Inkie Beard

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

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

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

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

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

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 fina