0054 Sir Gene Speaks

Well, I'm back sort of. A little bit. I'm recording on an iPhone. So the audio might be a little worse than last time. My last episode, I think is three weeks ago, right around there. So, obviously I haven't recorded anything new while I was at my parents' house. For those that listened to the last episode. And then I really haven't recorded anything new since I got back home. And Part of the reason that was just, I was. Emotionally drained or tired from the trip. Seeing my mom in the condition that she was in and then trying to manage the stress level with my dad trying to figure out like, what's next. How do we find a comfortable place for her? So. Needless to say politics. Was not something that was going to get me excited. I did listen to no agenda. On the flights back and forth. But honestly, other than that, I've just not listened to any politics or watched anything really political. Up until probably this week. And this is the week of the 25th, Those of you on the agenda. Social might've seen a lot of music links or posts coming from me. It's my version of super lazy deejaying where I essentially. Put links to YouTube videos of interesting music, a lot of international music. And a lot of eighties music. Essentially stuff that I'm listening to, stuff that I like. And occasionally I'll actually go through and take the time to post the links as I'm listening to them in real time. I'm no agenda social as well. So. Very lazy deejaying. What else did I do? Oh, I went to see. Tina the keeper. And of course her husband the godfather. So spend a little bit of time in the hill country with the health folk. It was touch and go there for awhile. I didn't think that they were going to let me in without passport, but. Luckily, there was so little traffic in the hill country that I think I managed to sneak by without anybody noticing. But that was a nice relaxing time and certainly another big, thank you. Go out to Adam and Tina for hosting. A very nice time and I certainly. We'll be back to the country of the Hills at some point as well. And of course Adam's actually trying to prod me to start looking for a house in that general vicinity. Saying that, Hey, if you're going to be my handler, you need to be close enough. But I can call you in case of fire. So there we go. Not sure exactly. If that's on the old option, black for me, I'm still definitely leaving Austin. Closer to the fall winter timeframe when it's a little cooler outside. It's been hitting a hundred degrees for the last few days here in Austin. So the last thing that I want to be doing or thinking about doing. Is moving things in a moving truck or even a packaging things to be moved in a moving truck. So we'll definitely stick around here until the weather cools off. But I got to tell you that traffic is getting worse. They're blocking off more lanes and creating bike lanes and bus lanes and all kinds of other things. New buildings are being built, a lot of apartment buildings so that the density of the population is going up. I think. Austin in a lot of ways is being transformed to what the Californians want. Which is something with mass transit, something with a lot of sort of. Off the shelf type buildings and a lot of similar. Foods and bars and coffee shops that they're familiar with. And a lot of the unique Austin flavor of sort of the hippie culture. In Texas that made Austin what it was, is going away and it's going away in a hurry. And it's primarily because all the newcomers like Google and Amazon and. Facebook and a lot of other companies that are moving a lot of their larger facilities to Texas to get away from California taxes. They're at the same time, very much bringing the same kind of. West coast culture, along with them. And ref. B building Austin in the image of Southern California or maybe Northern California, but it's a Northern California in the south. Is that a thing? Certainly doing that. So it is definitely time to cross the border back into real Texas. And get away from the. Enclave of California that exists in the heart of Texas right now. But that aside. So what have I been doing? Well, like I said, politics is too damn depressing and annoying to really spend a lot of time on. For me, I don't begrudge anybody else doing it. Obviously. Plenty of people. Are still doing political stuff. Both people I know and people, I. I used to watch on a daily basis. So. More power to them. In fact, I even asked Adam, I said how are you dealing with just having. Negative shit happening in the media all the time that you have to watch for your job. Like I'm just, I can't do that right now. I need some positive vibes in my life. I can't stand watching. Even the conservative news media, because the conservative news media, all they're doing is reporting on all the awful things that the liberal news media is talking about. So it may be a different angle, but it's essentially talking about the same kind of issues. And he said that he just takes it in as a sort of, he. He gave him Pfizer in his mind. It's sort of a way. To look at what's happening. Inside the TV as being separate from reality, and maybe there really are two different realities happening. But I'll tell you my way of dealing with it though. Of not being sucked into the negativism of politics. Has been to play a lot more video games lately. And I know it might seem crazy given that I recently celebrated my 140 ninth birthday. But video games have a way of making a person forget about what's currently happening in the world. And just focusing on what's happening to them in the immersive game. Play. And relating to, or I guess. Focusing on the concept of immersive game play. There are certainly plenty of games that can suck you in. A lot of have over the years for me, I know I was one of the original battlefield, 1942. Semi-professional dudes. I was third ranked in the world, I believe at the time, but that was. That was a point in time where my company pretty much ran itself. I didn't have to do a whole lot. I did a little bit of sales and then I had 40 hours a week. I just play video games and it was not a big deal. And for those that weren't around back then, that was 2002, 2003 time zones. Or a timeframe. But. The most immersive thing that I found right now. Is star citizen. If you have not heard of star citizen, I'm going to have a link. In the show notes for the podcast. So you can take a look at it. And what I recommend is doing two things. One. Before you ever try and get in the game. Do yourself a favor and watch some videos because you may not like what you see. You may like what you see too much. And in either situation. You may not want to get into this video game. And the reason I say too much is because star citizen, Is a game that has an insane amount of photo realism in it. But the downside of that downside of having a game publisher that is obsessed with creating things, to look as real as possible. It literally looks like a movie. It looks like every scene. From a scifi movie where they're CGI involved, except that you get to be in your own CGI world of that quality. And the downside of that is this game has been in the making now for nine years. And it's still not technically. I think Lee released it's. It's what they're calling an open alpha. Which means anybody can get in and play. Or I shouldn't say anybody, people that want to donate money to the game they started off as a Kickstarter. They raised a bunch of me as a Kickstarter. And then they decided to just keep that idea open so that anybody post tech started at wants to donate money. To the game publisher so they can finish this game. Can do so. And the way that they do that is by giving you one of the ships from the game. As a thank you for the donation. That's the nice way of saying it. Right? That's the way they would like to portray it. Some people would say, yeah, they sell shifts online and you can buy. A virtual spaceship. Technically both of those I think are true. You absolutely do get a thank you in the form of a spaceship from the game. When you make a donation. But you can also think of it as, oh, I want that spaceship and I don't want to play the game a hundred hours to slowly grind my way up to getting it in the game. I'll just pay a hundred bucks right now and I'll have it today. And I think both of those are valid ways to look at it. But what you're getting in the game, if you do pay money is something that is absolutely. Available to everybody else. In the game through, in game currency. So there's no such thing as a pay to win, which some video games absolutely have, which is to say exclusive ships that are only available. Two people that have paid a lot of money. In this game, that's not the case because every shift that you can get as a reward for donating to the game, AKA buying a spaceship, every one of those ships, you can also buy in the game. Just simply by playing the game, accumulating in game currency. And then spending that. By the ship. So it's really more of a. Pay to accelerate getting a ship. Then pay to win. Because you can still suck in that ship. In fact, you probably will suck more in the ship you buy. Then in a ship that you earn in game for one simple reason. You just don't have the practice. If you're buying a spaceship versus somebody that slowly grinded ground grinded. Their way to buying that spaceship by playing the game. And collecting enough money inside the game. So you can quite often tell people that have purchased larger ships because they tend to be killed very quickly. Whereas people that have the same spaceship that have earned it by playing the game locked. They've built a lot more practice and they tend to be much better players in that spaceship. But you don't want, it's not all about shooting each other either. There are plenty of people in that game that just like to explore that, fly around, look at the planets, look at the scenery. Take snapshots. Create screensavers, whatever you want to call it. And that's perfectly valid too. And I do think that this is an area where star citizen is heads and shoulders above every other space game. And those of you that. Know me a little better than others. I certainly know that I've played a ton of space games for really the last 20 years. Maybe even longer. Whenever there's been a space game, whenever there's been a space survival game. I've been the, to play it. So my two categories of games are submarines and space. Both involve you sitting inside of a tin can and dying. If you ended up going out of it. I don't know, maybe that says something about me. But in either way, I've played a lot of different space games and a lot of them have much better. Well, I shouldn't say better. They have much more different gameplay that maybe I would describe as better. Some of them have much more realistic gameplay like Kurbo, for example, which I've spent easily close to 2000 hours in. Is a rocket ship building game. And in that game, You you have little green men that are super cute. That are completely disproportional. There has, or half their body, but because they're in that game and they are the critters. That are essentially in your rockets. I feel that it changes the game from simply a tech building simulator. To an actual rocket ships simulator. Not being somebody who's a crazy sadist. I tend not to like to kill the curveballs. I like to actually keep them alive. And so when there's something that you want to be kept alive inside your rocket. You tend to take every possible action possible to save the rocket. When you're just shooting something that has no passengers. And it crashes. It didn't fly. Right? Whatever. It's not a big deal. You can always send up another one. The end game, money's only thing you're really losing on that. But when you're losing curveballs, even though they're also in game, It makes it feel bad. Like you don't want these little critters that are looking at you and, with their sad looking eyeballs and shaking. Cause they're afraid you don't want them to fall to their peril. Of course some say to us like Scott Manley have killed. Hundreds and hundreds of curdles. And he'll go to hell for that. But anyway, I digress. So that's a game that's much more realistic. There are games that I think are, have a lot more. Realism, but still in the scifi genre, like ULI dangerous as a game I've done probably 1500 to 2000 hours then. And that's another very similar game too. Star citizen, where you're. You're flying around in that game. You have the entire Milky way at your disposal. They have literally modeled over a billion stars and billions of planets. And you can fly to any one of them. And if you happen to be the first person that flies to a planet and then scans it or even better lands on that planet. Your name will forever be recorded in the database of the planets in the game. And any anybody else that ends up flying through that system, scans that planet or lands on the planet will see that you were there first and your in game name will show up for that, which is a neat. Aspect of that game. So they have the realism of the entire galaxy in there. And they have, what I think is really fun, gameplay, both for PDP and for industry. And I will say I'm generally an industry person in most of these games. In fact Eve online, which is another awesome space game that I played from 2004, till about 2008 or nine. And built. Amass billions of dollars of in game currency in that game. And I did most of that through trade. So it wasn't. did a little bit of all kinds of activity, but for the most part, the way that I made the money was by doing a lot of trade back and forth and hauling things and using jump praters and delivering things. And just watching the price index going up and down and, sell high, buy low, right. The old formula. And that's not a beautiful game, although now it's a little bit dated. Certainly in two thousands in the early two thousands, it was the most beautiful space game out there. In the same way that I think star citizen is today. Because the visual quality. Quality of the star ships, as well as the really space itself, the planets, the solar systems. The different jump gates. The difference. Docking locations. Everything was really well modeled and look nice. And that's certainly the case in star citizen today. So really for the last couple of weeks, since I came back from Seeing my parents. That's sticking up. The part of my life that doesn't revolve around the work. And that rather than politics is why I haven't had a podcast episode going out in the wild. My thought was. I really have sort of a. Politics philosophy, culture type podcasts. And I can't just be sitting here talking about video games. That's so off the topic. And eventually I just thought, this is ridiculous. I haven't done an episode since I first left. And then. Even if I don't have anything political to say, or necessarily even particularly philosophical. I should at least put something out there and I'm paying for the damn hosting. Right. Oh, and incidentally, anybody that's been making like monthly contributions to me. Please cancel those. Well, keep them going if you really want to, but I'm just giving you a heads up that I'm not doing. Three episodes a week, like I was for a long time. So I don't want it to feel like, or I don't. I'd rather, you not feel like you're making donations to something that's not really happening. So, if you want to make a one-time donation, that's awesome. But don't feel like Like you're going to be getting the three, three or four episodes. In fact, a week like I was doing when I started. And if you don't want to do the recurring donation, please go ahead and stop those. But anyway, so today, rather than just letting more time. Go by. I wanted to share, at least with you guys, what's been going on why you've sort of. Heard crickets chirping from my podcasts and not much else. And also what I'm up to. So if you want to hear more. About what I'm doing that has nothing to do with politics and is just sort of normal lifestyle. I'm happy to provide more of that info. As I am with some of the links that I'm going to have in the description for this podcast. If you don't want to hear to nonpolitical stuff, well, here's your chance to not listen anymore. And if you. If you are actually playing one of these video games that I mentioned, Kerbal Eve star, citizen, or elite dangerous. Or any of the variety of other video games? I really didn't talk about like Imperion or what was the other one? Ah, there's a handful of them out and I've really, I played all of them. It's just the current one that I'm playing right now happens to be star citizen. And so if you are also playing that or some of these other ones do, let me know. Either in knowledge on the social or you can find the email address to put comments in. In the podcast as well. And if you're in particular in either star, citizen, or elite dangerous. Then let's definitely connect up in game. Cause I always. Enjoy seeing other people playing and being able to participate. In larger multiplayer missions. That's always fun. In fact, one of the things that happened. This week earlier in the week. Is a complete waste of time, but it was really fun. A large group of people that I know we're flying a ship called the hammerhead. In star citizen. And they decided to do something really stupid. And that is to take that hammer head. Into a cave. Now the hammer head is a massive battleship. So if you can imagine. Something that is the size of several football fields. Well health, forget football fields, something that's the size of a. A large us battleship, except that flies. Thinking, something like that. And then bring it into a cave system. And the big mistake was bringing it in nose first. So gravity, which absolutely exists in a star citizen. I was having none of that. And so consequently, once the ship went in, there was no way I was going out. So. With six, seven people on board. They could have all just committed suicide and then respond in a different area. But what fun is that? So we started trying to think of ways to dip them out. Then one guy came in with a smaller ship and he managed to burrow his ship underneath this large hammerhead. And then get underneath it and then push us thrusters up and try and push it up. And that worked, but it only managed to push it up maybe 23rd meters. And then I took a much larger ship, the ship that was about two thirds to three quarters of the size of the Emory had all the 600 I in game, took that in into the cave as well. But I went in rear end first so that my thrusters were strong enough to get me back out. And then I tried to hook onto this hammer head. And then push it out. And that worked for about a hundred meters, made some progress, but eventually the two ships separated. Cause they're not really intended to connect up. I was just using friction. And my ship shout out of the cave and their ship dropped back in. And I recorded a good chunk of this on my Twitch stream. And it seemed I didn't really notice time going by, but when I started watching it again, it looked like over an hour of time was spent trying to pull this maneuver that everybody knew wasn't going to work. And everybody could have just skipped the by committing suicide and then responding somewhere else. But that's part of the game. That's part of the fun. Are these crazy stupid antiques that you can get into. That if you're going for pure efficiency of game play, you would absolutely never get into, but if you want a fun experience with your friends, you want to do something a little crazy, something that. I don't know, it probably wouldn't happen in real life. But then again, it could if the people who were controlling the ship were drunk this is an opportunity to do that. And having a bunch of people onboard your vessel makes the gaming experience that much more realistic. And as I said, Star citizen right now is probably the most beautiful, the most. Detailed super high resolution. Like you played at 4k resolution. And there are still things that you don't notice until you zoom in. For example, if you're somewhere where there's a rug on the floor, If you get right down to the level of the rug and you zoom in as much as you can actually see the individual weave on that rug. In game. And that's insane. No other game that I've ever played. Has that level of realism. You combine that with the Tobi eye tracker, which is something that I've got, which essentially. Is well, it's like the cameras on the iPhone that not just look at your face, but this thing actually looks inside your eyes. And it can determine what on the screen you're looking at. It's actually made by a company that makes these devices for a marketing research purposes. So a lot of times you might get, while you're back in the old days, you might get contacted by somebody in the shopping mall, pre COVID. That would say, Hey, would you like to make 25 bucks by coming in and watching a quick video and then filling out a survey? And in a lot of times, what they do in those settings is. They have these Toby like devices that will look at your eyeballs movement and. Provide a statistics on what you were looking at when. On the screen to determine what in the commercial that you're watching is working and what isn't working. And then combining that with your input, that you volunteered as well. It gives the ad agency much better perspective on how well they ad is going to work. And there's a variety of uses for stuff like this, but this, the cool use of it. Isn't for marketing it's for video games. And so now. You can be looking around on a 4k screen. And as your eyes move and as your head moves, and those are two separate controls. The screen will adjust accordingly. So if you. Tilt your chin up a little bit. Then the game knows. You're trying to look up and it'll move the end game camera upwards and face a little bit up. Much as your natural. In the real world as that type of movement would do. In real life, meaning if you start looking up, your chin goes up a little bit. If your chin goes up a little bit in the game, it'll shift a perspective as though you're looking up. And allow you to actually see things that are above you, thereby removing the need to be using a mouse for constantly pointing what direction you're looking at left right up, down, whatever. Which allows you to have both hands on your controllers and like a lot of space games, star citizen is a game that is best played with dual sticks. So essentially to stick controllers in the stick is what you would typically play. Well, you would have a whole task typically in an airplane simulator. Which is hands-on throttle and stick. So here in space games, you replace the throttle. With a second stick. And the reason you do that is because. You're not just moving forward or backward. You need to be able to move up and down. And you need to be able to move left and right. So the second throttle controls you're strafing forward, back left, right? As well as going up and down. While the main stick is the same as airplane simulators. And that's controlling your pitch, your role. And what's the third one, your I'm blanking out anyway. It's the third angle movement that you can do. Pitch roll and yeah, totally can remember it. So anyway, so if you play with dual sticks, having the eyeball controller for controlling what you're looking at. Is very cool. Anyway. With that said, I don't want to turn this into a big, long game commercial, which it's not intended to be. Just giving you guys a heads up on what I've been doing. But if you do want to play the game, check out the link at the end of the podcast. Well, it's not at the end. It's in the podcast. Comment section. I'll try to do these a little more frequently than every three weeks. But again, don't expect three times a week, at least not for now. Let's see how things settle out. Hopefully you enjoyed this little preview of what I've been up to you and those of you that caught me on Watched me on Twitch. That was very cool. I'll have the link to my Twitch account as well. And I'm generally on there at least a once or twice on Saturdays or Sundays. So try to be on every week, if I'm home. Thanks for listening guys