I sell things at will.
I haven't been sleeping well lately. This moring, I woke up at 5:30 am. The day before, at 4:30am. I just wake up, and any attempts to sleep constitute lying there with my eyes closed, my brain racing. So, I turn on the light and read a "bloom county" book. Then, I start thinking about things, get frustrated with life in general, and shoot out of bed uncontrollably. Then, I head downstairs and post "for sale" ads on craigslist.
Maybe this is a new era of Very Short Blogs.
I'm a hikikomori.
In related news, I further improved my index page (for those who have my blog bookmarked, a set that includes at least one). Now it randomly generates images as well as sizes and colors. Yay.
The images come from a variety of places. Three are photos I took, four are photos I didn't take but that are of people I know, one is something I drew, one is a random image off the web (including the "venus of willendorf," photos of which are sort of in the public domain), and one is a scanned image from a medical book. There used to be more, but I deleted about a third of them.
I re-did the script in simplified "example format" for my stepbrother, and the result turned out to be sort of cool (remember to reload endlessly). It's funny how a lot of times the most interesting or beautiful things come from a total lack of aesthetic planning or even wanton carelessness -- blurry screw-ups often turn out to be my best photos. Other people I've talked to tell me that it's often that way.
My aunt asked if my cgi image-size-background-color trick could be done with a photograph. I had not considered it. I tried it, and liked it so much that I made my index page do this -- now, it will look differently every time it's visited.
I join the ranks of the 1337, now that I have an index page that ends in something other than .htm or .html. Furthermore, .py is just about as 1337 as you can get -- more so than .php, .pl, .cgi, etc. This is the best index page I've ever had. It beats out the long-necked dude, the cobra, cary grant, the clown, etc. -- everything. None can compare.
I don't have to use .py. However, I will continue to, just because it's cool, and you don't see too much of it on the web. Well, at least not as much as most of the other extensions.
I can change the image out really easily, and have a whole new design. It's great, it's great. Not only that, but no matter how big the browser window is, the design doesn't squish to the left side of the page, nor does it produce horizontal scroll bars. Truly, I've outdone myself. HAHAHAHAHAHAH. Sorry. I'm allowed a burst of total, unabashed egomania, I think, because I haven't done it in a while. Also, please remember that it is a blog: a shrine to me, by definition.
But I'm ashamed in that I owe part of this to my aunt. At least I made the photo-image (it's taken of me, taken by me, and maniplated by me -- except the fire was stolen from somewhere). Many times, internet work turns out that way: not 100% original, although I suppose that could be argued in any medium -- even an abstract painter gets his notions of design, form and composition from his cultural background, or even his genetic background. Outside influences. But then, what isn't an outside influence? I smell causality and determinism here, so I won't go further.
I'm so embarrassed about my not having tried a photo with that cgi. Maybe I would have thought to try it eventually. It's 200% better than the lame-ass smiley faces. Arrrrrrrg
Oops -- now all of the links to /index.html aren't going to work. Time for a mass-modification.
I decided to put my name back on my site. It's inconspicuously in the copyright at the bottom, and then again in the meta keywords. Contrast with long ago, when my name appeared three times on one page. This is tacky, I realized, and is tantamount to the "HELLO WLECOME TO MY WEBPAGE" mentality. A personal name in a header or page title is bad form.
I'm pleased with my cgi smileys, and I don't care if they're asinine or trivial. They're more interesting and original than many computer programs, like the endless cgi guestbooks (and NOT graffiti walls), search engines or bbs's out there. Hmph. My mom likes my smileys, anyway.
This is a danger of programming, by the way: learning it tends to fall back on well-worn examples that really aren't very interesting. Furthermore, despite their cries to the contrary, I'm afraid most programmers just aren't very creative, and can't cook up too many original programs. So, they sit there drawing up guestbooks, shopping carts and data-retrieval interfaces.
I've heard a few times computerish, mathish, or science-ish people lamenting bitterly about how artists, musicians, fiction writers, poets, etc, self-appoint a monopoly on creativity, and are most often unable or unwilling to acknowledge it in other endeavors, such as the aforementioned science, math, computer programming, etc. This is true.
But it's also true that, by and large, the strength of these sci-comp-math types doesn't lie with their creative powers, but rather their pattern-recognition abilities. While the arty type fully acknowledges his limitations on the techy side, the techy isn't so ready to aknowledge his limitations on the arty side. More often than not, as has been noted elsewhere, the "geek" tends to feel that his prowess at computer programming, taking IQ tests and playing chess means that he can do anything else: paint, write, make music, and "argue with bertrand russel," to quote a nice anti-geek rant on the web.
Also, the difficulty of measuring creativity tends to make the comp-sci-math-tech-geek discount it as something that either doesn't exist or that he can define however he likes, which I suppose is true. But a box of reasonable, educated jurors would likely, in most cases, mete out a ruling of "not creative," or at least "far less creative than most arty types."
I was originally testing my cgi/python skillz by having the numbers from one to infinity print up on an end user's browser. I shortly thereafter realized that the python program called up on my machine doesn't stop once the user quits looking at its output to his browser. Pretty dumb, but at least I thought of it eventually.
So, as it turned out, I ended up with five or seven little pythons counting to infinity, who were noticeably slowing down my CPU. They weren't visible anywhere in the gui, which was sort of interesting; I only saw them when I started up the taskmanager to investigate my creeping OS.
But back to issues of anonymity, taking pride in work, allowing society to define the kind of person one wants to be, and modesty. A solution will ideally balance all of these. I don't publish anything terrible, come to think of it, and any objection to what's on here is strictly an objection to the kind of person I am, rather than some sick and sordid past that I'm trying to cover up.
But as I said before, it's iffy even to present any sort of personality on the web, even if there's nothing published that would be obviously objectionable to a reasonable person. I suppose it could be an asset. I'm thinking strictly in terms of hiring decisions here, because of course that's the only thing that matters in life -- even the buddhist monk asked me, "what do you do?" how awful. I could have said something like "breathe in and out," but it'd be taken as some kind od zen affectation.
But yes -- if you present a personality, and some HR manager sees it and it jibes with his or her idea of an ideal candidate, or even a person he or she would personally like, then it's a good thing. The reverse is also true, unfortunately, which is why it might be safer not to present any personality at all -- ie, have no public presence whatsoever. With this approach, sure, no one will particularly like you, but no one will particularly hate you, either.
It's analogous to the first principle of marketing: maximize your market. Ie, make your product appeal to as many people as possible. The way to do this is to make something that doesn't offend anyone, but consequently isn't really loved by anyone either. An exercise in engineered blandness. Presentation of personality with concern to getting hired works the same way. No-one really hates wonderbread, but no-one really likes it either. However, some people absolutely love smoked oysters, while others detest them. S. I shan't presume to self-identify as a smoked oyster, but I probably fall more towards the "oyster" end of the continuum than the "wonderbread" end. Love and fear.
But I feel like I have to maintain some personal integrity here, and not utterly knuckle under to "the man," as it were. So, I put my name back on my index page. However, I'm not going to throw it around like a nincompoop, just because that's in bad taste. The kmehr rouge aimed to do away with names, I believe, as part of their plan for a weird, utopian, "X-TREME" communism.
If I ever incept a band, I'm going to call it "vampyre magick," and it'll be a parody goth band. My best music, as in the stuff people like, has been intentionally funny stuff. It's a good way to approach it, because it gives the creator some template to draw against; exaggerating a pre-existing form is an easy way to make something. Of course, it's not as cool as creating something totally original, which I think I did in some of my art school sound pieces. But, no one likes to listen to them, just like no one wants to listen to frank zappa's "jazz from hell" (except the "st. Etienne" and "night school" tracks) -- it's just too weird.
One has to create something like mozart's requiem -- something original, and yet something that everyone can appreciate on a gut-level of pure aesthetics. The problem with my "sound art" and with other stuff like iannis xenaxis or frank zappa (not that I'm comparing myself) is that it's strictly intellectual -- there's no heart to it.
My funny pieces are the closest I come to genuine heart, and so they're liked the best. Art is all about feeling, I think, and not about intellectual masturbation. It's a pity, because that's what I was encouraged to do in school, a la fluxus and dada. I think. Or, maybe I was just making that up, and no one guided me along but myself. Who knows? It was four years ago. Four years ago! Wow.
And here I am, going back to my old alma matter in a few days to take courses in landscaping, programming and acting. Pretty weird. I might have a job come February, but the people who told me that they'd like to offer me the position are still trying to work me into the operation somehow. I guess I have high hopes, but things like this sometimes don't work out.
I'm going to go see that movie about the gay cowboys tomorrow with my mom. It should be fun.
I'm glad I abandoned plans to be involved in web development or IT -- I want to keep my computer exercises as a purely expressive and fun thing. I enjoy programming and diddling around on the internet, and I want to keep that in the domain of "things I do for fun" rather than "things I do so I can buy food." I dunno. Maybe I'm totally wrong, and I'd enjoy some computer-y job.
All we can do is wait to die.
I joined netflix, and am waiting for various movies I'm lukewarm about seeing to arrive. But certainly they're movies that I would watch if they were to arrive on tv while I lay there in front of it, so it's ok. For some reason, whenever I go to blockbuster I'm unable to apply this algorithm ("would you watch this if it came on tv?"), and instead search for something deep, meaningful, or whatever -- something I REALLY want to see, as opposed to "something I wouldn't mind seeing, and would enjoy having play while I lie down on the couch."
Netflix presents a solution to this problem: you browse hundreds of titles, and lazily pick those that vaguely interest you. It takes no effort beyond a mouse-click, so it's ok to significantly broaden your scope of "what you might like." then, you end up with a huge list of movies that gets mailed to you in bits every month, with no effort on your part. You forget about your queue of movies, and one day random movies you wouldn't mind watching arrive in the mail. "hey! Here's a pretty good movie! Let's watch it!"
This is as opposed to treking grimly off to blockbuster, to painstakingly choose an delightful, inspiring title for an evening's entertainment. There's a relaxed informality to internet movie-selection that isn't there with store-browsing. With store browsing, I feel like I have to make the outing worthwhile by not just getting a movie I'd like to watch, but that I feel I should like, and that I feel I should watch, so that it constitutes a sufficiently "good movie" for me to have put on my coat, driven to the shopping center, and wandered around squatting to peer at titles on the lower shelves.
I need me some ram. I opened up an old pc someone had gifted me, and discovered a single 64MB dimm inside, which is now sitting here on the desk in front of me. I feel even stupider because I've tossed out a few boxes that have ended up on my doorstep over the years, without harvesting the ram or even pci cards. But now I'm left wanting.
I installed python, and clicked some buttons and entered some text into fields on my server configuration interface until cgi worked. I made this.
It isn't very impressive, code-wise, or function-wise in that it's not a good example of server-side programming; client side dhtml is capable of everything my little python script does. But, 1) I don't care, 2) I'm trying to fiddle with python cgi here and not crappy javascript, and 3) my python script is probably shorter and easier than a javascript that does the same thing. Javascript annoys me, for some reason; maybe it's because I've been automatically generating it and copy-pasting it for so long.
It is further confirmed and documented that all of my programming involves less than 20 lines of loops and random number generation. Sort of sad, in a way. When I was younger, like 13 or so, I also did a lot of "input" and "if/then" with BASIC. So, lots of quiz programs and such. Of course, I didn't get into variable assignment, and didn't know how to figure someone's score, and would always print "tally up your score" once all of the questions were answered.
I even made some interactive fiction. BASIC's user input generates question mark by default, so, at every turn, the computer would say to you: "The robot leaps at you with great agility! Defend yourself?"
Now, this continues, with my python/cgi smiley faces. Maybe I should quit while I'm ahead.
I went to that buddhist temple this morning, and it was pointless. I sat at a table while someone who may or may not have been a bona fide buddhist monk, but who nevertheless sported the outfit and haircut, went on about spirits leaving bodies, karma, trees being reincarnated as people, etc. The group chanted a five-minute recitation/prayer/something before the roundtable discussion started. Quite a few people there had the whole thing memorized. After the meeting, we had our chant again. This time, I thought it'd be the decent thing to do to arrange my hands and eyes properly ("together" and "closed"), and did so, except that I very nearly started giggling.
I'd always thought zen buddhism was different than theravada, mahayana, etc, in that it did away with the ritual and magical aspects, and focused instead on meditation. The compound I went to is called "the american zen college," but I think that might have been a marketing ploy (everybody loves zen).
Anyway, apparently I'm not allowed to actually sit for meditation until I've attended one of these meetings, which I've done. So now, full speed ahead, I think.
It was distressing to see all of these wide-eyed anglo-americans asking a venerated old korean dude in a robe, who didn't make a whole lot of sense and who owns a great deal of real estate as well as, as I understand, some google stock, about life's secrets and wonders, and then they get some crap about reincarnation.
That's really my biggest complaint about buddhism: literal reincarnation. It's just as bad as heaven and hell, albeit not quite as bad as "the earth is 5,000 years old." so ok, first of all there's this thing called a spirit, or essential essence of a being, that can exist apart from that being. Then, when the being ceases to function, the spirit leaves it and goes to occupy another thing. This is just stupid. Why would this happen? Who's directing this? What about viruses? Snakes with two heads? Aliens? Individual cells? Peopel missing their frontal lobes? It's silly in the first place to divide "life force" up into individual beings, not to mention specific spirits bouncing around from bug to zebra, oak tree to janitor, etc.
What the hell is a soul, anyway? Define your terms, people. Come on.
Meditation, to my knowledge, hasn't been approached much in a western scientific setting, and if you want to do it, it seems that you have to run around chanting, bowing, and lighting incense sticks.
Features of religion: 1) cult of personality (mohammed, jesus, buddah, moses, etc). 2)heaven/hell (yes, there is a buddhist hell -- I could hardly believe it, either). 3) representational objects (crosses, statues, holy books, etc).
Aside: I think #3 is one area where islam really has it over the other ones. I can't think of or readily picture any associated objects or visual images. There aren't but a precious few representations of mohammed in circulation, and I don't think the image of mohammed is considered important or interesting to moslems. They don't have any crosses, four-armed blue guys, or little statues of fat men. Interesting, eh?
Hinduism sort of desrves special consideration. First of all, it's incredibly old -- too old to have a personality cult associated. Second of all, it's not really a religion, but a group of disparate cultural and worship traditions spanning the area of a subcontinent. Calling "it" "hinduism" doesn't make all that much sense, really, and it's more a convenient shorthand for "social practices of india." I talked about hinduism, years ago, in another blog, so I don't want to go into too much more detail or elaboration. But suffice to say modern hinduism is more a cultural vehicle than it is a religious vehicle. Adherents, I think, use the rituals, images, and so-on to achieve their own spiritual ends. In other words, there's no big boss assuring you that some magic trick is real.
I feel that generally, the younger a religion is, 1) the crazier it is, and 2) the more the associated cult of personality figures in. Hinduism, as I said above, doesn't have a lot of impact on day-to-day life or actual beliefs -- at this point, it's more a cultural association, just like judaism. Christianity is getting there, at least in catholicism; it's become more of a cultural thing than it is a religious thing. You won't find many (if any) young earth creationist catholics, for instance. But, many enthusiastically self-identify as "catholic" within a cultural context. "no meat on Friday" has more value as a badge of identity, of a shared culture, than it does with salvation.
It seems the big requirements of religion are to believe in magic and participate in programmed rituals, two things that don't slide easily with me. I think I'm missing a gene or something, because ritual is important to most people, whereas I find it to be pointless, and usually offensive.
I wonder if I'll ever hit the "1,000 mark."
it took joe 27 months to make 100 pages.
x/900 = 27/100
x = (27 * 900)/100
x = 243 months
therefore, it will probably take joe about 20.25 years to make 1,000 pages.
Let's say 20 years, so as to make it look more like an estimate, as well as to make it round and aesthetic (just like my old phone number: 330-5442. Have you ever seen a lovelier phone number? I thought not).
Joe will likely be in his friggin' 50s before he's generated 1,000 pages, and is able to take full advantage of the four place-holders in each page number/name. Four will probably be enough; even if joe lives to be 100, joe will never generate more than about 2000 blog-pages. I think it's safe to say that he won't generate 10,000, unless he keeps up the same rate of blogging for 250 or so years.
Barring the cure for human aging, this is unlikely.
Ok, that was retarded.
In other news, I got kicked out of the vipassana retreat, which may or may not be a good thing. I was having second thoughts after googling vipassana cult, and decided to call them and ask some questions. I asked if it was a cult, and told them that I'm uncomfortable worshipping some fat 80 year old indian businessman. Well, I didn't say that, but I called him "that goenka guy," which didn't go over too well. The teacher retorted "first of all, it's 'mr. Goenka,' not 'that goenka guy.'"
Then I asked about being forced to stay, and got some sort of wishy washy answers. Finally, the teacher told me that I have a lot of "fear" and "anger," and that I wouldn't benefit from the course -- she was reminiscent of the character of jim cunningham, a motivational guru from the movie "donny darko." she was one of these new-agers who talk a certain way ("feel your mind floooooooooooowing...release yourself of all guilt, fear, etc"), and she pronounced "can't" as "cahhhn't," which might have been dreadful affectation or just the fact that she's from new england.
I might not have approached my questions in the most diplomatic way possible, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that they would address them logically and in a friendly way, instead of getting defensive and angry. Most people I've talked to seem to think being uninvited was for the best. At the very least, the retreat seems extreme; it certainly does have some cult-like properties. I still feel pangs of regret and disappointment, especially since I was so looking forward to the drive through pennsylvania, new york, connecticut and massachusetts. I've only been to new england once before. Those are some hard-to-spell states.
Standard Cult Methods (from this page)
Focusing a bit on #5, I heard in an early email that they prefer beginners with no experience in meditation, so they can indoctrinate them as to their particualr method.
In all fairness, vipassana is comparable to some other more reputable, less-weird meditation retreats (such as plum village, lead by thich nhat "can do no wrong" hahn, also known as thich nhat "thick nut" hahn) in the morning wake-up bell, veggie meals, etc, but it seems a little harsh and weird -- buddhist boot camp, if you will. Anyway, moot point now, since it started about 15 minutes ago, and the teacher now hates me and thinks me the antibuddha, which may or may not be true.
I think a less weird introduction to meditation would be in order, if I decide to give a shit. There's a buddhist temple near where I live (weird), and it might be nice to go sit in with them. Except I don't like buddhist cultural baggage, and might prefer transcendental meditation, except that even that talks about "his holiness maharishi mahesh yogi." you just can't win.
I tend to think that rites, rituals and dogma achieves the opposite of what spirituality is supposed to, even though I don't know what in the hell that is.