nd

-Title quote (translated): "Beginning"-

I had a dream that I ate a plate of cookies that had one brownie at the bottom. The brownie was drugged, and I spent the rest of the dream trying to find out who drugged it.

Have a happy new year!

Reality check. And a belated merry Christmas.

fsq

-Watch quote: "LAX"-

I wish I had more dreams that involved me being in a video game. I had one this week, and it was amazing, very vivid. The game reminded me of King's Quest, except with a wee bit more immersiveness.

This week I took a plane trip and noticed something interesting. If you look at an airplane, near the bottom, where the little pressure hole is, you can often see a tiny "fairy ring" of frost.

Reality check. That's all.

at

-Email quote: "Also, I regret to inform you that this is the section that I'll be overseeing. I'm so sorry."-

I was in this video game (think SimCity) and I managed to find the plushy, four-limbed purple creature that provided the "eye in the sky" view for me, the player. Or at least, I dreamed that I did. It was extremely vivid. Also, it made sense at the time.

Having wasted most of today getting lost on tvtropes.org, I have nothing more to say than to go there yourself. Watch helplessly as your productive hours spiral away...

Reality check. Also, be sure to check out the article on straw Vulcans.

a 7t q . 7t a q

-Grammar quote: "The comma comes before the conjunction, for that is where the reader pauses!"-

Swimming is a magnificent thing, in dreams. Perhaps that is why one of my dreams this week involved leaping from a chandelier into an enormous swimming pool (the deep end alone could have easily swallowed the biggest pool I've seen in real life). Of course, later in the dream some guys that I know told me where I could get really cheap shoes, so I went from that awesome pool vignette to... shoe shopping? Ugh, what an anticlimax.

Telekinesis would be an interesting skill to have (as I've mentioned before), but here's an odd thought picture. What if people had profound telekinetic power, but they had to physically get up and move emotions around? Would chairs and tables become their version of emotions, since they would be easier to manipulate? What role would "thoughts" and "emotions" play, in that case? Would such a people regard what we call the mental world as their physical world?

Reality check. Comma comes before the conjunction.

q/ 7t q

-Written quote: "use argument by contradiction. Consider h=f-g, use IVT, min-max thm"-

I tried having a tall mug of green tea before bed last night, in hopes that maybe the slight caffeine content would help me sleep more alertly. I believe I had a fairly vivid dream, but I was so tired from Friday night's John Doe (interesting TV series) marathon that I kind of rolled over and forgot most of it. Something to do with international politics, I think. So the tea is still up for grabs.

I wonder, sometimes, whether the person who invented Hearts intended for the game to be a mushy allegory for romance. Maybe it's too hard to resist when you have a name like "the game of Hearts"

On the other hand, most of the interesting rules have developed over time. It becomes almost a collaborative effort over time, with each new set of house rules and strategies adding depth to the story.

- No point cards on the first round

- If you have the Queen of Spades, you should either avoid hearts altogether, or get them all

- When cards are passed, you can't see the cards you've been given until you let go of yours

- A common strategy is to avoid taking tricks so that you never have to lead

- Winning comes in giving hearts away

Reality check. I'm an INTJ. I overanalyze.

nd ntd aad

-Conversation quote: "snip in the but" [a horrific misspelling of "nip in the bud"]-

This week, I had a dream which contained a lady with a very fat cat. This cat was obese. Also, it had chubby human feet, which made it even more ACKKK to look at.

I have discovered a completely interminable dominoes game. I suppose technically speaking, the game has an end, but it is a game played to a certain number of rounds, one round for each possible double on the dominoes.

The set I was playing with was a double-twelve set. Yes, that makes 13 (not very short) rounds from beginning to end.

I was so sick of dominoes by the end. Here's a helpful tip: if anyone ever invites you into a game of Mexican train, run. Run far, far away.

Reality check. Weird thought: why do people sometimes refer to personal attraction as "magnetic"? You've got a 50-50 chance that the force is repulsive rather than attractive.

nd t d

-Tim quote: "the joy of snow to you"-

Most interesting dream this week was one where I was in a house built into a desert cliff. There were several other people in the house, and apparently we were all isolated there for weeks or months. As a result, interpersonal relationships were rather tense. Later that same night, I dreamed of the same house, but this time with only one person in it, and he befriended a huge wolf spider living there. I'm really not sure why my brain likes desert cliffs so much.

And now it's time for Philosophical Pet Peeves!

My first pet peeve is this: when people say the phrase "Before time began" Let me rephrase this as the equivalent statement "In a time we call 'before', time doesn't exist."

Please use your brain. "Before" and "began" have absolutely no meaning if time doesn't exist.

Reality check. Also, there are massive amounts of snow outside.

q qq qqqq

-Self quote: "Choose Your Own Adventure novels are discrete approximations of the many-worlds hypothesis."-

I had more dreams about my job this week. Whoop-dee-dee. But on a more exciting note, I did have a short moment of lucidity in one of my dreams, which I decided to use for flying (probably because I usually become lucid when flying, so the concepts are closely associated in my head). My ultimate goal for lucidity is to get a chance to talk to an anthropomorphized version of my subconscious/intuition.

I've got no inspiration today. Go read Darths & Droids.

Reality check. And ponder the nature of consciousness and the universe.

a 7t7t q

-Dinner quote: "Voldelexauron"-

I had one night this week with 5 dreams that I remembered details from. At 90 minutes between dreams, that comes to over 7.5 hours of sleep. I think that means I either remembered every dream I had that night, or else I mistook one dream for several. I think the latter is probably more likely.

This link needs no explanation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMznvnMw-ys

Reality check. Feel free to laugh uproariously at the pompous voiceover and/or the fact that they're selling a toy that would be wickedly awesome at, say, a $20 price point but is somewhat failtastic at the actual retail price.

t 7 q

-Twist-up crayon quote: "Hold crayon and twist clear bottom end clockwise to extend crayon. To retract, twist counterclockwise."-

I never realized, before I started writing down my dreams, how very many dreams I had about mundane things. In the case of this week, I had at least one dream about what I was doing over the weekend... but more on that below.

Approximately right after last week's post, I went down a rabbit hole. What I mean by this is that I decided I wanted to sit down and make a complete text-based game from scratch.

While it was an exhilarating experience, it also took me out for 3 solid days. By solid, I mean I stopped pretty much only to eat (and one of those days I forgot breakfast).

Oh, and in case you're curious, the game is about a diplomat on a space station. There are ~5 different endings, 4 of which result in the protagonist's death. Most of these death endings are far more entertaining than the real ending, though I guess that's the case for most games...

Reality check. Also, it contains a domesticated bat. Also, loads of bugs. But try it for yourself: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=ee9dcfd6333256ebe62ea590dc5e5dbbe04e75f6e8ebb871

nmf

-Introvert quote: "Friends are like sunbeams / Bringing brightness to the world / And I sunburn fast."-

Had one night this week with an incredible 3 dreams remembered in detail. And once again, the secret was a glass of milk right before bed. The most interesting of the three dreams was probably the one about an office building I frequent, which is notorious for having a million second floors, each reached by a different set of stairs. Even in real life, there are really and truly places where if you go up the wrong set of stairs, you have to turn around and go downstairs, then go back upstairs again to get where you want to go. So anyway, when this building magically popped up with a courtyard in the middle (in my dream) I was not in the least surprised. The real building could very well have a courtyard that I don't know about.

I won't do a super-long post today, because frankly I'd rather be working on the text-based game I've sketched out. It will be about a space station, horror, diplomacy, and a domesticated bat. This is it, people.

That is, if I finish it. I often start these things with my head buzzing, only to get bored when the tedious bits start.

Reality check. And unlike the building in my dream, it will be fairly straightforward to navigate: clockwise or counterclockwise.

mn7 qqs

-StagsCon quote: "Sabine was here" (with a crown dotting the "i")-

No particular dreams that jump out at me from this week, except maybe the one where we were reenacting a gunfight while using partially smashed flip-flops as shields. It occurs to me that dreams are probably the inspiration for most modern art.

Yesterday, I went to StagsCon, which was awesome. Somebody from my fencing group was getting a Pelican, so that was pretty exciting. I also got to see a tushload of nobility from all across the Outlands, including HM Sabine, our current queen (HM Maelgwn III couldn't make it), their highnesses Bela and Ana, Caerthe's baroness Mary of Blackthorn, and the baroness's dog, Isabel.

But court was only a small part of the day; most of my time was spent in classes about marshaling rapier combat. A large part of this discussion centered around youth -- you know how parents can get when they start discussing safety vs. helicopter parenting vs. how to handle rapier authorization for minors. It turns out there are all sorts of icky legal traps to fall in, like giving first aid to a minor without first getting their parents' permission.

Fortunately, my group only gets the occasional minor (most of our recruitment base is from the local college where we practice), so I probably won't have to deal with too much of this. Funny how the most complicated parts of SCA come from the fact that we live in a modern world.

Reality check. Oh, and StagsCon met in the local college too, hence producing a discussion about school, hence producing the chalkboard graffiti quoted at the beginning of this post. HM Sabine has an amusing sense of humor. In one class, she had to keep leaving and coming back, causing us to all stand up until she either sat down or left, bringing the class to a screeching halt. Finally she got tired of this and came in with one hand over her face and the other frantically gesturing "Down!"

fjft

-Hudson quote: "In the drinking water."-

Mostly dreams about teaching, this week. Not terribly exciting, I know.

Who decided it was a good idea to take perfectly good water and mix in a powder, flavored like fruity cough medicine (except not so thick), leading to a brew so pungent that the smell lingers in any fridge unfortunate to sock away a pitcher?

Ah, Tang, Kool-Aid and your big sister Crystal Light (tapping the adult and female market that thinks Kool-Aid is disgusting but apparently secretly likes it), how I hate you.

Reality check. It's like the inventor was a B-list wizard, and the whole powder+water idea was his bad idea for a magic potion.

,,fa

-Unusual Conversation of the Week Award quote: "A fire alarm isn't stabbing you in the face."-

I had a rather self-gratifying dream last night. It involved people telling me that the piano was the hardest instrument to learn, which is convenient since it is the only instrument I ever learned how to play (don't ask me to do miracles on it now -- my 8 years of lessons occurred long, long ago).

Two foods I "discovered" recently that you must try: cherrums and Greek-style yogurt. Cherrums are, I'm assuming, some weird cherry-plum hybrid, which means they look and taste mostly like small plums, but with a bit of extra sweetness. They get wrinkly as they ripen, but like cherries you can eat them even when they're collapsing into themselves. Chief advantage: I don't think any of them overripened before being eaten, and I bought 2 lbs. of the stuff. On the other hand, I tended to eat more than one in a sitting.

Greek yogurt, as you may have heard, is yogurt made from ewe's milk, then strained so only the impossibly thick stuff remains. Unlike your typical commercial yogurt, it isn't sweetened half to death so you really get the savory flavor of proper yogurt, besides that incredible texture. People often use it for making homemade frozen yogurt (which is why I bought it), but I would recommend keeping your hands off of it as much as possible. It's perfect as is.

Reality check. As a sidenote, however, I found the thought of Greek yogurt to be very distracting when I was trying to work -- in that sense it's best to just finish it off as soon as you bring it home from the store.

7t7t q

-Care instructions quote: "Product should be washed inside out on a gentle cycle in cold water. It is recommended that apparel be washed prior to wearing. Products with Sparkle Flex should be hand washed."-

Had a dream this week that I was living in a ratty apartment complex, with people curled up on the street around the buildings. This made my brain think that I must be poor in this dream reality, so I ended up having to take out a loan just to pay rent. That sure made me feel thankful about my real situation in life.

Speaking of real life, I had an odd experience this week -- it was odd enough that I immediately remembered to do a reality check afterwards.

Basically, I was staring at a clock on the wall and it suddenly stopped, right as I watched. However, the lights were still on so the power hadn't gone out (in retrospect, those clocks are usually battery powered, but it did seem unusual at the time).

I looked at it for a while to verify that the second hand wasn't moving, then said aloud "Hey, that clock just stopped!" Feeling the need to say something like THAT out loud only reinforced the dreamlikeness.

A few minutes later, the clock not only restarted, but it swept its hands quickly through the time that it had missed out on. You have no idea how unreal that looks until you see it. I decided to count my fingers and surreptitiously check if I could fly. My suspicions were heightened by the fact that I felt unusually tired -- drifting in and out kind of tired -- that morning.

As it turns out, the clock was just jammed. No dreaming involved.

Reality check. Unless you subscribe to the philosophy that says that everything is a dream.

fa q 7 q

-Menu quote: "Strolling Musicians - Daring Cliff Divers - Exciting Gunfights - Amazing Magician - Hilarious Puppet Show - Dancing Monkeys in Costume"-

I keep having dreams about my job -- to the point where I'm ready to tell my subconscious: "Hello, I do this all DAY. Can't nighttime be the time where I get to fly and stuff?"

So, yesterday I went to Casa Bonita in Denver. I would try to explain it, but there really is no way to do it justice, even if I were to use their catchphrase, "The world's most exciting restaurant."

Anyway, if you're ever in Denver (preferably with a large group of friends), I highly recommend it. I am still in awe at how they manage to keep their prices so low and their facade so small -- I guess they dug out underneath it a little.

Reality check. & Splendid Appointments: Behold the roaring waterfall, graceful palms, volcanic mountain, caves, sparkling pool, mine, palace, jail, etc, etc, etc.

jf jft

-Schedule quote: "OTHER NOTES:"-

Most interesting dream snippet this week: seeing Winnie the Pooh sitting on a couch... as a war general. To paraphrase the internet: whut?

There's a 0 sitting over there, on his haunches. Phantom keeper of addition; passgate to the realm of depth: a + 0 = a, ∃(-a) s.t. a + -a = 0.

In the other world is 1, anchor to multiplication. She reaches down to guide the flipped-overs, bringing them back around to herself.

They are the guards of it, the fundamentals, false and true, on and off. But their lives are separate without the bridge, the twisting graphite, the unlit black of zeroed lights. The proof that writes over the breach, that lets 0 multiply. The breath of cognition that opens the door of addition to 1.

How do you get to 1, having only 0? Or to 0, having only 1? Is it possible? From no bit to every. Information! Where is the shining chain that says 0 and 1 stand next to each other, and we can walk there from here, the verb that connects the two universal nouns? The gymnastic flip-flop that says if we can do this thing, we can repeat over and over until everything exists? Zero and one leapfrogging over one another until they've flung out the universe, entire, of all the substance man can imagine and plenty more that he can't.

What made this pair, this first couple? What reached out into nonexistence to make them be: both at once, even if we only saw one of them at the beginning? (the other had to be there, you see, we just hadn't realized that yet)

1+0 = 1

(1)(0) = 0

Stacked and through, they appear in the pair. The bit, the pattern. Echoed only once more, by the faerie children, twinned of -1. Dwellers in half-existence. If the first bit was the form, the second is the magic. Through and stacked.

-i + i = 0

(-i)(i) = 1

But that is another story.

Reality check. [/mathgeeking]

q f7t q

-Penny quote: "Thank you, sir, for saving me."-

Had a dream I was with a group of refugees (how unusual! NOT) that were about to be wiped out by some kind of disaster, possibly a meteor. There existed a tree in this weird, weird world that could potentially save us, but the person who tended the tree would die. After much agonizing thought, we decided that we would allow the person (who had volunteered for the task) to sacrifice himself for the possible good of everyone else in our little band. However, when we went to the mall(!) to buy the tree, they were sold out. People ignorant of the tree's power were using it for decoration.

There's a message about consumerism there. I'm not precisely sure what it is, though.

A thought to chew on, partially sparked by a forum discussion. Why do people (especially parents) prod introverted people into spending more time with others than they normally would because "socializing is healthy"? I understand that often healthy things aren't enjoyable -- vegetables -- but wouldn't this fall under the category of emotional health? As in, if you're content with life, that would be emotionally healthy?

So how is forcing introverts out into the babbling world more often supposed to be healthy? Beneficial in other ways, perhaps, in that they get to know people that can later help them out. But how is it a matter of health? Extroverts almost seem to have this impression that if you leave an introvert unsocialized, it's like failing to socialize a dog. They might bite someone!

Of course introverts are socially awkward. It's because we don't like seemingly pointless small talk or large groups or spending too long without being able to sit and think. We're uncomfortable. But introversion isn't like a bad habit that we can kick with enough practice in social situations, though we may get better at acting like extroverts on the outside. Introverted is what we are. It's how we process data, for goodness' sakes! And you better be glad we do it that way, because though we're only about a third of the total population, we comprise 60% of the gifted population. Extroverts would still be smashing flints together if it weren't for us.

Don't get me wrong. We need extroverts. I like extroverts. They make connections in the hive mind of humanity that we all rely on, and they're usually fun, bubbly people to be around, in small quantities. It's just that sometimes I get tired of them trying to convert me.

Reality check. Of course, being online, I'm kind of preaching to the choir. Have fun with this Google Trends graph.

n7 , q

-Scotch tape quote: "Photo-safe determined in accordance with ISO Standard 14523"-

Had a dream involving getting chemical burns this week. Can't feel pain in dreams? Ha!

As I discovered last week, you can bring a plant on a plane! I was quite surprised that the thing went through security without a hitch, not to mention the fact that the flight attendants didn't seem to mind when I held it on my lap instead of stowing it beneath the seat in front of me.

So far, the little African violet seems no worse for the wear, despite having been yanked from its (very lush and moist) greenhouse, taken on a hot 6-hour car ride, plunked in front of a south-facing window, taken on another car ride to the airport, sent through an x-ray machine, held on a plane (which is a much smoother ride than a car, at least), and finally driven to its permanent home, where it is currently gracing the kitchen table.

I decided that this African violet wouldn't get a name until I was sure that it would actually make it to that kitchen table. Well, it has survived, so I suppose I need to cook up a name. My brother suggests that I give it an ironic name such as Saruman (reader: this is a tiny miniature violet with white flowers blushed pink and light, variegated leaves. I picked it because it looks almost ghostly, like it was beamed down from the moon).

While I think a Lord of the Rings name is a little passé at this point in time, I think I will pick an ironic name, just for the laughs. The question is, what ironic name shall I give it?

Reality check. Spike? Richard? Thor?

ntd nd

-tvtropes.com quote: "Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations."-

I tend to have more interesting dreams when I'm off visiting family. I think it's because I make the decision not to spend the valuable time checking email or really doing anything on the computer, and I have less stress (and deeper sleep) as a result. Anyway, while visiting the southern GDDoD contingent, I had a dream in which I set out to vanquish a dragon with the help of a wizard and his wife who lived in a trailer. The wizard reminded me, oddly, of Telemain. Even though he's not a wizard.*

You know a sci-fi power that would be more frightening than telepathy? Precognition. By this, I mean a practical precognition, where the person sees what is going to happen to him before it does, continuously.

"Remembering" things even a minute before they happen would make the person foolish to even imagine he had free will -- if he had the free will to imagine (or not) as he chose. Yet the only thing that gives us this concept is that one minute that isn't shifted to the future. One minute of memory after what we already have, and the philosophy of free will is out like a light.

Even odder is the thought that these precognitive people could, theoretically, exist among us --trapped by their own memories into not speaking a word of their talent. Indeed, even people with their entire memories flopped upside-down could exist. Though their experience living time backwards would be alien to ours, it could also be completely undetectable.

Reality check. *I highly recommend the series in which he appears.

sf

-Magnetic Poetry quote: "ephemeral wood to book s"-

I have never before seen arrows that could be shot from crossbows four at a time yet look like blue-tipped matchsticks made of foam. Until last night, when I dreamed about them. Blue is an interesting color to pop up in my dreams... a dream analyst would say that my emotions are a roller coaster what with all the colors I've been seeing lately, but as far as I can tell, my emotions are as steady as ever.

I have a favor to ask of you, my readers. If you know any good ones, would you mind listing horror movies that actually engage the mind? It occurred to me yesterday that I have never seen a horror movie to which I have had the emotional reaction promised on the tin, and it's getting to the point where I think I never will.

When I see a movie others define as a "horror" movie, I end up analyzing what the director is doing and how the special-effects department might have done this scene or that. These movies have as part of their package that they don't spend too much time on character development (and it's so trope-ridden as to be describing no real people), so I couldn't care less whether they live, die, or are tortured beyond recognition. Especially since, once again, I know the actors aren't suffering beyond the discomfort of a great deal of makeup and stage blood.

The thing is, I have seen (very few) movies where I buy the story enough that the characters matter more than the actors. But never in a horror movie -- so the sting of it is gone.

Reality check. And what do people find so frightening about The Ring anyway?

q q/

-Double quote: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd... The odds are bad, but the goods are worse," woman and man, in technical circles-

Nothing frightfully interesting this week, except the dream where I was controlling the man-eating plant. Too bad insectivorous plants are incapable of digesting flesh in real life, and will get sick if you try to feed them meat (as many people will recommend doing -- perish the thought!).

I am not typically much of a television person. There are several reasons for this:

1. I enjoy long, overarching storylines but am too busy/scatterbrained to catch every episode. I cannot stand seeing a recap that would spoil a previous episode, so once I miss one episode, that series is toast.

2. Books and television share a similarity: most of the work out there is hopeless formulaic yam-trappery averageness that people will buy every week, like eggs. The difference with books is that one can select the quality product (or not, in the case of the general book-reading, TV-watching public) to be consumed, then consume it at a convenient time -- even for free at a public library! Television, on the other hand, is doled out in specific time slots, and it is not until much, much later along the spectrum of production that a DVD or similar may be purchased or checked out or rented for convenient consumption.

Much of television watching is "What's on right now?", with purchasing only happening if the series is especially good. We let ourselves get stuck into ruts of mediocre series just because they're on at the time that we decide to gel, and that is that.

Which brings me to internet television. I have essentially given up on "traditional television" at this point, but I can see that internet TV, while impressive, is still not quite where it could be. Networks still want their main business to be on traditional sets because presumably this can net more advertising money -- people are more patient with commercial breaks when they're watching on a television set, for one.

Yet, to keep people coming back to the traditional mode, their strategy seems to be to offer online content, but cripple it a little (in the grand scheme of internet media). Rather than taking advantage of the medium, the infinite time slots, they choose to offer 5 episodes. One season. Rolling coverage, come back next month for the rest.

Reminds me of the graphics card processing at a certain company. Rather than have, say, 3 different production lines for 3 models of the product, the cards are all produced to the highest specifications. Then, to provide lower-tier models of the card for different markets, some of the high-quality cards are set aside and "fixed" -- parts of the circuitry fused so the performance is slashed.

There's a visceral discomfort to that. But TV execs, graphics cards manufacturers, perhaps they are simply acting in the most profitable way they can.

Reality check. Part of my frustration comes from a show that I enjoy watching online, but that only offers season 1 at this point. The thing that really gets me is that the show was CANCELED on traditional television after the second season, so how exactly would showing it online hurt the network??

-T-shirt quote: "D.A.R.E. to resist drugs and violence"-

Had a dream about a water shortage. Whoop-dee-doo. All the places I've lived in my life (most recently the Great Domesticated Desert of Doom^TM and Colorado) have those for real, so why the heek do I need to dream about it?

I think we need to develop a different word for "communism." Problem is, people nowadays (and for the past couple decades) use that label to refer to what is really "socialism." In my opinion, socialism is fundamentally different from communism due to the government mediation involved -- someone still has the power, and far too much of it if real-life examples of socialism are examined.

But I'm not averse to seeing the English language evolve. What I am averse to is that now we really have no word for that idealistic state where everyone contributes, without government getting its grubby paws into the job, to the greater good.

Oh wait, we do. The internet.

Reality check. For further reading: Looking Backward.

fjf 7t 7t

-Emerson Cod quote: "Truth ain't like puppies."-

Most unique dream of the week: I was in a monochromatic shoebox diorama (the kind that kids do for school projects, except with better build quality and less color). It looked a lot like this:
which is, yes, the title animation for the Cyan Worlds logo. However, this is the color and sort of bloopy shape-ness that also appeared in the diorama. In this instance, though, it was a small family home that was cast in blue-green low-poly 3D. An interesting color switch from the prominent reds that are typical of my dreams.

The sky looks- hum, hard to describe. It looks... gauzy? Not cloudy because there aren't definable clouds, just that sort of diffuse brightness that happens when there's a film of moisture held stretched against the sun. Judging by the heat today and the past few days, which has been definitely present though not extreme, my guess is that there may be a thunderstorm approaching. Or there may not -- it could just be the sky dreaming of clouds.

That's how faint the cloud outlines are. Now that I look again, there are some boundaries, but the whiteness colors so much of the sky that the blue patches look more suited to being called clouds. Clearly, the mist and the air have colluded together to flip the heavens inside-out.

Reality check. I wonder if we're to expect drops of sun and rays of water?

nnq d

-Title quote (translated): "Time of flight"-

I dreamt of playing the piano last night. Or rather, I was considering playing it; I took 8 years of lessons as a child but have since then been well out of practice, something my dream-self, muddled as it was, did remember. The piece I was considering was Rondo Alla Turca.

Happy Independence Day! I would certainly have no excuse for forgetting this, as my neighbors seem to have commenced firework launching at EIGHT IN THE MORNING (a very pointless time to set them off, if you ask me -- sunlight being, after all, still in force).

The newspaper of course had a large spread of the Declaration of Independence printed on one of its pages, but this turned out to be part of an ad, which was slightly off-putting.

Reality check. One way I would not recommend celebrating is by watching Omega Glory. Don't say I didn't warn you. [grin]

nnmq nnmq

-McCoy quote: "A... teddy bear?"-

Most interesting dream this week was about a red shape-shifting algae that I was (I think) involved in developing in a lab. Once again the color red features prominently -- if I didn't know any better I would think that I was Jonas.

It's hot and humid and not even noon. The end.

Reality check. I could use the weather here as an excuse for not posting yesterday, but the truth is that I forgot because I was busy watching Star Trek (original series) and wishing that I could find a good communicator noise to use as a ringtone. Funny how sometimes one gets into a rabbit hole and sort of forgets everything else for a time.

nd ntd nd ntd

-Ad quote: "Wholesale to Distributors"-

I had a dream a few nights ago about flying on a plane, which is not surprising since I flew yesterday (I suppose that since I fly regularly, but not as much as someone who flies for business reasons, this activity falls in that dream sweet spot of mildly unusual happenings). Still not as much fun as flat-out flying in a dream, by which I mean flying without the aid of machinery.

As I predicted last week and the week before, the dandelion field is growing back. Right now, there are just the green echelons of spears, of whippy-thin stalks topped with high-pinched buds. I would say that the buds are shaped like teardrops, except that no teardrop is actually "teardrop-shaped", so really it's a ridiculous phrase.

And whoo boy, is there a lot of them. I've always heard about the persistence of dandelions, how they grow back more when they're cut. But I never expected to see such a thick bed of them on the crest of that hill, so dense that even if one or two of them wilted, they wouldn't fall very far off of vertical before being propped up by a neighbor.

If this is the dandelions' way, perhaps I am not so distraught that they were cut.

Reality check. I would be even less distraught if I could have a real flying dream...

nd s

-Notepad quote: "2.565"-

Oddest dream this week was eating mints that came from the eyes of prisoners. Don't ask me how that came about, because... that's just weird. Really, really weird.

Anyway, the reason that I didn't post yesterday was because I happened to be going to the Colorado Renaissance Festival, my first one, surprisingly. It has nothing to do with Society for Creative Anachronism, though I hear that it's quite likely that you'd see SCA people wandering around. This is possibly because we have loads of amazing garb (or want to shop for more).

Highlights were...

- The musical act Cast in Bronze (a carillon -- that's an awe-inspiring instrument that looks like an organ except with enormous bells instead of strings or pipes -- was what he played). This guy not only plays the carillon quite well, but he certainly has a flair for the dramatic. Which is probably necessary when one is playing such a grand instrument. He dresses up all in black with only his eyes showing, framed by a golden bird-shaped mask. He also is prone to suddenly swivel his head to stare at the audience on one side of the stage or the other, and by suddenly I mean that you feel like he just caught you causing mischief out of the corner of his eye, and is ready to investigate further.

-Watching the hilariously bad staged tournament. Honestly, when one is in SCA, watching people pretend to do battle medieval-style (albeit on horseback, I will give them that) is just too funny. Because they obviously didn't want anyone actually making contact when going at whatever top speed is for horses, the riders had to kind of jump off their horses when they were "hit". Also, 2 on 2 does NOT constitute a melee battle.

-Steak on a stake and cheesecake on a stick. I need say no more, except perhaps that the latter tastes even better than it sounds.

-Wondering how it's even possible to make macaroni and cheese on a stick. Apparently it is, because one vendor was selling it.

-Wondering what, exactly, fairies have to do with the Renaissance, and why so many people dressed up as them.

-Being one of the better-dressed characters in the festival, due to the free garb that gets lavished on the newbies in my particular chapter of the SCA.

Reality check. All told, a moste excellent daye.

jft7

-Penn quote: "Everybody pronounces it 'Soyss'."-

The most interesting dream I had this week was the one in which I was learning mathematics from a mild-mannered (don't know why I used that particular adjective, but that's what I wrote in my dream journal) French engineer. Guess I dreamed about this because I recently spent some time reading information about Augustin Cauchy, an engineer who became a mathematician later in life.

Mere hours after last week's post about the dandelion field, workers were out there with weedwhackers mowing it down.

Judging from the length of the grass in that area before they came through, I am hoping against hope that this is something that happens only every few months. As far as I can tell, none of the dandelions have grown back yet, but, knowing dandelions, they'll soon be back in greater force than before. A few low-lying wild morning glories seem to have escaped the butchery altogether, and are blooming like crazy now that the magnificent dandelion clocks aren't there stealing their show.

I am struck by how ordinary the field now loooks. It's a trimmed, manicured, domesticated lawn, its smooth expanse ruined every now and then with a wartlike tuft of weedy flowers. Understand that before the trimming came, even the grass looked beautiful -- waves of slender, elegant blades. Now it's the grass that one can't look too close at: the ragged stumps of green topped with a film of beige scars.

Even though I know that grass is healthier when mowed, my visceral reaction is that it looks healthier when it can grow to its proper taper. Certainly, unmown grass is more forgiving -- once you have the cut grass it's an arms race against both weeds and the grass itself to keep it looking neat. But unmown grass looks good even if it grows another inch, or is longer in patches, or is sprinkled with dandelions. It looks right.

Reality check. I hope the dandelions come back soon.

ns nmtn7

-MMORPG quote: "Doomkitten"-

Last night, I had the strange experience of dreaming that I had a pillow. Yes, a pillow. Before you get too confused, I do have a pillow, but I happened to throw the pillowcase into the laundry hamper, figuring that I could live without having the pillow on my bed for a night or two. Looking back, this may not be the case.

I'm not sure I quite understand why dandelions are considered weeds. Sure, if you're actually trying to grow a smooth, perfect lawn and a few of them pop up, they look ugly -- much the same way that hair does when it's halfway between wet and dry. Then, of course, you get frustrated because, to restore the perfectness of the lawn, you have to root them up, which is a Sisyphean task if ever there was one.

But if you ever get a chance, find an abandoned lot where the dandelions have taken over, and there's enormous fluffy swaths of the soft clocks and bright flowers, punctuated every now and again with delicate, low-growing pink flowers (also "weeds"). The result somehow looks completely different from when dandelions first invade a lawn. It looks like a faery meadow, ready to be set to magnificent seed-swirling at any breeze.

As you may have guessed, I have a dandelion meadow near my home. Whenever I walk past it, on my way home or on my way out, I am so thankful that no one has put forth a serious effort to remove it.

Reality check. Also, dandelions have many edible parts, or so I'm told.

fqa aq

-Old song quote: "Ah poor bird! Take thy flight / high above the sorrows of this sad night."-

My dreams this week (or one of them at least) have me wondering what in the world "Abilene" is. It's rare for me to remember a word from a dream, particularly since this one came with a precise spelling as well.

The week has been busy and not all that fruitful. I'm currently learning to use a typesetting program/language called LaTeX, which may or may not be useful later down my current career path.

Let's just say that the program is ornery. The thing is designed to make formatting one of the lesser concerns of writers (particularly technical writers -- it contains plenty of packages for beautifully typesetting equations), but at the level of mastery I have so far, the formatting is just annoying. You see, the way that it keeps the user from worrying about formatting is by deciding that it always knows best in that department. It can be surprisingly difficult to get it to do what you want it to do if your idea of proper formatting doesn't match TeX's ideas.

Add to this my fair level of proficiency in Microsoft Word, which makes learning any new formatting program just a little more frustrating. Often I'll decide that I want to do X to the document and not think much of it, but it'll turn out to be a lot harder in TeX than I'm used to having it be in Word. I sound like such a Windows fanboy, but I would guess that this happens to anyone who becomes a "power user" in any one application (no matter whether that application is even good or not).

On the other hand, LaTeX does make certain things much, MUCH, easier, particularly in mathematics-heavy writing. It sure is easier to just type $\leq$ than to have to hunt down that ≤ symbol on the character map. So it would behoove me to learn to play well with its flaws -- I'm pretty sure that the benefits, at least for me, will end up being much greater.

Reality check. Wait... a city in Texas?? Why would that occur to me?

aa a 7t

-BOL quote: "...and Blogger..."-

No particularly interesting dreams this week -- it strikes me once again that dreams generally deal with very ordinary situations, but with limited ability for your brain to manipulate them in order to see what would happen if x or y happened and you reacted in z way.

I'm surprised that, as the years go by, less and less people seem interested in cryptography. In world war eras, sure, there was that sort of umbrella fascination with spies, which included cryptography, but now crypto is mostly associated with day-to-day data encryption. While this is an extremely important field, it's also a lot less awesome than spies, I must admit.

What makes crypto unique, in my opinion, is that it is one of the few "practical" jobs in which theoretical mathematicians can participate. Both the public and private sectors are always looking for new encryption schemes that are more difficult to crack, and this process actually requires mathematical research, if you can wrap your mind around that phrase.

Many of the encryption schemes deal with prime numbers, a concept which is still surprisingly mysterious to modern mathematics. Prime numbers have the advantage that, since they are not divisible by other numbers, there won't be duplicate "keys" that unlock the same encrypted message. For example, if each digit in a passcode multiplied the numbers in the encrypted message (which wouldn't be particularly secure, but as an example), you would have to guard against situations in which you could use either "41" or "22" to unlock the same message. Naturally, you'd want only the one correct key to unlock it to make it harder for someone to hit a working key by accident. If the numbers were restricted to primes, then neither 4 nor 1 would be allowed, and only 22 could unlock the message.

Another important area for cryptos to keep track of is letter usage frequency. If a person is looking at a poorly encrypted document and sees 12 times as many $'s on it as anything else, he could guess straight away that "$" means "e". The way around this problem is to give frequently-used letters multiple representations, while keeping the representations of rarely-used letters proportionately low. If "e" is now represented by "$", "&" and "*", it's harder for a person ignorant of their meanings to notice the huge streaks of the letter in the document, but decoding the document is essentially just as easy as before for people who do know the relationships.

Reality check. For some more rigorous cryptomania fodder: http://www.mycrypto.net/encryption/crypto_algorithms.html

mq q

-Booth list quote: "ECHOSTAR Edward Jones Edward Kraemer & Sons, Inc."-

Most interesting dream this week: the one in which I was blind. Except for, my brain was silly and decided that seeing nothing would be too boring, so it switched me to third person instead.

As it turns out, I like walking. I didn't realize this until I decided, on the fly, to forgo the whole "car" hassle and just walk to my house. At this point, I was about 40 minutes away from said house.

I've never been a very athletic person, much more bookish. I didn't see the point of being outside in the elements more than I had to, so I didn't do much of the kid-like activities when I was little -- as a result, I never developed much in the way of endurance or strength. Or gracefulness.

Fast forward to adulthood, and my move from sea level to mile-high Colorado. At first, that only increased my desire to avoid exertion because I was always lagging behind everyone else, huffing and puffing. But, as anyone who has been to Colorado would know, the natives just LOVE the outdoors and any activities that give them an excuse to go there.

This is what people mean when they talk about "good" peer pressure.

Reality check. Of course, now when my relatives visit from The Great Domesticated Desert of Doom^TM, I have to remember to slow down for them.

7ta

-Chrome quote: "Help me understand"-

Dreams about sitting on benches and awkward conversations this week.

I'm relatively busy at the moment, so today's post will be brief but (hopefully) meaty.

Freeware Tools/Games Worth Getting

Vuplayer and Meow MultiSound are quite handy for those of us that like to grab music from the hidden files of games (which is fair use in my book) -- generally the music is in some strange format that Windows Media Player frowns at in consternation. Vuplayer is also just an all-around well-designed music player, and it plays and exports a zillion formats.

Knytt and Within a Deep Forest are games made by that genius, Nifflas. Wonderful pixel art, music, and pleasantly frustrating gameplay. You really have to try them to understand... and anyway, they're both free, although WaDF can occasionally trip false alarms with overeager antivirus programs, so be aware.

Finally, for those of us still a bit sore about the whole "Vista" shenanigan comes a program actually made to work with Vista -- and the title even proclaims it! LogonStudio Vista can be used to replace that swoopy blue-green stuff that comes default on the logon screen with something a bit more personal. The program, as I understand it, is a fairly simple "hack" of sorts, but it's still a pretty neat little feature, especially when others see your logon screen and wonder how you did it.

Reality check. I've been running all of these on my computer for some time now, so I can vouch for their lack of infection; you always have to be careful with freeware because often there's a reason it's free.

7

-Overheard quote: "John doesn't want to do the hokey pokey with me!"-

Several interesting dreams this week, of which I remembered very little when I awoke. This is probably because I got to bed late (for me) almost every day. There was a dream about cookies -- I remember that one.

I will be going to a feast this weekend. By that, I mean I will actually be going to an event called a "feast", not just a large potluck or similar. 

You may recall, readers, that I have written several posts about the Society for Creative Anachronism, which I began exploring last fall. Since I started going to fencing practice, I have gone to one major SCA event, but that one involved an extra charge if you wanted to attend the feast, so my fencing group skipped that and went to a restaurant on our own.

Now, the group that I'm in is hosting a feast, and the site fee is donations only. I am amazed at my childlike glee about this event -- an opportunity to put on the garb that the other fencers have so graciously piled on the newcomer (me), raise up my wooden goblet (also given to me by the advanced fighters), and perhaps even do some knife fighting (which I hear is traditional at this feast, though done with decidedly nontraditional plastic knives).

And of course, eat some very, very delicious period food.

Reality check. It would be even cooler if the baroness of Caerthe (the SCA barony I live in) dropped by, but I suppose she probably has better things to do.

7tfjf

-Mystery quote: "There was not one single cent of money provided by the Legal Services Commission spent upon this paper, and thus they were not disclosed in the paper because there was no conflict of interest. The investigations in these children were done purely on the National Health Service, let me absolutely clear about that."-

In yet another dream demonstrating my inner (and not-too-hidden) geek, I actually managed to enter a coding competition and start work on a circuit-analysis program in my sleep. So yes, it is indeed possible to dream in code.

A local institution here in Golden, Colorado, sells a beverage called Genius Juice. While the fluid contained in the so-labelled bottles appears to be water, I cannot help but imagine that it must come from freshly squeezed geniuses, however that comes about.

I have one bottle of "Genius Juice" in storage at the moment, which I happened to get as a side effect when I ordered a sack lunch -- I'm not a particular fan of bottled water. I haven't drunk any of it yet, but my imaginative mind is coming up with many deliciously odd scenarios that could result of sampling the juice.

Reality check. On a completely different note, the US is trying to revive rail transportation. Personally, I think the huge, sparsely-populated expanses here are at the root of the difficulties we've had implementing public transportation, but we shall have to see how this idea fares. Thoughts?

nmqt nmqt

-Dream journal quote: "Hand asleep?" (not sure if this was in the dream or got jammed in by me sleeping on top of it and making it tingle in real life)-

The longest entry in my dream journal this week is extremely boring to retell. Essentially the only interesting part to the outside observer is the predictable inclusion of the color red, one of the few colors that stands out in my dreams (hm, The Giver comes to mind). It was an interesting dream to experience, mind you, but the same can be said of vacations; they may have been vastly interesting to the vacationer, but the large volumes of photographs from the trip -- foisted onto hapless passerby -- are not.

This Monday, I found out that someone who lives in the same building (or complex, or whatever you'd like to call it) as me committed suicide over the weekend. After the initial shock of realizing that someone that "close" to me had actually committed suicide -- that it wasn't just something that happened in the news -- I just felt strange, above everything else. I had never met the person who died. I only ever shed a tear or two when others around me did, as a purely communal response. 

Not quite true. I suppose I was a little overwhelmed with the tragedy of what had happened, the tragedy that no one I talked to seemed to have actually known the person. There were discussions enough about whether, if I or you or she or he had taken the time to speak to this person, who lived in the same four walls as all of us, then perhaps things would have turned out differently.

Or perhaps not. The human mind is an illogical and dangerous organ, sometimes.

Reality check. Oftentimes.

7 7t

-Hackaday quote: "Arduino" (now repeat 7 bajillion times)-

The most interesting dream I remember this week was one involving a function that contained a singularity. I know this because I was staring at the denominator of the function for a while, and it contained a (z - z₀) term, although with an actual number for z₀. Unfortunately, I don't remember any of the context for this observation, so why I was staring at a function with singularity z₀ will remain forever a mystery.

In other completely geeky news:

I was doing the usual Wikipedia crawl, where one article leads to another and another and another and another and another and another and... well, anyway.

I started on ADAM, then progressed through evolutionary computing, to, finally, Core War. Yes, Core War. It's a game for assembly language programmers (all you need to know about assembly code is that, while computers run it fast, it's horridly, horridly, difficult for humans to actually read -- I enjoy coding, but assembly language still eludes me). Essentially, it's a two-player game where each programmer makes a "warrior" program whose entire goal is to halt the processes of the other program.

I suppose this game appeals to me because it's similar to ordinary video games, except without the middle conversion from code to monsters or dragons or rpg worlds. It's actual "programs" "attacking" each other.

Reality check. A bit of a segue: Conway's Game of Life. A complete segue: http://www.thatsmyface.com/

jf aad7t

-Worst Moment of Your Life quote: "Scientist accidentally injects Ebola into finger"-

I should have noticed I was dreaming last night. In the dream, I was not only roaming my childhood home; I was also singing. ON KEY.

In a flagrant break from tradition, I will muse on a topic somewhat related to the quote. This is mainly because, as a shameless science nerd, I spent most of yesterday utterly distracted by the train of articles and information that branched off from the spare PopSci treatment of the news.

Essentially, an Ebola researcher accidentally pricked herself, through 3 layers of gloves, with a needle full of the biosafety level 4 pathogen. Bear in mind that biosafety level 4 means that the agent has no approved vaccine or cure, and it will probably kill you within a couple of days. In the case of Ebola, which damages blood vessels and clotting, it's a relatively gruesome death.

The scientist didn't actually depress the plunger on the needle, so she may have dodged the actual disease -- though, in a testament to just how deadly Ebola is, she requested that she be injected with an experimental Ebola vaccine that has only been tested on monkeys, just in case. The researcher is currently in a pretty severe containment unit while they watch her for sympoms.

I apologize in advance for any cheesiness, but reading this story made me appreciate what heroes these virology researchers are. They have to go to their jobs every day knowing that one slip of their hand could literally kill them -- they're working with organisms that, by their very classification, could have mortality rates from 50 to as high as 90% if some part of the elaborate containment system for these bugs should fail. And because the pathogen has no cure, that mortality rate goes down only a little with prompt hospital treatment.

Honestly, there aren't many jobs like that around anymore, not in developed countries. And most of the jobs that are like that at least get some sort of nod from the public for bravery.

Disease researchers, we just take for granted. "Scientists have developed a new vaccine for [disease]!",  "Possible cure for [disease] found!" Nobody mentions how dangerous it is for them to get there, before that vaccine or cure is developed.

Reality check. The other thing I realized when reading that article is that it is a very, very good thing that clumsy old me is NOT in that line of work.

fa a fa fs7t

-Flowchart quote: "...permitted to count one..."-

I had a dream in which I was running, this morning. Perhaps this explains why I woke up with a sore throat (which, by the way, is already feeling much better) -- I must have been panting or something.

Scene in public eatery (paraphrased & name-switched):

Me: [sniffs air] What's that smell? It smells like someone smoking.

Sugarfrost: [recoils] It smells like... burning chicken.

Me & Butterbiter: How do you know what burning chicken smells like?

Sugarfrost: My mom made a chicken soup once where she was cooking the chicken, and it burned.

Me: Oh, I thought for a second you meant your live chickens.

Sugarfrost: Actually, there was a fire in their coop once, when they were really small. All but two were too stupid to leave when that happened.

Butterbiter: How did that smell?

Sugarfrost: It was mostly just sad. They were still all fluffy and adorable.

Me: [sniffs air again] I still think it smells more like cigarette smoke than burning chickens. Unless...

The purpose of that dialogue was to give some background for the following pixel art, which I made shortly after the above conversation:

Reality check. Not that knowing the background necessarily helps.

mnq

-Pdf quote: "The triple point pressure of any pure substance is the lowest pressure that the liquid
phase is stable."-

Rather unexpectedly, I did not get many interesting dreams this week. The one interesting dream to pop onto my mental doorstep was the one in which my father was a rocket scientist (!) smuggling some sort of innocuous good to Kenya (!!). For this, the Kenyan government sentenced him to death by lethal injection (!!!). It was a very odd dream, and rather unpleasant.

But guess what? IT'S PI DAY! Happy Pi Day, readers!

Reality check. e^iz = -1

q q7t q

-url quote: "floating_hamster_balls_for_kids"-

I'm debating whether I preferred the dream with music in it or the dream in which I had a virtual pet dragon with its own smaller pet dragon. I must admit that music in my dreams is quite rare, so I suppose that can be my dream of the week.

Apparently, my social intuition is better than I thought it was. The other day, I was walking by a large building that stood in front of a small parking lot. The process was such that the parking lot came into view only gradually.

I came to a point in my walk where a young woman came into view, and for some reason I looked at her body language and remarked, almost without thinking, that she must be waiting for her boyfriend to catch up. As soon as I made this observation, I wondered where I had gotten it from -- when I actually decided to observe her behavior consciously, there was nothing unusual that she was doing.

Even more oddly, I myself have not bothered with the whole "dating" routine yet. I'm one of those people that singleness suits, so far. So if I were choosing someone specifically for this sort of intuition, I would pick myself last; how in heek would I of all people know how to recognize such a situation?

My intuition was right, of course. A few steps further: a young man came out of a nearby building, walked over to her, and they embraced heartily.

But I still can't figure out exactly WHAT it is that gave this away to me beforehand.

Reality check. Ever had any strange run-ins with intuition?

jf jft

-Get Fuzzy quote: "Thank you. Now work on California."-

The most interesting (and I use the word in its loosest sense) dream I had this week was the one in which I had ringworm and had to have it surgically (!) removed, except that I realized after waking up that the operating room looked suspiciously like a ballroom. And I was awake and lying on the floor the whole time, rather than knocked out on a bed.

More information on last week's mishap: my finger is now doing fine. Basically, it was another case of me fulfilling my quota for lack of common sense; I turned on the belt grinder while my left hand was resting (thankfully in a glove) on the main wheel. Obviously, I didn't realize this at the time, though I REALLY realized it milliseconds after.

It's always a bad sign when you flip a switch and you immediately feel pain in a valuable appendage. I have been thinking about it all week, and I think the only thing worse than that would be flipping a switch and immediately hearing someone else scream.

Actually, though, after the initial shock of realizing that my finger was stuck inside a fast-spinning, abrasive piece of machinery and in some degree of pain, the injury wasn't all that bad. Certainly, the quality time I spent with an ice pack last Friday is completely outweighed by the juvenile glee that comes of telling people that "a belt grinder ate my finger."

Reality check. For the really gullible among my acquaintances, I follow that statement up by showing them my hand with the injured finger "missing".

q 7t a7t

-Laundry room quote: "Dryer/Dryer"-

I had a vivid dream this week, not surprisingly on Friday (I got to bed unusually early Thursday night) with escape artist prisoners and poking guards. And also a dream about yellow Labs.

Sorry about the brevity of this post, but a belt grinder ate my finger yesterday, so typing is more difficult than usual.

Reality check. *cue reader freak-out fest*

q

-Overheard quote: "If you end up finding a customer who needs a tunneling machine, you know who to call, hopefully."-

Another mixed week for dreams. Curiously, green is still the only color I can remember with certainty (it was on a Rubick's cube in one of my dreams a couple days ago). Last night's dream was fairly interesting, although I can't quite recall why; all I can remember is going to the supermarket in the wee hours with some people to grab food or something.

After much thought, I decided to write the following for today's post:

Humans are silly.

Reality check. And I am one of them.

jfjf7t 7t

-To do list quote: "ATM"-

Last night, I had yet another of those dreams where I'm part of The Resistance, which always involves a lot of running down hallways and every so often fighting off The Dominant Power. In this dream, the fighting entailed loads of knives, which was awesome. Although, actually, from playing around in SCA, I know that dagger/knife fighting is kind of annoying, both for the one on the handle end and the one on the pointy end. I would much prefer rapiers for all around, if it were in real life. *thinks* Or better yet, no weapons at all. But at any rate, when I was in the dream the knives certainly had that dramatic flair.

Thought to chew on for the week: How much conscious control do people have over their happiness? I would submit that the more one realizes how much conscious control he has over how his brain reacts to circumstances, the happier he can be.

Reality check. Although perhaps the present culture of instant gratification has done away with even that amount of self-control.

am nmqt fjf

-Subscription quote: "If you have configured in your control panel to receive immediate topic reply notifications, you may receive an email for each reply made to this topic.  Otherwise, only 1 email is sent per board visit for each subscribed topic. This is to limit the amount of mail that is sent to your inbox."-

The most interesting feature of this week's dreams was when I was a young hunter fellow that had stumbled across some sort of bear's campsite. The catch was that the bear was somewhat intelligent and had managed to create some glyphs of humans wearing red on the wall of a nearby cave. This was an unusual dream, however, because near the beginning of the narrative, I was looking at a plant display in a hardware store, and there was just overwhelming green everywhere. I don't know if there's anything to the interpretation of dreams by color, but I do know that green is usually a secondary color to me... generally there will be a lot of sandstone-y reddish orange with possibly some balance from green. I cannot remember another dream in which green was the dominant color, yet it definitely was in this one (even in the bear scene, the red glyphs and brown of the log and bear were couched in a glorious ferny wood).

Meanwhile, in real life, the dominant color is white. Ah, beautiful, beautiful snow. I still haven't gotten tired of it, as the natives predicted. I still haven't stopped childishly stomping off pathways so I can sink my shoes into the snowbanks. I even enjoyed it when it was extremely windy and snow was blowing into my clothes like a softer but colder version of the windblown sand back home. The snow dunes the next day! I suppose I was mistaken when I thought that new-falling snow was the most beautiful weather feature in this world... drifts of perfectly smooth, slightly curved whiteness beat "flat" snow any day.

Reality check. I also found out that my breath can actually freeze onto things! How cool! [/childhood reclaimed]

jf7tjf7

-Paul Martin quote: "It's open, it's connected, and it's not silly."-

I had another somewhat unfruitful week for dreams, though I did verify something that sleep researchers have been finding out lately -- if you are a bit sleep-deprived, then have one night where you get extra sleep, you'll have unusually vivid dreams that night because your REM is "catching up". The dreams I had this week on the days I had extra sleep weren't especially vivid, but they were much more memorable than my dreams on the other days (most of which disappeared the moment my head left the pillow). I'm still trying to figure out if last night's dream of my arm bleeding through a band-aid has any sort of Deep Meaning^TM... on the other hand, it's as true in dreams as it is in literature that over-analysis destroys the charm somewhat.

The following is a program that will solve all the problems in the world. Or, um, not. Headers are excluded because Blogger thinks I'm trying to put some sort of malicious html badness into my post when I include them.

int main()

{

char happiness = 'n';




while (1)

{

cout << "Are you happy? (y or n)\n";

cin >> happiness;

if (happiness == 'y')

{

system("Pause");

return 0;

}

else

cout << "Well, perhaps if I keep bothering you, you will be!\n";

}

}

Reality check. This is not at ALL a comment on modern society. No, not at all. *grin*

at a a

-Song title quote: "Bond on Bond"-

I don't fully remember any interesting dreams this past week, unless by interesting I mean interesting by psychological association. In that case, the most interesting dream would be one which was a recurring nightmare when I was young -- arguing with my father. Now, I love my dad dearly, but we had some major communication issues when I was a pubescent teen, and we didn't always precisely get along. Anyway, the dream is significant because I had, the night before, created some havoc due to my still-weak skills with communicating my ideas in the verbal medium, and I suppose my mind made the connection.

On that note, I think it's time for another story! Because sometimes the best way to communicate something that offends people if you say it is to turn it into an allegory, so they only realize what you're talking about once they have read the whole story and, perhaps, see why you think what you think. And to forestall any questions on the matter, the main character in the following story is not me. But he could be an exaggerated version.

The Collector
A Fable

What, indeed, is life like? And what hand of words can take a fistful of it?

I will tell you what life is like. It is like a boy in a remote country. In the remote country is a village, and the village hides under a mountain that spits and scatters stones.

The boy, we shall call Gatherer. The stones, we shall call... stones.

From nearly his first wail of life, Gatherer collected stones. Some stones reached into the light and spewed it out, radiant. Some were somber and speckled, but they warmed sweetly after moist hands took them. Still others were pale, and shone only softly, like skin. All, Gatherer felt, were beautiful, and he added each to a box with cubbies in it.

At first, Gatherer's friends helped him, picking and taking stones for their collections or his. Some had a better eye for them than Gatherer, some could hardly see one or two on an open field. But games and chores and whispers with friends pressed urgently on their young minds, and collecting stones became a distant hobby. Gatherer, however, still loved the stones, and his box filled.

The time came when his box had no more room for stones. With a heavy heart, he sorted through the square nests to find stones he could sell, and through tearful selection, he scraped together enough to buy a new box. The stones clattered away, and the big hands at the counter produced a box. Though the sacrifice was great, the reward was still better, and Gatherer hied off to collect more and still more stones.

Through one way or another, Gatherer's friends soon found that they, too, could purchase trinkets with stones. Suddenly, they were back at Gatherer's side, and he showed them where to find the best stones, for he knew. There was much scurry in the village in those days.

But time passed. The children -- save one -- grew weary of searching and overturning for the best stones, the new stones. Instead, they sought favorite places where one pretty stone rolled in abundance. They took these in armfuls, filling their boxes with flaring gems. Then, off they would go to the store, and stones would clinker away in great avalanches. True, every child -- save one -- found and took the same pretty stones, so the large hands at the counter asked for more and more in return for small items. However, losing stones was no great tragedy to most of them, except in that it took longer to save enough for their next fancy.

Gatherer rarely had to give up many stones for each new box. He did not stay in one place to gather many pieces of one stone, for he saw that doing so took spaces that could be filled with one piece of many stones. All stones were beautiful, but he saw that it was much better to discard those of which he had many, to make room for those of which he had few.

Sometimes his friends would bring him a stone. Usually, it would be a pretty stone that every child collected, but Gatherer rejected it. He already had one, he said, and he did not want to take another space of his box away. But he would show them new places to find stones, stones that were valuable, and they would save up enough to get their trinkets faster.

His friends accepted this, for a while. After all, Gatherer did all the hard work of finding new stones, so the others had to find and take less. That was pleasing to them. And yet, they could not shake the irksomeness of finding so many stones for him that he would not take, and slowly, they became angry. They did not see how he could call himself a collector when he threw away so many, many stones, stones they had ached and labored over.

Gatherer kept saving and buying, always new boxes, never trinkets. Stones were more than beautiful to him, they were his life and breath, even as his friends faded and left. He tried to show them that stones had more in them than their price, tried to show them the most winsome of his stones, those that flashed and gleamed, but the most he got back was a new name.

The name was Brag.

His friends were bitter, now. They saw that he could buy things -- even pricey things like velvet-lined boxes -- with barely any trouble at all, one stone or perhaps two, while they labored over dozens, turning and picking, their backs bent. Sometimes, if the trinket was more desirable or their stones more worthless, they had to take two trips or three, store and stones, filling their boxes, then emptying them, then filling them again. It was much work.

Gatherer bought more boxes and collected more stones. They were beautiful to him, and he had all the time he needed. He did not care for games, the chores were simple, and he had no friends left to whisper to.

At last, he perceived that the village had no more stones that he did not. He did not know what to do, then, so he began to collect two or three of each stone. But never seeing new ones pained him, for stones were beautiful. However, he found he could not speak of this to the other children, for they hated him and his valuable stones and his constant talk about his collection, nestled in its velvet boxes. They thought him a miser, his collection a twisted monument to arrogance, no more.

So Gatherer collected stones, and he learned, slowly, to throw away his joy. Finally, the time came when he bought himself a useless bauble, and he felt no remorse as the stones rolled away with a muted clicking. It was better this way, for taking joy in the stones would only bring pain and disappointment.

And so he adjusted to life without joy. After all, the others had lived without it for years.

That is the way of it.

Reality check. In case you're wondering, this particular story is crossposted on another website, though with not nearly so much background information; I want the people there to figure it out for themselves, or not at all.

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-SSL error quote: "You should not proceed, especially if you have never seen this warning before for this site."-

Well, looks like I'm back to "busy enough that dreams are suppressed" stage. Pity.

Webcams, I think, are one of the most distracting devices known to man. You'll be doing something on your computer, minding your business, nothing special. Then, the trigger. You'll either see your reflection in the screen (easy for me since my desktop is completely black) or perhaps see a well-composited picture online, and BLAM! Photographing spree ensues.

Then you have a bunch of pictures of yourself, probably not really looking at the camera because you're looking at the screen, which is generally below the webcam. Also, one or both of your arms are stretched out to hit the "capture" button. Your posture is probably not particularly good, and every single picture is posed, by virtue of being a picture you took of YOURSELF. Admittedly, on rare occasions, I'll just mash the button while moving around and seeing what happens, but it's still posed to a large extent because I'm still keeping half an eye on how I look on screen.

So what do you then do with these pictures? I mean, usually if people see how many self-portraits you take of yourself, they think you're an utter creep or at least irretrievably vain.

Reality check. I guess free fun always has its pitfalls.

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-Jayisgames.com quote: "Added to the 'cute but evil' list comes Within a Deep Forest, a completely free downloadable game for Windows that casts you as a little blue ball, bouncing around a delightfully whimsical little world filled with the most frustrating jumping puzzles known to man."-

By far the most interesting dream I had this week was when a person I know pretty well was really an alien in disguise. It's one of those cases where if you knew him personally, the thought of him being an alien is beyond funny.

I've never had an eye for proportion... guess my left brain is way too overeager to shortcut to verbal symbols. Which is not too much of a problem for an engineer, I suppose: most of our drawings have precise measurements for each element; nothing is left up to the eye.

It also means I occasionally take a stab at the more "graphic design" style of art, highly stylized and very forgiving. Of course, given what I've just been typing, the fact that I chose this particular piece to post on my blog is kind of ironic.

Interpret it however you want... like many of the creative forays that I actually decide to pursue, I could identify several unique ways in which it could be applied to me.

Reality check. Sidenote: if you ever see a containment vessel that looks like THAT, run away. Quickly.