It's terrible marketing, and it's also all of the challenges in my life right now.
Doubt: meditation. I was all "why have I done this for two years without noticing any benefit? and why should I keep doing it?" The only answer I could come up with was "faith". This bugged me.
Rewind eight years and I'm a clever little snot meeting up after class with the best theologians at St. Ignatius High School. (my teachers, I mean.) I think I was honestly searching for something to believe in, although I might have been trying to be smart. We went through all the arguments for and against some divine something, and I fell pretty quickly on the "for" side of that. But then I said "well, what about Christianity? why should I dedicate my life to this Jesus fellow instead of any other wiseman?" and their responses boiled down to "he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven." That is a slam dunk argument if it is true! But given the ambiguities with early Bible history and folks' tendencies to worship (npi) their heroes until they're larger than life (npi), I wasn't convinced. The next line of defense was "well, of course you can't prove Jesus is God; you have to have faith." I can deal with faith in people, or institutions, or whatever, that have earned my faith, but making the leap from Jesus being a wise and good guy to that pretty astronomical legend, well, that bugged me too.
(it didn't help that this was popular on the radio about that time.)
So what's the difference? How is my current *ahem* faith in meditation better than my childhood faith in Jesus? I think to get at that, you have to take the Buddhism out of it. Faith in reincarnation, say, seems about on par with faith that Jesus is God. But faith in developing a stronger, happier, more fulfilled mind through meditation seems pretty believable even for the skepitickest skeptic.
At any rate, I'm back at it, plugging away no matter how futile it might seem.
Uncertainty: my work! I'm working on a short javascript sorta-game to test a hypothesis that just learning can be fun, if it is well structured. My timeline is: finish game by June 15, iterate until June 30, do some tests by July 15, have results and write paper by July 31. I am not sure if I can hit any of those deadlines. I'm not sure if I'll get any results if I do.
I guess the good life here lies in savoring the uncertainty. That's what I wanted, right? To work on newfangled things that might or might not work? Try them, see if they work! That is the fun of it all! It is good to remind myself of that.
Oh, and Fear: well, that comes from getting lost three miles into a snow-covered forest at midnight last weekend. Hah!
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Two contradictions, one answered, and two questions, all unrelated.
Contradiction 1: it's better to be mindful of what you're doing, but the way to adopt a better behavior is to automate it.
Interlude 1: apparently I post about "mindfulness" all the time now. Well, deal with it, I guess.
Contradiction 2: being overly proud is obnoxious, but having high self-esteem is beneficial in just about everything all the time.
Answer to contradiction 2: focus instead on self-compassion.
Question 1: You keep up with movies and TV; why not music? (proposed answer: social pressures, plus we never take time out to just listen to a CD.)
Question 2: Why is "addiction" a negative feature in drugs, but a positive one in software?
Interlude 1: apparently I post about "mindfulness" all the time now. Well, deal with it, I guess.
Contradiction 2: being overly proud is obnoxious, but having high self-esteem is beneficial in just about everything all the time.
Answer to contradiction 2: focus instead on self-compassion.
Question 1: You keep up with movies and TV; why not music? (proposed answer: social pressures, plus we never take time out to just listen to a CD.)
Question 2: Why is "addiction" a negative feature in drugs, but a positive one in software?
I like San Francisco.
It's a nice place to walk around. I like the Mission, both hipster-Mission (16th and Valencia) and Hispanic-Mission (24th). (is it okay to say "Hispanic"?)
There is good coffee. I was just introduced to Philz, which I would instantly recommend to anyone who thinks all coffee tastes the same. They have 15 different blends; I like the Ambrosia. Then I had perhaps the hippest coffee I've ever had, at Sightglass. It cost $5.25, the point-of-sale machine was an ipad, everyone around me had awesome beards and jeans, and it might have been the first time I've ever been the fattest dude in the room. But hey, the coffee was on par with Victrola's, which is saying something, because they've got the home-field advantage. (and their coffee is really good.)
There is good ice cream. Yeah yeah, Bi-rite rocks, but man, Humphrey Slocombe is it. Peanut butter curry and Secret breakfast (bourbon and cornflakes) might be the most flavors I've had in one bowl.
I guess I'm lunch-tweeting. I got to thinking, y'know how reading and then reflecting helps you remember what you read better? I wonder if consciously lunch-tweeting would improve both my sense of taste and my mindfulness of what I eat.
Anyway, back to San Francisco. I'm thinking of living there, if I were to end up at Stanford. The commute would be really hard. 20 minute bike ride, hour train, 15 minute bike ride, and $6.50... each way. Maybe if I lived closer to the Caltrain station? But I was underwhelmed by SoMa and Dogpatch; they both have a cool warehousey charm but it feels like it'd be isolating to live there. (SFer? tell me if I'm wrong.) And Potrero Hill is close to the 22nd street station on a map, but it's on a huge hill.
There is good coffee. I was just introduced to Philz, which I would instantly recommend to anyone who thinks all coffee tastes the same. They have 15 different blends; I like the Ambrosia. Then I had perhaps the hippest coffee I've ever had, at Sightglass. It cost $5.25, the point-of-sale machine was an ipad, everyone around me had awesome beards and jeans, and it might have been the first time I've ever been the fattest dude in the room. But hey, the coffee was on par with Victrola's, which is saying something, because they've got the home-field advantage. (and their coffee is really good.)
There is good ice cream. Yeah yeah, Bi-rite rocks, but man, Humphrey Slocombe is it. Peanut butter curry and Secret breakfast (bourbon and cornflakes) might be the most flavors I've had in one bowl.
I guess I'm lunch-tweeting. I got to thinking, y'know how reading and then reflecting helps you remember what you read better? I wonder if consciously lunch-tweeting would improve both my sense of taste and my mindfulness of what I eat.
Anyway, back to San Francisco. I'm thinking of living there, if I were to end up at Stanford. The commute would be really hard. 20 minute bike ride, hour train, 15 minute bike ride, and $6.50... each way. Maybe if I lived closer to the Caltrain station? But I was underwhelmed by SoMa and Dogpatch; they both have a cool warehousey charm but it feels like it'd be isolating to live there. (SFer? tell me if I'm wrong.) And Potrero Hill is close to the 22nd street station on a map, but it's on a huge hill.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
A quarter century!
I'm 25. That means I've lived 25 years. Hah! I've still got my piece on the game board of life, and it's doing pretty all right.
If life were a day, I'd be in late-stage sleep, probably heavy on the REM and dreaming wildly. If life were Star Wars, I'd be half done with Gungans, although only a quarter done with Hayden Christensen. If life were the career of the Talking Heads, I would be just about to release "More Songs About Buildings and Food".
I'm leaving Seattle in just over two months, and the US in just over three. In the next year, I will hopefully experience the following:
- visiting all you wonderful family and friends before I go
- the world's tallest mountains and a lot of Buddhism
- one of the world's biggest tennis tournaments
- underground cities and stuff
- at least one country that y'all think is super dangerous
""Well," said Pooh, "what I like best -- " and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called." That's the moment I'm living in right now: the moment of excitement, and boy it is great.
But it's not the whole thing. Over the next quarter of my life, I hope that I can balance that excitement with more focus, mindfulness, and compassion. I think these are the most important skills to develop, and I still feel like a fool! But that's fine; after two years of regular learning-stuff school, I was a second grader.
If life were a day, I'd be in late-stage sleep, probably heavy on the REM and dreaming wildly. If life were Star Wars, I'd be half done with Gungans, although only a quarter done with Hayden Christensen. If life were the career of the Talking Heads, I would be just about to release "More Songs About Buildings and Food".
I'm leaving Seattle in just over two months, and the US in just over three. In the next year, I will hopefully experience the following:
- visiting all you wonderful family and friends before I go
- the world's tallest mountains and a lot of Buddhism
- submitting papers to top-tier academic conferences
- plants that eat bugs- one of the world's biggest tennis tournaments
- underground cities and stuff
- at least one country that y'all think is super dangerous
- admission into at least one grad school that I'm excited about
- a crater that is continually on fireAfter that, I'll get paid a scholar's stipend to write some programs that I want to write, to find out things that I want to find out, and occasionally hang out at big ol' intellectual fandangoes with other like-minded sorts.
""Well," said Pooh, "what I like best -- " and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called." That's the moment I'm living in right now: the moment of excitement, and boy it is great.
But it's not the whole thing. Over the next quarter of my life, I hope that I can balance that excitement with more focus, mindfulness, and compassion. I think these are the most important skills to develop, and I still feel like a fool! But that's fine; after two years of regular learning-stuff school, I was a second grader.
Anyway, it's tempting to say "well, look at my life about to start; the best is yet to come!" but that reduces life to a set of achievements, sets myself up for potential failure, and discounts the truth that the best is right now. As they say: Thank you for everything, I have no complaints whatsoever.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
We all know everything.
Thanks to the Internet, we all know all the facts. When you learn something, you're just decreasing the lookup time.
Sometimes this is useless. I don't think it'll ever be important for me to know Abraham Lincoln's birthday. If I did need to know it, I could spend 30 seconds looking it up.
Sometimes this is moderately useful. I could look up a recipe for lasagna every time I want to make it, or I could just memorize it. It'd be a little easier to make.
Sometimes this is very useful: knowing a programming language inside and out will save you so much time. If you have to look up documentation for every line of code, it'll take you hours instead of minutes.
Sometimes it's crucial. Being able to speak a language is qualitatively different from having to look up every word, conjugation, and grammatical rule. Even more so with physical tasks: knowing how to swing a baseball bat vs. knowing all the things you should do when you swing a bat. But either way, you're not making something out of nothing, you're just decreasing the lookup time of existing facts.
I'm thinking we should just stop teaching the first two cases, and optimize for learning the "very useful" and "crucial" cases. Interestingly, I'm also thinking that learning the "very useful" and "crucial" things is more fun.
Sometimes this is useless. I don't think it'll ever be important for me to know Abraham Lincoln's birthday. If I did need to know it, I could spend 30 seconds looking it up.
Sometimes this is moderately useful. I could look up a recipe for lasagna every time I want to make it, or I could just memorize it. It'd be a little easier to make.
Sometimes this is very useful: knowing a programming language inside and out will save you so much time. If you have to look up documentation for every line of code, it'll take you hours instead of minutes.
Sometimes it's crucial. Being able to speak a language is qualitatively different from having to look up every word, conjugation, and grammatical rule. Even more so with physical tasks: knowing how to swing a baseball bat vs. knowing all the things you should do when you swing a bat. But either way, you're not making something out of nothing, you're just decreasing the lookup time of existing facts.
I'm thinking we should just stop teaching the first two cases, and optimize for learning the "very useful" and "crucial" cases. Interestingly, I'm also thinking that learning the "very useful" and "crucial" things is more fun.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Seligman: talk about PERMA, not "happiness"
Martin Seligman is partially responsible for everyone talking about "happiness" today. But he's also sick of people just hand-waving about it. From the article:
"He has also created his own acronym, Perma, for what he defines as the five crucial elements of well-being, each pursued for its own sake: positive emotion, engagement (the feeling of being lost in a task), relationships, meaning and accomplishment."
This feels more meaningful. Did he forget anything? It's worthwhile to note that there's nothing that explicitly says "meditation", which might be a problem if you're, say, interested in meditating. I think the meditator's response is that meditation increases all of these. Mindfulness can increase positive emotion, concentration leads to engagement, meditators are good with people, maybe they find some big ultimate meaning, and maybe less of accomplishment but purifying your mind is good for something.
At any rate, I like this article.
"He has also created his own acronym, Perma, for what he defines as the five crucial elements of well-being, each pursued for its own sake: positive emotion, engagement (the feeling of being lost in a task), relationships, meaning and accomplishment."
This feels more meaningful. Did he forget anything? It's worthwhile to note that there's nothing that explicitly says "meditation", which might be a problem if you're, say, interested in meditating. I think the meditator's response is that meditation increases all of these. Mindfulness can increase positive emotion, concentration leads to engagement, meditators are good with people, maybe they find some big ultimate meaning, and maybe less of accomplishment but purifying your mind is good for something.
At any rate, I like this article.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Is motorcycling dumb?
I just passed my motorcycle test. I wish I had asked about statistics on motorcycle safety during the class. I found this and this and this, all of which make it seem like motorcycling is indeed much more dangerous than car driving. Perhaps an order of magnitude more dangerous!
But drawing facts relevant to me out of this is hard! Here are at least four good reasons (and I may repeat some of them) that make it seem not totally absurd for me to ride motorcycles:
1. I am not into sport bikes
1. I am not into dirt bikes
1. I am not into really any kind of fast bikes
1. I pretty much want to ride a moped at like 40 mph tops on country roads
2. actually I just want to ride a moped in Asia
a. maybe that makes things dangerous, because Asia (particularly India) is insane
b. however, maybe that makes things safer, as they are much much more used to motorcycles there than here, and the biggest danger here is cars not seeing you (citation needed)
c. I am not ruling out ever motorcycling in the States, but if I did that I would have to consider more safety statistics more
3. okay okay I don't drink and drive obv (this is apparently even a bigger contributor to motorcycle accidents than car accidents)
4. I just took a motorcycler safety course
1. but really, I am just not interested in fast bikes. I am encouraged by this:
"Not all powered two wheelers have the same level of risk. The relative risk of being killed per hundred million vehicle kilometres overall in 1988 when comparing motorbikes to cars was 8.4, and for bikes and pedal cycles, 2.9. However, the relative risk for mopeds which may be used by a different user group at lower speeds was 2.3 when compared to cars, and 0.9 when compared to pedal cycles, making them favourable by comparison."
And I already ride bicycles, so I'm not increasing my risk. (which leads to: is bicycling dangerous? well, this is per mile, so my 2 mile bike commute is much safer than a driver's 10 mile commute.)
Conclusions:
- mopedding/motorcycling slowly as an occasional hobby (say, in Asia) is not absurd
- mopedding as a daily commute is reasonably dangerous (like bicycling), so I will take care and get all the gear and wrap myself in day-glo if that situation enters my future
- riding a real motorcycle on highways and stuff occasionally may not be absurd (again, I am not interested in this, don't worry, Mom and Dad)
- riding a real motorcycle fast as a daily commute, or riding anything faster/fancier, is probably Actually Dangerous (unless you are a real pro)
But drawing facts relevant to me out of this is hard! Here are at least four good reasons (and I may repeat some of them) that make it seem not totally absurd for me to ride motorcycles:
1. I am not into sport bikes
1. I am not into dirt bikes
1. I am not into really any kind of fast bikes
1. I pretty much want to ride a moped at like 40 mph tops on country roads
2. actually I just want to ride a moped in Asia
a. maybe that makes things dangerous, because Asia (particularly India) is insane
b. however, maybe that makes things safer, as they are much much more used to motorcycles there than here, and the biggest danger here is cars not seeing you (citation needed)
c. I am not ruling out ever motorcycling in the States, but if I did that I would have to consider more safety statistics more
3. okay okay I don't drink and drive obv (this is apparently even a bigger contributor to motorcycle accidents than car accidents)
4. I just took a motorcycler safety course
1. but really, I am just not interested in fast bikes. I am encouraged by this:
"Not all powered two wheelers have the same level of risk. The relative risk of being killed per hundred million vehicle kilometres overall in 1988 when comparing motorbikes to cars was 8.4, and for bikes and pedal cycles, 2.9. However, the relative risk for mopeds which may be used by a different user group at lower speeds was 2.3 when compared to cars, and 0.9 when compared to pedal cycles, making them favourable by comparison."
And I already ride bicycles, so I'm not increasing my risk. (which leads to: is bicycling dangerous? well, this is per mile, so my 2 mile bike commute is much safer than a driver's 10 mile commute.)
Conclusions:
- mopedding/motorcycling slowly as an occasional hobby (say, in Asia) is not absurd
- mopedding as a daily commute is reasonably dangerous (like bicycling), so I will take care and get all the gear and wrap myself in day-glo if that situation enters my future
- riding a real motorcycle on highways and stuff occasionally may not be absurd (again, I am not interested in this, don't worry, Mom and Dad)
- riding a real motorcycle fast as a daily commute, or riding anything faster/fancier, is probably Actually Dangerous (unless you are a real pro)
Friday, May 13, 2011
Well, I've found a career.
Just got back from Vancouver and CHI, the biggest human-computer interaction conference. My research blog has a list of some papers I found cool. But more importantly for this blog, I loved the experience.
About 8 of us drove up from the UW Ubicomp Lab in a van. We stayed for 4 days, and each day involved 4 90-minute 4-talk sessions. Super cool stuff. I don't think a single session passed where I was bored by the talks. "Human-computer interaction" apparently does mean what I hoped it meant, which is "Anything where a person uses a computer, come on guys, let's make this all better." It's a bit generalist: it seems like people study "Computers + X" and learn a lot about X. Which is wonderful! Sure, you could study databases or something and squeeze out 4% more efficiency from some algorithm... or you could apply a computer to something that didn't previously have any computers and gain 100% more efficiency! Or solve problems that nobody else knew existed, or they knew they existed and had no idea how to solve them!
Between and after the sessions, of course, was massive standing eating drinking talking, which I understand is referred to as "networking". And here's the other thing: I like the people. I could see myself working with a lot of them in the future. So that's great.
Finally, I felt like I could hack it! There are hard problems, but I wouldn't mind tackling them, which means I could solve them. I feel like I can really make it in the academic world.
Okay, enough talk; time to go actually make it in the academic world. Cancel that; time to sleep so I can go learn how to motorcycle tomorrow. Woo!
About 8 of us drove up from the UW Ubicomp Lab in a van. We stayed for 4 days, and each day involved 4 90-minute 4-talk sessions. Super cool stuff. I don't think a single session passed where I was bored by the talks. "Human-computer interaction" apparently does mean what I hoped it meant, which is "Anything where a person uses a computer, come on guys, let's make this all better." It's a bit generalist: it seems like people study "Computers + X" and learn a lot about X. Which is wonderful! Sure, you could study databases or something and squeeze out 4% more efficiency from some algorithm... or you could apply a computer to something that didn't previously have any computers and gain 100% more efficiency! Or solve problems that nobody else knew existed, or they knew they existed and had no idea how to solve them!
Between and after the sessions, of course, was massive standing eating drinking talking, which I understand is referred to as "networking". And here's the other thing: I like the people. I could see myself working with a lot of them in the future. So that's great.
Finally, I felt like I could hack it! There are hard problems, but I wouldn't mind tackling them, which means I could solve them. I feel like I can really make it in the academic world.
Okay, enough talk; time to go actually make it in the academic world. Cancel that; time to sleep so I can go learn how to motorcycle tomorrow. Woo!
Saturday, May 07, 2011
No-grains experiment 2
Well, I wanted to try it again, so I went for the last week and a half, almost 2 weeks, without eating grains. Got a bit more data. Plus I've been tracking this stuff non stop since the beginning of the year. So here's what I came up with, comparing every day I've eaten grains with every day that I haven't:
stomach with grains: ['3.10', '2.92', '2.78', '2.83', '2.36', '3.10', '2.75', '3.29', '3.12', '3.34', '2.87', '3.50', '3.60', '3.71', '3.00', '3.67', '3.25', '2.53', '3.00', '4.00', '3.44', '3.28', '2.33', '3.22', '3.81', '2.82', '2.71', '3.46', '2.40', '2.82', '2.84', '2.94', '3.09', '2.83', '3.60', '3.60', '2.91', '3.55', '3.00', '3.12', '2.75', '2.77', '2.81', '2.33', '3.22', '3.22', '2.75', '2.86', '3.14', '3.29', '3.00', '3.12', '3.14', '3.20', '3.00', '3.36', '3.33', '3.40', '3.71', '3.34', '3.40', '2.82', '2.71', '3.00', '3.29', '3.21', '3.17', '2.67', '3.50', '2.40', '2.80', '3.81', '3.08', '3.42', '3.56', '2.88', '3.50', '2.86', '2.84', '3.38', '3.24', '2.88', '2.29', '2.89', '2.84', '3.12', '2.00', '2.20', '2.75', '1.91', '2.33', '2.67', '2.43']
mean = 3.03
stomach without grains: ['3.33', '3.67', '2.89', '3.37', '3.31', '3.60', '3.00', '2.87', '2.59', '2.80', '2.92', '3.11', '3.22', '3.63', '3.47', '3.29', '2.89', '2.67', '3.30', '2.88', '3.87', '3.80', '3.85', '4.00', '3.57', '3.22', '2.70', '3.30', '3.59', '3.18']
mean = 3.26
stomach with grains: ['3.10', '2.92', '2.78', '2.83', '2.36', '3.10', '2.75', '3.29', '3.12', '3.34', '2.87', '3.50', '3.60', '3.71', '3.00', '3.67', '3.25', '2.53', '3.00', '4.00', '3.44', '3.28', '2.33', '3.22', '3.81', '2.82', '2.71', '3.46', '2.40', '2.82', '2.84', '2.94', '3.09', '2.83', '3.60', '3.60', '2.91', '3.55', '3.00', '3.12', '2.75', '2.77', '2.81', '2.33', '3.22', '3.22', '2.75', '2.86', '3.14', '3.29', '3.00', '3.12', '3.14', '3.20', '3.00', '3.36', '3.33', '3.40', '3.71', '3.34', '3.40', '2.82', '2.71', '3.00', '3.29', '3.21', '3.17', '2.67', '3.50', '2.40', '2.80', '3.81', '3.08', '3.42', '3.56', '2.88', '3.50', '2.86', '2.84', '3.38', '3.24', '2.88', '2.29', '2.89', '2.84', '3.12', '2.00', '2.20', '2.75', '1.91', '2.33', '2.67', '2.43']
mean = 3.03
stomach without grains: ['3.33', '3.67', '2.89', '3.37', '3.31', '3.60', '3.00', '2.87', '2.59', '2.80', '2.92', '3.11', '3.22', '3.63', '3.47', '3.29', '2.89', '2.67', '3.30', '2.88', '3.87', '3.80', '3.85', '4.00', '3.57', '3.22', '2.70', '3.30', '3.59', '3.18']
mean = 3.26
t-test on stomach before and after grains:
t = -2.67446580787, p = 0.00851982121181
So there we go! Going grain-free very probably helps my stomach feel better! If going grain-free didn't help my stomach, there is only a 0.8% chance that the means would be this different.
However, there are complicating factors:
- travel days. On travel days stomachs are weirder.
- Google days. I used to be getting gourmet meals 3x/day, and now I have to fend for myself.
So let's ignore the travel days:
t-test on stomach before and after grains:
t = -2.23123617479, p = 0.0277911206015
stomach with grains: mean = 3.09
stomach without grains: mean = 3.26
Still significant.
How about only comparing days after I left Google?
t-test on stomach before and after grains:
t = -1.06189037683, p = 0.294500544066
stomach with grains: (daily averages omitted)
mean = 3.13
stomach without grains: (daily averages omitted)
mean = 3.26
No significant effect.
Did Google just make my stomach worse? Let's compare all the days while I was still at Google to all the days after I left.
t-test on stomach before and after Google:
t = 1.00310288377, p = 0.317813018172
stomach while I was still at Google: (daily averages omitted)
mean = 3.11
stomach post-Google: (daily averages omitted)
mean = 3.03
Nah, looks like the gourmet meals were nice after all. (or at least, probably no real effect either way.)
So I'm guessing that, all other things being equal, grain-free makes my stomach feel slightly better. It appears to have an effect, but it's a small one. And I don't have enough data from post-Google no-travel life to show statistical significance yet.
Friday, May 06, 2011
Indeed, what WILL we do without our vanities?
I thought that bit was just the best few sentences I'd heard in a long while. But it's stuck with me, digging up an old question I still haven't answered:
What would you do if you didn't do what you do? or, more concretely,
Should I bring a computer on my travels?
In the one corner, we have most of the world, Csikszentmihalyi, and Wilber: get more complex. Do the things you do, do them well, integrate them with your being. In the other corner, we have ascetics. (well, they're wrong, anyway.)
Here's an answer I kind of like: keep spinning all those plates that you're spinning, but take periodic breaks from your vanities, check in, regroup, make sure you want to be spinning them all.
What would you do if you didn't do what you do? or, more concretely,
Should I bring a computer on my travels?
In the one corner, we have most of the world, Csikszentmihalyi, and Wilber: get more complex. Do the things you do, do them well, integrate them with your being. In the other corner, we have ascetics. (well, they're wrong, anyway.)
Here's an answer I kind of like: keep spinning all those plates that you're spinning, but take periodic breaks from your vanities, check in, regroup, make sure you want to be spinning them all.
From "A Journey in Ladakh" by Andrew Harvey
"You must write and I must be a guide. It is our svaha, our nature. Perhaps next time we will be luckier, less condemned to our different vanities. I will talk less and you will carry no big black notebooks, full of illegible writing."
"What will we do without our vanities?"
"We will drink. We will see visions. We will heal the sick and bring love and calm to the mad and evil. We will play cards all night and not need to sleep. We will walk on water in front of a hundred thousand cameras, to refute all materialists for ever."
---
I'm two days away from heading to CHI 2011 in Vancouver. This will be a thing.
I've been measuring time I work, defined as actual time concentrating and creating (not answering emails or blogging or whatever). It's much less than I'd think: 4 hours on a good day.
Today, for example, 5pm and I've done zero hours so far. Yesterday I did zero hours. You know what takes up a lot of mental energy? Trying to impress people. It's important to remember not to spend time doing that.
"What will we do without our vanities?"
"We will drink. We will see visions. We will heal the sick and bring love and calm to the mad and evil. We will play cards all night and not need to sleep. We will walk on water in front of a hundred thousand cameras, to refute all materialists for ever."
---
I'm two days away from heading to CHI 2011 in Vancouver. This will be a thing.
I've been measuring time I work, defined as actual time concentrating and creating (not answering emails or blogging or whatever). It's much less than I'd think: 4 hours on a good day.
Today, for example, 5pm and I've done zero hours so far. Yesterday I did zero hours. You know what takes up a lot of mental energy? Trying to impress people. It's important to remember not to spend time doing that.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
I am having remarkably high quality experience today.
It's not that the things I'm doing are special, but the experience of doing them just feels relatively wonderful.
I slept like an incredible rock last night. 9:48, and a Wakemate score of 100. Perfect 100! My previous high over the past 4 months was something like 87.
As I was just walking across a bridge, listening to Kanye West's "Lost in the World" (I was surprised to find I really like this album), feeling the sunny warmth and marveling at all the cars going underneath! I rather had a moment. I must have confused people walking the opposite direction, because for some reason I was smiling really a lot. I tried to tone it down so it wouldn't be creepy. It felt different than regular life, like I was on a drug or something. Kind of like a couple times biking in Pittsburgh, and I'm sure some other times that I haven't remembered.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Consuming well
I tend to draw a line between consumptive and productive pleasures. You can get enjoyment out of eating an ice cream sundae, watching a movie, or painting a painting, but I feel like the first two are very different from the last. Obviously there's the effect (after one you have a beautiful artwork, and after the other you have less money and more ice cream in your body) but it also just feels weaker. Anyone can eat a food and have fun, but to paint and have fun you have to work at it. Get into a flow state, not just a passive consumption state.
I'm still reading "The Evolving Self", which posits that the way to ... happiness? improvement? general goodness? ... is to cultivate "complexity", in which you become a creature of many parts that work together as a unified whole. Differentiate and integrate. Being highly evolved is better, and being highly evolved means being complex. Sounds like Ken Wilber. And I still pretty much agree with it.
(aside: "complexity" is a loaded word; I wish he had picked something else, because by "complex" he doesn't mean "complicated". I like simplicity. But I think I like the simplicity of a very well-made watch: a lot going on, but it's easy to use and all the abstractions are hidden from you. This watch would be a very complex thing, but still simple, not complicated.)
Consumptive pleasures often don't increase complexity. Productive ones often do. But I think the key is the "often"; sometimes you can consume something in a way that adds complexity. And I guess, given that we consume anyway, might as well consume in complex ways.
Case in point: Jonah Lehrer (Radiolab! That's what he's on.) recently wrote a post about why it's worth being an oenophile, even though cheap wine regularly beats expensive wine in blind taste tests. Take away the blindness, let people see the price tag, and expensive wine always wins. So if you don't know wine, your enjoyment goes up with price. But if you do, you can start to pick out other good things in the wine besides the price. That's complex consumption.
I still think it's a siren's call: there are only a few steps from "complex consumption can improve your life" to "you can just sip wine all day, get a job as a sommelier, live the easy life, and it'll be great". But there's nothing basically wrong with connoisseurship.
Okay, we already knew this, right? Sheesh. tl;dr: nothing to see here.
I'm still reading "The Evolving Self", which posits that the way to ... happiness? improvement? general goodness? ... is to cultivate "complexity", in which you become a creature of many parts that work together as a unified whole. Differentiate and integrate. Being highly evolved is better, and being highly evolved means being complex. Sounds like Ken Wilber. And I still pretty much agree with it.
(aside: "complexity" is a loaded word; I wish he had picked something else, because by "complex" he doesn't mean "complicated". I like simplicity. But I think I like the simplicity of a very well-made watch: a lot going on, but it's easy to use and all the abstractions are hidden from you. This watch would be a very complex thing, but still simple, not complicated.)
Consumptive pleasures often don't increase complexity. Productive ones often do. But I think the key is the "often"; sometimes you can consume something in a way that adds complexity. And I guess, given that we consume anyway, might as well consume in complex ways.
Case in point: Jonah Lehrer (Radiolab! That's what he's on.) recently wrote a post about why it's worth being an oenophile, even though cheap wine regularly beats expensive wine in blind taste tests. Take away the blindness, let people see the price tag, and expensive wine always wins. So if you don't know wine, your enjoyment goes up with price. But if you do, you can start to pick out other good things in the wine besides the price. That's complex consumption.
I still think it's a siren's call: there are only a few steps from "complex consumption can improve your life" to "you can just sip wine all day, get a job as a sommelier, live the easy life, and it'll be great". But there's nothing basically wrong with connoisseurship.
Okay, we already knew this, right? Sheesh. tl;dr: nothing to see here.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Nah check it out, HERE is a business card
Okay I guess one last blog/buzz about business cards.
How to make one yourself:
1. Find a QR code generator. I like this one because it lets you set error correction levels.
2. Set error correction as high as possible (that is, it'll have more dots, some of which are redundant in case some fool smudges or tears or writes all over the middle of it.)
3. Input what you want to pop up when someone scans it. If you want the code to represent just a bit of text or a URL, fine. But if you want more structured data (like a bunch of contact info) you can use specially formatted strings. Here's a guide to the types. And if you want contact info in particular, you can use the MECARD format (details here). So, for example, the text embedded in that QR code is:
MECARD:N:Tasse,Dan;;;EMAIL:dan.tasse@gmail.com;URL:http://www.dantasse.com;
(kinda think some of those ;'s are unnecessary)
4. Write all over the middle of it. Seriously, just in Paint or GIMP or something.
5. Make sure it still works.
Here's another person's guide that says the same things.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
I would really love your feedback on my business card.
I'm going to a conference for the first time ever. I will probably meet a lot of people. Maybe I would like some of them to remember me. So I made a business card.
Quick:
- what's my email address?
- what are you thinking about?
- intrigued or annoyed?
Also, I am particularly interested in your thoughts on:
- font choice. IANAFN, but I like fonts sometimes. I basically want the feel of just writing this in courier, but I don't want people to think I'm a computer-cluster linux-kernel-hacker long-hair nerd-rager. I considered Futura (but it was too art-deco retro or something), Frutiger (less interesting and I couldn't find it for download in 5 minutes), Gill Sans (for some reason I thought it was associated with macs?), and Yanone Kaffeesatz (too narrow to fill the space). I went with Droid Sans, as it seemed at least as good as anything else to my untrained eye, and it might subtly make people think Android. If they do think Android, that's good; I dig Android (and Google)'s philosophy (obviously), and anything I do will probably involve using Android a lot.
- spacing between "dan" and "tasse". I was going to try to make it a half-space or something, squash the words together a bit, because otherwise people might wonder "is it dan_tasse@gmail or something?" but that was not trivial to do, so I skipped it.
- spacing and borders in general. Anything look too close or far from the borders of the card? (note that it will not have a border; if you see a double line around it, that's an artifact of blogger)
- should I leave off the twitter? I use it wayyy less than gmail, and right now all it does is post when I blog a new research blog. But I'd like to start using it for research/business/etc more, as it seems a good tool for that.
Quick:
- what's my email address?
- what are you thinking about?
- intrigued or annoyed?
Also, I am particularly interested in your thoughts on:
- font choice. IANAFN, but I like fonts sometimes. I basically want the feel of just writing this in courier, but I don't want people to think I'm a computer-cluster linux-kernel-hacker long-hair nerd-rager. I considered Futura (but it was too art-deco retro or something), Frutiger (less interesting and I couldn't find it for download in 5 minutes), Gill Sans (for some reason I thought it was associated with macs?), and Yanone Kaffeesatz (too narrow to fill the space). I went with Droid Sans, as it seemed at least as good as anything else to my untrained eye, and it might subtly make people think Android. If they do think Android, that's good; I dig Android (and Google)'s philosophy (obviously), and anything I do will probably involve using Android a lot.
- spacing between "dan" and "tasse". I was going to try to make it a half-space or something, squash the words together a bit, because otherwise people might wonder "is it dan_tasse@gmail or something?" but that was not trivial to do, so I skipped it.
- spacing and borders in general. Anything look too close or far from the borders of the card? (note that it will not have a border; if you see a double line around it, that's an artifact of blogger)
- should I leave off the twitter? I use it wayyy less than gmail, and right now all it does is post when I blog a new research blog. But I'd like to start using it for research/business/etc more, as it seems a good tool for that.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Cleveland, you spoil me!
Every time I touch down in CLE, I spend a week surrounded by people who love me. Okay, of course, going home to visit family and friends is nice. Dear Future Dan (one of the main readers of this blog): remember this week, it was really great!
Dear all the other readers of this blog: you are probably less interested in my reminiscing about family-and-friends-time. So instead, I'll point out some great things about Cleveland that you might get a chance to experience someday if you're lucky enough to visit here:
- theater at the Hanna, where my parents and I saw Two Gentlemen of Verona, and despite the play being generally not an awesome Shakespeare play, the performance was really well done!
- dinner at Lola, where now-famous chef Michael Symon got his start (I think?). Anyway, calf heart: surprisingly not weird, and surprisingly good. And pork belly too. Wow. (vegetarians beware.)
- drinks at the Velvet Tango Room, okay this place was kinda underwhelming when I live so close to Sun Liquor, Tavern Law, and Zig Zag, but it's at least in the same league, albeit more expensive.
- whoops forgot a drink in the middle at the Paganfest promotional show at Maple Grove in Maple Heights. Sometimes these things happen. Cleveland!
- 30+ kinds of olive oil and balsamic vinegar at the Olive Scene, and lunch at Tartine, in Rocky River. Check out the Olive Scene. Disclaimer: friends' parents own it. But it's great.
- another great lunch, this time at some bar I don't remember but it was on TV or something, I don't know these things it was tasty
- still got to stop at the West Side Market, which is still also wonderful.
I mean, this is right out of an airplane magazine "36 hours in Cleveland" deal. There is a lot going on there. I think I will not dump on Cleveland so much. It's got a lot of issues (cars cars cars) but it also has a lot to offer. I like to think about the latter. (more on that later!)
EDIT: whoops, I guess I didn't click Publish when I wrote this? So I published it later. Editing the date now to fit it back within the squiggly-wiggly timey-wimey continuum. (btw, new Who season: super great!)
EDIT: whoops, I guess I didn't click Publish when I wrote this? So I published it later. Editing the date now to fit it back within the squiggly-wiggly timey-wimey continuum. (btw, new Who season: super great!)
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Hot brain, cold brain
Cold brain = the part of you that thinks like a computer.
Hot brain = emotions, gut feelings, instincts, procedural memory, the stuff that guides your actions.
Is there a better term for this? If not, I'm going to start using the terms "hot brain"/"cold brain" a lot. It really concisely describes something I often want to talk about. For example, it's easy to learn in your cold brain that smoking causes cancer and that you should quit smoking. But it's hard to convince your hot brain, which is why quitting smoking is hard. Or, it's easy to learn vocabulary in a foreign language (cold brain) but hard to come up with it as you speak (hot brain).
Hot brain = emotions, gut feelings, instincts, procedural memory, the stuff that guides your actions.
Is there a better term for this? If not, I'm going to start using the terms "hot brain"/"cold brain" a lot. It really concisely describes something I often want to talk about. For example, it's easy to learn in your cold brain that smoking causes cancer and that you should quit smoking. But it's hard to convince your hot brain, which is why quitting smoking is hard. Or, it's easy to learn vocabulary in a foreign language (cold brain) but hard to come up with it as you speak (hot brain).
And if you like barbecue chips, maybe you also like barbecue sauce.
So here I rail against people using their phones when they're hanging out with friends. (in general with the "multitasking is bad" thing.) And then I'm at a bar, and I realize I could help settle a dispute between some other friends, but I don't remember what exactly the dispute is. So I pull out my phone and Twitter and go to see what it was. My friends who I'm with mock me a little bit. I go "yeah, you're right" and put it away (but not before seeing what the dispute was).
Then I find my bit of data and go to report it back to said friends (the ones who aren't there)... by pulling out my phone and firing up the Twitter again. I am again mocked. This time I really deserve it.
All I'm saying is, don't judge people.
Then I find my bit of data and go to report it back to said friends (the ones who aren't there)... by pulling out my phone and firing up the Twitter again. I am again mocked. This time I really deserve it.
All I'm saying is, don't judge people.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
What drives you?
- need? Do you do the things you do because you must in order to survive?
- guilt?
- duty? (you feel like you have to, for one reason or another)
- compulsion/automaticity?
- excitement?
- ... mindfulness?
In case you can't tell, I'm trying to set up a progression or hierarchy, kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. (Maybe this is the same thing.)
At any rate, I've recently gone rather a lot to a compulsion and excitement driven life. I take all the "dumb things I gotta do" and put them in a compulsion queue (like put things on my desk, or messages in my inbox; I'll clean them out eventually because I have a compulsion to clean things), and the rest of the time I spend on exciting things.
It feels like they all have relative values: A need-driven life is probably not great. A guilt-driven life is also terrible. I'm not sure about duty and compulsion. Excitement is pretty good, and whatever drives a monk on a mountain (supreme consciousness?) is probably the best.
I used to live pretty guilt-driven. It was behind a lot of my "environmentalism"; I felt like a Bad Rich White Person for pretty much trashing everything unconsciously, so I'd try to "minimize my footprint" left and right. I don't really get any big kicks out of composting, but it makes me feel less bad.
This is why I'm not sold on environmentalism now: what's behind it? If you really enjoy it, rock on! If it's a negligible cost, well, that's fine. But if you're making your life worse to reduce your waste from 84 units to 82... I kinda think we'd all be better off if you redirected your energy into something positive instead. And I mean "positive" in the sense that the question you're answering should be "how can I make _____ more good?" instead of "how can I make _____ less bad?"
And while I'm prescribing how you should live your life (pff!): quit living so duty-driven. But that's for another post.
Edit: I should say, too, that while this was spurred on by a conversation with Beej and Becky, I don't mean to snipe at them from the internet. I think we had this debate about the value of reducing your footprint and agreed to disagree; I'm posting it to record my thoughts at this point in time, and also to maybe provoke a further conversation if y'all want. (And also to tell everyone on the internet how to live their lives.)
- guilt?
- duty? (you feel like you have to, for one reason or another)
- compulsion/automaticity?
- excitement?
- ... mindfulness?
In case you can't tell, I'm trying to set up a progression or hierarchy, kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. (Maybe this is the same thing.)
At any rate, I've recently gone rather a lot to a compulsion and excitement driven life. I take all the "dumb things I gotta do" and put them in a compulsion queue (like put things on my desk, or messages in my inbox; I'll clean them out eventually because I have a compulsion to clean things), and the rest of the time I spend on exciting things.
It feels like they all have relative values: A need-driven life is probably not great. A guilt-driven life is also terrible. I'm not sure about duty and compulsion. Excitement is pretty good, and whatever drives a monk on a mountain (supreme consciousness?) is probably the best.
I used to live pretty guilt-driven. It was behind a lot of my "environmentalism"; I felt like a Bad Rich White Person for pretty much trashing everything unconsciously, so I'd try to "minimize my footprint" left and right. I don't really get any big kicks out of composting, but it makes me feel less bad.
This is why I'm not sold on environmentalism now: what's behind it? If you really enjoy it, rock on! If it's a negligible cost, well, that's fine. But if you're making your life worse to reduce your waste from 84 units to 82... I kinda think we'd all be better off if you redirected your energy into something positive instead. And I mean "positive" in the sense that the question you're answering should be "how can I make _____ more good?" instead of "how can I make _____ less bad?"
And while I'm prescribing how you should live your life (pff!): quit living so duty-driven. But that's for another post.
Edit: I should say, too, that while this was spurred on by a conversation with Beej and Becky, I don't mean to snipe at them from the internet. I think we had this debate about the value of reducing your footprint and agreed to disagree; I'm posting it to record my thoughts at this point in time, and also to maybe provoke a further conversation if y'all want. (And also to tell everyone on the internet how to live their lives.)
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Recording things for the future
I've got a couple of projects I'm working on now. Both are mobile apps.
I think I'll try standing desks some more. I'm intrigued. Some of my Google coworkers liked them. I came across this article. And I haven't heard anyone say they're bad.
Actually I got that article from this article (p1) (p2). Man! I guess I will also:
- brush my teeth before meals, or way after them
- cool down my showers to lukewarm, and work on getting down to cold (this has other benefits, including helping me be happier at hotels/guesthouses/hostels that don't have hot water. makes me generally lower-maintenance. that is nice.)
- try to squat. hope not to fall over.
These all seem easy to implement and no-downside. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
More difficult to implement although probably helpful:
- always sleep enough (I'm working on this still) and sleep with the seasons (just infeasible)
- always stomach breathe
So I will not commit to either of these.
I think I'll try standing desks some more. I'm intrigued. Some of my Google coworkers liked them. I came across this article. And I haven't heard anyone say they're bad.
Actually I got that article from this article (p1) (p2). Man! I guess I will also:
- brush my teeth before meals, or way after them
- cool down my showers to lukewarm, and work on getting down to cold (this has other benefits, including helping me be happier at hotels/guesthouses/hostels that don't have hot water. makes me generally lower-maintenance. that is nice.)
- try to squat. hope not to fall over.
These all seem easy to implement and no-downside. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
More difficult to implement although probably helpful:
- always sleep enough (I'm working on this still) and sleep with the seasons (just infeasible)
- always stomach breathe
So I will not commit to either of these.
Friday, April 08, 2011
Mihaly, don't let me down!
Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is one of the more influential books in my life. So I got The Evolving Self, Csikszentmihalyi's follow-up book. I am a chapter and a half in and already I have strong feelings about it.
The premise so far is: in this third millennium, we've mostly realized that the ol' Christian God sitting on a cloud with angels (or Greek Gods on Olympus or whatever) is false, but we're still searching for meaning and "happiness", whatever that means. Mihaly, I am with you so far!
But then, page 15: "But evolution has introduced a buffer between determining forces and human action. ... consciousness enables those who use it to disengage themselves occasionally from the pressure of relentless drives so as to make their own decisions."
What? How? Who are "those who use it"? How do they have a choice to "disengage themselves"?
On page 23 I'm back with him. He cuts through the "homunculus" image, in which we're each governed by a little man in our head who pulls the levers, and then cuts through the "traffic cop" image, where we're each governed by a bunch of signals but there's one guy saying which signals win. "Instead, consciousness is more like a magnetic field, an aura, or a harmonic tone resulting from the myriad separate sensations collecting in the brain."
So my question is: Mihaly, do we have souls? "Divine spark" or determinism? (or determinism + quantum/whatever randomness, which is just as good as determinism) I don't see a third path. You seem to say determinism, that consciousness is just a word that we use to talk about our minds the same way we say a computer "has vision", that there is not even any "we" to talk about "our minds", but you seem uncomfortable actually saying it.
Other minor quibbles:
Page 19: "The only value that all human beings can readily share is the continuation of life on earth."
... err, I don't share that. If all the existing humans just stopped having kids and eventually died out, as far as I'm concerned, that would be pretty okay. (modulo a few rough years for the last few living ones.)
By page 33, he's talking about how our minds are generally chaotic and unhappy when we have "free time"; we always want to accomplish the next goal. Then he says "There is a reasonable evolutionary explanation for this condition, too. If we could be contented just sitting by ourselves and thinking pleasant thoughts, who would be out chasing the saber-toothed tiger?"... doing that pop-cultural evolutionary thinking thing, where you dream up some explanation for how something could have been an evolutionary benefit and then conclude that it was an evolutionary benefit.
But on the plus side:
Page 40: "We think like computers whenever we think like computers. But certainly this particular function represents only a small aspect of how we think." This is a pretty concise way to talk about an idea that's been buzzing in my head for a while.
Mihaly, man, you're pushing all my buttons! In great and frustrating ways! If the determinism-or-not question remains an issue, I may get kinda annoyed. However, I have high hopes that you'll either pick a side or reveal to me some new side to that debate, or else we'll just put it aside and talk about more specific things.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Continuing with the Buddhism, I had some good meditation two days ago
I think I got a taste of what mindfulness tastes like. My main focus was my rising and falling stomach. I caught most every thought that came up (and there were a LOT of them) and said "okay, that's 'planning'" or "worrying" or "being excited" (a lot of them were "excited" because I was all like "oh man I'm finally doing meditation right*") or whatever, and then I saw them as if they were photos in a slide show, they'd go to the right and soon fade.
This lasted maybe a few minutes. But I think I learned a few things:
1. what it feels like to "do it right*"
2. how important it is, really, to be gentle with yourself the whole time, really; this feels more likely than anything else to get you somewhere.
3. how easy it is, once you've done it right*, to get super attached to reproducing that same state**
* I know I know, all meditation is good, it's not right/wrong/etc, no seriously, the rest of this meditation I've been doing (and maybe any meditation that you're doing that seems unproductive) is not wrong
** okay I want to keep this post short so I won't go into any more detail, but whenever I read a book about meditation and it talks about some of the more advanced mental states, it's really interesting. maybe I'll talk about this later.
This lasted maybe a few minutes. But I think I learned a few things:
1. what it feels like to "do it right*"
2. how important it is, really, to be gentle with yourself the whole time, really; this feels more likely than anything else to get you somewhere.
3. how easy it is, once you've done it right*, to get super attached to reproducing that same state**
* I know I know, all meditation is good, it's not right/wrong/etc, no seriously, the rest of this meditation I've been doing (and maybe any meditation that you're doing that seems unproductive) is not wrong
** okay I want to keep this post short so I won't go into any more detail, but whenever I read a book about meditation and it talks about some of the more advanced mental states, it's really interesting. maybe I'll talk about this later.
Monday, April 04, 2011
It's about to get real Buddhist up in here, but don't worry, I'll talk about girls too so at least that's interesting
First, short thought: when you are not-doing, that too is a thing you are doing. You cannot do more or less. All you can do is redirect energy from one thing to another. Hmm. This is a half-formed thought; let's let it bake while exploring:
A longer thought. A section I liked in Noble Truth #2 part 2 of "Dancing with Life" by Philip Moffitt.:
"How do you know that you know?"
So he's talking about how to avoid clinging/addiction/unhelpful desires, and a student says "It seems to me that I have let loose of clinging... but then a little voice of doubt inside me asks 'How do I know that I am not just in denial of my clinging and am fooling myself?'"
Moffitt answers: if you've actually abandoned clinging to a thing, you'll feel it, in three ways.
1. You experience a distinct felt sense of spaciousness, well-being, and lightness. Depending on your nature, you will feel it more strongly in either your body or your mind.
2. You have a felt sense that something is over and that something new awaits you.
3. When you reflect back, you can see how your clinging was making a bad situation worse.
Let's look at things that I used to desire that I've not been desiring much (like these) and see if I'm abandoning clinging or just shoving it under the rug!
1. Being known as a master chef. I cooked some in college. Some people said I cooked well. It went to my head, I got the idea that I wanted people to think I was a super cook. Today, I don't really care.
- spaciousness/lightness: sure! it's nice to just make food to stay alive, and explore new things for fun!
- something is over, something new awaits: in a sense, yeah. I'm not sure what new awaits, but I guess "cooking with anxiety" has been replaced by "cooking and enjoying it more."
- clinging was making a bad situation worse: I think so. I used to think real hard, like think till I explode, or at least get real anxious, about what to cook.
Verdict: probably mostly abandoned clinging. Hooray!
2. Food advocacy. I used to think I would be some sort of social crusader, particularly in the area of food. Funny how little I think about it now.
- lightness: yes. well, it's one less thing to worry about.
- old thing out, new thing in: also yes. Now I concentrate on one cause, which is my work. It will help the world. Good enough for me.
- bad situation worse: yeah. I couldn't really do anything about it, or I wasn't willing to put in the time to do anything about it. So all my food advocacy thinking was just making me feel bad.
Verdict: also abandoned clinging. Also hooray! (note that these hoorays are completely unclingy hoorays. of course.)
3. Being a musician. I used to want to be a musician. Like a guitarist, like a cool guy, but I didn't want to play guitar because everyone does. So I figured I'd play trombone a lot. Like a cool guy. I do not have time or energy to play trombone. I suppose I'm not a cool guy.
I'll skip the details, but it feels like a weight lifted. Another clinging gone. Check me out, I'm practically in a cave on a mountain already.
4. Meeting a nice lady friend. I just have not had any inclination to try to do this for the past few months! I did a bit last year, but nothing worked out very easily, and I became busy with other things. So have I transcended even the desire to go on dates? It would help on that becoming-a-monk thing.
- lightness: not really. I guess not dating means one less thing to do, but dating wasn't a burden.
- old thing out, new thing in: nope. It's not like that energy translates into more energy for something else.
- this desire was making a bad situation worse: well, no.
Verdict: not abandoned! Just pushed under the rug. Well, that is not ideal.
5. Languages. I keep saying I want to learn languages, and then I keep not learning languages.
(moment of reflection)
Okay, well I still want to learn languages. I guess I'm not very effective at abandoning OR denying this one yet.
A longer thought. A section I liked in Noble Truth #2 part 2 of "Dancing with Life" by Philip Moffitt.:
"How do you know that you know?"
So he's talking about how to avoid clinging/addiction/unhelpful desires, and a student says "It seems to me that I have let loose of clinging... but then a little voice of doubt inside me asks 'How do I know that I am not just in denial of my clinging and am fooling myself?'"
Moffitt answers: if you've actually abandoned clinging to a thing, you'll feel it, in three ways.
1. You experience a distinct felt sense of spaciousness, well-being, and lightness. Depending on your nature, you will feel it more strongly in either your body or your mind.
2. You have a felt sense that something is over and that something new awaits you.
3. When you reflect back, you can see how your clinging was making a bad situation worse.
Let's look at things that I used to desire that I've not been desiring much (like these) and see if I'm abandoning clinging or just shoving it under the rug!
1. Being known as a master chef. I cooked some in college. Some people said I cooked well. It went to my head, I got the idea that I wanted people to think I was a super cook. Today, I don't really care.
- spaciousness/lightness: sure! it's nice to just make food to stay alive, and explore new things for fun!
- something is over, something new awaits: in a sense, yeah. I'm not sure what new awaits, but I guess "cooking with anxiety" has been replaced by "cooking and enjoying it more."
- clinging was making a bad situation worse: I think so. I used to think real hard, like think till I explode, or at least get real anxious, about what to cook.
Verdict: probably mostly abandoned clinging. Hooray!
2. Food advocacy. I used to think I would be some sort of social crusader, particularly in the area of food. Funny how little I think about it now.
- lightness: yes. well, it's one less thing to worry about.
- old thing out, new thing in: also yes. Now I concentrate on one cause, which is my work. It will help the world. Good enough for me.
- bad situation worse: yeah. I couldn't really do anything about it, or I wasn't willing to put in the time to do anything about it. So all my food advocacy thinking was just making me feel bad.
Verdict: also abandoned clinging. Also hooray! (note that these hoorays are completely unclingy hoorays. of course.)
3. Being a musician. I used to want to be a musician. Like a guitarist, like a cool guy, but I didn't want to play guitar because everyone does. So I figured I'd play trombone a lot. Like a cool guy. I do not have time or energy to play trombone. I suppose I'm not a cool guy.
I'll skip the details, but it feels like a weight lifted. Another clinging gone. Check me out, I'm practically in a cave on a mountain already.
4. Meeting a nice lady friend. I just have not had any inclination to try to do this for the past few months! I did a bit last year, but nothing worked out very easily, and I became busy with other things. So have I transcended even the desire to go on dates? It would help on that becoming-a-monk thing.
- lightness: not really. I guess not dating means one less thing to do, but dating wasn't a burden.
- old thing out, new thing in: nope. It's not like that energy translates into more energy for something else.
- this desire was making a bad situation worse: well, no.
Verdict: not abandoned! Just pushed under the rug. Well, that is not ideal.
5. Languages. I keep saying I want to learn languages, and then I keep not learning languages.
(moment of reflection)
Okay, well I still want to learn languages. I guess I'm not very effective at abandoning OR denying this one yet.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
No Mac Java: are you kidding?
Jesus Christ. I just heard about Mac deprecating Java.
Java is English. Not the best language, but a pretty okay language that a lot of the world (like Android and, recently, InPulse) speaks pretty well. Shutting out English is misguided at best and a calculated ploy at worst.
I find myself sometimes trying to articulate to non-programmers why Mac is increasingly evil and why my next computer will be Linux, and the best I can come up with is: As the Apple programming world becomes more separate from the rest of the programming world, developers will increasingly have to choose between learning Apple/iPhone/iPad and everything else. Apple entices users to its walled garden with shiny toys. Apple entices developers to its walled garden by having lots of users. (especially lots of rich users.)
And once developers are Apple wizards (at the expense of their non-Apple skills), they're at Apple's mercy. They have to play by the rules of the App Store, like it or not. They have to deal with ridiculous languages and frameworks, no matter how they change, like it or not. And so, consumers: with Apple you get shiny toys in the short term, but in the long term developers gets stifled, squeezed and bled dry. And then nobody wins except a certain black-turtlenecked figurehead.
God damn. I'm so glad that I've spent the past 2.5 years working for a company that is actually making the world a better place.
Java is English. Not the best language, but a pretty okay language that a lot of the world (like Android and, recently, InPulse) speaks pretty well. Shutting out English is misguided at best and a calculated ploy at worst.
I find myself sometimes trying to articulate to non-programmers why Mac is increasingly evil and why my next computer will be Linux, and the best I can come up with is: As the Apple programming world becomes more separate from the rest of the programming world, developers will increasingly have to choose between learning Apple/iPhone/iPad and everything else. Apple entices users to its walled garden with shiny toys. Apple entices developers to its walled garden by having lots of users. (especially lots of rich users.)
And once developers are Apple wizards (at the expense of their non-Apple skills), they're at Apple's mercy. They have to play by the rules of the App Store, like it or not. They have to deal with ridiculous languages and frameworks, no matter how they change, like it or not. And so, consumers: with Apple you get shiny toys in the short term, but in the long term developers gets stifled, squeezed and bled dry. And then nobody wins except a certain black-turtlenecked figurehead.
God damn. I'm so glad that I've spent the past 2.5 years working for a company that is actually making the world a better place.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Fully externalizing memory
Thoughts in your head exist in a wonderful state. Each thought is like a whole tree of spindly little branches and leaves connecting to other thoughts and providing context. When you write down a thought or bookmark a site, it's like just getting the trunk.
Sometimes you can get more. When I write down a thing to do on a future date on my calendar, it's accessible in a nice state. If I take a photo of a memory, it's often easier to remember the full context of the memory than it is if I just write it down. But you can never get the full memory tree.
But you do get two benefits from externalizing memory. First, (semi-)permanence. Especially when it's in The Cloud. My blog will last at least as long as Google. (maybe longer, if I back it up myself too.) This is useful even in the short term: the other day, I forgot that I blogged this article, and then I found it again, and now I'm starting a new post based on EEGs and wakefulness.
Anyway, the second benefit to externalizing memory is the ability to quit worrying about it. Working memory is crucial to everything, and tiny (that old "7 +/- 2"). Say I have "remember to do this thing next Saturday" holding up one chunk of memory, now I'm down to 6 +/- 2. Losing a chunk of working memory is like losing a finger. So I write it down on Google Calendar, tell it to email me a reminder, and then I get my finger back.
So I feel like I'm down a few fingers. Here are some things I'd like to externalize:
- Instead of worrying about "creating jobs" and making more work, let's use our prosperity to work less. Or redefine "work". Hell yes! I imagine a world where people work because they want to, not because they need to survive. Post-scarcity world. I'm pretty friggin' lucky enough to live there now. What happens when everyone does? Could the US, big as it is, survive this transition? Could any country?
- I continue to dig Alex Pang's Contemplative Computing blog. Quote from the Buddha: "The Buddha's laboratory was himself, and he generalized his findings to cover all human beings." Follow the link to "program of weight loss"; it's pretty good. Well researched, yet readable, and touches on a lot of things I'm interested in.
- Another link off that, this time to "What Actually Was the Stone Age Diet?", maybe the best explanation of "caveman/paleo/etc" diets. It's somewhat professional, remarkably free of histrionics, not affiliated with anyone who wants to sell his own book, and boils down to:
1. There was no one "Stone Age Diet." Over the last couple hundred thousand years, humans ate roots and berries and meat, or cooked roots and tubers, or a wide range of plants and some meat, or a ton of meat.
2. The only things that we certainly haven't eaten for more than ~5000 years are cereal grains and milk.
3. Even then, we don't know how long it takes our body to adapt to a new diet.
My conclusions remain mostly the same: I'm not interested in counting carbs vs. proteins, but I remain open to the possibility that grains aren't awesome for us. Still gotta run that next experiment. (my plans are to do this in April, when my life has stabilized a bit.)
- arg side note on food which is disappointing because I had a great segue to get back into talking about self-monitoring. I don't know where or why I picked up Josh Whiton's blog in my Google Reader, but it's great. He talks about food here; I'm intrigued. (he just wrote about monks too. Always cool.)
- arg arg side note about monks: if I were that 93 year old 70-year monk, I feel like I'd be sort of upset about my life! I'm sure he's not. But still! This is why I'm feeling the "worldly AND monkly success" path instead of the "mountaintop" one. (possibly I am brilliant; more likely I am too naive and restless.)
- okay back to self monitoring/experimenting. It's hitting the mainstream. Also led me to Seth Roberts, who might be crazy (ad hominem alert!), but has written some stuff that's inspiring about research I care about anyway.
- incidentally, Readability is a breath of fresh air in the smoggy Beijing of the internet.
Sometimes you can get more. When I write down a thing to do on a future date on my calendar, it's accessible in a nice state. If I take a photo of a memory, it's often easier to remember the full context of the memory than it is if I just write it down. But you can never get the full memory tree.
But you do get two benefits from externalizing memory. First, (semi-)permanence. Especially when it's in The Cloud. My blog will last at least as long as Google. (maybe longer, if I back it up myself too.) This is useful even in the short term: the other day, I forgot that I blogged this article, and then I found it again, and now I'm starting a new post based on EEGs and wakefulness.
Anyway, the second benefit to externalizing memory is the ability to quit worrying about it. Working memory is crucial to everything, and tiny (that old "7 +/- 2"). Say I have "remember to do this thing next Saturday" holding up one chunk of memory, now I'm down to 6 +/- 2. Losing a chunk of working memory is like losing a finger. So I write it down on Google Calendar, tell it to email me a reminder, and then I get my finger back.
So I feel like I'm down a few fingers. Here are some things I'd like to externalize:
- Instead of worrying about "creating jobs" and making more work, let's use our prosperity to work less. Or redefine "work". Hell yes! I imagine a world where people work because they want to, not because they need to survive. Post-scarcity world. I'm pretty friggin' lucky enough to live there now. What happens when everyone does? Could the US, big as it is, survive this transition? Could any country?
- I continue to dig Alex Pang's Contemplative Computing blog. Quote from the Buddha: "The Buddha's laboratory was himself, and he generalized his findings to cover all human beings." Follow the link to "program of weight loss"; it's pretty good. Well researched, yet readable, and touches on a lot of things I'm interested in.
- Another link off that, this time to "What Actually Was the Stone Age Diet?", maybe the best explanation of "caveman/paleo/etc" diets. It's somewhat professional, remarkably free of histrionics, not affiliated with anyone who wants to sell his own book, and boils down to:
1. There was no one "Stone Age Diet." Over the last couple hundred thousand years, humans ate roots and berries and meat, or cooked roots and tubers, or a wide range of plants and some meat, or a ton of meat.
2. The only things that we certainly haven't eaten for more than ~5000 years are cereal grains and milk.
3. Even then, we don't know how long it takes our body to adapt to a new diet.
My conclusions remain mostly the same: I'm not interested in counting carbs vs. proteins, but I remain open to the possibility that grains aren't awesome for us. Still gotta run that next experiment. (my plans are to do this in April, when my life has stabilized a bit.)
- arg side note on food which is disappointing because I had a great segue to get back into talking about self-monitoring. I don't know where or why I picked up Josh Whiton's blog in my Google Reader, but it's great. He talks about food here; I'm intrigued. (he just wrote about monks too. Always cool.)
- arg arg side note about monks: if I were that 93 year old 70-year monk, I feel like I'd be sort of upset about my life! I'm sure he's not. But still! This is why I'm feeling the "worldly AND monkly success" path instead of the "mountaintop" one. (possibly I am brilliant; more likely I am too naive and restless.)
- okay back to self monitoring/experimenting. It's hitting the mainstream. Also led me to Seth Roberts, who might be crazy (ad hominem alert!), but has written some stuff that's inspiring about research I care about anyway.
- incidentally, Readability is a breath of fresh air in the smoggy Beijing of the internet.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Cross posting my Goodreads: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Here's the link, and I provide it so that you can friend me if you also use Goodreads.
I won't do this often either, but my modes of putting info on the internet are a bit fragmented: when I read a book, I post about it in Goodreads, but when I get to thinking, I blog. When I read a book and it gets me thinking, that's a pickle.
So I read this book (free pdf/kindlebook/etc! time management book from 1910 England!) and here's what it got me thinking:
This guy is quite a baller. "What I suggest is that at six o'clock you look facts in the face and admit that you are not tired (because you are not, you know)..." "'I hate all the arts!' you say. My dear sir, I respect you more and more." and a lot more badass quotes that I forgot to write down.
But also, he's an example that proves that this "lifestyle design" or even "time management" stuff wasn't born yesterday. He's writing this for the common middle-class you or me, who wishes to "accomplish something outside [his] formal programme." He points out how, in 1910, a bunch of people went to work, came home, and twiddled away their time, while growing upset that they're wasting their lives.
His solution, part 1, is to set aside 90 minutes 3x/week and dedicate them to learning in depth about something. Literature if you like (poetry, not novels); other arts if you don't; or just a sense of in-depth knowledge and wonder in all things. The whole thing smacks of being very English: "Just Try Harder!" But at the same time, there are a lot of Buddhist undertones:
"You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose."
"When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no matter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards before your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking round the corner with another subject. Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the station you will have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue."
"The most important of all perceptions is the continual perception of cause and effect- in other words, the perception of the continuous development of the universe"
"Let the pace of the first lap be even absurdly slow, but let it be as regular as possible."
It's a spot of enlightened jelly wrapped in a doughnut of stiff-upper-lip. Well, better than most Englishness, which doesn't even have the jelly.
I won't do this often either, but my modes of putting info on the internet are a bit fragmented: when I read a book, I post about it in Goodreads, but when I get to thinking, I blog. When I read a book and it gets me thinking, that's a pickle.
So I read this book (free pdf/kindlebook/etc! time management book from 1910 England!) and here's what it got me thinking:
This guy is quite a baller. "What I suggest is that at six o'clock you look facts in the face and admit that you are not tired (because you are not, you know)..." "'I hate all the arts!' you say. My dear sir, I respect you more and more." and a lot more badass quotes that I forgot to write down.
But also, he's an example that proves that this "lifestyle design" or even "time management" stuff wasn't born yesterday. He's writing this for the common middle-class you or me, who wishes to "accomplish something outside [his] formal programme." He points out how, in 1910, a bunch of people went to work, came home, and twiddled away their time, while growing upset that they're wasting their lives.
His solution, part 1, is to set aside 90 minutes 3x/week and dedicate them to learning in depth about something. Literature if you like (poetry, not novels); other arts if you don't; or just a sense of in-depth knowledge and wonder in all things. The whole thing smacks of being very English: "Just Try Harder!" But at the same time, there are a lot of Buddhist undertones:
"You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose."
"When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no matter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards before your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking round the corner with another subject. Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the station you will have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue."
"The most important of all perceptions is the continual perception of cause and effect- in other words, the perception of the continuous development of the universe"
"Let the pace of the first lap be even absurdly slow, but let it be as regular as possible."
It's a spot of enlightened jelly wrapped in a doughnut of stiff-upper-lip. Well, better than most Englishness, which doesn't even have the jelly.
Great idea of the day
Quick: name a tablet computer! Name 3! (err, Galaxy Tab, Xoom, grumble grumble Ipad)
Say you tell me that I should get a Vortex Nebula tablet. I've never heard of Vortex Nebula tablets. Immediately I know that this is either:
- a very new tablet
- a specialized tablet (and I'd expect you to give more reasoning as to why I would like it particularly)
- a bad recommendation
Okay, now name a cognitive architecture. I can think of one, ACT-R, and it helps that my undergrad Cog Sci advisor at CMU was its inventor, and that I spent a summer working on tools based on it.
I'm not currently working with cognitive architectures. But say I wanted to get into the field. You can imagine how it'd be useful to have this sense of "what's kinda standard" before I start.
Why do I know "what's kinda standard" in tablets, but not in cognitive architectures? I'm going to guess it's advertising. Even though they're totally brain dead and content free, ads for these things are around you all the time, so you get to know at least what the mainstream is using.
So here's the great idea: you have Adblock in your browser, right? What if, instead of removing ads, it just replaced each ad with the title of a paper you care about instead? (specifically, you give it a field, and it throws in paper names in that field, randomly according to how often they're cited, say. or author names.) You'd get to absorb useful names instead of ads! Instant sense of "what's kinda standard"!
Say you tell me that I should get a Vortex Nebula tablet. I've never heard of Vortex Nebula tablets. Immediately I know that this is either:
- a very new tablet
- a specialized tablet (and I'd expect you to give more reasoning as to why I would like it particularly)
- a bad recommendation
Okay, now name a cognitive architecture. I can think of one, ACT-R, and it helps that my undergrad Cog Sci advisor at CMU was its inventor, and that I spent a summer working on tools based on it.
I'm not currently working with cognitive architectures. But say I wanted to get into the field. You can imagine how it'd be useful to have this sense of "what's kinda standard" before I start.
Why do I know "what's kinda standard" in tablets, but not in cognitive architectures? I'm going to guess it's advertising. Even though they're totally brain dead and content free, ads for these things are around you all the time, so you get to know at least what the mainstream is using.
So here's the great idea: you have Adblock in your browser, right? What if, instead of removing ads, it just replaced each ad with the title of a paper you care about instead? (specifically, you give it a field, and it throws in paper names in that field, randomly according to how often they're cited, say. or author names.) You'd get to absorb useful names instead of ads! Instant sense of "what's kinda standard"!
Monday, March 07, 2011
Career is only one letter away from Careen
Life can go all sorts of ways! Here are a few I'm thinking of, in descending order of preference.
1. the Dynamo. Love your job. Do something interesting, get expert at it, rock around the clock. Examples: Herb Simon, Cal Newport, anyone who works at a nonprofit. Sometimes these people are academics or doctors. They're always driven.
Upsides: you're Making A Difference. It's widely socially accepted. If you're an expert, you probably won't have trouble making money. The hours you're at work are wonderful.
Downsides: work might consume your life. Family and friends will require some effort. Unless you really work on developing your attention, mindfulness, and compassion, you might become a one-dimensional scatterbrained pencilhead. Also, the academic life is not easy.
2. the New Rich. Examples: Tim Ferriss, Chris Guillebeau, any number of bloggers and internet businessmen. Make some money somehow. Do it using the least effort possible. (beat the system a bit maybe.) Now that you have enough money to survive comfortably, spend the rest of your time pursuing any passion you want.
Upsides: how does this not sound great? This, not the 40-hours-for-40-years grind, is the standard of the new world. You still get to be your own boss. Making A Difference is overrated anyway.
Downsides: other people might try to drag you down. It's not as easy as it sounds. The hours you spend at work might be crummy. You might wonder why you're selling Pokemon Beanie Babies instead of Making A Difference. You have to keep up your personal development in your free time, because what is life if you're not somehow learning?
3. the Mercenary. Examples: a couple friends I won't name b/c y'know the internet. Travel around, get a job, make some money, quit your job, live for a while, when you're out of money get another job.
Upsides: as a softwareman, this is totally feasible. It's like plan #2 except when you're not working, you're totally not working.
Downsides: you might spend your life implementing a points-and-badges system for someone's social Web 2.0 AJAX mobile local foursquare twitter blatz. You have to lie to others because not liking your job is generally socially frowned upon. If you start to take it too seriously, you may have to lie to yourself to stay sane.
4. the Monk. Examples: some travel bloggers I guess? Oh and maybe the Buddha but that was like 2600 years ago. Whether you actually become a monk or just start wandering for a long time is up to you. This is always a remote possibility that I will probably never have the guts to actually pull off.
Upsides: Enlightenment!
Downsides: don't be an idiot. (honestly. I don't mean this sarcastically. It's a legit choice, at least for a while. But you'd have to take extra care not to be an idiot.)
5. other kinds of specialized lives. Like say you're a lawyer; you'll undoubtedly have different paths than this. Or a field linguist or a veterinarian or whatever.
6. the 40x40. Put in your 40-hour work week for 40 years. Make a lot of money doing something you don't like. Get a gold watch when you retire.
Anyway, there is no great wisdom here besides that I like to organize things and give them names. I'm trying out Career Plan #1 right now; I feel like I could definitely hit it in the academic world. If it doesn't work out, let's give 2, 3, or 4 a try. I wonder if there are any big categories I'm missing.
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Clearing out my Google reader
Somehow, even though I spend all my time staring at fluorescent rectangles, there's not enough time to organize and output all my thoughts. Here are four.
First, Tim Bray posts about making money in mobile, concluding that yeah, making money selling apps is tough, but there's a lot of other ways to make a ton of money here, and we have no idea how big this market will end up being. He links to Anil Dash's post about running "lifestyle businesses" on the web. My thoughts: this is awesome. This is really great. It supports the idea that, should my research dreams not work out, I could potentially support myself by doing internet things for myself without going crazy.
I've been wanting to write this post about speaking D-list languages for years. If you speak Spanish, and you meet another Spanish speaker, great, you can communicate. But if you speak y'know Ukrainian or something, and you meet another Ukrainian speaker: instant friends! This is most of why I want to learn Dutch. Also, it applies to more than languages: if your favorite food is pizza, and someone else's favorite food is pizza, meh. But hey, if you like herring, let me know, because then we are chums.
Tim Bray again! About input. I agree. Wish I could vomit words into a computer faster. Particularly when doing things like transcribing a dream journal. (one of my coworkers' responses to this was: 90 WPM isn't fast enough for you? Nope.)
I follow a lot of blogs about "lifestyle design or whatever." I find them exciting. And it's great to think that a lot of people are sculpting their own lives in this Internet Age of Change All the Time, instead of just falling into predictable (damaging) ruts. The downside is that a lot of times this overlaps with "making money on the internet" in sort of annoying ways. (and, god forbid, "social media.") So I'm excited to hear about this change-of-mind from one of these lifestyle-design-or-whatever bloggers.
First, Tim Bray posts about making money in mobile, concluding that yeah, making money selling apps is tough, but there's a lot of other ways to make a ton of money here, and we have no idea how big this market will end up being. He links to Anil Dash's post about running "lifestyle businesses" on the web. My thoughts: this is awesome. This is really great. It supports the idea that, should my research dreams not work out, I could potentially support myself by doing internet things for myself without going crazy.
I've been wanting to write this post about speaking D-list languages for years. If you speak Spanish, and you meet another Spanish speaker, great, you can communicate. But if you speak y'know Ukrainian or something, and you meet another Ukrainian speaker: instant friends! This is most of why I want to learn Dutch. Also, it applies to more than languages: if your favorite food is pizza, and someone else's favorite food is pizza, meh. But hey, if you like herring, let me know, because then we are chums.
Tim Bray again! About input. I agree. Wish I could vomit words into a computer faster. Particularly when doing things like transcribing a dream journal. (one of my coworkers' responses to this was: 90 WPM isn't fast enough for you? Nope.)
I follow a lot of blogs about "lifestyle design or whatever." I find them exciting. And it's great to think that a lot of people are sculpting their own lives in this Internet Age of Change All the Time, instead of just falling into predictable (damaging) ruts. The downside is that a lot of times this overlaps with "making money on the internet" in sort of annoying ways. (and, god forbid, "social media.") So I'm excited to hear about this change-of-mind from one of these lifestyle-design-or-whatever bloggers.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Word games
So there are "board games". Unfortunately, when you say "board games", somehow Scrabble, Monopoly, Settlers, Risk, Bang!, Betrayal, and Catch Phrase all get lumped into this same category. This makes it hard to disambiguate sometimes. I think there should be at least 4 very different categories:
1. Party Games: Catch Phrase, Identity Crisis, Scattergories, and I guess Cranium and Apples to Apples
2. Card Games: Bang, Bohnanza, maybe even Dominion
3. Strategy Games: Settlers, Puerto Rico, Agricola
Now these are on a pretty easy axis: complication (aka nerdiness). Puerto Rico is good to play with your programmer bros, Catch Phrase is good to play with 12 random people at a party and/or your family. And that's the defining characteristic of each category. The card/board distinction seems somewhat coincidental (although maybe not but I'll get into this later).
But the fourth category is word games: Scrabble, Boggle, Bananagrams, Snatch It. The defining characteristic of these games is that they depend on how well you've memorized the English dictionary. And in how many forms you've memorized it: can you come up with an 8-letter word that starts with W? How about a 5 letter word that includes C, A, T, and 2 other letters? (and how quickly?) And because these games are so focused on this one skill, it's hard to place them accurately on the complication axis. Some really nerdy folks don't like them, some totally non-nerdy folks do.
(I like them a lot. They make me feel flowy, and like I'm really honing a skill. If strategy board games are like weightlifting and party games are like running, word games are like pole vaulting. Or learning a language.)
So if the question is "do you like board games?" I think my best answer is "yeah, I'm about a 2.2 on the complication scale, and I love word games." Incidentally, if you ever want to play word games, I'm down.
1. Party Games: Catch Phrase, Identity Crisis, Scattergories, and I guess Cranium and Apples to Apples
2. Card Games: Bang, Bohnanza, maybe even Dominion
3. Strategy Games: Settlers, Puerto Rico, Agricola
Now these are on a pretty easy axis: complication (aka nerdiness). Puerto Rico is good to play with your programmer bros, Catch Phrase is good to play with 12 random people at a party and/or your family. And that's the defining characteristic of each category. The card/board distinction seems somewhat coincidental (although maybe not but I'll get into this later).
But the fourth category is word games: Scrabble, Boggle, Bananagrams, Snatch It. The defining characteristic of these games is that they depend on how well you've memorized the English dictionary. And in how many forms you've memorized it: can you come up with an 8-letter word that starts with W? How about a 5 letter word that includes C, A, T, and 2 other letters? (and how quickly?) And because these games are so focused on this one skill, it's hard to place them accurately on the complication axis. Some really nerdy folks don't like them, some totally non-nerdy folks do.
(I like them a lot. They make me feel flowy, and like I'm really honing a skill. If strategy board games are like weightlifting and party games are like running, word games are like pole vaulting. Or learning a language.)
So if the question is "do you like board games?" I think my best answer is "yeah, I'm about a 2.2 on the complication scale, and I love word games." Incidentally, if you ever want to play word games, I'm down.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Wow, lucid 4, in which I have a somewhat ominous and disappointing convo with Mr. Rogers
A day after lucid dream 3 (so, night before last) came lucid dream 4. A day! As with programming, rapid iteration == fun.
In this one, I realized I was lucid, and looked at my hands. They didn't look quite right; one of my thumbs was half gone. So I thought "that's not right", and the thumb disappeared completely. I thought "that's still not right," and it reappeared fully. Nice.
Then I said, okay, I want to meet some dream people again. But this whole lucid dreaming thing is still a little freaky, so... who should I see? How about the least freaky person ever: Mr. Rogers. So I said "I'll close my eyes, and when I open them, Mr. Rogers will be here." No luck. Again. Still no luck. I "realized" that of course that won't work, I should go to Mr. Rogers's house. So I said I'd close my eyes, open them, and be at Mr. Rogers's house. Success! I think.
I don't know what Mr. Rogers's house looks like. Maybe this was it. And when Mr. Rogers came to the door, he didn't look or act just like Mr. Rogers from the show- but then, of course he's a little different when he's not on TV. Here's how our conversation went:
Me: Who are you?
Him: Mr. Rogers.
Me: What do you represent?
Him: (no response)
Me: (thinking, well, here he is, might as well get some advice. but I didn't plan any questions in the waking life. so...) Okay, what should I do about my career?
Him: (still no response)
Me: What should I be?
Him: Well, you could always be a carbonmaker.
Me: a what?
Him: a carbonmaker.
Me: huh?
Him: well, you wanted some prescient advice, there it is. (in the tone of "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.")
Me: okay... what about the ladies? (I think I meant "should I get married someday?" although I might have just been asking Mr. Rogers how to pick up chicks, which is hilarious.)
Him: I don't know what to tell you, I'm single.
Me: what? I thought you were married.
Him (and this I remember is an exact quote): I have no hope for you, boy.
Afterthought: I don't feel totally in control of lucid-me, which is why I still come up with random stuff sometimes. For the record, both lucid-me and the subconscious Mr. Rogers that I conjured up are great. Also, after this dream I felt a little dumb, like I just forced some random situation and then filled in the blanks with the way I think Mr. Rogers would act, and I asked stupid questions and got stupid answers. I think, next dream, I'll do a bit more looking around, and play with the dream world that I get, instead of deciding which dream world I want.
In this one, I realized I was lucid, and looked at my hands. They didn't look quite right; one of my thumbs was half gone. So I thought "that's not right", and the thumb disappeared completely. I thought "that's still not right," and it reappeared fully. Nice.
Then I said, okay, I want to meet some dream people again. But this whole lucid dreaming thing is still a little freaky, so... who should I see? How about the least freaky person ever: Mr. Rogers. So I said "I'll close my eyes, and when I open them, Mr. Rogers will be here." No luck. Again. Still no luck. I "realized" that of course that won't work, I should go to Mr. Rogers's house. So I said I'd close my eyes, open them, and be at Mr. Rogers's house. Success! I think.
I don't know what Mr. Rogers's house looks like. Maybe this was it. And when Mr. Rogers came to the door, he didn't look or act just like Mr. Rogers from the show- but then, of course he's a little different when he's not on TV. Here's how our conversation went:
Me: Who are you?
Him: Mr. Rogers.
Me: What do you represent?
Him: (no response)
Me: (thinking, well, here he is, might as well get some advice. but I didn't plan any questions in the waking life. so...) Okay, what should I do about my career?
Him: (still no response)
Me: What should I be?
Him: Well, you could always be a carbonmaker.
Me: a what?
Him: a carbonmaker.
Me: huh?
Him: well, you wanted some prescient advice, there it is. (in the tone of "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.")
Me: okay... what about the ladies? (I think I meant "should I get married someday?" although I might have just been asking Mr. Rogers how to pick up chicks, which is hilarious.)
Him: I don't know what to tell you, I'm single.
Me: what? I thought you were married.
Him (and this I remember is an exact quote): I have no hope for you, boy.
Afterthought: I don't feel totally in control of lucid-me, which is why I still come up with random stuff sometimes. For the record, both lucid-me and the subconscious Mr. Rogers that I conjured up are great. Also, after this dream I felt a little dumb, like I just forced some random situation and then filled in the blanks with the way I think Mr. Rogers would act, and I asked stupid questions and got stupid answers. I think, next dream, I'll do a bit more looking around, and play with the dream world that I get, instead of deciding which dream world I want.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
More lucid oh boy
- I was flying around the galaxy, until I realized I wanted to talk to some people, so I said "the great thing about all these stars and galaxies is that they're really... a pizza!" Then I was standing on a planets-and-stars carpet in a basement. (of course by "pizza" I meant "carpet".)
- I met a person! I got to talk to him! There were a bunch of us dancing in a circle, singing a song, until I said to one youngish fellow with a terrible bowl haircut, "Wait. Who are you? What do you represent?" I wrote down who he said he was (don't remember now), I didn't remember what he represented, and then I said "do you have a name?" and he said no.
- my heart started beating really hard and I woke up.
Dream people! There are dream people! They act meaningfully!
- I met a person! I got to talk to him! There were a bunch of us dancing in a circle, singing a song, until I said to one youngish fellow with a terrible bowl haircut, "Wait. Who are you? What do you represent?" I wrote down who he said he was (don't remember now), I didn't remember what he represented, and then I said "do you have a name?" and he said no.
- my heart started beating really hard and I woke up.
Dream people! There are dream people! They act meaningfully!
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
More data about my life; this time it's sleep.
On my research blog here.
Somewhat interesting! No linear correlation between how long I slept and how awake I feel. Nor between the WakeMate score and how awake I feel. Hmm.
EDIT: actually, there is something interesting. There's a correlation between how awake I feel when I wake up, and how awake I feel all day. Well, that's not super interesting, but it's something.
Somewhat interesting! No linear correlation between how long I slept and how awake I feel. Nor between the WakeMate score and how awake I feel. Hmm.
EDIT: actually, there is something interesting. There's a correlation between how awake I feel when I wake up, and how awake I feel all day. Well, that's not super interesting, but it's something.
Monday, February 21, 2011
The big no-grains results! Plus, relearning stats, continued.
Let's assume we only care about the "stomach" variable. I have 9 days where I ate grains, and 19 days where I ate no grains. On each day I have a number that says how well my stomach felt, on average, during the day. I would like to know if my average stomach feeling is the same or not the same on grains days vs. non-grains days.
(let's assume that there's no weirdness where grains makes your stomach feel worse for the next 2 weeks or something. In fact, let's forget about the fact that these are time series data at all. This might be a minor or a major statistical transgression, I don't know.)
I think the test to use here is a Student's t-test (AKA just "t-test"). Particularly, an independent 2-sample t-test with equal variances (assumed) and unequal sample sizes. (side note: I also remembered z-tests and ANOVAs, and it looks like:
- a z-test is a simpler test that you can use when you're just trying to know if a sample that you've taken is significantly different from the group as a whole. For example, if I knew my "stomach" value for every day of my life (or even if I just knew the mean and standard deviation), I could use a z-test to tell if those 19 no-grains days were unusually high/low stomach-value days compared to all 9038 days of my life.
- an ANOVA is a generalization of the t-test. Specifically, the one-way ANOVA is something you can use to compare >2 means. For example, if I tried "no grains" for two weeks, then "no meat" for two weeks, then "no coffee or peanuts" for two weeks (clearly this would be the hardest), I could compare my stomach value for all of those.
- if "ANOVA" wasn't scary enough, there's also things called "ANCOVA" and "MANOVA"; the latter makes me snicker every time.)
Okay! Let's do some t-testing! In one corner, the stomach (, mood, energy) values of my grains days. In the other corner, the stomach (, mood, energy) values of my no-grains days. Which Is Bigger?
t-test on mood before and after grains:
t = -0.78694967152, p = 0.439345514713
t-test on energy before and after grains:
t = -0.961369818324, p = 0.346365085994
t-test on stomach before and after grains:
t = -1.98753017649, p = 0.0588975495116
Again, the p-value is the one that tells you if there's anything going on. Small p-value means there's a small chance that this effect could have happened by chance. Looks like I can't say anything about whether grains effect my mood or energy. But p=0.058 is pretty small! (traditionally 0.05 is the threshold for caring about p-values, at least in psych) And surprisingly so. I couldn't have told you that from the graph.
Let's look at the data again: (check it out, I'm learning python string formatting)
stomach with grains: ['3.10', '2.92', '2.78', '2.83', '2.36', '2.75', '3.29']
mean = 2.86
stomach without grains: ['3.33', '3.67', '2.89', '3.37', '3.31', '3.60', '3.00', '2.87', '2.59', '2.80', '2.92', '3.11', '3.22', '3.63', '3.47', '3.29', '2.89', '2.67']
mean = 3.15
Huh! That is interesting. Now before you jump to conclusions, note a few things:
- this is self reported, not double blind, not even single blind. (although in this case I'm the experimenter and the subject, so single blind = double blind; and it'd be really hard to make this experiment blind.)
- data was gathered "as I feel like it" AKA whenever I use my phone.
- I cut out 3 days' worth of data because they each had only one sample.
- "days" were split at midnight, even though I usually had one or two points after midnight; I should probably split them at about 3 or 4AM.
- I didn't just cut out grains. I also minimized added sugar (how well? dunno) and added more meat.
- p = 0.058. That's really borderline significant. It could just be a fluke.
- I didn't say what I'd look for before doing the experiment. Why is this such a big deal? Well, p=0.058 means that even if grains didn't matter, 5.8% of the time such an effect could have happened just by chance. Which means that if I tracked 20 variables, I'd find one that "looked significant".
But hey, exploratory pilot study: super success! I think that my energy and my mood are pretty similar, and I think that maybe grains make my stomach feel worse although I'd need to study it again to tell for sure. Very cool!
No Grains Experiment: my mood ~ my energy
Linear regression between mood and energy
mood = 0.825810375087 * energy + -0.0729595387559
r=0.758294792793, p=1.88373127793e-06, stderr=0.13663099386
Linear regression between energy and stomach
energy = 0.258583651008 * stomach + 2.34871983188
r=0.304880567838, p=0.107798798334, stderr=0.155454941953
Linear regression between stomach and mood
stomach = 0.339858387287 * mood + 2.29632783485
r=0.313914641094, p=0.0972479087456, stderr=0.197823185145
(that's mood on the x-axis, energy on the y-axis, each data point is one day, sorry this graph is weak, I'm learning here)
mood = 0.825810375087 * energy + -0.0729595387559
r=0.758294792793, p=1.88373127793e-06, stderr=0.13663099386
Linear regression between energy and stomach
energy = 0.258583651008 * stomach + 2.34871983188
r=0.304880567838, p=0.107798798334, stderr=0.155454941953
Linear regression between stomach and mood
stomach = 0.339858387287 * mood + 2.29632783485
r=0.313914641094, p=0.0972479087456, stderr=0.197823185145
I was tracking 3 variables: how energetic I feel, how my mood is in general, and how my stomach feels. I figured they'd either all be independent (because those seem like they could be independent) or they'd all be strongly correlated (because I enter them at the same time, and they're all 1-5, so if I'm hitting 3 for the first one, say, I'm more likely to hit 3 for the second one.)
Surprisingly, it looks like there's a strong correlation between mood and energy, but only a pretty weak correlation between energy and stomach or stomach and mood. I'm maybe half confident that I'm interpreting that right, but if so, then that means that the more energized I am, the better mood I'll be in. That makes sense to me. I like being energized. I don't get into high-energy negative states (like anger) very much; if I'm high-energy, I'm likely feeling pretty positive. And optimizing the state of my stomach: maybe not even worth it! (I mean, for "feeling good" reasons. Optimizing the state of my stomach might have good long-term health implications, say.)
(that's mood on the x-axis, energy on the y-axis, each data point is one day, sorry this graph is weak, I'm learning here)
Still more stats to follow! (including, y'know, the important ones, where I figure out whether no-grains is worth it at all)
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Happiness again, but I'll try to keep it grounded.
I've come across two sources since my last post about happiness that make me want to discuss it more:
1. "The Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner.
2. Google Buzz comments from the last post. (thanks, Daniel, Gerrit, and Dan!)
So there are at least two meanings of "happiness." One is kinda "any good thing in your life" and therefore it's about as vague as "goodness". I'll call this meaning "big-H Happiness." Another meaning might be, as Daniel suggested, "a pleasant and optimistic mood that comes from things going right and not wrong." I'll call that one "contentment". (is that fair?) Fulfillment is yet another kind of happiness.
BUDDHIST ASIDE: contentment is not at all Happiness. Seems like you maximize contentment by avoiding suffering, while if you're Buddhist, you maximize Happiness by knowing the 4 noble truths, being superbly mindful, and ultimately ending suffering. END BUDDHIST ASIDE
SINGULARITARIAN ASIDE: ultimately all suffering comes from the set-in-stone fact that we all must eventually die. Someday that fact may not be set in stone anymore. This is a much longer debate, but if we find a way to become immortal, can we find a way to avoid suffering forever? Does the end of death mean the end of the need for Buddhism? END SINGULARITARIAN ASIDE
Back to the main point: there are many kinds of happiness. Eric Weiner starts his book with a quest: to search for happiness. He visits the Netherlands, Thailand, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, and others, all "happy" places by one measure or another, to see if he can recognize any common threads between them.
Now actually, I think I'm behind this plan. At first, it sounds absurd, like searching for "goodness", but I guess it's also like searching for "beauty", and the latter sounds like a good plan for a series of travels. Go to the Louvre, the MOMA, the Sagrada Familia, Fallingwater, Costa Rica, Grindelwald, and everywhere in between, and try to see what beauty is. This is an absurdly ambitious task, sure, and the search for happiness even more ambitious, but what the heck. It's a book.
But still, it's a search for happiness; I don't think he's very sure what he's looking for. Nevertheless, it's entertaining. And despite all my predictable grumbling about "he's not finding the right KIND of HAPPINESS", he has some good points:
- About the Swiss: he doesn't know if they're "happy"; "content" is more like it. But that's not quite it either. "We have far more words to describe unpleasant emotional states than pleasant ones. (And this is the case with all languages, not just English.)"
- About Bhutan and Gross National Happiness: "John Ralston Saul, the Canadian philosopher, describes Gross National Happiness as a brilliant trick. 'What it does is go "Snap!" and changes the discourse. Suddenly you're talking about something else.'"
I find this very appealing. Often changing the conversation is the best way to get what you want.
- "In the west and in the United States especially, we try to eliminate the need for compromise. Cars have personal climate controls, mattresses have personal firmness levels... If we no longer must compromise on the easy stuff, like mattresses, then what about the truly important issues? Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use."
Also s/compromise/suffering/g. (that means "substitute 'suffering' for 'compromise'".) Stop trying to eliminate suffering/compromise, and just get better at dealing with it. A portion of your happiness cross-training regimen.
1. "The Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner.
2. Google Buzz comments from the last post. (thanks, Daniel, Gerrit, and Dan!)
So there are at least two meanings of "happiness." One is kinda "any good thing in your life" and therefore it's about as vague as "goodness". I'll call this meaning "big-H Happiness." Another meaning might be, as Daniel suggested, "a pleasant and optimistic mood that comes from things going right and not wrong." I'll call that one "contentment". (is that fair?) Fulfillment is yet another kind of happiness.
BUDDHIST ASIDE: contentment is not at all Happiness. Seems like you maximize contentment by avoiding suffering, while if you're Buddhist, you maximize Happiness by knowing the 4 noble truths, being superbly mindful, and ultimately ending suffering. END BUDDHIST ASIDE
SINGULARITARIAN ASIDE: ultimately all suffering comes from the set-in-stone fact that we all must eventually die. Someday that fact may not be set in stone anymore. This is a much longer debate, but if we find a way to become immortal, can we find a way to avoid suffering forever? Does the end of death mean the end of the need for Buddhism? END SINGULARITARIAN ASIDE
Back to the main point: there are many kinds of happiness. Eric Weiner starts his book with a quest: to search for happiness. He visits the Netherlands, Thailand, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, and others, all "happy" places by one measure or another, to see if he can recognize any common threads between them.
Now actually, I think I'm behind this plan. At first, it sounds absurd, like searching for "goodness", but I guess it's also like searching for "beauty", and the latter sounds like a good plan for a series of travels. Go to the Louvre, the MOMA, the Sagrada Familia, Fallingwater, Costa Rica, Grindelwald, and everywhere in between, and try to see what beauty is. This is an absurdly ambitious task, sure, and the search for happiness even more ambitious, but what the heck. It's a book.
But still, it's a search for happiness; I don't think he's very sure what he's looking for. Nevertheless, it's entertaining. And despite all my predictable grumbling about "he's not finding the right KIND of HAPPINESS", he has some good points:
- About the Swiss: he doesn't know if they're "happy"; "content" is more like it. But that's not quite it either. "We have far more words to describe unpleasant emotional states than pleasant ones. (And this is the case with all languages, not just English.)"
- About Bhutan and Gross National Happiness: "John Ralston Saul, the Canadian philosopher, describes Gross National Happiness as a brilliant trick. 'What it does is go "Snap!" and changes the discourse. Suddenly you're talking about something else.'"
I find this very appealing. Often changing the conversation is the best way to get what you want.
- "In the west and in the United States especially, we try to eliminate the need for compromise. Cars have personal climate controls, mattresses have personal firmness levels... If we no longer must compromise on the easy stuff, like mattresses, then what about the truly important issues? Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use."
Also s/compromise/suffering/g. (that means "substitute 'suffering' for 'compromise'".) Stop trying to eliminate suffering/compromise, and just get better at dealing with it. A portion of your happiness cross-training regimen.
Lucid dreamt again!
Notes from this time:
- Looking at your hands or feet to stabilize the dream really worked. It felt like they came into focus, and I was able to stay lucid for a couple minutes after, instead of just waking up.
- I kept trying to convince some friends that it was a dream. They were pretty unresponsive. Then I kept asking them "so hey, we can do anything, go anywhere, what do you want to do?" and nobody came up with much. Eventually one of them said "I don't know... Gala?" (we all understood that Gala was some magical fantasy land that you fly to. Sadly, we didn't make it there.)
- I wonder why I kept asking them what they wanted to do, instead of just doing it myself. My goal this time was to talk to a dream-person, ask them who they were or what they represented. Somehow I didn't get around to it.
- After things faded to black, I was in a little bit of itunes-visualizer land for a minute. (what kind of minute?) It was nice and pretty exciting, but I was a little disappointed because I knew I was on my way back to the waking world.
- The most exciting thing, I think, is that I lucid-dreamt again, which is the second time in about as many weeks, which means it's unlikely that the other was a fluke, and more likely that I'll be able to do it more.
- Looking at your hands or feet to stabilize the dream really worked. It felt like they came into focus, and I was able to stay lucid for a couple minutes after, instead of just waking up.
- I kept trying to convince some friends that it was a dream. They were pretty unresponsive. Then I kept asking them "so hey, we can do anything, go anywhere, what do you want to do?" and nobody came up with much. Eventually one of them said "I don't know... Gala?" (we all understood that Gala was some magical fantasy land that you fly to. Sadly, we didn't make it there.)
- I wonder why I kept asking them what they wanted to do, instead of just doing it myself. My goal this time was to talk to a dream-person, ask them who they were or what they represented. Somehow I didn't get around to it.
- I wasn't very lucid, and it didn't last very long.
- flying worked sort of like I expected, which is to say, it worked when I was confident that it was working, and I sort of struggled or lowered when I was less confident. Somehow I decided that pedaling like a bike was the way to fly. It worked well enough; it wasn't this euphoric effortless flying, but it was very nice. Things soon faded to black.- After things faded to black, I was in a little bit of itunes-visualizer land for a minute. (what kind of minute?) It was nice and pretty exciting, but I was a little disappointed because I knew I was on my way back to the waking world.
- The most exciting thing, I think, is that I lucid-dreamt again, which is the second time in about as many weeks, which means it's unlikely that the other was a fluke, and more likely that I'll be able to do it more.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Live excitement-driven?
God, here I am talking about a Tim Ferriss book again. Whatever. The deal was "buy the 4-hour body, get the 4-hour workweek pdf free," so I got both. 4HWW is actually more interesting, as I don't want to lose weight or gain muscle, and that's what most of 4HB is about. (course, I don't really want to make an automated web-based business either, and that's what most of 4HWW is about, but whatever.)
Nevertheless, there are nuggets that have stuck with me, and one of the biggies is when he's talking about happiness. Ferriss says people are always talking about happiness, but that's like saying you want "good" food; it's true, but it doesn't give you any guidelines as to how to get there. Hey, I'm listening; this is something I think quite a bit. His answer is: talk about excitement instead. Don't search for happiness, search for excitement. (see quote #4 here)
I like it! I may adopt that as a motto or guideline or whatever. When you're excited, all the little stuff doesn't matter. Life is fun, in pretty much every way. You get to move mountains, because you gain energy from your work instead of spending it.
On the other hand, there's another newfangled internet hero: Cal Newport, who argues that it's not about finding work that excites you, but about enjoying the work you have. He does have, well, 3000 years of meditative history, as well as the entire religion that I most believe in, behind him. Well. That's hard to argue with.
Or maybe we have a false dichotomy. Enjoy the work you have, and seek out new work that excites you? I guess that makes sense. I don't know, if I had to pick sides, the excitement thing is really tempting. I may think more about this later but I have some purple potatoes burning in the oven.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
No Grains Experiment: so far inconclusive.
So I've managed to graph my personal data of the last month, and here are some preliminary results. On days 9-27 I ate no grains; on days 3-8 and 28-31 I ate grains.
(charts created using Google Chart API)
It seems unlikely that there's any difference in any variable. I have good days and bad days either way. Fair enough. I'd like to do some Real Actual Stats (tm) on this data. Either way, cool to see! More info coming soon enough...
It seems unlikely that there's any difference in any variable. I have good days and bad days either way. Fair enough. I'd like to do some Real Actual Stats (tm) on this data. Either way, cool to see! More info coming soon enough...
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
I know other people's dreams are boring, but come on folks, this one was lucid!
It happened the night before last. First, some background: I'm reading "Lucid Dreaming" by Robert Waggoner, and it's seriously fantastic. It's a different world. I'm not sure how far down the rabbit hole I go, but at least far enough to want to know more. I've picked up some tips, and this dream provided a smorgasbord of opportunities to try them out. Some notes:
- I was most certainly lucid. I said to a friend,"this is a dream!" It didn't happen from reality testing; it just seemed rather spontaneous. I caught a coin in mid-air, then I realized I was dreaming.
- I had enough presence of mind to remember things from the waking world. That's good, because:
- the first thing I did was to start spinning, as that's supposed to prolong lucid dreams. Sure did. However, I also closed my eyes, which put me into a black zone kind of like floating through space. I wondered if the dream was going to end, but luckily, it didn't, and I ended up in:
- vivid vivid land by the sea. If I had to compare it to somewhere, it'd be Dinosaur Land from Mario World, if it had been rendered by the artists who did Riven.
- I remembered that profound things had happened to Waggoner after he stopped trying to do stuff and said "hey dream, show me something important!" so I tried the same a few times. No luck.
- However, I saw a FedEx office building, and I didn't know what to do. I said "Hey dream, should I go in?" and a light flashed above the door. This may be the coolest event of the dream. I feel like I directly communicated with my subconscious. Like there's another guy in my head creating a movie for me to watch.
- I met a couple people from real life, but they were silent and didn't do much, like cardboard cutouts. I didn't particularly try to engage them.
- I feel like I slipped out of lucidity at one point. It started to feel like a regular dream.
- However, then I had the control to say "I want to see my family" and I did. They were kind of floating in space. I couldn't even see them clearly, but I felt very deeply grateful to them. This has happened before.
- I had a false awakening. I "woke up" in my childhood home, in my bunkbeds, trying to write down the dream, but a friend kept talking to me. Then I woke up for serious.
- I felt wonderful for the entire next day.
All just as this book (and everything else I've ever read about lucid dreaming) has said. Wow. I can't wait for it to happen again.
- I was most certainly lucid. I said to a friend,"this is a dream!" It didn't happen from reality testing; it just seemed rather spontaneous. I caught a coin in mid-air, then I realized I was dreaming.
- I had enough presence of mind to remember things from the waking world. That's good, because:
- the first thing I did was to start spinning, as that's supposed to prolong lucid dreams. Sure did. However, I also closed my eyes, which put me into a black zone kind of like floating through space. I wondered if the dream was going to end, but luckily, it didn't, and I ended up in:
- vivid vivid land by the sea. If I had to compare it to somewhere, it'd be Dinosaur Land from Mario World, if it had been rendered by the artists who did Riven.
- I remembered that profound things had happened to Waggoner after he stopped trying to do stuff and said "hey dream, show me something important!" so I tried the same a few times. No luck.
- However, I saw a FedEx office building, and I didn't know what to do. I said "Hey dream, should I go in?" and a light flashed above the door. This may be the coolest event of the dream. I feel like I directly communicated with my subconscious. Like there's another guy in my head creating a movie for me to watch.
- I met a couple people from real life, but they were silent and didn't do much, like cardboard cutouts. I didn't particularly try to engage them.
- I feel like I slipped out of lucidity at one point. It started to feel like a regular dream.
- However, then I had the control to say "I want to see my family" and I did. They were kind of floating in space. I couldn't even see them clearly, but I felt very deeply grateful to them. This has happened before.
- I had a false awakening. I "woke up" in my childhood home, in my bunkbeds, trying to write down the dream, but a friend kept talking to me. Then I woke up for serious.
- I felt wonderful for the entire next day.
All just as this book (and everything else I've ever read about lucid dreaming) has said. Wow. I can't wait for it to happen again.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Listen, Cat Stevens is seriously great.
I thought he was just another of those old dudes my dad had records of. He's a singer-songwriter. He was active in the 70's. Both of those are strikes in my book. But like the Beatles (and yes, I think I can talk about Cat and the Beatles in the same sentence), Cat is actually worth listening to today.
Positive characteristics of Cat Stevens:
- he makes acoustic-guitary songs that sound nice.
- he makes rolling-piano songs that sound nice.
- his lyrics are mystical in a couple different ways. Take Katmandu for something that sounds South-Asian (oh okay maybe it's just because he's talking about Katmandu), or Into White for something that sounds sorta Anglo-mythological (or maybe this is just me), or Lady D'Arbanville for a medieval chivalry sound.
- interesting career arc! Pop star at 18, tuberculosis, then a few epic albums at 22-24, got more experimental and progressive, deteriorated musically and got tired of the life, converted to Islam at 29, changed his name to Yusuf Islam, and vanished from the music scene. Recorded his next studio album, as Yusuf Islam, 30 years later.
- speaking of progressive, I really like his album "Foreigner", which features an 18-minute track on side 1, which culminates in this like bossanova or samba or whatever old-fashioney bit that apparently people think Coldplay copied? Whatever; it's great. I love a good multi-part suite. Given that I already find him a bit mystical, I will give him a lot of leeway to record such a thing.
- speaking of suites, can we talk for a moment about how good the first half of Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid is? Seriously, this whole disc is good, but tracks like 2-7 (particularly 2-4) are like no opener I've heard for a while!
- okay, focus. This post is about Cat Stevens. Oh, speaking of copying, apparently the Flaming Lips' Fight Test is just Cat's Father and Son; they somewhat sheepishly admitted as much.
- anyway. Cat Stevens. Good stuff.
Positive characteristics of Cat Stevens:
- he makes acoustic-guitary songs that sound nice.
- he makes rolling-piano songs that sound nice.
- his lyrics are mystical in a couple different ways. Take Katmandu for something that sounds South-Asian (oh okay maybe it's just because he's talking about Katmandu), or Into White for something that sounds sorta Anglo-mythological (or maybe this is just me), or Lady D'Arbanville for a medieval chivalry sound.
- interesting career arc! Pop star at 18, tuberculosis, then a few epic albums at 22-24, got more experimental and progressive, deteriorated musically and got tired of the life, converted to Islam at 29, changed his name to Yusuf Islam, and vanished from the music scene. Recorded his next studio album, as Yusuf Islam, 30 years later.
- speaking of progressive, I really like his album "Foreigner", which features an 18-minute track on side 1, which culminates in this like bossanova or samba or whatever old-fashioney bit that apparently people think Coldplay copied? Whatever; it's great. I love a good multi-part suite. Given that I already find him a bit mystical, I will give him a lot of leeway to record such a thing.
- speaking of suites, can we talk for a moment about how good the first half of Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid is? Seriously, this whole disc is good, but tracks like 2-7 (particularly 2-4) are like no opener I've heard for a while!
- okay, focus. This post is about Cat Stevens. Oh, speaking of copying, apparently the Flaming Lips' Fight Test is just Cat's Father and Son; they somewhat sheepishly admitted as much.
- anyway. Cat Stevens. Good stuff.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Ski report
days skied at vail/beaver creek, Colorado: 4
vertical feet: over 75000
free chocolate chip cookies ingested: 3 (two at beaver "not roughing it" creek, one on airplane)
degrees below zero it was while we skied on tuesday: 15
degrees below zero it was while we skied on wednesday: 20
injuries: 1 (a burn on my wrist)
hot tubbed in -15 degree weather: yep
pub trivias won: 1
money saved by bringing tea bags on the mountain: $11.25
resourcefulness of pete and kelly: 173
generosity of pete and kelly: 746
german cities powered: only 13
amount pete and I talked about code on the mountain: nonzero
moguls enjoyed: at least half of them
and now I will interrupt this list format to talk about moguls.
Moguls are these big bumps (ranging in size from a breadbox to a subaru) that appear on ski hills after some snow falls and a bunch of people ski on them. If the resort runs their big grooming machines over the mountain, it flattens all the moguls.
Moguls make skiing more difficult. Small ski areas tend to groom most of their hills. Large resorts groom maybe half? As a result, you really only get to ski moguls at big resorts. And moguls are awful when they're icy anyway.
Moguls demand different technique. On a groomed hill, you can ski in big loping turns. But on moguls, these bumps are in the way, so you have to make these tight little turns. Here's an example. (I mean, minus the crazy jumps.)
Anyway, every time I ski (all like 3 or 4 days each year), I get frustrated that I'm not good at moguls, and I try to ski them anyway, and I feel kind of clumsy. But I think I've finally gotten good enough that I enjoy an average mogul hill, can make it down safely, and if it's kinda shallow or has nice snow or I'm just really on, I can have a lot of fun in it. I can ski moguls and look pretty good. And before you accuse me of shallowness, let me substitute "experience flow" for "look pretty good."
That's really what I'm trying to do, anyway: experience flow. I've been worrying "I'm not improving at skiing" and then meta-worrying "why am I worrying about how good I am at skiing?" and that's the answer. At low skill, it's fun, at high skill it's fun, and in between it's a sometimes-boring plateau. So finally, I think I'm past that plateau.
TODO(dantasse): think about how this applies to other parts of my life, and if I've learned anything about perseverance from this experience.
In the meantime, hooray!
vertical feet: over 75000
free chocolate chip cookies ingested: 3 (two at beaver "not roughing it" creek, one on airplane)
degrees below zero it was while we skied on tuesday: 15
degrees below zero it was while we skied on wednesday: 20
injuries: 1 (a burn on my wrist)
hot tubbed in -15 degree weather: yep
pub trivias won: 1
money saved by bringing tea bags on the mountain: $11.25
resourcefulness of pete and kelly: 173
generosity of pete and kelly: 746
german cities powered: only 13
amount pete and I talked about code on the mountain: nonzero
moguls enjoyed: at least half of them
and now I will interrupt this list format to talk about moguls.
Moguls are these big bumps (ranging in size from a breadbox to a subaru) that appear on ski hills after some snow falls and a bunch of people ski on them. If the resort runs their big grooming machines over the mountain, it flattens all the moguls.
Moguls make skiing more difficult. Small ski areas tend to groom most of their hills. Large resorts groom maybe half? As a result, you really only get to ski moguls at big resorts. And moguls are awful when they're icy anyway.
Moguls demand different technique. On a groomed hill, you can ski in big loping turns. But on moguls, these bumps are in the way, so you have to make these tight little turns. Here's an example. (I mean, minus the crazy jumps.)
Anyway, every time I ski (all like 3 or 4 days each year), I get frustrated that I'm not good at moguls, and I try to ski them anyway, and I feel kind of clumsy. But I think I've finally gotten good enough that I enjoy an average mogul hill, can make it down safely, and if it's kinda shallow or has nice snow or I'm just really on, I can have a lot of fun in it. I can ski moguls and look pretty good. And before you accuse me of shallowness, let me substitute "experience flow" for "look pretty good."
That's really what I'm trying to do, anyway: experience flow. I've been worrying "I'm not improving at skiing" and then meta-worrying "why am I worrying about how good I am at skiing?" and that's the answer. At low skill, it's fun, at high skill it's fun, and in between it's a sometimes-boring plateau. So finally, I think I'm past that plateau.
TODO(dantasse): think about how this applies to other parts of my life, and if I've learned anything about perseverance from this experience.
In the meantime, hooray!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Phatic speech
Phatic speech is speech that exists to fulfill a social task, not to convey some meaning. For example "what's up?" doesn't necessarily happen so that you can find out what's up. Sometimes it's just a way to say "I acknowledge you." Other phatic phrases can be for social grooming or making friends.
I think it would be cool if we had more phatic speech. Like this:
Me: What's up?
You: How's it going?
Me: Four score and seven years ago,
You: Our fathers brought forth on this continent
Me: A new nation, conceived in liberty
You: And dedicated to the proposition
etc.
After you finish the Gettysburg Address, high fives are in order, and then you're instant friends.
I think it would be cool if we had more phatic speech. Like this:
Me: What's up?
You: How's it going?
Me: Four score and seven years ago,
You: Our fathers brought forth on this continent
Me: A new nation, conceived in liberty
You: And dedicated to the proposition
etc.
After you finish the Gettysburg Address, high fives are in order, and then you're instant friends.
And so ends the No Grains Experiment.
I decided to start eating grains again yesterday because I'm going skiing next week, and I'll probably eat some grains then, and if reintroducing grains weirded my stomach I'd rather that happen here than there.
Plus, 3 days of eating-grains-again data would be nice to have. It's not much, but it's all I've got.
Anecdotal findings so far:
- not eating grains makes me feel rather healthy.
- not eating anything with added sugar would make me feel rather healthier. I went with "well I'll try to minimize sugar" which ended up being a pretty ineffective way to minimize sugar.
- grains make me feel a little fuller. (not in a good way.)
- a bit of the difficulty in making the switch is "what's the base of your meal?" Replacing grains with spinach worked for a couple dishes. Sometimes I'd eat fruit and/or nuts. I'm trying to just stop worrying about having a staple that soaks up all the rest of the sauce.
- eating no grains is easy when you cook your own food.
- eating no grains is easy when you have a bountiful buffet of wonderful food available for you every day.
- eating "minimal added sugar" is easy when you cook your own food.
- eating "minimal added sugar" is hard when you have a bountiful buffet of wonderful food available for you every day. Dessert is tempting (especially when it's interesting, ice cream, or italian).
- eating no grains is hard when you go out to eat. At some restaurants, you cannot eat! At most restaurants, you just have to be comfortable looking a little ridiculous. I ate Indian with no rice. It was good anyway.
- eating minimal added sugar is easy when you go out to eat.
- I feel better after eating healthier. If I could just internalize that thought, and not divorce the immediate good taste from the 15-minutes-later heavy feeling, eating junk food would never be appealing. Hmm.
- There was a specific warning in "the 4 hour body" about how thai curry without rice might give you gas. Truth! I wonder why.
- smashed frozen bananas + other smashed fruit (or peanut butter) is almost just straight up ice cream. Seriously. It'd probably be even better in a food processor.
's all for now. More real findings after data happens. First, anyone know stats? Here are two analyses I'm thinking of doing:
- if each day had a "mood rating" or like my average mood for the day, track that in the 7 days before vs the 21 days of the study. (like a T test or something? Null hypothesis: mood before = mood after, uhh non-null hypothesis: mood after > mood before)
- see if there are correlations between mood and energy, stomach and energy, or stomach and mood (I guess run a linear regression?)
- and maybe rope sleep into this too; we'll see.
If I sound totally off base on any of these, do tell.
Plus, 3 days of eating-grains-again data would be nice to have. It's not much, but it's all I've got.
Anecdotal findings so far:
- not eating grains makes me feel rather healthy.
- not eating anything with added sugar would make me feel rather healthier. I went with "well I'll try to minimize sugar" which ended up being a pretty ineffective way to minimize sugar.
- grains make me feel a little fuller. (not in a good way.)
- a bit of the difficulty in making the switch is "what's the base of your meal?" Replacing grains with spinach worked for a couple dishes. Sometimes I'd eat fruit and/or nuts. I'm trying to just stop worrying about having a staple that soaks up all the rest of the sauce.
- eating no grains is easy when you cook your own food.
- eating no grains is easy when you have a bountiful buffet of wonderful food available for you every day.
- eating "minimal added sugar" is easy when you cook your own food.
- eating "minimal added sugar" is hard when you have a bountiful buffet of wonderful food available for you every day. Dessert is tempting (especially when it's interesting, ice cream, or italian).
- eating no grains is hard when you go out to eat. At some restaurants, you cannot eat! At most restaurants, you just have to be comfortable looking a little ridiculous. I ate Indian with no rice. It was good anyway.
- eating minimal added sugar is easy when you go out to eat.
- I feel better after eating healthier. If I could just internalize that thought, and not divorce the immediate good taste from the 15-minutes-later heavy feeling, eating junk food would never be appealing. Hmm.
- There was a specific warning in "the 4 hour body" about how thai curry without rice might give you gas. Truth! I wonder why.
- smashed frozen bananas + other smashed fruit (or peanut butter) is almost just straight up ice cream. Seriously. It'd probably be even better in a food processor.
's all for now. More real findings after data happens. First, anyone know stats? Here are two analyses I'm thinking of doing:
- if each day had a "mood rating" or like my average mood for the day, track that in the 7 days before vs the 21 days of the study. (like a T test or something? Null hypothesis: mood before = mood after, uhh non-null hypothesis: mood after > mood before)
- see if there are correlations between mood and energy, stomach and energy, or stomach and mood (I guess run a linear regression?)
- and maybe rope sleep into this too; we'll see.
If I sound totally off base on any of these, do tell.
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