Wednesday, November 04, 2020
Tuesday, November 03, 2020
Thursday, October 08, 2020
The Three Theys of Interstellar
The third "they"
The movie Interstellar runs deep with current known science and also notions of time (in a manner that is not well-enough understood by science). In the movie, there are several discussions that refer to "they" as the architects (my word) of the events within the movie. "They" is used to refer to the creators of the wormhole, the same wormhole that brings humans to a distance galaxy to find habitable worlds. "They" is also used to describe the creators of the tesseract within Gargantua Black Hole into which Cooper falls. There's actually a third "they" used by Brand (daughter of Professor Brand) where she unknowingly shakes Cooper's hand while she's in the wormhole and while the tesseract collapses around Cooper. She mistakenly refers to Cooper as "them".
The second "they"
While in the tesseract, Cooper hypothesizes (or guesses) that "they" are future descents of humans. When viewing the movie's narrative superficially, "they" are the ones who set everything up to allow colonization of distance worlds, and also to allow Cooper to survive within the Black Hole long enough to send back the necessary data to solve Professor Brand's equations. The movie does not provide any further explanation, but does hint that Cooper's guess is not 100% accurate. This hint comes when he becomes third "they" during the aforementioned handshake with Brand. Also, Tars specifically calls the creators of the tesseract by the moniker "Bulk Beings".
Cooper's explanation for "they" is flawed. If "they" are our descents and also the creators of the wormhole, this forms a "Bootstrap Paradox". If the wormhole didn't exist, we'd have no ability to save humanity in order to have our descents create the wormhole.
Getting stuck on this Bootstrap Paradox assumes this movie presents the final and accurate explanation for "they" or the "Bulk Beings'. However, if the creators of the wormhole are different from the Bulk Beings (creators of the tesseract), the paradox evaporates.
The first "they"
Cooper was right in his guess that we were solving our own problems. We got our selves to the wormhole. We investigated several habitable worlds on the other side. Cooper himself fell into the Black Hole and interacted with Murph. However, what's the moment that prevents the paradox and allows Bulk Beings to exist? This moment is when Brand colonizes Edmond's Planet. Her colony saved the human species, but not humans on Earth. Her colony's eventual descents (the Bulk Beings) had to finish the job. They had to enable the survival of humans on Earth. They did so by creating the tesseract for Cooper inside of Gargantua.
So, who are the creators of the wormhole that kicked off human survival? Who are the first "they" of Interstellar? My best guess is that "they" are simply an interested party who provided us with a way to save ourselves, if we are ready to be saved. The first "they" of Interstellar are different non-human related beings who were possibly even more advanced than the Bulk Beings.
Thursday, October 01, 2020
Dream - Terrorist Plot Device
Most dreams that I recall involve me as first-person, from which I interact with and experience the goings-on within the dream universe. Once in awhile I break from the first-person perspective into second-ish or more typically third-person, but this change in perspective is typically only for a brief time.
Last night, I had a more theatrical dream. I experienced the dream from a first-person, and third-person, but from a multiple of perspectives for several on-going but related events. I would take on the first-person perspective for one set of events. Then, by a semi-conscientious decision, I would move to another perspective in another set of events from a different character's point of view. I had some control of the characters I took on, but the story unfolded around me in ways that aren't common. Normally, my awareness within dreams gives me the ability to make minor adjustments where I kind of know what's going to happen, or passively direct the story. However, I never directly take over and rewrite the story. This time, I had zero control of the events. I was experiencing the story as it unfolded. I was responding to the story as my character would. I was watching a movie from within the movie.
In this story, there are multiple seemingly simultaneous events. Much of the story takes place in a large hangar that has been converted to offices and manufacturing. Terrorists have taken over the building, but lost control of the employees at some point. I don't remember too much from this part of the dream, but I know several plot points were set up. The terrorist assault was a cover to steal actual printed bearer bonds. I don't remember if the bonds were paid to them or if they staged the assault to find them. I would jump between several employees of that company, all trying to avoid the terrorist. Many of us were moving from room to room to avoid the terrorist. In fact, by this point in the dream, I never saw the terrorists. The character I become just seemed to always know where the terrorists were in order to avoid them. Sometimes I was a nondescript male scurrying about with a larger group, other times I'd switch to another group and was a 30s to 40s Kit Harington.
One room was a break room with some office and kitchen furniture, such as filing cabinets and kitchen sink. On the concrete wall that was adjacent to the door, there was an spot where an execution happened earlier, blood staining the wall. I remembered seeing that execution happen as a character within the dream, but I don't remember the execution happening as the dreamer. (It happened during a part of the dream that I don't remember, but I know happened.)
At some point, I decided that portion of the story progressed enough and it was time to see other events. I was on a plane in the air. The plane was also taken over by terrorist. I was another nondescript man. We, the passengers, fought subversively against terrorist without direct conflict. At some point, the pilot was shot. It seems that the co-pilot was somehow killed or removed from the plane during a part of the dream I don't remember. After the pilot died, we (the passengers) were able to take over the plane and negate the terrorists, though I'm not clear as to how. The looming threat of landing the plane without a pilot now become the tension of the story.
Switching back to the hangar, another man, blond of similar age, and I (as Kit Harington) discovered the plot of the terrorists and somehow knew where the bonds were hidden. We broke away from the group and ran to the office where the bonds where kept. We started grabbing the bonds and split them up. At this point, the perspective switched from first-person to third-person. I watched as Kit Harington and the other man split up the bonds, roughly in half. However, my thoughts were still internal to the Kit Harington character. As I watch myself (as Kit Harington) and the other man, we agreed to meet at a predetermined location to somehow cash the bonds in and evenly split the proceeds. However, my character was thinking that I'd just keep what I grabbed and cash that in on my own. Not really betraying the other man, but feigning to cooperate in order to get what I can and get out of there without dispute.
The story then switched back to another person on the plane. I was briefly a person that took over the controls of the plane in order to land it. That was a very brief swap, I guess to show that the plane would somehow land. I immediately switched to be another man who was with a young boy that I met on the plane. The boy was scared. I comforted him as best I could. The plane crash-landed at the start of the runaway of an airport. Most people seemed to survive, but the plane was on fire. I helped the boy out of the plane, but instead of smoke and screaming-running people, the boy and I calmly exited the plane into a cool mist. I walked with the boy, continuing to make conversation with him to keep him as calm and distracted as possible. I tell him he can have whatever he wants when he returns home. As I walk with him, he's naming a bunch of things he wants. I tell him to keep walking. He walks out of mist as I stay behind and retreat. He turns around playfully and says "...and I want Lucky Charms". The boy then nonchalantly walks over to where a crowd has gathered at the outskirts of the airport. As I'm walking back through the mist, an airport employee on the tarmac notices me through a brief clearing in the mist and happily yells at me, "Hey, it's Lucky!" And other employee looks up to see me before I disappear and leave behind a single rainbow marshmallow from the Lucky Charms cereal.
From a third-person perspective again, I watch the boy (that I rescued) grab the hand of another boy who is with a family (father, mother, young son, older son, young sister and older sister) in the crowd . The boy turns around to watch a fire at the airport with his family. I then watch the boy age before my eyes in a time-jump to become the same age as the boy he is standing next to. He and the other boy are twins. The fire he's watching isn't the plane. The fire is from the conclusion of the terrorist assault on the hangar at that same airport; two or third years later. The boy originally died in the plane crash at that same airport.
As the dreamer, I was thoroughly surprized by this ending. I believe this is the first time I remember seeing a superimposed time-jump. It was an interesting effect to see within a dream.
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Recent purchase of old games on Steam...and labor required to actually get them running
I recently purchased a game package that consists of Railroad Tycoon II Platinum, Railroad Tycoon 3 and Sid Meier's Railroads! on Steam. Two of these games needed a human (me) to get into the game files to fix them so the games can be run on Windows 10 (or even on Vista or 8).
Railroad Tycoon 3's issue is that it crashes on startup. The fix is to turn on an option called "Disable Hardware T&L" in the Settings dialog. The problem is that you cannot turn this option on in-game if you cannot get the game started.
Sid Meier's Railroads!'s issue is that it crashes constantly, like in minutes. The fix is to directly edit the game's executable file with a hexeditor to change a specific bit. You never know when you'll need a hexeditor, so I always install one on every desktop PC I've owned. Even still, I've literally not used a hexeditor on game files in over 2 decades. Anyway, the bug fix description is too involve for me to repeat in this article, so I'll just point to the source article on Steam: Fix Crashing/LAA manual fix (backup link).
The Steam article employs a particular hexeditor, so if you aren't experienced hexediting files, you may wish to use the recommended app. Despite the lengthy article, the actual fix is very quick once you find the bit you need change. So far, I've not had a crash since implementing this fix.
Epilogue
When Steam gaming platform first came out, I was not a fan. I tried to avoid it like the plague, but eventually, AAA games that I wished to play were only available on Steam, so I had to commit. The game that finally snared me was Civilization 5.
One cool thing about Steam is that they have a ton of old games from as far back as the early 90's (maybe even earlier). The old games are typically ported, dosboxed or patched to run on modern systems. Although you have to rebuy old games that you wish to play (for rather small prices), it is typically worth the cost to avoid the trouble of working out how to configure a modern PC to run those games.
The problem with Steam is that their updates are often half-hearted efforts. For example, no efforts are taken to maintain aspect ratios of the original games. This makes many of the old games appear uglier than the originals. However, this is typically OK, as you play old games for their game mechanics and functional design more than their outdated graphical design. A bigger issue is demonstrated earlier in this article. Some games are so badly adopted by Steam, you, the user, have to manually configure the game files in order for the game to even run (or at least run without a ton of crashes).
Not all games are fixable. An example of this is Independence War (a game I loved). Both Steam editions (original and sequel) appear to have unfixed game-breaking bugs with no community solutions. These games are only $6, but it's $6 too much for a game that cannot be finished.
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)