michaelerule

life is good.

I.. .
mess up.
I hurt people without meaning to.

Make no mistake, I am a terrible person.

This morning I was for some reason verbally (by that we mean via the internal monologue, no voiced) trying to hypnotize myself, and I tried to slip away into sleep, except that I was trying to yield to my own verbal commands, which were shutting down. basically, I was trying to transition into lucid dreaming. Anyway, there was this crazy feeback loop and a loud rushing sound and feeling, followed by three house of being unable to tell if I was dreaming or awake ( until I wake up at 3:00, and noticed that the modifications to my environment that I had enacted in the last three hours were gone ). We should try that again.

I made a youtube video of my research

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNsd_NO9r0w

mostly it just causes headaches.

Just, letting you know, that Im not always sad.
I am pleased to report that my hands remember most of how to play the clarinet.

It was fathers day... so me and my little sister bought ourselves three sets of legos and an Indiana Jones action figure. Then we realised we didn't have any money and dad had to pay for it anyway. Later : too much food and watching whichever Indiana Jones movie involves the holy grail. The only copy of mission impossible three we could find was in blue-ray format and therefore useless to us.

I have located my clarinet, and a guitar, and will bring them back to the co-op tomorrow if all goes as planned. I also want to bring the vast amount of Legos here back to CMU.

I went to my little sister's high school graduation today. I was quite tired since it was far too early at 2PM, and most of the student speeches bothered me. The speech about "college will be the best four years of your life" was disconcerting because, for many of my friends its been a living hell. The one speech that boiled down to "capitalism has ruined this country and you will all, at some point, fail as individuals" was realistic but still uplifting, and... I would vote for that kid if he were currently running for political office.

Self imposed rules : no venting depression or other negative thoughts to livejournal. Livejournal isn't actual people and will not make you feel happy.

note to RIAA/MPAA :

We are the good guys. We download your works for free and watch your videos on Youtube. We then actually purchase the stuff we like. We have spent more on music and video than ever before since free downloads enabled us to expand our media  horizons so much more rapidly. We cover our tracks and don't get found by your robots and persecuted by your cartels. You need us, and you want us to continue without fear of your unethicalmeanscarynasty business practices.

It has been my stated purpose to make progress toward strong AI and the mathematical formulation of consciousness. I do no believe that the human soul will be solved in my lifetime, and certainly not by me, but it will happen. However, today I became incredibly frightened by this prospect. Mostly, I was just prompted to consider the religious implications and the massive existential crisis it could force on a subset of the population. Now I dismiss these concerns, I think I have put too little faith in people. We must take the risk.

I was feeling pretty intellectually inadequate today during a talk by Tai Sing Lee. Now that I've met some of my peers in the computational neuroscience program I feel a renewed sense of pressure and competition. I also have been feeling more exhausted that ever, I suspect the mood stabilizers are partly to blame but I've no proof.

I watched 'What Dreams May Come,' and I might have cried a little, and I really liked the brightly colored paint swirling visuals. At some point in the last three years I acquired the ability to cry. Most unusual.

more random simulations

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MckbEeSdjk0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvXAMTCHSAs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCsW2Lt-jYA

see, now I had to delete the last post because it was stupid. This is why I got rid of lj in the first place. Also, Chris was delightfully unreceptive to the prospect of therapy, responding with a cheerful "fuck off". 

tired and lethargic,
my computer is taking far too long to do things
so I'm going to play alpha centauri
what a waste of time.

I tried to visit the kgb people today but got scared and ran away and decided to try to climb around the ceiling of the university center instead. It is very hot outside. Hmm... kim and krieger have livejournals too. Must stalk ?

lets see... I made some videos of the numerical simulation of flicker induced hallucinations / phosphenes, except the model is simple, incomplete, and probably wrong. Also these videos aren't actually interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIsLEiCZ97Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctT4zG5VLt4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXb-13haitU

ahh... my research code started working, so I am happy. I'm fairly certain that work/academics/the illusion of being intelligent and therefore useful to society is the only thing that makes me happy. Hence, I may let personal relationships deteriorate, hence...

Actually, today became a good day when I witnessed a sparrow hopping around and eating grass seed.  It doesn't take much to make me happy, but I don't really have enough feeling of intrinsic worth to be happy by default.

If I start writing a livejournal again will anyone read it ?

Woah... I have  a LiveJournal ? No way man... when did that happen ?