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EpicMegatrax writes more bullshit
 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-09 07:30 [#02501696]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



when i talk about "finger algorithms" for my pg-300 it's
actually a bit revisionist. i didn't think of it as
algorithms or programming at the time.

i'd learn how to use a bit of gear, then hit some limit. i
want to do ABC, but XYZ is stopping me. sometimes solving it
meant rearranging the studio a bit, other times it meant i
have to fingure out how to use a second a third knob without
growing another hand. so i'd fuss around a bit, try putting
my hand on in various ways; perhaps close my eyes and
visualize this or that way. then i'd have something that
seemed good enough and i'd go along. it would be fumbly at
first; the hand wants to go back to the old configuration.
but i'd stay on myself about it: no, do it that way. i'd be
holding in my mind as i did the track: don't forget to do
that new finger thing. don't forget that. sometimes i would.
usually i wouldn't, soon enough anyways, because i was doing
the whatever it was because the track i was working on
couldn't proceed without it.

three or four tracks later my hand would just do the right
thing. then perhaps i'd throw it out for a totally different
approach when i hit a different wall.

later i realized this is the same way it works when you're
taught to block without having to think about how to block.
i also realized you can arrange this sort of thing into a
tree diagram very nicely. on the leaves you have the small
finger motions, parent node is the hand, arm...

i'd been casually and repeatedly reconditioning my muscle
memory. muscle memory is modules arranged in a tree
structure. i can only work on little pieces at a time... but
after i blunder around enough, i start to say, "ah! i could
axe this part and combine these two and..."

at that point, i may as well be taking a piece of code
someone else wrote, figuring it out, cleaning it up, and
then making it do things it couldn't do before.

then the arrangement of the studio is a module as well...


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-09 08:05 [#02501697]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



driving is the same. i have compulsively engineered a
thousand little things like i would when working with music
gear. everything in my car has a dedicated place and my hand
knows that place. if i want my lighter, a stick of gum, a
paper towel, a tissue, my water bottle, or any number of
other things, the task will be assigned to my left hand or
my right hand, and that hand will go right for it, blind.

which goes to which hand is largely about what's closer, but
there's also a huge amount of decisions made based around
always keeping at least one hand on the wheel. my left hand
typically hangs onto the wheel while my right snakes around
like an autonomous robot. if the item is not in its proper
place, that's when my conscious mind comes around and pays
attention and reacts by getting annoyed.

my left hand staying on the wheel comes from learning to
drive on a car with manual transmission. i got used to
holding the wheel with my left hand because i needed to
shift with my right. i drive automatic now, but i felt no
reason to change it. but i could, if i wanted to.

there are a zillion layers of learned patterns in there.
some, like the bits from when i learned on a manual, are
very old. some i put in aftermarket. pretty much all of it,
though, i have consciously sifted through, considered, and
possibly altered.

i figure this is a good part of why my autopilot works so
well. i've spent a ridiculous amount of conscious effort
tuning things. how i use my hands, how i sit, how i turn a
corner, how close i follow other cars.

then a friend of mine will be in the passenger seat and ask
something like, "where should i put this plastic container?"
and my brain promptly explodes, because explaining where he
should put it would take two paragraphs, and then he'd still
not get it quite right. then i pull it together and say
"just give it to me." the robot arm stows it properly and
promptly.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-09 08:30 [#02501698]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i used to just think of these as habits, and i suppose they
still are. it's only recently that i got a bet more meta
about it, and said: this is a process i've done all over,
perhaps it'd help to generalize it. to stop writing the same
piece of code over and over and put it into a library i can
link in... well, not really much luck there, yet. training
habits/weasels is still a frustrating and slow process.

most of the layers of cleverness developing on top relate to
how to be more strategic with the slow and limited rate of
change i can manage. it's exactly like trying to squeeze
more out of a limited resource on a computer like memory, or
CPU. that's what i got, so i got to get better at using it.

i feel like i can bust beyond that, but whether it will be a
lot or a little, i do not know. most recently i've been
pondering if there's a way i could develop re-usable
weasels. generic habits that get me 2/3 of the way there,
leaving me less to hassle into cooperation.

so then you get to the body itself; practicing movement.
things like posture and not tensing up more muscles than you
need. truth be told, it's a fucking mess in there. finding
things like the unconscious twists and strains i'll perform
to avoid ripping my pants. realizing i've been using my abs,
knees, back, shoulders, neck, and other things sort of or
very wrong. i figure i'll get through the bulk of it
eventually, and everything else will run better.

i remember thinking, "at what point do i qualify as bionic?"
i was having a laugh at myself when i thought that, but
there is a guarded little pocket of excitement that, in a
year or two, it may not be a joke anymore.

or maybe i'll hit a wall and progress will stop. lots of
things going on in my noggin feel like that at the moment. i
squint my eyes and look down the road, and... whoa. could
that work? that's unreal. i really hope that works. if i
were evil, i'd definitely let loose the evil laugh i'm sure
i'd have down cold at this point


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-09 10:00 [#02501700]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i've been writing about the more interesting things going on
in my brain, but not all of it is as epic. i am a typical
human in many regards, and in my is the usual stuff. idle
pratter. sex. adult stuff i suck at; making a to-do list,
talking to myself about how i'm behind on the to-do list i
made, etc.

after the last post, i was feeling pretty smug. i was also
feeling antsy since i've been at the computer for a hours,
so i went out for a drive.

i was replaying the last post back in my head, well.
admiring it. yeah, there's definitely some vanity there. my
brain tangents a lot, though, and it could easily veer off
into ideas about how i could have written things. i might
spot something i missed. or come up with a new idea.

but not tonight. no, i was just replaying it over and over
for a few minutes -- not the whole drive; i'm not that
terrble -- and not veering anywhere other than up my own
butt.

then, a fox darted out into the road. i promptly stopped
replaying my post, literally in the middle of reading a
sentence aloud to myself. i actually didn't say "shiiiit,"
but i did slam on the brakes. the fox scampered along, i
resumed driving. i did not resume replaying my post, though,
i promptly began working on this one. and it ends with: huh.
i guess that vanity loop was useful after all


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-09 10:08 [#02501701]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



it was useful because i was trying to think of an example of
that sort of situation before, and i came up dry. a real
example of my autopilot knowing that this shit is bad news;
fuck this i'm out. immediately shooing out whatever i'm
thinking about. it's very jarring, but also very reliable.

it's interesting to me that i had trouble remembering
another incident. that's the sort of thing where i can
usually pull out eight or ten, no problem. i suspect that
sudden change in context interferes with storing the memory
somehow. it may never get the chance to set. i'm thinking
about stuff, incident, i'm thinking about stuff again.

it's like remembering you saw an LED blink last thursday. if
you stood there and looked at the LED, and then it blinked,
once, you'd remember this. if you walked by and sort of
noticed it kinda you might remember it five minutes later,
but it's gone within a day.

muscle memory is not the only sort of memory that i've
gotten meta about. straight-up memory is also very
important, and i've a parallel project to tune that up a bit
as well. but i'll be a tease and sit on it for now. partly
so i can feel smug, but more actually because it's not as
far along and half of it still feels like crap. but i have
to try it to be sure...


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-09 21:46 [#02501711]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i've taken a moment to admit i am good at many
things and terrible at a good many more. i realized i need
to take this a bit further. the frank truth is, a lot of my
things have been working terribly for years. many things are
still very actively terrible. algorithmically destroying
limits and circuit bending my own brain has been one of the
most rewarding things i've ever undertaken, but that's
partly because things were terrible everywhere. like, "thank
god i don't have a broken leg anymore" and you want to go
for a run. your arm still needs fixing and your left eyeball
is easily distractable. your sock is on terribly wrong. but,
jesus christ, that leg is fixed. let's go!

pretty much, i realized that i've been quietly letting a few
things go to shit as i've written all this. it is not a
problem, but it will be soon enough. writing sets into me
almost as bad as coding. coding is the worst, but writing
will still persist as i wake up the next day, promptly me to
go at it for twelve hours, then be even stronger on day
three. it's a rush, and it's when some of the best fings
come together. but, yes, things are going to shit outside of
it all. when i realized this, though, the stickiness of the
writing mindset flowed into the thought, and things
collided, and i selected one of my previous lines to deploy
for this situation: this is un. fucking. acceptable. usually
i'd just run away from it until it became a serious problem.
i've painted myself with a bit more confidence and
steadiness than i really have. then it flowed into my
realtime reality, my mind accepted the thought as valid, and
i thought next: i have to get on this. then i mashed on the
gas to get home faster. so, bbiab.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-09 21:48 [#02501712]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



p.s. i can't help myself, sometimes, so:

eventually the board will allow new users again,
a trollship will sinkg, and loads of old racist
threads will clog up the shoreline and kill the baby seals.
translating that metaphor into reality, i'm really in for it
when that happens, after writing all this. mark my words


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-10 06:58 [#02501725]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



can't help myself again; this bit of this thing is thick as
the moment and it's cool as coffin nails. colliding
elusive's hidden scotch into common american slang doesn't
mean what i want it to mean here, but it sounds cool-as, and
you get what i mean, etc.

so much on the rational hacking side. irrational, damn.
that. too

everyone has conversations with themselves, i figure. but
there's moments (also, for everyone, i figure) where it's
more than just chatting with yourself; it seems a little
more like it's some independant thing from your train of
thought. a typical scenary is "that alley is sketchy as
fuck" derailing your thoughts as you amble down a street at
night.

the way i see it, there are a zillion guesses and bets going
on in your mind every minute. most of it is noise and goes
nowhere; the ol' aldous valve spares ye. for everyone, i
figure, sometimes their subconscious is not only really
sure, but on red alert. watch that shit over there. bad
news. more often that not, it's right, unless you're one of
the tortured souls that's had this mechanism run amok.

i have cultivated sort of a grey zone in between. i call
them notions. notions are things like: press the "next
track" button on your steering wheel immediately. if the
notion is correct, this is typically a direct vector into
all the traffic syncing up with the music on an almost
spooky level. or timing it so i'm at a lull point and not
driving too past when i go by the cop hiding...

but, they're often wrong. i'll argue with them, sometimes,
and try to sort out how they came together. my policy is
that i can override them whenever, especially if i have
logical reasons that prove it is probably full of shit.
"turn left!" no, fuck off. that street is shit at this time
of day. and i don't.

the dark alley radar is still its own thing off down below
and works as it did before, as does my ability to talk to
myself all day. this is a nice little geiger counter of
sorts in between.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-10 07:00 [#02501726]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i had to post this because you'd swear the AC unit was
fucking with me. i'm following notions and the AC unit will
click on or off seemingly as if it noticed. i have no idea
how it decides when to turn on or off; i've never really
even paid attention. but, fuck, maybe i have.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-10 07:33 [#02501727]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



oh, yes, and a notion is about fifty micrograms short of a
vibe.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-10 09:11 [#02501729]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



once and i'm smiling to myself, figuring my algorithm is
doing what it should. twice and i'm giggling a bit. three
times, and i'm staring at the AC unit as if it's a living,
conscious thing, and trying to figure out of it's messing
with me. four times and it overrides my better judgement and
i open the web browser.

but it ended. the streak broke a while ago, but it was
lovely.

i'll generally follow notions. many of them don't pan out,
but when they do, it can be really trippy. so it's a bit
like gambling; i've encouraged this mechanism for the same
reason people gamble away their savings. the rush of a
success is pretty exhillarating. most of the time nothing
happens, or a little something kinda happens but i really
can't tell myself that was something and believe it.

so, my conscious mind has veto power. "i don't feel like it"
is even good enough. but, if it's reasonable, if it doesn't
put me out, i'll indulge it. pull the slot lever; why not?
if it complicates things, fuck it, there will be others.

when something does clearly, really, happen, here and there
i can vaguely see how they it might have come about. the AC?
my subconscious hears the AC all day. it's probably figured
out the pattern thoroughly, but my conscious might hasn't
the foggiest.

a lot of the time, though, i really couldn't tell you. every
car on the road falls in sync, traffic parts ways as if i
were moses himself. a traffic light around a corner -- not
visible when i had the notion -- flicks green as if it knew:
yes, this chap has a notion; i need to turn green
immediately. really couldn't tell you how that happens


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-10 19:55 [#02501781]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



I'm waiting for my car to be serviced and allowing myself to
write what I can on this painful fonekeybeard.

in magick I saw so many people that chased nonsense and
believed it was working. courtesy of confirmation bias, and
I am careful to avoid letting myself fall into it. the
notion thing has repeatedly blown through the level of pure
chance so many times I lost count. the AC unit being dead on
five or six times in a row is good enough for me. and it is
one moment of dozens.

I can't remember when I started on it, but it really feels
like a skill I've been honing. it's getting heavier as time
goes on. it feels like it comes from the same place in my
brain as automatic writing. I can ask for a notion on demand
and it feels the same as asking for word salad. which way
should I turn at this intersection? "right." consciously
evaluate; OK. sounds good.

it also feels like when I'm working on music and trying to
feel out the perfect moment to press some button or
something. even though my conscious inner monologue never
shuts up, I have plenty of success holding it aside for a
fraction of a second so the subconscious can belch something
out without my conscious mind lurking it up.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-10 19:56 [#02501782]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



murking it up. like autocorrect. fucker. I am shutting that
off right now.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-10 20:26 [#02501783]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



yes, come to think of it, fighting with my phone's
autocorrect is a lot like what the conscious mind does to
subcomscious output: it tries very hard to take imput and
clean it up, which makes perfect sense. but it also is apt
to fix things that aren't mistakes, and that often ruins it.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-10 21:45 [#02501784]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



trying to explain notions makes me realize i have been being
reasonably scientific about it, but there's all sorts of
output data i could be analyzing and haven't been. like, how
often?

yesterday was thick, but today, i haven't had a single
notion so far. i haven't felt the need to ask for any,
either. i was mostly sucked into taking care of some of
things i needed to; i was busy. it doesn't ever seem to pull
a kool aid man and go, "o yea! notions!" when i'm busy.

notions are a game i play to amuse myself like trying to
trigger everyone to unconsciously pick up their water
glasses at the dinner table. it is casual and playful, and
more something i have fun with during an idle moment. i have
treated it as such, up until now, really. once something
starts to feel like a tool of sorts, though, it warrants a
bit more thorough analysis. i'm never going to take it
completely seriously, mind you, just run the numbers in
places i wouldn't otherwise. tally up the facts i've got.

like, weed definitely seems to spike it up. that's pretty
obvious for anyone who's smoked enough. i also figure many
people have had a moment or three where the traffic is just
perfectly synchronized to the song, traffic lights change on
beat. cars are set up like a perfect equation to weave and
mix and negotiate into a sum of zero. when it settles, your
path is wide open. like you were moses parting the waters.

clearly, i don't think i'm moses. i also don't need a notion
for a traffic/music synchronicity, which happens purely out
of nowhere to me a handful of times a month. i adore those
moments, and being how i am, i promptly began to tinker with
ways to stack the deck and coax more of them out of the
woodwork. with notions i've left a window open, and my
subconscious can give me a yell if it feels all the grooves
lining up. i don't control all those grooves, though. i have
the music as a blueprint and my decisions as a driver. i
won't ever get these on demand. i'll just miss fewer
opportune moments.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-10 21:50 [#02501785]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



and, confession time again: i am no longer killing time at
the car dealership. i am going to switch on a firefox plugin
called leechblock that blanks out websites so you won't
waste time on them.

many years ago some friends were circulating some "how to
stop masturbating" tract; sort of like a linux HOWTO file
for christian bores. i read it for a laugh, and one
suggestion was this: wear complicated pants. something that
requires unbuckling, debelting, unzipping, yanking, and more
before you make it to your dick. you can still get there if
you want, clearly, but the barriers give your conscious mind
time to catch yourself picking your nose, so you can learn
to not pick your nose. eventually the job is done and the
complicated pants are stowed in a closet in case they are
ever needed again.

leechblock is sort of like that. it broke my addiction to
google news years ago. i didn't really read many articles, i
just compulsively mined it for interesting images i could
add to the ricedoutyugo background modulator. for three
hours a day. i used leechblock for a bit, and i've never had
to use it again since. until now


 

offline Hyperflake from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-08-11 00:41 [#02501792]
Points: 31038 Status: Regular



fucking hell


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 02:10 [#02501793]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



it's christian bloatware that i've reverse-engineered and
found a clever bit of programming in. the rest went out with
the bullshit list. even that, though, is not without bugs:
what if you have to pee?

leechblock stopped me a couple times and did its job. when i
write about things, though, i think about them, and then i
write about them. i was stewing on stuff for 45 minutes in
the car: ok, bionic, really? can we quantify that more
precisely? on and on.

now i know if i fire up QtCreator my brain will refuse to
pay it any mind; darting back here. dodging xlt/web is not
the real point; i just have to get it down. i could leave on
leechblock and write it up in a text editor, but at that
point, it's already written, and i may as well just shut
leechblock off and post it.

this is not the first time i've tried to tackle this one,
honestly: these streaks are definitely the mostest, but life
can't be done entirely like that. how do i find a balance
that gives droll logistics the necessary care and feeding
without impacting one of my best things?

there's no singular answer, just a lot of strategies and
small battles. breaking google news addiction. or is there a
singular answer? and i'm off analyzing my previous analysis.
part of it is i can't stick to the plans i come up with;
this is a complex sub-problem in and of itself.

the bottom line is i need to devise some sort of leechblock
for my brain. on the flip side, i am taking a harder look at
the mechanisms themselves. deep treks into complex topics
are a warm bubble of fun and discovery and calling up the
storage place to argue about a late fee because their web
site was broken fills me with equal parts anxiety and
contempt. because, shit, i got better things going on. so i
do, but this all still needs to be done, because it will end
the fun things if i don't. i need to find the point where i
cross over to picking my nose and engineer more complicated
pants at that precise spot.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 02:16 [#02501794]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



so, at what point could this cloud of nonsense go bionic?

if i can take a specific algorithm from some pocket of
computer science and painstakingly program my muscle memory
with it in some flagrantly unnatrual way, then i am
effectively running a software algorithm in a mammalian
brain, and that's where i'd draw the line and call it
bionic. technology not found in nature being injected into a
biological organism to accomplish things not possible with
the manufacturer firmware.

even the idea that this could be possible really fires me
up. is it? i don't know. the brutal-honest, notion-layer
answer is that i really feel it's within the realm of
possibility, but it's likely that my disorganization and
wandering will stop me from getting there. un. fucking.
acceptable


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 02:26 [#02501795]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



for many years i had a slight niche going on that went like
this: is your PHP thing critically important but a flaming
piece of shit? hire me to compulsively take the car apart
and put it back together properly while it's rolling down
the highway.

PHP is a language that's easy to do a little something in.
it's laid back. this leads people to think: well, i did that
little thing fine, and now i know PHP, so let's do a big
thing. this does not go nearly as well, because knowing PHP
is not the same thing as knowing programming, and
algorithms, and how things scale. but by then it's too late;
the thing worked alright for a bit. by the time it's
apparent there are deep issues management doesn't want to
tear it out and replace it with a good one. they just want
it fixed.

so i have a lot of experience reverse-engineering some
organic piece of crap, mapping it out, coming together with
a plan to fix it, and then fixing it. a lot of it has
translated to all this, obviously.

there is an old saying in computer science: there be dragons
here. it's a cheeky line you leave as a comment in the code
somewhere, essentially to warn people: there is some crazy
shit in this part here; don't step in it.

now i'm going to try and be clever by extending that 80s
neckbeard joke with more of the same: where there be
dragons, there also be gold. the adept adventurer clearly
doesn't want both the dragons and the gold, just the gold.
so you need some sort of plan, or something.

my plans involve laser-scanning the lair from afar, studying
the dragon for weeks, learning when he eats and when he
sleeps and when he poops and then going in there when he's
just taken an amazing dump and eaten three other adventurers
and carefully make off with targeted bits of loop. optimized
for best loot vs. what will the dragon notice missing.

i got bored of that, though, and moved over to Qt/C++.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 02:32 [#02501796]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



the subconscious is pretty much the best example of "there
be dragons here" you'll ever find. very quickly i realized
the dark-alley radar mechanism was not something i wanted to
fuck with. it's important for not getting stabbed in a dark
alley, and there are clear connections between that sort of
thing and schizophrenia. i have one brain, and i don't want
to fuck it up. like i don't want to stub my toe into some
part of web interface i've been hired to fix and bring the
whole thing down.

looking and something and saying: is this any good? should i
mess with it? etc. is equal parts strategy and experience.
the first half you can learn from a book; and the second
half takes years working in software engineering. i've been
able to take some of both with me into this. but it's still
totally new and weird in many regards.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 03:39 [#02501798]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



a guy i know was once talking about how acid-dropping
hippies were mentally "soft." you know, like christians.
there's a saying, "if you keep an open mind, people will go
and try and put things it in," but i'd also add my own bit
to that: "...and also, other things will blow in with the
wind and lodge themselves in there more or less at random."
my approach is to indulge incredibly weird ideas on a whim,
but to throw them out just as quickly if it's not working.
that culling is the missing element in the case of the 60s,
i think.

people speak of the ol' aldous valve as this quasi-mystical
thing without even attempting to quantify it: "there's this
sphinctor between your mind and the universe, man, and if
you can open it, like -- whoa." the analogy is not
inaccurate. yes, there is a sphinctor between your conscious
mind and your subconscious; whoa.

i spoke of how it's like a phone's autocorrect aggressively
repairing what it sees as typos. by and large it's helpful;
sometimes it's not. this is getting more in the
neighborhood. taking it a bit further, subconscious things
feed into a series of tubes and springenwerk that, at the
end of the line, can only emerge as things your conscious
mind is able to understand. so dreams are a weird goulash of
things you understand trying to depict something you don't;
whoa.

from there you can veer off onto more functional metaphors
to explore the process: a heuristic spam filter, for
example.

i picked weasels for habits because calling it software
began to feel wrong after a while. it's fussy and organic.
if i'm really stoned, so are all my weasels. they mess up
sometimes. training them is frustrating and takes genuine
effort/patience.

i used to say i was like a squirrel being driven by an
eighteen wheeler, and is the squirrel driving the truck, or
is the truck driving the squirrel? my own patterns push me
around a lot, still, but i've upgraded from a squirrel to a
trained weasel. it has a bit more body strength and a bit
more of a clue


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 06:45 [#02501803]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



so, part of the mechanism that teleports my finger up my
nose is the car. whenever i get in the car to take a break
from the pressure of hiding from my problems, i come up with
another sixteen things i want to write down. this is hiding
from my problems under the guise of fixing my problems, but
if it fixes my problems, then it's actually not a problem.
welcome to my brain.

translating things back into an everyday agenda is an angle
i now feel compelled to cover. the bionic thing is some
far-out distant dream that i may throw out with aldous's
sphincter next week. or it may be possible, but impractical
and not worth it. being the first bionic synthesis of human
and software would be a nice notch on my belt, but that's
really not what i care about.

i care about an iterated process of self-improvement and
debugging that feeds back and accelerates until i've moved
from a trained weasel driving the eighteen-wheeler to a
robotic sean booth with the latest tesla drivers. so i can
destroy all the other things i want to do more effectively,
you know?

necessity is the mother of invention, and i unwittingly
began reprogramming my fingers without noticing that's what
i was doing. i did this again with the car, and driving,
with a slight awareness. this time around, i am being pretty
deliberate about it.

what i am currently attacking is arguably the root of the
whole tree of systems -- the body, instead of the body
manipulating machines. this is where we begin to see an
improvement of the O(n) that is non-linear. i am always on
the lookout for these sort of opportunities/insane ideas.

working out for hours a day is something i do because i'll
unravel if i don't. it conveniently gives me plenty of time
to hack around in there. i'll notice the invisible pants
pattern one day and some improperly tensing muscles the
next. the pants thing was a fantastic find, but most are
more technical and about posture/etc.

clearing that out will take a bit, and i won't know how far
it'll go until after i clear it


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 07:50 [#02501805]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



writing about it has begun spinning off potential
iterations, which is essentially why i haven't taken more
drastic measures to kick myself off of it. i took care of a
few potential explosions and tomorrow i will take care of a
few more. this is not how i plan to run my long game, but it
will do for now because there is nougat to extract. stick a
straw into it like sunoco and drain out the dragon corpses
that have done whatever the word is for doing the thing and
turned into valuable sources of fossil fuel.

like notions, digging around myself and exploring muscle
memory is a fun and playful thing that's gone far enough
along that it's started to acquire more serious
implications. so, upgrade this or that power supply going
into it and give it more juice, right?

i wrote about those tae kwon doe routines earlier, and how i
realized they were essentially designed to tear out the
randomly-wired tree of muscle systems and replace them with
something structured and deliberate.

should i go look at those? perhaps. should i go back to tae
kwon doe? absolutely not. that would just be like school and
the teachers want me to write all the letters just so... but
why can't do this? or that? no, this is better. no, i will
not shut up, i am only seven but i know you are full of
shit. ok, i am going to the office

i realized i should seek to craft my own set of routines.
i'm just working around like i'm on an afternoon walk. there
is nothing wrong with this, but i could accelerate the
progress of my progress if i use the time in a more
deliberate manner.

this gets us back into another good thing from magick; the
value of ritual. it's the same and you can rely on it to
build. observe the results, think, change one small part of
it slightly, observe the result. controlled variables and
tactical iterations. as usual, the biggest problem is
whipping myself into do it. darn weasels.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 08:18 [#02501806]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



the principle of the elementary school i went to thought i
was a riot. getting myself sent to her office for arguing
the teacher into a corner meant i could go be weird and
appreciated instead of sit there and have horseshit drilled
into me. perhaps that does a lot to explain my attitude


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 08:22 [#02501807]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i just thought of joyrex. i just lost the game.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 08:27 [#02501808]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



so, what did you guys do to joyrex to get kicked out and
sent here?

i compared to joyrex to a rich kid who spoils his floozies
and tartly ejects anyone not focused on indulging him


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 08:34 [#02501809]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



genuine lol (tm), but it's another learned pattern. it's old
and deep. older than the left hand algorithm i picked up learning
to drive standard. i used to need mushrooms to find these
sort of things. now, talking to myself for hours is even
more effective than they ever were. digs up so many i've had
to start keeping lists


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 08:57 [#02501810]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



one of the other things AA got correct was: "a fearless and
honest moral inventory." or something like that. that was
nothing new to me, though. i'd had it my whole life to an
absurd and compulsive level. it goes beyond morality. my
inventory-ing and searching extends into things so deeply
that when a producer says he swears by the boss sp-303 i
hear that the same way dr. drew hears one of his celebrity
charges insisting they can "stop any time they want." you're
full of shit, buddy, you're just in so deep you don't want
to admit it. i was too compulsive to let it get that far.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-11 09:21 [#02501811]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to EpicMegatrax: #02501810



i was too compulsive to let it get that far.

by "it" i mean both the Boss SP-303 and alcoholism. dealt
with mercilessly and sold for scrap before the bullshit
phase had a chance to set in


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 02:45 [#02501833]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



alcohol ruins your judgement in a progressive and non-linear
way. after three drinks, three more start to seem fantastic,
and on you go. pretty much, this made it pretty easy for me
to figure out where the line was, because as soon as i poked
it, it exploded. ok, sounds good. most things are not as
easily spotted.

if you want to blame something for my spam, blame the fact
that you can't edit posts here. that's why i began posting
so much -- because on boards i can edit posts, i'll sit
there for ages editing and re-editing. this actually makes
it read much better. i fix all the typos, and even
conceptual mistakes. i decided it was taking too long one
day, and i know myself, so i decided that if i leechblocked
the ability to edit it would cut it back to something more
reasonable without exploding. hmm

some of the typos and mistakes really bother me. really,
really bother me. but, in the end, it has its charms. it
reads like the bandwidth between my chatty brain and words
is not sufficient, my fingers slow me down even more, and
i'm i'm stuck in traffic, mad as shit, leaning on the horn.
it's not an inaccurate metaphor


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 02:56 [#02501834]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i called notions a grey area becuase it's a zone where
my subconscious is starting to be a little sure, but not
really sure, let alone defcon one, danger zone, etc.

i have started to feel a bit of granularity to them, i have
to say. i realized it's something i've always been doing:
waiting for the right moment to leave my room. to light a
cigarette. to stop typing and allow myself to pee, finally.
i'll compulsively pick something like when the hour is at
fourteen minutes is the time for thing X. it is also more or
less a game; i don't feel i have to. i just enjoy it, in a
way. it's comforting, perhaps. but, like notions, some of it
begins to get weird and heavy after it's been going on a
while.

if it were a chess game, i have something that occasionally
screams out a killer move from nowhere. but in a general
sense, i've also had moments where i feel like it's a chess
game and i can see another move or two ahead. i will never
know everything, nor even close to it. but carefully tuned
machines and filters may make it seem like i do at certain
moments.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 03:02 [#02501835]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to EpicMegatrax: #02501834



that's where you get into magic, and lose track of the k in
your subconscious mind. it works like this:

i moved into a place a while back, and some of the roommates
told me this was haunted. that's not something i've ruled
out, but i've never really felt like a place is haunted, so
i more got stuck on how it was weird that they were doing
that. like, this is too early to talk about the skeletons in
the closet. we just met. then it happens three times, and,
oh: this is some hazing shit, let it play out.

i was waiting for the ghosts to show up and either they
would get me or they wouldn't. they didn't. i was standing
on the rickety third story steps when a train rumbled behind
the place, shaking them unnervingly. yes, the infrastructure
scared me, but not the ghost, which was clearly the ghost
train i'd been waiting for to arrive at the station.

once i had it, i took the algorithm and attempted to
optimize it. i asked: "hey guys, does the train have a
schedule?" "oh, yeah, probably..." "is it accurate?"
"uhhhhhhhh"

well, i never found out. but, my optimized version went like
this: presuming you can get it down to a second or less,
invite some poor sap over and tell them you have magic
powers. then snap your fingers.

this is how magic works: good playwriting, inside
information, and a good sense of timing. but, as with
bionics, i'm not in this to be david copperfield.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 03:05 [#02501836]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



oh, on the note of davids, my influences w/rt dancing are:
metaprogramming and david elsewhere. i can't really think of
anything else

until, half a second later, when i have another one of those
i'll-never-be-john-carmack kinda brutal and honest moral
inventory moments


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 03:20 [#02501837]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



the thing about working on the mind/body interface is that
your body is with you all the time. i'm catching bad habits
and running through the few habits i've managed to get going
to get myself to stop picking my nose while i carry my
groceries up the stairs. i'm not even trying to, it just
hums along.

i realized this is part of why the car is so dialed in: i
spend a lot of time in it. i also spent a lot of time with
music machines, but that was diffuse and spread out in a way
that the car isn't.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 04:09 [#02501838]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



the core engine of magick is to perform a david copperfield
on yourself. despite this whole architecture of thought in
me on the topic, there was a moment where i felt like the AC
unit was alive. or posessed. i'll never know how it made the
statue of liberty disappear.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 04:21 [#02501841]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



in my squarepusher theoretical future, i'll warrant a
wikiquote entry and this will be there: "emotion is the fire
the powers the steam engine of thought."

those moments when the subconscious busts through the
conscious wall for survival reasons are tied into intense
anxiety and fear. keeping all this nonsense in the playful
mood filefolder means it never gets near that mechanism. it
also means that if i'm busy, if i'm concentrating on
something else, that i won't hear from it.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 04:21 [#02501842]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



*that powers

there's one of those typos that really smarts. i can't even
type my best shit properly.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 04:42 [#02501843]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



then, as always, (computer) science: "oh, emotion switches
off between different sets of modules. this is a state
machine"

i feel lucky, really. all those metaphors from programming
imported right into metaprogramming with few platform
issues. "oh, it's a state machine switching between modules,
now what triggers a state change?" and on i go.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 05:04 [#02501844]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



"63," i thought. "interesting number. don't use it much."
"no, go with 62," i hear back from somewhere. i go with 62.
this is pretty normal for me. if the building were on fire i
wouldn't be having a conversation with myself, i'd be
exiting the premesis before i burned to death. but it ain't.
if i were in a rush and late for an appointment, i would be
worrying about some integer. i would pick one if it had to
be picked or ignore it entirely if it didn't, then go to my
appointment. but, no, it's midnight on thursday, and i'm
just talking to myself about what the perfect AC setpoint
is. then it goes up its own butt and i wonder if i
subconsciously set the AC and set myself up for that moment
in the first place. mirthful smile.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 05:19 [#02501845]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



decided to smoke a cigarette because the minute hand on the
clock had plenty of fours into it -- the same reason i
decided against smoking one a half hour ago; not enough
fours. if i've been smoking too many cigarettes that day i
tell myself that i've been smoking too many and pay the
four-count no mind.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 05:21 [#02501846]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



all of these things are incredibly sloppily done with an air
of seriousness that's patently unconvincing to even myself.
mock seriousness, or like an old man having a very serious
conversation with his bureau. it's an indulgence, and it's a
bit weird to have it go somewhere useful.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 05:29 [#02501847]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i vaguely feel like the root of it is constantly making
little bets with myself to see how they pan out. over time,
i get better, and my bets win a bit more often. still,
they're merely bets, and most of them don't pan out in any
way whatsoever. playing those sort of games are a way to
sharpen the skill, i suppose.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 06:49 [#02501848]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i can't remember the moment when i began forming the habit
of using my left hand as the dominant hand to drive, but
when i started analyzing things i knew where it came from.
most things i can't explain, let alone remember. but there's
one arc that i dug up that's unusually complete.

in third grade, a girl i had a crush one did this thing with
putting a foot out to the side. i did this too, and i don't
really remember rationalizing it. just an intuitive sense of
something i'd learn later, which is that people like people
who are like them.

anyways, she wasn't interested, fourth grade came along, and
i was still doing the foot thing. but i'd already stopped
noticing. years later, in high school, my right big toe
began to click. i remember precisely where i was when i
started. i could lead you right to the spot, if the building
is still standing. it began to hurt soon enough and i
started walking to dodge it. later, i opted to ask out a
totally different girl i liked in that exact spot in the
hallway without even realizing it.

eventually, my right knee began to suffer more than my left.
i never really tracked down why, until now, but there you
have it: a spare incident from my childhood inside of a
spare incident from my adolescence until i'm an adult and
it's spread to the knee and i have to figure out what to do
with it all. and it seems to have impacted my conscious
behavior's sense of venue without my noticing.

yeah, i don't think i'll be sorting all this out too
quickly.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 22:54 [#02501912]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i never thought about the term "metaprogramming" until
recently, then i had a moment where i felt like i finally
got where it comes from. not meta, metaphor programming.
wilson probably even explained this in his books and i lost
it, but i've recovered the data now.

take the weasels... take them, please! no, seriously now,
folks, the metaphor is a tool for reverse-engineering habits
and understanding them more thoroughly. take a question
like, "what happens to my brain software when i'm stoned?"
and it gets very confusing. software can't get stoned.
trying to work through that is very abstract and goes
nowhere. when you swap it out for "what happens to my brain
weasels when i'm stoned," and the obvious answer is "all my
weasels are stoned as well." then the answers to lots of
sub-questions are either obvious or bring up important
sub-points.

that doesn't mean i'm using done software as a metaphor. the
weasel thing is just a different angle of attack. you circle
around some blob of question marks and eventually you've
broken it up from one mass into two or three, those get
their own metaphors, and on you go.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 22:59 [#02501914]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



on that tip, consciousness is a debugger of sorts. this
metaphor is absolute not intended to explain consciousness
completely, or even mostly. it's just a little machine to
peer inside and study it.

with driving, my carefully tuned architecture of stored
patterns handles driving while i'm off in space. the moments
that i'm yanked out of that and pulled back into reality are
the moments where my stored patterns run into a pile of
question marks. situation is not enough like all the other
situation it knows, or needs the full horsepower of my
reaction time. so it drops into debug mode, and forcibly
context-switches my overworked debugger over to not hitting
the truck that just blew out of a side-street.

i first had that thought -- oh, it's a debugger -- a few
months within unwittingly metaprogramming the way i ate
pringles. but, like that, i didn't really see the nuances at
the time.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 23:03 [#02501915]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i think everyone has moments where something they see
doesn't make sense... then, they look closer, walk towards
it, and realized they "saw it wrong." like, you thought it
was a cat, but it was a pile of leaves. until you got
closer, though, it was totally a cat. it's deeply weird and
happens to everyone a few times a week and no one cares
except weirdos like me. i see the debugger springing into
action again: the conscious mind can tell that the way the
subconscious has tore apart input from the eyes and
reassembled it the conscious mind can understand does not
make sense. then you either shrug it off, or move closer to
see what's going on.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 23:06 [#02501916]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i've long said, "anxiety is like lightning, and strikes the
most convenient target." when you're nervous, you look
around for something to glue the emotion to. if there's a
reason to be nervous, you figure it out. if you're like me,
there's a lot of noise in the system, and it takes working
through a lot of unacceptable situations to break the habit.
i still have my mind dart off and worry about bullshit;
sometimes it really wants to go there. sometimes it slips by
and takes me over and i worry; other times i realize it's
nonsense. relax my body (a procedure getting more complex
these days). breathe deeply. clear my mind for the little
time i can. and i begin to calm down. three seconds later,
it happens again. i keep at it, and eventually, that
particular situation no longer makes me nervous. a lot of
things still make me nervous.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 23:12 [#02501917]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i realized today that applies to anger as well: when you're
mad, you get mad at whatever's in front of your face, too,
and want to hit it. in its face. its stupid fucking face

taking the lightning metaphor deeper, i said: what if,
whenever i'm pissed, i form a habit that jumps in and
reminds me of my deepest priorities in life? and, from
there, what i have to do to work towards those priorities,
tasks and sub-tasks and daily agenda and then perhaps i'll
then be mad at the next to-do item on my list. because this
ties into my tasks, then my priorities, and what i want to
do with myself and my life.

the idea is to earth the energy of the lightning bolt in a
controlled manner and feed it into a useful task: destroying
bad patterns. burning them up. rage. i've already been doing
this plenty, when something like drinking gets me so mad at
myself that i tear through deep patterns i'd otherwise have
trouble uprooting.

if my plebian cow of a neighbor is throwing a prima donna
fit for no particular reason, i tend to get a bit mad. then
i chase it off, like anxiety. but perhaps i should be
thinking about channeling this anger into the fact that i'm
living in a shithole and these are the sort of neighbors you
get in a shithole and i should really be mad at myself for
still being here. and how do i debug/escape the situation.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-12 23:18 [#02501918]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



oh, yes, that obviously means i'm now debugging the
debugger. sounds like a recursive function and i do hope it
returns at some point. predictable squarepusher joke.


 


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