This evening I am going to revisit the thoughts I scribbled down, usually quickly, in my first pocketmod last week.

The first thing I wrote has to do with a currently ‘on pause’ project, that being the novel I began in November. On November first, in fact. I was inspired by another writing site. Actually, it was the site which recommended this very site on which I am writing now. This is it! I got a little past 25 000 words (I think - I may be fooling myself now that I consider it) and then lapsed into lethargy. Ok, that is not exactly true. What actually happened was that I went to Austin and the sheer excitement of being in that city which runs orange with nostalgia and inspiration entwined did not let me concentrate on novel-writing. You must admit that writing a book is a very solitary profession. During the first half of November, during which I wrote persistently every day, I was alone. There is little to distract in Seminole, Texas. It was easy to imagine the adventures of the Beast and of the unnamed main character and of Natascha, Nivalis, Houmlessak, Jonatan, Shambal and various other odd individuals (not to mention the un-individuals, that is, the seething masses gazing at passing trains, spanning platforms with their centipede-like bulk. Oh, yes, the novel was (still is) about the ambiguity of personality and its merger into larger forms (ie, society in all of its forms, from peer groups to nations).

(This)

But I meander.

The first bit in the pocketmod states this: Map out the path the beast took towards the leaving of his lady! The beast was one of the original ideas when the novel (first conceived as a short story) took seed in my sloshy brain. He was initially a television commercial about anti-lubricants for women who just got too sopping wet down within that crevice-thing they have. The idea if him (it?) morphed. In several parts in the novel (which is unnamed, as you may have imagined since I call it repeatedly ‘the novel’), the beast, from within a projection or a television, elaborates on various goods which are supposed to help the main character along on his ‘journey’. It’s more of a sojourn or a pilgrimage, actually. This beast is accompanied by a she-beast who usually just howls, makes rude gestures and provides various other visual accompaniments to the beast’s soliloquies. What is going to happen at some point is the main character and the beast will sit and actually converse. They’ll spill their guts to one another. The precursor to this activity is the beast’s she-beast leaving him. I still have not actually traced the path to that juncture, however. I can assume the beast irritated the beastess by taking the stage and hogging it one too many times, for example. I still want to let it lie. Inspiration shall strike at some point, I feel assured.

Next - “Sometimes I feel I could live in West Texas just because of the sunsets. The colours, though washed out pastels they may be, are irresolutely striking. Now, to continue my walk.

There is not much to add to that, is there? I imagine many fans of West Texas to claim the sunsets here are indeed some of the best (if not the best) on earth. I’ll have to agree they are magnificent. They don’t hold a candle to the ones up north (I’m thinking Alaska), however. So fuck you, fellow Texans. This place is a blight and should be erased from existence! Yes!

Fuck Texas.

That brings me to a peripheral point. My mother mentioned the other day (I think yesterday, in fact) that one day I’ll have to take care of this house because I’ll be the one living in it. I considered this. How would my life be at that point? I suppose I’d be quite a bit older. They’d be in the cemetery just out of town. I’d convert the living room into a studio. I’d be stocked up on booze just in case it would help with inspiration. Christopher would come stay for a few weeks and we’d have a grand time. Tony would visit and we’d create marvellous music. Most of the time, however, I’d be alone, sequestered in this nook on the bleak side of the earth and on the barren side of the universe. I’d continue my programming projects. Maybe I’d actually become proficient on an instrument… ? Thinking about it is calming, I suppose, but it is also the easy way. It is a lapse into lethargy. Hm.

My 750 words are up! Now, I shall continue my adventure with the Loopy track. It needs a better name. Do you have any suggestions?

I am incredibly fucking frustrated concerting Project Euler #254. I am befuddled. Flummoxed. And overall - irritated. The problem is an irritant. I posted some things about it in the Sheep Blog earlier and have since learned that none of that matters at all. Of course, this will be soon merged with the Sheep Blog, so the last sentence is half superfluous. But, anyway, creating a list of every number which has digits which add up to i was big fun, though ultimately pointless. Having the values of f(n) does nothing for me because with each of them I’d have to calculate the n. The sheer amount of computation involved is staggering. Furthermore, to get each f(n) for i = 150 takes longer than it would to pull a tugboat full of raving mustelids from here to South Africa without encountering any water or poisonous snakes.

So!

I hope you have noticed that I have begun writing these entries (starting today) with markdown since the Sheep Blog uses BlueCloth to create the fucking html from fucking text. Yeah.

So!

My next strategy was to make a map of sf(n) -> n. The code I have just come up with is this:

sfMap z = sfMap' (IntMap.fromList []) [1..z]
    where sfMap' theMap [] = theMap
          sfMap' theMap (x:xs) = sfMap' (if (IntMap.lookup sfx theMap) == Nothing
                                         then IntMap.insert sfx x theMap
                                         else theMap) xs
              where sfx = sf x

I’m using IntMap because I read in the glorious ghc library reference that it is exceedingly quick (maybe even quicker than a marten). Now, this creates a map with only one entry for each i (which is sf(x)). Since I am being sequential in my xs (note the [1..z]), the first time a x results in an i (sf(x)), it is recorded. Any further duplicate *sf(x)*s are ignored. I think this is the correct step forward (as opposed to the false stagger in a random direction earlier) even though when attempting to find is up to 1 000 000, it was taking so long I had to interrupt the process. I need to create a more efficient way of making this map. I have some shades of ideas, but they are still murky.

I shall continue after returning from an excursion to ‘Southern Rose’ with my parents for dinner. Yum…. I suppose.

I have returned. Actually I returned over two hours ago. What have I done since then? Well, unfortunately, I have not forgotten about Project Euler and my little problem (cue the song, though it has little to do with mathematics). I played Hand and Foot with my parents (I came out on bottom and do not mind in the least), consumed some oatmeal cookies (much to my tummy’s chagrin) and wrote a program.

I had this brainstorm whilst at the restaurant, actually. There was a book I espied in Luxor in Praha back in, um, most likely 2007. It was about sharpening discursive skills or some rot of the like. I enjoyed thumbing through it and desperately wanted to purchase it because I felt my quickness of mind has been dulling like a blade scraped repeatedly on porous rock. Yeah. Like that. Unfortunately, when I next returned to the bookstore, I could no longer locate the tome. I did remember a point from it which stuck with me and has taken me over three years to implement. insert smiley. The book suggested doing a number of simple arithmetic problems quickly every morning consistently. I always liked the idea, but have, as I just wrote, and you know I love repeating myself, procrastinated until about 30 minutes ago in employing the method in any sort of tangible manner.

So I wrote the program. It is called daily_arithmetic.rb. Any fool can see that I wrote it in Ruby. I really should have done it in Haskell, instead, but IO in Haskell flummoxes me terribly, as very few of you know. Possibly none of you knew that until the very moment you read the last sentence. Just for fun, I’ll post the whole program here. 750words.com would probably call this cheating, but it is an original work, after all, and I’ll attempt to vomit up another 100 or so words afterwards to appease the spirit of fair prose play.

require 'rubygems'
require 'datamapper'
require 'dm-mysql-adapter'

DataMapper.setup(:default, 'mysql://localhost/morning_quiz')

class Arithmetic
  include DataMapper::Resource

  property :id, Serial
  property :question_count, Integer
  property :score, Float
  property :time, Integer
  property :type, String
  property :created_at, DateTime
  property :updated_at, DateTime
end

choices = { 1 => :+, 2 => :* }

puts "Good morning, Schweinehund."
puts "1) Addition"
puts "2) Multiplication"
while !choices.keys.include?(choice = gets.chomp.to_i)
  puts "Don't fuck with me, sunshine!"
end

puts "How many questions, you dullard?"
while (count = gets.chomp.to_i) < 1
  puts "You are straining our relationship, cabbage-boy."
end

puts "Ready?"
gets
start = Time.now
correct = 0

count.downto(1).each do |i|
  fst = rand(9) * 10 + rand(9)
  snd = rand(9) * 10 + rand(9)
  ans = fst.send(choices[choice], snd)
  puts "Question ##{count - i + 1}: #{fst} #{choices[choice].to_s} #{snd}"
  if gets.chomp.to_i == ans
    correct = correct + 1
    puts "Very good, vole."
  else
    puts "Nope!"
  end
end

finish = Time.now
score = correct.to_f / count.to_f * 100

puts "From #{count}, you answered #{correct} correctly."
puts "Your score is %.02f%%" % score
puts "It took you #{finish.tv_sec - start.tv_sec} seconds."

Arithmetic.create(:question_count => count,
                  :score => score,
                  :time => finish.tv_sec - start.tv_sec,
                  :type => choices[choice].to_s)

Isn’t that fantastic? DataMapper is an especially cool gem. I recall the days of struggling with mysql (or postgres, or whichever). Now, well, existence is made more beautiful by the simplicity of DataMapper.

Ok, the next task of the evening is to begin working on the Loopy piece. I wish to flesh it out and shall exude mellifluous energy from my beta-brain into LMMS and Audacity. I think I will not even bother with Lilypond. The spirit of the original ‘composition’ was one of spontaneity. Jesus Christ Mother Of Satan And His Holy Bedfolk, I do not even recall what key (if any) it is in. Perhaps that 7/8 5/8 ostinato was an A and a…. well… I am not sure, actually. Doesn’t this ‘unknowing’ make it more exciting, however? I am babbling away. So have nice evening.

I am proceeding with my attempt at Project Euler Problem #254. It revolves around reversing functions. g(i) is basically the reverse of sf(n). What I am doing is taking an Integer (i) and returning every number k with the following property: If one adds up the digits in k, one comes up with i. Here is my code so far (see if you can spot the obvious error before I continue!):

(Project Euler Problem...)

listToInteger :: [Integer] -> Integer
listToInteger xs = listToInteger' $ reverse xs
    where listToInteger' [] = 0
          listToInteger' (x:xs) = x + 10 * listToInteger' xs

integersAddToInteger :: Int -> [Integer]
integersAddToInteger i = sort . map listToInteger . digitsAddTo . take i $ cycle [1]

digitsAddTo :: [Integer] -> [[Integer]]
digitsAddTo [] = []
digitsAddTo [x] = [[x]]
digitsAddTo xs = thirdSet xs ++ secondSet xs
    where secondSet xs    = digitsAddTo $ [first xs] ++ rest xs
          thirdSet (x:xs) = map (x:) . digitsAddTo $ xs
          first (a:b:xs)  = a + b
          rest (a:b:xs)   = xs

When I call, for example, integersAddToInteger 5, I get this:

[5,14,23,32,41,113,122,131,212,221,311,1112,1121,1211,2111,11111]

Now, the obvious error is that if I want to find all k for an i greater than 9, the function digitsAddTo will begin using double digit numbers. I shall now attempt to fix this problem.

Did I mention that I abhor Puccini? Well, then, you may ask why I am listening to Puccini. The answer is this: I am listening to my music collection in more or less alphabetical order. I do cheat a bit, however, especially when I acquire a new album or want to listen to something which is previous alphabetically from where I am at the moment. Anyway, I am on ‘G’ at the moment and Puccini’s first name was Giacomo. I use past tense there with great satisfaction. For, were I to use present tense, it would indicate that the world was still a more repugnant place because of this human’s continued existence. Let us all applaud the fact that he could not create any more of his appalling works. (I await the slow dying of the raucous applause before continuing.) So, you ask once again why I am torturing myself by listening to the wretched excuse for a composer, even if I am listening to my collection in alphabetical order? I have told myself many times that I should give each artist (or idiot, in this case) a few chances before purging them from my collection. I fear (and I use that word with utmost sarcasm) that this will be Puccini’s final chance. Of course, that means I must suffer through Il Tabarro (which I am doing as I type this) and Il Trittico (which I shall do at some not too distant future point in time). If the latter does not redeem him in any manner, my hard drive shall be cleansed of his presence. And that is enough about that. Yus.

I few lines from ‘Cloud Atlas’: Had a view of an alley: downtrodden scriveners hurtling by like demisemiquavers in a Beethovian allegro. Afraid of ’em? No, I’m afraid of being one. What value are education, breeding and talent if one doesn’t have a pot to piss in?

I’d say the latter is of value no matter your situation. I am being broad in my definition of ‘talent’, however. Perhaps you have a talent for adapting and surviving. Your skill at adapting and surviving will be honed by this raw talent. Improvisation is something which may be learned (ie, education) and can also contribute to survival skills. I’m not sure about breeding, though again it depends on your connotation of the word. Since the book is set in the first half of the 20th century (so far - I have not completed the novel), ‘breeding’ is emphasized. There are many comparisons between the ‘white’ races and ‘mongrel’ races implying the former are superior and the latter uncivilized sometimes to an extreme degree. This was greatly impressed on me during the first ‘tale’ in the book.

As for the pot to piss in, I’d argue that you can better yourself no matter your situation. The only people not bettering themselves are ones falling into malaise and idleness because of routine, stagnation or despair. I can imagine myself living under a bridge, but still scavenging enough coins to keep my supply of pens from dwindling. My current handwritten journal is far from complete. I’m not sure how well my laptop would fare under a bridge, however. Heh.

At the moment, though I do have a pot to piss in (at my parents’ home), I am in desperate straights concerning funds. Though I do search (not as frantically as I would were I living under a bridge) for a job daily, I spend the remaining time staving away idleness and at least writing here, creating the Sheep Blog (which is pretty much finished, by the way, and I am copying each of these entries into it after completing them), and soon beginning work on the Hope For Wildlife website.

That is not to mention the music.

Yesterday evening, I began writing the bassline to ‘Union’, another piece in the cycle begun two years ago (more or less). I have over half finished, and though it is simple, it complements the melody in a fine way, methinks. All that is left is the ‘instrumental’ portion, which I shall write this evening, that will echo the 6/8ish rhodes part in ‘Reprise’. I am not sure how closely yet and shall find out spontaneously what my beta-brain invents once today evening rolls along.

I have been chatting with Christopher every few evenings and each time it spawns inspiration. Yes: The cognitive bias work. What I have written so far is not enough and I feel my idleness in this matter is an insult to the spirit of camaraderie. I must write about him and about me. Yes. Anchoring, Confirmation Bias and Framing. Those three initially.

Now, I shall piddle about with the Hope For Wildlife site. Fucking Puccini is still playing. Die! Die! Die!

I have spent a few hours working on this and have come up with a solution but would most likely need an infinitely more speedy computer for the computation to finish. I let the compiled version run for over an hour with no result. Great, eh? Here’s my code so far:

-- Define f(n) as the sum of the factorials of the digits of n.                 
-- For example, f(342) = 3! + 4! + 2! = 32.                                     
-- Define sf(n) as the sum of the digits of f(n). So sf(342) = 3 + 2 = 5.       
-- Define g(i) to be the smallest positive integer n such that                  
-- sf(n) = i.                                                                   
-- Though sf(342) is 5, sf(25) is also 5, and it can be                         
-- verified that g(5) is 25.                                                    
-- Define sg(i) as the sum of the digits of g(i). So sg(5) = 2 + 5 = 7.         
-- Further, it can be verified that g(20) is 267 and                            
-- sg(i) for 1 <= i <= 20 is 156.                                               
-- What is sg(i) for 1 <= i <= 150?                                            

-- This does not finish! I need a better way to compute g.                      

module Main
    where

import Data.Char
import Data.Maybe (fromJust)

factorial :: Integer-> Integer
factorial n | n < 0 = factorial (-n)
            | n < 2 = 1
            | otherwise = n * factorial (n-1)

intToDigitArray :: Integer-> [Integer]
intToDigitArray = map (\x -> toInteger $ ord x - 48) . show

sumFactorialOfDigitArray :: [Integer] -> Integer
sumFactorialOfDigitArray = sum . map factorial

-- f(n)                                                                         
f :: Integer-> Integer
f = sumFactorialOfDigitArray . intToDigitArray

-- sf(n)                                                                        
sf :: Integer-> Integer
sf = sum . intToDigitArray . f

g :: Integer-> Integer
g 1 = 1
g i = (+1) . snd . last . takeWhile (\p -> fst p /= i) . map (\n -> (sf n, n)) $ [1..]

sg :: Integer-> Integer
sg = sum . intToDigitArray . g

ans = sum . map sg $ [1..150]

main = putStrLn $ show $ ans

SO!

As you can see, the computation of g runs through everything from 1 up to i, computing each sf(i) along the way. This is the source of the never ending computation, methinks.

Something that occurred to me is that I could find every number which could could result in i if I added up their digits. The problem with extraneous zeros is daunting, however.

Hm.

I seem to have not written yesterday. The reason for this heinous crime is the extreme productivity of yesterday. The Sheep Blog is practically finished. All that remains are parsing of new messages to create proper markup (I’m thinking of using RedCloth or BlueCloth for this, though I know absolutely nothing about them and have not even bothered thinking about Markdown or whatever it is called before) and to add an Edit page. This latter bit should be a cinch.

After waking up blearily yesterday morning, I showered and proceeded to immediately begin work on the Sheep Blog. I must admit that I breezed through the Ajax implementations with very little problem. The only small snag was that when sections of a page are reloaded via Ajax and themselves contain calls to javascript, they do not function. That is, The content section of the Sheep Blog has one or more Entries. Beneath each entry are two links, one pointing backwards to the previous day of Entries and the other pointing forward to the following day of Entries. These links would not work when the section was reloaded (though they did initially when the whole page was loaded at once). The solution was to place all of the Ajax code in a function, which I called ajax_hovno, and to simply call the function once more from the loaded content. I admit I had to google around a bit before I realized this was the proper solution.

I did an approximately an hour’s worth of this coding at Java Jitterz, the only ‘coffee shop’ in Seminole. I quite like it there, actually. And, it is a place to go to get away from the house (besides my daily walks), and getting away temporarily (or even permanently!) always improves productivity. Well, as I wrote in my ‘100 Things About Me’ five years ago: Small changes, no matter how rudimentary or subtle, always invigorate me. I must admit that my biggest fear is stagnation. Yus. Which brings me to the next topic and the biggest bit of productivity for the day.

I stayed up until about three in the morning working on Reprise. The night before I had written the Rhodes and String parts in Lilypond and was pretty satisfied. So, yesterday, I whipped out LMMS and programmed in the parts. It took longer than I thought it would even though there are many, many repeating phrases. It is, after all, a very repetitious song, though in a shifty, sliding manner. The repeating phrases slide over one another, some changing subtly each iteration, others remaining static. I enjoy the effect, which is fortunate since I wrote it. Heh. The original (and still current) intention was to pan each part hard to one side and throw a deep reverb on the combined result. All mixed together, I had hoped it would give the Rhodes and Strings a distant feel. It did not exactly do that, but instead made them more ambient and blurry. I have not worked out the exact mix parameters yet, but the demo I mixed down before I actually attempted to go to sleep sounds mediocre. I’ll reuse the word ‘blurry’ and call it appropriate.

The sequenced parts are three in number. Part two is nearly, but not quite, part one sliced in two. The third part is a melody of sorts which accompanies the chord progression and weird backwards/forwards guitar part which repeats and fades at the end of the piece. In the center, I created a bastardization of the vocal melody in ‘Union’. It seemed like a good thing to do at the time, somehow tying the ‘album’ together. The Rhodes part will in a way be featured during the extended instrumental section in Union, making another tie. Possibly it will show up somewhere in the Loopy Unnamed Song, also. Anyhow, this part three is mixed badly. I’ll bring the rhodes up an octive and maybe cut its bass frequencies a bit for better results. I may not actually do another mix or any modifications tonight, however, because I have plans for Intersection, which is the first piece in the sequence.

As a brainstorm before I fell asleep (which was long coming), I thought it may be good to add another song to the ‘album’, that being the ‘Acy Bob’ piece I wrote in the hotel whilst first in London back in February. I know I worked it out a bit later on and that Tony wrote some lyrics. The plan is to create something very simple and repetitive with a groovy beat. Yeah. A dance track! A hit! That’d be the cute little day.

My name is the evil one and I dislike you. I fear you’ll have to deal with this in a congenial manner because the fact will not change. Thank you very much.

And now back to our regular scheduled absurdity. Three of them, actually:

• Nuggets
• Plastic
• Origami

Die NOW

Or go look at the Daily Otter.

(Daily Otter)

Not suprisingly, I did not work at all on the Sheep Blog today. Why is that? Well, I went with my parents to the Casino an Hobbs, where I lost quite a bit of money. Well, one must have balance, right? Tuesday I came out way ahead and today, I cut my winnings in half, so, I suppose I should not complain. I am still ahead. Yeah. Exciting, isn’t it?

At the first machine I played at the Casino, I whipped out my pocketmod and wrote down an observation I made about my father during our trip from Seminole to Hobbs. Here is what I wrote (more or less):

My father always has a very strict frame for every event which surrounds him. This is my opinion, anyway. For example, as he is always trying to teach a lesson of some kind, when we were driving from Seminole to Hobbs today, he spotted a truck hauling which seemed at first glance to be a metal construction created for some unknown purpose. He latched on to it immediately. Now, my view here is that he had it in his brain (perhaps not consciously) to present a moralistic lesson. He stated that ‘that old boy’ is hauling something he built, implying (to me) by his tone of voice and general demeanor that it was a thing of value to build something with your hands and that the ‘old boy’ should be proud to have done so.

It turned out, however, that the ‘construction’ was just a number of metal frames, perhaps for beds, strapped together to keep them from tumbling from the trailer. My point is that he has certain constructs in his mind which I surmise he learned whilst growing up in Seminole and especially during his teen years and early 20s during which he worked hard using his hands. He bagged groceries for years. He also worked on top of an oil derrick for a long while. He expounds quite often about these years of his life to me when we are driving about Seminole on this errand or that (usually to the grocery store or post office or back, actually). Anyway, he finds value in this. I am not slighting his point of view, but I find it gets a bit tiring when he brings it into the moment sometimes subtly and sometimes not just on the spur of the moment time and time again. Using the ‘old boy’ with his trailer, no matter its real contents, is just one example. He is prone to this behaviour often.

I believe it was yesterday on our way back from the grocery store when he once again was talking about the time when he always had a job as a teenager and therefore always had ‘two quarters to rub together’. I let my imagination take over a bit at the time and wondered if I pursued a conversation with him (instead of being silent and just listening, as I was doing) on the topic if he’d come to the conclusion that all adolescents would be better adjusted were they to be subjected to the same sort of lifestyle. That is, learning to work with their hands by experience. His jobs were all after school and on the weekends, leaving little time for ‘extracurricular activities’. My imagination continued and visualized me saying I believe children and adolescents are better off if they are not subjected to work and have time to explore their creativity instead. I’d argue that a routine job would perhaps deaden their minds. I was silent, though. He dropped it after a while.

A few hours ago, after nearly two years, I began finishing the piece ‘Reprise’. I like the parts I wrote (with Lilypond). My plan (I have lots of those, don’t I?) is to put together the songs I constructed (all unfinished) two years ago as an ‘EP’. I suppose I was somewhat inspired by the ‘Ships EP’ by the Bearded Seals that I purchased from Amazon yesterday evening (created by Ashley). The sequence of songs on my EP will be like this:AYB

Intersection -> Untitled (the one with lots of looping and the 5/8 7/8 polyrythmic ostinato) -> (Maybe: She Ain’t My Girl Tony/Me improv) -> Union -> Reprise Introduction -> Reprise

I’ll ask Tony to contribute bass parts to most all of it. Well, maybe not Reprise because I have an old bass part he did for it lying around somewhere. If I can use it (modified with effects or whatever), then I shall not bother him. Union has no bassline, however. Nor does any of the rest, for that matter. :) That will most likely make up about 20 minutes. I look forward to it. I can bang out the sequenced parts of the pieces pretty easily. The sequenced part of Reprise will reappear in Union, and maybe in Untitled. Oouh, baby.

Now I shall munch on broccoli dipped in hummous and watch a film. Good evening to YOU.

What psychoses possesses another person to begin cleaning up the ‘mess’ which is inevitable during a meal before the remaining diners have finished eating? Furthermore, what possesses them to complain, afterwards, using the ubiquitous language of emotional blackmail, that no one else does anything to keep the kitchen and dining area tidy? The other diners are surely not at fault. When dining, isn’t it best to relax and enjoy oneself? As opposed to rushing and having the mind elsewhere (like on cleaning up the inevitable mess)? I would include this behaviour in a list of psychoses, for sure. Perhaps it sprouts from insecurity. If one can accuse others of not playing their part in household chores, one can look at oneself as somehow better than others. Or, it could sprout from the incessant need to teach.

It irritates! My father always, no matter what he is doing when he is involved with someone else in an activity, has to attempt to teach some sort of lesson (at times moral in nature). Even when we play Cribbage, every hand is not just fun and games, but has a teacher-student atmosphere. Though I love playing cards (and my father is one of the only ones I have to play cards with), it is hard for me to keep quiet at times. I want to point out what he is doing time and time again. He probably doesn’t even realize his ‘teacher’ attitude. It is most likely an ingrained habit.

I’m currently working on the sidebar of the Sheep Blog. It’s pure JQuery at this point and being that I don’t do JQuery very much, I am learning gobs which will soon be forgotten if I do not continue to dabble in JavaScript on a regular basis. Searching through documentation is big fun, I can tell ya, especially if part of your brain kicks you once you are on a certain page and you realize you were looking the same thing up a few months back. That brings me to Mnemosyne. I began creating entries for Rails/RSpec ‘flashcards’ so I do not forget small things which are used seldom but at important junctures and have to look them up every time. So, I say to myself as I type this, ‘why don’t you do it now, Bob?’ Ok, so I’m creating another file called ‘JQuery’ and filling in some flashcards. Oouh, baby.

This is a rather choppy entry into this ‘journal’. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the word ‘blog’. I wonder what the etymology of it? I believe I shall look that up at this very instant. Ah, I should have known! (Well, perhaps not.) It is short for ‘weblog’, though, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it was not originally used for ‘online journal’ at first (1994), but was instead a contraction of World Wide Web + Log. I can imagine it indicating expansive log outputs from over-zealous cron jobs, for example. Heh. I first began writing an online journal in late spring of 2000. It was a very refreshing, fruitful experience for me, though often I typed when in some manner modified. Jenicek and I drank a hell of a lot back then. When modified, however, I wrote whatever was on my mind with absolutely no censorship. My friends (Jenicek, Viking, etc) were amused and entertained by my entries, which ran the gamut from musings on networking, python/zope programming and work positives/negatives to in depth analysis of my relationships including sometimes scathing rants about the female(s) with which I was involved. While my friends read and encouraged me, some of the other people I wrote about were angered and alienated. That was good. I enjoyed that.

That brings me to the last month or so on Facebook and my conflict with Christian about completely open writing on that forum. He loves to rule his little community and control it to the best of his ability and was time and time again aggravated when I wrote something on his ‘wall’ which contradicted his ideas, or when I delved into the absurdity that I am so known for loving. Well, I am now banned from commenting on anything he posts or from writing directly onto his ‘wall’. At first I was irritated at his anal-retentiveness and his need to be in control of every aspect of his very small universe. Now I smile about it. Let him enjoy his despotism.

Forums such as this and the Sheep Blog, which I am still working on… yes, yes… I know I should have finished by now, deny any censorship.

Oi! That is it for today… I think.

I’ve been listening to Carla Kihlstedt’s ‘2 Foot Yard’ for the past week and it is quickly becoming one of the best albums I have been obsessed with in about six months. So, anyone who is reading this should go out right at this moment and purchase it.

I also finally procured the book ‘The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable’. I have only gotten through the first 12 pages or so, but already it has made an impression on me. Succumbing to my own Confirmation Bias, I was delighted at his exposition on the superficiality and unfairness of our species in not acknowledging the uncelebrated heroes who actually make the greatest marks on history. Well, perhaps they do not leave the greatest marks, but prevent black marks our species might leave on history. Because events are prevented by these heroes actions, they are naturally not celebrated. I’ve thought about this concept many times in the past and probably written about it, as well. I’ll have to search through old journals for such dribble if I ever find the time.

The creation if the Sheep Blog is taking longer than I surmised that it would. Mostly, it is because of the authentication method. Yeah, I could avoid it, but then there is the slight chance that anyone could find the page which would allow them to make a post. So, well, the authentication has to be there. Also, there is my unlucky bane of being unable to recall procedures which were natural a very short time ago (just a few weeks!). I can lay the blame at my newness to the Sinatra/Datamapper/Blueprint trifecta, but I think it is in reality my lackadaisical mental skills. I am attempting to hone them as quickly as possible, but my years of ruination came with quite a price. At least I am a big believer in neuroplasticity. Yeah.

I just talked to Hope at Hope For Wildlife in Nova Scotia and am apparently going to be in charge of their website starting very soon. My plans are to automate the whole thing. :) I hope (pun intended) that is a reasonable idea. Step one is to find a hosting site which has ruby, shell access, and a bit of storage space. Again, Sinatra will be my choice of hosting servers. Nice. Bluehost.com appears, from a cursory inspection, to be just what I am looking for. For $6.95 a month, I’d get shell access and Ruby! Yeah. I shall have to ask them whether I can install my own gems, but I don’t see why it’d be a problem. On mustela-ermina, local gems go in ~/.gem. Still, I need to investigate the workings of this mechanism. Damn my fickle brain.

I’ve been working on the Sheep Blog for the last few hours (well, on and off between small snacks). Authentication is working. Signup is not needed (the only user will be me), so it does not exist. Fantastic. I am very happy with Sinatra and its quick development ‘iterations’. I should be ashamed that I am not writing tests, however. I plan to do so when I set off into the task which is Hope For Wildlife. I hope that plan comes to fruition.

I took a walk through the only park (that I know of) in Seminole earlier. I attempt to do this every day. Yesterday I did not, however, because of our late arrival from the casino. My Mother is paranoid about me being out after dark. I find this exceptionally paranoid, but I don’t worry her when I don’t have reason to. If there is one thing I have learned from spending time with my parents is that they cannot be changed. They are set in their ways. That rock will not erode. As I wrote before, they are submerged in Confirmation Bias. They have drowned in it and been born again so as to be unable to live without it. I propose a challenge to myself - never become so set in stone. I flow like liquid. Perhaps I should also evaporate.

As I walked, I listened to music on my small Samsung mp3 player on random. The machine only possesses a 4GB capacity, so diversity is limited. I have swapped albums out only rarely since this tradition has begun, though, so I suspect that many of the tunes I hear on these walks will soak into my memory and be always associated with my cyclical journey on that wavy sidewalk. Many of the tunes seem to appear more than others, or, perhaps, they are the more ‘catchy’ ones and I recall them better.

The first order of the morning is to comment on the negative atmosphere in which I have chosen to write. My mother and father argue constantly and consistently with voices which rip apart any concentration on the beings around them. Well, I assume their bickering affects everyone in the same way it affects me, but I can, of course, not be sure.

I fell asleep sorely disappointed in myself. I had a list of things I wished to accomplish and only one even came close. Still, it was also not completed. I wake up refreshed and tell myself it will be a far more fruitful day. Perhaps. We shall go to Hobbs and meander around doing little, however. I’ll take a novel which Christopher sent me weeks ago. I’ll begin it since it seems to call to me, lying limply on the night stand. In case we go to the casino, which I assure everyone that we shall, I shall fold a new pocketmod so that any thoughts which spill from my beta-mind will not be lost in the noise, smoke and passing minutes.

Another goal will be to create a simple blog which will do pretty much the same thing as 750words.com. I’ll put it up on fucksheep where blog.fucksheep.org once resided. I know the code for that is still up, but it is ragged and unfinished (though functional). All I really need is a simple blog. I’ll dump the entries table from the database and create a new table which will fuel the simple blog. I’ve decided on sinatra for a web framework, so I must update Ruby and its various gems. Perhaps I’ll compile Ruby 1.9.2 on fucksheep. Oh, boy. That will be fun. I wonder if it will even work. If not, I’ll stick with 1.8.7.

One of the failed goals from yesterday was to begin writing about cognitive biases and evaluate myself in light of each one. There is an extensive list on wikipedia. Of course, I shall not go through all of them, but I’ll guess my goal encompasses about 74%. Christopher, in our conversation two nights previous, and I decided to write about each other in the light of the cognitive biases, as well. He thought that getting an outside perspective would also be fecund. I thought the idea was splendid, but the more I imagine it, the more I believe it will be exceedingly difficult. He claims that our fundamental personality does not really change. I am worried that since we have not actually spent time in each others’ presence in a consistent fashion in many years, that the evaluation will be skewed by fragments of memories we have of each other from years ago. Well, it’s still an interesting experiment. Yah?

Writing of cognitive biases: The first one I was to expound on is Anchoring. My mother just demonstrated an interesting example of it. She asked me from the small breakfast bar who I was talking to last night before going to sleep. She then quickly added ‘Tony?’ Though I answered loudly and clearly ‘I was talking to Jana,’ and she was looking at me, obviously paying attention, she replied asking me if he was doing fine, obviously still having Tony locked in her mind. Of course, she could have misheard me, but I don’t think so. I am pretty sure my parents both exhibit anchoring to an extreme. I am not sure if it is their age or just a trait of their personality. She locked onto Tony because she was expecting him to be my answer. It’s truth before proof. I could also assume this is a Confirmation Bias on a short term. That is, her belief that I was talking to Tony was not swayed in the least by contradicting evidence.

I have been informed that we are going to the casino. Well, I shall enjoy myself. I have a small shittypie full of music, so I shall be happy in that. I should snag a novel now. They are calling me to come. More later.

I have returned after winning about $450. I find that I do better when I am listening to very abstract music. I especially noticed the coincidental powers of ‘Blemish’ by David Sylvian.

Looking through the Rspec/Sinatra pages I have discovered, I believe it will take only about 4 hours of work to put everything together I wish for the small blog. Getting up and running on fucksheep is another matter, of course, and will look into that after I have completed a working replica on mustela-ermina. I shall first write here (this is my plan) every day, then retype into the blog, revising a BIT. We’ll see how it goes. Most likely, I’ll eventually abandon 750words.com and put my ‘morning (which are not wholly morning and most likely never will be) pages’ directly into the blog. I have dubbed it, even before its birth, but certainly after its conception, ‘sheepblog’, for obvious reasons.