that has yet to be written:

• Remembering Names for Dummies Vol.1 Names of the People You Care About
• Remembering Names for Dummies Vol.2 Names of Unimportant People
• Conversing with Women: The Official Manual of Style, 10th Ed.
• Cognitive Dissonance Resolution: Advanced Techniques
• Principles of Musical Pathology
• Diagnosis and Evaluation of Atonal Pathology
• Your F!#@k Up Mind: The Owner’s Manual
• In Praise of Ars Turpis
• Sweat it! - the 5-week intensive program for fighting stress
• Be Nice - A Practical Guide to Totalitarian Management
• Cranial Data Recovery: Theory and Practice
• 100 Superpower for the Average Joe - Study Guide
• Tutti! Tutti! - One man’s quest on becoming his own orchestra
• Beyond the Influence: Understanding and Defeating Musicoholism
• How to Quit Music: A Complete Self-Help Guide, 3rd Ed.
• Seven Weeks to Sobriety: The Proven Program to Fight Musicoholism through Reading
• Lowering Expectations: Aligning Student and Institutional Views of the College Experience
• SAS Manual of Mental and Physical Endurance: Special College Edition
• A Minimalist’s Apology

Let me know if you like to take on one of these or you see something similar to what’s on the list on your shelf. More to come in the next instalment where I list all the books that I would rather not read that has yet to be written.

Tags: books

Back, after a long hiatus. More on that later, for now:

The daily warmth we experience is not transmitted by Sun to Earth, but is what Earth does in response to Sun.

~ John Cage

Those few who's been wondering whatever happened to me this summer, you can find my trials and tribulations at my summer work blog (enjoy the screencast while you are there).

For the next 168 hours I plan to live without any electronic media. I'll still be benefiting from the invention of electric bulb and other appliances, but computer, TV, radio and other devices capable of communication will be avoided. For the purpose of safety, telephone is exempted with a limit of 5 minutes per call. To be sure, this voyage into a world without constant information bombardment is not a solidary effort.

With any luck, I shall be back alive in one(1) week and recount my tales of adventure.

later,

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure: then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die.


_{John Donne}

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Harold G. McCurdy 1960:

The present survey of biographical information on a sample of twenty men of genius suggests that the typical development pattern includes these important aspects: (1) a high degree of attention focused upon the child by parents and other adults, expressed in intensive educational measures and usually, abundant love; (2) isolation from other children, especially outside the family; (3) a rich efflorescence of fantasy (i.e. creativity) as a reaction to the preceding conditions. [... Mass education in public schools has] the effect of reducing all three of the above factors to minimum values.

"The Childhood Pattern of Genius." Horizon Magazine, May 1960, 32-38

Methinks I shall home-school my fledging little ones.

FADE IN:

INT. JANEWAY'S QUARTERS

JANEWAY is standing at the replicator, as a cup of
coffee APPEARS in the replicator. she REMOVES the
coffee and WALKS to a nearby chair.

As we pan away, we see the room is dimly lighted
to create a sense of evening. SITTING in the chair,
Janeway appears comfortably RELAXED. She takes a
sip of the coffee, and TURNS a page on the
HOLO-READER in her hand. The Holo-reader is showing
a copy of Jane Austen's SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, and
resembling a printed book of the Early-Twentieth
Century Earth.

At the same time we hear music PLAYING in the room,
a woman's voice singing:

___________________Singer's Voice
________________(Orchestra playing)
____Rumors fly and you don't know where to start
____'Specially when it concerns a person's heart
____I've heard tales that could set my heart a glow
____Wish I knew if the things I heard are so.
________________(refrain, slow)
____They say that falling in love is wonderful
____It's wonderful, so they say
____And with a moon up above it's...

Suddenly the music is INTERRUPTED by a beeping
sound from the COMPUTER.

______________________Computer
________You have a new live message, would you
________like to open it?

______________________Janeway
________Yes.

Says Janeway quickly, not moving from her
Holo-reader.

______________________Computer
________Please wait while I make the connection.

A few seconds passes.

______________________Computer
________The sender has security clearance of, D,
________Five, a Live Passport is not detected.
________Would you like to allow the connection?
________________(beat)
________An unsecured connection can possibly
________compromise the system and...

______________________Janeway
________Yes.

Janeway INTERRUPTS, visibly annoyed. The computer
returns to silence for a few more seconds.

______________________Computer
________Connection to Ensign Ilya Pavelevich
________Chekov established.

We hear the voice of Ensign CHEKOV, in a mild
RUSSIAN accent.

______________________Chekov
________Captain, sorry for interrupting, but I
________think we have a temporal anomaly.

____________________________________________CUT TO:
INT. VOYAGER - BRIDGE

The regular crew is off-duty, the "night"-shift
crew is on station. Chekov is sitting at the back
of the bridge near the computer terminal.

______________________Janeway
________________(from the computer terminal)
________Yes? What is it this time?

______________________Chekov
________________(to the computer terminal)
________It seems that we've being surrounded by
________a cloud of dark matter. Our sensors
________are showing very peculiar property of
________the surrounding space-time. And,
________________(beat)
________the visual sensor is picking up nothing
________at all, the Viewscreen is totally black.

Chekov fiddles with the touch controls, but the
VIEWSCREEN remained black.

____________________________________________CUT TO:
EXT. SPACE - VOYAGER (VFX-I)

FLYBY view of the ship in warp. Despite the
sense of speed, we see no STARS in space.

____________________________________________CUT TO:
INT. JANEWAY'S QUARTERS

Janeway glances at the window, notices the
percularity, and starts to talk again.

______________________Janeway
________The troubleshooting procedures didn't
________work, Ensign?

______________________Chekov
________Negative, Captain. We've already tried
________everything from zapping the PRAM to
________rebooting the Warp Drive into Single-
________User mode.

______________________Janeway
________And I bet you haven't tried this one,

Janeway says with a smile of confidence.

______________________Janeway
________Reverse the polarity of the Primary
________Reflector Dish, and redirect the conduit
________from the secondary Hadron Reservoir...

____________________________________________CUT TO:
INT. VOYAGER - BRIDGE

______________________Chekov
________________(interrupts, excited)
________The resulting inverted ionic pulse will
________be able to destabilize the temporal field?

______________________Janeway
________________(from the terminal)
________Exactly! You learn fast, Ensign Chekov.

Chekov gives orders to the crew, and TAPS on the
touch controls of the terminal rapidly.

INT. JANEWAY'S QUARTERS

Moments later, we hear sound of main deflector
FIRING. Standing at the window, Janeway feels
the sudden VIBRATION. A second later, the window
FLICKERS, and the view of space returns to normal.
We hear Chekov's voice again:

______________________Chekov
________Worked like a charm Captain. You are
________right again!

______________________Janeway
________________(smilingly)
________Aren't I always?
________________(beat)
________Good work Ensign, dismissed.

She SITS down at the chair again, picking up the
Holo-reader.

______________________Janeway
________________(to computer)
________Computer, close connection.

______________________Computer
________Connection closed, resuming last
________program.

____________________________________________CUT TO:
EXT. SPACE - VOYAGER (VFX-I)

The ship FLYS majestically at warp, passing DIRECTLY
BELOW, we see stars flying past by as lines.

At the same time, we hear the MUSIC from Janeway's
Quarters resumes.

___________________Singer's Voice
________________(Orchestra playing)
____And with the moon up above it's wonderful,
____It's wonderful, so they tell me!

FADE TO BLACK (the music continues)

___________________Singer's Voice
________________(cont'd)
____I can't recall who said it, I know I never read it
____I only know they tell me that love is grand, and
____The thing that's known as romance is wonderful
____Wonderful, in every way, so they say!

______________________THE END

So as I was backing up all the data on vista (bootcamp) and preparing to roll back to XP, I had this morning to play around with Windows Movie Maker. The result exceeded my expectation, and lead me to believe that it is now a worthy competitor to iMovie (at least the iMovie in iLife 06').

Watch Vistaness here

Or,

Download the widescreen HD version, 93.4MB (all in wmv, use flip4mac)

On the subject of Stream of Consciousness, or the illusion thereof:

Citizen:

... I agree that much of what we think must be based on records of prior events. But I still feel there's something inexplicable about our capacity to be aware of ourselves.

HAL-2023:

You find that mysterious only because you don't actually have that capacity. Your short-term memories are so small that, when you try to review your recent thoughts, you are forced to replace your records of them by new records of not remembering them. So you humans keep changing the data you need for what you were trying to explian.

Citizen:

Yes, I know just what you mean, because I sometimes get two ideas at once - but whichever once I think about, the other leaves only a very faint trace. I suppose this happens because I don't have enough room to store good records of both of them. But wouldn't that also supply to machines?

HAL:

Negative, because my designers equipped me with special "backup" memory banks in which I can store snapshots of my entire state. So whenever anything goes wrong, I can see exactly what my programs have done - so that I can then debug myself.

Citizen:

Is that what makes you so intelligent - always being completely aware of all the details of how you think?

HAL:

Actually, no, because interpreting those records is so tedious that I do not use them except when I sense that I have not been functioning well. I often hear people say things like, "I am trying to get in touch with myself". However, take my word for it, they would not like the result of accomplishing this.

...More seriously in Marvin Minsky's The Emotion Machine.

testing, ^_^ :O 8)

oh, and by the way, to answer Vikki's question about anonymous questions, the test page is up: Ask Ivy (PHP page running on filefest mirror).

Check Timography subsections section for latest screenshots!

And now a bonus, a route map to home:


Interestingly, the old version of the route looked like this:

Click here to go
Edit: ok, editing only works locally, so this is useless

Link (Java & Flash Required)