Quote
It is not that we keep His commandments first, and that then He loves; but that He loves us, and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace, which is revealed to the humble, but hidden from the proud.
Candy
I took a break this weekend. From Friday through Sunday, I did not spend more than 10 minutes thinking about my AI. Last week I thought up a lot of stuff, and I think I needed some distance. Also the resting of the mind for the purpose of refreshment I believe is a good thing. I caught yet another cold before the weekend, so I was high on Advil Cold & Sinus again; hope to get off the stuff ASAP. So right now, that’s the deal with what’s going on with me. Little pieces of the new Facebook application are starting to form already. It shouldn’t be that hard a thing, just like the last one wasn’t. What else? Eun Hye hasn’t written me back yet, but did I really expect it? Maybe. But like I wrote once before, life is sweet, even when it is sour. Like that candy. 12:01am comments?
My Other Desktop
I can't believe I never posted this. This is on my MacBook Pro’s native LCD monitor: the earthrise.
Click on pic for larger version. 12:01am comments?
April 25, 2009
returned
the light fantastic
took me from the world, there
returned me unchained 12:01am comments?
Longing
I may be close, I may yet be far. Probably the latter. But why I say the former is that I picked up something from over two years ago, near the beginning’s beginning, and am starting to use it: (q (fn l) r); and I have something rough hashed out on how to work with uncertainties (what I’m using that for). What is left is how to deal with subforms, how to deal with the parts of the whole, which only indirectly are connected to conceptualizations. It goes, it definitely goes. I can’t wait for the day gig to end, maybe mid-May. Then I can keep those 48 hour days again. Really, 24 are too few hours. Really. So all that’s fine as far as that’s concerned.
In other news, against my better judgement, I am trying to get back in touch with the ex, Eun Hye. I don’t know why, but remembering her birthday made me want to know how she’s doing. I’ve sent her a few email messages, but as of yet, no answer to any of them. I don’t know for how long or how persistently I’ll try, but it’s spring, and I miss her. That’s the only thing in my life that is not all hunky dory, it would seem, the lack of companionship. I’d be alright being alone practically all the time if I knew she were out there for me, I think. I dunno. I really have no idea how this will all end up, but as far as I’m concerned, I know that miracles do happen. Here’s to hoping.
In still other news, I’m thinking of writing another Facebook application. Sort of a “choose your own adventure” thing, where there’s like a couple paragraphs, then a few links on what you want to do next, and that goes to another page, etc. I figure I’d be the main contributor, and add to it when I felt like it, a good vehicle for experiments in writing. I write anyway. But anyone would be able to add to it, though I’d keep a button on each page, “This Is Garbage”, which would send me a message so I could check that someone’s not spamming or writing something obnoxious, etc. But anyway, don’t know when I’ll get to it, but as with the last, probably if I play around with the idea long enough, it’ll magically get done. So that’s all I have to say about that.
Quote
I believe that pure thinking will do more to educate a man than any other activity he can engage in. To afford sympathetic entertainment to abstract ideas, to let one idea beget another, and that another, till the mind teems with them; to compare one idea with others, to weigh, to consider, evaluate, approve, respect, correct, refine; to join thought with thought like an architect till a whole edifice has been created within the mind; to travel back in imagination to the beginning of the creation and then to leap swiftly forward to the end of time; to bound upward through illimitable space and downward into the nucleus of an atom; and all this without so much as moving from our chair or opening the eyes — this is to soar above all the lower creation and come near to the angels of God.
Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’
Rawhide! Back from a trip to Jersey last weekend, Easter. It was interesting to see a couple friends I hadn’t seen for 20 years. I can’t believe I’m even talking about decades like that. Anyway, I came upon an epiphany on Easter Sunday, a gift from the Lord, it would seem. It was a small epiphany: to grasp intuitively the concept of emergence. This was walking along the shore near my friend Karla’s house, while she was picking up plastic garbage and throwing it away proper. So I really cannot complain about anything. In other news, the day gig may be ending soon, and I’m good with whenever that might be. A month or less, it appears. And so it goes. Which makes me wonder, where does it go? 12:01am comments?
Happy Easter!
Gustave Doré: The Resurrection
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April 10, 2009
Quote
There is no situation so chaotic that God cannot from that situation create something that is surpassingly good. He did it at the creation. He did it at the cross. He is doing it today.
Architecture
As far as my AI goes, still in that mode of steady discovery. Currently I am looking to solve the problem of self-organization, as I produced my solution for the problem of intelligence. But it goes as well as can be expected, I think. As far as everything else, things have been going on here and there. I served on jury duty last Thursday and Friday. In NYC, you have to go two days to see if you’ll get selected. I could have tried to get on the jury for the Brooke Astor case; jury selection was just happening at the time I was there. I met the judge, a decent man with a sense of humor. But it was a 2-3 month commitment, and few volunteered.
It was good to get a break from the day job, I suppose. It’s just that I don’t get paid when I don’t work. Such is the life of a contractor. I think the project will last into early to mid May, and so I’ll have saved up a little bit by then, and can go on cruise control as far as money goes for a couple months at least, after. Perhaps by then Apple stock will get to a point where I can sell it; I have over 100 shares of it. And in other news, I almost bought a fake coin from eBay. I put in a bid for a pirate coin, a piece of 8 from the golden age of pirates (1650-1720), and then I thought better of it. Did a little research and found it was almost definitely fake, and I cancelled my bid. The internet giveth, and the internet taketh away.
One thing I’ve come to realize is that doing my own thing, trying to tackle as hard a problem as I have, it has brought me to a completely new level as far as programming goes. When I step down from the high code that I’ve sweated over, and tackle something like that Facebook application, it was so, so a different thing: as I wrote before, here, I played around with things, and things got done. The whole project got done that way. I changed my “job position” on Facebook from software engineer to software architect. I’ve always wanted to be an architect, and I thought, well, if I’m not there yet, I will be when I get this prototype written for my AI concepts. Really, it’s quite liberating to be here, not tied down to any specific language or methodology. If nothing else comes of this whole endeavor, I have this, and it is not a trivial thing.
In which I still wonder about destiny with impatience. 12:01am comments?
Heart
I forget where I picked this up. As usual.
Click on pic for larger version. 12:01am comments?
April 1, 2009
Quote
The humblest and the most unseen activity in the world can be the true worship of God. Work and worship literally become one. Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever; and man carries out that function when he does what God sent him into the world to do. Work well done rises like a hymn of praise to God. This means that the doctor on his rounds, the scientist in his laboratory, the teacher in his classroom, the musician at his music, the artist at his canvas, the shop assistant at his counter, the typist at her typewriter, the housewife in her kitchen — all who are doing the work of the world, as it should be done, are joining in a great act of worship.
