Since this page is catching a lot of search engines, I guess I should put up an intro blurb...
Welcome. This is a collection of Lion Kimbro's thoughts for about a year now. (Written sometime in 2001.) No, this isn't a silly blog; This is a categorized selection of thoughts, most directed towards some end, rather than a "Oh, I woke up and saw a pretty bird; I'm feeling... grouchy!... today." sort of thing.
Recommended use? Search this doc (Control-F for the internet explorer folk) for the word that interests you. If nothing shows up, wait a couple moments; this file is probably still loading.
Some day I'll divide this up into a bunch of database entries. Until then, you have this enormous flat file.
If you are curious about the thought database itself, search for "ThoughtDB".
OpenSource software continues to do well. It's like MicroPayments. Finally we have PayPal. But there were several attempts earlier to do micropayments. They all failed. It wasn't that micropayments were a bad idea, or that there was something fundamentally wrong with it; it was just that there wasn't enough infrastructure in place to provide for them. They jumped the gun. They saw too far with their intellect, but not far enough with their wallet. It's okay- these were good attempts. They probably seeded the public with much needed, good interest. I think it's the same with OpenSource software. I have a feeling that it's a bit pre-mature right now to say, "OpenSource will take over the world." Actually, that's probably not premature; I think it's true. I think it's obviously true. OpenSource software is a lower energy state. It takes less energy to support it. Naturally, in an almost physical sense, it must be what we move to using. It's just not there yet. We need a lot of groupware and standard methods of working to be done. Studies, analysis, a lot of technology work has to be done before we get there. But get there we will. OpenSource software will be one of the greatest things to have hit the world, along with micropayments. It's like the invention of money.
The Japanese like Linux, too. =^_^= . o O ( Our secret ally. )
Getting the frames for human drawings is really hard work. I think, rather than getting a human subject to draw for me, which requires a lot of synchronization and is time consuming, it might be more useful to lift the designs from the "How to Draw Anime & Manga Characters" book.
I think the reason the neck is frequently mistakenly drawn just immediately beneath the head, rather than back a little, is because we think "Oh, the neck is under the head. I should draw it under the head." Which makes sense, except that the neck is sort of slanted away, generally speaking, from non-straight forward angles.
Mostly trying make sense of the weird landscape we find ourselves in, and, with collaboration and repeatable experiments, figure out how to do some interesting and fun things with it all.
An idea of taking common household chemicals, figuring out how to reduce them to their elementary components, and recombine them in useful ways.
Basically consider urban landscape to be a wasteland environment, and scavange up what we can.
The company is a low energy state configuration of people. In a very real sense! The motivations in our life and what not are manifest through electrochemical reactions within our brains; In a very real sense, a relationship between people, either romantic or economic, is a chemical low-energy state.
How to write a useful, en-livening, warm, comic or other piece of written work: Identify something that you are nervous about, that worries you, or otherwise bothers you. Write a comic showing the situation from a higher perspective. I'm immediately thinking of Fujishima's Ah-Megamisama, in which Keichi is hired by the company on the basis of having dirt under his fingernails. The helps allays our fears about the world, that the job market it incredibly intense, and that people who are better at marketting themselves are the ones who will get the good jobs. We are bombarded with these fears day in and day out, and it sways us to behave in strange ways. These comics are really useful, and life-affirming. Takahashi.
At the end of all great people and things and powers is Name. Trace all the rivers to their source, and you find Name. In the opposite direction, there's nothing. It's like a fire in the middle of a very dark and dangerous jungle. The fire provides warmth and life for even the smallest dwellers of the jungle.
"Everything's Pre-School" - Joseph Laureno, referring to how most good ideas and life comes from a pre-school childlike mentality. Specifically, we were talking about designing games by taking out the lego sets, drawing things on paper, and using dice, rather than building enormous engines and what not, and haggling over interfaces and rendering tools. Make it fun from the beginning when it's easy to build things, and then scale up, and everything should come out all right.
Die hair yellow, just for fun.
Get a laptop to serve as my catch. Make sure I have a wacom with it.
Make it so that when you get a handle to a file, you get much more than that. You also get events and what not from the system. Fro example: Read only toggled on a file? Youg et a message saying so.
Return to Mudd. Study lots. Also study business. You are going to start a school.
Make a kinetic book for the fledging unix prorgammers.
Immediately, here are some things that you can write:
I have a dream of books on all topics, from which it is easy to learn and study. Where people recognize that I have a dream of a study of education driven by the market, rather than the slow and sad progress of conflicting and fad funded psychologies. I have a dream of enlightened public schools where children can persue their interests and are encouraged to make a better world for one another; where they are not talked down to. Where students are not forced to learn something they don't want to (the "UniBomber" provision), where students learn to read and write because they recognize that they want to. These ideas can't be realized because of a myriad of reasons, but they are good ideals, I think.
Make Kinetic Books. Each point should have understanding confirmed by leaving a space for the reader to write in a response, reply, draw a map, whatever. This is not unlike children's aeroplane books. People are active, and thinking/learning(constructing) is an active process!
Ways to improve books:
I had three observations:
I don't know that the "teach them one skill" approach, emphasised by Gerry Sussman and popularized by Philip Greenspun, applies so well towards Chemistry. Very kinetically oriented. Well, I suppose you could say, "You should be able to calculate how much energy it takes to convert an ice cube at 250 K to steam at 400K." Yah, that's reasonable. And the concepts that you learn along the way- they would be tought. LEarning would happen. And the lecture would have focus.
I'm remembering when I was back in the Centenial Towers Apartment, and how I had diagrams on the wall that were quite nice and fun and interesting.
The current Catch is not faring so well- mostly scribbled notes, no order or what not.
The current catch functions very well as a categorization scheme, utilizing the tags and hierarchies, that is, as a collection of data, and it works well as a presentation of the collected data- I can see in 2 dimensions, the various pieces of data and their corrolations to other pieces of data (although there are a few wormholes/links between disparrate pieces). It's definitely been helpful (I noted the key conceptual links between communication and education, and games and governments).
Successes:
But there have also been failures. Putting ideas together still takes too long (though it does work!- a definite improvement over before, when ideas were lost completely). I believe that a technical solution is ideal here. I will lose the nice 2d representation of data- this is *VERY* unfortunate, but I will gain better notes (I can type faster than I can write), they will be easily retrievable. I will lost pictures unless I have a wacom tablet attached to the picture, or scan in images (UG.). This is terrible. I'll probably need to hand scan a few.
Now back to the walls: What to do with my surfaces? Scrawled notes have no sticktivity to my mind. They do not attract my attention, nor are they easily interpreted (hard to read, no pictures, etc.,.). I believe I need to take it all down, and then use it as I used it at the Centennial Towers: As a location for artistic expression, and visual maps of subjects and topics that I am learning. As the collage of learning.
This has three benefits:
The number one loss is that relationships among subjects will not be as apparent as it was before. I'm not sure this will be lost as I convert the Catch to computer notes, though..!
I question the educational values that our colleges are bringing us. They focus on teaching skills, rather than teaching thought.
They are bringing us people who know how to read text, apply it to solve simple problems, and follow the routine. I would call this teaching a skill. It is incredibly useful and important.
But it is not the whole story. When I'm in Chemistry, and they tell us that there are Redox reactions, Acid Base Reactions, and Precipitation Reactions. We're just told that. Well?! Are those all of them? Okay, so we have Comp./Displace/Decomp/Combustion(combustion? doesn't that seem rather non-orthogonal?) in there. Okay- why? What's going on here? Are there ever redox reactions that are also acid-base reactions? (Turns out: Yes). How's this: Maybe redox is transfering electrons, and maybe acid-base is transferring protons, and precipitation is doing neither. Okay, so that's kind of orthogonal; I feel like I've learned something, though I had to do all the thinking- the book gave no indication, and fellow students give the cold shoulder if you pester the teacher with your annoying questions. I cannot get a map of all reactions, or a compendium, or tools of the trade. When I ask about these things, the teacher either doesn't know, or doesn't have the time to teach me. Other students are annoyed by the questions. I'm just trying to make sense of what's going on. I'm astonished that so few others are. Most are begging for equations->grades->survival. <sigh> The system is set up for that.
Is there anyone with a general knowledge of Chemistry, the profession, etc., etc., etc.,..? If so, why aren't these people teaching? Is duplicating quality information too expensive? Too little supply, even though there is a high demand? Or perhaps, there is neither supply, nor demand. That's likely, which is dissapointing to me. (Whit's Principle of Education: Lion, if people asked the kinds of questions you ask, the answers would be in the books...)
Don't you all ever stop healing? Don't you stop healing, when you're healed? With all the healing going on, you'd think that there'd be a healed person or two. Heal-> No sharp constonants in the word.
Goddamnit I hate all these m_'s and LongReallyLongJustSoYouKnow variable names all over the place. I can't tell what the fuck's going on in the flurry of over-non-informative-information..!
Like I really wonder about whether or not begin_vel is a global variable or not, in the midst of a giant engine. Now I have to call it m_BeginVelocity, in order to match the rest of the style.
Oh yeah, we REALLY needed that m_ because... IT MIGHT be a global variable..!
What was once easy to understand and clear is now massive and uncomprehensible..!
RRRRrr!
An interesting way to write a story:
Think about how you wish that you lived.
Write a story about a character living in such an arrangement. What does the character think in respons to various situations? How does the character react to various situations? What are the systems in the characters to handle or react to the situations? How does the character work?
I recall Michael saying something similar to this; Did he say that it was futile to come up with an ideal response to every arrangement? Was it futile because it's a terrible effor in the first place, or due to the uniqueness of all people? Or, perhaps because these are mental ponderings, and simran knows nothing of them.
Ursula Le'Guin said: "Listen". But to what? Should I be listening to my mind, the news, simran, nature, everything, anything, WHAT? Just what should we be listening to? On what channels? Physical, emotional, causal, mental, intutive, the Voice of Love? Or perhaps the patterns of life? What? There are 9 wizards at Rokh, if I recall correctly.
"Shit; I don't know anything anymore..." (Forgot where I heard that, or even if I heard it somewhere.)
If I had to teach someone about how to get hired, I'd show them the mass of resumes that a company receives, say, "Which of these resumes is the company going to pull someone out from, knowing that they want someone who can do XY and Z and be happy doing it?"
I'd be sure to show the numerous shiny looking, but not necessarily interesting, resumes that temp agencies bring us, and discuss the tradeoffs (generally $5,000) that comes with hiring from the agencies.
Then again, the agencies ARE really good about bringing us a lot of candidates. Generally it's easier when looking for a job to hook up with an agency, because you don't have to do a lot of work.
As you are learning stuff, you will want to understand information deeper. This is right and good. If you are in a class though, you are not given time for deep comprehension; the class is pushing you along to give you a broad overview. (This is almost universally true. Deeper thought is almost always possible.) The purpose becomes to give you overview and certain key ideas, not depth and foundation. If you can wing on your own without a teacher and institution, you'll need to meet their grades. (Not to deter from winging on your own; I believe there is a time and place for each, and it's not necessarily what society tells us.) There will be a desire to learn deeply. This can lead to deeper reading. It is important to remember to do homework first, with minimal late-binding comprehension. THEN, after you are done establishing the key ideas that the teacher wanted you to get, you can dive in after deeper questions, and ask the teacher those questions. But get what the teacher wanted you to get FIRST. THEN go after deeper materials.
In an opensource project, you need to seed locations with interest.
It can be far from perfect, and it can be incomplete, It just needs to be seeded. After that, things can/will(?) flower out.
"Life's too important to be taken seriously." - author unknown to Lion
Write an entry about how the catch evolved.
Change name to "Seattle Unix Learning".
Write "Emacs3D": A programmable 3D editing environment, using Lisp or Python.
You could make it so if you typed, "heli", you'd get a helicoptor view. If you type, "persp", you get a perspective view. "worm" for a worm view. Make it so that typing the names of common objects will make them appear.
If you want something to be yellow, you type, "yellow." "green" for green, "blue" for blue, "purple" for purple, etc., etc., etc.,. We'll be getting a lot of bright colers, I guess then..!
It'd be a fun project, to make a pretty goofy 3D editor, but one that would allow you to creatively make all kinds of interesting shapes and things.
Think Slats, Hoops, Tinks, and Chips.
We need to make a database of free sounds; Sounds that are either public domain, or covered by some sort of free license.
Challenges include:
Initially, we should go for things such as footsteps, Doors opening and closing, etc., etc.,.
This can be rolled into the River Of Hope idea.
Later note (May 1st, 2001): Someone's started one: http://www.adelaide.net.au/~xandrews/clangfx/index.html
This takes place in the far future. A professor is teaching some physics to a class of students. He says, "And this is the Slagerforth Equation, from 1959." The class bursts into laughter, and the professor, with a "Oh God, here we go again," look on his face, waits for the juvenile laughter to cease.
Lion, when you write letters to people, have fun with it. Write as if you were writing back from an expedition, or write as if you are in a dungeon or on the high seas. Be dramatic and fanciful and everything.
In a sort of modern day version of the Catholic "If it hurts, It's good for you, if it feels good, It's bad for you," belief, people frequently believe that the sole reason why playing games is fun is because games are a distraction.
I don't think that's the case at all. I can think of plenty of other distracting things that we could do besides playing games. For example, knitting. You could say that the reason people like knitting is because it keeps them "distracted".
Distracted from what? From the basic pains of the world. Whatever you are "supposed" to be doing.
I do think that it is common to use games as a way to distract ourselves from the world, but I don't think it is why games are fun/interesting.
A model that might be useful is the model of chemical bonding. There are lower energy states, where the molecules like to be. You have to apply some sort of external energy to turn the bonds back into Joules (Energy/money), and then you can form something else.
Playing games can be a relatively low energy state; one that the mind prefers. Thus, by looking at games, we can look at the sorts of things that the mind likes- low energy states for minds.
I'm not certain that this is a viable/valid description, but I do feel that it is a good description of *habits* and how they work.
I don't think it's so much that a focus on Progress is the only way to live. Rather, it only takes one culture to believe in progress in order to "spoil the bag". Indeed; I don't understand what's so bad about progress. I mean, if you think it's bad, then you'd like us to PROGRESS to a state of non-progress. I don't get it; maybe a better explanation of what you mean by "progress" would make it a little clearer to me.
One cool thing in StarFlight is that to win the game, you have to make a number of risky decisions.
In the game, you have places that are very safe- you can get lots of supplies, minerals, what not. You could practically live there forever, building up your strength, etc., etc., and what not.
But then you get this clue. This clue that says, "If you go this way, to this place, and look around a bit, you will find something that will change the course of your life." (Or at least, this game, but, the game is so cool, it may as well change your life as well! The author has hidden some goodies for life within this game, which your mind is apt to find..!)
You look that way, and... All you see is DEATH and NOTHINGNESS.
I mean, you look ANY which way, and all you see is your ass getting kicked. In your crew, you have some members of various races, and the people to the south don't like those people. You could get different people, but then the people to the north won't like them either! You look north east, and there's a bunch of robots ready to make mince meat of your ship if you answer one of their questions wrong. Southwest, there are aliens who don't even talk to you, all they want to do is turn you to scrap. To the west are fluxes which will throw you some random place in the universe.
All in all, it's not very pretty.
Until you get this note, and this note says: If you go to some system really really far away, so far you barely have fuel for it, and then if you go there and look around, you might find something cool.
Well, you can stay, build up, and eventually be destroyed by solar flare, ...
Or, you can gear up and undertake... ...what promises to be... ...a very... ...very... ...dangerous... ...Journey.
And that's why StarFlight is so cool. =^_^=
There is this feeling of imminent mortality, There are "safe" places and "very not safe" places, and then clues, like in those games where you follow clue after clue after clue.
And THAT's a hell of a lot of fun..!
It's very Leiji- the Leiji who did Galaxy Express 999 and Star Blazers.
Contrast with the Final Fantasy series- It's just WAY too safe. It's too easy just to stay in one place, build up, build up, build up, etc., etc.,. You're never in any danger; If in doubt, just build up.
Thus, there is no tension to the game. You just stay in one place, gaining strength. You fight monsters, but it's not scary. If they beat you, just buy more potions or something. There's no economy on potions, like there was on Endurium in Star Flight.
Also, in Star Flight, you could go anywhere.
In FF, you're directed to go here first, then there, then there, etc., etc.,.
StarFlight managed to pull off a pretty nifty and involved story amidst the freedom to explore.
Oh, and in Star Flight, you never attain mastery over the world. Resources are finite. You have to choose your flights carefully. There's no point at which you have some much weapons and fuel that you are invincible. (Actually, is this true? I seem to remember doing rather well with 5th Class everything...)
A company appears and says that they will exchange $2 million for souls. For each person that signs a paper saying that they promise their eternal soul, the company will award $2 million dollars. People may buy their souls back for $3 million dollars.
People of all types wonder, "What is the trick?" There are some violent reactions. People line up to sell their souls.
A girl who treaters her ex-boyfriends extremely poorly. (Based on Brandy). When a boy comes to visit, the family informs him at the door, "Oh, oh, we're so happy to see you, and we just want to tell you: Whatever happens, we Love you, and we are sure that you are very nice."
A girl who can freeze time: The world around her.
She has a hard time relating with people some times, and once, she stopped time for a very long time, and was quite dissociated with the world when she finally unfroze it.
She knows quite a lot; she's read many books, and learned many things.
Vehicles are really important to stories. A lot of pride and care goes into vehicles, and it has a lot of symbolic meaning. Just think of the Grinch's sled, with all the lights on it, poking in all directions. Or the Explorer's sled. Or the Edelin. Or a sailors boat.
These vehicles are really important, and people have more pride in their synthetic bodies than their actual bodies..! (Since people had no say in how their body came out, but their vehicle represents their mind.)
The more customized the vehicle is, the better. The more it was built from the ground up, the more meaningful it is.
Indeed, I would be surprised if you couldn't make a complete game solely around the construction of a vehicle.
Leiji Matsumoto used the vehicle this way to now end, what with people merging into their vehicles, and the Queen Emeraldas (a spaceship). He had right vision. =^_^= A vehicle is an extension of a person- an exoskeleton that they wear, that means a lot to them.
Why do people read Mystery Books, Stories..? Why do we like them? What's going on there?
I think that the Western Surat Shabda Yoga paths are good. I think that the Eastern "Thou Shalt Pay Attention Solely To Shabda, Thou Shalt Devote Attention to Naught Else" can be really harmful, and is even western (in the negative sense) in Spirit- in that it is *not* holisitic, and it's a one-size-fits-all sort of deal.
In attaching metaphysics to the Surat Shabda Yoga, I think that Paul Twitchell did a good thing.
I can draw a line: Eastern SSY paths devote entirely to Spirit but in an ungrounded way that does not concede any territory to the mind and the world around it, and Scientology on the right which pays attention almost entirely to thought forms and mental developments, byt pays almost no attention to the Spirit. (When it refers to the spirit, it does so in a very Mental way; It is a mental current, for the most part.)
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has powerful muscles, but no personality.-- Einstein
I think Paul Twitchell did good work in paying attention to the world, but keeping the focus predominantly on the spirit. Give unto Ceaser that which is due Ceaser, Give unto God that which is due God.
On to the essence of the spirit vs. the mind: I think that it is true, as the eastern SSY paths will tell you, that the Shabda will in fact harmonize our lives and make everything bethat we do NOT need the mind in any degree for the Shabda to help us.
But I think that that teaching itself is a Mental form, and that it can be, and has been, abused, as is possible with all other mental forms. I think that mentality has been pushed aside so strongly, that communication along mental lines has been completely hampered, so as to obstruct the natural flow of the spirit..! Dislike the mental regions as the eastern SSY paths do, it is still a valid channel for the Shabda to take. To deny mental validity is just like the monk who hides himself from the world to find God. Any truth found thereof is a LIMITED truth- there is NOT a completion of the circuit of life.
In particular, I had a problem: My life was against the grain of the shabda, and whereas a simple mental realization of metaphysical nature (surely a Paul Twitchellian type of realization) could have alleviated muych pain, and provided inspiration and a return to the shabda, The teaching that we should rely wholey and solely on "pure shabda" has been a NEGATIVE and obstructing one.
The ability to provide new forms of life for ourselves, using the light of the mind, is important and right. There is a natural refreshing process that has to continue, as we cycle through stages in life. Like a snake shedding skin. It is important to observe and flow with. It leads to a more harmonious, healthy life stylee, and is invaluable. The proper flowing of the river is important.
A change in mantra isn't always what the doctor ordered..!
Make a "periodic table" of Energy. It would include work, momentum of light, whatever. The various non-mass aspects of Physics. Properly categorize and place everything.
Practice the names whenever you like, and don't practice the names whenever you don't like.
There's no pressure, there's no hurry.
Simply, if you would like to do the names, do them.
If you would like to, but don't have the time, then wait for a period when you have the time, and then, if you like, say them. They won't go away, they won't dissappear.
The Anatomy of Fantasy (or perhaps) The Anatomy of a Dungeon Crawl
Make a collection of cards. On them are certain key cartoon (.'. mental formed) depictions of fantasy elements.
For example: A Cave. A Sword. A Shield.
No idea what use this would provide, but it would be interesting to have; these icons hold so much meaning for me. (Romantic-era literature and plays as well.)
I believe someone once made an "Encyclopedia of Imaginary Places". This is sort of similar, except it works on the level of charting key mental symbols, rather than detailing the facts of particular implementations.
Hang KamiDana about my office.
Put up some sheets, make it look neat. Since the lights are broken, I guess I'm going to have to go for the mysterious motif. I always liked the romantic plays. I'll have pinks, blues, weird lights, strange and beautiful plant shapes. 't'd be coo'!
Read and buy "Go Rin No Sho (The Book of Five Rings), by Miyamoto Musashi. This may very well be the best book on Engineering that I have ever read.
"The Mythical Man Month" is really important too. Read it after you have been programming for a while; it won't make any sense otherwise.
"Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing" is good. Read it.
"The C Programming Language K&R" is how you learn C. Read it. Make sure you are doing the examples. Don't worry about understanding the introduction.
"Design Patterns" is interesting. Beware.
I'm trying to show the uniqueness of the solution to the L shape problem; That there's only one way to put all the L pieces into a 2**Nx2**N shaped board that has had a square removed.
My idea is to count the # of solutions, show that there is only 1, and then give the inductive proof Ron showed me that guarantees a solution, and say, "Since there's only 1 solution to it, and this is a way that always does it, this must give the unique solution."
This puts the focus on showing that the # of ways is solitary.
Can I do it inductively? The problem with induction is that there can always be some crossovers on the edges. Well, perhaps I can't do induction in the "take each block, surround it by four others" sense, but perhaps I can do an inductive proof another way.
If not, why not- will any inductive proof work here? (If not, that simplifies my problem - solving approach to a degree...)
Finish up that guys notes on Organic Chemistry, and then make maps for it. Publish under FDL.
The look over that PhD's lectures on organic chem synthesis. Lots of pretty pictures.
I had a dream. There were 5 levels to this amusement park in the astral plane. I went to the bottom level, because it was easiest. It was the world of sleep. It was very dark. There were two sections: The place where you land down (just remembered a dream I had many nights back, where I was in a city in the middle of a cast desert looking like the surface of mars, but sand colored, not red, and the city was a gigantic maze with little tribes living in it) from the elevator was the "hospital section", roughly rectangular in shape. There, in the back hall, adam and eve (or people dressed like them: kids) greet you and say hello. They challenge you to ask them a question; I asked something about the brotherhood/sisterhood of all peoplekind. After a while, I went to the challenge section: It was a dark garden with paths, but someone had placed string between various posts to make the relatively simple path into a rather complex maze; you just had to go with the fantasy that you aren't supposed to cross a string in order to play the maze. But there was a very real threat: A wind spirit. The wind spirit would chase you (you could see it some time because the wind rippled around and leaves flew up in the air and stuff) and try to strangle you, so you had to go through fast.
At the end of the "maze", there were a bunch of tall palm trees, and then you go on to this dock where there's a de-briefing boat and congradulations. (Remember, this is a sort of amusement park; an etherial strange amusement park, but an amusement park none the less.)
BUT, if you climbed up the palm tree like Joel did, you could see that if you embarked on the boat, and then disembarked on the other side, there were all kinds of goodies (teddy bears and other plushes) - a secret zone..! We were going over there, but on the way, just before you enter a boat, there is a sort of tent, and I saw a (living) plush monkey scurrying about the tent, and I went up and caught it for myself.
Weird Dream.
It recently occured to me how much Mario Brothers is like pinball. The character bounces around like a pinball ball. You can speed him up, slow him down, and when you are doing really well, he is bouncing all around.
I've heard web designers say, "I wish PostScript or PDF were the web format". What?! Are they nuts?!
Here's the problem: People who publish to the web believe that they are a special class of people, and they want to construct a multi-media extravaganza for the people who are visiting their page. The goal is sort of to really impress these people, and, you know, they'll tell their friends, "wOw! I saw this REALLY awesome web page- you gotta check it out!"
So, they jelously guard any control that they can exhibit over their content. They want it to look on their clients browsers exactly like they envisioned it.
WebTV and text browsers be damned- they aren't important! It's all about the multi-media CDROM Wonder! The clever UI!
Bah. What a bunch of balogna.
Make a little fairie that communicates through CORBA to any interested listeners. (I'm supposing that CORBA has this capability...)
It would try and watch traffic over the CORBA bus line and try to assist the programmer in whatever way it can.
First, it would just be relatively static, but after a while, it would evolve to dancing around the screen and what not.
Read Eric S. Raymond Interview
My current model for interest, motivation, getting stuff happening.
I believe that it works like this. "Interest" is like this magical fairy dust. It sort of appears in this act of almost-not-quite mental effort. I would really rather call it an attitude adjustement, or a slight change in how we view things, or a perceptual adjustment. I believe that interest is really important. The way to open the doors to interest is to be absorbed in mystery and/or wonder. But anyways, back to the interest. Interest appears, and it appears like this fairy dust. (include picture here. Interest is *blue*/mental & *white*/spirit. Sort of etheric, probably.) When sufficient interest forms, it starts to gravitate together. Interest is like dust; it has this very very very faint gravitational pull to it. When a bunch of it's together, like a giant glob of Hydrogen (electrically neutral; 1 + 1 -) floating out in space, it collects together. It starts to compound together. The subject of our interests starts to appear in our mind now and then, like a very faint pattern or spider webs. Or like, there's a section of a room that is warm, verses another section of a room that is cold. If we then turn our attention to the interest some more, more and more of this fairy dust appears (probably stemming from the raw force of attention), and enough collects that it can turn into a stable mass. (Draw picture of collection, and place here.) Once it becomes a stable mass, it can start to do things. For example, if it gets large enough, it can make the jump from "distraction" status to habit. (I'm being fecetious about the distraction part; I believe that distractions are, overall, basically, very very good.) When it forms into a habit or an act of some sort, it can start to take on physical energy and mass, as you perform actions and make things. A certain amount of mental and physical rearranging occurs to help accomodate as well; This new mass that you've built in your brain starts to interact with all the other various massese in your brain/mind.
I'm making up a term, "InfoSeek Mode," to describe a state that people get in. In this state, I go looking around for information from various sources, and on myriad topics. Generally, it is a *distracted* state; One in which there is a predominant alternative thread (which I do *not* want to follow), and then several splintering off in all sorts of strange directions. These other directions twist and gnarl.
The end result is an alert and stressed person. You have to constantly have that predominant alternative thread in view, and say, "Uh... No, don't want to go there... No, that' no good at all."
Now, several things can happen here. The #1 people thing will say is, "OH, you 'just' have to do that thing," and then they go on to not practice what they preach. Obviously, that's not the Way. Phil G. & Co. takes a view of looking at the mental obstacle, and rearranging the situation in light of the obstacle. (One thing I really like about Phil G.)
I've said a lot of negative things about our Western society. Western society is great. It's good that we're going places. I don't think that Eastern complacency is at all the ideal state. I just thing that we're being way too Western. As Ursula Le Guin said, we're on a path that is too Yang. "This is Taoism of the Duhhh variety."
Possible causes: A stressful state itself can lead to InfoSeek. (But then is it really InfoSeek? The item of interest is the item that causes stress.) Having a boring task. Having a really difficult task.
It could be just a task that's too difficult. A better ramp-up schedule could be precicely what is needed.
Principles:
This is something that I've just done; I have minimal faith in it: Organizations:
Could it be that the strategy of "It's the Data" that applies to programming (avoid algorithms! dump algorithmic complexity into data complexity!) apply equally to debugging?
By my experience: Yes. An gram of data structure is worth a kilogram of algorithm.
(Ask yourself: How much algorithm circulates about 1 simple data structure?)
Database of Code Meta-information
It might be interesting if there was a program or database layout to assist in debugging. It could give you visual cues and what not.
For example, you could rapidly assemble, "Who all calls this function", have a place to write in pseudo-code descriptions of what those functions did, add various diagrams, etc., etc.,. Perhaps even generate a summary of the decyphering and everything. The program could pick up function signatures for you, and other such stuff.
Functions:
Hyperlinks appear wherever there is a function name. You can hyperlink to it's database entry (if it exists). You can hyperlink to a new database entry (if it doesn't exist). You can hyperlink to it's place in the code.
Actually, I could easily conceive that there should be no code written that does not have an associated database. The associated database would describe how the code functions, include discussion amongst programmers about the code, any ICQ transcripts, etc., etc.,.
Rose from Rational Software
C-web Literate Programming Knuth
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/cweb.html
http://www.literateprogramming.com/
When you find out a bug, look for other such instances of the bug; you've probably made it before as well. Seek them all out, and remove them.
This both helps you devote attention to the bug/deficciency, so that you won't make it again, and, it eliminates a bunch of bugs.
I suppose this could apply to life as well.
If things are getting hairy: Write Pseudocode 1st in the form of comments. Then fill it out. Go for as large a scope as you need, until you are reasonably confident that the algorithm will work.
If you are writing a component, write in the following order:
I found a web page that represents my philosophy on software development.
I think a lot of this requirements analysis is, unless you are working on something like the space shuttle, just a formalization of blame distribution- a way that software engineers can say, "Well, see, look here, on page 300, you SAID that we were only supposed to fit these demands here, and NOW you are asking me to do THIS instead...!"
But it *is* good to have an idea where you are going in the end; And that's why I believe that an iterative cycle is good to have from the beginning. That way, you don't run into nasty low level surprises at the end.
Read this visual tutorial on DSSSL..!
I found it from another great page on DSSSL.
I'll divide the schools of thought about learning into two sort of goofy camps:
People are always complaining that "People don't join an Free Software project until it's done..!" What has our world come to! I think that's just stupid pessimism. (That's right- I'm a militant optimist!)
I think, generally, it means: I started a brand spanking new project and people aren't making it the coolest thing in the world!
The best success I had with OpenSource software was when I found someone who was working on a project alone, and helped out a bit. I didn't add much to the project, but I *did* contribute, and it was worthwhile. Even that small bit added a lot to morale and development; he was so happy that someone had added, that he pretty much matched my effort in triplicate..!
So, I guess I would say: If you are complaining about people not helping one another, go help someone!
Someone said, "What moral right does the government have to take my money away from me, and spend it how it pleases?"
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It's also one of the hardest questions to answer; Akin to asking, "What is the meaning of 'an'"? We can't answer off the top off our heads, but we know what it is.
We don't have an 'inherent right' written down on any agreement signed by any of us to live here.
The idea of taxation is as old as the idea of dues. Dues, as in "paying your dues." We're all wound together; none of us is an island; and sometimes is profitable for us to put our money together and buy something that none of us could have bought alone.
I am just imagining this cell in my body (a cell that happens to generate power, let's say), saying, "What right does the rest of the body have to take energy from ME?! I didn't ask for that!".
Set up a male-female-female triangle; The two female's represent two images that the mind is switching between. Which will it prefer? How does the mind select an image?
What is the meaning of picking up an image or mask? Why do we select one mask or another?
Shakespeare equation: Show all masks, and someone will champion each one. (Rather than excluding one, promoting one above others. -Not quite the case always: See Tempest, but, academics like this theory, since everyone is at least comfortable with it: "We agree to disagree".)
What do images mean to us? Why do we care so much about pictures? Why do pictures move us so much? Why do we read stories? Why do we care to live life?
I fully accept evolution and science, but I also don't believe that algorithms and data can automagically pop into awareness behind a cloud of semantics and complexity (the scientists version of the God of the Gaps - "awareness is poking around in there just beyond our current comprehension").
That awareness is something unique is obvious to me, and it seems quite reasonable to me that awareness is the source of algorithms and data, rather than the other way around.
So, why did awareness create these images? Why did it leap into them? And while we're here, why do we choose one image over another?
I bought and read "How To Start Your Own Country".
I don't remember if the author mentioned this, but one way to do it is to build a religion, achieve a large number of people, and then go find some place.
The author correctly noticed that- you'd have to get weapons (like SeaLand) to have your own RECOGNIZED country. (Grim as it is.) It just occurs to me that establishing a religion is probably the easiest/cheapest way to aquire the necessary critical mass in mindset and dedication to actually pull of defending your own territory.
I'll have to look at how the Mormons formed themselves easrly on, and what their deal was.
Decisionmaking never satisfies everyone unless all details are visible and FULLY understood, in which case it is hardly decision making, but just going with the obvious.
Work on Adonthell..!
Make it so that programs can register their grammer with a shell. For example, if a program accepts some options, and then a filename, make it so that the shell knows that, and can appropriately provide feedback to the user.
For example, I type ls blarg, but blarg is not a valid input (there is no such file or directory, nor are they valid command line options). The shell can tell me, "I'm expecting a filename," or something like that.
One way to implement this would be to use an ELF section or something that included details about how the program interfaces, or something like that.
"Brilliance Radiates" was a phrase I made up while I was living in downtown Seattle. I still think it's true. Brilliance reveals rather than conceals.
Brin agrees. And Philip Greenspun practices it.
OpenSource software is an example of this. Code accountability, parallel debugging. People hate to be debugged.
Smart people share their ideas, rather than hide them.
But does the communication of ideas necessarily make one brilliant? Adolf Hitler shared *his* ideas, and it was bad for the world. Then again, I could follow an argument that he was brilliant, albeit twisted. Nah. Maybe not.
I still believe that if we are of a genuinely sharing mode of thought, and that we communicate with others, it does great things for our intelligence, perceived and actual.
Is the opposite of a maze a maze? There's the trivial case of, "Well, if the maze has a border, than the opposite of the maze is not a maze because you can walk about the border.
I found a great link on procedural world generation called Algorithms for an Infinite Universe
Apparently there was a (non-Nintendo) game called "Star Fox" with an infinite world. I already mentioned Star Flight, and I believe that there is a game called "Elite" that has an infinite world as well.
There is Thompson's "Predictable Random Numbers" article in Game Programming Gems; I haven't read it; Jim Boer told me about it. Thompson referenced a Gama Sutra article [possibly the one above] in it.
Deer Hunter 2 (Jim Boer again) used some of the ideas. "We were looking for methods to allow huge outdoor areas with minimal storage space."
Jim Boer had the idea of having trees in terrain grow back to full size (or matching the neighbors), so that you can erase deltas after a while.
Imagine being in a real life three dimensional maze, perfectly stale and grey, with a maze of lights (and their wiring cables MAZING around), running in all directions for infinity, and the walls of the maze themselves having groven into them more maze; just really small compared to the maze you find yourself in.
Place this enormous (or infinite..!) maze in space, without any sense of orientation- up down left or right.
Know that all sense of scale is gone; Your location compared to the grand maze is unknowable.
Indeed, the entire universe could be just one gigantic and infinitely detailed maze, with just ONE path from one node to any other node.
Looking at the wall with a microscope yields only smaller and smaller orders of mazes engraved on the walls of the smaller mazes.
That's what it's like searching the mental realms for an answer.
Write a pure fantasy entirely out of scientific material. Make up some new laws, and write about them. Do calculations, perform mathematical tricks, etc.,. A sort of scientists version of The House of Leaves (by Danielewsky).
"Beyond the Stars" is an example of this, though I believe that the author truly believes what he writes. (Read it at iuniverse.com)
But why are scientific-fiction books (to differentiate from science fiction books- space operas and what not) taboo?
I see no reason why the realm of the affairs of humans should be allowed to realms of fictional play, but the affairs of particles and energies shouldn't..!
A great little program would be one that would allow me to keep track of who's court a ball is in.
For example, I'm busy working, and then I think "Geeze, ther's something that needs to be documented." I can either do it myself, or have Miguel do it. Miguel should probably do it, but I have the inclination right now. I'd like to check with him.
I email Miguel, "What do you think? Do you want to doc this, or can I?" The ball is now in Miguel's court.
But, I want to make sure he doesn't drop it. I want to be able to tell the computer, "Make sure that Miguel responds to this email/addresses this issue within 5 days." If he doesn't, it will either tell me, or automatically email him, or whatever.
But there is a third class of persons who are genuinely, and in the most pathetic sense, the institution's victims. For this type of character the academic life may become, after a certain point, a virulent poison. Men without marked originality or native force, but fond of truth and especially of books and study, ambitious of reward and recognition, poor often, and needing a degree to get a teaching position, weak in the eyes of their examiners--among these we find the veritable chair a canon of the wars of learning, the unfit in the academic struggle for existence. There are individuals of this sort for whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly aspiration. Your private advice does not discourage them. They will fail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for another ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life. Or else, if they are less heroic morally, they will accept the failure as a sentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men thereafter.
High tech stuff is always drawn with lines and icons and what not.
I think that is because high tech stuff comes from the environment of the mind, and I think the environment of the mind isn't at all like the physical world around us. I think we're seeing directly, in various fantasy and cartoons, the natural environment of the mind.
I think that the bus architecture is so useful, it may even be worthy of becoming a built in language feature..!
The ability of two objects to open up a communication space between them, and invoke methods on one another, that others can tap and hear as well.
Hooks = Messages = Events
Programming by leaving hooks all over the place. Pick up the hooks where they are needed, and lay them to rest/decay where they are not.
Read some piece of science fiction. What do you like? What do you dislike? What was the plot? What mechanisms did the author use? How did the author make people talk? What elements did the author use to retain interest? Which parts are original, which parts are unoriginal? Are the elements original, or unoriginal, on the whole? Assignment: Use the mechanical elements yourself, as a test , honing of skill.
Light vs. Heavy, Comedic vs. Serious, Deep vs. Shallow, and now Tense vs. Relaxed.
Personally, I'd prefer to write "relaxed"; like Ah My Goddess. (Light, Comedic, Deep, Relaxed.)
Spatially targetted e-mail would be awesome..!
You could have a geographic map of the offices or whatever, click down a position, pull out a radius, and say, "E-mail these people!" It'd be really handy for addressing regional issues: ie "Address all the people w/in 400 feet of the nappiest refridgerator in the world".
Computers should be addressible as computers, spatially. It'd be nice to make some software to handle this kind of thing..!
Kitty (Amber Straub) said it best:
I am planning to get my arse in gear again about making lunches. I feel Im wasting a lot of my time. I used to save a lot of time by remembering to pull something out of the freezer in the mornings, and by already knowing ahead of time what was for dinner and also making lunches the night before. I just need to get organized. Hopefully today I can get some unpacking done once I get home.
Knowing what you are going to do before you do it is a good way of going quickly. As they say in work, (Did Marcellus teach me this? Or was it Billy?) Keep your attention on what comes next; that way you won't be distracted, and you'll know just what to do when the time comes; there will be no dawdling or chance to think, "Now what should I do?"
Start or be involved with a movement to promote and read only FREE books, either in liberty, or gratis. Full 100% distribution, translation, and resell rights must be granted for the works to be accepted. Programs or technical works must be modifiable.
The problem with doing something like this ALONE is the marketting problem: We need to be able to seperate what is of quailty from what is not of quality.
But, this is hard to do as an individual. So, collectively, we must go through free materials, and rate them Yay or Nay.
NEW Works are current, and as they are freely released, they go onto a "shelf" for 6 months, and are rated by and for others.
Number 8-> Symbol for the universe.
lll :ll l:l ::l ll: :l: l:: :::"God, it's funny, you know- EVERY TIME I'm getting a drink, I see FRANK in there, getting a Pepsi or soda or something. I don't think he works very hard..."
Sub-plot, or whatever:
A boy who is really excited about a topic goes to extreme measures to take a class in the subject, only to be terribly dissappointed by a poor teacher.
The boy lambasts the teacher for disinterest, only to find out that the teacher is a volunteer, bearing the burder of the teaching position.
The boy must cope with the situation, but attempts to find a way to resolve the problem anyways.
This is interesting in itself; a dilemma of sorts. But more important to any story, I think, is the character. I believe that the CHARACTER drives the story; we are interested in partaking in mini-universes with other people in them. Who knows why; just for fun. (I'm working on figuring out why.)
Pseudocode should be broken down into smaller pieces of pseudocode. When do you stop breaking down pseudocode? When implementation of the pieces is trivial to you.
From Amber, Jan.2, 2001 (1/2/1):
i think ill write something like this next:
(dig my pseudo code)
if kitty lub lion!
then print lion lubs kitty too!
while lion lubs kitty
then print roaaaar
Make a story with room for H, but leave it out for the prudes. Then, you can make a version of the story "(story name here) 'Extra'" with the H material.
The only desk that I have ever felt comfortable with is the IKEA Jerker workstation.
Here's the entry from their catalog, which is strangely not found anywhere online...
Note the difference in my configuration, and the one in the product display. For some reason, there is a stigma associated with healthy desktop utilization. Monitors should be kept at eye level, and keyboards should be exactly level with 90 degree bent arms, but whenever you look in magazines for anything fitting these descriptions, you are out of luck.
I originally was looking for a carpenter to build me a custom desk like one I saw that a GreaterGood.com staff person had made for themselves, but when I saw the Jerker, I knew I could shape it into what I needed.
Adam Prato has assembled a rather sizable collection of links to the IKEA Jerker workstations.
It would be neat if you had a sort of algebra of complex simulations. For example, you could look at a stream of smoke and say, "Oh, this is a Julian set 13, and it's probably going to turn into a Julian-45, if it doesn't turn into a Julian-59, though it's rather unlikely to turn into a Julian-99."
The Visual Man Pages
Today's Date: Sun Dec 31 18:00:35 PST 2000
Man pages in HTML or something; maybe a diagramming language extension or something; I don't know.
You could establish pullouts from a line; so say, for example, you wanted to document "ls -l". Your visual man page language could support saying, "Here's the string "ls -l"; and now I want a call-out from the "ls" part saying "This is the LiSt command," and now I want a call-out from the "l" part saying "I want the listing in the Long form."
You could do a LOT with just that. Then, you could add in Gifs and JPegs and stuff like that. We really should have a set of visual man pages; no need to be decoding these things in our heads over and over.
Warning: This is pretty vicious... {:(}= <- Not Proud
There are just waaay too many pseudo-intellectuals out there selling their stuff online.
Take Ximix Productions, for instance.
Favorite topics:
A lot of it just gets down to plain complaining. I hate complainers. {;D}=
Pick a random movie, that you haven't seen, from this list, and watch it.
Read and assimilate this excellent report on Free and OpenSource software..! A Battle Plan for Linux..!
What about a Software pyramid scheme?
You write some code, and say that it can be used in propreitary products if each author receives $1.00 (you'll need to use some sort of index to account for inflation) for every licensed use of the code. The code may be used by FREE projects for Free, provided that the code follows the licensing provisions. So whenever anyone ever sells a piece of your code within proprietary software, you (and by extension, Free Software) get a paycheck, paving the way to future development.
Some times I really wonder. Going through Patri's website just a moment ago was one such time.
Visions of my brilliant Mudd friends streamed through my mind, and I thought, "What have I been doing all this time?!"
If it was something like Lanier's website, I could push this sort of thing away,
But this is Patri; my former suitemate..! These are people that were friends in college. Or Inertia Suite, which I keep up with.
In a game based on mazes, be sure that the menu at the beginning takes the shape of navigating a maze. (A tiny (7x7) maze, but still a maze..!)
I can include the infinite maze in infinity by having a "Maze Plane" that connects with the rest of the Infinity universe. If you go through a portal, down a stairway, whatever, you end up in a corrosponding location in the infinite maze plane.
Recall that the infinite maze can be three dimensional; There's no reason we can't procedurally generate a 3-d maze. It just gets a little trick to navigate; that's all...
When you create simulation objects with their own update cycle, be sure to consider adding a "delete me" flag to the objects.
Or perhaps make it so that you make an API call or something, and say, "Delete this object at the end of the rounds.". Or make it so that every object has a bool delete() function call, that is called at the end of each turn. If it replies "true", then it is deleted.
They are probably going to want to delete themselves at some point. The system needs to know that it can delete the object. That way, for an object to self destruct, it just sets its own "self destruct" flag, and then the engine will destroy it.
There should probably be a notification to observers as well that the destruction is occuring, so that they can react accordingly.
Perhaps use this simple targetting system:
What if the targetter forgets about the targetee? It should send, "TARGETTING_OFF" to the targetee, and the targetee destructor component should remove the targeter from it's list.
You can play sounds and animations in response to target on and stuff like that. {;D}= Pretty cool.
Shoot... Augh! One more thing. You have to make sure that targetters exist before you send a message back to them, informing them that you no longer exist... Dammit!
Wed Jan 3 16:01:40 PST 2001
Wouldn't it be interesting if you could see the trails left behind the directory tree by co-workers? Prioritized directory sorting? Wherever people go the most, worn grooves appear over?
I think that'd be fascinating..! What would such a directory tree be like?
As per a simulation, Ithink we'd want intelligent folders, that KNOW when people are entering, looking about, and leaving.
Ahhh... The simulation programming *DREAM*... [But do the folders need their own life tick? Their own update? I don't think so...?]
Thu Jan 4 09:01:59 PST 2001
Here's another thing I would like: A way to get information about a directory. Who owns the directory? (Luckly, this information is built into UNIX.) But more than that: What is the policy for the directory? Who owns the directory? What's their phone number? [how do I look them up?] (Unix: "finger")
How can we design an intelligent file system, and then use it in conjunction with the normal file system? Or is this doomed to be isolated, like SQL? (Although, I understand that the HURD might be able to help me out here..!)
I'm thinking of folders primarily from the view of the desktop, rather than the command line.
I'm also thinking of folders as having autonomous intelligence, rather than just hanging out there on their own.
A good installer shouldn't let you double install. (Though there SHOULD be a "FORCE" option). It should say, "Oh, you're trying to install that? Well, you've already got it installed. Type XYZ to uninstall the old one, or type ABC to freshen the previous to the new.)
Put the story "Lianxiang" (it can be found in "Strange Tales of LiaoZhai") into the space game some how. It's sexy, and it's beautiful. I liked it quite a lot. (Strange Tales of LiaoZhai page 136)
Not all stories are art, nor are all stories communication. Generally, though, they are one of the above, or more commonly, both. But rarely neither. I can't think of a single case.
There's a Japanese movie called "AfterLife" that I've heard is really good.
SEARCHERS! Look for "idea", "catch", as well as "thought"
Get familiar with SQL Databases. Do the Philip Greenspun thing.
These little notes can all go into a computer SQL database, very effectively.
People listed should include:
Quotes listed should include:
For example, Mark Twain is a Writer and Social Commentator. Confucius was a Teacher and a Social Commentator. Neal Stephenson is a Writer and a Social Commentator. Neal Stephenson also wrote the Diamond Age, which I have notes on. Neal Stephenson and Confucius both wrote on similar things.
If you look up a
VoltronWing: Titles are generally not necessary (though once in a blue moon, I make one up); More often than not, I don't have time to apply a full on title; It's enough work just getting the tags in place.
Or, you could NOT go the web-route. Make the thoughts database have a command line interface. Then, have a GTK+ or web cgi program interface to the command line program.
It looks like someone has already acted on the idea I had about creating a thought database! Be sure to follow this one up. =^_^=
Later Note: It's really a way of writing to several blog-ish sites at once, and there's not much interest in making a thought database out of it.
Jesus Christ the Internet is scarry.
I just found a web page, "Virgins of the Sun", created by a guy named "Lion". He has pretty much the same tastes in Anime as I (as far as I can tell), and seems to love the color yellow, and the sun.
Next I'll find out he's a coder, and codes Free Software projects.
Pretty scarry..!
Thu Jan 4 13:24:43 PST 2001
Software that makes it easy to make a PUBLIC DATABASE. Make it so that you can *easily* make a shared public database, complete with clients, servers, distribution of the database(s), and security features.
For example, I could make a public database of all anime characters. All I have to do is think of the database schema and the permissions, and the software is created for me.
To follow up on this project, I would need to...
It doesn't require any inovation to do all of this; It's rather straightforward.
Free Software (Gift) Exchange Registry - FSEX is an idea for helping out people working on Free Software. It's also extendable to comics, and what not.
Any time that you consider storing a NUMBER in a game, consider using a POSITION.
Numbers are good when you have large quantities of possible values, or you are using numerical computation extensively. (Computation beyond addition and subtraction.) Video games: Numbers are also good for showing rapidly increasing scores, simply because it's rather sexy to see the numbers rolling about. But then again, you might find a good way to do that with icons flying about the screen or board.
Positions are good because it is easy to make paths, detours, and have a visual min/max view. You can start playing around with tokens and watching paths, than just writing and erasing numbers. You can "color" positions, affix symbols; It has a simplifying effect.
Consider: If you are on a location with a red marker, you get to do x2 damage.
Vs: If the score is 2,5,15, or 19, you get to do x2 damage.
In the course of time, I have noticed that my mind tends to judge thing based on the instant, rather than logically through time.
It's rather good at identifying that 7 > 3, and 3 > 2, but not at putting these facts together over time, but rather, is good at putting them together instantly.
So, for example, if addressed with 3 and 2, I can immediately say, "3 is larger," or, "method X is better", And if addressed with 7 and 3, I can immediately say, "7 is larger," or "method Y is better". What I cannot easily do is say, "7 > 3 AND 2." That is, it takes effort for me to draw the the data together, and to see it from the big picture.
One thing you could do if you want to trick someone, is to show them the metaphysical equivelent of 2 and 3, and then expouse the virtues of 2, knowing full well the advantages of 3 over 2.
However, you can hold in your hand the *7*, and the person viewing the 2 and 3, unless they take care to hold a 7 in their hands (outside of the metaphor: in their thoughts), will be so happy to have distinguished their 3 from a 2, will be incapable of realizing that there may be a 5, a 7, or a 13, or whatever.
Collecting the data together takes work.
I was thinking of writing an article for FreshMeat along the lines of, "Let's all donate $10.00/week to our favorite OpenSource project, whether it's well known or not. It'll help contributers refocus attention on our hopes, developments, and commitments, and it will help developers realize what they are doing, and more importantly, let them know that the world cares. What you cannot donate in time, you can donate in money." $480/year ($5*4 weeks * 12 months) of Free and Open Software Goodness. (I expect KDE and GNOME would make a lot of money.)
If donations became commonplace in the OS world, we could start to see company donations, and that'd be rather cool, if it happened. Halo Effect.
Interesting link: FairTunes.com. I believe Linus Torvalds has about $150 in there..!
Either a registry of all projects, or projects individually put up paypal hat.
Now go get PayPal accounts!
The highest ranking comment here on Kuro5hin was interesting, and link to a fascinating article, Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence. Just look at Japan. If children's exposure to pornography caused them to become violent, all of Japan should be in the midst of a violent turmoil by now.
Add to the list of Freshmeat articles I'd like to write: The Peril of Configure
I have never met anyone who understood how configure, automake, autoconf, autogetn, and whatever else there is, work.
We're using generators. Having generated code that you are supposed to modify is evil because other people can't easily seperate what you added vs. what was already there, and they can't see what you deleted.
Configuration stuff should be based on blank slate files. None of this, "Put a file in each directory" stuff. We want cleanliness, clarity, and understandability, from our configuration scripts.
There's probably whole realms of genetic code floating out there. One person takes a configuration file that looks "about right", and tries to just cobble together something that barely works. Who knows how many bandages are applied on top of bandages on top of bandages. I'm imagining whole worlds of #defines that are completely unnecessary and needless. I can understand that configuration is complicated, but must it be so dirty and misunderstandable?
Include a link to the web site on autoconf, automake, etc. There is a Free Book online about these tools. Also include a link to the contest that existed that was made to reform autoconf and what not.
Rejemy: (9:03 AM) Yes, it's so true! The whole build process is very mysterious - the most you can hope to do is search through it for something that looks familiar and hack that.
http://www.advogato.org/article/138.html
You should be able to ask the compiler what features it supports, ask the system what features it supports, ask the system where it stores files and what the defaults are. Programs that can have multiple configurations or whatever should provide information to any other programs that would be interested. There should *NOT* be any of this running a program in order to see if it supports something. We'd prefer *ASKING* to the violent poking and prodding that configure enjoys.
Programs, tools, need to play nice, and make information available to other programs that may use them.
I thought of these while reading Tan: Autoconf replacement proposal.
You can go and ask a bunch of people for help, and be turned down, or thrown down weird leads, chasing red harings...
Or you can learn it yourself. You may feel like you are wasting time, but 3 hours of research sure beats 2 days of questioning, emailing, annoying, etc., etc.,. Better to teach yourself.
NOTE: Tongue in Cheek.
Insane people (people with wild ideas) talk a lot. It annoys us. We hate it.
Sane people don't talk a lot. They keep to themselves, pretty much. When they talk, the don't say much outside of the ordinary. They pretty much follow the standard way of saying things.
My conclusion is that insane people are just people that talk. As in: If you got a sane person talking, you'd rapidly find that they were insane. And As in: If you got an insane person to shut up, you'd rapidly find that they were quite sane.
Occasionally an insane person has ideas that went through the cycle of beinging ignored, then attacked, and then having their ideas taken as obvious. That kind of person, we call brilliant, if not insane for have insisting on the obvious.
I think we all just need to talk more. Talk as in the two way sense- listen, and say, listen, and say, listen, and say. We talk quickly in our own minds, but talking between people is slow.
I'm done now.
Guess what, Weak Typing Increases Productivity..! Finally I can site an article.
It's nonsense that we "have to have strong type", otherwise your fellow moron programmers will mess everything up. Whatever. I've *NEVER* looked into a list and not known what the type is. I've NEVER had that problem. EVER. LISP has been doing just fine for decades without strong type.
The deep meaning of Encapsulation is this:
Functionality is organized, and each chunk of code, whether the chunk is an "object" or a component or a function or whatever, regardless, each chunk of code does just it's piece of functionality, and nothing else. Very minimalistic.
Here is a well encapsulated ammunition box: When a player or creature touches the ammo box, it replies with, "I provide ammo." Then, the creature or player respond with "I'll take it." (If the thing that touched it was not interested in ammo,the thing that touched has deaf ears to the ammo box.) When the ammo box receives, "I'll take it," it replies with, "Here you go," and turns itself off, or something like that.
Here is a poorly encapsulated ammo box: Something touches the ammo box, and the ammo box checks to see if the thing that touched it was a creature or a monster. If it was, then it tells the creature or monster that they have ammo. What is gained in speed is lost in organization and flexibility. Code that allows creatures to pick up ammo should obey principles of encapsulation and appear in the creature's code, not in the ammo boxe's code. This example "breaks encapsulation" when the ammo box "knows about" things called creatures and players.
Encapsulation is generally bad for performance and good for abstraction.
For example, lets say I have an ammo box. When it's touched,
The two weaker senses of encapsulation follow:
Thus, we have 3 meanings to the word "encapsulation":
(Later note: I was talking with someone and found a 4th differentiation; but I've forgotten what it was...)
Generally, if you read a book about object oriented programming, you'll get the 2nd or the 3rd definitions.
But the deep meaning of the word "Encapsulation" comes from definition 1, and transcends object oriented programming.
Yet another meaning of the word encapsulation: The state of code that has been "Interfaced Off". That is, functionality has been put into a function or an object, and then has been given an interface, so that you don't have to think about how it works.
4 Definitions!
Do "Interface", "Interfaced Off", and "Encapsulation" need entries in the Hacker's Dictionary? I suppose so (They aren't in there today: Wed Jan 17 14:36:54 PST 2001). No. They don't; They are defined, albeit poorly, in computer science literature, and thus don't have a place in the New Hacker's Dictionary.
Later note Mon May 7 17:58:12 PDT 2001: COHESION is the complementary force of COUPLING. Strong Cohesion is the deep meaning of encapsulation. http://www.ics.uci.edu/~redmiles/ics121-SQ99/lecture/seven/tsld014.htm
I was working on code with a linked list, and a count. As you added things to the linked list, you were supposed to increment the count. As you removed things from the linked list, you were supposed to decrement the count. No naming overlap existed between the count and the linked list; you could not tell that they were directly related. If you added to the list w/o changing the count, you got a crash later on. This was an example of poor encapsulation: We want the count to increase whenever you add to the list. Turn the add/remove into a function call. When you want to add an element, call the function. When you want to remove an element, call another function. The function will encapsulate the connected functionality. There will be a strong cohesion. I learned the word "Cohesion" from a book on "Structured Design". Structured Design seems to be the 70's/80's word for what is now called Object Oriented Programming. The name for "programming well" just keeps on turning...
"In this paper, we have shown that the cohesion of a class or an object can be described in terms of classical (module-based) cohesion taxonomies, and similarly for the coupling between classes and objects. There can be no category of cohesion or coupling that is specific to the object-oriented paradigm. Accordingly, it makes little sense to talk about object-oriented cohesion or object-oriented coupling unless it is made clear that what is meant is the application of classical cohesion and coupling to the object-oriented domain.
The results are special cases of a result regarding metrics in general: When inheritance is not involved, the metric is always a classical metric that has been applied to the object-oriented domain. Furthermore, even when inheritance is involved, the metric may still correspond to a classical one. The use of metrics in the object-oriented paradigm is no less vital than in the classical paradigms. Most of the metrics used in conjunction with the object-oriented paradigm are, in fact, classical metrics. There is nothing wrong with this, provided we acknowledge that they are classical; claiming that classical metrics are object-oriented is, at best, a cause of confusion.
-- A classical view of object-oriented cohesion and coupling Aaron B. Binkley And Stephen R. Schach Computer Science Department
Incredible article: Object Oriented Programming Oversold!
It's a big world out there.
What if somebody walked up to your desk and started telling you now to organize your desk's contents? Most would say that this is silly. However, this is almost exactly what is being done with OOP.
Here's another good one, that I particularly agree with:
I am beginning to get the feeling that many people are forgetting how to do good procedural programming and blaming the paradigm for their shrinking knowledge.
OO fans see no problem with reading 1,700 page books about "proper OOP", yet never touch a one-page guide to "proper Procedural/Relational programming" (if they make such a thing anymore).
However, nobody is championing procedural/relational anymore because it is out of style and a risk to career face right now.
There are some clues to how electrons carry heat energy on a web page that a guy named Greg Dries wrote for Sci Network. It seems that an electron can pick up heat energy, and move it elsewhere REALLY FAST. How does an electron pick up heat energy? I still don't know, but at least I know that that's what's going on down there.. (It just seems like an AWEFUL lot of energy for a few electrons to be zipping about..!)
A movie about a guy who is fed up with the Internet and the variety of opinions in the world.
He goes on a single man quest to set the world straight. He collects information, arguments, etc., etc., to become the single most rabid arguer in the world.
During the show, show flip signs of common quotes, sayings, trusms. Ex: Old dogs can't learn new tricks/Never too old to learn, Balance/Carpe Diem, FirstTheyIgnore/ThenTheyMock/ThenViolence/ThenOfCourse, etc., etc.,...
Call it: "Arguments."
March 23, 2001 Later realization: This man is Ted Nelson.
It would be neat to actually see a "thought bubble" appear in a movie. The Wizard of Speed and Time included one.
If you had enough money, it'd be interest to incent students by giving money to the first person to solve a given problem.
How we solve problems.
This is basically what I was teaching my students about how to construct algorithms, and I think it's true for much more than constructing algorithms; I'd very well say it's how we construct ALL our thoughts, and even our lives!
It's like those Wave Patterns that come out when you release electrons one at a time through a dual slit, or whatever. The pieces appear one at a time, but distant from one another. Then they collect together, and a complete focused image appears. This happens for stories, it happens for programming, and I dare say it's probably how the Enlightenment and Realization of The Eternal God will happen as well, whenever God blesses us to meet Him. (I could be wrong; this could be a merely mental conception of the God-realization experience.)
We don't work linearly, and we shouldn't *TRY* to make ourselves work linearly. This very catch (this doc) itself is a nonlinear, but progressive, work in progress.
We should harness our non-linearity, and work with it, rather than trying to cram ourselves into the pants of discipline.
Quaternions are also called Hamilton #s because Rowan Hamilton discovered them. They extend the complex numbers.
Quaternions consist of 4 components:
q = w + xi + yj + zk
They add like vectors. They multiply like polynomials. 1's, i's, j's, and k's interconvert according to the following rules:
Quaternions avoid "Gimbal Lock".
Angle Axis Representation- You give an XYZ unit vector, to describe an axis, and then give an angle that rotates about that axis. One motion, to fit all your rotation needs..! (I read that this causes a rough interpolation? Not sure I understand why...)
Small stories might be pleasurable because they are so limited in scope, like games. There is a closure to them..?
What I like about Philip Greenspun is that he doesn't resort to high-language to weild authority, and prove that he knows what he is talking about.
Rather, he speaks directly from experience.
A lot of times, he gets on people's nerves. He's not very diplomatic to the readers state of mind. This has good aspects, and bad aspects. The good aspects are that he gets his point across clearly and rapidly. The bad aspect is that people who disagree feel insulted.
But they shouldn't disagree. Because he's right. (There's no shame in being wrong.)
Personally, I like his writing style a lot.
He's a smart cookie. Whatever he has that's so special, I wish he'd tell me what it is, and I wish I had it.
What do you think is the place of intellectual gathering places such as universities in the gay-rights movement?
-- Marian Chen, March 17, 1997
Answers
First, I don't think we can take for granted that a university is an intellectual gathering place. We have students who come for a credential so that they can get a job (Business and Economics are the most common majors these days, not English and Philosophy). We have professors who publish in journals that nobody reads just so that they can pad out their vitae and get tenure. We have administrators hiring sub-assistants and milking the students, parents, and destitute PhDs. Not that I'm cynical....
Second, I'm not sure that we can assume that intellectuals will make significant contributions to the gay rights movement. I personally believe that prejudice stems from lack of understanding others' experiences. I can't understand what it is like to be gay from reading a Harvard sociologist's paper. I can only understand it by reading literature. It is the poet, not the professor, who is going to educate me about the reality of being gay. (Remember the famous poet who asked "What's the difference between an ape and a professor of English Literature?" (the professor of English Literature thinks that he can write poetry).)
If we accept that only art can give people an insight into experiences that they haven't personally had then it is Hollywood more than Harvard and the starving Bohemian authors of Greenwich Village more than the complacent tenured faculty who will play a significant role in the gay rights movement.
-- Philip Greenspun, March 18, 1997
Tell Philip Greenspun that I am teaching Fledging Unix Programmers. Tell him that I am currently a computer programmer. That I am attending college. That I want to teach full time. Should I hire on with someone else that teaches (such as RedHat), or should I open a school of my own. I am not a business expert; Should I become one?
It would be cool if, generally, wherever a filename is written to the screen, you could click on it and be taken to the file, local or remote. This requires some meta-information be provided, so that not every word is considered to be a file name.
Publish all my loopy ideas under the title, "BAD": Bizarre Architecture Docs.
Then I can write for FreshMeat without shame.
Characters must visit the world constructor in the Causal Plane. 2 minute trance/psychadelic sequence, Dr. Who music, as approaching the Lord of the Causal Realm. Exchange occurs, and then the characters leave as the universe they saw dissolves.
It's a show, or a story... It is an experiental thing. Treat the story as a story that people listen to, We're not aiming for apparent realism, we're aiming for the realism of experience. A simulation, not just a plot.
Use the Python Imaging Library to make some simple sprite stuff for the class. I think they'd get a kick out of that.
Python Imaging Library for Windows
Chase down interesting stuff and nail it.
I was working on this project, and all the bugs and stuff were bothering me. I didn't like not understanding how the layers below me worked. "Oh, don't go down there; that's not the place you are paid to be." So, I'd sort of meander at the top levels.
Then one day, I grabbed a bug and tracked it down, day and night. (Actually, for about 5 hours.) It was exhilerating. "Too hell with what I'm paid to do, I'm tired of moping. I want to fix this!" I dove in...
Hours later, I came out, having fixed a fairly huge bug, that had been causing several other problems as well..!
I'm wondering if I should devote myself to improving the object architecture, rather than working on GameObjects...
Hmm... I'm going to think about this...
Communicate how we see structures as we program. A boy dreams, and find himself inside a programmers vision of debugging a program. (He's investigating an enormous file tree, or something like that.)
Bushido Blade's fighting system was set apart and defined, more than anything else, by the absence of life bars, of any measured progression towards victory or defeat, or any quantitative indication of who had the advantage. When one of you fell to the ground and stopped moving, you knew who was winning. That was what made the game realistic, individual, and interesting, since one stroke could win the fight, one mistake could lose it, and any disadvantage could be overcome with one desperate attack. --IGN reviewer of KenGo
Great description. {;D}= So great, it looks like they've taken it off the record..!
There is a great article called Flow with Tao which is good because it explains the I AM very clearly. It also unites several practices together, explaining how they are various manifestations of the true light of Mind.
The mind is like a hollow shell. It is empty and lifeless. The author has cleared the mind, and seen it for what it is, the everchanging kalediascope of states of mind that is our world, but I believe that he has confused his life with the mind.
The Eternal Spirit, or the Eternal Tao, is to be focused on next, as it leads outside of the mind, and even outside the center of the mind.
The way to follow the Tao beyond the mind is not through more realization of mind, but through following the Sound current, which appears in meditation.
Here's some more 'I AM' metaphysics.
Re:Remember...
(Score:3, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18, @03:57PM EST
Telemarketer: "Hello Mr. X, let me tell you about this great offer..."
Me: "May I ask your name?"
Telemarketer: "Joe...I have a great dea..."
Me: "May I ask your last name Joe?"
Telemarketer: "I don't see why you'd need that."
Me: "May I remind you that under FCC regulation you are required to state your first and last name upon request?"
Telemarketer: "..I didn't know that...Joe Doe."
Me: "Then I guess I can inform you that it is your employer's responsibility to inform you of FCC regulations, and that if you're going to making these calls, the FCC requires you to know these regulations. If your employer does not inform you of the regulations, they are committing a felony. May I ask your employers name?"
Telemarketer: "Wow... I didn't know that. I work for Credit Card Company X."
Me: "Joe, I asked YOUR employer. You work for a telemarketing firm, not a credit card company."
Telemarketer: "I'm not allowed to tell you that.
Me: "Then I may remind you that under FCC regulation that you MUST state your employer's name as well as your immediate supervisor's name upon request."
Me: "Furthermore, if I request to be added to your 'Do not call' list, you MUST add me to the list. If your employer is not keeping a list, they are subject to fines up to $500,000, and I am entitled to a $500 voucher."
Telemarketer: "Sir, I just called to ask..."
Me: "You never stated your employers name. Please don't commit a felony, Joe."
Telemarketer: "Phone Services X."
Me: "Please add me to your do not call list. If I get a call from Phone Services X within the next 5 years, I will hold you, Joe Doe, and your employer, Phone Services X, responsible. I will contact the FCC and you will be prosecuted."
From Slashdot.
We need a nomic game that works. Here's what I think can be done, to make a working nomic game:
Bootstrap Rule. Use a bootstrap rule at the beginning of the game, that defines a turn to be much more complex, consisting of several rotations amongst several players on a game board. Thus, several (3?) micro-turns happen during one person's mega-turn.
When the micro-turns are complete, then the rule change proceeds, and then the next person's turn comes up.
Several "recommended rule changes" are plausible and may come into play at various points. This is a set of changes that are relatively interchangable, and cause the game to go in a well understood direction.
Original rules are still allowed, and encouraged! Good ones should be well recorded, better thought out, and placed on the Internet to be available for all to see.
Idea that doesn't work: Use purely premade cards. Example: FLUX. It's not so much that it doesn't work, as it is that you aren't really making a game that changes it's own rules. Based on the Flux card set, for example, you could just make a very simple rule set, and throw out the concept of "changing rules"; it's just a multi-state game. There is no addition to the game though; it has definite scope. It is a *finite* game.
I imagine that a great many games can be nomic-ized. You can take a working game, and decompose it into elementary components. For example, Monopoly. We can break it up into several component elements:
With these components, we can start plugging things in, or taking them out.
For example, we could easily have a game in which property cannot be morgaged. We could make it so that it can be sold for 3/4 value.
As the game plays, the component rules are added and removed, and new rules can be generated on the fly.
A few good links on the web:
To build it, you have to refer to it. When in a topic, the first instinct (once you have a sizable database- 6 months) should be to look for everything else you've thought about the subject. If you don't find anything, something needs to go in there.
Negatives: Could start to eat all your time, not be worth it. (Ex: Such as the original catchs- unsorted, messy, on paper, not categorized, etc., etc.,...) Long time to put on the wall...
Positives: Database matures, and starts to pay off beyond the gains from just writing down an idea. Knowledge structures, branches and connects, within itself. It grows, refines, and becomes something of quality.
Beanworld is highly diagrammatic.
BeanWorld is REALLY fascinating; I *LOVE* it. Here's why: * It's Technical. Larry Marder has thought a lot about how information is presented. It's quite intuitive. There are plenty of maps, drawn to make distinctions clear. Callouts are frequently used in diagrams, to sequence time and clearly delineate the speaker. It's incredibly iconic. We see lots of geometries, sequences. Reading the material is like watching the description of a machine. Each diagram is *really* interesting. * It's Aesthetic. * It's Easy. By easy, I mean that it's simple, rather than baroque, but no simpler than it needs to be. * It shows care.
I wrote that before. I'd add to that that it is *transparent*. For example, let's look at the "BlankTank" on page 97 of Book 1. Notice how you can see the blanktank through the chow, and the chow through the blanktank. This is very diagramatic; it let's you see things that you normally wouldn't be able to see. It is true, you are supposed to be able to see through the blanktank, but I think it's indivative of a trend in the work towards transparency.
Lots of a few types of components, composed together.
Two dimensional. Page 55, the bugs. Another halmark of visual clarity. [vision is really two-d.]
I don't know how else to categorize this,...
It seems to me like often times, you can get someone who is really effective and passionate about what they do, and they have some method by which they do things.
If they really pour themselves into their task, and use their method, they say, "This method is great! This method works! Here's how."
Then, everyone says, "Wow, that's a great method," when in fact it was the persons effectiveness and passion and drive and what not. So what we end up with is a lot of, "Look at this great method, as upheld by person A," vs., "Look at this great method, as upheld by person B," and we can't really differentiate between the two, because both seem to work.
What we should probably take a look at is the people, rather than the method.
Or if we want to look at the method, we should look at large groups of people who aren't particularly motivated, trying to get some task done. Set up some tests or something.
But personally, I think it's more fruitful to look at what is going on with person A and person B.
Are they just lucky? I think that they are tapping interest-fuel wells. Interest that pays off because it comes from the heart.
Purpose: The purpose of the program is to show off just how incredibly professional we are, and how deeply we have studied and understood the practices and methodologies of software engineering and development.
Lion's Law of Mental Perfection:
I postulate that minds strive for absolute perfection. I postulate that they strive for everything to be absolutely perfect.
I think that this leads to the "Common Enemy Unites, Enemy Gone Divides" principle.
When there is no common enemy, minds try to perfect what is before them. Since there is a lot of chaos out there, this leads immediately to disagreement. Conflict. No matter how subtle or large a conflict or disagreement is, It is all the same size to a mind; Merely a collection of algebraic symbols clashing about.
When a common enemy appears, the act of perfecting the small scale gives way to the much larger imperfection at hand. When that larger imperfection is cleared away, they work back at perfecting the small neuances.
Minds, effectively or ineffectively, try to establish order.
I do not believe that happiness is to be found in the mind; It is always working at making a finer grade of perfection within the objects of it's affection, and there will not be an end to it, ever.
No painting is ever finished. (But we like to paint; Some Times.)
In a game, you try to fill up a space with a color, or something like that.
Variations: Apply multiple colors with special properties. Mix Conway's Game of Life into the mix.
Paper Computers. I think the web address is www.papercomputer.com, or www.papercomputers.com
Sometimes I'm astonished at the astonishingly and consistantly poor quality of code that comes out of some [unnamed] "great" programmers.
Perhaps the way to write good code is to write bad code. Or rather, to program effectively, is to program poorly and quickly, and hold it all in your noggin.
Or perhaps it's not the quality of code (reads: "Organization", "Clarity", "Consistancy") that matters so much as that you were able to tie together various different parts of the program..?
It would be interesting if code was described in verse. Taking the less is more thing to an extreme; Trying to say the most, carefully choosing words, and seeing what comes out.
The human voice can be the most beautiful, or the most disturbing, thing to touch my ears, and my soul.
Maybe that's why we moved to instruments; Too painful to listen to voice...
It could also be why Elvis is the King.
One day, there was a programmer who caught sight of a bug. She ended up with, in her hand, a memory address. A pointer.
She traced the pointer to it's source, and found another pointer. She followed that one too. She kept on following the pointers to their source.
A year later, she found that the source of the source of the source wasn't even within her process.
She researched operating systems, and followed the pointer in. She kept rooting around, rooting around, for the source of the pointer.
From there, she found that it came from networking code. She followed it in, and found that the address had come from outside her computer.
How had anyone known to throw in a pointer to her system from the outside world?
She tracked down THAT pointer, but it took lots of dumpster diving to do it...
Cheezy ending: Make it so that it was herself that threw the pointer in from another computer. (I AM resolution.)
Good ending: Have her find something cool at the other end. Something not herself.
This may be the funniest thing I have ever read.
Explain our daily world in terms of the natural mental language of the mind: surreality and icons. Mental story icons take the form of the supernatural.
