Slowly Learning Wordpress to Migrate - Open Source TRPG publisher

 I will need to eventually move to Self Hosted Wordpress site our company has a web developer now, entry level.  I consider websites low margin - a necessity but it should just have basic customization options. 

Game in the Brain, Gaming Work, and Gaming Life will move to this eventually - I will also be removing gameinthebrain.com from Google Domains - who is using some Squarespace subdomain to maintain this. 

I got to thinking of some CORE mission vision basics about what game in the brain about - Game in the brain is an OPEN SOURCE TRPG publisher. Trying to make open source as a business work in both my Hobby of TRPGs and my work. 

I'm trying to do what the FUTO (the company Louis Rossman is working in now) who started the Source First license - basically its Open Source Free except for Billionaire or Mega Corporations - I agree that Open Source Foundation is keeping it free but not considering allowing contributors to make a living out of this - enabling Corporations to make a TON OF MONEY out of open source and not contributing to it proportionally. 

In the Philippines right now I'm negotiating with Frappe and NextCloud - hey your product is free and open source - I want you to make money but we cannot force people to pay you (and because its free we can do this without asking permission ) - we will charge the annual cost that would be more competitive than Google workspace or another ERP - the Open Source partner gets 80% and we get 20% of the service of installing and setting it up. 

Example. In the Philippines Erpnext or NextCloud is sold at 10usd/user/month or 120usd per year per user. In a 10 user deployment 1200usd - 80% ( 960usd) goes to the Open Source partner and  20% (240usd) goes to us for setting it up and installing it. I want the partnership written down and official, I can just execute this without their permission since its GPL anyway and nothing is stoping me... BUT I want it formal and an example - so that others may consider it moving forward. 

Note that in the Philippines, the final price would be 1200 USD + 12% VAT—our Value Added Tax is not the same as the USA's, which is only applied to anything added. In the Philippines, the VAT is a sales tax. So the 1200 USD will have 144 USD taxes (which we remit to the government every month). 

It comes with a 1 year warranty of support (anything wrong with the service of installation). We dont want to do the Software as a Service - we believe we can do it with Support services - as they need it, and Upgrade Services - if they want the additional upgrades and updates within the year is covered by the 1 year warranty and support... but beyond that year the customer can choose to not get any support if they dont need it. We believe only 10-20% of customers will need it... of the 10,000 businesses (2025-2035) we plan to set this all up - we believe only 1,000 SMEs will just get support from us while the 9000 dont need it and are happy with it in the next 3-5 years. They will probably get us to migrate to NEW hardware.  

We want to do the same for DEBIAN (helping companies migrate to Debian Linux In light of Crowdstrike fiasco and the End of Windows 10 (costing 61usd, 122 USD, and 244 USD in the succeeding years).

I'm not desperate or greedy—with our Open-Source (Free) ERP, Low-Code, open-source Arduino, and Firewall (Netgate PFsense), we will equip 10,000 businesses with this technology and probably 100,000 businesses because of our School partnerships—none of which will be giving us any money. We will just be educating millions of people in Open-Source free options and creating a new open-source economy of services. 

Game in the Brain's Open Source CC-BY-SA SHIPS and materials were supposed to do that, but that needs a lot more stuff—like the FDM 3D printable procedural 3D Character generator and various tools that will allow you to easily create all this material and resell or trade it. 

Creating an OPEN SOURCE economy—wresting trillions from corporate greed to regular people who will not HOARD the wealth and create artificial scarcity but circulate it more efficiently. As a world builder, I know my economics, and this is where my economic beliefs, practical skills, and Social responsibility all align—like a Min-maxer: Altruism Optimized.  

Hard Scifi Skill and Calculations and Acceptance of what the Future holds

Hard Sci-Fi (HSF) is a hobby that delves into the real science behind science fiction. At its core, HSF emphasizes a solid understanding of fundamental scientific principles. In HSF, we start with the immutable laws of nature, such as gravity and the conservation of matter and energy. From this foundation, we explore elements that are more likely to evolve over time.

This approach allows us to narrow down and predict the trajectory of technological advancements. A key aspect of HSF is studying the history of scientific development and understanding current technological trends. By doing so, we create mental models to simulate and plan various scenarios, assuming the development of specific technologies and their potential consequences.

Today, I did a number of calculations, particularly the Carbon capture capacity of technology. 
I learned that

• https://doe.gov.ph/sites/default/files/pdf/electric_power/04_LVM_Grid_Summary_30_apr_2024.pdf the Philippines has 12k MW coal capacity and consumes about 30M tons of coal. 
• That if 1 cubic meter of water/salt water can grow algae then 1 square km only converts a measley 10,000 tons of carbon. 
• That 20B tons of carbon needs to be captured and preserved out of the 40B tons we produced. 
• That earth has only 500M sqkm and to capture 40B of carbon per year you would need 400M sqkm of algae farms (assuming only 1 sqm per 1cubic meter). 

These calculations are part of my research as I try to set up a Bio-reactor our manufacturing plant but its part of my World building because I need to understand what the future looks like. 

That if the Philippines converted all its coal to Nuclear in 20 years through Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) of up to 12,000MW  that would be hundreds of SMRs. That if moved more of our concrete and manufacturing to renewable STARCHES from algae, our proiten to come from Aquafarming - using the algae to feed fish, crabs, shrimp, sea urchins (I love uni, I only get to eat it like 1x per year - cause I have a lot of costs to take care off) etc...

Here is my Algae Bio-Reactor proposal for the Plant  these are the things keeping me busy from writing more Scifi, but it deals with Scifi.  

Acceptance and Trust 

I realize that the ability to believe that people will be educated, have compassion, or care about science and key features in society is not feasible. that we are a society with roles, and we have to trust people who have our best interests in mind. The future is not a WELL-INFORMED PUBLIC - no - the future is TRUST and a society built on transparency and honesty. The future is people being largely ignorant in matters of Politics, State, Science, Technology, Compassion,  and environment - TRUSTING honest and accountable people to help us make decisions and suffering the consequences when these people fail us. 

What happens when you realize the future is built on Trust - I stopped getting angry and frustrated in ignorance, misinformation, malice - and exploitation as much. I understand I have to trust someone to watch my back about some matters, as people trust me to watch their back on other matters. That I have to be accountable and transparent even more. And the people who trust me should come and check on me - and I should come and check on the people I have trusted on matter I cannot hope to comprehend or track. 

All this science and technology and calculation - requires a society that has a strong trust. Trust that kids can walk by themselves in the streets of japan and someone will be there to prevent their harm, that people will be fed, sheltered and cared for, and that people will have a voice. It requires a fundamental building block of trust - and then higher and higher levels of complexity can be achieved and this complexity will leverage greater and greater feats of technology. 

That in SCIFI there will be communities with very high Trust - and vigilance and pro-activeness against people who seek to destroy this trust so they can exploit a population and its resources. 

I get to sound crazy in my blog - how game theory, games, scifi writing, and calculations are processed and knowing - I'm crazy to think this and alone and probably thousands have though these thoughts and have long odds of success. I'm not smart enough to be smart in everything, Be the red genie (Aladdin and the Magic Lamp 1982) the shitty option most people are stuck with. People want the HYPE and the illusion when a perfectly good person is available for them to trust. They want to listen to the deciever instead of someone who can really help them. 

Getting back to Work. Progress Update

Nicco's update to me of the maps. I'm still busy with my Pfsense Certification, so I can't really write or do a lot except proof and do QA on the maps. 

Of course we will have the 200DT Merchant Trader of CE Free (pay-what-you-want) Power Point file of each room and element being a PNG file that will allow you to edit and re-order the ship. 

MNEME of Cepheus Engine will make EDITABLE maps so that you can tweak your deck plans without Photoshop. Of course the RAM required for such feats is quite a lot, but I think everyone is at 8GB these days. 

I'm pessimistic especially how bleak the news is.  

As for my other open source projects, I just wish it becomes a viable way to make a living coming from the industry I come from. 

Isekai Done - Check that from my bucket List.

 Closing this Chapter of my life - Tried to make a Short Audio Book. It took about 700php to play with Eleven Labs to convert my Short story. Something I could produce in my free time without much thought - just to prove I can generate the words, know how to structure, and get into detailed visualization.  I used the 22 USD plan (it was on sale for 11usd) - this Tutorial was how to use Projects Mode  - I walked in it may cost an additional 11 USD to learn to use this. 

What I would write about if I had the time and bandwidth would be a 1860 Philippine Altered History - an epic of a vengeful Aristocrat began conquering towns - and creating his own Petty Empire - only to fail - but his war in 1860 altered the martial traditions of the country and the power dynamics of the Towns with Manila. Guerrilla warfare doctrine was developed - and the wealth he accumulated before the fall of his petty empire created a military-industrial base that  made it that Spain and America didn't fight untrained peasants against their veterans and Artillery in 1890s but guerrilla fighters who had 30 years of traditions and identity. 

Hacienderos did not lead the revolution but Warlords - a less western Philippines that has more in common with Malaysia and Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand - despite being mostly christian.  America would have still won, as they needed the Sugar and the Spanish plantations to boost their economy - but not in a position of overwhelming power. 

A novel of 19C warfare with the Philippines lost in time. Admittedly a power fantasy - If the Philippines got "Isekaied" to Redo the past and not get fucking screwed all the time.

Of course given all my Gaming and Writing aspirations - my gamer mind is best employed in hopefully making my country easier to live in - making Open source businesses work in the Philippines and displacing MS and Google options for software. Accepting I will not have the time or the opportunity to make a name in TRPGs. 

One of the things I would want to do is Convert Noli Me Tangere or "The social Cancer" something easier to listen to and then use Elven labs to convert it into an Audio Book. 

Delays and more delays - responsibilities gets in the way.

So, we've been busy. Nicco had a medical emergency, and I had some important projects that are robbing me of my free time to work on this.

It's really a niche project, and as I handle students and work with schools, the love for sci-fi and combining it with TRPGs is much rarer and probably will end with my generation. I'm on the edge of Generation X, with friends 5 and 10 years older than me.

Although my sci-fi studies and aspirations are finding their way into my work as we become partners with Netgate (pfSense), Nextcloud, and Frappe, and the family business is slowly transitioning to me. The project that is closest to what I believe is sci-fi is creating a VPN with Wireguard to give people who buy our Nextcloud appliances a tunnel for their home or SME Nextcloud. It's supposed to be an open-source, free tunnel system with Wireguard under a non-profit, but of course, we have to build the technology up first then - as advised by IT friends - split it into an LLC and ensure the technology is distributed to prevent easy traceability.

We are building micro-datacenters (data cabinets with UPS, AC, all built-in, as older buildings cannot take the weight of a full data center, and a data center requires intensive planning and preparation) and plug-and-play Fediverse servers to create a "NEW" open internet that will be able to fight back against mass surveillance and mass misinformation systems. We plan to use H2Ogpt, the new GPUs and NPUs, cheaper distributed Fediverse, wikis, and augmented support.

I'm going to lose my evenings as I prepare for my pfSense certifications, which I have to achieve in the next six months, and planning for a Service Management System (ISO 20,000-1). I'm targeting creating my ANKI deck by July 15, and then, with our network support team, all the hands-on exercises. I plan to make sure all the ECEs and IT interns with us will finally have hardware hands-on experience, and my team will create ANKI-like testing to prepare them with hands-on practical exams. We hope to train 30 people who would easily pass the pfSense certification every year and provide SMEs and people with affordable services to secure their home and their self-hosted tech.

One of the results of the ARM transition from x86 is the wattage cost of on-premise hosting will only cost $2/month for a 10-watt device (scale up). Having 5-10 such devices or the equivalent wattage of devices running would be just as cheap.

So, in a hard sci-fi TRPG, particularly in the genre of punk, casting off shackles (like mass surveillance, corporate monopolies, and information manipulation) – a free internet and market is one of the key fights. It's not so black and white, as "criminals," "terrorists," and "enemies of the state" will use the same technology as human rights groups to protect their privacy. For me, creating open-source technology that allows developing worlds like the Philippines to have an internet without ads and mass surveillance and manipulation is worth my free time. It both serves my game inspiration and my work.

It's just sad to think that this animal, the sci-fi TRPG gamer, is going to be extinct, but then I realize that every archetype of a different era was made irrelevant and extinct. I really want to be a game writer and designer, but it looks like administration, project management, and system design is where I can do the most good while daydreaming that I could write and make some TRPG tools so I would be able to run games in the future.

I really want to run more games and hopefully help teach a new generation to get into TRPGs and learn all the writing, planning, research, and problem-solving skills from TRPGs that helped me become the person I am at work. In games, I get to experiment and have my ideas tried. TRPGs – a fun and highly immersive version of case studies – allow us to make mistakes and enjoy the difficulty of trying again and again.

I'll probably have one or two frustrating nights where I will just do the math of low orbits (based on atmospheric density and gravity), but they are becoming rarer.

I see interest in my work declining when we don't post and don't produce - it pains me to lose what we've worked hard to gain. Anyway, Nicco will still be producing the ships and the editable ship maps - note that he is taking care of his sister and dad and might get busy giving out the next map and product - note that I've financially committed to having all the CE ships converted to our Creative Commons blender ship designs - even if very few are interested in designs they wont get in trouble for.

Mneme Space Combat is my worse performing product (if you measure its Cost to make vs Income it generates) despite how ambitious it is - interestingly, students who are looking for Internships from my alma mater get to have Toy making experience as they design the FDM prints of the ships (we are working on geometry nodes) and get to use our 2 reality Ender 3 3D printers (when they don't have their own) through the project. In a way it makes the dreams of others come true. 

CE was around for a long time before I got around to really appreciating it - now it is its own thing, separated from Traveller (probably eating up traveler sales). 

Escape Velocity and Orbital Limit

Escape Velocity  the relative speed you need to have to escape earths gravity field. 

Orbital Limit is an arbitrary point here in Mneme World Generator that means - the distance the escape velocity to leave the gravity well of a planet is only 1m/s. Meaning if I throw a ball at more than 1m/s while I am in this distance relative to earth or a planet that ball will not go back down and will escape the gravity well that will cause it to orbit the planet. 

Low Orbit is based on atmospheric drag - which is why its so hard to calculate - but I have the components little by little being set up. Basically low orbit can be as low as the highest Peak on the surface. Basically if you take the median radius of the Moon and take its highest peak - like the Mons Huygens at 5.3km - since there is no atmosphere you can set an object to ORBIT the moon as high as 6km from its surface. 
Low Orbit will be where a lot of defense and surface monitoring satellites will be positions. Satelites meant to relay information and tends to be here. This tends to be controlled as much of ships and satellites can be weapons of mass destruction and its too difficult to shoot it down and prevent it from causing devastation at the Low Orbit position. 

High Orbit is going to be based on earth's high orbit - which I will measure in Escape Velocity, Gravity, and relative to Orbital limit. High orbit is where a lot of space stations and traffic will happen. Star or High ports will be in High Orbits - especially when ships use dangerous and powerful propulsion.  In a densely populated world like earth and with precious ecologies - High orbit is the limit for potential weapons of mass destruction. Ships capable of carrying and using weapons of mass destruction exceeding High Orbit can be constituted as a hostile act.  

Distraction: reviewing De Agricultura for a Kids Fantasy TRPG

 I maintain a copy of De Agricultura for sharing. I've updated it and used Askyourpdf to help me review it since I've forgotten everything I learned about it. The only thing I remember is that it's better than Harn Manor, and it probably was the basis of Harn Manor and proof that Taylorism existed much earlier, that Medes and City-states of Mesopotamia in 3000 BCE had already developed these metrics much earlier. 

The starting place for the TRPG is a manor in a frontier territory. Very typical fantasy but with some twists - as a kids TRPG, there are some PG elements like an order of secular social workers that administer these lands - professional bureaucrats who typically offer their competence in return for honoring their social work. Their social work is primarily charity and helping people get back on their feet. Imagine Mohists, Franciscans,  and Buddhists (as a Philosophy and secular - allowing people to have relations and national loyalties). The people who adhere to the Philosophy and identify with it call themselves Anastasian - the order is called Phoenix Dawn (I know its a common order name). Luminaries are the administrators and they maintain many Estates for various Nobles - even competing or nobles. They tend to stay out of politics - unlike the church which requires faith and blind obedience. So the order tries not to be political, and is imperfect (corruption and manipulation exists, as well as abuse of power). Of course - any charitable organization will have their True Believers and their internal Inquisitors (called Auditors). 

As a kid-friendly TRPG - I was reading old TRPG adventures, and it all began with the Murder-Hobo activity - reviewing the old adventures - I realized, wait a minute - there is historical text in what the training for soldiering and operations. Guard Duty, Hunting and Retrieval Tasks, and Exploration and Survival Tasks (traveling to A to B with a map and directions) are already very challenging tasks that don't involve murder-and-looting, and its going to be educational if kids learn some basics knowledge. 

One fo the things I want a TRPG for kids to do is to see the world more as an Adventure. Traveling, Trying new things, and learning they can work with the uncertainty of an RNG of life would be ideal if they play a TRPG. Like any TRPGer dad this is my Nth Attempt to get my kids to play TRPGs. 

So I'm avoiding the huge difference in Social Status for Starting characters - as well as the complexities of such dynamics. all the starting characters are Wards of the order, or one of the many migrating families that have moved to the Manor to help transform the fields, and a bit of background fluff - like those who identify as Anastasians have a duty to expand frontiers - giving to their eldest children enough resources to cultivate a new land - which the order will double and provide servants. Of course its imperfect - some people chose to leave being Anastasians in order to keep their kids from leaving . 

The players will definitely start in a very idealized and exceptional place - and then discover the other Lands and other conditions. making the players acclimate in one area and then learning to acclimate in other areas. As a frontier town, they will be introduced in other cultures and areas. This is one of many side distracting projects - because i was short of money to afford getting my kids the Pathfinder 2e remastered begginer box because of the many expenses that came up: they broke their ipad for school, a friends medical emergency, and my many projects. So reflexively I DIYed it - and anyway I will make the book launch as part of my Mneme Variant Combat rules book - because it will use a majority of the rules of that book to simplify combat and stream line it.  

So there will be just Stat Allocation, a 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 and 5 stat will be assigned. I will simplify the background as they are all wards of the order. Then as for career, they start with the 0 level skills of the career. This is their first term - they basically mustered out already at 16-ish. In the manor there are Mentors who determine the 6 skills at 0 level. Their first Adventure is travel through the Fort into their neighbor's territory, doing a trade escort mission. I wonder what the kids will think of the "Labor Tax" they have to work on projects around the manor for 40 days a year? (this is a very important topic in Philippine history and that of many of the colonized people around the world).