Doing some housekeeping soon...

 Archiving all the old posts.

Thoughts about myths: some thoughts I need a perspective on

 I started listening to Stories of Old Greece and Rome as well as The Sons of Odin (Norse mythology) about a year ago. I was intrigued that there were different points of view about the old myths of gods, titans/giants, and heroes; I became intrigued in the Stories of Old Greece and Rome because of Ovid and his epic poem The Metamorphoses - in The Sons of Odin because of Neil Gaiman's story American Gods.
 One of these differing accounts I noticed was about one hero Perseus - flying with Hermes' winged shoes - who deals with one of the Titans by the name of Atlas and in Ovid's account confronts the giant - who wants to shove Perseus away for fear of the theft his Golden apples; another account says that Atlas is weary of holding up the sky and requests that Perseus do him a favor - either way the Titan ends up becoming stone from looking into the eyes of the decapitated gorgon Medusa.
 I listen to the story about the Sons of Odin and I'm telling my aunt about it - how the story uses simple, more Nordic, words to describe the scenes in Asgard among it's inhabitants - and she says to me 'you know that's just myth right?' and I affirm that - but these are interesting and wonderful stories to know about.
  I've been thinking about the simplicity of the language in one story, Sons of Odin, and about the complexity of the language in the other story, Ovid's Metamorphoses. I'm thinking about the words we get from these myths, the stories behind these old words - and I think about the one story my family would probably like me to treat as truth - the stories told in the old and new testaments of the Bible - where even those stories have contradictory accounts in and of themselves. How much of the language that I read and hear in stories that are in English are limited by the language they use?
 Why shouldn't I treat the testaments as I do the myths of Old Greece, Old Rome, and Old Norse - just interesting and wonderful stories to know about? What happens if I respect these old stories of gods, godesses, the curiosity of Pandora, Odin's sacrifice at world-tree, and other things just as much as I respect the testaments of my childhood? How limited are we modern English speakers by the limits of the old myths and stories that have been told? The symbols we see - in myth, logic, ethics, politics and plays - are not new and seem to just be new combinations rather than entirely new words ... this makes me wonder about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: how much of what I as a native English speaker perceive and categorize in my experience is determined by what my ancestors perceived and categorized as their experiences?

Working on my self

Getting up every day and going to school, working on myself. I've been doing this since January, I have not had much time to blog. Figured out a few good things about myself and also some frustrating things as well. Things are much improved over last year.

New Favorite Quote (October 2015)

  My new favorite quote, from around the year 1600 by a poet named Edward Dyer:

          'But all the pleasure I find / 
    is to maintain a quiet mind.'

  I don't know about the rest of the poem - but this particular line struck me as important to remember; there is value in maintaining a quiet mind.

Listening to the Blues...

Hello folks,

Wanted to recommend some blues tracks by a friend of mine, Curtis Schomberg. Hopefully this will strike your ears as enjoyably as it does mine: enjoy them via youtube.

 Until next time,

 Enjoy Seizeless Thoughts

Being Deviant:

 After years of avoiding it, I am finally back to being deviant... on DeviantArt anyhow.

  -- 0x0DAB

Anxiety and Weaving

      "Damn it, my hands are too f*-!%$ up to weave; they won't stop shaking." I am walking home from a class on loss and grief and was recently overwhelmed by the feeling of what I call 'human static' - when too many voices are presented to me and I cannot decipher meaningful conversation. The class on loss and grief is familiar enough to me - 15 people have become familiar enough to me that my anxiety with any one of them would be zero if presented in any situation but the following: everyone chattering and giving well wishes as things wrap up for the end of group - but no, I cannot chatter and give well wishes because I... I am terrified. It was 7:58pm when I fled and it was 8:48pm before I finally began to re-assert control over my anxiety. Why?

    Noise? Thoughts of mixing up that noise for this noise - mixing pieces of human speech into a snythseis ... synthesis of of voices that have no particular meaning or, worse, a a meaningful phrase or sentence or question that was not said, that was not their intent, and that would be strange given the context.

    I must face these challenges all within milliseconds and my brain simply locks up and then another part of my brain takes over: I freeze. I look for fastest route out. I escape.

   What if I had a wife and kids, now, instead of being a bachelor? Perhaps some day they would all decide to surprise me for a birthday party - as they decided to absorb from the television imagery of how these things should go - and I know my response:

    I imagine opening a door, bag or briefcase in hand (exhausted from a day at a cubical farm?) and suddenly there's a blast of 'human static' that somehow amounts to 20 or 30 people saying 'surprise!' or 'surp--se!' or 'wah - blat!' Who knows...

   So - my brain locks up and a different part takes over:

   I snarl, yell back in rage, take a defensive pose, and slam the door closed - to walk quickly away from a suddenly posed threat. I am exhausted and have fallen back on atavistic ways of thinking.

  And imagining this scenario in my head I ask myself '... why?' and there are many conclusions to why:

    - why go out and deal with crowds? where there are humans - they tend to gather.

    - why do I react this way? something happened long ago and far away.

    - why can't I control my fear? fear is not something to be controlled.

    - why must I be so focused to get past my fear? the arrow of my concentration stops fear.

    - why can't I just be still in the midst of the human static? I can't hear everything.

Separating Creative Output and Rest.

    I am having an easier time sleeping lately - thanks to melatonin at 8:30 each night - but I think it might be a good idea to separate my sleep area (the room with my bed and clothes in it) from my creative area (where my piano, desk, books and computer are) because currently they are all in the same area and my messy room is getting frustrating to walk through or do anything creative in. I frequently read outside my room, write outside my room, and I never code (much), write fiction, or do artwork here at my house.
    I've been considering changing my room around a bit - to accommodate better sleep hygiene and to (hopefully) improve my creative habits. The thought that is seizeless here is that I am unable to decide where creative habit begins and personal places end. Creativity and personality, for me, seem to be two sides of the same coin. The problem is that when I am creating in my room (like writing this post for instance) I feel like lying down and that doesn't seem to be a good way to do things posture-wise (my arms and wrists complain with each keystroke, but I ignore it).
   I know the things that I use to create: piano, desk, books, computer. I know the things I use to sleep and store clothes (a closet and a bed). Perhaps I'll just move the things I use to create into a different area - the only way I could have come up with this idea was seeing the way my friend operates his living space: he maintains a well ordered house with a separate space for his music, for his art, for his entertainment, and his sleeping. I think I'll just start with a separate space for my creative endeavors, for my sleeping space, and then go from there.

Quote from Soul Dust Lecture

"Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.
 Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the
soul is the piano with many strings." -- Wassily Kandinsky

Writing habits

Well... It has been a while since I posted here. But then again, I have never really been but sporadic in my writing habits. I have tried working on a more regular schedule but it just does not seem to fit my style of putting pen to paper. The only success I had with scheduling was the 1000 to 2000 word regimen suggested by Steven King's On Writing. But that began to burn me out. Especially when it came to getting 80,000 words. I have an alert that shows up at 4:30pm each day which reminds me I should be at my desk writing for an hour or two... [originally posted by text message]

The Mid-morning Application Idea: A simple dream recorder

 I have, for some time, been looking for a way to record my dreams in as unobtrusive a way as possible. The problem is that when I search for recorders to use on my laptop I find them either: a) too simple, b) too complex, or c) too bright, or d) cluttered.
 To this end I propose to write an application called, aptly enough, Simple Dream Recorder. Perhaps someone else already has a software project by this name - if so I'll have to come up with another name, but for now I think I'll just continue with this tag.

 I hope to document the project from conception to development to use (by my self, in this instance)... and perhaps I'll present those ideas here - or start yet another blog (like The Mad Hacker) whose end is abrupt and confusing.

 Perhaps this idea shall fade when the daylight arrives - like a nightmare... here then gone?

Brutal Simulacra

Welcome Back To SecondLife...

(Please note that this post is much longer due to not posting from a cell-phone)

 I just logged in to my oldest Second Life account a moment ago, landed where I logged off about five years ago, and got greeted by someone who commented on the age of my avatar - how seldom seen are nine-year-old avatars in Svarga (or did they mean in-game?). We conversed about what took away from the experience of creative play when first exploring that digital place.
 Seeing that earning lindens (the in-game currency) by scripting sailboat simulations could actually be converted into real currency and buy a real sailboat was when it became less creative play and more work that was creative; the fun was lost after that point and scripting simulators just felt too much like work for them.

What am I doing back in SecondLife?

 Well, I have been watching Netflix documentaries for months and months and I was beginning to get burned out. Also - there are only so many fictional scenes I can imagine from novels before I need to switch to non-fictional concepts.
 I tried to enter into a programming course... Got through the first two weeks and then realized 'hey - I am not getting a grade at the end of this course; what's the point if I'm not going to pass or not pass/get a failing grade or a high grade?'
 Second Life offers me that semi-tangible feeling of creating something and gaining social interaction - a reward - for just logging in. With this MOOC, with programs, with fiction, non-fiction, and movies - I am not getting much in the way of commentary: just one-way interaction. Second Life offers two-way interaction - and that's what I am looking for right now.

What was my original intent there?

 To explore simulacra. As in Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. I had read the book and shattered my mind against his philosophies - a 15 year old American lower-class kid. So I started getting into virtual spaces. Second Life became the ultimate expression of that search for simulation and understanding how to tell what order of simulacra were in my life at the time. After I began to get intrigued with college and that college experience intrigued itself with Second Life - I began to back away. The final backing-away came when I had a job for a year and a month (nine months or so of actually working). Too much first life to engage in the second life.

Attack of the MIDIs!

Thanks to SolMiRe and SoundCloud I can now finally put those midis I create in MusePad to good use.

When I create something in musepad I end up with a series of musical notes whose cadence begins to frustrate me after certain repetition. What causes music to be something uplifting or inspiring? How does the phrasing of one set of notes become a musical harmony and what stops it from being a cacophony?

Thinking of how a bootstrapping compiler works and how it should be written. Reading lots of different opinions on whether it's a good idea to begin a compiler this way or to decide on a specific domain that this compiler will be used for. Every time I think of it I wonder if I should make it work then make it work better. Are programming languages independent of their interpreters or compilers?

Can a ripple or wave be frozen in place? That would be something to see: harmonic oscillations of sound waves in water that was suddenly instantaneously frozen. Perhaps a simulated ripple or set of ripples could produce the effect I would like to see... Like a zen garden without human intervention.

The X-Files: what fear loving child ofthe 90s would not enjoy the chance to be creeped out by the monster of the week or the scary intimidating feel of a shadow government working for extra terrestrials looking for cheap slave labor and easy mineral rights? Excuse me while I enjoy the nostalgia.

Macgyver. What can be said that hasn't already? Could you tell he was exhausted with his role? I was tiny when he was on television. I remember Mac was like my dad but less dangerous. I guess I have had worse for a role model. Enjoyable in the early 90s but it feels a bit campy now. Ah! Nostalgically induced regressing hallucination session.

There is something i've been thinking of lately: the development of artificial intelligence to a degree which would be capable of sentience. What would be the best way to approach our relationship to that sentience? As author, parent, creator, programmer, or some mixture of these? What would we be viewed as by these new creations? Inferior superior or equal? Would there be any reason to compare oranges and tennis balls? And what of our relation to our creator? If we're shaped by sentience what view does that sentience take of us? If we are not formed by some creator - are we surrounded by accidental sentience already? Purposeful sentience seems to be what would occur if artificial intelligence was something we humans wrote on a computer. What command would you give an artificial intelligence?

A lot of things have happened since the mid-80s. I have no clear calendar dated memories. The first thing I recall with clarity is the front room of my grandfathers La Sierra house which had a plastic chandelier with multicolored plastic panes; I looked up at this as I lay down with my father was taking care of me. I was very small. Why should I be nostalgic for the old neighborhood? The television was my babysitter: mr rogers, sesame street, eureka's castle, mr wizard, reading rainbow...

There were many things I could say but only a few things would apply to the situation at hand. What is the situation? Well I don't recall now. Anyhow this is my first post to ceaseless. Thanks for checking it out.