The week is almost at an end again. The beginning of the winter feels like yesterday and I already feel the spring in the air. The weather's actually warm enough to walk around in shirts without fearing for you life, which wasn't quite what we had for the past few months. The connections and the questions of the winter seem to be gone again, and as the world begins to move along with coming of the summer I realize yet again why the April is the cruelest month of the year, at least according to certain very well known poet recited world wide.
The diybio nyc is coming to pass and as promised before I am trying to busy myself with a lot of work in and outside of school. At the moment the android and processing hacking continues, though with the things that have been happening recently I haven't been able to pay as much attention to them as I would have liked (as I'm typing this I am beginning to realize that the sound of click and the print of a key on the screen isn't exactly in tandem. While they sound like they happen at the same time there's a very subtle time difference that's throwing me off for some reason. Or am I overly sensitive right now? Why would I be?). I need to find bunch of stuff for the diybio nyc community, and I need to keep coming up with stuff so that we don't lose the momentum of the movement. I've seen too many organizations and groups of worthy cause simply disspate and disappear for lack of action. I don't know what I can do alone at the moment and I certainly don't want to give off the feeling of someone crazy for control of the group, so I guess I need to be patient for a while. I was never good with all the interpersonal stuff. I'm just sincerely hoping that the group will have someone who can take all those responsibility soon.
The android is a fascinating operating system. I don't like how it has the trappings of the much hyped 'cloud' computing system built into some of its components. I'm guessing the reported horrible battery life on the G1 device is in most part due to the fact that the machine makes extensive data calls to the net in order to keep all the google things synchronized with the mainframe somewhere over the net. 3G data connection at all times of the day cannot help but to drain through the battery. Other than that single fact however, I like the platform. I think it might even be stable enough to run on some of the computer systems as a dedicated operating system (provided that we can do something about the whole driver issues, iron out some kinks that's stopping some of the major hardware developers from jumping onto the bandwagon), which would be epic. A handset os and desktop/laptop grade os sharing a single depository of available applications would be a dream come true for developers, especially when that platform is (more or less) opensource. I am not an opensource/GNU zealot, but I do agree that on fundamental level freeing developers from needing to make a payment to develop for certain platform means more applications and mature platform. Considering that grand social and economical implications of the opensource operating systems technology, I am putting a lot of hope onto the whole android os project. All the ideologies aside, I think android os would make a really interesting beginner hacking platform for all parties, regardless of age and experience. The helloworld example of the android platform is easy enough for most mid-high school students to follow, and even advanced examples are fully doable with enough patience and effort. This is the os that should have been on the OLPC project. Low-cost, web/development friendly computing platform that can help people make money off their skills and knowledge directly, all safely protected under the opensource banner (no lawyers knocking down your door for some licensing fees or copyright violation, unlike some other OSes I can think of).
While the possibilities of the android os boggles the mind, the hardware side of things had been rather disappointing. The G1 is so far the only phone that actually carries the android os as the platform of choice, and not a whole lot of handsets are on the horizon, citing various reasons usually revolving around the relative immaturity of the platform itself. It's a valid complaint. The android os is somewhat buggy as the things stand. It's not 'beta' state buggy, but it definitely have quirks that are ironed out in some of the more mature mobile oses. However, I'm beginning to think that the lack of android os based phones on the market isn't simply due to the immaturity of the platform itself. It might have more to do with the business side of things, with mobile manufacturers who had been in close relationship with cellphone service providers for years being reluctant to invest in developing a handset that might not go down every easy with the service providers. After all, for service providers, more control=more profit, and they have a vested interest in keeping customers locked into specific platforms and specific softwares usually produced by the in-house divisions of the service providers themselves (take a look at this situation and weep, the zealots of freemarket goodness). I do believe that decent mobile with android os will come along sooner or later (I'm particularly grim about the fact that G1 doesn't allow you to take videos, something that would have given the G1 a definite edge over the iPhone), but I am also beginning to suspect that handset manufacturers and service provider companies need to work out a new business model in order to make that happen. Perhaps the days of subsidized and locked in handsets are coming to a close? It was a ridiculous concept from the beginning when you think about it. Let's put it this way. AOL or Optimum Online subsidizes Dell/HP/Apple and when you buy a relatively cheap computer from them, you need to be locked into two year service agreements where you can use your own computer only if you agree to connect to the internet using AOL/Optimum Online. If you move to some city or country outside the coverage range, your computer effectively goes dead (or you get slammed with 'roaming' charges that are x10 what you normally pay). The scheme might have made sense when computer and internet connection were novelty products (one-per-village) and flying in an airplane to foreign country was only for the privileged few, but in modern age where they are trivial tools for making a living, you are really putting a dampener on the social/economical/technological progress. And all of that for a scheme that we are not even sure if it actually ends up making a profit.
The part about the global roaming really irks me. I travel frequently, around Korea/Japan and back to the US for both business and pleasure. And with the screwed up bandwidth division all over the place, I'm never really sure if my given phone will be able to work in some other country. Don't even get me started on the roaming prices. For all the fuss over globalization and it's effects on societies across the world, I don't really feel that the infrastructure is global at all. It's actually as local as it gets.
The processing hacking is going well. Since I have some moderate experience with mathematica and python, learning how the processing works wasn't all that difficult. Being able to put together a complex project however, seem to be a different story. I'm jumping through a lot of hoops to get the processing engine for the augmented whale project to work. I downloaded the whole Blue Whale mitochondrial DNA (Magaptera Novaeangliae) sequence from the genbank, but that was the easy part. Now I need to figure out a way to build a decent sound and graphics generator that will provide generative content from the DNA sequence input. For the difficulty of figuring out the basic octave settings I am actually thinking of using codon sequences instead of raw nucleotide sequences, which will provide me with more variety to work with. Simply generating beeps and lights from the sequence isn't really good enough either. I need to be able to create something capable of catching the essence of the whale, so to speak. I'm thinking Shoji Kawai-ish ambient music, but it's to be worked out as the project progresses. The deadline is an April so I have about a month or so of time to work on it, which really isn't a whole lot considering that I need to work on all the school stuff and the diy-bio nyc will be needing some dedication on mypart. This is still much better than having nothing to do, as Bernard Shaw put it somewhere.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
lambda calculus
Just read a interesting thesis on using lambda calculus to do some multidimensional mathematics... About four hours ago actually.
The problem is I can't seem to be able to figure out how to do the whole lambda calculus thing in the first place. It's beginning to get a little irksome. I was good at it before, good enough to do the whole algebra II exam using only lambda calculus when I was in middle school. That was when I was a little kid! And now I can't recall even the simplest abstraction method to pull the trick off. I know I have the notes that can bring back my memory stashed somewhere in the closet (which is as big as half my room), but I don't feel like opening it up and shuffling through ten years old papers right now since I'm tired from the work/study that went on today. It feels like sand is flowing in my veins.
I really hate it when things I knew before, and things I could do before slip out of my reach like this. It makes me feel so vulnerable, that in my twenty and so years of life I've never managed to get past some inherent level of wisdom and ability despite years of experiences and rigorous academic training. It makes me feel naked in this world, against the very questions I sought to solve throughout most of my life.
Lambda calculus lambda calculus... Ugh I still can't remember. Maybe I'll be able to recall something by tomorrow, once I get some proper rest and food into my brain.
I'm still doing that crazy 3000~5000 words freewrite per day thing. It's only that many of them are increasingly becoming sensitive/insane to post in public spaces, so I'm dumping them all into my offline text cache. The surge of creative acts on my part doesn't seem to be easing up, something I'm quite happy about. It makes me feel live to do those things, despite the fact that doing all sorts of activities (mathematics, physics research, synthetic biology, etc etc) exhaust the hell out of me. I feel like I'm running through a marathon a day, which might not be too far from the truth (I think I'm actually beginning to lose weight, by THINKING).
I've been reading up a lot about mathematics these days, nothing too difficult. Mostly on group theories and their applications, and a bit of topology here and there, sometimes combined with little odds and ends most people don't learn in standard college classes. It reminds me of why I like mathematics in the first place (I want to make it perfectly clear though, that while I like mathematics I mostly despise mathematics classes). Forget PSP and nintendo DS. I have lifetime of gaming right inside of my own head, as long as I don't forget about them like I did with the lambda calculus.
Speaking of mathematics, Charles Stross writes a lot of stories that are part 007, part Lovecraft, part Dilbert, and a whole lot of satire on the bureaucracy of the world. It's like a geek's wet dream come true. In that world the unspeakable horrors from beyond the veil/depth/whatever permeate every space, and running some strange equations and recursions off your computer ('interesting fractals' they say) can punch a hole through the universe from where the dark things of the world can emerge from. Jennifer Morgue, Concrete Jungle, and the Atrocity Archives come to mind (those are the names of his books set in the world I just talked about). I've been reading them all in ebook format (perfectly suited for my on-the-go lifestyle these days) along with like ten other books/papers/journals on topics rich enough fill a small encyclopedia series and they're a real keeper. Very fun time-wasters if you ask me.
Whenever I read stories like these I can't help but to ask what the act of writing and creating worlds for writing in really means for the author. Not necessarily just writing, all the art forms in general. I feel as if the creators of those works secretly want their creations to become real, that they are not just content on creating but somehow wants to influence the world around them using their creations. It's a trait of art that I've been following up on for quite a while now, and one of the reasons why I think artifical life would be the most ideal form of art.
The problem is I can't seem to be able to figure out how to do the whole lambda calculus thing in the first place. It's beginning to get a little irksome. I was good at it before, good enough to do the whole algebra II exam using only lambda calculus when I was in middle school. That was when I was a little kid! And now I can't recall even the simplest abstraction method to pull the trick off. I know I have the notes that can bring back my memory stashed somewhere in the closet (which is as big as half my room), but I don't feel like opening it up and shuffling through ten years old papers right now since I'm tired from the work/study that went on today. It feels like sand is flowing in my veins.
I really hate it when things I knew before, and things I could do before slip out of my reach like this. It makes me feel so vulnerable, that in my twenty and so years of life I've never managed to get past some inherent level of wisdom and ability despite years of experiences and rigorous academic training. It makes me feel naked in this world, against the very questions I sought to solve throughout most of my life.
Lambda calculus lambda calculus... Ugh I still can't remember. Maybe I'll be able to recall something by tomorrow, once I get some proper rest and food into my brain.
I'm still doing that crazy 3000~5000 words freewrite per day thing. It's only that many of them are increasingly becoming sensitive/insane to post in public spaces, so I'm dumping them all into my offline text cache. The surge of creative acts on my part doesn't seem to be easing up, something I'm quite happy about. It makes me feel live to do those things, despite the fact that doing all sorts of activities (mathematics, physics research, synthetic biology, etc etc) exhaust the hell out of me. I feel like I'm running through a marathon a day, which might not be too far from the truth (I think I'm actually beginning to lose weight, by THINKING).
I've been reading up a lot about mathematics these days, nothing too difficult. Mostly on group theories and their applications, and a bit of topology here and there, sometimes combined with little odds and ends most people don't learn in standard college classes. It reminds me of why I like mathematics in the first place (I want to make it perfectly clear though, that while I like mathematics I mostly despise mathematics classes). Forget PSP and nintendo DS. I have lifetime of gaming right inside of my own head, as long as I don't forget about them like I did with the lambda calculus.
Speaking of mathematics, Charles Stross writes a lot of stories that are part 007, part Lovecraft, part Dilbert, and a whole lot of satire on the bureaucracy of the world. It's like a geek's wet dream come true. In that world the unspeakable horrors from beyond the veil/depth/whatever permeate every space, and running some strange equations and recursions off your computer ('interesting fractals' they say) can punch a hole through the universe from where the dark things of the world can emerge from. Jennifer Morgue, Concrete Jungle, and the Atrocity Archives come to mind (those are the names of his books set in the world I just talked about). I've been reading them all in ebook format (perfectly suited for my on-the-go lifestyle these days) along with like ten other books/papers/journals on topics rich enough fill a small encyclopedia series and they're a real keeper. Very fun time-wasters if you ask me.
Whenever I read stories like these I can't help but to ask what the act of writing and creating worlds for writing in really means for the author. Not necessarily just writing, all the art forms in general. I feel as if the creators of those works secretly want their creations to become real, that they are not just content on creating but somehow wants to influence the world around them using their creations. It's a trait of art that I've been following up on for quite a while now, and one of the reasons why I think artifical life would be the most ideal form of art.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Cellphones in third world.
First, a little article excerpt I got from the nokiablog.
"The iPhone may be the smartphone homecoming queen, but for years Nokia has been offering us the cute girl in the library. You know, the one who’s actually getting stuff done."
Of course, there are a lot of wonderful apps and utilities for iphone out there, like the papers app which is an absolute necessity for the scholarly types out there (including me. I'm practically drooling over the thing). Even so, when you take all the trimmings away, it is only true that iPhone really plays second fiddle compared to the level of the higher end phones from nokia. iPhone, for all its bells and whistles, is a heavily locked in product with first rate interface and second rate functionality. It will get better with time, but I'm not sure if even Apple can handle messed up corporate swamp that is the world of Cellular provider services. Now if only Nokia can get around to having a decent SDK for the Symbian platform as well...
I read an interesting tweet from Cory Doctorow this morning. Here it is.
Theory: ppl who say mobiles will replace laptops don't do much w laptops, esp context-switching, intense data entry or grfx
Mobiles will be poor world's laptops = poor world will be second class netizens, fenced off from generative power of network and pc
Both of which are only true, some portion of which we can already glimpse through the recent troubles at the Apple appstore selection processes. Cellphones are ideal for simple transmission of relatively simple information, but they aren't so great at doing anything long and complex (there are quite a few cases that argue to the contrary, like the keitai novel from Japan, but they are more of a result of culture rather than machines/interfaces, meaning that you need a full lifestyle change in order to be able to use the cellphone interface to pull such a feat off, which is not really my definition of usability.
Now, cellphone themselves are not the bottleneck here. If it's the full sized keyboard you need you can link up a bluetooth keyboard to most smartphones these days (except iPhone). Bigger screen? I'm sure some external monitor will come along someday. More processing power? If someone's interested, it can be built. When you think about it, it's the cellphone service provider companies that create most of the hurdles in designing and using cellphones in the world. Deliberately crippled functionalities, machine lock-ins, draconian service charges and commitments that spread out across multiple years of time, after which the phone becomes obsolete and you repeat the cycle of getting another handset with another multiple year contracts. And why do we let service providers get away with this? It is because of the infrastructure needed to run cellular networks. They built it, they own it, and there's nothing to be done about it.
So why don't we remove reliance on cellular infrastructure in the first place? OLPC experimented with a very interesting technology called mesh-networking. Why can't we apply the same to cellphones? Mesh network of cellular signals, wherein you'd only need someone else using a cellphone within certain area to be able to connect to a network. There will still be a need for corporate controlled gateway but the user's reliance on it will fall dramatically, and it would mean less infrastructure load for the cellular service providers themselves.
Such network can expand across vast landscapes and cover areas that are normally impervious to cellphone signals as long as there are chain of users leading to the location. This would mean an incredible range of financial and technical freedom for third world cellphone users, and combined with the advent of opensource mobile platforms like Android OS, it would mean the beginning of truly free information exchange and content creation.
This reminds me, will future mobile OSes resemble a huge web browser covering all sorts of libraries and functionalities?
"The iPhone may be the smartphone homecoming queen, but for years Nokia has been offering us the cute girl in the library. You know, the one who’s actually getting stuff done."
Of course, there are a lot of wonderful apps and utilities for iphone out there, like the papers app which is an absolute necessity for the scholarly types out there (including me. I'm practically drooling over the thing). Even so, when you take all the trimmings away, it is only true that iPhone really plays second fiddle compared to the level of the higher end phones from nokia. iPhone, for all its bells and whistles, is a heavily locked in product with first rate interface and second rate functionality. It will get better with time, but I'm not sure if even Apple can handle messed up corporate swamp that is the world of Cellular provider services. Now if only Nokia can get around to having a decent SDK for the Symbian platform as well...
I read an interesting tweet from Cory Doctorow this morning. Here it is.
Theory: ppl who say mobiles will replace laptops don't do much w laptops, esp context-switching, intense data entry or grfx
Mobiles will be poor world's laptops = poor world will be second class netizens, fenced off from generative power of network and pc
Both of which are only true, some portion of which we can already glimpse through the recent troubles at the Apple appstore selection processes. Cellphones are ideal for simple transmission of relatively simple information, but they aren't so great at doing anything long and complex (there are quite a few cases that argue to the contrary, like the keitai novel from Japan, but they are more of a result of culture rather than machines/interfaces, meaning that you need a full lifestyle change in order to be able to use the cellphone interface to pull such a feat off, which is not really my definition of usability.
Now, cellphone themselves are not the bottleneck here. If it's the full sized keyboard you need you can link up a bluetooth keyboard to most smartphones these days (except iPhone). Bigger screen? I'm sure some external monitor will come along someday. More processing power? If someone's interested, it can be built. When you think about it, it's the cellphone service provider companies that create most of the hurdles in designing and using cellphones in the world. Deliberately crippled functionalities, machine lock-ins, draconian service charges and commitments that spread out across multiple years of time, after which the phone becomes obsolete and you repeat the cycle of getting another handset with another multiple year contracts. And why do we let service providers get away with this? It is because of the infrastructure needed to run cellular networks. They built it, they own it, and there's nothing to be done about it.
So why don't we remove reliance on cellular infrastructure in the first place? OLPC experimented with a very interesting technology called mesh-networking. Why can't we apply the same to cellphones? Mesh network of cellular signals, wherein you'd only need someone else using a cellphone within certain area to be able to connect to a network. There will still be a need for corporate controlled gateway but the user's reliance on it will fall dramatically, and it would mean less infrastructure load for the cellular service providers themselves.
Such network can expand across vast landscapes and cover areas that are normally impervious to cellphone signals as long as there are chain of users leading to the location. This would mean an incredible range of financial and technical freedom for third world cellphone users, and combined with the advent of opensource mobile platforms like Android OS, it would mean the beginning of truly free information exchange and content creation.
This reminds me, will future mobile OSes resemble a huge web browser covering all sorts of libraries and functionalities?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Another OS stories, synbio woes, and economy sucks.
Another OS stories, synbio woes, and economy sucks.
I've been rewatching a bit of serial experiment lain lately. How did I manage to do that with my recent schedule? Thank god for ipods. I had the DVDs converted to a raw file and then imported them into my 80GB ipod classic. As I have written somewhere before on some blog on the net, ipod is the modern vellum. It's like carrying a book around, except that there a lot more data to be stored in smaller packaging. I have quite a few MIT/UC Berkeley lectures on it as well, not to mention some of the more incredible (they are all incredible) TED talks that's available straight from the iTunes program. Not to sing praises of the Apple corporation or anything, but they really did get a lot of things right, the kind of things most large computer/electronics corporations just don't seem to be able to handle very aptly (probably because people who never programmed on computers run many of those corporations). If only they weren't being such dicks about it in their marketing campaigns and target population.... The fact of being able to have an external hard drive interfaced to a sound-out and a screen feels in many ways like holding a book for me, except that the format of the information and the amount of content is different. It's probably one of the reasons why I'm not all too find of the ipod touch. Too many functionalities, while useful and cool, is really a distraction I think (although the recent release of the Papers application for iPhone/touch is making me have second thoughts. That program is really a must have for any academic researcher). The app store concept integrated into the iPhone/touch was a stroke of genius as well. It's like software depository you can normally see on linux, just available ubiquitously, and each of the applications being self-contained without needing third party libraries and dependencies like it is normally the case with most linux distributions. Some people argue about the usefulness of the app store citing examples like 'pull my finger' or some other dumb derivative taking the top place among the most downloaded apps, but that's not the point, is it? Most bestsellers in books are pure crap. I don't mean to insult the authors but seriously, if you ever stopped and read through the Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet series you'll never be able to read any more fiction. It's amazing how there is both purity and filth in this world, manifesting in a single form of media. Likewise despite the flood of rather disgusting applications, app store provides a lot of gems like the aforementioned papers application that might as well change how scholars do research.
The facets of computerized culture is really apparent in the serial experiment lain. It can't be helped. the whole series revolve around computerization and its impact on the culture, and the anime was designed from the ground up with the accompanying PSX game in mind, where the player explorers the world of lain through a faux web browser that relays fragmented bits of information for the player to dissect. I've always found it interesting how Apple received such a prominent coverage through references in the lain anime. Most if not all the computers in the lain world (called navi, itself another Apple term derived from 'knowledge navigator.' it was basically a prototypical model for today's mobile computer/smartphones, where one would be able to connect to ubiquitous information and utilize various forms of media for literally navigating through knowledge contained in the web. Might not sound like much now, but we must realize that this idea came out while people still had to order floppy disc drives onto their computer) are some form of Apple computer in its previous or experimental derivation. The anime itself was largely done on Apple computers, using techniques that seem usual to us now but novel for the time it was made in. But if it were only superficial references I wouldn't be interested to actually write about it.
I'm interested because of so many of the software references present in lain. The copland OS in the lain world, which is the prevalent majority OS of the lain world like it is with the windows platform in ours, is actually a code name for experimental Apple OS that eventually culminated in the current iteration of OS X. You can also see a lot of references to other alternative operating systems like the BeOS and NeXT STEP. I don't know about copland (to be frank, Apple OS prior to OS X weren't all that great. There wasn't much you could do with those, made windows 95/98 look customizable), but BeOS and NeXt were both operating systems far ahead of its time. I'm not using this term lightly. They were both so far ahead of its time that many modern operating systems are still playing catch-up with some of their features (I'm looking at you, Vista). They were merely pushed out of the spotlight because of the incompatibility with the deluge of windows only application that also nearly did in the Apple corporation. Spec-wise, they were the operating systems of the future, capable of interfacing with, and running in mind boggling array of machines and peripherals with minimal modification. NeXT system was the first operating system in the world to feature the world's first web browser. That's right. WWW as we know it didn't really exist until NeXT came along with their crazy graphical applications and network capability. The first Doom was coded in NeXT machines. NeXT machines formed the backbone of the early CERN system and many other major labs around the world, and the coup-de-grace of all mathematical simulation/research applications, the Mathematica, was born on the NeXT system as well. Conventional Apple OSes and windows just couldn't handle the development and maintenance of such high caliber applications. Not that it was impossible, just that it would have required heroic feat of software engineering due to inherent faults and limitations of the operating systems themselves, which would have cost astronomical amount of money, and crazy amount of time, only to end up with buggy application capable of running only in highest of high-end systems (sounds familiar? Most modern games are programmed 'on' windows. Maybe that's why we have such crazy spec-eating buggy applications on the market today), something that was just not acceptable in mission critical applications used in laboratories and research centers around the world.
BeOS was later forgotten into oblivion. It had its share of devoted fans, and they still develop for the platform that's about to be reincarnated as the opensource Haiku OS (still in beta), but as the things stand it's a hobbyist platform at best. NeXT STep also has its share of devotees as well. They are developing a type of shell called GNUStep that's opensource and capable of running as a front-end for any operating system architecture, including linux, FreeBSD and windows. However, NeXT really didn't fall into oblivion like the BeOS did. Steve Jobs was the CEO and founder of the NeXT corporation, and he brought the whole thing to Apple when he became the CEO of the Apple corporation, which merged into some of the existing Apple architecture to form the backbone of what we know refer to as the OS X.
Apple has a bad reputation of being a computer company for fashion-conscious jerk wads with money to burn, and to some extent they really do deserve that reputation. You don't gain that kind of popularity without intentionally marketing your products toward them, and Apple certainly did target people who think computers are fashion accessories aiming for the lucrative high-end electronics market. Regardless, physicists and other scientists (especially the biologists of all kinds) love OS X. It has UNIX backbone so it integrates easily into any major research mainframes out there, most of them running some derivative of UNIX platform. It's popular enough to support most formats out there, like PDF, PPT and whatnot. It has bigger library of available softwares compared to linux, and it (was) a whole lot more stable compared to equivalent windows distributions while using less hardware resources to do more (modern versions of windows nearly caught up with OS X on the issue of stability though. OS X being inherently safer than windows isn't all that true in most cases). OS X has generous licensing terms, and you can reinstall you OS on your computer as many times as you want. If your windows crash on you and you need to reinstall it more than three times you need to call Microsoft and get permission to do things to your own computer. If you're using the arduino kit, OS X interfaces better than windows. If you're programming for the android OS, OS X connects better (though they are remedying that problem). Mathematica and other numerical simulation software is better integrated in OS X. OS X is capable of multiple processor array using multiple number of computers out-of-the-box. With windows? Well you can do it if you have money and time. And physicists/chemists/biologists usually want to do research, not spend grant money and weeks of time in configuring their computer system. It might have been fine to do that,maybe even cool when they were pimply faced teenagers, but when you have a paying job priorities change. People can argue about merit of different operating systems all they want. As the things stand at the moment, the only edge windows has over OS X is that it has bigger software library, and bigger software library is beginning to sound more and more like 'more games to buy and play with', which isn't something people with things to do keep in mind when buying their computers. If Microsoft thinks they can get away with having more games on their system as the leading reason to run windows, they need to wake up and smell the coffee. It's relatively trivial to port games. It's bloody difficult, if not impossible to port scientific applications, or anything else that you need to do your job. It's clear what people will choose when spending their 1k+ money on computers, and the gap will only deepen as the time goes on.
I don't like Apple. I don't like the Apple corporation. I think Microsoft spends more on their research projects and Microsoft does more for humanitarian projects compared to the Apple corporation. When I praise OS X, I'm praising BeOS and NeXT, not the Apple corporation. I'm not sure if I like Steve Jobs. From what I hear he's quite unpleasant to be around, and it's probably true. What really boils me when I think about OS X is the inevitable comparison between OS X and windows. At least linux is free. You don't complain when you get things for free, that's being distributed for more or less ideological reasons. Either you work with it or don't. But you need to pay for OS X and windows, and for operating system that costs money and that's bound in quite possibly draconian DRM windows usually doesn't feel like you're getting your money's worth. Mostly because it's really difficult to do actual work with windows based OSes, and mostly because windows OS doesn't have a shell.
All of this is beginning to sound a lot like bunch of techno fetishism isn't it? It probably is. I think the creator of serial experiment lain also makes a point on that issue, in an interview I read somewhere. Despite the level of technology in our possession, they way we wield it is not a whole lot different from how shamans of ancient religions would have wielded their religious fetishes in order to inflict some intended change upon the world. Like the lain OS project, for example. It's an old, possibly dead project that planned to use GNUStep interface on top of FreeBSD to make a new OS that runs the same way as most of the conventional operating systems in the lain universe, with similar level of customizability and interfacing options that include full voice support and etc. (it's a really ambitious project that probably fell apart under its own weight). Maybe the originator of the idea to create the lain OS was trying to immanentize the eschaton in his own right. Bringing about a change in world through symbols and symbolized actions. A lot of software based ideologies are beginning to sound more and more like their hardware-based counterparts, like cutting out the heart of your enemy and eating it to gain strength, or burying some sort of devotional item under a building to protect it for posterity. Now I know some of you might be smirking with obvious sense of superiority over the rest of the populace at not being subject to such barbaric impulses, but that's exactly my point. I'm saying that such semi-religious impulses are innate part of how human beings operate and view the world around him/her, so if anyone's feeling 'superior' over any other it's bound to be some sort of (possibly xenophobic) illusion, like saying my stick is better than your stick. Even the root of transhumanism can be explained in such a manner when you think about it. Basically people are searching for immortality and omniscience. A completion of the self as a human being through changing the body, something that's in the same league as the African scarification and Scandinavian body tattoo. They thought those patterns and runes held power to change the self, so they sought to integrate them to themselves by carving those patterns onto their own bodies. People now think molecular and atomic patterns have power to change the self, through it the world, and through it the very course of future, so they are searching for the way to integrate them to the very core of being, becoming transhuman. We may be living in an age where becoming something more than human is being equated with carving patterns and tattoos onto our bodies, along with other fetishes god knows what, maybe even some sort of exoskeleton.
Despite the aversion of the normalcy against 'barbarism' or anything that remotely reminds them of the past, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just means that we need to keep an eye out for ourselves when charting out the course of change for our future, not to get caught up in individual fetish objects as the end-of-all solution to our problems. I want to be a mad scientist, someone who can inflict change on the world through the use of knowledge and technology. It's a self-fulfilling cycle, where change in the world begets more knowledge which in turn changes the world further. Maybe my fixation with computer OSes and other peripherals are because of my desire for knowledge. Maybe I've been unwittingly sacrificing to the gods of knowledge by devoting myself to one type of operating system or the other, or some web browser, programming language, whatever, hoping that fixation with such objects would grant me power to achieve my dreams. Perhaps the same can be applied to everyone else out there, to varying degrees of intensity. I've seen people who don't know squat about entry level calculus holding zealously to physics and chemistry text undoubtedly beyond their comprehension, as if uttering those arcane words and tracing those symbols would somehow grant deeper wisdom, and change the course of the world to their liking. Perhaps the same can be said of the fashions and other items for 'fitting in' at the society. Maybe it's not about fitting in at all, maybe it's about collective understanding of the world, each individual trying to find a way to fulfill their sense of self according to that shared depot of information, which inevitably results in similarity.
Okay, enough about the whole fulfillment of self, cults, religions, and softwares.
I was set to have a meeting next Monday at the AMNH for possible first diybio-nyc meeting, but it doesn't look like it's going to work out (why am I not surprised). The meeting is still set to go, but it won't be in the AMNH which is a big shame because it would have been epic to have the first diybio-nyc meeting in history of the world in the museum of natural history. Maybe I should still push for the meeting in the museum... Apparently the reason for sudden change of venue is due to the changed policy of the museum due to economic woes and shrinking budget. The trouble with lab funding and now this. I'm feeling the effects of economic woes all over the place, and I get a feeling that it's going to get worse before it gets better.
As for the quality of the diybio-nyc personnel, I might as well be the most junior one of the bunch in terms of actual biology experiences. Apparently some members were actually participating members of the iGEM competition and one of them actually works in a biotech company situated in nyc.
I've been rewatching a bit of serial experiment lain lately. How did I manage to do that with my recent schedule? Thank god for ipods. I had the DVDs converted to a raw file and then imported them into my 80GB ipod classic. As I have written somewhere before on some blog on the net, ipod is the modern vellum. It's like carrying a book around, except that there a lot more data to be stored in smaller packaging. I have quite a few MIT/UC Berkeley lectures on it as well, not to mention some of the more incredible (they are all incredible) TED talks that's available straight from the iTunes program. Not to sing praises of the Apple corporation or anything, but they really did get a lot of things right, the kind of things most large computer/electronics corporations just don't seem to be able to handle very aptly (probably because people who never programmed on computers run many of those corporations). If only they weren't being such dicks about it in their marketing campaigns and target population.... The fact of being able to have an external hard drive interfaced to a sound-out and a screen feels in many ways like holding a book for me, except that the format of the information and the amount of content is different. It's probably one of the reasons why I'm not all too find of the ipod touch. Too many functionalities, while useful and cool, is really a distraction I think (although the recent release of the Papers application for iPhone/touch is making me have second thoughts. That program is really a must have for any academic researcher). The app store concept integrated into the iPhone/touch was a stroke of genius as well. It's like software depository you can normally see on linux, just available ubiquitously, and each of the applications being self-contained without needing third party libraries and dependencies like it is normally the case with most linux distributions. Some people argue about the usefulness of the app store citing examples like 'pull my finger' or some other dumb derivative taking the top place among the most downloaded apps, but that's not the point, is it? Most bestsellers in books are pure crap. I don't mean to insult the authors but seriously, if you ever stopped and read through the Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet series you'll never be able to read any more fiction. It's amazing how there is both purity and filth in this world, manifesting in a single form of media. Likewise despite the flood of rather disgusting applications, app store provides a lot of gems like the aforementioned papers application that might as well change how scholars do research.
The facets of computerized culture is really apparent in the serial experiment lain. It can't be helped. the whole series revolve around computerization and its impact on the culture, and the anime was designed from the ground up with the accompanying PSX game in mind, where the player explorers the world of lain through a faux web browser that relays fragmented bits of information for the player to dissect. I've always found it interesting how Apple received such a prominent coverage through references in the lain anime. Most if not all the computers in the lain world (called navi, itself another Apple term derived from 'knowledge navigator.' it was basically a prototypical model for today's mobile computer/smartphones, where one would be able to connect to ubiquitous information and utilize various forms of media for literally navigating through knowledge contained in the web. Might not sound like much now, but we must realize that this idea came out while people still had to order floppy disc drives onto their computer) are some form of Apple computer in its previous or experimental derivation. The anime itself was largely done on Apple computers, using techniques that seem usual to us now but novel for the time it was made in. But if it were only superficial references I wouldn't be interested to actually write about it.
I'm interested because of so many of the software references present in lain. The copland OS in the lain world, which is the prevalent majority OS of the lain world like it is with the windows platform in ours, is actually a code name for experimental Apple OS that eventually culminated in the current iteration of OS X. You can also see a lot of references to other alternative operating systems like the BeOS and NeXT STEP. I don't know about copland (to be frank, Apple OS prior to OS X weren't all that great. There wasn't much you could do with those, made windows 95/98 look customizable), but BeOS and NeXt were both operating systems far ahead of its time. I'm not using this term lightly. They were both so far ahead of its time that many modern operating systems are still playing catch-up with some of their features (I'm looking at you, Vista). They were merely pushed out of the spotlight because of the incompatibility with the deluge of windows only application that also nearly did in the Apple corporation. Spec-wise, they were the operating systems of the future, capable of interfacing with, and running in mind boggling array of machines and peripherals with minimal modification. NeXT system was the first operating system in the world to feature the world's first web browser. That's right. WWW as we know it didn't really exist until NeXT came along with their crazy graphical applications and network capability. The first Doom was coded in NeXT machines. NeXT machines formed the backbone of the early CERN system and many other major labs around the world, and the coup-de-grace of all mathematical simulation/research applications, the Mathematica, was born on the NeXT system as well. Conventional Apple OSes and windows just couldn't handle the development and maintenance of such high caliber applications. Not that it was impossible, just that it would have required heroic feat of software engineering due to inherent faults and limitations of the operating systems themselves, which would have cost astronomical amount of money, and crazy amount of time, only to end up with buggy application capable of running only in highest of high-end systems (sounds familiar? Most modern games are programmed 'on' windows. Maybe that's why we have such crazy spec-eating buggy applications on the market today), something that was just not acceptable in mission critical applications used in laboratories and research centers around the world.
BeOS was later forgotten into oblivion. It had its share of devoted fans, and they still develop for the platform that's about to be reincarnated as the opensource Haiku OS (still in beta), but as the things stand it's a hobbyist platform at best. NeXT STep also has its share of devotees as well. They are developing a type of shell called GNUStep that's opensource and capable of running as a front-end for any operating system architecture, including linux, FreeBSD and windows. However, NeXT really didn't fall into oblivion like the BeOS did. Steve Jobs was the CEO and founder of the NeXT corporation, and he brought the whole thing to Apple when he became the CEO of the Apple corporation, which merged into some of the existing Apple architecture to form the backbone of what we know refer to as the OS X.
Apple has a bad reputation of being a computer company for fashion-conscious jerk wads with money to burn, and to some extent they really do deserve that reputation. You don't gain that kind of popularity without intentionally marketing your products toward them, and Apple certainly did target people who think computers are fashion accessories aiming for the lucrative high-end electronics market. Regardless, physicists and other scientists (especially the biologists of all kinds) love OS X. It has UNIX backbone so it integrates easily into any major research mainframes out there, most of them running some derivative of UNIX platform. It's popular enough to support most formats out there, like PDF, PPT and whatnot. It has bigger library of available softwares compared to linux, and it (was) a whole lot more stable compared to equivalent windows distributions while using less hardware resources to do more (modern versions of windows nearly caught up with OS X on the issue of stability though. OS X being inherently safer than windows isn't all that true in most cases). OS X has generous licensing terms, and you can reinstall you OS on your computer as many times as you want. If your windows crash on you and you need to reinstall it more than three times you need to call Microsoft and get permission to do things to your own computer. If you're using the arduino kit, OS X interfaces better than windows. If you're programming for the android OS, OS X connects better (though they are remedying that problem). Mathematica and other numerical simulation software is better integrated in OS X. OS X is capable of multiple processor array using multiple number of computers out-of-the-box. With windows? Well you can do it if you have money and time. And physicists/chemists/biologists usually want to do research, not spend grant money and weeks of time in configuring their computer system. It might have been fine to do that,maybe even cool when they were pimply faced teenagers, but when you have a paying job priorities change. People can argue about merit of different operating systems all they want. As the things stand at the moment, the only edge windows has over OS X is that it has bigger software library, and bigger software library is beginning to sound more and more like 'more games to buy and play with', which isn't something people with things to do keep in mind when buying their computers. If Microsoft thinks they can get away with having more games on their system as the leading reason to run windows, they need to wake up and smell the coffee. It's relatively trivial to port games. It's bloody difficult, if not impossible to port scientific applications, or anything else that you need to do your job. It's clear what people will choose when spending their 1k+ money on computers, and the gap will only deepen as the time goes on.
I don't like Apple. I don't like the Apple corporation. I think Microsoft spends more on their research projects and Microsoft does more for humanitarian projects compared to the Apple corporation. When I praise OS X, I'm praising BeOS and NeXT, not the Apple corporation. I'm not sure if I like Steve Jobs. From what I hear he's quite unpleasant to be around, and it's probably true. What really boils me when I think about OS X is the inevitable comparison between OS X and windows. At least linux is free. You don't complain when you get things for free, that's being distributed for more or less ideological reasons. Either you work with it or don't. But you need to pay for OS X and windows, and for operating system that costs money and that's bound in quite possibly draconian DRM windows usually doesn't feel like you're getting your money's worth. Mostly because it's really difficult to do actual work with windows based OSes, and mostly because windows OS doesn't have a shell.
All of this is beginning to sound a lot like bunch of techno fetishism isn't it? It probably is. I think the creator of serial experiment lain also makes a point on that issue, in an interview I read somewhere. Despite the level of technology in our possession, they way we wield it is not a whole lot different from how shamans of ancient religions would have wielded their religious fetishes in order to inflict some intended change upon the world. Like the lain OS project, for example. It's an old, possibly dead project that planned to use GNUStep interface on top of FreeBSD to make a new OS that runs the same way as most of the conventional operating systems in the lain universe, with similar level of customizability and interfacing options that include full voice support and etc. (it's a really ambitious project that probably fell apart under its own weight). Maybe the originator of the idea to create the lain OS was trying to immanentize the eschaton in his own right. Bringing about a change in world through symbols and symbolized actions. A lot of software based ideologies are beginning to sound more and more like their hardware-based counterparts, like cutting out the heart of your enemy and eating it to gain strength, or burying some sort of devotional item under a building to protect it for posterity. Now I know some of you might be smirking with obvious sense of superiority over the rest of the populace at not being subject to such barbaric impulses, but that's exactly my point. I'm saying that such semi-religious impulses are innate part of how human beings operate and view the world around him/her, so if anyone's feeling 'superior' over any other it's bound to be some sort of (possibly xenophobic) illusion, like saying my stick is better than your stick. Even the root of transhumanism can be explained in such a manner when you think about it. Basically people are searching for immortality and omniscience. A completion of the self as a human being through changing the body, something that's in the same league as the African scarification and Scandinavian body tattoo. They thought those patterns and runes held power to change the self, so they sought to integrate them to themselves by carving those patterns onto their own bodies. People now think molecular and atomic patterns have power to change the self, through it the world, and through it the very course of future, so they are searching for the way to integrate them to the very core of being, becoming transhuman. We may be living in an age where becoming something more than human is being equated with carving patterns and tattoos onto our bodies, along with other fetishes god knows what, maybe even some sort of exoskeleton.
Despite the aversion of the normalcy against 'barbarism' or anything that remotely reminds them of the past, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just means that we need to keep an eye out for ourselves when charting out the course of change for our future, not to get caught up in individual fetish objects as the end-of-all solution to our problems. I want to be a mad scientist, someone who can inflict change on the world through the use of knowledge and technology. It's a self-fulfilling cycle, where change in the world begets more knowledge which in turn changes the world further. Maybe my fixation with computer OSes and other peripherals are because of my desire for knowledge. Maybe I've been unwittingly sacrificing to the gods of knowledge by devoting myself to one type of operating system or the other, or some web browser, programming language, whatever, hoping that fixation with such objects would grant me power to achieve my dreams. Perhaps the same can be applied to everyone else out there, to varying degrees of intensity. I've seen people who don't know squat about entry level calculus holding zealously to physics and chemistry text undoubtedly beyond their comprehension, as if uttering those arcane words and tracing those symbols would somehow grant deeper wisdom, and change the course of the world to their liking. Perhaps the same can be said of the fashions and other items for 'fitting in' at the society. Maybe it's not about fitting in at all, maybe it's about collective understanding of the world, each individual trying to find a way to fulfill their sense of self according to that shared depot of information, which inevitably results in similarity.
Okay, enough about the whole fulfillment of self, cults, religions, and softwares.
I was set to have a meeting next Monday at the AMNH for possible first diybio-nyc meeting, but it doesn't look like it's going to work out (why am I not surprised). The meeting is still set to go, but it won't be in the AMNH which is a big shame because it would have been epic to have the first diybio-nyc meeting in history of the world in the museum of natural history. Maybe I should still push for the meeting in the museum... Apparently the reason for sudden change of venue is due to the changed policy of the museum due to economic woes and shrinking budget. The trouble with lab funding and now this. I'm feeling the effects of economic woes all over the place, and I get a feeling that it's going to get worse before it gets better.
As for the quality of the diybio-nyc personnel, I might as well be the most junior one of the bunch in terms of actual biology experiences. Apparently some members were actually participating members of the iGEM competition and one of them actually works in a biotech company situated in nyc.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Writer's Block: Dream Trip
The beautiful buildings and arts thanks to the Renaissance and Greco-Roman civilization appeals to me, as well as the libraries with lots of rare old books and the biotechnology zone around Venice. I think the area around Venice is the place to be when we are talking about synthetic minimal cell research, and the fact that the originators of the research in the institution in Venice seem to be looking at physical side of life as well as the frequently explored molecular biological/chemical side of things are really enough to make me swoon in delight.
And, of course, the arts. The marvelous art pieces. Roman ruins everywhere (well, everywhere compared to the rest of the world), and some of the best libraries and museums in the world. Albeit my view of Italy is influenced from a lot of traveling artists' visions from the 19th century and onward but I still think it will be a sight to behold. Especially when combined with wine and food. People who hate Italian food don't have a soul. People who hate wine don't have a life (unless you abstain from drinking alcohol entirely).
Even when I think of some steampunkish model for fictional pieces or simple daydreaming, I view the background of that world as being more like Italy than Britain, which isn't the case with most people for some reason. Roman and Renaissance devices and architectures, the ruins with steampunk machines and devices running amok. The libraries with gigantic difference machines running in the background. And of course, steam powered airship floating in a valley of ruins.
American Gods, and issues of authorship
I finally got through the American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I've said it before and I'll say it again. He's a terrific writer. He's not the best writer out there or anything (he won't be winning any Nobel prizes anytime soon, but then does it really matter anymore?), but he's certainly above the fray in bringing his ideas to life through words. His characters feel genuine and endearing, even the villains. None of the plot elements feel like a cop-out from a hairy situation of an author having to create unique situations for living, something I've seen a lot of writers succumb to.
Through the end of the book I was embroiled in some very mixed-up emotions. I wanted to see the story progress, but I didn't want the story to end. I wanted to see the story between shadow and crow to its possible happy conclusions. I wanted to see shadow grow old and meet someone and I wanted to read what he would have been thinking at the moment. I wanted to see if he'd get to meet any other gods, and I wanted to know if it would be as humorous and wonderful as most of his other encounters with the gods of the world, past and future. As I read on to sate my curiosities, I couldn't avoid finishing the book, and that's the biggest gripe I have with the American Gods.
There are all sorts of heavy stuff that people trained in such arts can debate and write about all days and nights in American Gods. Some would like the feeling of America as a collection of old, used-up ideas and modern god like ideas struggling for control, afraid to be forgotten. Some would call it an old and washed out idea just like the gods of old, since it's an archetypal picture of the American that journalists and novelists and anyone else who can write and has good enough eyes to see things around them had been writing for past half a century or so, maybe even longer. I don't think it matters. Neil Gaiman didn't write this novel so he can have grand disposition on the fate of the American ideas (if that were the case the future of America would lie in somewhere around Iceland, and that would be funny, not serious). He wrote this novel to write a good story with good people living in it and he did one heck of a job. I don't think I'll be forgetting about the three sisters, Mr. Wednesday, shadow, Laura, crow, and etc etc anytime soon. It would be great if I don't forget about them for the rest of my life, but no one knows what will happen in the future, and hopefully I might be able to experience something even more intense.
I'd love to write about some elements in the story, but I don't think I should. I made a blood oath never to write down spoilers when 'reviewing' a book in a public place. Let's just say that I really enjoyed the book, and I never wanted it to end. I think I spent about four or five days reading this book. I would have finished earlier, but then I had sudden burst of workload on me this week so I had to pull a few late nights. I mostly read this book in the subways, and in the bed with the reading light on. I would frequently curse at myself for reading past three AM on a work day, just hoping that I would be fresh enough to not look like a zombie by the time I wake up a few hours later. I would actually anticipate the ride on the subways since it was pretty much the only time during the day that I could sit down and read for close to an hour or so. The crowd didn't bother me but I might have bothered some nice old ladies for making weird faces while reading the book, from deadly seriousness to strange smile (the kind you get when you suppress an even bigger smile because it would be weird laughing out of the blue). But then I guess there were even weirder things on New York City subways at eleven in the night, so I probably didn't stand out too much... Which reminds me, I've never seen people reading on subway who change their facial expressions before. Is it that everyone else is so well trained in managing their faces or are the books just really boring? I would say it's the training issue, since I also become excited when I'm reading through particularly illuminating passages on a physics book, and most normal people probably don't do that.
As I read through the American Gods, I was reminded of just how much I like reading, and sometimes even writing, creative stories. With my official status as a student I usually have to dig through a lot of journals and data, where they usually deal with diagrams and numbers without much creative license (I think I remember one of my teachers telling me that use of creative license in any scientific writing is a single ticket to ending your career. Or did I read it in a story somewhere? I can't quite recall). Reading those dry, albeit enlightening, academic scripts seem to have taken its toll on me, and sometimes I feel like I'm a dry person myself. It's like the case with Marge Simpson. I only think of crazy jokes or stories only after I leave the party and start my car. It drives me crazy.
That being the case, reading through the American Gods and some other fictional works before that was a cathartic experience for me. I wonder what kind of trait drives us to enjoy and seek out well-made stories involving fictional people and places? Was there some strange need for living organisms to be able to tell fantasies to each other in order to survive? The kind of fantasy where both the storyteller and the audience knows it's fantasy but indulge in it anyway? That would be an interesting venue of research, something I sadly cannot seem to be able to find anywhere.
The American Gods also had me thinking about the archetype of stories. Whether we like it or not, elements of the ideas composing stories from various authors end up being similar to each other. Usually the difference is only made up through the skills of the writer/storyteller in masterful use of the language the story is transmitted to their audience. C.G. Jung built up a whole sub-discipline of psychology based on those archetypes found throughout human culture and even dreams, and it's almost as if human beings are capable of only telling certain types of creative stories with varying degrees of proficiency. What would that imply in understanding human creativity? Maybe the trait of creativity isn't as limitless as we tend to believe. Maybe creativity is just like most other mathematically derived abstract act, based off of some type of pattern that circles around itself. If that were the case, we would be able to make a machine capable of creating stories not by linking relevant words together but through linking relevant ideas together, into a preset pattern. An idea of conflict, an idea of resolution. The individual set of vocabulary and the storyline composing that single idea would be irrelevant as long as it can lead to the next part, and the transition won't even have to be singular. It can be polyphonic like Bach's composition, each event happening with another in ceaseless pattern. However while I'm sure it would be interesting to create such a program/machine, I'm not sure how I would be able to handle the task of making a machine capable of creating a character. Will characters simply emerge out of the polyphonic storyline? Will their personalities simply emerge out of the series of events that the characters are subjected to, each of them simply beginning with a name?
The first thing I tend to do when I want a deeper understanding of a writer's work is to look up information on the life of writer him/herself. The research can be illuminating in a lot of cases, which is funny when you think about it since most writers I know of make their living by creating stories that are considered very unique compared to the rest of the 'writer population.' Would that imply that the trait of creativity is inseparable from memories of the individual? And what should writers do when they are so prolific that they are faced with the possibility of patterns and familiar ideas appearing again and again within their works? Do they embrace the patterns and ideas and try to refine them? Or do they try to break free, staying away from such patterns and ideas appearing in their works altogether?
Through the end of the book I was embroiled in some very mixed-up emotions. I wanted to see the story progress, but I didn't want the story to end. I wanted to see the story between shadow and crow to its possible happy conclusions. I wanted to see shadow grow old and meet someone and I wanted to read what he would have been thinking at the moment. I wanted to see if he'd get to meet any other gods, and I wanted to know if it would be as humorous and wonderful as most of his other encounters with the gods of the world, past and future. As I read on to sate my curiosities, I couldn't avoid finishing the book, and that's the biggest gripe I have with the American Gods.
There are all sorts of heavy stuff that people trained in such arts can debate and write about all days and nights in American Gods. Some would like the feeling of America as a collection of old, used-up ideas and modern god like ideas struggling for control, afraid to be forgotten. Some would call it an old and washed out idea just like the gods of old, since it's an archetypal picture of the American that journalists and novelists and anyone else who can write and has good enough eyes to see things around them had been writing for past half a century or so, maybe even longer. I don't think it matters. Neil Gaiman didn't write this novel so he can have grand disposition on the fate of the American ideas (if that were the case the future of America would lie in somewhere around Iceland, and that would be funny, not serious). He wrote this novel to write a good story with good people living in it and he did one heck of a job. I don't think I'll be forgetting about the three sisters, Mr. Wednesday, shadow, Laura, crow, and etc etc anytime soon. It would be great if I don't forget about them for the rest of my life, but no one knows what will happen in the future, and hopefully I might be able to experience something even more intense.
I'd love to write about some elements in the story, but I don't think I should. I made a blood oath never to write down spoilers when 'reviewing' a book in a public place. Let's just say that I really enjoyed the book, and I never wanted it to end. I think I spent about four or five days reading this book. I would have finished earlier, but then I had sudden burst of workload on me this week so I had to pull a few late nights. I mostly read this book in the subways, and in the bed with the reading light on. I would frequently curse at myself for reading past three AM on a work day, just hoping that I would be fresh enough to not look like a zombie by the time I wake up a few hours later. I would actually anticipate the ride on the subways since it was pretty much the only time during the day that I could sit down and read for close to an hour or so. The crowd didn't bother me but I might have bothered some nice old ladies for making weird faces while reading the book, from deadly seriousness to strange smile (the kind you get when you suppress an even bigger smile because it would be weird laughing out of the blue). But then I guess there were even weirder things on New York City subways at eleven in the night, so I probably didn't stand out too much... Which reminds me, I've never seen people reading on subway who change their facial expressions before. Is it that everyone else is so well trained in managing their faces or are the books just really boring? I would say it's the training issue, since I also become excited when I'm reading through particularly illuminating passages on a physics book, and most normal people probably don't do that.
As I read through the American Gods, I was reminded of just how much I like reading, and sometimes even writing, creative stories. With my official status as a student I usually have to dig through a lot of journals and data, where they usually deal with diagrams and numbers without much creative license (I think I remember one of my teachers telling me that use of creative license in any scientific writing is a single ticket to ending your career. Or did I read it in a story somewhere? I can't quite recall). Reading those dry, albeit enlightening, academic scripts seem to have taken its toll on me, and sometimes I feel like I'm a dry person myself. It's like the case with Marge Simpson. I only think of crazy jokes or stories only after I leave the party and start my car. It drives me crazy.
That being the case, reading through the American Gods and some other fictional works before that was a cathartic experience for me. I wonder what kind of trait drives us to enjoy and seek out well-made stories involving fictional people and places? Was there some strange need for living organisms to be able to tell fantasies to each other in order to survive? The kind of fantasy where both the storyteller and the audience knows it's fantasy but indulge in it anyway? That would be an interesting venue of research, something I sadly cannot seem to be able to find anywhere.
The American Gods also had me thinking about the archetype of stories. Whether we like it or not, elements of the ideas composing stories from various authors end up being similar to each other. Usually the difference is only made up through the skills of the writer/storyteller in masterful use of the language the story is transmitted to their audience. C.G. Jung built up a whole sub-discipline of psychology based on those archetypes found throughout human culture and even dreams, and it's almost as if human beings are capable of only telling certain types of creative stories with varying degrees of proficiency. What would that imply in understanding human creativity? Maybe the trait of creativity isn't as limitless as we tend to believe. Maybe creativity is just like most other mathematically derived abstract act, based off of some type of pattern that circles around itself. If that were the case, we would be able to make a machine capable of creating stories not by linking relevant words together but through linking relevant ideas together, into a preset pattern. An idea of conflict, an idea of resolution. The individual set of vocabulary and the storyline composing that single idea would be irrelevant as long as it can lead to the next part, and the transition won't even have to be singular. It can be polyphonic like Bach's composition, each event happening with another in ceaseless pattern. However while I'm sure it would be interesting to create such a program/machine, I'm not sure how I would be able to handle the task of making a machine capable of creating a character. Will characters simply emerge out of the polyphonic storyline? Will their personalities simply emerge out of the series of events that the characters are subjected to, each of them simply beginning with a name?
The first thing I tend to do when I want a deeper understanding of a writer's work is to look up information on the life of writer him/herself. The research can be illuminating in a lot of cases, which is funny when you think about it since most writers I know of make their living by creating stories that are considered very unique compared to the rest of the 'writer population.' Would that imply that the trait of creativity is inseparable from memories of the individual? And what should writers do when they are so prolific that they are faced with the possibility of patterns and familiar ideas appearing again and again within their works? Do they embrace the patterns and ideas and try to refine them? Or do they try to break free, staying away from such patterns and ideas appearing in their works altogether?
Monday, February 16, 2009
Writing in the moonlight, hopped up on nyquil.
As I write this the clock is ticking away into the later parts of the three in the morning, and the cold medicine I had to take the day before is still visibly making me drowsy. My eyes are about to shut down and I can feel some sort of weird medicine induced chill entering my system, which is all the more fantastic coupled with the not-so-pleasant after effect of mon-sal, which is a general Korean term for illness induced from exhaustion. In a few hours I would have to be off to work/school anyway, so I don't think I should really be going to sleep. I am observing myself with both concern and fascination as my body tries to resist against both the medicine and the virus or whatever that's having that ill effect on my system. How marvelous it would be to be able to analyze my whole body as a system that's being overridden by numerous effects from the environment. The general condition of my body is also taking its toll on the accuracy of my fingers and perhaps even my brain (despite the fact that I feel clear as day except for the deathly weariness that penetrates to the bones), so typos abound which I go back nad try to fix every now and then, which really puts a dampener on the whole concept of the practice of freewriting, which is to be able to write without any limitation or revision so that whatever the literary 'melody' of words and phrases that the author has within him or her can come out without the normal resistive feedback (and yes, the previous ridiculously long computer language/lovecraft post was also a single-go kind of thing without any kind of revision or spell checking, which is rather impressive to me since I could not find any kind of spelling mistake when I read through it again yesterday). Why am I feeling like this at this moment? That is, why am I awake at three in the morning on a workday writing away on another one of those freewriting spree while under the influence of a terrible cold-fever-pain relief medicine (the pharma tend to mass all the multi-symptoms within a single capsule these days so I have difficult time telling which medicine does what anymore)? It probably have to do with the fact that I was so engrossed in work yesterday that I did not have time to eat all day, only to go to sleep with whatever medicine for my aching body and burnt out nerves on an empty stomach. Which leads to waking up in the early morning/late night (depends on who you are and where you live I guess) to get a bite to eat, and now I'm stuck in this rather awkward situation where I desperately want to go to sleep but the time restraint and the full stomach is preventing me from doing so, while the clock is ticking away into the 'real morning' when I would have to take a shower and go out to work along with all the dreary faced crowd on the subway. It's not really as bad as it sounds, though that may be simply because I've gotten used to that over the years. I mean, some of those Germans got used to shoving dead naked people down boilers right? And what I'm doing isn't as remotely as humanity defying as that. Which might as well be one of the reasons why the world is so screwed up. The world is set up in such a way that everything you do is never as bad as it was before, whenever that before may be.
(Was that the sound of a clock that I just heard? No, that's the sound of my proper blog post about evolution and artificial life being torpedoed to another day)
Nothing you do is as bad as something that happened in some other time in some other place. The laws and regulations are set up in such a way that you really can't do any worse unless you're somehow capable of the seemingly superhuman feat of going against both the mean and well-meaning portion of the populace (one of them you might be able to handle, but if both of them get on your back even gods might be erased from the face of the Earth). Which is both good and bad at the same time. I mean, you won't be gassed anytime soon for whatever the religion or sexual views you have, so that's good. It wasn't always like that. On the other hand, you have public education system in the richest nation in the known world with teachers telling their students to be thankful for having it better than the people who were killed in the Holocaust, or better than some poorest-African-or-something nation of the moment they pull out from their hat (frequently pronounced wrong). The same teachers/politicians/insert anyone here then goes out to have two hour lunch while the national average falls off like a rock (what are you talking about? The average is way up compared to... When we used to have slaves! They'd say).
"Hello. Welcome to McDonalds. We taste like crap and charge you ten times the cost it takes us to make this crap. At least we won't shoot you in the face and take all your money, so you should be thankful for that."
The whole damned society feels that way when I think about it. I think people are beginning to take this 'being thankful for what we have' thing way too seriously for their own good. I'm all for being positive, but being forced into positive thinking feel more like castration to me. So, how many kids are we turning into eunuchs per annum?
Of course, that not really being true. That's being way too pessimistic, which is just as bad as being way too optimistic for no reason. Most children have parents, and some of them are rich and sane enough to suspect that castrating developing young minds is wrong on some level. So we have alternative educations and a whole bunch of alternative prep schools with buildings that were built after the Beatles broke up. All modern and cool. They usually cost a bit more than most universities, by the way.
The money might send a lot of people packing, but the difference between those schools and schools that are 'better than what kids have in Iraq' become very clear very quickly. I'm not talking about the fact that the expensive schools have walls that don't have holes in them. I'm talking about cellphones.
In the expensive school, having a cellphone and being able to communicate is a right, that's usually restrained under special circumstances, like in a class when your adviser ("we don't teach, we advise") is talking in one of his or her ideological days going pro-choice/smash-the-state and all that jazz. In schools that are 'better than what child soldiers in Burma go through' however, cellphone is illegal. You'd better be ready to call your parents in, kid. The parents who usually don't speak English and pull 12 hour shifts until they drag themselves back home and fall asleep, rinse and repeat 7 days a week. Or six days a week if your parents are feeling particularly pious, in which case they'll spend nine to six helping out in the church/temple/ufo/whatever. They'll be called into school on some random business day during business hours, and the stern-faced somebody in that school will look down on them, pissed that those parents are wasting his time because they didn't teach their child not to have cellphone in school. All in all, the whole thing stinks, but you'd better grin and bear it, at least you have it better than (insert people meeting horrible ends here).
The whole thing is ridiculous already, but it gets worse. Those kids will have to grow up and make real decisions someday. For godsakes some of them might even become politicians. One of them will fight for pro-choice and think women and men have equal rights. The other will be devout whatever and think equal rights are for pansies who can't control their women. Can you guess the answer?
Alright, enough rant about the education system and the society. I can go on and on but it feels so wrong because it's so obviously screwed up and easy to criticize. You'd literally have to be smarter than a Chimpanzee to be able to think that something's not quite hunky dory here, and I'm afraid that writing down thought like that might make my brain dull out. Which is a bad thing when you're writing to bite through the medicine-drowsiness.
I'm still doing that android thing. There's only so much that I can do without the actual developer phone, but the emulator had been holding up nicely. The visual interface design for android applications can actually be done using XML and CSS, like designing frontend for webpages, so it's relatively easy to get thing looking pretty and professional. You can hard-code those things if you want, but that would be crazy unless you never plan on updating your app. Score one for the android team. I was thinking of doing iPhone app, but with all the crap Apple is pulling in their app distribution network, I think I made a prudent choice here. I'm already a bit past the 'design notepad app for android' stage, and will be doing simple physics simulation soon. There's something about sitting down and obsessively coding through stuff that's really attractive to me, like solving puzzle with a creative edge. I don't want to make a job of the thing, but as a hobby, I think it's a keeper.
I've also decided to participate in a little writing project with people I met on twitter. Sort of punkish e-zine, they call it assassin mesh-up. Once I'm awake enough to find a link to the first issue (they are all in pdf) I'll try to post it. They are accepting all sorts of stuff from music to drawing, not just writing, and anyone can participate. This issue's theme seem to be augmented whale/dolphins. Hmm. I wonder what i can do with that.
The plan to busy myself with all sorts of productive things is going along nicely, though today's (or was it yesterday's) events pulled a little stop on me due to all the drinking and late-night things. I expect I should be able to get my life on the right track by the middle of this week. (Oh my god the stupid cold medicine is starting to wear off. I knew writing like a madman would be able to do the trick). Now that I think about it I have to get ready for next week's nyc diybio meeting at the AMNH, will be going through crazy amount of reading/writing in preparation for that. Might even have to slow down my android stuff for this week.
Here's the excerpt from the assassin-mash-up project email.
I'd love to write more, but the butterfingers aren't really allowing me much freedom on that issue.
(Was that the sound of a clock that I just heard? No, that's the sound of my proper blog post about evolution and artificial life being torpedoed to another day)
Nothing you do is as bad as something that happened in some other time in some other place. The laws and regulations are set up in such a way that you really can't do any worse unless you're somehow capable of the seemingly superhuman feat of going against both the mean and well-meaning portion of the populace (one of them you might be able to handle, but if both of them get on your back even gods might be erased from the face of the Earth). Which is both good and bad at the same time. I mean, you won't be gassed anytime soon for whatever the religion or sexual views you have, so that's good. It wasn't always like that. On the other hand, you have public education system in the richest nation in the known world with teachers telling their students to be thankful for having it better than the people who were killed in the Holocaust, or better than some poorest-African-or-something nation of the moment they pull out from their hat (frequently pronounced wrong). The same teachers/politicians/insert anyone here then goes out to have two hour lunch while the national average falls off like a rock (what are you talking about? The average is way up compared to... When we used to have slaves! They'd say).
"Hello. Welcome to McDonalds. We taste like crap and charge you ten times the cost it takes us to make this crap. At least we won't shoot you in the face and take all your money, so you should be thankful for that."
The whole damned society feels that way when I think about it. I think people are beginning to take this 'being thankful for what we have' thing way too seriously for their own good. I'm all for being positive, but being forced into positive thinking feel more like castration to me. So, how many kids are we turning into eunuchs per annum?
Of course, that not really being true. That's being way too pessimistic, which is just as bad as being way too optimistic for no reason. Most children have parents, and some of them are rich and sane enough to suspect that castrating developing young minds is wrong on some level. So we have alternative educations and a whole bunch of alternative prep schools with buildings that were built after the Beatles broke up. All modern and cool. They usually cost a bit more than most universities, by the way.
The money might send a lot of people packing, but the difference between those schools and schools that are 'better than what kids have in Iraq' become very clear very quickly. I'm not talking about the fact that the expensive schools have walls that don't have holes in them. I'm talking about cellphones.
In the expensive school, having a cellphone and being able to communicate is a right, that's usually restrained under special circumstances, like in a class when your adviser ("we don't teach, we advise") is talking in one of his or her ideological days going pro-choice/smash-the-state and all that jazz. In schools that are 'better than what child soldiers in Burma go through' however, cellphone is illegal. You'd better be ready to call your parents in, kid. The parents who usually don't speak English and pull 12 hour shifts until they drag themselves back home and fall asleep, rinse and repeat 7 days a week. Or six days a week if your parents are feeling particularly pious, in which case they'll spend nine to six helping out in the church/temple/ufo/whatever. They'll be called into school on some random business day during business hours, and the stern-faced somebody in that school will look down on them, pissed that those parents are wasting his time because they didn't teach their child not to have cellphone in school. All in all, the whole thing stinks, but you'd better grin and bear it, at least you have it better than (insert people meeting horrible ends here).
The whole thing is ridiculous already, but it gets worse. Those kids will have to grow up and make real decisions someday. For godsakes some of them might even become politicians. One of them will fight for pro-choice and think women and men have equal rights. The other will be devout whatever and think equal rights are for pansies who can't control their women. Can you guess the answer?
Alright, enough rant about the education system and the society. I can go on and on but it feels so wrong because it's so obviously screwed up and easy to criticize. You'd literally have to be smarter than a Chimpanzee to be able to think that something's not quite hunky dory here, and I'm afraid that writing down thought like that might make my brain dull out. Which is a bad thing when you're writing to bite through the medicine-drowsiness.
I'm still doing that android thing. There's only so much that I can do without the actual developer phone, but the emulator had been holding up nicely. The visual interface design for android applications can actually be done using XML and CSS, like designing frontend for webpages, so it's relatively easy to get thing looking pretty and professional. You can hard-code those things if you want, but that would be crazy unless you never plan on updating your app. Score one for the android team. I was thinking of doing iPhone app, but with all the crap Apple is pulling in their app distribution network, I think I made a prudent choice here. I'm already a bit past the 'design notepad app for android' stage, and will be doing simple physics simulation soon. There's something about sitting down and obsessively coding through stuff that's really attractive to me, like solving puzzle with a creative edge. I don't want to make a job of the thing, but as a hobby, I think it's a keeper.
I've also decided to participate in a little writing project with people I met on twitter. Sort of punkish e-zine, they call it assassin mesh-up. Once I'm awake enough to find a link to the first issue (they are all in pdf) I'll try to post it. They are accepting all sorts of stuff from music to drawing, not just writing, and anyone can participate. This issue's theme seem to be augmented whale/dolphins. Hmm. I wonder what i can do with that.
The plan to busy myself with all sorts of productive things is going along nicely, though today's (or was it yesterday's) events pulled a little stop on me due to all the drinking and late-night things. I expect I should be able to get my life on the right track by the middle of this week. (Oh my god the stupid cold medicine is starting to wear off. I knew writing like a madman would be able to do the trick). Now that I think about it I have to get ready for next week's nyc diybio meeting at the AMNH, will be going through crazy amount of reading/writing in preparation for that. Might even have to slow down my android stuff for this week.
Here's the excerpt from the assassin-mash-up project email.
Okay, hello everyone. First of all, let me tell you this was a bitch to write; I hardly know where to begin. I hope I get it correct.
First and foremost, if you got this, you got it because you requested it. Second, THANKS! Please inform other folks you think might be interested. Third, if you got this and you aren't interested (either now or ever), no problem, because we don't keep permanent mailing lists. Only those who join the project will be mailed for the particular project they join.
This is a mixed media project. Originally it was a fiction project, and for the time being, fiction will probably take up the bulk of the project, but that should not discourage folks. Any kind of media is acceptable. Music will be impossible to put into PDF format (or am I misinformed?), but it will be properly represented.
For those of you who read the ASSASSINS MASHUP PROJECT, you have an idea of what the project is about. If you haven't, that's okay too. In short, this is is an open genre, open media mashup project; from Christian to zombie horror, from haiku poems to novellas, and everything else not already thought of. Please note that that means you may have to 'endure' some genre work that you are not particularly fond of.
Each quarter (3 months) a new theme will be chosen (anyone is free to submit one, even if they have not contributed to any previous mashup projects). Project participants will then interpret that theme in any way they wish and submit a media work within the project timeframe. Do not let the "apparent" genre of the current mashup theme fool you into thinking you are limited to that genre. "The tombs of Mars" could be a family named Tombs in Mars, France; gravesites on the planet Mars; aliens in a spaceship called Mars; a family called Mars; Mars the Roman god of war; etc. Be creative, do not limit yourself.
All the work will be published for free. Sorry, this is a non-paying gig.
All levels of writers/composers/illustrators, from amateurs to professionals, are accepted.
Currently there is no "leader" of this group. Those whose current theme is to be published will be in charge of keeping everyone on task, gathering all the work, and bringing that particular project to fruition. So don't throw out a theme if you are not prepared to grab the bull by the horns.
ALL THAT SAID, I'M SURE THE PUBLICATION WILL CHANGE AS IT GROWS.
By joining our merry band of writers, you are obligated to:
1. Contribute a story to the theme you have promised. No writer is committed to all the magazine publications, just ones you have made commitments to must be fulfilled. However, we are aware that life sneaks in nasty little surprises, take them into account and continue to write. Finish the job. If life should sneak in something abysmal, please let us know as soon as possible, and no one will no hold it against you. Deadlines are deadlines though and we will not push them back.
2. You must contribute to editing the project. It's not that tough, and it has the added benefit of understanding how others write and see your writing. The more eyes on projects, the more mistakes we catch, the more we all improve.
3. Promotion. You must help us get the word out about the project. This does not mean you have to take out ads on the electronic billboards in Times Square, but if you are up for that, go for it. Hit writing groups, newsgroups, post it in your blog, write about it on Twitter, give to friends, tell them to pass it around. But be careful not to spam. We want readers, not haters.
Okay, I'm sure I haven't covered half of what I need to, so feel free to ask questions, and please do, REPLY ALL so that everyone gets the message.
THIS QUARTER'S THEME: "Augmented whales/dolphins" which is actually an abbreviated form of "In the doomed future augmented whales and dolphins are re-located to Venus. Here they are free to swim, nay fly through it's thick atmosphere. Building a whole new civilisation for themselves. Again." You are free to choose not only which one you create for, but how you interpret it.
THIS QUARTER'S DEADLINE: May 1st (2.5 months)
LENGTH-RESTRICTIONS OF PROJECT: 4000 words?, 5 mins of music? thoughts?
Please inform mp.hills@gmail.com if you are going to participate in this quarter's project. If you are not, but might be in future projects, please add or at least follow the RSS of http://www.twitter.com/
Okay, I know this was lengthy and a bit fragmented, but I hope it wasn't too hard to understand.
Made in DNA/Brent
First and foremost, if you got this, you got it because you requested it. Second, THANKS! Please inform other folks you think might be interested. Third, if you got this and you aren't interested (either now or ever), no problem, because we don't keep permanent mailing lists. Only those who join the project will be mailed for the particular project they join.
This is a mixed media project. Originally it was a fiction project, and for the time being, fiction will probably take up the bulk of the project, but that should not discourage folks. Any kind of media is acceptable. Music will be impossible to put into PDF format (or am I misinformed?), but it will be properly represented.
For those of you who read the ASSASSINS MASHUP PROJECT, you have an idea of what the project is about. If you haven't, that's okay too. In short, this is is an open genre, open media mashup project; from Christian to zombie horror, from haiku poems to novellas, and everything else not already thought of. Please note that that means you may have to 'endure' some genre work that you are not particularly fond of.
Each quarter (3 months) a new theme will be chosen (anyone is free to submit one, even if they have not contributed to any previous mashup projects). Project participants will then interpret that theme in any way they wish and submit a media work within the project timeframe. Do not let the "apparent" genre of the current mashup theme fool you into thinking you are limited to that genre. "The tombs of Mars" could be a family named Tombs in Mars, France; gravesites on the planet Mars; aliens in a spaceship called Mars; a family called Mars; Mars the Roman god of war; etc. Be creative, do not limit yourself.
All the work will be published for free. Sorry, this is a non-paying gig.
All levels of writers/composers/illustrators, from amateurs to professionals, are accepted.
Currently there is no "leader" of this group. Those whose current theme is to be published will be in charge of keeping everyone on task, gathering all the work, and bringing that particular project to fruition. So don't throw out a theme if you are not prepared to grab the bull by the horns.
ALL THAT SAID, I'M SURE THE PUBLICATION WILL CHANGE AS IT GROWS.
By joining our merry band of writers, you are obligated to:
1. Contribute a story to the theme you have promised. No writer is committed to all the magazine publications, just ones you have made commitments to must be fulfilled. However, we are aware that life sneaks in nasty little surprises, take them into account and continue to write. Finish the job. If life should sneak in something abysmal, please let us know as soon as possible, and no one will no hold it against you. Deadlines are deadlines though and we will not push them back.
2. You must contribute to editing the project. It's not that tough, and it has the added benefit of understanding how others write and see your writing. The more eyes on projects, the more mistakes we catch, the more we all improve.
3. Promotion. You must help us get the word out about the project. This does not mean you have to take out ads on the electronic billboards in Times Square, but if you are up for that, go for it. Hit writing groups, newsgroups, post it in your blog, write about it on Twitter, give to friends, tell them to pass it around. But be careful not to spam. We want readers, not haters.
Okay, I'm sure I haven't covered half of what I need to, so feel free to ask questions, and please do, REPLY ALL so that everyone gets the message.
THIS QUARTER'S THEME: "Augmented whales/dolphins" which is actually an abbreviated form of "In the doomed future augmented whales and dolphins are re-located to Venus. Here they are free to swim, nay fly through it's thick atmosphere. Building a whole new civilisation for themselves. Again." You are free to choose not only which one you create for, but how you interpret it.
THIS QUARTER'S DEADLINE: May 1st (2.5 months)
LENGTH-RESTRICTIONS OF PROJECT: 4000 words?, 5 mins of music? thoughts?
Please inform mp.hills@gmail.com if you are going to participate in this quarter's project. If you are not, but might be in future projects, please add or at least follow the RSS of http://www.twitter.com/
Okay, I know this was lengthy and a bit fragmented, but I hope it wasn't too hard to understand.
Made in DNA/Brent
I'd love to write more, but the butterfingers aren't really allowing me much freedom on that issue.
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