Vesper Breath, Value of Life, L6 and LANs, Change Places and !..!

June 25th, 2009

Hi everyone,

All my assessment for this semester is completed and now I just await my results. Now my eyes / mind / various other squishy appendages turn to all the objectives and things that piled up on my floor or been pushed aside. (Actually my floor is clean, suprise I actually managed to clean my room whilst studying). Meanwhile I have been organising what needs to be achevied during both this gap from study and in the following semester.

Spent a large amount of time looking at networking equipment (switchs, routers, smart switchs,etc), (hacking NG GS608s via eeprom to enable the BCM5398 smart managed switch features, if NG has them turned off), as I have several LANs coming up and various purchasing decisions to contempt and iron out. Ironing makes me feel like eating waffles. I also have to organise some visual / video stuff inorder to work out a movie night I am having with a grandparent.

Was part of an interesting discussion the other day regarding the value of life ,whether the creation of life was just as immoral as the destruction of life and whether creating life, just lead to the newly born experiencing pointless suffering. ##philsophy on freenode isn’t what it used to be, in fact I don’t think it ever was what it used to be. As the semester ends, I have recently been answering various questions about my future and the possibilities. The more I think about it, the more I realise that the answer isn’t something static that is easier to vocalise into comprehensible means.

The steps we have control over are the steps we take, and we can only take one or two or three or possibly seven steps without falling over in an heap / queue / stack / <insert data structure here>. Incandescent featureless footprints taken in the fabric of time, make me wonder whether such blemishs have an impact in the grand scheme of things.

Best wishes and have fun

Benjamin Southall :)

I don’t have the best job in the world, my job is just a tribute.

May 9th, 2009

Hey everyone,

I was going to write another joke post similar to my QUT IRC sketch, but then I realised that I wasn’t feeling as satirical at all today. So instead I have a few things to update people on and a few more things to mention and poke a sharp pointy non stick like object at for all to ignore. Firstly I am not blogging to you all live from Hamilton Island, and I am not from the UK. To my parents, my siblings, my grandfather, my godfather and anyone else that reckons I should attempt to masquerade as the Best Job in the World winner, I say thanks for the suggestion but no thanks.

Attempting to masquerade as this person, would probably involving me changing my appearance and gaining an English accent and hiding the person I would be impostering in some sort of underwater pressurised cell in my secret underwater lair in the Great Barrier Reef, and fun and awesome as this all is, If I actually attempted to do it, their would be several consequences which include

  • One of my secret lairs would being no longer secret
  • I would have to blog to world why the Great Barrier Reef is awesome and spend a lot of time snorkeling, which isn’t that hard to do but takes away time that I need to work on my university assessment.
  • Eventually I would get busted as my English accent would be not good enough or I would get knighted by the Queen for services against the Global Recession and services in support of conservation for my English accent being too good

A second thing I should mention is my pagerank still seems to be intact despite families assurances that I had been bumped to the 8th page of Google when they used Macca’s Wireless to check emails and stuff (This is why you shouldn’t let your siblings get addicted to WoW and other online games, as then the shared internet connection goes away and the other family members have to resort to Macca’s wireless).

The amount of media hype regarding this job, got me thinking about it, particularly as the person who won it has a similar firstname and the same surname as me. He gets to housesit a luxury house in Hamilton Island for 6 months, to basically have a six month vacation and gets paid $150k for it.  Evidently it is a publicility stunt, apparently $100 million of publicity from the media hype on media hype has already been generated. And this very good for QLD’s tourism industry, to quote Ruth Apelt’s song “Tourist-led Recovery”, “yeah we’re banking on a tourist-led recovery, that’s what I know, that’s what I know, and in QLD we say, yo way to go!!”.

But is a paid vacation really the best job in the world ? I mean 150K for 6 months is approximately $834 dollars a day or $105 dollars an hour for an 8 hour work day. In terms of rate of earning there are plenty of other jobs that can earn people $105 dollars per hour for an 8 hour work day, so it doesn’t win there, but I do suppose it is rather cushy. However once that job is finished, the money stops, like all employment, however the personal publicity he will obtain, would probably help him find future work.

But is the rate of money earnt per hours worked the most important thing in making a job the best in the world ? From an altrustic perspective it certainly isn’t, from that perspective the best jobs in the world would involve the saving, supporting and development of other people’s lives. This would have people with Doctor’s without Borders and councillors and social workers as having the best job in the world. From a hedonistic perspective the Hamilton Island job isn’t the best in the world, because in terms of hedonism, there are other jobs that cause more pleasure for less sacrifice or pain. From an egoist perspective the job isn’t the best in the world , because it isn’t ultimately in the individual’s upmost best interest’s as if he was offered a better offer, he would be then obliged by belief system to take it.

Jobs are perceived by most people as a means to an end in earning an abstracted concept which humanity assigns value to. The best job in the world is when your occupation isn’t a chore or a job, but is a passion, so you don’t even perceive as being a job or a means to end, you do it because you love it, despite the consequences negative or positive.

What do you think is the best job in the world and why do you think that ?

I would love to write down some more on this question but I have to get back to work on my university assessment.

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Legacy of the Unforgotten, Doomed from the Start, Room Cleared

April 27th, 2009

Hi,

Got to attend the dawn service for Anzac Day, sprinting to it through the city at 4am after 21 hours without sleep, food and water(was coding an assignment) is an awesome experience. Anzac Day doesn’t really mean something to you until you have connected to those who you relate to who  suffered.

Just like out of sight , out of mind in the Beach and in Brave New World. After connecting with my great aunt and reading Monash and several other books on the Anzac legacy, and being told how my nose is the same as an ancestor of mine, who was in signals in France in WW1, their legacy feels more relevant and related to me as it stands.

My room is now clear and my trading card games are all sorted. I also got excursions into design of experiments using Haguchi methods and Fractional Factorial analysis.

I have also discovered that rss feeds , digg and reddit, delicious and other aggregators of relevant information make tradtional news information sources seem boring, irrelevant, biased and ridiculous. Newspapers and television seem gloomy, hypercritical and emotive wrangling.

I am aiming to get recording working again, so I can start audio / video blogging, and performing some of my skits. rebecca (my eeepc) is working  quite well other that the occasional DRI2, UXA , GEM Intel graphics glitch. I am allocating time to fix ulrica , but I really need to focus on the INB302 project, as not as much work got done of that during the break.

I learnt my lesson with this INB381, start early, and just use structs instead of C++ std containers, because the design we are given for polygon meshes leads to cyclic dependency which doesn’t mix well with constructors that take other classes, which depend on other clasess which take other clasess etc.

Forward declaration didn’t work, neither did layer 1 struct encapsulation, conversion to structs or layer 2 or 3 struct encapsulation may have worked but I didn’t have the time.  So at least in the second assignment I should do better.

Currently I am hoping that I get the chance to juggle everything well and that things blossom into awesome, because juggling awesome is fun.

Best wishes and best of luck

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Cybele,Dweia, missed chances and time made up

April 15th, 2009

Hi everyone,

From Fools and deception, to new life, remdemption and the Spring Equinox in the Northern hemisphere anyways, considering that most know this time for its church services and chocolate egg, I guess we haven’t moved that far at all.

Holidays are symbolic and holiday spirit and passion for holiday traditions is a state of mind. I don’t think Maple or wxMaxima (CASes) would be able to solve or derive the meaning of them anymore than most huans do.

It is so easy to get caught up in the hype and FUD (fear, uncertaintity and doubt) and lose sight of our heritage s human beings and the rituals that were so important long ago, that have since been misplaced. It isn’t hard to become engulfed into mass indoctrinism whether its purpose is economic in the supposed crisus or religious in times when a lack of belief ,faith ,hope and trust in ourselves is so common.

I have been almost as busy as the bees that helter skelter from spring flower to spring flower in search of pollen. My tasks however to be a less leisurely pace and are accompanied more with clattering of keystrokes and whirring of  computer fans.

Buses are fun to miss by two minutes. Puzzles are fun to solve, especially if your short on time. All the life and death carefully modelled with non linear ordinary differential equations and then steady states found and typed up into Latex via Lyx.

Balance is important in more ways than one, considering how much I was sneezing on Tuesday. I have rediscovered and given new life to some things that have been dormant a while including the LainOS revival project, several changes to how well rebecca(eeepc) is runnig from a kernel update, the acquisition of an 18plus card and various other things. (UXA causes Blender menus not work render properly, EXA causes title bars of windows to be slightly glitched)

After this LAN I am at ends today,I will probably catch up on sleep and then proceed to working a precarious pace towards the goals I need to reach. For the moment for  the buses missed, I will just have to catch the next ones.

Meanwhile I will just keep swimming, rembering, bideing my time, hoping that everything falls elegantly into place.

What does spring mean to you ? What puts a spring in your step ? Does your life feel redeemed by your existence ?

Best wishes,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Delusions, Delirium, Trivia and Overloading

April 2nd, 2009

Hi everyone,

How are you all ? How was your April’s fool’s day ? I am blargh.

Google’s April Fool creation of CADIE had me filled with joy, and its removal from the internet has left despair in its place. I really want to combine Google’s suggestion of CADIE, the rat molecule brain robot experiments and the antropomorphic fashion robot in Japan, to create a true Hard AI that has minature robotic body that assimilates computing resources based on the other computing equipment / cloud that it can connect to. (See GIR from Invader Zim, or Questionable Content’s  AnthroPC)

I went to a trivia night with my family for my dad’s birthday yesterday, it was interesting to say the least. Once again it proved that the enemy of knowing the correct answers is self doubt and mistrust.

Maths Modelling lab test went ok (aside from me injecting an imaginary steady state where there wasn’t one, and then realising my mistake and correcting it) and I did well on my first advanced calculus assignment.

I have yet to get Supernova tickets (hopefully I will get them tommorow), which ironically just guarantee me a cooler venue in which to work my contribution to a group project, another two assignments and study for an advanced calculus midsemester.

In case anyone is wondering, I will just end up cosplaying as me, because it is easier and I am short on time.  I talked to jabberwacky today (ai chat  bot) and learn’t that it wasn’t an improvement of my conversations with most people , much to my disappointment.

All the knowledge in my head seems to be reassembling and sorting itself into more complex and dynamic patterns, which is causing me to be surprised by my thought associations and the strengh of my memory. Relevance however is another issue.

Emotively I feel like I am in darkness and isolation, but am still edgy from my tolerance for suffering and convolution highly strained.  I guess this feeling will stay for a while, until I spot something euphoria like a shiny non dead butterfly to temporarily cause lost of focus of my social and workload situations.

It rained today it was nice.

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Lines in the Sand, Are they are Real ? What are Lines ? What is Sand ?

March 15th, 2009

Hi everyone,

Today has been interesting. Friday also was a good day, in which the QUT Tabletop Gaming Club, had our first games night in the new room allocated to us. Games of Magic, Stratego, Chess and Monopoly were played and fun was had by most, if not all.

I also managed to have the online discussion with my INB302 group members the other night, which was quite hectic, but productive.

I have been thinking more and more about recursion as a measure of proof of complexity and a partial proof for reality. We can currently create using our minds or computer , worlds other than the one we appear to exist in.

Phenomologically these worlds exist to us, however unless communicated we can’t share or clarify there existence with others. In these worlds that we create however, we can make characters, and it perceivable that if those characters had minds, they could create worlds and characters with minds, and so on and thus forth.

You could also use this recursion to create a circular logic structure / paradox, in which your existence is phenomenological creation or observation of the character’s mind , which is the other character’s mind which is in your own.

Currently the hard AI to attempt to simulate reality with free will at an accurate level hasn’t been estabilished, we don’t even have the hard AI to have an inanimate object interface with our reality as though it was sapient and sentient, let alone the hard AI required to implement free thought, imagnation and creativity.

In between the lines of reality, hyperreality, subreality and cyberreality, does recursion of this form benefit us ? Are sophism or solipsism valid mechanisms for thought and approach. Different people interact with the same shared perception / consensus of reality in different ways generating their unique (phenomological) experiences.

Paradoxes are useful when dealing with recursion because they give it a pattern and ocassionally a breakpoint, in which it can revert to a different frame of reference.

Communication of thoughts,ideas and emotions is simple but difficult, because we make it so, in non-dimensionalising and parameterising our dialogue is such that it doesn’t isomorphically from person

A says blah, blah maps to blah2 in common for person A, blah2 in common for person B maps to qwerty. Person A says blah, blah means blah2, blah2 then gets converted back to qwerty so that Person B, understands what Person A is saying.

Person A says blah, Person B hears blah, Person B asks which blah or what do you mean by that ? Blah in what context ?

We need a language that is connationless, emotionless and is such that meaning of the message is shared between two or more unique (phenomological) people.

Ideally if we our brains all work the same way / structure, except with different associations and memories,we could have a thought based language that mapped what were thinking about to a global language value and then attempted to map that value into equivalent or  component parts of another person’s thoughts or memories.

It would work like the Babelfish from HGTG, except it would be based on brainwaves and signals. Something like this is much easier than the current system that allows the analogueness of our vocal chords,body language and an ambigious spoken / written language.

The latter attempts to emulate the isomorphic mapping but isn’t able to due to  both parties mapping their respective phenemological values to the same word and then getting upset when their communication doesn’t ensure that the message is communicated and understood.

Avoding or ignoring something doesn’t make it go away or not exist. (Mildly better strategies include blowing it up (which should reduce most objects to smaller pieces) or setting it on fire (which either makes it on fire, or turns it in smaller piecies which have been burnt)).

Avoidance doesn’t resolve a problem.  Some problems can be resolved by fire and explosions, however this does bring about certain results, intentional or otherwise due to causality.

Can we draw lines ? Are Lines real ? Is Sand real ? Is Sand anymore real that Lines ? If we avoid Lines, we draw only using dots, if we avoid sand , how do we know if it is real ? If we set sand on fire or explode sand and do a decent job of it, we should get glass , but can we set lines on fire or explode lines ?

Best wishes and have fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

*drools*…*drools*.. *drools*, Banana Cheesecake and more awesome :)

March 7th, 2009

Hi everyone,

2 weeks in. Had my great aunt’s 80th birthday party yesterday. It was quite nice. We arrived at little late which was slightly embarrasing, however the venue was simply smashing. It was a cross between woolshed, old english cafe, and a store that actually had cross generation kitzch items. The desserts were awesome, (I enjoyed a large slice of banana cheesecake), despite the fact that they were all out of waffles (They had served waffles for a party of twenty earlier that morning, .  This didn’t stop Jackie’s friend James from getting the last waffle however.)

The conversation ranged from General Monash, to changing times, to what actually constitutes as a waffle, to the deplorable current state of education (after I asked Jackie whether she had made the acquaintance of my current Advanced Calculus lecturer, who also taught teachers at Mt Gravatt Teachers College), I would have liked to talk more about the Great Wars and the current state of politics, however I didn’t get the chance.

After afternoon tea and birthday cake,  we were invited to have a look at James’ house and his wonderful handiwork and antique collection. His house is a roundhouse and it is similar amazing, from the croquet field, that he made himself, to the gardens and the rockeries, and the fabulous antiques that we didn’t see the half of. Including 2 grandfather clocks and a granddaughter clock, limited edition painted plates and various other wonders and suprises.

Having not gotten more of my studies done yesterday and I am currently at Uni fiddling with freeglut for INB381, and the google ads in my gmail inbox pointed me to an awesome embedded linux smart phone (exeda) and a micro pc (fit-pc). My dad (as he works for Telstra) regularly asks me whether I want a new phone, and if anything like the exieda makes it way down under I may just take him up on his offer, as my current phone an Alcatel OT735 has recently decided not to let me take photos. (it powers down when I attempt to take a picture or video).

Anyhow I better finish these OpenGL drawing questions and the team conflict resolution strategy reflection despite the confliction resolution model being focused on being incomplete and inadqueate and not mapping to actual reasonable courses of action in employment. On Friday we had the QUT Tabletop first Games Meetup and AGM, it was rather fun, I learnt a new canadian card game called Crazy, we played Hangman, and few others played Australian Monopoly and Magic the Gathering.  Shame that Rory didn’t show up with Chess Boards, I was looking forward to a game.

I hope you all are having as much as I am, and getting as much work done if not more

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Orientation Reunion, Freshthings, and other news

February 21st, 2009

Hi everyone,

Last day before uni goes back, I guess the time has seemed to have flown, but really it just passed by occasionally knocking me off my feet, although more seldom than the random acts of dancing which emotivity throws at me.

The lines between the past, present and future seem gauche, and almost reveal in impressionist values as synaesthesia meets phantasmorgia in my minds eye, propelling me deeper in questions.

So much to accomplish in this year, as I quiet sat reading about General Monash, I reflected on commonalities and disrepencies between my life’s choices and the choices of the real and fictious characters in the stories I stumble accross and then unabashedly dive into, promptly misplacing my scuba gear.

The book on him, not only causes me to feel proud of him, but proud of the ANZAC spirit that he instigated and orchestraed, let alone bore witness to.
I wonder whether it is the same spirit now or like if all things it has been improved and modernised throughout the passage of time.

There are lots of new students with their dreams and illusions intact all queueing for ID cards, or looking cluelessly at maps, because despite graduating from secondary education, cartography, geography and orienteering weren’t their strongest points.

I begin to wish that the IOU GURPS would orthogonally project itself to reality, rather than just act as memory augmentation HUD in my minds eye.
People change but remain the same, the grace and class forlorn but hopeful given the current circumstances.

I also had the pleasure or misfortune of attending a book launch / meet the author session of a book that I thought would be relevant to my investigation on the definition and mathematical modeling of relationships and love, but instead turned out to be an attempt at mass simplication of determinstic hyperstereotypical numerology, but no justification was given for the choice of ruleset and significance associations.

So unlike the remainder of people attending I could see the author skillfully projecting, sight reading, physcoanalysing and hyperstereotyping the crowd before he got their birthdates, maybe my intuition is too keen, maybe my analytical ability spoils the magic of his supposed trick of divining what is best for people based on discrete set theory, linear algebra and largely astrology.

Of course knowing how the magic works, probably spoils the trick. When querying the author, I found that he had little interest in mathematics or indeed the causality of deterministic philosophy supporting his text (if you could call an A7 or A6 pink pocket size book a text ….) and that his origins were more rooted in Astrology and Palmistry.

Neither did he seem to appreciate my historical knowledge of number systems and the history and origins of numerology.

Personally as a recommendation to anyone who reads his book,that both you and you proposed partner undergone personality tests, have a realtionship discussion and identify both yourselves and each other, before deciding whether your love life really does add up.I also recommend that you believe in what you want to happen, because if you believe in it, it is more likely to happen, simply through your belief.

The bushfire seems to be all over the news,  and the public seems to be enthuastic to give despite fears of recession (which is interesting, the fact the we have known about  this recession for at least 5 before it was coming, and if I had my way, there would have been no ecomonic bailout, and society would be forced to regress to a prior state or to innovate in order to survive.), and it strikes me as odd at four particular things.

Firstly, the fact that arsonists give pyromanics a bad name. Pyromaniacs love fire, they like watching fires, lighting fires, feeling heat from fires. Most pyromaniacs know how to safely light and extinguish fires that won’t spread. This doesn’t mean they stupidly light fires that become bushfires and kill people. (I could say more on this point, but I won’t , else my rage ignite with passion and burn down people’s mentalspace)

Secondly, the fact that people are pretending to be victims and stealing donations, I mean come on, where is your respect, where is your honour , where is your pride ? Such everyone has their charity, but what else missing because of that ?

The IT Crowd says it best when they say “You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a baby. You wouldn’t shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn’t go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman’s grieving widow. And then steal it again”  (People do depraved things like this for two reasons, one for the lolz, two because they don’t think they just do ….)

Thirdly, the fact that people wait till disasters to help those that are victims of circumstance, instead of just always helping those who are victims of circumstance, day in and day out, why is quick fix charity to a temporary problem made more important than regular charity to regular people to constant problems.

Lastly, the fact that so many people were ignorant of the fires and hence it cost them their lives / their homes. The television media is all over the fires after they burned down parts of Victoria, but when the fires were burning and warnings and messages were broadcast over the Internet and radio, not many people got the message.

Ignorance has a significant cost. The weather on the news has flood warnings , so why not other disaster warnings. Also the ignorance of people to being aware that the area that they have residence is prone to bushfires / floods / etc.

Of course, my entire point is if people actually built biomes , then this wouldn’t be a problem as the atmosphere and environment would regulated but The Wilderness Society doesn’t seem to agree with that strategy for conservation, probably as something to do with their lack of influence and budget restrictions.

Best wishes,

Hope to catch up with people,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Holiday Paradox, Yumcha,Icicles and raspberries

January 8th, 2009

Hi everyone,

With the Festive Season and New Year’s Celebrations now over, I have the time to pragmatically approach respite but that desire becomes enmancipated from focus, when I realise that given this was the Christmas we had when weren’t having Christmas, leaves me to marvel at unison between the best laid plans of mice and men being  sabotaged by hungry cats and implusive people and the irony of consistency that ensured our Festive chaotic hodgepodge that was our Christmas invovling lots of travelling, catching up with people and lots of interesting and curious surprises. (This sentence didn’t know when to stop, so I had just let it go or else it would have engaged me in a intextual battle for sentience)

I also realise know that despite the 6 or so weeks of deja vu and premonitions that frazzled my consciousness, the important reminders of Christmas were present regardless.

These included Gratitude, Respect, Hope, Awe, Tradition, Beauty, Peace,Truth,  Trust and Sacrifice. (As a side note I have deduced that sacrifice is quite important to the emotion called love, but that is a tangential interpolation for another time, an additional perpendicular side note, imagine cupid with a nerf missle projecticle instead his regular arrow).

The act of doing nothing implies that nothing is done, but inaction is still action just with a different direction.  The opposite of nothing is supposed to be everything, but yet how many of us manage to do everything  One always does something and that something can be anything, except it seems everything or nothing.

These concepts are such that when we intend or desire to nothing, we end up doing something. (This combined with the law of attraction, probably explains my Christmas, if you can follow it, if you can’t you could always get drunk or smile and nod politely as your mind boggles).

The Chinese Room gedanken got me thinking, the main of point it is that those that speak Chinese have both syntax and semantics in the transformation and communication of language, were as the person in the Chinese room only has syntax.

I wonder that if you gave him syntax that mapped syntax to semantics in a lookup mesh or table, would that make him just as capable at understanding Chinese as those outside the room.

I find that I often feel like Daria (I have been watching it lately) or I feel like the native speaker with understanding of the messages communicating wondering if what I communicate is actually reflected on and understood or just conveyed through Chinese rooms were the information is correctly or incorrectly parsed based on various syntax languages adopted by the systems and people around me.

I bumped my head the other day and it is still sore. Chance has nothing to do with Luck and the odds are such that given reason and choice, choice is taken regardless of purpose or rationality

Abrasive circumstances either result in dust or diamonds ….., which result is upto the the individual invovled.

Did you have a nice Christmas and New Years ?

Did you stumble across a surprise you didn’t expect ?

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)

Incy wincy uboot, Illusions of Progess, and other haberdashery

December 17th, 2008

Hi everyone,

One week till my Birthday and I don’t feel any different or any older.
I have time now, but seek part time employment that can assist in reimbursing my dwindling bank account.

I have been busying myself with LANINGRAD (which could have been better), coding PHP, studying for next year, helping various people with their Linux related issues, including the reverse engineering of a Linux BSP for the Colibri PXA27X board and various other ends.

My foot is still slightly sore, rebecca (the eeepc1000h) replaces ulrica which is still being fixed. My NAS / ivanhoe is at Altech and I waiting for other people to pick up there act in an attempt to get it back before my birthday.

I passed my maths subjects and got a 7 for the Advanced Network Management (Unix Admin) and 6 for Project management.

My thoughts have ranged from skits, to referencial proofs of illogicality, to partially isomorphic mappings between machine learning and social interaction.

Enjoy the summer / winter solstice ….

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 :)