the space bar

musings from a simple planeswalker

[antekytheran]

What do u know about ...

[antekytheran]

Listen to portal | Clyp is the easiest way to record, upload and share audio.

godspeed

[antekytheran]

(Ghost Warrior)

[antekytheran]

Parabolic Tangents

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_Ej2aL62dU

Even the most unexpected unintended consequences can appear to have been part of a well-laid plan.

If society is always innocent, then guilt is in the eye of the beholder.

Sometimes what holds you together is also what broke you in the first place.

If you don't know what to do, imagine losing the most beautiful thing you ever knew.

The only way a candle can be burnt from both ends is if it is somewhere in space.

The difference between a good guy and a bad guy is when and where they get their black and white cookies.

The difference between a broom, a rake, and a mop is that a broom is made out of straw.

The reason coins are never square is the same reason that mirrors are never triangular.

In order to find the truth about something, you first need to question yourself.

If you can't tell your friends from your enemies, then it's time to quit the game.

You can always hit a moving target if your first move is the right one.

The difference between life and death could be what you're putting in the bag versus what you're putting in the box.

The cost of doing business is usually an arm and a leg.

If Kansas is going bye bye, then hitch a ride on that twister tornado.

If someone else put your life on the line, you never knew what was really at risk.

If you think someone is out to get you, it might just be their way of life.

The easiest way to make friends is to make enemies.

The difference between humiliating and degrading pain and suffering and excruciating and agonizing pain and suffering is that which is lost and gained.

Sometimes the most sinister treachery is a buried secret, forever lost.

Even criminals need to go to the store from time to time.

Work for your right to party, party for your right to fight, fight for your right to work.

You know that you are always right up until the moment that you find out that you were wrong the entire time.

You will never find out who has deceived you by being completely honest.

Sometimes taking something away from someone is the best way to give them something.

No one can see what you're doing in the dark.

Plan everything ahead - write the steps down one by one, so that anyone can follow them.

If the struggle isn't taking your life away, then go ahead and live it.

If you need to ask for permission, then the person who you're answering to is a poser.

If your purpose isn't your passion, then your passion is someone else's.

You'd be surprised at how much someone can tell about you by just looking at you.

If you're doing different things at once, there will always be a point where you are out of line.

Attach meaning to objects instead of becoming attached to objects.

If you find yourself becoming someone you don't recognize, kill yourself.

Potential becomes action. Run to the places that you will be from. Think with different muscles in different positions.

Being resourceful is learning to do things for unexpected reasons.

Sometimes the very thing that is holding you back is something you can't live without.

If you’re sure you’ve buttoned the hardest button to button and things still aren’t working, then you’ve probably got an innie/outtie problem.

[antekytheran]

Free Four

learning how to code is not only beneficial because software gigs often pay well, but it also empowers you with a problem solving mindset.  one real-world skill that knowing how to code has taught me away from the computer screen was the power in creating associations and applying familiar analogs to deal with unfamiliar situations.  try it some time, i dare you, i double dare you...

[antekytheran]

Nineteen Clicks of Separation

In a Nature article published in 1999, Romanian-born Hungarian-American physicist and network science pioneer Albert-László Barabási reported that the diameter of the world wide web (presumptively at the time of publication) was 19 degrees.  He defines this as there being, on average, 19 other documents or pages separating every unique page on the web.  One can imagine that this number might have grown by several degrees in the 20 years or so since the article was published.  Notice that this was actually before Facebook launched on the Harvard campus.  Extra points to anyone who can tell me if Barabasi knew about Google PageRank, and if so, in what capacity.

What does this mean for the average user?  Probably not much, but it is interesting to think about from a social perspective.  Social scientists and sociologists, just like in any other science, are looking for ways to apply their research.  While people usually frame ‘social problems’ in the context of things like wealth, gender, and racial inequality, in this so-called ‘Age of Manipulation’ and social distancing, social mechanisms are at work everywhere you click.

[antekytheran]

And for a time ... it was good

[blogabouts]

Happy Holidays 2009

Sunday morning. Cereal. Playstation3.  Beating Modern Warfare 2 & Assassin’s Creed 2, back to back.  Yeah, it doesn’t get any better.   So glad to have some free time on my hands. This weekend, I organized… everything.  My work desk.  My photography gear. My presentations. My finances.  I cleaned my house.  I cleaned my room. I cleaned up my iTunes.  I added a bunch of apps & music to my DROID.  I cleaned up my RSS feeds / Podcasts / Google Reader.   Scheduled all of January 2010 in my calendar.   I ate well. I hit the gym (to work of all that holiday eating. Mmmmm).  I also reread through a couple Malcolm Gladwell books: Tipping Point and Blink.   Great stuff.  Blink is particularly interesting. It is about the subconscious processes we go through to arrive at ideas.  Supposedly, nature has designed us to make rapid choices automatically for all kinds of reasons:  survival, creativity, socializing, etc. This subliminal cognition can result in prejudices, like racism and sexism, but they are also fundamental to our survival. Blink stipulates that certain ideas (i.e. epiphanies) can only be reached by not thinking, and allowing your mind to make abstract lateral connections subconsciously.   Training and putting in serious brain work are important.  It allows you to do a highly orchestrated series of choices, without thinking.  So when its game time, and things have to get done on a set or on a project,  you can let go and do whatever feels right.  Once things are in motion, the best work comes from forgoing introspection and relying on your reptilian brain.  This approach is universal. It works for athletes, dancers, fighters, models, actors, artists, soldiers, firemen, businessmen, generals, day traders,  gamers, all kinds of professionals really.  I learned a lot about unlocking this specific kind of creativity when I used to compete in Tekken tournaments.  Even though there are hundreds of thousands of players, each with their individual play styles,  I generally divided all players into 2 categories.   Some players I liked to call “Data players” and other players I called “Feel players”.  Data players are the kind of people that know everything about the game, and everything about their opponent, and with the right training, they could execute and leverage all that “intelligence” to win, a whole lot.  But at the end of the day, I always believed that “Feel players” were better,  faster, and came up with more interesting ideas, because they never had the process of thinking to slow them down.  They would just “be” and “do”, and there’s a lot of strength in that.

[antekytheran]

Holding Your Own In A Street Fight, or I Feel Ya Playa

“I generally divided all players into 2 categories.   Some players I liked to call “Data players” and other players I called “Feel players”.  Data players are the kind of people that know everything about the game, and everything about their opponent, and with the right training, they could execute and leverage all that “intelligence” to win, a whole lot.  But at the end of the day, I always believed that “Feel players” were better,  faster, and came up with more interesting ideas, because they never had the process of thinking to slow them down.  They would just “be” and “do”, and there’s a lot of strength in that.“

Would you consider yourself a ‘data player’ or a ‘feel player?’

[antekytheran]

A Rorschach Plot

Ever wonder why your life sucks all of a sudden?  Before you start revealing all of your problems to the first person who is willing to listen, consider for a second the possibility that you’re being cancelled.

Social media has created the possibility of overnight online fame.  Sure, you love the rush of a million fingertips and eyeballs on your account, but at the end of the day, they’re just touching Gorilla Glass or what have you.  But you don’t really care.  You love to live your insta-celluloid life with the outside world looking in.  But you might slowly start to realize that the trappings of fame aren’t just reserved for touring bands or movie stars.  Eventually, you may find that fame has a price, and sometimes the price is right for an interested bidder.  I’ve seen angels fall from blinding heights, trust me.

Well boo-hoo, cry me a river.  At least you’re not living in L.A. (are you?)  Before you kill yourself, take a few steps back, peel a few layers of reality off, and come back down to Earth.  Life has a way of not telling you everything upfront, which is part of what makes it interesting.  It also has a way of being very unforgiving.  Did you notice someone looking at you at some point in a way that caught your eye but you weren’t sure what it was about?  Did something odd happen that you couldn’t figure out?  Did you get an email that you brushed off because you were too busy having fun?  Did you have a plan?  Did you hook up with someone(s) that you shouldn’t have?  Did you get paid?  Did you tip?  What happened?  Why are you even doing what you’re doing?  So, the point is, before you make your next move, make sure the game hasn’t changed on you.

[antekytheran]

A post-COVID society

Apparently, we are in a post-COVID society because of how the pandemic has affected the world and each and every one of our lives.  How convenient is it that social media has now matured into a technology adopted by the masses!  Before expounding on various conspiracy theories, the point of this post is actually to express how important it is, now more than ever, to re-evaluate interpersonal perspectives in a socio-political climate fraught with new social dangers and potential issues having to do with isolation, privacy, mental illness, dysfunctional relationships, co-dependence, projection, and maladjusted responses as reflections of our former selves; a residual self-image, if you will.  One could even argue that, humans are, by nature, social creatures.  Whether you’re from the Freudian or Jungian school, social dysfunction is extremely well documented in the psychology literature.  And of course there are also the fringe concepts such as fugue state, hypnagogia, etc.

As a matter of fact, you can’t even bring up information technology without having artificial intelligence and machine learning in the back of your mind, with the algorithms crunching and learning away at ever increasing speeds.  No matter if you start to think about computer labs, brains in vats, grey goo, Matrioshka brains, Dyson spheres, or even wired-up humans à la ‘The Matrix,’ one might want to start to question our relationship with technology so ubiquitous and pervasive that it can become nearly symbiotic.  Just take a look at your average coder or programmer.

But unless your device is literally demanding you to ‘hand over your flesh,’ you can rest easy.  Take a load off, jam out on your bluetooth earbuds, pick up the phone and call a friend, grab an iced coffee, fire up the grill, play some tennis, head to the beach with your bluetooth boombox, or better yet, reach for that newfangled VR gear! But wait, what was this post about again? Oh right, COVID. Actually, kids who grow up playing outside are known to be stronger and healthier than otherwise, it's medically accepted fact. So go ahead, get dirty, but play clean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-IsysrqUlU

[antekytheran]

Occultism in Music

Did you know that religion was formerly referred to as Magic or The Art which has somehow evolved into what is known as the arts within arts and entertainment today? Maybe people used to craft spellbooks instead of albums.

I get the sense, however, that the occult has always been an underlying theme in recorded music. More recently however, I've actually started to see occult themes appear in music in very apparent ways.

Are these artists reaching back and digging for the roots of their culture, or does it have to do with how they find inspiration, whereby the methods are both a means as well as an end? As opposed to knight errantry, religious freedom of expression, mind you, is an unabashedly American phenomenon. The question of whether or not occult themes can be considered a musical fad or actually a way for artists to adhere to a cultural identity is probably akin to dancing about architecture.

[antekytheran]

Respect the Game

The name of the game is disrespect, because that’s all you’ll get when you play.

1) you can’t win

2) you can't break even

3) you can’t even quit the game

If it sounds awful, it is.  Some of us do things because we love doing them, and if we get good and maybe start to make some money, we might even start to feed off of the fame and respect.  I suppose this mostly applies to competitive areas within the media and entertainment industries, but even the best of us forget our manners and that there is usually a time and place for certain things.  But even if you scratch socio-economics off the list, most people at some point will get stuck wondering what the hell happened.  All joking aside, some people might then be forced to do things for not-so-good reasons, just to have some hope at the end of the tunnel.  Hell, for some people, it’s already way past that point and there’s no turning back.  It’s a hard lesson to learn that once you realize you’ve been led astray into a forest with no machete and no tent, that you’ll have to use your own memory to get your bearings.

Sometimes people will step up when you need it the most, because of the way things are and have been.  So don’t forget who your heroes and/or heroines are.  You’re only a goner if you actually never had a real shot to begin with.  And if that sounds naive or elitist, then I really had no idea.

[antekytheran]

The Checkbox Method

I actually have to thank an ex-roommate for telling me at one point, “if you don’t like your job then quit.”  I think I also had the common sense in me to have something else lined up afterwards.  But alas, some of the best laid plans turn to dust.

In the midst of picking up the pieces, I realized that I had highly disparate social connections but also a few areas of overlap.  After numerous passes at re-listing and re-organizing in spreadsheets, email, and even over social media, I came up with a way of stripping down to the bare bones of what one needs in life.  After all, we are in coronavirus COVID-19 mode for the foreseeable future, so it doesn’t hurt to have an extra set of ninja survival skills in your mental toolkit.

Want                                                                                                     Need

Have                                                                                                     Keep

So it looks obvious at first glance but it does take some time to make use of this.  Every item is connected to every other item, so the point of this is actually just how these four corners of the checkbox are interconnected and also interdependent upon each other.  For example, I’ve had to get rid of some very desirable and collectible pieces of vinyl from my music collection, and really think about what I needed to snag on a limited budget.  Also, while we’re forced to re-evaluate everything from where we hang out, to whom we associate with, to whom we interact with on the internet, you might want to take stock of what you’ve got and what you’re giving up, from mp3 sharing, to DVD borrowing, and even little bits of info here and there.

Taken a bit further, you can extrapolate this to apply to a small business startup enterprise:

Interface                                                                                 Advantage

Industry                                                                                      Business

Interface is taken to mean your public relations function and outward facing image.  The industry is your competitive landscape and also who your customers are.  The business side of things as well as how you feel you stack up are of course up to you as far as what you bring to the table and how you go about doing your thing (hey, maybe it’s even related to the ‘checkbox method.’)