Everybody endeavours to render the world powerless in one area at least ,usually their area of livelihood

Listen to enough people, peek into too many minds,  and you will start to believe you are extraordinarily impotent in all matters of life

The gazing abyss gazes, and having gazed, moves on

by not doing hard bets 

i am gaining 

neither victories

nor wisdom

“And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.” ― 

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

If you need to go into a cave

but can't because folk

then what do you do ?

every once in a while, 

the world has to be 

recreated/reconciled; ground-up;

from first principles

and the more you miss

the longer this takes

but you can't walk around

telling the daily others

"reconciling, i may not be the person you knew"

what _can_ you do ?

attempting to be 'authentic'

in a crowded noisy world

attempting to hear

what _is_ the inner voice saying ?

avoiding the traps 

the instinct to fall into fear

to mirror the surroundings

yet the world doesn't work

 unless you're bared teeth, 

bile and adrenalin raging

I would workout , if left alone . no really. this I have seen.   I would workout far more than if I had to negotiate/ juggle responsibilities/chores. I can never decide, and never in my favour.

GPS, and, expert systems, and Planning, seem to be determinate, and limited to the operators available. They might have limited use in real life ai, but for games, they might be more than enough.

The main function, GPS,is passed three arguments. The first is the current state of the world, the second the goal state, and the third a list of allowable operators. The body of the function says simply that if we can achieve every one of the goals we have been given, then the problem is solved.

This code I have seen before - but in a basic game engine - it goes - while game not over, keep updating world, only, the inputs kept coming via keyboard and mouse, and the world kept updating every iteration, which was the tick of that universe.

I guess in programming, all Things reduce to the same code patterns.. so much for paradigms

over the past few days, I have found a) IIT lectures on rete's algorithm ,and also expert systems as a whole, b) peter norvig's PAIP book as a pdf c) that b was missing pages d) a github repo containing the entire book as a web page d) videos of winston horn's expert systems class at MIT .... e) that the old chestnut (Winston&Horn : Lisp) is based on old ai AND sicp

quite a lot of 

how do i read so fast ?  my brain can control time, 

it can go back in time, but only for a few seconds, 

so i can read a line, go back, read some more, etc  

i don't know how i do it, but it happens now and then

this is probably because of all the upside down poses

 and chanting i did

so when i am doing this, you are unaware that 

time is passing  round-and-round, you are just standing 

there staring blankly . this is why you feel bored too

your brain is aware of the loop ,but in a useless way,

and that helplessness manifests as boredom

more option stuff

** closing / cancelling **

if shorted, go long, if long, go short, to close an option 

otherwise the end of the month comes and you go into delivery mode

** strategy **

buy a call and a put at a price

 predict a target price

set a profit and loss number

cut your losses, let your profits run, and move up your stop-loss 

** what we noticed **

call option at strike 415 , is getting cheaper as underlying moves towards 420  (419 currently)...

28 th Dec 415 CE 1 14.25 13.75

why isn't it getting dearer ? it's in the money, and intrinsic value is increasing .... ?

** easy terminology - redux **

what they say :  short a call

what it means : be forced to sell tomorrow at a loss, or keep the premium

what they say :  short a put

what it means : be forced to buy tomorrow at a loss, or keep the premium

what they say :  long a call

what it means : be forced to buy tomorrow , profitably, or lose the premium

what they say :  long a put

what it means : be forced to sell tomorrow , profitably, or lose the premium

more puts bought than calls, over a threshold,  means tt markets have no more space to go down, and so will swing up some

more calls bought than calls, over a threshold,  means tt markets have no more space to go up, and so will swing down some

easy option terminology

In the stock market, you can 

* short a call(1)      meaning : be forced(5) to sell tomorrow(2), if price goes up (3)

* short a put           meaning : be forced to buy tomorrow, if price goes down

similarly, you can 

* long a call(4)      meaning : be forced to buy tomorrow, if price goes up

* long a put           meaning : be forced to buy tomorrow, if price goes down

other than these, you can also do plain-vanilla things, like

* buy today

* sell today

like the basic prole you are

Footnotes

1 - sell a Call option as opposed to 4

2 - not really tomorrow , but on option expiry date, which is the last <some>day of the month

3 - beyond the strike price in the unprofitable direction, here up

4 - buy a Call option

5 - in Indian stock markets, options in the money are not optional, and are settled delivery based. Yes

 there are no 'thing's

only black cats in unlit coal cellars in the middle of a moonless night

and we fumble around

**

when there are two people talking, there are 

actually six people talking

that's why I don't talk much

can't stand the noise 

 the lisp books come out again

more dennis the dentist

CEOs  

Vishal Sikka

Rich Williams 

Chuck Prince

Spiritually yours

David Godman , of the -

Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi (Compass) Paperback – September 29, 1988 by Sri Ramana Maharshi (Author), David Godman (Compiler)

- fame

guide for the perplexed

these are the books that lit bulbs in my head

The Third Wave - Avin Toffler

specifically,  the part where he explains the code of the second wave

Understanding Media - Marshall McLuhan

less the book, and more the quotes from wikiquote, specifically the Typographic Universe. McLuhan considers the world of text to be a 'second wave' for the world.

Mankind's worst mistake 

didn't know this was a chapter in Jared Diamond's book, but this plus ranprieur's faq on civillisation as an evil devouring fungus, solidified the nagging suspicion that all wasn't rosy

Undercover Economist  

lights went off in my head as I read the first chapter about the price of coffee. Ditto for akerlof's lemon theory, albeit it was read on wikipedia.

Kahneman Tversky

The work on biases by kahneman and ariely also were great, introducing the concept of base-rates. (that is something to unpack !), framing, and how we make mistakes.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 

explained a lot of how we  see the world . the why part remains vague to me. Alan watts talking about play , gives a hint, with the focus on serious, not solemn, and the parable of the piano teachers..

Tao Te Ching

I keep coming back to this , especially the first 2-3 verses

DefMacro.org  : Lisp for the rest of us

this blog post got me past coder and closer to programming theory than anything else I read. 

DefMacro.org  : Taming Doubt, Taming Perfection, Reality of Enso

three blog posts that became a foundation stone for my sanity, and direction, in this confusing world of skill, talent, and commerce.

SICP

that one quote preceding chapter N - facility of mind with ideas - just wow

oh no it's that meng guy again 

this page of jokes is what sold me on buddhism, buddha, bodhidharma, zen, lankavatara sutra

Beginning Android Games

showed me how java code looks when done by a not-a-wanker or lifer.

 constraints free up the skilled, and shackle the mediocre

they breed masterpieces

yet, the greatest pieces emerging from the quicksand of the largest constraints

often are mistaken for devices of the poverty-stricken,

and thus ignored

I spent the first 21 years of my life without having to get into a motor vehicle on a daily basis.

I got my first motorised two wheeler at 25.

I owned my first car at the age of 32 /33.

Now in my forties, I try to live a life where I don't have to  get into a motor vehicle every day

walkable bike-able cities where people have less illness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPUlgSRn6e0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA

I find it difficult to get my 12k steps (or even the basic 4k/5k) walking around like an idiot in my building compound. I also find it hard to go all the way out of the compound after making up a flimsy reason, like , "I'll buy tea powder from that far shop and not the near one"

I find works of both Tom DeMarco, and Jerry Weinberg, to be very delightful and refreshing, re software.

Amidst all the jargon, noise, and bullsh*tting, these are two voices of common sense. These are 2 voices which encourage you to think. The termite-hill /ant-farm that is modern IT, or even software-engineering ( a name given to allow you to be paid more) , regularly encourages you not to. 

Big fan of the book "Slack", by the former. The creators of the modern-day-app of the same name probably didn't read the book, when creating an anti-thesis with the same name.

from the book - 

"Twentieth century psychological theory holds that man's character is dominated by a small number of basic instincts: survival, self-esteem, reproduction, territory, and so forth. These are built directly into the brain's firmware. You can consider these instincts intellectually without great passion (that's what you're doing now), but when you feel them, there is always passion involved Even the slightest challenge to one of these built-in values can be upsetting."

Halloween day is the right day to be reading Peopleware. To brings to mind in how many ways things can go wrong,  and did go wrong, that in spite of all this knowledge sitting there, the path of destiny has dragged me through each mistake one by one

of course, the Alan Kay is the root of the tree of which these guys are branches (and leaves)