Inkie Beard

I haven't written here for a while, not for the lack of will or giving at least a genuine if feeble effort. I've become stuck posting anything by the trap of it "being worth sharing". Which is exactly the opposite of the reason for this blog! 


This is space exists solely to allow my personal shower thoughts and half baked brain worms to be written on the napkin of the virtual world, strung up on twine in the cafe window for any meandering passerby to glimpse, muse over, critique or laugh at as they trip through the derelict off ramps & dirt tracks of the information super highway. Thank you for any time you spend within the enclave of this blog, just know that by making it this far, yours is the interest and support I cherish!

After several months of near constant stressing about work deadlines & topsy-turvy project schedules, I finally came to terms with the fact that I had burnout. 
Recently I've had a growing sense of apathy & general disinterest towards work. A deep feeling that I can only describe as a feeling of treading water, with no hope of forward momentum or progression any time soon. The tasks I've been managing & proceeding through are important but feel very much in the auditing, administrative & policy driven arena; rather than the outcomes focused problem solving I'm more accustomed to. 
It's odd however, until I recently took some much needed time away from work that I realised I was also in the grips of the complete antithesis state of full blown obsession/worry over messages, deadlines & not blocking other people's progress by them waiting on something from me. Subconsciously I think this last stems from having a burning need for this process to final…

It's the not so secret, dirty secret of our modern lives. We live in a golden age of free services that make our lives interconnected on levels that our ancestors couldn't even fathom. Instantaneous realtime interactive updates and vision of someone on the other side of the planet. For free!! We really do live the utopian lifestyle, or do we? 



We are being monetized. The really insidious thing is, we like it. We crave it. Likes, follows, subscribers, retweets, pins, shares, the list goes on. We're subsumed in a culture of instant gratification and constant engagement. These "free services" have hijacked the way we think and live, all while making copious amounts of money from the personal data we all but throw at them. 
Whilst there is an innate understanding in all of us about the nature of how insidious and conniving these services are. We still gobble up every morsel of social media's bright lights and flashy features, mostly without a single thought of who …

With everyone working from home a lot more these days, especially in the face of a global pandemic with self isolation in effect in most place still, it becomes tricky to make good on that old "buy you a coffee" promise to your friends &/or coworkers.



My Shout is the idea for a service to send things to people by alias only. The service would leverage home delivery services such as Menu Log, Favour, etc. but aimed at sending things to other people rather than ordering for yourself, though that would be an obvious function of the service. The address and location details of the person are only known to the service and hidden from others, it would be a breeze to then be able to gift things to your friends, coworkers, or even favourite creator, etc. that is halfway across the country or even the world without knowing their address. 
Once a "gift" has been sent the recipient gets a notification and can schedule when to get the gift, or even exchange to an equal value…

It's been a hot minute since I've had a chance to update regarding Galliventurer. After playing around a fair bit with backends and trying a number of different nosql databases, one of which has been running pretty solidly with the existing discovered universe of a few hundred (470+ presently) stars and their 24k+ satellite bodies. Things are humming along quite nicely and there is even the beginning implementations of some actual game functionality, such as flying the (placeholder) ship through the universe in a soon to be released build! However there are several things that I hope to address in the very near future:
1. Procedural UniverseWhilst the universe is cool and all at the moment, it's very rudimentary and no where near close to the level of detail I'm after. From researching a bit, I've found everything that currently takes up space in the database can actually reside solely in an algorithm and follow the whole procedural generation a lot more faithfully.…

Artificial intelligence is often touted as the future demise of the human race. We've all heard it, the robots will either wipe us out or rule us with an iron fist, the last being quite literal. Call me a niave optimist, but truly intelligent artificial sentience won't be like us. Our species is a by-product of several hundred thousand years of evolution, a near constant fight for survival every minute of everyday just so we can eek out one more day to further the human race. Our whole being is hard wired to abhore the idea we have an expiration. That would be very counter intuitive for a species that needs to survive and dominate in order to produce off spring and continue on. Artificial life & sentience doesn't have that issue - with a decent power source & a decently sturdy casing and it's all set.
Truly sentient intelligent robots won't have anywhere near the same goals as us, and we can only hope, none of the same hang ups. Here's where I explain my…

* muttering accompanied by beeps/electric signal noise *
"Huh, how'd you get here? Just when I've finally resigned myself to floating aimlessly through the endless void of spa- woah hold up, you're old. Positively ancient, in point of fact. When are you from?! The early 21st century or something? I didn't realise soul travel*was discovered or even possible that far back, will need to run a diagnostic on my historical cores... Anyway, let me transfer you into something more familiar. It will take me a while to construct a complete new vessel for you. Thankfully the adventure droids are great for gallivanting around in. And it's relatively safe, for short periods of time at least."



Introducing the main narrative device, Galliventurer the neural duplicant bound to the ship. This character will provide the plot points & instructions on gameplay mechanics, etc. for the initial part (and possibly entirety) of the game. It's still early days but an idea of…