psyche

Thinking of the metaphorical meaning of The Enigma of Amigara Fault, suicide and such jump to mind. I couldn’t help thinking of Lain being my “hole” - it was perfectly tailored to bring out all my psychological insecurities and quirks, and it did. Interestingly, teachers like Mr Barker, Mr Rokison and Mr Smith have only known me since my shift into mediocrity and insanity, and I think Mr Motion is beginning to understand that my mental arithmetic is sluggish at best. Rambling, rambling, rambling. I think my theme of happy/sad is linked to bipolar disorder or at least mania.

I was thinking about trying to speed up my mental maths: if you know your squares up to 20, you could do something like this:

Input: multiply a and b.

Check whether a mod 2 = b mod 2 (i.e. are they both odd or both even? This isn’t necessary but is a vestige of this retardation’s origin in my mental maths crazy stuff - I know a bunch of n²s for ns up to 20 and then some randomers like 25 and some powers of two because of computing jigga.)

If so, use the thing. Using some (like going backward to difference of two squares).

ab = ((a+b)/2-(a+b)/2+a)((a+b)/2+(a+b)/2-a) = ((a+b)/2)² - (a - (a+b)/2)²

So ab = (mean - distanceToMean)(mean + distanceToMean) = mean² - distanceToMean². Yeah.

Hmm. So like: 12 x 14?

1. 12 + 14 = 26
2. 26/2 = 13
3. 13² (lookup, so only one operation, not the fat O(n²) number that multiplication usually takes) = 169
4. 12-13 = -1
5. (-1)² = 1
6. 169 - 1 = 168

Looks retarded but I actually find that easier than going 14 x 10 + 14 x 2 = 140 + 28 = 168. I’m not joking.

Maybe it becomes useful later?

17 x 23 = 20² - 3² = 391

As it pivots on square values and I only want to go up to 20, you can make other stuff:

11 x 29 = 20² - 9² = 319

So it’s “If both numbers are odd or both numbers are even*, their product is the mean squared minus half the distance between them (or the distance to the mean) squared.”

This is fun.

23 x 27 = 625 - 4 = 621. Pimping.

And stuff. Actually, maybe the reason I like this is not to do with number of operations but merely type of operation: I find multiplication difficult; I am an idiot. Addition and subtraction I also dislike but not as much as I dislike multiplication.

*I think I added this constraint so you only get whole numbers. Remember, I’m an idiot!

Having a lookup table of squares and doing this - any good for computational optimisation? MAYBE.

I ordered some of Nakaido Reichi’s music from OCS Books. When I went in there, they started talking Japanese at me - possibly because I was having a bad hair day. Thus, today I got my hair cut. That’s all.

I’m watching this in the hope of properly understanding quantum computing.

Notions of the “observer’s mind” remind me of Lain and obviously Plato’s allegory of the cave reminds me of The Matrix.

These tech talks are awesome. Google aren’t as bad as their (generally) fbugly [functional but ugly] UI design suggests: this is the real deal!

UPDATE: Seriously.

Pax

Ted Nelson gave a talk at school today. It reminded me of two things:

1. The Matrix (lots of prisons and systems to control us and adapting to the machines’ way of life…)
2. The God Delusion *(a densely-packed refutation of something that you’ve suspected was fundamentally flawed all along)

Prof. Nelson handed out some copies of ZigZag and Xanadu and demoed XanaduSpace. Having heard about it for ages and seeing demonstrations in other videos scattered across the web, it was great to see it right there. I think a combination of seeing it materialise despite the rather long-lived smear campaign against it (it was like a Googlebomb of “Xanadu” for “vaporware”, but in print) and hearing Prof. Nelson talk about the concrete concepts behind it (C++, OpenGl and Python backend, next platform will be iPhone, Flash version soon) really solidified the concept in my mind. I think I’m ready to believe that with fine-tuning, the computer world can be turned on its head (in a good way).

The basic premise of the talk was that technology was really just “packaging and conventions” and that we had learned to use kludgy solutions rather than good solutions being engineered (this was blamed on techies). Nelson believes that the web’s infrastructure (one-way links, unsourced quotations etc.) is severely lacking, and that 1984, when Xerox PARC gave us the desktop metaphor, was when “it all went wrong”.

Another thing that struck me was the sense of activity and understanding. Age 70, having been ridiculously ahead of the curve for so long but never really achieving the maximal recognition he deserves, Nelson continues to pursue his original projects with zeal and an apparently very perceptive mind. Listening to his anecdotes and analogies reminded me strongly of interviews with Richard Feynman.

The subject of Lain remained fairly suppressed, although people now frequently tell me how often I mention it even when I don’t (…).

Of course, the best thing about Xanadu would be sourced or transcluded quotations - as people may know, I have a thing about blockquotes [1, 2]. With Xanadu I will finally get my wish! FINALLY! OH YEAH!!

On a rather insane note, I think I read somewhere (probably New Scientist or Wired but I really can’t remember - I should really find the source and, y’know, transclude it) that the Google generation is actually very bad at processing and finding information in most scenarios because of their (no, not me - it’s them!) ridiculously short attention spans and inattention to detail.

I think this is the other extreme that I’ve been waiting for; people generally have this rather idealised view of internet-savvy folks being greatly intelligent data processing machines, churning through some huge number of articles on RSS feeds, tagging hundreds of links every week etc. while the minority believe that people are now just dumb keyword filters. I think both of these views are inaccurate. Yes, there’s a danger that people may deactivate their higher thought and just sift through pages of Google results but intelligent reading and data processing is not dead.

When I did our first Module 1 past paper last week (unashamed boast: 95%), I applied the rules that I generally apply to webpages (not consciously, mind you. I had to really think hard about what I do) :

1. Keyword search - what is the general feel of this page? Large text? What does it say?
2. Specific subheadings? (Mark allocation?)
3. Start forming fuzzy answers
4. “Oh, crap! That doesn’t make sense… wait - let me read this in detail.”
5. “Oh. Oh. Right, wait.”
6. Answer questions on this page.

Repeat for every page.

Then finally, check every page in detail.

It’s kind of like modular programming or drawing something starting with a basic sketch and refining it (but not both at once. I should have said “xor” instead of “or”). You can either choose random bits and focus down on them or get a general outline and keep refreshing your knowledge with slightly higher information resolution. Eventually the answer crystallises in your mind, like an infinite function tending to root 2 or a sign becoming readable as your camera desperately focuses and refocuses.

Yeah. It’s all good, basically. It’s crazy about Taniyama, isn’t it? Man.

Mr Smith covered the talk in a slightly less haphazard way…

Pax

* Mr Smith has told me that there are in fact better alternatives.

Jeremy Keith visited us a while back and I think his talk has been my favourite so far as he seemed to be not only generally awesome but also deeply aware of the tardation of the web. Unlike others who misread or ignore symptoms of the web’s disgustocrap, he, parallel to the Ted Nelson school of thought, appears to embrace a much more semantically-enabled and generally non-retarded and awesome web.

This article of his is just about the most awesome article ever.

Pax

I Pownced this before but having been since removed from Pownce, I’ll put this here:

Alex Wright - The Web That Wasn’t (embedding was disabled by request…)

It’s pretty awesome.

I watched The Golden Compass and it was okay - they did the person/daemon thing quite well.

This is my critique of Will’s performance on them and I’ve posted my thoughts on his new podcast on the accompanying blog post.

It’s worth a listen as Will is really spearheading the “I like podcasting”… movement… at school… He’s right, though - twitter is worth looking into, although I use it and jaiku rather half-heartedly.

I’ve just realised that while sometimes my thoughts are ugly, I really do try to blog beautifully. Every English essay I have scored full or close to full marks on has been angst-ridden and cynical. So be it!

My father somehow won a second Nintendo Wii (???) by accident and I’m thinking that rather than selling it, I could do something involving some of this stuff? That is, if my brother will let me. He probably won’t. I wonder.

Abandoned playground? The Lain PSX game movie media038.avi (stuff mirrored here [much more disturbing than anime, only gave me sound when I used MPlayer]) contains a weird moving still of her on a swing. This reminds me a little of the Animatrix short Beyond. The whole atmosphere of Lain, The Matrix (first one), The Animatrix and the Matrix Comics is one of despair and confusion. It seems to be my favourite thing in the world.

It appears that the new I Am Legend movie again fails to accurately mirror the novel. This is a shame as the novel is awesome.

I was recently put onto Denno Coil by weirdo in #lain while discussing how I thought Lain showed “augmented reality gone wrong”. How chillingly specific this is.

Why has the iPod been so successful? Because it enables people to quickly and easily turn on, tune in, drop out…

Pax

I thought this was quite interesting.

Also, this.

This work could help better understand disorders linked with timing, such as schizophrenia. Still, in the end, “it’s really about understanding the virtual reality machinery that we’re trapped in,” Eagleman told LiveScience. “Our brain constructs this reality for us that, if we look closely, we can find all these strange illusions in. The fact that we’re now seeing this with how we perceive time is new.”

Pax

The things in Lain were probably just meant to be thought about, talked about and forgotten about. Ironically, while having extreme trouble remembering the minutiae of my life, I have no trouble recalling this stuff - stuff that makes me very uneasy. It hadn’t really soaked into my heart before. I’d understood it all from thinking about The Matrix and such but something just happened. I don’t know.

Consider:

• Déjà vu
• Derealization
• Existential crisis
• Solipsism syndrome

Together, these things have taken something from me. It was a delusion of some kind. I WANT IT BACK.

Pax

There’s been a bit of a lacuna and I don’t think I’ll fill it entirely as others have committed the events I missed to posterity.

I now make a large number of notes on my phone and in Mail. I now retain much more information than I used to - or at least, my computer and phone do, and I am able to retrieve this information.

Themes of personal reality and our inability to accurately perceive the real physical world are endlessly depressing. To quote Eiri Masami:

A memory is merely a record. Thoughts and emotions are but a limited sum derived from this record. Between this mere receptacle we call human form and the truly real world stands an insurmountable wall.

I think I’ll be uploading the text from omnipresence in wired as it’s quite interesting. It seems that Lain contains everything I care about. From the existential stuff to the misanthropy to the genuinely researched computer science (it’s way, way beyond The Matrix intellectually and emotionally. I never thought I’d say something like that)

Despite it being what people tell me is a simple process, I haven’t been able to get Inquisitor to install since upgrading to Leopard. Elliot and I have switched to Opera. It’s awesome.

Some connections sprang up. I Am Legend was brought to my attention by my uncle many years ago and is soon to be a film (I know that there have been repeated films based on it). It features urban decay and loneliness. Good. It feels like the truth is out there - if only I could find someone to explain it to me! How do you check if what you’re doing is the right thing? You can’t just sit and think, because you fudge your mind. There’s no rulebook. You ask other people. Consensus reality!

Suppose I’m a histrionic pathological liar. This combined with a general obsessiveness means I would be prone to interchange reality and fiction in my head. It would often have no consequence but it means I become fixated (Lain). Is there a cure? I think so. I still wonder about HotSauce. I also wonder about how the Lain people knew about computers and information science. Strange. Lain and The Matrix make me worry about secret truths. I think that’s why I try to make everyone watch Lain. I fear that information will be lost forever.

It’s easy to get sick of something and move on… but more dangerous is not getting sick of it. Instead of burning it out during an intense phase of interest, it might haunt you. Lain haunted me for about year before I really knew what it was. Maybe this is partly why it is taking me so long to shake it.

I used to consider myself a good writer and although it’s clear now that I am nothing of the sort, I still have a fondness for my piece of GCSE English coursework about a rather deranged man called Slavik. He met his end choking on a Quorn sandwich. More recently, Enjoy Every Sandwich. Connection! \o/

They should superimpose satnav data onto car windscreens somehow. Augmented reality.

I saw David Gray at the Roundhouse on the 14th. I like him. He’s clever.

Ikea and council flats at night. Kids hanging around some rusting metal railings outside a car park. Sad-looking car that never moves. Secret people locked up in those little houses. Suburban gloom?!

If I were in an attention-seeking, dramatic mood, I’d simply smile with some sort of emotional weight.

Pax

I don’t really have a frame of reference for this; I’m going to put it into psychology but I don’t really know where it belongs (sadly, I don’t really know where much belongs). When I watched The Animatrix for the first time, I think I was probably about twelve (?) - an age at which I genuinely believed I was at the pinnacle of my understanding. I dismissed The Animatrix as mildly interesting but ultimately not very engaging. Having watched it again (and noted myriad similarities between Kid’s Story and SEL…), I think some of it is a lot better than I had first thought. My perspective has changed entirely, for some reason. My condition before, and I must work by analogy here, is similar to that of someone prepubescent trying to understand the appeal of sexuality: I believe it is largely beyond comprehension. It’s the same as trying to understand extra spatial dimensions (although maybe someone out there can understand or visualise these things…).

The thing is, I always believe I’m at the pinnacle of my understanding. How do I know, then, whether I am getting closer to or further away from the truth? I lock into different mindsets, both long- and short-term (remember Self-Pwn Farhan?), never knowing whether I’m right or not - only what I believe. I don’t know why I believe what I do; I don’t choose what to believe. I guide myself and talk to myself but ultimately my decisions about belief and rejection or acceptance of reality or society are not consciously made!

So what should I do? I pour my mind into this, so that later I might at least try to understand my old viewpoint - in case my new one is erroneous.

Pax

When I look back at this, I want to truly understand who I was. Even if the nihilist in me is dead and I am ready to start the end of my life (that is to say, be happy), I want to remember who I am. I don’t want to end up being someone with Farhan’s memories and body and life but a different set of algorithms - no! I want to stay the same. Not some evolved Farhan, better-suited to integrating with a society that I have rejected (well, a society that rejected me).

I am tired all the time. The classical music they play at Hammersmith Station in the morning (to make us docile?) is … it becomes insipid. Society has reached a level of abstraction I simply cannot tolerate. I don’t work! My brain doesn’t go well.

I have to somehow justify my own state. There’s no way to make everyone understand who I am. I have to trust that I can keep everything I have ever seen or known alive simply by remembering. Even if no-one else understands or remembers, I must, right? That’s enough, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

What is The Node? It’s something to do with suburban gloom and computers… it has some anti-consumerist leaning… urgh. I have to know. I’ve got quite close to discovering through SEL and The Matrix. By that I mean their extended universes. The Lain anime, game and book together remind me of it, as do the The Matrix (first film), Animatrix and Matrix Comics. I have to somehow find out just who I am! It’s not something I’ve forgotten. I don’t think I ever knew what The Node was or is or whatever but I still feel like I did. I also feel like I will never know.

I don’t want to be dismissed as a quirk or an anomaly. There’s something going on here!

When I watch the Lain intro now, it’s no longer the interesting chords or funny animation that I’m concerned with. I see media convergence, reality and perception being truly accepted as separate etc. but I also see a girl with a funny hairclip, a child playing video games… I see something that is somehow connected to something. Basically. What is it? Why have I reacted so badly? Is my subconscious artificially giving me a purpose by filling in gaps with non-existent facts to promote the idea that I somehow have some reason to exist?

Am I finally breaking down, trying desperately to justify my own existence? Who am I? Who is Lain? What is The Matrix? What’s The Node?

Pax

One of the main things that’s wrong with me is that everything I encounter ends up meaning something weird to me - something it wasn’t meant to mean. This is why it’s so difficult to explain myself to other people; I’m highly self-referential. Things change in my mind.

I’ve just realised how good some of the Animatrix really is. Beyond captured suburban gloom very well, Detective Story, Second Renaissance and World Record were just awesome and Kid’s Story was partly inspired by Lain - I didn’t know that when I watched it but I still connected with it.

I don’t want to die without being understood, I think. That’s why I try to force everyone I know to do everything I’ve done - so they can understand the conclusions I’ve drawn. However, it doesn’t really work. I don’t think it ever will.

I see things I will never understand. The social climate I’m in is one of elitism and condescension. Not the one I expected, with snobbery and such, mind you - it’s more subtle. It pretends to be acceptable but is in fact the creator of troubled people. Double standards make me very, very angry. I will not die without finding Lain, by the way.

If that means I have to live forever, then so be it HA HA HA HA HA

The feeling of Myst is linked to suburban gloom by the common factor that is loneliness. Lain led me to bôa, who are awesome. Everything is converging. My tags will soon be obsolete as everything will be about the same thing: The Node!

Pax