Actually it was two months in west Hollywood to be exact. So I ended up quitting my job at Sun Microsystems and enrolled in the two-month Maya Fast Track program at the world famous Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, California. I moved into a studio apartment right next to Warner Brothers studios while I still maintained my apartment in Silicon Valley. Ironically, this apartment complex was also the home of a MTV series about roommates. I can’t recall the name of the MTV series however. I actually walked into a group of MTV technicians setting up lighting rigs on one evening. I definitely felt plenty of good vibes in the Burbank area. But why wouldn’t I. I was taking life by the horns and pursuing my life’s dream. About five miles away was the fledgling campus of the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. Now what I haven’t told you by now is that I had been teaching myself how to use the advanced visual effects software application called Maya. Normally visual effects studios paid $50,000 or more for a single Maya license. I had found a cracked (illegal) copy on the internet and had successfully installed it about one year earlier. During that year I went through hundreds of online tutorials. It was always my childhood dream to work in the visual effects field and I was finally taking steps to make that happen. Long story short, after two months of instruction I knew I was not going to be a visual effects artist. My stuff was …eh. The other students were much better than I was. I loved learning how to use the software but I could not keep up with the progress and quality of the other students. It was an expensive but necessary journey and I don’t regret it at all. For kicks I have posted my demo reel below.
Author: admin
My Virtual Reality (VR) Experience
My first real experience with the world of virtual reality began with the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). While everyone else was learning something called the Hypertex Markup Language (a.k.a., HTML) I took the esoteric route. At the time I was working as a technical writer for Network Equipment Technologies (net.com) in
Redwood City, California. While there I wanted to use VRML objects embedded in customer help files (HTML) to enhance the online help experience. My supervisor at the time was not too enthused at the potential. Ironically my published article was chosen as the cover article for InterCom magazine. InterCom was the (at the time) printed magazine sent out to over 200,000 Society for Technical Communication (STC) members worldwide. Yeah, that officially makes me a hard-core nerd.
My article made the cover for InterCOM magazine
It was nice getting the exposure that the article afforded me and one of my best compliments was when an STC member emailed me and said that my article was much easier to understand than the best selling book on VRML at the time. Over the years I wandered into the Second Life virtual reality community. That is where I cut my teeth on basic virtual reality experiences and other sub-cultures. It was a new and exciting time for VR. Second Life was becoming more and more popular and only limited by internet bandwidth and the capacity of your PC’s graphics card. Also, in Second Life, I was introduced into an early version of electronic money called “Lindens”. Funny how that exposure would make me more open to exploring something called cryptocurrencies later in life. Nothing like a little foreshadowing! Soon after my exposure to Second Life I enrolled in a University of Washington Certificate in Virtual Worlds. I finished two of the three required courses, but due to a heavy work load did not enroll in the third and final class. But it was probably a good thing as the program was shut down in 2011. It was a fun program and I learned quite a bit and have the videos to prove it (see below).
I have experience with several virtual worlds and scenarios
Why I like the XRP Digital Asset
I first came across XRP several years ago and at first I didn’t get the warm and fuzzies over it. It was and still is known as “the banker’s coin”. But then I caught myself in my thinking and I reminded myself of past decisions where I let certain biases cloud my decision. After some reading I thought this company had the inside track to replacing the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system as well as being used in banks all across the planet. In the past I had documented some middleware applications that used a SWIFT plug in. (Editors Note: A “plug-in” is a software application that lets two different applications talk to each other). So I changed my mind and started reading up on XRP and its future plans. Overall, the winning thought that convinced me to buy into the XRP movement was that I should have no qualms about making money off of the banker’s coattails! They have been doing it to me for decades! Just think of how much good I could do with my XRP returns! A while back I came across a table created by Ripple (see below) that compares XRP to Bitcoin (and others) and I knew this would be a useful tool (reference) in my tool chest. Essentially, the table below compares XRP to Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCC), DASH (a security digital asset), and Litecoin (LTC). Ripple published this table in Nov 28, 2017.
| Speed | Cost | Scalability (transactions per second) | |
| XRP | 3.3 secs | $0.0004 | 1,500 TPS |
| BTC | 45 mins | $1.88 | 16 TPS |
| ETH | 4.49 mins | $0.46 | 16 TPS |
| BCC | 60 mins | $0.21 | 24 TPS |
| DASH | 15 mins | $0.39 | 10 TPS |
| LTC | 12 mins | $0.12 | 56 TPS |
Let me know what you think: mike at protonmail dot ch
What is the Comex Rule 589?
In the XRP (Ripple) digital asset community, the 589 number has a strange aura about it. Some people grin when they see that number pop up in an online XRP chat while others just shake their heads. The BearableGuy123 Telegram character, supposedly an insider about all things XRP, mentioned it in one of his images (see above) in 2019.
So when this image first came out in 2019, people thought that it meant the end of year price for XRP would hit $589! Keep in mind that the ever growing audience of XRP holders has been trying to decipher the BearableGuy 123 images for the past three years. I can’t tell you how many YouTube personalities jumped on that bandwagon. And what happened at the end of the year? Nothing. Everyone, especially those YouTube personalities, were feeling that they had been hoodwinked in the least and manipulated at worst. But as time progressed the 589 was deciphered as the Comex Rule 589. An entry on the Silverdoctors.com web site describes the Comex Rule 589:
“The COMEX Rule 589, which entered into force on 22 December 2014, could be applied at any moment. Let’s suppose, that Silver price is 16$. At some point nobody will want to sell its physical Silver. Buyers will then be forced to raise the auction. After a rise of $ 3, the market will be stopped 2 minutes to let buyers and sellers negotiate. Then the market resumes, the auction goes up by $ 3 … etc. When the threshold of $ 12 rise in the day will be reached, without anyone wanting to sell physical silver, the market will be closed. And there will be no fixing for that day. Without a fixing, nobody will be able to buy or sell silver in the world till the next fixing. The second day, the silver market opens at $ 28. But nobody agrees to sell physical silver at this price … so as the day before, the price rises by $ 12 … but there is once more no fixing. In 2 weeks, 10 business days of trading, courses will increase from $ 16 + $ 120 = $ 136. … Have fun and do the math by yourself.”
The current train of thought is that the XRP digital asset may be tied to a precious mental like gold or silver once the world’s economy collapses and digital currencies take on an even stronger role in everyone’s lives. In the future, while talking to future digital asset holders, get used to hearing of the “infamous” 589 number and all of hope and eventual disappointment tied to the number. And don’t be surprised if you keep seeing that number pop up in all sorts of strange locations.
WEF Crypto Examples?
Want some good suggestions on which cryptocurrencies to buy BEORE the economy/stock market crashes? Most of the cryptos listed in this World Economic Forum (WEF) PDF just released this month may probably be part of the new world wide financial system! At least that is my first impression. And most of the coins (aka digital assets) are available for purchase on Coinbase.com or Uphold.com! This is not financial advice and is for entertainment purposes only. I own XRP and XLM (Stellar). If you don’t like to read, here they are:
– Algorand
– Cardano
– Celo
– XRP
– Solana
– Stellar (XLM)
http://www3.weforum.org/…/WEF_Getting_Started…
How did I come across this information? I regularly search alternative media to get a head’s up on financial and societal trends and what is going on in America and the world.
I look for patterns and trends. In the past three years I have seen a lot of “alleged” blueprints for the new financial system being presented via alternative media. Many of the people providing these blueprints are suspected of being “insiders”. Lately, the remarkable pattern that has surfaced shows many of these same cryptos listed in the recently published (June 2021) World Economic Forum (Cryptocurrencies – A Guide to Getting Started…link below) PDF. What a strange coincidence! So the “crazy” alternative info is now matching what I see on the World Economic Forum’s web site PDF (page 17). Keep in mind that there is a list of close to 10,000 cryptocurrencies to choose from! The WEF chose those six cryptos to use as examples. Hmm. That makes me wonder what their selection process was. Did they throw darts at a dart board? Or could these cryptos be part of the new financial system? My gut feeling says, like I said earlier …maybe. Especially since Coinbase, a crypto currency exchange known for being very picky about which cryptos it makes available, already lists most of those coins! This tells me those coins have been vetted. And XRP, my largest holding, I believe is definitely one of the chosen cryptos to be used in world finance (specifically remittances and possibly as a reserve currency or for derivatives). Are we just waiting for an event to flip the switch? The World Economic Forum has a uncanny way of “predicting” events that end up affecting the world. This is the same WEF that “predicted” the breakout of the current virus and the proliferation of cyber attacks a good one-to-two years in advance. ….. So, I still stand by my observation that those listed cryptos may have an above average chance of succeeding in the coming two to six months.
Hollywood Cast/Crew Party!
My Facebook friend tipped me off as to when and where the cast/crew party for the SyFy Channel’s Sharknado 4 would be held and I was itching to take a short vacation to Las Vegas! How about a video instead of text. Yeah? Here you go friends.