It's Friday at last. I must saw that this week really passed by in a
flash. I still can't believe the workdays of the week are over.
After the hectic schedule today I spent most of the time pondering mud
the question that had been on my mind for awhile now, the unreasonable
effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences. Well technically I
was doing something else with bunch of other people, like browsing
through the morgan library museum, but my mind was fixated on the
issue and I had trouble responding to simple questions from the
company I was with (until a few moments ago, sharing beer and
hotdogs). To be perfectly honest I love falling into those moments of
intense concentration. It makes of feel like a human being, not just
an automata going through the motions... It makes of feel alive more
than any other idle chitchat and smiling faces.
Suddenly I think of Pascal and his theory on pleasure and boredom
being the drivers of the greatest achievements of humanity.
Whatever the case might be, I wonder he the question itself is worth
pursuing further.
It's almost midnight and I'm having a hard time thinking anything
coherent in middle of this crowd (that's beginning to get slightly
roudy. Why oh why do I keep on showing up at there things... Oh right,
to get drunk). I guess it's time to sink into oblivion for the night.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Piece of life
The plan to finally have some post of synth biology get together in
the nyc is coming along nicely. I think it might even happen in the
museum of natural history. (I hope against hope) The itsedle would be
in getting people interested enough to in through the trouble of
showing up.
Reading a lot of neil gaiman pieces lately. Books and articles have
been pouring out for the occasion of the coraline movie which will be
released in a few days. He's a good writer, and perhaps a good self
promoter. Not that it's a bad thing to be able to promote a genuine
talent... Or maybe it's his manager or assistant that's crazy good at
playing the media? Whatever the case might be it feels nice to see
more texts about his works all over the place (the places I tend to
visit anyway).
Spent some amazing time talking about mathematics and physics with a
colleague. The question almost always coils down to one topic
regardless of what we start with. The unreasonable effectiveness of
mathematics in physical sciences. Lot of ideas, none that strikes
anyone as the answer to it all.
the nyc is coming along nicely. I think it might even happen in the
museum of natural history. (I hope against hope) The itsedle would be
in getting people interested enough to in through the trouble of
showing up.
Reading a lot of neil gaiman pieces lately. Books and articles have
been pouring out for the occasion of the coraline movie which will be
released in a few days. He's a good writer, and perhaps a good self
promoter. Not that it's a bad thing to be able to promote a genuine
talent... Or maybe it's his manager or assistant that's crazy good at
playing the media? Whatever the case might be it feels nice to see
more texts about his works all over the place (the places I tend to
visit anyway).
Spent some amazing time talking about mathematics and physics with a
colleague. The question almost always coils down to one topic
regardless of what we start with. The unreasonable effectiveness of
mathematics in physical sciences. Lot of ideas, none that strikes
anyone as the answer to it all.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Finally, possible diybio in the nyc.
I've just finished some intense lab/simulation session.
Some good news in the diybio nyc front. I might be able to put
together a little group for people in the city. I've never put
together anything like this before, so the experience is a little
nervous for me... Hope I don't somehow screw this up.
Now that I think about it I need to do some serious review on
molecular biology... Got to find the time in middle of doing all the
physics stuff.
Some good news in the diybio nyc front. I might be able to put
together a little group for people in the city. I've never put
together anything like this before, so the experience is a little
nervous for me... Hope I don't somehow screw this up.
Now that I think about it I need to do some serious review on
molecular biology... Got to find the time in middle of doing all the
physics stuff.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Testing
Testing out my new smartphone. Since I got a new n85 I might as well
try my hand at some mobile internet...
Though I must say this t9 writing is not so easy to get used to. Maybe
I would have been better off with a blackberry or e71? I'm also
writing a short cellphone novel on quillpill using this, as a test on
how far I can take this device.
Current verdict? While writing relatively long pieces on this device
is possible, it's not quite recommended. I'd rather say that this is a
multimedia convergence device, an iphone without the touchscreen and
with a fantastic camera. The default 8G memory the device comes with
makes the design intent rather clear.
I'm quite satisfied with the device so far (though I would have
preferred it to be a bit cheaper) I just wish there were more ways to
make use of the potential of the device, like broader app
availability.
try my hand at some mobile internet...
Though I must say this t9 writing is not so easy to get used to. Maybe
I would have been better off with a blackberry or e71? I'm also
writing a short cellphone novel on quillpill using this, as a test on
how far I can take this device.
Current verdict? While writing relatively long pieces on this device
is possible, it's not quite recommended. I'd rather say that this is a
multimedia convergence device, an iphone without the touchscreen and
with a fantastic camera. The default 8G memory the device comes with
makes the design intent rather clear.
I'm quite satisfied with the device so far (though I would have
preferred it to be a bit cheaper) I just wish there were more ways to
make use of the potential of the device, like broader app
availability.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
coraline shoes
Above is a picture of a limited edition Coraline shoes from Nike they will be giving out as a promotion for the Coraline movie. Apparently if you are the type that stays until the very end of the movie in theater (like me) then you'll be treated to a password that allows you to enter into a drawing for one of the 1000 pairs of Coraline shoes. I'm guessing you'll have to register at the movie website with the password, but the specific information on what to do with the password is nil at the moment.
Call me weird, but I'm a real stickler for spooky fairytales and related real world items. It's really no different from some people having particular attraction towards steampunk I think, except that in case of fairytales a lot of people aren't as vocal in proclaiming their obsession/amusement/whatever for fear of appearing child-like (which I think isn't necessarily a bad thing so long as you can act like a decent human being, but the message is lost on many people).
Fairytales are like myths, with a bit more creative and psychological bent. A bit of analysis on even simplest fairytales reveal a whole lot of buried concepts and questions that we can't find the answer to. It is a thin veil surrounding the concept of the world as we know it, and sometimes we see great hazy figures shimmering in the dark behind the veil, if only for a split moment. I see H.P.Lovecraft's works as fairytales. It might sound strange but they really do fit the profile of stereotypical fairytale routine. Lot of modern authors borrow from fairytale motif as well, Neil Gaiman, the author of the Coraline and the eponymous sandman series stands out from among them.
Since I'm definitely going to the movies, I might as well sit until the very end and see if I can get on my hands on the shoes. Doesn't look half bad, really. I've been having a knack for winning things lately (did I mention that I won an advanced copy of a history book? I guess not) so maybe the luck will last until I can get my hands on the movie merchandise.
Write or Die
I just found an intirguing little piece of application on the net called 'write or die.'
It's basically a timed word-counting notepad. You set the difficulty, time limit, and word goal, and once you begin you need to keep on typing until you hit the designated word goal. If you pause the whole work will begin to evaporate. This is a wonderful program to get the creative juices flowing in the morning, as it requires quite a bit of intense concentration within short period of time to be able to fulfill some of the harsher settings.
The address to the web service is http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html
I highly recommend that you try it. In fact, I'm considering making this into my daily exercise.
Below is a whole lot of nothing I wrote to test the program out during the lunch time. I wonder if there's any offline version of program like this? (Don't be too hard on me for the horrible writing. I didn't even run it through a spellchecker, and I've been up for 30 hours)
I'm listening to Hulu's fringe as I write this. I'm really curious to see if I can fill up the whole 500 words requirement in the allotted time, which is interesting since it had been what I've always been doing since the primary school. Wait, those this mean that i won't be able to pause this thing again? Typing using this program makes me think of a few ideas. How about a Turing complete typewriter that is rigged to explode unless someone sits in front of it ands type away writing something coherent without pause? An explosion imminent, the the typewriter is reasonably intelligent that it is able to detect repetitive nonsense sentences, run on sentences that is designed to delay the typewriter machine without creativity... Once the writer in front of the typewriter pauses for whatever reason, for a duration more than a brief duration that takes to move fingers between keyboards, ahhh the pause really does work only once. I can't even take a look at the reply on my tweetdeck since going out of the website to look at another program is impossible to do on the little time allotted to the writer on this devilish little program! Anyway, the typewriter is rigged to be able to detect certain traces of creativity. Now we are walking into the realm of fairytale from the realm of mystery suspense. It makes sense. A magical, or perhaps cursed? Or perhaps simply 'purposeful' typewriter. The concept of purpose is a strange thing, in that an everyday item that is normally insentient can be thought of as dreadful once it begets some kind of purpose, an empathy with a human act and thinking (should it be simply human act?). It is really indeed very strange. The Human act... Once an item begets a characteristic that makes it react to certain coherent series of human action, such as forcing a writer to write continuously within allotted time or face horrendous consequences, it takes on a trait of intelligence regardless of presence of conscious. Reaction is taken as being conscious regardless of the act of thinking or conscious contemplation as long as it is coherent in its consequences and possibly purpose. However giving objects purpose itself provides a nasty conundrum for us in that in order to imbue an item with a purpose that can be interpreted coherently by a conscious being, something else has to be present in order to provide the original 'thing' with the coherence of purpose, of action and reaction that can be interpreted by the human being, the writer who sits in front of the typewriter. Some people seem to use similar argument in their defense of the concepts of divinity, I think. (((wow this program is really good for letting the juice flow into my brain. I might as well make this into a daily exercise))) However using such argument to defend the concept of divinity or some proto-conscious being would be a mark of mental retardation or at least of unseemly haste. All that such logic implies would be a conjecture that the 'item', the mechanism in which the 'purpose' is ingrained into the item, and the human being/writer would have to share a common method of sharing information, and that interpretation does not require a proto-consciousness. Simply existing within the same universe alone would be enough to allow them to 'communicate' with each other, since they already share common dimensionality, i.e. connection/language/link/probability etc.
It's basically a timed word-counting notepad. You set the difficulty, time limit, and word goal, and once you begin you need to keep on typing until you hit the designated word goal. If you pause the whole work will begin to evaporate. This is a wonderful program to get the creative juices flowing in the morning, as it requires quite a bit of intense concentration within short period of time to be able to fulfill some of the harsher settings.
The address to the web service is http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html
I highly recommend that you try it. In fact, I'm considering making this into my daily exercise.
Below is a whole lot of nothing I wrote to test the program out during the lunch time. I wonder if there's any offline version of program like this? (Don't be too hard on me for the horrible writing. I didn't even run it through a spellchecker, and I've been up for 30 hours)
I'm listening to Hulu's fringe as I write this. I'm really curious to see if I can fill up the whole 500 words requirement in the allotted time, which is interesting since it had been what I've always been doing since the primary school. Wait, those this mean that i won't be able to pause this thing again? Typing using this program makes me think of a few ideas. How about a Turing complete typewriter that is rigged to explode unless someone sits in front of it ands type away writing something coherent without pause? An explosion imminent, the the typewriter is reasonably intelligent that it is able to detect repetitive nonsense sentences, run on sentences that is designed to delay the typewriter machine without creativity... Once the writer in front of the typewriter pauses for whatever reason, for a duration more than a brief duration that takes to move fingers between keyboards, ahhh the pause really does work only once. I can't even take a look at the reply on my tweetdeck since going out of the website to look at another program is impossible to do on the little time allotted to the writer on this devilish little program! Anyway, the typewriter is rigged to be able to detect certain traces of creativity. Now we are walking into the realm of fairytale from the realm of mystery suspense. It makes sense. A magical, or perhaps cursed? Or perhaps simply 'purposeful' typewriter. The concept of purpose is a strange thing, in that an everyday item that is normally insentient can be thought of as dreadful once it begets some kind of purpose, an empathy with a human act and thinking (should it be simply human act?). It is really indeed very strange. The Human act... Once an item begets a characteristic that makes it react to certain coherent series of human action, such as forcing a writer to write continuously within allotted time or face horrendous consequences, it takes on a trait of intelligence regardless of presence of conscious. Reaction is taken as being conscious regardless of the act of thinking or conscious contemplation as long as it is coherent in its consequences and possibly purpose. However giving objects purpose itself provides a nasty conundrum for us in that in order to imbue an item with a purpose that can be interpreted coherently by a conscious being, something else has to be present in order to provide the original 'thing' with the coherence of purpose, of action and reaction that can be interpreted by the human being, the writer who sits in front of the typewriter. Some people seem to use similar argument in their defense of the concepts of divinity, I think. (((wow this program is really good for letting the juice flow into my brain. I might as well make this into a daily exercise))) However using such argument to defend the concept of divinity or some proto-conscious being would be a mark of mental retardation or at least of unseemly haste. All that such logic implies would be a conjecture that the 'item', the mechanism in which the 'purpose' is ingrained into the item, and the human being/writer would have to share a common method of sharing information, and that interpretation does not require a proto-consciousness. Simply existing within the same universe alone would be enough to allow them to 'communicate' with each other, since they already share common dimensionality, i.e. connection/language/link/probability etc.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
worthwhile sunsets
George Inness
Lowell Birge Harrison
William Bradford
Walter Launt Palmer
Louis Apol
They're all from late 1800's. Are you getting this, "modern artists"?
Lowell Birge Harrison
William Bradford
Walter Launt Palmer
Louis Apol
They're all from late 1800's. Are you getting this, "modern artists"?
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Purity
I was standing on rooftop of a very tall building. The roof was spotted with puddles of water sitting perfectly still. I could see the moon up close as currents of wind surrounded me. I could feel the same current moving the distant patches of clouds toward even further sky, and felt the whole world bristle and swirl in utter silence.
What is purity? Purity in life is very likely to be an aesthetic experience, come into being because there is filth in this world. So by definition, purity is not about being pure, but bout being without filth, without taint.
It leads me into an interesting train of thought, since the very structure of the definition of purity seem to place emphasis on the relationship between the concept of filth and the world, while the concept of purity remains somehow out of reach. It's like a door in the fairytales that one can only see through a reflection in a mirror.
Being able to discern between purity and filth, no matter how pretentious, is the first mark of a worthwhile life. In the end, worthwhile life is the one spent in pursuit of depth, for the world is a sea of mediocrity.
What is purity? Purity in life is very likely to be an aesthetic experience, come into being because there is filth in this world. So by definition, purity is not about being pure, but bout being without filth, without taint.
It leads me into an interesting train of thought, since the very structure of the definition of purity seem to place emphasis on the relationship between the concept of filth and the world, while the concept of purity remains somehow out of reach. It's like a door in the fairytales that one can only see through a reflection in a mirror.
Being able to discern between purity and filth, no matter how pretentious, is the first mark of a worthwhile life. In the end, worthwhile life is the one spent in pursuit of depth, for the world is a sea of mediocrity.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow And Its Planning
It’s 12:15 AM and I’m dead tired from writing proposals all day. So here’s a quote from Le Corbusier’s ‘The City of To-Morrow And Its Planning’ that I found especially profound.
We prefer Bach to Wagner, and the spirit which inspired the Parthenon to that which created the cathedral… This modern sentiment is a spirit of geometry, a spirit of construction and synthesis. Exactitude and order are its essential condition… Our trend is towards higher and more impartial gratifications, by reason of the mathematical spirit which inspires us; we can create in a detached and pure manner. Such are the epochs which we call classical.
Safe to say, after Hans Bellmer and Jasper Johns I’m beginning to find the wild world of urban planning and architecture to be strangely attractive. A lot of that stuff is like mathematical physics of the most abstract kind. I guess it can’t be helped. They all strive toward some manipulation of space. One with vectors, the other with human life.
Lately, no matter where my eyes turn toward to I see artscience in birthpain.
Am I the only one who thinks the very nature of sciences and academia is on the cusp of radical change? The difference we see will be tantamount to the difference between the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, a significant one for anyone who knows how to read between the lines. The change will be slow, of course. Any worthwhile changes are. I give it a century to fully grow into a visible sap.
Of course, I'm usually somewhat cautious about talking about these things around my every day colleagues... There are so many crackpots in the field of sciences that everyone's pessimistic about practically anything new. Excited, but pessimistic.
Architecture, artscience, physics and mathematical music. I know tonight's dream will be a strange one.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Blog reading level test
There's a funny reading level testing website on the net. Once you enter the web address of a blog into the bar provided at the web page it tests the reading level required to read the blog and displays it as an icon you can post on your webpage.
My livejournal blog is said to require a high school level of education to read properly. My wordpress blog, however, seem to require college level education to understand. It's a little odd since most of the posts on both blogs are the same. I wonder what kind of criteria determines the readability of the blogs?
My livejournal blog is said to require a high school level of education to read properly. My wordpress blog, however, seem to require college level education to understand. It's a little odd since most of the posts on both blogs are the same. I wonder what kind of criteria determines the readability of the blogs?
Friday, January 16, 2009
Fairytales
I've been trying to figure out the difference between fairytales and fantasies for the last few hours, and I think I might have found the answer.
Simply put, fairytales draw from the twilight zone between outright fantasies and hard core reality.
Thus, fairytales are fundamentally psychological experiences. They might not be logical, but they draw from deeper resources that composes the fabric of society, often neglected and forgotten. In a way we can view them as cocoons where nearly dead ideas and practices go to hibernate. Of course, it might be hard to reach such conclusion using the sanitized versions of fairytales in circulation today, but anyone who look deeper should be able to figure out that fairytales all over the world are fundamentally dark, some outright scary without even trying to be.
So the 'lessons' of the fairytales in their purest forms are often not very moral, and doesn't make much sense, with deeply suspicious edge to them. Ironically, Lovecraft and his horror/mythos writing might be said to be modern incarnation of fairytales that fantasies neglected to inherit.
This is an interesting idea. I might follow up on this soon.
Simply put, fairytales draw from the twilight zone between outright fantasies and hard core reality.
Thus, fairytales are fundamentally psychological experiences. They might not be logical, but they draw from deeper resources that composes the fabric of society, often neglected and forgotten. In a way we can view them as cocoons where nearly dead ideas and practices go to hibernate. Of course, it might be hard to reach such conclusion using the sanitized versions of fairytales in circulation today, but anyone who look deeper should be able to figure out that fairytales all over the world are fundamentally dark, some outright scary without even trying to be.
So the 'lessons' of the fairytales in their purest forms are often not very moral, and doesn't make much sense, with deeply suspicious edge to them. Ironically, Lovecraft and his horror/mythos writing might be said to be modern incarnation of fairytales that fantasies neglected to inherit.
This is an interesting idea. I might follow up on this soon.
Vista grief, life update
I'm a little too tired to post anything of substance today... Actually you can say that the trend had been continuing for quite a while now. It's been a long time since I actually had to stop and think before writing a blog post, though my posts on livejournal had always been a sort of scratch pad for freewriting, something to get my juice flowing after especially dull and dreary day... This is a worrying trend, though in my defense it's not entirely due to laziness on my part. Most of my insignificant musings these days had been in form of formulae and mathematical structures, and I don't really know how to translate LaTeX based mathematical musings into some format that works for livejournal... Jpegs I guess? Mathematical wanderings are actually quite good for decorating my idea notebook. It's beginning to look like some mad alchemist's text with essays on arts and philosophies, with very awesome diagrams I made while working on toy graph theory problems, the kind that organizes the premises into pentagram patterns and such. Who know, maybe I'll decorate it at some point and sell it as an art piece like some people do.... I don't have any links at the moment but I remember someone working on some really cool stuff that's supposed to be part of a general exposition on some fantasy world view of his...
Oh yes. I've got to talk about the vista grief. It's part of the title of the post, so I've entered into a sort of sacred contract with the reader of this post that forces me to talk about that topic at some length. As some of you might know, I'm very sensitive when it comes to chossing operating systems and computers. It's not that I'm trying to define myself through disposable gadgets or anything (though the same probably can't be said of many people out there. They hold onto their choice of gadgets and platforms like a tribal shaman would his mystical fetishes). The reason is quite simply due to the fact that I really need to use these things at work and I need full performance out of these things while I'm at work. If for some reason I'm at work and I need to sit on my hands for an hour simply because my OS of choice decided to have a little freak out on me I'm royally screwed, the delay can set me back for days on my lab schedule and I already need to time my bathroom breaks and skip meals, so I can't have that.
Well, my new laptop, the Thinkpad T400, is a marvelous piece of work in terms of mechanical design. I can practically replace any part at will using a screwdriver, and all parts are available for sale at the manufacturer's website, so no googling needed there. I once spilled grape juice on my keyboard. I simply turned off my computer, took off the keyboard, rinsed it in water and put it back after it dried. Voila, it works like a brand new machine (well, it IS a brand new machine). No replacement parts, no hassle with the customer service departments. The design is... 'Reliable,' something that can't be said for most other laptop manufacturers out there... If I spilled grape juice on a macbook keyboard I'm not sure I've gotten the same kind of experience. Those 'unibody' designs seem like a pain to take apart and fix on my own.
The problem with my machine, is the operating system. Sure, the machine itself is a godsend. It's light, hardy, and does what i expect it to. The operating system, windows vista, however, is simply one big piece of trainwreck. It takes around three minutes to let it restart, and on battery it runs so much process at once that the restarting process shaves off whopping ten percent off the machine's total battery life, ridiculous amount considering that this laptop lasts a little over six hours on full charge and wifi browsing (it basically works out in such a way that windows vista sucks through an hour worth of battery life during three minutes or so of startup period). Ballmer can say whatever he likes on the 'success' of vista. The truth is they really dropped the ball on vista, and whatever the defense M$ comes up with make them sound like used car salesmen spinning stories to sell a really crappy product. Except of course, these used car salesmen earn millions of dollar per year and run a global conglomerate. I just hope they worked harder for the upcoming windows seven. Seven's getting rather positive reviews from the press on their beta releases so far, so I'm guessing whatever they come up with won't be worse than vista....
Ok, that's it for the obligatory vista bashing. I'm getting a little sick of those posts myself. Hopefully I won't have to put up any more of such rant in the foreseeable future (did I just hear a collective sigh of relief around the internet?).
I was supposed to open the new year with the blog posting on the concept and practice of minimalism in variety of genre, but the post isn't working as well as I hoped it would. It's almost finished but it seem to lack some coherent 'zing' that I try to have in my writeups, so I'm keeping it on my computer before I decide I can't do anything else to it. I always found it interesting that most minimalists (barring industrial designers) seem to have some of the most complex goals in mind when designing their medium, whether it be visual art or music.
My processing language study is coming along nicely. I'm working on something that utilizes gene sequence input to generate graphics and sound. I still need to work out a bunch of kinks but I might put up the finished product on vimeo someday. It's shaping up rather nicely I think. The processing language itself is very friendly to people new to programming. I'd suggest it as a good candidate for the first programming language for any student to learn to use.
I've been really into reading Neil Gaiman lately. He's released his Coraline on to the web as part of the promotional campaign for a new movie based on his book (Coraline), and it's quite a good read. It's basically what the author says what it is. A fairytale for adult. If you're looking for a grand secret of life and the universe you won't like it all that much, but then would people looking for secret of everything in fairytales actually like anything? I'm also in middle of reading through Neverwhere, and so far the experience had been wonderful. He's not the first one to write fairytales for adults, but he's the first one that made me realize that I actually enjoy that stuff. There's something wonderful about being able to write a story that's capable of maintaining it's own sort of coherent world view without resorting to cliched antics of fantasy. The same goes for the experience I had with the Invention of Hugo Cabret, a book so charming that I'm still having trouble simply reading through, instead taking time to savor each and every moment of the experience.
Oh yes. I've got to talk about the vista grief. It's part of the title of the post, so I've entered into a sort of sacred contract with the reader of this post that forces me to talk about that topic at some length. As some of you might know, I'm very sensitive when it comes to chossing operating systems and computers. It's not that I'm trying to define myself through disposable gadgets or anything (though the same probably can't be said of many people out there. They hold onto their choice of gadgets and platforms like a tribal shaman would his mystical fetishes). The reason is quite simply due to the fact that I really need to use these things at work and I need full performance out of these things while I'm at work. If for some reason I'm at work and I need to sit on my hands for an hour simply because my OS of choice decided to have a little freak out on me I'm royally screwed, the delay can set me back for days on my lab schedule and I already need to time my bathroom breaks and skip meals, so I can't have that.
Well, my new laptop, the Thinkpad T400, is a marvelous piece of work in terms of mechanical design. I can practically replace any part at will using a screwdriver, and all parts are available for sale at the manufacturer's website, so no googling needed there. I once spilled grape juice on my keyboard. I simply turned off my computer, took off the keyboard, rinsed it in water and put it back after it dried. Voila, it works like a brand new machine (well, it IS a brand new machine). No replacement parts, no hassle with the customer service departments. The design is... 'Reliable,' something that can't be said for most other laptop manufacturers out there... If I spilled grape juice on a macbook keyboard I'm not sure I've gotten the same kind of experience. Those 'unibody' designs seem like a pain to take apart and fix on my own.
The problem with my machine, is the operating system. Sure, the machine itself is a godsend. It's light, hardy, and does what i expect it to. The operating system, windows vista, however, is simply one big piece of trainwreck. It takes around three minutes to let it restart, and on battery it runs so much process at once that the restarting process shaves off whopping ten percent off the machine's total battery life, ridiculous amount considering that this laptop lasts a little over six hours on full charge and wifi browsing (it basically works out in such a way that windows vista sucks through an hour worth of battery life during three minutes or so of startup period). Ballmer can say whatever he likes on the 'success' of vista. The truth is they really dropped the ball on vista, and whatever the defense M$ comes up with make them sound like used car salesmen spinning stories to sell a really crappy product. Except of course, these used car salesmen earn millions of dollar per year and run a global conglomerate. I just hope they worked harder for the upcoming windows seven. Seven's getting rather positive reviews from the press on their beta releases so far, so I'm guessing whatever they come up with won't be worse than vista....
Ok, that's it for the obligatory vista bashing. I'm getting a little sick of those posts myself. Hopefully I won't have to put up any more of such rant in the foreseeable future (did I just hear a collective sigh of relief around the internet?).
I was supposed to open the new year with the blog posting on the concept and practice of minimalism in variety of genre, but the post isn't working as well as I hoped it would. It's almost finished but it seem to lack some coherent 'zing' that I try to have in my writeups, so I'm keeping it on my computer before I decide I can't do anything else to it. I always found it interesting that most minimalists (barring industrial designers) seem to have some of the most complex goals in mind when designing their medium, whether it be visual art or music.
My processing language study is coming along nicely. I'm working on something that utilizes gene sequence input to generate graphics and sound. I still need to work out a bunch of kinks but I might put up the finished product on vimeo someday. It's shaping up rather nicely I think. The processing language itself is very friendly to people new to programming. I'd suggest it as a good candidate for the first programming language for any student to learn to use.
I've been really into reading Neil Gaiman lately. He's released his Coraline on to the web as part of the promotional campaign for a new movie based on his book (Coraline), and it's quite a good read. It's basically what the author says what it is. A fairytale for adult. If you're looking for a grand secret of life and the universe you won't like it all that much, but then would people looking for secret of everything in fairytales actually like anything? I'm also in middle of reading through Neverwhere, and so far the experience had been wonderful. He's not the first one to write fairytales for adults, but he's the first one that made me realize that I actually enjoy that stuff. There's something wonderful about being able to write a story that's capable of maintaining it's own sort of coherent world view without resorting to cliched antics of fantasy. The same goes for the experience I had with the Invention of Hugo Cabret, a book so charming that I'm still having trouble simply reading through, instead taking time to savor each and every moment of the experience.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
Origin of aesthetics
I just read a post by a friend of mine about 5cm per second, which set off whole series of thoughts I've more or less repressed due to my recent schedule.
In that film, as well as in the creator's other works, aspects of light, motion, and wide open spaces are featured prominently, almost as if the entirety of the creator's work was designed to take place in an infinitely large, translucent prism that deconstructs light strewn into a million shades of spectrum as it passes through the main characters and vicissitudes of their affairs. Individual effects aren't really that novel, but when combined together into a coherent whole his works take on certain peculiarly beautiful and memorable allure. The memorability and (illusion of?) profoundness of his works are especially amazing when I consider that his works, when dissected into little atoms of dispositions and styles, aren't even that unique, possibly even pedestrian. Similar styles can be observed all over the place, East and West, usually when the medium centers around the theme or the existence of sky and atmosphere, though presence of requisite elements does not necessarily guarantee the style.
Whenever I see one of his works, or any work of art that shares the certain 'style', the impact on my senses, I feel strange nostalgia... In fact, I should say that I feel quite a number of emotions simultaneously, with distinct after taste of nostalgia running between them. The experience is never really overwhelming unless I let it be. The nostalgia is different from the usual bar-room affairs I have, tacked with dark, foggish candlelight and thick tingle of wine to be washed down later with doses of sleep. This nostalgia is more like clear air, the kind you are allowed to feel for a brief moment at specific moment of twilight, when all things past and future has to be in their right place at the right time. It leaves you with strange sensibility of awake-ness and understanding of the things around you. It's the nostalgia that draws your eyes to the stars and patterns of clouds, beautiful yet true, telling of the things to come. It's the nostalgia of the indescribable.
Even when I was young, I was always captivated by the kind of 'feeling' I'm able to feel in certain specific situations in life. Pain and happiness are easily understood. I am reacting to bunch of stimuli that can be categorized and organized into myriad of different psychological description of the human self, and even then I didn't place much significance on those calculus of human psyche. What really haunted me was, the subtlety of feeling (I use 'haunting' and 'feeling' for lack of better terms in my vocabulary) within very vague and nondescript situations, with no clear coherence of elements yet unmistakable impact. When I was young I would go out during the time of twilight, sit in a park, and watch the world silently turning from violet to blue to black (or vice versa), watching the rhythmical swaying of the trees in the wind, lazy spread of clouds shining in some strange hue of the light, trying to figure out just what exactly I was feeling at that moment. The experience was addictive and frustrating at the same time. I knew I was feeling something, something I usually can't feel in company of the normal things of life, but what was it? What are the words for the state of mind? Finding the answer was difficult in the least by the fact that the 'strange feeling' seem to contain within itself bits and pieces of all the shades of other urges and sensations, ranging from the urge to create to fulfillment, greed, happiness, and reverie. It was a complex amalgam of the primal and the logical, each biting the others tail like ouroboros...
Those experiences were the closest things I've ever come to a type of religious revelation, and if there ever is a singular coherence within this universe that we can't help but to call divinity, it might be something very close to the truth behind that 'feeling.'... Perhaps.
Even now, I still cannot forget about that 'feeling.' In fact, the feeling might have been getting stronger, more intense, as I live and understand and feel even more things like sexuality and self-identity. It had significant impact on what I've done so far with my life, and my interest in sciences began as an attempt at finding an answer to the question, since I felt that reliance on 'verbal psychology' not grounded in hard physical facts will inevitably end up leading to a tangle of other ideas, in an infinite loop of self-reference.
In that film, as well as in the creator's other works, aspects of light, motion, and wide open spaces are featured prominently, almost as if the entirety of the creator's work was designed to take place in an infinitely large, translucent prism that deconstructs light strewn into a million shades of spectrum as it passes through the main characters and vicissitudes of their affairs. Individual effects aren't really that novel, but when combined together into a coherent whole his works take on certain peculiarly beautiful and memorable allure. The memorability and (illusion of?) profoundness of his works are especially amazing when I consider that his works, when dissected into little atoms of dispositions and styles, aren't even that unique, possibly even pedestrian. Similar styles can be observed all over the place, East and West, usually when the medium centers around the theme or the existence of sky and atmosphere, though presence of requisite elements does not necessarily guarantee the style.
Whenever I see one of his works, or any work of art that shares the certain 'style', the impact on my senses, I feel strange nostalgia... In fact, I should say that I feel quite a number of emotions simultaneously, with distinct after taste of nostalgia running between them. The experience is never really overwhelming unless I let it be. The nostalgia is different from the usual bar-room affairs I have, tacked with dark, foggish candlelight and thick tingle of wine to be washed down later with doses of sleep. This nostalgia is more like clear air, the kind you are allowed to feel for a brief moment at specific moment of twilight, when all things past and future has to be in their right place at the right time. It leaves you with strange sensibility of awake-ness and understanding of the things around you. It's the nostalgia that draws your eyes to the stars and patterns of clouds, beautiful yet true, telling of the things to come. It's the nostalgia of the indescribable.
Even when I was young, I was always captivated by the kind of 'feeling' I'm able to feel in certain specific situations in life. Pain and happiness are easily understood. I am reacting to bunch of stimuli that can be categorized and organized into myriad of different psychological description of the human self, and even then I didn't place much significance on those calculus of human psyche. What really haunted me was, the subtlety of feeling (I use 'haunting' and 'feeling' for lack of better terms in my vocabulary) within very vague and nondescript situations, with no clear coherence of elements yet unmistakable impact. When I was young I would go out during the time of twilight, sit in a park, and watch the world silently turning from violet to blue to black (or vice versa), watching the rhythmical swaying of the trees in the wind, lazy spread of clouds shining in some strange hue of the light, trying to figure out just what exactly I was feeling at that moment. The experience was addictive and frustrating at the same time. I knew I was feeling something, something I usually can't feel in company of the normal things of life, but what was it? What are the words for the state of mind? Finding the answer was difficult in the least by the fact that the 'strange feeling' seem to contain within itself bits and pieces of all the shades of other urges and sensations, ranging from the urge to create to fulfillment, greed, happiness, and reverie. It was a complex amalgam of the primal and the logical, each biting the others tail like ouroboros...
Those experiences were the closest things I've ever come to a type of religious revelation, and if there ever is a singular coherence within this universe that we can't help but to call divinity, it might be something very close to the truth behind that 'feeling.'... Perhaps.
Even now, I still cannot forget about that 'feeling.' In fact, the feeling might have been getting stronger, more intense, as I live and understand and feel even more things like sexuality and self-identity. It had significant impact on what I've done so far with my life, and my interest in sciences began as an attempt at finding an answer to the question, since I felt that reliance on 'verbal psychology' not grounded in hard physical facts will inevitably end up leading to a tangle of other ideas, in an infinite loop of self-reference.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Music
Mainstream is so dead.
Now I only have neoclassics like Philip Glass and alternatives of the alternatives, gang gang dance and some stuff from moon wiring.
Sound seem to defy the genre these days. I feel sick of splitting music apart on their tonal patterns-genres-since they don't seem to exist anymore. Or did they ever really exist? I don't know.
I can only think of three kinds of instruments that are distinct enough to have its own 'genre.' Violins, pipe organs, and electronic. By electronic, I mean electronic. Machine-made, electric frequency dependent, algorithm built stuff. The kind of stuff you can play Riemann manifold as a music, provided that you can algorithmi-fy the thing first, which is fully doable. The physical instruments themselves might be laptops or your cellphones, who cares. -anything that can play stuff. Composed of chip, input and output. Would output even have to be sound? What about frequencies of radiation?
The three kinds of instruments are the only ones that makes the cut for the 'musical high' for me these days. I'm probably too sick to death of all the dull, whitewashed stuff the hipsters seem to pump out these days. They're all beginning to sound like white noise, except that these ones must be paid for and are designed in such a way to affect hormone production from my brain. Which makes it worse than white noise.
(((now that I think about it, I've never seen an exhibition at MoMA that utilizes snow crash. What gives people?)))
The whole issue makes me think about music and music composing. How is it any different from a specialty branch of mathematics?
If one form of information can be effectively translated into another, what will the universe sound like?
Now I only have neoclassics like Philip Glass and alternatives of the alternatives, gang gang dance and some stuff from moon wiring.
Sound seem to defy the genre these days. I feel sick of splitting music apart on their tonal patterns-genres-since they don't seem to exist anymore. Or did they ever really exist? I don't know.
I can only think of three kinds of instruments that are distinct enough to have its own 'genre.' Violins, pipe organs, and electronic. By electronic, I mean electronic. Machine-made, electric frequency dependent, algorithm built stuff. The kind of stuff you can play Riemann manifold as a music, provided that you can algorithmi-fy the thing first, which is fully doable. The physical instruments themselves might be laptops or your cellphones, who cares. -anything that can play stuff. Composed of chip, input and output. Would output even have to be sound? What about frequencies of radiation?
The three kinds of instruments are the only ones that makes the cut for the 'musical high' for me these days. I'm probably too sick to death of all the dull, whitewashed stuff the hipsters seem to pump out these days. They're all beginning to sound like white noise, except that these ones must be paid for and are designed in such a way to affect hormone production from my brain. Which makes it worse than white noise.
(((now that I think about it, I've never seen an exhibition at MoMA that utilizes snow crash. What gives people?)))
The whole issue makes me think about music and music composing. How is it any different from a specialty branch of mathematics?
If one form of information can be effectively translated into another, what will the universe sound like?
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Learning and changing the world
This is the first post of the new year, wow.
I hope this new years brings much changes and opportunities for the people of the world who sorely need it in their lives.
I was going to open the new year with a post on minimalism, but my current schedule just won't let me do a long, detailed post like I did before. So here's new year's first post version 2.
While twittering with a friend of mine working as a teacher in India, I came across this website. It's a list of 26 learning games with goals of social change, like the free rice project I mentioned a distant time ago (I'm still playing it time to time. It's doing wonders for my vocabulary!). It's topics range from vaccine/rice donation game through word recognition, to some more elaborate games with Darfur themes and etc.
Why don't you open the new year by donating some time to one of the games? Many of them offer incentives to give help to the conflict regions around the world depending on your progress. Even the games that doesn't offer such incentives might serve to educate your or your acquaintance's children with some spirit of giving. It's meaningful, good, and quite possibly enjoyable. I don't see any reason you should not pay a visit to few of those game sites.
Of course, while I advocate such good spirited ventures, and wish there were more of them (a VC aimed at developing markets? That would be interesting), I do believe that they are not the answer to the fundamental problems of the world. What would be the answer to the human conditon you say? Empowerment. Empowerment not through tweaking of resolutions and codes of law but through finance and science. The change in law should accompany the change in knowledge and wealth as a natural outcome, and any attempt at artificial show of power not backed by educated and wealthy (enough) populace is doomed to failure.
That is why I support all practices of DIY sciences, whether they be biology, nanotechnology, or robotics. Any practice of science that remains open enough for other people with interests to begin their own pursuit will inevitably affect the flow of the age's zeitgeist. From such free knowledge we might have ventures and technical innovations that might be able to accomplish the things a century of world resolutions had failed to achieve.
People already talk of stagnation of the internet culture and deadlock of everyday technology. I argue to the contrary. We are on the cusp of a new age that is being conceived even as we speak. I'm not sure if our generation will be the one to reap the benefits of the coming era, but some sort of zeitgeist-catharsis is coming our way, in some form, in some time. It had been for last few decades. And what we need to do is to make sure that the number of our generation who believes in change can reach a critical mass.
I hope this new years brings much changes and opportunities for the people of the world who sorely need it in their lives.
I was going to open the new year with a post on minimalism, but my current schedule just won't let me do a long, detailed post like I did before. So here's new year's first post version 2.
While twittering with a friend of mine working as a teacher in India, I came across this website. It's a list of 26 learning games with goals of social change, like the free rice project I mentioned a distant time ago (I'm still playing it time to time. It's doing wonders for my vocabulary!). It's topics range from vaccine/rice donation game through word recognition, to some more elaborate games with Darfur themes and etc.
Why don't you open the new year by donating some time to one of the games? Many of them offer incentives to give help to the conflict regions around the world depending on your progress. Even the games that doesn't offer such incentives might serve to educate your or your acquaintance's children with some spirit of giving. It's meaningful, good, and quite possibly enjoyable. I don't see any reason you should not pay a visit to few of those game sites.
Of course, while I advocate such good spirited ventures, and wish there were more of them (a VC aimed at developing markets? That would be interesting), I do believe that they are not the answer to the fundamental problems of the world. What would be the answer to the human conditon you say? Empowerment. Empowerment not through tweaking of resolutions and codes of law but through finance and science. The change in law should accompany the change in knowledge and wealth as a natural outcome, and any attempt at artificial show of power not backed by educated and wealthy (enough) populace is doomed to failure.
That is why I support all practices of DIY sciences, whether they be biology, nanotechnology, or robotics. Any practice of science that remains open enough for other people with interests to begin their own pursuit will inevitably affect the flow of the age's zeitgeist. From such free knowledge we might have ventures and technical innovations that might be able to accomplish the things a century of world resolutions had failed to achieve.
People already talk of stagnation of the internet culture and deadlock of everyday technology. I argue to the contrary. We are on the cusp of a new age that is being conceived even as we speak. I'm not sure if our generation will be the one to reap the benefits of the coming era, but some sort of zeitgeist-catharsis is coming our way, in some form, in some time. It had been for last few decades. And what we need to do is to make sure that the number of our generation who believes in change can reach a critical mass.
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