We just got back from checking out some land being tax-saled down the road from Rob's place. It's 100 acres, wooded, with a river flowing through the middle of it. Pretty cool for an asking price of $100 an acre! Oh, and in the pictures the lake (first pic) is just down the street, and the dome (fourth pic) is the next-door neighbors.
I thought I'd mention a new US policy I support; that I think is actually a pretty cool idea if it's implemented honestly. Here's the story on NYtimes. Basically they're creating a small ($5 billion) foreign aid pool that's kind of a “scholarship”. To win it countries have to spend money on education and follow free market principals. Of course, it may well end up like the Clemens Foundation did…
I'll also mention that Derek's QOD desktop client has come along well. There's also a Blackberry version in the works!
On that note, hate crimes against Muslims are up by 1600% since 9/11. However pre-9/11 Muslims were the least hassled group (only 28 incidents in 2000), so there were “only” 481 incidents in 2001… In Los Angeles alone there were 280 incidents of white-on-black hate crimes in 1996. So when you read that 1600% number, pay attention to how people are spinning it.
According to a NVAW (National Violence Against Women) poll, over 300,000 women are raped in the US every year, or about 200,000 according to the DOJ. And that number is going up too. Going by the numbers, at least 1,500 women on IAM have been raped. It's a very big problem. So yes, 481 incidents of anti-Muslim crimes is atrocious and unacceptable, but don't let it distract you from other atrocities.
I didn't sleep well last night.
I woke up every few hours, and eventually dragged myself out of bed covered in sweat. I've got so unbelievably much work to do right now… And for whatever reason, the Supermicro P4DCE+ motherboard I need is on serious backorder, so I'm getting stalled on all fronts.
I think I'm going to stop eating for a few days; just rice and green tea. Go monk. I'm worried that I'm slowing down. I want things to go faster, to keep getting faster. I have an idea for an automated software generation tool called the MonkeyMaster I'm fiddling with.
How the MonkeyMaster works:
It pumps source code first into a combination structural analysis and repeater tool coupled with a markov chain based pattern tool. Multiple streams are spit out and run through a proof checker and are run in a highspeed test environment. Nonfunctional code is thrown out, and functioning streams are demoed and selected.
Pieces grow on the code along the same lines as a random path crystalline fractals (that is, they “wander” the edges of the code until they find a random attachment point). This code is constantly splitting in multiple dimensions so paths can be chosen in a more dynamic fashion than a single flat file or even a linked series of flat files.
It's called the MonkeyMaster project because it's based on the notion that if you have a million monkeys at typewriters, eventually they type Hamlet. Anyway, if those million monkeys type incredibly fast, and then their output is proofread, and then treated as puzzle pieces where matches are determined not by shape but by context (is there really a difference though?) and then a subject engine categorizes the output, not only would the monkeys write Hamlet, but they'd write all books, and they'd even categorize them for you.
I want to be the MonkeyMaster!
Anyway, enough with the rambling, I have work to do.
Oh, I've been thinking too hard today I think… Didn't get at all as much done as I should have. I mostly spent the day listening to bagpipe music and mostly thinking about inventing a new form of music, instead of getting much done. I wrote all of about 500 lines of code, and accidentally deleted some essential code (the iamedit module), although I do have a recent backup.
Music is made up of a complex set of frequencies which, to oversimplify, make different parts of your ear vibrate. These vibrations have a structural/locational context, as well as motion as “objects” over the fourth dimension. We're still treating music largely in the same sense as we did fifty thousand years ago. While beautiful, it's primitive.
If you wear high quality headphones (standard headphones can't physically produce the sound required) and run unusual tonal structures on the edges of human hearing, odd neurological effects start happening. You are able to alter brain states (that is, put people into waking dreams, make them suggestable, make them pass out, make them vomit, make them orgasm, and so on) and if not careful, really mess a person up*.
Anyway, I was thinking that it should be elementary to combine this with biofeedback tech (which is relatively inexpensive) and build a device that creates music not so much to tell a harmonic story, but to “massage the nervous system”.
Oh, and I have a quick code update I'll be adding in the next couple of days — a quick'n'easy way to change the background color of the title bars on diary entries. Then I'll set up my diary into three color codes. One for IAM/BME entries (the essential stuff), one for political and news entries, and one for personal entries.
* Yes, I've been experimenting on myself a lot lately.
First, so people stop asking me, yes, of course I will provide extensive documentation for the diary entry below, but I'm still assembling it.
Second, I'm probably going to call it a day soon, I'm not working very efficiently for some reason, but here are some screenshots of the scrapbook online index tool that I have to have done by Friday (since that's probably when people's scrapbooks will start arriving).
Now, to protect my “Canadian Identity” I'll sing a song. It's not even a song written in Canada, but I think it's safe to say anything that combines traditional Celtic roots and alcohol is as Canadian as beavers and porn on prime time TV.
[chorus]
He must have been an admiral a sultan or a king,
and to his praises we shall always sing.
Look what he has done for us he's filled us up with cheer!
Lord bless Charlie Mops, the man who invented beer beer beer
tiddly beer beer beer.
The Curtis bar, the James' Pub, the Hole in the Wall as well
one thing you can be sure of, its Charlie's beer they sell
so all ye lads a lasses at eleven O'clock ye stop
for five short seconds, remember Charlie Mops 1 2 3 4 5
[chorus]
A barrel of malt, a bushel of hops, you stir it around with a stick,
the kind of lubrication to make your engine tick.
40 pints of wallop a day will keep away the quacks.
Its only eight pence hapenny and one and six in tax, 1 2 3 4 5
[chorus]
The Lord bless Charlie Mops!
I've been doing research for a story showing that the 9/11 is being used by US forces to prepare for and potentially stage a military take-over of Canada (which has the largest oil fields on the planet, as well as more natural resources in terms of water and lumber than any other country on the planet). Sounds crazy, I know. I didn't want to believe it myself. But the endgame pieces are starting to fall into place and I'm having less luck believing that I'm just making up a conspiracy out of nothing.
It's really upsetting me actually, enough that it's hard to work on it for more than a half hour at a time. This would be the third time that the US has launched a military invasion of Canada, and it's a bloody mess every time… While America has been chased out in the past, America has a lot more at stake this time. Fucked up. Really fucked up.
You know, I should just move to Margaritaville.
