solitude

Technical, political, fictional

[damonmorgue]

RACISM - How did we get here?

Imagine yourself confronting a casual debate partner. You want to understand one of the most confounding historical mores. The first question to start with is of course a simple one: Haven't you ever wondered why some societies pull through? Why is it that some countries can undergo dramatic governmental changes, that seem to be a total regime collapse, and then come out on top a decade or two later?

Now, you may get a coherent answer, but more likely not, because it's not the sort of thing that many people think about. Any why should they? It's an easy thing to ignore because after all, as you should point out to your debate partner, countries have survived monarchy, imperialism, democracy, republic, even pulled through from what we see as very extreme arrangements such as communism, fascism, and others, but seemingly come out no worse off. The interesting conclusion one must come to is that behind all these was a deeper form of cohesive cooperation, where the greater majority was largely unobstructed by the regime in their efforts to work together. They must have held something deeper than ideology that kept them together regardless of the whims of power.

Again, we are forced to answer a question, because the root of the issue has not been found. We can say with a fair degree of confidence that the information collated thus far is not enough to produce a society stable enough to weather any storm, because some countries fail around the above question. So, why do some populations rally and band together when comes a dire situation? It becomes easier to see when we are made to answer a lateral question. Where would you go if your country collapsed beyond repair - if you were forced to emigrate? Different ideologies will give different answers, but as we will see there is a uniting thread. A strict free-market capitalist might tell you they like their prospects in Eastern Europe, or even the common market of the European Union. A college socialist would say that they'd move to Australia, Canada, Norway or Sweden. Some less-concerned people will stay where they are, some will go back to their parents or grandparents country, some don't know. But why these countries? A capitalist would do better in Africa or China, where there are far fewer regulations and laws. A socialist would be more at home in an openly socialist country like Venezuela, a xenophile would do better in Brazil, and so on. But all these countries lack any sort of cohesion, and why?

The simple answer that we've danced the whole circumference of is ethnography. The USA has survived hundreds of years through colony, revolution, civil war, industrialism, and now the modern politics of globalism, but here is where it starts to break. It has fractured right down to the party level, where the Democrats have actively become the party for minority groups. If multiracialism is good and natural, why does nobody want to move to Brazil, Venezuela, and similar? Why did Rome collapse so disgracefully? Why are the barrier countries between East and West so unstable? Why is it that only now, after centuries of two-party politics, does it seem America is upon a precipice? And finally, where will they go once it all falls down?

The answer is ethnography. We respond at a subconscious level to demographics. We naturally want to be around people who look, sound, act, and think like us, in that order. This is at the deepest level of our nature, for when as children we look up at our parents and see this coherent unity, we come to expect it preternaturally. It's the simple answer to why people can find other ethnicities attractive but will always marry internally. It's why Russia recovered from almost a century of Communism, and why British colonies were able to maintain civility after declaring themselves self-governing republics. It is a fundamental law that has been known from the beginning of the world, and only the most arrogant dare to efface it.

Those who resist the gravity of demographics - be here duly warned. You can enjoy the time in the splendour of your societys golden age. Things are safe and prosperous regardless of what ideology you personally ascribe to, and you have a few decades of utopia to be as liberated as you like. It is good and natural that two vastly different people find commonality in casual meeting; indeed, it's expected of a well-adjusted human to do so, and perhaps you are confident you can do this with anyone from anywhere in the world. But this is not a foundation to build a society from. Those who celebrate diversity, I ask you this: Can you trust a racially diverse family, neighbourhood, or city to back you up in your deepest troubles? When you are, for the first time in your life, made to answer a hard question of ethics, or of policy, or of justice, can you trust them to find a common foundation with you? Can you expect of your neighbour anything that you expect of yourself? Believe me or don't, but there was a time when you could, and that was a time when your country was homogeneous.

Judging from the temperature, I'd wager this is your last warning.

[mydarkloyalty-deactivated202001]

The Accolade by Edmund Leighton

The power of right to rule by divine right, is the cornerstone of civilization.

Hail!

[damonmorgue]

REALITY WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE CONFINES OF MIND

This post covers two main areas: Perception of self, and perception of others. Both are considered from internal and external ports, so as such there will be four tracts of analysis:

     Internal perception of self, or how the reader sees themselves.

     External perception of self, or how other people see the reader.

     Internal perception of others, or how the reader sees other people.

     External perception of others, or how other people see other people.

In considering these viewports, it is useful to outline the connotations of specific pronouns that will be frequently used - I/Me, He/Him, and She/Her. These are, respectively, Internal ("I") Self, External ("You") Self, and External Other, because the writer is male and that just makes more sense to him - i.e., I am always me, another male could be me in a similar situation, but a female would never really be me in any circumstance. Note that this is not due to any prescribed sexual stereotyping, but stems from the writers own internal narrative. If the reader does not find this satisfactory, they are encouraged to continue reading and then return to this paragraph later.

  In many ways, these fields will overlap. It can be overtly shown that external perception of self is strongly tied to internal perception of others (which mask do I wear today?), and it can also be understood that internal perception of self is affected (and in some ways effected) by the external perception of others (HE scoffs at HER for behaviour x - but surely I don't act like THAT). This is an interesting exercise in empathy.

TRACT 1

Internal perception of self is, or should be, solely an "I" operation. It is like an internal radar, constantly running, and scrutinises all personal behaviour on the same levels. Public and private actions are not distinguishable, though often still divided into "excusable" and "inexcusable", and the strength & volume of the readers internal narrative affects the amount of information received from the other tracts. People who spend a large amount of time in their own internal representation of the world will find it much more difficult to determine what others may think of their behaviours, as their own "fantasy" constantly cycles before them (fantasy here being an observed facet of reality).

It is this viewport that allows a person to stroll effortlessly and consistently between external situations, and heightened awareness here frequently translates to a confused obliviousness to Tract 2. For Tract 1, behaviour excused in private can sometimes leak into the public sensibilities, simply by being less extreme than behaviour "inexcusable" but still conceivable in private. In a social situation, He or She may see My odd behaviour, and posit that whatever I practise in safety is likely far more unusual due to the previous token. This is an example of Tract 1 influencing Tract 2 - He and She, observing Me, will insert their own eccentricity into the perception, "He behaves strangely in public, I like to think that I hold my own. But in private, I am much less controlled." Alternatively, those with a strong understanding of self may assert, "This is their natural form. They are always like this." Being, of course, ignorant of the function of the other tracts, they favour their own propensities when observing yours and graft their internal predilections onto your habits.

Exercises:

1. Write down the pattern of thoughts that you have every day for two weeks. Study the undulations of positive/negative as you would on a map. Leave it for two more weeks, then come back and look at it - see if you can remember why you were at any particular height at each point.

2. Believe for a day or two that you are a weak, spineless sycophant without any conviction or confidence. Look for evidence that this is so, and try to remember times when you displayed this behaviour. Try to revert back to normal, and wait until the end of the week before proceeding.

3. Believe for a day or two that you are a strong, intelligent paragon - bristling with charisma and self-assurance. Approach situations with this mindset, and when you are alone use that time to plan your attack on future situations.

4. Compare the week you're now in to the one before it. Highlight the behavioural changes - how much you ate, what you achieved in work and play, when you woke up and how long it took you to fall asleep, etc.

TRACT 2

External perception of self is largely a "You" operation, but can be manipulated by "I". It is how He and She see Me. Understanding this requires practice, reflection and a good deal of empathy. Engaging it becomes a form of excorporeal experience, where one temporarily leaves the comfort of their own mind and adopts the mask of someone else. Once this tract has been mastered, even the most depressed or neurotic person can step into the character of a confident, well-liked social butterfly. Manipulating this tract affects Tract 3 functions in other people, essentially creating a clone of You which is no less real to them than They are to you. Social networking makes this mask incredibly easy to wear, as no minute, interpersonal gesture manipulation is required - the only thing needed being a consistent pattern of clicking and typing.

External perception of self is based, therefore, on the "highlight reel" that I show to You. Any one of a limitless number of avatars is able to be projected to other people, each with their own set ideals of character that they display. Those who are keenly aware of this tract are often masters of social discourse, but can as a result suffer from a lack of personal sentimentality due to their frequent empathic escapes. This "sentiment" refers to their strength of intrinsic moral values, which degrades with repeated Tract 2 excursions and hence every decision and judgement becomes weighed by other peoples anchors. It should be reasonably obvious that the connection with the next tract is very strong, but in understanding this one we exclude some internal nuances of the observed (tract one introspection) in favour of those belonging to the observer.

Exercises:

1. Spend a lot of time with other people. Watch the way they react to you, and the way they react to others. Write down the observed differences.

2. Eavesdrop a conversation between two people about a contentious issue. Study the posture and gesticulation of each agent, and then corner one of them later on about the issue - feigning ignorance of their views. Be sure to adopt the opposite posture of their previous debate partner, while still arguing their point - e.g., if the previous arguer was conciliatory and forgiving, put on a mask of rigidity and uncomprising faith in the truth of your adopted view. See if the conclusion of the debate is any different to the first one.

3. Based on the answers to the first two scenarios, ponder whether you influenced other people, or if they moved to different viewpoints by themselves in order to dominate/appease you.

4. If you can, film yourself talking to someone. What do you notice while watching? Do you have any behaviours that you were surprised by? These are things that other people notice and use to form their judgements of you. They don't see what tract 1 is doing.

TRACT 3

The responsibility for internal perception of others sits uncomfortably between "I" and "You". There is little functional difference between descriptions of it and the previous tract, but given the reversal of agency, it is worth defining them separately. The way that other people see you is controlled by the same mental apparatus which embellishes your opinion of others. In this tract, one's personal narrative fills in the gaps of perception and will also rationalise or make excuses for others behaviour. It is in tract 3 that Freud's idea of projection resides, wherein the observer seems to notice their own subconscious conflicts in others. In discussing how you see other people, it is important to note that you only see what you know, and you anchor your future knowledge around prior learning and experience. The human brain is a highly complex network of pathways that are formed by experience, and new paths can be a fork from an old one (definition), a bridge between two or more closely linked paths (relation), or an entirely new node formed between distant paths that serves as a basis for future learning (innovation). When children approach an unknown scenario, they produce wildly original interpretations of it. This is because their brains are still forming innovative pathways, as their knowledge is relatively broad at this young age - tying shoelaces and identifying animals are, relative to adult specialisation of knowledge, quite broad subjects.

Hence, when the average adult observes anothers behaviour, they are more likely to identify behaviours via definitive mental links. An intellectually atypical adult will attempt to interpret behaviour relationally, and an interpersonally-extraordinary one will synthesise another persons thought process and rationalise their actions innovatively. The person who analyses your actions from your perspective, while still wresting perception from their own subconscious, can fit into the mould of Machiavellian cunning or kind-hearted benevolence with great ease. These are people you will want on your side.

With this in mind, consider how you observe others behaviour. Tract 2 is simply Tract 3 with flipped agency. Begin to notice the discrepancies between your observations, and other peoples justifications, of behaviours.

Exercises:

1. Watch other people drive. Cars are an extension of the personal space bubble that we place over our homes, so they are often a place where people feel safe. Is someone speeding past you? Why are they doing that? Consider that the reason you come up with is based purely on what your subconscious can fathom, and most likely stemmed from definitive, rather than relational or innovative, sources.

2. Find someone you trust and watch them create and interact with the world, then ask dumb questions. The following are good examples: Why did you paint those leaves green? What frustrated you about stubbing your toe? No, what really frustrated you about stubbing your toe?

3. On a more subtle scale, repeat the above exercise over the course of a week with other people. Come to a conclusion on their behaviour before learning their reasoning, then compare the two. What does your interpretation say about you?

TRACT 4

External perception of others is an abstraction of all previous tracts, and is largely dependent on the observational skills of the reader. It is the ultimate exercise in perception - through it we see other observers standing in Tract 3, other actors manipulating Tract 2, and everyone in the world trying to reconcile Tract 1 with the image that they are attempting to project. When considering how others view others, it is important to remember that any analysis you make is reliant on your internal perceptions of that situation. Though it may not be an attainable state of mind for anyone, not even the most gifted empath, as a philosophical principle its existence must be acknowledged; and for the purpose of this article it must also be analysed in order to draw the reader into a holistic appreciation of the thesis.

The ultimate lesson to be gained from disseminating human interaction lies in understanding of the fourth Tract. All conversation is conducted through perceptions of self. The way you see yourself affects the way that you see others, as you are judging them based on your experiences. Likewise, this also affects the way that you see others observing each other - but those others are, in their frame of reference, judging based on their own experiences.

Why is any of this important? It is not enough to present such a model to stand on it's own without justification. The aim of this model is really this fourth tract. While it is likely that this is too abstract to be of any real use, the model itself has been constructed so as not to rely on particular details. Ideally, once read, this will simply be an anchor by which to better interact with others. After digesting this information, the reader should begin to realise that it is not enough to merely exist in reality; we must also understand the lenses through which we view it, so that we can take steps leading us closer towards it.

The only exercise is to explain this theoretical model to other people.

[damonmorgue]

FORTITUDE

A season sold to solitude

Walk upright - the ocean will pull back any who hesitate. Posture is a small step to strength. Avoid weariness - it carries fear, anger and loneliness. It is unbecoming. Silence the deceiver's voice - it is your burden to withstand the spiritual siege. He knocks on every wall, listening for weakness. Invest desire - this will one day be hers. Let it be a holy beacon lighting the path to the future. Develop gentle strength - it displays and commands respect. An argument made in stoic wisdom is worth more than a thousand righteous screams. Envelope the mind in knowledge - this is for you. Become a titan of intellect, giving bias to no stubborn proclivities. Attain peace of heart - this is for her. A bottomless repository, a hidden kingdom to hide from the dying world. Defend your faith - this you share, and each need every day. Do your part to become a man of God, worthy of his most prized daughter.

A fervor fed to fortitude

[damonmorgue]

Building Hiredis-2.8 in Visual Studio 2013

A checklist for the frustrated beginner Redis is a technology I'm only just beginning to use. If you don't know what it does, I question A) why you're reading this and by extension B) what you're doing with your life by even reading this blog. Seriously, get off the internet and go outside. If these questions have sent you spiralling into some sort of existential maelstrom, know that Redis provides an in-memory database which is very fast and very useful for inter-process communication. The possibilities are almost endless, and I am quite excited to start exploring them. Hiredis ( https://github.com/redis/hiredis ) is a reasonably stable C++ client written to access such a database. The developers have provided a Visual Studio solution which can be built with very little issue. However, as is the way with such things, linking it to another project can cause some headaches. I encountered several headaches when linking the project, but made a breakthrough right after being pleasantly distracted - so if all else fails, distract yourself for a while. It helps. I hope that going through the following checklist will alleviate this pain:  

Firstly, coordinate your Platform Toolset. I am using v120_xp across all the projects, because it will run on our industrial hardware which runs XP. Make sure you change this for Win32_Interop, hiredis, and your project.

  For your project, the hiredis project, and the Win32_Interop project, check that Properties->C/C++->Code Generation->Runtime Library is set to the same across all. I tested with /MTd and /MDd, both were fine as long as they matched between the calling project, the hiredis project, and the Win32_Interop project which hiredis uses for it's wrapped Winsock functions. This will resolve many linking errors that you might be seeing.

  Ensure that hiredis is linked to Win32_Interop.lib - you can do this in Properties->Librarian->General->Additional Dependencies. Add the full path of your Win32_Interop.lib file. Mine was c:\dev\redis-2.8\msvs\Debug\Win32_Interop.lib, so be sure to link it properly otherwise you'll get a few linking errors from networking funtions such as socket, bind, fcntl, etc. I did not try linking with a pragma comment, so if you prefer the readability of this then try it out for yourself.

  For your project, make sure you are using Multi-Byte Character Set - hiredis and Win32_Interop use these by default. If you're combining with MFC, you'll notice that MBCS was deprecated in VS2013. Check the link in the article here ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2013/07/08/mfc-support-for-mbcs-deprecated-in-visual-studio-2013.aspx ) which gives you a download for these.

  In your project's Properties->C/C++->General->Additional Include Directories, add a path to the redis src directory amd the deps/hiredis directory. Mine were, respectively, c:\dev\redis-2.8\src and c:\dev\redis-2.8\deps\hiredis

  In your main.cpp file, include "hiredis.h" before anything else. Windows has a funny habit of being quite fussy about the order of includes, so this is just something we all have to live with.

  Link with hiredis.lib - you can do this as a #pragma comment(lib, "c:\your_redis_msvs_output_path\hiredis.lib") or in the linker, whichever you prefer.

  This should solve the majority of confusing build errors. To properly test, run a default redis-server (the path to which may be something like c:\dev\redis-2.8\msvs\Debug\redis-server) and write a test program. This need not be anything more than creating a pointer to a redisContext and initialising it with the function redisConnect("127.0.0.1", 6379) and then pinging the server with     redisReply *myRedisReply = (redisReply*)redisCommand(myRedisContext, "PING"); You can get the result of the ping (which should be "PONG") by looking in the str member of the redisReply object. That's it! If there are any other beginner errors that would be useful to list, contact me and I'll add them.

Edit: Some additional steps for building hiredis into a project:

 You may need to add external files into the project from the src folder. Use extern "C" { ... } to wrap the #include-d redis headers, otherwise you'll get more unresolved external symbols. Then just add the existing files into your project. Make sure you #include files from the redis-2.8\deps\hiredis folder, and add files from the redis-2.8\src folder.

You also need to link against Win32_Interop.lib in your project, not just the hiredis one.

[damonmorgue]

Rust

A year old ode to a person who could not release their past

We all corrode from

    pain within

Heart and mind clamour

    in th' din

Hold up the mask to fool

    the blind

Let it crack when

    kin we find

Sever the arm that offers

    you blood

Leaden the heart that offers

    you love

Burn the future for the past

    in your mind

Mourn it on the wound path you find

[damonmorgue]

Evolving Liberty

The tough lesson of multiculturalism

The ingredients of culture are people, place, and time. The people are the progenitors and (later) agents of culture, whereas location and time are the formative and accommodating contexts. A culture arises wherever these three materials meet, hence we see not only "African culture" and more minute sectors such as "traditional south Sudanese culture", but also cultures abstracted from a set geography such as "sport culture", "internet culture" and the many respective sub-groups of both. In the latter it can seem that "place" is supplanted in some way by "activity", but the activity, ultimately, survives by the existence of a physical, habitable place for it to be practiced in. Where culture has arisen, it is unique to that people, that geography, and the given period of maturation. To supplant this elsewhere is to place it into a climate which it is, by its very nature, unfit to exist in, as it did not develop there naturally. This is not to say it cannot - merely that it does not naturally and therefore requires some form of mutation. If a cultures values are to be sustained, they must remain dominant in the law and governance of that region. Hence, if culture were sentient, it would find its best interests suited by remaining in its geographic origin. This conclusion is arrived at by accepting the initial premises of what defines and creates culture. When geography is shared by two or more cultures, the value systems of the population are in some form of dispute (be it overt or hidden) and if this dispute is socially encouraged, then the original culture of that region has effectively given up its claim to existence. The social encouragement of moral dispute is called Multiculturalism, an idea whereby a host culture with predefined standards and values is subjected to foreign standards and values with no goal of mutation for those alien elements. It is this masochistic act which causes social unrest, and urge for legal or social reform to accommodate these other systems. Often these urges are unrecognised by the population who have assimilated into the original culture, and are agitated by smaller groups who do not recognise the foundational translation that their value system must contend with - it does not exist in its natural habitat, yet it is now staking claim to rights which may not exist in another culture's habitat. Multiculturalism, in common parlance, asks itself whether or not it should legislate on behalf of imported values. Does it allow a redefinition of theft? Does it allow a redefinition of free speech? Or of marriage? These are fundamental questions and do not even address the linked issues of affirmative action and proxied segregation that often occur. The true road for the multiculturalist does not lie in a conservative or liberal answer to any given reformation of law, nor in Islamic or Christian, nor hetero- or homosexual. Because multiculturalism has removed any claim on precedence for the host culture, it cannot continue to legislate in its natural manner. No, the road that multiculturalists must ask to tread is as far away from any culture, any set of values, as can be given. In order to have true multiculturalism, one must ask for a base of "aculturalism". Let us take the example of marriage. To a religious person, this is the dedication of loving union before a deity. To the irreligious, it is simply a step that is taken for social recognition - there is no higher authority to appease. In the eyes of the acultural state, there should be no such institution as marriage. The outcry to extend the definition of marriage in western countries is based largely on a moral dispute between arrogant host cultures and equally arrogant agitators. In times when recognising God or an objective set of values was considered basic and universal to western culture, marriage could be recognised in the "traditional" manner. However, in order to obtain the equal social standing and taxation/legislative benefits available, a foreigner to this value system must assimilate in some way. An acultural alternative would be to simply treat marriage as a form of legal and financial union, completely ignorant of the parties involved. What separates three friends living together with shared finances is then no different legally than a husband and wife. The distinction now is recognised in religious rites, for it is not the states concern to recognise the elements of such arrangements that are not relevant to its function. In this way, perhaps the right wing or traditionalist commentator is closer to the truth; but has failed to take it to its ultimate conclusion. Where the left wing, self styled as a "progressive", asks for reformation of the existing system and another canopy of laws to subject society to, the traditionalist first identifies with the rights of the host culture and defends this existent structure. What the traditionalist has failed to grasp, and (similar to the previous failure) the progressive has identified without conclusion or goal, is that the host culture has invalidated itself by calling assimilation an evil. The coy Marxist cries out, "European culture is dead! The white man no longer exists!" But he feels no such pleasure in declaring the same for any culture but his own, and he has provided no step toward further stabilisation - for stabilisation is not the goal of the left. They thrive on upset and noise, the crashing din of protest is their aim. Change in their favour provides no satisfaction. But the traditionalist, in furious steadfastness to his host culture, respects also the right of foreign cultures. This is a weakness if not examined within the asserted framework of cultural origin, because so normal and acclimatised is the fertile ground beneath his feet that he fails to maintain it. Where multiculturalism has been encouraged, a host culture has given rights to foreigners who would not reciprocate if under converse circumstances. And so it is that such a culture will be undermined from within, the well poisoned by its own citizens, and not through narrow worldview but by the typical resistance to change that most conservatives hold. Change in their favour is an untread territory, and therefore shunned. But the abstract idyll of equality, so resplendent in the sunset of our Western civilization, stands lofty in the minds of moralists. The constitutions of modern democracy are written in such a generalised tone that they appeal to all mankind, yet no single group. But even given this, they assume a prescribed moral order. Where Jefferson gave absolute, unalienable truth to his rights, he bowed still to his own moral climate - the assumption of rights, the assumption of good and evil, and the ordainment of such by a Creator. Being so unable to predict the vacuum of Christianity and theism in general, his declaration appealed succinctly to his own culture. Today it is twisted by the very sects that grew in this blindspot. But Jefferson lived in a time when right and wrong were unassailable; who could have seen mankind give himself a sponge to wipe away the horizon? What purpose could there have been in blotting out the sun that we should light torches in its stead? This consideration to context is not given by modern arguments - it is too inconvenient. It makes evident the moral decline that precedes social decline, and that social decline which precedes the fall of our civilization. Unlike Rome, we do not live in a web of loosely connected cultural nodes - if anything, we are too tightly connected. There was no safety net for Rome's glory to be caught by - some went north to the Germanic peoples, some south or west to Spain and Africa, and more yet in the east to Byzantium. But if "the West" falls, as it has threatened to many times in the last century, who will take it under their care? Will it be adopted, co-opted, adapted, or bolstered by its saviour? Will it fall at all in our diplomatic age? Cultural decline of this scale has never been witnessed. Perhaps, one day, when the solar system or even the galaxy looks at itself and groans under the same conflicts, it will look to the precedents set by Babylon, Egypt, Rome, Europe, the West, and Earth - for regardless of our fate, mankind will see this struggle until the New Heavens are hung in their place.

[damonmorgue]

Another run of thoughts

What's it called when all things are well save one grievance? Surely there is some title or label that we give such a pleasant state.

Does this diagnosis change when that grievance is unable to be cast out? Or when it simply has no reason itself to pervade an otherwise secure heart? What about when it has become a fixation - the only thing dividing waking from sleeping, and sometimes not even this - what now do you say it is?

It is now an obsession. No longer a desire to right some ill, or cure a loneliness, no longer an exaggeration or embellishment. Dreams of attainment are always unrealistic and totally separate from reported reality, but everyone elses reality is always flawed, isn't it? Who am I to say that mine won't play out differently? Who am I to say that it will?

[damonmorgue]

The curious character of coincidence

Slowly, silently, and culminating with an awful, wet slap, the small silhouettes dropped from the hooks and onto the stone floor. It was a monumentally disappointing thing for the weathered fisherman to look upon, but he was helpless to stop the process. The door to his hut was uniquely secured - an interior latch that locked itself upon contacting a protrusion on the doorframe. It was, of course, able to be unlocked by key, but said key was sat on a thick table near the centre of the small abode, sadly visible from the wrought iron portals that formed windows. He stood staring in, his hands grasping the ironwork vainly, his initial shock overruled by a sort of haggard resignation. It had been a long winter so far. Clearly, he mused, it would only get longer. Turning away from the source of his despair, he tried vainly to take in the beauty surrounding him. And beautiful it was - as beautiful as only winter could be; the proud trees stripped of their leaves, the deceptively warm glow of distant snowcaps, the wretched tumbling of the grey river, and the characteristic silence of a world that seemed paused by the season's frigidity. Things were, in an impartial sense, quite good. There were no other pioneers braving an intrusion into his nominal territory, the sky (today at least) was mostly clear, his shelter had not been compromised by natures throes, and, of course, there was no disruption of his treasured silence. Counting over these blessings in his mind did little to comfort him, however. It wasn't so much the thought of dinner sitting on the sooty floor of the pantry - there was, after all, clean water in close proximity - but the irritation of seeing lost potential and wasted effort, locked behind a door, unable to be saved and that by his own carelessness. He had been the one to walk out without the key, violating a principle he had abided by yet never had the practical inconvenience to force a habit of. It was so simple a task that required his exit, one so sundry that it had escaped his mind as soon as the wind blew him out of his work cycle with it's portentous howling. Hearing the wind and feeling it's nudging awoke a primal sort of anxiety in him, and sent him darting back to the closing door. The frustration conflated with disappointment, and it was a curious mood indeed. Contentedly inconsolable. But the river rushed by and the wind bit softly at his face, the smoke rose languidly from the fire and the grass danced stiffly. Before he knew it he was relaxing onto the cabin's door, and it was then, at the peak of his submission to fate, that he heard a light click behind him. There was no palpable reaction from him as the door slowly pushed open, taking his limp posture with it. And so he lay there, legs beyond the threshold, arms fallen by his sides. The old hinges had stopped their moaning after his pressure on the door was allayed, and it sat wide open in a sort of self-congratulatory confidence. "Spring must be on its way," the prostrate figure informed the old cabin. Somewhere behind him, a wet slap answered.

[damonmorgue]

There must be memory of it. Irrelevant to anyone but me.

What is it I want to do? How can I expect anything more than what I input? Provided I decide on a destination, how do I get there? It's too late to fail now, so pick up the torch or cast it away forever - there is no second place. Why...? Why why why why WHY no there doesn't need to be an answer. Let's be honest here - I wouldn't want to hear it anyway. "Just accept that you are a "thing", an accessory of some sort. Perhaps a curiosity or a novelty, whatever, that doesn't matter because it's not different to anything previous, so why is it a shock? Yes, you were interesting for a little while, perhaps even engaging or enticing, you may have even seemed enigmatic and intelligent. But your own head has trapped you. You have imprisoned yourself in fiction because your imagination has taken over from reality. Look at what is - what REALLY is - and you'll see that there's nothing there to mourn. Just attachments to some emotional fantasy that refuse to leave your conscious thoughts." If only they were so honest. Nobody really is, it's all polite and courteous discourse and  bullshit like that. What if they are being honest though? Everyone has their struggles. It could just be scratching on a gossamer film that they layer over those turmoils. But don't assume to be so endeared to people... We KNOW how that ENDS. Would you really want to be drawn to such poisonous avatars anyway? What sort of person guards against their friends? "Exactly. You aren't a friend." Isn't that what I do to them also? NO ONE GETS IN AND NO ONE GETS OUT and all that. It's only me that's engaging this, there is no external attachment to this internal fiction. The characters are modelled after real people with such accuracy that the one is easily confused for the other. Even that sounds like someone else. I'm glad you don't know me, otherwise you'd say something about it, or worse still stay silent and detach slowly. Why did I drift away from them? They weren't productive. As if I have anyone or anything now that is. Only me. And I'm not all that encouraging all the time. Venting is very encouraging, it's like throwing paper onto embers. This is such an unstable shell - wear it out and it will start to purge it's most useful mental apparatus. I guarantee that tomorrow or maybe the next day it will have restored itself to normal operating capabilities. Will it ever transcend it's current ones? "Unlikely. It doesn't really need to." Says you. I think I'd know better. "But why would it need to? It's not even that capable as is. It never has been! It's just you and me here, and we both know who is stronger. I will win every time. I am victory itself. I AM YOUR DRIVE I AM I AM I AM I I I I I I I I I I I I I " here is the problem then. I. Gotcha ya bastard!! Do not run from the truth. Do not flee from wisdom. You cannnot sculpt yourself, that was always His job. Put down the chisel, it's not creating an artwork, it's destroying one. Just be quiet, all this noise isn't turning into a symphony, it's burning the sheet music. Just for once stop pushing so hard. It's not guiding you forward. It's destroying what progress you've made. ... Silent now. You're not speaking anymore. May you never speak again.

[damonmorgue]

SEASONS

I'm 23. I sit in an office all day and write computer programs to save some mining magnate a few million dollars. That's it, that's what I currently do as a young man. These are my peak years and I am sitting here and only feeling stagnant. Perhaps some would consider this a fortunate place to be, and I can understand why - there's virtually nothing I can't do, nowhere I can't go, the money I somehow earn is festering in a digital bank account - it's numbers on a screen, bits magnetically stored in a hard disk somewhere - I could blow it all on useless crap I'd only use semi-annually, and I wouldn't notice it's passing. There are millions of people who would, and do, give anything to be in this sort of position.

There's a dreadful emptiness in me, and it isn't buried all that deep. I've always known that material things do not bring pleasure, and I've always believed that achievement is the greatest motivator. But it seems the more I achieve, the more hollow I become, as though the satisfaction eats something more away every time. I can see God walking in front of me, but I feel like I'm walking on a treadmill - it's not even a struggle, it's not a sandstorm or a blizzard, nor is it quicksand or snow. It's just vain motion.

But now I understand the Teacher's words:

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven."

Yes, there are many seasons yet to come, and who controls their passing? Yes, I've ascended the heights, and I've stepped out onto the clouds, but I see now that they aren't clouds at all, they're just plain old cobblestones layered in mist by my half closed eyes. I'm just plodding along convincing myself that I'm headed toward something, "I'll get there eventually, wherever 'there' is..." But what the Thinker thinks, the Prover inevitably proves. I have proven to myself that I'm going somewhere. I've also proven to myself that if I think hard enough about proving something to myself, that I'll gain some mighty insight and be able to surge ahead once more.

But to everything there is a season.

[damonmorgue]

CALL TO THE WIND

I heard it first on the mountains, when the moon dyed the gilded fields to silver. Carried on the starlight streams it flowed down to the depths, singing into the slumbering ears below. I was awakened with an uncharacteristic attentiveness, for it had called too loud and long to remain occluded from even my unconscious mind. Rousing, I turned to regard the last ashes in the hearth. Red veins sheltered in the tiny chasms, stubbornly breathing their last, futile wisps of smoke into the dim chill in memory of their former blaze. My conscious ears heard it more clearly then - tenebrous and timid - for the first time. It was not long until I had left the comfort of shelter and entreated passage unto the frigid outside world, and began making my way stiffly toward the origin of the enigmatic sound. Between the forests, along the wooded roads, beside the frostbitten grass and foliage I wandered, chasing that moonsong to whither it would lead me, until finally I stood at the base of the mystical range from which the ancients stole the World-Smith's ores. There were no passes or trails leading to on high, for no man had ever traversed hence. Despite their inviting grandeur and imposing beauty, they were fragile to the foot of man, having only the winds and beasts for their companions. I clambered for what seemed hours, losing sight of the peaks and falling deaf of the songs. Between sheer cliffs, along ancient rocks, beside sudden precipices and impassable chasms I seemed to wander aimlessly, ascending ever higher but achieving seemingly little. After freezing aeons cycled past, after countless disheartenments left me sitting unmotivated on bitter ledges, and after the inevitability of my purpose awoke me once more, I finally crested the last obstacle. I heard it then on the mountain, the moon dying the distant fields below to a glittering silver. It sang to me as I stood on what seemed the highest plateau in the world. I took a breath, closed my eyes, and walked out onto the clouds from which the starlight streams flowed.

[damonmorgue]

Designing an ASM-like scripting language, part 3

Predictable complications and omniscient lists After dealing with some high-priority projects over the last month or so, I'm back to getting Daedelus off the ground (hue). Filling out the opcode behaviour uncovered a new requirement - branching. Yes, conditional and control statements like if, while, etc. I knew it was going to require a C-like approach, but I vainly thought through other alternatives anyway. Of course, none really provided the intuitive aspect that the problem begged. It really seemed there was only one thing to do - and that was getting right on with it. My first attempt was to treat conditions the same way as I'd treated arguments - parse them recursively and store the blocks of code that were nested within. However, as this language construct is more abstract than opcodes, such a naive approach turned out in brainstorming to be very inappropriate. Pondering, I drew a picture of a script as a set of circles and lines, and was immediately reminded of a set of points as in a graph. My games programming past instantly shouted "Vectors! Easy!" And I was quite happy with this and even started programming it. This approach could have been made to work, but during the process was actually providing some unnecessary complexity - not only would I have to match vectors into pairs, I'd then need to go back into the script and start thinking about a way to execute or ignore code based on x/y coordinates... Starting to seem like overkill. The final solution to the branching question was the OmniList. There's probably another name for this, I don't know what it is though. Bi-axial doubly-linked list is a bit cumbersome. Quad-linked list?              *parent *brother |node|    *sister              *child                   It seemed like a pretty cool data structure so I put it into it's own class and templated it to be used later. The implementation for a Branch is like this: class Branch : public OmniList<Branch> The main drawback I can't seem to get around just yet is that list creation must proceed in only one direction vertically, and only one direction horizontally. My order is child -> sister, but I'm sure there's a way to get at least horizontal creation to go in both directions, even if it doesn't make much sense to do so. Given that it would be an unused functionality, I've stuck with child->sister for now. The parent and brother nodes are linked back on creation.

I'm just finishing up on integrating this into the virtual machine's processing logic, so soon it'll be time to test it and see if it all works!

[damonmorgue]

PERSPECTIVE ON FALLEN EMPIRES

A conjecture on decline

We are told that in the dying days of the Western Roman Empire, barbarians pillaged their way through the decadent shadows of glorious imperium, unopposed, unstoppable, and uncivilised. We still use their names to describe outcasts in and out of our society - vandals, goths, and so on, for so unwelcomed was their presence. When the Ostrogoths usurped the Italian-born emperors, their historically-apportioned ignorance is treated as the primary descent into what we so arrogantly call the Dark Ages. We, extrapolating history from our primarily Byzantine records, view the next 500 years as barbaric and superstitious. This is not a history penned by drunk victors, but by the swollen and beaten remnants of a superpower which allowed intellectual and social treason to fester within it's own capital. Opinion is the unavoidable lens through which we must view all past, present, and future events, but think culturally about the state of Rome in her death throes: subdued peoples remained not only in their own ancestral lands, but settled afar and, despite Imperial sovereignty, a rich multiculturalism arose. The absence of Imperial governance merely removed an external shroud from the inherent cultures of Europe, Asia and Africa. In essence, there was no collapse, excepting the major political centers which were mostly Romanised anyway. People have changed very little and I doubt it would have been a momentous upheaval. With the recent spate of tribalist victories in the European Union, the history books are waiting, confused at who the victor is that will be penning this next era. If decadent liberalism - whose primal, blind hatred is focussed on nationalism, and which is inherent in modern European aristocracy - is not suppressed, our descendents in another era may be learning about the second dark age in which cultural strength and achievement flowered. The flailing remnants will pen their history in enraged fits, and the liberated cultures of Old Europe will simply continue in their demure manner, attending to the needs of their people before they attend to the needs of future historians.

[damonmorgue]

ActiveMQ in VS2013

A simple guide by a simple man

A spike project I have worked on lately has to do with the way we communicate between proprietary field equipment and a centralised observation program. The architecture of the observer is in the process of being completely rebuilt with modern software design principles, and our field equipment has to be dragged out of the festering, corpse-strewn mire it currently inhabits and updated to use the message queue capabilities of the new design. The chosen message queue program, as you have guessed, is Apache's ActiveMQ. As the field equipment runs embedded XP, .net interfaces are out of the question and the implementation has to be done in C++. Why this entry? Because it was problematic to set up, and the fix was not entirely obvious (at least not to me). By chance it was that I happened upon the answers, and so I'll share them here for anyone who needs to do something similar. Why this entry, here in solitude? Now that's a better question. Needed to get basic messaging running: APR (http://apr.apache.org/) - http://mirror.mel.bkb.net.au/pub/apache//apr/apr-1.5.0-win32-src.zip ActiveMQ(http://activemq.apache.org/) - http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi?path=/activemq/apache-activemq/5.10.0/apache-activemq-5.10.0-bin.zip ActiveMQ-cpp (http://activemq.apache.org/cms/) - http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/activemq/activemq-cpp/source/activemq-cpp-library-3.8.2-src.zip If you're anything like me, just getting the basics to build is the most important step and you're pretty confident of success after that. Of course, all I need to do in this project is push a message onto the queue from the field equipment, and read any relevant ones coming in. So all I want to do in terms of ActiveMQ is just get the activemq-cpp and activemq-cpp-example projects running for now. This isn't a guide on how to get messages going back and forth on a queue or how to set up ActiveMQ for Windows - that's a guide that may or may not come later.

Building APR So you've downloaded APR and want to build it. "The apr project builds! So does libap- oh..." You have just encountered a fairly intricate frustration, so hold up a second. As you've noticed, the folder structure is a bit fiddly, but once you've got apr.dsw converted and opened in VS2013, you need to go to the property pages for each of the following:  - apr  - libapr and change the Platform Toolset to Visual Studio 2010 (v100). Why? Well thanks to this obscure post - http://osdir.com/ml/dev-apr-apache/2013-11/msg00019.html - we see that some function casts used in the source code are 32-bit only. "Why do I, the library user, need to work around this?" Because that's how life works.

Build aprapp. It takes a while. In the meantime you can look at the C source code, or for a more pleasant experience, douse yourself in acid. Once that's done, go to the APR root folder and get the libapr-1 dll and lib files from either Debug or Release (I personally just built them in release mode). In your ActiveMQ-cpp directory, you should find a supplied vs2008-build folder. Make a subfolder in this for APR, with include and lib subfolders, and copy over the dll/lib files and the include folder from APR.

Building ActiveMQ-cpp Open activemq-cpp.sln, then the properties page for activemq-cpp, and in the Configuration\C++\General\Additional Include Directories, add your APR include path. Also, change the platform toolset to VS2010. You will need to repeat that for the project activemq-cpp-example, but will also need to add libapr-1.lib into Configuration\Linker\Input\Additional Dependencies "Oh cool, it builds now. Let's run it!" You wouldn't want to forget such an integral step as linking the dll would you? Just put libapr-1.dll into the folder that the exe is output to.

In conclusion... Now you can run it. The official readme wants you to grab 2 or 3 more libraries, but they aren't used at all in the build process so don't trouble yourself. This whole process highlights some of the pitfalls of modern software development, not just for library users but also developers. It's so damn big. Not just in raw code, but in the techno-geography of where it could end up being built and run. Look at main.cpp in activemq-cpp-example. Look at all those include files. Is that a difference in design or scale? The minds behind these libraries have to account for so many implementation quirks and they still offer this product for free!

Perhaps it's naivety on my part, but when I start writing code that can be put into a library or even just a handy class, the very first thing that I think about is using it from the "other end". But then, I don't work for one of these software-to-software solution companies, whose products are marketed toward other programmers, so there could be whole face to this issue that I can't see. I really hope I never have to work for one of these companies anyway, it's not my thing. It's not quite as physically applicable as I'd enjoy.

I probably don't belong in modern, large-scale software development. Relying on other people was never one of my strengths.

[damonmorgue]

Designing an ASM-like scripting language, Part 2

Obligatory gloating and selecting operation by argument count

As it turns out, forcing brackets was a great idea. The initial tutorial architecture was woefully inadequate, and not a great idea. I think it was meant to be party to both C and C++, which explains some of the design choices. Either way, a little bit had to be refactored with the introduction of the argument stack - curmudgeonly pointer interfaces were the most prominent.

One thing that hit me on the drive home yesterday, and a suspicion which was confirmed today, is that the recursive parser needs a queue rather than a stack. ctrl+f saved the day, thankfully the STL is fairly homogenous and I only had to replace calls to top() with front().

I ran the first operation with a right-most nesting, and after a minor correction with a string index it ran happily. I then tried an operation with a nested first argument, which didn't work. It didn't seem it would be hard to correct though, and this too was a well-founded inquiry. All I had to do was increment that aforementioned string index by 1 after returning from the recursion.

See for yourself!

Well that's the gloating part. What now? Argument-dependent operation types, which I briefly mentioned in the first part of this series. This might be a little bit more tricky. This pertains to the TMR and REG commands - with two arguments, it is considered a write operation and does not return anything. With one argument, it is a read operation and passes it's return down the queue.

So that's today's mission, which after explanation doesn't seem so complex after all.

[renaissance-art]

Piero della Francesca c. 1472-1474

Montefeltro Altarpiece (detail) 

[damonmorgue]

"Spaséñiye, sodélal yesí Posredé ziemlí, Bózhe. Allilúiya."