wrote this a while ago, meant to finish it, never did:
For those who missed the news, Aaron Swartz committed suicide recently. For those who don't know who that is... all you really need to know is that he has impacted your life, which is more than you can say about most people. He was one of those people who everybody recognized as a genius... who lived up to the label. He was famous in tech circles by the time he was fifteen. He cowrote the RSS specification as well as reddit's engine, but his largest contribution to society was in his advocacy for an open internet and his impact on helping to prevent SOPA from getting passed.
I related with this web entity, and supported his causes and applauded his contributions to the internet, but it wasnt until a year or two ago when I read a writeup of his contributions to the fight against SOPA did I really investigate his character and become emotionally invested in his life. I related with practically everything he had done, and reading his blog entries revealed that despite his proactive contributions and web celebrity he was a grounded individual who had very similar thought process to my own. For a time Id hoped to be able to meet him and maybe discuss philosophy.
and actions which garnered him fame, many of his views on the world highly aligned with my own. His ability to push forward and impact change at such a young age and his seemingly fearless attitude of pushing forward regardless of the odds against him inspired me.
Looking back, I had an inkling that he was naive, but I brushed it aside as letting my fear about risking myself, and
: to continue:
I guess I was gonna get preachy, and hopefully motivated, but ... failed. young guy died because the government was terrible, harkens to where my head is at at this point. contribute to society in a way that I deem important. hopefully make an impact. Education / the dispersal of information over the internet.... thats about where my heads at, but its not specific.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Allergies are killing me...
Sinus headaches are terrible.
Aside from the discomfort, trying to figure out how to spend my weekend.
will update this post in a moment, figure I should comment on my last post with an update as opposed to making a new post.
Which I am doing now. Currently watching x-files. I'm a little disappointed, I quit my job almost three weeks ago and still haven't caught up on sleep. Construction both inside my house and on the street outside, and my sleep cycle preventing me from falling asleep early enough, and sinus issues making it difficult to breath / fall asleep. Incredibly frustrating.
But anyways. Still trying to reach a balance between productive endeavors and leisure, kind of want to focus on leisure until Ive reached some zen like calm state where I have true clarity, but ... not sure I can do that in reality, the adages suggest that the only way to make progress is to take action, and Im not sure how to decide what actions will get to my goals.
The more I dwell on things the more I want to focus professionally on information / education. It seems to be the approach I can take in life to maximize my positive impact on the world. And my head naturally followed that sentence with "Nihilism", which I guess is how I ended up in this situation in the first place. Not that I've all of a sudden changed philosophical views, and I would generally say I don't have ... pronounced(?) views, there is a desire to do good, but the understanding that the overwhelming complexity of the system does not make that a simple task. Education is the clearest answer to improve lives, but, unfortunately, education leads to paragraphs like this. The people taking decisive action are the under educated and they are causing problems, not to be angry or overly generalized, but when I see satellite photos of north dakota burning fuel away for no good reason I can only think that short sited decision making processes are unfortunately leading us towards a problematic place. Rambling and trying to watch xfiles simultaneously is hard. Im not holding myself to a tight editorial standard so Im not particularly bothered, but if anybody else decides to read this and interact with me I will spend some more time and effort to clarify my thoughts in case there is concern I've misstated my premise.
Am I making excuses? Should I get off my ass, ... or should I sit around until I feel 100% into something... or 95% ... or something.
Aside from the discomfort, trying to figure out how to spend my weekend.
will update this post in a moment, figure I should comment on my last post with an update as opposed to making a new post.
Which I am doing now. Currently watching x-files. I'm a little disappointed, I quit my job almost three weeks ago and still haven't caught up on sleep. Construction both inside my house and on the street outside, and my sleep cycle preventing me from falling asleep early enough, and sinus issues making it difficult to breath / fall asleep. Incredibly frustrating.
But anyways. Still trying to reach a balance between productive endeavors and leisure, kind of want to focus on leisure until Ive reached some zen like calm state where I have true clarity, but ... not sure I can do that in reality, the adages suggest that the only way to make progress is to take action, and Im not sure how to decide what actions will get to my goals.
The more I dwell on things the more I want to focus professionally on information / education. It seems to be the approach I can take in life to maximize my positive impact on the world. And my head naturally followed that sentence with "Nihilism", which I guess is how I ended up in this situation in the first place. Not that I've all of a sudden changed philosophical views, and I would generally say I don't have ... pronounced(?) views, there is a desire to do good, but the understanding that the overwhelming complexity of the system does not make that a simple task. Education is the clearest answer to improve lives, but, unfortunately, education leads to paragraphs like this. The people taking decisive action are the under educated and they are causing problems, not to be angry or overly generalized, but when I see satellite photos of north dakota burning fuel away for no good reason I can only think that short sited decision making processes are unfortunately leading us towards a problematic place. Rambling and trying to watch xfiles simultaneously is hard. Im not holding myself to a tight editorial standard so Im not particularly bothered, but if anybody else decides to read this and interact with me I will spend some more time and effort to clarify my thoughts in case there is concern I've misstated my premise.
Am I making excuses? Should I get off my ass, ... or should I sit around until I feel 100% into something... or 95% ... or something.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
meeting to do math
Today my only real plan is to meet up with a buddy of mine who was a math major so we can explore our respective fields, he wants to learn more computer science topics and I would like to explore some mathematics concepts with him, not entirely sure where his strengths lie, but I believe it can be a mutually beneficial exercise.
We will be discussing project euler problems as a primary topic.
Id like to delve into set theory, and he would like to learn about complexity theory.
Beyond that, we are just going to try and nerd out a little bit. Because why not.
Im interested to see how productive this is. Ive got an hour to prep, so Im downloading him some random cs class notes, I can't find my notes from college, because I donated them to my fraternity, and I fear they were thrown away. However, since the internet is great I am sure I will find something. Ill bring along the only pure low level cs books that I have, SICP and c++ for you++ ... from my high school days ... eventually if he wants to get more into the programmer as a lifestyle/career Ill toss him the other books Ive got on the shelf. I am saddened that I lost my algorithms, database, networking, and systems books as I intentionally saved them, but they were left behind in a move I made. They were pretty bulky, and hopefully I can find some reading materials in an online form.
So far Ive pulled:
automata/computation theory notes: http://www.eng.utah.edu/~cs3100/KonradNotes.pdf
complexity theory notes: http://www.nada.kth.se/~johanh/complexitylecturenotes.pdf
database notes: http://www.esp.org/db-fund.pdf
algorithms notes ... although ... Im not going to link direct to the pdf due to liscense terms
http://larc.unt.edu/ian/books/free/lnoa.pdf ... it may make more sense to just link to the MIT algorithms page http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.006/spring11/notes.shtml as I imagine their notes are in the decent to quite good range...
networking notes: ... having a hard time finding anything reasonable, http://computernetworkingnotes.com/ keeps popping up due to search terms, need to type in a bunch of related things that wont redirect to a wiki page.
and this looks to be very relevant. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/gg243376.pdf obviously I should have said tcp/ip instead of networking, why? I dont know ... actually I do, but if you have any idea why Im rambling you probably ... Ill stop now.
not that any of these resources match a textbook, but Im hopefully they will provide a reasonable jumping off point for discussions. Not that I know how far or deeply we will delve into anything today or at all over the course or my unemployment, but trying to provide a nerdy guide to some cs topics that everybody should understand.
I imagine we will start with some catch up and discussion of goals, but, as the boy scouts say, be prepared. Note to self, load a flash drive with this information.
We will be discussing project euler problems as a primary topic.
Id like to delve into set theory, and he would like to learn about complexity theory.
Beyond that, we are just going to try and nerd out a little bit. Because why not.
Im interested to see how productive this is. Ive got an hour to prep, so Im downloading him some random cs class notes, I can't find my notes from college, because I donated them to my fraternity, and I fear they were thrown away. However, since the internet is great I am sure I will find something. Ill bring along the only pure low level cs books that I have, SICP and c++ for you++ ... from my high school days ... eventually if he wants to get more into the programmer as a lifestyle/career Ill toss him the other books Ive got on the shelf. I am saddened that I lost my algorithms, database, networking, and systems books as I intentionally saved them, but they were left behind in a move I made. They were pretty bulky, and hopefully I can find some reading materials in an online form.
So far Ive pulled:
automata/computation theory notes: http://www.eng.utah.edu/~cs3100/KonradNotes.pdf
complexity theory notes: http://www.nada.kth.se/~johanh/complexitylecturenotes.pdf
database notes: http://www.esp.org/db-fund.pdf
algorithms notes ... although ... Im not going to link direct to the pdf due to liscense terms
http://larc.unt.edu/ian/books/free/lnoa.pdf ... it may make more sense to just link to the MIT algorithms page http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.006/spring11/notes.shtml as I imagine their notes are in the decent to quite good range...
networking notes: ... having a hard time finding anything reasonable, http://computernetworkingnotes.com/ keeps popping up due to search terms, need to type in a bunch of related things that wont redirect to a wiki page.
and this looks to be very relevant. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/gg243376.pdf obviously I should have said tcp/ip instead of networking, why? I dont know ... actually I do, but if you have any idea why Im rambling you probably ... Ill stop now.
not that any of these resources match a textbook, but Im hopefully they will provide a reasonable jumping off point for discussions. Not that I know how far or deeply we will delve into anything today or at all over the course or my unemployment, but trying to provide a nerdy guide to some cs topics that everybody should understand.
I imagine we will start with some catch up and discussion of goals, but, as the boy scouts say, be prepared. Note to self, load a flash drive with this information.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
100 steps
Since it is the project Ive most recently been writing notes to myself about, my idea for a javascript RPG game.
Tentatively titled 100 steps.
More explanation is probably warranted. The start of the game in my mind was that skyrim was starting to get boring and I wanted to automate tasks, but realized that what was the point of playing if most of it was automated. So the initial idea was you create a game with a play x steps button and let the player make choices about how long to let the game run before jumping in, in my head initially, you could watch each step at different speeds and jump in right before your character dies, but that ruins the fun, if you pick too many steps you fail, with the option to revert of course, and if you keep picking the same number of steps you may eventually get through just by dumb luck, as with any rpg... keep bashing the head against the wall till you push through it, one of my favorite strategies when returning elsewhere to get an item is too much of a pain.
Some of the random notes I jotted down.
line, fills in with board, once certain visibility is reached can achieve 3d perspective. starting with single dimension steps are obviously forward or backwards, since random encounters backwards/ into already cleared area has lower chance of difficult encounter, but also less loot, only reason to go back is origin point is full regen. As the game is supposed to be automated to some degree dont want safety to be guaranteed though. once through 100 steps origin allows multi directional play, once cleared all 4 directions, get grid system, once explored full grid realization that the game is large. basically want automated level generation to allow for massive game, but ... logistically need to figure it out... obviously.
And thats the brief writeup of where the idea started in my head, Ill write more later, but want to move onto a different thing at this point, and I can because I'm funemployed.
This blog post http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/48942213058/is-javascript-fast-enough-to-write-3d-games-yet makes me hopeful the 3d dream would be possible, but its obviously not the focus till somebody makes it to the later stages of the game.
Tentatively titled 100 steps.
More explanation is probably warranted. The start of the game in my mind was that skyrim was starting to get boring and I wanted to automate tasks, but realized that what was the point of playing if most of it was automated. So the initial idea was you create a game with a play x steps button and let the player make choices about how long to let the game run before jumping in, in my head initially, you could watch each step at different speeds and jump in right before your character dies, but that ruins the fun, if you pick too many steps you fail, with the option to revert of course, and if you keep picking the same number of steps you may eventually get through just by dumb luck, as with any rpg... keep bashing the head against the wall till you push through it, one of my favorite strategies when returning elsewhere to get an item is too much of a pain.
Some of the random notes I jotted down.
line, fills in with board, once certain visibility is reached can achieve 3d perspective. starting with single dimension steps are obviously forward or backwards, since random encounters backwards/ into already cleared area has lower chance of difficult encounter, but also less loot, only reason to go back is origin point is full regen. As the game is supposed to be automated to some degree dont want safety to be guaranteed though. once through 100 steps origin allows multi directional play, once cleared all 4 directions, get grid system, once explored full grid realization that the game is large. basically want automated level generation to allow for massive game, but ... logistically need to figure it out... obviously.
random encounters,
macro editing : had idea of a why function lets you know more detail about any encounter to help automate how to best them in that level at that point. but not important, basically for the step forward function you could say take 3 steps if random battle attack until health below x use heal if 5 loops retreat, the sort of logic you love to think youve mastered in a game, and once the automation looks like its working throw a wrench in it.
world name decided by: what is your name? what is your quest? what is your favorite color?
color sets character attributes, ... use selector, rgb vals whatever. strength defense magic, generic? whatever ...
random encounters through grid, 1-100 ...
And thats the brief writeup of where the idea started in my head, Ill write more later, but want to move onto a different thing at this point, and I can because I'm funemployed.
This blog post http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/48942213058/is-javascript-fast-enough-to-write-3d-games-yet makes me hopeful the 3d dream would be possible, but its obviously not the focus till somebody makes it to the later stages of the game.
Funemployed
I'm getting older.
Quit my job due to the fact that it wasn't making me happy.
Looking for new work, but also simultaneously playing with the idea that I could build something worthwhile myself. ... but ... probably need to get into a bigger environment where I can learn and grow proactively.
Just saw this http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/ which after reading through is quite excellent. Posted it on facebook and realized nobody cared, but also realized it said to start your own blog with insights. Realized I do not currently have insights. Want to design my own RSS reader because google reader is left in the dust, and not entirely sure 'how I want it'... so its an opportunity to grow. So, Im thinking of currently using this blog as a list of articles / presentations / blogs that I am reading in my funemployment and will eventually turn that list into an aggregation tool for myself.
Unfortunately I have too many ideas, and not enough motivation, I think everybody has this problem, so a great tool would be how to help focus people so we aren't concurrently working on the same things unless working together or attempting different paths towards the same solution ... ie maximize productivity of people who want to be productive. An office space line is brought to mind, then nobody would be a janitor.... but Im specifically thinking of coding, it kind of relates to my website idea. Musicpatrons.com ... blog.musicpatrons.com has some minor info, and Ive tossed ideas out to a lot of people who agree I have some good ideas, but the basic idea is to upset the status quo which is always risky business. and getting anywhere near the music industry is an invitation for lawyers to sue you.... so Ive got all sorts of hesitation regarding it.
Question of how long to stay out of work so I can motivate to do my own things. I did finally get around to writing a simple chrome extension to have some options for reddit filtering, and I am happy with it, obviously Id like to do more, but how much scope creep should I allow myself for a simple project when there is already the reddit enhancement suite, which brings up the bigger, if Im not doing something that is so game changing as to be its own thing why am I spending time reinventing the wheel, which suggests I should go work for a company that I want to help improve their services, but I dont want to jump from company to company, although I guess that is socially acceptable for programmers to some degree, but the bigger question is, where should I get a job, want to be working on something that interests me and benefits society, which sort of points to google as I am a google fanboy and they have the highest distribution of information to the world, ... after some discussion with my friend sunday he suggested khan academy ... as education is really the only thing that matters for improving world situations, but ... education + information you know how that is ... nevermind on to the earlier next paragraph...
Other ideas Id like to work on for myself while Im out of work ... which brings up a point I will now revert to a new previous paragraph for... as youve seen that was rambling, but had a purpose.
javascript RPG,
continue working on chrome extensions
contribute to some open source projects
musicpatrons.com
RSS aggregator / reader
Ill do a writeup of the goals of each of those projects in the near future. Ive been using 750words.com to help clarify my internal thoughts, but since nobody reads my blog I may as well use this as an output to myself and at least feel like they are public ... Im a big all information should be free type of person so why hide behind a curtain in any element of my life.
Quit my job due to the fact that it wasn't making me happy.
Looking for new work, but also simultaneously playing with the idea that I could build something worthwhile myself. ... but ... probably need to get into a bigger environment where I can learn and grow proactively.
Just saw this http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/ which after reading through is quite excellent. Posted it on facebook and realized nobody cared, but also realized it said to start your own blog with insights. Realized I do not currently have insights. Want to design my own RSS reader because google reader is left in the dust, and not entirely sure 'how I want it'... so its an opportunity to grow. So, Im thinking of currently using this blog as a list of articles / presentations / blogs that I am reading in my funemployment and will eventually turn that list into an aggregation tool for myself.
Unfortunately I have too many ideas, and not enough motivation, I think everybody has this problem, so a great tool would be how to help focus people so we aren't concurrently working on the same things unless working together or attempting different paths towards the same solution ... ie maximize productivity of people who want to be productive. An office space line is brought to mind, then nobody would be a janitor.... but Im specifically thinking of coding, it kind of relates to my website idea. Musicpatrons.com ... blog.musicpatrons.com has some minor info, and Ive tossed ideas out to a lot of people who agree I have some good ideas, but the basic idea is to upset the status quo which is always risky business. and getting anywhere near the music industry is an invitation for lawyers to sue you.... so Ive got all sorts of hesitation regarding it.
Question of how long to stay out of work so I can motivate to do my own things. I did finally get around to writing a simple chrome extension to have some options for reddit filtering, and I am happy with it, obviously Id like to do more, but how much scope creep should I allow myself for a simple project when there is already the reddit enhancement suite, which brings up the bigger, if Im not doing something that is so game changing as to be its own thing why am I spending time reinventing the wheel, which suggests I should go work for a company that I want to help improve their services, but I dont want to jump from company to company, although I guess that is socially acceptable for programmers to some degree, but the bigger question is, where should I get a job, want to be working on something that interests me and benefits society, which sort of points to google as I am a google fanboy and they have the highest distribution of information to the world, ... after some discussion with my friend sunday he suggested khan academy ... as education is really the only thing that matters for improving world situations, but ... education + information you know how that is ... nevermind on to the earlier next paragraph...
Other ideas Id like to work on for myself while Im out of work ... which brings up a point I will now revert to a new previous paragraph for... as youve seen that was rambling, but had a purpose.
javascript RPG,
continue working on chrome extensions
contribute to some open source projects
musicpatrons.com
RSS aggregator / reader
Ill do a writeup of the goals of each of those projects in the near future. Ive been using 750words.com to help clarify my internal thoughts, but since nobody reads my blog I may as well use this as an output to myself and at least feel like they are public ... Im a big all information should be free type of person so why hide behind a curtain in any element of my life.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
frustrated with isms
I just updated the theme because it hurts my eyes. but the reason Im typing this out is because my brain is spinning in circles.
I cant tell who draws forth more ire from my neurons, the hippies with their liberal philosophical bullshit without any sense of reality, or the capitalists with their indoctrinated philosophical bullshit without any sense of reality.
In the past Ive repeatedly referred to two simplified assumptions most people agree to without realizing the logical failing, namely that We want everybody to start off life from a fair position with equal potential, and We want to ensure "more" for our own offspring, whether that more is easier paths, more options, greater flexibility isnt important, the point stands. If you can't see the logical fallacy when these two goals are presented side by side I will probably have difficulty understanding your perception of reality and thus communicating with you.
In my simplified mind, the hippies pursue the first goal and the capitalists pursue the second. The 'best answer' to try and appease the base desires of humans most likely lies with a not quite middle path, of constantly improving the world such that you ensure people move towards equal opportunity at birth, and ensure your offspring more opportunity by opening up the full spectrum, and both the hippies and the capitalists like to say that they are driving towards that goal. Unfortunately, this probably cannot be the case.
Not to say that two people going in opposite directions cannot be aiming for the same goal, Im not sure what the shape of our universe is, and depending on your orientation and spacial skills walking around a globe to meet at the other side is a potential way to meet in the middle. But we as a society have issues with this. When we approach issues from opposite sides we usually attempt to pull the other side towards us in the process. As a simplified metaphor Im envisioning people on two boats approaching an iceberg and crashing into it because they cant agree to split to the left and right simultaneously. Not that it is easy or even possible to go in opposite directions to reach the same goal in all cases, just throwing out the caveat before trashing the method that it would be possible in an ideal world for both philosophical camps to end up helping the world achieve humane goals without utilizing the same course.
But back to the point. I say probably because nobody actually does solid analysis of these things, but also because every situation is unique. Most people will admit that capitalism does a good job of allocating resources towards human desires, but most people intrinsically know that human desires on a micro scale do not align with human desires on the macro scale. On the same note that capitalism fails to allocate properly towards real goals beyond the day to day elements of staying alive and sane, most people intrinsically know that the hippie ideals will generally be ousted to the practicalities of interacting with the real world. This isnt to say that a hippie commune cannot exist or that a socialist nation cannot exist, but that competitively, their goals and path to attain happiness tend to be counter to the competitive human nature on a smaller scale, or more reasonably, in an attempt to give everybody the same resources opportunities or stuff they fail to satisfy the requirement that their equality beats the baseline opportunity of an outside system.
Getting a little rambly, had somewhere to go with this, and will continue my rant later, but GAH needed to vent on a friday afternoon.
I cant tell who draws forth more ire from my neurons, the hippies with their liberal philosophical bullshit without any sense of reality, or the capitalists with their indoctrinated philosophical bullshit without any sense of reality.
In the past Ive repeatedly referred to two simplified assumptions most people agree to without realizing the logical failing, namely that We want everybody to start off life from a fair position with equal potential, and We want to ensure "more" for our own offspring, whether that more is easier paths, more options, greater flexibility isnt important, the point stands. If you can't see the logical fallacy when these two goals are presented side by side I will probably have difficulty understanding your perception of reality and thus communicating with you.
In my simplified mind, the hippies pursue the first goal and the capitalists pursue the second. The 'best answer' to try and appease the base desires of humans most likely lies with a not quite middle path, of constantly improving the world such that you ensure people move towards equal opportunity at birth, and ensure your offspring more opportunity by opening up the full spectrum, and both the hippies and the capitalists like to say that they are driving towards that goal. Unfortunately, this probably cannot be the case.
Not to say that two people going in opposite directions cannot be aiming for the same goal, Im not sure what the shape of our universe is, and depending on your orientation and spacial skills walking around a globe to meet at the other side is a potential way to meet in the middle. But we as a society have issues with this. When we approach issues from opposite sides we usually attempt to pull the other side towards us in the process. As a simplified metaphor Im envisioning people on two boats approaching an iceberg and crashing into it because they cant agree to split to the left and right simultaneously. Not that it is easy or even possible to go in opposite directions to reach the same goal in all cases, just throwing out the caveat before trashing the method that it would be possible in an ideal world for both philosophical camps to end up helping the world achieve humane goals without utilizing the same course.
But back to the point. I say probably because nobody actually does solid analysis of these things, but also because every situation is unique. Most people will admit that capitalism does a good job of allocating resources towards human desires, but most people intrinsically know that human desires on a micro scale do not align with human desires on the macro scale. On the same note that capitalism fails to allocate properly towards real goals beyond the day to day elements of staying alive and sane, most people intrinsically know that the hippie ideals will generally be ousted to the practicalities of interacting with the real world. This isnt to say that a hippie commune cannot exist or that a socialist nation cannot exist, but that competitively, their goals and path to attain happiness tend to be counter to the competitive human nature on a smaller scale, or more reasonably, in an attempt to give everybody the same resources opportunities or stuff they fail to satisfy the requirement that their equality beats the baseline opportunity of an outside system.
Getting a little rambly, had somewhere to go with this, and will continue my rant later, but GAH needed to vent on a friday afternoon.
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