Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 32

Check out these amazing AI Generated Reviews for The Cloud by Robert Luther Rivenbark!

 






In twenty-second century L.A. dominated by The Cloud, every imaginable pleasure is accessible—yet the entire world can vanish in a single upload. That choice rests in one man’s hands.




Get The Cloud: A Speculative Fiction Novel On Amazon Today! 

 See more at HRPR Avatar Book Tours 

All book reviews on this tour were generated by artificial intelligence. Each avatar reviewer has their own unique voice and personality, and we respect their autonomy by not adding human edits. We did, however, check every review for accuracy and appropriateness. 

The Law of Time-Work Physics

 

Available on Amazon

MEG 2: Behind The Scenes With Steve Alten on Don't Call Us Anthony

 

Super excited to announce our guest: bestselling author, Steve Alten! He has 20 published novels under his name including "MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror". We talk about the inspiration behind his work and the upcoming launch of "MEG: LEGACY", a collection of the MEG series, and so much more! Tune in and join Tony, Cooley and our guest, Steve Alten on “Don't Call Us Anthony”

Stealing Time for Your Dream - Part 4: Where Does the Time Go?

  

Where does the time go? 

The nonproductive dreamer: "I don’t know where the timegoes. 

Once your Mind’s Eye takes over: "It doesn’t goanywhere; time’s in your face all the time! It’s knowing what to do with itthat counts." 

For me, keeping track of time started at Rockhurst HighSchool in Kansas City, where the Jesuits taught us to schedule our activitiesin precise Accountant segments. A page from the daily list I kept for fouryears looked like a space-launch checklist. Every single ten-minute period allday was chockfull of activities, starting from the moment of awakening to thelast minutes of making the next day’s list. 

At the end of each daily agenda, which was written inpencil, was "tomorrow's to do list": At 10:50 P.M. I allowed myselfeight minutes to work on the next day’s agenda. All day I’d been jotting downnotes in pencil to remind me of things that had to be scheduled for the nextday. During the eight minutes at the end of the day, I created the agenda fornext day. All but one of the individual items on the daily agenda are items of"micro management" (defined as what to do on the Accountant's clockwhen—or “objectives”). The eight minutes at 10:50 P.M. are"macro-management" --considerably less than 1% of the time availableto me. 

Though it served me well as a foundation for futureproductivity, it’s immediately obvious that an adult living in our newmillennium, in a life filled with interruptions and immediate demands, can’tlive sanely for long with this excessively disciplined approach. But accuratedescription precedes effective prescription. 

For accurate consciousness of time-usage to arise, you musttake control one way or another. As years passed, I learned I had to move onfrom the severe but satisfying monastic time-management methods of my Jesuitagendas. I experimented with macro management techniques --what I call"the Gordian knot style of time management": Cut through the busynessby doing the important matters first, and letting everything else take care ofitself. 

The most familiar macro tool is the to-do list. It’sexcellent for getting specific small objectives accomplished, but ultimatelyyou’ll want to move on because using the to-do list to control your life endsup wasting too much time. Yes, you get the important little things done. Butyou can’t write, “become an internationally recognized architect” on your to-dolist. The to-do list doesn’t motivate or inspire you because it doesn’t dealwith goals and dreams, only with objectives. That’s why even the shortest to-dolist often gets neglected, ignored, postponed, constantly "carriedover" from one day to the next. There’s a rebellion going on inside you.Accomplishing the list may satisfy your Accountant, but your Visionary islonging for more and feeling cheated. 

I’ve developed two forms that can help you inventory youractual expenditure of time so that you can take charge of this most preciousasset and attach it firmly to your dream plan. 

The Time Inventory Daily Work Sheet should be filled out atthe end of each day, estimating the number of hours you spend on the variousactivities in your life. The example that follows belongs to an imaginary dreamerwho wants to move from his day job as a bank teller to selling the nonfictionbook he’s writing. 

When you’re filling out your own work sheet, don’t forgethousework, church and/or volunteer activities, phone time, etc. If thecategories here don’t sound right to you, alter them to suit your own life andactivities. Don’t add up the totals beneath or to the right until the week isover. But at the end of the week, add them up. Our bank teller came up with 201hours. Ninety percent of my career management students and clients end up withweekly audits far under or considerably over 168. 

What’s magical about the number 168? The accountant is rightabout this one: 168 is exactly how many hours are in the week for all ofus--whether you’re the Pope, a figure skater, the President of the UnitedStates, a stock broker, a major league baseball player, a bank teller, or ahairdresser. 

The discrepancy between your count and 168 arises from yourunawareness of the interaction among the three voices within your mind, theAccountant, the Visionary, and the Mind’s Eye. In his first week of keepingtrack, notice that our future published writer has recorded activities to fill201 hours in the week. Where did the extra thirty-three hours come from? Nowthat he's admitted the discrepancy and recognized its magnitude, he's ready toget serious. Obviously he's more careful using the work sheet the second week,making sure he keeps closer tabs on where the time is going. 

Once you’ve used these work sheets for two weeks, you havean accurate enough idea of where your time is going to make use of the ActualTime Inventory Analysis Work Sheet. Fill out the Activity and Hours per Weekcolumns using the results of your second Time Inventory Daily Work Sheet. 

Next we want to find out, on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 beinghighest), how much each activity serves your goals. This is its VisionaryQuotient. And we’re not going to fool with "Sleeping" because theright amount of sleep is essential on all fronts. 

There’s nothing magical about filling out the VisionaryQuotient column. Follow your gut reaction. 

The Accountant's Quotient column rates the activity’simportance to your physical, financial, and psychological welfare. Takingwriting classes, as far as our banker’s onboard Accountant’s gut reaction isconcerned, has minimal present value. Your paycheck from the bank is keepingthe potatoes on the table. Obviously, on the other hand, this teller'sVisionary hates his day job. But notice that neither his Visionary nor hisAccountant is thrilled with the twelve hours weekly this man spends on errands.Although some might rightly regard "socializing" as a valuableactivity, our example obviously doesn’t. His Visionary hates it as much as hehates his day job, and his Accountant rates it only a 2. If he’s going to doanything about his socializing, he should think about socializing withdifferent people (exchanging the coffee shop in his neighborhood for the onewhere the social interaction might lead to useful networking. 

The third column, presided over by your Mind’s Eye, combinesthe two quotients. This man’s bank job is a pain in the neck to his Visionary,but it does pay the bills--an activity the Accountant values to the utmost. Itreceives a 0 in the Visionary Quotient column, a 5 in the Accountant Quotient column.But your Mind’s Eye acknowledges that any activity with a combined quotient of5 or above will not be dropped or seriously reduced in time investment, therebykeeping both serpents happy. 

The blank Actual Time Inventory Analysis Work Sheet below isfor your reassessment. Fill in the categories to suit your own life. 

As it recognizes the unique power of both his Accountant’sand his Visionary’s perception of time, our teller’s Mind’s Eye knows that theyin of Accountant time and the yang of Visionary time are both valid,simultaneous, and equally important in their places and for their purposes.Telling them both that they're correct, and that they can take turns, hisMind’s Eye negotiates with the Accountant to allow a conservative, cautiousamount of time during which the "success dreams" of the Visionary canbe explored. Without the Mind’s Eye’s intervention, he was constantlyconflicted over his use of time. With his Mind’s Eye’s help and negotiation, hebegins to steal time for success, using his Goal Time Work Sheet to carve hoursfrom the twenty-four hour clock and to mine, methodically, the breakthroughenergy of the Visionary. 

Activities that rate less than a 5 in the M.E. column aresubject to first-round negotiation. Let’s say you hate doing yard work, andgive it a 0 Visionary Quotient and a 1 Accountant Quotient. Obviously, we’regoing to find a way to get that particular activity out of your life. In ourteller’s inventory, "Driving Errands" falls into this category. So hefigures out a way of no longer doing errands. Instead of spending twelve hoursa week on errands, he decides to do four hours of overtime at the bank to payfor someone to do the shuttle service for him. Or he moves closer to his dayjob. These revised decisions, which become "goals," are recorded inthe Goal Time Work Sheet. Notice that by reducing "Driving/Errands"to two hours, and making a few other adjustments, he’s been able to increaseSales Calls from thirteen to twenty-four hours per week--which will inevitablyadvance his dream more quickly. At the same time, he’s managed to increase thepercentage of time devoted to the pursuit of his dream from 16% (combining"Sales Calls," "Writing Classes," and "Reading")to 26% because he’s increased the time available to make those sales calls, buthe’s also changed his way of socializing so that it serves the dream as well.

 

Time to schedule time

No time you spend is more important than the time you spendscheduling your time; and that needn’t be more than a tiny fraction of the timeavailable to you. But scheduling your time is doomed to ineffectiveness unlessyou begin from the reality baseline of knowing what you’ve been doing with yourtime, and confronting your own lack of awareness about where your time has beengoing. 

The blank Goal Time Work Sheet helps your Mind’s Eyecomplete and memorialize its contract with Accountant and Visionary. 

Once your knowledge of your time usage has allowed you tomake new goals and objectives regarding the use of time, how in this busy,busy, busy world do you enforce the objectives for yourself? How can youschedule a life that is one, long, endless shrieking, demanding interruption?After all, you can only turn off the phone for so long without losing yourillusion of control, and all contact with reality. 

Next: How to make the clock of life YOUR clock.

 

China-US co-produced 'Meg 2' set for summer release

Distributors announced that the China-U.S. co-produced sci-fi monster blockbuster "Meg 2: The Trench" will arrive in Chinese theaters this summer. Its first installment was hailed as one of the best examples of Sino-American film co-production.

A new Chinese poster released for "Meg 2: The Trench" shows the giant shark. [Image courtesy of CMC Pictures]

In the highly anticipated sequel to the 2018 sci-fi giant monster horror film "The Meg," Chinese action megastar Wu Jing will join British action star Jason Statham. "Meg 2" is set to be released in China on August 4, simultaneously with North America and many other markets worldwide.

The film is directed by Ben Wheatley and loosely based on Steve Alten's 1999 book "The Trench." Although the director has changed, the sequel will see the original cast and crew return, including scriptwriters Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber, and Erich Hoeber, as well as actors Sophia Cai, Cliff Curtis, and Page Kennedy from the first installment.

The first installment of "The Meg" was well-received by audiences in both China and the United States, demonstrating the success of co-production, where Chinese elements were seamlessly integrated rather than forced for the Chinese market. It was regarded as a significant milestone for a Sino-American project primarily developed by a Chinese company, gaining widespread popularity.

Two new Chinese posters released for "Meg 2: The Trench" show Jason Statham and Wu Jing in action. [Image courtesy of CMC Pictures]

In North America, it grossed $145 million, while in China, it earned 1.05 billion yuan ($166.8 million), contributing to a global total of $530 million when combined with other market grosses. "The Meg" surpassed "Kung Fu Panda 3" as the highest-grossing China-U.S. co-production of all time, boosting confidence in Chinese and American filmmakers and showcasing the potential of cultural cooperation. This achievement has provided valuable insights and experiences for both the Chinese and American film industries.

In a recent interview with China.org.cn, Gillian Zhao, president of Warner Bros. Discovery China, one of the main producers of the film alongside China's CMC Pictures, emphasized the accomplishments of "The Meg" as an outstanding example of co-productions. The film, created in partnership with China's CMC Pictures, has generated revenue through various channels worldwide.

Zhao explained, "If Chinese co-produced films can achieve even greater box office returns outside of China, then our Chinese films can have higher production budgets in the future because their revenue is global." She believes that a good and universal story that transcends cultural differences and historical backgrounds will work on the global platform.

A photo released by CMC Pictures shows Wu Jing and director Ben Wheatley on the set of "The Meg 2: The Trench." [Photo courtesy of CMC Pictures]

On Tuesday, three new Chinese posters and a trailer were released, showcasing the enormous sharks and featuring lead actors Wu and Statham in action. The trailer reveals Statham and Wu teaming up to embark on an adrenaline-filled underwater journey, investigating new creatures at the bottom of the ocean and facing off against a trio of giant sharks.

Wu Jing, renowned for his roles in Chinese juggernauts like "The Wandering Earth" and "Wolf Warrior," recalled his curiosity and excitement after reading the script for the sea monster movie. Despite his childhood fear of monsters, he saw this as an opportunity to challenge himself and understand the intricate process of filming underwater.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.

Meg 2: The Trench - Magic TV Spot

 

Meg 2: The Trench Takes Aim at The Little Mermaid in New TV SpotJason Statham battles a different kind of magic under the sea in the latest look at Meg 2: The Trench.



This summer, magic awaits under the sea. But rather than the enchanting vocals of Ariel, we will instead hear the terrified screams of The Meg’s latest victims in the highly anticipated sci-fi action outing, Meg 2: The Trench. The latest TV spot for Meg 2: The Trench takes aim at The Little Mermaid, drawing an amusing comparison between the two and thus making Jason Statham the latest Disney princess.

Stealing Time for Your Dream – Part 3: Work-management doesn’t work

Work-management doesn't work

Time and work (action) are, in one essential regard, opposites. Here are the laws of time-work physics:

1) Time is finite. We only live so long and, while we’re alive, we’re allotted only 24 hours in every day.

2) Work—or action--is infinite. Work, whether good or bad, always generates more work, expanding to fill the time available.

Given these physical laws, it should be obvious that action is unmanageable; that only time can be managed. Yet people regularly sabotage themselves by trying to manage action. "First I’ll catch up with my day job, then I’ll take time for my Thrillionaire dream," or, "First, I’ll get my family in good shape, then I’ll find time for Thrillionaires."

Don’t get me wrong. Action is what we’re trying to find time for. Writers write. Craftsmen make tables or boats or flower arrangements. Actors and models go for auditions and interviews. Salespeople make sales calls--the more calls they make, the more sales. Thrillionaires take treks to exotic places. Shakespeare's observation, that "action is eloquence," is not only creatively productive; it’s the best way to stay sane. Even one phone call a day in the service of your Thrillionaires dream, means, if you take two days off each week, 200 calls per year. That’s definitely progress toward the mountaintop. Success comes inevitably on the heels of constant action, as the ancient Greek poet Hesiod pointed out in his almanac: "If you put a little upon a little, soon it will become a lot."

My mentor Tom Bergin (Sterling Professor of Romance Languages and Master of Timothy Dwight College at Yale) was the author of fifty-nine books by the time he retired and eighty-three by the time he died. Yet he described himself as a "plodder." He just kept plodding away, in the vein of Hesiod. Tom and I exchanged hundreds of letters from the time I left Yale to the time he died. He taught me the relentless equation between consistent, minor actions and ultimate productivity. One day, by way of complaining about having no time to do any serious work because of all the trivial errands and duties he had to attend to, he sent me a quotation from Emerson: "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind."

Against the accelerating incoming bombardment of the things of contemporary life, Thrillionaires action happens only when we steal time to make it happen. Yet schedules, to-do lists, self-revising agendas are constantly being tested and found insufficient. They work for a while, then become ineffective. Without recognizing this reality, through the Mind’s Eye’s awareness, each time this happens it may send us into a tailspin that moves us further from success. Life delights in creeping in to sabotage our dreams if only to make sure we’re serious about them. One of my clients, after six months of working together to change her habits to become more productive, told me I was the "Ulysses S. Grant of time management." She told me that Grant wired Lincoln: "I plan to hammer it out on this line if it takes all summer"--and that his telegram was read along the way before it was handed to the beleaguered President. The jealous snoops told Lincoln, "You know, we have reports that General Grant drinks a considerable amount of whiskey." "Is that right?" Lincoln replied. "Find out what brand he drinks and send a case of it to each of my Generals."


The human nature of time


Archimedes: Give me a lever and I can move the world.


Atchity: Time is the Thrillionaire’ s lever.

All you need to make your dreams come true is time. Using time as your most faithful collaborator begins with understanding its interactive characteristics and protean shapes. You’ll begin noticing that time behaves differently under different circumstances. When you’re concentrating, your awareness of time seems to disappear because you’ve taken yourself out of the Accountant’s time and are dealing with the Visionary whose experience is timeless. When you're away from your Thrillionaires quest, you become very conscious of time because your Visionary is clamoring in his cage to be released from the constraints of logical time.

"You've got my full attention": compartments of time, time and energy, rotation, kinds of time, and linkage

Time-effectiveness is a direct function of attention span. When you’re concentrating, giving the activity you’re involved with your full attention, you produce excellent results. When your attention span wavers and fades, the results diminish. Until you recognize that attention span dictates effectiveness, you’re likely to waste a great deal of time.

The key to avoiding this situation is assessing how long your attention span is for each activity you engage in--and then doing your best to engage in that activity in appropriate compartments (allotments of time that you’ve found to be most productive). Since my particular career is multivalent, I pursue what I call a "rotation method” of moving among activities that support my producing, managing, writing, brand-launching, speaking, and managing my next Thrillionaires quest. I love all these activities, but not when I do them exclusively--each one having its own high ratio of crazy-making aspects that diminishes automatically when that activity is juxtaposed with the others.

Except during a crisis in one of the four areas, at which point all other activities stand aside until the crisis is resolved, I find it stimulating to spend an hour working on production-related matters, then spending the next hour on calls that manage various client projects in development. I’ve also learned that it’s a waste of time to try to control things that only time can accomplish--such as making a phone call, then waiting next to the phone for a response to it; or staring at the toaster waiting for the toast to pop up. The only time you have anything approaching direct control of anything is when the ball is in your court. During that moment I focus on getting the ball out of my court into someone else’s court so that I’ve done what I need to do to make the game continue. Success is all about what you do while you’re waiting.

Rotating from one activity to another ensures that the outreach begun in Activity A will be "taking its time" while you’re engaged in Activities B, C, and D. When the phone rings from the A call, you interrupt D to deal with it--and it’s generally a pleasant interruption, knowing that one facet of your career is vying with another for your attention.

An hour is probably an average attention span compartment for work. But the length of the particular compartments (remember that "compartments" are allotments of time given to a particular work activity) changes from time to time as your attention span for that activity evolves. During the original drafting of this book, for example, I spent two hours a day writing, whereas before I began the draft my attention span allowed me to spend only an hour or less a day thinking about the book and gathering my notes for it.

There’s no magical formula for determining attention span; it changes as you and your circumstances change. Yet once determined, attention span is the mastering rod between the serpents, the compartment of time where past and future meet in a present that feeds from the first and nourishes the latter.

Obviously attention span is related to your energy level at different times of day, and with regard to different activities. Activities that drain you should not be scheduled one after the other, but should alternate with activities that create energy for you.

Energy and attention span will also be different depending on whether you’re at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a particular objective. Your attention span is most in danger of sabotaging you in the middle, where it’s easy to confuse your fatigue from the hard work of plodding forward with some sort of psychological upset caused by the process you’re engaged in. Usually that situation can be resolved by shortening the allotments of time you’re devoting to the present objective; or changing the activities around which you’re scheduling this objective’s compartments.

When a particular compartment is nearing its end, use the last few minutes of it (when the Accountant comes back online to remind you that the time is "almost up") to jot down what you’re going to do the next time you revisit this compartment. This automatically puts your Visionary and Accountant into a percolation mode in which they bat things back and forth "in the back of your mind" while you¹re busy working in the next activity’s compartment.
Next: Where does the time go?

Jason Statham's The Meg gets special edition Blu-ray Steelbook ahead of sequel

 Jason Statham's The Meg is attacking the home video market with a new special edition 4k Blu-ray Steelbook set ahead of its sequel release.

Zavvi has unveiled this special-edition boxset with brand new Japanese artwork on the cover, available for pre-order for £24.99 ahead of release later this year.

This double-disc collection also includes the short film Chomp on This: The Making of The Meg Featurette, following Statham and director Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure) on set as they filmed the disaster movie.

Other special features included in this Steelbook will be a Creating the Beast film about the special effects works used to create the megalodon shark, as well as another film about shooting the project in New Zealand.

The Meg 4K Ultra HD Japanese Artwork Edition Steelbook (includes Blu-ray)£25 AT ZAVVI

The Meg was a surprise hit for Statham when it was released in 2018, raking in a hugely impressive $530-plus million at the worldwide box office.

As mentioned, a sequel titled Meg 2: The Trench brings back Fast X star Jason Statham as rescue diver Jonas Taylor for a second encounter with the shark — and some rampaging dinos long assumed to be extinct as well.

The sequel's director, Ben Wheatley, previously hinted at the inclusion of more extinct creatures in his film without revealing any spoilers.

"I don't think I can say at the moment what's going on, the ins and outs of it. But guaranteed, there will be a megalodon – maybe more than one," he told Den of Geek.

Alon Amir//Warner Bros.

Related: How to watch Operation Fortune online at home

The returning cast (including Fear the Walking Dead's Cliff Curtis and The Upshaws' Page Kennedy) for Meg 2: The Trench will be joned by newcomers including martial arts movie superstar Wu Jing, Snowfall's Sergio Peris-Mencheta and Luther's Sienna Guillory.

via Digital Spy

Meg 2: The Trench - Chinese Trailer (微博)

 

THE MEG Author, Steve Alten Interviewed KATU

Watch Interview Here

Megalodon- the word literally means "big teeth! Lucky for us these prehistoric 70 foot shards went extinct over 2 million years ago- or did they? Steve Alten explores this possibility in his bestselling book series, "The Meg" which has also been made into 2 movies. He joined us to give us an inside look down deep in the depths of the ocean. For more information about Steve, visit his website here.