Chris Talks to Himself

Welcome to the conversation I have with myself.

[chris-aok]

Headcanon: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

SPOILER WARNING

I just finished re-watching all of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I've decided the ending was slightly different than what actually appeared on screen: Benjamin Lafayette Sisko died.

When he threw himself off that cliff in the Fire Caves and took Dukat with him, his physical body died; however, the wormhole aliens (aka The Prophets) managed to save his mind/soul by communing with him one last time as he fell. He now lives on forever in their plane of existence (The Celestial Temple/The place inside the wormhole) as a soul. The Prophet told him: "You're with us now." That's what she meant. And because Dukat was always meant to serve as Ben's antithesis, this mirrors Dukat's own death so that he could become an avatar for the Pah-Wraiths: Benjamin had to die so he could ascend to the Celestial Temple.

Despite what he told his wife Kasidy Yates-Sisko, he isn't coming back. In fact, canonically, he never has come back in the last 25+ years of Star Trek. If he was going to, some show/movie between 1999 and now would have mentioned something about it, but they haven't. And because the novels and comic books aren't canon, my headcanon fits. Also, the pseudo-episode for "Season 8" they thought up during the documentary "What We Left Behind: Looking Back At Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" isn't canon either because it was never produced.

I'm saddened by his death and I mourn his passing, but it makes for a more powerful ending than him simply taking a break from our reality to learn from The Prophets. His sacrifice is worth more. The finale is that more poignant. He didn't just save the wormhole aliens, he saved the Universe; at a cost: He had to permanently give up his physical form (Loophole: He could potentially "possess" someone like a Prophet possessed Kira in the episode The Reckoning.)

He eventually will become much like the wormhole aliens due to spending eternity in their plane of existence and experiencing their reality. This means his way of thinking, feeling, and being will change. He'll eventually forget how to experience linear time or what it's like to have a corporeal form. This is to be expected as he will live on forever as a soul/entity/ghost/non-corporeal being. One wonders if this is something the wormhole aliens regularly do: Recruit new members among their ranks by plucking them from their native reality (I'm assuming they have access to more realities than just ours.)

This all recontextualizes the last shot of the finale and makes it more significant: One of the last things we see is Ben’s son Jake looking out one of the windows of DS9 at the wormhole. He isn't just looking at the wormhole. He's looking for his dad. He's looking at where his father now resides; like visiting a deceased parent's grave. Poor Jake: He still ended up losing his dad like in the episode The Visitor and he misses him. Kira tries to comfort him in that shot, but it's hard to comfort someone after they've lost another parent (His mom died at Wolf 359 years before you'll recall.) This is going to be hard on Kasidy as well, as she now has to raise a baby by herself (I'm sure Jake and his grandfather will be willing to help.)

Their grief is a little more complex too, because Ben isn't completely gone: He's just out of reach. The wound of his loss can never fully heal because he's still near. It's similar to how Worf still mourns the passing of Jadzia, but Ezri is still around. Gone, but not completely. It's bitter-sweet. A pain that can't fully resolve itself. Stuck somewhere in-between. Just like Ben.

What an amazing show.

[chris-aok]

Year One

I started this blog a little over a year ago.

When I began, I posted daily. Now I try to post at least once a month.

That's still a form of consistency, even if the tempo is reduced.

So let's celebrate both the success of consistency, no matter how small; and the milestone.

I tried a few new things in the past year, and I made a few new memories (And habits) along the way.

I still want to keep working on this blog, even if it is only about once a month.

I'm not sure what the next year will bring, but I'll try to share what I can as I go.

What surprises do I have in store for myself?

[chris-aok]

[chris-aok]

Star Trek

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm a Trekkie.

I don't think I would cosplay it (Maybe I might?), but I do love Star Trek.

It's interesting because I loved it for a few years, then I was just into it, and after recently playing Star Trek: Bridge Crew with some friends a few weeks ago, I rediscovered my love for it. I'm now rewatching all of TNG.

I of course have some series and movies I prefer more than others, but it's fair to say I love most of Star Trek.

The ideas of the Federation and Starfleet are incredible to me: Idyllic, and utopian, but also aspirational.

Bridge Crew does a good job of approximating the experience of being on the bridge of a Starfleet starship and keeps the pressure up throughout. Your success and survival depend entirely on your ability to work together and communicate effectively.

However, while Bridge Crew scratches the itch of being on the bridge of a Starfleet starship, it does nothing to feed the imagination: No real story worth mentioning. That's ok, but it makes me realize we need a Star Trek game with a good story, good characters, and some challenging & serious sci-fi themes. I wish someone could do for Star Trek what Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) did for Star Wars.

Games aside, my philosophy on Star Trek series is as follows: There is no such thing as bad Trek. It's all good, but it's also all different. Each series had a different goal and tone it set out to achieve and that's ok. If they just kept trying to reproduce TOS decade after decade, it would have gotten real stale real quick. By deliberately having different themes each series engaged with, we get to have so much variety to choose from as Star Trek fans. I also think each series targeted a different audience and therefore had to adapt to that audience accordingly. The people watching television in the 60s were not the same people watching television in the 80s were not the same people watching television in the 2000s, and so on: Their views of the world evolved. They evolved and Trek evolved with them.

There is no such thing as "the best" Star Trek series or movie, just your favourite. Mine is TNG. To be fair, it's entirely possible I love it because it was the first Star Trek I was introduced to. I personally think that the idea of choosing Patrick Stewart for captain elevated Star Trek as a whole as well as its ideals. He might just be the most important actor to have ever worked in Star Trek for that reason.

I also want to clarify that I love science fiction in general. This is relevant because I recognize Star Trek as a vehicle for sci-fi. A platform with which sci-fi stories can be told. There are many Star Trek episodes that could probably be told in different contexts or in other settings outside of Star Trek canon: Very few Star Trek episodes could only be told in Star Trek. Again, that's totally ok; but let's not forget what Star Trek is: A way to tell sci-fi stories; and sci-fi itself is just a way to tell stories about ourselves. If your sci-fi doesn't have something to say, it isn't shit. When I was younger, the themes and critique went way above my head. All I was into was the spectacle, discoveries, and cool technology; and sci-fi should be able to provide that if it can; but sci-fi's main purpose should be to critique us. Superficial sci-fi is cool for a season, but sci-fi should leave an impact on your way of seeing the world; or at the very least invite you to reconsider your view in the first place. Star Trek delivers on all that and has continued to do so for decades.

[chris-aok]

I Quit Improv

Not much to say, I guess.

Up until a few months ago, I was only learning short-form improv and I think I was ok at that.

I had more recently started learning long-form improv, which is a different set of rules and mechanics.

I decided after my most recent long-form improv course to stop improv for the time being.

Who knows, maybe I'll come back to improv eventually or maybe I'll just move on to trying to learn something else, like the guitar, or Spanish.

I'm not too beat up over it. I'm a little disappointed in myself, sure, but I spent a solid 9 months on trying to learn it, so I think I can let myself off the hook: I gave it a good amount of effort and did a couple of shows.

What's next? No clue. I think I want to take a break until January on extra-curriculars and see where my head is at in the new year.

Talk at you later.

[chris-aok]

[chris-aok]

[chris-aok]

[chris-aok]

[chris-aok]

TTRPGs, VTTs, and PDFs

TTRPG stands for table-top role-playing game.

These are games you usually (But not always, more on that later) play around a table with other people. This is different from traditional board games like Monopoly in that there is a role-playing component along with more dialogue and story.

TTRPGs almost always have a book or books that contain the basic rules for the game, some lore, and myriad other elements that help flesh out the game.

I have noticed over the years that people that enjoy TTRPGs tend to love owning those physical books; to the point that they will sometimes own more TTRPG books than they actually have room for in their home; sometimes even buying some books more than once: one for home, and a copy for when they're out and about playing with others. What an illness. That isn't an affliction that affects me: I prefer digital books most of the time over physical books; mostly because I prefer how they look on my iPad mini's screen, but also because when you're looking for a specific rule or piece of information, you can use a search function to find it faster. Also, I can carry an entire library around with me wherever I go and still have it all in a compact and light form-factor. In fact, given the choice between a physical rulebook for a TTRPG and its PDF equivalent, I'll almost always take the PDF. It's possible this might change in the future, but for now, that's where I am.

After playing the Blade Runner TTRPG this summer, I admit I became more curious and interested in learning more about TTRPGs in general.

In the process of learning more about TTRPGs, I found out about VTTs, or virtual table-tops. A VTT is an online platform where you and other people can get together to play TTRPGs online. There are a few VTT platforms out there, each with their own feature sets. A few well known ones are Foundry, Roll20, and Alchemy. It is worth noting that VTTs, while useful in helping people play online, are each their own closed-off system. Meaning that if you buy a TTRPG for Alchemy, you cannot play it with people on Foundry. In fact, you would have to buy it again for Foundry to do that. So before buying a game on any random VTT, I would always recommend first researching the different VTTs and deciding which one you want to ultimately commit to and then buy your games for it...if they're available. That's another thing: Not all games are available for all VTTs. Some TTRPGs are only available for some VTTs. To be clear, you don't have to own a game on a VTT at all. You can choose to only own the physical book(s) or PDFs and play with just that and you'd be fine. VTTs just help make things more visible and concrete when playing with other people online.

Someone I know informed me this summer that Humble Bundle had a bundle on sale offering a bunch of Alchemy VTT modules for games from Free League Publishing. At first, i wasn't that interested; but when he told me that for a limited time, I could also get the PDFs for all those modules, I jumped at the opportunity. So I got the bundle, and then visited Alchemy for the first time. Neat platform. They seem to focus on building an atmosphere for games with the use of music: I love when game masters do that. I quickly downloaded all the PDFs before they were pulled from Alchemy and loaded the ones I found the most interesting unto my iPad mini: Neat.

While I was checking out the Humble Bundle site, I also noticed they offered a bundle for a metric ton of PDFs for the Star Trek Adventures TTRPG. I'm a trekkie and it was a great deal, so I got that too.

By this point, I was high on PDFs and was curious if I could find more at a good price. In my research of TTRPGs, I had discovered this popular online store that is considered a hub for TTRPG PDFs: DriveThruRPG.

Most TTRPG PDFs (But not all) are legally sold on DriveThru. So I decided to check it out and lo and behold, they had sales going on for the Alien and Hellboy TTRPG PDFs. Fuck, I got those too...and a few Alien VTT modules for Roll20...and a few other PDFs for a few other TTRPGs that are less known but had art I really liked.

By now, it was clear to me that I had succumbed to some sort of compulsive purchasing disease like the people I mentioned earlier that kept buying physical TTRPG books.

A few weeks later, I had the opportunity to play Dungeons & Dragons (D&D, the most popular TTRPG in existence) with some people, and they were making use of a platform that will one day become a VTT for D&D called D&D Beyond. It was cool to play with D&D Beyond because it has an iPad app, and when you join the game of a game master that owns a bunch of D&D books on the platform, they can share their books with you. So I gained access to another metric fuckton of electronic D&D books.

Clearly, I have a problem, and I need help. I've gone over a week without trying to buy or obtain another TTRPG PDF, but I don't know how long I'll last. My poor iPad mini is slowly filling up and I haven't even read half of the PDFs yet. I need to stop, but I don't know if I can. I thought I was somehow better than those that compulsively buy physical TTRPG books, but I'm not. I'm worse: I'm not limited by physical space, I'm limited by how much storage space I have, and that means it's easier to just keep getting more PDFs. It's a slippery slope. These things should come with a warning label: "SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: MAY CAUSE EXCESSIVE SPENDING." Please help.

[chris-aok]

Second Improv Show

Last week I had my 2nd improv show.

Not much to say, but I'll try:

I was less nervous and more in control, or at least I felt like I was.

I (Metaphorically) stumbled once, but other than that, I kept things flowing every other time I was on stage.

Overall, the show was alright, but I know I could have gotten more laughs had I tried harder.

In short, I'm saying I can be better.

I'm grateful I had the opportunity in the first place.

I think I'd like to try again.

I need more stage time. Not because I need to be on the stage. That appetite hasn't developed yet. I want to be on the stage again so I can work out the kinks and be fearless when I get on stage. There's still a rush of adrenaline with taking the stage and knowing you could bomb.

I actually think I need to bomb a few times so I can be comfortable with it and learn it's nothing to be afraid of. I want to be ok with abject failure. Coming from someone with a complete fear of failure, this makes sense. I want to master my fear.

I also think I need to be more dynamic. There's very little variety in my performance, which makes me seem very stiff (Which I can be)

Anyhoo, it was an alright night, but I need to do it more, both so I can conquer my fear, but also so I can improve.

See you out there.

[sonandheirofnothinginparticular]

[chris-aok]

Blade Runner The Roleplaying Game

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to play Blade Runner The Roleplaying Game with a few people.

While I am no stranger to tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) like D&D, I was the person with the least amount of experience at the table.

The game was made by Free League Publishing, if you're at all familiar with them. They have a solid track record with licensing known IPs and making TTRPGs out of them to positive effect.

I can honestly say that this was the most fun I have ever had playing a TTRPG in large part due to the universe we were playing in. While the TTPRG isn't canon or officially part of the Blade Runner universe, it still nonetheless places itself squarely in the universe of the movies, meaning all that lore can be pulled from.

I think that's why I had so much fun: Everything I knew from the movies and short movies counted for something. Plus, having read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick many years ago, I guess it's a universe I'm well versed in.

I love the Blade Runner universe and the game made playing in it fun as hell.

I very much want to play more of it, so I've been seriously considering buying the game.

However, realistically, I'm unlikely to be able to find people to be able to play with IRL.

However, a few months ago, I had discovered a service called StartPlaying which lets you find people to play TTRPGs with online. This is great because I could then buy the electronic version of the game made for Foundry, which is a virtual tabletop game service.

Though, admittedly, while I love the Blade Runner TTRPG & universe, and would probably enjoy playing online, TTRPGs have always been way more fun for me when played around a table with people IRL.

I need to think about it.

[chris-aok]

Fantasia Film Festival

I attended a few events over this past weekend at the 2024 edition of the Fantasia Film Festival.

For reference, it's probably been over 20 years since the last time I attended Fantasia. I'm not sure why I stopped attending; but I'm glad I came back this year.

I saw three things this weekend:

1) The Second (2024) by Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos

I have been following Tony and Taylor on their YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting for years. It used to be one of my favourite channels for a while until they stopped producing video essays in 2017. I was sad when that happened, so I was glad they announced they would be releasing a short film at Fantasia this year. I had to see it. They gave a presentation after the film where they talked about how they went about making the film. They also announced that a few more video essays are coming soon for a limited time only. I'll take it. I love their video essays.

2) Shelby Oaks (2024) by Chris Stuckmann

I've been watching Chris Stuckmann review movies on YouTube for a while too, so when he announced he would be premiering his first feature film at Fantasia this year, I thought it would be cool to check it out. The Director Mike Flanagan jumped on as Executive Producer not too long ago, and the film just recently found a distributor: Neon will show the movie in approximately 3,000 theatres in 2025. That's great. I wish the film a lot of success. On another note, it would be cool if Chris reviewed his own movie. I keep reflexively checking YouTube for reviews of it, and while there are some, the person I want reviewing it is the same person that made it. Ironic.

3) A discussion with Director Mike Flanagan

Unlike most Mike Flanagan fans, I only know him for one movie: Doctor Sleep (2019). I'm sure I'll watch more of his movies eventually. I've read both of the Stephen King Shining novels: The Shining and Doctor Sleep. I've also seen the Shining (1980) which Stanley Kubrick made. Being aware of those three pieces of media made what Mike did with the story in Doctor Sleep (2019) truly remarkable. He talked about how the film bombed and pissed off both Kubrick fans and King fans. I can't say I'm much of a Kubrick fan, and I guess I do qualify as a King fan, but no, I wasn't pissed off by it: I loved Doctor Sleep (2019) a lot. A gentleman from the horror magazine Fangoria interviewed Mike. I've been more or less aware of Fangoria since at least the 90s, but I've never made time to read it or its website. However, after the interview, I'm wondering if I should change that. The interviewer had a mastery of the facts (Who, what, when) of all things Mike Flanagan and was able to jump around with really good questions throughout. It was cool. The Fantasia Film Festival also presented Mike with a career achievement award, which was rad.

It's odd: When I first started going to Fantasia when I was younger, it was as a fan of certain film genres; and I always thought the festival was filled with fans that just passively consumed media like me (I speak more about what I mean here). However, after this weekend, it's apparent to me now that the festival has just as many people in the industry that are either working in it professionally, or want to break into it. I don't know if I just couldn't notice that before, or the landscape has changed drastically with the evolution of the Internet and technology: Now anyone with a mobile phone can become a filmmaker. The barrier to entry is a lot lower. People can crowdfund their movies on Kickstarter like Chris Stuckmann did. It feels like there are so many more possibilities than before. Seth Godin talks a lot about this in Poke the Box.

Incidentally, at the screening of Shelby Oaks, I was sitting next to a director from Portugal of another film premiering at Fantasia this year: The Old Man and the Demon Sword (2024). I had no idea who he was until he introduced himself and we got to talking. I wish him and his movie all the best as well.

I don't know if I'll see more things at Fantasia this year, but if I do, I'll let you know.

[chris-aok]

Reading

I'm reading.

I'm hopping between 19 books right now. It used to be more, but I eliminated a few to help me concentrate.

I'm reading books on a variety of topics. Most of it is non-fiction with a couple that are fiction.

In the time since I've started, it's gotten a little easier to focus and read more pages per sitting.

I try to read a chapter before moving to another book.

It's all still work, but the work is feeling easier to do.

I don't have any real reading goal per week or per day: I just read when I feel like it. Ok, that's not entirely true: I try to read a chapter of all 19 books within the last 10 days. I rarely manage to pull that off, but the trying helps me to read more.

I'm using a spreadsheet to track my progress, which also helps me decide what to read next.

I may end up deciding to focus on fewer books at a time so I can finish them faster. I don't know. We'll see.

I'm learning a lot and interacting with a lot of new concepts and ideas. It's cool. Additionally, the main advantage I've discovered of reading this way is that I'm making connections (Between the books) I may not necessarily have been able to make otherwise; or if I could have, it would have taken me months or years if I read one book after the other.

I'm highlighting passages as I go along, but I know if I really want to extract the most value out of this experience, I should take notes and follow my process for notetaking.

For now, I want to focus on building the habit and (hopefully) develop my enjoyment of reading first, then I'll supplement it with notetaking later. Maybe.

[chris-aok]

[chris-aok]

Apple Intelligence

There have been three major milestones to computing in the past 50 years:

The PC revolution of the 70s and 80s

The Internet boom of the 90s

The mobile revolution of the 2000s

Apple has played a major part in two of those milestones: The PC revolution and the mobile revolution. Because they are a hardware manufacturer, this makes sense.

There may be a fourth milestone brewing: The AI revolution.

I say "may" because we're in the middle of it right now, and I still can't tell if it's hype or genuinely going to change computing for all time. However, if I am optimistic, let's assume there's going to be an AI revolution. Apple will possibly play a major part in it.

OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and Google can be said to be major players in the AI space in 2024. One might even say OpenAI is the most important player in this space today.

However, if history has taught us anything about how Apple operates and enters existing spaces: They popularize and bring about mass adoption of existing technologies, time and again; eventually eclipsing other players and redefining markets and product categories for years to follow.

OpenAI has done a good job of doing this for AI so far.

However, when Apple announced last week that they were bringing AI to not one, but three of their platforms/operating systems (macOS, iOS, and iPadOS), they made it clear their silence on AI over the past few years had more to do with them working on getting things ready than inaction.

Apple's approach with Apple Intelligence is one I very much welcome: AI with privacy baked in.

Privacy has been a concern of mine with existing AI platforms since they've become popular in recent years.

With their approach of triaging requests and sending them to the right place as appropriate, I feel better about using Apple Intelligence:

Simple and quick-to-execute requests on-device

More complex requests sent to Apple's Private Cloud Compute

Requests better handled by an external AI sent to a 3rd-party AI only after first obtaining approval from the user (Only OpenAI's ChatGPT at time of launch)

But my tinfoil-hat wearing ass aside, their approach is what's likely to make use of AI more common than any other effort made to date: It's going to become ubiquitous throughout the operating systems and apps people use. That's the secret sauce.

Working on an email you need to sound professional? You don't need to open a browser or app to interact with an AI. It's going to be accessible directly from where you're working and integrate into your workflow.

Working on some equations you wrote by hand and need help visualizing answers or graphs? You don't have to go somewhere else, Apple Intelligence works right from the hand-written notes.

This kind of integration at the system-level is what is needed to make AI useful and powerful: Useful by allowing it access to your personal information so it can understand your personal context and powerful by having the freedom to execute on your behalf throughout the system. Unless OpenAI builds their own hardware and operating system in the years to come, they'll always be limited to executing requests that lack your personal context. They'll know the world, but they won't know you.

The only companies that would truly be able to make a powerful, personal AI are Microsoft, Google, and Apple. They each have the desktop, but only Google and Apple have mobile as well. However, If history ends up repeating itself, Apple will popularize use of AI more than Google and Microsoft will.

Exciting times.

Regarding Apple's Private Cloud Compute, I have some predictions:

It's only going to be around for a limited amount of time. When the processors in Apple devices become powerful enough to execute more complex requests on-device and those powerful devices have reached a sufficiently high percentage of active devices (70%?), they'll retire Private Cloud Compute

Or, even as most Apple devices improve to handle more complex requests on-device, Apple keeps expanding the capabilities of Private Cloud Compute to handle even more advanced requests, always staying ahead of what can be executed on-device

Or, even if most Apple devices improve to handle more complex requests on-device, Apple keeps expanding the capabilities of Private Cloud Compute to make it so you never need a 3rd-party AI like ChatGPT

I look forward to seeing which prediction comes true. I'm even ok if it ends up being 4: Something I couldn't predict because I can never really predict what Apple is going to do.

For years, I saw Apple release processors with neural engines that could do machine learning and I saw no immediate benefit for most of its users. Sure, it meant some scientists and researchers could use it; and maybe some few isolated apps could make use of it; but most people didn't need it. Why include it?

Then they came out with their own silicon for desktops and laptops and were still talking about neural engines and I still didn't understand why.

It wasn't until they came out with Apple Intelligence that I had to remind myself yet again that Apple always plays the long game: They were thinking about AI long-before most of us had heard of ChatGPT. They were building the foundations that would be required for Apple Intelligence years ago.

This isn't the first time they've done this sort of thing: Delivering the foundational technologies for a major breakthrough years before anybody understood why.

As a casual observer of the tech. industry, it's a pleasure to watch Apple work for this reason: You never know when they'll make a giant reveal years in the making, recontextualizing everything that preceded.

I look forward to trying Apple Intelligence first hand when it comes out later this year. Based on the devices I own, it'll only be available for my desktop and laptop, but that's ok: If it gets me to use AI more, I may be sufficiently motivated to get more recent mobile devices to use AI there as well.

We'll see.