Visual Studio 2010 - My Little Slave

Well,

I'm astounded by the amount of work this well engineered tool did for me! I dragged one label, changed one name, and wrote 1 line of code.

It wrote 62 lines of DHTML, ran a server, etc.

Cool

On the innate physical attractiveness of human beings

Why do people find other people physically attractive, and just WANT them?

So I reason that physical attraction signifies a high level of commitment to yourself (and if you're naturally attractive a commitment of your family toward choosing mates with the same types of commitment). Staying in shape, is difficult, and takes dedication, and hard work DAILY.

So the female's brain is instantly like: wow this guy's really committed, he comes from a good family, works hard, EVERY DAY

I mean that's what you look for in people; anyway that's how it was supposed to work before makeup and rhinoplastys in the wild. but I think it still holds, especially in the US where like 50% of the people are obese.

Not to mention that physical attractiveness is a good predictor of many other things: fertility, strength / ability to NOT be depressed, just to name a few.

What drives us to perform in secret?

I was thinking about this today, based on my current life situation. It seems that secrecy is really in the heart of liberty, an American foundation. Honesty, without secrecy, there is no privacy; fore go privacy and the usual alternative it control (whether governmental, or parental). Perhaps there are other cases I cannot conceive of now, where there IS privacy and NOT control.

The other drive toward secrecy as far as personal accomplishments are concerned is this: without secrecy the magnitude of your accomplishment is constantly kept in check by others, therefore forcing modesty upon you and disallowing you the (perhaps delusional) belief that your actions are grandiose, magnificent, and will lead to a great breakthrough. Though if this breakthrough does occur, the results are normally enough to confound the community for a time. They are puzzled. How did he do it? This questioning of your knowledge, if no one is able to figure the method to your solution, has the potential to lead one to become a legend, and thus gain considerable fame for oneself.

So the costs of secrecy are obvious. Social disentanglement, begets loneliness, begets eventual insanity. The other is the intangible breakthrough, which one strives for, which may never come, because he, the lone-wolf, has chosen to abandon social reevaluations of his work for soundness in direction, with the future hope of social fame.

So I can understand why people take a vow of modesty when they talk to one another, and therefore why the language is suffering so much as thoughts become more and more abstract. "What are you up to?; Oh NOTHING". These thoughts are meaningless, but I believe there is a good reason, though an unconscious one in most people for keeping to themselves, it is the preservation of their own liberties, by not divulging everything to anyone who asks.

Super-Programming-POWER

Today, I unexpectedly found a very cool parallel between cookbooks, auto-repair manuals, and programming. Who knew that such could exist.

In a cookbook, or as a better illustration a car repair manual, there is a troubleshooting section which serves to link the real world problem, or causes / effects of that problem on the environment to a possible resolution focused on the parts of the automobile. Then each of those sections gives a detailed diagram of this part (usually in exploded format) and it's links to other parts' parts ( sometimes in exploded format ; where all the pieces are disassembled in a 3D view ). Furthermore, it gives a detailed explanation of how to disassemble and reinstall this part to the others. Some steps in this process come along with pictures, which sometimes have arrow pointing out the part described.

Personally, these type of more real-world applications which will affect me directly, ( this is the car I drive to work daily ), and have recipe explanations are very appealing to me. So I found a way to visualize and explain to myself the code I work on which has a rather large number of functions and files that do different tasks, most of which I'm sadly very unfamiliar. So this was my solution:

I pretended that I'm reading this type of manual for the current programming error I'm assigned. I try to visualize the part in question, and create an exploded 3D view of it's parts. Then I try to model it's function based on input and output, in a visual way. The images aren't ever really complete. Actually most times I end up pretending that a class (sorry for the jargon; go look it up :P) is a part of the car, so I really have a picture of some very vague car part in my head. So once I do this, I try to see how this part fits in with the system, which accomplished a more advanced task. But I don't think of the task 1st. I think of the other system in the same way as I did 4 this one, then I imagine, again visually, how they connect ( at the points where they exchange data, or modify data between one another ), and similarly model the logic as buttons, small river pathways, etc. which lead to different possible actions.

Self Proclaimed Genius

This question is for myself: Am I really a SELF proclaimed genius?

What does this classification even mean to me?

Just a moment ago, I was privileged enough to regain control of my blog . . . genius. Humorous romantic of the term genius, is more like it. The romantic, ask any girl who has received those love letters in the form poems. Been crushed by the sheer number of them, or just a few, she'll know how to define this for you.

So, as I recover my blog and read about a a small company which produced an amazing balancing bipedal robot named Dexter (after one of my favorite sci geniuses of all time) I think to myself about how I think about the people who create these GREAT, AMAZING, creations the media would rant about and abstract into the:

"they have created a [superlative] robot, [fluff]"

in their silly overly dramatic voices, but I should save my rant for the media for a seperate post. After all, patience will pay off, b/c it will receive (I hate to promise b/c I might suddenly lose all interest in blogging; I usually blog in sprees || spurts).

I posses this sense of idealism in my head, which is made, I suspect of a conglomerate of such media propaganda, self-guilt, from not achieving my overly perfectionist goals, lies, malformed opinions, and basically anything which is irrational and decided upon by my emotions, but has indubitably stuck in my psyche over the years. So thus being stuck, information such as this plays a suppressive role during times when I vigorously rationalize the world around, and about myself. It causes me to analyze why sound ideas during non-emotional phases do not elegantly connect with other ideas, which I do not at the time know to be emotional. So thus I have to rationalize that they are false. In other words 'unlearn" something ( perhaps this is why unlearning can be a very strenuous and difficult process; hmm another post any1? )

How do I come and believe in ideas such as: "I cannot learn everything" when I judge that knowing everything consists of knowing ideas that people such as the ones mentioned at the linked site might know. In practice I might not know most of what they do. But, in practice, if they compare themselves similarly to the world they would find that they ARE the top. Silly ( perhaps this is how overly conceited people become pompous assholes who are good at what they do; and victims of hate because their personality is such ). How would these people ever have a need or motivation (well I admit they could, but this IS a rhetorical question not open to analysis are dismemberment : ) )

Also I come across the notion that my grandiose ideological ideas are accomplished but by a mere number of skilled people as those linked above. This is rather unorthodox as far as my views are concerned. Rather shattering shouldn't it be? So it IS possible to become my ideologies !!!

Well, not really. Because I would be becoming a REAL person not my ideology, which those real peole cannot ever be. This is a difficult concept to grasp. If you do grasp it: congrats. But if you don't: give yourself a couple of years, do something silly, crazy, something opposite to which you think you are 100% sure of, something which will FORCE you by means of circumstance, surroundings to take action in your new environment. Don't just sit and think. Although I'm EXTREMELY hypocritical in offering such advice.

My anxieties are much eased by the idea that my previous thoughts about how intelligent and full of potential I really am are true. Now if you interpret this last sentence to mean I'm a pompous bastard, then too bad for you, Perhaps, had you lived in my shoes as I have, until now, there could be an understanding reached that would open eyes to reveal that is is an EXTREMELY motivational statement to me in the vicious nastiness of current life, or life in general as it is always HARD; people say this consistently over time. But your opinions are great; keep them; and grow from a true understanding of their meaning with time. Later you might decide to revise, or further strengthen them based on life experience.

This topic has not been very focused on the point which I'm trying to explain. I usually try to be, but alas, not today. Maybe I'll try again some other day. I think it's partially b/c I'm having too much fun typing ultra fast and not really thinking about how to structure my thoughts so much as I normally would. Plus the fact that I cannot keep a thought consistent without ranting on it's details EVERY time as I'm currently doing (so this is why they say people w/ Generalized Anxiety Disorder blow up (seems like fluff, and superlative in brackets are HTML tags in blogger ) small tasks into really big ones. ).

Summary:

But basically, I got a real feeling that inventions I read about are created by real people with real knowledge, not some fictitious people in my head. This makes me feel sounds better

My Doppelganger

I'’ve felt his presence since my madness began. Only recently has he come to the surface of my existence in an experience. He is my couch potato. He is the lazy, uncaring, characterized by laziness, suicidal thoughts, & pessimism. This seemingly detestable character has ruled my life every afternoon in front of the TV. Now he is my most cherished ally versus his own nature. He is the ultimate weapon to counteract thoughts based outside myself. Thoughts, which usually center around the future, my feelings, and expectations of others, and their thoughts of me. Now by pretending I'’m on my couch when these intrusive thoughts encroach my mindful, and potentially self loving, cherished territory, he battles them down, soothing me not to care for their existence as I would not care for anything else; then I love myself. Once I love myself I the world springs, as if compressed and waiting, to color and meanings. I am a different person --– a person with unlike memories of my predecessor, unfathomable childishness toward the world, innocence, and desire to improve.

This is the only desire which can lead to improvement itself. I need to feel, literally feel, or be very aware of, somehow, my ability to improve on my previous attempts. Otherwise I spill my time as a pleasure not concentrated to a goal.

"Mind Your Surroundings"

The title is the only viable piece of good work the pathetic excuse for a film "Batman Begins" stamped into my nerve endings. However with it I as my base, I can now attempt to explain a focus, yet not a focus; it is technically such, but focuses on, not the word, nor the images, or anything at all connected with "focus", but is simply another manifestation of the idea, which has no word in itself.
This manifestation, as it occurs, and is now sharply obvious to me, has been around since I can recall. It is funny how I can recall something, which at the time I did not even notice, but yet it does remain in my memory that I have experienced this manifestation countless times before.
The particular appearance of focus is based on the surroundings in my mind's eye. Those same surroundings which I have thus far subconsciously created, and had tremendous difficulty in focusing upon. If I am in tune, or aware of my conjuration of them, then I am calm. Otherwise, a frenzy of unsuccessful attempts riddled with the why's and how's of what is happening to my emotional state, only induce a further trance of that which they seek to understand, leaving me to an eventual breakdown and depression.

Now, the best description I can provide at this moment would be one which Buddhists use: an extention of the self, the body. If I believe I am sitting on my orange and white couch typing this blog right now, I subconsciously create a portrait of exactly such a situation. The TV in front of me, the bike to my left, the windows, doors, temperature, even to the slightest, however "foggy" and remembered these senses might seem, as if out of in a state of dream, they are there, and it is they that create the extention of myself to which my focus is soley devoted.

If I wish to devote myself to not feeling a certain way, I must change. The change, I hay logically thus far assumed was in my emotions themselves. It is only a miniscule part. The change is in my environment, one which guides my emotions so strongly, that the emotions themselves, as weak and uncultivated as they are, cannot resist its direction. Thus to try to accumulate sudden mastery of them, through asking of their change (and pessimistically rebuking myself if I do not succeed, by creating yet another set of environments in my head) is ludicrous.

So I change, through first acknowledging the created environments, the environment. This is not as easy as it sounds. The amount of awareness, impartiality, and change in state from an autonomously emotionally attached one, to a blissful and undisturbed state of 3rd person observer, is excessively difficult. After all, this is the goal on which the practice of mindfulness meditation is centered upon.

Then with this change I learn to embrace the reality of now, and the changes of the world as they come, without unsuspectingly subjecting myself, rather habitually and possibly almost, or on the brink of, subconsciously to environments, which force me into the past, future, and onto other tasks which are irrelevant to the now.

Approaches to Focus

In light brought on in my readings of a Buddhist sites' definition of "Mindfullness", and further contemplation of my own, very similar, thoughts on methods of bringing focus to my activities, I've realized the supreme advantage of the Buddhist method over my own (my own method was developed over time with much experience, and self acknowledged insight mutually exclusive to any Buddhist influence until today).

In my view of the world, I hold several things key to retaining a focus. All of these key ingredients are different vantage points streamlined to motivate my love and appreciation of myself and my art(or whatever I may be doing at the time). For example (and these are more detailed in my journal blog) I remind myself when I listen to a lecture, read a textbook, or discuss a mistake I've made, that I am not a expert in this field, and I do not wish to be an expert. This simply calms my perfectionistic ideals into submission.

Now, my view on distractions from my focus is a simple one: silence my mind from them. This is much harder than it sounds, and is most times a failure when attempted. Most times when I try to silence, I am left with a nagging feeling, as if I am one step away from accomplishing that solitude (and at the same time I apply motivational techniques to stimulate my enthusiasm) and focus, but am consistently running head first into an invisible, impenetrable, immobile barrier. Note that moving past this barrier is very much influenced by my surroundings. At home, on a leisurely schedule, and encompassed by serenity, I find focusing on things I WILL do later on with a compassion a feasible and almost effortless task, however occasionally my motivation stirs into a depressive pensive mood. This tendency has been noticeably decreasing, as my success rate of focus outside the home, especially in areas where reminiscent, almost nostalgic, and explicitly chronic, thoughts have been an auspice of failure. In those areas, however the usual circumstances of myself, and the normalcy of the environment leave no options to my emotion but to falter, and face, the then, inevitable defeat.

As a superficially similar but practically opposite technique is the one presented by Buddhists. They see that dependence on oneself to produce an illusion, as in my case I produce an illusion of motivation and an illusion of defeat, which in my 1st viewpoint seems inevitable, with conscious effort does not allow for a connection with reality. The centerpiece of their vision is in acceptance of the world around; with acceptance comes compassion. Clear to me now, acceptance frees the need for any further manipulation of ones own thought process, in fact acceptance allows for a self modifying cognition which is always streamlined toward success and understanding of the goodness of life. This vantage will be much less likely to force a autonomous questioning of morals, or produce event driven trigger anxieties, which loose a focus.