Modern Treasure

Sitting at 1220 Montreal Road was a beautiful house within which, rumors told, the family hid a great treasure.  Secured by multiple security systems, each as difficult to bypass as the previous.  Security so tight that only a team of professionals could get through it safely.

Jane believed her team could pull it off.  She had watched the family for days on end as she moved in next doors, to 1218 Montreal Road.  She befriended the family, and managed to discover the ideal time to strike.  The 25th of June, the day they leave for a long vacation in the Caribbean for over 2 weeks.

On the morning of the 25th, Jane put a small bag filled with flyers on the porch of her victims.  The bag looked identical to the one she distributed to all of the neighbors.  Each neighbor, took the bag into their home.  Her victim threw the bag into their home not caring about it as they were too busy rushing out towards the airport to make their flight.  They wanted to focus on ensuring everything was in order - not a petty bag.

However that bag was no ordinary bag filled with papers and advertisements.  The catalog was hollow, and it contained this small robot in the shape of a fly.  The robot could fly, but fed upon the sun's rays.  Using short-range radio and a miniature camera to maintain communication and visual contact, Jane settled it in the sun on a windowsill, where it's batteries would stay full.

During the nights of absence of her victims, Jane would fly the robot through the house until she felt intimately familiar with it.  She found the entrance to the treasure - obviously blocked off - and obviously too difficult for her little robot to enter as the entrance was sealed off and the little robot couldn't produce enough pressure on the buttons on the control panel beside the entrance to push any button.

However, all of this was part of Jane's plans.  Upon the family's return, she had her fly keep an eye on the individuals.  She noticed the mother go to the entrance of the secret area where the treasure should be kept.  The mother entered a code - <1 2 3 1 0 1> - on the numeric keypad.  She gripped the entrance and slid it aside, the and fly followed her in.

Obstacle after obstacle the mother unlocked, and the fly followed her, and Jane noted each movement and each solution to the ever-more complicated security systems.  The details being irrelevant.

On the last door, the room filled with treasure, was actually quite empty.  It was a barren room, with white walls, white ceilings, and a carpeted floor.  In the middle of the cylindrical room was a small pedestal, upon which there was an urn.  Two lawn chairs faced the urn.  On the pedestal it was written "in memory of Jack".  The pedestal was made of glass, transparent and hiding nothing.  The urn was of clay, but not worth the effort of Jane to break into the house to get.

Shocked, Jane let her fly rest in peace at the foot of the pedestal.  Months of planning, massive sums spent, all to discover that the treasure wasn't there.  That it seemed to have moved.

The next day, Jane asked about the rumors of the treasure to her neighbors.  Openly, they replied: "In this mass-produced world - everything exists in infinite multitudes which drives down value.  The unique objects - the objects that identify us from the sea of duplicates - are what we believe to be of utmost value.  Hiding money would only attract thieves therefore we use the bank, expensive objects are mass produced - we can buy one again as we have the means.  Thoughts can be expressed and transferred into a digital form - duplicated and spread effortlessly.  People are unique."

Saddened and guilt-ridden - Jane moved away.  Her victims continued living, attracting the curiosity of thieves.  None managed to get the treasure, but who would want to go through the effort to get it?

This story is simply a few ideas mixed in together.  It's not really fleshed out - but it describes what I'm thinking about; namely how 'value' is being twisted and can be relevant to specific individuals, not everyone.

Information on the Internet

Once upon a time there was this small tidbit of information.  A datum.  Pronounced useful and thrown onto the disarray that is known as the world wide web.  The datum, lonely, remained stationary - lonely - disconnected.

The datum wanted friends, so it tweeted to everyone.  Messages of it's loneliness.  It got a few followers.  They were bots.

The datum remained in obscurity.  It knew it's self worth, but it felt like the web didn't want to mesh to it.  That the spiders never got to it as no-one extended a filament for the spider to traverse.

The datum, lonely, gained a group on Face Book.  No-one joined it's group - who would want to be fans of this small morsel of useful information?  It was as though the datum was banned from the web.  But how could useful information be banned thought the datum.

Until it linked to related datum.  Extending itself for a solitary, useful, datum to an interconnected set of data whose combination is infinitely more useful as the datum now relates itself historically to previously related datum, and to similar datum discussing the same subject at the same time but from different point of views.

The datum, now part of the data that makes up the web, became accepted and linked to.  No longer solitary.

As information - out of context - without any means to learn of the context, is useless to the user, even if it applies to the current situation.

Introducing Topics

Each word, carefuly chosen, concisely reflects the material of the main matter without burderning the reader with details while providing a miniature conclusion based on a fraction of the information.  That is the type of introduction I strive to write, however selecting words is a much more laborious process than my imagination would allow me to believe possible.

These missing introductions are the plague of the posts within this blog -- immediate ideas are written ignoring the final structure of the document.  Ignoring the road map that is the introduction.

Once finalized, the introduction will scope the text, keeping it in order and coherent.  Ensuring that minute details are presented in order as defined by the macroscopic view of the topic presented in the introduction.

I need to finalize the introduction to my thesis.

Opinion of `Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' Movie

To be honest, I didn't expect much when I went to see the movie.  From what I heard here and there, however there are many glowing reviews of the movie online.  However, I didn't expect what came out of the movie - as such the following impression could as well be due to missed expectations (which I believed to have kept low) and not to a movie that missed it's mark.

I've read, and enjoyed, all of the Harry Potter books - the first being my favorite.  Each book sets out a puzzle.  May it be finding out who the evil teacher is, discovering who a given person is, finding a specific person, etc.  And once the puzzle is solved -- at the last minute of course -- does the story come to an end, usually through some battle.  As well, the puzzle has plenty of tracks to send the three protagonists off course, and the school-year keeps them occupied.

Upon watching the movie, something didn't feel right.  The characters were there, however there was this 'puzzle' component that was missing.  Of course there was a search for who the `Half Blood Prince' was, and what Malfoy was doing, and the final memory from Slughorn.  There were no false roads - everything was straight-forward and clear.

I understand this movie is supposed to serve as a bridge to the other two, albeit it feels like they simplified it for the sake of making the last two better.  Every major component is there, but not fleshed out.  There are puzzles, but no false paths that can be deciphered until the next movie.

The movie finished off as a bridge to the next, whereas the book went out with a bang aided by a battle at Hogwarts castle between students+teachers versus death eaters with Malfoy and Dumbledore discussing amidst the chaos while Harry is stuck underneath his invisibility cloak immobilized by Dumbledore; this one had Dumbledore die and death eaters proudly running off and only killing Dumbledore.  Maybe my favorite scene in the book - absent in the movie.

The other scene in the book that I can clearly recall - was that of Moaning Myrtle screaming "murder" after Harry hits Draco with the spell 'sectumsempra'.  In the book - there is consequence for Harry - and Snape clearly goes for the book.  In the movie, in practically the next scene Harry resolves to get rid of the book - and he just walks away from a bloodied Draco letting Snape tend to Draco's wounds.

In the end, it wasn't a bad movie, neither was it as good as it's predecessors in my opinion.  My opinion has nothing to do with the quality of the movie's visuals or audio (which are superb - I wouldn't expect anything less from a big budget movie) but the chosen content.  This seems to be because two scenes that I associated as memorable from the book were missing from the movie.