2025 January Retrospective

If this was some tabloid blog, then this very post would be quite a mouthful, considering all that has went down, and the year hasn’t even started in earnest yet. But, alas it is not. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I’ll let you be the judge of it, as I am not a judge or jury myself.

Stronghold Crusader: Conspiracy Theory Edition (Cont.)

Just like all good conspiracy theories these days, this particular one also turned out to be right on cue.

The definitive edition of Stronghold Crusader is most definitely happening, and you can even try out the demo for yourself. Isn’t this the best news you’ve heard all year-round? What an absolutely fantastic way to start the year, considering when there’s not much one could get too excited about otherwise.

It’s pretty crazy how it only took 20+ years for Firefly to finally get it that people do love innovation in terms of mechanics, but absolutely despise the change of art direction, especially when the original was just so so incredibly good.

To some extent the inability to understand this fact was also the root cause of why most RTS franchises failed miserably in their efforts of transitioning to 3D in the late 90s and early 2000s.

With some luck, I’ll probably find myself playing this for the next 20+ years.

Missing the gold-rush syndrome

Most everybody these days, seems to like to invent all sorts of syndromes. I guess as organized superstition loses its potency and grip, people tend to feel the need to replace the void via other means, and honestly who can blame them?

As a result, I thought to my myself that I’d join in the fun and pitch in. Maybe it will stick? Who knows, right? One, can never be 100% certain.

Over the course of my life and career, there were a couple of moments that when I look back at in retrospect would identify as a certain type of tech-gold-rush. Now, some happened, when I was too young of course, and you all know by now that I am not the kind of person known to be crying over spilled milk. However, I’d like to point out and dive into a couple; where I was in what would one consider the right place at the right time, but decided not to just keep an eye on the developments, but maintain a certain distance – in other words, I preferred or rather didn’t want to get hands dirty.

Let me start with the most obvious one, I was right in the middle of the so called ushering in of what eventually became known collectively as the “social media”, working on so called “apps” for Facebook, and other lesser known networks. This was few years before the time Farmville, and subsequently I always felt that I could have capitalized on being that early, but alas, I didn’t.

The next one in line was of course the iPhone, and the so called “smart phones”. Due to a number of special circumstances, I actually had my hands on one of the first generation iPhones’, right after it came out. But, just like with “social media” before, I didn’t make the jump.

Later, the era of AR and the resurgence of VR came and kind of withered away in the wind, without me caring or paying too much attention to the whole charade. I still consider it all nothing more than a gimmick in any and all of its current and past incarnations.

In all of these cases, I just didn’t find the tech all that interesting to be perfectly and totally honest; and as a polyglot, I fancy myself as someone who possess the ability to pick up and become pro-efficient in any language, and with any piece of tech for that matter. So for me, it was never important to do it right there and then, because I knew that if there was a real need, I’d be more than capable to cross the bridge when it came to it. No need to get it off my system prematurely.

Now, where am I going with all this? Am I putting the beginnings of my midlife crisis into words here? No, of course not. Or at least I’d like to think that I am not. Getting old is an interesting thing for sure, I’ll give you that.

However, for the past 4 years or so in particular, we’ve been seeing the beginnings of what eventually will be the gold-rush of AI. Wait a minute, you might say, didn’t the whole thing plateau already? Well, a certain ceiling has been hit, that’s for sure, but in my experience the actual gold-rush hasn’t even started yet, or at least not in earnest.

Don’t get me wrong, not bad at all for some vectors and dot products, right?. But as far as the doomsday scenario of AI replacing all jobs and killing us all – AGI in other words, we’ve been barking up the wrong tree, in the wrong forest, on the wrong planet, wrong solar system and ultimately wrong universe. All that is to say that we are not even 0.000000001% closer to anything that could be called even remotely AGI of any description. This is my own personal opinion, and you are free to disagree with it, hell – you can even quote me later to prove me all wrong. I’ll take with a smile and a tip of my baseball cap as any good gentleman and scholar worth his salt would do.

Oh, but what about agents, and assistants, and so forth. My advice, just relax – despite of what you might hear on the great information superhighway, “it’s not so over”, in fact not even close. All this so say, that I’ve been contemplating, if I should do the reckless thing this time around and do jump on the proverbial bandwagon, or just ride it out like I did on so many past occasions.

I would very much like to retire early and then just work on my one-too-many side projects that I never get enough time to dedicate to, so it all seems like I am advancing at a snail’s pace from the outside. On the other hand, if I do it and take the leap, then I’d have to put aside everything else aside for a while and get into some sort of a laser focus mode.

Decisions, decisions …