dark and the trailer spoiled a few things, yet it needs to be said, I enjoyed the movie. The question becomes what if I had loved the movie, what if the rotten tomato’s would ended up at 60% and metacritic at 65%, what then? Did the makers cut themselves $45,000,000 short, perhaps even more?

It is speculation, but I think that is where the right branch might have taken them, yet that remains pure speculation, I will admit to that part. 

Enjoy the weekend!

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April 9, 2021 · 15:32

Belated brilliance

Some of us know what I am talking about, when we first see it, we think ‘nice’, nothing negative, just a plain nice. We liked the story, the girls loved Jude Law, the men were all over Jennifer Jason Leigh (virtually). The story was good, there was nothing bad about the whole thing, but now 20 years later some are realising just how brilliant David Cronenberg really was at that moment, our computers are catching on, our approach to virtual reality is catching on and suddenly what was once nice, is now regarded as the Koh-i-nor diamond. I am off course referring to eXistenZ the movie. We can take it apart from any angle, but consider the side we can now use on the PS5? What if we create an RPG that is a dream within a dream?

Not unlike the book the Talisman, consider a map, the normal game map set to a normal grid (whatever you call normal). Now we see a second map, that map has relative places in the same place (not the same place), but you are placed in wherever the temple, or resting place was. So in map one we have something resembling Japan, whilst Map 2 is more like New Zealand, as such map one is 50% larger, yet in relative places we see similar places and the resting places is an option to travel between the worlds, both worlds having duties, quests and achievements, but if you are a Shaman in one, you are an artisan in the other, a ying to every yang. Now that we have the power systems (like a PS5), we should use that to fuel gaming imagination, not merely a more buggy and textured killing game, but a sandbox game with several sandboxes, optionally they have very different kinds of sand in that box. Optionally there aren’t 2 worlds, but three or four, the opportunity offered will be staggering. 

Now consider that no game designer has ever considered creating such a leap, well, apart from serious Intel computers, the power was not there before, so why do we see more Assassin’s Creed 2022 LEAKS, with references to Africa, why more of the same whilst the last two games are still buggy? Why more existing IP, and what makes for the massive absence of new gaming IP? The creativity is out there, some of it is 20 years old and never considered for gaming, all whilst that movie was all about virtual gaming. What allows for an iterative mind to exist in a world that relies on true innovation? I mentioned that before, when you try to make a game that appeals to all, you end up with a product that pleases none, I would think that some game makers would have learned that small truth by now. I created (in my mind) in the last three months close to half a dozen games and if I can do it, why not these self proclaimed experts? 

I will let you decide, but if you get jumpy and overly exited when you see the next Assassins Creed, like a teenage boy seeing his first photo model topless shall we say. In a stage when we can be exploring life as a tailor, designing cloths for her naked body, I reckon you got exited for the wrong deal. By the way, according to some ladies that same formula works with Daniel Craig too, so he should be happy for now. 

For me, these ideas came to me as my mind was arranging books and movies, rearranging ideas in all novel ways to make connections that were not there before, so why aren’t others able to do just that?

And if you think gaming is a mess, consider that I completed the concept of a stealth systems to deploy a solution giving the Iranian navy a unique view of the Sea of Dammam (the view from the bottom), so what gives? Northrop Grumman lost idea’s and is relying on the Next Generation Interceptor program to stay alive a little longer? Well, if software iteration x.53 is anything to go by, it will not last long. Iteration was the game of financial stability, it is now the deterrent of innovative leaps ahead, it was the one part that the weapons industry had in common with the gaming world. Innovation was everything, and that is falling away more and more. 

So even as the Wall Street Journal gave us in 2018 “a payload adapter—that failed to operate properly in space”, it is interesting wording, apart from the silly notion that more than one thing went wrong, so as I gave two maps with different scaling, what else causes a person to be in a different place when he falls asleep? The person who never really knew where he (or she) was and that is important in gaming, because there we do not sleep, we merely pass time, so what happens when location and time are triggers? What if one life is set to time, but the other one is depending on a sun and a moon? In a real stage where we have two worlds where both work in a different premise, understanding that premise is essential if you want to efficiently win the game, that has been a cornerstone setting in RPG games for a long time, so why not change that stage, the technology is now powerful enough.

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April 5, 2021 · 17:30

The stage is the play

Famous words given to us by William Shakespeare, but are they actually true? I am not debating the insight or wisdom in this, but in a stage with Alien life, how far does it apply?

I have been working on Keno Diastima again and a few things were bothering me, well bothering is not really the right word, or the right sentiment. The stage became debatable, or perhaps shallow was the better definition. I needed a larger stage and the stage became the play. SO I decided to look back at some of the earliest original writings. There was Sun Tsu (the art of war) at 490 BC and the two works by Julius Caesar at 60BC, they are important because there was pretty much nothing of that calibre before that in their fields and their dome of influence. For me I focussed on Bellum Gallicum and on Bellum Civile. I wanted to avoid an intersection of ‘oriental thinking’. They are original as they were all ahead of their time and they set a stage that is still used today, the works were that good. It was an important stage because in any alien encounter we need to know where THEY are at and it is not some kind of wisdom puzzle, when we get visitors from the Sombrero galaxy it is not for mere tea and crumpets, there is a larger stage and that is what I needed to focus on.

I will not divulge too much, or set the stage too open, because it might still be a work of art to some stage (book, movie, TV series, etc), as such I cannot reveal my entire hand, but consider the use of Caesar, the fact that he wrote the two books in an age where writings were utterly rare and the idea that he was heading the battle in Thessalia, in a stage where the cavalry of Pompeii vastly outnumbered the one Julius Caesar had, all whilst the infantries were close to equally matched, still Pompeii missed out and lost that decisive battle, numbers matter, especially in a stage where two generals are grounded experienced veterans, in a stage when communication between parties was set in hours, not minutes or seconds. That part matters too, even as we look at our not so smart phones and forget that part altogether. 

My mind remained in brooding mode and I was starting to think things through, I was aware of the reasoning of the other side (trust me, you do not want to go there), but how and why are we reacting? Is it wishful thinking that they like tea and crumpets? It is not completely unrelated though, especially when you consider the building that once was in a place now known as Islam Abad (Iran) I think, if the right satellite looks in a proper way, they would see something that is odd, the evidence should still be there, even now 5500 years later, the evidence is still there, and I am covering that in something else, but that I keep under wraps for now, when I realised what I had found, when my mind perceived a stage that is almost undeniable I started to work on one part and in the back of my mind, my brain started to work on Keno Diastima, even the Greek part has meaning in ways that boggles the mind (well, at least to some degree). 

So as we consider the stage, the stage we are shown, what happens when it all goes topsy turvy? What happens when we become (have been for a long time) our own worst enemy, how will others react? How can we see the failings of us when we ignore what was in front of us the entire time? That is the stage I am digging through, because in all that mud a few nuggets can be found and I want to find them, they need not be there, but the mind can create them and as they are close enough to some presumptive truth, I am on the right track to create actual nuggets, not chicken, or pyrite, but golden nuggets, hoping that I can turn them to platinum bars (complete with a coca cola on the rocks), I an not driving a vehicle, as such I can have my coke on the rocks, so there!

Yet in the back of the mind, the two stations are more and more complete and soon there is a line between us and the Sombrero galaxy. Bioware, eat your heart out! What was once written can be written again in different ways, so as we see “The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look”, as well as “Experience is the teacher of all things”, two truths that have been out there for well over 2000 years and now I am trying to set an entirely new stage to part of that, or basically, I am incorporating the stage for 16 people on a space station, and in all that, what happens when we become our own worst enemy? 

The University of Melbourne published Farrago, there we see “The space that fills the gap between us and those stars, is perceived by us to be empty. From a conceptual standpoint, this is a perfectly valid definition, yet from a scientific perspective we can do better”, they are correct in more ways then one, they cannot see beyond a certain spectral point and the equipment that we design has similar limitations, we see in frequencies, yet an event 5500 years ago showed us at one point that we are limited by ourselves, and we forgot what we experienced, so at that point, what are we not seeing? We merely observe the parts we can see or measure, yet what happens when we mis out because we are focussing on a ruler, all whilst we need to use a version of a spatial Inclinometer, one that also measures spatial radiation, we never did that, did we, because we were never there, but evidence of that still exists, yet as we reach the limit of our expanded imagination, we forgot to push those boundaries and that in part made us our own worst enemy, a stage where the play is us, the stage was not the play, it was to show us the boundaries of the play of us. 

And as we go forwards, there will be people stating the list of original writers, but that was never the issue, Thessalia was. It was the place where the play showed a shift of borders, you can read it in Bello Civili, the set stage we see is “The book was for a time lost, but was rediscovered in Italian city archives in the Middle Ages”, it was found, but parts were missing, the papal powers feared the missing passages, did no one ever wonder why? I cannot tell how much is missing, but a part was omitted and another side of Thessalia optionally shows that. It is speculation, but when we consider a commander like Pompeii, a person as veteran as Julius Gaius Caesar was, did you actually believe he had no records? A stage with two sides, two sides of coins, not the same coin, but the same currency and that is where we see the play, the stage of Keno Diastima, not one coin, not more coins, but two distinct currencies, and the second currency we forgot about, but it was here all along. You merely have to open all eyes, we need to focus not with one mind, but with at least two. 

The stage is not the play, it defines the edges of the play, it makes all the difference.

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March 11, 2021 · 19:10

In your face space

It happens, something is staring me right in the face and I lay it beside me. It happens, it happens to us all. This trip started in 1992 (I believe), at a consumer electronic show in Amsterdam (RAI) we got to see the first Mini Disc, the first thought I had that it would be a great digital system for computers, it was roughly 4% of a Bernoulli disk whilst being able to store 600% of what a Bernoulli could store. The idea was rejected by Sony, too incompatible they claimed, nowadays we know more, it would have been a great option, it would have pushed players like Apple to the limit 5 years ahead of the curve. Yesterday I was confronted with that thought as my DVD was acting up (the disc, not the player). Now consider the new players, the new way to watch TV. All whilst the telecom companies want you to use more and more bandwidth, the more they can harvest, the more dependent you get to become.

What if we take that away? Consider this Compact Flash, one card, not 26 discs, merely one card and it is not even the start, in a time and place where collections are complete book cases and we can replace it in almost all cases with one card per TV series. The fans have a perfect copy per card and there is still the option to upgrade over time, in the age where 4K will define new boundaries, the retail side also needs to adhere, a setting where we can drive innovation, not merely follow it. Battlestar Galactica, Smallville, Babylon 5, Teen Wolf, Games of Thrones, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, Dexter, Midsomer Murders, the Star Wars saga and so on, one card per setting and the technology is already here to set the stage to a much larger degree to meet the customer beyond halfway, a customer that can watch their series in perfection, one card that can last a lifetime. I reckon that players will have larger settings, they have the space, open up any blue-ray or 4K player, most of it is space and adding a CF, or SD card reader (optionally both) is the easiest thing to do. Not walking back and forth to the player getting the next disc, merely one card and all seasons are there. Yes, newer series will likely go per season, but at present there are hundreds of series all well above a dozen discs, and the fans have needs, they want that card on their mobile, on the road and the card can take a lot more than any disc could, so what stopped a player like Sony? Another ‘too incompatible’ mention, or the fear of piracy? Piracy is already there, the disc allows for newer protection and even in store upgrades. Go to any store where you buy movies or TV-series, now consider a box (like GoT) and that box will be able to contain a dozen of your favourite series, now consider the space it is taking up and consider that one card could have all seasons and you keep it in your placer at all time, to be able to play it at your hearts content. So why is that solution not here now? Consider all the telecom players trying to be clever with their 5G, all whilst it is just not ready and do you really want your bandwidth to depend on your 5G router? Consider that IT Pro gave us a week ago “as they promote Kubernetes as the secret ingredient for closing the gap between 5G’s promises and 5G problems. Kubernetes does indeed have some potential to make 5G actually work well. That said, it’s not necessarily the holy grail of edge computing and telco networking that it is sometimes made out to be” (at https://www.itprotoday.com/hybrid-cloud/can-kubernetes-solve-5g-problems-partly-not-soon), there we are told “They make promises like “5G networks will one day offer peak data rates of up to 10 Gbps” and “5G’s hyper-fast speeds will revolutionise the way we live.” If you read statements like those carefully, you’ll notice that they’re predicated on theoretical future developments, not what 5G is actually delivering to the typical user today. That’s because, to date, 5G network implementations haven’t been all that impressive. They turn out to be slower than 4G in many cases, not to mention less reliable. 5G, in other words, has become “a bad joke.”” A setting I have been mentioning for close to two years and the joke gets to be worse, at present Saudi Arabia has a 5G network that is well over 700% faster than anything the US can offer, their BS marketing drive is that bad and it will get worse, as such do we want to rely on congestion, or do we want an option where we can watch what we love unhindered, optionally in a better setting than now? So whilst we take notice of “it won’t address all 5G problems, and it will take a long time–several years, most likely–before Kubernetes is a full-fledged 5G solution”, which I predicted a few times in the last two years, I made no mention of Kubernetes, I merely observed the greed driven stupidity of some and watch these ships wreck left right and center. So whilst American politicians are blaming China for their own lack of innovation, I created the setting of a 7th device that can push innovation and change. And when we consider that innovation drives creativity, I wonder what someone else can come up with tomorrow, I already set the design of a new device for IOS and Android, that is how I roll. All whilst Microsoft is pushing Forza on your mobile, I came up with two new pieces of hardware, yup, I feel decently good, especially as we see Microsoft falter again and again and now it get to pull the wool over the eyes of Apple and Sony too (life can be satisfying). Did I figure out everything? No, I did not, but if I had done so I would make life for 1,000 researchers at Microsoft impossible and that is not fair either, oh wait, I really do not care about that, sorry!

All this in a day, so what is stoping these moguls of achieving true innovation? #JustAsking

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February 24, 2021 · 21:51

A desk and screen

It is not the stage I am facing, it was the idea for a short film the story itself might seem known, it was a stage that several have used before, but here I am trying to invoke a darkness from within. A stage we face when we are all alone in an office. We tend to hear things, but not always are these sounds in our minds, they are the sounds all around us. And in some cases for moments our sense of hearing increases with factor 50, as such we cannot identify the noises we hear. Then there is the application of shadows, in this I call towards Nightwatch, the 1994 version by Ole Bornedal, not the remake. The bonus is that we get to see a young and innocent Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, before winter came (ha ha ha). The two elements came to me as a setting on a simple GI at the console of a missile silo, his partner has suddenly taken ill, and that man is releasing his diner through the mouth (aka vomiting), it is at that point that the alarm goes off and the console room becomes isolated. That is the setting, I will not bore you with the details (aka the ending) but as a short movie it should be worthy of some recognition (aka my ego in action). Yet that is not the setting that matters, or the central point of discussion. 

You see, there are bigger fish to fry (optionally served with garlic sauce). Who took notice of ‘Where are Cape Town’s great white sharks?’, as well as ‘Extinction: Freshwater fish in ‘catastrophic’ decline’ (source: BBC). We have been seeing stuff like that for a while, yet to politicians are seemingly in denial. We see this again and again, yet they are ignoring a larger problem, an environmental source gave us 5 years ago “A world without fish is a scary prospect. Without them, life as we know it will not be possible. The ocean will no longer be able to perform many of its essential functions, leading to a lower quality of life. People will starve as they lose one of their main food sources”, now I have had my issue with overextending environmentalists for a long time, but I do not think that this person is wrong. And a key part here is ‘Without them, life as we know it will not be possible’, the stage is even less good when we consider that this decline has been going on for 30 years, as such, which politicians did something about that? To give you a boost with a setting of horror, consider that marine life in 30-40 years will be gone and as such, your grandchildren will at least starve to death (if they are lucky), did you consider this?

So was the environmentalist wrong, perhaps exaggerating? Well we might think that but the impact is already reported on BBC, and the great whites are merely the tip of the mountain, the inaction by politicians and government is a much larger stage, they are all in denial, or perhaps more subtle voiced, they have a Trump view of democracy. 

Sometimes we read things, we see things and we hear things, yet share holders and stakeholders are doing their best to make sure that the noise does not each too many people, it might adversely affect their need for profit. Yet as I mentioned “they are the sounds all around us” and we need to start taking notice. There is overfishing and pollution. If it was only pollution, in my case micro plastics, I would have had an optional solution. The idea came to me when I was watching a woman open her pack of cigarettes, I thought that it might be a solution in solving the micro plastics in the ocean. I am emphasising ‘might’ as it is untested and there is an optional danger to marine life, so I am a little hesitant. The solution comes in two forms a coastal and a deep water solution, one cannot do the other, but I was prepared, or perhaps better stated, my mind was and two versions came to mind. I wonder at times how we can wake the people up, we can argue that this world is better off with 7,500,000,000 less citizens, and it would preferable if the animals are still around when that happens, but I tend to be an optimist. 

I am also considering that we have had 4000 years to grow and we screwed up the planet in the last 100 years, which is quite the achievement. As such when we look at movies like the 5th wave, or play games like Mass Effect where our world is under attack from aliens, these people were optimists. They can just park on the dark side of the moon and wait for 20 years, they can claim the planet, free of life and optionally all the buildings are still there. 

We did this to ourselves, we can only blame us.

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February 8, 2021 · 00:38

Hammer hits anvil

Yes, that is the foundation of an idea, the idea is voiced, in the ear, the hammer hits the anvil, the anvil vibrates the wires and the lightbulb in your brain lights up the room and the idea is born. The setting is the same for all, the only difference is that when the hammer hits the anvil, not everyones wires vibrate, and as a result in some people the lightbulb never lights up that room that is known as ‘skull space’, still my setting was that I did not come up with one idea, I came up with three. It is an idea that was someone else’s idea, but that foundation can still be used today and in a cloud space game setting.

Lets go back to 1984, George Orwell was making noises in regards to government oversight (of everyone) and in that same year Mike Singleton had an idea and created ‘the Lords of Midnight’, now even as the setting was nice, it was set to computers with a limit to 48KB (ZX Spectrum) and the 64KB that the Commodore had. Yet what happens when we take that idea and use the map of the UK (that island left of France) and set ourselves in a stage of riding, stealth and travel to collect the alliance of a minimum amount of keeps to secure the safety and unity of one region, each keep is in one county. The stage is all set, so to change it and make it a real challenge, the stages vary, the keep is not always in the same place (sometimes they are), and we aren’t always starting in the same place, so there will always be more than one option. The area is all in a stage where there is an enemy, not always visible, but as we align, we are given who is not our enemy and they will give the information of what is against us. A stage that is more alike the old days, when communication took days, not seconds. We need to adjust our way of thinking without removing the first person challenge. Even as it is based on that game, it will be a completely new game, it will be a larger setting based on the entire UK, all with optional awards (virtual diploma’s) of achievement and a retirement award. A game that shows time in a new setting if you like.

The setting of a cloud will allow a larger setting of randomisation, as the server does all the alignments, as such if 10 players play it, there is a chance that 2 players have close to the same setup, but not completely. A game where you need to do the work and not rely on some wiki solution where the one solution fits all. 

About a decade later someone made a game called Virus! It was an original game and even as it never made any headlines, I never forgot the originality. Yet in this day, what can we do to innovate? For example, a shooting game is one completed a game that has been completed, but it does not need to be like that. What if the opponents and the level of play is determined by a QR code? In the game Virus! It was Windows and your hard-drive, which in those days was innovative, yet today it does not work like that (or at least it should not). QR codes are everywhere and any level completed will be one we have already seen, yet what if we had on any mobile the option to save the code and use it to transfer the image to the cloud game? It does not matter whether it is a spaceship with an environment, a soldier with an urban or rural setting, it is about the fact that we are not in control and the maker cannot be creating levels again and again, and random generators tend to be less random than you think. Yet the setting of a QR code is out of our control and we can decide what every dot means, we merely are in the dark whether that dot is used. A game with almost infinite levels and a never ending stage of challenges, a lovely idea for any shooter with drive to compete.

Yes, I agree that it is in fact an iterative idea when we revisit an old idea, but the people seemingly forgot about the idea and as such it becomes a new ballgame. When we are given “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – Known Issues [Updated Feb 5]”, in a stage when Ubisoft gave the laughingly statement that the game would be released days early and we see 3 months later that there are well over a dozen issues with impacts on a dozen missions that cannot continue, is it such a bad idea to look at the past when these kind of screw ups would never make the cut of publication?

And a lot could have been prevented from day one by properly testing a game. In this I tend to fall back to Skyrim, a game that has issues, no one denies it, but in all the years (since 11.11.11) that I have played it, I only witnessed 3-4 bugs myself on any console (Xbox360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4, PS5) and a dozen or so glitches, yet glitches do not break a game. And that was made almost 10 years ago. I think it is time to reconsider what we love to play and what maker consider to be a good game. When we consider the size of Skyrim, my only issue with the game (after playing it again and again at least 8 times, is that the missions are always the same, yet the openness of the game allows for a lot of exploring and doing things your way. But what gives when the QR code resets the opposition and changes what you face in every dungeon, crypt or hollow? 

And that gives me another idea, I reckon that there are a few nordic directors with a grasp of the dark side of tinsel town, and when you consider Troll Hunter (2010). I thought it was awesome, André Øvredal took a folktale and pushed it and us into another direction. I am certain that it can be done again. So, what happens when we take that part of Skyrim that is based on Nordic legends and create a new horror movie, but one that is close to the folktale of the Draugar “Draugar usually possessed superhuman strength, and was “generally hideous to look at”, bearing a necrotic black colour, and was associated with a “reek of decay” or more precisely inhabited haunts that often issued foul stench”. Lets not forget in the academic world where people hunt academic recognition, stupidity (read: shortsightedness) is found a dime a dozen and when we see the people’s admiration with the zombie apocalypse, the idea that it had already happened is not the weirdest idea to consider, so what happens when someone opens up the wrong thing (tomb or urn) in Malmo and before the authorities have any clue what actually is going on, the issue has spread to Norway, Denmark and Germany. So as we need to rely on folklore, folklore that is specific to Scandinavia, what will those do who have no knowledge? The military will merely grab bigger weapons, weapons that have some effect, but the stage is different, you can hunt cockroaches with a flamethrower, yet what happens when that roach is somewhat heat resistant? The option are nearly endless and it could make for an entertaining 2-3 hours with a box of popcorn. As you see, these AAA game designers are all about being cool and having hot items (riddled with bugs), I needed one salad to get three ideas on paper. I wonder what I will be able to think off with a decent cheese pizza (with extra oregano).

Have a great Monday!

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January 22, 2021 · 15:56

Three sides to a tail

Yup, after a few moments of hilarious news bashing, I got back into the creative groove and an idea struck me, so I decided to make this story (unrelated to anything else at present) into something different, something optionally more towards a dark variety.

There once was a boy, the boy became a man and he was raised to be nice and polite, and he worked, he worked hard and was rewarded accordingly. This man had an idea and he worked in his free time, into the dark and catered the idea until it was ready. Now this man was no saint, he never claimed to be, he was polite but that was about it. He did not care for civilities, he did not care for the small rules, he had a plan and that plan took precedence over everything else.

As such he went through life, he catered to his boss to the degree any person would, but he had his pwn idea and at some point he made it a reality. He had created his new navigation system, a system that was actually better than most and soon thereafter a company showed interest with cash, a lot of it and the man sold his idea, he had his nesting egg and then some, or so he thought. It was less than a year later when a former boss claimed it was his and he showed the contracts that gave him the rights over any IP the man has and it went to court and the sneaky son-of-a-whore (read: boss) won. The man lost his nesting egg and more over the IP which was nothing like the firm his boss ever had (he was an administration firm), so the man was in shambles, and he took his anger, which had turned into rage at this point and he sought out the boss at his house, and he pulled a gun, the boss was suddenly the visible weasel that he always was and begged for his life, but the rage had taken over, the man pulled the trigger and killed first the two children, then the wife and as the boss saw that he had nothing left shuddered, he was not truly afraid for his life, and at that point the police came and shot the man, but not initially fatal and the man killed his boss. 

We suddenly move towards a plain, if it was a Tolkien story it would look like Mordor, and the man saw the boss and then an angel. The angel spoke “You two do not deserve in heaven and no mercy will do, but you have the option to get to heaven by going in that direction” pointing at a mountain the size which would make Mount Doom proud, the top will lead to a staircase to heaven. “Yet it is not a race, you can only get to heaven together or not at all” after which the angel flew away, the man looked around and saw a demon, he walked to the demon. The demon looked at the man, “the mountain is that-a-way”, the man considered for a second his option, then he looked at the demon again and spoke “If I do not go, he cannot go and he does not deserve to be in heaven ever, so, how can I serve you?”

The price of greed can be higher than you ever considered. Have a fun Friday!

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