think about doors that open by themselves, as if they were alive. think about rooms that can become cold in the day and boxes that light up. think about boxes that can make voices come out of nowhere. think about the energy delivered into our homes, as if from nowhere. think about the power plants that generate all this power. think about the fossil fuels that burn to release the energy to drive power plants. think about the lives that used to be in the fossiles that now burn to work for us, as if their ghosts have been called back to life into slavery to our urban fetishes. is this not the city, where the living and the dead live together? is this not the city where the dead still live in their death and those alive are dead in their living?
nothing comes from nothing. if the fan can move by itself, surely something, someone must have poured its energy into it. it's just so immense, the amount of energy we release. sometimes i think that all this energy running around is really the ghosts of the past, that all urbanisation must necessary suck the life out of someone or something in order to run itself.
think about outsourcing. think about how little we pay those workers out there to maintain our margins over here. think about how little Singapore pays foreign construction workers to build its prosperity.
if we found stupid aliens on mars, we'd probably bring them back to work in factories for us as well.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
Imagine a pill...
that would be the fruit of Genetics, Nano Technology and Biotechnology, that when swallowed, would go into your system and find its way around your body, using the protein that it finds around to build components required for more complex genetic computations, planting the appropriate components in specific parts of the body, and finally finding its way to the brain, planting its sensory components there to receive instruction from the brain.
Imagine that this system could capture images in the retina and save them or send them out to external systems, giving you a kind of printable photographic memory that obseletes the camera, taking advantage of the eyes which are by farmore perfect nearer perfection that any lens possible.
Imagine being able to authenticate your identity in a way that allows you to go shopping without having to bring even a card. You just take what you what and go home.
Imagine being able to access information without a compture or a phone or anything, knowing all, yet not knowing anything.
Imagine messaging in your head, being telepathically connected to the world.
Imagine being able to move from country to country without needing a passport.
Imagine having to swallow a second pill because there were some problems with the first.
Imagine the pill to have some bugs and you go into security alert.
Imagine someone hacking into you and you are screwed because you stored too many important things not in your brain, but in the system inside your brain.
Imagine being able to do your work suntanning on a resort island and nobody knows you are in your swimming trunks.
Imagine getting paid for renting out five minutes of your brain a day.
Imagine being able to learn anything so quickly that people really realise the value of the journey.
Imagine how work and leisure fuse so readily it becomes ever more important to learn how work could be enjoyable, and that work is an inevitable part of life.
Imagine a different pill that is able to uninstall all this.
So, would you rather the blue pill or the red pill?
that would be the fruit of Genetics, Nano Technology and Biotechnology, that when swallowed, would go into your system and find its way around your body, using the protein that it finds around to build components required for more complex genetic computations, planting the appropriate components in specific parts of the body, and finally finding its way to the brain, planting its sensory components there to receive instruction from the brain.
Imagine that this system could capture images in the retina and save them or send them out to external systems, giving you a kind of printable photographic memory that obseletes the camera, taking advantage of the eyes which are by far
Imagine being able to authenticate your identity in a way that allows you to go shopping without having to bring even a card. You just take what you what and go home.
Imagine being able to access information without a compture or a phone or anything, knowing all, yet not knowing anything.
Imagine messaging in your head, being telepathically connected to the world.
Imagine being able to move from country to country without needing a passport.
Imagine having to swallow a second pill because there were some problems with the first.
Imagine the pill to have some bugs and you go into security alert.
Imagine someone hacking into you and you are screwed because you stored too many important things not in your brain, but in the system inside your brain.
Imagine being able to do your work suntanning on a resort island and nobody knows you are in your swimming trunks.
Imagine getting paid for renting out five minutes of your brain a day.
Imagine being able to learn anything so quickly that people really realise the value of the journey.
Imagine how work and leisure fuse so readily it becomes ever more important to learn how work could be enjoyable, and that work is an inevitable part of life.
Imagine a different pill that is able to uninstall all this.
So, would you rather the blue pill or the red pill?
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Friday, June 16, 2006
Sunday, May 21, 2006
no more gymmers, please. because gyms don't make hunks. all these gyms around here are just churning out these strange people, with the body of a construction worker and the personality of a mouse. it's just distasteful, like pop songs getting sung by an opera singer. it's just painful.
if u wanna be a hunk, start from your personality. so that when you get that body working, you know how to handle it, and so that behind those huge chests, you also have an equally big heart to match up to it. because, because, the size of your personality matters.
if u wanna be a hunk, start from your personality. so that when you get that body working, you know how to handle it, and so that behind those huge chests, you also have an equally big heart to match up to it. because, because, the size of your personality matters.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Thought this was interesting. An exhibition at Tokyo featuring 116 life-sized panels of persons who had passed away in accidents and crimes, including those of children and of those who lost their lives to drunk drivers. The driving message of the exhibition was "life", and the panels featured articles such as photographs and shoes that belonged to the deceased, as well as messages written by the bereaved. In a time when Japan experiences so many murders and deaths, it was only timely that such an exhibition remind us again of how precious life is, and how much more we need to address crimes and accidents as very urgent social problems.
Original text: 生命のメッセージ展 始まる
Original text: 生命のメッセージ展 始まる
Friday, April 21, 2006
energy, rhythm and line
is what i have learnt from swimming, and is my current analogy for everything around me. refraining from writing long essays that give examples and then explain these examples, here's the heart of it all:
[energy - callibre]
energy to me, is the deep capacity for action. energy does not determine what you do or how much of it you can do, but rather, at what level you can do it. it is the substance that is consumed in action, the wax that is burnt to give light.
[rhythm - heartbeat]
rhythm is the consistency at which you can do things. in the short term, this is how regular you are to perform. it is the dynamism on a microscopic level that paces you to look forward.
[line - imagination]
it would be tempting to use the word "vision" but i thought "imagination" is less assuming. line is the process that pictures the present, imagines the future, and manifests this imagination in the physical world. this was my last addition to the set, when my freestyle somehow wasn't moving. line is what makes you move. line gives you the big picture that allows you to pace your rhythm.
That's all. There would be many things that flow from this analogy... but that would be another lesson.
is what i have learnt from swimming, and is my current analogy for everything around me. refraining from writing long essays that give examples and then explain these examples, here's the heart of it all:
[energy - callibre]
energy to me, is the deep capacity for action. energy does not determine what you do or how much of it you can do, but rather, at what level you can do it. it is the substance that is consumed in action, the wax that is burnt to give light.
[rhythm - heartbeat]
rhythm is the consistency at which you can do things. in the short term, this is how regular you are to perform. it is the dynamism on a microscopic level that paces you to look forward.
[line - imagination]
it would be tempting to use the word "vision" but i thought "imagination" is less assuming. line is the process that pictures the present, imagines the future, and manifests this imagination in the physical world. this was my last addition to the set, when my freestyle somehow wasn't moving. line is what makes you move. line gives you the big picture that allows you to pace your rhythm.
That's all. There would be many things that flow from this analogy... but that would be another lesson.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
my take on internet censorship
barring physical distance and network infrastructure that gives rise to poor connection, the internet has no definite boundaries.
yes, there are administrative boundaries, that can control how and to whom information can go out from private servers, but controlling what your users can access, on a nation-wide level, is quite a different matter.
on private networks, it is feasible, common and fair to implement proxies through which all traffic must be filtered, since such networks are relatively small (usually only up to a few thousand machines) and usually all the servers and often most of the clients as well, are completely owned by an organisation.
on a nation-wide network, however, users are connected through backbone lines to the internet. information is not just freely accessible, but overflowing. The practicals:
1. for gateways that filter on domains, a trivial workaround would be accessing content via public gateways. gone to china, done that.
2. for gateways that filter on content, encrypted traffice via a know foreign server would do the trick.
3. if you're looking for pure content, you could always try another language.
4. you could always get your friend overseas to keep you updated. if you don't have one, you could always find one on some chat server, forum, community, IM or dating site.
5. enforcing policies on local content providers does not mean that similar content is not available. uses will find it on foreign servers. unless you can shut the whole america down...
6. some countries have export laws surrounding software. but always, someone out there writes something similar and gives it away for free, from a server sitting in a country that doesn't have such laws. i still think it stupid to have a law that dictates whether you can send software out of a country purely based on the fact that the software was written while in a certain country. anyway, the link is usually there and you just have to click "OK"...
the principles:
1. the whole concept of the internet sits on the abstraction of physical connections. this is philosophically in disagreement with trying to enforce physically-based policies.
2. the internet is full of redundant links. meaning that if you close down one link (ie, filter at a gateway), chances are there are other links to the content.
3. search engines cache content. even if a content has been taken down, it is possible that a cache of it is available.
4. because we do commercial transactions on the net, we need encryption to work. the same encryption can let us tunnel through forign proxies and get to the content we want without the scrutinity of censoring proxies.
5. the internet is a world totally different from the physical world. the whole (yes, 100% of it) internet is made by hackers, not by policy makers. hackers made it work beyond physical and political boundaries and policy makers cannot change that. if there were any rules or laws in this world, their enforcement and implementation would have to be as profoundly different as the internet is different from freight routes.
6. people who grew up with the internet create a different social atmosphere. we need to remember how piracy actually drives sales through free marketing and customer education, and work from there. in the real world, theft leads to loss of profit. but when you step into the software world, everything is about knowledge. and it is knowledge that drives the hunger for greater knowledge. the only real reason people want to protect their trade in knowledge, i believe, is because they are not confident of growing faster than their customers to continuously attain a greater capacitiy to provide even more knowledge. ridiculous sales margins claiming to retrieve previous investments in research, at the end of the day, i believe, contributes to social stress. and i think the stress is building up - no longer between the workers and the beauracrary, but between knowledege workers who are scattered all over, including within the beauracrary, and the managers, sales people and politicians, whose sole purpose in this all is to reap as much unbelievable profit as they can. the difference is this - the beauracry used to own all the facilities in which workers can create something of value that can be sold by the beauracracy for money or power, but now, the worker owns all of this. in fact, the worker himself, is the facility from which all value flows. admitedly, the greed and selfishness of people will never change. but a new social order where the knowledge workers hold not just knowledge but also the ability to implement policies and managers have the authority but not the means to put their policies across, it would be interesting to see how they would evolve. as knowledge economies become more specialised and workers become more highly skilled and self-sufficient while markets becoming more discerning, the power game i think, would take on a new dimension. in such a world, the top-down approach to internet censorship is simply strange.
7. the reason we are starting to have social problems arising from the use of the internet, i believe, is not because we are not controlling the medium strictly enough, but because the policy makers have not come to terms with its nature. social response all these problems are signs that the old order is losing ground and a new balance has not been achived. i think policy makers need to change their approach to the internet and cosider it part of the social fabric in order to make policies that will work. but this might take a generation, when those who grew up with the internet become policy makers.
well, give and take, that's my take. might not be yours, for now, but let's just wait and see.
barring physical distance and network infrastructure that gives rise to poor connection, the internet has no definite boundaries.
yes, there are administrative boundaries, that can control how and to whom information can go out from private servers, but controlling what your users can access, on a nation-wide level, is quite a different matter.
on private networks, it is feasible, common and fair to implement proxies through which all traffic must be filtered, since such networks are relatively small (usually only up to a few thousand machines) and usually all the servers and often most of the clients as well, are completely owned by an organisation.
on a nation-wide network, however, users are connected through backbone lines to the internet. information is not just freely accessible, but overflowing. The practicals:
1. for gateways that filter on domains, a trivial workaround would be accessing content via public gateways. gone to china, done that.
2. for gateways that filter on content, encrypted traffice via a know foreign server would do the trick.
3. if you're looking for pure content, you could always try another language.
4. you could always get your friend overseas to keep you updated. if you don't have one, you could always find one on some chat server, forum, community, IM or dating site.
5. enforcing policies on local content providers does not mean that similar content is not available. uses will find it on foreign servers. unless you can shut the whole america down...
6. some countries have export laws surrounding software. but always, someone out there writes something similar and gives it away for free, from a server sitting in a country that doesn't have such laws. i still think it stupid to have a law that dictates whether you can send software out of a country purely based on the fact that the software was written while in a certain country. anyway, the link is usually there and you just have to click "OK"...
the principles:
1. the whole concept of the internet sits on the abstraction of physical connections. this is philosophically in disagreement with trying to enforce physically-based policies.
2. the internet is full of redundant links. meaning that if you close down one link (ie, filter at a gateway), chances are there are other links to the content.
3. search engines cache content. even if a content has been taken down, it is possible that a cache of it is available.
4. because we do commercial transactions on the net, we need encryption to work. the same encryption can let us tunnel through forign proxies and get to the content we want without the scrutinity of censoring proxies.
5. the internet is a world totally different from the physical world. the whole (yes, 100% of it) internet is made by hackers, not by policy makers. hackers made it work beyond physical and political boundaries and policy makers cannot change that. if there were any rules or laws in this world, their enforcement and implementation would have to be as profoundly different as the internet is different from freight routes.
6. people who grew up with the internet create a different social atmosphere. we need to remember how piracy actually drives sales through free marketing and customer education, and work from there. in the real world, theft leads to loss of profit. but when you step into the software world, everything is about knowledge. and it is knowledge that drives the hunger for greater knowledge. the only real reason people want to protect their trade in knowledge, i believe, is because they are not confident of growing faster than their customers to continuously attain a greater capacitiy to provide even more knowledge. ridiculous sales margins claiming to retrieve previous investments in research, at the end of the day, i believe, contributes to social stress. and i think the stress is building up - no longer between the workers and the beauracrary, but between knowledege workers who are scattered all over, including within the beauracrary, and the managers, sales people and politicians, whose sole purpose in this all is to reap as much unbelievable profit as they can. the difference is this - the beauracry used to own all the facilities in which workers can create something of value that can be sold by the beauracracy for money or power, but now, the worker owns all of this. in fact, the worker himself, is the facility from which all value flows. admitedly, the greed and selfishness of people will never change. but a new social order where the knowledge workers hold not just knowledge but also the ability to implement policies and managers have the authority but not the means to put their policies across, it would be interesting to see how they would evolve. as knowledge economies become more specialised and workers become more highly skilled and self-sufficient while markets becoming more discerning, the power game i think, would take on a new dimension. in such a world, the top-down approach to internet censorship is simply strange.
7. the reason we are starting to have social problems arising from the use of the internet, i believe, is not because we are not controlling the medium strictly enough, but because the policy makers have not come to terms with its nature. social response all these problems are signs that the old order is losing ground and a new balance has not been achived. i think policy makers need to change their approach to the internet and cosider it part of the social fabric in order to make policies that will work. but this might take a generation, when those who grew up with the internet become policy makers.
well, give and take, that's my take. might not be yours, for now, but let's just wait and see.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Friday, March 10, 2006
stuck in the office
nowhere to go
no place to be
just myself
away from everything
what people think i am
supposed to be
stale
everywhere i breathe in the air
breathed on me
and now i just don't want to be
anything at all. i hate it that i used to be
such a good kid
that all these suckers around me are now putting chains around me
to keep me
the way i was; i hate it that i had not wasted all that energy
fighting parents that think i'll never learn to decide
what to do
next!
why does the world seem that bad when it is just one person
maybe two
who haven't learnt to love enough to let go?
Friday, March 03, 2006
Friday, February 24, 2006
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Monday, February 13, 2006
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Friday, February 10, 2006
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
言葉は
感情的で、
残酷で、
時に無力だ。
それでも
私たちは信じている、
言葉のチカラを。
Words are so emotional, so cruel, and at times, so feeble.
Still, we choose to deliver that power of words in which we believe.
とは、電車でみた朝日新聞「ジャーナリスト宣言」キャンペーンのキャッチコピー。なんて力強いと思う。ジャーナリズムの原点に戻す言葉だ。そして人間の生きる勇気を呼び出す言葉。信じていることを言う。信じている生き方で生きる。僕は僕らしく生きていけばいい。すばらしい言葉だと思う。人生を改めて、信じましょう。
I love these words from Asahi Shinbun's "Journalists' Declaration" compaign. Full of power, even returning journalism to its roots and calling forth the courage to live. The strength to speak one's mind, and to live the life that one believes in. To live just as one is. Despite all that is happening around us, it calls us to believe afresh, in life itself. Do not go gently into that good night / Fight, fight against the dying of the light!
感情的で、
残酷で、
時に無力だ。
それでも
私たちは信じている、
言葉のチカラを。
Words are so emotional, so cruel, and at times, so feeble.
Still, we choose to deliver that power of words in which we believe.
とは、電車でみた朝日新聞「ジャーナリスト宣言」キャンペーンのキャッチコピー。なんて力強いと思う。ジャーナリズムの原点に戻す言葉だ。そして人間の生きる勇気を呼び出す言葉。信じていることを言う。信じている生き方で生きる。僕は僕らしく生きていけばいい。すばらしい言葉だと思う。人生を改めて、信じましょう。
I love these words from Asahi Shinbun's "Journalists' Declaration" compaign. Full of power, even returning journalism to its roots and calling forth the courage to live. The strength to speak one's mind, and to live the life that one believes in. To live just as one is. Despite all that is happening around us, it calls us to believe afresh, in life itself. Do not go gently into that good night / Fight, fight against the dying of the light!
Thursday, January 26, 2006
time freezes at airports. it's funny, because it is exactly because everying is timed to the minute that time is frozen there. flights come in and go out all the time. and the florescent lighting doesn't give you a clue whether the sun was up outside. people of all races walk around you, some sitting around, as if waiting for eternity to begin, sometimes rushing like fish shooting themsleves at a floating bait. it is like the gears in a clockwork, that, by precisely being the mechanism on which time is built, alienates itself from the substance of time. the gears rotate, and maybe some arms move, but inside the clock, twelve midnight is just as well as any second that gives way to the next eternity. Four flights in five days, and my time stil hasn't seem to have thawed.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
mascular memory
amazing. i'm at the airport and tried logging into the public teminals with my password... and suddenly i couldn't log in... panicked and wondered what happened overnight because i had just logged in the night before... sat down with my notebook plugged into the free ports and tried and tried... until i tried logging into an account i log in everyday and my fingers just did it...
passwords are mascular conditioning, i tell you... your fingers remember them better than you do... give them a chance!
amazing. i'm at the airport and tried logging into the public teminals with my password... and suddenly i couldn't log in... panicked and wondered what happened overnight because i had just logged in the night before... sat down with my notebook plugged into the free ports and tried and tried... until i tried logging into an account i log in everyday and my fingers just did it...
passwords are mascular conditioning, i tell you... your fingers remember them better than you do... give them a chance!
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Monday, January 09, 2006
it's been raining the whole day today, and it's still raining. love rains, and today it rained the kind of rain i love. i love rains because, unless we live underground, it is one thing that remains that still connects the city back to nature. i love rains, because when it rains, the whole land is at rest.
today's rain was particularly restful. big fat soft raindrops breaking on drooping leaves and the hungry earth. even the wind was still. and even my eyes wanted to close, calling me to lie down and slow myself down to the rhythm of the earth and join it in its rest.
maybe it's just the too many agendas and too many appointments that we have that we forget how we ought have lay down and let life take its pace. surely, a rain this pretty coudln't have been an inconvenience?
today's rain was particularly restful. big fat soft raindrops breaking on drooping leaves and the hungry earth. even the wind was still. and even my eyes wanted to close, calling me to lie down and slow myself down to the rhythm of the earth and join it in its rest.
maybe it's just the too many agendas and too many appointments that we have that we forget how we ought have lay down and let life take its pace. surely, a rain this pretty coudln't have been an inconvenience?
Friday, January 06, 2006
internationalisation vs evolution
i would suppose that the creation (c) of information has at least two factors: the way we think (f), and the information around us we are exposed to (i). That means something like this:
f:i -> c
this means that to maximise c, we will need to maixmise both the range of i and the size of the function class of f. this has two implications:
(1) information needs to be shared as widely as possible
(2) the way we think need to be as varied as possible
which IMHO are somewhat contrary to each other, in the sense that, to achieve (1), we need to branch out and internationalise our horizons; but globalisation inevitably brings in some degree of homogenisation, which does not agree with (2). It is then the challenge for every knowledge economy to absorb the world's wealth of information, and somehow, choose not to conform. Only then can it become and remain a creator of information instead of being a receipient.
some countries have done well in this, others haven't. Those that do well, do a lot for themselves - not just because information sells, but i think this has a lot more to do with identity. or at least attitude - because they have seen the great wealth of information out there, yet for some reason, chosen not to give up their own set of thinking frameworks. only then would their thinking be given a chance, to evolve.
i have come to believe quite a bit in human evolution. not the darwinian one, but rather evolution as opposed to revolution. i think people change in two ways - they either change so that they can make their surroundings suit them, or they change so that they will suit their surroundings. while changing one's surrounding sounds heroic and all, one must remain powerful enough to drive all this change, and to continue driving it; on the other hand, changing oneself to suit his surroundings requires that the practioner remain flexible enough to continue adapting. the advantage here, though, is that even when you're up against someone who is adapting in a direction different than you, you are still used to adapting to your surroundings - but one who must drive change, must drive others out of their change as well. if you're up against the world, that could be quite a big drive you will need.
the difficult thing about human evolution, though, is in adapting constructively. that means, every change should add to, and not remove, adaptability. and this, as you can imagine, can be quite a complex problem with no standard answer. but this is what makes it worth its while - when everyone evolves independantly, everyone would represent an isolated ecosystem of information. and this is what i mean by maixmising (f), the way we think.
we need to make our surroundings a self-sufficient ecosystem of information. if you americanise too much, you would lose some of your thought-identity. you would become american. but surely, there's always more than one way to do things. live, and let live.
i would suppose that the creation (c) of information has at least two factors: the way we think (f), and the information around us we are exposed to (i). That means something like this:
f:i -> c
this means that to maximise c, we will need to maixmise both the range of i and the size of the function class of f. this has two implications:
(1) information needs to be shared as widely as possible
(2) the way we think need to be as varied as possible
which IMHO are somewhat contrary to each other, in the sense that, to achieve (1), we need to branch out and internationalise our horizons; but globalisation inevitably brings in some degree of homogenisation, which does not agree with (2). It is then the challenge for every knowledge economy to absorb the world's wealth of information, and somehow, choose not to conform. Only then can it become and remain a creator of information instead of being a receipient.
some countries have done well in this, others haven't. Those that do well, do a lot for themselves - not just because information sells, but i think this has a lot more to do with identity. or at least attitude - because they have seen the great wealth of information out there, yet for some reason, chosen not to give up their own set of thinking frameworks. only then would their thinking be given a chance, to evolve.
i have come to believe quite a bit in human evolution. not the darwinian one, but rather evolution as opposed to revolution. i think people change in two ways - they either change so that they can make their surroundings suit them, or they change so that they will suit their surroundings. while changing one's surrounding sounds heroic and all, one must remain powerful enough to drive all this change, and to continue driving it; on the other hand, changing oneself to suit his surroundings requires that the practioner remain flexible enough to continue adapting. the advantage here, though, is that even when you're up against someone who is adapting in a direction different than you, you are still used to adapting to your surroundings - but one who must drive change, must drive others out of their change as well. if you're up against the world, that could be quite a big drive you will need.
the difficult thing about human evolution, though, is in adapting constructively. that means, every change should add to, and not remove, adaptability. and this, as you can imagine, can be quite a complex problem with no standard answer. but this is what makes it worth its while - when everyone evolves independantly, everyone would represent an isolated ecosystem of information. and this is what i mean by maixmising (f), the way we think.
we need to make our surroundings a self-sufficient ecosystem of information. if you americanise too much, you would lose some of your thought-identity. you would become american. but surely, there's always more than one way to do things. live, and let live.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Not that I know the origin of this typeface, but IMHO, this is the worst accident in typography and a blatant display of an ignorance of asian culture.
To start with, what analogy is it using to make its reference to asian culture? Which asian culture uses a cuneiform writing instrument? I can only find two possible conclusions:
1. The motive is actually cut bamboo leaves
2. The motive represents the slitty eyes that are typical of asians
In the case of (2), I would find it an insult. In the case of (1), if bamboo leaves were an important motive, then why don't I see native asian fonts using much of it?
Someone must have gotten something wrong somewhere.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
the meaning of "publishing" or "publication" is lost on this generation, and it's all the Internet's fault. the Internet is like an abstraction layer between the "physical world" and the "logical world". not that the logical world is ideal or anything, but what it does do, is remove the physical (aka real-world) boundaries from eye. at this point, in 2005/6, when Internet is at most gigabit for the everyday user, experienced users can still notice the difference between a server in USA and a server in Japan, but let's just say this is a temporary technial problem that will be gone by 2010.
my point is this - that the difference between a blog and a diary, is summed up in the world "publish". where a diary is a personal record, for one to find one's own tracks, a blog is a published statement, one's offerring to the world. but nowadays, people write about their private thoughts online as if it made no difference. maybe it really makes no difference to them - but maybe too, that it's not that they want their private lives to be examined, but that, they want a space to shout. to shout back at the world that has pushed them into little cubicles and pigeon holes. it is the peasant living in us, trying to throw stones at the palace walls of a tyrannical king.
so much for civilisation and industrialisation. every year, i come back to the same conclusion - that the world hasn't changed much since prehistory.
anyway, this entry has been sponsored by my new dairy. Proceeds from clicking-through will go to NKF.
my point is this - that the difference between a blog and a diary, is summed up in the world "publish". where a diary is a personal record, for one to find one's own tracks, a blog is a published statement, one's offerring to the world. but nowadays, people write about their private thoughts online as if it made no difference. maybe it really makes no difference to them - but maybe too, that it's not that they want their private lives to be examined, but that, they want a space to shout. to shout back at the world that has pushed them into little cubicles and pigeon holes. it is the peasant living in us, trying to throw stones at the palace walls of a tyrannical king.
so much for civilisation and industrialisation. every year, i come back to the same conclusion - that the world hasn't changed much since prehistory.
anyway, this entry has been sponsored by my new dairy. Proceeds from clicking-through will go to NKF.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
現実から逃避しようとはしていない。でも本当に手にしたいものは、もう何かをしたらもらえるものではない。買えるものなら、買ったらいい。見えるものなら見たらいい。わかるものならわかったらいい。でも僕に欲しいものは、「なる」ものだ。顔だけじゃなく、人間そのものを変えたい。前も言ったが、「無駄のない人間」になりたい。いろんな人のいろんな性格の一部を自分の中に取り込みたい。「似ているもの」ではなく、本物になりたいんだ。そんな術、そんな技、どこから習えるのかな。そ、そう。人間ステムセルになりたいです。無限なポテンシャルを秘める存在。それが、僕の生きる駆動力となっている。
だから、僕の道は違うんだ。その道を先に歩んだ先輩、僕にもその道を教えてください・・・
だから、僕の道は違うんだ。その道を先に歩んだ先輩、僕にもその道を教えてください・・・
Friday, December 16, 2005
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
This got me stumped - should I be excited about the possibilties of neural computation, or angry about animal testing?
Full story here
It sounds like science fiction: a brain nurtured in a Petri dish learns to pilot a fighter plane as scientists develop a new breed of "living" computer. But in groundbreaking experiments in a Florida laboratory that is exactly what is happening.
The "brain", grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a single rat embryo, has been taught to fly an F-22 jet simulator by scientists at the University of Florida.
Full story here
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Asu no Shinwa (Tomorrow's Legend)
Okamoto Taro's highest art.
This wall painting, measuring 5.5 by 30 metres, depicts the moment just after the nuclear bombing. Despite the dark and painful topic, the first response to the painting is probably "what is this?" - what draws you on the frist look is the powerful colour contrast, the lines that give it a certain beauty - the centrepiece of the work is a dancing skeleton - what is the message of this great piece? It being so dark, yet so beautiful makes the heart skip and the mind inquire.
Currently under restoration since its recovery from mexico after being lost for 30 years. Target completion 2007 July.
http://www.ntv.co.jp/dai2-junbi/photo.swf
http://www.1101.com/asunoshinwa/
http://www.ntv.co.jp/dai2-junbi/shinwa.html
Live coverage here.
This is zlel reporting from Singapore.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Harnessing artificial tornadoes as an energy source
(names may have been altered to protect the innocent)
eimajination: imagine weather war...
Edmund: more power in the wrong hands... scary thought
Edmund: since hurricanes and tornados generate their own self sustaining weather systems
eimajination: actually wat i think is third world countries should someday stop selling oil
eimajination: but sell power
Edmund: hmmm you have a point there
eimajination: then they will get out of poverty.
Edmund: the infrastructure's not gonna be easy though
eimajination: ya
eimajination: but now the develped countries are bullying the oil producing countries loh
Edmund: hmmm well since the 3rd world countries are already in that kinda debt
Edmund: heh
Edmund: might as well right
eimajination: it's just not right loh
eimajination: developed countries pretending to be civilised and all
Edmund: hey... economics make the world go round
eimajination: but it also makes the rich richer and the poor poorer
eimajination: it enforces a country-scaled global class system
Edmund: hmmm wonder how we can break that
eimajination: oil loh
eimajination: free market on oil
eimajination: let oil prices go according to demand
Edmund: hmmm energy costs are gonna sky rocket
Edmund: probably gonna force us to use alternative fuel as well
Edmund: hmm maybe not a bad idea
eimajination: yes
eimajination: IMHO it's the most concrete solution to 3rd world poverty loh
eimajination: but nobody wants to pay for their freedom
Edmund: well personally it might be a situation that the 3rd wold is too addicted to foreign aid
Edmund: it allows for a lot of things to remain in status quo
Edmund: no impetus to learn how to fish
Edmund: when the fish is given to you all the time
eimajination: ya but at the same time
eimajination: the so-called foreign aid is not real loh
eimajination: basically they WANT 3rd world countries to remain 3rd world countries
eimajination: instead of pouring in aid, i think they might be able to achieve more if they schooled a select group of kids all the way into university...
Edmund: hmmm how do you define the group?
Edmund: how can you confirm that one of them won't turn into some megalomaniacal maniac?
eimajination: u need to school them in their national values also loh
Edmund: schooling on national values is one thing
Edmund: accepting it is another
eimajination: ya but if u want them to be able to fish...
Edmund: and come on, how much does it cost to get a kid from infancy through uni?
Edmund: in the grand scheme of national budget
eimajination: not that much
Edmund: negligible
eimajination: therefore you can school quite a lot of kids
eimajination: mebbe a few thousand kids?
(names may have been altered to protect the innocent)
eimajination: imagine weather war...
Edmund: more power in the wrong hands... scary thought
Edmund: since hurricanes and tornados generate their own self sustaining weather systems
eimajination: actually wat i think is third world countries should someday stop selling oil
eimajination: but sell power
Edmund: hmmm you have a point there
eimajination: then they will get out of poverty.
Edmund: the infrastructure's not gonna be easy though
eimajination: ya
eimajination: but now the develped countries are bullying the oil producing countries loh
Edmund: hmmm well since the 3rd world countries are already in that kinda debt
Edmund: heh
Edmund: might as well right
eimajination: it's just not right loh
eimajination: developed countries pretending to be civilised and all
Edmund: hey... economics make the world go round
eimajination: but it also makes the rich richer and the poor poorer
eimajination: it enforces a country-scaled global class system
Edmund: hmmm wonder how we can break that
eimajination: oil loh
eimajination: free market on oil
eimajination: let oil prices go according to demand
Edmund: hmmm energy costs are gonna sky rocket
Edmund: probably gonna force us to use alternative fuel as well
Edmund: hmm maybe not a bad idea
eimajination: yes
eimajination: IMHO it's the most concrete solution to 3rd world poverty loh
eimajination: but nobody wants to pay for their freedom
Edmund: well personally it might be a situation that the 3rd wold is too addicted to foreign aid
Edmund: it allows for a lot of things to remain in status quo
Edmund: no impetus to learn how to fish
Edmund: when the fish is given to you all the time
eimajination: ya but at the same time
eimajination: the so-called foreign aid is not real loh
eimajination: basically they WANT 3rd world countries to remain 3rd world countries
eimajination: instead of pouring in aid, i think they might be able to achieve more if they schooled a select group of kids all the way into university...
Edmund: hmmm how do you define the group?
Edmund: how can you confirm that one of them won't turn into some megalomaniacal maniac?
eimajination: u need to school them in their national values also loh
Edmund: schooling on national values is one thing
Edmund: accepting it is another
eimajination: ya but if u want them to be able to fish...
Edmund: and come on, how much does it cost to get a kid from infancy through uni?
Edmund: in the grand scheme of national budget
eimajination: not that much
Edmund: negligible
eimajination: therefore you can school quite a lot of kids
eimajination: mebbe a few thousand kids?
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Say No to Handbills
The problem with doing a compaign to advocate saying no to handbills, is that you can't do handbills. You'd probably have to wear boards hung over your shoulders or hold up banners while the crowds go by. But still, I hate handbills.
Because handbills are expensive. To the marketing team, they may be one of the cheapest ways of advertising, but it's putting all the resources into the wrong places. Each sheet of handbill may only cost that much money, but they also warrant only that much attention. A victim walks by, collects a handbill, glances at it, walks to the corner, and tosses it - perhaps onto the floor. Worse still, passers-by taking pity on those whose work is the distribution of handbills, take a copy of the handbill only so that they can toss it off into a dustbin two metres away. All this when the industry does not assure us where all this paper is coming from. Are trees replanted for every tree fell for this? Business is disgusting.
Why not give out packets of tissue paper, or postit-pads or something that is of more use to the potential consumer? If you just want to get seen, why not get someone to hold up signboards or dress up so that you get the attention? Please please don't do anymore killer marketing campaigns...
Advertising agencies, please!
The problem with doing a compaign to advocate saying no to handbills, is that you can't do handbills. You'd probably have to wear boards hung over your shoulders or hold up banners while the crowds go by. But still, I hate handbills.
Because handbills are expensive. To the marketing team, they may be one of the cheapest ways of advertising, but it's putting all the resources into the wrong places. Each sheet of handbill may only cost that much money, but they also warrant only that much attention. A victim walks by, collects a handbill, glances at it, walks to the corner, and tosses it - perhaps onto the floor. Worse still, passers-by taking pity on those whose work is the distribution of handbills, take a copy of the handbill only so that they can toss it off into a dustbin two metres away. All this when the industry does not assure us where all this paper is coming from. Are trees replanted for every tree fell for this? Business is disgusting.
Why not give out packets of tissue paper, or postit-pads or something that is of more use to the potential consumer? If you just want to get seen, why not get someone to hold up signboards or dress up so that you get the attention? Please please don't do anymore killer marketing campaigns...
Advertising agencies, please!
Living Out of a Suitcase
Machine's been down and all this week I've been living on Knoppix. Just got the latest version on CD today, and finally got it figured out... had terrible problems with performance and couldn't maintain a decent presence on msn cos I didn't have enough memory to make context switches bearable. But finally I'm getting the hang of it. Here's my secret....
knoppix desktop=twm screen=800x600
Yeah, that's it. The 800x600 really makes a difference... guess video is expensive. But the most amazing thing has been this... Knoppix has felt as much home as Windows did. But then again, my top-listed apps in windows was firefox, gaim, vim and bash.... haha.
Machine's been down and all this week I've been living on Knoppix. Just got the latest version on CD today, and finally got it figured out... had terrible problems with performance and couldn't maintain a decent presence on msn cos I didn't have enough memory to make context switches bearable. But finally I'm getting the hang of it. Here's my secret....
knoppix desktop=twm screen=800x600
Yeah, that's it. The 800x600 really makes a difference... guess video is expensive. But the most amazing thing has been this... Knoppix has felt as much home as Windows did. But then again, my top-listed apps in windows was firefox, gaim, vim and bash.... haha.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Saturday, November 26, 2005
The Reincarnation of Sexism
It just occurred to me that this is so strange. If it is a Chinese perspective that the dead get reincarnated, and males can get reincarnated into females and vice versa, why then is there such undeniable sexist undercurrents in the traditional Chinese thinking? Are they too existentialist or they just can't get it sorted out? If couples will say "I still want to be your wife next life", why don't they also remember that thy could end up brothers, or brothers could end up couples?
Gaps in logic, holes in the brain.
It just occurred to me that this is so strange. If it is a Chinese perspective that the dead get reincarnated, and males can get reincarnated into females and vice versa, why then is there such undeniable sexist undercurrents in the traditional Chinese thinking? Are they too existentialist or they just can't get it sorted out? If couples will say "I still want to be your wife next life", why don't they also remember that thy could end up brothers, or brothers could end up couples?
Gaps in logic, holes in the brain.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Confessionary Confectionery
Remember Kogepan? The reason we loved it that much must have been because it so simply voiced what we refused to say, but are dying to admit. That's why we also have chain mails that go along the lines of "answer the following questions truthfully and send it to another 5 people..." We're dying to let everyone know what we secretly want so much of, but yet so afraid that they find out that we want this badly to tell it all.
Ok so here shall hardly be my list of my 5 top most secret desires:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Bleah.
Remember Kogepan? The reason we loved it that much must have been because it so simply voiced what we refused to say, but are dying to admit. That's why we also have chain mails that go along the lines of "answer the following questions truthfully and send it to another 5 people..." We're dying to let everyone know what we secretly want so much of, but yet so afraid that they find out that we want this badly to tell it all.
Ok so here shall hardly be my list of my 5 top most secret desires:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Bleah.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Rush Hour Etiquette
01. Stand left, walk right. Even if you're reaching the top/bottom of the escalator, continue walking. If you have to stop because you're reaching the end, keep left. Common sense - if you stop walking, how on earth is the guy behind you, and the guy behind the guy behind you, and the guy behind the guy who just stepped onto the escalator, going to walk right?
02. The reason the queue at the escalator is so long is because everyone's refusing to stand on the step directly behind the guy in front. Don't waste space. If you take three steps to get onto an escalator, use the stairs during rush hour.
03. Don't swing your hands when you walk. You're claiming too much personal space.
04. If you have to read the news, fold it and read it. Don't force the guy standing in front of your read the cover of your papers for the whole half hour on the train.
05. You don't have broadcast rights to the music you bought. Use earphones in the train. Someone might be trying to catch a nap cos he got home at 3am the night before.
06. Leave space for weavers. If you're walking in a group, make sure people who are trying to beat the bell can run through.
07. Move into the centre of the train. Between the rows of seats along the walls of the carriage, you should be able to fit three rows.
08. Don't wait until the door opens and then say "excuse me" in a lift. Make your way to the door before the door opens so that the whole lift doesn't have to wait for you to get off. Waiting 10 seconds for each person to get off means that it takes forever for the guy on the 30th storey to get to his office. No, the math should be 30x(10+f+2d) where f is the time it takes for the lift to get from one storey to the next and d is the time it takes for the door to open or close. And you will need to multiply that number by the number of people in the lift.
09. Kid's don't qualify as "those who need the seat more than others". If you have kids who don't want to sit, make them stand. They've got more energy than anyone else.
0A. The reason train companies put money into contactless cards, small magnetic tickets and so on is so that commutors can clear the gates more efficiently. Don't take your time to take out your ticket and read the LCD to see how much money you have left on your card. You can do that during off-peak.
01. Stand left, walk right. Even if you're reaching the top/bottom of the escalator, continue walking. If you have to stop because you're reaching the end, keep left. Common sense - if you stop walking, how on earth is the guy behind you, and the guy behind the guy behind you, and the guy behind the guy who just stepped onto the escalator, going to walk right?
02. The reason the queue at the escalator is so long is because everyone's refusing to stand on the step directly behind the guy in front. Don't waste space. If you take three steps to get onto an escalator, use the stairs during rush hour.
03. Don't swing your hands when you walk. You're claiming too much personal space.
04. If you have to read the news, fold it and read it. Don't force the guy standing in front of your read the cover of your papers for the whole half hour on the train.
05. You don't have broadcast rights to the music you bought. Use earphones in the train. Someone might be trying to catch a nap cos he got home at 3am the night before.
06. Leave space for weavers. If you're walking in a group, make sure people who are trying to beat the bell can run through.
07. Move into the centre of the train. Between the rows of seats along the walls of the carriage, you should be able to fit three rows.
08. Don't wait until the door opens and then say "excuse me" in a lift. Make your way to the door before the door opens so that the whole lift doesn't have to wait for you to get off. Waiting 10 seconds for each person to get off means that it takes forever for the guy on the 30th storey to get to his office. No, the math should be 30x(10+f+2d) where f is the time it takes for the lift to get from one storey to the next and d is the time it takes for the door to open or close. And you will need to multiply that number by the number of people in the lift.
09. Kid's don't qualify as "those who need the seat more than others". If you have kids who don't want to sit, make them stand. They've got more energy than anyone else.
0A. The reason train companies put money into contactless cards, small magnetic tickets and so on is so that commutors can clear the gates more efficiently. Don't take your time to take out your ticket and read the LCD to see how much money you have left on your card. You can do that during off-peak.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Monday, October 31, 2005
Today ought be a special day. For, for the first time in my life, I heard not a handicapped street begger, but a real handicapped street performer near my workplace today.
She was very obviously blind and her face looked weired, imaginably having lost one eye socket - but she was singing. Not singing slow Christian music to beg the guilt of passing Christians, nor was there in her voice the desperate self-pity that, hiding behind the latest popular hits, cried out, "I'm useless, please be the kind person you think you are and give me some money." Instead, her voice was delightfully bright. And so were her songs. The last number I heard her sing was Dancing Queen. Not the most effective kind of material one would use had her best asset been her handicap. And I'm not saying her singing was "uhm okay" - she was good. Someone-should-have-turned-the-disco-lights-on kind of good.
Yes, I was impressed. I loved her dignity. I loved her not trying to sell her handicap, but rather, to have overcome it, and to have found within herself something that was bright enough a gem to offer the world.
Put bluntly, the rest of the lot should be taken off the streets. Selling their self-pity, hoping to elicit the sympathy of some unsuspecting passer by. If their handicap were their greatest marketing asset, then how incomparable the darkness of their hearts must be beside their blindness, how crippled their spirits must be beside their lameness! All the more, it would be a sin to give to them. Cheap charity is but the giver masturbating his own selfish consience, unwilling to pay the full price to set the needy free.
I know, America is doing it. The rich are doing it. But still, the next time someone on the street tries to sell you tissue paper and yet says "please help me out", do them a favour - don't buy it. Buying a packet of tissue paper is never all that you can do for anybody.
She was very obviously blind and her face looked weired, imaginably having lost one eye socket - but she was singing. Not singing slow Christian music to beg the guilt of passing Christians, nor was there in her voice the desperate self-pity that, hiding behind the latest popular hits, cried out, "I'm useless, please be the kind person you think you are and give me some money." Instead, her voice was delightfully bright. And so were her songs. The last number I heard her sing was Dancing Queen. Not the most effective kind of material one would use had her best asset been her handicap. And I'm not saying her singing was "uhm okay" - she was good. Someone-should-have-turned-the-disco-lights-on kind of good.
Yes, I was impressed. I loved her dignity. I loved her not trying to sell her handicap, but rather, to have overcome it, and to have found within herself something that was bright enough a gem to offer the world.
Put bluntly, the rest of the lot should be taken off the streets. Selling their self-pity, hoping to elicit the sympathy of some unsuspecting passer by. If their handicap were their greatest marketing asset, then how incomparable the darkness of their hearts must be beside their blindness, how crippled their spirits must be beside their lameness! All the more, it would be a sin to give to them. Cheap charity is but the giver masturbating his own selfish consience, unwilling to pay the full price to set the needy free.
I know, America is doing it. The rich are doing it. But still, the next time someone on the street tries to sell you tissue paper and yet says "please help me out", do them a favour - don't buy it. Buying a packet of tissue paper is never all that you can do for anybody.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
As if micro weren't enough - without even realising, were're stepping into the age of the nano. Microcomputers are so last centuary. If you're reading this 20 years from the date of writing, really sorry that I'm using pretty last-decade words here, but today, at the horizon, we're talking about the dawn of quantum-channel-based communications, DNA computing, nanorobotics and genetic therapy.
Yes, so much so that we keep on losing the big picture, the long-term view. Remember, at the dawn of navigation, we used to use stars as our guiding lights. And before we the industrialisation, we used to build everything to last forever. Now, everything has an expiry date. A namespace. A domain. A locale. We forget how the whole system is held together, how one nanosecond flows into the next and how the next flows into eternity. How boats on a stream that lightly knock against each other actually take on individual lives and lifestories after that brief and anonymous encounter on the floating market. Put it bluntly, we seem to have stepped into the age of one-night-stands. Transient, isolated and intense.
My maid (aka domestic helper; just in case "maid" still means unmarried woman where you're coming from) just went off to the airport. It's been a good one year. She came not knowing anything, even innocently tossing some of our plastic covers into the bin, not knowing the difference between plastic covers that keep lenses safe and disposible plastic packaging that come with the food we buy at convenient stores.
It is hard to imagine the depth of the journey that she's gone through in her stay here. So many things we take for granted must have been pretty challenging for her, as much as it is to us if we had to live in a distant and strange land. And even harder to grasp is how her life, after she's gone back, will continue in parallel to ours, even though we may not make contact ever again. How (if I may borrow a term from computing - not that I haven't been doing so :P) massively multi-threaded the real-world is! (Oh yes, and how real-time it is also...)
Ya, it is an exciting world. But how very helpless it also makes me feel everytime I attempt to grasp how the whole tapestry is held together.
Yes, so much so that we keep on losing the big picture, the long-term view. Remember, at the dawn of navigation, we used to use stars as our guiding lights. And before we the industrialisation, we used to build everything to last forever. Now, everything has an expiry date. A namespace. A domain. A locale. We forget how the whole system is held together, how one nanosecond flows into the next and how the next flows into eternity. How boats on a stream that lightly knock against each other actually take on individual lives and lifestories after that brief and anonymous encounter on the floating market. Put it bluntly, we seem to have stepped into the age of one-night-stands. Transient, isolated and intense.
My maid (aka domestic helper; just in case "maid" still means unmarried woman where you're coming from) just went off to the airport. It's been a good one year. She came not knowing anything, even innocently tossing some of our plastic covers into the bin, not knowing the difference between plastic covers that keep lenses safe and disposible plastic packaging that come with the food we buy at convenient stores.
It is hard to imagine the depth of the journey that she's gone through in her stay here. So many things we take for granted must have been pretty challenging for her, as much as it is to us if we had to live in a distant and strange land. And even harder to grasp is how her life, after she's gone back, will continue in parallel to ours, even though we may not make contact ever again. How (if I may borrow a term from computing - not that I haven't been doing so :P) massively multi-threaded the real-world is! (Oh yes, and how real-time it is also...)
Ya, it is an exciting world. But how very helpless it also makes me feel everytime I attempt to grasp how the whole tapestry is held together.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
古いCDを聞いて、また人生のはかなさを感じた。
「部屋とYシャツと私」という曲だ。「もし私が先立てば オレも死ぬと云ってね」のところにきたら、また生と死の間に辿り着いた。歩いてきたのが「過去」。足元にあるのが「未来」。そして今はその過去とその未来の間にいる。そういう感じだ。そう感じると、すこし伸ばしたら、過去の景色が見える、僕の中で。昔のまんまのように。その同時、今現実に感じている周りのものは、思い出のように感じてくる。未来から見る思い出のようだ。その一瞬、僕は過去にいるのか、現在にいるのか、それとも、未来にいるのか、わからなくなる。
すごい感じですが、怖い。一瞬の「現在」に、一生が感じられそうな感覚は、とても人間的に限界かな。一人で感じてしまうのは、重荷だ。ここにきたら、誰かに助けられたい。一緒にこの生きるつらさを負って生きたい・・・
「部屋とYシャツと私」という曲だ。「もし私が先立てば オレも死ぬと云ってね」のところにきたら、また生と死の間に辿り着いた。歩いてきたのが「過去」。足元にあるのが「未来」。そして今はその過去とその未来の間にいる。そういう感じだ。そう感じると、すこし伸ばしたら、過去の景色が見える、僕の中で。昔のまんまのように。その同時、今現実に感じている周りのものは、思い出のように感じてくる。未来から見る思い出のようだ。その一瞬、僕は過去にいるのか、現在にいるのか、それとも、未来にいるのか、わからなくなる。
すごい感じですが、怖い。一瞬の「現在」に、一生が感じられそうな感覚は、とても人間的に限界かな。一人で感じてしまうのは、重荷だ。ここにきたら、誰かに助けられたい。一緒にこの生きるつらさを負って生きたい・・・
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
If you took an operating system and did a hardware implementation of it, would it mean that the machine runs without an operating system?
Now it is becoming clear. There is no such thing as a software product. Software belongs in the quaternary industry, and you don't talk about produce in this sector. The primary industray talks about primary products, the secondary talks about consumer products. And from the tertiary industry on, we start talking about services - so why are we going back to products?
According to Wikipedia, if that is a source of any authoritativity, the quartanery industry is one that involves intellectual services. Put it in another way - in the secondary industry, you sell people the hammer to hit the nails in. In the tertiary, you charge them money for hitting the nail in. Now in the quartenary industry, you charge them money for telling them, in what manner they ought be hitting the nail in.
That is what it is. Let me now attempt to give a description of what I think software thus is - for the lack of a better word than "software", that is. Given that a user is a person or group of persons that interacts directly with the "software", then, software, perhaps, is a collection of logical steps of basic operations and the configuration that govern how and when these steps are to be invoked, essentially abstracting the know-how that experienced practioners employ while addressing issues, especially in, but not limited to, the problem domain of the user, expressed in a notation that can, directly or otherwise, be intimately employed in conjunction with a hardware device in order to derive a result which may be construed as an expert advice in the user's problem domain, a professional service that in part or in full solves the user's problem, or, a product which production is the user's problem domain.
For those who have problems with long sentences:
This leads to two differentiating factors between software, and other services in the quartenary industry: firstly, that software needs to be executed on a tangible device, as opposed to programs implemented in organisations that involves strictly the retraining of staff to optimise processes, and secondly, that software may command a depth that can give tangible solutions to problems, even if the problem domain exists in the secondary or primary industry. It also follows that software makes it possible to offer intellectual services in a frame that may be separated from the source of that intelligence by space and time.
Coming back to our opening question. When does software cross the line? I believe that the crux of the matter is in the word "notation". So long as a solution may be expressed in some form of notation that may be used to make hardware derive some kind of useful result, the solution, expressed in the form of a notatian, is software. Which is to say, that digital circuit diagrams are software, but PCB derived from these diagrams, are not. In some sense, I am suggesting that in such cases, we are compiling our software into hardware, not binaries.
Which leads us to conclude that, yes, it runs without an operating system, only because we do not yet have a name for something that behaves like software but is not expressed in some form of notation. I would like very much though, to have a term that can take the clause "expressed in a notation" out of what I think what we currently think software to be. Afterall, in essence, software, really should be the intelligence that can help people solve problems in the absence of an expert. Why should it matter what form it takes?
No, there's no such thing as intelligent hardware, either. Not at least, for me.
Now it is becoming clear. There is no such thing as a software product. Software belongs in the quaternary industry, and you don't talk about produce in this sector. The primary industray talks about primary products, the secondary talks about consumer products. And from the tertiary industry on, we start talking about services - so why are we going back to products?
According to Wikipedia, if that is a source of any authoritativity, the quartanery industry is one that involves intellectual services. Put it in another way - in the secondary industry, you sell people the hammer to hit the nails in. In the tertiary, you charge them money for hitting the nail in. Now in the quartenary industry, you charge them money for telling them, in what manner they ought be hitting the nail in.
That is what it is. Let me now attempt to give a description of what I think software thus is - for the lack of a better word than "software", that is. Given that a user is a person or group of persons that interacts directly with the "software", then, software, perhaps, is a collection of logical steps of basic operations and the configuration that govern how and when these steps are to be invoked, essentially abstracting the know-how that experienced practioners employ while addressing issues, especially in, but not limited to, the problem domain of the user, expressed in a notation that can, directly or otherwise, be intimately employed in conjunction with a hardware device in order to derive a result which may be construed as an expert advice in the user's problem domain, a professional service that in part or in full solves the user's problem, or, a product which production is the user's problem domain.
For those who have problems with long sentences:
software, perhaps, is
(a COLLECTION of
(logical steps of basic OPERATIONS)
[and]
(the CONFIGURATION that govern how and when
these steps are to be invoked,)
[essentially abstracting]
(the KNOW-HOW
(that EXPERIENCED practioners employ
while addressing issues,
(especially in, but not limited to,
the PROBLEM DOMAIN of the user,)
)
)
)
[expressed in]
(a NOTATION that can, directly or otherwise, )
[be intimately employed in conjunction with a]
(hardware DEVICE in order to
(DERIVE a result which may be construed as
(an EXPERT ADVICE in the user's problem domain,)
[or]
(a PROFESSIONAL SERVICE that in part or in full
solves the user's problem,)
[or]
(a PRODUCT which production is the
user's problem domain.)
)
)
This leads to two differentiating factors between software, and other services in the quartenary industry: firstly, that software needs to be executed on a tangible device, as opposed to programs implemented in organisations that involves strictly the retraining of staff to optimise processes, and secondly, that software may command a depth that can give tangible solutions to problems, even if the problem domain exists in the secondary or primary industry. It also follows that software makes it possible to offer intellectual services in a frame that may be separated from the source of that intelligence by space and time.
Coming back to our opening question. When does software cross the line? I believe that the crux of the matter is in the word "notation". So long as a solution may be expressed in some form of notation that may be used to make hardware derive some kind of useful result, the solution, expressed in the form of a notatian, is software. Which is to say, that digital circuit diagrams are software, but PCB derived from these diagrams, are not. In some sense, I am suggesting that in such cases, we are compiling our software into hardware, not binaries.
Which leads us to conclude that, yes, it runs without an operating system, only because we do not yet have a name for something that behaves like software but is not expressed in some form of notation. I would like very much though, to have a term that can take the clause "expressed in a notation" out of what I think what we currently think software to be. Afterall, in essence, software, really should be the intelligence that can help people solve problems in the absence of an expert. Why should it matter what form it takes?
No, there's no such thing as intelligent hardware, either. Not at least, for me.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Sunday, October 02, 2005
雑談二章
「１」
人生は舞台ならば、その真ん中にたって、もういいんだよ！と叫んで、みんなに言いたい。でもそんなところがないね。聞いてくれるひともいない。疲れたんだ。みんなそうだろう。しかし前へと進まなきゃいけない。もういやでも。こんな人生はいったいなんなんだろうか。
「２」
Strange how thinking habits evolve. Of late, I find myself not thinking of portable code, but moer of protable algorithms. As in, even though it's ANSI C, I still want to make the algorithm implementable in other languages which are not as strong in their language construct. Not that I will actually get to doing that, but it's just the thinking that goes into things. I just want to think, I think.
「１」
人生は舞台ならば、その真ん中にたって、もういいんだよ！と叫んで、みんなに言いたい。でもそんなところがないね。聞いてくれるひともいない。疲れたんだ。みんなそうだろう。しかし前へと進まなきゃいけない。もういやでも。こんな人生はいったいなんなんだろうか。
「２」
Strange how thinking habits evolve. Of late, I find myself not thinking of portable code, but moer of protable algorithms. As in, even though it's ANSI C, I still want to make the algorithm implementable in other languages which are not as strong in their language construct. Not that I will actually get to doing that, but it's just the thinking that goes into things. I just want to think, I think.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Woke up to this and it's still in my head...
Funny that an ex-classmate just asked me if I have invested by CPF. No, I don't have no CPF. I'm just a foreigner with no 故郷 to go back to.
Almost heaven, west virginia
Blue ridge mountains
Shenandoah river -
Life is old there
Older than the trees
Younger than the mountains
Growin’ like a breeze
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads
All my memories gathered 'round her
Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine
Teardrops in my eye
I hear her voice
In the mornin’ hour she calls me
The radio reminds me of my home far away
And drivin’ down the road I get a feelin’
That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads
Funny that an ex-classmate just asked me if I have invested by CPF. No, I don't have no CPF. I'm just a foreigner with no 故郷 to go back to.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
今朝おきて、ラジオをつけたら、「乾杯」が流された。
こんな今朝もあるのよね。
いつか年を取ったら、自分はどんな僕を思い出すのか、つい自分に聞いた。
人生って、何なんだろうな。
年を取って青春の時の自分を思い出すのは、つらいことになるのか、幸せな思い出になるのか。
ついに詩集を取り出して、結構好きな一生を読んだ。
When You are Old
WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
大人になったら、なんになる、とは自分にはもう聞かない。
それは単に未来だけを見ている考え方だからだ。
僕の頭の奥で常に覚えているのはね、未来の僕が振り向けば、
どんな過去が見えるのか、ということだ。なんか、
未来の僕と今の僕との対話見たいな感覚だ。映画みたいだ。
だから時間と空間が重なった映画が好きだ。体の中に、
その本当の意味がわかる気がするから。
今の僕と未来の僕との間の距離は、本当に隙間のように小さいんだよ。
こんな今朝もあるのよね。
いつか年を取ったら、自分はどんな僕を思い出すのか、つい自分に聞いた。
人生って、何なんだろうな。
年を取って青春の時の自分を思い出すのは、つらいことになるのか、幸せな思い出になるのか。
ついに詩集を取り出して、結構好きな一生を読んだ。
When You are Old
WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
大人になったら、なんになる、とは自分にはもう聞かない。
それは単に未来だけを見ている考え方だからだ。
僕の頭の奥で常に覚えているのはね、未来の僕が振り向けば、
どんな過去が見えるのか、ということだ。なんか、
未来の僕と今の僕との対話見たいな感覚だ。映画みたいだ。
だから時間と空間が重なった映画が好きだ。体の中に、
その本当の意味がわかる気がするから。
今の僕と未来の僕との間の距離は、本当に隙間のように小さいんだよ。
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Sunday, August 21, 2005
每次想想自己的生活，就感到一股很深很切的憂傷。一種無奈，無法怨恨神，也無法接受這一切一切的事實。羨慕活的那麼燦爛的人，過的那麼美麗的人。
是，我在工作上，順利得已經連半句怨言也想不出，真的是完美得不得了﹔可是我的內心生活，卻如此空虛，又有誰能想知？生活中，好像心中要的，都得不到。還有人說是因為我不肯花錢去得到，可是我要的，真的已經不是金錢所買得到的。我只想要人門真正地喜歡我，不是因為我能為他們做什麼，就是喜歡我這個人。我想要真正的朋友，緊緊跟著我身邊，陪有走每一段路。我只是不想孤單，不想一個人。我要的，是那麼簡單，又是那麼難得．．．
我也蠻努力去讓人喜歡我啊。或許是這地方，這環境不適合我吧？每次都這樣想，心理才比較好過一點，可是一直還是不了解，神為什麼要做出這樣的我，讓我活得這麼累。
是，我在工作上，順利得已經連半句怨言也想不出，真的是完美得不得了﹔可是我的內心生活，卻如此空虛，又有誰能想知？生活中，好像心中要的，都得不到。還有人說是因為我不肯花錢去得到，可是我要的，真的已經不是金錢所買得到的。我只想要人門真正地喜歡我，不是因為我能為他們做什麼，就是喜歡我這個人。我想要真正的朋友，緊緊跟著我身邊，陪有走每一段路。我只是不想孤單，不想一個人。我要的，是那麼簡單，又是那麼難得．．．
我也蠻努力去讓人喜歡我啊。或許是這地方，這環境不適合我吧？每次都這樣想，心理才比較好過一點，可是一直還是不了解，神為什麼要做出這樣的我，讓我活得這麼累。
Friday, August 19, 2005
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was the rhythm. Maybe it was the deejay. Or maybe it was stuff in the beer, I don't know. What I remember was the beat vibrating though the stool, though the wall, and ultimately under the floor though which everyone was inexplicably connected to the music. And suddenly it was smooth, and suddenly it was heavy, and I could feel it beating in me, as if my organs were too, were beating to it. Suddenly the lights were flashing, suddenly the beat was in me. And then, just so suddenly again, the beat took over me. I could feel the pulse in my legs and arms, and my body began to move in unfamiliar half-beats. It was my body, assimiliating the drumbeats into my system... there was something strange and unfamiliar about it... but I should quite think, that that night, I was dancing.
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Saturday, July 02, 2005
シンガポールは立派なお国になってるよね、昨日二つのシンガポール人のアルバムを買って、聞いて、そう思ってた・・・
Bought Huang Yida's new album just because one section of one song on radio. It's his music... luscious, organic, orgasmic. It wasn't like I heard exactly what words he sang, but the words and the music came through well. And so it was his music that drew me in. Somehow this time round, I don't really care too much what the lyrics are, just happy that the lyrics agreed with the music... usually, I'm drawn in first by the music, then the lyrics - and then I start liking the song really a lot and a lot because of the lyrics. Maybe it's just that this time it's just the sound that mattered...
But then, the sound of the lyrics could change the sound of the music. Anyway...
So are you a music person or a lyrics person?
Put it in another way, is it the looks or the personality that you look for?
Kinda the same thing, ain't it?
Bought Huang Yida's new album just because one section of one song on radio. It's his music... luscious, organic, orgasmic. It wasn't like I heard exactly what words he sang, but the words and the music came through well. And so it was his music that drew me in. Somehow this time round, I don't really care too much what the lyrics are, just happy that the lyrics agreed with the music... usually, I'm drawn in first by the music, then the lyrics - and then I start liking the song really a lot and a lot because of the lyrics. Maybe it's just that this time it's just the sound that mattered...
But then, the sound of the lyrics could change the sound of the music. Anyway...
So are you a music person or a lyrics person?
Put it in another way, is it the looks or the personality that you look for?
Kinda the same thing, ain't it?
Sunday, June 19, 2005
It boggles my mind how it could be true, that a son who had demanded for his share of the estate, gone away, spent his money, spent his life, driven to the edge, when he came back to his house, could be greeted, not by sneering voices, not by theories of retribution, not by deep hurts dug up as anger, but by love. That a father could be so loving, that although on all counts, his son should have disappointed him and deserved nothing but the place of a servant, instead chose not to reason by logic, not to reason by the past, not to reason by the fact that he no longer owed his son anything, but to respond in love, seeing not a son that had been unfilial and a total disgrace, but seeing a son who had returned as if from the dead. From the dead! How limited our view of things is, that we cannot see beyond death and get so bogged down by reason and short-spanned emotions...
Unfortunately I think most daddys aren't like that. I can hear them say "I told you so!" or "you deserved it!" or "and you still have the cheek to come back!" followed by a long lecture poured out of a hurting and angry heart. Because deep inside, we know we deserve nothing more than the angry eyes of unapproving parents, for we have fallen short of their expectations. Because we know we have failed them, and we know that when we fail our exams, we get punished.
I guess earthly parents don't love enough to let go, to say less of picking up broken pieces after we have gone all wrong. We all humans look too much at our own hurts. All this makes God's love so unbelievably amazing. Grace, they call it. Totally undeserved. So undeserved that some of us - at least I - have problems trying to believe that it is all, for real.
Unfortunately I think most daddys aren't like that. I can hear them say "I told you so!" or "you deserved it!" or "and you still have the cheek to come back!" followed by a long lecture poured out of a hurting and angry heart. Because deep inside, we know we deserve nothing more than the angry eyes of unapproving parents, for we have fallen short of their expectations. Because we know we have failed them, and we know that when we fail our exams, we get punished.
I guess earthly parents don't love enough to let go, to say less of picking up broken pieces after we have gone all wrong. We all humans look too much at our own hurts. All this makes God's love so unbelievably amazing. Grace, they call it. Totally undeserved. So undeserved that some of us - at least I - have problems trying to believe that it is all, for real.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
本物の祭りといえば、ほとんど宗教関係の祭りでしょう。
国もそれぞれの祭りがあれば、それが名物になり、外国の方が見物しに来るでしょう。
だが、シンガポールは、宗教がないのだ。信じる人がいないではなく、国としては、宗教関連の祭りだったら、××祭りはシンガポールの祭りだ、とは言わなく、あくまでも○○宗教の祭りだ、との感覚が強いと思う。つまり、シンガポールは本物の祭りがない。だからシンガポールは必死に祭りを作ってる。たとえば、旧暦のお正月の頃は、ＣＨＩＮＧＡＹというのがある。オチャードの道路を封鎖して、人が踊りながら、Ｆｌｏａｔというある主題を元に飾ったお車を通わせる祭りだ。旧暦のお正月は、ここの中国系が祝ってるけど、こういうＣＨＩＮＧＡＹのような祭りは、ないのだ。それどころか、本当にあるのは、花火。でもシンガポールは一般人は花火の使用は法律により禁じられてる・・・
祭りを見ながら育てた人にとって、これは変かもしれないが、綺麗なシンガポールの奥は、こういう虚無さだ。祭りがないせいか、他国の人が放射している熱情は、シンガポール人には感じられない、と思う。やっぱり、人間には祭りが必要、かな。
国もそれぞれの祭りがあれば、それが名物になり、外国の方が見物しに来るでしょう。
だが、シンガポールは、宗教がないのだ。信じる人がいないではなく、国としては、宗教関連の祭りだったら、××祭りはシンガポールの祭りだ、とは言わなく、あくまでも○○宗教の祭りだ、との感覚が強いと思う。つまり、シンガポールは本物の祭りがない。だからシンガポールは必死に祭りを作ってる。たとえば、旧暦のお正月の頃は、ＣＨＩＮＧＡＹというのがある。オチャードの道路を封鎖して、人が踊りながら、Ｆｌｏａｔというある主題を元に飾ったお車を通わせる祭りだ。旧暦のお正月は、ここの中国系が祝ってるけど、こういうＣＨＩＮＧＡＹのような祭りは、ないのだ。それどころか、本当にあるのは、花火。でもシンガポールは一般人は花火の使用は法律により禁じられてる・・・
祭りを見ながら育てた人にとって、これは変かもしれないが、綺麗なシンガポールの奥は、こういう虚無さだ。祭りがないせいか、他国の人が放射している熱情は、シンガポール人には感じられない、と思う。やっぱり、人間には祭りが必要、かな。
Friday, June 17, 2005
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Sunday, June 05, 2005
I think I've figured out why people think that my sister's older than I. Okay, maybe it's that she is pretty matured in her thinking and behaviour, but also this - do you believe there's an eldest-child and youngest-child character, that most eldest-children behave in a certain way and youngest-children have certain traits? I think my problem is that I have a youngest-child character... I think. Somehow, no matter how majime a person I am, I'm not losing it...
guess what... that means i have a problem, don't you think so? cos i don't have an elder brother to relate to me in response...
nvm if u think this kakiko's all crap. there's just nothing to do on saturday nights.
guess what... that means i have a problem, don't you think so? cos i don't have an elder brother to relate to me in response...
nvm if u think this kakiko's all crap. there's just nothing to do on saturday nights.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
So we've all been duped... no wonder it's so difficult to wake up early in the morning... and the sun does not really set at 7pm but at 6pm... and we're all at work by 7-8am... no it's not the numbers I'm talking about, but rather how far the sun is into the day - doesn't it start to make sense if we really started work at 9am - on the third or forth hour of sunshine in the day? If it still were the gentle warmth of the sun that wakes us up each morning, then we'd have three good hours of the morning sun... instead of having to grope in the dark when the day is still half asleep...
ah well, so what is "real" on this island?
ah well, so what is "real" on this island?
Friday, May 27, 2005
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Monday, May 02, 2005
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Between flights, between trains,
spaces of time,
To some, this would be the purpose of joerney; yet another wolud want it in print,
Etched in the mind, between
The freezing smile and the relaxing pose.
It's been a day that seemed a journey, between
The opening and the closing of uneager eyes that are
Not entirely uncharmed, just unexcited, having forgotten their
Curiosity. But today I walked streets that felt altogether foreign,
Like clips of different movies
I failed trying to piece together.
Yet there was something that was suddenly enjoyable about this -
After week upon week that seemed no different from one another, this was
Quite like a journey.
Say then, what would the purpose of journey be?
Today there was none,
When between trains were other trains,
And between walks were other walks,
Yet somehow this purposeless movement,
Made me quite settled, not trying to look for a reason
To be in transit.
spaces of time,
To some, this would be the purpose of joerney; yet another wolud want it in print,
Etched in the mind, between
The freezing smile and the relaxing pose.
It's been a day that seemed a journey, between
The opening and the closing of uneager eyes that are
Not entirely uncharmed, just unexcited, having forgotten their
Curiosity. But today I walked streets that felt altogether foreign,
Like clips of different movies
I failed trying to piece together.
Yet there was something that was suddenly enjoyable about this -
After week upon week that seemed no different from one another, this was
Quite like a journey.
Say then, what would the purpose of journey be?
Today there was none,
When between trains were other trains,
And between walks were other walks,
Yet somehow this purposeless movement,
Made me quite settled, not trying to look for a reason
To be in transit.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Monday, April 18, 2005
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Saturday, March 26, 2005
/*
Invisibly run a commond, probably a batch file.
created by : zlel
last edit : 26 Mar 2005 10:22:03
license : public domain
Sigh. When you really want something...
you just gotta code it yourself.
Compile under mingwc with
mingw32-gcc -o irun.exe irun.c -mwindows
*/
#include <windows.h>
int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance , \
HINSTANCE hPrevInstance , \
PSTR lpCmdLine , int nCmdShow)
{
PROCESS_INFORMATION ps;
static STARTUPINFO si;
BOOL res;
int commandlength;
char *commandline, *parameters, c, *mycommand;
int quoted, i, found;
char prefix[]="cmd /c ";
commandlength = strlen(GetCommandLine());
commandline = malloc(sizeof(char) * commandlength + 1);
mycommand = malloc(sizeof(char) * commandlength + \
1 + strlen(prefix) + 1);
strcpy(commandline, GetCommandLine());
quoted = 0;
found = 0;
for (i=0; i<strlen(commandline) && ; 0==found; i++) {
parameters = commandline + i;
c = parameters[0];
if (c == '"') quoted = 1 - quoted;
if (c == ' ' &&amp;amp;amp; quoted==0) found = 1;
}
sprintf(mycommand, "%s %s", prefix, parameters);
si.dwFlags = STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW;
si.wShowWindow = SW_HIDE;
if (0==found || !CreateProcess(NULL, \
mycommand, NULL, NULL, FALSE, \
0, NULL, NULL, &si, &ps)) {
MessageBox(NULL , TEXT("実行できません") , NULL , MB_OK);
}
free(mycommand);
free(commandline);
}
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Thursday, March 10, 2005
宮崎監督は映画を作らない。と、言ったら、あまりに失礼でしょうか。
でも本当そうですよ。彼が作るのは、映画じゃなく、世界だ。実は世界より、宇宙っていうか、次元だ。映画館に入った僕は、決してストーリの発展にこだわっておらず、その宮崎監督の世界に踏み込みたかったから切符を買ったのです。
微 妙だよ、宮崎監督の世界っては。なぜかすごい穏やかな感じがするんだよ、いつも。ストーリに争いがあり、戦争もあるけど、なぜか、穏やかだ。どんな騒動が 起こされても、なぜかどこかに希望が秘めてある。その感じが大好きだ。見ているうちに、また希望に信じ直れるかもしれません。
「ハウルの動く城」はよくできたから観に行く映画じゃない。
あの宮崎監督の世界に入りたいから観に行く映画だ、きっと。
でも本当そうですよ。彼が作るのは、映画じゃなく、世界だ。実は世界より、宇宙っていうか、次元だ。映画館に入った僕は、決してストーリの発展にこだわっておらず、その宮崎監督の世界に踏み込みたかったから切符を買ったのです。
微 妙だよ、宮崎監督の世界っては。なぜかすごい穏やかな感じがするんだよ、いつも。ストーリに争いがあり、戦争もあるけど、なぜか、穏やかだ。どんな騒動が 起こされても、なぜかどこかに希望が秘めてある。その感じが大好きだ。見ているうちに、また希望に信じ直れるかもしれません。
「ハウルの動く城」はよくできたから観に行く映画じゃない。
あの宮崎監督の世界に入りたいから観に行く映画だ、きっと。
Sunday, February 20, 2005
17 minutes of my life left. As if that were all that's left to live, yet I'd choose to type aimlessly into windows that hold blank words and talk to people who ask me what i'm doing here, and I tell them I'm just looking for a chat. Now 15 minutes. And still I'd sit there wondering why i should be talking to people to whom I can neither attach a face nor a personality - and at that, for the 15 minutes I have left. Is it like this when you reach the end? Or should this be the best you can hope for at the end? At least, tonight, after my battery's gone, I can plug this machine back into its socket and let it suck up a full life, and tomorrow it will be good to me again. Ah, yes, and that, must be the mindless addiction to technology - that after a reboot, we can spend another life figuring out why we're all still hanging around.
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Okay, let me just be simplistic and quasi-quantitative. Let's imagine most of the world start working at 20 years old, work 5 days a week, retire at 60, live till 80, get married and have 2 children in each family.
So, you would spend 5/7 of 40 years of your live earning money, 2/7 of 40 years and 7/7 of 20 years spending money, while your kid spends 7/7 of his first 20 years, spending your money. So,
Say A and B have equal need. So A would serve B, and B would serve A. So when A works, B enjoys, and when B works, A enjoys. So A would work 7 hours in 14, and B would work another 7 in 14.
Yet here, you would work 5 hours in 14. So someone somewher is working 9 in 14 - afterall, someone's gotta give, rite? That would be 9/5 as much work as you. But if you work 5 days a week, how can that someone be woring 9 days a week?
Ah, that's because you can make more than 1 person happy at the same time. If you could make 2 people happy in 1 hour, then you can work 1/3 of the time and everyone will be happy. Ah, maybe that's the strength in numbers - and why personal service is so expensive...
okay, maybe this sounds like rubbish :P
So, you would spend 5/7 of 40 years of your live earning money, 2/7 of 40 years and 7/7 of 20 years spending money, while your kid spends 7/7 of his first 20 years, spending your money. So,
(5/7)*40 : (2/7)*40 + 20 + 20
=> 200/7 : 360/7
=> (working : spending) = (5 : 9)
Say A and B have equal need. So A would serve B, and B would serve A. So when A works, B enjoys, and when B works, A enjoys. So A would work 7 hours in 14, and B would work another 7 in 14.
Yet here, you would work 5 hours in 14. So someone somewher is working 9 in 14 - afterall, someone's gotta give, rite? That would be 9/5 as much work as you. But if you work 5 days a week, how can that someone be woring 9 days a week?
Ah, that's because you can make more than 1 person happy at the same time. If you could make 2 people happy in 1 hour, then you can work 1/3 of the time and everyone will be happy. Ah, maybe that's the strength in numbers - and why personal service is so expensive...
okay, maybe this sounds like rubbish :P
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
And now, the end is near, and so I face, the final curtain.
My friend, I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain.
I've lived, a life that's full, I've traveled each and every highway.
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.
Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention.
I did, what I had to do, and saw it through, without exemption.
I planned, each charted course, each careful step, along the byway,
and more, much more than this,
I did it my way.
I had Keiko Lee singing that on my radio, and for that while, I really wanted to know if that's how he must have felt like lying on his bed at home. I recalled the stories that were told of him, how when he was young, he used to throw really wild parties that run into the night, with Tiger giving them all the booze they needed, and jumping into the pool running around drunk and all. The parties I remember weren't as wild anymore, but as I recall those evenings around the swimming pool, I can still almost feel the wood and brick under my feet and smell the Christmas air. The queueing up at buffet tables for food, and the chatter of half-familiar voices in the open garden. It seemed all so recent, though I can also recall the years when these parties stopped. And I also recall the year when i refused to change into clothes that were better suited for a party, arguing that it ought be me and not my clothes that were invited to the party - of course in the end, my parents won - but that happening that year became a beacon throwing light on how much in debted my family has been to them.
Imagine, a young doctor, not long after graduation, working for an established doctor - and spending the rest the better part of his life in the very same clinic. It's unheard of in this current society and time, but suddenly i feel linked to some old tradition. And just as much I feel linked to this family.
And it's like suddenly, so suddenly, something's that been there all this while is gone. So fast. I still remember how he used to drink throughout his party and walk around and talk to everybody. I can still hear his voice...
For many reasons, I suddenly feel like he's family. Especially when I think about how his family indirectly has provided for my family, I suddenly realise that somewhere deep inside, they have actually become a little part of me. Really. Family is not just about the poeple who are connected to you by blood.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
実は、元旦の挨拶のカキコは、大晦日の夜１１時過ぎ書き込んだのだ。教会へ行かなかった。パーティーの誘いもなかった。カウントダウンの過ごし方も悩みたくなかった。逃避にしろ、なんにしろ、わざと早く挨拶のカキコをしといて、１２時の前に寝た。
正直、純粋に逃避していたじゃない。人はなんで２００４→２００５その番号が変わるのを祝わなきゃいけないの？大自然の中では、そういう感覚がないはずだ。人はみんな自分のなかで、「新しい階段」という時が来る、自分のなかの「時計」がある。そしてその時計は、世界中で使われてる「時計」とは別物だ。どうして、１月１日は、みんなの「新しい始まり」にならなきゃいけないの？それは、まるで理解のつかないことじゃないか。
だから、僕の時間はそのまま流れる。津波も予告なしに来るように、カレンダーは僕の生き方を決めない。本当に世界のタイミングを支配するのは、カレンダーではなく、人と人の間の相槌ではないか、と思いませんか？
正直、純粋に逃避していたじゃない。人はなんで２００４→２００５その番号が変わるのを祝わなきゃいけないの？大自然の中では、そういう感覚がないはずだ。人はみんな自分のなかで、「新しい階段」という時が来る、自分のなかの「時計」がある。そしてその時計は、世界中で使われてる「時計」とは別物だ。どうして、１月１日は、みんなの「新しい始まり」にならなきゃいけないの？それは、まるで理解のつかないことじゃないか。
だから、僕の時間はそのまま流れる。津波も予告なしに来るように、カレンダーは僕の生き方を決めない。本当に世界のタイミングを支配するのは、カレンダーではなく、人と人の間の相槌ではないか、と思いませんか？
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