linterry's blogger

...and have a piano, try playing the following simple arrangement that I made for it:

Spice Girls - Stop (Page 1)
Spice Girls - Stop (Page 2)

I've labled the chords this time so people can see how the song is structured. I'm not 100% sure of the chords in the 2nd verse (before the chorus), but it seems to sound right.

Today at Shake House while chilling on my favorite iced green tea... I was thinking about the mathetmatics behind RTS games. If you watch enough replays, you'll realize that even in very close matches, the winner ends up completely wiping out the opponent's army with quite a few units leftover... despite the fact that they had about equally sized armies to start with.

It's a strange phenomenon... because generally I would expect that roughly equally sized armies, controlled by roughly equally skilled players, would more or less produce the same outcome: both armies (by virtue of being roughly the same in power and intelligence) annihilate each other out.

But this is obviously not the case... like I said, if you watch enough Warcraft replays, the winner always seems to have quite a few leftover units...

Even back in the Warcraft II days (for DOS!), I contemplated this simple scenario: if two footmen are ordered to attack each other at EXACTLY the same time, then they will kill each other completely. In other words, Army A loses 100% of their army, Army B also loses 100% of their army in a 1 on 1 scenario. That's obvious.

However, if Army A had two footmen instead of one, and you had 2 vs. 1 scenario, the result isn't what you would intuitively expect. If they were forced to attack each other, what will be the outcome of this 2 vs. 1:

1) Army A loses 50% of their army , Army B loses 100% of their army
2) Army A loses 25% of their army, Army B loses 100% of their army

The answer is in fact the second one. Army A has twice the attacking power, so it will kill Army B (the single footman) in half the time. Army B can therefore only take off half the hitpoints of ONE of Army A's footman before he dies. The other footman will stay completely healthy. Therefore, Army A still has 75% of its initial total hitpoints.

Why is this important? Because it means that differences in the size of the army end up being SQUARED in the outcome. In other words, having twice the army doesn't give you twice the results, it gives you four times the results. You have both twice the attacking power AND twice the hit points, for only producing ONE extra unit.

Therfore, if x represents the unit count difference between two armies, then the final outcome is certainly not linear to x, but instead some kind of power of x... or perhaps even exponential in larger battles?

Well, let's see...In huge battles invovling many units, the non-linear effect is amplified by the feedback generated by x on the gradually evolving outcome. If you have a slight initial advantage (x is small), then at first, the fight will seem to be going equally well for both armies. But as x increases for the slightly bigger army, the result gets worse at a non-linear rate for the losing army. After quite a few units have dropped on both sides, that small initial x will have ballonned into a much greater value, and the SPEED at which the losing army is being defeated is getting faster and faster. By the time the losing army is competely destroyed, the winning army will actually have quite a few units left over, despite the fact that initially both armies were almost the same size.

IOW, small initial differences * long duration = large differences in the final otucome. A bit of chaos theory flava' perhaps?

In conclusion, it would seem that the final result of a RTS battle is some kind of exponential of the initial difference in army size. This is why GOSU players seem to run away very often. There is really no point in fighting a battle where the odds seem to be stacked against you, because if you start losing a bit at the beginning, but insist on continuing the fight, then after the fight is over your losses will be VERY BIG relative to your opponent. It will not reflect the small initial differences at all... therefore, a good RTS player always has a sense of when the small intial difference is starting to balloon (usually only after a few units have died), and then quickly make his escape.

Check out that keyboard action from SK.Insomnia (one of the world's top WC3 players). Whew!
These guys average around 200 Actions Per Minute.. that means that 3 actions every second. Don't know about you but that's hella fast!

http://www.wcreplays.com/events/cologne/videos/insoplaying.zip

At www.wcreplays.com, there currently is a good list of intersting videos you can download... they interview pro players attending a tournament.

At KFC tonight, I suddenly heard an old single by the Spice Girls "2 become 1". Well, now that the High School Stigma of "Only Fags like the Spice Girls" no longer applies to me, I'll just come out and say this: I think the Spice Girls really kicked ass, at least in their golden years. They have so many awesome unforgettable singles, despite being super-mainstream and super-conformist: each song is literally done to musical perfection. A very crisp and punchy arrangement, simple melodies that anyone can sing along to, and with the help of some sound engineering, really nice vocals.

A lot of music snobs out there evaluate a song by how inaccessible it is: basically, it gets tons of bonus points if not many people know about it, it gets HUGE bonus points if only "cool" people know about it. This is mostly due to the fact that people share their music with other people, and the last thing people want is to be jeered at for liking a particular song. Stigmas surivve and propogate by the simple fact that humans need to be accepted by others.

I like to evaluate made-for-radio songs by only 1 criteria: The Brain Acceptance Factor. In other words, if my brain pleasurably accepts this song as something good, then it's good. That's it. I try not to think of the various stigmas surrounding the song or the artist. This is why I can enjoy songs like "I Wanna be With You" by Mandy Moore, or "To You I Belong" by B-witched... even though Wei kindly informed me about the latter: "don't you know they're a bunch of pre-pubsecent 12 year old girls"? It didn't matter, at least when I was listening in private. It was REALLY catchy and had a good melody/chord progression, and that's all that matters. I bet if some "cooler" arist sang the song, it would've been a mega-hit; because as far as I'm concenred, sonically it is mega-hit material. Big, melodic, punchy, lovely fills, and it sticks in your head. The kinda stuff that would pop at you from the background if you were sitting at a fast food resturant and not even listening attentively. Too bad for the stigmas.

Most of the time, my brain naturally subconsciously filters out all the forgettable "I've heard this shit before" crap, and it also consciously filters out shit that I think sucks but might want to grab your attention in cheap ways: ie: too noisy, too repetitive, too annoying. An example of such a song would be: Who Let the Dogs Out by the Baha Men. This song was really popular in its day and yet I failed to understand why: it's so goddamn annoying! Also, pretty much any beat driven 1-bar sample looped R&B falls in this category... I just can't stand Mekanized Copy N' Paste Muzak. By the way, I really hated Destiny's Child. They really sucked. WHERE is the "music" in their feminist lyrics? Just beats and the occasional sampled fill.

Anyways, back to the Spice Girls. They produced really good music, and I don't mean good because of stigma-induced reasons. They had a fairly negative stigma for a lot of stupid reasons, and yet their music sonically made up for it and then some. If you ever play their hit songs on the piano (which has the nice effect of negating arragement tricks and vocal differences), you'll find that songs still beat out a LOT of the top 10 hits on the radio today, in the sense that it just SOUNDS better. It feels like playing the Chicago Musical songs on piano.. the chords progression flows well, the meldoy is catchy... well Chicago is jazzy so the chords are far more complex, but the feeling of sophistication is similar. Even though songs like "Stop" feature the age old I-V-IV-V-I progression looped over and over, try making a song as catchy with that progression... it's not easy. It takes something special to make a good melody.

---

UPDATE: After playing "bass karaoke" with Stop, I have realized that I was wrong about the I-V-IV-V-I. The song actually sounds correct with a C-G-F-G progression all the way through, but that is NOT the acutal chord progresion in the song! It is instead C-Bb7-Amin7-G, with a neat descending bass. Similiar to Viva forever, this progression is used in the entire song except for the 2nd verse which builds up to the chorus.

---

One thing the Spice Girls did well was make sure the verse part sounds catchy. That's REALLY hard. A lot of songs have a killer chorus, but you can tell the artist just didn't know what to put in the verse so obviously the verse ends up sucking. But the Spice Girls make simple verses fun to sing... like 2 become 1 - the alternating note pattern is fairly dissonant with the chord (7th + 6th), but it really sounds good and interesting!

Little thing I discovered: the song Viva Forever (one of my favorites... the guitar solo and string fill are both breathtaking), only has 4 chords the entire song. And yet it doesn't feel like there's only 4 chords, it's only when you try to play it out, you realize it's relaly just 4 chords played over and over again. And yet, the song is so naturally smooth, it seems wondrous that despite only 4 chords, it can sound so rich and fulfilling.

As I was contemplating sinning at KFC tonight, I suddenly recalled this e-mail I read many years ago (in Chinese no less) about how KFC's chickens weren't really chickens, but instead gigantic masses of poultry meat without heads or feet. I can't say I really believed these claims, because I probably have eaten at KFC over 50 times after reading it... but still, it was always in the back of my mind.

Well, it seems the popular consensus is that all these claims are a myth... the origin seems to be a widely circulated e-mail claiming that an independent University of Hampshire study actually discovered that KFC chicken was not really chicken.

Here is the link to University of Hampshire's reply:

http://www.unh.edu/BoilerPlate/kfc.html

Well, I guess it's another KFC night!

I was just at Blizzard's World of Warcraft Site, perusing through the latest game information. This game will be the shit... I just watched some of their gameplay videos and it was really mindblowing. It's not really anything in particular that blows me away, but like all Blizzard games, you can see the polish and hand-tuning even through the less-than-stellar divx encoding (which really ruins the color fidelity). The fantasy world they have created is so wonderful, I really can't wait!

I was browsing through some of my warcraft 3 screenshots, and this one sorta caught my eye... for some reason it doesn't look like it was generated in-game.. those shadows behind the rifleman are too real! But of course, it was generated in-game, it's just that it seems to look better than all the others.

Out of passing curiosity, I was wondering exactly in those lozenges was producing that strange out of body experience. The only active ingredient in "Tussils 5" was Dextromethorphan Hydrobromide. A quick Google on this ingredient reveals that it's a very popular way to get high. This site http://www.dextromethorphan.ws/dxmguide.htm pretty much explains it all.. sheesh... talk about details! God knows how many times this dude has taken trips to Lala-Land off dextromethrophan for him to know THAT much about a single chemical.

Sometimes I think that if I was born under a different environment, I could've become a substance abuser very quickly. I'm a really indulgent person who pursues any kind of physical pleasure - as long as I'm consciously aware that it won't destroy my life. In my extremely volatile and vulnerable teenager years, if I had sided with the wrong crowd, I would be talking about the various ways to smoke pot instead of how to silence my computer.

Hmm... perhaps I can share the only real substance abuse experience I had in my whole life:

I met this Russian dude Alex in 4th year univeristy. This guy was totally different from all my relatively conservative Taiwanese friends. He wasn't very social at all, but he sort of had this "dark side" to him - he'd go to raves on a consistent basis ALONE, and smoke weed or pop a couple of E's and dance to techno all night long.

On one very cold Toronto winter, I actually went with him to a fairly big rave, and I still remember how uptight I was feeling about it... the place was dark and dingy, and the music initally was not my kind of shit... repetitive quarter note kick drums is not my idea of wicked techno. But then Alex talked to some guys and managed to get us some weed and one Ecstasy pill each... and then I said "what the fuck, I'm here anywyas, might as well try it"... and everything after that was somewhat of a blur. All of a sudden, I was dancing without a care in the world, feeling so happy, feeling like everybody in this dance party was my best friend, feeling so confident that I could dance with any girl - even though if someone video taped me and showed it me later when I was sober, I'd probably look like a complete fag. Anywyas, at one point I kept eyeing this nice asian girl standing the corner, she didn't look like she was high at all, but we kept exchanging glances at each other and all of a sudden I had this belief that all I had to do was walk up to her and we'd be having sex in a bathroom stall... except I wasn't THAT high, so the most that happened was just exchanging glances. The interesting thing about Ecstasy is that it that unlike alcohol, it completely eliminates the social fear of rejection WITHOUT the stupefying effect... in fact, it makes you even more alert and perceptive. I remember talking to this really nice looking white girl.. .she wasn't high either, and she shared this horrific story about how she ended up in the hospital for like 3 months becuase she was taking like 30 pills in one day... yikes!

When I got home in the early morning, I still remember how my jaw was shaking violently and I could do nothing to stop it. I think I puked once or twice... when I woke up, my whole body was aching like it never ached before. Apparently, Ecstasy prevents your brain from knowing when it's tired or when it's dehydrated, so you can keep dancing all night long without it nagging at you for rest or water. Unfortunately a lot of people dance TOO much and collapase from physical exhaustion, but luckily for me, it was just massive aching throughout every muscle joint in my body.

For some reason I never went back to another rave. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, but I think that the idea of doing this on a consistent basis was a little outside my comfort range. Still, if it weren't for the Ecstasy and the miniscule amounts of weed, I think it would have been a really long and boring night.

Recently people (or more specifically, alfatrion, ben, and teddyp) have been wanting to get gmail accounts cuz well... supply is limited. They don't just give away Gmail accounts to anybody. So now gmail accounts have become an economic commodity of sorts ... some guys have set up this site - a Gmail swap site. It seems the current value of a gmail account stands at around a postcard or thereabouts.

Luckily, I learned from that site that active blogger users are automatically entitled to received a gmail account... so I check my blogger account and indeed, there was an invitation sitting on the right hand side. So now, I have a gmail account (linterry@gmail.com), and now I feel like I'm Google's little whore...

Seriously though, Google are one of the few companies who truly know how to put more meat and less filling into their services. Minimalistic interfaces, unintrusive ads, it's just plain GOODNESS! It appears to me that Googlers love their jobs, and it shows through their quality work and service policies. Hell, they can even turn ads into a useful and constructive affair. God knows how many ads for viagra I've received in my hotmail account, my girlfriend will attest that the last thing I need is viagra (now if there was an ANTI-viagra, now we'd be talking). But on Google, I see ads that I would actually bother reading if someone stuffed it into my mailbox... stuff that's related to video games or computers mostly...

Oh my god. Immediately after a umm.. bedroom session... I cough up this really nasty phlegm. I've been having this awful dry cough ever since... forever, and finally I manage to cough that crap out. I feel a hella lot better now... like something dark and nasty has been purged from my body.

In other news... Jeffrey called me this morning, had a little chat. I guess he's right, I should appreciate my job... so much freedom... good money, and (from time to time) it's fairly interesting. It's also devoid of 90% of company politics, since I barely have any communication with my employer aside from sending in the goods evermonth. But of course, the downside is I have no work routine, and sometimes I feel so isolated from the world around me. Well, that's old news.

Know this guy? He's Sweet[SAINT], the top Warcraft 3 player in Korea, and one of the best players in the whole world... he's so goddamn young! And reminds me of Juan a little. I just watched recorded footage of a match between him and this other guy, Cherry[Reign]. It's unbelievable how Warcraft has matured into such a professional sport in Korea.

This is what happens when you lose an intense 20 some minute match - you feel like crying... poor cherry[reign], he didn't expect to get his ass whupped like that



You can watch the entire series here: http://war3.replays.net/news/show.php?id=185

It feels like my chest has imploded or something... if I don't talk, then I don't cough, but the moment I say something, I feel like I want to cough my lungs out. God this is awful. I don't think I've ever suffered an illness like this in my whole life. Could it be the air pollution taking its toll? Or the constnatly running air conditioners taking too much moisture out of the air?

I should see a doctor but the problem is I don't trust doctors, at least not in Taiwan. If I had a friend or relative who was a doctor then I would go see him, but I don't want to lineup in a hospital, be entered into a computer system, and be randomly assigned to someone who may want to finish my appointment as fast as possible so he can have his coffee break. Another part of not wanting to go is this strange male instinct to never seek help even when suffering. Kinda like how certain animals prefer to die alone when they feel ill. I already went to the pharmacist and she prescribed me some unknown drugs for my condition (they can do that in Taiwan), but all they really do is give me a woozy high (like the lozenges). They don't really alleviate the cough.

I have this really bad cough. I don't think I'm sick or anything, it's just that I have problems breathing properly, and it feels like something is constantly stuck in my chest. I can't count how many lozenges I've swallowed in the last few days. Lozenges give me a bit of a high... makes me feel like everything's not really happening.

Strangely, if I'm whacking off to some porn, the symptoms all magically disappear. Mind over matter....

I borrowed this totally awesome book called Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick. An alternate title might be the ULTIMATE LAYMAN'S INTRODUCTION TO CHAOS THEORY, because it is simply a engrossing read from page one, at least to anyone who has a fascination with science and mathematics but would probably die of a brain hemorrhage if asked to solve a system of non-linear equations.

It is amazing how my perceptions of science and mathemtatics have changed for the better now that I am not saddled with repetitive monotonous assignments and exercises that MUST be finished by some arbitrary date just to fit an arbitrary system. It is very much like the way I looked at piano. I used to despise piano lessons so much I would jump up and down with glee if my piano teacher called in to say he couldn't make it for today's lesson. But two years after piano lessons ended, and I started touching the 88 keys again out of my own interest, that's when I began to discover the wonderful world of harmony at my own pace. Maybe the same thing is happening with me and mathematics and science. Ahh, who am I kidding. Looking at a page filled with equations and weirdo subscripts only reminds me of all the pain and suffering.

But seriously, it's distressing how mathematics in general has become nothing more than a bunch of rules and relations that a student must memorize in order to recieve a particular numerical score on his final assessment report so that he can beat his peers to a financially rewarding occupation. I'd imagine that mathematics to someone who loves mathematics is not about memorizing numbers or equations - but about finding the truths in this world so that we can understand it better. All the things we learned in high school and undergrand... those formulas, equations - they all try to explain some kind of observable phenemonon in the universe. For practical purposes, the set of teachable mathematics is generally restrcited to highly simplified and idealistic problems that rarely occur in the real world. When's the last time you had to figure out the final velocity of an object ACCOUNTING for air resistance? It seems these undesirable complications are always ignored on the belief that "it wouldn't matter much in the real world anyhow".

But chaos theory shows that it does. All those tiny insignificant details we like to omit in textbook problems end becoming gigantic deviations in the final result, at least in "non-linear dynamic systems". From what I gather, a "non-linear dynamic system" is one where there involves feedback - for instance, the effect of air friction on a falling object. The amount of air friction depends on the speed of the falling object. The speed of the falling object depends on the air friction. So as air friction reduces the speed of the object, the reduced speed also reduces air friction.

It is in such "non-linear dynamic systems" where chaos can be observed. Some of the examples in this book are so simple it's almost unbelievable how pervasive chaos is. And if you look at it from another perspective, it seems humans also exhibit patterns of chaos... through the unpredictability of their daily ups and downs, their inability to reach a steady state with their environment - and yet at the same time, their behavior seems repetitive and pattern-like in the long run. Everyone's life can be seen as a struggle for wealth, security, and love. It's much like economic systems... there are certain predictable patterns (long term trends), but there is also simultaneous "randomness" that makes is wildly unpredictable on certain levels (price fluctionations within a day). Or the weather, we have a spring, summer, fall, winter every year, but we are unable to predict with absolute certainty whether it will rain or shine 2 weeks from now.

It's a great, fantastic mystery...

Today at Titti Pasta (yes that is a strange name, isn't it), I asked another waitress her sign... like the other waitress at the noodle shop, I like her quite a bit. For some reason, she always makes my drink extra delicious, and even my girlfriend finds it strange that my drink always tastes better than hers, even though we might order the same thing!

Like the other waitress, she rarely smiles at work. I think quite a few people think she's a bit grumpy, because she really NEVER smiles. So, once again, while paying the bill, I said to her "can I ask whether you're a cancer?"

Bam. There's that smile again.

"Nope! Guess again!"
"Scorpio?"
"Nope"
"Pisces?"
"Nope"
"Taurus"
"Nope"
"... okay I give up. what is your sign?"
"uh-uh, you have to guess it!"

(at this point, I was 100% she was feeling very happy and didn't think I was a nuisance or a fool, because there was her golden opporunity to end it, but she wanted it to continue... and of course, that huge smile said it all)

"hmm... Sagittarius?"
"Nope"
"... Virgo?"
"right!"
"really? no way...!"
"what do you mean no way! :-) i don't look like a virgo?"
"no no no, it's just that my girlfriend and I think you're just like someone we know... so we thought maybe you would have the same sign"

that last bit was a lie, but I needed it just to make myself feel more comfortable with the situation. Then, while I collected my change, the waitress took care of someone else's bill, but the smile instantly disappeared. When I was about to leave, I turned around, waved her goodbye, and she smiled AGAIN and waved goodbye to me.

Have you ever noticed how people in public rarely smile? Next time you're on a public transit, look at the people around you. Everybody has this depressing blank expression, like it's the end of the world or something. But then sometimes, somebody gets a phone call and like fucking magic, they smile like crazy while talking to their friend. They probably don't even notice it. But it's a sure sign of one thing: our modern lifestyles encourage soliditary, and our existence is not acknowledged enough.

Humans cannot live alone, at least not in a natural state of equilibrium. The smile says it all.

Most of the times, I feel content. But sometimes, I get really excited about something, it gets my heart pumpin', my blood flowin', and I stop thinking about depressing things.

There were two such events this week.

1. Secret afternoon tea with Carol
After spending a week mostly at home by myself during my girlfriend's busiest work week, I got lonely enough to call Carol several times to ask her out for afternoon tea. She refused me twice by saying she was too busy, but here is where having a girlfriend is a great advantage: you don't care... and I don't mean you pretend not to care, but you REALLY don't care. The third time however, she agreed, and we met at Shake House for a couple of hours while my girlfirend was away at work.

Those two hours were, for a lack of a better word, "different" from any other two hours for the last year or so. You can watch porn, have sex with your steady, make money, write a blogger, go out for a drink, chill out with friends, watch the NBA finals, win a pickup basketball game, but NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING compares to just sitting 1 on 1 with somebody you are totally attracted to (and haven't seen for awhile). The intrigue, the uncertainty, the tension, the animalistic energy of looking at a beautiful woman straight in the eye - it's so GODDAMN INCOMPARABLE! Just thinking about those two hours, honestly, makes me feel alive again.

2. Hitting on the waitress at the local noodle shop
Okay, this wasn't really a pickup attempt or anything, but there's this very young and slender waitress at the local noodle shop whom I've been eyeing forever. For the last few months she kinda disappeared, and I thought that was kinda sad, because half the pleasure of going to eat noodles was just staring at this beautiful young girl (whose name I don't even know). Imagine the joy that came over me when I saw her again at the noodle shop! BTW, my gf knows about this, we've "discussed" the waitress several times... but today, I thought I'd actually start saying something to her using this REALLY CHEESY LINE:

"Hey, you really remind us of someone we know, what's your sign? Taurus? Aquarius?"

Can you believe I said that? It came out pretty well though, mostly because my girlfirned thought it would be funny if I asked her what her sign was (we were really curious before anyhow). Turns out, the waitress is a Scorpio too, just like my girlfriend. Awesome. Explains that quiet, demure aura about her.

You know, a lot of people, especially in the macho North American world, think that a line like that is totally stupid and would only serve to ridicule yourself. But here in Taiwan at least, a line like that, weird as it is, serves two very good purposes: 1. it breaks the monotony in the waitress' day and 2. it makes her feel really happy that people notice her and want to come forward to talk to her. How do I know this? Because the whole time while she was working, she never smiled ONCE... but the moment I popped that stupid zodiac line, there was that smile. It doens't matter if she thinks I'm a fucking lunatic... at least she smiled, and when we left, she actually bothered to wave to us goodbye. My girlfriend totally agrees that if something like that happened to her when she was waitressing, she would be really happy.

Just called my mom to ask her a few questions about horticulture. We totally fucked up some really silly things... like... totally oversaturing the soil with too many seeds (40!! in a small pot), and planting Hollyhocks in a really small space when they grow to like 1.5m tall and the root extends 50cm deep. Gotta learn how to transfer these plants around and buy a LOT more soil!

Also need to buy a water sprayer and some fertizilier... sheesh!

Out of a whim, I've decided to raise a potted plant. I bought a pack of African Marigold seeds for less than a dollar, and planted them about 3 or 4 days ago.

This is what it looks like now



We all KNOW that if you put seeds into soil and water them, things will grow. But do we all remember how it FEELS? Unbelievably, I have not raised anything organic for like... my whole life really. And yet, when you put a seed... which looks like nothing... just flakes of garbage, into common soil, and see things grow out of it, it feels almost like magic.

Do I sound crazy? Maybe I am. Maybe I live in a world filled with so many wires and machines that I've already forgotten the most simplest pleasures in life. That's why I'm crazy. I live in a a world of Mhz, icons, windows, shortcut keys, RAM, HD, MB, GB, 1280x1024,copy and paste, GPF. Wires, machines, and electrons. I'm used to the idea that if you want to create something, at least in electronic form, you need to put in a gargantuan effort.

The idea that you can plant a worthless looking seed into worthless soil, and have something actually GROW out of it with almost no effort at all, it feels so strange. So ILLOGICAL.

There is no analogy for such behavior in the computer world. I can't put two 1GB hard drives close together and 1 month later they magically fuse to become a 60GB hard drive. Nor can I install two pieces of software, leave them alone, and then come back 2 weeks later with a hybrid of both magically sitting on my hard drive. A computer is truly dead. I spend all my time with a dead thing.

I watched Game 5 this morning starting from the 2nd half. Inside of me, I was hoping maybe some Laker magic could turn things around. But the realistic, pessmistic side of me was ready for another ass-whuppin'. It seemed to me, after only watching a couple of minutes, Game 5 was no different from any other game. The Lakers, as usual, looked so lost on offense. Kobe forcing the issue beyond his own talent. All the other guys not really knowing what to do with the ball. Shaq having some joy down low, but still not getting enough touches.

And then there's the Lakers defense, or lack of thereof. Yowzers. How many dunks were there in this game? How many offensive putbacks where there? 60% FG% at the half, WTF was that?

Detroit capitalizing on every turnover, every defensive rebound... and abusing the fast break to perfection... again.

This line I remember "They could play this matchup 10 times, and the Lakers would still not get a win". I totally agree. This was utter domination. The Pistons are undeniably deserving of the championship.

One thing I really enjoyed watching was Rip Hamilton's endless off-the-ball movement (this guy has so much energy!) Since off-the-ball-movement is one of the weakest aspects of my own game, I tried to watch him move without the ball. He does pretty much the same thing everytime: this massive curl where he loops around from one side to the other, using the mess of players in the low post as a screen while he emerges near the perimeter for a catch and shoot. Once in Game 5, Payton tried to shortcut the screen by not following Hamilton to the baseline and instead going above the screen to where Hamilton would usually emerge - but then Hamilton just reversed his direction and quickly cut back towards the net. He recieved a pass, then got the shooting foul as Payton was caught totally out of position and help defense had to come stop the easy layup.

I'm not sure if this is due to the triangle offense system, but Kobe, being a SG himself, doesn't really do a lot of off-the-ball movement. He tends to stay near the top, a few small v-cuts here and there to get free for the pass... but generally, he always hangs around the top left side of the perimeter. Therefore, whenever he makes a move, the defense is usually almost always in position, as they don't have to chase him around like Hamilton.

I remember my cousin Andrew telling me... when I am without the ball, I should always try to flash across the baseline instead of just hanging near the perimeter, it seems a lot of SG's do this on nearly every offesnive position. Iverson and Carter come to mind... except they don't move like Hamilton's long-winded curl... they just run under the net... and then "pop out" as fast as they can to get open. I kinda want to try Hamilton's curl next time I get the chance to play a pickup game... even though I can probably only pull 2 or 3 off before I start gasping for air.

The Lakers are finished. Yes, they have a history of pulling off miracles... but they only get one per series, and they've already used that one up in Game 2. They are truly getting schooled by the Pistons, and I don't think Laker magic can save them this time.

Detroit absolutely positively "deserves" to win the series. They have played with more heart, determination, and even finesse. If the Lakers somehow manage to turn this around, I'll be happy as a Laker fan, but dissatisfied at the game of basketball.

Unbelievably, Detroit's offense seems much more coordinated than the lakers. They've got a multitude of weapons.... here are a few I've noticed being used over and over...

1. Billups gets a high pick, defender goes under screen, Billups makes the jumper. His shot is scary good.
2. Hamilton, with all his quickness and energy, comes off a baseline screen for his trademark catch & shoot. If help defense comes, pass to the open man.
3. R. Wallace goes 1 on 1 in the post. Boy did he ever school Medevenko in Game 4.

The Lakers look so much more stagant on offense. I wonder if they could do better without that triangle offense system....

Yesterday night my Uncle Phillip called me out to help him with a bit of English. After I helped him translate a few things, we start chatting a bit... I told him about my recent dissatisfaction of the capitalist system, and how I have been reading Marx literature.

He seemed surprised that I would read into such material, and asked me why have I been doing so... to which I replied "simply curiosity". He said that was good, but to not get carried away - because life, at least a healthy one, is all about balance. To be at equilibirium with the world around you... that is when you can start sleep soundly at night, when you feel that life is truly worth living.

How does one go about achieving this? A large part of it, at least according to Uncle Phillip, is simply having the right frame of mind... to look at things in a certain way that minimizes aggravation. Usually this means that you must be more accepting of everything that is around you - good or bad. It is much more difficult to force all your desired changes onto the world - not only will there be great resistance in proportion to the severity of the change, but in the end, despite all your non-stop efforts, you will still be unsatisfied.

Reminds me of a lovely Christian saying:

God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed;
Give me courage to change things which must be changed;
And the wisdom to know the difference

BUT...

If it were so simple as a 3-liner, then why are there so many people suffering in this modern world? Is it becuase they have never heard of this saying? Or perhaps they've heard of it, but ignore it? Or perhaps, like me, they try to adopt it, but find it hard to use practically.

I COULD just accept what's going around in world as "fact" and simply, "get on with my life". But, it is difficult. With someone like me who thinks very emotionally, it's many times harder. You may think that I'm purposely trying to harp on capitalism for a lack of better things to do. But it's more a feeling that evolved naturally as I went on through life, and has only crystallized in my mind in the last few months. I have every reason to be pro-capitalist. Our family has reaped the "good side" of capitalism... healthy amounts of accumualted wealth, just sitting there for our own comfort and security.

Yet, despite logic and rationality dictating that I should just continue in the same ways that have brought our family "success"... emotion and feeling prevails. My dad has encouraged me to learn how to invest in stocks since I started making my own money. Yet for some strange reason, something inside me has detested the idea of stocks since the very beginning. I could never bring myself to be like the successful American capitalist... surrounding himself with Bloomberg stock tickers and news of markets rising 0.1% one day and falling 0.1% the next. I can get emotional impact out of almost any section of the newspaper EXCEPT for the Markets & Investing section, which is so unbelievably dry it scares me that there are actually people who read these sections in detail.

I believe that it takes more than just the right perspective, it also takes the right environment. For instance, no matter what great, all-knowing advice I was given in Toronto... there was no way I could achieve the happiness than I am experiencing now - for one simple reason: I didn't live with a girlfriend. There are many other factors too, like I didn't make my own money, I had to deal with the conflicts of living with parents... but mostly, I could turn those around using perspective adjustments. However, there was no way that I could look at the dire lack of sex and love in a positive way. As much as I tried to channel this need into other areas.. such as buying better clothes, trying to improve myself, trying to learn more... I could never fool my inner spirit. It was always honest as to what it really needed, and expressed it so strongly through my constant longing and dissastifaction with life.

2 weeks ago I read somewhere how Starbucks was going increasing the average price of their beverages, "expensive" as they already were. Online communities were saying things like "stop drinking their coffee and buy their stock instead". Just yesterday, I read in the paper how one discontented Starbucks barista was so unhappy with the working conditions at Starbucks... forced to work at unsafe speeds, salaries too low to survive decently, at the same time the CEO taking away 17 million a year - and yet the baristas, the very people who work hard everyday to make your House Blend, are the biggest losers in this whole operation. Remind you of Marx? Anywyas, he decided to take action and tried to assemble some kind of union, and Starbucks, with their immense financial resources, promptly assembled some pretty top-flight lawyers. If history is any lesson, we all know who's going to win this battle...

There's no real point in taking action, at least not on that kind of scale - the best thing you could possibly acheive is to be commemorated in some kind of documentary about your heroic crusade 3 or 4 years from now. We cannot possibly escape so easily from this system... it is our life, it is our home, it is the world. It will take a drastic revolution (like the one Marx predicted) to enact any kind of meaningful change. And we must be careful not to be just as fundmentalist as the capitalists and change the world into a completely socialist one. Instead, we must strive to achieve some sort of balance that is a more accurate reflection of who we are as human beings.

from http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=comment&id=592

Resume fraud gets slicker and easier
Half of job seekers submitted false data in 2003, survey finds
Updated: 5:22 p.m. ET March 09, 2004

NEW YORK - Simple misrepresentation of facts on a resume is passe. Lying convincingly is in.

As companies, via background searches, try to call the bluff of less-than-honest job seekers, candidates are resorting to more complex, sometimes high-tech means to hoodwink potential employers.

Some applicants are providing employers with toll-free phone numbers, which are answered by operators of Web sites that not only offer phony academic degrees, but also "verify" a job seeker's education.

And, in an effort to put more credibility into embellishing their resume, some candidates are paying hackers to plug their names into a class list database of a university they claim to have attended."

I was skimming through some old entries of mine, and this one caught my eye

---

November 28th, 2003

i think that dream is a projection of my deep hatred of large corporations. it's my strong belief that any multi-national publicly traded mega-corporation is nothing more than a money-making machine. it doesn't matter what they sell, or what they produce, these are by-product actions of their main objective. maybe at the start, they were actually in business for the sake of making a qualtiy product.. to really serve the public, bring happiness to people... maybe then, they actually had real ethics. but over time, it seems any successful company slowly loses out to the pressures of the free market, and ethics exists only in the required amount in order to defend oneself from potential legal action. real hand-made care is replaced with streamlined manufacturing that uses cheaper and cheaper parts. the result is that real quality is slowly in dying in favor of cheap illusions. effort that used to be put into making quality items is slowly being diverted towards the art of fooling people into buying the same item made using only half the cost.

[.....]

it all goes to show that in this world, nobody really cares about each other anymore. that's how it works in the free market. the company doesn't care about you. they only care enough so that you'll buy their products. and everybody seems FINE with that. well i'm not. i have evolved to the point where if i spot a product that looks too good on the outside, i will naturally assume that it is total shit on the inside. and more often than not, i am correct. to me, that's distrubing. i have to keep my "bullshit" radar on at all times...because i HATE being bullshitted... but it seems that unless someone forms a bullshit police, the disgusting need for humans to acquire excessive amounts of material possessions will continue to produce bullshit until that's all what's left in this world.

---

The reason I think this is interesting, is because all these feelings I had, back in November 2003, have a strong correlation with what Einstein wrote, except Einstein expressed those feelings much more lucidly and succintly. Also, the "hatred towards money-making mega-corporations" has a strong correlation to the book I read only recently "The Corproation: the Pathological P" by Joel Bakan. In other words, I already felt the same way as Einstein and Prof. Bakan long before I even read their books.

However, I think there is something else here.. there is a very strong tendency for us to read books that coincide with our beliefs, and to dismiss books that disagree as heretical or ignorant. That is very dangerous because our opinons become overly reinforced not because EVERYBODY agrees, but because you ONLY listen to those people who agree with you! There are many books out there that praise capitalism, the stock market, and perhaps they have many valid reasons. However, when I see these books, I shake my head in disgust and don't even bother to TOUCH them. Instead, I search for the few books that coincide with my beliefs, I read them, feel satsfied because "I'm RIGHT" flashes across my brain several times... and I only succeed in becoming more polar in my opinions.

But then again, having the greatest scientist of all time share the same feelings that I do... feels really good.

Although not as dramatic as the totally unexpected Fisher shot, Kobe's heroics in Game 2 only made me feel one thing: he knew that shot was going in. After he made that 3, I thought to myself: that was truly Destiny, the way it was meant to be. Everyone knows it... he thrives of pressure, he turns it into an asset. That was his moment.

Then, Lakers proceed to wipe the Pistons totally clean in OT.

Luke Walton... what can I say... this guy makes incredible passes. He truly has a gift for finding the cutter at the right time. Even in OT, under pressure situations, this guy has the cool to pass up the 3, look the other way, and create a divine alley-oop to Shaq. Give him more minutes... and not the Kobe-wannabe Rush. He got lucky on that 6/7 3PT. Maybe he had good sex the other night, who knows. But Walton's passing talent is not luck. It's something consistent the Lakers can depend on.

What a series...

I just want to remind anybody who reads this blogger that I am not some lunatic commie crusader who's out to hunt out and destroy "capitalist scum". Yes, it's true I am not the biggest fan of the capitalist SYSTEM, but please don't equate that to a dislike of the PEOPLE who subscribe to the idea. Most of my friends are fairly capitalist, and I have no problems getting along with them.

Once again (and I really do sound like a broken record), it is my firm belief that people are mere puppets of the system that they are interconnected with. They do not have the power to act free of cause given to them by the Universe, and thus by a new logic, they are all fundmentally innocent. "You" would have been Hitler himself had you been born into that family, at that time, in those social conditions, and met the same people.

The goal is simply to spread AWARENESS, if nothing else, to those who have lived their entire life in North America, to new ideas. That is all. Having researched both capitalist and socialist ideas, I can say that I'm fairly aware of the negatives and positives of both. Unfortunately, a lot of people out there (including my old self), equate Marxism with the failed Soviet Communist regime, whereby if you only took the time to read what Marx had actually written, you'd realize that the Soviet regime was NOT true Marxism. True Marxism would involve the complete dissolution of private property, yet that was not the case with the so called "Communist regimes". It is no surprise that the American government - the hub of global capitalism - quickly labeled the fall of the Soviet regime as the "death of communism" - and since communism supposedly had roots in Marxism, people now look at Marx in a negative way. But if you read what he wrote, you'd find that he is more humane and caring than you would like to believe.

Socialism is best learned as a philsophical idea. Manifestion of this idea into the economic and political realm is quite a different matter. I honestly have little insight on the details on how to implement a socialist society. It is of little concern to me because I am not in a position of power to materialize such ideas into the the physical world.

Capitalism itself is a much simpler idea, simply let market forces decide who should have what, without state intervention. It is no mystery, at least to most scholars, that there are a smorgasboard of problems that arise from such a system, because it is dangerously fundmentalist. It caters to only one side of humans, the egotistic individual, who only wants to look after himself and his closest loved ones. But like Einstein said so well in his article, humans are more than just this, they are also social beings, who need to make honest contributions to their community, to society as a whole. Yet I don't think you can argue that even the "community" is rapidly disappearing from the North American world. People are so estranged from each other that quite often the most communication a person will have with their neighbour is a friendly hello in the morning on the way to work, if they're even lucky enough to know their 1st name. We live in dense, sprawling, metropolises and yet when you walk down the street, you walk by thousands of people, automatically trained to ignore their existence, subconciously saying to yourself that you have no business with any of them, and that you have more pressing matters at hand... yourself.

Capitalism embraces the individual more than anything else. Individual wealth, individual power, individual status- these are the barometers of a successful person in North America. Whatever philantropic social activity you wish to carry out is done "on your own time, with your own resources, and at your own discretion". Is it no wonder that the majority of our time is spent on individualistic, selfish behavior? The political and economic system sanctions it! Sure, you are "free" to make generous contributions to society, but what if these contributions are not profitable? How are you going to survive decently in this world?

There are so many things I see in this world that just don't make sense to me. 80+ hour work weeks. Cram schools. Increasingly competitive behavior in the education system. All-you-can-eat. Unbelievable surplus of goods, left unsold or thrown away despite the needy having almost nothing. All in the name of ... WHAT exactly? Why are we working 80+hour weeks? So your house can increase from a sprawling condo to super-luxurious penthouse? So you can drive 5 different cars instead of 2? Is this the way humans really are supposed to be? Why are we forcing kids to spend their entire day at school? (this applies to Taiwan only, actually, but I'm pretty North America will follow soon). Do they really LEARN more? Or are they only being trained to take fixed tests with frightening effiency like mindless automaton? And all-you-can-eat. God, that sickens me so much to see so much food consumed at once. I used to eat at these places, but I swear no more. It is so disgusting to see a human induldge himself in such gluttony, to see so much animal meat massed into a container, consumed without nary of thought of the horrendous conditions in the slaughterhouses - horrendous because if the slave workers didn't work so horrendously, you wouldn't have so much meat in front of you for such a low price.

And you think to yourself... are these really the faults of capitalism? You bet your ass it is! Capitalism doesn't CAUSE these things to happen per se. It is not a malevolent entity, it is fundmetnally netural. But what the capitalist system DOES do, and does so very well, is encourage selfish and egotistical behavior through its inherent reward system. Work like a madman, and you could get so rich that you have enough capital to survive for 100 generations. But try to relax and enjoy life without a financial nest, and you can look forward to the disgrace of living off social welfare, or even worse, becoming a beggar. So everyone starts working like a madman, until our country is literally loaded with unused surplus goods, and the simple, old-fashioned lifestyle is abandoned in favor of what we have today in the 21st Century: people sacrifcing so many things they never did before all in the name of WEALTH and MATERIAL POSSESSIONS. Ethics, time with loved ones, spirituality, physical health... have all deterioted as the capitalist movement progressed. And it's only getting worse.

Here are some numerical facts gathered from my latest book interest "The Bubble of American Supremacy" by George Soros:

The richest 1 percent of the world's popultion receive as much as the poorest 57 percent. Some 1.2 billion people live on less than a dollar a day, 2.8 billion people on less than two dolalrs a day, over a billion lack access to clean water, 827 million suffer from malnutrtion. These conditions were not necessarily caused by globalization, but globalization has done little to redress them.

In closing, I would like to retell a story my girlfriend told me recently about something she learned in university.

In Guatemela, the train is often late, sometimes up to 2 or even 3 hours. Yet strangely, people have nothing much to do with their time, and are often late for everything... so they just lie down and read a book to pass the time. Some even bring chicken and have a barbecue with everybody else.

In Tokyo, the Shinkansen (bullet-train) was once 3 hours late. It was disastrous. The people yelled and threatned to sue if service was not restored immediately. When the train finally arrived the great mass of people violently shoved each other around in a fight to board the 1st train, severely injuring several people. "Time is money".

This is not a petition to have everyone live like Guatemalans. It's just to give you awareness on how the world perhaps... used to work. The judgement on what kind of life you deem to be more "sane" is of course, entirely up to you.

Obsessive compulsive disorder. That's gotta be me. Yesterday night, I sat at my computer seat trying to discern between the various leftover sounds in my computer. Although I concluded in my last post that the PSU was still to blame, I realized that there was one more source of noise in my computer...

The ATI Radeon 9800

Can't believe I didn't think of this... go online and I find that there are certain people who complain of the noise, usually those with a very quiet PSU and CPU cooler, because relative to the average PC, the Radeon is fairly subdued. But in a system with a lot of Quiet Components, it stands out.

Then I find this product... VGA Silencer by Arctic cooling. Strange, that looks oddly familiar... damn! I saw this at NOVA yesterday! So I rush back as soon as possible and buy it (890NT... strange, both the Sparkle PSU and Aero7 were exactly 890NT), rush home, and this time, I had the guts to do it myself, simply because it really looked simple, and the instructions were very good. Within 20 minutes, the card was back into my computer..no problems!

HOLY SHIT EPIPHANY TIME! I had to check twice to make sure that the fan was indeed spinning, because on the low speed mode, it truly is "inaudible". Now I have to put "inaudible" in quotes, because while I said my new CPU fan was inaudible last, well it turns out now I can hear the CPU fan if I focus on the computer noise. Also, I can easily hear the HD seeking... whereas before it was virtually dead silent. And I can now hear kids outside playing at 3pm, whereas before the computer noise would virtually drown out any ambience coming in from outisde.

Very very pleased!

But it did cost me a little bundle. I bought the Coolermaster Aero 7+ from NOVA (really wanted a ZALMAN solution, but nobody seems to sell ZALMAN in Taiwan), for NT890. It's positively HUGE! But the feature that sold me was the included potentiometer that allows you to control the fan's RPM speed. At the lowest seeing, it spins at approximately 1900 RPM's, which is similar to most Pentium 4 setups... it's very quiet. The stock AMD Fan was at a constant 4100RPM, emitting a pronounced high pitched whirring. Despite a twofold drop in RPM's, the Coolmaster cools the CPU slightly better than the stock AMD, thanks to it's more efficient design.

Now the strange thing about reducing computer noise is as soon as you silence one component, something else becomes more pronounced. In this case, now the "quieter" PSU is the culprit, but overall there is a great reduction of high frequency noise from the PC, which is the most important thing. After all, during Taiwan summers I MUST turn on the air conditioners, which always generate noise through the fans...

I mentioned it cost me a bundle... well because i had to pay for 2 taxi trips to NOVA (250NT) and the service charge for removing the old heatsink+fan and installing the new one (300NT). But I definitely think having professionals install it was a much better idea that trying to dick around with the hardware. I once installed a Pentium 166Mhz computer from scratch back in Grade 10 but I've totally forgotten everything I've learned about that process. It's just not worth it to go through the learning curve once again, and risk damaging your system to save pocket change.

Anywyas, that's it for now, time to enjoy some MP3's at a reduced noise level.

Still can't sleep. Recently, I've been trying to understand the spiritual side of human beings. I believe that understanding the spiritual side can help solve my quasi-insomnia. After all, I can never intellectual rationalize WHY I can't sleep. I have far fewer worries than the average person working 9 to 7...

I always sleep well in Okinawa... and that's how I will try to generalize the spiritual needs of humans. these are not very well organized, so there might be some redundancy and/or some blatant omissions... but i'm just spitting them on the top of my head

- the need to be loved and approved by others, verbally AND physically (primary justification of existence)
- the need to love and help others, verbally AND physically
- the need to express oneself through words, music, art, work (tangible communication)
- the need to receive and empathize with said expression from others
- the need to belong to a group or family (ie "home")
- the need to compete as a way of feeling superior
- the need to acquire new possessions
- the need to be in touch with nature, communicate with animals
- the need for intellectual stimulation
- the need for physical stimulation
- the need for something nostalgic and comforting
- the need for something new and exciting

i suppose from that list, you can see why capitalism is not a very good idea. it caters to only a small portion of our total spiritual needs, the rest are either ignored or allowed to deteriorate. as we all know, capitalist behavior sure isn't a friend of mother nature! and with people competing feverishly for more and more possessions, who has time for love anyways? physical love in particular is already oppressed by society through strange dogmas that have their roots in certain religions. free self-expression is also oppressed by the hierarchical slavery by means of private ownerhips. physical stimulation is virtually DEAD particuarily with computer related jobs. but certainly, the one thing that capitalism has been able to provide with aplomb is something new every day: new cd's, new books, new products, new clothes, at unbelievable rates.

i like to think of our various spiritual needs falling into different "Compartments". if you nurture a particular need, that compartment becomes fuller and fuller, until it can become full no more. however, every day we need to have a little bit of each, otherwise the compartments run dry and we feel spiritually drained.

a real danger is that if one completely ignores a particular spiritual need (perhaps out of ignorance or denial) he might attempt to "make up" for that deficiency by further pursuing one of the other needs. unfortunately, this will never work, because that compartment may already be full - thus he remains as a whole unsatisifed even though he continues to pursue the other needs like madman... even though one day he might find himself surrounded with wealth and possessions, he still feels poor.

i think a lot of people, particuarily in north america, are sorely deprived in physical love. i once read this article that the average human being needs 8 hugs a day to feel healthy. sounds like a lot doesn't it? but i do think it's true. sadly, as a young adult living in a world that praises monogamy as a great virtue, you're only going to get that amount from your girlfriend or wife, and only if you live together. and if both of you are out working 15 hours a day, there will be little energy left at night for meaningful interactions.

i think it's all about balance - reaching an equilibrium state with oneself... although it is impossible to remain perfectly at equilbrium for eternity, we can certainly hover closer to it. right now, i think i'm a bit far... i just went out to our veranda and just looking at the smoggy sky and seeing a couple of dogs on the street made me feel good.. i think it's a sign that i'm very deprived in the nature interaction department, possibly also in the expression department, and love by otherS (currently the only source of real love is my GF), maybe possessions, competing, and phsyical stimualation too.

but the nice thing is that i much closer to the equilibrium state than i was in toronto. there, the lack of love just killed me... crippled me really... and there was no way to escape it, no matter how many things i bought, no matter what hobbies i partcipiated in, no matter how many times i went to chapters and tried to learn new things, the lack of love was in such an emergency state that my spirit felt tortured every day. now, at least that part of my life is taken care of.... at least when my girlfriend's around..

I finished downloaded the OST to Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series... now I can listen to that wonderful intro OP through the computer instead of the shoddy TV speakers.

This song is truly magnificent... "Inner Universe" by Yoko Kanno, Origa, Shanti Snyder. It has a great techno/trance arragnement: resonance/cutoff filters on hihats (NICE!!!), a wicked synthesized bass sample, crystal clear string pads, and features the hauntingly beautiful Russian vocals of Origa. Remember Lisa Gerrard's beautiful spiritual voice that gave the goosebumps at the closing credits of Gladiator? Origa is very similiar... her voice gives me the goosebumps... it's so spiritual.

Well I got this one played on the piano fairly quick, and I was just as crazy as last time to render it into simple sheet music form. The arrangement is made as simple as possible.. the essential bass notes and chords only... if you want to embellish it, then that's up to you.

Inner Universe Sheet Music

I've noticed that after replacing my faulty power supply unit (PSU), my computer has become much quieter. This is largely due to the fact that I bought an Aopen model that had the japanese phrases MU-ON (literally, "no sound") on it... and I always appreciated a quiet computer, even though that's never something I think about when I buy a new PC.

I've noticed that when I listen to MP3's, the reduced noise makes a huge difference. The music tends to absorb you much more effectively, small details in instruments are much more pronounced. When I work on my CMUSIC stuff, the difference is priceless... background harmony fillers that are usually drowned out by the louder vocals and drums suddenly become apparent, and I don't have to depend that much on Transcribe's "out of phase" feature.

Tonight as a experiement I decided to disconnect the CPU fan to see what the noise reduction would be like. It was almost like an epiphany. You could barely tell wheteher the computer was on or not, and I could literally "hear myself think" in the relative silence of the room. Unfrotunatly without the fan the CPU heated up to 90 degrees in less than 2 minutes, so I could barely listen to any MP3's before the motherboard automatically shut the computer down to prevent CPU damage.

I think some kinds of studies have shown that prolonged exposure to incessant background noise, particuiarily "white noise" (equal energy across the frequency band) can cause fatigue and irritability. Probably slightly exaggereated, but I think that computer noise, which is more or less "white noise" (sounds like whining), can certainly can have some kind of detrimental effect to our mental condition.

FYI in contrast to "White noise" there is also "Pink noise", the kinds you often hear in nature such as waterfalls and winds, are far less irritating because the energy levels drop accordingly with higher frequencies.

Tomorrow I'm going to drop by NOVA and see if I can pick up a quiet CPU cooling solution. It's something to get excited about!

A recent song has had me hooked recently, 我們的愛(wo men di ai) by F.I.R. The songs is totally average until the chorus, which is absolutely beautiful. The 5th bar in particular, the melody progresses so smoothly even though the chord progression "resets"...

After listening to it like 100 times, I was that crazy to play it out into MIDI and hopefully somebody out there can enjoy it:

F.I.R 我們的愛(wo men di ai)

Personal note to self: do not drink more than 3 caffeinated beverages a day.

The ideas just keep on coming. For the 3rd post in a single day, I want to talk a bit more about free will, or rather, my belief of its non-existence. A much more simple "proof" can be found here, but I'd like to explain things in a deeper sense.

The theoretical notion of a computer, at least in the abstract Turing model, allows us to see the world in new perspectives. The previous post about automatic capitalism is one example. Here is another: people will debate endlessly as to whether humans truly have free will, and the answer to this question may remain unsolved until the end of time. But does your computer have free will? You'd be a lunatic to think so. However, you may not be entirely aware as to why your computer cannot have free will.

Is it because the computer is programmed, that it is relieved of free will? Certainly not. We have seen that humans, especially during the child stage of development, are just as "programmaeable", despite in a less mechanical manner.

Is is because the computer is created by the hands of man, that is is relieved of free will? Certainly not. Humans are also created, by the hands of mother nature and possibly the Divine Forces Unknown.

Is is because the computers have no soul? It would seem so, yet, what proof can you offer me that you have a soul yourself? How can I ever be sure, as sure as I am of my own existence, that you are nothing more than a shallow illusion created for my entertainment?

The real answer lies in this: computers are fundmentally deterministic in nature. They are completely predictable machines, incapable of true randomness. Thus, if we study the program embedded inside the machine long enough, along with the current set of data, the computer's next step will always be known to us. It doesn't matter if the computer is a magnificently complex AI, any Turing model computer can eventually be reduced to program and data, and can thus be entirely predicted.

A computer therefore, is relieved of free will. It cannot make a choice without reason, that is, without escaping the program and data that represent its very existence.

The question therefore is this: can humans actually be deterministic? If such a proof was made, it certainly be a valid justification for the absence of free will.

It has already been shown, through chaos theory, that the universe itself is non-deterministic, down to the sub-atomic level. Strangely, the fact that the universe is non-determinstic does not make the computer non-deterministic, even though nobody would deny that computers are part of this universe. A physical computer itself might very well be non-determinstic. After all, you never know when it might blow up, thus rendering the prediction that it would output 352.1 on the screen as the next step obsolete. However, it is not the physical computer itself that we are concerned with, but rather the abstract Turing model notion of a computer. Such an entity, relieved of it's ties with the physical world, can be defined as being 100% determinstic.

Now, the question remains, is the Abstract Human (abstracted to the same level as the Turing model) deterministic or not?

The answer is difficult. First, it may be helpful to remind ourselves that the accepted definition of free will is that we are able to make a decision "free" of any cause or reason.

On one hand, humans can exhibit extremely deterministic behavior, particuarily when it involves their primal instincts. If a human with a perfectly functioning brain accidentally touches a hot stove, they will, with 100% certainity, pull their hand away. This is part of our biological dispostion ingrained deeply within our psyches, and it cannot be ignored, unless there was some other rationale for withstanding the pain. For instance, if somebody held a gun to your head and forced you to hold your hand on the stove for 10 seconds, it is possible that you could withstand the searing pain and do so. But here again, there is still a compelling reason for you to ignore your instincts: the threat of being killed.

Let us of focus on the first example, when a human accidentally touches a stove, sans coercion. If I were to repeat an experiemnt, whereby I take a perfectly functioning human being on this planet, and watch it accidentally touch a hot stove, how many times will the human pull his hand away? Surely you will agree that even if I repeat the experiment a billion times, the outcome will always be the same. Mathematically, the human is 100% predictable. In that split second when he is shocked by the heat, he cannot ignore his biological instincts and simply "choose" to ignore the pain. He has no reason to do so, which is accentuated by the fact the touching is accidental. Like the perfectly functioning computer, there is 0% room for randomness in a perfectly functioning human who touches a hot stove.

Thus, humans are at least in some ways determinstic. Given a proven set of facts about a human being and the current situation, I will know with 100% certaininty what his future action will be, at least in certain cases.

Humans can by and large be compared to computers. Our "program" is the biological dispostion given to us as birth, refined by exterior environmental influences multiplied over time. Our "data" is the volatile memories that we have accumulated since the day we were born. Many decisions are made SOLELY on the program and data, such as the hot stove example, which relies only on the biological dispostion portion of our "program". Much like the computer, it is entirely deterministic.

But now let's take the most extreme counterexample, once that does not seem to involve any biological instincts, but instead on that mystical free will that is neither program nor data. If I asked you to raise your left or right hand, which one would you choose? Here, it would seem the decision relies on nothing more than what hand you want to raise. But this is the key, and truly the foundation of the absence of free will: You do not choose which hand to raise, the Universe "chooses" it. Much like how a physical computer can simulate true randomness by using the current electrical voltage as the random seed, your seemingly random decision is not based on some mystical free will inside of you, but rather the infintie culmination of events that has occured since the beginning of time up to now in the Extrerior Universe. Certain biological dispostions might exist, such as whether your left or right hand is dominant, but for the most part, your decision is based on a absurd combination of whether you stopped at 10 or 11 traffic lights yesterday, whether you ate noodles or rice 5 days ago, whether or not your cat is named Felix or Buttons. They all combine together in an infinite mix of completely unrelated factors, all contributing to the final result of you raising your left or right hand.

Since chaos theory has shown that the universe is non-deterministic, the dependence of your decision on an infinite number of non-deterministic factors actually makes your final decision truly random. But that randomness is not the result of a property of the Abstract Human Being, but rather a property of the Physical Universe itself.

Even if it were proven that the left/right hand case was indeed reliant on free will, how can humans be determinstic and non-derministic at the same time? It would be fairly convoluted. Can we be 20% determinstic about something and 80% non-deterministic? Or would it be an boolean flag affair; certain decisions are determinsitic, certain decisions are non-determinsitic? No matter how you look at it, it seems to present a very ugly solution if we assert that the human has duality in respect to determinism/non-determinism.

Seen in another way, a computer can only behave non-deterministically if it is fed non-deterministic input. A human as well, can only behave non-deterministically if his decision relies on non-deterministic factors from the exterior universe. In the case of the left/right hand, there are an infinite number of such non-deterministic factors, indeed rendering a person's final decision unpredictable. Yet this is not proof that a human cannot be deterministic.

My gf's hooked on the Ghost in the Shell TV series. Today's episode was called "automatic capitalism", which I found fairly enlightening: There's this really wealthy mathematician who has become the target of assassination. The protaganist has been hired to do the dirty deed... but she encounters many problems tracking him down. His address, his true name, his family, are all kept in the utmost secrecy. But the protagonist persits, and eventually discovers the location of the mathematician's hideout. She inflitrates the hideout, and discovers a shocking fact:

The mathematician has long passed away. Financial reports stated his wealth continued to increase day by day, so everyone just assumed he was still alive somewhere. But the secret to his wealth was in reality a computer program that he designed. This extremely intelligent AI subroutine, with access to split-second stock information and equipped with the perfect Bayesian network that could beat even the best of human investors, continued to accumulate unprecedented amounts of wealth under his name even after he passed away.

There is a message in all of this. In North America, accumulating wealth is still the prominent religion. The majority of people, at the end of the day, are still all about money. And yet it is conceivable that achieving the nirvana of such a religion can be delegated to a cold, heartless, machine. Which begs the question: where is spirituality in all of this? How can life be so meaningless that the definition of success can be achieved by a mere computer?

Furthermore, it seems grossly unjust that someone who just sits there with a computer program doing nothing all day is entitled to a virtually infinite supply of wealth. Where does this wealth come from? From endless labor of course, who are still paid set wages that don't reflect the value of the capital they produce (this is Marx's key point). You may not see it this way, but living off the stock market is nothing but 100% exploitation. You are riding the sweat and blood of the hard working people who create new values in the economy, and taking the lion's share at that. Good for you and your new Benz + 5 million condo, but bad for society who has to shoulder all the ill effects of such an exploitative system.

I recently read a relatively short article that literally moved me to tears. I don't think the tears were big enough to roll down my cheeks, but my eyes swelled up for sure.

Here is the article:

Why Socialism, by Albert Einstein


It puts things that real live people say on their xanga sites in a certain perspective that is the reverse of capitalist values:

On the extremely negative side:

http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=var&tab=weblogs&uid=54695029

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I know what I want in life. I want power. I want the ability to influence the TSX (Toronto Stock eXchange), and to direct a nation's wireless system towards a goal that I deem as beneficial.

I want to make a mark in this world and perhaps go down in history.

I know that I do not want to settle down just now. A lot of my friends are geting married within the next 3yrs. I want to use that time to accelerate my professional development and portfolio.

At work, I'm in the area where the Directors are, and I see how they influence a company by their decisions. I try to understand what their decisions mean, and what it does for their corporate political placement. I then ask, why is it that these men and women, who are of the same age as my and my friend's parents, are so far up on the corporate ladder scale? What is it that they've done, and how have they played the corporate game, in order for them to be where they are now?

I intend to be where they are in half the time.

I *WILL* become the CEO of a certain communications company, or at least something along the lines of it. Maybe even do my own start-up company on the side.

Some of you may laff now, but if you knew who I truly was, and what I intend to do, you'd be scared.

I *WILL* dominate the business world.

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On the positive side:

http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=ToToRo7&tab=weblogs&uid=92136970

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The problem is, I've discovered a spiritual side to myself that runs in the complete opposite direction. I want to feed the good side, but the competitive side seems to run in the opposite direction.

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Perhaps, through the fact that even capitalist-successful people like Totoro7 can become aware of their spiritual side, there is still hope to save this world from the hidden social crises that strike at the very heart of the human soul.

New set of pictures for the 4th trip to Okinawa. They are somewhat boring so I tried to spice them up with a bit of anti-globalization commentary:

4th Trip to Okinawa

Once again, I have trouble sleeping... sometimes, I wonder whether I can ever reach a stable state where I can sleep soundly day in and day out. As it stands, the current norm is to lie awake thinking about anything that can be thought about. It'd a downward spiral. I don't achieve anything from pursuing such thoughts except to further complicate myself.

I feel alienated from the world I live in. It's not that society has rejected me, it's more that I reject society as a whole. Besides my girlfriend, and maybe a couple of good friends, I don't have anyone I can really empathize with. Actually, I don't even empathize with my girlfriend that well, we're just comfortable being around each other, but that's good enough for me. After all, the majority of social encounters are along the lines of banal pleasantries and meaningless communication. I don't trust corporations either. It's no wonder I have chosen to wall myself up in my house, working from home, not having to deal with the unpleasantness of society.

Sometimes I wonder, am I really free. There are many things I would like to do... and it's it not along the lines of making a fortune through investing or playing poker in Las Vegas. I couldn't less about those things, emotionally, they are of little value. Money is nothing more than a hassle to prevent physical discomfort... I have to make money to eat and live in a home. That's it. Okay, so in certain moods, I spend a bit extra on my computer. But the computer has strong emotional value to me. It is almost like a family member, if that makes any sense.

I think all I want to do, at least right now, is just fuck pretty girls. When I say fuck, it's not just the physical act of sex. Sorry, I don't subscribe to Maxim's "I'm the man" paradigms.. that girls are things to be conquered and if you can manage to put your dick in her, even if you forget all about it and never call her again, it's still commendable. Fucking is more than just sex, it's about spiritual connections, if you even believe in that stuff. It's about knowing the person, knowing who you're fucking. The same applies with porn... if you ever watch porn where the characters are believable and you the girl is someone you might know well, 10 strokes with your dominant hand and you're reaching for the tissues.

Right now, I'm contemplating whether I should call Carol and ask her out. In North America, I'd give your routine BS: "going out just as friends", but har har har, that's not exactly true, is it? It's perfectly obvious to me that there is some kind of animalistic attraction going on, even though it's less sexual than with my gf. I don't exactly look forward to have physical sex with her even if the opportunity presented itself. What I do look forward to, is a long relaxing conversation at Shake House (my favorite privately owned coffee shop), where minds can meld and spirits are able to embrace each other. If I was my gf and knew the entire situation, such a conversation would be worse than a meaningless quickie. So I can't bring myself to call Carol, it feels like cheating.

Right now, spiritually I feel drained. I get recharged when my gf and I go out to eat, but when I'm at home doing work, or just doing anything else, I feel so drained.

Yesterday when I was taking the bus to tutor, I saw all these fancy boutiques along An-he Rd. Aside from the obvious differences in decorating, they were largely the same. Mannequins in the front, clothes scattered about in a pre-arranged pattern, and very few customers. It was such a sad thing to see, all that pretension bundled up in one area. What are we doing anywyas? The world doesn't make sense to me anymore.

On the way home today from tutoring my girlfriend suddenly told me she was going to have a farewell dinner with her YKK students on Friday night, and that I couldn't tag along. I wasn't too pleased about this, since I am emotionally dependent on my girlfriend being physically beside me 24/7, and the fact that most of her YKK students are sexually deprived males who have made passes at her in a light tone.

I expressed my dissatisfaction with the situation, but she got really pissed off quickly as always and said, loosely quoting: "what the hell is your problem? i'm just having dinner with my students". very true, very true. but ain't it quaint that fidelity problems always hit you in the blind spot when you're not on guard.

So like the immature child that I am, I sulked all the way back home. Gave my GF the silent treatment, but she wasn't having any of it and seemed completely unapologetic. Then, once I got home, I got a call on my cell phone.

It was Carol, a girl that I had dated during my first visit to Taipei many years ago. I still remember how I was completely infatuated with her that whole summer and my whole raison d'etre seemed to revolve around how many times I could get her attention at work each day. Even though I behaved like a dog, she took fairly kindly to me and I always suspected some kind of romantic tension between us. Unfortunately, geographical distance (I was still at UofT for the majority of the year) and the age difference (she is 3 years older) prevented anything substantial from materializing.

Carol called me out of the blue just to tell me her cell phone # had changed and wanted to ask me a few questions about learning Japanese, since she is going to work at some Japanese trading company next month. It was kind of a shock really, because I have always considered talking to her 100% taboo, given our history and my current relationship with Shinobu. I actually snuck a call out to her when Shinobu went to Okinawa back in Decemeber, but that was about the limit of our communication for the past few years.

And now, out of the blue, she calls me, and before you know it, I was talking to her on the house line for an hour about work, life, and even religion. Shinobu was camping in our bedroom so while she was out of sight, she pretty much had a rough idea of the length of our discussion.

Incidentally, there were many clues that I was clearly on the social advantage with the phone conversation with Carol. She would, on a couple of occasions, hint at the lack of self confidence in her own value: "I'm sorry, am I taking too much of your time?" "I hope I'm not boring you with all this talking about religion". On the other hand, my mind was hitherto preoccupied with the Shinbou situation so I had good control over myself, simply on the virtue of knowing that I had something bigger than this phone call to attend to. I didn't have to face that horrendous anxiety-building sequence when you are pondering whether to call somebody or not, but Carol did. And it showed.

Needless to say, after I hung up, there was some funny tension between Shinobu and I. I was still supposed to be sulking but my heart was SO FUCKING RADIANT to have received a surprise call from my old romantic interest, that I couldn't help but dance my ass off in front of a very miffed Shinobu.

"Who was she?"
"What did you talk about?"
"How did she know you spoke Japanese?"
"How did she know your cell number?"

The questions came out, slowly, one by one, as Shinobu's natural jealously and curiosity got the better of her. She was violently thrown down from her Throne of Social Superiorty. Now, I was the one with the Relationship Power, and she could do nothing but grin hatefully and bombard me with questions. You could tell that out of pride, she didn't want to say anything but even in the best of "I'M MATURE" actors, Mating Jealously will inevitabily defeat your relativiely pitiful will.

Strange how all it took was one phone call to completely turn everything around. Not only do I not give a shit about Shinobu being away on Friday night with some stupid Taiwanese males, I am so fucking happy. The whole day I was sorta feeling glum from the Okinawa hangover but after Carol's call I swear to god life just became worth living again. It's not like we're going to get together or anything, but just the knowledge that you are coveted by OTHER members of the opposite sex is fucking priceless.

Jealousy, in my mind, is 100% natural. It's just like when you fall in love, nobody can tell you whether you're in love or not, you just know. Jealousy SHOULD be the same, except for some unfathomable reason, people feel they have the right to tell when you should or shouldn't be jealous... and yet despite their verdict, you cannot deny those feelings of anger, rage, and dissatifaction that comes from deep within the human soul, even though the reasons for feeling so seem logically unacceptable. "The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of" ~Blaise Pascal

Social power, in any given situation, is strictly determined by an individual's belief that he or she is loved and coveted by those around him. In a simple boyfrined/girlfirend relationship, if one person seems to show a lack of interest in meeting up and suspiciously shows up late everytime, all it takes is for proof that you are loved by somebody ELSE to emerge and your significant other will get their act together pronto. It's the fear of not being loved that drives us to be good people, or at least that has been my experience throughout my entire life. Once that fear is removed, and the only motivaiton left is the relatively pathetic sense of obligation and duty, you can bet your ass that performance in the relationship will suffer. Re-create the fear, and everything will snap back into place. It is the human condition

For those of you who are in the Discontented Working Class, you might consider reading this Marxist essay:

A Better World

Everything up to the idea that implementing communism in modern society is very possible, was really good stuff. Truthfully I don't believe that pure worker-communism, at least in the way it was conceived was Marx, is a practical matter... it sounds so beautiful in theory, but all it takes is one greedy capitalist to catalyse the chain reaction once again, sending society spiraling back down into the capitalist state we are living in today.

I like this section in partciular:

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However, behind the apparently equal exchange between labour and capital lies a fundamental inequality; an inequality which defines the lot of humanity today and without whose elimination society will never be free. With wages, workers only get back what they have sold, i.e. the ability to work and to show up in the market once again. By its daily work the working class only ensures its continued existence as worker, its survival as the daily seller of labour power. But capital in this process grows and accumulates. Labour power is a creative power; it generates new values for its buyer. The value of the commodities and services produced by the worker at any cycle of the production process is greater than the worker's total share and that portion of the products which goes into restoring the used up materials and wear and tear. This surplus value, taking the form of an immense stock of commodities, belongs automatically to the capitalist class, and increases the mass of its capital, by virtue of the capitalist class's ownership of the means of production. Labour power in its exchange with capital only reproduces itself, while capital in its exchange with labour power grows. The creative capacity of labour power and the working class's productive activity reflects itself as the birth of new capital for the capitalist class. The more and the better the working class works, the more power capital acquires. The gigantic power of capital in the world today and its ever-expanding domination of the economic, political and intellectual life of the billions of inhabitants of the earth is nothing but the inverted image of the creative power of work and of working humanity.

Thus, exploitation in capitalist society takes place without yokes and shackles on the shoulders and feet of the producers- through the medium of the market and free and equal exchange of commodities. This is the fundamental feature of capitalism which distinguishes it in essence from all earlier systems.

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I just got back from a 4-day trip to Okinawa and I'm quite the tired person. Would just like to make the following quick points

1. I have a post-Okinawa hangover. It is depressing coming back to Taiwan.
2. Everytime I go to Okinawa, within a few days I magically revert back to a "decent" sleep schedule (ie sleep before 3am, wake up before 12pm). I actually had breakfast yesterday, and for those who know me well, that was a miracle. I don't know why, but I sleep so easily in Okinawa. On Saturday, after a full night's sleep, I could nap at will for another 8 hours throughout the day.
3. I really admire Shinobu's family. They are a wonderful example of how people can be extremely happy and content with relatively few material possessions, even over a long repetitive period. When I see the whole family together eating at a dinner table, watching TV and occasionally jibba-jabbin' left and right (they only have 5 channels, and yet unbelievably that is more than enough for them), it is almost like magic... like I'm witnessing Life As It Should Be right in front of my eyes. They are not without flaws (the father being quite the alcoholic comes to mind), but they obviously have that missing bolt that makes the Family Happiness Cogs run smoothly, that is sorely lacking in mine.
4. Due to this enlightnment, I'm at a complete loss as to what my future goals are. This happened after the last visit in Decemeber, and it's happening right now..... again.
5. I really miss home-cooked meals.
6. Being back in Taipei, I have problems sleeping again, and that's why you're seeing this post.