Tag Archives: Montreal

December 8, 2025 · 00:04

The stage was set

That is the setting I now engage. Yesterday I got an idea for a movie, a massively violent movie and I had it before I had the idea for a new game (see previous blog) and even as I had a few ideas that coincide with this I decided to put it here. Feel free to use this, perhaps the new studio in Saudi Arabia (at https://www.arabnews.jp/en/features/article_160242/) can use it for a new protege to make it into something useful. I do have another movie (I actually have 4) but only one has a decently finished script. I am using the word ‘decently’ as I never made script before and I actually hope to sell that one. So the new idea, I put here on my blog and let you guys figure it out. Perhaps someone at the PlayMaker Studios in Qiddiya City can use it. You gotta seed the field somehow. 

So here goes. The movie came from my mind after reading the ICE events in America and my mind had to make a few changes to that setting as there was a chance that it resembled Collateral Damage (2002) with Arnold Schwarzenegger and I don’t do remakes of someone else’s ideas (or at least not to my knowledge). So here goes

Begin

The man walked towards the ice cream parlor to get two ice creams. He was on vacation and his daughter always wanted to see Los Angeles and Hollywood, so they ended up walking down Rodeo Drive. And he walked into the ice cream parlor to get two ice creams one strawberry and he wanted a vanilla one. As he walked out there was a commotion. There were ICE officers hooded and masked. His daughter had gone. He looked around and panicked. An Ice officer walked up to him asking for identification. He pulled his Canadian passport and showed it. The man saw his panicked stare he asked what was going on. The band answered that his daughter was missing, she was just here. The man said the illegal alien had been removed for transport. The man shouted “What?” She is my daughter, I just got us some ice creams. The man shrugged, she is gone now.

The man demanded where she was taken, the officer said they would take he to the same place in a few minutes. The man was absolutely fuming but held his peace, it was better that way. 

They drove towards a collection centre where people were processed. The agent identified himself in the centre and asked for the girl that was processed earlier. The other agent was nervous. She was dead, killed on route and rerouted to the morgue. The illegal that killed her was under arrest and would be deported to Guatemala. The man exploded in anger, his daughter dead? He went insane with rage and ran out towards the bus stop. He had never been this angry before. As soon as he got back to the hotel he packed up and left. He refused to pay and demanded that the hotel get their funds from the ICE or homeland security. 

We then get a setting where the man takes out ICE in Seattle using a sniper rifle with scope and a silencer. He starts killing ice officers indiscriminately and it starts getting the headlines on social media and it starts attracting media attention. They do not know who he is, but everyone wants to know and we get around half a dozen kills. Then we see that Eric gets a phone call from a man he hadn’t heard from in decades. The other man was called Perry and he gave the Eric his condolences. And he gives the man some ideas to get back to Canada and from there get the train to Montreal, from there he could take the Amtrak Adirondack line to New York and in 11 hours, things might cool down a little. He would arrange a weapon for Eric when he got to New York, he needed to get his revenge and Eric agreed. 

Two days later we are in New York, looking at the headline Sniper kills another ICE agent and the stage get to be more and more violent, but the killings are precise, they lack emotion, any ICE agents is switched of like a machine, headshot after headshot. And the man was very good at this, his army days were directly in his blood and after he retired from military service he had a family and his wife died in childbirth (optional recall image thought photos). 

And still the list comes to a larger setting and Eric has a new target, The chief of ICE and the location was known, it was 26 Federal Plaza New York. Eric was getting ready for the next hit and Perry was assisting him. He had already found the place to look at, it was the office of the Bureau of Vital Statistics and the roof gave him the perfect setting and he already had an escape plan in place. He merely needed to wait. He was on the roof when he got a message, the target would arrive in two hours. He was happy to wait. 

And as he waited he saw the amount of police cars at his target had increased dramatically and he looked through his scope and then he spotted a glimmer on another roof. He made himself small and looked, the shimmer was no longer there, but he hadn’t imagined this. He thought for a second, left the rifle behind and left through the escape route, only to walk straight into the arms of  four man, two were holding pistols SIG Sauer P226 legion .357 magnums both with silencers. The other two man identified themself as CIA agents. They beckoned him to come with them. He felt all energy escape until the car door opened and his daughter was there, tears of happiness and she flew into his arms. They got into the car but his daughter entered the front seat, it seemed that she was given that directive. The four of them went into the back and the driver drove of towards Penn station. The CIA man spoke, we were looking for Perry for a long time and this was the only option they had. Perry would hear of Eric’s ordeal and come out to help. It was the only option they had. Perry was assisting terrorists all over the planet for money and he had to be stopped and after years this was the only way left to them. Perry had to instigate the contact and psychologists said that he would not pass up the opportunity to cloak himself as a savior. It was their only option. 

Eric asked about the other ICE agents. The CIA man said that they were of no consequence, they were an embarrassment to American justice, this riffraff made their own bad and as such they offered their lives for something that actually mattered. Perry was too dangerous and this was the perfect solution. The CIA man continued, whilst we drive, the rifle on the rooftop is cleaned and dropped at Perry’s place. He will take the fall for all of it and Eric and Sally can go home now, they will get to adjust the time on the 90 hour ride from Montreal to Calgary, First class ticket were handed over to Eric. 

The CIA man ended the conversation with “Thank you for your assistance. There is no paper trail, there is nothing that points to Eric. Whatever evidence was left was scrubbed and Perry’s evidence was ‘placed’, Enjoy the 100 hours to get back to home and spend it with your daughter. She only knows that you helped us but nothing is said on what you did. You merely looked through old schoolbooks on fellow students. She never needs to know this, let’s leave it at that.

End

And that is how far I got. So should someone at PlayMaker Studios see something in this, have a go at it an spruce it up a little. This took a mere 1 hour of my thoughts and an hour typing all this. After all the BS on AI and all that other jazz, it was nice to actually be creative again and perhaps tomorrow there is some creativity left. But that is tomorrows problem, who knows the AI bubble might burst overnight, weirder things have happened while I was sleeping. 

Have a great day, It is almost Monday (in 2 minutes time)

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February 19, 2025 · 21:36

Realignment

Part one
Part one is seen in the CBC article (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/donald-trump-water-canada-peter-lougheed-1.7459583) where we see ‘Trump’s musings on ‘very large faucet’ in Canada part of looming water crisis, say researchers’ and we are given “In 2005, former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed warned against sharing Canada’s water supply with the United States, suggesting Alberta’s most important resource was water, not oil and gas. “We should communicate to the United States very quickly how firm we are about it,” Lougheed said.” This was a mere 11 years before Trumps first presidency. So when we see “U.S. President Donald Trump wants to tap into Canada’s water, saying there’s a “very large faucet” that can be turned on to drain water from north to south and help with American shortages. We look at the question of water sovereignty — and whether Canada is ready to protect its resources.” We need to realize that America made its bed with the tariffs and I say let them pay, $13.25 per 25M3 of water as added tariff over the $53 per 25m3. Sounds about right. So how long will it take until Trump (aka OBWH) realizes that he took the wrong fight to the wrong party? Oh and leaks south of the border are his problem and with the current infrastructure, I reckon we can wait for that to go wrong and that time can be set in hours (at the most). So whilst we were given “Massive amounts coming out from the mountains, from the melts,” Trump said in January. “And even without it, even during the summer, it’s a natural flow of water. They would have had so much water they wouldn’t have known what to do with it. You would have never had the fires.”” Ads I see it, the Canadians know exactly to do with this, charge the Americans. And as Trump reiterates on cheap oil, we can give him an education. When a commodity is in short supply prices go up, not down. It was a simple equation that was set half a century ago, as such Cheap oil from Saudi Arabia is a figment of his imagination. What would they do with it? Well, selling to China remains an option. And Canada has options too, the Commonwealth. As for the reasoning? I still believe that America is running out of funds and that their infrastructure is about to buckle (a personal speculation). 

But with the tariffs, he opened up a whole new stage of short selling his own options. 

Part Two
I was thinking of what we could do to bring the pain to America and in comes the Canadian ‘darling’ of out of the box thinking. The name is Ryan Reynolds. You see, as gaming is set to dwindle down to abysmal settings (mainly due to Microsoft) Canada has options. In the first there is Ubisoft Montreal (Canada), then there are options in Toronto, Montreal and Quebec. So I have been re-playing Ratchet and Clank (PS4 remake) and I had the idea to get the last 4 achievements. During the play through I was considering that the flaky nature of the game could well be done by others (not a copy, but true new IP). Considering that the game was made in 2016 and sold almost 4 million games, it is still popular now, 9 years later. That takes near perfection to do. And it can be done again. As such I thought that with the voice of Ryan Reynolds (optionally with a sidekick voiced by Blake Lively) there is space for new IP. I haven’t worked that out yeet, but with America falling out of grace with millions of people it is an option for Canada to shine and with Sony being a Japanese company, there will be space to grow in the Commonwealth, Europe and Japan. Three places Trump pissed off. As such I say we need to grow, help Canada grow and let the pieces fall where they may. The style of Ratchet and clank is flaky, funny and unique. As such we need to prevent a R&C clone. But that is decently easy. The trick will be to find the animation and design in a unique way. To set the stage we need to rely on Ryan Reynolds (Blake Lively too) to set the stage with the voices. The rest will follow (I’m making it overly easy which is not the case) but the stage would be that America will feel the second sting of lost revenue and it was all because short sighted advisors in the White House thought that tariffs were the solution and after that JD Vance was stupid enough to blame Europe for all kinds of matters and that gives Canada the opportunity to sell to Europe as well and as they already set the stage to the Commonwealth we see a optional stage of 900,000,000 consumers and they are happy to see a non-American vendor. 

I reckon that I can work on the gaming idea soon, Perhaps even sooner if I consider a few CBM64 games. You see, plenty of that is UK IP and optionally no longer protected.

As such we see that from Microsoft and their ‘lessened intelligence’ pissed off millions of gamers in 2013, and with the losses they have they aren’t happy. So whilst I have the setting to make them lose more money and that is a work in progress in the meantime we get President Trump adding spice to that to piss off 743 million Europeans and 2.5 billion Commonwealthian’s. Smart move Mr. President. And I reckon that Japan likes the setting they face and in the meantime Tencent (China) has its own gaming solution that can stream as well. So in three directions a lot of revenue goes elsewhere.

As I see it, America has one option and that is to bring a clear victory home from Riyadh. If the Russians get anywhere of some level of win, most of the planet will become anti-American. And soon thereafter America becomes the isolated pariah. 

In the meantime Canada can ‘profit’ from the hardship that California faces and as such Vancouver can create more movies and TV series. I reckon that together with the UK and others they can upsell their services which America can no longer provide for the time being. 

As we see these elements that are in play, consider that billions of interest are required every month to pay for the almost $37,000,000,000,000 debt, or did you forget that such a debt has interest? At 1% it ends up being over 35 billion and it is never merely 1%.

As such I say, America did this to themselves. They re-elected that guy (not sure if the Democrats really had a proper person to become president). 

So enjoy that lovely cup of tea (coffee is also good) and consider how Canada can give a little more pain to America. Tariffs? Let that be an American worry this day.

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August 22, 2023 · 20:51

Turning the pages

This is Aterm we use, sometimes correct, sometimes incorrect and sometimes literal. We all do it and I am no exception. Yesterday I had a detour and the detour kept on going in more and more directions, seeing more and more new ideas based on the old premise and that is not where it ended. In all honesty, part of the ideas flowed from the ideas of John Spilsbury (always look back to old masters when you get stuck) and he was no exception. There were more parts connected to this, but that is for another day. Whilst doing this my mind wandered towards the CBC article ‘Every developer has opted to pay Montreal instead of building affordable housing, under new bylaw’ (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/developers-pay-out-montreal-bylaw-diverse-metropolis-1.6941008), yes avoiding doing the right thing by paying the fine is the way the greed driven work. In the end it is always about the bottom dollar. I think the best quote comes from Mel Brooks in History of the world part 1 with “Leader of Senate – The Roman Empire: All fellow members of the Roman senate hear me. Shall we continue to build palace after palace for the rich? Or shall we aspire to a more noble purpose and build decent housing for the poor? How does the senate vote? – Entire Senate: Fuck the poor!” This pretty sums up the bulk of all real estate developers. And the picture isn’t pretty. Especially as the (a speculated view) the fines are so low that these developers will continue to ‘Fuck the poor!’. The article gives us “Two years after Valérie Plante’s administration said a new housing bylaw would lead to the construction of 600 new social housing units per year, the city hasn’t seen a single one. The Bylaw for a Diverse Metropolis forces developers to include social, family and, in some places, affordable housing units to any new projects larger than 4,843 square feet” and when you consider the added “Those fees (read: fines) have so far amounted to a total of $24.5 million — not enough to develop a single social housing project, according to housing experts”, as such I see the math as “there have been 150 new projects by private developers, creating a total of 7,100 housing units” giving us a fine of $3380 fine per housing unit and the housing units go well over a million each, sometimes well over 3 million, as such the fine is a joke and it is that yoke that hits Valérie Plante in the face. Now, normally I will not care. I do not live in Montreal, I am not Canadian, but this setting will be copied by developers towards the UK and Australia making their wealth a lot more and gained quicker. As an example I would like to raise the paperback setting of the London Administration with their Powerhouse. So how many became social housing? The answer is laughable and this will run over to Australia as well (perhaps it already has) and these administrations are seemingly a joke. I have been waiting for 10 years for a decent affordable apartment and the waiting list is nowhere in sight at present. So whilst the CBC presents us with “The city of Montreal had promised in 2021 to release the two-year results of the bylaw by early 2023, but hasn’t done so. Ensemble Montréal says it compiled the data itself, using the city’s open data. It is calling for Plante’s administration to disclose what it plans to do with the five new plots and $24.5 million.” As such I have no real hopes that anything will be achieved and I fear that a similar setting will make matters worse in the United Kingdom and Australia. New Zealand has a tight grip on exploding greed, as such they are in a much better position than any of the three others. Even as Australia might be in the least problem of the other two, it does have issues and the UK is in a really bad shape as it is allowing investment groups to buy out complete suburbs at present. CNBC gave us in February ‘Wall Street has purchased hundreds of thousands of single-family homes since the Great Recession. Here’s what that means for rental prices’ and it is not merely the US, as I wrote about it in the past, the UK (London Specifically) is a great way for these players to store their wealth and watch it safely mature, in the end we all need a roof over our heads and the boasted returns for London are too good to pass up and I personally believe that places like Toronto and Vancouver are about to meet those same returns, especially as we see events unfold now in Montreal. So how much longer until these places as well as Sydney are set in a similar stage? I will let you figure it out, but the numbers aren’t looking good if you are in a shifting position of housing. And matters are getting worse. In the last 10 years in Sydney things went from bad to disastrous and I reckon that more cities are on that list of shifting tides. And this amounts for the Commonwealth and the EU metropolitan pressure points. Munich, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Madrid and Rome being prime examples. Weirdly enough Paris escaped the stage. If Le Monde is to be believed with ‘‘Adapting the existing’: Paris’ plan to reach 40% affordable housing by 2035’ they could be ahead of the curve by a massive amount. I wonder if Australia, Canada and the UK have looked into this as a possible solution. Not sure if it is possible (as I am completely ignorant of building codes in these places) but it is a setting I had not seen before as far as I could tell.

So enjoy the week and consider your rent, and how much it could go up this year when it is owned by a Wall Street player, a fearful page turner is ever there was one.

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March 10, 2022 · 03:48

Direction of my tech

Yup, that was what I was contemplating. But only for a little while. I reckon that my 5G IP is pretty complete for a first version. There are more sides to contemplate, but it becomes to much like speculating where others might want to go. Or as some would go with (Microsoft) Contemplating where we want consumers to go next. I do not think that is the best path to take. I have several roads mapped, yet I suddenly remembered Tim Minchin, he said something to the effects of (altered for my case here) “If you chase orgasms, you’ll never get one, if you aspire to give other people orgasms you might get a dose of pleasure in the process” It actually applies to tech too. If you hunt on the statements on what people are supposed to need, you will miss the mark too often. If you give the consumer what they will need you could benefit too. So my IP was set to the consumer, to the retailer and to increase their safety. Weirdly enough as I was doing that, I came up with a few ADDITIONAL sides that the IP could deliver giving the people what they might (and might is important) need. In that process I opened a larger revenue stream on a bigger foundation. Yes, it requires Google to add functionality, but there is every indication that they will go there. That indication is set to two foundations. The first is that they need to stay ahead of Apple and others, and giving that advantage allows for this. They also need to set a larger conditional stream, based on a new metric. You see, for now we see cpc (cost per click), cpm (cost per thousand impressions) and a few more. I believe that 2022/2023 will proved that they need to add cpl (cost per location) a niche and targeted view that more likely applies to real estate and local business, but it sets a targeted revenue stream for walk videos, location videos and there are thousands of videos. GoPro alone has 10 million followers, I have not seen clear metrics on walkabout videos, but they are there in the tens of thousands and when you link that to Google Maps that market starts getting interesting. One walk on 5th venue video has 487,957 views. Consider how many real estate people would be interested if they can grab that cpl? And it is global. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Paris, London, Munich, Amsterdam, Stockholm. Villages in Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria that need is already visibly increasing. The moment we have a connected Hybrid view with Meta that need will pretty much explode and it works for Google to have this, there are thousands of walk video makers, allowing them to flourish will enable more revenue (and Google was never sad about more revenue). For this consider the realtor Sotheby’s International Realty (London), when that option arrives, do you think it walks away from 736,891 views in just a few days? And yes, there will be more views in larger cities with tourist appeal, but when you search for a house or apartment in any place, who does not check out what YouTube has to offer? When these parts became clear to me, I adjusted the 5G IP I had, I added for a Hybrid functionality because that is where we all want to go. Even now, even as too many have NO CLUE what Facebook (now Meta) is up to, I already see that coming. And those with a gaming PC (especially with a second graphics card) will be ready in 2023/2024 when that is offered. I foresaw the need, I considered that addition and as I saw that there were more options, more choices to allow for and basically adhering to the consumer needs got me there. I come from the IT services branch, not the sales branch, so I hear what people needed, I converted to fill that need, not tell them that there is an alternative with some lame ‘What if’ statement. I reckon that 2024 will be the year when salespeople will finally put that sales tactic to bed. They want what is at point A, so you get them there. I found a method to allow industry 7,8,11,17, and 21 to enjoy what point A offers as well. Yes, I did not offer this to industry 1 through to 23 because that was not the goal and all those sales people telling me to do that, I say ‘Why?’ There is a group of consumers that have a need, that need is satisfied and offering 5 other groups to offer what they might need is nice if they are there. But the rest? What rest? They are seemingly somewhere else. Stop catering to ‘wannabe’s’ and ‘what if’ people. 

Two distinct systems with the grasp of several and a third system is starting to take shape. The two systems will have access and enable all kinds of software solutions and there I found a few options, but some of the changes seem pointless until Meta truly launches, when it does I will see all the wannabe’s running scared and running in panic not to lose the revenue. Like a wall of water coming at them and they are holding a one litre beaker. Not to stop the wave, but to fill their beaker for themselves. Some will fill it, some will not and then they look at the second ave coming, all whilst funnel giving the consumers and retailers a long term revenue though the application of a mobile pipeline. Not a pipeline ON mobiles, but a pipeline that is mobile and Hybrid will stamp that need out pretty quickly. I was fortunate enough that my need can satisfy that side in addition of what it was already doing. So whilst I believe that 2024 will be ruled by Meta, Google and Amazon, they will not be alone. I believe in that new setting Adobe will be uniquely placed to set new standards and what was a $13,000,000,000 annual revenue company could double, optionally even triple. All options that Microsoft let fly by, they relied on hype and spin and in the new setting that will not fly. It is like watching IT in 1998, all trying to sell concepts. In a time when Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta and Adobe have proven themselves, we need not wait for some roadmap of a concept product. The people have had enough of that and they are looking for alternatives. That is why I believe that Adobe will make larger waves and as a graphics company they do have the Rolls Royce solutions out there, so they do have the edge. 

It does not matter whether I am right or wrong, do you (consumer/retailer) have what you need to get the job done? Are you ready for 2023? You need to start thinking there. Most people and businesses do not have the money to buy in January 2023 what is required. And you need to think longer term, you need to think that what you buy in 2023 needs to be good to last you to December 2025. I countered that in the past by not buying the latest, but by buying one model older. It was often 40% cheaper, merely 10% slower and would last me 2-3 years. That is the stage you need to think of now. Because when Meta is introduced it will impact people and businesses. It will not end for the ‘old’ Facebook, but the shift will start, so make sure you have what you need. This is not merely for high end places, for expensive stuff. Simple pharmacies, book shops, cafe’s. For them the market will alter as well, they need to see where they are and how far they can go at present. They could wait and lose the market of course, but that is up to them. As for the direction of my tech? It is out in the open, because I tried to adhere to what the people needed and what they are most likely to need. But in the end (Q4 2022) I might have to offer alterations and additions to more closely adhere to their needs and I can, because national 5G will not be ready in many places, which works in my favour as well (yay me). 

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December 4, 2021 · 11:07

Merely a dream

I had a decently weird dream last night. It might be a movie, but I think it is not good enough for that. It might be a popcorn movie, merely for streaming and DVD sales and that would be fine too. The setting is that the dream started a few other things and I wonder where we are in less then a year.

It started in Toronto, I was there for whatever reason. There was a lot of chaos, a lot of shooting and a lot of damage. It was primarily in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. It is around February 2022, the US has defaulted on its loans. The people lost almost everything they ever owned and the stage is that ultra right angry people are whipping up the others who are coming to terms that their politicians are as useless as everyone expected them to be. Canada suddenly has to deal with 30-50 thousand invaders all angry and all taking whatever they can, they have nothing left. I saw police officers in Yorkville getting shot, store windows were getting crashed and houses are overrun. The American had turned into rabid dogs. The army was trying to create bottlenecks but an army spread over Canada having to deal with three clearly way to large fire points and a lot more in the rural areas is not an army that can get a whole lot done. And nearly all Americans were wielding firearms. It is then that I see the army starting to shoot to kill and I wake up.

Now, that was merely a dream, but the larger station remains. Everyone is in this ‘lets hope’ phase, but America has been utterly broke for well over three years. And every time the debt ceiling is raised. A political system that cannot take responsibility, that uses the blame game and points at the previous party if it is a different political party. They both failed and they both refused to overhaul tax laws for well over over 25 years. In the 90’s the idea of a trillion dollar firm was ludicrous. Now they have 2, maybe 3. These firms did NOTHING wrong. They adhered to tax laws and they did what the tax laws demanded that they would do. So every time I see another tax the rich, whilst these people look at three parties (ignoring 15 others), I get nervous. The larger station is not that they refuse to overhaul tax laws. It might be that they are too stupid to overhaul them.

And this too is nothing new. What will be new is that the US government will take a look at their patent office and make (forced) deals with any isolated (registered in America only) patent and demand a financial deal with that owner. So lucky my IP is not registered in the US. A setting of grab it whilst you can will start soon enough and whilst the US will be in denial, there will be behind the scene deals with Google, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Alcatel-Lucent, Microsoft and IBM. All to get a little more use and traction out of the failing US economy. All whilst it has been clear for decades that the tax laws need a complete rewrite, a setting where everyone is taxed fairly. But that will not likely happen. That will upset the large donators and political friends they have and they would lose them, so nothing will happen and the dream that I have will come closer to becoming an optional reality. 

Is it a wish or a dream? No one wishes for this. Not when you consider all the innocent lives struck by American stupidity, but the larger station is that a lot of Americans are close to desperate and the default will push them over the edge, I feel certain of that. Even as the news (mainly media) is now flaming their need for digital advertisement, hiding behind the announcement that the US of A could default next week, we also get a mere 16 hours ago that ‘U.S. Senate passes bill to avert government shutdown, sends to Biden for signature’, but that is not the same is it? A shutdown is one thing, a default is something else. There are paths that they could walk, set up a massive loan with JP Morgan, Blackrock or Morgan Stanley, the turnaround will need to be massive and that is how the slippery slope becomes a diagonal sheet of ice. A timeline extended and extended, all whilst the premise of stopping this going from bad to worse is ignored.

It was but a dream, I realise that, but perhaps my brain is working out a few financial items covered in nightmares. 

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September 20, 2021 · 21:18

Taking and making what it gives

Yes, we seem to think that this is the stage we need to be in, and at times you are correct, that is what there is. It dawned on me that at times innovation, or innovation alike can drive creativity. In the past there was an option to get into movies required a fortune, so you either tinkered by the side of the road, or you were some rich kid, that was the reality. Now consider that this is no longer the case, the stage is set to two elements (three actually).

1. GoPro Hero 10 ($600)
2. Mac Airbook (up to $4500)
3. Software (up to $500)

So for $6000 (max) you could have all you need to become a cinematographer. The laptop idea is expensive, there are cheaper solutions, to under $6000 there is a stage where you can make all kinds of movies and there is no cost for film or development. As we were in lockdown, the mind wanted to travel, so I started to watch the walking tours, a lot of them in 4K and most of them made with older GoPro devices. You might laugh, but some of these walking tours equal decent TV and in some cases cinema trips. I saw Portofino, Cannes, Monaco, Vancouver, Montreal, Buenos Aires, London (several), Riyadh, Jeddah and a few things stood out. The movies were well above average, the streets in Canada are amazingly clean, Portofino was worth the watch for a few personal reasons and so on. I believe that we are one step away from a ‘small’ company like GoPro to put a massive dent in Hollywood and that is before you realise that we will be drowning in amazing movies, the stage is already there that amateur film makers can make ‘their’ version of the Blair Witch Project. Another version of Cloverfield and we can go on in all kinds of directions. I myself was entertaining an idea in another direction (no matter what), but I am an idea man, not a movie maker (not yet anyway). 

And even as GoPro is making headway into setting the dynamic movies to a new height. I predict that they will corner the market in several ways within the next 2-3 years. I believe that the information given here is incorrect “The number of GoPro devices shipped worldwide has been decreasing since its peak of 6.58 million units in 2015, to around 2.8 million units in 2020”, there is not a decline, mainly because some people STILL use the GoPro 4, a lot are still using the GoPro 8, so there is a market of well over 15,000,000 film makers and I believe that with the additions on the GoPro Hero 10 that group will increase (a lot). And when you consider that this can directly be spread via YouTube channels, for GoPro the sky is the limit. Whether the film maker will decide to rely on GoPro tools, on Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or iMovie, there are several solutions and as people tart to become more and more active there is a new market evolving. A market of services, critical evaluation and creation, all working in some form of symbiosis. And as the makers set out there options of short movies, I wonder when it will be a GoPro Hero user who in the near future will be the first to win a Academy Award for Best Short Film (Live Action) using a GoPro because the hardware is now definitely up for it, we now only need to wait for the creative soul to make that step (it will not be me), and I would not be surprised that thee will be more evolutions in this direction before the end of 2023, a stage that (as I personally see it) evolved and came to a much larger live during lockdowns and curfews. 

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August 22, 2021 · 19:14

Time slice or lemon tart

That is indeed the question, but the question is not that important at present. It all started with a weird dream. In this dream I was in Montreal (Canada), now let’s be clear. I have no connection to the city, and apart from the fact that they have a good hockey team, I know next to nothing on the place, I know it is in French speaking Canada, but that is all. So in this dream I saw someone, it might be a reflective me, it could be anyone. They saved a hawk, or falcon from their balcony. The animal was shivering and clearly afraid, the person put on an oven mitt and offered his hand. The bird jumped on the hand with the mitt and carefully the bird was taken in the house. He placed the bird on top of a chair and got the bird rare roast beef (it seemingly really liked the rare roast beef) and gave it a bowl of water mixed with a lot of sugar. The bird was no longer seemingly afraid, but it was nervous. The person was looking at the clouds and wondered. He then moved what was drinkable and eatable into the bathroom, the bathroom and this is important was one of the innermost rooms in the house, no windows and no direct outer wall. He also placed a chair and a small table (it was a large bathroom), moved the goods into the bathroom and walked around the house pushing the heaters up everywhere, yet not to the highest setting, setting 4 was used on knobs with a 6 setting, I think that mattered somehow. Then he carefully moved the bird, now aptly named Horus with the mitt again and took the chair as well. He then got into the kitchen, took several items and moved to the bathroom where he set the radiator to high. 

Then it started to happen, Montreal was hit with a cold snap, it was only October, or November, but the cold-snap happened and well over 50% of the people in Montreal froze to death. 

Now, none of this is a mystery. I saw the Day after tomorrow, I played AC Origins, so all the elements (all except Montreal) fell into place, no real mystery or divine intervention.

Then I remembered every time I played a new game of Minecraft. Did you play it? The first day is important, because you need to create a safe location before the sun goes down. That part is important because too many RPG games are a service where it is at your convenience. Whenever you get around to it, and Bethesda has used that setting since I started playing it in Oblivion, in that same setting Fallout 3 onwards has the same stage. Yet what happens when that is not an option? When a house is on fire, it does not help to hand the bucket to the owner of the burning house when you get to level 13. He (of she) needs it now, or really soon. This is a stage we forgot about, the time slice. There are two issues.

  1. Do you have the minimum skills to cater to a time driven need?
  2. Should such a stage be set and always be achievable?

These two setting are important, there are gain two stages we must contemplate. In the first we cannot always be there, that is a mere fact of life and programming around that element is often folly. The second is that if we have a proper RPG, we have houses (guilds), but what if your first guild is not a mage or a tinkerer? So early in the game you see a setting where you can only watch, be that famous Monday morning quarterback and watch others do the job. Then we get to the important part, we need to set these parts to some level of randomisation that instigated when you START the new game. Not when you get there. So we see the need to have 20-40 missions with a decent rewards, but we need to be partially lucky, so that the internet cheater miss out as well. That is setting a larger story, especially when success unlocks a larger side quest. And the second part in all this, it enables and fortifies the replay of a game. So in the dream we can see that Horus was the trigger, but what happens when you never noticed that bird? Would you be ready? Would you make it to any shelter? And most important, without resources you will go hungry, thirsty and optionally will continue with decreased stamina and health (a day without food makes a person weak, try it for yourself if you doubt me).

So is the approach of having time sliced missions a hit or a lemon? I cannot answer that, I think it could be great if you program this properly and it will take proper programming to get it done. Programmers could ask Anunnaki (god of fate), but there is a chance that you will not receive any help from that direction. It will be a challenge on several levels, but should you pull it off you will be the one adding a new dimension to RPG gaming, a dimension that has been lacking for close to a decade, before that systems were just not strong enough.

In this I merely remembered the settings I came up with in Mass Effect Andromeda 2, Base of the pillar. And yes, I will admit that I had some overlapping ideas that I had for Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration, but I think that a good foundation (as long a the story is completely different) is not a bad thing. I saw the massive mass driven mistake that Andromeda was and there was a setting to fix it and regain credibility, but in that setting ME Andromeda would pack the second game with the first game, and even as a lot was the same, it was added with an enormous amount of changes and different storytelling. One needs to be faithful to the original trilogy. 

Yet all these settings cannot be more of the same, there needs to be a level of evolution. Yes there are plenty of gamers that do not mind more of the same, but they will soon realise that they are stuck in the past and that is as I personally see it never a good thing. And is success a guarantee? No, it is not. I do not offer guarantees, I merely dabble in ideas that can make the next generation of gaming special and enticing.We all might come up with a Nintendo WiiU, and that is fine, but it is not that system, it resulted in the Nintendo Switch and the few who are able to make THAT leap will make it big and that ups the level of gaming for everyone, that I the setting that players like Amazon Luna and Google Stadia (they a little less) get to look t and there is the larger station of play, a setting we have not seen before, not a game that exists everywhere. This is not about exclusivity, but about a totally new level and dimension of play, I think too many are forgetting that we need to push that part and not enough of us are making that leap. 

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