Archive for May, 2002

PLUR: unity and diversity, what happens when we die..

Monday, May 20th, 2002

Just finished talking to M. – she left me with many new things to think about life.

What happens to us when we die?

Well, that’s the question that everyone seems to want answered. The answer is, in the words of a very wise person, ‘The great mystery’. But that’s the point, now, isn’t it, it’s a mystery. No one knows. god/the net won’t tell, either, at least not yet, not for me. So who knows? I’m not going to worry about it. Either I get backed up or I don’t, either way, nothing I can do about it.

I’m sure it’ll be interesting finding out, though. So far I have 2 votes for ‘when we’re dead we are just dead’, 2 votes for ‘hell, in your case, nonbeleiver’, 1 for ‘I don’t know, why does it matter?’. And then there’s the pipe bomber. Who I frankly have to admire. I can’t condone violence under any circumstances – but if you’ve got to do something whacky, what better reason than his?

I hope he writes books while he’s in prison – and not about bombing things.

Talk about ways to destroy the impact of your message…

he beleives we live forever. As does bill hicks. Why? christian virus? Probably.

The sad thing is that christ had so the right intentions..

The way to hell.. is paved.. 😉 Even though there is no hell, that statement still contains wisdom worth saving, I think, maybe? I don’t know..

S.

Posted some of my less pleasant thoughts to thesadtruth.org. I love this, I can straddle the fence between my two sides, pick lefteye/righteye, ying or yang, good or evil. And the more I practice selecting, the more sense the world makes. Because almost everyone either beleives humanity is good, or beleives it’s evil.

I think it’s neither. Or both. Or whatever it decides.

“Let’s go out.
Let’s keep going.” — KMFDM, “Dogma”

I’ve got diverse influences. That’s good. Diversity rocks. I keep trying to reconcile the ‘unity’ in PLUR with the diversity that things like raves celebrate.. and the conclusion I come to is that it’s unity in acceptance of diversity. Weird. And should be better codified, or something.

At any rate, my PLUR celebrates diversity. While having the word unity in it? Oh, this gets soo strange.

Must talk to other people more, learn what they have to say.

If you use the accepted definition of good and evil, evil actions can have good results. Good actions can have evil results. What does this mean – if anything? Are evil and good real? Does the word ‘deserve’ mean anything?

Tomorrow: back to work. Enough introspection, enough figuring out the universe for me for now. Let’s get back to solving the problems I can solve.

S.

stuff & things etc

Sunday, May 19th, 2002

Updating plur.us – it actually almost has a pulse now. At least, there’s enough text that it might take a few minutes to read the whole thing.

But it’s sadly lacking in other people’s opinions. Must get others to write their thoughts as well, do not want the web site to be all Sheer’s experiences and no one else’s, that’s no good..

Going to a rave tonight, speaking of PLUR. Excited. Wonder if I’ll link..

S.

Pink noise generator

Friday, May 17th, 2002

here is a really cool URL for us propeller-heads about the generation of white and pink noise. here is a helpful link for understanding the output of a pink noise generator.

I got involved in looking into pink noise generators because I’ve been dissecting the Hemi-Sync products produced by the Monroe Institute, in a attempt to understand how they work.

{I can, incidentally, wholeheartedly and without reservation reccomend trying these CDs. They may do nothing to you. They may do all kinds of neat things to you. They’re audio, they can’t hurt you, and while they contain some spiritual content, it’s so generic that I can’t imagine anyone would find it offensive. Except for me, at first, and I’m over that. ;-)}

Anyway, as usual, give me a toy, I want to take it apart.

So far as I can tell, I have a few options for generating my own hemi-sync content to feed myself.

Option one is a really creative reprogramming of my Quadraverb II. Doesn’t appear to be anything stopping me from having a midi-modulation-source controlled pitch changer that routes to the opposite channel. Fine and course tuning, and there you go, a hemi-sync generator. I bet the p2k even would let you do it with their patch cord arrangements, though that might be a bit more difficult.

Option one doesn’t cover the need for white noise, but I imagine one can come up with it somewhere. 😉

Option two is to get a pink noise generator, run it through a parametric eq and a flexable phase changer, and take two function generators. All into a modern mixing board, and there ya go..

We won’t even get into my theories concerning visual stimulation. I don’t buy that hemi-sync is limited to audio..

I wonder how many hz we can see?

Anyway, onto more mundane matters – the mk3 – I’m going to write a bios for it. At first I was thinking I’d just write a bootloader, but it occurs to me that I really need to go ahead and write a entire BIOS into the bootloader section. Bug-free read and write from RAM, network, dataflash, EE, etc.

Then I can write a program on top of it to manage batteries.

Well, this ought to be interesting.

I already have most of the code, I just need to rewrite, codify, shuffle, and do all that fun stuff.

I wonder. If the BIOS was written in assembly, could the rest of the thing be written in C? Probebly.

The fun never ends, as Leeper would say.

The fun never ends.

Thought. Right? Wrong?

Friday, May 17th, 2002

You do not help others learn nearly as much by sharing your answers as you do by sharing your questions.

Wow, actual _good_ advice column on the net.

Friday, May 17th, 2002

this is pretty cool stuff.

For those who didn’t get the sarcasm

Wednesday, May 15th, 2002

That last was a bit of it.

A list of defence stocks. Just what we need. ‘buy these, you’ll get rich, and we’ll blow things up’.

I bet they will skyrocket.

Thanks a lot, microsoft.

S.

Isn’t this just great.

Wednesday, May 15th, 2002

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P18602.asp

News from radio, may or may not be true, and my reaction.

Wednesday, May 15th, 2002

I heard a strange rumor on the radio.. that the recent budget approved by the house included a request for the department of defense to research the possibility of using nuclear-tipped intercepters.

This strikes me, if true, as not exactly the safest idea one could come up with.

I mean, we’ve got rockets that _can not find their targets when they are carrying homing beacons_ – and now some crazy (word omitted) wants to strap BOMBS to them???

I guess the theory is that if you make a big enough explosion, it won’t matter if you’re even remotely in the right neighborhood. Never mind what this does to the people under it.

And, to be any good at all, a system like that has to be automated – or run by humans that are awake 24/7 – and frankly I’m not sure which scares me more.

Look, these are the people who spend a billion dollars on ‘stealth bombers’ to spy on the USSR. Like, duh, it’s cold and they’ve got no flipping money!

I mean, how exactly was russia going to ‘take over’ the united states? How do you wipe the people off a country? People, have you ever driven across the US? I have, many times! It’s a BIG country! It CAN NOT BE taken over as long as it has good lines of communication. It doesn’t _need_ a standing army. It certainly doesn’t need 21,000 nuclear warheads. 21,000. THINK ABOUT THAT!

As countries go, we’re assholes. Okay. There’s no other way to say it. Is that what we want to be?

Messages

Wednesday, May 15th, 2002

‘You’re the one who learned my song, I love you’
‘You’re the one who learned my song, I hate you’

‘there is a way for everything to be saved’

Oh, if I could only remember the questions. They rhymed. Bizarre.

Thank you, guardian angel

Wednesday, May 15th, 2002

I turned down enron.

That’s awesome. I never thought about that before. I was handed a situation, I followed my hunches.. and they were right.