07.31.04
Posted in health, Religion/Philosophy at 8:06 pm by James
Think before you speak. Now adays there is a over emphasis in math, science, and engineering. The problem is that by focusing on these fields we develop the mentality to rationalize and over-analyze everything, in attempts to model it with some mathematical or logic formula. How many minds do you have? One mind? Its divided into two though. Some people consider it two minds: a logical and a emotional. What is intuition? It is not logical, for it has no basis in rationality. It is not emotional, because it transcends the mind. When people explain intution, they say “because I feel that way”. The emotion is the effect, not the source. Others say there is a conscious and subconscious mind. If you look into Eastern thought, many gurus,masters, etc. will say there are minds associated with the other neural clusters in the body, ie cardiac nerve, solar plexus, etc. Interestingly enough these nerve centers also correspond with the different chakra’s in the body. Think about many common expressions: “Think with your heart”, “Have a gut feeling”.
But what is the mind? It is a collection of nerves. How are these neural clusters any different? When you have a 3 point reflex, you react without your “mind” knowing. But for any response to occur, your nerves must have the intelligence to act. When people train tai chi, or any sport that requires repetitious practice, we train ourselves to practice an action, until it becomes a reaction, with the final goal to make it a reflex. So at that point are we not using our mind? Or are we merely optimizing mental computation into more efficient localized neural networks. You can’t argue a task is too complex. Complexity is simply the amalgamation of simplicity.
By focusing on logical analysis, we over emphasize the rational aspects of our left hemisphere and ignore the bulk of our intelligence. Why is the mind a powerful tool? Because of faith. Not because of reason. So I think its good to incorporate a more complete intelligence in ones life. Compound this mental balance with tantric principles of being present in the momment, and I think it will be easier to find love and happiness in the chaos.
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Posted in blogging at 5:20 pm by James
My blog is now running the WordPress 1.2. On Friday I was looking at photoblogging. I stumbled upon a few nice projects and a few good commentaries. Ideally I would like to be able to link a photoblog to gallery (Which i have not seen a good project yet). Linking to gallery providea s good framework and robust feature set. I understand many people want to keep photoblogs simple, but without the powertools underneath, you will not bo able to easily do more. I found one interesting post on using photoblogging with wordpress. Since i was using nucleus before, I would need to convert it over. I found some posts about using rss feeds to convert nucleus to wordpress. One developer in nucleus said he had something in the works. I didnt see anything, so I decided to write a script myself. After all, how hard could it be? Both Nucleus and WordPress are php with mysql backends. I think the craziest thing I have done was gut PostNuke and attempt to make it more modular.
Anyways, so I based the import script off the existing WordPress improt scripts. Nucelus does support multiple blogs, so I only allow to import one. I also excluded the nucleus karma since there it is not supported by WordPress. If you are intessted its at: http://james.onegoodcookie.com/pub/import-nucleus.phps.
[2006.02.04 15:10: Updated the URL. Sorry the script is not currently maintained. If you do have problems with it, I would be willing to help you if you can send me a copy of ur mysql database.]
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07.28.04
Posted in Religion/Philosophy at 8:32 pm by James
There is a natural pattern/order to the world. On every scale the driving forces of life etch their way into the fabric of the universe. By the same creative power that wuji gave birth to yin and yang, does the world give bith to life. One can see patterns if all of nature: the golden mean, ratios, common shapes and polyhedrons. The existance of such pheonomena can be attributed to one of three notions: 1) fundamental and inherent structure in these patterns (scientific), 2) an idea/concept deeply ingrained in the spirit that drives the cosmos (spiritual), or 3) sheer luck or paranoia (coincidental). These three possibilities are in themselves very interconnected- for they are simply different perspectives of the same space. For the mind is a amazing and wonderous creation. Who is to say if it is the imagination of the mind trying to rationalize the unknown, or in actuality, if the mind itself is conjuring the unknown.
At every scale of the cosmos, we see the same behaviors. Groups of quarks interact to form atomic particles. Atoms interacting to form stable molecules. Molecules interacting to form substances. Substances interacting to form life. Life interacting to build communities. communities interacting to build nations. In the cosmos, the interaction of substances lead to planetary bodies and suns, which in turn create solar systems, galaxies, and the cosmos.
The busy seemingly chaotic movement parallels the motions of humans in the world. Areas on the hands, feet, and ears,eyes link to specific regions of the body. Is it any wonder that palmistry and astrology are more than superstiion? Some chinese philosophy uses the 5 element theory to analyze phenomena. Is it any wonder that all the great complexity of the world can be analyzed so simply?
Less is more. Complexity is nothing more than the application of simplicity. To understand the simple, allows a sound mind to understand the sophisticated. The world has a natural flow- it works this way. To ignore the patterns of the world, to go upriver against its natural current, is to struggle in life and never make progress.
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Posted in Religion/Philosophy at 7:51 pm by James
Karma comes from Sanskrit means action (in the context of intent or cause). It comes from the word root: Kri: means “to do”, “to make”. While there are many definitions of karma, the one I am concerned with is the buddhist notion of karma. Early Buddhist notion of karma focused on the liberating potential of what the mind is doing with every moment. So everything you are and everywhere you have been is not as important as the mind’s motives in the present.
This does not mean the deed of yesterday are forgotten. The tenet of Vipaka is connected to Karma. Vipaka means result or effect. A important quality of Vipaka is that the results may feedback into the cycle of karma. The notion of karma and vipaka are mirrored by waves. A drop falls in a body of water (karma). The drop causes waves to spread in the body of water. The reverberations can reinforce or dissipate the karma. It is even quite possible for the waves to splash the water, thus creating new karma. So the goal is to become mindful of the effects of desires and aversions as a way to moderate or change one’s karmic results.
Karma is considered a doctrine of free will. The entity that acts is responsible for the shape of consequences and effects that flow forth. Since nothing in the world is contained in itself, the karma of the individual not only effects himself, but also to some degree other entities. This does not mean you are the powerless victim of karma. The effects are merely a morally compelling power. The individual chooses his fate by his mentality and actions.
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07.11.04
Posted in Unfiled at 9:30 pm by James
On friday my brother picked up a new hard drive and we went to work. The two of us successfully removed the old hard drive and installed the new one. He had some vague instructions in broken english (babelfish Japanese) that gave us a general idea how to proceed. After about 1 1/2 hrs, everything is good to go.
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07.07.04
Posted in linux at 3:42 pm by James
With all my computer woes, its hard to do anything on the computer. Earlier at Rice I was trying to log onto aim. Aimexpress failed on greenland (linux box) so I turned to gaim. Gaim loaded just fine. When I got to work I tried to log onto aim. I forgot I had left gaim running. So I had to kill gaim on greenland. When I loaded aim, my buddylist was wiped. So i’ll have to be careful of gaim from here on in. So tack another one on the list…
===== Update 12/26/2006 =====
AurorAManson posted this link which discusses how to recover your buddy list. Heres the core info:
If it’s not possible then follow these steps to recover your buddy list. First make sure you use a computer that has been signed in before with the aim name’s list in which you want to recover. You’re also going to want to make sure that you have your hidden files shown. In order to show hidden files on XP have a windows folder open click tools and go to folder options > click on the view tab > show hidden files and folders > ok. Once you have hidden folders shown go to: C:\Documents and Settings\+NAME+\Application Data\Aim\+SCREENNAME+\userinfo.bag. It will ask for you to open up the file. Select a document program from the list such as notebook or WordPad.
The file contained has a lot of different symbols in it, don’t worry just sift through and find the usernames of your friends copy and paste them back onto your new list and presto you have your friends back.
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Posted in Unfiled at 3:20 pm by James
There goes my laptop. I was trying to open a 300meg stuff-it (sit) file and next thing i know the hard drive started sounding like a broken record player. After a 5 hour fsck, and a 12 hour DigitalWarrior run, some data maybe recoverable. However most of it seems lost. I think all of the recent data newer than 2 months is lost. Hopefully by next week I’ll have a machine up and running again.
This will put me back a couple of weeks on my research. I’m not sure how much other data dissappeared… I didnt backup anything in over 2 months. On my shopping list is some more backup firewire hard drives.
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07.06.04
Posted in health at 11:24 am by James
I was finishing up my two platforms on Monday. After I finished cutting the wood, Elisa’s dad helped me assemble the platforms. The man is a miricale worker. He cut the time required to assemble the platforms down to a third. These platforms are of a higher caliber than the last ones I built with Elisa. On the downside, I was an afternoon snack to the swarms of mosquitos nesting in front of their house. All the ones in the front were small ones. In the back of the house they had some bigger ones. I wonder if their pool has anything to do with it. Or is it b/c they live in Meyerland. The injuries are as follows:
8 bites on left hand
1 on left side of neck
9 right hand
7 left foot
5 right foot
I might have missed a few, but this list seems fairly complete. So today i have been very exhausted. It might not be from the mosquitos: dehydration, tiring time out doors, sleeping with a/c too low, bad breakfast. Or it might be the posion… tomorrow is another day.
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