Category Archives: movies

May 10, 2021 · 13:53

A staircase not finished

I feel like I am in a two story apartment, but I cannot get to the other floor because the staircase was never finished, I can get up, but not all the way, I see the other floor, but I cannot get there. Perhaps you have had that feeling. I got that when I saw Defying Gravity season 1, a season 2 was never made and it saddens me. The story had a great start, plenty of mystery and we saw (through CGI) walks that reality is not ready for (Venus). The story seems Wonky, but I feel that there will be more, or there should be more. Especially in light of what I am setting up (Keno Diastima), I feel that it is important to know what more there is. I feel that there are two reasons. The first is that I want to remain original, which as far as I know, I am. The stage of the story is now in (rough lines) in season 3. Three seasons all eight episodes all seasons 2 double episodes of (hopefully) nearly an hour. In ones mind time works differently, the min seemingly wants to use the big brush when you revisit thoughts again and again (highly annoying). Even as the series is making a wink at Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke, 1973) it is not a copy, it has its own storyline, but the idea of getting confronted with a place with alien symbology mesmerises me. For me season 1 was the hardest, I wanted to keep one surprise to the end of season 1 and to make sure that the setting was not too boring (it has the speed of a Stephen King story), so it is not about high action and most other series rely on Reagan, ehh, I meant ray-guns to settle the score is enticing, but I want the psychological element to be much more important. It is what enticed me to Defying Gravity. It is also something I had hoped to continue, perhaps it drove me to set the stage to Keno Diastima, but it is a stretch, you will see that in episode three (at the end). Yet no matter where we are, the stage of loneliness, abandonment and isolation, being pushed in one direction and connection to another person, in a place where only 8 are (and 8 added later on) gives us more to consider, gives me more to probe and that is in setting where we need to consider that scientists and business driven people tend to not ever connect. The business person requires the push of profit and gain, the scientist yearns for discovery and verification. You might think that I am exaggerating. Yet consider the dominant outgoing task oriented person (sales) versus the reserved steadiness people oriented person (support), that is not a conversation that connects, often it never ever connects.

I have seen it too often, one is all about profit and sales, the other about making sure the person got the right tool to get the job done. Now put these two in a place where they do not know where the are, what they are doing and how they got there and watch the sparks fly. Now give them a basic sign.

It is like the Dutch reading board that we used in the first grade in 1968. Now give that same reading board to a person 25 years older, change the images and make the text Sanskrit, all whilst the images are optionally text as well. You might find the parts of the text you need, but what do they mean? And everyone around you is in your shoes, they are all at a loss, so how to get momentum and the insight that you are doing something right? 

That is the stage we optionally see and to get to the better spot to make progress we need the staircase, but how to voice the symbology to get a staircase? And that is merely the beginning of a larger stage that goes in a direction you never foresaw. So how will the journey continue? I feel that it continues by making every choice and adventure and one of verification. Perhaps it will never continue, perhaps it becomes another Defying Gravity, another Dollhouse, which was on route to optionally become great, if only season 3 had become a reality. And perhaps it will be the winning ticket and Keno Diastima becomes a complete story with 5 (or 6) seasons. I have no idea, but it is something to work towards. For me it is a way to fix/jumpstart my creativity and I need that as I have two more 5G devices to consider, getting the total sum to 5 devices (1 now public domain).

Leave a comment

Filed under movies, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

May 9, 2021 · 19:22

Ketchup with the past

Yup, a wordplay and I am always happy to make wordplays. I think it was the Monty Python team who instilled that part in me. I reckon they came at the right time. One might say that it was a ‘Papers having been a place for the Great Charter’, the latin joke gains perspective once you add ‘great’ to the equation of a ‘shitty place’, but that is merely me trying to find the joke in all the wrong places. It brought me back to a situation I thought of before. It is added with the thought that when you decide to steal a billion dollars YOU WILL BE FOUND! Unless everyone realises you are dead, the loot is gone or if the theft was never detected in the first place and it is that last part that matters. 

In 1495 Girolamo Savonarola started something that would later be known as the bonfire of the vanities. In that event works by Albrecht Dürer, Giovanni Bellini, Luca Pacioli, Michele Giambono and at least a dozen others, from these makers some works made it to today, but not all. A lot was burned by the people adhering to the words of Girolamo Savonarola. Books and pantings that would now value at a billion plus. So what would happen if (massively sci-fi and fantasy) we could step through in the minute before it happens and replace these works with forgeries? The forgeries would be burned, the originals saved. It is not the only moment that this happened. There was Kristalnacht (9–10 November 1938) and more importantly the Library of Alexandria that had in excess of 200,000 scrolls holding the works of Plato, Homer, Aristotle, Apollonius of Rhodes, Aristarchus of Samothrace and many more. Some survived but a lot were lost to the flames, what do you think that a scroll, a first edition to a work by Didymus Chalcenterus, the man that inspired Cicero would fetch? I reckon you are millions short in your estimate to the value of such works. Parts were burned (allegedly accidentally) in 48 BC? After that there was another issue where Caliph Omar had another go at the same library, now in 642 AD. How much was lost? So there is no foundation in reality, but in fantasy? Three jobs in two places with a loot amounting to that could fetch well over $4,000,000,000 and no one is the wiser, history was written and 2,000 year later that loot is no longer hot and wanted, so what could be gotten? History is filled with events where we see that fires and natural events caused havoc, and what stops the inquisitive minds to seek out those ‘forgotten’ treasures? 

So, this has no bearing on reality and its setting, and as far as I am concerned, the creative mind merely needs to dream, realistic or not, we tend to dream (sorry Scarlett Johansson). For me it all started with Tom Hanks and Melanie Griffith in ‘Bonfires of the Vanities’, it was an entertaining movie, but it was there (1990) when I learned of the origins of that name and some Italian prophet who enticed people to burn art, the lowest form of censorship. That day I learned (again) that Adolf Hitler wasn’t even original, he got the idea from an Italian. It also intersected with the thoughts that censorship burning  have no positive outcome, it never does, what existed was lost, we could never see the ‘feigned’ negativity of the works and learn for ourselves. It is perhaps the only reason I opposed the banning of ‘Mein Reich’ not because of the work, I never saw or read it. We can never make up our minds if we do not see the negativity of the work. All these so called ‘wise people’ stating that it is better for us, we have learned that these people are all about forwarding their own positions at the expense of EVERYONE else. And we lose the option to learn.

We can search the red book of Mao and wonder in that same way what some were trying to hide from us. We saw the posters, the presented imagery by the Chinese in those days, but we never got to learn what was wrong and why things were wrong. I reckon that the what and why are connected, but from me that would be speculation. You see, we should have learned something from the trial of Socrates in 399 BC. We are told (from primary school onwards) that he was given the “death sentence of Socrates was the seemingly legal consequence of asking politico-philosophic questions of his students, which resulted in the two accusations of moral corruption and impiety”, yet in that we were never told what these politico-philosophic questions were in the first place, we were too young? It was too complex? We didn’t learn, merely that some questions get you the death penalty and there is a larger failing there. If we cannot learn, how can we move forward? In that same setting in school we were never made aware of ‘Apology of Socrates to the Jury’ by Xenophon of Athens, if so would we have learned anything more? 

We need to catch up with the past at times, although it was a snow globe that gave me the idea how to push a meltdown to nuclear reactors, actual positive inventions are clouded by censorship. And the times is filled with those examples, so what were we not allowed to learn then and have we learned now? Do not take the work from power players proclaiming to know, learn it for yourself. You might pick up a few ideas on the side and that might give you your first big break. It is up to YOU to decide what to do, and as long as you have peace with whatever path you take, that will be all that should matter to you. 

In the past we were inspired by books and music, then we got records and electronics, then there was the internet, but it will be limited to what you are allowed to see, I reckon that the really nice parts are hidden in what you were not allowed to see because people decided what was good for us. I do accept there are premises where censorship is a given (read: a must) and essential to protect the vulnerable groups and I do not oppose that, I merely wonder who gets to make certain calls, especially in the case of political censorship. Yet overall I spend a nice day day dreaming of a situation and it passes the day. Optionally I came up with a new movie, not bad for a simple Sunday in May. 

Leave a comment

Filed under movies

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 8, 2021 · 07:10

Create history with history

It is a stage I have been pondering about. To get there, I need to tell you how I got there, I do believe it matters. I wrote articles of the Afreet in the past. I was introduced to them in a game called Archon 2 by Electronic arts (30 years ago). Archon was a sort of battle chess. Consider chess, but you do not ‘conquer’ the piece when you hit it. It starts a battle between the two and the victor is left standing. So like chess pieces each one has abilities, not to move, but to fight (the higher the chess piece, the stronger his or her ability to fight). The additional part is that black pieces are stronger on black squares, white pieces are stronger on white squares and the board also has a collection of squares that rotate colour from dark to light and in the other direction in several stages. As such standing still there is a dangerous undertaking. The Ifrit, or afreet is like a whirlwind and quite powerful, its opposition is the thunderbird. That was my introduction to the Afreet. Over time I learned more, but that is the start. So when we see time travel stories we tend to go to places, yet what happens when time comes to us? What happens when time becomes a defence mechanism? What happens when the Afreet go back to defend the sands they love, defend the places that threw them out, but in this case as they return they fight for the people? It is merely one part of the setting. 

An Afreet has been part in several series, usually as a temporary antagonist. Yet what happens when the world is dying to a much larger degree, because of our stupidity and the Greek gods come back to defend what they believe is the world of their making? In that setting what happens when the gods of the dead unite in a struggle? Hel (Nordic), Hades (Greek), Afreet (Arabic), Yama (Hindu), Shinigami (Japan) and Mictlantecuhtli (Aztec) they unite because the people are killing the earth, which will then no longer feed them the souls that sustain them. In this they start via the Afreet to start larger wars and to push for population control. 

As the push into one direction we see the battlegrounds move from the Middle East and India to Western Europe and America. The movie shows us the evil and the bad that people do under the excuse ‘the devil made me do it’ (thanks to Tom Ellis for reminding me), yet what happens when there really was some form of devil (afreet) pushing people?

A series that shows the horrors of death, direct, blunt and overwhelming. A stage that has inspiration from some of the horror movies and series, but it is overwhelmed by the interaction of horror and war movies, which apart from Jacob’s Ladder has never happened, and a more brutal version is a little overdue. And it goes beyond of what we see, what happens when it re-inspires faith in people? Are these gods of the dead the safety valve for the other gods?

It is just a thought, but I cannot remember where different ideologies interact to a much larger degree and that in itself makes for a new level of TV history, does it not?

Just a thought, have a nice weekend, optionally one not involving death. And before you think it is an outrageous idea, consider India has 22,000,000 covid cases, another 4200 died in the last 24 hours and over 3 million in total have died of this disease and Australia is opening the borders with India over some bleeding heart stage. So the people (and media) making Prime Minister Scott Morrison a pariah for taking the tougher decisions. As such when the Indian variant runs blatantly through  Australia as per June 2021, feel free to sue those bleeding heart media people. Catering to shareholders and stakeholders by relying on flames and avoiding the harsh realities of choices that Narendra Modi of India refused to make should come with a price-tag, should it not? So whilst he decides to spend $1.8 billion on parliament renovation (not essential oxygen needs), we see the larger inactions, and I have written about it for days, the media avoided it all, but the media is all about happy family pictures and how it is such a sad discriminatory setting. Make sure that your court case includes the reporters and media that relied on flames whilst avoiding a lot of data, because as per June it could be the death of your child, brother, sister, partner or parent. 

So as many rely on the blame game, I merely came up with a new TV series (the creative part in my DNA) and there is every chance that Covid will have a definite presence, with 3,279,018 deaths, how could it not be?

So all hail to the gods of death and try not to choke on your tea or coffee this weekend. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, movies

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, movies, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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?

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, movies

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

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.

Leave a comment

Filed under Military, movies, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

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!

Leave a comment

Filed under movies

Tagged as , , , ,

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.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, movies, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

Leave a comment

Filed under movies, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, movies, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,