Saturday, June 22, 2024

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. 

Saturday, June 15, 2024

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). 

Wednesday, June 5, 2024

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.