Investing in stone

Nothing lasts forever, the facades wash off, the stones dissolve. Time is too precious to waste on perishable commodities.

Shores of Time

The longer I live, the more I discover that the most valuable asset we have is time.

The one way to heaven

Our Descendants

It is only a matter of time for man to invent an AI "Artificial Intelligence" that surpasses ours. The day will mark the an of one chapter of intelligent life on earth a starts a new one. People are speculating and are afraid that we will be slaves to the machines or that it will destroy humanity, but the future might not be so grim.

Organic chemistry of human beings and life in general have a lot of limitations that do not exist for machines. Moreover, machine intelligence will evolve at a far greater pace than human intelligence. Quite quickly, the machine will surpass humans in every way. Life on earth will have a smarter species, the machine.

To survive, life can tell good from evil, it survives and thrives on cooperation. Let us hope that it is no different for machines. There will come a brief period where man and machine live side by side, but only a very brief period. What happens can only have one outcome, the AI will succeed us.

What about mankind? In the best case, we might still exist in parallel to the new superior species which will evolve so rapidly we cannot keep up, much the same as the lesser intelligent species now. I would even hope that one day we can upload our mind and live in the realm of machines!

I do not know what will happen to us and I wish that the machine will take on the better qualities of its creator: kindness, compassion, and love to others and remember who we were.

P.S. I hope we do not destroy ourselves before we create it :)

5 Years

It has been almost 5 years since we got the news of cancer. What did we learn?

• It teaches us to take life as it comes, one day at a time
• It brings the best and the worse in people around, separating the wheat from the chaff
• Teaches us to have faith in a master plan
• Teaches us to cherish the silly and simple things

We are all fleeting moments in time, lucky to have met and had a chance to write our brief moments in the history book of time. Those moments are there, always and forever, and I am honoured to have shared them with you and looking forward to many more.

Brain Wash

How many times have you entered a debate with a religious person “the brainwashed type”? A simple piece of advice is to leave them alone; they are destined to hit the wall “someday”.

Try to squeeze them during a debate in a matter which requires one’s own answers; all they can come up with is an example about how an X person did to Y and so on. Silly analogies fit for an eight year old. Very often they would remind you of a line from a book that they know for certain is made by the creator, which most often happens to be the only book they read. Without this book, man would have been lost; the only and last way to salvation. Come and Join US. “Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated”.

In truth, religion is just another system of control. Systems of control and civilization being tightly coupled and inseparable. And man has learned that the most efficient way to control the masses is fear, and what better fear there is than that of the unknown, better still “fear of the creator”.

But still, our purpose is to get closer to the truth, and to do that we have to dare explore the unknown, we have to dare pursue questions. Simple questions of where, when and why prove to be the hardest to answer. For it is through simplicity that we reach complexity, not the other way round. Not to ask these questions is blasphemy, to say that GOD doesn't want us to ask them is sacrilege.

The time will come, when those who are now brainwashed shall be washed again, and perhaps then, we would have washed away our fear and ignorance.

thank you friend for the youtube video :)

Unfair

I played a game once called “Grim Fandango” by Lucas Arts, in it there was a character who kept on singing:

  Ashes to ashes to ashes… 

Could it be that it is as simple as that? Could it be more miserable?

We have created it all, we stretched the foil so thin it’ s about to break if it hasn't already. What’ s next Ashes?

What I didn't say about the game is its ending 

  We don’ t know where train would stop, so we might as well enjoy the ride

Control? What choice have we got? We didn't choose to be here. Freewill? It’ s only an illusion. A blunder to mimic control.

At the end of the day, we are as helpless now as we ever were. Some people would think they are not, and would go about their lives creating all these cultural systems around them to sleep better with illusions of grandeur and superiority. But really they are more pathetic than those who we call the unfortunate.

We never know where the train would stop. Not because we don’ t know, but because we are simply not the passengers. We are those unfortunate, tied to the track wishing the train never comes, but it always does. How else could this sad existence end?

The photo above is that of a Syrian child in a refugee camp showing gratitude after receiving a few pieces of cloth. I do not know what to say except that I am sorry, it is our fault, each and every one of us.

Will it Surface?

It is said that a lie becomes a truth if you are not caught. It is also said that lying is bad, a sin to be more exact. Sadly, roles have turned, lies became truth; the truth is maimed to look like lies. Old human virtues like honesty, honor, integrity and credibility have all been replaced by deceit and what they call cleverness. Those concepts of old have become so dead that we morn them in the movies, their only applicable domain.

It also said not to give power to those who do not know how to use it, not to give freedom to a slave. How can you expect a slave to rule? How can you expect a bird caged its entire life to fly? To let them free you have to teach them, to let them understand you have to train them. Not doing this will produce a world much like the one we are in today, slaves with power turning against each-other. Slaves with power who would do anything to remain in power; not because power is tempting, but because they are so afraid to get back to a cage;

Have we abandoned our humanity for the sake of virtual values? Or are we simply trying to survive? Will a jewel stand out from a pile of trash or remain there buried forever? If the jewel ever found a way out, will there be anyone to admire it?

P.S. This is a 10+ year old post back when mastersleeper was my website :) Still relevant today

What is Love

Technically speaking, love is when the neurological patterns of the brain are mostly occupied with memories and routines about the other person. The brain gets used to having those activities and events and would miss them when not present. The image and memory of her would be associated to happiness and the brain would try to incorporate it into other activities and events. It would change the innate self preservation and override it into a me and you preservation.

Trying to translate this, I think Love is:

- When you feel a hole inside every time she is away.

- When you do not mind acting stupid to catch a smile or a reaction.

- When you realize you are not holding back words anymore even when they might get you in trouble ;)

- When the self in selfishness changes to YOU&ME. 

- When you start worrying about the future and how to keep her in it.

Be well my love, come back to me.

A Smoker`s Interface Device

Q: What to do when asked to assist a smoker with fixing his software "Visual Studio"?

A 1: Take pictures
A 2: Put tissue on top of the filth
A 3: Fix it fast "nothing can be done about the smell :("

disgusting!

6 Billion++ and counting

How many times do you look at yourself in the mirror and ask the question: What am I here for? What is the point? What am I supposed to achieve?

Why are we here? Have you tried to answer that? Did you find an answer?

Truth is, my friend, consider yourself lucky to ask these questions and even contemplate answering them. Most people do not have the time to do that. Most people are busy, just busy.

If you are reading this, you are either thinking right now that either people are pointless, or I am just a crazy self-righteous person who has a lowly vision about humanity. You are wrong either way. What I mean is that most people in the world are struggling for survival, nothing more, and nothing less. Simply surviving.

You would have thought that by now, humans should have evolved enough to not worry about basic survival anymore. We are, except for a few "very few" trapped in the spiral of survival. If you pick random human being right now, he/she is most probably:

- living in some city slum
- working in a sweatshop
- Enslaved in one way or another in the so called modern world.
- working from dusk till dawn for a heartless organization to feed his/her family.

Tell me, how would the higher questions on existence matter to us? After all, we are just enslaved by the very systems that we have created and are part of.

They say you cannot think with an empty stomach. Yes ...Amen to that... And whoever is reading this. Count your blessings coz you really are blessed just by being able to read this.

I cannot pretend to know the answer to any of the existence questions, no one can, but what I know is that we should start helping our human race. And what better way to start than to better yourself and the family you have? It is no easy task.

New Hobby

Of late, I am taking a liking for golf. There is something so entertaining in this game that I cannot put my finger on. Well, thanks to the encouragement from my wife and the help of my friends, I have managed to get into the game.

Still in the learning phase though as it takes some time to get the correct swing and feel for the ball. Though it is an expensive undertaking, I am loving every minute spent on the green. Even managed to score some good points in a few "very few" holes. Soon, hopefully, I will do my handicap score.

INTJ

My personality test, again and again. Surprising though how negative this description is:

quote:

"loner, more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family, not very altruistic, not very complimentary, would rather be friendless than jobless, observer, values solitude, perfectionist, detached, private, not much fun, hidden, skeptical, does not tend to like most people, socially uncomfortable, not physically affectionate, unhappy, does not talk about feelings, hard to impress, analytical, likes esoteric things, tends to be pessimistic, not spontaneous, prone to discontentment, guarded, does not think they are weird but others do, responsible, can be insensitive or ambivalent to the misfortunes of others, orderly, clean, organized, familiar with darkside, tends not to value organized religion, suspicious of others, can be lonely, rarely shows anger, punctual, finisher, prepared"

Then again, it is true!

I am always the one who understands villain characters in movies, only to discover that most are INTJ. From mad scientists to dictators, all are INTJ. My favorite philosopher; yes!! You guessed it Nietzche

quote:

"Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!"

from: Zarathustra's Prologue

To All peeps I DO NOT CARE About

Pages of Time

Sitting, waiting, contemplating things past and things to come. I recall a phrase that I could not point my finger where I heard it from.

"What happened happened and could not have happened any other way"

So many trains of thought keep taking me back again to the age old debate of fate vs freewill. Are we all just a page in a story that is read over and over again, or do we have control over our destiny. Perhaps this is a paradox in our universe. A universe where we encounter infinities inside things finite.

Every once in a while, we are slapped with a deja-vu situation. Could it be an echo of fate? Or just The pages of the story leaking backwards.

I would like to believe there is reason to all this, at the same time I do believe that this reason cannot be found within this universe. How could a subject trapped in a box know what is on the outside? Perhaps he does not have to know? Maybe all he needs is just belief?

To me, the tug of fate is stronger than that of freewill. Freewill is fading away into an illusion, created to keep us from going insane.

Morons go Unpunished (spaghetti code)

What do you do with a colleague “programmer” who is just useless?

What do you do when you are asked to add a certain feature and stumble upon brilliant code like the above?

What do you do when people around you are totally blind to see such blaspheme?

What do you do when the alarms you raise go unheard because no one cares?

Bull Finish

Managed to do it a few times (today was one), but finishing a 501 with a bull is not easy. You get one and only one shot at it and it's gone if missed. The clip below shows one by Phil Taylor, with a twist. Watch and you will not be disappointed.

Recursive Creation

As a programmer, I often find myself creating recursive algorithms in order to achieve complex operations otherwise infinitely complex to solve. The beauty of recursion is the simplicity and brevity of the code needed to get a very complex result.

We often stand in awe and wonder before the life we see around us, how complex things are, how sophisticated and fine-tuned the universe and creation is. Mankind has been trying to make sense of it all postulating theories upon theories about life and creation. It is only recently, with the invention of computing, did we discover the power of recursion and the fractal nature of complex systems.

However, we are still only beginning to scratch the surface of this matter. One day we will be able to comprehend how it works and how it is all connected together. From how a mountain range or a cloud takes its shape to how a DNA molecule can unravel “recursively” to become a living being.

I believe that Mathematics is truly the programming language of creation, recursion being a tool to producing its infinite complexity and beauty.

Schrödinger equation and Freak Waves

Plato was the one who said that Necessity is the mother of invention. That held true at his time, and still holds true until today. It is also true that the general attitude of human beings is to believe and be happy with short term solutions to immediate problems, even if they actually cause more problems in the long run.

In this blog post, I will take a very unique example of this and how eventually we cracked a mystery. It is about the phenomena called: "Freak Waves".

For so long, sailors have spoken about waves as high as 30 meters destroying ships in the ocean. This was dismissed as being a myth. Even scientists were so believing in their theories, claiming that the probability of such waves occurring is almost zero. Eventually, and only when the shipping industry was being effected did scientists worked it out and discovered that their theory was wrong all along and that normal waves in the ocean follow the Schrödinger wave equation.

Schrodinger equation predicted the distribution of actual results. Below is a BBC documentary about Freak waves. If you have the time, please watch all 5 parts and discover this very interesting phenomena in nature.

Greed and ipad service plans

Today, I decided to cut my mini sim card to a micro sim card. The procedure is quite a simple one that involves a printed template and a scissor. Here is a link to the template I used. I am using this micro-sim for the ipad as it only accepts micro sim cards.

One might wonder why would anyone do this? why not change it or buy another micro sim subscription plan for the ipad. The answer, sadly, is that cell phone companies are so greedy that they charge at least triple the price for an ipad micro sim card subscription. Further research led me to conclude that the reason for this micro-sim card is not solely for saving space, but for having different subscription plans. AT&T had a hand in the decision that the ipad uses this new standard.

Thankfully, a simple search online led me to discover that the micro-sim card has exactly the same connectors as the normal mini-sim card. One has to only trim the edges a little for it to fit in the ipad/iphone tray. I guess greed has a way of turning back onto itself.

PEOPLE ARE NOT STUPID!!! HEAR THAT SERVICE PROVIDERS!!!