this one connects tao and flow

http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Taoist

incoming management

walk-turn

a quick walk down memory lane, one wrong turn and you're back in your classroom of long ago. empty desks look at you as though it were only yesterday. it's hard to imagine yourself as a kid, but when you do, the memories so wipe out everything in your conscious and redraw the images. you now become a thin kid .it's easy to laugh, run and jump. your fat blob ass weighs you down and highlights this contrast.

what can you say for the giants of wisdom,skill and caring who have touched your life in beautiful ways , except be humble and extremely grateful for the good fortune when you think of the others who didn't get it.
I read 'The pilot for special missions' as a kid. It was book one in a two part book. the second was the flying carpet. Oh vetrogorsk, how can one fall in love with a city, but I did.lighthouses and the ship museum and all.
then comes adventures of captain's island. I still have the sketches i made of clippers but the books have been lost. hence I must resort to the net to find versions of them. btw, captain's island was by sofia profokieva.

Thank you , kind pirate, or should I say, resurrecter of the lost valuable ..

the pilot for special missions

edit: it's sofia prokofieva and not sofia profokieva

and they both said ...

what I wish people would get...

"The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it" - Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

... meaning, when I say I've got a new hat, I do NOT want to hear about YOUR hat.

and for the pair of the day -
Man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of the greater.
- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Only those who have worn the crown of suffering can look upon that
wondrous light; and they, when they return, may not speak of it, or tell
the mystery they know.
- Jerome K Jerome, Three men in a boat

blurring the line between scifi anime and life

bruce lee lighting matches with nunchuks

movie-revolver

was watching Guy Ritchie's 'Revolver'.Have to say I liked it. Apparently this movie didn't do well on screens. Apart from the fact that people who liked his previous two would 'spiritual liberation' gagging, there's one more reason - Heck, if a Guy Ritchie movie came to a theatre near me, I'd give it a miss and go straight to Dvd coz I need them subtitles you see. And the you can't rewind-fast-forward on a movie-screen...
but but but, this one's straight english accents that you can understand ,though throughout the movie they keep gibbering on about 'the enemy' like they were in world war two .
This movie peters out after the halfway point and starts going sideways trying to drive in some profound idea .Later on we find this is the ego that is the 'enemy'
Then you realize that lines in the movie that you thought were about something in the movie, weren't. Then , you see that this weakens the plot. Then you realize that the whole movie is just an overlay and a distraction to the 'liberation' funda.

What was awesome about the movie
0. black and white quotes
1. chinatown gangs - every time I see a hong-kong-ese gang speaking cantonese, I start jumping round the place and go eat chinese food at Wang's Dynasty the next day.
2. small animation sequence like in kill bill -
3. luxury sedans.
4. Sorter. This is one amazing character. Thin tall oldish bald man in glasses who can only be described as the guy who 'precision shoots the sh!# out of people' .
5. 'Avi' reminds me of Thelonious Monk
6. chess settings are sure cool ( incidentally there's a blues album called 'chess masters' ? )
7. the Zach is a fat italian in the grey-and-white track-suit looking exactly like what a t.v costume designer would imagine 'fat tony' would look like.
8. voice over narration

this movie has an 'shoot the alter ego with an imagined gun to kill it' piece like in the fight club movie.
Apparently, the funda is kabbala. But zen sounds very similiar too.

books I think ought to be great

but which haven't gotten round to reading yet, and am pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get past page one

1. Godel,Escher,Bach, an eternal golden braid ( punctuation may vaey ), by douglas hofstadter
2. a pattern language, by christopher alexander
3. a thousand years of non-linear history , by manuel delanda
this can add the following to the list :
3.1 war in the age of intelligent machines
3.2 a thousand plateaus - guattari & deleuze
> no more : 4. the emperor's new mind, by roger penrose
5. laws of form
6. SICP,PCL, Anatomy of Lisp, etc etc,
7. Flow

to begin with some of these books already languish in my cupboard unattended. there are also books on graphology, astrology, how to read faces...

new additions : the Programmer's Stone course's reading list

this includes feynman lectures on computation (!!!)
and more

nude wedding !!

The youtube video of how the two met is like something out of a bollywoood movie...
every bollywood movie rather , except for the reduced costume expense.
video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtmdGMPgU7I

cool tech

The handheld wind powered charger -
http://www.hymini.com/html/HYmini.html
I'm guessing this would start an industry to engineer brackets to mount your hymini outside your car while you drive

india wins first individual olympic gold

they played our national anthem after presenting medals

*sniff sniff .....

interesting : alternative to bio fuel

http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/algae-based-biofuels-in-plain--003362.php

movie comparison

Indiana Jones 4 tries very hard to put together the best of old Indy and almost succeeds, except that it fails the plausibility test.

In National Treasure 2 , our man cage kidnaps the president and breaks into Buckingham palace and all, but it is quite believable

cool stuff

Self parking car using Lego Mindstorms

good play.

we wants !! treadmill-workstation

read all about it here
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hMmh9BUYN1qLc8AZDtjlu-hst5XA

finery for the discerning

most amazing mario tough level

pirouttes

truth in comedy & comics, not so funny

I mentioned in an earlier post how the comic strip Doonesbury is a good source for news. Next, this youtube video of George Carlin's classified as comedy.

do not underestimate bollywood

check out this video on www.englishrussia.com

greening the desert -easy cheap

must-watch - permaculture

pesky immigrants !!

Native Americans move against those pesky immigrants, buying back the tribe's land
purchased from their ancestors for beads n trinkets. Link below.

what's next, I wonder - redefining Thanksgiving ?? way to go ,guys...
Read

More on the upcoming disaster - read
A good example of Tainter's explanation of diminishing returns funda ... - that lower hanging fruit is picked first .

ps : I wonder how long it will take for these to turn up on ranprieur.com

Civilization : You're doing it wrong !

article on why shoes are the 'wrong thing'

Teaser :
Walking is easy. It’s so easy that no one ever has to teach you how to do it. It’s so easy, in fact, that we often pair it with other easy activities—talking, chewing gum—and suggest that if you can’t do both simultaneously, you’re some sort of insensate clod. So you probably think you’ve got this walking thing pretty much nailed. As you stroll around the city, worrying about the economy, or the environment, or your next month’s rent, you might assume that the one thing you don’t need to worry about is the way in which you’re strolling around the city.

Well, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you: You walk wrong.

Look, it’s not your fault. It’s your shoes. Shoes are bad. I don’t just mean stiletto heels, or cowboy boots, or tottering espadrilles, or any of the other fairly obvious foot-torture devices into which we wincingly jam our feet. I mean all shoes. Shoes hurt your feet. They change how you walk. In fact, your feet—your poor, tender, abused, ignored, maligned, misunderstood feet—are getting trounced in a war that’s been raging for roughly a thousand years: the battle of shoes versus feet.

cake time

Too much choice is bad for the brain . They say ...
Fighting through ads all day is tiring.

A quote from Chuck Pahlaniuk seems apt :
"Big brother isn't watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always
distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.” ....

and one more :

"Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn’t see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love.
Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.
At least the ancient Greeks were being honest."

What if technology got so good(?) that 'they' could run a test on you and figure out your psychological profile - whether you're the type to serve without complaint or if you'd figure out what's best for you and what is DUE you, and filter you out then and there itself, deny you employment based on testing results .... ?

What if you you couldn't lie ? how would that be ?
It's not impossible -there are already people who have the skill to catch people lying based on body language, tone, micro-expressions ... (Ekman/Tomkins) ... it's just a matter of time before the technique's externalized, put into a tome, and becomes part of collective social consciousness ( yes, this includes your house broker and the dipshit who ogles at your girl and the ridiculous office caterer who serves you crap on a daily basis ANS steven seagal to boot... ) and becomes standard procedure. Some of us will be lucky enough to be able to go through life and among the rest of us being what they are. The rest will quickly develop multiple personalities I think.

Overproduction and struggle for existence will ensure that each surmounted challenge will be
replaced by another one.
Organizations' need for dedicated, sacrificing members who put the organization before themselves will only go up. Inevitably, psychological profiling ( and policing ) must follow

empires of the mind cannot function without cages for the mind

I'll finish Spook Country someday soon.

money

doesn't grow on trees, say those who pluck it off from the trees , and hoard them in their cellars. We are very angry at them

my idea of what's right in the world

cliff stoll video clip

now I'm convinced

the future's here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrdeZ-4rqyU

Clean locomotive power.
The same technology can be used to desalinate sea water. Huge amounts of water created like this can be used in engines wherever.
Patents have been taken already.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4292136.html

Mr. Glass

It's a mediocre time Mrs.
Dunne. People are starting
to lose hope. It's hard for
many to believe that
extraordinary things live
inside themselves as well as
others... I hope you can
keep an open mind?

Issues of temperament. Too highly strung, some of us are, like a violin wire.
Sometimes the tension is in the wire, but not always.

Samuel L Jackson plays Elijah Price in 'Unbreakable' to Bruce Willis' David Dunne.
Superb performances both. The story is woven with care, each thread lovingly laid and twined with the rest.

David wakes up every morning with a great sadness in his heart. His wife is unable to figure out what's wrong and is going to pieces with worry.

Elijah tells him : "You could have done one of a ten thousand things. In the end, you chose to protect people. And I find that very interesting"

Elijah is convinced that David is a real-life instance of the exaggeration that comic books draw for us. He sees comic books as an unrecognized form of cultural transmission - not unlike the songs of the loremasters of yore. And remember, visual communication works best for men.

David is a security guard at a University. Elijah runs a comic book museum.

Elijah has an affliction. He suffers from weak bones which crack and shatter every time he falls. He drives a car with padded interiors and carries a glass cane for irony.
A lifetime of suffering has made his faith in super-heroes an absolute.
For him, it's only a matter of when he finds one. He thinks David is one such who is unaware of his super-hero powers.

It's easy to be smooth if you're a villain. The moral programming that stops a normal individual from seeing humor in pain/suffering is conveniently absent.

Curious, David experiments. He can lift all the weights in the gym. He was not injured in a car accident, and is the only survivor in a train accident. A bit of confusion arises when he remembers that he almost drowned as a kid. But Elijah clears this up and David realizes that he is unbreakable.

He now heads out at night, seeks crime, and does his bit. And when he hangs up his rain-cape, with SECURITY stencilled on it, he knows there'll be no more sadness in his heart when he wakes up.

Shot in Philadelphia , a city I have only seen from afar, it sets the bleak grey tone of the movie very well. And the ocassional gloomy rain frames the state of the characters' minds very well.
The background score depends heavily on silence.

Real crime, however, is very hard to take, and we silently hope it remains within the movie forever, and is forever unable to escape without.

However, 'Signs' by M.Night Shyamalan is just plain spooky and freaks me out and makes me jump at shadows and the refrigerator noises in the night.

the Fresnel furnace is coming to stay

unless it is not.
http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/solar_furnace/plans.html\

btw, there's a name for this sort of blog which isn't really a blog.
It's called a Tumblelog

the fresnel furnace is unavoidable

unless it is .
http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/solar_furnace/plans.html

story in a pack

the king rules and
he has to
the queen plots
all the time
and the jack
is a knave
but the joker
remains delightfully
free and
laughs all day

who am i

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men-that is genius"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson


"There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford"

-John Bradford, on watching a criminal go to the gallows

thought up while jangling ball and chain

..........................................
..........................................
..........................................

the prodigal dotter strikes again ?

sunday evening

Sunday evening. Monday begins in your mind before it does in reality.
Watching Nicholas Cage go it in The Golden Man (?) which is based on the Philip K Dick story of the same name. As ooky as the rest of his stuff goes. Atleast the girl trusts him.
Recipe for the day : it is easier to write a whole program in the main method and then decompose it into a family of classes that solve the same problem.

edit: the movie's called Next. which is why I kept wondering for a long time why they did not show the movie name on the panel after ad break before the movie continued ...

gloomy saturday morning

perfect weather. I hope it depresses the sh!t out of all the people in this towne so that they all stay indoors so that I can walk on the roads without being forced to jump left and right like a dancer in order to avoid the smug IT weenies in their super flashy small car from Hyundai.

today's fortune cookie

After a dinner of pizza ( classified as 'junk', in case you wondered ), I came home and turned my computer on and launched a unix shell which promptly flashed the fortune cookie for the session that it does before it shows you a prompt (note:non-unix people, unix is like working within Windows, but always within command prompt (start-run-type cmd-enter ) and that too in full screen mode (atleast, the preferred way of better people everywhere, that is))

"What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working
when he's staring out the window."

and I said F*** yeah !! I agree totally. I was telling myself sometime back that I needed a 'study', so that things remain in the places I put them, and this ( importantly ) includes ideas.

Paul Graham has written an essay on why some people were not meant to have a boss, only he doesn't use the term 'some people' but addresses every reader. Being the latest in the line of inciting programmers to 'cast off their chains' and unite individually. Read that again. No mutual exclusivity laws have been violated.
Now I know atleast one person who has read PG's essays and has went and quit his job and has gone the startup way. Only time will tell if this was a good decision for him.

Galeej Gurus turn a year old or something like that . is what I gathered from the chatter on FM.
GoKikAss guys.

Now, for the staring-out-of-the-window-idea-of-the-day.
This link is about how an old T.V lens ( a fresnel lens ) can focus sunlight so powerfully so as to fuse mud into glass in a matter of seconds.
I'm thinking that's an amazing bit of power. Should there be some poor smart chap sitting next to his perpetual motion machine apparatus unable to complete it because of the high cost of heating, this must be like the cavalry riding over the ridge, bugles sounding off and all.
Of course, once the perpetual motion machine is done, we are home safe, and oil can cost $2 Million a barrel and we wouldn't care and the skies would be clear and the whales would be safe and all.
Perpetual motion machines aren't all that fictional. I remember reading that if you insert a huge pipe into the depths of the ocean right past into the colder regions and then pump a bit of water out of that pipe, the hot water - cold water politics would keep the water flowing out of the pipe. Because of the cold water expanding as it touched the warm they said.
Atleast, this lens could be used to create a sea-water distilling device. No ?
I can see it already :
off a deserted coast, about a hundred metres into the water, floats a strange contraption. It is all glass and throws light off like a furious diamond, but floats on a base that's rubber, painted a shade of government-orange. Pipes run from it all the way to a small bunker on the shore and then they disappear into the ground. A lonely figure in khakhi cradles his huge ancient rifle and stirs from within the shade of the bunker roof. Beside him his stainless steel tiffin box contains the reddish brown remnants of his lunch, which is driving this pleasant drowsiness ...

That's me, always carried away and dreaming about sleep.
Watch this video here and think about it.

reading

- The Wizard of Earthsea, by Urusula LeGuinn ( pronounced lay-gwinn ), mind you
- The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes , I forget the author's name

The mantle of reality cloaks the myriad creatures of possibility

What I like best about the Earthsea world is the concept of True Speech.

wild growth

lightningbird

eyefish

underestimate not lines. wip

of lines

now, that's something

http://www.impawards.com/tv/posters/charlies_angels.jpg

Quests with a 'Q'

life as a heroic pursuit

* Innocent
* Orphan
* Warrior
* Caregiver
* Seeker
* Lover
* Destroyer
* Creator
* Ruler
* Magician
* Sage
* Fool

definition

a square is created from four lines
a square has four sides
a square is not created from four sides
for
the sides become sides only after the square is a square

the general idea behind documentation

we, the future ask you who are the present that when tomorrow ,your
work will be in our past, will you leave us your words, writ in stone,
so that we may know your ideals and that we may know that which was
good, and thus steer out of our own dark corners, blundered into ?

revenge

get back at the world by denying it your genius

Lay Lee

Parsons: The art of fighting without fighting? Show me some of it.
Lee: Later.

ramtops

an education

I believe terry pratchett books - all put together - and read in the formative years make a formidable education. No, seriously.

rhythm

is important.

create,control and maintain .. and improve personal rhythms as a first step.

Tagore has a quote on rhythm. A data analytics company quotes it on their website.

book alert

or maybe not

Andrew Tobias wrote "The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need"
Then, he wrote "The Only OTHER Investment Guide You'll Ever Need"

apparently, this is for a different value of 'only' than I'd imagined ...