sound_philosophy(summer_time)

Last Night

Bread Baking

Improv Party Last Night.
Jim made bread.
I brought 6 pounds of watermelon.

We played very difficult charades, which someone compared to how if accountants were to have a party, they would get together on a really difficult case, and just end up working at the party.

I just finished a math exam.

I have a robot obsession

I was going to write something about the bipolar street performer I met last night who told me that he had a 90% chance of committing suicide. Then, I was going to write about the representation of computer games in recent films. But...

...I decided it would be much more fun to talk about robots. Specifically, my obsession with them.

I just sat down on my couch to draw something (yes, the couch IN MY ROOM) and the first thing I drew was a rectangular prism, followed by a sphere atop it, and then the words in block capital letters "EVIL ROBOT". This is a symptom of the problem.

Getting down to it - robots are sexy, seriously. They are what's hot right now. Popular media doesn't care about the human condition anymore, it cares about the robot condition - the struggle to find love, control your feelings, reproduce and find your purpose. Robots trying to look like people. For example:

- Battlestar Galactice
- BiCentennial Man
- A.I.
- Any and all Star Trek, etc. (I'm not a Trekkie)
- my friend Jim somehow

I'm also trying to build/program a virtual zoo called MyZoo using simple AI in the Second Life platform right now, which is probably why its on my mind, or maybe that's another symptom. Anyway, its sexy - we'll see what comes of this.

Fog: Real Time Computer Graphics Adventure

So last night I stepped of Glen Garry Glen Ross with Kate and Jenmy to very thickly fogged weather, which I found delightful. The conditions for it were just right: no wind, very moist cold air. The fog was uniform over our entire walk.

While I was walking, I realized just how difficult it must be to simulate fog, and shadows, and combinations of them for computer graphics. I really wish I had taken pictures of what was going on, how the street lights were interacting with the trees and power lines to make really sharp and diffuse shadows.

So, what is the behaviour of fog? Let's assume this: every point in a region of fog distributes all the light it recieves evenly over every angle. Also, the fog has a certain density in the air, which determines whether directionality or diffuseness of light dominates.

On the macro-level, I would notics that diffuseness seems to dominate: light sources have "clouds" of illuminosity surrounding them, which is why it is so useless to have headlights on. Back to computer graphics, this must be horrible to have to simulate, so perhaps (as with some games) it is slightly pre-rendered.

On the micro-level, and this is what is really cool, I noticed that thick, straight power lines or branches that were close to the light cast a planar shadow. This, obviously, isn't unexpected, but it looks fucking cool. For a first short bit the shadow is really harsh, and then lights fills in as it diffuses. What's also fascinating is that the shadows is a VOLUME, not a 2-dimensional pictures that were are used to seeing cast on a surface. As I was walking along I noticed that the shadow would change shape based on the thickness of its volume I was looking through, as it had no clear defined visible edges. This above effect further adds to the horror of trying to simulate this. which makes me content that the universe exists in its full volume and computational power to create pretty effects.

Hedonism, Gregarity, Selflessness and Everything Nice

Lessons learned: It's hard to change who you are, or maybe its just me. This was meant to be an experiment to see what variable X would be like enhanced for twenty-four hours, but it turned out to be more an experiment about whether or not I was capable of enhancing variable X.

So, round-up

Hedonism - fun day, nothing special though. Ended up staying at Pete's house and drinking seriously for the first time in like 4 months, I think I totalled 2 pitchers for the entire night, including dinner.

Gregarity - for one intended to be a social butterfly, this was a pretty dissapointing day. I spent most of my time working on an assignment.

Selflessness - I cleaned the kitchen, and did everyone else's dishes, which I think is pretty damn selfless. Didn't donate to a charity or anything, or pick a child out of a sewer, but that's really because neither of those presented themselves.

So, there you have it. I want to do this again sometime , but maybe for like a week. Oh yeah, I also have a sweet job this summer, which is awesome, but unfortunately, its in Kingston. Judging from my supervisor though, the hours will be flexible, which is the only way Dustin works.

Time to work on a lab....

Productivity

So this entry was a little late, but today is the day of Hedonism, so I'm fucking going to enjoy myself, which does not include blogging.

I defined Productivity for my purposes as to produce as many tangible, finished items as possible. This didn't happen, but I felt that it did. Starting at 7:30, I had alot of momentum coming out of bed and through the day, but, around 3 pm, my resolve started to wane. I wasn't allowing any downtime for myself. Finally, nearly having my lab finished it all broke down and I became screwing around. Nothing happened for a long time, it sucked.

As drastic as that sounded, it really wasn't generally, my days doesn't change. Life isn't a movie, unfortunately, so I didn't cure cancer or anything yesterday. The day of productivity wasn't as inneffectual as the day of impulsivity, but it still drags. This experiment isn't being as successful as I had hoped.

Today is the day of Hedonism, which isn't being as hedonism as I hoped (no grapes being fed to me by nude women). Most of this stems from my confusion over the definition: Is it hedonistic in the moment? or hedonistic in the long-term? I am fine doing both, and the latter is simply calculated selfishness. The definition from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is: "Hedonism: The doctrine that pleasure is the chief good is like." Man, hedonism gets knocked alot, mostly because people have a narrow view of what pleasure is. It's not all fucking and massages (I haven't had a massage yet, but I came shortly after midnight, putting today off to a good start. No, not alone!) Please can be riding bikes, doing something productive, eating or whatever - whatever makes you feel good.

Okay - this entry is starting to drag so I'm off to pursure more pleasure.

Impulsivity

A day of following in the moment impulses. For myself, I defined being impulsive as not thinking of the past or present (within limits, obviously).

Like I said already, looking at my overall day, nothing changed on the macro-scale. I didn't end up in Tahiti, sleep with 100 women, or anything memorable. What I did do is read papers in class, chug a Red Bull and a half each with Thom, and touch stuff unusually, yell out. I felt warm inside in the moment, but I'm left feeling rather hollow. I didn't get anything major done. I DID find out that I got an NSERC grant though today, which is ridiculously good.

So what have I learned? When I act "Impulsive", I simply act crazy. I yell out, jump around, drink wierd things, but am left with nothing. There is no calculation of benefits but within the next few seconds. I have no lasting worthy memories.

I have decided the difference between impulsiveness and hedonism is that hedonism is calculated, like Ayn Rand would have loved, whereas impulsiveness is random. I've found extreme impulsiveness is rather bad.

Tommorow's trait: Productivity. I've already got my alarm clock set for 7:30. Until midnight though: Rumble Box!

Week 1102: The Week of Change

Today's Theme: Impulsivity

This is the only planned thing I do today.

Every once in a while I get a creeping fear that I am becoming a boring, full-grown, integrated member of society. This is a symptom of those fears, and I'm having a personality experiment to mess with it. The schedule for this week is as follows:

Monday: Impulsivity
Tuesday: Productivity (for the sake of bourgeoisis)
Wednesday: Hedonism (sort of indistinguishable from impulisivity, except I'm allowed to be sloppy)
Thursday: Social Butterflyness (aka Gregarity)
Friday: Selflessness (something I need to work on)

So start the grand experiment. The first 12 hours have gone fine, I haven't noticed major changes on the macro-scale of my life but I feel different, with impulsivity being highlighted.

My major concern coming up is this job decision I have. I geuss I am content that either way I will make a relatively large amount of money this summer for someone my age.

I just discovered the sweetest game! Rumble Box! I'm going to play some now then watch Battlestar Galactica!

Rocks!

Sick Again

This makes three times this semester. Each time, I've known exactly what I've had, and who it came from. Judging from the predictability of this so far, I'm writing this in the hopes that I will actually remember something and learn from this.

SICK I

Disease: Flu
Perpetrator: Kate Evans

This happened just when school was starting again, and put me out of commision for a few days. I remember sweating alot and being delirious.

SICK II

Disease: Norwalk Virus (Stomach Flu)
Perpetrator: Daniel-Ryan Spaulding

D-R thought he would host a "sexy party", in his true style, and told everyone like two weeks in advance. It seems that the day of the party, he was throwing up, etc. but was determined that the show must go on. Big mistake. Norwalk is highly contagious, and everyone at the party got sick, which screwed up rehearsals for Heterotopia for a full week. Strangely, Kate didn't get sick - she was like the only one.

SICK III

Disease: "Sinusitis"
Perpetrator: Talia Acker

I'm coughing up my lungs right now because of this one, another disease spreading around with thanks to Heterotopia. While the name of this disease is somewhat ambigious, and I think defines a symptom and not actually what I have, the effect is not. I have a fever of 39 degrees Celsius. I should probably be sleeping right now, but I just had to prove that infinity is odd.

I plan on getting better soon.

Heterotopia (or what the hell Dustin has been up to all this time)

The Time Project Website

Hi Everyone,

Since September I've been involved in a play creation project that has gone full circle from ten people sitting in a room, to writing, to dramaturgy, to rehearsal, to production next week. Its been amazing working with creative people from drama, applied science and education for so long, and The Time Project (as it was code-named) became quite a large part of my life.

We've talked about topics ranging from destiny to quantum mechanics to social spaces and imprisonment and disconnection. We used a blog posting-process to innovatively control writing. We spent time brainstorming, and have hundreds of notepads of ingenious scramblings somewhere. The embodiment of this entire process finishes this March 14th -18th, when the play is going up in the Integrated Learning Centre (Beamish-Munro Hall).

If you've noticed that I haven't been around for the last year, especially since January, then this is why. This is for every time I declined your asking me to go out and drink or have fun, because I was either rehearsing, writing, or finishing some homework that had been displaced by the play. The entire process was overwhelming, and I'm going to miss it once it's over, but then again, I will have time to eat properly again. Help me let it go out with a bang.

I and a bunch of other people put alot of blood, sweat and tears into this play, so in essence, if you don't see it I won't love you anymore.

Dustin

More info: http://www.criticalstage.co.uk/current.htm
Blog (writing tech): http://thetimeproject.blogspot.com/