Saturday, August 30, 2014
Listless
I have reached an unusual crossroads in my life. I feel I really want to do something or make something. And yet I feel so lazy in doing so. I have the desire but not the willpower. I suspect its just a stage, part of a clearing process. I will see it through to the end.
Sleep
Yeah for me, its this elusive animal, like bigfoot or his frosty cousin the yeti. I can try so hard to pursue it, chase it, and buy anything and everything under the sun for it, and yet it still does not yield its hidden mysteries to me. Often only when I least expect it, it happens.
I just learned that expressing myself strangely helps me to sleep better. It really relates back to a previous article, but essentially my life is a bit out of balance, and as a result expressing myself more seems to tip the scale towards balance, allowing me to sleep. I am not sure that I fully understand this mechanism itself, or why it would be the case that failure to express oneself or emit their own vibration would make it hard to sleep, and yet even as I type that, my intuition is starting to make it clearer through imagery. The point my intuition is trying to make is a rhetorical question. "How can something sleep without any substance of its own?" Anyway, I suppose my time here on earth will teach me extensively about addictions and health challenges. Hopefully all these trying incarnations will allow me to blossom into something wonderful and powerful, and probably really good at healing. Anyway that is what relevant spiritual literature says the purpose of this suffering could become. And I am pretty sure I believe it too.
I just learned that expressing myself strangely helps me to sleep better. It really relates back to a previous article, but essentially my life is a bit out of balance, and as a result expressing myself more seems to tip the scale towards balance, allowing me to sleep. I am not sure that I fully understand this mechanism itself, or why it would be the case that failure to express oneself or emit their own vibration would make it hard to sleep, and yet even as I type that, my intuition is starting to make it clearer through imagery. The point my intuition is trying to make is a rhetorical question. "How can something sleep without any substance of its own?" Anyway, I suppose my time here on earth will teach me extensively about addictions and health challenges. Hopefully all these trying incarnations will allow me to blossom into something wonderful and powerful, and probably really good at healing. Anyway that is what relevant spiritual literature says the purpose of this suffering could become. And I am pretty sure I believe it too.
A new anime
There is a new anime out that I have come to enjoy even if it injures me a bit emotionally. Its called Anohana.
**Spoiler**
From the first few minutes of the first episode before the intro I could already tell the little girl was a ghost. But what I could not tell you was how much drama there is in this show. Spoiler alert, there is death, despair, unrequited love ( a word I only know because of English translations), people living in the past, a highschool dropout, cold woman, a hardass dad, crazy mom, dead mom, running away from home, and a guy who dresses as a the girl he fell in love with after she died.
**End spoiler**
Yet despite all the insanity, the viewer is left with a beautiful hope that things can change, and that people can go back to being the happy people they were in their youth. It tells the tail of a reinforcing of friendship bonds.
I will say I find Menma a bit annoying at times. Of course she seems extra childish, though I am sure that is done for effect.Seriously though(if/when I have kids, I will promise to give them her good heart, but also a brain and a sense of personal awareness).This girl possesses a strange cuteness that is as blatant as it is pure. A lot of cr fans were crying from this stuff. I have to say I was moved once or twice myself. Be careful, it has a bit of the feels. As for genre, its like a shoujo drama that has a guy as a main character, which in and of itself is an interesting combination.
Truthfully, without ever watching a full episode or even having translations you could still accurately guess what the show was about just from its intro. It captures and articulates the idea so perfectly, that you almost feel it ruins the show a bit for you. Though the guy singing the intro sounds like he is either totally apathetic or has had the energy drained from him. OR perhaps he's just trying to be chill, its hard to tell with that kind of voice, though the music itself is perfectly grafted to the theme and pace of the animation.
**Spoiler**
From the first few minutes of the first episode before the intro I could already tell the little girl was a ghost. But what I could not tell you was how much drama there is in this show. Spoiler alert, there is death, despair, unrequited love ( a word I only know because of English translations), people living in the past, a highschool dropout, cold woman, a hardass dad, crazy mom, dead mom, running away from home, and a guy who dresses as a the girl he fell in love with after she died.
**End spoiler**
Yet despite all the insanity, the viewer is left with a beautiful hope that things can change, and that people can go back to being the happy people they were in their youth. It tells the tail of a reinforcing of friendship bonds.
I will say I find Menma a bit annoying at times. Of course she seems extra childish, though I am sure that is done for effect.Seriously though(if/when I have kids, I will promise to give them her good heart, but also a brain and a sense of personal awareness).This girl possesses a strange cuteness that is as blatant as it is pure. A lot of cr fans were crying from this stuff. I have to say I was moved once or twice myself. Be careful, it has a bit of the feels. As for genre, its like a shoujo drama that has a guy as a main character, which in and of itself is an interesting combination.
Truthfully, without ever watching a full episode or even having translations you could still accurately guess what the show was about just from its intro. It captures and articulates the idea so perfectly, that you almost feel it ruins the show a bit for you. Though the guy singing the intro sounds like he is either totally apathetic or has had the energy drained from him. OR perhaps he's just trying to be chill, its hard to tell with that kind of voice, though the music itself is perfectly grafted to the theme and pace of the animation.
Why I need to blog
Its time for me to start emitting my own vibration. It may seem like a foreign concept to some, but to break it down its really simple. Essentially, I have done way too much absorption. I have been asking too much from others opinions, not placing enough value on my own. I have been seeking validation outside of myself. And I have been soaking it in. Enough! Now, I will balance my masculine and feminine energies. Usually its the yin that is missing in most men's lives, but for me it was the yang. I was not taking control. I was not acting directly, and instead waiting to be directed. Now its time to show the world what I can do. What my plans and ideas are.
First of all. I like chocolate. I don't give a damn that it can make me unpredictable and harder to control myself. Given that I have been so passive, a little more unpredictableness is totally called for.
Second, I like playing games. Its time to put my ideas into action. I am pretty good at that so far. All my character designs are my own. But I can do more. So much more. Its time to stop asking for help and sit down and figure it out like a man. Sure its a bit exaggerated, but its necessary to correct the imbalance in my life.
I like the concept of the F# programming language. It allows for great data processing and sorting. Also good for math. Even more than that, its a challenge. I like to get myself to try things that I do not fully understand in order to gain intelligence through the process of coming to understand something. Its a mental exercise that I enjoy. That being said, I its time to do more of those coding challenges in F# instead of C#.
I realize this is more or less a semi-coherent rant. But its necessary for my health. So there. If you don't want to read it, then don't. I will tag this as a rant so anyone hoping to find a programming blog won't be sorrowly disappointed.
First of all. I like chocolate. I don't give a damn that it can make me unpredictable and harder to control myself. Given that I have been so passive, a little more unpredictableness is totally called for.
Second, I like playing games. Its time to put my ideas into action. I am pretty good at that so far. All my character designs are my own. But I can do more. So much more. Its time to stop asking for help and sit down and figure it out like a man. Sure its a bit exaggerated, but its necessary to correct the imbalance in my life.
I like the concept of the F# programming language. It allows for great data processing and sorting. Also good for math. Even more than that, its a challenge. I like to get myself to try things that I do not fully understand in order to gain intelligence through the process of coming to understand something. Its a mental exercise that I enjoy. That being said, I its time to do more of those coding challenges in F# instead of C#.
I realize this is more or less a semi-coherent rant. But its necessary for my health. So there. If you don't want to read it, then don't. I will tag this as a rant so anyone hoping to find a programming blog won't be sorrowly disappointed.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Asian Dating : Scammers
So not long ago I signed up for a website called Blossoms.com. I found myself being pulled into a lot of different directions. I ended up being bombarded by women of ages 18-43 looking for love. Now most of them are nice people. A few of them are scammers. Some of them are nice people who I feel are trying to marry their way out of a bad living situation.
I want to talk a little bit about scammers. First, it can be really easy to tell if they are. The writing is on the wall so to speak. When you look at their profile. You will see 2-8 pictures of what looks like a model posing for professional-grade photograph. There may be 1 picture of a normal person as well. Another tell-tale sign of them being a scammer is obvious to most people, but essentially not all of their photographs look alike. Its kind of silly when you see it because you honestly think "What the hell is going on here?".
Now some scammers play the long game. They will talk to you in chat for hours, always flirting using lots of "hehehe"'s and emoticons. Essentially laughing and pretending everything about you is either handsome, interesting, or cool. But eventually, it works like this, they will say for one reason or another that they don't like the website that they are on. They will ask you to go to another website where you have to pay to signup. You can tell its a fake website when you that all of their members look like models.
One way to tell earlier on is if they are a scammer is to ask them about what they do for a living. They tend to give vague and brief responses. One time I asked they said "trading". Trading what exactly? Another time I asked they just said "assistant manager". Of course I followed up with, "Well then, what does your manager do?". They just said "marketing". So its actually pretty common when you ask real people that they will even tell you what company that they work. They may tell you what its like, what they hate about work, what they love about work. All the various responsibilities, etc.
Sometimes a scammer may say that they need to go to another website because it has webcams. Usually if you are on a website that you have to pay for, it will already have one. Anyway, If they do, you can ask them to use skype or yahoo messenger instead. If they refuse or say it doesn't work with their webcam, I would say call bullshit on them, mainly because skype and yahoo are mature professional products that are designed to function on the largest variety of webcams available. Moreover, I am willing to bet there are common OS level interfaces that the driver talks to. So if you have the driver installed correctly it should pretty much work regardless of the what the webcam is because when software from a website or skype ask the OS to do something, the OS will call the driver's implementation of that task on the webcam hardware.
They may say that their English isn't very good and thus its necessary to go to this website that does translation services. If you were naive enough to sign up, you would find that they probably use a checkout system that you have never heard of. You buy credits for translations. In some cases its as bad as 1 dollar per chat message, but they try to disguise it in a credit/point based system, offering discounts on larger volumes of points at 'discounts'.
Anyway as it turns out Blossoms.com already has built-in translation services for paying members. If you already signed up, all you have to do is type in your native language and it will translate for you. The website already has several anti scammer features. It will say which country their IP address is coming from. It will has a link to an image database search where you can put other peoples pictures into and this would allow you to search the internet for their pictures. I would still recommend google images instead. Their database said it only searched like 5.4 billion pictures. I think that is a little low. Its not strange for photographers to take over 70 photos a day for example. So a real internet image database should be many many times the human population of the earth.
Anyway that is all for now. Perhaps in the future I can get to talk about what the non-scammers are like.
I want to talk a little bit about scammers. First, it can be really easy to tell if they are. The writing is on the wall so to speak. When you look at their profile. You will see 2-8 pictures of what looks like a model posing for professional-grade photograph. There may be 1 picture of a normal person as well. Another tell-tale sign of them being a scammer is obvious to most people, but essentially not all of their photographs look alike. Its kind of silly when you see it because you honestly think "What the hell is going on here?".
Now some scammers play the long game. They will talk to you in chat for hours, always flirting using lots of "hehehe"'s and emoticons. Essentially laughing and pretending everything about you is either handsome, interesting, or cool. But eventually, it works like this, they will say for one reason or another that they don't like the website that they are on. They will ask you to go to another website where you have to pay to signup. You can tell its a fake website when you that all of their members look like models.
One way to tell earlier on is if they are a scammer is to ask them about what they do for a living. They tend to give vague and brief responses. One time I asked they said "trading". Trading what exactly? Another time I asked they just said "assistant manager". Of course I followed up with, "Well then, what does your manager do?". They just said "marketing". So its actually pretty common when you ask real people that they will even tell you what company that they work. They may tell you what its like, what they hate about work, what they love about work. All the various responsibilities, etc.
Sometimes a scammer may say that they need to go to another website because it has webcams. Usually if you are on a website that you have to pay for, it will already have one. Anyway, If they do, you can ask them to use skype or yahoo messenger instead. If they refuse or say it doesn't work with their webcam, I would say call bullshit on them, mainly because skype and yahoo are mature professional products that are designed to function on the largest variety of webcams available. Moreover, I am willing to bet there are common OS level interfaces that the driver talks to. So if you have the driver installed correctly it should pretty much work regardless of the what the webcam is because when software from a website or skype ask the OS to do something, the OS will call the driver's implementation of that task on the webcam hardware.
They may say that their English isn't very good and thus its necessary to go to this website that does translation services. If you were naive enough to sign up, you would find that they probably use a checkout system that you have never heard of. You buy credits for translations. In some cases its as bad as 1 dollar per chat message, but they try to disguise it in a credit/point based system, offering discounts on larger volumes of points at 'discounts'.
Anyway as it turns out Blossoms.com already has built-in translation services for paying members. If you already signed up, all you have to do is type in your native language and it will translate for you. The website already has several anti scammer features. It will say which country their IP address is coming from. It will has a link to an image database search where you can put other peoples pictures into and this would allow you to search the internet for their pictures. I would still recommend google images instead. Their database said it only searched like 5.4 billion pictures. I think that is a little low. Its not strange for photographers to take over 70 photos a day for example. So a real internet image database should be many many times the human population of the earth.
Anyway that is all for now. Perhaps in the future I can get to talk about what the non-scammers are like.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Black Addiction Chocolate Pie Recipe
Okay, this was something I wanted to put up earlier, but I ended up getting delayed again and again.
Black Addiction
Chocolate Pie
By Alex Baggett
Ingredients
·
2 cups heavy whipping cream
·
1 Hershey’s
special dark pudding mix
·
1 Oreo Pie
Crust
·
1 Ghirardelli Cabernet Matinee Chocolate bar.
Directions
Break the chocolate into squares and put it into a large
saucepan. Pour the whole milk into the saucepan as well. Heat on low while
stirring slowly for 8-10 minutes. When
it just barely starts to steam, turn the heat off. And stir vigorously until
the chocolate is mixed in. There will be small pieces floating around at this
point and that is okay. Empty the
pudding mix into the mixture. Stir first with your mixing device from earlier,
then when there are no longer large clumps, use an immersion blender or an
eggbeater or other electric mixer to blend it in more finely. After that pour
the result into the Oreo pie crust. Cover using the cover that came with the
Oreo pie crust and put into the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes. Then you can
take it out and serve.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Blogging
Before I started blogging, the first question in my mind was essentially: What is the point of this?
The second question was: Isn't there something more useful or entertaining that I could be doing instead?
Let's face it, blogging isn't doesn't really give the same feeling as watching an episode of your favorite show.
But I have learned its not really about that. Its not entertainment, and that's okay. It doesn't pay the bills (so far) either and that's also okay. But it has done this for me, it has made me able to think clearly about my life and helped me to express myself much more clearly and succinctly than ever before, and for that I am grateful.
The second question was: Isn't there something more useful or entertaining that I could be doing instead?
Let's face it, blogging isn't doesn't really give the same feeling as watching an episode of your favorite show.
But I have learned its not really about that. Its not entertainment, and that's okay. It doesn't pay the bills (so far) either and that's also okay. But it has done this for me, it has made me able to think clearly about my life and helped me to express myself much more clearly and succinctly than ever before, and for that I am grateful.
Catching up
Lately I have realized the value of talking with people just for the sake of it. Connecting and reaching out to people can quickly transform acquaintances and coworkers into full-fledged friends. I spoke with a man at the meditation center that I go to today. I am still not 100% sure what his passion is. I think he said it was about being open and available to support others emotionally or something about inspiration. But nevertheless, this guy was quite happy that I talked to him personally. I didn't say anything that special by any means. I just told him what my passion was in life and my struggle to realize it. I told him how I got onto my path. And he told me about his.
I also did a face-reading of a woman there at the meditation center. I had to tell her what I saw. I was compelled by the notion that I needed to start being more forthright with matters of the heart. I saw sadness, hurt, and shame/blame.Perhaps she blamed herself for something. Her feelings were somewhat buried under other emotions but I could tell what she was feeling inside. In any event, I was surprised that I was not ridiculed for the reading after the meditation. I guess some part of me expected her to react negatively about being told something from a reading - an ill-conceived belief I am sure. It turned out I was right, she was grieving over a loss of some kind. I ended up hugging her twice and she was quite appreciative.
Oddly, despite all of this, I still feel a cold almost mechanicalness about my own feelings and actions. I guess I knew, I wasn't fully sincere about this. I wanted her to be happy, but not deeply from the bottom of my heart. I wanted to be friends with this man, but at some level I knew I was seeking to benefit from such a friendship. Some part me in the back of my mind was weighing advantages and disadvantages of being his friend. I wanted to go to group meditation because I knew it would help my insomnia. Its all well and good but these motivations are still mind-oriented, not heart-oriented. That is not the man I want to be.
I know what I have to work on.
I also did a face-reading of a woman there at the meditation center. I had to tell her what I saw. I was compelled by the notion that I needed to start being more forthright with matters of the heart. I saw sadness, hurt, and shame/blame.Perhaps she blamed herself for something. Her feelings were somewhat buried under other emotions but I could tell what she was feeling inside. In any event, I was surprised that I was not ridiculed for the reading after the meditation. I guess some part of me expected her to react negatively about being told something from a reading - an ill-conceived belief I am sure. It turned out I was right, she was grieving over a loss of some kind. I ended up hugging her twice and she was quite appreciative.
Oddly, despite all of this, I still feel a cold almost mechanicalness about my own feelings and actions. I guess I knew, I wasn't fully sincere about this. I wanted her to be happy, but not deeply from the bottom of my heart. I wanted to be friends with this man, but at some level I knew I was seeking to benefit from such a friendship. Some part me in the back of my mind was weighing advantages and disadvantages of being his friend. I wanted to go to group meditation because I knew it would help my insomnia. Its all well and good but these motivations are still mind-oriented, not heart-oriented. That is not the man I want to be.
I know what I have to work on.
A good day today
So far its been a good day today.
I saw the new X-men movie. I was certainly impressed by the immense detail and expression that went into its production. I enjoyed the complexity of the movie as well. A wrong turn or a misstep could even send the characters into a darker future than before. The concept of robots known as 'Sentinels' that could adapt to fight anything also greatly intrigued me. I wanted to see the execution of such a concept because it seemed unlikely. So to be believable they would have to do a good job in showcasing the adaptive power of said robots, which they succeeded in doing, in my opinion.
As always, Magneto was incredibly powerful and not to be underestimated. If you look at the way he has acted in the previous movies, it should come as no surprise that given the chance, he would try to unite mutants against what he perceived to be "the human threat" .
Some of the interviews that were done about the movie were also quite memorable, especially the one done with Patrick Stewart where he talks about his message for his younger self.
As always, Magneto was incredibly powerful and not to be underestimated. If you look at the way he has acted in the previous movies, it should come as no surprise that given the chance, he would try to unite mutants against what he perceived to be "the human threat" .
Some of the interviews that were done about the movie were also quite memorable, especially the one done with Patrick Stewart where he talks about his message for his younger self.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Late night thoughts.
Sometimes working late can really take its toll on you. Don't let anyone tell you an application support engineer's job is easy. 5 hours and 4 minutes of a possible business impacting issue plus another 45 minutes writing up the incident report will keep you much later than planned. Its kind of quiet and lonely at night, I wish there were more people to talk to during this time, because that is how I spent most of it. You almost sense that the world is moving in a certain direction and by staying up you are resisting the natural flow of reality. Its quite surreal at times.
My work shift can be quite draining - sucking the energy right out of you. It can leave you unable to think carefully and make good judgement calls. It uses clarity as its fuel and burns the mind given enough time.
Perhaps I am being too negative, but In my current state, I don't feel physically prepared quite enough for it.
So what's left? Late night anime, sore eyes, and disappointing relationships.
Eh, its not quite that bad, but yeah.
My work shift can be quite draining - sucking the energy right out of you. It can leave you unable to think carefully and make good judgement calls. It uses clarity as its fuel and burns the mind given enough time.
Perhaps I am being too negative, but In my current state, I don't feel physically prepared quite enough for it.
So what's left? Late night anime, sore eyes, and disappointing relationships.
Eh, its not quite that bad, but yeah.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Gaming with Canadians and language
I would like to say it hasn't changed me, but that wouldn't be very honest on my part. I am learning French. Most of the time now when I am on listening on our Ventrillo server it is to my friends speaking French. I am watching Canadian educational videos as well. But what is a language anyway? Is is just a means of expression? I would like to think so. But apparently its more than just that. Although the underlying humans just trying to be themselves and have fun and enjoy life is the same, I can clearly sense there are advantages and disadvantages to certain languages as means of expressing certain kind of experiences. Not so unlike programming languages actually. Japanese for example has more ways to be polite than you can shake a stick at. For each verb there is a plain and polite form. On top of that there are polite verbs that replace regular verbs that have a plain and polite forms. In addition, there are helping verbs that make the sentence more polite. Is that everything? Nope! There are words for the word 'you' that are either polite or rude or anything in between.
So, what about French? Well, I haven't dived too deeply into the grammar, but at the base level you can have very different sounds representing the same idea in English. I would go further to say there are certain kinds of sounds that are more common or more emphasized in each different language. I believe we as humans unconsciously associate certain combinations of sounds and as familiar and acceptable. When we are placed in an environment where the sounds are not what we associate with normal, we can become uncomfortable. So does the uncomfortability reveal an aspect of myself that I have not yet accepted? Maybe but its not something I could hope to put into words. Am I learning French to become comfortable with these sounds? Yes, but also so I can understand my friends.
So what about gaming? Well the truth is its fun - especially with friends. And the language doesn't matter so much, only the attitude of the people you play with.
So, what about French? Well, I haven't dived too deeply into the grammar, but at the base level you can have very different sounds representing the same idea in English. I would go further to say there are certain kinds of sounds that are more common or more emphasized in each different language. I believe we as humans unconsciously associate certain combinations of sounds and as familiar and acceptable. When we are placed in an environment where the sounds are not what we associate with normal, we can become uncomfortable. So does the uncomfortability reveal an aspect of myself that I have not yet accepted? Maybe but its not something I could hope to put into words. Am I learning French to become comfortable with these sounds? Yes, but also so I can understand my friends.
So what about gaming? Well the truth is its fun - especially with friends. And the language doesn't matter so much, only the attitude of the people you play with.
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