November 11, 2020 · 00:40

A,B,C,…..D?

We all have ways to promote the thinking pattern within ourselves, we all have our way to get about it, I am no exception. Yet, today is a weird day, I am overwhelmed with a thought and a sensation from the 60s. I was a wee young lad (a little piss ant is more like it), I was never a saint, especially when I was young. And in all this we all had our own ways to deal with ourselves, again, I am not exception. 

The sensation that bugs me today is something that has been in the back of my mind for a while. It is like a nuisance that keeps on bugging me and I do not exactly know why. It is a drink, in the Netherlands it was for a small time (in the 60s) decently wanted. The bottle was long and slim, with a light blue lid, it contained some form of a tangerine drink. That drink has been on my mind for a while now, and I miss it, but until recently it’s been nagging me and I do not know why. I looked up a few things and I noticed that there is no decent tangerine liquor. The drink I used to have was a lemonade, basically tangerine juice, settled with a third ingredient like water, still water. So why was it on my mind so strongly?

I had been considering a lot more from that era, mostly TV series, it was all before the house of Pong set up its shrine (a manhunter New York joke). And then it hit me, it was 1968, the Dutch TV series ‘De Fabeltjeskrant’ created by Leen Valkenier started, the UK got it later titled ‘The Daily Fable’, the setting had connections to the fables of Jean de La Fontaine, Aesop, and others. No matter how simple it was then, it was close to unequalled until it ended in 1989 after well over 1600 episodes, a gem too many had forgotten about, The adventures narrated by Mr Owl, with Miss Stork, 

Mr. Cunningham the Fox, Mr. Crow, Boris the Wolf, Bert and Fred Beaver, Zippy the Hare,Shelly the Tortoise, Miss Ant, Gerald the Pigeon, Milord the Horse, Harold the, George the Guinea Pig in the British version, Mumbles the Mole, Myra the Hamster, Greta the Cow, and Zaza the Zebra. There were more characters, but I stopped watching when I grew a little older, yet consider the simple fact that this series ran for over 1600 episodes and consider all the old tales as well as the tales of Grimm and others, what a treasure trove it could be, even today, we are all looking at the hi-tech series, but there is a reason that Tim Burton struck gold with the Nightmare before Christmas, stop motion animation is still an art that can move all the senses we have and we forgot about that tiny detail. We seemingly forgot about the situation where what was is still good, but how to embrace it? The fair part is that children do not mind, they embrace the story, the interactions, the inclusion, it is the inclusion that tends to take the cake, but it is merely one of a few factors and to be around for 22 years, that matters, that shows that you have a winner. So can it be relaunched? That is the question we need to face. E can remaster it, it can be remade, but in the same way? It is like the original Mass Effect, these gems are close to timeless, in 15 years when we have the Playstation 6 and the Zbox (or XboxX), a game like Mass Effect will still have a value that equals its weight in gold, so TV series too will have their moment and the IP and its owner sees a new life where none was expected. It is the showing of a real visionary, a game like Mass Effect (the original trilogy) is truly one of those. 

So whilst my mind focussed on a tangerine smell and a faint taste of what was, the reason was lingering in the back of my mind and the Daily Fable is not the only thing from those days. Netflix is investing a little over $17 billion in this year alone, but on how much actual IP? What if a fraction could get them several series that could give them a much larger offering of series? As the workflow comes back (after another lockdown), we see that there is a need for materials that will be there for the younger and the not so young viewers. 

It is about series, games, streaming and non streaming. It is all directed via IP, but it is not the only option, there is a whole league of games that lost their IP protection years ago, the same for TV series and the clever mind is one that looks in the past and find the troves most forgot about.  A setting we need to take another look at. So consider on what Netflix is spending and then add the billions that DisneyPlus is spending and see what some can get at a mere farthing per pound, a setting too enticing to ignore, but the will be the name of the game soon enough. 

It links to an old joke, what is the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant? A zookeeper has a $10 note and hands you 10 $1 coins, an accountant squeezes the $10 note until it gives up 11 $1 coins. We can laugh at the or realise that the Netflix has an optional $1,700,000,000 around, all because not the right accountant took a look at the $10 notes. We can laugh at the joke, or we can consider that there are parts none of them looked at, why is that? Or better stated, where are the gemstones? You already saw one, let me give you one more, it was a Swedish series called ‘Den vita stenen’, a series based on a 1965 award winning book. In a collection of nations, a mere 2 options and that is before you realise that France, Germany, Norway, Estonia, Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. They all have the gemstones no-one noticed or they forgot the impact they had focussing on a local market tends to have that impact and the time goes short, soon more than one will catch on and when they get it done it will be too late for them.

Such is life, as such, did you get to point D? If so, is it a square, a rectangle, a trapezium or a parallelogram? All options and none are the same.

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November 10, 2020 · 19:10

The election continues

You might think that the elections are over, but they are not. It will not change the outcome, so I am not here to scare you or put undue pressure on you if you are in the democratic camp. Everyone started to celebrate, there was dancing in the street, never before was a president so unpopular that he is getting hounded in the streets, but what about the votes? You see the results of Georgia and North Carolina are still outstanding and if I am correct, there represent 31 electoral votes, it is not enough for President Trump to win, but the setting is that if he gets both, the difference is too small and a recount of Arizona and Wisconsin will turn it all around. The 10 of Wisconsin and the 11 of Arizona would be enough, when we see Arizona: Biden leads by .6 percentage points (98% reporting) and Wisconsin: Biden wins by .6 percentage points (99% reporting) source: CNN, we see that there could be enough to start a recount. Even as a Republican, I do not want President Trump a second term, he did enough damage for the USA to suffer close to a decade, who wants that? I do not, and many others feel the same, in light of the 99% for the two states we have been seeing for two days, you all need to wake up and you need to wake u fast. Skinning the bear before you kill the bear is one of the most dangerous plays to make. 

My view of the danger is seen when we consider North Carolina: Trump leads by 1.4 percentage points (98% reporting), even the 2% is highly unlikely to topple the stage and as such we see that President Trump would gain 15 votes. That difference seems to high, but a recount not in favour of President elect Biden changes it by another 21 votes, giving President Trump 36 votes, this is not fear mongering, this is a fatal danger the American people face, so relaxing whilst Georgia is known is the mot dangerous part in all this and lets face it, the recount for Ariana and Wisconsin have not been called, but you forget that the Republican Party is allowed to demand a recount, and that I when the stage gets dicey to say the least.

So when I see ‘Biden era begins, but Trump fights on in his own world’ source: the Guardian, I wonder if anyone has seen the danger the looms, in a stage where the difference in a state with 3,100,000 registered votes gives us less than 15,000 and that is if all districts are even, which they are not, in addition we saw yesterday ‘A possible Wisconsin recount: How would it compare to 2016?’ (Source: FoxNews), so make all the fun of FoxNews you like, but if the happens, there is a small chance that we are at 50% of overturning an election, good luck with the next 4 years at that point, so everyone relaxing whilst the endgame is still in play is perhaps one of the dumbest things you can do. Also consider that Wisconsin is showing to be largely Republican, President Trump had most of the state and Biden won by a mere 25,000 votes, the two districts he got were Madison and Kenosha, you still feel safe and secure? 


A recount could change it, and recounts are a given when the win is too small, but can be demanded by ether party and Trump is anting a recount, bet your horses (Napoleon and Sprout) on that. So whilst I am one to enjoy a meme or to in a stage where the end result is not final, is just ludicrous. So when we consider the Guardian giving us ‘Trump fights on in his own world’, I wonder if they realise the hazard everyone is still in and when that setting explodes in your face, good luck getting the Trump Administration doing anything for you at all. 

Remember, Georgia might seem all for Biden, but the difference is a mere 13,000 votes, a recount is pretty much a given and 1% is still to be counted. So let’s not drink the bubbly yet, a victory drink the shows to be a loss is really the ultimate form of sour grapes.

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November 9, 2020 · 22:58

Your field of dreams

We are all in a field of dreams, a field where we see the initial turn of the cards in our favour, some of these dreams are a little selfish, it does not make us selfish, but we are at times in a setting where the game needs to go over way. In my case it is Google buying my IP with the start payment of $25,000,000 post taxation, in the second offering it is Huawei buying it (for the same setting). Amazon is allowed to buy it, but I reckon that 5G technology is something that Amazon is not yet ready for, in the 4th is Elon Musk and he is only there because he makes things happen, he pushes boundaries and that works in my favour in this case. Is it silly (read: stupid) to sell $2,000,000,000 (in its least positive setting) for a mere $25 million? No, because the second payment is that I still hold on to 40% of the registered IP, they get 60%, this is not throwing away money, the I setting a page where I get 40% of something instead of 100% of nothing. We need to realise what we can do and what is outside our reach. We need to push for the field of dreams to get towards reality, not to make the golden dream more and more golden and never a reality.

In gaming, I am not a coder, not a programmer, I never was. But I could think ion a whole range of games, of improvements almost at the drop of a hat (any hat). Yet the stage was never there and I was never a Peter Molyneux or a Richard Garriott (real visionaries). Yet that is the one part I shared with Steve Jobs, he was not really a visionary either, but he recognised the people with vision around him and he could relate to that. It sets a different stage. There was a reason I came up with Watchdogs IV, Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration and so on, I saw what was possible, I could think out the stories. In the same way that I am now working on my second short story (with a wink towards Rendezvous with Rama), and my minds keeps on creating, even when I need it to stop (sleep is a pesky thing we need). Two 5G devices, several adjusted solutions towards 5G and optionally a new setting towards 5G mobiles making them extremely private. All settings I came up with in less than a day each. Then there is the Gordian One weapon systems and a solution towards reactors the I (with my sense of humour) called S.N.O.W., it even comes with two new valves, a wasp valve and a piranha valve (different applications), the device needs testing, and it has a positive side and a negative side. The upside is that if I get it to work, Iran can take its reactor and sell it for scrap and concrete chunks, the downside is one I will not discuss here, because I will be honest, it is scary and I do not really combine scary and NBC solutions, it tends to be real crazy stuff. 

In all this, we still feed the field of dreams, I am no exception, in my mind I end up with a nice cushy job until I retire and a really really nice house to live in when I retire and before that. Some dreams are simple in nature, we tend to not need a lot in that setting. I like the quote in the dark Knight the best in that regard, because the application is larger “I’m like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one, you know, I just do…things”, we all tend to chase cars, whether it is that large fee, that gorgeous partner (who we tend to hope is still a virgin), that super large slice of Tiramisu, in the end, things are like cars, when we have it we look for the next thing, the house, the cushy job, the dream partner, they are essential needs, they link to our souls, we all want a version of that. And there is the danger and the blessing of the field of dreams. Phil Alden Robinson was right, faith and family have a larger imprint, yet the issue is not merely to have faith, but to have faith in self, that is the trigger, we can all have faith in someone else, but when that person has a larger faith in what I regard to be delusional politics (Paula White), how does your field of dreams evolve into a nightmare? That is the setting the some face, not me, even though I am a Republican at heart, someone like Donald Trump should not be allowed to continue, he damaged the Republican Party more than anyone realises, John McCain or Mitt Romney, either are 50 times the man the Donald Trump could ever be and he is looking towards a $400,000,000 court case involving taxes if I am not mistaken. We can invite into our field whomever we want, but we must take care that this field is about valuing self, not others, that dream partner is about the extension of you, your dream, your field. 

The problem for a lot of us I what we take into the field, for me it is my workaholic self, I know this, it is how I have always been, and in the past there was trust to former bosses, but that is now gone, I accept the choices I made and I made a few by trusting those who shouldn’t have received trust, but it was me, I merely blame myself. I walked in there with my eyes open. 

I now am in the final stretch and it is not a final score, but it is close to one and if I pull it off the balance goes deep into the green, if not I stay in the red, I accept that, I made choices and I accept that. Yet when you set up your field of dreams to propel you to the next idea, the next option or the next choice, be aware of what you took into the field, as long it is just those things and thoughts that are yours, you are fine.

If that does not scare you, consider the political implications that the Galvin report brought “A report, named after Robert Galvin, head auditor, and whose name appears on its front cover, was initially written at the end of 2006 as an audit of the expenses and allowances claimed by a sample of more than 160 MEPs. The existence of the report was kept secret until an updated version in February saw the fact of its existence made public by Chris Davies MEP. Even then, its contents remained secret”, and it is not that this happened, it is the small little part the we see with ‘its contents remained secret’, so in what universe does any government keep the wheelings and dealing of MEP’s a secret, especially when there are a lot of questions that need answering? 

When we see “Two MEPs were found to be paying out full assistance allowance, but neither had any assistant actually accredited or registered with the Parliament”, which I tend to see as some form of fraud, are these two MEPs still in office? We might concern ourselves with our own field of Dreams, and when we see what happens in the real world, we see no other way to live, unless we set a stage where these tools make a lot of money (at your expense), and should you wonder why I have a trust issue, consider that you can only make money if 50% or better goes towards greasing the gears, the is what the politics of most nations tend to fall towards. These people will only act when there is something in it for them. Ae the thoughts I am having so outlandish? 

Part of it is seen with “Huge end of year bonuses are being paid, often simply to use up as much of the allowance as is left over, between 3 and 19.5 times the recipient’s monthly salary”, and we wonder why we cannot get the budgets to fit? I reckon that this is a form that would apply and the governments stay silent, our field is all that remains, it is close to pure and it is seemingly clean, as long as no-one enters we are unaware of.

Philosophy teaches us that trust is risky, the question of when it is warranted is of particular and increasing importance. In case of our own field of dreams, we warrant very little risk, because for some that field contains a life of ambitions, and who would you trust with your lifetime of ambitions? You partner perhaps, your parents perhaps, but it tends to end there, for most that is all there is and the dream is about to shatter, when your field of dreams shatters, will you be safe?

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November 9, 2020 · 17:46

A fair call

I have been outspoken in the past on the US Administration speaking out on things they hardly understand, more specifically the nuts and fruits division (aka US Senate and US Congress), yet this morning I got confronted with one of such calls and I find it hard to disagree. The article that I initially saw on ABC (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-09/google-facebook-banking-senate-inquiry-fintech/12856080) where we get told ‘Senate inquiry asks whether Facebook, Google should be regulated like banks’ is the foundation of a much larger stage, and in the I find it weird that Apple is not named either. You see the quote “The inquiry — which in September handed down an interim report into other issues including regulation of buy now, pay later platforms such as Afterpay and Zip — is now examining whether it is dangerous to have large tech giants offering banking or other financial services”, is more than simply on the money, there is a whole range of services pushed and prodded towards consumers, if anything, the fact that players are faced with games like Gardenscape who continue their deceptive advertising trough games is a mere indication of how bad it could get. There is a basic level of protection that consumers are entitled to and as I personally see it they will not be getting it. 

Now, if these tech providers want to facilitate financial services whilst their services are not linked and behind a Chinese wall, isolating data and speculative insight away from the financial services it is one thing, it would level the playing field with the other providers. Yet in it current stage that setting is indeed extremely unbalanced, unbalanced towards their competitors and more important it will be unbalanced for the consumers who need a honest chance. 

So whilst we are getting treated to “Senator Bragg says our personal data has become an asset and the tech giants could be regulated so they use it fairly”, my response towards Andrew Bragg is that he is wrong, or perhaps incorrect is a much better word here, it is not regulation, it is isolation from internal and external data sources. Which means that if Banco Googly wants to extent a loan to Jack the Keyboard Hammer for a $99 new keyboard, they will have to do their own due diligence and use the methods the other banks and financial services have. That is the only way to keep level playing field. 

Now, player like Google Facebook and Apple might claim that the data link will allow cheaper loans, the might optionally be true, but when you get to the other side of the seesaw, and the seesaw is down for you, the data links might give you less options or more expensive options for the longest of times and the would not be fair. In that regard, have you ever seen ANY financial institution who set your wellbeing over their need for profit, please give me their name, because the alleged law firm known as Mandacious, Dissembling and Sneaky, who will inform you that there are leagues of financial institutions the always have your wellbeing at heart, all whilst you know that there are none that actually do. 

So, yes, I do believe the these tech giant have a much larger drive to own more and more money and there is nothing wrong with the, but they are doing it with a massive unfair advantage leaving banks with the empty jar of watered down milk as tech giants get to skim the cream of every milk delivery, it would be an unfair advantage, with larger implications when they start connecting financial data to the data the they already have, it would be a stage where we get a larger segregation of those who have versus those who have not. A stage that Dutch Journalist and tech savvy person Luc Sala warned us all against in the late 80’s, so 30 years ago he saw this level of segregation through technology, and when did personal segregation EVER have positive consequences? Ask the African Americans, the US Latino’s, optionally Native American Indians. Ask them what positive result they saw from segregation. Oh, and by the way good luck getting out of the room alive when you ask. 

Yet there is a larger stage the Google, Apple and Facebook will face and they already have the larger pieces in place to avoid them, as such regulation does not solve anything, it merely gives rise to legal loopholes, as I personally see it, the segregation of those services is the only decently clean and complete stage the void a lot of traps (most of them, not all), there is a larger stage where Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (yup they are in it too) can set the stage of offering testing data, but the should only be allowed if that data is open to all financial institutions and for the same price. You see, they are not alone, that field has has layers like Equifax, TransUnion, Dun & Bradstreet, LexisNexis and a few more, as such there is a stage where their data has more unequal benefits, which is interesting, the article never mentioned them, so whilst some are amazed by people like Andrew Bragg and their PowerPoint voice, yet the data keepers the re out in the field now are not on the ticket here, it seems weird as they have been around and their impact is not to be ignored, so why did Andrew Bragg miss that? 

And the final quote is “Senator Bragg calls it a “game changer”, although critics have pointed out that without careful consideration, it could have serious privacy implications, among other concerns”, so what is his game, when we see ‘serious privacy implications’, I merely wonder who is buttering his bread, because the few I mentioned have a much larger impact, one the is never to be ignored and they have been involved in the financial industry almost forever setting the bar of allowed data versus insincere, or unjust data, a term that should have been in the article as well. You see the unequal field is created by some having more data as well as second degree data. Second degree, or secondary data is where it is at. We can consider that Secondary data refers to data, collected by someone other than the user. Yet what is the case is that these sources of secondary data is often collected for other means and other settings, like social science which includes censuses, information collected by government ad commercial departments for other means; organisational records and data that was originally collected for other research purposes, research purposes that are now reused without the users knowledge. And that is beside the station that some of this data is cleaned badly, and often linked to settings the are no longer relevant, yet they are there connected to a user setting an unrealistic view and optionally ignoring the setting that the created debt is false. The person will soon learn the he/she cannot pay it back, or it is rated as just that little more expensive. 

All stations that players like Experian and Dunn & Bradstreet arm against, for their needs as well as the good of the people. These tech giants are nowhere near the level of clean (and optionally corrected) data. As such there is a fair call to disallow these tech giants their Fintech arm, unless it is completely isolated from their other business arms.

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November 8, 2020 · 21:03

Reality helps out gaming

Yup, it happen, it is a little rare, but not unusual. So as I was setting the stage of a post apocalyptic game in Sweden, I was a little stuck. Yet reality was there to help me out. Yup, the Local SE newspaper gives us (at https://www.thelocal.se/20171101/why-sweden-is-home-to-65000-fallout-shelters) ‘Why Sweden is home to 65,000 fallout shelters’, we assuming that this is partially true, because 65,000 is a bit much, but it is something to work with, and as such we now have shelters, a lot of them, so the game is still in concept stage, but with that many shelters, the idea is starting and in this, Norway is helping out, they apparently have the Sentralanlegget (read: Central Facility). As such we now have a start and I am not one to be the minor, so I am setting the map stage from Alesund (Norway), to Sundsvall (Sweden) and the map is everything south of there, so it is a huge map. Instead of travelling everywhere, the stage would be that you get to chose the top of person you are and from the you wake up in a place (somewhere), and that age is the beginning. I have a few twists in mind, but it will include seeking strawberries on Gotland (the Swedish readers will get this). 

I will not give away the whole enchilada, because the gamer needs a surprise or two, but I want to set the stage where permadeath will make the game a lot more challenging (yet not essential), in addition to that with Oslo, Goteburg, Malmo and Stockholm in play, we have a lot more to see and to do. Yet it all started with one shelter and as we have no idea where we are, the sage is set for RPG, mystery and a whole dose of challenges. 

Wow, that took mot of the day to think this through, but I was hindered by the fact that Fallout is a really good product and I wanted to avoid the overlap, it cannot be completely avoided, but it can be minimised to the least and that is how I went to work. 

In this, the stage was about setting a new game based on a foundation that we have seen dozens time over from the C64 up to the current generation of consoles. 

So the news in the Local dot se was really a nice find, they give us “The country is home to around 65,000 bunkers, fit to host seven million people in the event of war, and an official report has now advised the government to start building more, following a 15-year pause”, implying that every bunker is for around 100 people, that is something we can work with. If the bunker is too big, it might not be operable with one person, with 100 that is still a risk, but a lot less likely. With that starting point, the stage is set for a story, because as I said before ‘the story is everything’, and in that resetting stage we see a larger need to find, to travel and to achieve. 

And the timing is right, some sources are confirming the fears I had regarding AC Valhalla, I will not give them here, because I would merely be repeating their reviews (read: rants). I have not seen it, and mot of the evidence has (as I suspect) been based on previous (pre gold edition) alpha’s and beta’s. So I will wait and take another look in 32 hours when the game becomes available. I know a person who is getting the game and I am not willing to spend a nickel on it (at present), I can wait for Black Friday and get it at 25%-50% of retail value. The other thing is that I am still playing Watchdogs: Legion. Now, that game has a few issues, but it is definitely a step up from one and needs you to engage in more sneak than number two demanded. It can be a good thing depending on your view on what hackers do. Yet there is little to no question, Watchdogs is a decent hit (it is better than a lot of other Ubisoft titles), even as Eurogamer gives us ‘Watch Dogs Legion review – a bleak and buggy retread of Ubisoft’s formula’, I particularly liked “Legion is too terrifyingly real, and just a tad too grim. I doubt the very real climate in the UK is helping much – which clearly isn’t Ubisoft’s fault – but I usually play games to escape the ills of Westminster, not to be smacked over the head by them. I appreciate that terrorist attacks and food banks and too many homeless people add a frosty layer of authenticity to this fictional vision of the capital, and I know this isn’t Ubisoft’s fault, either, but good grief, it’s depressing to recognise so many signs of a fictional dystopia from your local real-life news reports”, perhaps after the American President events it is a little too real, but that too adds to the positive, the hackers and their need to act. The ‘frosty layer of authenticity’ is as I see it positive, not negative. It is about hackers for a reason. Yes the game has issues, but nothing that will break the bank or glitch into reset. In some cases a better description (read: rant) might have been the solution, but such is life. 

Overall, after playing for a while, I do not disagree with “it will eventually grow stale as missions rarely deviate from this template”, yet as a hacker I signed up for the, did I not? Not to get shot in the face when a hacker should have far too little firearms experience against Albion special forces. So the article (at https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-11-03-watch-dogs-legion-review-a-bleak-and-buggy-retread-of-ubisofts-formula) is good, yet I feel that there is a setting that is partially overlooked. Yet I do understand and like the words Vikki Blake give us “Watch Dogs Legion is dark and unpleasant in more ways than one, and it doesn’t matter how many protagonists a game boasts if you’re unable to care about a single one of them”, it is an eye of the beholder view, agree or disagree, it is up to you. That part matters, because Ubisoft got a small reprieve, if AC Valhalla is near perfect they get a shot to survive, if not they might end up being part of Microsoft too. Microsoft is unlikely to pass up on 23 houses with fps experience, especially if they can get it for 5 cents on the dollar and lets face it, they spend most cash on Bethesda anyway. 

So here I aim handing out free Sony exclusive materials because that is the guy I am (when pissed off an absolute nightmare), and I did have some fun designing a way to sink the Iranian fleet (we all need hobbies). As such setting my fingers into a post apocalyptic games was also essential, you see it was an actual snow globe that gave me the idea on how to meltdown Bushehr 1 (a still untested concept), and that side might actually help me to design a few missions for the Swedish post-apocalyptic game which I aptly renamed ‘glödande godis’, and we all need candy, whether we glow in the dark or not. Ah well, such is life.

So even as reality can help out a gamer, we need a fair amount of indiscriminate imagination to get it all to work and lets face it, at present only the Japanese know what life in a post-apocalyptic setting has been (small reference to August 6 1945).

So whilst we will get to know what is the truth around AC Valhalla in a little over a day, the stage of finding an alternative to fallout will take a little longer than that.

In the mean time we will sit back, relax and enjoy the Trump show (as he is getting fired), for me it means that we can enjoy a more global version of the news in 1-2 days and that has been sorely lacking at present.

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November 7, 2020 · 23:25

A cloud-less future

Yup, it happens, it is not intentional and it will happen to us all. This started for me as I was listening to my iPod, I am enjoying a band called The Sweet, a British band I really liked in the 70’s. So listening to their greatest hits was something I had not done for a long time, yet for some reasons somewhere between Ballroom Blitz and Blockbuster cogs started to turn, it was that time of the day again as I was setting my creative cap on, you see, I had the idea for the MD net drive in the early 90’s when I saw one of the first Mini Disc drives. Consider that this small disk had the option to store an entire CD, in a time that a Bernoulli drive with a disc 20 times that size could only story up to 90 MB. I talked to Sony about it, but they waved the idea away, it would never catch on. Little did they realise just how long they ended up to be. Yet these idea’s are giving me the thought of a new generation of devices. 

Consider the iPad, iPod, Mobile phone, they all have items that you use all over, they all have a setting that is almost transparent, perhaps even trans parent. Now consider that we might rely on the cloud in some cases, but that cloud will soon become less and less reliable. Even now, the last week I have had all kinds of congestion issues with YouTube, friends in the UK have had other data related items, nothing major, there was no loss, but there was also no clear connection, things went bump into the night (and next morning).

Now consider how small an NVME SSD drive is now, a 1 TB drive fit into my hand, so what happens when we look at the KingstonSSD drive that is a mere 42 mm large? They will get smaller, but for now it is small enough, and 240GB is small enough to be an ejectable drive tht can go from device to device. Your music inserted in whatever device you need it to be. Yes, the cloud does this too, but how long until the cloud costs more than you bargained for? What happens when the congestion increases, net neutrality is off the beaten track through Service Level Agreements that you either sign up for (for a fee) or lose? 

Now is the time to have alternatives, if only to avoid the lack of 5G in France and Germany or perhaps the fact that 5G in the US is only 13% of the speed of 5G in Saudi Arabia, you think it will not hit you at some point? You’re dreaming, the question is will it affect you, for the most there is little doubt, it will not hinder you, but there is every chance that it will aggravate you, when the 3rd or 4th song stagnates, freezes or just stops, your mood is gone. This is what happened to you with CD’s and it will hit you again. Yet the setting is not so bad, we can void it all at the beginning of the station. What if these factors would never hit you? 

There is no doubt that there will be an option to have a NVME port. Perhaps a MNVME (Mobile NVME) port, even now we see the Orico GV100 512GB NVMe Portable External SSD, which is the size of a USB stick, it is 3.78 inch long, but almost 1/3 is for the key holder, so that thing can already be smaller, and it is $179, in consideration a 2TB drive for the PS4 is $97, so there is room to manoeuvre and when these drives become popular, prices go down. 

Yet the foundation is that we need all kinds of devices, that all link to one drive, a drive we have on us. Soon it will have crypto parts, biometrics data and we keep it on us, a validation for all kinds of matters. We have no option but to move in this direction, several factors will push us, some good, some required and some because it is just a form of laziness. Consider that the drive has the 2 Netflix movies you downloaded last night, so you can enjoy whatever you binge on the train to work? It is destined to happen, and some of the companies are most likely already looking into this, I predict ted in 2012 (after seeing a stack of patents by Samsung and Apple) that the stage of mobile devices was changing. The hardwire became more transparent and nondescript (fitting multiple directions), it was the software that was pushing a direction, yet in all this the data (your music, your movies, your games) remains open to direction and I reckon that the setting of mobile name will deal with that direction, some will be generic, some will be branded. It is the generic part that has the highest stage of usage, because people do not believe in one direction, they embrace the freedom of choice, there are plenty who all really on Apple, but Apple will take care of that part, it is portable and mobile data that will set in the third wave. Why?

Because the people think that others will take care of it, just like they did when Google created search (and they latched on for a free ride) and now they are all crying like little bitches: “boo hoo hoo, Google is so nasty”, to them I tell, go cry me a river, you get ahead of the curve or you stop being part of the process and when the data part is very soon coming up for debate, it is those who allow for larger portability that will get the podium, not some Azure service agent, giving you some version of “Get Started With Free Credit To Try Any Combination Of Azure Services. Build Your Next Idea”, yes but it is still set to the Azure Frame (Apple and Amazon having their standards), it is those who allow for a larger frame of open choice, they will win, because data requires open stages (a copy me, I want to travel) idea, whilst others have one system, one cloud and when you get conflicts these salespeople stop talking when you get to the part that is not inherently theirs, it makes them no money. 

It is there where we see a the stage where a billion people will want to move and as some business types will sell their children for a slice of that cake, what do you think your value will be when you are the one holding that cake? And all that I even before governments get clued in on what data they are missing out of. 

There will always be need of a cloud, there are however more and more moments when the cloud is overrated and more of a hindrance, that is where mobile data will become a key player in the hardware that people will buy. It will be a consumers market where the buyer decide where they want to go, not the seller telling the buyer where they need to go, that is the frame in 3-5 years.

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November 7, 2020 · 01:49

The new setting

I had a partial start on Bethesda’s Elder scrolls, but not one for their Fallout series. You see, you do have the right to sell your IP to a third party (Bethesda to Microsoft) and set the agenda of forcing a million dedicated players into the arms of what I personally see as a disreputable solution for gaming, but I am entitled to create IP free for Sony exclusive solutions that offers the people an alternative. The idea that I am handing out free dedicated IP for Sony developers was probably not in consideration for Microsoft (who paid $8,500,000,000 for Bethesda software), yet the idea of me handing out free lollies was not on their mind either, and PS5 directed IP even less so. 

As such here I am watching Jason Bourne on Netflix whilst my brains is considering a larger stage for a radiated world to survive in. Yes, I can’t just be like any other normal guy enjoying porn, no my mind has to create puzzles and RPG settings, life can never be simple, can it?

Whilst I was starting all that, there was a larger (read: additional) stage I wanted to create. A longer stage. An idea to interact the PS5 with both (read: either) Android or iOS device, creating mini games that give an additional stages to the game. It can all be done on the PS5, but I considered that some games are interesting if an element gets added (for free), so here I am considering my old NBC knowledge the decontamination parts that were not really in the Bethesda games. Yet that part could be a stage in the game, finding the plans, creating the solution and managing it. Even if it is part of the game itself, management parts of that game can be set to automatic (after the elements are set), but if we create management apps, giving the player an added 30% return on doing so, we create interest, the need to participate. 

The game needs an enticing environment, yet we have seen so many games in the US, What if the stage is not there, but the setting is Stockholm? It is relatively close to a lot of places and what if we use that setting to create a haven, not like in other games, but one that requires fresh water, fresh meat and of course a red wire collecting images of the Swedish bikini teams between 1975 and 2175, fair is fair, and if you play a girl, you get to find the collector cards of Swedish fireman and park rangers (fair is fair). We just know (read: assumption) how you ladies want to see images of Alexander Skarsgård and Peter Haber, fair is fair after all. Yet we need more than simple alternatives for snow globes or pip-boys, but the setting is one that needs adjusting. We need more than a race from item to item and that is not by creating places to are to, but by creating a narrative that goes beyond what w expect, that shows the larger stage of the repercussions of radiation, not by taking pieces away from the adventure, but by adding to it, by creating an additional awareness, one the previous games only hinted at. I am not blaming the games, they were and till are fine games, but I want to create something new, not by creating a copy, a copy is second rate, yet if we skate on the fringe, if we add to the narrative we et something new and that is the are for the gamer, that is the race for those who love to play games, to get more, not to merely get more of the same. The difference is distinct and gamers know this, I know this, so we get create more as we create something new, something that differs and is different. 

That is the challenge, that is the perspective we require, one we have not faced before. It is how I got to think out the Palyar prerogative playing in Amsterdam, that is how I got the previous answer to a new IP, holding an answer to Bethesda and the Elder Scrolls and over the setting of Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration, which I came up with in the past. A setting to Watchdogs IV and a few more ideas, all new IP, all in advanced concept stages.

Life tends to be about new settings, for the most it is about adapting to them, for some it is about creating them.

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November 6, 2020 · 16:54

The second treasure

Has it happened to you? You are sitting there, in a chair (or sofa) and you suddenly get hit with realisation, this is what happened to me in the last 4-6 hours. You see, when I created some of my 5G IP, it was not in a stage of need, it was a response to the stage of Neom City, a KSA undertaking that is founded on a new city bathing in new tech and high tech. I foresaw hat consumers needed and off course I looked at. Global stage, a 5G stage where we see 440,000,000 small businesses on a global scale handing over what the buyer needs. I altered part of this to set for a much higher cyber security need (sorry to seem mysterious, but the IP has not been sold yet). This all started before Covid, so even if Covid was never a consideration, my solution would still work and would work with increased positivity. It was however today that I stopped to think about certain repercussions. 

Walk the walk
We all talk the talk (anyway most of us do), we even walk the talk, but who walks the walk? Let me explain, when you walk (the actual exercise using legs), you often do it without thinking about it, you go from one place to another, you walk to get the groceries, to get the lunch, to get wherever you need to be. And overall you forget the foundation of matter, where you walk and how you walk, it is an automated process. For me too, but when you stop and think that process through, you might see a few choices that you do not normally think about. That is a process I found myself in with my IP, I found a second treasure chest, one I never bargained for, one I never considered, but it is there and now that I realise what my IP brings, it is a much larger stage.

Awareness
In market research there is something called awareness. For brands awareness is close to everything and they know it, they are always in a place to increase awareness and I have always been aware of that, yet as I do not work for them, I didn’t really care, they have staff for that and that staff has several ways to increase their brand awareness, and they are armed with a compelling list of reasons why they should do so, where they should do that and when they should do that. It is the way the world works. Yet I am now in a field where it is not merely about awareness, I have entered a stage where we see a sort of aggregation of awareness and curiosity. What is when, when is that and optionally why it is. This got me to ‘The curiosity and exploration inventory-II: Development, factor structure, and psychometrics’ (at Journal of Research in Personality 43 (2009) 987–998). Here we stake notice of “refine the measurement of trait curiosity with an improved version of the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory (CEI; [Kashdan, T. B., Rose, P., & Fincham, F. D. (2004)”. I was somewhat aware even as the paper is 11 years old, but then I remembered something that the paper held “Many new scales have been published, but few have been subjected to close psychometric scrutiny. The present research centred on the development of a brief, reliable, and valid measure of curiosity, improving upon an earlier version of the CEI. The data offers early evidence for the scale’s latent structure and evidence for convergent and discriminant validity”, it is the ‘a brief, reliable, and valid measure of curiosity’ that stuck, you see it is that what kills the cat and I remain (sincerely) a cat person, so I took notice. It dawned on me that my IP cannot distinguish between awareness and curiosity, but are they not scales of grey? They are both fruit, so if someone used my IP to get the data on a new Maserati, the person cannot afford one (neither can I), but is it curiosity or creating awareness on the new model? That is out in the open, so there is a second treasure chest and optionally the chest in that chest containing a diamond in the rough? (sorry Disney), I leave that up to you to consider but the stage is a lot larger, is it not? If the path we walk on gives us pause to consider where we walk, we optionally consider the soul of our shoe and how it can pass that terrain more easily. It might not make sense, but consider if you are in London, the streets will not make you pause, but Hyde Park will and that is where we find ourselves, on the edge of a park, where we see an optional  new cluster of consumers, the curious ones and we get a stab at the stage that they occupy.

And those who respond with “curiosity bears a resemblance to several other psychological constructs, all of which are concerned with the way people regulate and direct their attention in the presence of novel or valued environmental stimuli. Although these terms have been used somewhat interchangeably, this unfortunate tendency has obscured the fact that the essential qualities of curiosity con- note a high degree of receptivity and willingness to engage with novel stimuli”, in this day and age ‘novel stimuli’ is the bread and butter of hype creation and that pushes the borders of curiosity, yet they are in the stage of trying to maximise that part (plus 10%), in my case the stage of that is there and now we need to see if the data can give us the curious, the aware and make them the buyers or at least clearly separate the two groups towards the active consumer if you will and that stage is not merely set on a whim, the better the data is, the better the results will be and that I what these brands are also pursuing, I merely noticed that I had more data to offer these brand polyglots and offer a new kind of shovel to parse through the data in that regard.

That is the stage I found myself in, I just found a new chest and I am hoping for the good of it and an optionally small chest holding a diamond, now I merely need to attach it to the IP I already have and I am increasing the application of my IP by a decent amount. 

Sometimes life throws you a bone, sometimes a chest, whether it holds renumeration or manure is not yet clear, but I hope for the best.

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November 5, 2020 · 22:28

Rule of thumb

It started with me wondering what else I could do. I have been involved with gaming since 1984, I started testing and reviewing games in 1986, so I have been around for a while. I met the giants in gaming. Sid Meier, Richard Garriott, Peter Molyneux and a few others. They and the games they made formed the views I have on gaming, there are of course more others too. 

My normal job was in technical support and teaching, as such I had a firm grasp on technology. I learned to teach, teach software and technology and as such, my life was a decently happy one. 

Still, I wonder what else is possible, you see only the delusional ones think they can do everything. I agree that any person can do anything and if they are given, committed and enthusiastic, they become good at it. I believe that to be true for everyone, no matter gender, race, religion or age. 

It kind of intertwines with the elections in the US, after 4 years we see a shift and now I wonder if anyone in the media has the balls to set an image of Donald Trump tomorrow on page one, with the text “You’re fired!”, providing Joe Biden gets the 270 he needs. I wonder when that stage will be reached, and if it will be reached. They all claim that Biden will win, yet there is a decent. Chance that Pennsylvania will remain in camp Trump, with 89% counted and 20 votes, the advantage of 2.6% there is no given that Biden will win and even if he does, the difference is too small, so a recount is inevitable. In Arizona the roles are reversed, yet here only 11 votes are up for grabs, giving us the optional score of 254 for Biden and 234 for Trump, it is a setting weirdly close and like the old series the West Wing, two states might set the end and at this point President Trump has the lead. Those three sites are Georgia and North Carolin with 16 and 15 votes. I am careful not to set the stage of what might be, I am Republican minded, but I am definitely no President Trump fan. So as I take notice of ‘‘Stop the count!’: Angry Trump supporters amass at counting centres’, I wonder just how stupid Trump fans are to call for an end to democracy. A vote is a vote and they should all be counted, that is how democracy works. And this is where the brain started to twist. Whenever we are in any RPG, it is about our actions, it is about what WE decide should happen. It matters not what the RPG is, that is how the game is set.

But what happens when we change that, what happens when we sign up for a game with a political stage? What happens when our actions becomes pro or counter RPG government? You see, when I initially designed the idea of Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration (before they gave their soul to Microsoft), I had not considered it, yet in MEA 1+2 and optionally Citadel: Incursion (I had to give it. Name), that stage becomes a larger issue. Politics is at the fibre of any stage and we ignored it in RPG to a larger extent mainly because of system limitations. The new systems will have computing power in abundance, so it becomes less of a hindrance and setting that stage to a proper foundation, especially in a game like Mass Effect Andromeda is has an influence, because as we unlock more and more pods to wake up, the political stage on a station like the nexus will also alter, it sets a larger stage, a larger application of what we need to do. Even as the stage is not always on what we need to achieve, the general direction will alter and so fr no game took this into account (as the systems weren’t powerful enough). 

This changes what gaming provides, yes we like to make decisions in our RPG and that does not change, but there is the greater good and the larger picture to consider, it becomes even more interesting if that picture is not available to the player, the story could take a few interesting twists along the way. To illustrate that, we can look at a TV-series called Babylon 5. When we were in season 1, we see the Narn, Centauri, Minbari, Humans, Vorlon and others. Yet the Narn and Centauri are arch enemies, so working for one makes the other off limits and that is a mere extreme example. If we decide to act alone, we might side with one group and optionally piss off another, it is the nature of the game and gaming will become less black and white and more grey tones. It is also a lot harder to program. For example it is not like in the old The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you could only buy certain houses when certain fame levels are reached.   Yet what happens when fame and infamy are more fluidic? What happens when missions are only offered to the infamous (or famous) and above certain ranks? It will not change the game, but it will colour the stage to some degree, that same stage will be influenced when we colour a governmental stage, like the US, Blue, Red and Green. We see a larger stage where working for the ‘other’ party is allowed, but at that stage, we gain infamy a well as political points. See it as a new complexity level in RPG gaming. There is no doubt in my mind that this is where we are heading, mainly because it os now possible to do just that, and as we see the need for games with a larger value to replay a game, the setting of another level of complexity is pretty much a guarantee. We might want to lean back and reach back to the original D&D rules of thumb rulings, but I reckon that console gaming has surpassed it a few times over. Even as Ubisoft stated in a game ‘Cull the herd’, that stage is one we seemingly walked away from. We do not oppose the eradication of the horde (it’s an Orc thing), but it also leaves us open to eradication as well. And as such we need to set the stage to a larger frame, because that is what we do.

Extremes are nice to colour the stage, but it is the blending of values that give a larger appreciation of any story, there is plenty of evidence out there and as I see it, there is a much larger stage to fill it up, how it is done is up to the gaming visionaries.

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November 5, 2020 · 02:19

The edge of IP

Yup, another bout of insomnia, another idea in the IP range. I state this casually and carefully, because even if the stage is altered, there might be a setting where it in not entirely my IP. In the first I came up with a new Mass Effect Andromeda, I wrote about it previously and to make the story fit, the game would contain a remastered and rewritten part one (the bad version we saw in 2017), a lot would be used, but the game would be different, even if the planets are not. That was only part one, the stage of part two is in three parts, the Nexus, the missing ships and 5 additional planets. Also we would revisit the planets that were cleaned up with a lot of additional materials. Yet my mind kept on racing. It was the Prothean Vigil VI who gives us “They used the conduit to gain access, but the conduit is only a prototype. The portal only links in one direction, so they were trapped on the station. I do not know what became of them there, it is unlikely they found any food or water, they suffered a slow grim death”, the game is 13 years old, and I have lashed out to Microsoft on a number of occasions, but this one, this one they got right, and the second game was even better the the first one, optionally one of the best RPG games EVER produced. 

So what happens when a group of people makes it to the Citadel, about 2 millennia after the reapers. The station cold dark and we get to see the restart of the station, the keepers are setting the parameters for races to come, yet what happens when teams Humans, Salarians, Drell, Turians, and Protheans make it to the Citadel? Not the original station as shown in the game, but the station in its complete complexity. Each race starts in the original building that was meant for them, as they could dock there, but after that, it becomes a chase, a challenge, of puzzles and wit to survive, to create the stations energy settings, the interactions that are required and not to mention as you play one race, all the others become NPC’s, with the option of a previous completed race to use your achievement as a template to equal. Something like that has as far as I can see never been done before and to that extent wasn’t even possible until the PS5 (and its Microsoft equivalent) were released. Not to mention there is every chance that the Google Stadia might keep up, so that is three, all whilst it would be possible to link a friend and set his milestones as one for one of the NPC’s. 

You might wonder why that and not a new station, a new environment. Yes, that is true, but to create all the races and all the settings takes a lot more and these races have been clearly established, also there is a danger that we might inadvertently copy parts of another Citadel station (System Shock), as such I wanted to get head of the curve (as I am not getting any sleep)

It would still be a large undertaking, The idea was bugging me when I was redesigning MEA and MEA2 in one package, the setting of the size of the station was never that clearly represented, also the cryogenic unlocks made little sense, there was too little pro and con options. A setting where we see the plusses on one sided and we weigh that, all whilst the minus side was largely ignored. So as I went out to create a new version in my mind, I kept on looking at the larger stage, the larger needs and it kept on kicking me back to Citadel station, especially the parts we saw in ME1 and ME2, I thought it was time to kick it in another direction and this is what I came up with in a mere 2-3 hours. 

Consider the screenshot, it is part of the citadel, 5 arms, one arm holding dozens upon dozens of skyscrapers, each building (or at least several of them) explorable, yet there is also the danger of that needle and haystack expression, there needs to be a clear directive on what is required, what are we seeking for, and not all are in the same arm, so paths are needed, airlocks, and larger cargo spaces so we can travel between the arms, yet the keepers (now under clear Reaper control) must also be avoided and changes need to be done whilst they are not looking. All whilst ever building is getting cleaned and sanitised by worker drones. 

It becomes a much larger setting and it might be one that the explorers under us (Dora too) might like to get a handle on. And let’s not forget, there are 5 teams, optionally some with advanced knowledge. All this and the Andromeda challenge too? What a luxury! I would love to make it a Sony exclusive, but Microsoft already has the beat on the IP, so if there is exclusivity, it might be Xbox (something I really would not like).

Well, it is 2:14 now, I have no idea what I will come up with next, but I got roughly 4 hours until the sun comes up and I forgot my Maui Jim glasses. 

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