psy-onna-stick

it was a most pleasant day. last day of the week? einstein's general theory + my last couple of weeks seem to indicate that the more one works, the less one moves in space and the faster the days go by. the first two classes were entertaining; the last class was our orientation.

wordsworth brought in a couple of texts and we demonstrated the kind of analysis that's expected of them for their papers... i think by the end they started getting it... then i had half an hour to teach them the basics of psychology.

either i'm a great teacher, or they're really smart, or they're good liars - apparently everything i said was clear. i covered everything they'll need to get through a goodly chunk of their degrees and i even took it one step further - to the point where we are right now with our wednesday classes.

that made me feel good. then i went to work and actually got quite a bit done, which also felt good. the end of the evening in the office was a bit of a rush job (a few TODO comments in the code) because pg was cooking and i didn't want to miss dinner :P

pg and i just watched confessions, and i can see why our lecturer found it distracting. it's really good.
now, i believe, *is* a good time to go to bed.

---
the last weekend was killer, and i was concerned that i'd be burned out by the end of it. strangely enough, while i'm still exhausted i'm REALLY excited about real programming again and i'm loving both jobs. i don't even mind having to drag my co-worker by the ear because he's a fantastic exercise in coaching, and i'm convinced that the day will come when i teach him to do things the easy way :)

where? am i?

it's just turned thursday, and i have the following to report. in no particular order.

• rollerblading slowly through quiet, dark streets while dressed in clothes i only wear around the house felt... nice...
• i fear i may have offended my favourite professor by sending a mail slightly impolitely deconstructing monday evening's lesson of stupid
• i'm very, very tired.
• this morning's lesson on lacan and levi-strauss actually made sense, and was interesting. it gave me a totally new perspective on science (reinforcing my previously held views, but putting them in a much more interesting context), and brought me across the line from the side on which i'd been imagining that co-conspirator isn't a complete idiot. when she doesn't *get* something, she forces a subject change.
• i would wonder how people like co-conspirator and the girl from monday's lesson got their degrees, only our master's forum this evening explained it all. in simple terms, undergrad is now the pay-as-you-go say-you've-been-to-college certificate, and master's studies are what undergrad used to be once upon a time, when people actually wanted to learn stuff.
  
  in addition, it has been made perfectly clear that the thesis track is a complete waste of time for anyone not planning on continuing on to a phd, and i realize that if i want to contribute something to the academic world i'm as well off, if not better off, doing whatever i like in my own time and publishing (or not) personally. i'd rather make use of my little "vacation" by doing as many courses as i can about things i know nothing about.
• my co-worker: *sigh*. he's not bad, but i don't know how much drilling i need to do before he gets what i'm on about. SIMPLE code. SIMPLE solutions. THOROUGHNESS. when committing and when testing. COMMENTS AND DOCUMENTATION. useful things. in friendly format.
• last night i got to bed early (around midnight) for the first time in a week - and we were woken up with a jolt around half an hour later by a phone call from the states...
  i didn't answer, and i got back to sleep almost immediately, but physical shock was memorable :(
• a long chat yesterday with one of the guys i used to serve with; it sounds like we might get together to make some music - i hope.
• the project! it's OVER! there were a few interface issues, but on the whole it's now a neat and functional application and it does the job. and a whole bunch of other jobs in the future, which means that i designed it well ^_^
  it was really satisfying to see the results of field operation. one row of data made my whole day :)
• i didn't have the energy to go rollerblading last night. it sucked to bail, but it was the smarter choice.
• working on contract is beginning to sound much, much better than for a salary. i can take days off between projects and nobody will give a shit where i am. i can incorporate studies and personal events into my time estimate, and nobody will panic.
  now i'm just waiting for the guys from freelancer to get back to me so that i can bill my first job.

it's not over yet

i've just now, finally, i pray, completed the sql logic. i can't believe that in my haste i made such silly mistakes. now all that's left is to integrate it with the front-end, and then i'll be ready for bed. soon after which time i'll be getting up for class again...

... i only got to sleep around 3am yesterday (too, it seems), then got up early to do the reading and didn't have nearly enough time. i managed to arrive late for the first class because i'd gotten the rooms backwards and sat waiting for a while until i registered that i didn't know *anyone* around me...

the second class was interesting, but i was buggered, unfocused, and it took me right until the very end of class to come up with something interesting. i decided not to go to the third that i've been auditing because it really is a waste of time if i'm not doing the readings. and i was really tired as well.

i had lunch with wordsworth, who gave me a ride to the bus - on the way another netvision representative called to offer me some new deal; it's happening more and more frequently, and i've taken to screaming at them in an attempt to get myself on a "do not call" list. it's very upsetting, especially considering the fact that they've still got me by the balls with the internet services that i don't want :S

work: horrid. everything went pear shaped, and it all being down to configuration issues doesn't make me feel any better. i don't know if my chat with the boss at the end was productive; it took me a while to explain last week's misunderstanding to him; there were a lot of assumptions made about company knowledge that i've just learned the hard way, such as who to listen to and under what conditions to agree to a project. next time i'll be smarter, at least :)

slightly more positive news - my mum's coming to visit soon ^_^

it's funny, i don't listen to music when i'm super-stressed. after getting home, snacking, skipping over to pg's parents' to print and photocopy stuff so that i can sign up for a freelancing company (what a great idea!!! they take a cut and i don't have to get intimate with the revenue service), and doing my french homework, i was feeling much more relaxed.

just a little bit longer...

not. my. day.

i got to work all excited after french class, only to discover a couple of minor bugs that kept me busy until i had to run to class again. it was in the middle of class that i got a phone call informing me that things weren't working...

... it's the class that's usually my favourite. nim, the girl who upset me on thursday? [i didn't even mention it, apparently. she kept cutting off the professor, and punctuated the rest of her sentences with "uh, huh?"s and "mmms" and "rights" - a little distracting]
i had a talk with her, which i'd been dreading both having and not having - i was certain the confrontation would be unpleasant, but the alternative was more of her behaviour. surprisingly, it seems to have gone alright. but the universe couldn't let it go at that, so it had her "teaching" us the whole lesson instead.

this is a girl who doesn't *get* what the class is about. we spent two hours pouring over uninteresting things that any idiot could find online, and in this case did. the highlight? she cited "the onion" as a source, not realizing that it's a parody site.

seriously.

...

straight back to work, there until 10pm. i got things basically functional, but the boss asked me to make some critical changes and holy crap, i've just spent two hours renaming fields in the database only to discover that i'd forgotten to incorporate a couple of changes made in the other office, potentially wasting hours of work when i don't *have* hours to spare. it's closing in on 1.40am and i haven't done the readings for the morning.

FUCK. and my outcry at my discovery woke pg :(
at least it seems that the bosses are happy with me. i'll tell you how much that's worth if i survive the day.

parkinson's law isn't always right

i'm WAY overdue for this project, judging by the amount of sleep i've lost and the fact that i haven't been out of the apartment since thursday. heck, i can count the number of breaks i've had on my fingers (although friday's few hours were good).

there's just a *tiny* bit left to do and i really can't do it without jeopardizing my day. dammit.

both wired and tired

i have just now completed the Big Deal - the only thing that sucks is that while there's a big deal of code behind it, it doesn't actually look that impressive from the user's end. i can only hope that it's as "to spec" as i think it is. at least it's a major item scratched off the list; two more major ones to go.

i'm taking a break to do some of the readings for tomorrow; the only other break i've had was for french homework. i've just decided that i won't be joining the protest tonight... i really don't have the time.

on another note - the leftovers from pg's baking are unfortunately delicious.

ticking tocks

i worked until late, then slept, then got up early and carried on working. aside from a chat with my mum mid-way through the day, i continued to work through to the evening, at the end of which i discovered that the biggest part of the project (or most complex, at least) is still ahead of me. so tomorrow's going to be hard work again. and i have readings to do.

dinner at pg's parents' was great, and we came home just before the guys began to arrive for super-weird anime, a nasty game of citadels (i was either killed or disabled for most of the game, and - mostly - it wasn't even intentional), and attack the block. that's a fun, intriguing film but it's not quite as good as i was expecting (after the so-far cornetto series and paul, which kind of set the bar), although something tells me that there's a lot more to the movie hidden beneath the surface and that it might warrant a more observant review at some later stage.

as pg said - it's alright that we didn't see it in the cinema.

---
in terms of discourse and registers and what-have-you, it's dawning on me that pg's and my relationship has, for a while, been a lot less girlfriend / boyfriend and a lot more husband / wife. i find it a bit startling every time that we discuss future plans (serious ones, like leaving the country and raising children) that these things don't worry me; they're not overwhelming or scary, they're just the way things are and the way things should be. and that feels... rather good, really.

break-ed

i spent a couple more hours working, then went to bed. then woke up and dragged myself back to campus. the day was great; excellent even. we got good feedback on our orientation course, too.

i scrambled home, buying olive oil on the way and wondering, once again, why the express queue is always the slowest. i mean, i know *why* - they just have to herd troublemakers over to another aisle - but i don't understand why it's not taken care of.

i did a bit of work, then joined sorter at my apartment to spend an hour or two terrified by the fact that we were working with asbestos (not directly, but the dust was everywhere and i'm not sure that our masks were really enough. it was dirty, disgusting work (i didn't do much aside from share my opinions and try to avoid the dust - not that the troublesome particles are visible) and i *really* hope we've sorted the leak out this time.

whether we have or haven't, though, we now know what the situation under the roof is and i'm going to need to set up something a little more solid.

we came back to my place for a beer, after which i showered and ate (and joined pg in watching an episode or so of invader zim, and now i'm working / playing...

oh, crap. and YAY!

i'm a bit blown. it's 1am and i've barely begun the stuff that needs to be finished this week, because every - single - time i try to do something i learn a new limitation or something else goes pear-shaped. no pressure... i'm reduced to simulating the functions that are working but somehow inaccessible by copying and pasting their live results into the code i'm writing.

this is shameful.

---
the other crazy news:
i made a serious faux pas yesterday with both my bosses, and i got the feeling that at that moment i'd blown the whole thing and had lost the job. it ate away at me all the way home, by which time i'd settled on a course of action that involved sending a long email to explain exactly what was going through my mind when i said what i did.

apparently they're both surprised and satisfied by the email, but we'll only know when it comes time to make the hiring decision...

mongoose called me up yesterday, and spoke to me in a way that i find... disappointing. i'm actually quite irritated with him, and i suspect that we're not friends anymore, nor have we been for a while.

this morning began way too early with way too much freud and lacan. i'm not entirely sure what was going on - i tried to take notes but the words blew away like wisps of smoke in a breeze. something about navels and signifiers and not knowing anything. that was all after witnessing an absolutely horrifying incident with some violent kids (and i mean, 8-12 year olds) continuing to be disgracefully rude to an elderly lady in spite of three of us (on a packed bus) stepping in; one was adamant that he was both polite and a grown man, and i'm fairly certain that his parents should be culled.

---
the good stuff:

on my way off campus last week my left ankle developed shooting pains at every step, and i suspect a bit of a sprain. it only got worse whatever i did, and then i figured out that if i forced my leg out and to the left it didn't hurt so much... it's kinda like i'm retraining my leg, only without the use of orthotics. the odd bit is that when i went for a run on sunday (forcing it outwards consciously) it was okay... anyway, it felt much better today.

rollerblading last night was excellent. today, so many birthday wishes *did* make me smile in spite of my cynicism. it made it tough to get things done! the best part of the day: cooking liver for dinner and then being treated to pg's excessively decadent personal pavlovas. small for a pavlova, giant for a meringue ^_^
every time i leave the study i'm surrounded by balloons and wishes; and pg knitted me a really funky scarf! (i didn't realize she'd made it herself, i was certain it was store-bought :P)

almost 2am?

rubbish! i won't have it!

i've finally learned how to use linq. why it's so complicated to find out how simple everything is is beyond me. add new item, linq to sql classes, drag and drop, save, et voilà. sheesh. so now i have http referral, wcf, linq, and manual sql server database manipulation under control, all i have to do is produce a hefty frikkin' service-based interface for the users in two / three days.

holy crap.

...

mondays are long days, and in the third class i discovered that i hadn't even bothered to look at the materials for the second course i'm only auditing. thank the gods that i'm auditing, i was lost for half the lesson (although the other half was interesting).
the earlier classes were great.

half the time i was at work was spent engaged in conversation with my co-workers - i *really* like the new office. i really hope i can impress the bosses enough to take me on.

i came straight home, ate dinner, and aside from five minutes of sitting with pg while she's going through invader zim (it was my favourite episode, hobo 13) i've been here, in front of the screen.

must... sleep...

stressed out weekend

i don't feel like i had much of a weekend... i spent all of yesterday stressing because i couldn't get a basic wcf restful application running. i had sample code and too much documentation to pour over, and while i thought i understood everything i just couldn't get things functional.

i took a break midway through the day to watch i, claudius, expecting it to be a comedy. it's about as funny as stepping barefoot on a sharp knife when lost and hungry in a dark forest. it's kind of like watching rome (the series), only with less psychedelics, less sex, and less amusing lines.

at night we walked to mike's place for a joint birthday party (mine and one other), and the evening was quite awkward (mostly seating issues, but some social ones too). mindless echoes was supposed to play at 10pm, which was then moved to 11pm, which meant that they only really got on stage around 11.45pm and we had to be out of there by midnight... at least the second song was awesome.

i have to admit that i ate far too much. when i got home, i looked in the mirror and was horrified to see my gut hanging out at me - no way. in response, i didn't have an appetite nor anything to eat today*, minus an energy bar around 4pm and a bowl of cereal two to three hours before returning home to go for a run.

* yes, i know it's counter-productive.

today began at the tax bureau, where i offended the first guy into a state of intentional, petty uselessness, and walked around in circles** until eventually somebody took pity on me. i'm still not sure what happened after that, only it involved filling out a form. i'd written "less than one month," and the woman read it and looked up at me: "i don't understand, you need to mention time-frame. like, a month? a year? something."

** literally, they've placed all the offices in a circle and have useless signs, for maximum confusion.

french class wasn't bad, and then i was stressing again on my way to work. stressing because i have four days left to make good on this contract and i haven't made any progress with actual code in days... then i got into the office (minus a short visit to the old office to say hi and discuss monies) to have scr laugh at me: all of the documentation i'd found for wcf was for versions 3 or 3.5, and the example he'd given me is for version 4. within one minute we'd sorted it all out and damn they made that shit easier!

back to campus, for an amusing and deeply satisfying class on the russian revolution. really. i made a connection between conway's game of life and the post-revolution riots that, combined with the trauma classes, have me pretty certain that i know what my seminar paper's going to be about. i had to refrain from arguing with our professor about zombies because i don't want to let the cat out of the bag regarding my plans for my thesis, and most certainly not in front of other students :P

a couple of hours in the old office, with sorter and i agreeing that with my schedule conflicts (the past couple of months have not gone according to plan) it's a good idea to bring someone in, and it just so happens that my co-worker, for all his faults, is the ideal candidate. so we had a chat and i've just now sent him the outline with the first stuff he needs to get done.

i came home to change clothes - not warm enough, unfortunately - and go for a run. i feel better already, have eaten a delicious and almost carb-free dinner***, done a couple of things that needed doing (hopefully i've done them correctly) and am ready to get to bed.

*** yes, i know complex carbs are okay nutritionally, but they're not very helpful when trying to lose weight!

summary fire too

it was really tough focusing on things today. the amusing bit is that i only realized two important things at the end of it that would have made me waste a lot less time earlier:

1. i *did* have the details i needed to get started on transferring our department's website. when i did remember, i got started and it's such a pleasure to work with joomla!

2. visual studio's c# express has more than enough power to create and manipulate an sql database (even though it's not designed for this, and requires ignoring a lot of "this is all wrong" alerts).

the kak bit of the day - a rehashed argument (and not an enlightening one) with an annoying girl in our department forum on facebook. the excellent bit - going to the tmuna with wr (with him carrying a book of shakespeare*, that doesn't happen as often) to hear some didgeridoo artists, groovy funk music and then excellent trance.

* edit: this was more amusing when i used to refer to wr as shakespeare.

summary fire

the scientologists didn't have authorization to enter campus, which reflects better on both the student union and the contractors who organize the bazaar. the day was long and entertaining, i got a nasty surprise at work (although i suspect that it's my own fault that i misunderstood the requirement, and otherwise everything's great), then i came home to shop and didn't have energy to do anything more than watch big fish and go to bed.

picked up my copy of ferenc karinthy - metropole this morning, bought stickers (so it's now going to cost me less than a shekel per sheet, instead of twelve), and i've now given up on my webmaster duties for the weekend in favour of getting real work / studying done.

---update: oh, shit! i completely forgot two awesome items:

1. the march hare reading eric idle - who wrote shakespeare? at the beginning of class. inspirational!

2. until yesterday i hadn't been exposed to kant's formulations:

a. "act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."
b. "act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."
c. "therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends."

good to know. i can't disagree with kant... only with those who misinterpret him.

i don't like wasting words

so i repost them here.

the paper makes one incredibly large assumption at the very beginning - that people are rational. the problem is that the very notion of "rational" depends on culture and world-view.

the universe as you know it is entirely constructed of partial sensory data that you put together in causal sequence to create narrative. that's not to say that you don't get anything right, but that is to say that you "tune out" or "smooth over" contradictions in order to contain them. considering the simple fact that your experience of the world is not identical to the world itself* is a giant contradiction that you have to make peace with, and that effects most of your rational decision-making processes.

the bottom line is that the scientific method is the one method ideally suited for discovering facts outside of the human experience, but it's incomplete (i'm being exceedingly generous here) when applied to human consciousness because psychologizing is a process that does not take place in isolation and cannot (at least at this stage in our technological / philosophical development) be measured in any meaningful way. understanding human behaviour demands a lot more than understanding "desire", because there are deeper desires that determine whether those shallower desires will be acted upon and it is uncannily complicated to communicate them - meaning that it is fantastically difficult to assume that you can figure out what drives someone else. or even yourself.

* for instance, there's no such thing as colour, only differing wavelengths reflected from light hitting a surface, but you identify them as colour and most of us can all talk about the colour blue** regardless of how we see it.

** assuming, of course, that it's a culturally significant colour. this is why the russians differentiate between a lot more reds than the rest of us.

---
clarification
---
> "your paper makes one incredibly large assumption at the very beginning - that people are rational. the problem is that the very notion of "rational" depends on culture and world-view."

Where does the paper make that assumption? The paper is fully about how to consider irrational acts. Looking at statements in the preamble before examples of irrationality are introduced simply doesn't do the paper justice.

i'm sorry, i went through the paper and it appeared to be trying to make sense of human behaviour. Everything talked of utility, and the idea of utility implies being able to determine what that utility is. The underlying assumption that people want money doesn't fly for a surprising number of people.

> "considering the simple fact that your experience of the world is not identical to the world itself* is a giant contradiction that you have to make peace with, and that effects most of your rational decision-making processes."

First off, calling it a contradiction is erroneous. I am happy to concede the DUALIST approach. Yet I am a functional materialist in so far as the experience of evidence -fits- with other evidence.

it's not a matter of evidence fitting or not fitting, it's the notion that your reality IS reality instead of just a MAP onto reality. which is not the same thing.

> "the bottom line is that the scientific method is the one method ideally suited for discovering facts outside of the human experience, but it's incomplete (i'm being excessively generous here) when applied to human consciousness because psychologizing is a process that does not take place in isolation and cannot (at least at this stage in our technological / philosophical development) be measured in any meaningful way."

Firstly that is not my experience of the human mind and people in general. The atom may not be deterministic due to Quantum theory, but my experience of people suggests determinism on a grand scale. Even what people consider to be 'irrational'.

The thing is that you seem to think it's possible to simplify; one's internal universe (the mapping) is vast and complex, and neurologically riddled with feedback loops and filters. the fact that you see determinism on a grand scale is a perfect example of how your mind creates a coherent narrative on top of events in order to link them with causality. this is something YOU do, not something that exists outside of your experience.

Further, even if the scientific method is in error, it would be even more erroneous to suggest that emotional argument or beliefs is the superior form.

i'm not sure how to express this succinctly: the scientific method is not in error, we are incapable of using it on ourselves. it becomes irrelevant to discussions of human behaviour because we are unable to isolate the variables.

>" understanding human behaviour demands a lot more than understanding "desire", because there are deeper desires that determine whether those shallower desires will be acted upon and it is uncannily complicated to communicate them - meaning that it is fantastically difficult to assume that you can figure out what drives someone else. or even yourself. "

This is probably your own work. I suggest nothing more than there are separate human desires that are often in conflict, even in the individual, and belief systems are the means of picking and choosing between the conflict, whether cognitively or not.

100%. but you don't have access to the processes, so to make assumptions about them is ridiculous.

>"* for instance, there's no such thing as colour, only differing wavelengths reflected from light hitting a surface, but you identify them as colour and most of us can all talk about the colour blue** regardless of how we see it."

Here, you are wrong. Colour is simply the ASSOCIATION between distinguishable wavelength and various experiences. Assuming that an association is 'not a real thing', is a fundamental flaw on your part.

here we have a terminological quandary. instead of "real", i use the terms "true" to indicate a subjective reality and "fact" to indicate an objective one. if you believe something, it's true and real for you. if that belief can be verified using the scientific method (and here we have to be reasonable, because even though scientific consensus isn't always right, it is always "as right as can be until we get new information") then it's "fact" and real for everyone.

"colour" is the interpretation of a wavelength, which means that it's very real for every human being, but not real in an external sense. colour is truth, not fact.

>"** assuming, of course, that it's a culturally significant colour. this is why the russians differentiate between a lot more reds than the rest of us"

<personal details deleted here>

our brain performs two functions: filtering and pattern-matching. you're right - it's incentivized, meaning that if we don't need certain information then we drop it. just like the japanese, unable to differentiate between "r" and "l". there is no "conflict", as such; it's a personal mapping that either has a value for a specified wavelength or doesn't.

in the enemy's camp

i couldn't keep my eyes open during first class. it was painful and uncomfortable and filled with lacan and freud and bad parenting.

i had to write a paper about trauma today, and i learned so much while writing it that i'm fairly astounded by my own insight.

the evening class was entertaining as usual, work (old office) was a bit productive, the bus there (with the girl who scrapper met through me, somehow) was initially awkward, then kinda interesting, and interrupted by a girl sitting in the row in front of us who started asking me questions out of the blue. i was completely thrown by this; when she got to asking how i feel about israel, my immediate response was "it's a shit-hole."

"why?" she asked, sounding a bit hurt.
"it's the lack of culture. it kills me."

and she left me alone. then i felt bad for being so vague and not being specific: it's because everyone's completely absorbed by their own needs and desires and the notion of being considerate is completely out the window, to the point where israelis make themselves miserable by behaving so badly.

this evening it felt like pg and i were celebrating without specific cause - dinner out followed by ice-cream. and the real gift? she's been watching invader zim since she got home around noon.

*sigh*

---
the one thing that's pissed me right off, though, is seeing a scientology stand on campus. they profile you to see if you're normal, then teach you to do what essentially amounts to lobotomizing yourself before hitting you with the whopper. i realize that that sounds suspiciously like other religions. it's an anti-academic anti-science foundation that violently suppresses dissidence. that means that if you're stupid enough to fall for their shit, you're screwed. shit. that's still like a few other religions.

there are two types of scientologists: assholes, and morons. and they're both dangerous. the original judeo-christian texts in general and jewish philosophy in particular are full of profundity, but "the fans", as someone so eloquently said, are the problem. scientology, however, is a practical joke by a well-known science fiction author that went too far.

scientology is not like the others. scientology was designed to be a giant con; at least the other religions have *some* positive side-effects, scientology is net-mega-negative.

launching...

i walked home fast from work last night, partly because there were lurkers at the beginning of the road and i didn't want them to see that i was... distrustful... i had a quick shower and went straight to bed.

i'm very lucky - as is pg - that after she got up at 6.30am and was getting ready to go to class, i began to stir and somehow registered that i hadn't informed her of the strike. we hadn't been sent any details, so she decided to take a chance and went back to bed. two hours later i got up for my class (with the same teacher), and i arrived on campus to discover that the lessons were indeed cancelled and that pg had gotten it right.

---so i went to work. they set me up in an office with two other guys (who seem nice enough, but then again i've only seen this company as having a good dynamic), and after a weird struggle with security settings i managed to get started. aside from two short breaks for phone calls and coffee, i worked straight through from 11-5 and *enjoyed* myself. not least of which was caused by my getting the basic underlying requirement functional.

i'm kinda proud of myself. and grateful to microsoft for their visual studio line. it has evolved into a set of exquisitely solid products and aside from a few nuances (almost nothing that a good forum hunt can't handle) they really do allow one to focus on the programmatical problems instead of the environmental.

---the bus back to tel aviv smelled bad. at certain hours of the day, the back of the bus is packed with less hygiene-orientated people and it's hard to concentrate on reading shakespeare (we're on taming of the shrew, and it turns out i don't remember any of it) in that sort of environment...

i met up at the lincoln with daddy-o, and we spent a good hour and a half catching up, arguing politics and getting into the games; i think the last time i saw him we were taking the judges examination together in order to be promoted to captains, and now we're both civilians (he's been out two weeks) we can discuss this stuff freely :)

late for a meeting with nystire - and slightly tipsy, and with my mind still racing from the debating - i rushed to azrieli to meet him and his wife for coffee and rather interesting conversation. then i rushed home to strap on blades for a really fun couple of hours around tel aviv.

now i'm about to hit the hay: i'm still really excited about the day in general. the only thing that mars it somewhat is hearing about the south african secrecy bill. well done, assholes.

---i wonder why stephen hawking thinks we can't manage? and who was that weirdo who used to say the same thing? oh, yes... timothy leary... you don't wanna listen to someone like that... </massive irony>

long day

it was a long day, whether in the classroom, or the office. those are the only places i've been. and i think i'm nursing a throat infection.

the day began with a horrible incident with the slow girl who annoyed me the whole of last semester. she called me over, then stood with arms open expectantly until i couldn't not hug her without making a scene. i didn't want to hug her. then she spoke inanities at me that i had no response to. when someone i knew came past, i jumped at the opportunity to run away, feeling mortified at needing a pretext and disgusted at myself for butting into what could well have been a private conversation. no amount of apologizing could make me feel better about what i'd done.

it was a long day - my last professor had seen me arrive in the morning - a long day of supremely intriguing ideas. then i came straight to work, and have surprised myself by doing almost nothing but work since i arrived. and that was about six hours ago.

sheesh.

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memorable facebook argument for today: on academic strikes and whether or not they're justified.
you're not a customer, you're a student. and those people who are on strike are also students, who have no job security and it's their only way to pay for their studies.

the responsibilities in academia for actually learning anything fall on the student, not on the teacher - this isn't high school. the classes that are cancelled have to be made up... they probably will.

...

one of the problems with the university is that it's a giant bureaucratic organism and there're always "rationality gaps". the question is, if you were only taking two courses this year and were paying an amount accordingly, would you be less upset?

i don't think the money's the issue. most of us are paying a lot. but then, most of us aren't planning professional academic careers and it doesn't matter to us if the (non-tenured career academics) get fucked. but that's their career, and it matters to them. and if they don't get better conditions, in the long run the chances are there'd be far less people willing to choose academia as a career path. far less people to teach you stuff.

and then actual universities would be even closer to shutting their doors than they've become. you'll be able to choose whatever college you want to learn a trade, education can get stuffed and welcome to a Much Better World filled with Only Practical Things.

...

dick moves are all they have. the problem with any strike / boycott / protest is that if you don't mess things up then nobody will care. it's a sign of desperation that they're resorting to this :(

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and speaking of protesting: this just blows my mind - people put up with this shit?
good on this guy for slicing through. we're talking about non-violent and apparently non-disruptive protest. if it's a private school and the students are making a nuisance of themselves, they're more than welcome to have them removed in a reasonable fashion. the methods employed were not reasonable. and as far as i can tell we're talking about a public institution.

enthusiasm

but undone prep for tomorrow's classes. it's about 2am and i've spent the past few hours playing with visual studio... and actually getting somewhere. i love working with things that, umm, work.

...

french class was alright. "that guy" in our french class got me thinking: "if you ejaculate each thought as it occurs, you limit the speed of your thoughts to that of your flapping gums". i didn't say it out loud.

a few hours in the office, getting advice from scr (who's pretty much my team leader now) and discussing terms with the bosses - i *like* these terms - and then i returned to campus to get some reading done before the second class. which was another mind-meltingly interesting one.

i stopped by the old office on the way home to perform a code review and chew out -someone (as usual), then returned home to Get Stuff Done. only, Stuff ended up in the singular, which wasn't the plan...

the new media

after being hit by an inspiration particle after trying to come up with something clever on the theme of "poetry in unexpected places", and having sounded the idea off people i'm close to, i have come up with an idea that may very well change the way we interact with our world; an idea to breach the fictitious gap between cyberspace and meatspace.

PART 1 - GRAFFITI
the first part is cheap to do and astoundingly simple. instead of spraying "killroy was here", or even something fantastically artistic but physical, it is now possible to cheaply and easily print and place a QR code that represents whatever message or links to whatever static / dynamic artwork one wishes to display.

this becomes interesting when the text or linked item in question is strongly connected with the location of the QR code. for instance, imagine walking through a park and spotting a QR code on a bench. when you pass your scanner over the code, an apparition appears on the bench (viewed from the perspective of the camera facing the sticker) and adds a ghostly narrative to your experience of the park.
or, upon pointing your camera at a code on a street corner, you're treated to a band playing a song on that very same corner.

PART 2 - AUGMENTED REALITY
this takes the previous idea one level further, and requires cellphone applications that superimpose data from a QR code over the camera display. this could be anything from seeing objects that aren't there - similar to the idea in part 1 only viewable from any angle - to reconstructing the objects that are.

for example, if i'm wearing a QR code on the back of my t-shirt and it links to a skin of an alien monster, the application could display the skin instead of me and match its movements to mine.

BOTH ARE LIMITLESS
the interactivity made possible in either phase is bounded only by the imagination of the artist. a QR code can link to a puzzle that must be solved in order to find the next QR code. or it can be used to correspond with the previous / next viewers of the QR code. the target site of the code can be updated to reflect changes in the time, the weather, the political situation, the number of people who have already viewed the content, and so on...

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imagine a world where you can take in a good play, or catch up with your favourite "television" show just by following codes through the cityscape. i just did, and it sounds really, really good to me!

the studio

it's been a long, long couple of days. some of the visual studio stuff was so simple that i'm still not entirely sure how it works or that i did the right things. some of the stuff - the stuff that *should* have been simple, like setting up a database in sql server - has taken a lot of my time and gotten me nowhere.

what bothers me is that aside from a couple of breaks (dinner last night, lunch this afternoon and in about half an hour we're hosting gaming / anime night as usual) i've spent all of my time focused on work and none on studies :/

at least most of the weekend has been fun. and pg made cookies! we have too many cookies. the marshmallow ones are a disaster in the diet department.