The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other oddities.

[Rman Virgil]

With regards to the ebook, would it be possible to write in to your will that after X years it gets open sourced to the Warzone 2100 Project?

For sure and right off the top. Like I mentioned quickly, it could possibly be a revenue stream for server expenses as a $2.50 ebook. There are many options going that route.

Realistically, I'm seeing it as a one year project to bring to term. Question arises if anything happens before compleation I'd hate to see whatever was done to that point go to waste. I'll have to think about what mechanism would work best under that contingency to hand off all the files even if I am unable to.

Found something else you might like to read (if you can obtain it): "Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare" by J. L. Jones of US Marine Corps, possibly available from http://www.mccdc.usmc.mil - it's only about 14 pages (with most of that pictures, so prolly about 6 pages of actual text in total) but incredibly insightful in to the mindset of modern warfare. If it's not available publicly then we never had this conversation and this forum post does not exist. Nothing to see here, move along now...

One of my primary resources for re-booting WZ battlespace to what Pumpkin had in mind with their original GPM designs before scaleing back for various reasons involving economics and tech of the day.

There are many other resources but if I were to narrow it down to the top 4 this would be one of 'em. The other 3 would be: "How the Weak Win Wars", "Dominant, Digital, Battlespace Knowledge" and "The 33 Strategies of War".

In WZ battlespace, you should be able to do more than re-enact the American Civil War's "Gettysburg" with 21st - 22nd century weaps / tech. A lot more.

Would it be worth doing short bios of the various main characters both in the fanon and the canon? I imagine you've already done some work on that based on that software you mentioned in an earlier post.

I do thinks it's worth it and I have done some. Not nearly as extensive as the major characters but I still feel that even minor characters should not be stock stereotypes or cardboard thin. Though on the stage but briefly compared to the leading figures they should still be memorable and indelible. In that I hark back to Dickens and the Golden Age of Hollywood.... and current BBC efforts like "Downton Abbey".

Also, for the works already published (Crude in Sur Amerika, etc) would it be worth trying to guesstimate roughly where they appear in the enhanced timeline?

Yes it would. Like that one I imagined around 2110, after John Hammond steps down from active leadership to an advisory role. I do think it's valuable and will proceed to more formally timeline them going forward.

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[Rman Virgil]

A moon base would likely be used primarily to launch vast cargos to other planets, particularly Mars.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Moon
* http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/humanexplore/e ... ic040.html
* http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09 ... ng-station
* http://www.aljazeera.com/video/americas ... 45168.html

Agree.

It seems increasingly likely that these things would happen pre-Collapse. This would of course mean that there would be unaffected populations of humans on both the Moon and Mars. As for L5 stuff, I'm not sure - while we already have things like ISS, it seems that the main focus would be on getting Mars colonised, via the Moon. I'm not sure what a L4/L5 station would bring to the table (I've not investigated that tome thoroughly yet so I'm really just guessing on this aspect).

Honestly it was a toss-up for me between the utopian undercurrent of "L5" and the long standing "romance" of Mar's along with its mythological association with the polythestic god of war. However, the truth is that as of this moment the payload economics are more in favor of Mars than L5. I'll go with either. Main thing is we need an off Earth contingent in the WZ universe. Being purely Earth-bound 72 years from know is just not creadible or, frankly, that compelling or interesting.

There is also the very real possibility of mining asteriods - certainly lots of 'profit' to be made if that can be achieved. Maybe that would better suit an L4/L5 style station - with practically no gravity, it would be much easier to dock with?

Indeed. Brings to mind some fun yarns Isaac Asimov wrote half a century ago that were based on mining the asteroid belt.

In regards to geo-engineering, it's already happening on a massive scale. I would avoid going down the chemtrails route at all costs (even though they exit, there is so much mis-information and pure bullchit out there that it's just too nasty to even contemplate untangling truth from delusion on that subject matter). However, in terms of geo-engineering itself, there are plenty of reliable and scientific resources available to mull over (although it's probably worth avoiding anything that goes in the direction of HAARP for same reason as chemtrails avoidance).

Agree with you about the chem-trails and HAARP. And if my girlfriend heard that she'd be tempted to bop me upside my head 'cause she swears by the chem-trails. Her and Dr. Boylan sometimes drive me to distraction - but not really in a bad way - with these and such talk of star seeds, alien abductions, micro-implants, The Cabal.... and so on. It's not that I ridicule or discount the possibilities it's more like the evidence is not clear to me.
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[aubergine]

It's not that I ridicule or discount the possibilities it's more like the evidence is not clear to me.

My feelings exactly. It seems to be a result of large swathes of people shedding the cotton wool that modern capitalist society had wrapped them in for most of their lives, and being faced with a mass of new information points but where the lines between points have been heavily, if not completely, censored (or worse, hidden in plain sight) by the system.

So these swathes of people are somehow instinctively sensing the dots and that they are connected, but to find the connections they have to wade through a vast obfuscated mire. It's testament to the human mind, and modern day communication systems, that geographically and culturally divergent groups can form transitory tribes based on shared fragments of perception pertaining to the global village. While they might be going off on crazy tangents, as some would perceive it to be, the fact is that they are just learning to 'walk' with their collective brain - so I personally see a lot of the loonies (as many of my friends call them) as an inspiration.

What most people fail to realise is that a new social order (for want of a better description) is arising. I imagine it will be some 40 years before it hits tipping point, causing massive societal change and shift in consciousness. Ironically the paradigm shift will not even be noticed by that time, because it will be ubiquitous.

Many people detest SMS-speak (o rly?, ya, rly! kthxbai, l8r) but I always saw it as one of the most monumental shifts in human society that has ever occurred. Driven by disruptive technology (mobile phones) and artificial scarcity (voice calls cost more than SMS) and various other mechanisms, a widespread global demographic spontaneously invented a new globally recognised lightweight language using whatever they had to hand. Borrowing things like emoticons and acronyms from the early internet era, a distinct new society formed practically overnight. Meanwhile, not going down without a fight, the internet rose to the challenge and memes emerged - a logical progression from emoticons, yet they are a quantum leap in terms of communicating ideas, thoughts, feelings and concepts, etc.

The most impressive thing is that this seismic shift in 'language' is perhaps the most significant proof for the existence of a hive mind. Just as individual ants can work like a meta-organism to build incredibly complex ant colonies, we humans - enabled by modern tech - have started to manifest meta-organism traits.

It is of little surprise how the old institutions, that for centuries have told their subjects what to do and how to do it (yet strangely struggle to explain 'why?' it should be done) are now becoming increasingly paranoid as every day more and more people cognitively break free of the old systems. The institutions react by becoming increasingly Orwellian, Totalitarian and Fascist, the public react by rallying behind the 2nd Ammendment or rallying in front of police blockades.

The key difference between the hive mind and what preceded it, is that in the hive mind everyone gets to have their say and nobody gets to be in control. This social structure is only made possible due to total chaos. In the hive mind, war and peace are the same thing. As is trust and distrust. All opposites become one and the same thing. It's the ultimate nemesis of false dichotomies.

Outsiders still perceive members of the hive as individuals. Like the Taino natives not seeing boats, or the Amondawa tribe having no perception of time, a person who's not in the hive cannot even perceive that the hive exists and is all around them. (It has many ethereal manifestations: Anonymous, Occupy, Repeace, Idle No More, /b/, reddit, etc). When most people watch large public 'protests' on TV (eg. Occupy Wall Stret, May Day, etc) they have no notion that what they're seeing is a manifestation of the hive mind in the physical world. They have no notion that many members of the police line blocking the 'protest' from reaching some destination, and indeed many of the people present in that destination, are also part of the hive mind that are merely in a temporary "RL" (real life -- offline) sentient state.

IMHO the meta-people of the hive should factor in the WZ fanon. In particular, they are everywhere and nowhere. They will exist in all factions, (even scavs; assuming they don't completely ditch electronic communication tech), and at all levels.

What would The Collapse mean for the hive mind? It would be disastrous - at least initially. It would be like 7 of 9 being separated from the Borg. Or would it?

I would assert that by the time The Collapse happens, a vast section of the human race (globally) will be either part of or deeply influenced by the hive mind. And the hive mind will be a highly evolved and effective meta-being. The old notion of "order out of chaos" will be utterly outmoded by the hive mind notion of "chaos is order". What we think of as normal in 2013 will appear as Victorian and Barbaric to the people on the cusp of The Collapse.

The Collapse would be like having all limbs removed for anyone who is in the hive mind. If Maslow did a "Hierarchy of needs" for the hive mind, "Communications Network" would be a new level between Physiological and Safety, serious!

Within a year of The Collapse, even NEXUS would find itself being assimilated by the hive.

[Rman Virgil]

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Facinating, aubergine. I've considered many of these as seperate parts but never saw them integrated as you have done here into a coherent whole.

Let me amend that more precisely.... my cohesive understanding of collective conciousness predates the advent of the internet and is founded initially on 2 works of non-fiction and one of fiction (along with correlates to first hand, RL, experience and on-going enlightenment).

My understanding needs to be inclusive of the net's impact, its ennabling and amplifying power.

Those 3 pre-WWW tomes that profoundly shaped my perceptions for many years on this subject are:

~ "Crowds and Power" by Elias Canetti for which he won the Nobel Prize in literature.... though it is a work of non-fiction. The committee did the same with Bertrand Russell's body of philosophical work.

http://www.amazon.com/Crowds-Power-Elia ... 0374518203

~ "The True Believer" by longshoreman philosopher Erik Hoffer. One of the reasons I relocated from NYC to San Fran after I graduated from Uni, was to meet him and it happened purely by accident on a park bench in front of City Hall one midday during my lunch break.

http://www.amazon.com/The-True-Believer ... 038&sr=1-1

~ "More Than Human" by Theodore Sturgeon, one of the gods in my personal pantheon of Sci Fi authors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Than_Human

Years after these early influences, but still before the emergence of the WWW, my thinking on this subject was shaped by study of the life works of Carl Jung, Emile Durkheim, Ernest Becker and James Hillman.

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[Rman Virgil]

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After Dr. Alan Reed and Dr. John Hammond meet for the 1st time at the International Cybernetics Symposium in Oslo, the winter of 2068, they have an early diner to discuss in greater detail the papers they both presented earlier in the day. After their meal they switch over to some cozy sofa chairs to continue their conversation at which point Reed will offer Hammond a job at Synaptic Inc. working in their top secret research lab which has just recieved a huge contract from the DOD.

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I will now take my leave for a spell to give the expanded timeline my undivided attention.
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[Jorzi]

The shading on this one is pretty cool, may I ask for some technical details on what you used?

[Rman Virgil]

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The shading on this one is pretty cool, may I ask for some technical details on what you used?

Sure.... but it will come with context that is meaningful to me.

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Fitting it would be you to ask because it was you who got me to pay more attention to my lighting and not short change my time attending it.

When I started visualizing the meeting of these 2 characters in my head, light took on an even greater significance. That significance went to the heart of how these 2 mens characters have evolved because of aubergine. The forces of light and darkness, mingling and in opposition, within them, between them and in their involvement, as prime movers, with the story world's major events...

To be more precise, I saw a combination of lighting inspired by both classic film noir and Rembrandt (hey, in shooting for the moon I don't pretend I got within a million miles of it). In the case of the film noir, I also saw an odd PoV angle and exaggerated lines of perspective.

Also in my mind's visualization, I saw a blending of water color technique and bolder comic line technique.

All together, a rather odd combination. Then again, this is a thread of oddities in the sense of jumping outside the safety net of the cozy box.

To answer your question, I used a mixture of Photo Shop, Artrage Pro 3 Studio, Akvis ArtWork stand alone and PS plugin. The key to getting close to what I visualized, ultimately, was the granular control of the Akvis comic fx. I say ultimately because it took 8 entirely different iterations to get to where I wasn't feeling majorly dissatisfied.

As it is, I may end up redoing it again for the illustrated ebook novel so as to be more consistent with the different visual style I'm developing for that project.
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[Jorzi]

Akvis ArtWork looks like pretty cool software, although your workflow still sounds like quite a bit of manual labour(not that that would be a bad thing)

Actually I've gotten quite interested in experimenting with aquarel / comic style rendering, especially with the release of blender 2.67 and its integration of a new non-photorealistic renderer called Freestyle (previously an independendent open-source project)

[Rman Virgil]

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Akvis ArtWork looks like pretty cool software, although your workflow still sounds like quite a bit of manual labour(not that that would be a bad thing)   Actually I've gotten quite interested in experimenting with aquarel / comic style rendering, especially with the release of blender 2.67 and its integration of a new non-photorealistic renderer called Freestyle (previously an independendent open-source project)

 

My girlfriend flat out tells me my work flow is just crazy. She could never work that way. And I understand. As a pro graphic artist and designer, her work flow has got to be streamlined or she ain't gonna get her job assignments done on deadline. Me, I'm just putzing around like a duck on a pond.  In truth, I'm after "beginners mind" like Marc Chagal.  

In hindsight I do regret that I turned away from Blender back in its early days because I found it's UI so different from what I was used to on the Mac platform for so many years before I transitioned OS and eventually got used to the un-Mac world. It has since matured in every way for the better I can see.  

Especially promising this Freestyle integration... I looked into the Gallery at the original independent site and was very impressed with what I saw. When it comes to aquarelle "wet in wet" work, blooming, blotting, glazing, etc., it looks to have better sim tools than the prog I've been using. So I'm gonna dl the standalone and work with it. Appreciate the heads up. I have a strong passion for working wet in wet, not just in aquarelle but in oils too... though in traditional media aquarelle wet in wet is much less forgiving than oil but that's no worry in digital.   ("Aquarelle", pretty word, French for watercolor. I like. Enough to start using instead of the plain jane English.)

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Update on the expanded timeline.  

In my jazzed up state I tried to fast-track the next iteration of the expanded timeline by just re-reading and going from memory in constructing it. Has not worked out. I have not lived long enough with all the new material details to have them down pat. So instead I have started to extract from all the postings the various details and started cataloging them. From there I will create a "Brain" of relationships in Brain Pro 7 and then from there, the next timeline iteration. It's gonna take a little longer than I thought but it's a much better procedure for the scope of the material, it's inherently generative nature and to manage, for temporal consistency throughout, the complexity of the end project. Actually, it's how I should have proceeded from jump. Learning in the doing.

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[Rman Virgil]

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~ Making headway with organizing the raw material of US / World events, the short stories, the Bios, the temporal sequencing of all the foregoing and building the "Brain" matrix of dynamic relationships. I'm optimistic I'll have some coherent 1st cut of the expanded timeline by Sunday to share for crit and feedback.

~ A story of novel scope is taking shape that I will attempt to write as an illustrated ebook. It's course will run from 2028 - 2085. It will revolve around 3 protaganists: Alan Reed, John Hammond and a female character never discussed.

* Two things to mention about that quote.

~ First, I don't have a working Title yet. Any suggestions ?

~ Second, that female character never discussed is from another work that had nothing to do with WZ but whose story themes had much overlap with how the Pre-Collapse backstory has evolved over the last couple weeks. She was a natural fit and I felt compelled to put her into the central fabric of the story.

She is 2 years older than John Hammond and 5 years younger than Dr. Reed. Neither knows or has in any way crossed paths with her, though she was in attendence at the same "Burning Man" John Hammond visited during his 6 month South West "time-out" after graduating from Princeton and before entering the Secret Service.

She comes to be known to the world during Hammond's stint in D.C. as "Godiva", a pseudonym she promotes in the wake of her earliest acts of militant resistence. Her true identity eludes the authorities as much it does other figures in various resistence movements. This extreme anonymity is by her design and was initiated when she orchestrated the death of her true and official self in her early twenties, and henceforth severed all previous relations, family included. Some months prior to Hammond and Reeds first meeting in Oslo, she was responsible for bringing down the Eastern US grid for a week. Unlike the Reed and Hammond characterizations, "Godiva" is at a more advanced stage of development. However, I'm still open to suggestions. But enough on her for now.

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[Merowingg]

Rman sorry for fading but I still have quite busy days.

After this week I will try to reappear. I slowly read and organise resources, especially those adviced by you. I do have to write at least three pages or I will be killed I have also two italian tests, so you can nuke me already.

I am happy to see you are so creative recently.

I only upload map to addons while I do not create any

Regards,

Mero

[Rman Virgil]

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Hey Mero. I understand the challenge your facing with that paper. Gotta stay focused. Only way to get it done.

By next week I'll have the next iteration of the expanded timeline posted and all this material should be much easier to visualize.

BTW....

~ In my extrapolation of the RL "Burning Man", and correlating it to a resistence movement, I'm thinking I need to change the name of the event to something like "Burning Droid" or "Burning Borg"... or something else. Not sure what yet.

~ In my research on climate change, 2050 becomes a milestone year and the consequences and impact on US / World events and social movements is gonna be huge and graphic. More so than when the topic first came up a couple weeks ago. It's gonna be a major current of influence in world events on a par with the NWO. So between 2050 - 2085 there will be an era of "Climate Wars" and struggles between those for and against "Hacking the Planet". Of course the NWO will have its imprint on all this, as will our 3 main characters. There's also a correlation here with an urgency to push forward the Moon-Mars colony programs as well the connections to cybernetics and Transhuman Tech. I also started looking into specific tech like Nanotubes and it's application in Borg tech, comps and even a "Space Elevator" which would solve the L5 space colony payload economic issue.

Lots a stuff percolating.

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[Merowingg]

Well.. it is certain that I will defent (hopefully) it in Octoberr, as there is no chance in July. But still I see fire in my supervisors eyes and it is partly needed to pass the master thesis subject as the subject if not all of that, there would be no such rush.

I am glad to hear there will be a little bit of sorting here. When I will be fully back on track, then I have damn a lot to close read becasue of you Sir

[Rman Virgil]

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I presume Mero you are talking about the oral defense of the paper which is yet another challenge perhaps more intimidating than writeing the paper itself. Just make sure you do a lot of rigorous practice before hand till you get it down cold. Two different challenge experiences really. Writing a solid paper and defending it orally. Gotta come at it that way tactically which I'm sure you can.

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* Instead of making a visually plain jane timeline like Pumpkin's original, I've gotten into making a pretty fancy shmancy, graphically sophisticated expanded timeline which has involved me learning a new vector app which is really nifty and powerful but with a more complex learning curve than I anticipated going into it. But, I'm getting it - slowly. It will be worth I think. And going foward (after this next v.0.2 iteration) with additions, revisions and such, it will be a quicker process because I should be more proficient by then.

* Also making progress with the DB container for organizing all the raw material to date which will only grow as the timeline, shorter fan fiction, and novel mature in their dev. While I'm doing this I'm also organizing all the WZ fan fiction already written so I can continue with their revisions for consistency with each other and the new expanded timeline so that in the end all of it will become a cohesive adjunct to the canon.  

* Made a start as well on building the "Brain" of dynamic relationships between the characters and their ties to the story world's chain of events, canonical and expanded.  

~ Oddly enough, all the foregoing came up in conversation last year, in a slighty different context, with aubergine. At the time I said I was a big procrastinator when it came to this kind of organizing in my amateur hobbys. Generally with the WZ fan fiction I just wanna get to writing the stories themselves asap.   Ironically in my business experience I'm almost the opposite to the point of being ISO 9001 / ISO 14001 personally certified for many years and running my ops consistent with those protocols.  

What has changed since that occasion last year ? Simply - the sheer scope of the new timeline and the novel to be, in part, based on it. Because of the inherent complexity, i don't have a chance in hell of doing at least a descent job of it without first vesting in these organzing efforts.  

So while I'm chomping at the bit to just be writing story and doing graphic art, I will stay focused on getting these foundational organizing structures in place and then out the door here for review, crit, amending and whatever expansions that may result from the contributions of others who take a keen interest in the outcome of this project - and then perhaps other unforeseen boon efforts that may yet flow as a consequence down the road, and by the hand of other creators in the once and future WZ universe.   .

[aubergine]

Regarding time line visualisation, there's a nifty Mac app called Timeline 3D which makes putting linear timelines together pretty trivial. However, it doesn't facilitate (at least in the version I have) visual links between items on the timeline or "threads" that run throughout the timeline.

As for the overall organising, I think that is perhaps even more useful than the stories/art that it will result in. An organised and navigable plot will allow future generations to extend and elaborate, and should custom campaigns one day become easy to develop it will facilitate many interesting and interconnected campaigns.