Related idea: Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones.

We (the youth) don’t treasure the surreal experience of our dreams. We are able to speak of them to others like they are cheap, and easy to come by. The metaphysical (and personal) boundary has been shattered by the constant catch-cry of ‘follow your dreams’.

On age.

The rings of trees only show history (age) from a human perspective. Otherwise, the aesthetic quality is meaningless and fades into irrelevancy.

On understanding and knowing.

When writing something long, tedious, and too articulate—something on the lines of this: “it is not so easy to gleam from the text what exactly…”, it occurred to me that a simple “I don’t know why” would suffice in those places.

On epiphanies themselves (while reading the Temporary Autonomous Zone by Hakim Bey).

Epiphanies as well, are temporary autonomous zones—once defined and learned, they disappear forever.

On assumption.

Looking at the bag of Smith’s potato chips on the shelf, it was noticeable that assumptions run wild in most, if not all stores. At this point in time, on most ‘predominant’ things, no textual labelling is needed for us to recognise what said product is.

Related idea: The Story of B by Daniel Quinn.

In a human sense, the world is not Earth, it is only the sphere of human activity.

Ding.

Elevators directed to exits ding like they congratulate the human departure. Flights also; what they call a safety check is a simple high-pitched memento—tata, move from one place to the next, thank you. Is this a coincidence, purely a functional design, or is it a design for humans wanting to get rid of other humans?

Knowing others.

We are human, and as such, know other humans—like the dog who knows the other dogs. We share the same body, style, brain, and places, so we are capable of what the other guy does, in theory.

Bemacs, and a C-k keybinding for ideas.

How odd. This entry, at last, is being drafted into an Emacs scrap
buffer, sadly titled, ggdsghd. Yes, it is what came out when I made a
scrap buffer, randomly hitting clicky keys for a
name. Ironically the sentences above are just fill, fodder so I can
actually write. The blank black of my screen kills muses very
viciously. But I won’t kill them, that is, the fodder; for they do not
deserve the erasure.

Erasure is the focus, or rather, the complication at hand today. This
blog entry was delayed for several weeks because of the unavailability
of a C-k method for ideas stored in your brain (Bemacs?), and the
inability for me to do it myself, picking and choosing what is
best. How do bloggers choose a topic and write? I find it utterly,
exasperatingly difficult. A metaphor might be of use here; I’ve always
likened my thoughts as a tree, with everything branching out,
branching out on a random loop. Everything has sub-branches, and nodes
which connect to each other and in order to abstract the thoughts,
making them whole and singular, one must make sure too drag the
connections outwards as well. You break the connection, the whole
branch falls off, and these are very thin branches to be lifting a
whole tree from.

All this self-examination is unnerving. Who am I, to spare precious
bytes over me? The concept is a waste, of anybody’s time, and
especially mine, for I know that it is extremely arrogant to write
about oneself. I should be writing about something important, the
context of which lies in the tree described, but to comment
intelligently when it is not verbal; an argument, if you will; is the
trouble. A podcast perhaps?

No. There must be something which I can do, write about, find a way of
showing, or pronouncing an opinion gathered from facts. That is, doing
all that without breaking a tree.

I apologise for this entry, for it should not be shown in public: a
jumbled mess of thoughts mixed in with analysis of something that
should not be analysed. I placed it only purely to show a way of
thought, and struggle.

Reading, and a comment on a post.

I hate not being able to be formal on anything I write on the Internet, almost like my formality drifts out of me when I touch the keyboard. But, today, I’m going to force myself to be formal, because, unlike last time, this stuff is important.

So, I’ve had a bit of an epiphany today, one which I’ve realised describes what I want to a perfection I can’t seem to get across to other people. What I want, is the ‘don’t have to do anything with myself’ ability that so many of my friendly society members have, even people my own age can simply walk away from things that they do not want to do. The thing with this philosophy is that I care too much about things like school work, kindness, and other things that get in the way.

To illustrate my point, I’ve started reading SICP, and basically, all I want to do right now is read it, working through the examples. Yet, things still manage to get in my way, namely stupid things I, for some stupid reason have to do. School has a place, and every class can have an application but why do we have to prove ourselves to people? Some of the homework, excluding Indonesian and  Maths, I’ve done in previous years for my own amusement. Why do I have to do it again? In regards to SICP, how am I going to be a better programmer if I don’t get to program? I sometimes physically struggle to do work I’ve done before, and by that token, procrastinate uncontrollably. I want the life of freedom so many people like me have had the privilege of having, where I can pursue what I want in the twenty-four hours given to me in every day.

I didn’t post here to complain, however. I actually have something worthwhile to say, in fact a sort of discussion on a post I’ve read recently: As Simple As Possible on programming musings.

So, I’ll think I will start with my little introduction to this gem. Basically, what the post starts of with is a quote from a widely read and reviewed post Lisp is a Sin, one which the author vehemently disagrees with, maintaining that dumbing down computer science is what is keeping the computer science winter cold. The author wishes to make a point that not everybody can be a programmer, in fact, quoted, it’s rather enlightening.

The (trivial) point i’m [sic] trying to make is that not everybody has what it takes to be a programmer. Just as not everybody can be a singer or a painter (as an aside, i [sic] tend to agree with the opinions that link programming and art). As a matter of fact, good programmers are rare and need a quite peculiar combination of skills and talents.

Ironically, even the enlightenment can have a flaw, it feels like an attack on newbies to their (the wizards) community. I’m going to question the motives, and go right out and ask who, if anybody can become a programmer”? What are the requirements to call yourself a hacker (excluding public labelling, because sometimes there are closet hackers)? What do people who wish to become programmer, and what are the steps needed to make it fun?

Regardless of my wiseness, or my lack of experience, I’m going to try and cut down to a basic level of who can become a programmer. Anybody who is a fast learner can learn the syntax of a programming language in a short time, with a decent book at their disposal. That means that anybody can know what a certain type is, or even how to read a bit of source code. Writing source code is another story. What is required is enjoyment; you need to enjoy the creativity form to achieve anything worthwhile. Why paint if you hate to paint?

It is quite possible to learn a complicated subject with hard work, taking as long as the human being in particular has enough time, and enjoys it. They are the three requirements that brings us programmers; hard work, long times, and enjoyment.