Optimus monologue

OptiCat

2012-01-16T21:22:00.002Z

YAB YAB.

New blog.

Gotta post from phone wifi to this. Quite fun and easy with swype.
Thus smaller messages and photos if you don't like my big texts.

It's going nicely.

I need to play

2011-12-10T23:25:00.006Z

I am not motivated to try to be the best. It seems to me that maybe I can be good enough and happy if I can identify and follow the flow of the game.

I used to play table tennis for a little while. Just at school or with friends but rarely. While I was playing I had a natural instinct, like I was a hunter hunting the ball and defending, making sure I hit it at the proper angle so that it went back to the opponent's side. I was just playing rarely when given the opportunity and by pure instinct, without knowing any moves or how to hit properly the ball. I decided one day that maybe I should try table tennis lessons, so that I get more close to the real side of this sport and maybe a talent would unravel.

I kept playing for fun. I didn't want to get better. I wasn't moving my arm properly as it was instructed. We played with groups of people. It was fun. One asked me why I am not improving? Why do I keep defending and not making a directed attack or make the moves properly as instructed. I just didn't took it seriously. I realized that if I play with some friends who are not professionals then just playing with this instinct I have developed is enough to win. But this doesn't work with professionals of course. I like chasing the ball, I like having success in not letting it fall down, but it's just a lousy defense and I don't have a plan. At the same group I remember a girl who played in the same way as me.

We used to play Unreal Tournament together with friends. A friend sometimes tells me that when you play with a professional player then you lose the meaning, it feels meaningless to try anymore because you will never be so good as him unless you devote your whole life into this. There is also another effect because of this. When you play and you are losing so badly that it's pointless to continue, then you are affected and play worse. Best thing is to focus on the game and have fun, not thinking about the score.

I was curious about this thing affecting my real life. I see people who care about being the best too much. My life in their view would be like someone who is totally careless about his progress. I don't like to look this with such negativity though I have recently understood there is something different between me and specific persons. Maybe, some say in psychology, it's because I was the middle child. Additionally I don't think I was much encouraged to think high of myself. I am always feeling like the mediocre person or worse.

I am really not the same as the people I think about. Simple fact, if I really wanted to be the best, I would be fit, I would have a girlfriend from 18 or something, I would not take 8 years to finish the university, I would not almost screw again my master's degree and do a second year, I would even go for high marks or the perfect final project. I would have cured procrastination, I would have changed more things. If I wanted to be as perfect as some people want to be, I would put a gun in my head and say "If you screw again this time then you are dead". I would not take it lightly. I would not accept myself being so lame.

It's not bad. I don't want to put more negativity to myself. I just want to show you what I have realized, how different I am in some aspects from others. I want to show you that I would be an image of the worst nightmare for someone who cannot stand himself not being perfect. I want to show you the big difference and one of the reasons I don't seem to move on in some aspects of my life.

Though it's not that I am lame. The reality is that I am different. I am just not motivated by some goals. To tell you, something it's not that I don't like perfect things, in fact someone might have told me once that I was too perfectionist. There is one fact, sometimes I become a bit of perfectionist for things that I build, I want the stuff that I create to be good (no matter if I have released bad stuff), I dream for example of amazing demos or extremely optimized code and such stuff. I get crazy about some people who have achieved perfection through their works.

Maybe I am not as interested about the idea of me being a perfect being as for releasing some good works that reflect the better of myself. It seems that even my demo hobby for example was a way to show that, feeling mediocre with myself but creating something beautiful that people will watch and remember I did it. I always thought that I would afraid to go on the scene and play in a rock band for example because I'd have to not make mistakes. But with a demo, once you finish it and debug it, it remains always the same. It's a work of art that stays. People might never know the creator but he has left something that is even better than how he feels of himself.

It's an interesting idea. Anyway, there is also an objection to all the above. It says that the idea that I don't want to improve myself is a big false lie. I definitely want to improve myself. It's just that I don't find some things important. There are some parts of myself where I feel like I am improving. The spirit, the thought, the personality. Because they are interesting, because it's the game I like to play, to think about things, to analyze ideas, to understand my position in this world, to explain my problems, my worries, to know who I am and why things have come to this and even to seek for some mental improvement in places that can be practical too. I don't care about taking too high grades in the university, I almost don't care if I took more years to complete it, weight sometimes worries me because of my health but not looks, I don't need a girlfriend desperately (just to stop feeling uberlame?), I don't care about being a champion or the first in my job, making a carreer or feeling important. Sometimes I think I do care about these things or I am mislead to believe this is what I should seek, but the thing is that if I really cared then I would have a rich life and being succesful or finish the uni in time and have a good job and a clashy girlfriend or something.

When I naturally manage to play, to follow the game that attracts me, to fully enjoy creating things then it's a rare moment where things work. But usually I am either not doing the thing I feel like doing or flirting with the idea that maybe I could focus into becoming someone. But I don't have this and I will never have it.

I recently had the idea that I shouldn't worry about who I am and that playing with the things that I love I could reach success. I imagined some famous scientists or artists and I concluded that possibly many of them didn't thought about becoming a celebrity or getting a nobel prize or anything, they were just too fucking obsessed with what they were doing. Not that I care about becoming a famous person, it's just that I think that people obsessed only with the thought of becoming rich and famous don't usually achieve that.

I don't need to worry about being mediocre or not being perfect. I should just try finding the good flow where myself and things that I love come together and I just start creating things. Good things will come too.

Sometimes though the game is not yours. Sometimes you are forced to play another's game. So, just remember there are those times where you can still play your own games. Your free time and a clean mind.

p.s. Your job for example is a different game. You don't have full control. A personal creative project can be your own fully controlled game. Don't screw this up! Sometimes I felt restricted in my demoscene hobby because of thinking what people would think about my work. Big mistake! Some friends when they finish their job for the day and then have their whole day to play their own games, free time to be creative or just enjoy life, they instead feel miserable and don't do much stuff. I am trying to control this too.

Tribute to cats

2011-12-04T11:56:00.002Z

I like my cats. I like my cats. I very much like my cats. I like so much my cats that my avatar is that of a cat.

I like this cat a lot. It's the white cat. It's the male cat. He likes my bag. Must be the leather. He likes it a lot. He likes to lay down there. I love it when I see him lay down there and sleep. He is so cute.

Some days ago he fell down from the 1st/2nd floor. He hit. He is not the same. He lost one soul. Maybe the next soul has a different inflict. Whatever. My brother takes care of the cats so we went to doctor. We fix him soon.

He comes near me but I play Doom. Nobody interrupts me when I play Doom. So the cat seems a bit sad that I don't pay attention to him. But I like my cat so much that I could even stop playing Doom for a while to listen to his pours.

Sometimes cats make babies too. This is because we also have a female cat.

This must be the female cat. She has grey/golden fur. If I am not mistaken because the light is bright. Anyway, usually the female cat likes to stare outside the window. She also likes more food and chocolate but I must not give her too much chocolate because I have heard it's bad for her. She comes in my desk, she pours and runs and meow and stuff. It's so cute that I stop whatever I am doing to pay attention to her.

This is a very funny and very fat cat we have found in a greek tavern. One day I will buy a cat like that.

My cats are therapephtic. I talk to my cats. When I talked to myself it was seemingly weird. At least now I will feel like talking to someone.

Cats are Zen.

The problem

2011-11-17T15:17:00.007Z

There is no problem. First of all.

But suppose there was one if we were to find it, it wouldn't be trivial, it would be chronic, it would be something that requires you to look at the whole picture.

It's not the people, it's not the music, it's not video games, it's not drugs, it's not smoking, it's not food, it's not lack of sleep or the lack of sex, it's not laziness, it's not stupidity, it's not what you chose to do with your everyday life, it's not the details. These things reside in the microcosm you live and when you get the strength to change small things you will need them but how can you do it if you are not ok with yourself?

How can you do it in an environment that tells you about these things, they speak again about the old story, about real life, normality, how one should be and how he shouldn't and whatever they have heard from other people speaking the common sense around?

And how can you do it if you are more like me, when even if these people stop telling you these things, the whole culture or media or regular people around you somehow manage to touch you in the most negative way making you feel like a worthless shit? And because you are like me you start thinking about these and construct dialogues on your head where whatever ever you say there is an answer to tell you that you are invalid or that you don't have another good reply this time, that you are just trying to find excuses to not improve yourself, that you are not right.

What I am writting here might not apply totally to every person out there but those few individuals who are affected. Do you know what the problem is? It is that feel of guilt, the self-victimization, the highly negative effect from blame, from criticism. It is when you suffer so much that even if left alone you fight with those ideas inside your head. And then people tell you that nobody is blaming you yet the world is doing that to you with it's unwritten laws of what is and what is not. It's for those who are affected.

The problem is called the Noise. It is in the year and city you were born, it is in your family environment and it is in the modern culture. If you are unlucky and at right at this point you belong to the minority then there might be disturbance. If you are more sensitive as a person than there is definitelly going to be turbulance. Starting with your close environment and later on with an idea you have acquired about what the world wants you to be. You as in everybody, as in everybody ought to look more like this majority of people. If you are easilly affected then you are carrying this right now. If the most negative parts of the environment are not there to make things worse, still you are constantly excusing yourself for what you are. And excusing, while it looks like trying to give some rights to what you are, it really takes away your rights in your psyche because if things where right with you you wouldn't need to excuse in the first place.

We take things literally. Ideas mean something for us. We try desperatelly to fit our own personalities to the ideas scattered around the world, especially the most popular ones. Everybody is working, why am I not? Everybody is fit, why don't I have the right body? Everybody has a girlfriend (the strongest one), what's the matter with me? Am I lazy? Am I worthless? Am I a bad person?

I realized that ideas are like thin air and most people really doesn't care about them even if they will tell you the opposite. Nobody is going to publicly admit that because it sounds like living without ethics. Or maybe they don't know it. The strongest force in the world is the social game. Your opinions, your ideas will be expressed if they are similar to those around your social environment. The popular ideas are more usually expressed thus they become even more popular, so much that they become such strong taboos that nobody dares to challenge. Even if one tried to do that, arguments wouldn't matter. The subconscious feeling that some classic ideas seem absolutely right because everybody believes so (aka it's common sense) would win. You only have the need to oppose to specific ideas when they are critical to your personality.

So, by understanding that the whole thing is a farce, the unwritten social laws, what people claim they believe, what people show about themselves, things that you worry without need, the injustice of torturing yourself with these thoughts when people really don't care, the first step to free yourself from this burden comes. Now, while I had almost reached that state, where there was a little peace for a while, last year I was living in London, and this still came in an outrage and while reading some texts about meditation. Apparently the ideas were similar to what I had, emptying your mind from the nonsense, which for people similar to me is this thing I call The Noise, that makes us feeling worthless.

And yet, when I came back to Greece, oh the environment. It's really hard even after having the idea of how things should be and how you should not worry about things, to not worry when your family is hysterical about things. So, if I were to say about what the problem is with everything I'd say there are two things I have to take care of. Stop listening to these negative thoughts and accept who you are, might be hard to change mental habits but it happened to me when I realized I can't live like this anymore. The second thing is to avoid the environment that reminds you these things in the most negative way. Which might have to come first, because I could open my mind when living in London away from my parents for a whole year and still started in the last months of this period. Why I say that?

I had my first chance with Erasmus for 7 months. I never resolved the problem in that period. I needed more time. Even if you have your peace, your inner thoughts doesn't let you. Second time in London, only when the master was about finishing and I realized I am not living the day in peace while I am finally free without anybody to fill my head with negative ideas. It was me who was still oppressing me with these things. When I still was trying to excuse about things I shouldn't excuse in the first place. This could my last opportunity to have this peace and I waste it because all these ideas, our culture, our popular beliefs have instigated a guard inside my mind to check if I still deny the standards when nobody else is there? To hell with it!!!

So, this is how hard it is even when you are left alone to think matters again for a year. I could be unlucky and not have this sudden burst of anger that made me say enough. But I had my revelation, I had my enlightment and I remember it. It's only that it's harder now that I am back to the primary source of negativity. Only good thing is that if one knows the concept, one can find an hour or day to get away maybe (I just need a job. Something to make me again independent and rent a home to live).

I know what is not good for me now. I have no doubts. It's not that I am not meeting enough people (I do). It's not that I don't talk too much (I sometimes talk more than people can handle and other times not at all). It's not that I don't have a girlfriend. It's not that I am avoiding things. It's not that I procrastinate too much. It's not that I excuse myself (well, it is :P). It's not that I play video games. It's not that I listen to the wrong people (depends on who is claiming this :). It's not that I don't exercise (Ok, can change someone's mood, but this is about the microcosm of problems). It's not that I read the "wrong" ideas. It's not that I eat the wrong food. It's not that I have not enough hobbies (who has?). It's not that I think too much (well, partially it is but there is more to it). It's not the trivial solution everybody talks about, it's not what you have heard on tv, it's not the common sense.

All these things above have to do about these little problems that become big problems when one worries too much about them. Ok, today I worried about my weight. Everyone tells me I have to do this or that, general rules like they are a secret solution to everything, some other people criticize me and call me lazy, somebody told me to stop when I decided to grab something to eat. The last one especially didn't make sense to me, so much that I had trouble to explain the absurdity. Everyone understand things more when speaking about smoking. So, if someone put another cigarette in his mouth as he always does and you slap him and throw the cigarrete down explaining him he is doing harm, what do you think this action would achieve? Just irritation and the next day the guy would still smoke as much as before. The first guy thinks it's simple, to quit smoking one has to quit smoking. Circular logic. He thinks it's that easy because he is not a smoker. But we all know the problem is deeper.

I have the same thing with food. It's stimulation to me. When I am anxious, when I am not emotionally well or even when I am almost ok, I will escapade to food even if I am not hungry. The solution of just making a diet is not a simple choice, it's quite hard to persuade myself to start moving toward that direction because I will have to avoid my primary stimulation. Exercise is a better alternative since I am less resistant towards this solution though I still need to plan this and decide it. To decide hard changes in your life you have to be in a better emotional state. Or you need to have other more healthy ways to feel well. With all the emotional turbulance in me how am I supposed to accept leaving my primary stimulation even for a little while?

Same thing happens with the rest. Socialization is either too overwhelming or boring for me. I don't know why I MUST be social. One MUST fill his taxes but is one obliged to play football? One should enjoy playing football. Socialization is more like football. You DON'T have to do it, you enjoy doing it unless you don't. Similarly with the quest of finding a girl. It's a social pressure mostly for me. I abandon the idea lately. I mean, the idea that I MUST because it's such a shame not to have in that age. But if I need to struggle so badly to approach a girl then how would it be when I will be together with her? Will I still struggle? Maybe I'll get used with time but what I want to say is that I am not enjoying it. Especially when taking it too seriously. Maybe I could if I would see it more like a game (which I don't like it, I don't like some of these games played in these social situations). Even more things need too much effort that kills me emotionally. Even working for my own hobby, demomaking became such an effort filled with dissapointments and sorrow that had worsen the situation (that's why I attempt to code for myself these days, trying only to touch the positive feeling of it, e.g. not caring about releasing stuff or people not liking what I do).

But the biggest problem of all is worrying and excusing myself about all these things. The paragraph above seems like a big excuse but I want to give you an overview that things are more complicated than one wants to think. Asking for someone to "simply doing things" and then calling him lazy or saying that he is not trying, for not seemingly doing things, is idiotic. This creates a feeling of guilt, a real feeling of not doing and only excusing, it's not the way to go for people like us. Though, it's something that you hear from a lot of people. This answer is quite common. It's Noise.

I'd say, don't worry about thousands of problems. Don't worry about the Noise. Worry about your negative environment. And worry about the worries residing in your mind.

p.s. I'd wish this post had less excuses. Also, the far alternative is arrogance. Scream: "Yes, I am a lazy motherfucker who wants to get everything by doing nothing! I love myself." When things don't work just have faith and be arrogant. People are arrogant, people are hypocrites. Nobody cares. Choose a day and say you don't care. Think about the things that make you feel better without excuses. Without clarifications. If you can't DO what you want to, at least you might be able to THINK what you want to (with lot's of effort if you are like me).

Creative Flow, Productive Force

2011-11-06T22:47:00.002Z

How to start this post? I have the same dilemma for most of the stuff I try to post here. I am walking outside in the city during night and then my mind flies onto things I consider interesting, making lengthy analyses that might or might not drive me anywhere and only a strong desire remains to dwelve more into my thoughts and maybe discover something unique, a secret recipe, a deep meaning, a solution to my problems, a hidden insight. And then I decide to return back home and evolve my rows of thoughts into something more structured, a blog post that might not bore you and mainly will feel to me like it has captured the essence of how I feel about things into the tiniest space possible (not so tiny at the end :P).

And look how I have started. I love the previous paragraph because it's weird. It's pure creative flow! And I purely enjoyed writting it. So, let's continue even if I'll change subject twice.

Random thoughts where floating around my head when I grasped one that sounded interesting or nice at the particular time. Then, sometimes I evolve this thought into a whole monologue of connected lists of similar thoughts and it's like hypertext where one item can drive you onto a whole different area as any other item and two different links lead to two different ideas that are high matter to you and you start thinking about the one while telling yourself to remember the other but you forget that one by taking only one route and you try to remember the important thing you just missed and I kind love/hate this effect because it's so weird/cool. I am writting in the silliest way again, without structure because I choose to be loose for this post.

But then again I can change to the main them, which is still not the one. Maybe later. Anyway, the second main thing, I come home, I have this network of similar thoughts with many unique and interesting nodes and say I can focus on two or three of them and encapsulate my thoughts into a solid structured piece of work (I am pretty creative with my vocabulary too right now, feels good or maybe geeky :). Usually I fail. Not as much as here though :)

Anyway, fact is I cannot start at first. This has to do with my other interesting matter about motivation and how to be productive. Problem is, I randomly left my mind thinking about interconnected stuff and now I'll have to restrict my creative flow and focus on producing a good piece of doc. I am greatful this is not yet a paper assignment or my final thesis, because it would be much more bad then. But even when I am writting as a hobby in this blog yet I want to not write entirely random things, I feel that pressure when I stop letting the flow drive me and I start trying to follow a specific plan.

And then I cannot write. At first. I just need a start up. If you start up with one or two sentences that start flowing among your thoughts then more things follow up. Till something distracts you or you start hating your writting. Anyway, so if I cannot find a start up, because the start up was really making a random thought that escalated into something more interesting while walking in the city, I start up by something like "As I was walking yesterday against the cold wind, blah, blah, blah". Quite poetic or lame? But I want to analyze the subject. Anyway, I bet some of my past blog posts have started like this but not many.

And the main thing I wanted to write about might start here, after five or six paragraph. Oh my gosh!

And the fun fact was that I wasn't walking on the city, I was just riding the bus home :). Anyway, as I was standing there inside the bus, I was worried about some thigns I have to do, some things I want to do and some other things I must do or would like to do. I thought about other people who seem to do things like robots without stop, without worries, without pushing things back or maybe I said they have found the flow. They either are robots or I miss the flow.

I thought about the flow. What do you feel about doing now. The force that drags you but it's not a force that you put to yourself against your will. But your will would be the flow. So, if I feel like doing nothing does it mean that I am dragged by the nothingness flow or that I lack of flow? Anyway,. the important thing is to find the GOOD flow.

It's like Mario Kart Wii. Yep, I am gonna drive you crazy now with my more free style post. I purely enjoy this. My fingers are living their own lives. Anyway, Mario Kart. One thing puzzled us while playing it. Sometimes it seems that the kart fows through a tunnel of air lines, I mean blurry line rendering like it's a warp drive, of course not so crazy, light lines like flows of air. And when this happens you gain something like a deus ex machina speed booster (what the hell am I writting here?), I mean you magically find these invisible speed warp points out of nowhere and wonder why you suddenly fly like a rocket (not the rocket bonus of course which is a sign of suckiness, aka being last in the game :).

Are these mario kart air warps at specific places? Do I have to take the next corner from a specific position or angle? Are they changing positions? They are always invisible, a mystery and yet sometimes you ride them and fly like a maniac! I love it when that happens. But when does it happen? How can I predict how to achieve that effect and keep riding inside the flow? How???

Well, concerning the game, I can just google it, silly me :P

But what about reality? This is what I am searching. I have a programming project or something I really want to do or something I have to do or wish to be done. You feel like you are stuck for no reason (now, this is like a negative invisible flow, no such things on Mario Kart I guess), trying to avoid what you have to do because you feel the negative force, lurking on the net or playing games to avoid responsibilities. And it happens even with the things that you love, the thing that are not supposed to be your responsibilities. And sometimes you get unstuck and while you spend five hours staring at the ceiling, the next two hours flow greatly, many things done, happiness for a little while, till another distraction or simply a different state of mind breaks you from the flow. That's a disaster but how can you drive initially or back through the flow?

This is what I was thinking about in the bus. I said about myself, today I might not even have a flow. Maybe a good flow. Or my flow is generally not doing work. That means, the flowline that drives me most is at the place where I am sitting there doing nothing or just thinking about things or writting more random words than these. There are no strong flowlines at demomaking for me or in my work or in my responsibilities. Everything pushes me back except from enjoying simple things these days. Is it so? Are there no flowlines where thing flow naturally in the steep corners of Mario Kart? Or have I not discovered them?

So, there is the other option. Let's start with a project that pushes me back, stare at it doing nothing, just sit there and think about it, don't push yourself but try to find a hidden flow. In the same way as in Mario Kart, is it in the center of the road or is it at a different angle? So, what is it? What are the variables? Push yourself? Pop yourself? Wait and sleep? Wake up and work? Day? Night? Music? Ambient? Your feelings actually. Try to feel what you feel and what you feel about what you feel about what you feel. Ok,. I am driving crazy here again because this is freestyle :P

So. Maybe I need meditation. Anyway, clear mind, stare at project blankly. Let it flow. If it doesn't, don't mind. You shouldn't mind. It's an interesting idea. Flow is an interesting idea. Why can't I find it? What sucked my energy?

So, the concept of productive force came too. I said I have the vice of creative flow. Work on something only at the moment you feel like so. If the next second you fail to see the point the don't work. You are an artist. You feel things. You feel like working, you feel like expressing yourself through something, at that particular moment. Or you don't. But how to convert this creative flow into something more productive? We people sometimes have to force ourself, against our will. Because usually we have to do something but we don't feel like doing it at that particular moment. Or tomorrow. Or any other day :P

But we are not robots. So there is the free creative flow that happens when it happens but if it does it's a bliss and there is the productive (brute I'd say) force where you have to push yourself when things are near. The whole blog post had to do with this interesting dichotomy and yet I spend something like ten paragraphs talking about my blog posting style and Mario Kart (nice analogies though :).

Now that is letting my creative flow just flow and not care about it. I think James told me once about that. I should try it more. Problem that remains is that there needs to be structure too. Hmm, dichotomy, creative flow is chaos, productive force leads to structure. Or not exactly (need more matching words, heh I feel the words and I love it). It still flows freestyle. But the point is (if I manage to ever put it in normal sentences) that you need the brute force, you need the structure to organize all these things that randomly flow and you love it, but make sense of it.

It's like my friend Sotsoft. I may be wrong but it's like everything that he says is pure creative flow with minimal productive force. Pure chaos, no structure. Whatever I remember I am happy as we say in greek :)

I struggle with structure. But I want structure. I am interesting in structure. But things flow. I want to make sense. To myself too.

So, is Productive Force having a bad meaning? I also thought about this: We people (artists) that are drawn by this creative flow will do fine with things that we want to do exactly that moment but not with most every day things and responsibilities where we just don't feel like doing at the moment. At the same time, maybe an anti-flow towards not doing these things that we don't feel like doing exists. So, we are more susceptible into HAVing to succumb into productive bruteforce methods like pushing us doing stuff without our will because we have to set things moving oneday and we can't just keep staring the ceiling forever.

Productive Force is not the word btw, it's a different sounding, not so negative. Maybe productive force is the same as creative flow. The force that makes you produce. The flow that makes you create. It's just that create has a more artistic feeling while production is preferred for an everyday responsibility or work. So, it could be similar, I forgot what I wanted to say here. So, let's say there is another force which is Productive Force which is a kind of flow where you do stuff even when you don't feel like doing it. Maybe it's overcoming your vices of always succumbing to the creative flow. I don't know cause I don't have it. I always have to do things with brute force.

So, it's more interesting than this and this text has become too random. The artist obsesion? Sometimes I think I have the characteristics of an artist. I say it's strange how I became a programmer and not a writer. Maybe they are not that far away from each other. But programming needs structure, heh? I lately love structre in my programms. I am doing this easier than real life, heh. Real life is much more complex :P

I let me think about the rest alone. Text I enjoyed and now I don't. But the two dichotomies are at the title. Hmm,..

Reprogramming my brain

2011-09-28T23:51:00.007+01:00

I am still waiting for this point in my life where somehow my mind will evolve in such a way that I will feel like a different person who isn't afraid of things, who acts in the way it would seem to me impossible in the present because I know what to expect from myself. Of course that point is not a single one where these things happen suddenly but constant evolution. The problem is that because of the slow way things move, one has to keep focusing on a new state of mind for a long time till the old one will seize to be a burden. But since the old mind is much more powerful than new ideas, a new mental behavior that might be the right one, will be obscured by your old mental habits before managing to adopt it. It's a bit like a diet. Quite hard to loose enough weight but most important getting your organism used to a more healthy eating habit for the rest of your life, yet quite easy to put that weight back, be dissapointed and quit.

The way to reprogram your brain, to make it adopt to a radically new and healthier perception of things would be first to find the possitive concepts that might be worth a shot to focus for the rest of your life and try to stick with them. Later, if a chosen concept and a change in mental habits seem to be the reason for a more positive life, you could focus on how this proved to be more succesful than your old mind habits, trying to persuade your brain that "hey, this thing actually worked and the old shit you kept in your brain all the time never did!". Make it believe!

It's as a hard as a diet (or harder I'd say). We are stuck to old mental habits, common example being negative thinking, and how do you get a pessimistic person to suddenly or gradually think about positive things? It's a vicious circle. Perhaps some events, some considerations might help you someday to see things different, that maybe this thing works if I focus enough. It doesn't come for years but then it hits you. Time is the best healer they say.

It needs faith too. Some good new ideas that you could adopt and make your life easier might be fought by your old self. Complex logical arguments, things that you say to yourself or your close environment responds to, might not let you adapt this new worldview. But if you realize something is good for you and you have to adopt it to move on you might pull it. Especially if you had the same shit for so many years, you might need a change. Counter-arguments even from your old self might hit you hard and make you hesitant concerning the new idea. It needs faith, the kind of faith you see in movies where someone is in a dillema concerning an actions, makes his move, later thinks that he made the wrong choice (is there really right or wrong anyway?) and at the end someone else reassures him that he did the right thing.

This is what I tell myself. To have faith. That I am doing the right thing. Though, there is still logic behind it. In the past I couldn't feel well with everything if the logic or ethics could not be explained perfectly. Hopefully I have passed this point where I had nothing to believe in, where I wasn't sure about myself. I have collected few mental concepts that are very suitable helpers to make me live a happier life as much as I can. They are interconnected sometimes. And I am incorporating more stuff.

This was supposed to be a long introduction to something else, something that I started writting but decided to not publish yet because I want for a chance to not hurry posting thoughts that are badly written and incomprehensible but take care of a good structured text that manages to explain the ideas I want to say properly. This is maybe the first time I do this and the matter it will speak about it has to do with one of the good ideas I have started to incorporate and is quite important to me to throw in a harsh written text (it already doesn't look so good). It would be a good exercise and interesting experience to try for the first time to reform a text like I was coding something and trying to improve before release. I don't know when it will be finished or if I will still release the bad version because I can't do this properly.

Anyway, the idea I want to formulate properly has to do with The Noise I mentioned earlier. Thinking about it in the way I do changes my perspective and might make me a happier person if I stay into this. I am really anxious to write about this but for the first time I have to rewrite it carefully and take my time. Maybe one day I will try to take some of my scattered random thoughts of things I believe are important and reformulate them in a much shorter and clear version in my website (that is still under destruction anyways :P).

The things that you love

2011-09-21T22:47:00.010+01:00

There are two mottos I want to speak about today, one somehow working upon me as I learn to live with it, the second being quite popular yet it seems invalid in my case.

The way I am trying to live today reminds me of quotes like "Do what you love" and "Be yourself". In a nutshell, it reflects my faith of sticking to what I love and be sure that everything is going to be alright. It reminds me a bit of that famous quote from the alchemist, when you want something so much the universe conspires to create that reality. It's a kind of blind faith. Some think it's dangerous.

What is the fear? That by chasing your special dreams you forget the common life. What if your dreams fail to be realized, you turn up fourty without having done much in your regular life? Should you risk aiming for the higher ground instead of focusing on a regular life?

This fear breeds another sequence of ideas that made into mottos. Your life is small. Your life is precious. Live every moment. The big question is: What would you do if you knew that today is the last day of your life.

I really don't understand this motto. Or maybe I just despise it. Or I think it's invalid, it's unhelpfull, it's not motivating. For me.

Seriously, what would one do? What we see in movies is people saying to their relatives that they love them or trying to do everything all at once because they will never get a second chance. So, is this a nice way to spend the last day of your life? Would you enjoy activities if you did them with such anxiety?

As for my case, I really don't know what I would do if I knew this was my last day. Definitelly I wouldn't hurry to do everything I never did before in one day. I would either function just like the rest of the days or not (As I can't imagine the psychological state). Furthermore, I can't understand the fear of humans concerning the idea of only having one chance to live. Your life is every moment. As long as you are conscious you are already living it. When you are dead it won't matter too, since you won't be there as a consciousness to be sorrowful about that. And if your consciousness continues in the afterlife, you got your second chance. Either way you win! I totally can't relate to the fear of being at some age and looking back at the time you've lost. I don't even beleive there is lost time, since every experience counts. It's only lost when other people force you away from the things that you love to do because they think they only know what's best for your life. Ahhh,. the irony!

Going back to the first quote that I am more connected with, it's focusing on the things that you love without being disturbed by such thoughts whether what you are doing is the right thing or you are spending your precious time on something that you might regret in the far future. It's still a faith but it seems to make my everyday a little more happy and even more as I learn to live with this in mind.

As for the second quote of living your every day as if it was your last day of your life, while it seems thoughtful or attractive from an aspect of trying to live every moment with full energy, it doesn't appeal to me. Not only it's not motivating me but creates a lot of negativity in my case. It seems that it's trying to motivate me by fear, shadows a real view of the things that I actually love and thus I cannot see the reality clearly. And the reality is that if I was spending time worrying whether everything I do is lost time, being scared and fear being my motive for doing things, then this would be the case where I would drive my life in a wrong way. Wait, it actually happened already. I spend years discussing whether what I do is right or wrong, trying to find excuses towards those voices that criticise my way of life, remnants of the social common sense. It's not the time that was spent, it's just the years of bad mood and stupid obsession on trying to find an answer to all these allegations instead of focusing on what comes natural to me.

There was a moment I lost my faith. I had spent years on my own things while trying to find excuses to what I do, hoping that maybe there is worth to it at the end. Things went wrong as I came close to thirty and my obsessive focus became rotten. It was a tipping moment in my life. First there were some texts about the philosophy of meditation that relaxed my mind and made me understand that I put too much value to everything, resulting in too much hurt. A bigger inspiration was Ayn Rand. I didn't know anything about her or her philosophy before, so I've watched an Ayn Rand documentary and later the film The Fountainhead, based on her book. Among other things, the idea of an individual insisting on his own style regardless the risks was a common theme. Evolved was the idea that even with failure it was worth it, it was worth to do something unique rather than stick to the safe status quo. Maybe the idea of a conspiring universe is there too, that given the time at the end you always win.

It's not necessary that the last one is true. It doesn't seem to be a universal law to me. At least not proven. Many people might have followed their dreams but died in vain. We just haven't heard about them because they never became famous for their works. What might work is that if you keep focusing on the things that you love while learning to avoid the noise (fears whether you are on the right path or not), things might flow more naturally. And what if it's still not enough? What if several years might pass without any success, falling into oblivion and the rest of your life being rotten. This is the point where my faith says that it shouldn't matter. Because you have lived a life where every moment possible was filled with authenticity driven by the true spirit inside you. The moment is now!

At the end, I stopped making sense of the noise. You are born, you are raised, a unique personality with it's own needs and passions. You just came down to earth knowing nothing. As you evolve, you grab onto new things, you learn new ideas, being inspired by new people and you decide what you'd like to do in life. People with a different set of these elements come and argue about your way of life for various reasons. This might become a fuzz in your mind. The noise might shadow what is real for you. You might have to find by discovering more about yourself. In order to escape you have to know yourself but also need a little bit of faith to overcome fear.

Simplicity is the key. Just think, what is natural? If someone is oppressing you with the idea that you might lead the wrong life then why do you still do it? Because it's natural to you! If I need fear and oppression to be forced onto something, then maybe this something is not my thing? Why do we spend so much time arguing on what are the natural aspects of things? Sometimes I wonder whether we should all just shut up and do what we love to do, or at least try to discover it.

The thing that I called today "noise", the social noise being a more complete title, is totally unnecessary and wasteful. If time could ever be wasted, then the true waste would be people arguing about your life and yourself trying to defend it rather than what you chose to do with your life.

p.s. An old friend told me once to Have a time. It's referring to the saying Have a good time but without the good. The meaning is that of trying to live a good life without worrying about living a good life. I'd say you don't have to try. Focus on your true self (or finding it) and avoid the noise.

Normality is way past ahead

2011-06-23T19:13:00.016+01:00

Things in my mind are slowly changing to a point that makes me feeling more free and happier as a person. Still, a lot of things have to be fixed and progress in my regular life, but it's the spirit that I am trying to heal gradually and this is what I discovered to be more important than anything else. Practically I might look like a total loser, without a job, without a girlfriend and not even being someone special in the geek hobby that served as an alternative route in this mess. But even if I somehow changed some of this, people would never care about how I feel inside, they wouldn't question what worked this time and I succeeded, they would rather compare my performance to what is considered to be the common norm and that would be enough for them. The rule says that if you are succesfull as it is defined by society then you are on the right track. No matter how you got there or how you feel about it as an individual.

The question arose during several moments in my life whether it's possible to just accept what I am and be happy with it. It's not like that accepting your situation it would make you lazy and you won't evolve. Afterall if you are still here, something is not moving the wheels already. There are some good reasons why I didn't evolve like the rest of the world in some aspects. The thing is, being at this position and then worrying about it won't fix anything. I have been through this for most part of my life, being anxious about the concept of normality and myself not fitting and trying to defend my case against this notion. My decision to ignore the whole notion of normality and just try to accept and further understand who I am is a well thought mental stance that I recently took and goes along with my well being, creating a more positive ground for evolving in a true natural way. Not just clinging to normality but even trying to defend against it only made it worse. Ignoring it and just moving along is the most healthy option for me.

That's how I felt when I decided to search about these matters again. I found some good texts discussing how absurd normality is but I felt indifferent to justifications. I suddenly felt that I was one step ahead towards feeling mentally free. In the past I used to write a lot about normality and how I despise this notion, but even this activity triggered negative thoughts because I was so emotionally involved in this. Defending yourself against this is like you accept in a sense that normality is a concept, unconsciously registering the idea of normality in your brain, preserving your old thoughts about it.

I am not sure I make sense here. Someone had a similar perception about fighting for "X" group. It would make someone emotionally involved with the idea that there is some inequality between the "X" group and the rest of the ("normal", you get it?) world. This struggle to defend against the inequality concept enforces this concept deeper in your subconscious, simply put taking it seriously and thus creating the opposite effect. I realized that it would work best if you laugh at these ideas like they don't exist or even better wipe out the notion of "normal" from your brain. Well, you almost can't. But you can pretend to. To defend normal, would be like accepting it's existence, trying to somehow fit in yourself in this scheme instead. Not the most awesome thing you could do facing this absurd idea.

So, it's like waking up one day and saying: Ok, I know now that "normal" is just a stupid idea that's not worth it (some good reasons for that are in this article), the more I argue about it the more I preserve the negative feeling in my brain, so what's next? Should I "fight" it? The more I "fight" it, the more obsessed I am becoming about it, so it still consumes me emotionally. My move should be something in a higher ground than this. Either laugh at it or ridicule it (which is still a form of "fighting" (aka being involved), at least it's a lighter form) or better ignore it. So, is ignoring it the best alternative? Close to that.

The truth is that it's still a subject that interests me, and it truly touches me and I cannot ignore when I see people worrying about not being "normal" as I used to, even if I have escaped from it. Can one just "fight" it and would that consist of bitching against people using this notion? They are free to keep their own view and if this is the opinion of the majority then let it be. Maybe there are good biological or psychological reasons for most people wanting to belong and feel that they fit in, in the same way these factors forced me to follow a different route in my life compared to the norm.

I think that the best way to both avoid being affected from normality and still feel like giving a "fight" for humanity against this notion is to be true to yourself. That sounds very common. Everybody speaks about "being yourself" but the world is discussing limiting concepts about what should be normal or not again. That's because the ideas of normality were culturally interbreed in your brain. That's because you don't dismiss the idea once and for all but you are only trying to "fit in" (squeeze) yourself in a normality-based reality. So, even by excusing yourself for some of your mannerisms, it's like you don't dismiss the idea of normality entirely, but try to beg for some acceptance of you differences in this scheme.

I might be still not making sense in the last paragraph. I'd only like to say that it was quite hard. It took me several years of mental ruminations, frustration, anger, constant resolutions about my life, reflections on my emotions, changing of perspective till I reached a point that I saw a clear road ahead toward happiness. One idea that helped came from readings about Zen philosophy, helping me realize that I was worring a lot about stupid ideas where ideas are pure air if you give it a bit of thought. Especially normality. Worrying about such an absurd idea was totally destroying me emotionally. This rotten idea is totally out of the question for a happier existence.

Even if you manage to understand this new viewpoint, it's still hard to set yourself free. There might be possibly parts of your life that doesn't let you feel well and be hostile to this more healthy view. For example, it would be easier to say "So, I have this strange habit to talk alone in my room. Who cares if it's normal or not, that's just me and I am happy with it." but much harder to claim "I am scared to admit that I don't have and never had a girlfriend and I am 31". The last one is the culprit actually, the last attack of normality oppresion, so much that I once thought I should hurry up to get a girlfriend once so that I won't feel like a total loser anymore, even if she would later dumb me and I wouldn't care anymore. Isn't that totally fucked up? Maybe many other people harshed to make relationships in order to escape the feeling of abnormality?

Even if I later was erasing normality from my brain, there was still this tip of the iceberg, still not having a girlfriend at such an age (and I could write my thoughts about this in a future post because I am not afraid to admit it anymore and I have some interesting thoughts I would like to share). It's like I had to get over with this to feel totally unaffected by normality and snob it. But I said no! Even in my current position I have very good reasons to feel fine with myself. Why does everything have to be categorized as good or bad, normal or not, right or wrong and be put this label that all it does is spur emotional turbulance to the person targeted at? I am escaping from this. I just need to act like I don't know these notions, these labels but only myself. This is what means to be yourself:

You need faith. You need to understand yourself further. And then you just need to be honest and discuss. No labels. No, I am this because some excuse. Just express your individuality as it is. Honesty is acceptance.

If more people would do this then we would acquire the idea of a more "abnormal" world. The delusion would slowly break apart. This might already be happening. Making a ridicule of this in a honest way is going to be funny. You don't need to do this intentionally but it will come naturally. Just be yourself and baffle the people around you with your individuality. Enjoy your freedom of acting like an individual and the amazement it produces to people still bearing the monolithic notion of normality. Act like the words "normal" or "abnormal" are not there, not even laughable but non existent. "Normal? Is this an obscure musicgroup? Do you mean a vector tangent to a surface? What do you mean?" Speak with the truthfullness of yourself. I start:

This is me. I am a sensitive person. I used to cry. This emotional world of mine affects me quite badly in my everyday life. I don't feel well at social situations no matter how much times I have tried in the past. Things that are common for many people scare me to hell yet I try to overcome my fears. I felt shy about everything and sometimes I still do. I am getting anxious about eye contact. I sometimes don't remember faces. I can't give easilly directions. I used to be anxious about these facts. I daydream. I overanalyze things. I find more interest in ideas. I can't handle casual talk. I am obsessing about things. I don't have the same interests or life dreams as most people. People criticised me that if I don't change then I will be lonely yet I still have few very close and interesting friends. I truly don't need to fit in. These are in a nutshell some basic things describing me. Without labels. Now that I know more about myself, I could explain you further why I am like this or why I still don't have a girlfriend at this age (which seems to be the biggest taboo for normality) but the fact remains that I feel well with myself as long as I don't have to worry about the idea of not being someone else. This is me.

I feel free again. I have just abolished my fears..

Fueling that anger

2011-04-06T12:43:00.011+01:00

This is a small post, written under the influence of an angry state. It's not radical, it's not filled with sorrow, it's not extreme. I wouldn't mind if it was though. If you stay faithful to the intention then the critic doesn't matter.

Naturally I am submissive. This means that I don't react to the outside world while challenged. I keep things inside me. My reaction is neither right or wrong, it is only what I am.

Most people don't seem to be like me. Many people are more arrogant than I could ever be. Remember, I am the person who was sucked into some sorrow about being bad, incompetent, mediocre or anything. If someone would criticize me about something I would try to defend myself or not, it doesn't matter, what matters is that inside me I would have doubt. I would leave these people harm me in this way, cast this feeling of negativity onto me and I would take the bait. Because I am submissive.

I see people who do the worse things and boast that they are great people, I wonder whether people really see the harm they do, everyone pretends to be a better person and it's only me and few individuals who gets sucked into the negative state, where everyone else tells you you are great and you don't believe it.

Since I realized that most people are lying to their own consciousness (and that's a big thing to say but there, I said it!) I have been nurturing inside me what I was missing. The will to lie a bit, ask for what I want, say things as they are, be a little more arrogant, that means to remind to yourself that you are greater than the rest or just great. Be arrogant, if you want to feel great, say that you are great, fuck the rest of the world and what they think about you. You deserve it!

People will say this is arrogant, egoistic but people do it in a sense. The thing is, I didn't even do it while nobody would hear me!!! I am not talking about meeting some people and boasting, I am talking about even telling to myself when nobody is near that I am not worthless. I am talking about simple things! This is not even close to arrogance compared to what people do outside. With my Pure-OCD I was worried about the thoughts I was doing, can you imagine that? Some random guy is harming the weak publicly and he still feels he is a great guy and that it's justified. I avoided interacting with people in a bad way outside yet I was feeling bad inside me because I made some thoughts I didn't wanted which wouldn't harm anyone by just thinking them. Quite submissive, quite layed back, quite "feeling worthless in any opportunity", taking things so easilly that someone could easily abuse you and make you think you are the bad guy.

I see this submissive characteristic quite frequently when I read discussions in pure-OCD boards. So I know that there is this category of people that struggle with this and I know that I am not alone. I now know, judging from my experiences and my shift in attitude, that a good way to get over this is to accept being arrogant. I know that it's a right way to go, especially for people like me. We deserve it!

I always try to remember some reasons why I deserve this. First of all, most people are not as sensitive as we are. Yet, this extreme sensitivity is not to our advantage. The less sensitive wins and that might be even true in an evolutionary sense. You can't get the job or the girl if you are (as they say) too sissy. Even if you are more worthy than you may think of yourself, it's not convincing at all not showing this. Most people are more convincing than what they really are. Arrogance wins!

Another reason is that everybody lies anyway and what is the truth? Through my endless monologues and realization of what reality is, I can see the truth too. That there is not truth. Words and ideas are our creation, they carry emotions that we have put into them, emotions of words and meanings might change a bit depending on the person carrying them, his environment and his experience. The emotions they carry are connected to your personality which is a conclusion of your environment, your life experiences, your upbringing, your education. You only get negative or possitive feelings about things because they taught you to feel so. It might sound radical but there is no good or bad. It's an illusion that people twist to their advantage. It's an illusion that harms sensitive people like me. You don't need to feel negative about being a "bad" person and you don't need to struggle being a "good" person. The only thing that works is trying to discover who you really are and follow your own path.

I think that a common characteristic of a submissive person is how he uses his anger. Most of the days you might feel average or less, but when one day it hits you for some reason, you get suddenly very angry with your past and your life and then how does it go from there? Do you succumb into sorrow? Do you complain and then feel worthless? Do you let the situations make you feel worse? Do you feed on negativity? Those could be the signs.

The way to go is using your anger as fuel, change perspective. Learn who you are and why you deserve something better! Say that no matter what happens you are a good person. Remember the people who tell you that you are great. Don't doubt anymore, say it. Allow yourself to be arrogant. Even if you shout "all people are assholes, I am the fucking best", remember that you are still less arrogant than most people. Words are just ideas, especially telling to yourself that people are assholes doesn't harm anyone. You can start by this. Illegal telepathy is inexistant. Nobody can hear your thoughts and so you can at least believe in yourself even after inner doubt or outside critics. You can believe because all these are just ideas which are thin air and people even do it publicly. People lie outside but you can't even do it inside.

I know that all these sound like new age crap. And I know that whatever I write here cannot be used. Because it's not enough to say these to you. Some people where telling me to believe in myself but I didn't got it. But it's more than pure instructions. It has to be fed in you after you being fed up with reality, being fed up with always feeling worthless while some assholes are roaming this world, beeing sorrowful seeing the very very good people on this planet worsening up because being too sensitive is not working in your advantage, I hate seeing the weakest weakening more. All these in addition to the realization, the understanding of myself and the reality (seeking the truth is the most important thing to me and the most faithful one forever) and my hope for a radical change all came together that moment and taught me besides other stuff to fuel my anger, to kick a little bit of arrogance, to ask for what I deserve.

It takes time. And realization. Someone said that some truths cannot be told because one has to live the experience to understand. Don't worry if you don't get it. You will. In time.

p.s. Even when it fails (say that you fueled your anger too much in the outside and things went worse) you have to stay firm. Your arrogance says that "you don't deserve this!". So, stay firm! Accept the mistakes and continue. Don't let sorrow and don't let negativity inside. Even if things are not seemingly good for a long time. At the end, everything is an idea, thin air, nonsense. You will have your good times when you forget all these and laugh. Just keep firm and with the intention to get what you deserve! Will your OCD tell you that you are a "bad" guy now? Tell it that this is what you intended to be. Tease it. Nobody cares anyways. It's only you who do..

The power of intention

2011-03-22T23:46:00.006Z

My life is changing in a positive and unexpected way. Which would seem a strange proposition for some people. Nothing really indicates an improvement in my life that would explain this mood. In contrary, someone would say that my life has gone from better to worse during this period. The most serious drawback that happened is that I traveled to UK to take part in a master's degree that is even related to what I can do best and I failed badly in the exams. Not only that but I am back living in my parents home till I finish my studies the second year and get a job. This totally shuttered me especially the first days I have returned back to Greece. Everyone would say I totally fucked up and some friends were a bit more harsh than usual towards me. How can it be that I radiate positive energy?

This is the best part. This is what makes me happy. It is the fact that even in the worse conditions I can still be myself and that it's possible to manage keeping a balanced spirit. Happiness is not just about what happens to you in the external world. Everybody look at this and tells me in a sense that I should be unhappy. And I was listening to them. I was doing this because I had this thing in me. Maybe it was always there, maybe it was because of negativity in my close environment. It surely manifested in my past writtings in this blog or pouet. Sadness, drama, tears.

If I say that I have changed then one is left to wonder, when, how and why did this personal transformation happened? I am still investigating this sometimes because I can't tell for sure. One could give a not so well thought fast answer to this but I am still a man of doubt and so I keep an open eye for different interpretations. Let's start with the question of when then.

With my current model of thought, I believe that the evolution of personality is connected with everything since the beginning of our lives and so what brought me here is a sequence of all the events and influences and emotions I have received through my life. So, my current transformation can't be isolated in a single event that changed my life view. But if we were to pinpoint a specific period where sparks of enlightment started appearing in my daily life and made me (and willing to) think things different then this period would be surely somewhere in the second semester of my master.

It was the time when I was very depressed about things happening in my life, like the fact that I couldn't for another time fight procrastination and even kept being stressed and still failing at some courseworks. I have also seen myself being jealous of other people who worked harder and were more succesful with this even if they had less idea about the subject. This was one thing that struck me too, I was failing and I was going to be misjudged if I let my feelings open about this specific matter. I think I almost did it. It even got worse when I learned the final results of the exams. I questioned myself about things, like the fact that I am making a new life finally not living with my parents, in a nice city studying my own subject and I still can't get a grip! I challenged myself. There are things that you are afraid to ask yourself because they seem hostile to your personality. I managed bravely to ask some of these things. I was so shuttered being on my own and still not being able to relax and enjoy life that I had nothing left to loose. Suddenly the idea of letting loose invaded my life.

I'd have to say that during the same period of sorrow I came across a short book explaining the philosophies behind meditation. This was a pdf someone suggested me on pouet back then. It was just a coincidence that I decided to have a look at it on the same period. Diving into these philosophies was a good parallel to my stressful and dissapointing life path at the time. There was already this uprising inside me, realizing how pathetic I have become, begging for a change. I am not saying here though that meditation is THE truth and I neither took this as an absolute back then. What happened is that most of the ideas of meditation were in a parallel with some of my older thoughts and found me in a state of mind that would open up in the new posibilities of feeling better regardless my condition.

In a nutshell, there was a transformation inside me, based upon older not so well or confidentaly formed ideas, my so far formed personality and personal experiences of course, adding to all these my frustration at this pivotal point of my life and the positive inspiration from reading texts about meditation. That is the period when it all mixed together. And I really felt it's influence during the following days. I felt so free and so happy when I dwelved in these philosophies that I couldn't believe it. I was used in always observing the same mood in myself, knowing the hard truth that emotional change can be hard (that's why I like the effects of alcohol) and so I noticed the unusual changes. I even observed too noticable changes in my pure-OCD struggle. I am not sure how this happened, I only described the events that took place and as I said it's not a single truth you can pinpoint but a combination of personality, experiences, ideas and actually the intention. I actually think now that the intention is a very important part.

I had the intention, the will, the initiative as I recently like to say, to make a drastic change in how I feel. All myself was saying inside is "Never again". There HAS to be change, some kind of emotional evolution, something that will put me in a better state regardless of how things are. I deserve it! This is another thing I said: "I Deserve This". I deserver to be happy. And most people around me would disagree with me now. They would say, how can one be happy when being such failure? Without a job, without a girlfriend, being an outcast in even his one demise in some geeky hobby that also failed? Feeling unloved, a low-life, useless, unreliable, worthless? HOW???

What was written above are some of my fears. I realized it. And I realized that these things are ideas. Nobody is worthless or useless or unloved. People around me tend to criticize the negative things and this is something that I can easilly be driven into. I realized that all I have to do is keeping the initiative to feel good regardless what is happening around me.

I know that it all sounds like some classic predictable new age crap I sometimes despise. And it sounds like something simple you hear on tv for example. In my opinion, some ideas resembling those I read from meditation and eastern philosophy are making their appearence everywhere in the media. Somehow though, I believe there is more into it and we haven't grasped their full essence. My main question is how can it be that somehow these ideas seem to be flooding the media, being somehow familiar to everyone when discussed, even if they hadn't been into these stuff before. And yet, several people being in a similar state as me, driven by anxiety, lacking understanding, being obsessed with ideas, not being able to let the ego away. I think it is because there has to be a transformation through personal experience and evolution and not sheer acquisition of some miraculous "truth". Just like in my case. I think I am in the right path now.

I wrote so many things here that I had to go back to the first paragraph and see where it all started. My current situation. It's drastically better than the first time I came back to Greece. I have to admit, before coming back I told to myself that maybe I was happier because I was alone and that the negative influence of my parents would destroy the feeling. Maybe there wasn't any change and this sprouted fear in myself that maybe everything was vain, maybe the transformation I am talking here about would proove to be a simple delusion. I was afraid that this would shattered my only hope for a change that would matter. I knew however that this thought was a trap. Maybe something that I read in the meditation text kept me cautious. It warned of the common mistake to meditate and have expectations about it so that you get dissapointed and you miss the effect of meditation itself because of it. This reminds me a common pitfall in OCD too. You try to avoid awful thoughts and thus you get more anxious about avoiding these thoughts that you think more of these thoughts. It's interesting what parallels I can see in these two worlds.

All I had to do is to not worry even if this all prooved to be a delusion. If I worried then I would make things worse and fullfill a false prophecy. It's a bit twisted because it's hard for me to believe but I had to take this into account because 95% I would be feeling worse when going back to Greece. I would discover that these things don't work and my last hope for feeling different is in vain. However, I shouldn't focus on the idea that I don't feel better, as I said a trap. I should keep some emotional balance as best as I could and not be in sorrow if I fail even into that.

The first days and months where horrible. Having failed in the exams, going back to live with my parents and hear them about all these and what went wrong and all that stuff, having nowhere to go where I can feel well, with the sense of guilt for failing. It wasn't good. But I kept the initiative, I believed in my will for feeling different, my right to never feel worthless again. I think this initiative also needed a bit of arrogance or this is what it is. I always was a submissive person, taking things and not demanding from others. This can be good but has mostly negative effects into you because people demand and criticize you and they make you think this is justified. They make you fill worthless and because you feel worthless you don't dare to think they might be absolutely wrong. I put "absolutely" which I wouldn't in the past (With more "arrogance" I could also replace "might be" with "are" :P) because I have to believe in something, I have to cut the doubt at some places and ASK for what I want. This is not submissive, this is what I demand from my reality now. This is the power of intention

One would say that other things might have changed that make me feel more confident and strong. My own decisions on some things, like finding a good reason to not stay at home most of the day while still being productive in the city, for example I am studying outside in a university library every day ready to kick ass in the exams next year for my almost failed master. Or the fact that I started working out in a stationary bicycle every day (while watching demoscene.tv if you mind :)) and this has also improved my energy and maybe my mood too. But all things take part together in the evolution of the self, both the conscious thought, the environmental influences, the life philosophy orientation and the right actions. I'd say it again though, it's one thing that keeps all things in place, because things might not work well everyday and one could be shattered. It's the power of intention, my will to feel well. Never again!

In another chapter I'd like to write how my personal transformation helped me also to view my demoscene hobby in a different and more healthy manner. It really taught me taking it lightly and focusing on the things that I love doing rather than worrying about other minor things that kill the good feeling of it. It saved myself from the disaster of hating the things that I once loved to do and becoming some old guy who doesn't understand what a creative hobby is anymore. In fact, this was easier than the challenges I am still having with real life. It's a damn hobby afterall, not a real life job or a failed master :)

I won't say that things have ended. Things never end. There is not a single oracle of happiness. Everyday is a fight. We are in constant evolution. Tomorrow I could be in sorrow because of some stupid random event and so I have to be there and stay strong. As long as I keep the power of intention strong nothing can scare me. I believe.

p.s. There are so much that I want to tell about how different I feel and what I think about all these that there will be more article into this.

It helps a lot..

2011-01-24T15:56:00.006Z

If you feel ackward about something in yourself, if you are playing with the question whether you are "normal" or not, if you have this self doubt it helps a lot to search for your case in a search engine and see what comes. You will discover that there are more people with your problem and most of them believe there is no reason to worry. You will also read some good reasons why worrying about these stuff is senseless and it's nonsense to say this thing is not "normal". You might read some funny stories too and take it more lightly. There are even some good community sites where you share your curiosities, like Experience Project.

I am not talking about more "serious" stuff like mental disorders but also things that bother someone while they shouldn't be so important. Like searching for "I talk too much with myself, is it normal?". Or the classic "I am xx years old and I don't have a girl/boyfriend". You see all the people worrying, you see the absurdity, but also you see that you are not alone, you see other people taking it lightly, discussing the absurdity, clearing your fears, joking about it, abolishing your old misconceptions. And you see that many people are hiding it. You imagine that the people who one calls "abnormal" are not a minority but could be anyone of us. It could be 20 or 40 percent or all of them. And you see there is a stupid threshold here, so if I do this I am not normal but if I do a bit less of it I am normal? Who defines this thing? Some kind of popular opinion maybe. Why people worry around the net and how much more are those who might worry for the same issues but never got the chance or the strength to write about it?

I have found the answer to all of these questions and my struggle with normality a year or more ago and I keep focused on this new logic. I don't need to defend myself against these ideas of normality. Trying to defend is like trying to find excuses for being different. But this is like accepting that there is something in "being different" that I have to explain. It's like putting myself in a minority while a lot of people who look and play "normal" are the same thing, people with their own needs and properties. I don't need to defend myself, I just need to stay firm to the idea that I am who I am and that's totally acceptable. I just have to see all these not like a serious case but as a hilarious joke. Because it is!

I do it frequently now. Everything that bothers in myself, I make some spontaneous search in the browser, even out of curiosity and I read funny stuff. Every person is unique and so one discusses the "problem" from his/her own view. There is no more ethics of the absolute good/bad. There is a different way of understanding human problems where each individual's point of view matters. This is not only done to make me stop worrying but it's also a life philosophy. The more I dive into this philosophy, the less I can relate to people who are so fucking absolute about their side like everything else is undeniably wrong, yet I love to imagine that I can accept these people too with their annoying but unique elements. Trying to understand the world and be open with every possibility of a human being is a challenge afterall.

p.s. I was looking at the query about talking to myself because I do this a lot even when people can stare at me. There was a funny suggestion from someone. Why don't we make a party with people who talk to themselves? Can you imagine how that will be?! Hahaha!!!

p.p.s. Little fact I forgot to write. Some people have gone to the funny side. Which is to break social norms intentionally. It's also a coursework in some sociology studies which says to go out and break a social norm of your (dis)like and then notice how people react. Learn this, dear people who struggled like me in the past. You could have a laugh instead :P

p.p.p.s. The fight for individuality continues. The road has taken already. My life is different in the inner side. I finally enjoy being who I am :)

What are excuses?

2010-12-01T15:18:00.003Z

One of the very popular ideas that makes me mad, is what most people reply to someone who tries to describe his problems and inabilities at specific tasks. Most people say that these are just lame excuses to avoid doing what needs to be done and also that this person is lazy or stupid. It's one of those things that some people believe because they have a preconceived idea that "if something is easy for me then it should be the same easy for everyone, so if someone is not doing this easy task then he must be lazy." and the rest of the people just copy and reproduce this idea in social situations because for some reasons it's appealing or somehow it seems right.

Such ideas are not particularly helpful for those individuals who really suffer from such a disability. This disability could be everything, from autism, anxiety disorders, to problems with lack of concentration or severe procrastination. Everything that reduces your productivity, postpones your goals or hardens common activities significantly compared to the rest of the population. Imagine having to bear with one of these things for life and all that you get to hear is that it's all your fault. Where is the support? How do you expect these people to take life in their hands when you bring them down?

I don't say that one doesn't have to try hard in life. All I say is that if these people for some reason are in such a bad condition then it's not wise to put all the blame to them and one should at least listen to their problems with respect. One might wonder, what if they are imposters, opportunists that want to work less than the rest? And I'd like to answer this: Why someone who could have it the same easy as you (as you claim) would avoid doing what is best for him? What is laziness? What are excuses? If rising up in the morning, making a good diet, stop smoking, trying to become more social, trying to be productive with your own project or studies all tend to bring positive result, then WHY would anyone chose NOT to do them?

If it's the same easy, and being active and not avoiding doing something, would be good for me then why would I be so stupid to play it "lazy" instead? What do I have to win?

The answer is somewhere in the half. I don't deny "excusing" which I would better call "avoiding". Avoiding is the real reason. But why? Because there is a struggle! Because there is fear. There is sensitivity. There are emotions. There are a lot of factors playing a role but these are not the same for every person.

My recent personal view is that I have to understand who I am, review where I suffer and where I am good, observe my current environment and my desired goals and based on all these create an overall view of how I would really like my life to be and estimate how to proceed next at each moment. Understand the struggle though, understand that sometimes I need to push back, accept that I am avoiding, yet depending on what I want to achieve make my own choices. If I decide that one part of my life where I am not good enough is not necessary to persue to be happy (happiness is as I perceive it) then it's only my tell and nobody's else where I should try more and where should I stay back. Thus, I first acknowledge who I am and how I feel, yet I endorse the idea that life is a struggle and one should try hard if he wants to achieve something.

To close with this, some of the more fanatic people who argued with me that I am just excusing claimed that there is no such a thing as "psychological problems" or "disorders" (unless you are in a wheelchair). This is what makes me more mad, to deny that you have a hard time with some part of your life, to not acknowledge anything of your suffering, to think that everyone is similar to them one hundred percent. I just will say it again that "excuses" are there for a reason. Someone is "lazy" because he has a hard time. When someone says he has "psychological problems" there is something wrong with him, at least he might be confused and he can't see the problem. Whenever there is this feeling of suffering, of struggle, of hard times it can't just be excuses without a reason. I don't have a good logical structure to support all these, all I have is my feelings.

p.s. A second part on the same matter will come soon

The struggle of normality

2010-11-15T00:24:00.014Z

I recently wondered how did our society embrace the notion of being "normal"? Why can't we understand what a horrible prison this idea is? Why can't we see how epically ridiculous it is? It makes me furious, it makes me sad, to find young people on the internet struggling to be "normal", feeling horrible for being different, sometimes in an extent that they want to kill themselves. Why can't the madness stop?

Normal is a word, a meaning, a symbol. An abstract word even. It's not something to be taken serious. It's not something that should make you wish to die. It's even a lousy meaning. First of all, what is normal? Is it an average? There is no such thing as an average person! Other than that, why should someone race and struggle through his life to become... AVERAGE? How nuts is that?

Yet, the notion of normality seems to me so absurd and ridiculous only after 30 years of emotional struggle and searching for an answer. That's the most weird thing. Why couldn't I see the obvious in the first place? The answer is emotions. When you are born in a family and raised in a society where you get flooded by the sense of normality and the shame of being different then this is what your emotional brain registers as the truth. What comes after that is a consistent fight between your unwanted emotions, desires for freedom and a sense of logic. Logic is clouded by your emotions of fear which is what they have taught you since the beginning of your life. So, even if you logically see the mistake here you can't stop feeling bad about being different. Especially if you are quite much that.

The way I got away from this contradiction between my "inherited" emotions and my logic and desire for being a free spirit is by believing. Yes. Believing is what's needed to overcome such a vicious cycle. This logical jump. Supported by your logic and experience of course. I was hardly ever a believer. I always had a low self-esteem in such a rate that everyone believed in me except myself. That was my achilles heel and this is how I overcame it. I learned to believe in something, my individuality. Because I had enough!

You have to believe that your negative emotions do not tell always the truth. You have to stick to the logic you got through all the experience and knowledge acquired in your life. Because you don't deserve this.

You don't deserve feeling like a piece of shit just because it happens that you are different. You don't deserve unappreciating yourself while most other people overrate their shit. You don't deserve all this struggle and sorrow because someone invented an idiotic concept that spread like a meme in people's mind. You don't deserve preserving and spreading this fear and I believe it's fear that brought it in the first place. If you think about it, nobody just invented it, it's not a major conspiracy orchestrated by one single person. It's the human nature struggling from it or prolonging it. It's us being afraid, using words as symbols to describe it, creating an idea that devours us all and doesn't let us understand that we are all unique persons and there is no such a thing as "normal".

How did we evolved into this? Why is the youth struggling with such a stupid idea? Can we fight this somehow? Can we throw away the idea of normality from the next generations?

I think each one of us who understand could do it by this way. Don't go for a fight, just try being yourself more and more. Show your individuality. Make it shine! Don't feel and look ashamed by doing something weird in public. React like it's a funny little joke or nothing to be taken seriously. Break the myth! Have I ever told you about my recent belief? I believe that 40% of the population could be abnormal while hiding it. Or a huge number similar to this! Humanity is in denial. Each of us who believes in individuality should break this by stop hiding and just being themselves! I truly believe this..

p.s. I was motivated to write this post after reading another good one on the subject.

Ugh..

2010-11-14T23:07:00.004Z

Few comments are lost after I've moved (exported then imported) blog posts. I am sorry about that..

I am not going to move more stuff anymore.

JSYK.

p.s. It seems that I have lost one or two posts too :P

New Blog

2010-11-13T01:13:00.003Z

Ok, it's not that I decided to open yet another new blog after deleting my old blogs. It's not my blog. I introduced my brother to blogging and helped him open his new zenburger blog where I am just a co-writer. It is mainly a greek blog where some friends might write thoughts and ideas in short and poetic style and one image per post. My posts are not like the long stuff I write here. They are small, abstract and kindy sad or dreamy.

Many years ago someone asked me why I don't write in greek. Well, I had no time for an additional greek blog then or I enjoyed writting english more. I am not sure. But now, as a guest you can read me and my brother and friends in ZenBurger blog.

p.s. I moved the eye of the beholder post in random screenshot blog. While that sheet was not from me playing the game but more of what I thought about my attributes if I was in the game, so I posted it here at first but then I decided it wasn't in the mood of this blog. Anyway..

Cleaning up

2010-10-24T10:55:00.003+01:00

Ok, I did it again. I had to reorganize and reduce the number of blogs I have. Some subjects could be merged in the same thing, for example I once used to talk about normality and individualism and that stuff in Optimus Monologue. I have also seen that some of my blogs are more famous, while those others get quite less hits while they were subparts of the original Optimus Monologue. So why not merge the small ones if thematically similar with the few popular and big ones? Less blogs to take care of and people who read Optimus Monologue might find a post from Almost Skeptic too.

There are three thematic parts now:

My thoughts (from normality, mental disorders or philosophical stuff to paranormal, skepticism or random news, usually anything that doesn't have to do with computers, tech and demos but are on the other spectrum of my brain)

Optimus Monologue += Normality Struggle + Almost Skeptic

Computer tech stuff (thoughts about computer culture, demoscene, hackers merged with my programming experiences, demo previews and other tech relatd stuff)

Computer Hermit += Kodeus Delerius

More fun stuff Plasmafun (demo/game/movie/web watching-review). I also kept random screenshot blog and didn't merged with this because it would be a mess. Plasmafun goes quite well as I see and I love writting those reviews and posting screenshots. I deleted the greek blog "Με έχουν πιάσει Οτινανισμοί" too. Although it had too many hits which I cannot comprehend.

I like it how things are organized now. I am sorry for those who were looking at the old blogs I exported but I think you are also hooked to those places where I imported these again. No more changes for my blogs and I will be more careful before thinking about opening another one.

p.s. Oh, Optimus Knight was an image blog I opened at soup.io since a long time and I forgot to add it right there on the links. I have a lot of these blogs scattered around, things that didn't worked and I forgot (but optimus soup.io is fine) in different blog communities, from doomworld to paranormal community.

So, I am back. What now?

2010-10-16T16:09:00.005+01:00

It's been two weeks since I came back to Greece. I didn't managed to go very well with my master nor getting a job in the UK which was my primary motive. When I remember this and how things could have been if different decisions were taken it makes me feel pretty much sad. It's a hard struggle to follow but I should remember that this was a decision I made with responsibility and I said I was prepared for the worse.

I should also remember that there is something that I gained from this time, something that is far more important than getting another paper or a job, something that goes on right this time, an internal evolution which is unseen. It is what people cannot see and yet they expect to see external changes in you to understand. Once or two, few people have claimed that I have not changed after so many years at all, yet I know I am quite different in mind than in the past yet I am the same in the core. All they want to see is external changes, especially those they believe are the right ones.

The main thing that I enjoyed in my trip is finally being peaceful and clearing up my mind. A lot of things have changed in the way I see my life and myself. It is still an ongoing process but I have gone through the paradigm shift of how different my emotions could be and I feel confident about that. My understanding is not really that of a simple idea but several concepts transformed in my mind, things that didn't made much sense finally go well together and fit with each other in a way that makes me happier and more content with the facts.

Real life challenges still brings me back to reality though, yet it doesn't mean that all my peace was a fantasy. Since I have lived through the paradigm shift of a different experience, me and myself alone through this enlightenment as I understand it and endorse it, nothing can take it away from me. Even those days where I am back, living with my parents (but not for long), jobless and memories reminding me of failure.

This is a challenging moment and somehow I should love challenges more, it's a motivating thing to make me stronger, to not see this sadness and feeling of failure as an emotion to succumb into, not listen to people that try to remind this to me, but fight as individual because I am a human being too, I should be respected no matter how things have come to be. And first of all I should respect myself. And evolve more.

So, I am back. Maybe not for ever. But as long as I stay here, it is a challenge to make the best out of it, avoid or ignore misery and try to follow the new path of me.

Where are the extraordinary UFO videos?

2010-09-25T19:39:00.000+01:00

I have never seen a real UFO, i.e. something in the sky that I could hardly attribute as known aircraft, astronomical or meteorological phenomena, balloons or anything hard to distinguish for something outlandish.

I would very much like to see one and be with people around me so that I can be sure they see the same thing and I am not hallucinating or something. Somehow I want to believe but I am a bit skeptical about the whole phenomenon, although I think there is something strange hiding there.

An easy premature solution to be convinced (or not) would be to just search for various sightings captured on video. If I haven't seen a UFO ever in my life, someone else might have seen and at the same time captured with their video cameras. I have seen many of these in youtube. I recently found the opportunity to watch some more classic videos in series of UFO documentaries which I had once downloaded and rested in my hard disk for months.

I really made a full run watching those UFO docs in a frenzy for two weeks or more. Several interesting stories you can't easily ignore in these documentaries, but not a single convincing UFO video. Most of the times the captures look like very tiny lights far away that could be anything. They float in ways that in my opinion could indicate natural movement and not intelligent maneuvers. There are few other videos, still not convincing enough, that zoom a bit closer to the object yet still show some blurry array of lights that could be anything. I assume that if someone would video record a terrestrial object with blinking lights in the darkness with zooming and the appropriate field of view then it would look like those blurry lights. I am not entirely sure about this, I wish I would be at the sighting place and time when these things were capture to check it with my own eyes and decide.

While videos are always these blobs of light away or tiny specs of shinny material mostly floating slowly and not doing any funny manuevers, some photographs are a bit more detailed with things looking like saucers where you can't make up your mind though since they are stills and they could be easily faked (see also this).

As we move on collecting data about the phenomenon, the next thing I want to speak about is witness testimony. And that's compared to the alleged photo/video "evidence". Of course, witness testimony alone is not enough as an evidence and nor convincing at all. Yet some of the most amazing stuff only appear in the stories. It's only in few of these stories where the UFOs are not just small lights or flashy specs far away or even disc shaped objects as appeared in the photos but real shinny complex crafts flying very very close to the witness or even landing in a field where the witness can go there and examine the spacecraft, look at it's material, notice strange symbols on it, even be affected by it.

Of course they are stories. Some are amazing though, told by military officers, for example the Bentwaters base incident, where the witness say that a craft landed and one touched it, saw the hieroglyphic symbols on it and such extraordinary stuff that makes you wish that you where there at the right place and time to convince yourself. While the skeptics say that they mistook some lighthouse lights and a nearbye police vehicle and some astronomical phenomena for the thing and that makes you cringe because you immediately say "If I was there and that vehicle was 1 meter away from me and I could touch it and see it then how the hell could I have mistaken something else for this? What about a trained personel?"

But you can never know. You never know the limits of human delusion or human deception, even if you don't believe that high ranking personel or pilots or credible witness could have either hoaxed that or deluded so greatly, it's not impossible that this quite ordinary and annoying thing have happened.

So, you'd beg, didn't those people have a fucking camera or video recorder to capture something so close that would hardly be debunked as err.. the planet Venus? Why is it always that in the most extraordinary cases where we have very close encounters with those alleged extraterrestrial crafts and even the supposed beings in the area, we never see some video or even photo in those close distances, and then photos consist of those saucer shaped objects further away and videos are even more blurry lights much further away? Why don't we have some good videos of the objects in the size as they appear in photos? Why as we move down from witness to photos to videos, the evidence appear further away in sight and more blurry in detail such that you can never make up your mind? Is it because the real phenomenon doesn't exist? Or is there "something" that doesn't want us to know?

I am quite skeptic about this. Especially today that almost about everyone has a mobile phone with a camera in his pocket, I would expect that if the phenomenon was real the witness photos would dramatically increase today. And we would have also gotten by now some better close ups of those crafts doing more intelligent maneuvers or amazing footage of very close encounters as they are depicted in pre-rendered animations that try to match the witness testimonies in those UFO documentaries I've been watching. Where are the extraordinary UFO videos?

Some people say that it's a conspiracy. Yeah right, like someone monitors the mobile phones of every citizen that tries to capture something more credible and believable and either the government confiscates them or the aliens make them magically malfunction. I don't believe this. Or is it the paranormal phenomena related to some kind of entities or unknown phenomenon that plays games with the consciousness of some witnesses and there is nothing really there to capture, only experiences as perceived inside someone's mind and based on the present cultural influences? Which is a kinda far fetched but interesting alternative theory of UFOlogists like John Keel or Jacques Vallee that quite fascinates me and will be interested to study in the near future.

Yet my closest guess at the present moment is that the extraordinary avoid us (or basically me) not because there is a conspiracy or the phenomenon is too camera shy but sadly because I can't deny the possibility that it never was real in it's majority. Yet, as I want to believe, I beg for a very tiny fraction of these incidents to have some kind of reality, not necessary extraterrestrial but interesting nevertheless.

Another thing I would like to say, with today's graphics rendering technology one could even "give" us in hand those less blurry and more close-up UFO videos I ask for. Thus I would have my doubts even with a good video (and some say the phrase "too good to be true", meaning that the more detailed makes it less believable for some reason). I think the sole way for me to be convinced is if I ever have a personal and quite extraordinary experience as those described by witnesses but you never see in the camera. That's how some people got suddenly and deeply interested in the subject while they were skeptical in the past.

p.s. Don't get me wrong, I have been fascinated by the whole UFO-alien neo-mythology from the first time I have read or heard something in TV or magazines. It's not easy for me either to dismiss simply a phenomenon that played a role in our psyches for more than 60 years. Could masses be so greatly deluded that they have solely created a modern myth that makes you think there is some reality there? Is it safe to say that "if there is smoke somewhere then there must be fire too" or was so much focus and research spent on something that maybe was never there? It's a hard possibility to grasp, especially for UFOlogists that may have spent 30 years of their life searching for the unknown. It's a bit hard for me too even if I wasn't much involved into it as other people might be. The idea of all these things being a farse is kinda scary but will we ever know the truth? There will be people that will never be convinced either ways (real/fake) no matter how hard the evidence will be. I am only hoping I'll have one day a real good personal UFO experience that I will see with my eyes and will be convinced it's not something trivial but the (un)real thing!

The moment of pleasure.

2010-08-23T18:23:00.003+01:00

I remember a psychological experiment (or example) where one leaves a candy in the table and tells to the child that he can either eat it today or if he is patient enough and not eat it he can have twice the number of candies the next day. This is supposed to measure things like ones ability to discipline and go for long term goals, resist ones desires for the greater good, or some say it's a short of means for evaluating the emotional intelligence factor (EQ).

Then there is the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. One would agree that intrinsic motivation is the most desirable one if possible to have. It results into working with great focus on something because you love the process or the subject. Extrinsic motivation from the other side is usually focused on the final result. One could rather go through the process of working hard in a subject just for some good grades, passing a lesson, pleasing his parents or himself or anything else that is not directly connected to the actual experience of the creative process.

Of course one cannot always explain human behavior so easily with these distinctions. First of all the double candy reward experiment. Who tells me that every child who doesn't eat the candy for the first day can control his emotions easier than those who eat it at the very first watch? What if one child really likes candies (say because he is addicted to carbs) and the other doesn't care so much? Of course the second child still wouldn't dismiss a candy so easily, but since he isn't much depended on it and maybe he is more dependent on showing that he has control and understands the concept, will prefer the second solution. Or a third child who also doesn't care much about candies but doesn't trust the leader of this test, chooses to take it now because there might be no candy tomorrow. He might be emotionally depending in showing how clever he is and he might define cleverness as "grab now what you can, don't trust people that are over 20 years old" :)

Take for example the university experience. We might agree that if you study just for the grades, for taking a fucking piece of paper or pleasing your parents, it might just not work well. You would say that one is more successful if he is really interested in the subject and that rote learning just for taking grades is not enough. Yet you can observe so many people who have finished their studies with good marks and they just seem to be obsessed with... getting good grades. You can meet people with a far better marks than you who though don't show real interest for their subject and only view it as their future job and not their hobby. And yet, I am a personal living subject of the paradox, one who is really involved in computer graphics programming for several years because of his passionate hobby and still does it, yet he failed somehow miserably in a master with the same subject. Of course there is much more than loving your subject to succeed in studying and I will come back to this later.

I would like now to focus on one fact. It might help us to better understand the problem of finding inner motivation (especially those who suffer from procrastination) and trying to solve it if we actually dismiss the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and realize that there is only one thing that motivates oneself: The moment of pleasure

I will try to explain myself here. In my view, there is no distinction between people who can easily motivated by extrinsic motivation like magic. Don't you wonder how can some people just sit down there and work on some university project you find senseless or boring and you would still struggle working on it even if they tied you on your chair and forced you to do so? And then you wonder, how can these people do it? How do they live? How does their personality not react? Are they robots or something?

I will tell you what I believe after so many years of observing myself and wondered about those who can do stuff. They DO have an intrinsic motivation for the task that is usually not clear enough.

What kind of motivation could this be? Many of them sound like extrinsic motivations but they are based on someone's inner desires. There might be no strong interest in the subject or part of the process. What might be there could be a sense of self-actualization, accomplishment, increasing self-esteem, feeling powerful even pleasing yourself or your relatives if you manage to reach the desire results by insisting on working on a project that doesn't particularly motivates you alone. Grades, Rewards, Praising would be just the tip of the iceberg of your attempt, but they could still work as a justification of your achievements. One might just need to constantly see that he is successful in real life and that gives him the fuel to work and focus toward that direction even if all that he cares is grades, distinctions and a respected career rather than being interested in the subject itself. If this is what fulfills him in life then this self-determination will be his intrinsic motivation. I see this as a neat way of internalizing the seemingly extrinsic motivations when there is no actual interest in the subject itself.

One would say that the same happened with my demoscene activity. It's not that I did it purely because I purely enjoyed coding demos just for the sake of it. As I noted several times in the past, my journey into the demoscene was really the means to fulfill some basic needs as my desire to belong and excel in something in order to boost my self-esteem and give purpose to my life. Maybe I wasn't very happy or successful with real-life and I saw potential in something that was closer to my interests at that time. The relevant fact is that a hidden intrinsic motivation was playing the big role here. It's not that I didn't enjoy the creative process, there were some positive moments into it, but the primary force was insisting working hard in order to release a demo that is great enough to give me some kind of status and boost my self-esteem.

It's still some kind of a seemingly external motivation internalized. I see people trying to be very successful in anything they do in life, even if they don't necessary identify themselves with the subject they work with. You can see people who can just start studying any subject, be it Physics, Computer Science or Ancient Philosophy and can outperform someone who is interested in the subject but lacks the determination. People like these are greatly motivated by a single pleasure, the pleasure of being successful students, researchers, workers, lovers, etc.. But this pleasure I believe, manifests during the creative process, a psychological beliefs that says "The amount of work I do is the amount of success".

I do believe this and actually only today I had this revelation, when in a relaxing moment I delved again into my current burden since the last week. How the hell will I motivate myself to actually finish writing my final project? I am strongly making inquiry these days on the matter and radically try to find some good sources of inner motivation to somehow make the process more desirable. I compared my motivation with the project (and the repulsive forces of procrastination) to my evolved motivation with the demoscene.

There is one simple rule that I found at first. It's similar to what I said before that even seemingly extrinsic motivations can really be intrinsic in nature especially when they seem to work well. It's when I wrote that the only thing that can motivate oneself at the specific time (and that time is NOW) is the present moment of pleasure.

The moment of pleasure is NOW. When extrinsic motivation is needed, it works when you can envision the desired results related to your current effort (NOW). When intrinsic motivation is enough, the moment of pleasure is easier to achieve and it is the creative process itself, which you are truly enjoying at the present moment (NOW).

Of course, a truly intrinsic motivating factor is the best for you. Internalized extrinsic motivations (effort in conjunction to results) are good alternatives in case of lack of intrinsic motivation. Sometimes extrinsic motivations might weaken by the time for various reasons.

I have resolved this in the demoscene. I might have felt the frustration and also procrastination followed (which I couldn't understand since I thought that I shouldn't procrastinate if I love this hobby) because of some of the initial primary motives for being involved in the creative process not working anymore. For example, today I am quite a different person and I am quite more confident with myself. I don't need to prove to anyone or even myself that I am good or great or intelligent or self-worthy because I can program demos. This way though, my determination with the demoscene hobby has also faded away.

Yet I couldn't throw away this great hobby and everything I have learned from it. When I come back to it I see that I still love watching and making demos and being part of the scene, and the pure creative experience after abolishing any ideas about the external motivators and focusing on the process can be not only quite rewarding but more productive and satisfying. Some people, when they loose the meaning in that vain search for acceptance, recognition or any other semi-extrinsic reasons that faded away, they decided that the knowledge at least will help them in their careers and they can just forget everything about the scene. But in my case I saw that there is still magic and there is a magic when one can just be creative with only the intrinsic motivation being active.

I have really reprogrammed myself concerning that. It wasn't that hard at the end, although after ten years of living in a vicious circle. My triptych (what a word) in the demoscene is simple:

Creativity for Creativity (NOW)
Releasing for the Scene (Demoparties)
Comments are Irrelevant (Pouet, etc)

In a nutshell, I will be truly working on any programming activity when I feel like enjoying the process, if for any reasons I procrastinate or don't feel like working with that then I can easily leave it for the day (since I am not dependent any more on an obsessive need to work on something and finish it just for the result, my motivational process is not any more the release or the deadline or the people).

If it happens that because of the creative process I have random chunks of code, unreleased effects that fit well together, some half-finished idea or anything that could be tampered for few days/weeks or how much time I wish to dedicate for the completion of a full demo and I wish to contribute my work to some demoparty I might be/or not visiting then it will do just fine to work with it before the deadline if I am motivated enough. It's just feels nice to release your creative stuff for people to see and to contribute to demoparties just for supporting the scene. It works well only if one does not become obsessed with the release DURING the creative process but only focus on the realization of it when he has something to show.

It's only an aftereffect and shouldn't be the focus that one might get plenty of comments at sites like Pouet or other scene web resources. Some of these might be positive or even so admiration and love for the kind of work one has done. One can be content at the present moment of reading these comments as it coincides that the think one actually does, be it oldschool prods, pure effect demos, abstract stuff, 3d flyebyes, story demos, noise demos, etc. have it's own special audience that happens to like the specific kind of demos one produces. If one doesn't like your style of demos and gives a negative comment for whatever reason then you should ignore that since there will be always few individuals out there that happen to like your style of demos. This however is just an aftereffect of doing what you like to do and one shouldn't let his feelings during the creative process be related to his audience. You create purely for your own enjoyment and people who happen to either like or dislike your demos will always be there.

It only pleases me how nicely I have resolve my demoscene hobby in my mind and I know this worked well and made the creative process during my last two recent demos more great than ever before. I am not looking here whether it made it more successful, whether those releases were crap or not, whether I achieved anything with it. Things just flew so nicely, procrastination was absent mainly as an aftereffect of not focusing on negative feelings associated with my old motives, and I now believe solidly that if one does what he truly loves without being distracted by external motives then productivity can rise since there is true motivation directly connected to the creative process. One enjoys every simple moment of it and so he is greatly compelled to work on a project no matter the outcome.

And now the main question and new challenge for me is: What happens for work that one HAS to do but DOESN'T WANT to?

What happens when there are no true intrinsic motivations? When one would take a good excuse as a way to abandon this work? When he would give anything to not have to do yet not completing the task also means something negative that he wishes to avoid?

Welcome to my final project master thesis. I am trying to do a very big scary change to myself since the night before yesterday because of this. I am trying to make me believe that I have pleasure during the productive process (Ha,. I didn't even used "creative") when trying to write my final thesis. The code was not so bad experience and still I procrastinated because I was flooded by anxiety and emotion concerning something that HAS to be done whether I like it or not. The same process "helped" me so nicely to procrastinate deadly even during the completion of several courseworks, even those who were related with things that I like in graphics or found quite interesting. It's amazing how counter-productive can the studying-system be for some individuals.

And now I am angry and want to retaliate. My focus is this, the biggest enemy is not the educational system but myself. Isn't this the greatest and hardest thing to challenge, your own passions, desires and habits that makes you be the same as the one you were ten years ago?

Before you say that I am kinda harsh on myself, yes, and that was my initial thought. That night I was angry with myself for not trying a bit more with my master and somehow I got the determination I needed to allow myself attempting something that I never did before in my life. To overcome myself. To become better than me.

Of course my second thought was that I will forget this the next morning and that I will go back to my old habits of doing anything else rather than the work that has to be done. And since I knew that from several older attempts to change something in myself (e.g. weight) and I knew how especially harder it would be to actually fight procrastination (which in two words is actually displeasure avoidance) I insisted into both inquiring harder into the reasons (asking myself rhetorical and tricky questions) and promise to not let the subject fade away during the next days. My final project, which will be one of my hardest struggles I guess, is a perfect battlefield for this effort and I still have fourteen days to give my best and possibly evolve.

Evolve.
This will be internalized extrinsic motivator that I believe it fits my personality at the present moment. I think this is a single good shoot opportunity to do something I have never done before. This is what I finally came with after stressing the subject, being angry at myself, observing how my task-avoidance repulsive force works and what excuses it finds to not do stuff, thinking over it again, having some good intuitive moments upon the subject and then struggling again with it. I started writing good enough text yesterday (after a full week of procrastination and imagine it's a final project that you SHOULDN'T procrastinate with, not a simple coursework) and hopefully I will continue today.

And the (external) focus here is not finishing the project, I could even work very hard for it and yet fail to submit for other reasons but then I would at least know that I have tried. The (external internalized) focus is a feat of self-accomplishment, a challenge against your worse addictive habits, of maybe going against your nature and overcoming yourself.

My biggest fear was that this goes against my personality, my beliefs, my ego really. Everybody was telling me that I have to change, that I should be studying, that I should not be lazy, that I am not trying enough. I was telling myself that if I don't have a great need for something and at the same time don't feel like going through the struggle and don't see any pleasure on it then maybe it's because it doesn't fit my nature. I said that you can't just oppress someone into doing something. And all these things are connected so negatively to things that people said and I hate that it's too hard to accept it and even force it with great pressure to yourself right now. This is the shit!

But then there is something that nobody told me. That to do this task one has to be determined, understand the reasons behind it, believe. One has to clear his mind from all negative emotions, accept the good reasons for still doing it and also accept his possible failures during the attempt and find some good motives for forcing this to himself, that still fit his personality.

p.s. It's that really hard to accept and finally decide doing this for once and for all! But now I have believed with full reason. Discipline is not bad when it's applied with a conscious mind for good reasons. Sometimes some things we have to do in our lives are things that we don't want to do. There just isn't any good intrinsic motivation in studies for me. I still don't deny pleasure. But I think conscious (with a true understanding in mind) deprivation of pleasure would be another good challenge to myself (might help losing weight once and for all). I have to learn to live in balance. I might know the following days because there is still the possibility I will forget everything after a few days. I already procrastinated a lot by writting this but it was worth the effort..

Please, don't try to understand, this is just a reminder to myself for the possible future.

2010-08-22T00:19:00.005+01:00

I swear to myself, if I ever manage to make this big leap, I will never forget my old self. I promise that I will come back at a later time to resolve an alternative way for those people who never did it.

Procrastination, some more thoughts.

2010-08-19T14:08:00.010+01:00

I decided to write the second part here, in order to avoid having a very big article with two parts following a different path. In the previous post I wanted to address the real problem of procrastination in me and other individuals in the shortest way I could. Here, I will discuss various random ideas I left.

In the past I had a problem with that concerning my demoscene hobby. Originally I thought that one procrastinates because he doesn't feel like doing something. I believed that it usually happens when you HAVE to study, HAVE to work but don't WANT to. It worked so "nicely" with my mathematics degree in Greece that took me eight years to finish. But what happened with my hobby? Isn't that supposed to be something that you LIKE to do? First of all, I'd like to say that something changed in that, I went through and over it, I am not affected anymore. My last two CPC releases and plenty of unreleased coding experiments positively suggest that to me (it's not visible by productivity, it's only obvious when I remember how I felt WHILE working on these projects). This is because I changed my general attitude towards the scene. I have seen the false motives of my hobby and how vain they were. Yet I believed that the creativity of the scene and being part of it is still great. Not thinking about the results, the finalized project, the praises or blames of the scene but just focusing on what you really love did the trick. I just had to clean my mind and remember why I started with this hobby and which pure elements still makes it worth. I am really hotly motivated now for scene coding and focusing on doing what I love helps me to not procrastinate with this.

It only remains to see whether this "impossible" change has really happened. There is one suspicion that maybe I was more motivated in contrast to the real work I had to do in my studies (although I was more absent from demoscene activity more than ever this year, officially and unofficially). I compared my university obligations to demoscene. At least I said, if I don't finish a demo till the deadline, I am not going to fail anything. This is not my obligation, it's my hobby, it should be what I love to do not something I HAVE to do. I can be motivated to work with it because I LOVE coding and demos but I don't HAVE to work with it. It's not a final project, it's not a full-time job, it's the last pure thing that I can still enjoy while being creative. Well, it's not just the contrast with real life (and good avoidance excuse) that made the trick, it's also those thoughts. I was having these realizations for a long and sometimes they need years to really catch up. It only remains to see if after my studies I will still find myself in peace with the demoscene (I don't need to show productivity, I just need to not fall into the procrastination well (Wishing to WORK but CAN'T). I need to be able to let go if for some reasons I am not motivated and be able to return back at periods when I feel like working on demos. And be happy with all that.)

And so, this is my revelation concerning my hobby. It's also a revelation concerning some real life aspects (like feelings of not being normal, of HAVING to get a girlfriend (why?) and stupid unimportant stuff like that). Those things cured me. Maybe I saw them in contrast to other more real problems. Some of the more real problems are the occasions where if you procrastinate then you are busted.

What happens if you have a deadline for your final thesis? This is my current concern now. I know that if I work like crazy for a week I can still make it. I am trying now to convince myself that if I don't finish this one week before the deadline then I am busted (and that's the problem, I can't convince myself, I can't fool myself to not let this run till the very last night before the deadline :P). But I think I will make it with that. I just have to plan a week or more before the original deadline, something I NEVER managed to do before.

The other thing is job seeking. I made some attempts in June/July. I might have to do more now. I don't have a certain answer for a job position yet. And if I don't do this till the end of September or even before then I might have to return back to Greece and there is no future there for the kind of jobs that are maybe suitable to my programming experience. I am afraid I will procrastinate with that as I already did. Needless to say that I also failed (I write this for the first time in this blog) in some exam lessons (procrastination == I was never a good student) which means I am not going to get my master diploma this year and this might make it harder to get a job too. Also, all these things and especially the failure in the exams have brought me so hard down recently that I even ask myself the question whether I wasn't made up for this thing anyways..

The procrastination article link in the last post tells us that this condition is not something to joke about. And sometimes it's true about my own case. But sometimes I find myself also joking about it, being between a semi-serious/funny situation. Maybe it's just self-sarcasm.

Though it makes me think this about it: What if there is another factor, how seriously you take your procrastination, how much do you accept your life as it is?. There are people who don't even discuss about this problem. I know they can be great procrastinators but only joke about it. I sometimes laugh and sometimes cry. One could say that I haven't done something drastic about it because I don't consider it more than 50% a problem in my life? It's like say being a drunkard and sometimes saying "Fuck em, life is about drink and fun!" and other times "Shit! I should stop doing this.." and then again this cycle of a self-loving/self-loathing condition.

One could greatly say that one should accept himself as it is and one is fine by being lazy and only doing stuff when he feels truly motivated. And this is one lesson I learned, to accept myself, so I could accept myself not necessary having any obligation to do demos but only do them when I love it, I also accepted something that freed me and I haven't written much. That I don't need to be obliged towards real life stuff about normality or having a girlfriend. Many will disagree with these but why should we take these things seriously when there are other more real and serious problems out there (like the uni/job obligations)? Needless to say the more I was in sorrow because of all these matters the less motivation I had to do anything. So let's accept the unimportant and let's see what we can do with the important.

Of course, maybe the answer is that there is no cure. One(two) thing(s) I learned from a procrastination coursework I took part here at the university is that (at least the accepted) primary solution IS that you HAVE to do it at the end. No matter what, if compulsive task avoidance is similar to other addictive conditions like alcoholism (as presented by the same article link in the previous post), at the end isn't what we want to see stopping the addiction? Except if we somehow don't agree with this fact entirely, because there are sometimes where you just don't feel like doing things and maybe my personality reacts and doesn't let me be a robot. You see how I am busted? If this is the only solution then I am not exactly following it, expect when the deadline is very serious and still only with struggle..

..the other idea, which I forgot to write in the previous paragraph, that I learned from the coursework is that what we avoid is dis-pleasure. And it's true. We somehow have to try feeling those negative feelings, in a way accept them and live through them in order to get the good feelings of accomplishment. It's a nice thing to have in mind.

I will end up this ugly big post by mentioning my Procrastinooze trick. I generally don't like those anti-procrastination tricks that are supposed to work miracles but don't really do anything for me (or I am too lazy to even try them). But sometimes I try some because they are good experiments. This one is similar to those time tricks where you set up your watch/mobile to alarm you at shorter or longer hours (some also set the clock randomly some minutes back to not be late to an appointment) but here it's just an SDL application I finished yesterday that runs minimized and after a random number of minutes (from 15 to 45 or how much I want) it will suddenly and surprisingly pop up and play some annoying sounds and show noise in a window, till you press Space to stop the random snooze alarm and minimize it again for the next time. Once it might pop after 23 minutes then after 42 so it's really a surprise and when it happens I told myself that this is a signal for me to pause for a minute and try to perceive what I am currently doing right now whether it's work or ...procrastinating. It's like a random slap in the face every now and then to remind me that I have to do work in case I missed the clock. I tried this experiment yesterday by setting snoozing at every 30 minutes in my mobile but this was so predictable that I was expecting it. And so I can try the unpredictable now. Needless to say, I did no work yesterday no matter what :P

What can I say? Months ago I invented Procrastinopoly.. :)

Do you really understand procrastination?

2010-08-19T13:11:00.011+01:00

It disappoints me how most people think about procrastination and the solutions to it. It also saddens me that I still cannot find a true answer to fight this thing anywhere on the web. A lot of tricks exist, some of which are clever and interesting but they are not the solution to the problem. First of all, in order to follow these advices one has to change his habits or to plan well. Which is one thing alone that we procrastinators won't do. So, we will procrastinate finally making a change in our life... forever.

Then everybody talks about tricks or prompt us to just do it because as they say it's the only solution at the end. Nobody understands there is a deeper problem, a repulsive force. I can feel it. I don't wake up in the morning these days because I know I'll have to do work and I avoid it. When I wake up I go outside to eat, because I say that I need to not have an empty stomach, I need carbs and proteins for my mind to work. But this is also a nice excuse to avoid work again. When I finish eating outside I feel the repulsion. As I am going back home I feel it more. I want to do anything else, to find an excuse to avoid sitting down and working on the thing that I avoid all these days. An article describes it very well as compulsive task avoidance.

It's very common to say that clever people are usually the ones that fall into this vicious cycle because they find the best excuses to procrastinate. I generally disagree with that notion. First of all, these excuses are not so hard or clever to imagine. Saying that you can't do the job because you don't "feel" like doing it or you don't have enough time isn't a thought of a genius (they are actually trying to describe their feelings). As a secondary notion I'd say that it's not clever but idiotic to not choose doing something when you can have an advantage from that. I mean, do we have the choice to either be productive in our lives or not and we voluntarily chose not to be? It doesn't make sense..

Finally, I think what people mean by saying this quote is that they see a lot of creative (that's what they mean by clever) people having a hard time with that. My current view is that many creative people are sensitive, more conscious, feelingful and passionate about everything. This includes their creative hobbies of course but not only. It might explain the great passion they have about creativity or ideas or whatever else they are involved into but also results in problems in real life. Maybe it's much harder for some people to simply shut down their personal feelings and just focus on real life obligations. Sometimes I see people who are successful and always do great work as robots who have somehow found the mechanism to control their feelings and be productive. I wouldn't like to say that all these people are robots, in fact there might be some who had the same problem in a lesser or greater degree and just found the means or decided one day to change this. But I think that is the connection between the problem of procrastination and creative passionate people. I am always making the rhetorical question to myself: How do they do it?

This is how I see procrastination based on my personal experience. Regarding all these popular tricks on how to cure/fight procrastination seems to me similar to suggesting fancy tricks and "simple" solutions to people who have serious problem with drugs or alcoholism. It's like suggesting someone that in order for him to stop smoking he has to stop smoking. But is there a real solution for procrastination?

Individualism

2010-08-15T00:49:00.000+01:00

I was inspired to write this post after watching Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life. I didn't know anything about Ayn Rand and her philosophy before except for a funny xkcd strip (check also the tooltip/yellow box over the strip). Some of the ideas expressed certainly reminded my own situation where I struggled being myself and being focused in the things that I love while living in a world where people insist that you should resemble them.

I would like to shortly discuss two ideas from the hundreds of random thoughts that occurred during watching this film. Ayn Rand looked so confident, so strong (maybe cold) with her beliefs and the way she drove her life. Very few people manage to follow a different part, keep up with the struggle and win. One of my computer heroes was John Carmack of ID software. In one of his interviews he was telling his story about how he had the dream to become a game programmer while his mother strongly fought against this. I purely identified with his situation the first time I read this, since I also wanted furiously at the time to become a great programmer which got me into bad conflict with my parents and also in bad mood when everyone told me I should be "normal" just like the rest.

But the main point here is this. I was weak. I wasn't Ayn Rand. I wasn't John Carmack. I wasn't everyone who I admire for 1) Following their own path with confidence and determination, 2) Don't stop at any cost, 3) Cut the self-pity and focus on the job. Number one alone doesn't cut it. I lacked two and three. But I accept that maybe this is who I am. I just wanted to point this difference on me and also reflect a bit on the idea that maybe only a very small minority of individuals who have chosen to follow the hard risky path finds bliss in that. We just never hear much from the majority.

So, what happens to the rest? I want to focus again on two specific scenarios. One gets stuck inbetween and revolves around the dilemma, should one continue following this gloomy path or should he quit and compromise with common life? This was my kind of dilemma. I wasn't strong enough to keep it going no matter the cost and not hard working enough to truly focus on it. I felt desperate. Oppression and no support from the outside world, lack of self-esteem, made me gradually weaker.

Now, the other scenario is something that I see very frequently. Something that makes me angry. And though it makes me curious why I haven't followed this path (yet?), why I keep staying in the middle, being stubborn to quit no matter if I am feeling like having lost the battle for a long and only making a fool of myself. Like being the last in the battleground of insisting being myself while seeing all these people changing radically opinions. Some of these people were geeks like me and sometimes with the same passion. They even found my old rants about following this focus strongly no matter if I had no life supporting their own beliefs. And then after years, they came back with beliefs that are 180 degrees opposite to what they expressed in the past. Reciting the common ideas about real life that I grew to hate.

Let's say that I respect the fact that someone decided to change his own beliefs to something very radically different, that everyone has the right to leave the old sack and become a different man. What bothers me is how frequently it happens to most people with geeky pasts. Most of the people quit their passion and convert to social standards. Some of them even despise their past activities and few of them preach. That's another part. I believe that most people who fanatically preach about how we need to get a life are geeks in disguise. They used to be like us. I have seen regular people, cool and social, not from our kind who can talk and listen to you and accept for who you are. Then I see people with a bitterness who try to put it on you. No person who would be confident and happy and complete as a person with his life would come and bother with your different lifestyle. I don't have proof about these lines but I truly believe them.

And so I decided to finish this with a final passage concerning these strange changes. And the fact that geeks are afraid. Most individuals who decided to follow a path that is quite radical to the common notion of what a "normal" life should be, don't seem to have the guts to keep up with the social struggle for a very long time. Some of them change radically, some just quit, others start preaching and most also compromise with common beliefs or excuses about their passion. One or two examples about the compromise/excuse part..

First example, some computer geek in a magazine, when internet cafe appeared in Greece (in my place it's like big halls where the youth meets today, similar to arcade rooms), he wrote that we geeks can be considered social now because they meet at these places and socialize while playing games (it was not written as a joke). Second example, I should be reading an nfo file from a famous PC demogroup where they also said somewhere: "Most of our group members have a normal life. They go to gym, have girlfriends, listen to music, blah, blah..". I don't say it's bad to mix these activities with real life, I don't say one should either be one or the other. All I want to say is why the fuck do you have to justify for your life style in such a sense that it shares similar elements with normality? Why are you compelled to excuse or need to show that your hobby is not interfering with your real life? It's like saying that you are a weirdo, but not from those weirdos that give bad fame to our kind..

Third example, my own ruminations. My endless self-monologues in this blog or even when walking alone to explain myself. Sometimes I wonder why should I ever do that? This was some kind of a way trying to excuse my geeky life style, that MAYBE this... BUT it has that positive, it's not so BAD, blah blah. Who will be my judge? I couldn't even explain it to myself. I was writing these endless essays because I had a very hard time to believe them myself..

I guess it's hard, almost a taboo to say for example that you are some very weird person with no interest in common life and that is perfectly fine. Is it really tough to say sincerely that you are who you are and that's just it?

And So I have decided. From now on I will try to express who I really am in the most simple way possible and without excuses. I might have lost many battles but at least I can keep doing whatever I love to do and be happy with that. And be proud of that!

Hobbies and Passion

2010-07-22T11:12:00.007+01:00

I recently finished a small 1kb CPC intro for the retro Euskal competition. It makes me happy when I think about it and I am really looking forward for the end of the competition this Saturday night. The code of this intro (as with my recent CPC demo, Chunky Chan) was a very nice and smooth process (Chunky Chan was partially C code, while this intro is 100% assembly of course). I guess I have either become more fluid in coding or I am in a better mood for it.

Few days ago I met with two friends outside in the city and then we went to their homes and watched movies or played games till six in the morning. It was pretty exhausting the next day but really worth it. My discussion with one guy is what remained in my mind. He told me how he loved video games and how a passion helps you escape for a while from real life worries. He said "This is why we live for" (Για αυτό ζούμε ρε φίλε).

And then I remember this quote. These nice creative moments when I was coding this intro and tried to squeeze some stuff from 1700 bytes down to 896 (+128 byte header on the CPC), when I managed to finish it and submitted it, to the moment this will be out and I'll see all the other entries and I will read your comments on Pouet or CPCscene, those are some good things to live for. Those are the moments, especially the current days I am so anxious and frustrated with some real life matters (about studies or job seeking) and can't take it anymore, those are the moments I forget and live happily with something that is my own passion and means a lot to me. This is what we live for.

I am currently listening to some classic tunes in Kohina radio. It feels great and brings back memories. I remember a specific moment months ago when I felt relaxed and lay back and ran some classic AtariST demos in an emulator and one of them for some reasons made me extraordinary happy, I laughed, I then observed how I love the demoscene, that it is such a unique and special hobby for me, but it was such a moment of simple happiness that I still remember it. It has some bouncing 3d dotballs with such smooth animation that made me jump. This is what we live for.

And then I was thinking something else yesterday. I remembered many many years ago a girl who told me I should be grateful for having such a passionate hobby I can relate to, because for most other people this is a problem. Yesterday I searched in google for things like "I don't have a hobby", "Why can't I have a hobby?", "Do I need a hobby?" and I found enough questions of this kind (they weren't that much as "I am XX years old and I still don't have a boy/girlfriend" though :P) and people worrying about it.

And it seemed so strange to me. It seemed so strange because I never thought of this as a problem. I thought that one person can find a lot of interests, you can't just sit there and wonder what to do, because in all of my life I was having so much motivation for doing various things and I have only done a very limited amount of what I dream in life. Demoscene came naturally, it was computers and programming before, I had some passion for science stuff, space, looking at the stars, also reading stories about UFOs and such stuff. If I had never found the demoscene and never followed the programming discipline I could be studying physics now or be involved in astronomy as a hobby or maybe being one of those nuts looking for UFOs :)

What I want to say is that there are so many things I am looking forward with great interest, new things I want to get into in more depth, but it's not easy because I already have the demoscene, one big passionate hobby that eats most of my time. Having 2-3 hobbies (of the passion class) would be too much. But I do want to get into those other things! Thus it feels so strange when other people whine that they can't fill the time and feel bored eternally when you would like to have 96 hours per day to dedicate it to the things that interests you most in life.

I remember the days in my first job. Sometimes in the morning, while eating my breakfast and just before starting to work I used to surf on the web in various random sites, ranging from my programming hobby and the demoscene to blogs having to do with science or philosophy. I used to read articles (mainly simplified/popularized) on quantum mechanics or neuroscience or space exploration among others because these are some science matters which for some reason hook me up. I found them from slashdot at the time. Looking around the place to see what other colleagues where reading on the net, it was just the daily news and.. PAOK (a greek football team). Well, some funny guy near me was reading a forum about WOW and spent his time playing facebook games :)

But what is a hobby? Is it a leisure activity? Is it something that you do just to fill in your free time? Or is it a passion, something that you dedicate your life into, for a greater purpose, a feeling of fulfillment, creativity of great things, a thing of your personality? You know, in some of these questions I curiously seek in google to understand others position, I found things like "I tried this, I tried that, I watched movies for 2 hours, listen to some music, played a sport, read a book for an hour but I am here again being bored not having a real hobby". A friend told me that it's not just our creative hobbies that can take the form of a passion. One could make watching movies into a passion, knowing everything about movies, actors, history, etc. If he is hooked up into this, it won't be just a two hours leisure activity but he won't be able to find enough time for his passion. He will be in his job, waiting eagerly for 8 hours to go back home and watch the next bunch of some classic or cult movies and read every info on imdb. A movie-phile. It seems that a hobby no matter how passive or creative, how common or geeky, could either be approached as a simple leisure activity or a real passion that involves someone's true dedication into it.

Most people don't have a real hobby. And some of them who worry about it try to approach it from the leisure perspective which of course isn't going to fulfill their need to not feel bored in the long run. It still makes me wonder. Isn't there something that hooks you up so badly that you'd like to have more free time to dedicate into it?

I can't even understand what means someone's life to be boring. I am only using the word "boring" in situations when I am forced to do something that I don't want to for hours and I can only escape when this thing is over. But having plenty of time in front of you and not being able to fulfill this time with something meaningful? It's hard to grasp for me. However I should approach this situation not as something dummy but as a real hard condition I cannot grasp, the same way one cannot grasp depression for example. I guess I am on the outside now, staring at people with conditions I can't imagine how it would be to live with, in the similar fashion extroverted people would wonder about me at social situations. And then I realize that what I naturally have is a gift for most.

p.s. One thing. In the past, people made me believe that I don't have enough hobbies, that I am boring. When they asked me about my interests I'd say computers. They 'd say, emmm.. listening to music, watching movies, going to the gym, going for a walk. But those are things that everyone does in a lesser or great degree! I didn't consider them to be true hobbies that show who you are so I didn't mention them. I was boring because my interests couldn't relate with most people. What interests though? Leisure activities we all do at times? One passionate hobby compared to some activities one wrote in a form not necessarily because he genuinely is hooked to them but in order to show that he has many interests. That was the situation in the past. They made me believe I was boring. It doesn't seem like so..

The next day

2010-07-21T23:46:00.000+01:00

I was ok

I don't want.

2010-07-17T07:50:00.004+01:00

I am not feeling like writting this today.

Yesterday, changes have happened, I proposed new challenges to myself and I thought I adapt to them.
Today I felt so blue. I haven't felt so much before. I don't know why.
Maybe because there will be so much to do soon and sometimes I don't even know why I should bother.
Maybe because my personality which resides in my brain (no soul here) got scared of the changes and snapped it.

I know I am not making sense. But challenges are to come soon. And I don't know I am in the mood to take part in them. I don't know what to do with my life. I am angry with myself and some people. I don't know if any path will give me peace.

I don't want. Today. And only today I hope.

Dark feelings of the past

2010-07-02T01:27:00.003+01:00

I forgot darkness.
I forgot when I took sadness and sorrow and transformed it into something else.
When I wondered why people like to paint their lives black and I could find the answer by looking into myself.

I realized that I forgot darkness.
And staring at it for a glimpse brought back memories.
I forgot self-pitty, self-victimization. The bittersweet feeling of taking your anyways awful days and transforming them into something heroic.

Maybe not. People hated us. We hated shinnyhappies. I am not an emo, a goth or any of those stereotypes. I am a simple human being who in it's worse moments constructs a more positive meaning (martyrdom, heroic, whatever) from all of negativity.

I realized I missed that feeling when I encountered it again. It's not only since I discovered the Zen that I have changed to the better but it must be maybe two years if not one and a half. So long since I last played the game of self-pitty. Of course Zen is the way now for me, I just found the opportunity to reflect back. Some old emails, some old history remembered, some of the old feeling to be absorbed by something I left behind, I even totally forgot I had left it. I just had some bad days and it left me so vulnerable and reminded my number one wish and fear, to not be insignificant, to be loved, to not feel like a failure.

I know that all these are just ideas, that one could feel content with himself, that you are chasing things all the time and never get rest, that you may be building stuff and then something will randomly break things apart, that life is dynamic. It's just the days and a lot of fear about real life in the near future and being exhausted by everything and angry at myself. It's just things that are happening, blows I have taken, things that will change tomorrow. They just happened in such a way that they brought that need for longing in the past affairs.

It felt stupid yet it felt unique, something in the past I was missing. One might look at other people and laugh at them but there is more than one world and we should pay attention to both. Even after finding Zen, I knew it wouldn't (and shouldn't) be the end, I knew there was still an interesting path in front of me, I knew I should try to travel back to my old habits and observe this time, live it, feel it, be it. The darkness and sorrow of the past. The big story I created about me.

It must be a long time since I last posted cryptic and sorrowful posts in this blog. I have moved some stuff in other blogs and all I post here is comics. Things have changed I guess. Now, take a blast from the past :P

Math Jokes

2010-06-22T23:31:00.002+01:00

I never thought I would laugh hard by jokes having to do with math. I am even surprised that I might understand 60% of them. I guess my degree in mathematics proved to be useful in some aspects :)

I just remembered them because of a recent Pouet thread

I also remembered a site I have visited once in the past and still updates with new jokes.

p.s. This blog, once filled with incomprehensible, long thoughts is moving towards,.. I don't know. Some of it's content has gone into other new blogs. They ask me why I open so many blogs but I don't exactly open new blogs, I am just trying to organize the theme of my old ones. In the past there would be posts here about sadness, thoughts, ideas, computers, demoscene, programming, mostly long and dark posts about my life, but everything. Now there are different blogs for the computer stuff, programming stuff, etc.

p.p.s. So much work these days. I am trying to do something. I went into three things. Of course my final project, but then I started searching for a job in the UK and I was sooo busy speaking with job agents and planning interviews, solving C++ tests (within days or over the phone), being stressful in general. I didn't even found the time to code a little demo project for the CPC (I will be at Amstrad Expo this weekend). But my new demo framework in PhrozenC is very nicely prepared now and it could assist faster development and maybe I'll use it for many small demo projects. Hmm..

The tipping point of happiness and a true change.

2010-06-13T20:21:00.000+01:00

Months ago I had the strange feeling that nothing really matters, that everything is just an idea to which I was fixated and responded very seriously. In terms of the future of this and some of my other blogs, I felt like there is no point to update them anymore. At least those blogs that were filled with obsessive thoughts and feelings of sorrow and the smell of revenge. Because I suddenly realized that it didn't matter to me and all I could do is just to continue living my own life whatever that is and only evolve in the stuff that seem natural to me. I thought I could see something, the vanity of things, the fact that I am a being with a personality that evolved because of my past and is motivated to fight with the ideas that annoyed me in the past and I felt they are wrong.

This was just the beginning of new realizations. They have taken a less nihilistic path recently and a more holistic approach (Apparently not one of my blogs will die because I can write now based on my changing view of the world). The most amazing thing is that I felt something so strong like a true enlightenment. Of course the first thing I thought is that this enlightenment could be just a temporary one like all my rest infatuations with grant new ideas that fade away or die instantly when hard reality hits my door. No, I'd say this is different and I had the most confidence ever that what I have learned shows truly the right path for my life.

It's not easy to describe what happened to me because it is based on the experience of things under a different view that can't be described with words. I am even unable to find why now and which factor led me to this point. Why couldn't I see it in the past? What worked differently that helped my mind to embrace this new view? Could this still be a temporary fixation from which I will return back? Am I afraid of returning back?

You might have heard a lot of times this phrase before: "I can't describe with words what happened to me because you have to experience it to understand.". This kind of expression might produce multitudes of negative/positive emotions and series of thoughts to anyone of you. Sometimes these words can be attributed to some person claiming that nobody can understand him/her and other times it's when people talk about religious or metaphysical experiences. For some people it could mean forcing them to not try to explain the experience, thus not investigating it, just believing it and this can just piss off people who are highly skeptical or too practical. Others might like this phrase for various reasons I haven't thought well yet. I'd like to explain a bit on this concerning my own experience and what else I learned concerning the inability expressing it with words. No metaphysics included.

The inability is actually a difficulty. I realized that words are just words. They are the same as ideas. A word can mean many different things for each individual. It can hold positive or negative emotions or both. The difficulty comes at expressing the ideas of the new paradigm and not be misunderstood. Which doesn't matter really because I received the great gift during my experience and it stays with me regardless whether I can communicate this or not. And the second important thing is the fact that if I actually start describing the new paradigm concerning my enlightenment it will feel so vague and common that you'd shrug or giggle or think I am just naive. Because the words, phrases or ideas associated with my new view are so common and naive sounding, coming either from things you hear every day or see in the movies but basically they are very much related to ideas very frequently discussed in zen meditation for example. Or, and this may make some of you shrug more, in several "new-age sounding ideas" (don't worry, I am also highly allergic to all those new-age crap :).

What I want to say here is that you were expecting some brand new idea, something that you have never heard before, to be my new paradigm. If something changed inside me in a true sense, shouldn't it be something more extraordinary and unique that naive ideas like "Be yourself", "abolish the bullshit inside your brain", "don't let the ego control you", "find what you really want", etc? Also, aren't these some ideas we were in one or another way discussing in the past? Aren't these things that they were telling you and you didn't listen? Aren't these things that everybody is familiar with and everybody nods his head positively when hearing these? So, what are the news here?

One fact is that while I was hearing these ideas I couldn't feel them the same way as I do now. One extra point for the fact that the enlightenment, the realization of one's self, the way of happiness cannot be just a formula that you tell to another person and he is instantly cured. Because the ideas were always there, you just have to realize it oneday. And it takes time.

Remember that words and ideas stir different emotions to each of us and that an experience can't be described with words without being misunderstood. All those years I know these words and ideas but had confusing ideas about them. At the tipping point of true understanding I somehow experienced all those older ideas and word compared to all my past experiences in life and some realizations in a brand new way. It's like all the confusing puzzle pieces inside my brain suddenly moved to their right positions and all things suddenly made sense. This is my experience. Words and ideas can mean anything depending on someone's individual experiences. The whole relationships between ideas and your life story, the whole puzzle from the past till today, when it all suddenly makes sense it is something that cannot be properly analyzed focusing on it's individual parts but only understood (experienced) as a whole.

In the next part I will try to give some brief clues concerning my new view. In the future, I'd like to discuss further some of these parts and I will frequently use the keyword 'zen' or 'zen-like' to describe new posts discussing this view or having to do something with it respectively. Changes in the mood and direction of ideas in other blogs will also happen inspired by my new life view.

Random clues about my new life view

Personality. What is personality? I am not a brain scientist to know what's going on in my brain but I'll speak based on my current gut about it. Take your life from the beginning, starting from your birth till this moment. Evaluate your experiences either good or bad, your influences, your language, the ideas you have encountered, the things that shocked or astonished you, your evolved thoughts and emotions about all these stuff, about the story of your life (which is still running). All these massive networks of neurons that evolved till this point and relate to thoughts, emotions, images, symbols, words, sounds, colors, people, experiences shape your likes and dislikes, things or people that you like or hate, beliefs and preconceptions about yourself and everything in this world and finally creates a complex image of yourself as a conscious entity with a personality and a place in this world. This vast network that evolved through the path of your life is your personality, is how you imagine yourself, what you like or dislike, it is what zen calls ego. It's everything that you have that makes you.

Scary or revealing thought to ponder about. The whole image of yourself is all this accumulation of experiences, influences and just about everything. Imagine now that I somehow change some small even tiny amount of experiences or influences in your past without destroying the whole. Yet, tiny changes in the very past could bring greater changes in the distant future. Imagine, very tiny little changes in the factors that sculpture yourself and you could now be a man with such a different personality THAT YOU WOULD HATE SOOOOOO MUCH YOUR ALTERNATIVE SELF IF YOU MET HIM RIGHT NOW!!!. Excuse me for the capitals but I wanted to magnify this particular part to make you ponder how fragile the idea of the ego is. Your whole personality is just this massive puzzle of life experiences and associated emotions and ideas. I love pondering on this particular idea a lot. It somehow let's me free.

Ego? New-age/zen crap? But why??? Where does it help? I admit I had a lot of influences recently by ideas originally taken from texts having to do with zen and meditation. However, this influence wasn't the sole reason that lead to the change (I write this because some people could think that I was brainwashed and that this is a dangerous path, but I assure you I am still having my senses... evolved :). Several of these ideas were things I had heard from various sources and actually things I was always feeling would be good to follow in my life, it's like things I already knew where the good examples to follow, it just happened that they initially were described in zen philosophy (New-age is just influenced by them and other things). Anyway, one of the influences that brought me here was this article about the ego and also the much smaller one here.

In a sense, is it all about stop taking yourself seriously? Well, something like that, yes. Another set of ideas that everybody might be telling me yet it makes me wonder why I understood it now? (understood as in feeling/experience not ideas/words) But the fact is that people always confused me. Everyone told me that I should be myself, yet everyone came and criticized me about being kinda different in some aspects. You see people speaking about freedom, individuality and all those nice ideas, the zen ideas I described (and quite more I haven't spoken about yet) are everywhere, in movies, in books, in every day conversation and everybody seems to be happy about them and accepting them, yet each one of us comes later and put a barrier, put a restricting thought, maybe because being afraid that too much freedom without consideration can lead to negative results? I don't know. Those ideas are not just spoken, they are not just broadcasted, they are already there. It's like we already have them inside us, it's like universal truths. Somehow you know that if you discuss about them then instantly everyone will like them and truly agree with them. But people's actions will contradict badly. That's why I kept being confusing and had problems truly experiencing the realization of zen ideas. Until now that I realized that people are the best actors. (As a bit of a not so relevant example, how is it that everyone knows and agrees without second consideration that war is bad, yet it still takes a major role in the world? Do we always vote for exactly those leaders who don't nod happily with the free and nice ideas? Or are we contradicting with ourselves at a greater and more abstract scale???)

A simple reflection into the past: I pondered about my life story. All the experiences, good or bad, words and emotions associated with them, that shape my personality. About this blog. All my life I walk alone and talk furiously about those ideas on normality, weird people, individuality, close mindness and all my social fears. I am those ideas. I am those past experiences that shaped my personality, one that likes weird and different people and dislike ideas that sound like someone trying to tell us how to get a life, ideas that define what is normal and what is not and all that stuff. The sole reason I was keeping writing these furious texts and arguing with people (or with myself, trying to defend my beliefs against my doubts) is that all those past life experiences of people bullying me for being different, parents and friends blaming me for not having a life, accumulated into my current ego that likes and dislike things and is furiously filled with anger and a wish for revenge. Change some factors of the past (fragile ego) and I wouldn't be even here writing these stuff. I can think of these things as unimportant and this can be a relief

Explaining more cases and the objects of happiness substitution: The demoscene. Take the ideas in the previous paragraph. Bad childhood, low self-esteem, social anxiety, huge gaps left behind. Maybe it's the feeling that I was a loser in real life. I simply tried to cover this gap by seeking for some success in the demoscene. The demoscene just passed from my path. Another hobby with a community of weird people could come along but what it would do is to again substitute this gap of feeling a loser. It could also be a girl. It doesn't matter of the object though. This is what I have learned now and the realization makes me happy. Some people say that I could save myself by finding a girlfriend. But I believe it's just another case of filling the part that is faulty inside with another substitute. Other objects could be a career, your job, your family, your kids, even trying to be cool, at least when these things work as a substitute for feeling incomplete or having low self-esteem or anything bothering you. Why can't you just be happy by the way you already are? Why can't you just enjoy life and be content with what you have? When is the last time you were really peaceful?

Wouldn't that zen-like indifference be the ultimate defense, the ultimate excuse of not evolving in your life? This is an important part. Keeping a more positive, indifferent, open mind thought about my current condition, about being just a weirdo, a geek, without a girlfriend, with a lot of failures, thinking that all these are just my life story and I should accept things as they are, feeling that things are unimportant and that even the simple things matter, getting deep into that mindset really helped me find some peace for a while and gave a more positive view of my life and my future.

What happened in the past is that I was bombarded by general ideas and beliefs about life, also specifically targeted blaming towards me and then all those things evolving in inner voices that tell me that something is wrong with myself, trying to defend myself, remembering other ideas that say defending is like excusing, being full of negativity with all these internal and external thoughts and sometimes contradicting beliefs I accumulated from my interaction with the world, I got more close to myself, revengeful, angry, sometimes being anti-life (where life is what people consider "having a life", the common lifestyle) or liking weird people and fighting, it's like you get in the war that was created by you and them and never get peace. And you don't change this way, you get deeper into negativity, you move away from real world, you get defensive and in reality you are more influenced and feed your fury by these ideas. You never escape.

In few words, the new mindset that all these ideas, all these thoughts are thin air, the fight, the arguments, they are silly, everything is a lie, things should be taken seriously no matter what is my life path from now on, is a liberating view, one that gives you peace and drives your mind away from the spiral of negativity that both this world and yourself keep preserving. People are afraid as it seems that if they don't remind me that I should get a life then it's not gonna be good, but this is wrong because it is my life and I think every day about it.

I don't believe that zen-like ideas will make anyone so ignorant that he will leave his own life into oblivion. Because the brain is still strong and people have already personalities, they only need to take it easily for a while and live at peace. Taking things so seriously only makes things worse. At least for me. (are you robots?)

This text got soooo big that I don't like it (for another time). I could scrap it but I don't want to. But it doesn't matter. Maybe one day I will also learn to write proper articles. The fact is that there is a true change inside me and I just can't describe it. I feel so free and so happy inside me and this happened since a month ago and still persist at some days when focusing my thoughts into these things. It's not temporary and it lights my path from now on. Oh,. I never thought I would become a shinny-happy person. Usually I am allergic to new-age sounding stuff and shinnyhappiness in general :P

Best comics this week

2010-05-10T19:12:00.007+01:00

I found some greeeeeat ones!

Actually this one was the reason for writting this post. Best demoscene garfield comic ever. There are two associations one has to make here to laugh with this. It's so cleverly put :)

This one is simply funny and cute. Have you ever wondered to whom you where talking when you wrote your first program? :)

This is for mac haters. Seriously, one button?

This is if you have seen the movie 'The Box' or you just know the concept about it.

This speaks of a truth about my procrastination factor and creativity.

This is a bit on the serious side, maybe not in the same mood as the rest, but I just like it's meaning and found it recently.

p.s. I know I have also posted these in http://optimus6128.soup.io but I wanted to write some more about them because each one of them is so unique and funny :)

p.p.s. I discover most of the funny comics/images in random image thread on Pouet and few of them goes to soup.io

p.p.p.s. Going back to studying..

Snoozing..

2010-05-02T13:55:00.002+01:00

- Setting alarm at 10:00 am

- Alarm at 10:00 am
- Press ok to Snooze (for 15 minutes)
- 10:15
- Press snooze
- 10:30
- snooze
- 10:45
- snooze
- 11:00
- snooze
- .....
- 12:15 (no snoozes?)
- press snooze
- 12:30
- snooze
- 12:45
- snooze
- 13:00
- I like my bed soooo much..
- 13:15, 13:30, 13:45
- Finally I decided to wake up so that I write this on my blog :)

Who is the genious who invented snoozing?

People (or demos) that don't exist, part 3

2010-04-29T23:58:00.008+01:00

I don't remember if I have ever written the previous "People that don't exist" articles here (maybe part 1 but not 2).

In greek we say "Den yparxei" (Δεν υπάρχει!) - he doesn't exist, or "Den yparxoun" for plural (Δεν υπάρχουν!) - they don't exist. It is actually a slang that one says when he finds that another person did some extraordinary weird and cool thing. Actually, another internet slang describing this action is Epic Win :)

The people who don't exist are two polish sceners, a graphician and a musician. What they have done at a recent polish party (Stary Piernik 5) can only be described as astronomically epic win. In short words, they presented a quite good demo (according to the audience) at the big screen and later one of them holds the disk of the demo and says "I would like to say something. This is the one and only copy of this demo. This demo wasn’t here." and then he goes close to the campfire and throws the disk in the fire.

DEN YPARXEI!!!

Isn't that epical win squared? Or is it tremendously lame? I guess those where the mixed feelings of the 15 people who were at the party and the rest of the C64 scene.

Funny enough, even the title of the demo is sooo close with my rant about the greek slang. The demo doesn't exist. The demo wasn't there. Hahaha!!!

I read more funny things about this in CSDb and other sources. The demo is actually based on several old unreleased effects/parts from Fenek, a coder from Arise. The graphician Bimber and musician Wacek from the same group made the whole demo alone. Even the coder wonders, where the hell did they found his old unreleased previews?! The two guys without having much knowledge about coding spent two months connecting all the things together. (and that's why I write "effects/parts" in one point, maybe there are parts ready to be loaded and decrunched and only few calls are needed, because even if you have fragments of code from others it's not as easy for a coder (how much for those two people) to connect all the parts together without previous experience.) Screenshots of the demo can be seen in both the above links and they feature line vectors in a tunnel formation, a voxel landscape and maybe more.

But why You may ask? Whhyyyyyyy??? Bimber said that the demo was made exclusively for the people who came to the party to have the pleasure that only them have seen something that nobody will never see again. I say it was a joke, a stunt, a surprising and funny act, an epic win, something that we may never see again happening in a demoparty. Of course it's not the first time that a demo gets shown at a demoparty but never gets released, but for other reasons. The demo is not a final version, the coder doesn't want to release it yet or he thinks the demo is so ugly. Or someone has lost the sources. But this was different. This was a deliberate attempt at 8bit suicide =)

It's also like they are laughing at us. All these years I was struggling to create some good demos and even if I didn't succeed to make something really really good, I always was scared of the idea that whatever I have done could be lost after a hard disk crash or a virus or anything. I frantically gathered back ups and was getting too serious about it. And those guys just made a multipart demo with several effects, presented it at the party and then threw it away!

Ok,. maybe they are playing with us. Maybe this was just a stunt and they are still going to release a final. But that act on the demoparty is a thumb up alone from me. These people don't exist!

Things that you do when you can't find the English subtitles.

2010-04-20T02:08:00.005+01:00

1. Download the Spanish subtitles.

2. Create an empty html file and paste the subs between {pre} and {/pre} in the body.

3. Upload this html file somewhere in a server (I am using a temp folder somewhere in my codeverse.gr space).

4. Type babelfish.altavista.com in your browser.

5. Paste the URL of your html in 'translate an address' and select Spanish to English.

6. Copy the resulted translated text and paste it as a plane text in a .srt file

7. ....

8. PROFIT!!!

This is what I have to do with John Doe series. Nobody has ever made some proper English subs (apart from some strange subs I found in a random site, only for the 1st episode, where "I know I have to save that girl" is translated as "You know, you saved Germany!" and "I know the answer to the most things, but not how things feel" was translated to "boring..". Surely my babelfish translation is better :), there are only Spanish and Portugal translations. The series didn't last two long, only one episode, and the main hero talks soooo fast (because of the concept of these series) that it would be already a pain in the ass for the translators and if the series weren't important enough, nobody just cared to translate them. And the thing is that, in other series or movies when I can't find a translation I can easily watch it without them. But this one, the hero speaks so fast and outputs sooo much information that subtitles are essential, maybe even for English people(?). The series, great concept, bad execution. Sometimes laughable, comical. But I will watch it till the end with my little way to generate the subs, babelfish translated subs is better than nothing for these series, the concept is interesting and I always liked those strange or paranormal stuff. I will watch it even if it was disappointing and every time I need to generate the subs it takes some process.

I watch these series regularly: Lost, Fringe, Flash Forward, House MD, 24.
I plan to try and watch: Firefly, Eureka, Big Bang Theory (I have already seen some episodes scattered, with friends already), Battlestar galactica (I have watched few episodes in the beginning but I want to follow the story). Any more interesting sci-fi/paranormal stuff? Or maybe something of other kinds, like Jericho (I really liked this one)?

And yet yet yet another blog.

2010-04-15T18:00:00.001+01:00

This will be easy and fun to update :)

Every time I am playing some game, I feel like I have to grab a screenshot at a specific point that is either hilarious or has a particular beauty as a still.

I was playing Test Drive Unlimited yesterday (great game!). I got some screenshots as first posts. I guess Fraps will be my friend from now on :)

Random Screenshot Blog

Life v.2.0

2010-04-09T22:17:00.000+01:00

Important changes are happening. I sometimes feel different about things. I am also close to an important point in my life. The external changes are those which are going to happen if I finish with my studies and get a job somewhere in UK (are anywhere outside Greece). But the most important changes I am talking about are inside me.

I have self-esteem. I can produce it. Regardless if it's true or not. I feel more free about everything, I can be sure that I can live my life no matter what this will look like and feel confident about it. I have resolved personal matters and feel stronger about them.

I don't know what is happening. I don't know the reasons for this but there must be many. I came here to study, living alone, enjoying a more free life. At the same time I am more determined about this and more confident about myself. My psychological condition is better to enjoy it this time (remember, I have done it before with Erasmus but I was much younger and in a worse condition). Maybe I relaxed a bit from other things that bothered me, even if at the same time I was too much stressed with my studies. Maybe I was just working it out for years, resolving those matter concerning who I want to be and what people want me to be and all that stuff, and I came to be stronger.

The thing is, this change for example renders senseless some of my blogs. When I feel well with myself and I don't even need to prove it to others, there is no need to write such kind of texts like the ones at The struggle of normality or maybe even Computer Hermit. Even though when I read some of the old posts then I like them. But I feel weird about them. Sometimes I am even thinking I was writing too much about myself and maybe I shouldn't (and usually I was reactive to this idea of hiding one self and pretending to be another thing). So, I guess they will survive, I can't kill them. I only want to say that I have changed so much these days that I sometimes feel I don't need to write in these blogs.

Of course I don't say that I won't return back to my original state after few days or weeks. My latest post in one of these blogs was quite sadden and I was feeling vengeful for those people who fucked up my life as exactly I wrote. I get memories back and I wish I was living again those childhood days with my current state of mind so that I kick their ass. I was in the good mood I describe here days before that post. So, it's not like I won't find any chance to be in that sadden mood that allows me to write those texts. But something is happening and I want to keep the positive side of this mood more dominant.

The personality is what you get when you add all your past experiences, beliefs, things you hate, things you love and the complete idea you have about yourself. At my current age most of these things are crystalized, they are already determined. Yet you keep working on something, you try to challenge your beliefs, you try to improve something in your condition and you definitely have to change something from these crystalized habits.

More than a year ago I wrote those three rules. Rule number one is something that lasts forever. It's so important for me and it has never betrayed me. Quest for truth. To know (oneself, the world). Year by year it proves to be totally worth and it never kills me. Maybe not for others but for my kind of personality I need it. The rest of the rules was something like a joke but there was really a rule number two that I concealed.

I don't remember the 2nd rule. It has to do with the fact that people don't care about the reality, they get their self-esteem by living in their own imaginary world. Nobody cares about the truth. People are actors, it's only important that they play their role that makes them feel confident. They can contradict with what they say and not realize it. I couldn't do that because I am very attached to the truth, the reality that seems to be there, not the things that I would like to believe.

The 2nd rule was about playing their game. Even in a way that it would ridicule the whole concept. It's the ironic feeling one friend said about it. I don't remember how did I expressed that rule. It was about being fed up with myself caring all these years while people just play the game of socialization and godlike self-esteem. Some of these people might come to me and tell me to get a life and criticize myself and when they do this you suddenly thing that they are not playing a game, they are serious about what is there. But they are not. Because later their actions contradict with what they said. Most people will react to this idea right now. Because another role we put to ourselves is to think that we are right and we are talking the facts, we are not playing a role but we are ourselves.

It doesn't matter. The fact is that I implanted those ideas these years and they seem to let me have this self-esteem. Even as a reaction. When something makes me feel bad, I remember that nobody cares even if they seem like this. I remember that the whole thing is a game and the world is lie. But it works. It has played a role too in stop caring and living my life. It doesn't matter if my life is a "successful" one or just sitting in front of my computer writing this and eating junk food. As long as I can be confident about it and even ignore people who blame me. I can even play with them, be vengeful, be accepting, or denying, playing a role that is not me just to get rid of them or piss them off and a hidden ironic me laughing inside (another piece of 2nd part).

I would like to write a post about our fake world in my normality blog. One other day. See I found a motive to write one :)

I am really curious about the external things now. The studies, the job and what lies beneath. While they are not as relevant to me as the internal, failing in one of these could take me down possibly (but I think now that I could manage my life and actually ask and get what I want even if I had to return to Greece). I need to be successful with these because maybe the external environment helps with the internal too. I also love the demoscene too. It's another experience, I may had something with specific people, negative emotions with specific situations in the past, etc. but I miss the creativity. When I feel so well with the 2nd rule then I think this can work out well even inside this community.

To get on with this I have to stop writing these saddened texts to not give the opportunity to people to use them (or when writing these, write them with a purpose, with a different spirit) and show them that you believe in what you do. Or don't even bother to prove it to them since you believe it yourself.

More updates with this later, the game never ends.

Self-victimization and the value of life.

2010-03-10T15:31:00.000Z

There is a fear, a bad fear I had since childhood. I thought that some things would never change. Instead of being an optimist and trying to imagine that some negative things about me are possible to change, I had that sarcastic negative view that said "Yeah right! As I am gonna ever change :P".

For example, feeling a bit introverted or shy (Some say being introverted is not bad. In psychology it is a unique personality element, not something to be cured. Some people are extroverted and some are introverted and that's it!) or especially my constant and excessive feeling of anxiety about things which normally don't touch people so much. I get the feeling everyday that this is NEVER gonna change or improve enough. And there is a nasty negative loop in here that started from childhood and the more times it runs the more it preserves the feeling. It's the fact that every day I wake up and live my life, I encounter this element of negativity on me. Everyday I observe it I believe more and more into it. I believe that it is so crystalized that it's not going to change. And everyday I believe the more it is there.

My brain predicts my future actually from everyday experience by observing myself. (Funny thing, it actually reminds what we are currently studying about Bayes theorem with the prior and the posterior probabilities). It's like he observes myself everyday and says, you for another time were shy, failed in the exams, procrastinated as usual, etc, etc.. (and various other cases). What makes you think that you won't fail for another day?

If you live so many years since your childhood with negative experiences then these get into you. Some things make you brain predict the same negativity. In few instances you could break these by showing some positive new results to yourself (mostly in practical things that you can repeat) to making him believe that he needs to change his prediction algorithms and that some things you thought couldn't change, yes they can. It's easier with those cases. But those things go to other more obscure parts. Being shy, being anxious,. for example social anxiety? There is no straight indication that yesterday I was looking shy and today I was looking confident, for example. You have to guess. And if you tend to think "Oh,. nobody likes me, I am too shy, I am not cool for them, etc, etc.." then you keep believing it. And you have none to grade you, to tell you "You got an A in this social thing". You may ask someone or someone might told you to not worry because you are looking fine but then you'd think that maybe he is telling it politely and don't really mean it. And that's in your own judge. Now if you are a person like me you will always keep having this low self-esteem. And even if you try to change, you'd still be disbelieving yourself. It's a change of mood, a change of habit, of an attitude that is needed, from the pessimist to the optimist. You have to fool yourself, you have to live the delusion that you are a great guy or something. Because in order to break the cycle you have to play the opposite role and for too many times. But why am I not doing it?

This is actually another scary point I revisited about myself. It's like sometimes I don't want some of those things to change. It's like that if someday my life changes to the better at most points, I will be as I use to say, a shinny happy. It's like I need this negativity, I need this victimization, it's like an important part of my personality.

I am not sure about this. It's a scary thought and I have to investigate further. Because it might be another one of those eternal habits stuck deep into my brain that won't let me evolve at certain points.

But I want to say that it's not the sole thing. It doesn't mean I am perfect. I didn't just one day woke up and fabricated the idea that I can play victim. There are deeper roots.

Those roots are the things I have lived in the past. What can happen when your life starts like this, being the shy humble guy at school, dreaming in his own world, being bullied daily at school, suffering from those anxiety disorders, being restricted also in the family, trying to escape in someway, trying to get back his lost self-esteem by doing... demos. You don't know what is happening to you, you cry everyday, you are sensitive and the environment is even more hostile towards you. What do you do when there is no positive thought or situations from which you can hang on? You invent one! Self-victimization. Or martyrdom as I used to call it. You are the poor guy, that means you are the good guy, the one that deserves something. Are you poor in any case? Are you the worst in everything? Then you are special, you are something, some people might love you, etc, etc..

This is the root of self-victimization. Those people didn't just invent it oneday to gain attention. I don't know that it doesn't work that way. Maybe my brain asks attention, someone to love me, someone to say something positive about me because I am just poor. But there was a bad past. And there is a negative present and (if not averted) future if all you have in the past was eating shit in your face every day and all these things among your ways of escape forming your personality.

Another scary thing that occurred to me is that sometimes you also stop valuing life. When everyday you live is a hell and all these experiences keep accumulating in your brain and crystalize your personality, who you are that keep things in the same cycle and preserve the condition, then another thing that happens is that you stop caring about your life. The more scary thought is that sometimes when you don't value your life you might not value or understand other people's lives. Making these thoughts, I am glad that the ethics that evolved in my mind are good ones, that it would devastate my ego if I was the one to inflict harm on someone. Because worse things can happen when someone lives through bullying so much that he does not value his life (I think this is very related to what happened at the Columbine incident with those two boys, I am not justifying their acts here of course). Another thing that can happen is suicide (Thankfully it's out of the question in my case too, although the scary thing is that sometimes I think that if an accident would happen to me and I wouldn't be able to prevent it then I wouldn't care about losing my life (I would be more scared of the physical pain)).

Instead I am here and I dedicated my life in ..ehm ..ehm making demos (sign of vanity?) and searching for answers. The primary idea sometimes is that if living a regular life is not worth it then I could at least dedicate my existence into a scientific or artistic pursuit. Another idea could be that living a regular life was full of bullying and social anxiety and things that I was forced to live in a specific way by the unwritten rules concerning normality and so I found that living in a different world and making unique things (like doing demos or just thinking about stuff for endless hours, etc) at least was a bit better and sometimes gave me back my self-esteem. I could speculate many things about it but it's enough. I could have taken a more seriously self-destructing way out of my frustration with life.

One value is for me above all. The need to know, to feel, to understand what is the reality behind things. I am thinking about things every day thoroughly. I am doubting, questioning myself twice, having as a focus the truth behind everything and not seeking for facts just to justify my means. This could normally come in conflict with the self and you may manipulate what you think it's true but this evolves in me and I am not afraid of the truth because in the end it's not going to let you down. There is no truth that denies your self as a human being. There are reasons why you are sad and there are more reasons than what people say and they are inside you. This search for reality is what led me till now to the current thoughts about myself and this is evolving. I think I can make a meaning out of this life by knowing apart from other methods.

You gotta find a meaning in this sad existence. Not everyone is taking the kool-aid. Being not exactly "normal", not following the path everyone tolds you is the "right" one, but dedicating your life to something different, letting the so called "real-life" in a standstill, because some people fucked this part since my childhood and they even demand from me to be like them, I think should be justified. Can you put yourself in the position of those people who were bullied at school for being more different, more sensitive, not like most of you? Or are you living in your shinny happy life where everything looks so nice and simple?

This is what we need. To know more, to justify our existence, to make this suffering worth at the end. To live a meaningful life. Our past life has shaped our personality. There are neurological reasons, there are psychological and environmental and social. All those played a role in what we are and speak about our habits and our view on life. They make some paths difficult. It's up to you to find out and decide what to do with it. Would it be to evolve into a more "normal" being while keeping the positive weird traits? Or would it be to become a hermit or dedicate your life in art or science? Nobody can claim something is more right than the other. I don't think they have the right!

Learn yourself and evolve and then learn yourself again and do the cycle. This is what kept me alive at most..

p.s. This big post originated from hours of writing evolving from this post.

Personal evolution ad infinitum.

2010-03-10T13:24:00.000Z

While I was returning home, I was thinking about some things never change with me, things that might be either good for me or others which prevent me from evolving or just put barriers in my life. Then I made this new interesting question:

Myself as an ever-changing system, is it evolving or is it converging at a specific kind of personality with specific traits and crystallized habits? Given infinite time, would even the most well preserved habits, attitudes, beliefs change? Or would some things never change no matter how much I try (at least the things I want to change)? If some things are evolving and some things are remaining, then after a very very long time reaching infinity, the definition of infinitum persona would be the true hidden/concealed me? (if there is such a thing).

That's an interesting thought. It's also interesting to think separately about each of my current habits, both my beloved and those I'd like to abolish (but sometimes I don't seem to want), my personality traits, my current ideas about the world and myself and try to extrapolate onto the far future, give it a bit of imagination to go not 50 years from now but 500 or 10000 years or something soooo far (the infinitum concept made a bit more finite) that is given time for myself to evolve at it's final stage and think: Which of those traits do I believe they will be changed, which I think they will remain and why?

It's interesting to see at which points I believe there is hope for evolution towards the better and which I am afraid they won't change. Also which I know or believe they won't change because they are facts of myself that I honor even if others don't like those elements of me.

There are things that are habits that go in cycles and back to themselves. It's like you observe a negative trait on yourself and then your brain keeps these data in memory and the more you see a repetition of the same thing the more you believe it and the more you do and the cycle goes on. It's kinda funny or interesting that it reminds me of Bayes theorem with the prior and posterior probabilities that depend one on each other. After so many repetitions there is a convergence that preserves some of those habits or traits so badly that you think they can never change. Could some of these habits somehow change or basically evolve after a vast amount of life time?

At this point I was writing for hours and this evolved in another long series of text that moved far away from the main idea. I actually liked that text and felt it would be a very nice individual post for my other blog about normality. So I transfered it here.

I think this question reminds me another one a friend asks me frequently: Move 10 years forward in time. Can you imagine yourself, how you will look like, what you will be doing in your life? (which reminds me a bit of flash-forward the TV series :P)

It's just more inspiring to think about personal evolution ad infinitum (afteralls after 10 years I may not be too much different at specific points (scary)). And maybe it would be a good exercise try to think more about it. I could speculate many things and maybe learn more about myself and find solutions to habits that doesn't seem to want to be changed (I am a huge procrastinator :P).

I think I have to close this post..

What is the psychopathology of mr.Bauer?

2010-03-07T15:53:00.001Z

I was just reading this article

Someone who goes out of their way to help others, even at the expense of their own welfare, is actually more likely to break rules than the average person.

Another thing I ask myself when I watch some characters on TV is what is their D&D alignment?

Is Jack Bauer chaotic good?

How about Aaron? Lawful good? Neutral good? True neutral? I can't decide. What I enjoy in Aaron from 24 is how robotic he is (and his voice shows) considering following the laws and caring about the general good (although sometimes he overcomes these rules just to help Jack or others who think there is a good reason for that). Very funny character.

p.s. Yesterday I downloaded the 1st episode of season 8. It proved to be a milfhunter.com porn video file. Suckers!!! :P

Do you have screensavers?

2010-03-05T13:48:00.001Z

I had this dream today.

I was in a party.
And there were girls.
I had some kind of funny reputation there.
This was some kind of meeting of an internet community.
For the first time.

I wanted to show them something on the NDS.

I tried to find that test I did, my second code on the DS after the plasma, with Jennifer Love Hewitt in the background (from Led Blur) and the water effect where you can do ripples with the touch.

For some reasons I really wanted to show it to them.
I thought they would like it more than showing them a game.

I was fiddling with my DS for half an hour.
As usually with dreams, when you want something to much, something obscure happens.
Maybe in my dreams. What could that mean? In conjunction with something else about me in the real world I am just thinking?

Anyways, what always happen is that strange bugs don't let me do what I want to do, like elevators not going to the 4th but to the 44th (while the building has just five floors) or something slows your movement down when you try to escape from a monster or trying to run something on any device and when that's important amazing bugs are happening and I spent half the time to reach my goal but till then my dream is over and I wake up.

I opened the DS, there was a game booting, I quit, the same game was booting, I reset and open and different games were booting randomly. I couldn't go to the menu to chose my demonstration. Strange things. Then I opened the DS and tried to do something with it's electronics. But then I couldn't put it back.

The girls were curious, is that a camera? one said. Most didn't care.

A cute girl I haven't seen before, maybe see just arrived at the party, came in and asked me:

Do you have screensavers?

"Wow! If you like screensavers, you will love demos!" I replied.

I show her some 2d metaballs. She loved them.
I showed her a 3d version of them. She hated them.

"Wow! You love exclusively 2d!!!"

Then we sat down and listened to some chiptunes. So sweet!!!

I almost tried to get her e-mail but I woke up, so I don't know where she might be :P

From the part of the metaballs it's just imaginary. How could it be real(dream) since I would have never fixed the DS? But maybe I imagined I showed it from my laptop and this didn't got stubborn. I use to do this, waking up after having a dream that end at some point yet thinking about how it would continue.

Other than that I am fine. I lost some weight today. The diet plans are going well. I just need patience.

Now I will go for a walk.

Freee!

2010-03-01T22:13:00.000Z

If I fail in life, I make demo.

If I fail in demo, I make nothing.

If I nothing, I free.

Thank you god!

Actually the latest mantra is..

2010-02-17T22:04:00.001Z

Will we get an extension?!

Hahahahaha!!!

p.s. From PHD Comics. Love them because they prove so related to my present :)

p.p.s. I just learned about another important extension while I was busy with all those deadline. Time to celebrate. Let's play Doom. Or watch some series. Or go outside. Or sleep. Oh nooooo...

p.p.p.s. Incurable my laziness condition..

Three rules for serenity.

2010-02-16T00:48:00.000Z

1) I am not me.

2) Nobody cares.

3) Don't think of the mantras..

What the..?

2010-02-10T18:52:00.000Z

I was just looking into this list of demoscene blogs till my attention was caught by something familiar. Maybe a year or two before I started this blog, I opened an older one in blogspot, http://gubuterboy.blogspot.com. It might probably be my first one which I started and later abandoned.

It seems to be hijacked, probably by those people or automated bots or whatever, who search for URLs and use them for spam and other stuff. I don't know and I don't mind since it's an old abandon blog but what seemed a mystery to me is that it's exactly like the old layout I had but with just a single post that is sooo obscure and there is not a link going to some other malicious or spamming website. What's the purpose of this? Also note, it's an obscure text mixing their own spam about medicine with some keywords I might be using in my past blogging. I can see the number 464 everywhere (probably because I mentioned somewhere the CPC 464?), French coders, computer science, game players,.. oh the last phrase is crazy, here it is:

Our previous report noted that FHWA expects that another meeting of French coders is taking an interdisciplinary degree in Computer Science, with a consistently dark and ominous tone, and their associated games, game players could not be affected.

Seriously, not that I do care, but.. what the heck? What is the purpose of this cryptic scrabble???

(Yet another) New blog

2010-01-16T18:11:00.000Z

I just like to organize my blogs (a lot of work still to do on this) and for the primary subjects that are interesting to me I am deciding to separate those posts in different blogs (few good posts in this central blog have to be moved one day to other ones and the importing/exporting process is strange). I have exported five of my posts here to a new blog, Almost Skeptic which has to do with all the paranormal and ufo phenomena I like to read about, my thoughts on skepticism, the nature of truth and deception and everything that I will find relevant and interesting.

Meanwhile I am wondering what else to change in my blogs and if I'd need to decorate some of them with my own backgrounds (but that was never my thing and it takes effort and time that I don't have). And that's before the second university term will prey upon us and I won't have time for nothing. Enjoy my new blog with the old posts for the moment, maybe once in a while I will find time and motivation to write something new for it.

24 things not to do..

2009-12-18T18:57:00.000Z

..when you are on tight schedule during your studies.

24) Start watching a new TV series you just downloaded, called 24.
23)..I guess I'll work with the rest another time :)
22).
21)

Ah man, what a tight schedule! We had to finish 4 courseworks in a week (actually I'd have more days if I wasn't too lazy to start earlier). It's finally done, most things went very well except from a total failure to organize a presentation of our nonexistent project with our group and now I am ready to head back to Greece for the christmas holidays. Can't wait to meet my friends and taste that gyros food again.

Seriously, I haven't watched 24 before and some rumors about it's awesomeness got me started (especially from Stormrider's blog). I am SOOOO hooked up. It's more favorite now than my most favorite series and to show you how addicted I am to it (oh and there are already 7 seasons for me!), I definitelly have to sleep, I haven't sleep for two entire days because of my schedule, and I DON'T WANT TO. Because I was just watching 24 and I have to stop. I think I will try to sleep and wake up as early as possible to continue with the rest of the series. That's what I call awesomeness!

The strange cycle of suffering.

2009-11-26T20:52:00.000Z

I bumped upon an old website I was searching lately, one that is a good and interesting read especially for people suffering from Pure-O OCD, although kinda long (but not too much). The primary piece of information from the OCD truth website that still intrigues me is actually one thing that I suspected and is the primary idea most people suggest on how to cope with it. The author has written it at least three times in capitals, it's the universal truth of OCD like he calls it and it makes me shiver thinking in what nasty way it brings sadness and suffering out of actual air (nothing).

The primary way to cope with it and avoid the cycle of bad thoughts is to try to have a different perspective than before. That's an interesting thing because I find even me, after so many years when it suddenly hits, to forget the basic rules and understanding of it. I forget it because then emotions talk to me and logic comes second. And when you tend to suffer, you tend to hear your emotions more than everything.

Pure-OCD suffering is about people having nasty dreadful bad thoughts that they never intended to have and feeling guilty about it. This is a very short description that doesn't cover up the whole phenomenon but it's just so to move to the point. So, what is the root of OCD? Is it the bad nasty thoughts? No. It's having guilt about it.

The basic rule says that in order to get rid of the repetitive cycle of unwanted thoughts in your mind, you have to accept keeping those unwanted thoughts in your mind.

And that's the point where it makes you wonder. You will say, all those years I tried to move away from them by creating rituals or trying to shut down my brain or other ways and you tell me that the only solution is to have them? I had reached to that conclusion years before reading this opinion and even finding out that what I have is actually called Pure-O OCD and more people are having it. That was the point that I reached, the fact that this thing was feeding by my fear and disgust about it. Like a twisted recursive cycle. The only point was that I couldn't believe it would work at the time, also it wasn't easy to persuade yourself to actually let your mind follow those disgusting thoughts you avoided like the plague. So, when it was just a suggestion that it was also hard (avoidable) to test I lost my faith on it, till I found that there is a psychological reality on what bugged me, described by others exactly the same way I figured out myself.

Another way to see it (and helps getting away with guilt sometimes) is to question yourself: What's the difference between people having Pure-O OCD and those who don't? Both can have any category of thoughts, from the nicest to the most gruesome, even if they are random unwanted thoughts. The difference is that Pure-O OCD people feel too guilty about some of the thoughts. Regular people just don't care. And that is one different perspective. You feel guilty because you think it's only you having these thoughts, because if regular people ever had these thoughts then someone would finally speak about it. But they also do, it's just that nobody cares or wants to share! Another thing that you might think is that perhaps you have the bad gruesome thoughts in a greater percentage than most people. One reason for this is that by feeling guilty about them your mind brings them in higher priority and the more you detest them the more they pop up like crazy. People not feeling guilty about their kind of thinking as you do, might still have some of the random bad thoughts among the good ones but they don't even scratch the surface. One very bad thought in fifty random thoughts just pass away in ignorance and fades away since it's unimportant.

So, your mind is not the place where thoughts are restricted. It is supposed to be an endless source of creativity, the place where anything can be imagined no matter how good or bad. So, why do we want to restrict our thinking? Personality? Ethics? Being too perfect about what is even inside our mind? Should our inner thought that mirrors our personality be the best ever, like we are some kind of saints? While I understand when people similar to me come and tell me "But I want to think good stuff, not making those thoughts that make me feel like I have an evil soul. Isn't it natural to want my thoughts to be pure?", the matter here is that things might get very helpful, revealing and actually interesting if we try to see things under a different perspective. I ask myself today, why do I bother with these thoughts anyway? I can't give a proper answer just yet..

Another interesting analogy of the perspective that people with Pure-O OCD might have is to think of someone who is in constant Weltschmertz (Just a word that I like, it means something like, pain about what happens in the world, sadness about constant injustice). He never gets peace. He wishes that one day all suffering, all hunger, all wars, all pain will come to an end. What he asks for is for all the bad things to vanish (in our analogy, we ask for the ugly thoughts to never happen again). Consider though, is our world ever going to be perfect? Are the bad happenings something that should be cast away in an eternal dimension like it's a demon or something that doesn't belong here? The alternative perspective would be to see the world as something that is made out of the good AND the bad things. To accept that there is a reason for even the bad things to exist. It's not like wishing for the bad things, it's like accepting that the world is not perfect and there is a reason for it. One can still aim for the betterment of the world while trying to find peace with it's current state. Now, how similar is this approach with the one of accepting any of your thoughts no matter how bad they are? In comparison with the initial perspective where you wanted to cast away nasty thoughts like they were some outer place demons?

That is the point of understanding. It's the easier part. The harder is to apply it. When you still can't allow yourself having these thoughts. When your logic tells you how nasty OCD works and how you should play clever, yet your emotions tell you it hurts your soul to allow these thoughts. How can you ever find harmony even with this new perspective?

I have to admit that I haven't found that harmony yet. Even if I am more confident about how it works and under which perspective I should cope with it. I partially try to not care about my thoughts and partially I somehow cloud them by trying to stop thinking or push every thought away and that would be not a good idea because it's like fogging my brain. It's not so bad as in the past though. Although it came back after a very long time recently (years?) and I am wondering whether my everyday life contributes in that too (recent deadlines with university assignments, too much anxiety and frustration). I am saying "contributing" btw, not being the root of it. When I am more anxious with everyday stuff, OCD finds a more sensitive emotive world to kick in. When I have a very good and confident mood, I have noticed that even the worse thoughts can't touch my feelings. Although usually it's not the second that is frequent.

It's just disturbingly amazing how that mechanism in your brain causes all this chronic burden. It's so ingenious that I hate it!

Two rules for my two weeks rule.

2009-11-21T22:57:00.001Z

My two weeks rule: No matter what, if I decide to start working on any project or try to follow a strict plan, in about two weeks I will have already lost all my motivation and probably forget about it.

Two rules for my two weeks rule:

When there is an optimistic feeling during the first days I start working on something that it will go well, it is always accompanied by another ironic feeling that the two weeks rule will probably prove to be true once again. My inner cynic wakes up and laughs at me as he knows the future.

When the point is reached where my glorious plans are scrutinized by the two weeks rule of motivation, it's usually the end. I have that fear at the time that this point is not just a break. It is the point of no return. It is when your project stays on the shelves for a year or two.

Recently I have just noticed how true and precise my personal rule is! (Of course it's a rule applying to me, others might have the one month or even three days rule :)

Case one, when I started studying the first days were very enthusiastic and I was highly motivated but now things are boring. Of course, there is no different way here rather than working on my assignments for the time being, then being demotivated and doing anything else, then back working on them for another one or two weeks. Here, deadlines and obligations fight rule number two and the best worse thing that happens is to work for a week, then do nothing for another week and then repeat the cycle. Usually you start working when the deadline is near and you end up finishing your assignments the very last morning you have to hand in :P

Case two, diet plans. I have started some recently but those where scrutinized yesterday after eleven days of keeping an ok plan (two weeks is the most, usually a week and a half is enough time to break things apart). I suddenly felt the need to go into the supermarket and buy tons of stuff and... chocolate. My only hope here is to not continue the habit for the next days but start a new schedule for one more week. Because usually on diets I was either frustrated or kept the bad habit for a month or even a year after the two weeks.

And those two cases are the things that you are obliged to do. You have to hand in assignments no matter what and you have to take care of your health before it is too late. Even if the deadline is always far away for the second case :P. What about the things that you want to do but you don't have to do? I kept thinking on my demomaking hobby. It's crazy but it's still two weeks ruling here. I remember the biggest cases when I wanted to work on a big demo and thought that if I work hard for a month or two I could have something good. I even thought that if I worked only two hours per day for three months or a little more I could still reach that plan. There are some of my demos that theoritically they might have taken six months or a year (like led blur on the GP32) but the reality is that all those months I was experimenting with new effects or hardware and it was usually sparse like one evening of work per week and only when the deadline was near I started working intensively one or two weeks near the end. In my latest demo (Quantum Retrofuture), I decided to break the rule and work one and a half month before the deadline, not intensively but steadily. I started working for maybe one week, then lost the motivation for two weeks, then worked for two three days, then I had less than a week near the deadline. It's funny how precisely the rule works and you can never work steadily (even not so intensively but only at a stable pace) for a period more than two weeks!

It works so perfectly that I love it! Even if it always manages to scrutinize my plans :P

p.s. Solution? Maybe minimize the burn out period (it shouldn't be two weeks off after one week of work but maybe 1-3 days of break would be ok) yet let yourself take some rest without thinking about. Also don't be disappointed and never quit. Especially when it's a very important projects (like studies or personal health, demos can go screw themselves at the moment ;).

p.p.s. I was also going to write about the single day miraculous yet fading idea rule and then the near deadline rule which is obvious yet bugging me right now :P

Your dream companion.

2009-10-30T20:39:00.000Z

Few days ago, in the metro newspaper, I have noticed a weird article about some man that everybody keeps seeing in his/her dream. It seemed a weird thing of the kinds that are interesting to me, somehow related to paranormal phenomena also to collective unconscious or it could also be a psychological experiment to see how this spreads and if actually everybody is going to start seeing him in their dreams or even imagining him in their realities. It's kinda scary actually and I like scary and weird stuff like that. I was already reading the contents on a website dedicated to the phenomenon and I thought that I would probably see him because of self-suggestion but it didn't happened yet (if this things goes on the internet like a meme then be sure everybody will be seeing him and it won't be unexplained anymore :).

Actually I had no sleep yesterday. The last time I stay awake till I can see the rise of the sun outside my window was when I was playing civilization in my 386 :). But I think it will be finally a more frequent thing from now on. When I was studying mathematics in Greece, we almost never had assignments and they didn't count anyways. Ok,. mathematics was the only department I think that also didn't required a final project. And you could also fail epically and still take the diploma after 8 years. But now I just got introduced into what means having to finish written assignments (with code too of course, but that's my favorite part anyway :) once per one or two weeks and also go to the lessons (because you want to go to the lessons of an MSc that interests you and you have payed too) and maybe find a timeframe to read what you were actually taught. The funny thing is that I find the assignments doable. I thought they would be harder. Maybe it's because I am already familiar with graphics, programming and maths. But I manage to only do it in haste in the last time because of procrastination. I don't like this :/

Anyway, going back to the thing, yesterday we were doing the math assignment (which was big and required also a lot of matlab code, I haven't used matlab before actually so that's a nice opportunity to get used to it) and it was a bit funny because I was connected with two other people on MSN and all of us didn't sleep and had some chat about the assignment or other non related stuff. This is going to be a regular occurrence in the future for sure :)

Ok,. and going back to the primary idea (because I was lost in other stuff :). Now I was sleeping and maybe I will go back to sleep more because I need sleep. The reason I woke up and started reading this, is because I had a revelation.

First of all, things related to dreams are interesting to me for some reasons I am not sure exactly. It's just the weirdness or strangeness of it (Btw,. I recently watched this movie and I'd like to watch it again). One aspect that I recently defined and is very interesting to me is the idea that someone has a personal dream companion. That thing (person, creature, whatever) is someone you keep seeing frequently in your dreams, yet he is not someone you know in real life, he only exists in your dreams, he is like maybe a friend or a foe or a mysterious being which although you keep seeing in dreams and when you encounter him in another dream that you have seen even years after you instantly identify him and that lucid feeling bumps in that, you know, I have seen him in my past dreams and he is like a living entity in a dreamworld or something. I don't want to put any metaphysics in here, just define a kind of special dream encounter that you know who he is and what are his characteristic like he was a regular resident in a place you frequently visit in your dreams.

Of course, that scary face in the website Ever Dream this Man that people go crazy about is only a dream companion few people have seen. The kinda funny or interesting part is to try to remember on very characteristic dream companion you kept seeing in your dreams. Which one is your personal dream companion? Which are his properties, attitudes or relation to you? Was there maybe a special place that you also kept seeing in your dreams where that companion appeared more frequently? I would like to describe mine in the next paragraph but before doing that I'll just like to point a funny thing. The first two persons the man in the website reminded me are Alfred E. Neuman and then The man from another place (from twin peaks). Funny coincidence. Or maybe people are just watching strange caricatures on their dreams of things they watched on tv or seen in illustrations :)

I also discovered today that my dream companion when I was a kid was actually something I had seen in a video game once in my life (then) and later left it in my unconscious. Although applying my own additional properties to it. I remember a dwarf blonde girl, very tiny in size (maybe in the size of chucky) that I loved and had to care about it's safety. That little creature had a negative property. When for some reasons it got wet, it grew up a little in size (but still being too small), had more scary hair like nails and scary teeth and face, like a monster and created havoc around. Then I had to find her, take her with me and go to a place with very bright sun so that she finally returned to it's regular size because of the light or the heat. Preety charecteristic thing. Most of the times I encountered her in the home at the village of my grandparents, Arnea of Xalchidiki (somewhere in northern Greece) but the place was slightly different (bigger and more interesting) than in reality (this is another thing I like in dreams, that you see a place you know in reality but now it's a more interesting alternative version of it). So there was a special place where I could meet my special friend.

I only got the funny revelation today by refreshing my memories on the formation of this encounter that this dwarf girl was actually two versions of a sprite from a computer game, actually Gianna Sisters on C64. The very "exited" version of it was when you get the bonus to grow stronger in the game. But I hadn't thought then that she was just created in my dreams from my memories of the game. The thing is that during that time I had only seen Gianna Sisters once in a party of some schoolmate who had a C64 and it was the first time I had seen one (Oh,,. it took awfully long to load compared to my CPC experience then!). I played Gianna Sisters much later through emulators but that was years after the frequent dreams. Just one time of watching someone playing this new game was enough though for keeping this in my unconscious and letting it surface in my dreams. On the original game of course you wouldn't transform into the scary version by touching water. That was my imaginary additional construction that I made up on my dreams for reasons I can't think right now :)

So, I just woke up from my sleep (that I really need now!) to tell you this strange, funny or boring story. I am wondering if you ever had a dream companion or a reoccurring dream or characteristic place on your dreams. Of course this question is for anyone bothering thinking about and discussing his/her dreams because the last time I discussed my dreams with some guy and wanted to hear his own weird stuff he probably thought I was weird and avoided the conversation. (and that was so early in elementary school :)

Success / Honor

2009-10-22T21:54:00.000+01:00

Yet another piece of information to help me solve the puzzle of myself. Yet another moment of getting the feeling that it fits, that it explains everything I do and I everything I strive for. And another factor that can also make a sense of my frustration in life and might help me see where I should focus on to be happier.

It's like another one of these selfviews, not unique, not better than the rest, just derived from a different focus (interesting word I just thought of, think of the term worldview but now applied on self, it's like different kinds of perspective on yourself, different math trying to fit in the selfmodel (like worldmodel :))

It's nothing new I haven't thought before. I just focused more deeply into the idea and tried to view things under this perspective. Actually it occured to me after my first few weeks here at UCL, thinking about my hopes, the original reasons I wanted to do this, what percentage of it did I got till now, how some things doesn't fit with myself or some things lacking from me to match well with my aspirations. And then that reflected back at every little moment of success or failure I had in real life or the demoscene or even in the most tiny things and I have noticed more how this thing totally affects the little happiness or sorrows I get from life.

For example, I always had this feeling of failure when I was in my previous degree on mathematics. Of course then I wasn't doing something that I entirely wanted, I was just under pressure and all I wanted then was to join the scene and make a good demo which was also another needed source of the personal success feeling. It took me 8 years to finish the degree and it generally was more than the average. Anybody will jump in my monologue and say that I shouldn't be so negative of myself. But I am just realistic and even if I am failing on this, depressive realism is what I think describes me. Or just the exact opposite of this effect.

So, to go on with the story, one of the little aspects that made me happier with the idea of studying the computer graphics module at UCL is the fact that I am already experienced with the subject and so I would feel like home. I wouldn't feel like an average student who doesn't understand a thing and stares in the lectures like a fool. I would feel like knowing what's going on and that feedback effect, an inner feedback effect where I assure myself that my cognition on things is going fine and I feel like a conscious part of the process and not an outsider (Hmm,. now I am thinking it, the lack of it is what pisses off people who are like external observers to our geeky tech talks). Till now it's working fine here of course. There are though some interesting new lessons like machine vision which I understand that I am not supposed to understand everything at first sight because it's genuinly more complex than graphics and that keeps me away from feeling like a fool.

It's only on some of the practicals where I felt a bit the frustration that I am not good, not worth or not successful but that feeling could be avoided by the same logic. Although, when I felt I wasn't successful on one, I thought it wouldn't be the same on the graphics practical. At least there I should do nicely easily. The subject was to change the code of a raytracer and for once I had almost coded one in the past and knew the logic. But spending some time to review the java code and it's classes, half an hour configuring the compiler of a chinese girl, more minutes to get used to the compiler and for some reason more time because I had to use "instance of" to check the type of a class (and I totally understood object oriented programming in java, I just hadn't used one and I think something was wrong with the compiler too or I was doing something wrong), somehow two hours passed and I didn't rendered a single thing!!! I mean, not even normalized a simple vector! When you have that constant feeling "Oh, I suck, I suck, I suck,. at least on the graphics practical it will prove different" and it doesn't, it's the worst feeling ever. You know,. before coming here I was telling this little 'tantrum' and eternal fear to myself: "Ok. I code graphics for a hobby. If I even fail on a master that has totally something to do with graphics which is my main thing, then what can I say? I am for NOTHING!"

Pretty hard stuff to say to oneself. But somehow I feel like I am constantly chased by the ghost of not being good enough or of even be very lame. Of course the more I know it the more prepared I am to fight with it. The thing is not to exclusively seek success but to try to face those emotions because it's easy to fail and I should be prepared for it. It's like when someone tells me that maybe I should do a really really good demo to prove to myself that I can do it and break the negative spell of my eternal demoscene sucking. But then I think, would it prove anything? I know now that if I work hard my ass on anything I can even fly to the moon. So, is there something to prove?

One important thing is that me, myself and people who read my rants might confuse three similar words.

Fame. A word that everyone hates. Even more than money. It's not exactly the basic thing that I am seeking. Even if it can usually interfere with the rest and at little glimpses of it you might even start liking it. Or hating it.

Success. More like it. But what is success? What do people mean by this word and how each one understands it through a different perspective? I will split it into two categories.

Social Success or generally/socially defined success or what most people understand as commonly accepted success. Getting good grades at school, university, having a job career, a respected family. It's the tantra that elderly people might sometimes bust your balls with yet you won't be able to understand what's the fuzz about.

Inner Success, the feeling that you are successful on something that you totally understand, you totally honor, you totally find important or interesting. Someone might be a dropout from college but create neat stuff in his free time in any discipline. That's the thing I was seeking, that's why I wasted time in the demoscene instead of taking my degree in time and others couldn't grasp the importance.

Honor. It must be very close to inner success. It could be the same actually. It's the feeling of achieving something that you personally feel it's important. Difference from fame? You are not doing it for the people (that can only come as a bonus), you are doing it for yourself.

Each time I am working on something that I feel it's important and the process flows all nicely, I receive a positive feedback from my brain that makes me happy for a while.

In the graphics practical I was expecting that and didn't got it. Because of unforeseen misfortunes and maybe a lack of clear mind too. But what was the motive? It was just an exercise that wasn't going to be graded. I wasn't going to show the results to my professor to prove something (that I am a graphics god or something :). I could just fail and not care. But I did! Because I had the false view that I was going to finish this easily. It wasn't a fault on my understanding, being not experienced with Java or Eclipse wasn't a reason. There was nothing that I have to ask the lecturers to explain. It was simply my thing and yet I failed. What I was seeking? A reassuring from myself that I am functioning well, that I am successful on doing something well and fast. It just didn't worked because of bad luck. It just happened. Maybe tomorrow I will have a clear mind and it will work. And get my little positive feeling of functioning. I actually need a lot of these little glimpses of happiness at times. I just have to accept it when I bump into a failure. It doesn't prove that I am bad or not. I just need to remember that it makes me feel alive. I should seek for more of these and in different disciplines.

This is definitely going for Part II. Sometime..

Hellos from London!

2009-10-03T16:03:00.000+01:00

After finishing with the things that made me anxious (finding a student house, enrolling in the university, paying the fees and other minor stuff) and settling down, I think it's time to start. This is the last weekend before the lessons programme begins. I am really really curious and happy to get started with and I am wondering whether it will be interesting (I think it will be) and whether there will be any pressure or strict deadlines (Well there might be work to do. I have to stop playing Scribblenauts or any other addictive game :).

I haven't visited anything special in London or UK yet. I'd really like to visit the british museum and especially stonehenge oneday. There might be quite more siteseeings that are worth. I just need to find out and plan something (or join some of the clubs that organize tours). What I liked and find interesting here in London is that it's extremely multicultural. I haven't seen such a variety of different kinds of people before. Well, I was in Germany once (in Karlsruhe) but I don't remember such variation, even though it still looked more varied in different nationalities than what I am used in Greece. That's all I can say at the moment. I haven't seen much yet.

I also opened a twitter. Well, that's a lie. I already had the twitter account before but just never used it. It occured when someone asked me why I post a lot of stuff at Pouet and not in my blog (which is also a lie because I post far more text in my blog, only less frequently) and one reason I think I am more easilly tempted to post at Pouet is because I sometimes don't post serious stuff there and the oneliner is for small text. When I plan to post something in this blog it's several times that I cancel it because I need time and I am more obsessed writting with my own pace and also need to plan it more carefully. But in Pouet I sometimes write something that comes in my mind and fits in less than 255 characters. So I thought, it would be fun to write small thoughts, quotes or news in twitter. Now I know why they ironically say it's for ADHD people who are in a hurry or too lazy to write something more than 140 characters. But 140 characters? That's a bit too little. I still had struggle to fit something specific I wanted to post there. I wish there is an option to maybe make it 255 characters or something..

Scribblenauts. It's the best thing since lemmings. I originally read about it from an xkcd strip :). It's so clever and so addictive because you can finish levels with a big variety of different ways and you actually have a big dictionary of things you can use, even the most unimaginable. If you search scribblenauts in youtube you might get an idea. It's only funny when you can summon Cthulhu or LHC and crazy stuff like that. It's crazy summoning god and handing him a bazooka and having him fight with a pterodactylus or something. Who the hell has thought of such an idea for a game?

I think I will write a review about scribblenauts in my Plasmafun blog where stuff like that belongs more. If I don't get busy with my masters programm at least..

09/09/09

2009-09-09T08:12:00.000+01:00

I've heard there is a fuzz about today's date. Of course those special numbers where something is supposed to happen, have to be something symmetrical like 09/09/09, 666, 999, 2222, 10:10. I wonder, why not 17/09/09, 256, 9797 or 2321? Does the universe like those specific kinds of numbers? What if we had a different type of calender and 09/09/09 was something boring and random like A4/F2/FF :P

Although it's a slightly important day in my life because today I officially quit my job (Finally, no more picking up the phone!!! Arghh.. I was supposed to be a programmer here but all I do is watching youtube videos and constantly picking up the phone. They frickin work three at a minute! :P) and start preparing for my trip in England. Also, a brand new laptop is about to arrive at home today (I hope). More about it later..

I think that's the most important things that will happen from my side during this funny symmetric date. Except if I get abducted by aliens or stuck in an elevator or something :P

Firing neurons of hapiness.

2009-09-03T21:03:00.000+01:00

Unhapiness can be a bad messenger to someone who is trying to escape from all those negative thoughts about his quality of life and the constant criticism from anyone who begs him to be normal. While sadness plays a peculiar role in my life, where it's not always negative but in a strange way reviving (it fills me with anger and sorrow but that makes me feel stronger towards a cause to fight normality), sometimes when it's accompanied by doubt about some aspects of my life and those thoughts of people criticising me and the fear and disgust of them being right, it turns into real sadness where I loose the meaning of my focus yet I can't think of changing and be like them because this would be even more depressing.

Yet, hapiness can be a quite complicated thing (if not for you, then for some) and you can't just base on the idea that someone is not happy to point out that his life is wrong. It's not black and white. There is no single path of hapiness. It doesn't work the same way for anyone. Also, a feeling of being soberly sad comes after moments of hapiness. One can't be shinny happy for ever and not return back into a lower state. And maybe not always feeling content is a primary motive in our evolution.

It's also logical to seek for ideas that can make me feel better. Especially for those who can be established and wipe out the old irrational sadness of feeling guilty for not being normal like the rest or my fear that I am to blamed for finding excuses for my current kind of life. Right away someone who wanted to refute my attempt would jump and say that I am just trying to find excuses to cover my faults and hinder my view where it doesn't suit my arguments. It's logical that I am more focused by the ideas that make me feel better and thus I am more able to see the pleasing points and have a cognitive bias about anything that doesn't make me feel good. Someone would even say that it's not fair. Fair for whom? Whose life is it anyways?

But isn't this what everyone does? And I will tell you something that it's important here. I fit extremely much this state of mind. Many people can be much worse and feel much more confident. I have a more negative view about myself and it's hard to put me into the illusion that I am all great and I should ignore the rest (See also the Downing Effect, similar witht the Dunning-Kruger effect). A lot of people tell me that I underestimate myself and what I have achieved so far, someone even told me I am a strange phenomenon where everyone believes in me except myself :P. I should say here from my side that it's unfair with my kind of negative bias to claim that something is wrong with my life compared to a more "normal" life because I don't seem to be happy. Because I am too honest with myself and can't easilly let things go compared to others who live hapilly in ignorance. I may look like dividing people to sides, I may be misunderstood as someone who is too fanatic to support his own view on life but on the back there is someone who still encounters your arguments and instead of ignoring them he is puzzled and gives them a second thought. While people have already great confidence that they are right and I am wrong. This game is unfair.

I need to get more into that idea now (which has also to do with the title and main theme) which made me more confident about some things and gave me hope that oneday I won't be revolving around too oposing ideas but hold back into the one that fits me and be more confident about myself in specific subjects just like the rest. I will get fast into it because only with some introductory thoughts this post has become too big without yet getting into the main subject..

A specific evening and the very good feelings I had about it had lighten up something I couldn't see well before. What I have learned that night is that someone should try to observe what makes him happier in various occasions in everyday life instead of getting lost into more abstract ideas about hapiness. And someone could also see why these specific events makes him more happy and get a deeper insight of how to prefer living his life.

Ideas injected into your brain from childhood and common opinions of our times can confuse you especially if you are not confident like me. Even if I disagree, I can get stuck into ideas like "I am not very social so I must be sad", "I have no life so I must be sad" ,"I am too focused on computer programming so I must be sad". And now I would like to tell you what I have observed that day, combined also with various thoughts and conclusions on specific things. I will start with the second one.

I like programming. I like the geeky activity of computer programming. It's one of the things where I have grown a very good ability. As you improve your abilities in a subject neurons in the brain fire up more frequently and a larger part of your brain is dedicated into these activities. Everytime you do this you get some feedback of how well you perform in your activities and that makes you happier. I am not talking about an external feedback from other people but an inner understanding that you are very talented in something and each time you exercise more into firing these neurons the more happy you become and the more evolved your abilities become. It follow a possitive vicious circle where you are good at A, you exercise A more and the more you do this thing the more you like to be involved in A which makes you better at it and returns more positive feedback about it which makes you involved more. Also, to reach that point where it has become a talent, it takes years and usually starts in a very early age.

Based on this idea I can now explain what happened on that night. I simply met with people with whom I could exchange thoughts having to do with the programming hobby. First of all I could discuss my ideas and let these neurons fire excessively for hours. Then the other guy could totally relate with my hobby and I supposed fired hapilly his own good neurons by responding back and getting us into a happy conversation. Then we discussed about our studies in UCL and I felt very happy I will be studying together with these people with whom we can greatly relate. I was happy I would be studying a subject that is actually very close to the same hobby and as more I am involved into it the more happy I can get. One part of hapiness was the endless engagement into our things that makes our brain happy, the other ones was that we could relate as people very well based on our common interests. It sounds like a trivial thing coming right from the clue shoppe (but of course if you do things you like and you talk about things you like then it makes you happy, no news) but it gets more interesting from the firing neuron theory.

Another interesting example. I am deadly bored in common social situations. And they make me unhappy. For various reasons. When I sit three hours in a cafeteria with people I can't relate or find boring then it seems to much to me. But one day an interesting observation came in my mind: I find three hours in a cafeteria with boring uninteresting people too much but how the hell can I survive three days at a demoparty event with no sleep and bad noise and even enjoy the hell out of it? Wouldn't they look at my affection for the demoscene event with pitty the same way I see their kind of entertainment dull and I can't stand even an hour of it?.

What happens here? It's all about how your life came into a point where specific events lighten up positively specific neurons of your brain and so you enjoy repeating these activities to fire up the same neurons. An interesting thing is that if your brain really gets the possitive kicks from these activities then you can stand doing them even in the most awful conditions that may accompany them (dark and noisy demoparties, crowdy and noizy clubs, smelly disgusting cigarettes, drinking bitter and tasteless coffee (that's how I see especially the last ones :)). Another questions is how it become to be so? To like programming I had to initially get into it without those motivating neurons to be already there. If it evolved in an early age then why my brain didn't got into the more common things first? Like getting good at playing the social game? If this one happened then I assure you I would now truly enjoy casual social situations and this like an endless cycle would make me ask for more of those situations which would then make my neurons on this activity evolve and thus make me more happy as I constantly repeat the practice of doing this. But how did I not get into this endless circle and choose(?) the programming one instead. A matter of brain difference or psychology?

But even if I still can't answer the last question with certainity the fact remains that either way my life came forward to a point where I evolved enjoying my kind of activities and never getting the kicks (or getting the negative vicious circles, yes there are those bad firing neurons too) for other ones. Someone would say that if I insisted repeating the casual social activity then it would make a good set of neurons grow up and finally get a possitive feeling from this. But in my opinion that would take ages (it should even start on an early age when the mind evolved easier) and I think it isn't worth the try. From another perspective also, the idea that I am not social is not really true. The fact is that I am not 'casually' social. I can be very social with the right kind of people. So, I should find more of those people with whom I can really and have a really interesting conversation.

Why bothering with those dead cells? Why not bet on those well doing talented ones? Of course occasionally I am really touching the dead ones too because I am not 100% asocial (in very rare cases, even with the boring group I can have that inspiration of humour which makes me feel good for a while (and the rest of the group too)). People would just beg me to be more social? But aren't things evolving alone? Preaching that something is not normal or criticising someone is like pushing him into a direction that hits a wall. One cannot evolve like this. Does it mean that we should just stop discussing it and try to live our lifes the best way that fits? Why do we even have this arguments? (I can assure you though that thinking about these things and arguing sometimes fires a bunch of positive neurons among with negatives or else I wouldn't be here writting this blog :P)

With these things in mind I find all the notion of normality wrong. Condemning strange talents and activities is also something that makes no sense to me now. With the same neuron theory in my mind and how I feel that it might be working in my case, I can also speculate on why some people like things that I hate or cannot understand and why it comes the same from their side, and conclude that there is no point pushing each other towards activities that our cells have not evolved to enjoy.

The trip to London will be very possitive for me. I will be studying with people who will possible relate to things my brain like. I will be even working on a job involving those people (it hasn't happened yet). I should seek for the things that make me happy. I should observe what I was evolved to like.

p.s. Someone would say that I have many negative feelings from my hobby. Especially the part that has to do with the demoscene. But it's not the demoscene blame. Also I can purely carry on programming graphics without having anything to do with the demoscene or the things I learned to hate inside. The primary hobby remains to have the possitive effect. The aftereffects have to do with other connections that had to do with my personality. It's like when you had several faulty experiences with girls and you start hating girls. But there is something else behind. This thing is something I am searching. In UCL I will be studying and doing fun stuff with computer graphics, so it will be like my hobby but detatched from the demoscene (still not the demoscene's fault but some of my personality traits that somehow got mixed badly with some ideas and misconceptions). So, programming and computer graphics alone remain a very possitive feedback loop in my brain.

A happy night!

2009-08-17T23:13:00.000+01:00

I had a very good time today when I met my friends nuclear and hikiko to discuss about finding a house in London, having also our typical graphics programming discussions and then went to the netcafe to watch the same demo in three screens simultaneously. Somehow I had a rare positive feeling today, maybe it's the fact that we will most probably spent a great time studying together from late September in England.

Maybe it's time to give you my news about this since the time is near and I am in a great mood to speak about it. Me and hikiko applied for an MSc in Computer Graphics, Vision and Imaging at UCL and we are certainly in. Now the only step remaining is to find a good cheap home (university houses might not make it) or anything to have somewhere to stay and the good times start. I hope that nuclear gets his phd offer too and we can stay together. For me it's a positive thing from many views, first of all it will be great to be studying what I like to do in my free time, then it's actually a nice opportunity (or transition way) to stay in England and search for a related job there and I am hoping for many good changes in my life from that point on. I need that transition and I need to see new places and make a new start.

Maybe that happy feeling will fade away tomorrow and for the next three weeks but it's all natural to drop down from a highly positive feeling and when the time comes near it will be all positive for the better again. I can't await for the moment to come, that we settle down in a home and all good things are about to come. Yey!

The roots of normality.

2009-08-08T02:48:00.000+01:00

Ever wondered how and when has the concept of normality arisen? How things came to be the way they are?

Although the concepts of normal and weird, that of the average joe and the eccentric might have existed even in ancient years (I imagine some ancient greek philosopher looking too weird to the common person of his times, I think there are examples of strangeness and reactions to this in history), maybe the first time that it was applied in a political basis in our history is described in the 2nd episode of the documentary "the century of the self".

Anna Freud believed that if children strictly followed the rules of accepted social contract then as they grow up, the conscious mind will be greatly strengthen in the struggle to control the unconscious.

I leave you to discover more in the documentary video.

Blogs again

2009-08-06T00:30:00.000+01:00

I somehow need to organize all these blogs and it's a hard work. Right now I exported most old posts from Kodeus Delirius and imported them to the Otinanism blog. When I started the kodeus delirius blog (gates to delirium) it was just a blog of random stupid posts that had to do with just being crazy and writting funny strange posts. But later I transformed this blog into a news blog about my coding projects (from which I am absent the recent days anyway). It wasn't very nice to have kept the insane old posts with the coding news at the same blog. And since I was used to open various different blog with insanities, I will just keep one (otinanism) and put everything there. At first I thought about deleting it but later I said, let's make it as a blog of garbage posts :P

I also tried to add some links, blog archive, label lists, etc in some of my recent ones. There is work to be done.

There is only one more blog I am thinking about opening.

You might wonder why all these blogs? Isn't it more work to have seven of them? Actually no. The different blogs bear with subjects that would be posts on the primary blog. I am just splitting these subjects in different blog. I was write posts about demoscene, normality, hackers, programming, ufos, news, random thoughts, stupid posts, etc in the same blog for a long. Subjects that don't match with each other and don't fit in the same atmosphere of the blog. I have already used labels too but I needed to separate the posts in different blogs.

But if I separate the subjects then what I will be writting in the main Optimus blog? In the past most of the posts here had to do with the normality/personal struggle subject. These are going to the normality blog. Few of them with the demoscene. Plasmafun is about games/demos/various stuff, recently I am writting a lot of demo reviews there. Kodeus Delirius about my coding projects (although I don't think I am in enough mood to work with this blog). Computer Hermit again with computers but with a different perspective (although I am getting too obsessed with the "hackers" subject there, I am still skeptical why I opened this blog but I like the feeling of it right now). I might open one about UFO and paranormal things and my skepticism. I think the main Optimus blog will remain as a center for things, news, not related exactly.

Nah. It needs a lot of work to put it in a satisfactory way that I like. There are some blogs I am tempted to delete or merge with others. But maybe I shouldn't. Too much work and I can't decide..

The nature of socialization

2009-08-03T19:16:00.000+01:00

I went with some friends to a beach bar. My mood was looking quite serious and somebody noticed it. He thought I was sad. Then fact was, my thoughts were racing through my head. They weren't thoughts about personal problems. They were thoughts about subjects I sometimes analyze with great passion and interest, yet not necessarily affecting me. I mean, there wasn't any burden with real life at that time, only positive things ahead. It was just that my brain decided to overload me with various ideas for me to analyze. And I was actually in the moods to do so. I just was in the wrong place and time.

I couldn't have fun. I couldn't take part in the social situations, I couldn't enjoy looking at girls, I couldn't relax. It just wasn't my time. Because trying to do so required at first to defocus, switch off my brain and join another state of mind. I couldn't enjoy the time but I knew it wasn't wrong. I knew that my brain wanted me to grab a subject and analyze it, stay in solidarity and talk to myself, sit in front of my computer and write a programm, sit in a chair and read a book or anything else that didn't fit the particular moment and time.

Later I went into the sea. I like the sea. Most people get into the sea for fifteen minutes and then stay out in the beach for hours. I like to be in the sea and go deeper where there are is a distance from people. I like to relax there for hours (of course I know the after effects) and stare at the horizon, floating over the waves, being alone and thinking. Actually talking to myself..

I don't exactly know why I am doing it. Maybe because it's more passionate and gets you focused when you are speaking it loud than thinking it. I always do the same thing in my lonely walks or at home. I try to be careful to do it when people are not around because I feel a bit weird. Some people have asked me why am I doing it? One has speculated that I am doing this because I feel lonely and I don't have anyone to talk and so I should find more friends. I recently found a very interesting explanation that defy this logic and is also based on my insights on the nature of regular socialization.

The big difference is:

Most people have a primary focus to socialize with other people and only use "objects" as means of socialization (social interest).

Few of us are passionate and focused on "objects" and want to talk with people who share the same interest about "objects" (actual interest).

Where "object" means hobby, science, philosophy, actual knowledge, understanding and will to get involved into the discussion upon the subject, not short reference of common opinions and ideas that are necessary pleasing to people or just used to present yourself or open a random discussion.

When I am talking to myself, it is because I am of the second kind. Speaking loudly and with passion has to do with my strong focus and interest on the subject. It's not about my need to speak to other people because then I wouldn't need to do this alone since people are everywhere and I could just start a casual talk if I wanted.

The interesting part here is to think of the elements of socialization. Socialization as we know it from the majority (because socialization could be any form of communication, even those weird ones that are not considered particularly "social"). The most common form is the one which I recently called casual socialization. What is there? Predictable talks. Casual chat. Jokes. And when the thing reaches the "object" it's just brief mentions of ideas and opinions just for the sake of socialization. The important here is that there is an easy and relaxing flow of words and ideas just to have a nice casual feeling of being with people and belonging somewhere. The belonging part is why there is a trend to mention well accepted, common, predictable ideas so that everyone else is noding his head and there is a feeling of safety that we are all similar in ideas (belonging) and have a good time. Of course some disagreements arise but then the ideas change from one subject to another and all process is going lightly (not obsessively).

When I join a social situation, I sometimes may get dragged into a certain talk because it happens to speak of a certain matter that interests me. Usually I am just a pure listener but if I manage to get into the discussion I may speak like crazy, not being necessary a fanatic (I may agree with the opinion and there may be no arguments) but sounding like so because I switch into a furious state that surely looks kinda weird, even... not considered "social". Social for them might mean to say something small, not get too focused on subject, like making a dribble and then throwing the ball to another person and not playing with the ball in the corner. There are actually some sceners in Breakpoint who told me that. They thought that I monopolize the discussion because I am an attention seeker. But I think the answer is another one.

I am getting too obsessed with the subject of the discussion that my thoughts are racing and I am getting in a furious state. Just like these blogs. I certainly believe it's a brain difference and it's getting really obvious from my various observations of myself or other people during social situations, it's also obvious from the size and analysis of my texts and my obsessive nature. It can't be like this because of bad personality or psychology. You don't avoid a social way of communicating that works because you are stubborn. It can't be a naive choice to be something that is not me. It is me!

It seems weird. It's because of my focus on the subject that makes the process of socialization entirely different for myself than what others expect. Sometimes I open a subject because I am truly obsessed with it. Someone responds, he just finds my subject useful as a bridge to communicate. But he later changes the subject. I thought he did that because he found the subject boring. But no. This is how the game is played. Later (if we are at a party) he leaves the discussions and moves to other people. I thought he found me boring. I was wrong. He has to go from one person to another one. It's logical. He wants to meet people, as many as he can. I want to find one person who is really obsessed with the same object I am to spend the hours discussing this together. A different kind of mentality.

There is nothing wrong with each of these different mentalities. Some people meet together for the sake of socialization (socialization as an end in itself) while others are in need to communicate their passion about a specific "object". The first group might have to do something with the "object" because it's their job and then forget it, while the second group is involved into the exploration and understanding of the "object" because they are obsessed with it (the "object" as an end in itself).

I think it all has to do with a different nature of the brain. The cases of people in the autistic spectrum who are focused or obsessed with specific hobbies while they don't fit very well socially might be a key to that difference. I am not sure yet if my case has to do anything with it but there seem to be some strong indications that I am not into this condition just because I was lazy or stubborn. At least I am certain that my thoughts are racing through my brain.

What's your problem?

2009-08-03T15:41:00.000+01:00

It sometimes pisses me off and then I wonder. Why do these people get into trouble to annoy us? Why do they need to tell me with a hectic passion that I am doing something wrong with my life? Why do they get fanatic or angry about me not changing? Why their rants are not simple suggestions but screams that something is very bad with this world and that's us?

I mean, there are a lot of other stupid trends that are considered normal yet they are harmful to the people around and yet most of them wouldn't even react about (e.g. bullying). But things like being different, following your own path or having weird hobbies steer the anger in many. While it's just a quiet life that hardly harms anyone. Of course someone could give me counter-examples but those won't be more harmful than many harmful things that are accepted as common and nobody mentions.

One thing that is common in me and makes me passive to situations is that I try my best to avoid conflict. There are even acts that annoy me and yet I try to be patient enough and not get into fight. You'd again tell me that the right thing is to become more aggressive to those who deserve it but everyone has a different attitude and there isn't such a thing as a perfect attitude. The interesting though is that there are some people who seem to naturally have a tendency to seek for fights. They want to piss off people, they get ecstatic by bullying, blaming, criticizing people, they do this all day because their self-esteem needs it.

I can't explain it in a different way. Why someone would get angry over my lifestyle when it doesn't affect his own? He wants a target to blame, one to show his superiority by degrading him, under the excuse that he just wants to help. Why an anonymous reader of my blog would come here and blame me as hard as he can claiming that he is waiting for me to change and that I am an asshole literally if I haven't changed yet?

The message they give is that you are a lazy bum, a stubborn asshole, someone who just has it wrong and everyone else around is right. They'd again say that this is how I perceive their message and so in my defense I'd like to answer that the way some of the people are formulating this message only shows arrogance, degradation and leads to further feelings of victimization and alienation of self. Simply, I get more angry on such reactions and have a "fuck the normal world" attitude. Then they alienate me from the rest of the world and I am having an anti-normal distinctive worldview. This is not helping.

Actually the mistake of the message is to consider one way of life as something so bad that it shouldn't exist. I am more towards the idea that there are social savants and social inept people. Some have a primary need to belong and constantly think about people while others have a natural tendency to wish to explore the world. The mistake we (from our side) do is to feel negative about our own image (that doesn't resemble normality) and try desperately to fit in. I am still fighting with it and that's because those self proclaimed messiah's came to me and wanted to preach with anger and fear that something is very wrong with me and that I have to make a rapid 180 degrees change as fast as I can or else I will be sad all my life. Does anyone change to the better (his good, not yours) with accusations and constant fear or does he loose more of his limited self-esteem and develops anti-social attitudes?

You made me sad since childhood. You never helped me at all. If you just didn't opened your mouth then things would be better for me. What's your damn problem anyway?

No more food!

2009-08-02T23:06:00.000+01:00

Right now I am getting pissed off with myself. Of course I couldn't avoid a taverna visit with my friends for another night and this time I was so full of food that it became so hard to digest and I have trouble breathing. Of course this incident doesn't happen frequently (I remember only one more time when I was thirteen and I was paniced when I instantly couldn't breath) but it got me pissed. Not that it might change anything (because tomorrow I will be fine and forget it) but I am making thoughts to stop with the food again.

A little problem now is that there are some trips I am making in Crete because of my new job, the only source of food in the evening is a Taverna and when I sit for three hours there then I am getting bored and eat everything. Even if I order nothing, the first dishes (for all) are coming and since the rest of my colleagues don't eat that much, it's all open to my choice. I was two weeks in Crete and now I am thinking it, I was eating in a Taverna every evening. It's preety fucked up! Of course it's all my fault (and we have discussed it) and the next time maybe I should stay in the hotel or something. It's not atm possible to sit in the table with tons of food we order but nobody eats and not be tempted or prompted to empty the tables.

Most people don't understand the problem. They think that fat people like me are lazy assholes who always find excuses to eat. To say that it's not healthy is not enough. We know it. It's like you are saying the smoker is an asshole because he doesn't understand that smoking kills and that it's a silly thing. Of course he does. I am not a smoker (I am even annoyed by smoking in public places) but I wouldn't say to a smoker that it's wrong that he is smoking because the logic says that it's bad. It is an addiction. There are psychological factors. It's the same with food addiction. You don't blame the fat person. He knows something is wrong. You are not helping him by blaming him for the obvious.

The remaining problem is what am I doing now? I know that my focus is to return to my normal weight. I know that it doesn't make sense to loose and then gain weight at the end because it will only make the process longer. But I continue to loose focus from the main plan. Also another think is that we like food. We maybe have to persuade ourselves that we don't like food. This is the point where meaning is lost. Because food does taste good. And I am not the person who can blindly close his eyes and believe something that is a lie. But maybe that's the only way. You can't start losing weight by continuing eating food. I have to drop my old habits. I am trying for a lot of years. I've discussed it with some work colleague and he told me that he managed to quit smoking but not food. Such a great addiction it is.

Another thing is diets. They need a plan. I can't follow a plan. Also they look quite simplistic. Of course if you don't follow my overeating plan but the plan of every diet by rule, you are going to loose weight and follow a different habit. Till you forget it and return to you own regular habits. Also it's not that with the diet I will be hungry and become nervous. Hunger doesn't bother me much. It is the fact that I am not allowed to eat (and overeat) my favorite foods. There are cases where I am eating even if I am not hungry.

Maybe I can't follow the alternative. To just not eat. And I am searching for a more convenient path which favours my addiction, although this isn't possible. It's complicated. Whatever you say it is. But there must be a solution. I always believed that every problem has a solution if you think it hard enough. But this is getting too complicated and maybe I secretly don't want to stop my habit..

Life and the stars

2009-07-30T15:52:00.000+01:00

There is an eternal dileema. The writer of this blog is confused. Even if he knows where the road leads.

This blog is dedicated to those who suffer. Those who are afraid to speak for themselves, yet they sometimes do and then regret it. Those who are stuck between life and the stars. Those who can see the desert of reality yet they have to play the game but inside them they cry. Those who are different yet not exactly confident about it and fight between the sense of normality and their need to be honest.

I know that I am still not making sense. For another time I don't try to have a plan in my writting, I just write whatever comes although in a poetical style. I just like to make atmosphere. I just like to inspire myself. I don't think whether anyone will read it or what people will say about it. The be me, don't care about the world mentality.

Sometimes I'd like to make a sense. Some of my posts will. Although it doesn't matter since people understand what they want to understand. This blog is for persons like me, lost between their need for individuality and their shame for being weird. And it's for similar persons who have made similar thoughts and sometimes they feel lost. I'd like them to read something and feel joy in the same way I'd bump into another blog putting my thoughts into words. Someone else feels just like me, has a similar passion and similar worries as me, and he hasn't succumbed into normality and forgotten who he is..

I listen to people who are a bit fanatic at first. But their ideas and feelings are close to mine. They say that they are geeks, different than the rest, prefer programming than beers and girls, wish to achieve something big instead of following what most others do, are hapilly lost into strange worlds while they are getting bored of real life. Most of them come to me years later and they tell me that they changed their mind entirely, they despise their old life style and that girls and booze is the meaning of life. Such a sudden change that saddens me.

Of course I can't ask from them to stay being like me, if they really discovered something greater in a more "normal" lifestyle. I wonder though what their real self is and what's their difference from my own state of mind? I feel like there aren't many people very similar to me, being in that middle state where I am more close to the stars than life, yet I resist total conversion but still being worried and unsure about it. I mean, there are geeks who are robotically sending fuckings to real life preachers and seems to not even be worried, being confident of their different lifestyle. There are also geeks who suddenly moved from the weird to the normal side and some even preach hard about it. I don't blame them though although I'd like to know what's on their mind that forced that sudden switch. But not enough geeks ruminating about these matter and not being able to decide even though they clearly are more close to the stars than life. At least nobody is writting a blog about it. I think.. (The exception is few posts from blogs of the autistic community where there is a declaration of difference based on neurodiversity. Although most posts are discussing autism rather than the humanistic/social factors of normality)

Life and the stars. It's an analogy. It should be beer and the stars as it started but it might not sound so poetic that way. Yet it's something I thought at a party. I was drunken and had great fun socializing (even though I notice that my way of "socializing" differs and has the geeky sides) when I nodded my head and looked up into the sky. I was lost for a while. People were sucked into the vacuum of socialization, predictable memes and jokes and casual chat were through the air while I was lost in my world. The social voices (where social sometimes plasmatic and memetic) in my background and the real world above my head. I could feel the two worlds between of them I was lost.

Someone told me (for a good cause) that one shouldn't cancel the other. You can have both the stars and the real life. Even the distinction between real and imaginary life is a lie. You are still alive if you ponder about the universe. Socialization asks for a different state of mind that is incompatible with minds similar to mine. Even though we are all social in our own way. But there is a big difference. Can life and the stars be combined when they belong to different states of mind? At least they can somehow coexist.

Cosmos is another name for the universe. Although except from 'world' it also means 'people' in greek. If I visit a cafeteria they ask me if there were any people(cosmos) in it. It is good that many people are there because it's considered social. Some people don't like to visit certain stores at moments where there are very few people there. I like it because it's quiet.

Cosmos was a word about the universe (cosmonaut, cosmodrome, etc). It later succubed to meaning the world (the earth). Now it even means people, a crowd of them, humanity. When you look at the stars and dream on they tell you to stay grounded on earth. They tell you to stay into world matters, meaning the matters that have to do with human affairs. See how things succumbed into lower states. See how fixated we are about other humans. It's not normal to be driven away from the stars and ignore the other people living in their social delusion.

Another word is 'reality'. Reality is everything that exists. When you look at the stars it's reality. But they tell you to get back to reality and they mean to be fixated with the human affairs and forget the stars. (Read about The Human Evasion, this analysis reminds me of the similar thoughts on the meaning of Cosmos)

But let's stick back to reality. The reality is that there are people like us and the rest of the world. There are reasons why I didn't evolved into a kind of human that enjoys their lifestyle. I am very interested into finding more about them. Why I am here? Why most people blame the geeky lifestyle? How can I live hapilly with this contradiction and how can I succeed giving the message to other people who have suffered because of that?

There are several answers. It can be neurodiversity. It can be psychology. It can be both. It's actually a mix of all, brain functioning, environment, family, evolution of personality. The fact is that we are here and we have a tension to look more to the stars than beer. We need to explore reality not just to be casually social. It's a pain to struggle being something different than yourself. Even if personality is evolved 100% because of psychology, it doesn't mean that it has to change into an entirely diferrent state of mind that normality dictates. You can't be happy by changing who you are. Maybe it slowly evolves into something that tries to be at peace with itself and the world (if it's possible at the same time) but don't expect to see someone always making this rapid switch. Some of the people say that they accept us but they want us to rapidly change into something that is not us. Not every person can be 'normal'.

I still don't like how big this text became and how confusing it might be (although I enjoy writting such texts) because it might not deliver my message. But I believe that people very close to me might be reading it and finding out that they are not alone..

p.s. I say beer in the last paragraph because the stars can be life too and so called real life can be delusional. Still not very nicely sounding (for the sake of being poetic) but I just felt angry at the last part, why isn't something life I said?

Inner conflict.

2009-07-25T19:18:00.000+01:00

I said to myself. Something has gone wrong.
Then I stand corrected. Something has taken a different road.
Various scenarios of things that could have happened quite different.
And then the doubt that maybe some difference in the brain would grow a similar self no matter if we changed the variables.

And then the blame. That all these thoughts are excuses. And the confusion.
Excuses for what? What do they mean when they say it's excuses? Am I just making excuses about the excuses? Huh..

But it's not that bad now. I can accept things. I can admit facts. I am not that scared. And the inner conflict is not that painful. It's even cleansing. And it helps to admit facts that I was scared to do in the past. Because I want to know the truth, not to hide behind my finger. Although I like to admit things to myself but not to people who will use it to ensure their already predefined view on their holy right and my eternal wrong. It's like that these people always have the need to feel that their view of what's right and wrong in life is superior and that they even enforced that to people that differ from this view.

For example I can accept now that I could have followed a different path in a precious moment in my life. A path that it feels like not matching my current personality. In an early age, maybe around sixteen, it was a crucial moment that could mark the point of a great shift in my personality. I could either follow what was in my mind and my interests (being sucked into science, computers, programming, etc..), which I did and brought me to the point here and right now, or making a shift in my plans, not wishing to become a great geek but become a great dude. If that worked well maybe I wouldn't have a blog writing about these things today.

This is just a speculation of what would happen if I had followed a different route. I don't try to define the right path and the wrong path. I see these paths equally. Maybe something positive would have happened, some good friends who would be in the casual side of things not geeky side, yet be more friendly and supporting, could help me see the positive side of it. Maybe an experience with that girl in school which seemed to be interested to know more about me or supportive would drastically change who I became, but nothing happened from my side. Would a set of different variables bring different experiences in my early life that could bring the change or was it bound to never fit?

And so I became reactive to normality. Although it seems that I always didn't fit. If I did, I wouldn't be oppressed to act and look like the rest. It's not the certain point in history that mattered of what I became now, it was every point in history. The ideals of normality were oppressive to me because people were always oppressive to the way I was.

I am not unhappy of who I am. I am unhappy of the psychological oppression that bothers me. I am unhappy that I have an inner impulse to do something and then there is conflict. Emotionally I feel bad about certain things but thinking it more logically I figure out that I shouldn't. And all I get is this stupid feeling that there is an incompatibility between my desires and what seems accepted. And the blatant feeling is internal. It's like the people preaching that I should be normal but their voices living inside my mind. Sometimes I battle with my inner thoughts of blame.

Another interesting thing is that it seems like I am having a natural feeling of what may seem not normal and what is accepted. It's like nobody taught me what is normal and what is not and yet I can feel uneasy with some of my actions or thinking about acting in a certain way, nobody have told me before that the particular action or thought is not normal or a taboo, yet it's like I have a sixth-sense and in most cases it's proven that what I predicted to be not accepted it really gets the blame or makes people looking strange at me. No it's not a sixth-sense, it's meta-knowledge. Somehow I know from past experiences of people preaching normality or messages passed through the media or everyday life, what is safe and accepted and what could look peculiar and make me looking odd. Even about the things I have never seen any person doing, never being blamed, but I am just about to do. It's like I already know what "feels" abnormal and what "feels" accepted. So much conditioned I was in an age I can't remember. Not by a specific group of people but by the world around me.

Hopefully the more I learn about myself and the world, the more I construct a bigger and better image of the whole things that matter me. The more easy is it then for me to accept some facts I was afraid to do so that I can make my vision of things more clear and help me take things more easily. What I see now is that I have followed a path that led in my current personality with all the burden that comes with it, speculated whether I could have followed a different path, although I still found a high possibility that I was bound to become this or something drastically different in my environment should have happened for me to change. There are still things bothering me, there is anxiety, there are stupid inner conflicts, there are things that I might want but I don't follow all the standards to be successful in them (a job or hobby that makes me happy, courage and motivation to meet and talk to girls (actually this one was the cause for my recent inner conflict and this post)). But as I have the bigger image I can see what is missing, I can accept that I don't have some of these things because I am stuck somewhere, I can see the problem for each of them and possible loop holes I could follow that even with my current incompatibility as a personality with the norms I can still get what I want.

And yet the inner thoughts in my head say that it's all a big excuse to be lazy. The alternative would be what? To not think and just do? Sorry, I can't stop the rush of my thoughts. At least now I think I am moving somewhere.

Monty Fail

2009-07-09T14:37:00.000+01:00

I wrote this thing on another blog and I thought it would be nice to write my findings here. For those who don't know it has to do with a twisted variation of the Monty Fall problem that bugged me for days. I first wrote about it in my previous blog entry. I am not the guy who spends a lot of time in endless discussions on twisted quizzes or counter-intuitive problems cause usually I am more practical, like who solves sudoku or IQ tests when I actually manage to write a new algorithm that is both clever and usefull? But this one for some reasons hit me and I became a little obsessed with it. I still don't know if it's 1/2 (I'd say, inspired by PHd comics that it's pi/2 :) but the simulation with my own rules does it even if the mathematicians prooved the problem differently (they didn't even defined if something happens when the host accidentally reveal the car,.. oh well just read at the end ps or just get familiarized with the monty hall/fall problems, except if you don't want to waste your time :)

For the Monty Fall problem (the second variation) there is too much controversy and that is I think because the description is kinda weird and I can't think of a way I could possibly simulate that in reality nor can I have a good insight (yet) of what is the difference or what hard math or a very deep perception of statistics or probability that I could possibly lack. Till now I thought this was also 2/3 and tried to find out why they say (Marilyn, the PDF with the probability math I still haven't read, etc) it's 1/2.

One think that is not explained is what happens if the host accidentally opened the car. This is not defined. It says that he slips in a banana and randomly happens to get the goat. So, does he always randomly slips and gets the goat (so that the game show makes sense) or is revealing the goat just a specific run (and what happens in this case) and in the other runs the host would possibly reveal the car too. Yet we are asked if in the specific run that a goat is revealed (but a car could be revealed in other runs too) what would happen?

Although to be able to check it in a simulation a rule must be set for what happens if the host chooses the car. So I invented my own two different rules for my simulation:

1) The unfair rule: The game goes on and the player switches from a goat to a goat and looses anyways. So, the host can accidentally reveal the car and make the player instantly loose. In a C programm the simulation really gets us the proposed 1/2. That's easy.

2) The rerun rule: If the host randomly reveals the car then that run is simply discarded (and not counted in the total runs) and we setup a new one and try again. Now in this one I initially made a 2/3 but when I explained the monty hall/fall problem to my brother he surprisingly came with nice ideas to use in my simulation. My mistake was that when I had a new run with the 3 doors, getting the car I started the simulation again but with the same contents in 3 doors. That means, if I had GOAT CAR GOAT and the host opened the 2nd door with the car, I reran with the same GOAT CAR GOAT (didn't randomized again a new set of doors) and randomly the host would select the 3rd door and let the run continue. But this was like canceling the mistake of the host and selecting always the goat, bringing it back to the old monty fall (not hall) problem, thus 2/3.

He actually told me:

CAR | GOAT GOAT
GOAT | CAR GOAT
GOAT | GOAT CAR

"In the occasion of the second or third row the host has a 50% probability to fuck up and select CAR. In the 1st row the mistake will never happen. So if you change your simulation programm so that a wrong choice actually reruns the game by shuffling the car/goats order in the doors, you will get twice times the first row than the others. In the first row if you switch you certainly loose. So you have two cases that switching makes you loose (two times the 1st row) and two other rows (2nd and 3rd) that switch makes you win. This is 2/4 aka 50%."

And so it actually worked in simulation for both rules getting 50%.

p.s. Although I don't think that the people who originally invented the Monty Fall version of the problem thought of these rules for the solution. If they had they would be more precise. Somehow I feel that the Monty Fall is a slight variant of the Monty Hall deliberately made to get a 1/2 effect maybe to justify the several PHDs who did it wrong on the first problem and say that, they understood the Monty Fall variation from the description, not the Monty Hall description. They say that Marilyn had an unclear description of the initial problem. But Marilyn's description is just plain right. It's the Monty Fall variation that has an unclear or misleading or not complete (needs more data) description for me. It's just a counter-intuitive problem that most of us reply 1/2 at first sight. Did all of us thought of the Monty Fall problem? No. We just didn't see the whole image, just hide the revealed car and worked independently of the initial choice. A common pitfall. I don't believe that all those PHDs and especially other non-mathematical people just got it different. They got it wrong with a first guess as I initially and my brother and my friends did.

I am normal!

2009-07-08T20:46:00.000+01:00

Today I woke up and realized a big thing that nobody wants to discuss. The fact that I am normal! Who, me? Who despises normal? Who would not possess this title as a complement or honor but as an insult? Me, normal? Huh..

But I am. And that's the irony. Sometimes it comes as an enlightenment and I get a little excited about it till I forget it. Sometimes I think it harder and I arrive at very interesting conclusions that help me brighten my self-esteem because according to the facts I should have a higher self-esteem right now. And as time passes I will be becoming more engaged into the specific idea and that will help me embrace what I am and move on for the better.

Another irony is that most people who look like or pretend to be "normal" aren't really. Those are the weirdos, those are the most abnormal, unnatural beings on the planet. There is a lack of symphony between their inner wishes and the persona they decided to play and they don't address it. They never discuss it. They think that it wouldn't look normal, it would look silly, stupid if they revealed their true feelings, their true intentions, their true self that might not exactly look like the perfect model of "normal". These all sound wicked but I will try to explain just right now.

They are the weirdos. I am the normal. That's the best irony in years!

Does it matter if I don't resemble the common norm? Is it a problem if I am getting obsessed with specialized hobbies? Does it harm you if I like solitude or if I sometimes talk to myself? Do I have to look and act like the way you want me? Would it be natural to not act freely based on my true motivations and emotions but instead hide my true self and nervously trying to resemble some kind of a "standard" human being? Isn't it the most natural thing in the world that all of these years I stayed true to my original self and was honest enough even to you? This is normal in it's truest sense.

What is a normal person, a common joe, a model for imitation? Who would say they match perfectly that model? Even not perfectly? Who will or have defined it? It's ill defined! You can't just set some interpretation of the "normal" and expect all people to be just like it. Are we some kind of soldiers that have to all look alike? What about individuality?

Yet a lot of people try to look the way most people accept as "normal" and I bet they are in constant fear that someone will reveal their true identity. I guess that several people are doing this. As long as I meet and observe people I see masks. Most of them just keep their masks and are friendly. Few of them go even further and try to criticize or harass you for being different than the norm. I think that all those people are geeks in disguise. They keep their true self, present another accepted and praised one and even come to you and preach that you should be like them. It's like having split personalities. Really, is there something more unnatural, more abnormal than living a double life and beg the other ones around you that differ from this scheme to do the same?

Really, normal does not have to be focused on some kind of activities or specific life style. Most people have it really wrong here. There can be normal geeks and scientists as there can be normal people that are good at socializing and regular activities. It just have to come naturally. I remember an old friend who in the sense of the misguided definition of "normal" he was perfect. Ubersocializing, very good with girls, funny, nice, talkable also with a light interest in our hobbies (D&D or computers for him). I instantly felt that this guy is a rare occasion because all these things on him came so naturally. You know what he told me when he saw me worrying about things? First he acknowledged my specialized interests and focus, he told me all the positive words, he persuaded me that it's just me and it's natural to be me and wished me good luck. He never had the need or motivation to blame me instead of support me. That guy happened to follow some of the current standards of normality so well but just because it came naturally from inside him. And he was much nicer and accepting than all those preachers of normality who only blame while they aren't the best examples of the truly natural normality.

The next time someone comes near you and starts blaming you for not being "normal", you just need to tell him that he is asking you to try to be unnatural. Or even better tick him off by noticing his vices. Everybody has some of them. Nobody is perfect in the image of a norm. But the most severely deluded and ill-fated are the ones who fearfully try to stay in the norm and beg you to follow the same root.

Mind twisting

2009-07-07T20:51:00.000+01:00

It's been three days since I started obsessively analyzing a simple probability problem and different versions of it. Several years ago a friend told me the story of a woman who baffled several mathematicians by insisting in her extreme sounding solution which proved at the end to be true, and her case made an impression on me yet my friend couldn't remember her name or I didn't googled it enough then. And just few days ago I was ecstatic to find the story at Coding Horror.

I won't explain the problem since it's very nicely written in the link above and many people might be familiar already with it (please visit the link first if you aren't). It's just funny that after you read the problem you initially say 1/2 and it sounds so logical, you read 2/3 and you are certain that she is wrong, even though her explanations are quite simple and they are truly making sense (even to the math illiterate), while even famous mathematicians say this can't be right, till a call for trying to simulate a probability experiment proves them wrong. I tried the same thing in a C program and it really shows after few runs. There are even java applets that let you play the game of the problem for several runs and report the probabilities. Wow! (It's funny to read the story on the site of Marilyn and grin at the reactions regardless the simple mathematical or empirical explanations.

Of course I didn't described the problem but sent you into external links because it's not the one I want to discuss (it's already resolved) but the extension of it.

Say that you have the three doors again, you start with your choice and later the host opens one of the two remaining doors but randomly this time (not deliberately revealing the one with the goat). This means that he could also mistakenly open the door with the winning car. Although because in that case the show would be disaster it assumes that he gets lucky and randomly chooses a door with a goat. What's the possibility of switching from your initial choice to the alternative remaining one?

I would assume at first that since the host selected the goat, whether he did it deliberately or not this occurrence returns us back to the first version of the problem. You have taken one door and the host reveals a goat, your probability of switching is still 2/3. But both Marilyn, the wikipedia article and some mathematical pdf explanation states it's 1/2. And that's where the baffle begins.

First of all the example is quite imaginary and I could not easily think of a practical way to do the many runs and find out the experimental results. In the classic problem the host would deliberately select the door with the goat. So if he knew that one of the two doors contained the car he wouldn't chose it at all to not ruin the show. In the description of the extended problem the host forgets which door has the car and randomly chooses one of the two remaining doors, although it assumes that he luckily avoids choosing the door with the car. One could mistake that by thinking that even in several runs he always gets uberlucky to always not hit a car. But if I understood the description well you could assume that in that particular run he gets lucky and selects the goat yet the rules of the game is that he could even have chosen the car (someone would say that we don't care what would happen then since we only analyze this run). Yet I still have some good arguments why switching might not be 1/2.

First of all somebody should give an insight of what would happen if in a specific run the car is revealed. Because it matters if some of us wish to run a hundred of runs in experiment or computer simulation to be convinced. In that case, would the host say "ooops", pause the show to create a new arrangement of goat/car placements and start from scratch? This is like discarding the cases where he accidentally chooses the car so he always chooses the goat bringing us back to the initial problem with the 2/3 solution.

The second alternative would be that there is a special rule that says, if the host randomly reveals the car the competition goes on normally and then the player looses anyways. In my simulation program I removed the code that denies the host from revealing a door if it's a car. And then I don't care what would happen in real life if such a thing occurred and just run the simulation. A switch between the unrevealed doors will move from a goat to a goat and the player will loose anyways. Say that it's unfair rules of the show. This simulation gives a 1/2 after several runs. The problem though is that it doesn't suppose that a host slips in a banana and randomly reveals a door that happens to be a goat, etc, etc. It takes as valid that he reveals a car too.

There is something seriously wrong with the description of the second problem. It assumes that the host randomly chooses a door yet again it claims that it has to be a goat, yet it's still could be a car but it never is, while it doesn't claim what it would happen in the case it ways which isn't necessary seems we assume that it randomly is always (or in one run) a goat. I mean,.. it's as crazy as Schroedinger's cat!

A way it would make sense is to split it into four categories. Two of them happens before the game starts, the other two take place just after the host reveals a door.

I say to a friend that I want to go to a game show where at the end there are the three doors and the host always randomly reveals one after my initial choice. He speculates:

Case 1: If accidentally revealing a car forces the host to cancel this run and do it again from the beginning (and the next one accidental car choice, recursively forces him to discard the next run again) then the only valid run that finally happens is the one where he reveals a goat. This goes back to the original problem with the solution of 2/3.

Case 2: Accidentally revealing the car by the host results in the unfair rule of the player loosing. Either he switches or stays he gets the goat. Remember, I am not in the middle of the game, my friend speculates what are the possibilities either I switch or not based on the unfair rule. I don't know yet if he will select a goat or a car in the future. It tells me that if I play such a game in the future and given the possibility to switch, I have a probability of 1/2 to win either way.

I am already in the last part of the show, I have already chosen a door that I don't open yet and the host is about to reveal another one of the two. In the situation that the rule of case 1 was valid (discarding the revealing of the car mistake and doing it again) it would still fit in the old problem with the 2/3 solution. We only discuss now the situation when the unfair rule is at work.

Case 3: The host accidentally reveals the car. Either switch or stay gets a probability of zero.

Case 4: And now for the most important case. This is the one that is described in the problem in my opinion. The answer for this matters the most. The host randomly revealed the goat. He actually gave you an advantage! There was a possibility that he would hit case 3 but he didn't and your turn comes after that fact. He eliminated some negative odds of choosing the car concerning the unfair rules are at play. I can't think but the fact that it brings us to the old goat problem with 2/3 probability. While scientists, wikipedia and Marilyn says 1/2. This is where I am still baffled what am I thinking wrong!

It's hard to think that all those people have made a mistake again, so maybe I should have a look at this article (at the monty fall problem) and decide. I hope the theoritical math of this one can also give me a practical view of how this solution could apply and be explained using your perception in the real world. I'd like to see the theoritical proof and then see if somehow it also makes sense in reality. And how could someone create a probability experiment on this one? How to make the host randomly open the door yet he always chooses the goat? Doesn't this eliminate the other case of taking the car? Doesn't this converge our simulation to have several runs that look like the ones in the old problem bringing us the 2/3 result again?

If I am really wrong on this one then I would like to hear some proper explanations of why the 1/2 persists? The old problem sounded baffling but wasn't at all when you thought of the explanation. But the new one, if I get a proper answer it will either be something that changes my perception to something ever more crazy or the not so interesting yet revealing answer that the description of this problem and the way it's solution is suggested suffers from bad logic.

It will surely occupy my brain for more days. What a mind twister!

Blogs

2009-06-21T23:20:00.001+01:00

What is happening with my blogs?

It's not that I am opening too much. I am just trying to organize. A lot of things will change. This primary blog is a mess. Some of the others are kinda messy too. I am not sure what I will do with them.

Computer Hermit started very well. I like how it's going. I am also trying to keep the articles not as big and chaotic as here. Not an easy thing. I just hope the same to The burden of Normality (I am not sure if I will keep or change the title. Maybe "Revising Normality" or "The delusion of Normality" would do it?). Actually this one is my most precious one as it has to do with primary ideas that mattered me mostly even in this blog here. If there are some not big enough and good articles from here I could be transfering (or rewritting) them in that one. Με έχουν πιάσει Οτινανισμοί.. is a joke. Maybe I need once in a while to write random absurdities. It reminds me the past craziness of what used to be Gates to Delirium. I later used this one as a blog about my coding projects. It all needs a clean up. I am wondering when I will be doing all this work.

Maybe I will write small random stuff in here or links to articles I will be writing in the other blogs. Maybe not. It's all a mess. But I like my new two blogs. It's just like I am splitting posts that could normally be here in different categories for different blogs. Nothing is lost.

Now, I am not sure about the background. Designing your blog takes effort, something I never managed to do :P

Eleven years of struggle

2009-06-21T21:27:00.000+01:00

I don't remember when this burden have ever started. When the years of innocence had past and common ideas of what is normal were first nested in my brain. Among them came guilt and shame about things that somehow fell off or made me feel uncomfortably. I encountered them, I could feel their infliction, I was aroused by them, shocked and yet I gave them some names and tried to analyze them. I have come to understand that most people have learned to react to these feelings by sanitizing them. This happens by endorsing the belief that if someone feels uneasy about something then that something must be wrong and unacceptable. A way of thinking that I could never follow.

When I see little children I ponder at the moment early before the crystalization of beliefs. They are truly exploring a new world without preconceptions, without mental blocks, without negative feelings. Later I imagine how things will be for them in the future. Most of them will do fine. They somehow manage to survive integration through society and they learn to adore an average way of life and try to resemble the norm. A common thing is that they all learn the hard taboos and unwritten laws at first place, getting to acquire a universal knowledge of what feels uncommon and should be a disgrace. Then there is a small minority which somehow lost track and didn't managed to exactly resemble the norm here, one that is constantly bullied and criticized for being different. Children who were hypersensitive or having a higher consciousness, suffered from anxiety and other mental disorders, bearing a different kind of intelligence or being somewhere there in the autistic spectrum, having problems at home or school, or any other conditions that made their life a harder one than the rest. Especially when they were constantly criticized and bullied for that one reason.

What is normal? Is this world normal? If the majority defines what normal is in current societies and the present days then what can you say about the whole madness in the world? Don't go too far away! In the day when I was constantly bullied at school, my victimizers tried to sanitize their actions. Not only that but they actually managed to believe their lies. They thought it was the right thing to do so that I wake up and become as normal as the rest. I am getting furious the more I think back in the past!

Bullying is normal, not showing your emotions normal, following a 'cool' lifestyle is normal, smoking in my face normal, being average normal. Normal is subjective. Usually a lot of immoral (in my opinion) things today are considered normal. Or they are just passing easily away. Of course normal is not exactly the same in different ages and different places. A very characteristic example is homosexuality. Just observe how open the western societies are with it. To not be misunderstood, I am not against it, but I'll just use it as an example to show the absurd. Someone criticizes me for being nervous and he tells me that I should look 'cool' just like the rest. Someone is against my habit to speak alone to myself or my need for solitariness. Yet they claim they are open-minded and accept gays. Just try to imagine this: Someone is having an affair with the same sex and is fucked up in the ass (again no offense to gays, just an example). It Is Normal and Accepted! I rock nervously my foot on the floor. I make solitary walks? I don't look 'cool'? Abnormal and I shouldn't! How come?

People are dressed like emos or goths these days. A quite weird view really. Generally accepted because it's a known trend. If I surprise people and dress like batman in a day that is not halloween then it will be unexpected and thus abnormal. It's abnormal too that somehow I am uninterested in what clothes I wear or how I look. It was abnormal to speak to myself during solitary walks but now with the invasion of hands-free nobody notices. Alcohol is normal. It's even abnormal to stay sober at parties. People stared me wild for not liking coffee. Among other things, it was abnormal to think too much.

Just pause for a little and try to rethink what is considered normal and what not in modern societies. Things that shouldn't matter that much bother people in comparison to disastrous habits that just pass away as trends or common logic. Compare these to what was accepted in older societies and far away places. You will find many absurdities to realize that normality is a lie.

I recently acquired a better image of the sadness I have gone through since my youth and fell in melancholy. Sometimes I am wondering if it was all worth and if I could have changed something in the past. But now as things happened to be like this, I feel that the best way to give value in my worrying past is by continuing to do what I always did. To examine, analyze, create the big image in order to show what is wrong here and how it has and still is affecting deviant people. In my endless quest to know, only during the recent years I started finding proper answers that could give me the good pieces of the puzzle and a feeling of vindication and fulfillment. The answer was being kept in the personal stories of sensitive people and the blogs of persons fitting somewhere there in the autistic spectrum disorder. I still keep reading various random blogs (they are really numerous and with vast amounts of good proper analysis) and feeling like I am reading exactly my thoughts. A strong empathy is what I feel when reading another personal story of bullying and abuse.

I feel like home.

Chemicals

2009-06-17T07:39:00.000+01:00

I often wonder how much is happening right now in my body or brain while I am not aware about. How strongly can my mood be affected by things that our out of my control and not even know the source of the cause.

I had this rare condition yesterday which is kinda way cool even if it's excessive and possibly energy consuming. It doesn't happen frequently, usually I am the other way around. I had it yesterday and I remember another time I had it too, which was positive in a way because it made my hyperactive and hypersocial. I remember having a great mood and throwing jokes all the time. And after that comes the usual drawback effect when it all arrives back to normal. Ok, that's to be expected.

Yesterday I tried to really observe the phenomenon, to notice at realtime that something is happening to me and actually try to understand what triggers the effect. Whether it's some kind of food rich in specific bitamins, some psychological effect or just pure coincidence I would be interested to know. I am not taking drugs or anything, it just happened. One interesting things I noticed was that my hands were shaking. And of course the hyperactivity was extreme. Maybe it looked like I was nervous. I also wasn't in a diet. But somehow I felt I wanted to eat something. Maybe I am lacking specific bitamins?

But how can this thing made me more social (I wouldn't say less anxious)? Simply things were going fast and when I wanted to say something I opened my mouth and said it. There was no slow down process where I have to analyze what I want to say or my emotional filters block me from saying things. Not necessary bad things but silly socialization attempts which would normally be 90% avoided at first. When this happens I feel like I am transformed.

Could I learn more about this thing and possibly get some clues on various things that interest me? Building a better mood, enjoying socialization, fighting anxiety or just getting to know more about myself and the chemicals affecting me. Maybe somebody who is happening to read this blog could give me a clue. If they are usually submissive like me but rare burst of hyperactivity and hypersocialization with similar effects (tension, hand shaking) has happened to them and they already know what it might be or how to induce that effect to oneself?

The music curse

2009-05-27T20:16:00.000+01:00

"I was asked the question 'What was the first single you ever bought?' and I thought 'I have never bought a single or an album'. Even as a teenager!It's strange. I don't like listening to music. People find it hard to understand that." (From The Enya Realms / Quotes)

I had this thing bothering me in my youth. For some reasons I didn't listen to music before my eighteen. I didn't have a favorite kind of music, I wasn't a fan of any music group, I simply would occasionally listen to what would randomly play on the radio or the stereo because someone else would turn it on in the area. I liked music, a random song would possibly play which I would find attractive but I never listened music on my own in my whole childhood. And it mattered. It mattered because every time someone asked me the question "What music do you like?" I would become uneasy with the particular one.

There were reasons I avoided listening to music. When I am thinking about it, it's hard to describe. And it sounds silly. I think that to go in a store and buy a particular CD and listen to it or to turn on the volume of the stereo and select a specific music was something I felt "shy" about. I don't know if "shy" is the right word. I actually felt "shy" about a lot of things in my youth even the simplest ones and I was aware and constantly described this feeling to myself. I think one of the reasons might be that I was so sensitive to music that I felt uneasy or vulnerable, especially if I didn't listened with my headphones but others in the room would be able to listen my preference and maybe it could also reveal my emotions.

For most, music is mainly a kind of social connection which defines to which group of people do you belong. Somebody once asked me which is my favorite group or kind of music and when I told him I don't have one he said that this is not normal, that all people are fans of at least one kind of music and a group. For me, listening to music was something that I envied because there was that curse that didn't let me listen to something that was emotionally appealing. I was at a dead end. And I was also frustrated by that view where it's supposed that everyone listens to music as everyone likes sex or pizza.

After several years I got my first truly own PC while MP3s came into play, meaning that I could stay alone in my room and listen to music through my headphones without all the burden that made me avoid it. Much later, USB players also made it possible for me to listen while at road or as I was sleeping. I also explored various music styles and people sometimes tell me they adore my vast music preferences. I find it funny now when I meet people who have a very narrow music taste, even disregarding other genres, especially those who criticized me in the past for not listening to music. Maybe if music wasn't so emotionally overwhelming to me but just a cold social meme that defines group belonging then I would also be a fan of one group and would prefer only one music kind :P

Gladly I am more than that. My old psychological condition I'd like to call here 'the music curse' has to do with how overwhelming music can be for me. I am quite sensitive to it which can be good and bad. Which means that music has a true meaning for me, more true than those who think that I have to listen to it in order to be normal or to belong to a specific group of people. This is the first time I openly speak about this to anyone (And not liking or avoiding to listen to any kind of music for any reasons is not as uncommon as I thought).

I am glad that Enya said that quote for once. For I have read it and it totally shattered my past insecurity about that. Thank you!

Unseen changes

2009-05-24T00:47:00.000+01:00

In several occasions, I've been longing to find some free time to have a look back at my past. I am not meaning here to be involved into old forgotten worries but to have a modern look on old things and see how different it feels today. Sometimes I stumble upon things that bring back older memories but what I would like to ask from myself is some good moments to do this intentionally and under the appropriate mood. Still, the unplanned rendezvous with the past happens more often than you think and it's one of these occasions which prompted me to write these thoughts.

At first I was searching for an old post. I haven't found it yet but then I read some old comments from a specific person that wrote several long analytical comments just like me. Then I decided to look back at the older archives in order to collect all these posts from the specific person in a txt file so that I can read it later. In the past there were some things I couldn't understand in their entirety on his comments, so it would be interesting to see what I can understand now that my personal view of myself and the world might have evolved. Well, I haven't collected these texts yet because I was occupied by reading the very first posts in this blog and remembering the past. It's more than 3 years since I have started this blog (I only realized this today).

A common occurring pattern in the very early posts is that of myself crying out about my life or how much I can't enjoy the demoscene and so on. If I told you that it's quite different now you wouldn't believe me. Recent fragments of drama can still be found in my blogs, pouet or whatever. Who knows whether another outburst happens again soon? I have proven to the world that I cannot be trusted on that.

I just felt for a while, as I was reading one of the first posts, that this is not myself. Most possibly because right now I am ok and who knows how good or bad I might feel tomorrow? I have that feeling for a while and it slipped. I could say that the frequency of current drama posts is much less than then and less excessive. I won't stop writting posts with a melancholic or pessimistic feeling because this is what I like to do. But maybe it's the feeling that is changed, one the comes closer to an understanding and acceptance of who I am and my position in the world.

Thoughts that my life is getting worse, that everything is in deep shit, or I have lost hope or that eveyrthing is feeling vain (feelings that I express a lot in many of my old posts) do not circulate currently in my mind a lot. I actually don't believe that. There is a friend of mine with whom we walk in the city at night and speak about things like that. One of our conversation goes like this: "We have fucked up our lifes. We are getting deeper and deeper. Maybe we are growing up. Maybe we have come to understand that things we did in the past are vain. And of course our demomaking hobby (among other things) is coming out of vanity. We have destroyed our lifes.."

Sometimes I laugh because I know that the next time I will meet him out in the city he will tell me exactly the same things word by word. And while in the past I could relate better with these words (which are similar to the feelings in my oldest blog posts) something has changed on me that I don't feel the same at all as my friend. I don't think I have fucked my life (I also don't think the same about him) because I see life as a journey. Well, maybe I did some mistakes, I had some bad moments I could have handled better but if I don't bump into mistakes and frustration how can I learn? I really can't understand people who try to tell you what's right and what's wrong in life so that (as they say) you don't make the same mistakes as they did. But if you don't make a mistake how are you going to understand what did you do wrong in order to not repeat it? By this view, it's meaningless for me to look back and wish I could correct something in my past. It's senseless to regret for something that I was bound to encounter in my journey at the end.

No, I don't feel like in the past. For a long time I try to observe myself, the world and everything else under a more complete vision, one that struggles to accept and understand things as they are and discover the reasons behind it. One that tries to investigate further who I am and how do I fit into this world and what can I do to be more compatible without having to erase my personality. I try to find a balance. I try to learn more.

Knowing is actually the most important part in me. This one hasn't changed in it's core. From the excessive and over-exaggerated past manifestation to the more understanding and accepting function of it at peace. In the past I was even very regularly frustrated for my inability to answer to anything with certainty (that damn skepticism of me :) but now I have accepted that the truth can wait and the quest for it is what matters the most. There are changes, slowly coming, to the better. But the core is there. I always felt that knowing the deeper reasons of our problems, trying to understand how someone feels inside, something that we may not easily see but keep residing in ideologies and afforisms, knowing not like an encyclopedia but like a deep thinker who first tries to "feel", to "see", to "understand" the whole image and later uses logic to put an order and explain it to the world, is a force that I should always count on.

Knowing releases me. In the core I remain the same. Changes are happening slowly slowly (evolution is slow) to improve the core by transforming the elements related to it. People are afraid to know. They tell me to stop thinking. But knowing is a relief no matter if there is a possibility to encounter something that I don't like. At least I will know. And I will enjoy the process.

People hardly change. And those changes are slow because evolution is slow. The common problem here is that when looking one day or a month back you think you have not changed. This is also because the core that defines your personality never changes so you don't see any important changes. And even the changes outside the core are almost never dramatic. That's why people don't seem to change. But when I look back in the past I can see that there are important changes, yet the core will be always the same. People are criticizing someone else who is slightly different than them and expect him to change. In the meantime he might have made important changes in his life and his personal views. Which the most critics won't notice or see as an improvement. But the core, it's the personality, the older groups of neurons that form the illusion of consciousness. You can't wipe that out! You can't expect someone to change in his core, not even in 20 years or ever.

I am changing. But in the core I remaing the same.

Theory of mind?

2009-05-22T14:39:00.001+01:00

Going out and meeting with people is ok. It gives me insights in things that bother me. Things that have to do with me and my incompatibility with people. Some people of my family always told me that I should do that because it's good to be social. I am not sure if they can give me a good reason for that though, but it seems like they have followed the same pattern of being social without knowing why because other people told them that it is good who also heard it from other ones that don't know the reason. That's from the side of the clueless who just do things because everyone in society tells them it's good without explaining why.

I recently found another side. I might have encountered people of this side in the past , it's only that it's the first time I develop my ideas concerning me and their suggestions deeper. These people are just like the previous ones. They tell me that I should go out and meet people. The difference is that they gave me further insights on why should I do that. Although under further investigation I think that they are no much different than the first group. What I mean is that they might explain me now why I should go out more and meet people but with the same kind of recursivity, suggesting me what the others do and that being good because everyone does this and everyone says so.

To reach to the point. First of all I AM social. In my own sense. I was never locked up in a room for a month or a year all alone. I had a lot of social opportunities in my enviroment (family, school, university, work, scene, leisure, etc.) that you can't say something was missing and I didn't evolved. And I DO communicate. However the second group of people (some of which I met at recent Breakpoint and thanks for the insightful discussions) tells me that I should get out and meet more people more because this way there are higher possibilities to observe how most people actually communicate and try to look like them.

At least that's how I understand that they mean it. They made the observation that I do actually communicate but in my own weird way. A way that might look annoying, egoistic or just abnormal by most of them (I'll speak later about it, after I make my main point). Which might be explained (for them) by the fact that I was very rarely meeting people to be able to see how most people communicate and so I never learned. And their suggestion is that I should go out more and meet people so that I learn and meme the way most people communicate. Which is not exactly right because the main reason I stubornly keep on my own special way of communication is (which I'll explain later, after I make my point, as I said) is the fact that it is my nature to stay so. Going out and being involved in boring casual socialization won't change anything.

Theory of mind. I only have to admit that I wasn't even fully aware in the past of my difference in communication and how it's perceived by other people. I always thought that the way I feel and communicate is similar to the rest of the people. Only during the recent years I am becoming more aware that some of the things I have in my nature might be annoying for other people while I can't see them as such. This is called theory of mind.

I learned about this theory during my research on subjects concerning autistic people and how they relate to the rest of the world. A lack of theory of mind is generally attributed to persons with autism or asperger's. It's supposed that there is a difference in the way autistic persons perceive communication in comparison to neurotypicals (what we would call 'normal' people or those without autistic traits). Autistics seems to be living in their own world, not being able to communicate properly the way most neurotypicals expect them to do. Neurotypicals are suposedly having it right and all the misunderstanding is the fault of the other side :P

Except if it's also the other side who does not get it. If say 95% of the population communicate in the same neurotypical way as almost everybody does then they dismiss the other 5% as having it wrong. It's easy to be in the majority and feel that the way you think and perceive communication is the same as all other people. 95% of the times you will be right. But for the rare individuals who differ in that aspect it's more probable that they will notice one day that something is different with them and that other people don't feel or behave the same as them.

I read the wikipedia article on theory of mind again and stared a little longer at the last part of the first sentence. ..to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own. Hmm,. the interesting and funny here is that this is what most 'normal' people (or those who are preaching me to be normal and just like the rest) fail to do. They don't even recognize the reality that 5% of us might be different by nature. They expect us to be just like the rest. How does the theory of mind apply to their case?

I'll tell you something. I believe that some of the people who preach that I should be just like the rest are autistics in disguise. I just have a feeling about this but you don't have to take my words for it. I know I may be wrong. Also, we usually attribute some autistic traits with geekness. And we think that neurotypicals always have to look like our view of a 'normal' person. What if a specific autistic individual used some of his autistic abilities in order to become something like a social savant? What if 50 or 500 years from now the view on what is 'normal' is not the same? I think that we are missing the bigger picture here.

Of course normal is just a variable that changes through history according to the way the majority perceives the world. There is also neurodiversity in the play. Sometimes the notions of autism or other so called mental disorders are a bit too narrow. Specific mental disorders can be perceived as conditions where an individual is quite incompatible with the rest of the world. Genetics play a role in this difference yet the outcome is not naturally wrong, it's that most people perceive neurodifference as wrong attitude and that brings trouble.

Of course this doesn't exactly give the right to an autistic individual to justify any peculiar attitude that might bring trouble or confusion to other people. However this justice doesn't come equally from the other side. A neurotypical never brings in his mind that some of his 'normal' attitude or expected communication protocol might be harmful or annoying for autistic individuals. Because they already accept without a second thought that there way of doing things is a normal and expected way and so right without question. At least 95% of the people will agree, so they even have a vast confirmation to feel confident about.

My different communication way was about how I started talking to someone and actually monologized the conversation. They said that this can be either boring, annoying or egoistic from my side. That's my problem. The other side they suggest me trying is casual chat. Small sentences (and no big analysis) about trivial things, which is like passing the ball to the rest. My way seems a bit like they pass me the ball and I keep it to myself. It is like an inner flame inside me makes me speak and analyse endlessly and I have a great desire to dwelve deeper in what matters me. Casual talking would be like socializing for the sake of socialization (an end in it's mean). It's what the majority does. They remind me that I should go out more frequently and meet people but even if I did that more frequently it wouldn't change the way I naturally communicate. Casual talking is something that I hate actually.

I can accept that it can be annoying, I can imagine how it might confuse or put people in an ackward position (And here is the interesting, this is because they are just not used to it and don't know how to react to this different kind of communication. They have learned their communicating skills in an environment where casual talking is the common thing to do.) but I just can't be you. Well, actually I have news for you. Since a long I decided that it's not worth it. Even if I try to communicate my own way in a casual social occasion the most possible is that they will simply ignore me. The alternative, casual chat, is boring. So, either way it doesn't make sense and I stopped caring. Could that mean that I will go less out and communicate less? Ah, the irony..

This article became much longer than I have wished for and there are still a lot to write about. It's one of the harsh written article I actually hate :(

Nevermind.

A chaotic mind

2009-05-18T21:46:00.000+01:00

I was just seeing a friend, who is a lawyer and likes to write essays. He was initially interested to have a look at my blog and at the evening we discussed about my writing style. As expected, I was criticized for my long chaotic texts, a good thing though since I was curious to listen to his advice. Which of course was planning. Another thing I lack.

At the way home, I tried to rethink which is my fitting writing style and how hard it might be to follow a plan. The same might goes for real life. And making a nice plan of what to write or how to run my day is something that I have been thinking and wishing since a long but never actually managed to follow. It is intriguing to me to be able to plan your time or your writing style in such a way to increase productivity and efficiency. But it always fails. How many times have I decided to make a daily plan in order to finish various tasks during the whole day, yet I missed the motivation to follow the plan or even to sit down and actually create it?

There is only one exception in my case. I like organization. I love it. I hate it when people have dozens of random icons and files on their desktop. I only have four at the moment :). Also, in programming I am especially lately an organization freak. I spend days and weeks trying to make a good and strictly organized demo/game framework and even delete everything and start new frameworks from scratch. In this case, I am motivated to create an organized system of code which the computer will follow step by step. In the case of real life it's me who might no have any motivation to follow something strictly by the hour. I mean, I may have different impulses at a specific moments than what my program dictates. Same goes for writing. I just open a new post and let my mind flow and passionately write whatever comes in my mind.

We discussed the idea (one that I like too) that maybe it would be good for once to try setting some rules and a strict text size limitation, trying to express some of the ideas I care about in a smaller and nicely structured text. And that would be in another blog where the post would be more organized on different categories too. That would be a nice idea. Actually I secretly thought about it in the past before we even discussed that. But one thing remains. That I am a chaotic mind. The way I write, the way I actually think and how my impulses (emotion? passion?) control me rather than my logic, shows the above. I have tried several times to act like a robot but I failed. The most interesting to me now, would be to see what more can this say about myself.

I tried to keep this post small, even though I had no planned structure.

Extraterrestrials, where are they?

2009-05-16T23:21:00.000+01:00

Just a few thoughts that came in my mind while heading back home..

They keep asking people, whether they believe in extraterrestrials. If they'd ask me about, I would consider this question misleading. Do they ask if I believe in the existence of extraterrestrials? Or if I also accept that we have been definitely visited by them either in the ancient or modern times?

When the question is raised, I think that a yes would be misunderstood as saying that you are also endorsing the whole ufo/alien trend and all the neomythology that comes with it. While you might just wanted to say that you believe in the almost certain possibility that intelligent life might have evolved somewhere else in this enormous universe. If you said no because you (mis)understood something else or wanted to avoid the trap, someone would jump out of his place blaming you for being close-minded or egoist to accept that there is someone outside earth that could be more evolved than you. Which last argument is also a lame explanation of the motives for someone to not believe. Why would any self-centered person care for something so distant and uncertain outside his close neighbourhood? I don't think this is the reason for disbelief.

A little more complete and proper question would be "Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life in the universe?". And there I would answer (as most of us will) that yes, it is quite possible (billions of stars and galaxies, blah blah blah). And then there comes the real questions to ponder about "Do you believe that some of them may have visited us?". "Do the thousands of stories and witnesses account for intelligent extraterrestrial beings experimenting secretly on us or anything or are they all paranoia and disinformation?". And there is where I would say at best that I simply don't know, yet I am very skeptical about them.

Don't get me wrong, I used to be a UFO-nut, I still enjoy reading the latest news about any strange phenomenon out there but through the years I have become more and more skeptic. I have endorsed the possibility that many of the strangest stories, even the most seemingly credible ones, could be something very trivial or stupid. It can't be all wrong, I said once. How can one mistake the planet venus for a UFO? I usually put myself in the eyes of others and think that I certainly wouldn't be confused to think something like that and that the other guy does not seem very stupid either. Yet, I recently remembered of certain occasions on different places and times when someone told me that there is something strange with a bright star in the sky and even considered it to be a stable UFO in the sky or something. Or those winter days when the venus was so bright that I noticed it and wonder why is it so bright? But the idea that it's anything else than a star never passed in my mind. While it happens with few other people I know, even if later they seemed to be joking but said it was so bright that they weren't sure if it's a star or some kind of UFO at first. But hey.. I only perceived a star. Nothing else passed in my mind! Not even as a joke..

With things like these, I reconsidered all these UFO stories and thought that even the more credible and famous ones could not be exactly serious. It might be far fetched, I am not sure, I sound like someone who disregards anything but as long as I read more on the subject the more skeptic I become. Of course I didn't become exactly that kind of skeptic that says this is all bullshit and leaves the place, because I have an interest in anything weird. But it's my lost patience on the subject (60 years of ufology and yet the same stories and wannabe-evidence) or absurdness of the matter that keeps me a little off. From time to time I come back, read some random stories and watch some videos with blury far away lights that can be anything but proves nothing, although my questions are more skeptical each time. Still, the best answer to the last question is that I don't know and I don't think we might learn anything in another 60 years..

Another misleading thing they ask is whether I believe in UFOs. UFOs as unidentified flying objects. Hell yes, there are a lot of things out there in the sky that people can't identify. I believe that there are things out there we have not yet identified. Yet another question people frequently misunderstand though.

UFOs != alien spaceships

Do not use the term UFO to define this narrow view because the term means that it's everything not yet identified. It could actually be an alien spaceship, a secret military plane, advanced human technology, some strange meteorological phenomena, living entities in the sky or anything else you can imagine. For some, it could also be venus, swamp gas, a common aeroplane, a falling star, a satellite or the lights of a disco or anything else ordinary that common people might have misread. For these people, what they have seen remains unidentified even if it could be something trivial. Although, maybe the best definition is that it's the aerial phenomena that even science can't currently explain. When a skeptic brags that he doesn't believe in UFOs what does he mean? That he can already explain everything that might be happening right now in our skies? Or maybe he got also confused by the misleading question and regarded UFOs as flying saucers and only?

Flying saucers. Did you know the story behind this term? Kenneth Arnold never used the term flying saucer specifically, he just said in his report that the objects moved like saucers skipping across the water. I have read somewhere else that the shape wasn't exactly like a saucer as we know it today but more like a boomerang (but maybe I am mistaken because wikipedia states otherwise). Nevertheless, the interesting fact in that notion is that suddenly the mass media publicized the term and people around the world started observing saucer like shaped disks in the skies. An outburst of UFO events occurred where everyone thought he was watching flying saucers. Did the hysteria of the mass media produced such an effect? This was the start of modern ufology. And where are we now?

I want to believe. Seriously!

New blog

2009-05-12T14:25:00.000+01:00

I started a new blog. Only in greek. It doesn't make much sense. I was bored.
http://otinanism.blogspot.com

I want to write a lot of stuff. I had a lot of things in my mind that would make a nice blog post (or a boring long one :P). Time is short. I am not even coding these days but I don't want much. I am playing eye of the beholder, watching series, movies and silly UFO documentaries. I am overeating these days. I have to finish some crucial little works or occupations and I will be free in about a week (I hope). It will be fun when I will be free. I don't know if I will start coding a new demo again or I will continue playing games but I will be free and have a nice summer.

I also got a new job. My source of boredom..

Update: Ooops, I made another blog.

SCHEISS

2009-04-13T03:32:00.000+01:00

Many thoughts in my mind. When I start a new blog post I think about how. Many universes in the multiverse, but forget that crap, many actually going back and forth thoughts, but forget that shit too,. many..

I am too slow to compute this thing. But if I was too fast to compute it, that would mean that I would not compute it deeply, in more understanding of it, but only by ,.. oh forget of that shit too..

What would happen when everytime I try to start a thought and it goes further deeper than it should I pause my self and say to forget that shit?

Ok,. I'll start with the simplet things first. Neural nets fire and motivate me to say smokething about. Then another thing I said or a reply for someone supposed to hear me fires another neurons. The ones that remain and stay and i notice are maybe the ones more intereting to me. Or that's the defintion of intersting, the ones that fire your neurons into activity.

So,.

Breakpoint. Great experience. Maybe I should visit more demoparties even if I doubt at first about how I will feel. Ok I am drunken

If I cut every thought of me would I suddenly be comprehensible with few words? Never mind.,

Breakpoint. It's always nice to release your stuff in big screen no matter how much lame.

ftp (one night party coding production
quantum retrofuture

Ok,. let's go back

I broguht a laptop. A laptop is cool on demoparties. but then again. 5 years ago, I was drunken for three days. Talking to people like crazy and being somehow happy. Ok,. a guy who takes drugs would be happy too for a while. I don't say it's good or bad (I don't want to opperate with these words for a while, just to change my perception away from how I learned the world initially to a different understanding maybe oneday).

Wait/ Where was I?

Scheisse, that perception changes as we speak. If it changes then what is reality?

I don't know how you guys manage it. We had some interesting discussion while I was drunken but still I don't get it and I never think I will. But if I do then it will be the most interesting thing ever, whatever that means. I just can't stop to think, I can't make my mind not thinking and you all guys are like you are thinking and not thinking at the same time. Somehow I feel that I can be easilly enlighted (something I didn't managed all these years) but it never happens. Maybe it stops being interested?

It's more than word and new age. It's more than plain thoughts. It's even more than my thoughts. It's outside of our perception. Maybe someday..