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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... |
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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. |
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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 |
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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 |
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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... |
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i've taken a moment to 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. |
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p.s. i can't help myself, sometimes, so: eventually the board will allow new users again, 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 |
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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. |
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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. |
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oh, yes, and a notion is about fifty micrograms short of a vibe. |
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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 |
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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. |
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murking it up. like autocorrect. fucker. I am shutting that off right now. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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 |
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fucking hell |
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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. |
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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 |
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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++. |
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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. |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 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. |
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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 |
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i just thought of joyrex. i just lost the game. |
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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 |
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genuine lol (tm), but it's another learned pattern. it's old and deep. older than the 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 |
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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 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. |
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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 |
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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 |
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i called notions a 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. |
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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. |
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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 |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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*that powers there's one of those typos that really smarts. i can't even type my best shit properly. |
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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. |
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"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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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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