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real gl
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dreaming and belief
hypothesis: it's possible to get the mind to enter an awake-like state while dreaming (lucid dreaming), and possible to get the mind to enter a dream-like state while awake (hypnosis, meditation, lsd). hypothesis: two techniques to help train the mind to enter both of these states, are: practice really doubting whether "reality" is real practice really believing a non "real" thing (faith)…
hypocrisy ok
I feel like our culture values consistency. So if I say something about myself, like "I'm not embarrassed about using two forks" -- which I've said -- then I feel some compulsion to not be embarrassed about it. But the fact is, I am embarrassed about it sometimes. And it seems good to recognize that. I suppose that given that realization, it makes sense not to tell people in the future that I'm…
believing things because they are said
Couple thoughts: It occurs to me that I have felt like I'm doing something wrong whenever I feel stressed or depressed.. But I don't feel like I'm doing something wrong when I'm hungry, even if I decide not to eat.. I think stress and depression may be normal human processes, and as unpleasant and potentially destructive to the body they may be, I think they're not evil. I've just been told that,…
being happy
thought 1: maybe it's better not to have a life goal, but rather to focus on being happy day to day. thought 2: I'm interested in knowing what things and situations make me happy. thought 3: it turns out that working on visually stimulating things brings me some happiness. I was working on this today (see below), which is going to be a JavaScript version of this .
Acorn
I just saw this on my screen, and thought it was funny: It's like the guy is all upset that Acorn's trial period is up, and is trying to shout through a blurred window. But actually the blurring is from a bad camera shot, not Acorn.
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just a thought: I worry sometimes that by becoming more aware and detached from my emotions, I won't be able to feel them as much, which might suck, since sometimes it can be fun to feel emotions strongly, but I think that an aware and detached person could still allow themselves to sink into an emotion, perhaps even further than they could go if they weren't aware and detached.. ..I was thinking…
lucid dream
I had a few lucid dreams recently. The first was more-or-less normal, and the most recent two were very strange and short. One involved a bunch of balloons, and the other involved sortof seeing something different from each eye, and trying to "focus" onto the dream scene, but not succeeding. I recall that the first time I had a lucid dream was the first time I read about lucid dreaming, and it was…
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I tried the Oculus Rift again, and this time I am really impressed and excited. I had tried it before, and the demo I saw wasn't very immersive, which is understandable, since the person was working on a prototype that wasn't meant to be immersive yet, but I figured the problem had to do with low resolution.. ..but the demo I saw this time still had low resolution, but it was really nice. Things…
dropbox datastore
I kinda love Dropbox's datestore.. ..I was using a regular file for pima, since I wanted it to be encrypted, and also replicated on my disk, and I think the datastores are only in the cloud.. not sure.. ..anyway, for my progress helper thing, currently called "progressing with the stars", I used the datastore, and it was awesome. It was just so easy: I draw everything based on what's in the…
dual spritz
source code Bwahahahaha!!! You can try to read Alice in Wonderland and Pride and Prejudice AT THE SAME TIME! Why.. WHY!!! Because maybe learning to read two things simultaneously makes the brain smarter, which is a half-baked idea I got from not fully understanding an experiment I read about. Anyway, I'm going to try it, and we'll see what happens. So far what happens is that I can pay attention…
spritz
source code so I'm probably the last to hear of spritz, but I love the idea, and I wanted an interface that let me paste text into it and spritz it, which is what I have above (based on the code for OpenSpritz , though I ended up rewriting it to suit my simplistic needs). Anyway, the real reason I did this is that I read something in a book about the brain. It said someone ran a study on "brain…
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I often do this wrong: I want a number to bottom out at 0 — so that zero is the minimum value the number can be — so I do this: number = Math.min(0, number) Which is wrong. It should be: number = Math.max(0, number) But how to remember this?
sayings about suffering
"Remove desires." — I read Siddhartha in high school, and I recall a character saying that the root of suffering is desire. If we didn't have desires, we wouldn't suffer. Removing desires seemed like a good idea at first, but I tried it, and I found that I couldn't do it, and it seemed like if I did, then I wouldn't do anything at all.. I'd just lie there and die.. which seemed bad. "Accept…
sayings
I think sayings are programs that my mind runs, and I think it's useful to analyze them carefully and make sure they're good programs. Sayings about Fear "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." — I assume this is intended to mean "we shouldn't be afraid of anything", but it's being cute. Being cute does not seem good for programs in the brain. I want my programs to be obvious and…
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taxes texas in a sense innocence priming theatre masks [ :) ]--- [ :( ]---
two types of meditation
I was talking with a couple people about meditation, and how there are sortof two branches of meditation, where one is about relaxing, and one is about self examination, and a couple people came up with these names which I thought were clever: mellow -tation and meta -tation
surfing
so, when I was in Maui, I tried surfing, and.. ..I was just not strong enough to do it. I felt like a dinosaur with ridiculously small arms trying to paddle the board out to sea, and by the time I got there, I could barely do anything, much less paddle at the speed of a wave and lift my body out of the water onto the board and balance on the board.. ..but I could tell it would be fun! and I think…
The Embassy
for the past month, I stayed with a group of people in a big house in Hawaii, and it was awesome, and I want to live that way all the time, so now that I'm back in the bay I asked a friend if they knew of such a place here, and they asked a friend who knew of a place and put me in touch with The Embassy .. ..I woke up this morning in my bunk bed at the embassy, and the house cat Pixel had camped…
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I wanna see where my money goes, especially since starting my sabbatical thing. Downloaded all my transactions from Mint.com. Processing with javascript-eval.. function chop(x) { return x.slice(1, x.length - 1).split(/","/) } var lines = _.lines(input) var keys = chop(lines[0]) var ts = _.map(lines.slice(1), function (line) { return _.object(keys, chop(line)) }) _.each(ts, function (t) { t.Date =…
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I summoned an uber car, but didn't notice that the pin was not quite where I was. I ran toward the pickup location, but I could see they were beating me, so I called the driver. A woman picked up and I told her where I was, and she said she'd come there. A moment later, I see a guy wave to me from his car, right where uber says his car should be. I get to the car and he tells me he is deaf, and…
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I was describing pima's encryption to someone, and they mentioned that I might consider using b-crypt or s-crypt to generate the AES password from the plaintext password provided by the user, since the plaintext password is likely to be relatively small. I'm considering doing this, but there is a time consideration in JavaScript. That is, JavaScript is slow, so I wonder how long it will take to…
right to die
I have taken to the idea that people have a right to die. The biggest argument I've heard against suicide is that it hurts other people, presumably by causing them a sense of grief and loss. But when someone chooses to move away for a long time, they also cause a sense of grief and loss, yet their friends and family believe it is their job to accept this loss because they love the person moving…
volcano
I mentioned before a regret of not going with some people to see lava. I was afraid it might be dangerous. Some people went again, and I went with them. After walking for an hour and a half through rainforest and mud, and then an hour and a half over brittle lava fields with stream coming out at various places through cracks, we saw the main active point. We could see redness, like a furnace, 100…
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NOTE: you probably want Control instead of Command — this image is for MY machine which has those buttons switched Ho ho, so I like to lock my screen when I leave my computer, and I couldn't find a hotkey for it on my mac, so I made moving my mouse to the lower-left corner bring up the password protected screen saver, but I always felt like I needed to wait a second, because if I moved my mouse…