Friday, August 1, 2025
Today, cleaned at Blanchard Street, then the Courtyard at the Courthouse, then stairs then driveway.
August meta horizon plus apps
- Starship Troopers, I've always thought that an embedded anagram and with letters in sequential order can be derived and that embedded anagram is ars hoopers.
This app is the premium chanpagne version of Crash lands VR. This has a licensed Hollywood franchise attached to it. I never saw the movie. What's to see? A lot of insectoid arachnids on a hostile desert planet. I tried the app but you have to be fast with the reload and the grenades otherwise you'll get struck down. Again and again.
- Workshop. Be at a office. Make coffee. Prep paperwork. Or flip ground beef patties. What's the difference? One is blue collar and one is white collar. I never tried it. I was sitting down and it asked me to get up and walk two paces to the starting area and stand up for VR calibration alignment. Too lazy. I couldn't be bothered. And this is someone who volunteers sweeping the street for hours on most days of the week. Selective lazyness.
- Eleven Table Tennis. I don't want to play any VR games involving rackets. The only distant favorite is the free VR app that is strangely premium champagne grade because free apps are usually low in quality. Tennis VR is a favorite because it reminds me of the tennis courts of Beverly Hills. With this app, I can have the Beverly Hills experience in my own apartment.
With any VR table tennis app, you could have the Forrest Gump experience in your very own home.
With any VR pickleball app, you could have the middle class suburban townhouse experience.
- Ghosts of Tabor. Ghosts of who gives a f***. Tabor. That reminds me of Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. "Lives he by the Tabor?"
Anyways, tried it. The handgun bullets looked and sounded like it was a pea shooter. No accuracy or reliability in aiming at all. Gun Club VR is profoundly intuitive. Ghosts of Tabor. Not so much.
- The Room VR. Dark Matter.
The Room VR app is from a Polish VR app developer. The Room is a movie from Tommy Wiseau who is Polish. Room in Polish is pokoj.
Anyways, the app throws the player in the deep fryer as one is all of a sudden at a Police station as a Constable in 1800s London. The Police station is devoid of Police Officers. Even in the 1800s, they were more together than that. The paucity of personnel. Let's face it, meta Quest 3 is basically the first generation of instruments in an entertainment media that is still in its early pioneer days.
On a desktop is a key. The key opens a safe but as soon as the key is withdrawn from the supposedly open safe, vines grow out of the keyhole. The evidence locker produces a matchbox, a dagger and a gold pocket watch. Neither of those things as it turns out can open the safe. Am I missing something? Well obviously. But what?
The app addresses the player as Constable when let's face it, no Police department would have anything to do with the likes of us as prospective Constables.
Remember that while a Police Officer presumably has some level of security clearance, the average conspiracy theorist has level zero security clearance. That is none at all.
That's when I couldn't proceed any further. I've heard of arrested development but this is ridiculous. At the Police station? It wouldn't be the first time.
I'll have to watch a walkthrough video on YouTube which is the cheater method. The Room is from the same developer as Ghost Town VR.
I saw a walkthrough video. I'll try it again. This promises to open up mind blowing worlds. The Police station looked very detailed. And Victorian London nostalgic.
"Ghost of Christmas future, I fear you more than any other spirit I've seen." A Christmas Carol
Half Life Alyx costs $80. Any high definition high data game connected to a VR gaming computer because of increased data costs way more than the average meta Horizons app.
Get a VR gaming computer, $1,500. Sign on to steam, open an account. Then pay $80 plus tax, about $90 for Half Life Alyx.
Forget it.
Meta horizon is good enough.
"Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call, Don't stand in the doorway, Don't block up the hall..... For the times they are a changing." Bob Dylan
News. US lawmakers and Congressmen complain about smoke from Canada's forest fires. Well, did Canada complain to the US about Mount Saint Helen?
Trump imposes a 35% tariff on Canadian goods. Trump is a 35% tariff in human form.
YouTube comment: "Donald Trump Jr is cocaine in human form."
Life has its signs and serendipities. Dawn of Jets. I had VR for a year but it was during Trump's Administration that I got Dawn of Jets. Dawn of sounds like Donald. And J for Jets is the first letter of Trump's middle name.
This VR app is unlike any other. It is on a cosmic celestial level approximating that of Sturmovik IL-2.
The 50s era style jets seem so visceral and realistic that there are immediate Dr Strangelove vibes. 50s era military airplanes.
Under the administration of every President and Prime Minister ever, I have had some good times, new electronic luxuries.
Victoria and Vancouver are towns that are very strong in their traditions of Shakespeare. Bard on the Beach, better than barred off the beach in Vancouver and the MacPherson Playhouse and the Royal Theatre in Victoria has Shakespeare productions.
Very expensive. Couldn't afford to go.
The two Shakespeare plays I want to see the most are
- The Tempest. Shakespeare's last and most philosophical play. Explores the themes of our place in the Universe. All the World's a stage and all the people are merely players.
See, Shakespeare loves idioms and puns etc. Stage. Stage as in theatre performance platform or a stage of life. Caterpillar is a stage, butterfly is a stage. Life in this dimension with its Shakespearean set of physics is a stage. The afterlife with quite a different set of physics and time dynamic is another stage.
A couple is shipwrecked on an island where on the island lives Prospero the wizard from Midgard or the Earth world. Ariel the magic nymph from Astrogard, and Caliban from Helheim or else Swartelheim, the land of the swarthy.
The idea of the play always interested me.
- A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare's most psychedelic play. Recommended after smoking some hash. Most visually spectacular.
England has a midsummer night festival at Glastonbury and at Stonehenge. Lots of young people dressed up in costume and getting drunk.
I'm not really sure of the complete plotline of these plays. I've read quite a few condensed versions of Shakespeare's plays.
I once found a thick book which I left behind on a outdoor picnic table then someone scooped it. It was a very old book of Shakespeare's plays but rewritten in modern English. First of all, I thought, "As if I'm going to read all of this." I don't do a lot of reading anymore. Just piloting airplanes in VR is what I mainly do these days. And then Shakespeare's plays are most magical in their original. I can tolerate the King James Bible being translated into modern form but not Shakespeare. Shakespeare's magic lies in the original wording in the original 16th Century English which is priceless and inimitable.
Shakespeare rewritten in modern English seems like a watered down version of Shakespeare with not nearly the magic.
I don't regret leaving the book behind.
The idea is to see the plays at the Globe Theatre in London. Know the plays well, understand the plotline well first, otherwise you won't get what's happening.
Saturday, August 2, 2025
The Titanic VR app now has the sinking segment which it didn't have before. It looks better in actual VR rather than in a VR 360 video. The cost, $25.75 total.
This app doesn't really have replayability, certainly not on the level of World War Airplanes VR.
I haven't gotten the app.
Harmony Mediation VR, $10 is a mixed reality meditation app. 5 settings, golden illuminated floating paper lamps, snowflakes, aurora borealis, rose petals and then whatever. In mixed reality. This app seems interesting. A person can look at anything and meditate. There was never a specific requirement to look at anything specific. Some schools of meditation sit facing a wall. The wall is a blank neutral screen free of visual distraction.
I meditate while looking at television, watching movies.
Meditation is sitting still and not moving. There are different postures and time lengths. A person must pick one that best suits them. Optimally, one should meditate at least once a day. Meditation is the sitting down for of guards, military, standing at attention for a long time and not moving at all while doing it. That takes self discipline and certainly not everyone in the world can stand or sit still for even five minutes without moving or fidgeting.
If I was rich, followed to its ultimate, sure, I'd get a VR PC and Sturmovik, Half Life Alyx etc. If I was rich, I'd get Titanic, both VR apps, and Harmony.
The other Titanic is a very richly illustrated with warm vibrant colors and it depicts escaping from the bowels of the Titanic and to try to see if you could get on board a lifeboat despite that a man who was fit had a significantly decreased chance of getting on board a lifeboat.
The temperature would have been awful. Hypothermia. No way to maintain body temperature. Death all round. In real life, this app would be unsurvivable.
A person can watch an entire walkthrough video of this app in 2D video on YouTube completely with the motion sickness inducing constant quick panning of the camera. That's my favorite.
I really like the Television Series Hope Street.
It reminds me of the town I live in.
There is no Port Devine. That's a fictional town. The television series is filmed in a town called Donaghadee, Northern Ireland.
That town looks to be in between the size of Victoria BC and Sidney BC. Not as large as Victoria, Not as small as Sidney.
The lighthouse area looks like Ogden Point.
It's like any other soap opera. You get to know the characters and their ongoing interweaving stories.
They speak with an Irish accent, an Irish brogue, however its a very comforting sounding accent and to me it doesn't sound that much different than the local accent.
When I was on the boat from Vancouver Island to Vancouver City, I saw a lighthouse on a small island. That's probably the best lighthouse in the World. It looks really iconic. Archetypal. Whoever works there has a lonely job since lighthouses are warnings for boats to keep away or else run aground.
I wonder what island and lighthouse it is. It's part of an archipelago of islands that typically surround a large island such as Vancouver Island.
Yesterday's Hope Street episode released on YouTube is Love and Lies Under the Raggedy Tree.
The Raggedy tree is a mourning tree where people hang stripes of cloth, similar to a spirit tree in Thailand and all throughout Southeast Asia.
"Hands off our tree!"
I thought, the tree is involved too! The game is afoot, Watson.
Then, on yesterday's News. A tree just fell over in Cameron Lake killing a mother and her five month old child.
Satanic. No other word to describe it.
Experts said that there was nothing that could have been done to prevent it.
I doubt that the fallen tree, the fell tree, will be brought before the Courts, remanded in custody and then sent away.
I'll probably wind up getting the Titanic app and the meditation one as well. I don't know when. I'd like to see a walkthrough video of the other Titanic VR app which would be to basically relive the Jack and Rose Titanic movie escape but without drinking PCP laced clam chowder beforehand to do it. I've seen enough of the walkthrough to get an idea.
I'll get these before Christmas which gives me time to space out the budget.
Titanic Submarine VR - see the wrecked ship in the dark and under two miles of water. Or else see the exterior on the day of the sinking. Same developer as Apollo 11 so this will be good.
Titanic A Space Beneath VR - see the ship in its original glory. Explore the immense hallways of the ship, but while its sinking and unlike the original Titanic passengers who were stressed enough, in the VR version, you'll have to try and solve escape room type puzzles while trying to escape. That detracts from the feel of historical realism that I was wanting. Just try to escape with no frills.
The escape room is a disincentive to get this.
The other Titanic VR app, Titanic submarine is pure historical representation with no extraneous ersatz impossiblist escape room elements.
However, there is no VR app that let's you tour the entire ship when things were going well. When the Titanic was in the middle of the Atlantic and hadn't hit the iceberg yet.
However makes that VR app will be a Millionaire because VR historians would like to see that.
Titanic A Space Beneath looks really good. You get to go on a normal boat which headquarters and on the Titanic too. The premise is that it's the year 2145 and you have time travelled back to the Titanic to rescue two people. The graphics looks really good. Tempting. But the base price is $25.51 plus tax. No problem if you live in Shaughnessy Heights but if you are on a budget.
This cuts into going to Sidney BC to see the F-86 money and getting a new pair of runners to replace money which register as opportunity costs.
Priorities, priorities.
And you wonder why I fear the future.
Titanic is very slow moving and cerebral and is somewhat replayable. World War airplanes is fast moving, visceral, almost mindless fun. Intensely replayable. I don't mind post pining getting the Titanic apps.
I'll only wind up drifting back to World War airplanes after some time anyways.
If you like the Maritime museum and the smell of wooden barrels of oil from the docks, then you have to get all two Titanic apps. It's an intensely Maritime museum experience.
