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Galliventurer - Dreaming of a Universe

n. Galliventurer - one who adventures whilst gallivanting. We have a name. A compound of the words gallivanter & adventurer it fits the game quite nicely. It will also be the name of the player's ship (though, you may be able to have many ships throughout the game). Also trying something a little different for this project, practicing what I preach as it were. I'm actually going to plan this out a little bit before I ever actually write any code. Oddly I feel that most of my hair brain schemes of previous years have had a fast paced "rush to market before someone else thinks of this" attitude. So obviously there was no time to stop and take a moment to put any thought in before code went into editor. None of those projects ever made it out of the proof of concept phase oddly enough, no prizes for working out why. In the spirit of all this, things are different this time around. Having given it even two minutes of thought there are several issues.
Recent posts

No Language

I worry there isn't words to describe the depth of my feelings. One four letter word isn't enough. It feels too small, too fragile, to contain such an ache. A strand that cuts through to the very core of my soul and anchors me to you. The breadth of comfort with you, the depth of my entwinement cannot be limited to such a word. Sitting at the center of my life, you ground me when the rigors of everyday life threaten to throw me asunder to the void. I am yours always, you are my forever.

Reason Based Text Alignment Discovery Model

The hottest topic currently is fake news and the proliferation of disinformation. Though it would be counter to the wishes of corporations more interested in profits than human collective good, a system is sorely required to analyse text content that is shared as & undistinguishable from facts. Small statements with no backing and linking to articles written based on pure emotion rather than concrete evidence, backed by nothing aside from straw man arguments or espousing opiníon and rhetoric as law or common decree. An outline for a model that would generate a small visual graph which would allow for a glance into the substance of the content before consumption: Emotive language ratio to detailing of findings and reason based "disprove first" approach Inference of subtext and agenda of the content Links + source references count & meta score of their own merit Ratio of steel man or straw man arguments Count of balacing statements and justification/testing of hypothesi

How to Think

Moving an arm and thinking about moving an arm are two vastly different things. Even thinking about thinking about moving an arm is a natural thing to do even if reading it is very odd. Now the hard part, how to you design thinking ? The deliberate process of simulating scenarios to either logical or illogical ends would seem like a great fit for computers that can do millions of calculations a second. The slow an deliberate winding down a thought path seems to be the missing link to truely intelligent machines. We are very good at making machines. Even more so machines that actually produce things and have purpose. Since the earliest primitive forms of man, our tools are defined by their use. Or more aptly by the end result they achieve. So what is the end result of smart machines? To drive our cars, build our structures, do the heavy lifting and manage our lives? To do all that the ability to compute and apply action is needed but not actual thought. Most business tools and modern ap

Where's the Fun?

When Galliventurer was first conceived in the bowels of my brain it was during a particularly good session of playing No Man's Sky. I had just traversed several different planets finding old ruins and exploring as I went. The exhilaration I felt zipping around in space and then landing to explore - it was this feeling and the want to continue that on my phone, which persisted for days & weeks, was the main reason I even considered starting development on Galliventurer. No Man's Sky is possibly one of the most ambitious, fully realised games in history - yes it took them a while to get there, but I don't see Star Citizen releasing anytime soon - so it goes without saying Galliventurer will not be anywhere near that ambitious. A small glimmer of space flight amongst the stars with endless exploration. But then what? Subin Kim's freighter concept This has been a constant thorn in my frontal lobe since my first flight through the current build of the game. Sure you ca

Knowledge is Power - Society is Weak

Never more true than today, knowledge is power. Or more aptly in today's world the ability to provide & control the flow of knowledge is power. Recently there's been several large course corrections occur, several years too late but hey, better late than never as the saying goes. This highlights one of the biggest and most major flaws with the way we consume information on the internet. Social media, for good and for ill, is now a major source of information and "news" for millions of people across the planet. There are countless examples of the way that misinformation & even disinformation is created, spread and broadcast across the web. None more prevalent & far reaching than social media. Social media disarms in a way that in person discussion & social interaction previously couldn't. If you heard a story in person that even one or two people could corroborate it would be easy to accept as true, or just as easily refuted by the same small number

The Worker Bee

Do what you're told, follow the rules, don't over step your bounds, stay in your lane. The true cornerstone of modern enslavement to work. "We can't all live our dreams", why is that? Because then we'd have to change, to collectively actually think and enact a way all people could realistically achieve a base standard of living & contentment. Allowing people's mind free reign on real questions rather than worrying where the next meal is coming from & keeping the lights on.  Bee animation by  Joe le Sale While I have no answers to life's great mysteries, I do know this about the meaning of life - it definitely isn't to toil & labour day in and day out to fill the wallet of our bosses or investors. So how is it that we find ourselves with that holding such a giant sway over our lives? This of course is rhetorical, we all know the answer, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. Which brings the problem in to sharp focus, we no longer

Genetic Revert & Refresh

The premise is pretty simple, what if we could press the undo button for DNA related aflictions. It's a sound theory but whether it would actually work or not is questionable. The possibilities! This particular train of thought was mostly born from thinking about cancerous cells, which grow out of control due to a minute mutation in the DNA of a cell. The immune system doesn't identify the cancerous cells as something that is dangerous because they're near identical to any other healthy cell. The same could be said with aging, cells slowly mutating & loss of elasticity cause degradation in copying the genetic information to new cells. CRISPR gene editing theoretically allows us to alter DNA in a live organism. With this technique the ability to alter a DNA sequence needs only the desired information payload to be spliced in. This obviously raises rather large ethical concerns of being able to wildly alter people's DNA and fundamentally change the human genome. Whi