i used to tell people that i was a fifth business.

August 25th, 2010

“Those roles which, being neither those of hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were none the less essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement were called the Fifth Business in drama and Opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business.” — Robertson Davies, prefacing his novel “Fifth Business”

(but, from Wikipedia: “Davies was pressured by his publisher to provide some clear idea of what exactly “Fifth Business” was, and so Davies affixed this opening quotation, which was taken at face value for many years. Only in 1979, when the book’s Norwegian translator failed to find the citation did Davies admit it was his invention.”)

…and I’ve started telling people that I’m the Fifth Business again.

fool me once, shame on you

August 22nd, 2010

…fool me twice… and i will punch you in the face.

i digress.

as a child, growing up i wrestled with the idea of forgiveness.

i saw plainly in my home the notion of both loving forgiveness and permanently etched memories of ill-will.

on one hand, it’s clear that a transgression had been committed, and equally clear that it was let be. sometimes it would take days. maybe even weeks (an eternity for a child!) or even longer before such a level of acceptance was achieved. but in the end, it was the result of introspection, growth, and simply time’s ability to repair our brains, breaking the associations of pain and hurt from the neurons in question.

but on the other hand…

there were some things, people, events, experiences – some that remained. they were etched a permanent taint upon the self. you could see this in someone’s reputation, when their lifestyle choices or character was revealed or spread. rumors could potentially be gravely damaging in this context, for example. perhaps even the worst kind of near-truths that were perpetuated causing unbreakable stalemates of social dogma.

most of these things were shakeable. one need only focus and direct their attention to do so.
and in the cases where i was involved as one party or another – it’s easy to look back and think “oh, we were just kids” or “we were in high school, we were so young then”

and so it is with life, that we make mistakes at young ages, and learn from them. grow from them. and they bind us and bond us in groups of life, experienced.

but the thing i’ve been contemplating for the past couple of weeks is what to do about such feelings as they happen today.

we aren’t so young anymore.

and so i have learned to be more careful, myself, to do my best never to offend when i know i might. unless i have thought it through and am absolutely sure that it will be something i am ok with. and that’s a hard thing to know. where i might be the transgressor, the fork is typically – either this person will be ok with this statement or mode of behavior… or they will not, and then i don’t care about them anyway. it’s a reasonably simple conditional with potentially deep ramifications. but if i’m able to think it through and decide that this is the case – especially where i might be particularly offensive – then it results in many wins for me.

on the other hand – i’m faced with people who do not give as much thought to their words or actions, and so i’ve had to think about how to deal with these situations.

words are simple. they are weightless, effortless. i know more than most the dark power of words that can be inflicted with such simple utterance. i don’t often tell people that i can look back upon my life, just a few years ago, and remember seven words i uttered so callously, and yet they have had a profound impact on my life since. i will never know what happened if they were never uttered. but because i know how easy it is to say words that can be damaging, they are fluid. nebulous. it’s ok.

but actions are strong. actions are backed by intent. it’s again easy to impulsively act, but the activation energy required is much much greater.

and then there are actions which when considered at scale seem almost like a conspiracy. that there might be a design to the sequence of actions that are put forth.

again, we aren’t so young anymore.

brain-cruft

August 22nd, 2010

So I’ve noticed a good amount of brain-cruft that accumulates on a daily basis.

Stat counter.

My App Store sales figures

Google Reader.

the Underworld forums

Especially Google Reader – I want to trim that a bunch (which is culminating in a web service I hope to release within 3 months). But all in all, it’s stuff that I want to check, I do check, and I do think about.

It makes me think that it’s finally time for me to have a kind of routine of sorts, if only to flush the buffers.

The way my mind has tended to work in the recent years is in pure promiscuous mode – I spew random thoughts, and they’re woven in myriad directions. But at the heart of it all, I feel like I’ve lost control of information, and I’m not just talking about what I’m consuming.

It sometimes feels like the inside of my head is an echo chamber of abandoned trivia. Not trivia about sports or pop-culture, but trivia around my life and yours. All of you. And at times some of these threads are active and I talk to you about them. And other times they lay dormant, waiting to be summoned.

What does it all mean? I don’t know. I’m just flushing buffers right here, right now.

not your usual kind of everting network structure

August 20th, 2010

simul-post: not your usual kind of network structure

I’ll do this for the next few and then stop.

broadcast utopia

August 19th, 2010

some people have asked what it’s for. basically, i want to start writing more publicly, especially now that i’ve enlisted to become a freelance hacker.

i’ll continue to post here things that i keep private, etc. but more refined posts will be uploaded there…

simul-post

August 17th, 2010

http://broadcastutopia.com

Roadtrip

August 15th, 2010

Haven’t made full use of it yet, but going to write up the road trip at rytrip.posterous.com

geographical friends

August 6th, 2010

it’s common, it would seem, to reconfigure friendships to those that are geographically near.
i have typically found this difficult.

partly because of the level of friendship that i tend to engage in, and partly because ramping up new friends to that level takes a good amount of time. so my friendships are typically geographically scattered. and because we live primarily in a physical world with very real impact on our daily lives, as a result we are scattered emotionally and mentally as well.

i found no reason in the past year living un-alone to treat that with any greater allocation than otherwise. It happened, for sure. But unintentionally so. I would often catch myself in that kind of a feedback loop and know that I did not want such a thing. After all, unless you’re in a relationship, when you live with someone, it doesn’t mean you have to spend all your time with them: physically, mentally, or emotionally.

No, I did my best to remain aloof as best as I could given the circumstances. There were times when it was nice to have people so nearby. But much of the time – because of the nature of how i am – it wasn’t. Work was interesting because it sometimes would feel like every single person in that environment was a more mature, better developed aspect of my personality and preferences. And so there was a kind of implicit nurturing of fragmented personality bits.

All in all, in some ways this makes me wonder whether the past 12 months were a useful experiment. And it was. But like most things in life, I didn’t learn from it or get from it much of what I was hoping for. Lessons learned to never repeat. But I could see myself trying it again. With a very different configuration. In some ways, real-world interactions that gain depth have no substitute, even when an interaction will be taken asynchronous again. And in other ways, real-world interactions that destroy depth have no substitute, especially when an interaction has clearly been dying for some time.

TTT, but no TT

August 3rd, 2010

(The former is the acronym for TED Talk Tuesday.)
(The latter is a jp emote for tears.)

Today’s my last TTT at the company.

In many ways I think it’s the greatest example of why I really love the culture at my current, but soon-to-be-former employer.

Lunchtime conversations range from music production, pop psychology, new start ups, combating human trafficking, to the desirability of hot sauce with the day’s catered fare.

There’s a subdued creative spirit in it all, of a kind of meta-thought layer that we collectively carry around the office. And on Tuesday we intentionally draw from it, reflecting against the backdrop of some speaker of varying repute, depending on the day. The team here has been excellently cultivated to retain and attract people who carry a complex interplay of ideas and opinions.

And that can be rare. More often than not, I try to pretend that everyone I know has that, not because it is Better, but because I Wants. But not everyone does, and that’s fine. I was fortunate to find this group here without really having the foresight to look for it and realize it when deciding to come here.

But I found something similar in Seattle with my dear Saturday House crew. And the Sugar Labs folk.

But that tight interplay is not easy to find everywhere.

At least it hasn’t been, for me.

i cannot wait to disappear.

July 30th, 2010

i will be invisible.

and i will be ethereal.

and i will be unattainable.

and then i will turn my voice inward for the first time in a long time. and i will explode.

the edge of defeat

July 26th, 2010

he didn’t teach you how to win
he taught you how not to lose
that’s nothing to be proud of
you’re playing not to lose
you’ve got to risk everything
you’ve got to go to the edge of defeat
that’s where you want to be, boy
on the edge of defeat.

on enlightenment

July 24th, 2010

NDTV: How do you do it?

The Dalai Lama: There is no other choice. If you rely drugs or alcohol, it’s going to be self-destruction. So we have a wonderful human mind which has the ability to think with reason or fact. So use that maximum way and then become realistic. Once in the 8th century a Buddhist master expressed : when we are facing problems think of the problem and if you can overcome that problem then no need to worry. If there is no way to overcome that problem then don’t worry too much. Very realistic advice.

Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/in-conversation-with-the-dalai-lama-35955?cp

What does it mean to be enlightened in mind?

I am of the opinion that enlightenment of the mind is not a state of being but a state of quest. That to be is not, but to seek is.

There are people who would claim to follow Buddhist doctrines who’ve never read a word of the Dhammapeda

There are people who would profess to be independent [in their relationships] but then take support from their parents.

There are people who would think themselves knowledgeable who have not touched the surface of knowledge.

There are people who pretend to be competent never having truly mastered.

There are people who would say that they are very Zen, but have never sat and contemplated a Koan.

I am (or at least have been) all of these things.

But to know one’s limits, and to actively seek them and understand them and transcend them – this is true enlightenment.

life map

July 14th, 2010

I’m working on a life map. I was inspired by a dear friend from Seattle. Been meaning to make one for a long time, but finally getting around to it, in honor of my upcoming birthday.

and in an odd way, it feels like it’s finally helping me make sense of my current state, integrating the full timeline of my past history into the now.

litany against fear

June 15th, 2010

i must not fear
fear is the mind-killer
fear is the little death that brings total obliteration
i will face my fear
i will permit it to pass over me and through me
and when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path
where the fear has gone there will be nothing
only I will remain

When I grow up, I want to be:

June 10th, 2010
  • a robber
  • a professor
  • a fire man
  • a hacker
  • an air force pilot
  • a business man
  • the saint
  • a mathematician
  • a lover
  • a poet
  • a secret agent
  • the fifth business
  • an admiral
  • the captain of a star ship
  • a researcher
  • the count of monte cristo
  • Cayce Pollard
  • the emperor of the world
  • happy

(in roughly correct chronological order, starting at the age of 4. my inspiration was the hamburgler)

Crayola self-portrait

May 25th, 2010
Self portrait in crayola minor

Crayola self-portrait

Excerpted DNA sequences from 23andme.com, with sequential base pairs represented as Crayola colors from the standard 8-pack, adding white as a ninth color. ASCII RGB values taken from Wikipedia. Vim macros to translate ACGTxACGT pairs to form a P3 PPM image, 700×700 px, compressed into final PNG via ImageMagick.

Copyright © 2010 hypeless.net/25lines

translate the universe

May 22nd, 2010

The following taken from a dictation session in the car. I spoke correctly and expressively. The following is from the dragon dictation transcript

I have the book but maybe I should record blood test for myself was myself to think about ideas for getting the same things over on I can’t assume that I haven’t been compromised and that eve thoughts and opinions I express or that I think that I have been fuel that was the beginning of water started sleeping on the floor but I’d never give me the same way a lot of the stuff that we shared positive I wonder why White T-shirt but why do I want to read about it I I read about the same text message of this insistence cool but I feel like that but I used yet I don’t have anymore but anybody to talk to the information shortly thanks to Calvin was talking about the sound bites the

social

May 22nd, 2010

Neal Stephenson indicates to me that I should reconsider my exposure to the world. Chitchat happens about meaningless drivel. Perhaps I could create an outward broadcast that I could use to answer inquiries.

How much of being sociable is having meaningless conversation? Perhaps then I should only surround myself with people who want to converse in meaningful ways or who I don’t mind the drivel.

Perhaps it is a kind of quality bar in companionship. I would hope that others would set this bar for me also. That people finding my companionship either insufficiently intimate or productive would discard me.

There are options. And perhaps having people who are near but not of a parallel disposition would simply be disruptive.

Similarly perhaps much of society is also disruptive, preventing me from focusing on what I would like to. Unbroken time is invaluable to completing things.

Abstract < -> Tangible Thinking< ->Doing

Its like the musicians who just play. Enough to feel good, not enough to create.

my competitive advantage

May 16th, 2010

I can learn things faster than most people.

I have a wider breadth of knowledge than most people.

I understand things better than most people.

I have greater plasticity of mind than most people.

I can grasp and control double-think, something most people cannot do.

I can stay up later than most people, and for longer.

I can work harder than most people (…but only when I really want to)

I can tolerate suffering more than most people (in the western world)

in an attempt to evert

March 31st, 2010

i am going to start trying to write more.

privately, here.

publicly, at http://broadcastutopia.com

my alter-ego at [you already know, or contact me to know]

about spirituality at [you already know, contact me to know]

works in progress will happen at gummybrain.com [contact me for credentials] — i’m still coding it up, so some of it is ugly, and you can’t really comment / contribute… yet. more time, just wish i had more time.

a bit of a hurdle for me has been figuring out what i want to write about, and getting a better handle on what people want me to write about. so any requests, send them my way.

i know that people seem to like my outlook / perspective on life. and i think i plan to share that on broadcast utopia (BU for short).

lately? my mental state is a bit unstable. every time i have to interact with incompetence (from my perspective), I find myself greatly dissatisfied. Questioning the role of government, the role of bureaucracy, or community or spiritual leaders.

I want to live life at the speed of thought, free from constraint. most people think that i need to be more practical or grow up or eschew this desire. but those people scare me the most – either you never thought the way i think, or they got to you.

maybe i’m actually losing my mind this time. it’s hard for me to tell. when it finally happens, you’ll probably be the first to know.