Tyvek

The year: 1955. The man: A very ordinary Jim White. The place: DuPont's Labs. The discovery: as Jim walked through a lab, he noticed white polyethylene fluff coming out of a pipe. He set a team working on trying to manufacture the stuff, and by 1965 they finally had a industrialized form of the stuff which could be easily manufactured. The method with which they randomly spin the fibers is proprietary, but whatever they do works. Even the lowest grade of the stuff I couldn't manage to tear. Throughout the years different sectors of business noticed this revolutionary material and put it to work in their business. From house-wrapping, to luggage tags, to airmail envelopes, to shorts by Ralph Lauren. It's tear-resistant nature in tandem with the unbelievably thin nature of the material allow it to be used almost anywhere. As a company by the name of Dynomighty Design has expounded, the uses for Tyvek are indeed limitless, as the company produces printed wallets made out of a Super Grade of Tyvek. They even managed to hang a person from one of their wallets. Pretty intense stuff. Tyvek, revolutionary in its design and its applications.

~V 1.0~

 //If you have any topics you would like to see me write about, drop me a comment\\

How to Launch Several Programs with a Windows Batch Script

In the mornings whenever I need start programming on my computer (running Windows 8.1), I need to start quite a view (three...so not actually that many) programs so that I can program easily. It is just annoying to start the same three programs every morning just so that I can do my job.

Two days ago, I decided to use my computer programming prowess to build a Windows Batch Script that would launch the three programs for me automatically. This script I then added to my desktop and could launch with a simple double click.

HOW TO DO IT

The first thing that you need to do is create the script file. Windows Batch Script files have a .bat extension, so all you need to do is create a new file in Notepad and then Save As "LETSFUCKINGGO.bat", or really whatever you want to name your file. Make sure that you set the Save As Type (the very bottom select menu in the window) to "All Files (*.*)" from "Text Documents (*.txt)". This ensures that you can use your own file extension when saving the document. If you don't do this step then your file will be saved as "LETSFUCKINGGO.bat.txt", which will not run as a Windows Batch Script.

Now that you have saved your file, you should have a window that looks like:

Batch Scripts have a command start that is used to run a file at a given location. The syntax is then "start C:\path\to\my\program\program.exe" to run a program at any file location on your computer. So you could run several start statements in a row to start several programs. However, if you just do this, you will be left with an empty command prompt window for every program that you opened with the script. What we have now:

We could add the exit command after every start call, but then we would have to have as many exit calls as we had start calls. It's a solution, but a messy one. So what I find a far cleaner solution is to use the following syntax: "start "window-name" "C:\Path\To\The\File\program.exe" to launch the programs. Then if you specify a blank window name, the programs should all be launched from the same thread, which should terminate after the programs have all been launched. Therefore the window should look like this:

One additional thing. I use one program in the morning that is actually only launched through a custom shortcut that actually launches several things in order to properly finally launch the correct  process. So, if I just link to the program that is eventually launched, it won't have been initialized properly, and it is totally useless to me in that state, therefore, I need to start the shortcut that initializes the program. To do that, I just specify the name of the shortcut + ".lnk". So my final script looks something like this: 

This final save has a comment at the top to specify what this script does, and then a little echo call that prints out the specified text (for fun).

I hope this has helped. Enjoy, and have a fun and speedy program startup.

Food for thought, my friends.
 ~V 1.1~

How to Get into Programming

I found it extremely difficult to break into the world of programming when I first started during my freshman year of high school because it was so very different from anything else that I had seen before and every tutorial that I looked at either wanted to give me a semester long course in computer science theory and history before they taught me anything at all or assumed that I was already well acquainted with all of the basics and never really helped me move through the easy stuff. This tutorial (and the subsequent tutorials) will hopefully ease the absolute beginner into the world of computer science without confusing them too much, while at the same time allowing them to experience the magic of programming.

Some Basic Terminology and Theory

In this section I will just describe some just enough terminology so that I can clearly and concisely communicate with you, dear reader, but not enough to really bog us down. If you aren't really into this sort of thing right now, feel free to skip ahead to the next section.

Computer Science Theory is a very lofty and arduous phrase that altogether just describes the generalized concepts that make programming and related software applications possible. There have been some very intelligent people that have figured out these extremely tricky bits so that the rest of us can come in and create awesome shit.

compiler: A compiler is a program that turns computer code into what is called machine code. Machine code is the crazy binary that you see flash around in the matrix during transitions. Machine code is generally unreadable to most (sane) humans, as it is abstracted to a point that computers can very precisely understand what they are to do. Read more here if interested.

programming language: There are seriously a lot of programming languages, and most were created with a certain application or development style in mind. For instance C and C++ are extremely low-level programming languages that allow you to make everything exactly as you want to. The problem with this is that you have to make everything exactly how you want to, which takes a lot of time. On the other hand, Python has most of the common (and not so common) operations built in, so coding in Python can significantly less time. While some programming languages are related, each has distinct semantic and syntactical rules that govern what makes sense and what doesn't. More on this later.

source code: Code is the set of instructions that a programmer writes in order to instruct the computer in what it should do. Below is a picture of a Python program that converts a sqlite3 database file into a csv (comma separated values) file.

IDE: IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. A good IDE is a program that makes the process of programming, compiling, testing, and debugging an easier and more painless process. An IDE will often include various tools to that will allow you to isolate and fix problems with your code.

How to Get Started

I would first like to welcome back the other readers that have skipped our introductory section. Your level of studiousness is breathtaking. The first thing that you will need to decide when trying to get into programming is what language you would like to learn. While that often depends on what you want to do with your soon to be gained programming prowess, it is often better to learn the basics on an introductory language that is more beginner friendly before heading off into deeper waters. 

Web Dev: The current industry standards are Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, HTML5, CSS, and sometimes some other crap sneaks in there. Most of those languages are fairy modern and therefore fairly easy for beginners like yourselves to get into. Web development is not my area of expertise nor is it my field of interest, so instead of trying to keep pretending like I know much of anything at all, I will point my finger unto the experts. 

• Code Academy: An excellent website that guides an absolute beginner through the beginning concepts of computer science and web development. It has courses on CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby.
• TryRuby: A really in-depth and well done set of tutorials that helps someone with some amount of computer science experience through the initial stages of learning Ruby.
• W3Schools: Excellent tutorial sets on nearly every web dev language out there. 

Mobile: The mobile scene is pretty fragmented at the current moment, with three main platforms (4 if you count Ubuntu Mobile) and each requires that their apps be coded in different programming languages. 

• Android: Java with the Android SDK and XML.
• iOS: Objective-C and Cocoa Touch API with the iOS SDK.
• Windows Phone: C# with the Windows Phone SDK
• Ubuntu Mobile: QML and JavaScript or HTML5.

Not Web Dev or Mobile: For everything else that doesn't run in the browser or on a phone, there is a lot of freedom, but in some cases you are confined to what operating system you have. I will be writing most of these tutorials from the perspective of Windows and on occasion OS X. 

• Check back soon for more tutorials

Food for thought, my friends.
 ~V 1.0~

All about Tim, the man.

I am currently a freshman at Duke University. I love to program, I like lint-rollers, and I dress up on Tuesdays for fun.

Projects

Warren Buffet Bracket Challenge: I am currently collaborating with a classmate of mine on giving the $500 million prize that Warren Buffet is offering for anyone who can predict the perfect bracket for the NCAA tournament. I am using copious amounts of basketball stats in an algorithm that we are writing to see if we can bring the odds of winning from 1/9.2 quintillion to 1/10k-100k. Then distribute 10k - 100k brackets to 10k - 100k people. Our plan is to distribute the winnings to all members of the pool if one of them manages to win.
02/03/2014

fratspeak: A website that a couple of friends and I put together. fratspeak is a website that generates "sentences" in the style of frat boys, often to great comedic effect. We used a Markov Chain to relate the strings of words.
01/18/2014

BetterConfab: An app that aims to make small talk trivial no longer. It generates a meaningful question to ask someone whenever you would have had participated in meaningless confabulation. I wrote and designed all elements of the app in a span of two weeks, collecting questions from friends, family, and my very own brain!
12/25/2013

Food for thought, my friends.

~V 1.0~

Reputation

Expectation is intimately married to the eventually results that we receive.

In the moments before we are able to judge "what we think of a person", we are then totally reliant upon the things that we know about them. Our perception would be dramatically affected by what suppose that we know about them. If someone had told us things about this person that led us to believe that they were dangerous or arrogant or hilarious or eccentric or whatever, we are going to prepare ourselves to perceive the things that we are expecting. We look to confirm beliefs that we hold about the world, not to discredit them, so that leaves us primed to think things about something that we really have no business forming opinions about in the first place. Sure these pre-first impressions can be overcome if the reality is nothing like what we were told it would be, but I think that oftentimes it can impair us severely.

If I were to, say google items on Etsy that featured Rumi quotes, I would get a bunch of results like the ones in the picture. Actually, I would get exactly what is in that picture.

Now if I had to think about what kind of people would purchase items like the ones the ones above I would probably say a mix between 

and the ever obnoxious white girl. However, that opinion isn't quite fair. Because I don't really know what "kind" of people would buy any of those products. No matter how much I believe that those smug, opinionated, and affluent people would cherish items like these because they fancy that they simultaneously display their artfulness and intellectualism, I can make no judgement calls about someone who pays $55 for a (poorly done) poster that features an a dramatic pile of typographical vomit. 

At least not out loud.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.0~

SOPA was a Kinda a Big Deal.

        The internet prides itself as being as free and open as possible. It is the place where most people feel that they can express their opinions without having to fear any sort of repercussions. Everyone can enter a conversation and remain wholly anonymous to all with whom they are conversing. In that anonymity, they gain boldness, because they will never actually have to be held accountable for their words. Anonymity is great, and for the most part safe, but it additionally creates the perfect environment for loads of crimes to be committed. Handling the vast, potentially negative capacity of the internet has always been a tricky question, because internet crime rarely occurs in a set location—it can only occur by utilizing the combined effort of many other entity's resources. Most commonly, the internet is used to distribute “pirated” copyrighted media to an extremely large user base that is amorphous and difficult to track.

            In October of 2012, H.R. 3261, or the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), was introduced to the House of Representatives as an attempt to curb the masses of internet piracy of copyrighted materials. The bill caused the blogosphere to erupt into a fury of posts that proclaimed that “We Need to Stop SOPA.” In his article “What is SOPA?” Brian Barrett, decried SOPA as an obviously “very bad thing” that sought to effectively destroy what we love about the internet.  His addition to the echolalia is rather representative of the emotional and hysterical note that was effused throughout the internet at the time. Barrett joins in the fray, and presents an excellent collection of very pertinent points; however he presents his opinions using some rather inflammatory language that seems to detract from his statements.

Barrett‘s pronouncement seeks to expose the numerous technical issues that had been incorporated into SOPA’s design and overarching strategy. He points to the corporate fat cats and money-makers as the ones who deserve the blame, which reveals quite a bit about his purpose of writing.  The article is meant to convince the casual and avid internet user alike that offence must be taken by the attempted encroachments on their liberties present in the bill. The post claims that “The beating heart of SOPA is the ability of intellectual property owners (read: movie studios and record labels) to effectively pull the plug on foreign sites” (Barrett).  The verbiage is meant to incite anger into the heart of the common man at the audacious and unfair activities of the dastardly “IP owners” (Barrett). The author seems to be trying to make the reader gravitate toward sympathizing with the underdogs, “entrepreneurs”, and even the “venture capitalists” rather than the dastardly corporate overlords who for the most part publicly denounced SOPA (Barrett). He establishes these creators of tech companies as the heroes of the internet, because they have led and continue to lead the charge into the future by creating the companies that we all cherish. While the methods he uses to draw the line between the user and the pushers of the SOPA is somewhat questionable, his efforts are well-aimed. In its earliest version, SOPA would have enabled copyright owners to merely send a letter requesting a takedown of links or content to content providers like Google, YouTube, and Facebook who wouldn’t have much of a choice. They would have the option of either protesting the request in court or merely abiding by their wishes and removing the content (Barrett). Barrett warns that under the bill, if a company such as Warner Bros. were to find some of its content on an offshore torrent site that

“…the studio could demand that Google remove that site form its search results, that PayPal no longer accept payments to or from that site, that ad services pull all ads and finances from it,  and –most dangerously—that the site’s ISP prevent people from ever going there” (Barrett).

What’s worse is the bill included special provisions for companies that would “proactively shutter sites [that] it considers to be infringers” (Barrett). Barrett insightfully asserts that in this system the “Potential for abuse [would be] rampant” if companies were able to stop linking to their competitors “with a ‘good faith belief’ ” that they were illegally hosting copyrighted material. Barrett never once discusses what SOPA was trying to accomplish with such measures, however, but rather takes a blind stab at its negatives without acknowledging its strengths. SOPA was trying to create an environment where the internet would effectively police itself. A new model was being presented that is incredibly divergent from how things are done now. While the specifics certainly were not kosher, as Barrett exhaustively illustrates, the idea was an excellent step in the right direction by legislators—a point that the author entirely neglects to mention in his article. Policy-makers were certainly trying to handle the problems of piracy and were attempting something entirely new to solve a prevalent problem. What more can citizen’s ask of their government? Not much.

            In one of the least salient points of the article, Barrett notes that for all the grief that SOPA would be bound to cause, that it was entirely “pointless”.  The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) currently provides a method for copyright holders to get content removed from the web, but only after the request has seen the desk of a DMCA official (Liu). The protocol certainly involves much more bureaucracy, which slows the process down, but rightly so. A claim has been made that copyright infringement has been committed, and due process needs to occur before any serious action is taken. However, the copyright laws in America are by no means perfect, and the present set of laws is workable by only the most lenient definition of the word. Barrett refuses to note in his text that SOPA was in fact a realistic attempt at reforming copyright laws.  His misinterpretation of the law-makers’ intended purpose only increases his clout with his carefully selected reader and thus fits perfectly in his piece, but at the cost of presenting a fair and balanced opinion.

Barrett points to a “long” list of companies that shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars (Barrett) to lobby for the bill as some of the biggest proponents to SOPA’s popularity in Congress. The corporations merely seemed to be attempting to protect their financial stakes in digital media, rather than taking a jab at Lady Liberty as Barrett insinuates. And who can blame them really for that, really? They are financial entities that are actually keen to make money and thus will obviously make the decisions that will best ensure the most longevity of their assets. SOPA would have certainly made it a lot easier for companies to police that their intellectual property was being accessed only through legal means, but at a great cost to the freedom of netizens. They weren’t motivated by the possibility to stunt one’s ability to share content online, as Barrett suggests several times throughout his piece, but rather to ensure the security of their investments.

After lambasting the supporters of SOPA, Barrett takes a moment to note that it has indeed taken a long time for the opposition of SOPA to reach a “saturation point”, but that the time for action is nigh and that the savvy reader should join the movement. It is here that Barrett reveals his true motivation for nursing the uninformed along: he is campaigning. He gives the reader an overview of the catastrophic consequences if SOPA were to be passed into law, and then dares the reader to leave the page without doing anything to stop it. “Keep calling,” he says, “Keep emailing. Most of all, keep making it known that the internet was built on the same principles of freedom [as] this country” (Barrett). The parallel he draws between the great state of America and the internet is another poorly-aimed, but well-meant attempt at the reader’s heart. But by defining the web as an institution that seeks to uphold a set of moral and ethical standards, to use his own words against him, Barrett  “willfully misunderstands the nature of the internet” (Barrett). People don’t use the internet to celebrate an idealistic construction of what it means to be an internet user, but rather to express themselves, communicate with one another, and sometimes to pirate copyrighted materials. Using the internet isn’t a statement, it’s a functional object used differently by different people.

Barrett’s article was published at an exciting time; a day before the widespread and dramatic “Internet Blackout” that brought SOPA to the attention of millions of internet users and caused twenty-four Senators to come out strongly against the bill. Barrett uses his key position on the very cusp of a landmark protest to persuade his readers to involve themselves in the fight. He seems to take a moment in his writing to allow readers that are new to the game and are still trying to sort out exactly what SOPA is a moment to catch their breath and rev up to speed before he pleads for their support. The build-up is dramatic, but subtle.  He insinuates that progress is being made despite the incredible amount of fiscal motivation for the opposite and it was, some high profile companies pulled their support from SOPA in the months leading up to the internet protest. The movement to end SOPA was an interesting portrait of internet culture in that they are certainly prepared to jump aboard a cause that they believe in. It also showed rather clearly that the internet is unwilling to accept legislation that infringes upon its current method of operations, and so we continue to wait for a suitable update to the copyright laws in the US.

Brian Barrett's original article.

Bibliography

Barrett, Brian. "What Is SOPA?" Gizmodo. Gawker Media, 17 Jan. 2012. Web. 16 Sept. 2013. <http://gizmodo.com/5877000/what-is-sopa>.

Liu, Ken. "The DMCA Takedown Notice Demystified | SFWA." SFWA. SFWA, 06 May 2013. Web. 24 Sept. 2013.

 ~V 3.0~

The Internet has Affected the Meaning of Ownership

Historically, ownership has taken a rather different meaning than most of the Millennial Generation know it to be.  In the past, if someone owned something, they had a physical object that was in their possession.  People were able to strictly control who could have access to something that they owned, but in the modern age, and with the advent of the digital files, things that can be easily and silently copied and then distributed all over the world. In that act the concretely defined concepts of ownership that we have always held to be true have been blurred. For the most part, the internet has a culture that really embraces these foundational aspects of its nature. It deeply understands and loves that when something is posted on the internet, it is inherently going to be shared, copied, viewed and changed by lots of people, often times, people unknown to the original poster. “Owning” something on the internet is rather unlike owning really anything else, as the internet allows that idea, text, or image to be virally distributed to a massive user-base in the blink of an eye.

This classical notion of ownership that has applied to the artifacts of the physical realm is not strictly transferrable to pieces of the digital one. There are key differences in the conditions in which they exist that demonstrate that we must consider them separate and individual from one another.  An object that one can classically owned is a single, unique item that is defined as existing in one 3-Dimensional spot at a time and therefore must always belong to only one entity at any given time unless otherwise stipulated by societal conventions. This is rather obviously because ownership is limited by the number of objects up for grabs. However much I know that it would benefit my neighbor by lending him my shovel, if I did so, I could not use it until he gave it back to me. However, when something is translated into digital information, by its very nature, it can be copied and shared effortlessly, thereby eliminating the most significant contributor to our present notion of ownership. If we are no longer restricted by the number of objects in existence, as creating copies of digital information is impossibly easy, perhaps a new set of rules should be instated that govern the proper ownership of these digital objects. If my neighbor were in need of my digital shovel, it would do good by me to give him a copy of my shovel so that he could use it anytime he needed it. I would have been philosophically working toward a better humanity. By giving my neighbor what he needed, especially when it cost me nothing and would actually enable him to accomplish more now that he would be armed with a shovel.

It appears that the internet embraced these concepts of freely sharing information with others long ago. It cherishes the ability to collaborate and share things instantly with one another (Carter). The internet removes all obstacles from embracing our collective humanity and sharing freely with each other. Now, for free, people can have access to the products of millions of man-hours. If I give away my shovel but yet, I still have my shovel and can dig remarkably ordinary holes with my shovel, then I am in just as  grand a position as I was before I gave it away. The ability to share has allowed for the shift in perspective that humanity has been begging for. There are not really any benefits to sharing your knowledge on the internet but millions of people do it every day. The internet is a pleasant creation that breeds upon our innate desire to be a member of a community.

However, currently, laws don’t seem to be structured exceedingly well to cope with the rapidly changing landscape of sharing information over the internet. Of course crimes can be committed on the web, but current legislation is ambiguous enough that the laws (and punishments) can be used against people who may not have necessarily committed a crime. This was demonstrated most prolifically with the prosecution of Aaron Swartz as it was never definitively decided if a true crime was ever committed. However, the federal government was fully prepared to hand out a nearly life sentence, apparently in an attempt to send a message to other “cybercriminals” (Schwartz). The ambiguity regarding what exactly constitutes a digital crime and what does not needs to be more clearly defined, in addition to updating the numerous antiquated laws that currently restrict online activities. The internet endears collaboration and sharing, but the current iteration of copyright laws make such enterprises awkward at best, and punishable by a prison sentence at worst. The current spirit of the members of the web is to come together as a collective body, and to embrace humanity as the sum total of human effort, rather than the divided interests of the constituent parts. Each individual can make an important contribution to the overall good of mankind. The internet is enabling each and every man to see their role in shaping a grander future. Because aren’t just sharing funny cat pictures anymore, but they are creating ways that people can teach themselves to program or learn a language entirely for free. The internet is the interim next phase of human evolution as it allows the summation of a grand number of efforts for the common good. Some forward thinking companies have been using this motif of the internet to combat crime and build innovative services. This culture is developing quickly on the internet, but the whole of society seems to be shying away from this innovative model of sharing and uncompensated contribution to a goal. People are no longer restricted by their access to money or status in order to learn and to improve the lives of others. Literally anyone can change the world with the right idea.

• How then can we develop any further as a society unless we are able to get past our traditional and wanton views of ownership.
• Also talk about what is being shared and expand why the government does not want it.

Sources

Carter, Zach. "Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney, Under Fire Over Suicide Of Internet Pioneer Aaron Swartz." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 14 Jan. 2013. Web. 10 Sept. 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-carmen-ortiz_n_2472146.html>.

Peters, Justin. "Aaron Swartz Wanted to save the World. Why Couldn't He save Himself?" Slate Magazine. The Slate Group, 07 Feb. 2013. Web. 10 Sept. 2013. <http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/02/aaron_swartz_he_wanted_to_save_the_world_why_couldn_t_he_save_himself.html>.

Schwartz, Aaron. "Internet Activist, a Creator of RSS, Is Dead at 26, Apparently a Suicide."Ny times. The New York Times Company, 12 Jan. 2013. Web. 10 Sept. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist-dies-at-26.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0>.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.1~

A Short Examination of the Purpose of Art

When I think why I feel compelled to create something expressive and original, I am left entirely without an answer that fully satisfies me. I have the definite urge to communicate an emotional message, but emotions are themselves lacking in definition or any observable status. It is probable that the ambiguity that surrounds emotional expression perhaps initializes the desire in us to map and take command of the unknown. To be the intrepid voyager to bring the indecipherable concepts of feeling to a place where others can directly understand the emotion you want them to. That you can portray a visceral concept using a method that allows the communication and eventual transfer of a usually personal and lonely experience.

Feeling is not normally a social event. Societally, we actively attempt to silence the unintentional expression of emotions. Without the consent of the listener, we rightfully feel that we would be infringing upon their privacy. Each member of a social structure typically exists in a limbo between their expressed feelings and the ones which they hold to themselves. Both because they don't want others to know, or they are unable to explain precisely what and why an emotional object actually is. The ability to translate the incommunicable seems, alluring to say the least.


Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.0~

A Dare to Believe.

I'm at college. I made it to what Maya Angelou described to my class as "an institution of higher education". A place where all the reckless young bucks can build themselves a future writhing in potential and a dash of conformity.

Conformity is not necessary. The idealists tell me that. They decry from their fair perches that we can risk our chance at predictability for a life that is wholly free the prosaic cycle of normality that we see reflected by adults. School. College. Salary. Death. They tell us we don't have to repeat

repeat
repeat
repeat

repeat the cycle. We can be our own things that are not constricted by the confines of what the rest of "them" tell us to be possible. I like that philosophy. But, how much truth can be found in that? Who among us is willing to risk their (possibly) only chance of ~success~ for the promise of a chance to be different; and  that in that difference, one will find validation. Who among us is willing to believe that they can be the anecdote? The anomal. The one person who opposed the gradient and won their case for avowed uniqueness. I am. I believe that I can embody those things. I literally believe that my existence can be a thing to be respected and acknowledged.

I wasn't born with it, but I will learn, and that is my greatest strength.

Food for thought, my friends.
 ~V 1.0~

The Wonders of being Young

Being young is a wondrous adventure. The world is your oyster and *nearly* is possible. You can go and do almost anything you want. You have crazy impulses to go swimming at 2 am in the middle of a lightning storm and your friends are crazy enough to go along. While what your doing is crazy and unsafe, insane, stupid, etc. You do it. You have more fun than you thought possible. You are young and happy.


Because, why not, right?
~V 1.0~

 //If you have any topics you would like to see me write about, drop me a comment\\

Sneak Peak at my Graduation Speech

Well, good morning! We made it…here…finally. I'm not going to say that those thirteen years of school wasn't fun, but I did not enjoy them in the slightest. Perhaps in five to ten years I will look back on them with happiness, maybe even longing, but if so, it will be solely due to mine own forgetfulness—erasing any remembrance of how truly wretched it was.

 However, here we are. A “new frontier” stands before us—an open portal containing infinite possibility and untapped potential is just ahead. Anything and Everything can happen once we enter into that unknown ground—which is quite an exciting notion. Think now for these last few minutes of what you shall make of such wondrous freedom, for soon, we mustn't resign ourselves to mere constructs of imagination. Soon, we shall have the ability to exercise said freedom.

        In just a few short minutes, we will all, both symbolically and physically, enter this glaring unknown as a united group, but we will depart from the far side of that threshold connected by nothing more than our collective past. No binding links will exist between us. Then, unbounded, we are free to make exactly what we choose to of ourselves. There are no stringent rules that will govern our actions save the self-imposed and those defining the concept of decency—and even they should not be seen as impassable boundaries. For we must always be willing to subject even the pillars of society to the axe if something worth anything at all is ever to be accomplished. We have been given great freedom, but (this is the catch) it, therefore, is our responsibility as members of society to do our darndest to make ourselves great. Greatness isn't granted at birth. Status, maybe, but greatness is something else entirely. It is a decision that one makes about their future. People love to give you the “bad news” about your destiny. They consider themselves enlightened, wiser, or just smarter than you and therefore feel an almost responsibility to inform you that you will never make it. That you will never do anything that anyone wants to remember. But no one ever built a Fortune 500 Company riding on the predictions of their neighbors, snoody uncles, and realist “friends”. So really what I am working on is a call to arms. I am asking you all to make your decision about what your future shall be. Don’t waste your future because, YOLO. 

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.0~

Reflections from a Phantasmagorical Realm

     Blindly thrown 1000 vaguely similar realities, I move frantically through the night. My vision renders the world incomprehensible and offers competing images of what the dark world around me seems to be. All I think that I know is in direct conflict with the world around me. As if the only truths ever known to me were recently discovered to be false. I see hundreds of blue points of light all mystically blinking simultaneously. I feel terror grasp my heart as I struggle to come to grips with the reality I find myself in. Suddenly, I glance off of a hard, cool surface and nearly fall from the sky. I recovered my path through the midnight air for only a few moments before another unpierceable barrier obstructs my flight pattern in this phantasmagorical realm. The terror I feel in the pit of my being only escalates. The longer I live, the more frantic I become, and predictably, the more frequent my collisions become. Each is more painful than the last. They leave my sides quivering with paroxysms of agony. 

     I am on the very cusp of madness. I am on the edge of a unrecoverable fall that would lead to utter desolation of my conscious. I fear that I may have already teetered off of the precipice. That I may have unwittingly tumbled into madness already, and that the despair I find myself in now is a product of my condition. I fear because I believe the decline into true madness blurred and without true distinction. The only items by which one may mark the journey are the beginning and the end, and I would wager that once one has stumbled across the finish line, they would be unable to discern the status of their mental health. I presume that they would be pleasurably ignorant of their unfortunate erraticism. But in that proposal, I find a horrible possibility: I am already mad. Maybe we are all mad, only immune to the reality of our individual madness because of our madness itself. Each of us sees a a different segment of the population that is afflicted--some more severely than others. It does seem a happy fate: blissfully ignorant of all but one's self. 

     Truth is an unknown privilege that has not graced my presence for an indeterminate period of existence. I have lost sight of all of the constants that I vaguely recall from my past life, if there ever was one. I seem to believe that things weren't always this way; that once, a broad and illuminating source of light guided my progress and allowed my nimble avoidance of obstacles. That in a distant past, I had truth. I have lost it all now. I have nothing but a the continual thud of my body against the immovable boundaries that surround me. Time has almost altogether fled me, and in it's stead left me with an existence that I liken to hell. I question whether I am there now. Trapped in an inescapable loop of agony and fear. But nigh! I do feel that the air grows colder now. I welcome the numbness that accompanies this newfound partner of my muddled mind. It gives me hope that my torment may have a conclusion in one of two possibilities. Firstly, the decline of the temperature marks the forward progress of time and that eventually time will come to a close. Time reminds me that I still exist in a physical form and that physical form must die, thusly granting me my freedom. Sweet death! It is a delightful prospect that is accompanied by morbid silence. A silence that extends so far into the future that I have trouble considering whether the metaphysical could support a conscious for such a long-winded account of silence. The second situation which would grant me my liberty is merely a permutation of the first: my experience of cold alerts me that indeed do have a physical form, and as science reckons, all physical forms rely upon some measure of heat for their prolonged survival. In time, therefore, my form would be granted repose and I would enter the lyceum of the mute. 

    The other possibility that I, until now, have attempted to evade is the more likely of the options. Namely, it would be that I am already dead. That I have been robbed of the stillness that I covet so officiously. The horror of this possibility is enormous. It entails that I would be sentenced to an eternal elongation of my current existence. Each undefinable event of the addition of pain and discombobulation indiscriminate from the last other than the heightened sense of pain that I experience in the dungeon that envelopes me now. I break now. I can no longer perpetuate the lie of the possibility of escape. I am lost. The buzzing that haunts my ears is syncopated only by the nauseating blows that wrack my mind. 

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.0~

High School

The smell. The disapproving whispers. The horrendous food. Certainly such a prodigious academic location would offer something more profound to our erudite minds. Maybe. Maybe not. It is doubtless that high school at minimum sets the mood for one's intellectual appetite to be whetted. Many a futures have been swayed by the things learned in secondary schools. This does not seem to support that they are the least bit efficient at fulfilling the overall purpose of their very existence. Even a device as broken as this is incapable of holding back those striving to achieve excellence.

However, I will, without further ado, get to the point. The point being there is no point. To high school. The fact of the matter is that the  information furnished by high schools is trivial. Placeholders to what the future will hold. While overlooking the odd anecdotal case, there have never really been any true scientific revelations that have sprung forth from the bowels of one of the 17,000 high schools in America. While one may posit that I would be missing the point, as it were, of high school, I would dare to submit that it provides pupils with nothing more than a platform upon which they may refine their study skills before really beginning their education. A high school diploma may be earned with a disgustingly tiny modicum of effort. It's value is that it allows you to give college a go.Which to present day, the only merit I can award high school is that it will end. It will cease to be, and something of actual value will fill my time.

As I see it, high school is a metaphorical gas station in our road trip of life; a necessary step to getting to your destination, but has little to no affect on what you actually accomplish upon your arrival.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.1~

The Morality of Teaching.

Directly below these words is a picture one of my friends posted on Facebook, and below is my response. This fits in well with the theme of Morality, so I thought I would bring it here.

"Not that they don't study. That percentage of students that don't try will stay within a insignificant bound throughout the years and won't fluctuate all that much. However, based on the specific teacher, there will be a difference in how effectively that teacher inspires kids to learn. If a teacher is really ineffective, then a higher percentage of kids will be choosing failure over the input of effort.

Now I don't believe that anyone has ever really blamed the teacher specifically for children failing a class. Failure is expected in any given course. If everyone is passing with ease, then the teacher isn't attempting to challenge his or her pupils. So the teacher must ramp up the curriculum and then inspire the children to benefit themselves.

So your picture is correct in the fact that it is silly that we blame teachers for kids who are intrinsically self-destructive and aren't motivated to learn, but it is addressing the wrong issue entirely. Just as not all children can pass a class, not all teachers are good at teaching. Many are horrible. If one doesn't do a job to a high enough standard to deserve pay, they shouldn't have a job. But I fear that in the current state of things, teachers are practically promised job security despite their performance. Which isn't deserved. You are addressing the wrong issue entirely."



stet.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.1~

Journaling

After perusing my old journal entries, I received a super intense wave of nostalgic excitement. I remembered, for the most part, all of the events I had written about nearly a year and half ago to obviously just over a month ago. I remembered why I felt the way I did, and it was just cool to see how much (and little) that I have changed into who I am today.

It is interesting to see myself not a current snapshot, id est what ever my current emotions may be, but as a true fourth dimensional being. All my emotions and thoughts in their irrational and rational undulations alike, all neatly (and messily for that matter) recorded in Evernote or on the pages of a black spiral notebook on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. A surprisingly dynamic concoction of thoughts and emotions that often surprises even me. Most of my written rampages still hold true to this day. I feel the same things about certain issues today, as I did whenever I wrote my thoughts down, which is comforting to think at least I'm consistent in my insanity.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.1~

The Quandary of Morality

What is morality? Is it something that we can grasp? It is something easily defined and is there a clear line drawn in the metaphorical sands of ethics?

These are some very powerful questions I've been toying with in the past weeks. I do believe there is a God. I do believe there are some very important things that we cannot do because they are innately wrong and can be easily discerned to be right or wrong. Things such as taking something which doesn't belong to you or lying.

Now I will step back and ask how do we view right and wrong? I will venture to say that an activity which is nearly always "wrong" isn't wrong itself. The context of the situation is responsible for the transition of morality. Some activities, such as rape, will be permanently wrong. After much pondering, I have never been able to devise a situation under which a rape could benefit someone. They may force themselves to grow into a stronger person, but that is not a benefit of the actual evil itself, but rather of the individual choosing to be positive no matter what they are facing.  But, for many things, doing wrong isn't always wrong.

I think the only real difference between the right and wrong would be the object of the benefit and the target of the misfortune. When a soldier jumps on a grenade to save his friends, his actions are said to be good, because he choose to sacrifice himself for the benefit of others. He received the bad and others received the benefit of prolonged life. Good.

Therefore, according to our current hypothesis, we can judge the right or wrong of a specific action based on how it will affect others. In this way we can now see that stealing your sister's pack of cigarettes would ultimately benefit her, despite the theft required for the benefit to come about. So would this then make the act of thievery a morally right thing to do? I think so, but for some reason I still cannot view the actual action of removing the cigarettes from my dear sister's possession as a "good" thing. Those are her cigarettes. I do not own them, and therefore should not endeavor to do so, without the permission of my sister. But I would be adding years to her life if I could succeed in motivating her to quit.

Now let us enter the mythical realm of the hypothetical. Let us pretend for a moment that I am driving a bus full of school children across the Alaskan wilderness in the dead of winter. A blizzard is mounting and I am running low on fuel. If the bus were to run out of fuel, all of the children and I would freeze to death within the hour. We haven't passed a gas station in hours and then out of nowhere, we happen upon a unheated store. The owner's car is sitting outside, and he is just about to leave. Let's also say that we know the store owner lives almost an hour away. If I were to stop and steal the store owners gas so that I would save the lives of the children, but also certainly kill the store owner, because he then would not be able to make it to the safety of shelter, what would be the proper thing to do? Would the right thing to be the action that gave the most number of people the biggest benefit? Or would the fact that I would be stealing from that very unfortunate store nullify the benefit? I don't have the answers. I don't know what is the right thing to do.

I thankfully believe that the world is never nearly that dramatic, but I think that often the black and white line of morality is severely muddled both by our perception of what good and bad will occur based on our actions.

Food for thought, my friends.

~V 1.0~

 //If you have any topics you would like to see me write about, drop me a comment\\

Bookbinding: Part 1 - Printing Book

Well this is the first part of several on printing and binding your very own book. I definitely not a pro, but I certainly enjoy bookbinding.

First off, you need a book. I would suggest Google Books. They have basically everything, and if you select the "Free Only" or "Full View Only" option when you search, Google will only return the free results. They have most classics, aka out of copyright, for free. I chose Dante Alighieri's Inferno. Now whenever you have your book, you need to download it. I had to jump through a couple
hoops in order to get this to work. In the search results, click on the "Full View" link then 

Click on the "Full View" Link

click on the Download a PDF button in the right-corner. 

PDF button

Now you should have the full text of your book in PDF form. Whenever you open it up in Adobe Reader, you can view the full text of the book, or, as we shall do, print it!

I went for the double page printing, with 2 pages per side, like a real book. I folded the pages into 4 page signatures and then stacked them on top of one another.

~V 1.1~ 

 //If you have any topics you would like to see me write about, drop me a comment\\

The Written Word

As a society, why do we always seem to gauge a person on their proficiency with the written word, through reports and essays? Adults are required to give multipage reports of themselves to even get someone to consider them for a job.

College undergrads must write a several hundred page thesis in order to prove that they understand a certain topic. Knowledge is not proven by an ability to write down information from other sources, the magic occurs when the ideas are used to synthesize new ones. That is not something that is recorded on paper, but merely the aftermath. I believe that in order for an accurate assessment to be made of an individual's proficiency, that we must depart from the ways of old (because papers have been written by college students for hundreds of years). I think that there are many individuals who are very successful, but would seem rather dull and silly if they were to try and show their genius on a sheet of paper. Success isn't something that someone can find on a sheet of paper. It is an intrinsic quality (along with genius) and if you try to measure of quantify it, we will end up with a very broken system of education and assessment of education. One very much like we have today.

So in closing. Let's find a way to teach kids better, and also a better way to make entirely certain that they have learned. I believe the first step to an educational utopia is personalization on the student's behalf. We shouldn't focus on things the student already knows and things which come easy to the student, but the things which don't. And to accomplish that goal, we need to depart from the current methods of education and testing. Writing papers needs to be saved for those points in time when giving an oral presentation or doing real world examples simply doesn't make sense.

Our educational system is a broken mess.

Community

Not like the typical suburbian dream community of block parties and unspoken lawnmowing competitions, but the community which exists between members of a technological community. The type of community which actively supports sharing of content and one's own creations with others for noncommercial usage.

This type of sharing began in small groups of hobbyists who built computers out of basic components before personal computers or computers with real displays even existed. Much like the group Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak developed their tastes for computer-building in. Wozniak especially would design something really revolutionary or a chip which gave a speed increase, and then just give it away to other members of the group. While Jobs eventually decided to capitalize of Wozniak's designs, when forming Apple Computers only a few short years later. However, that is another story entirely. But the point is, they would share brilliant technology and designs with each other for no charge. These small homebrew led to the distribution of a small OS kernel by the name of Freax (later renamed Linux, after its creator, Linus Torvalds) which is now distributed for free.

This community is something that I cherish. Whenever I have a problem with my computer, I know I can go to a forum and ask a couple questions and within a week, I will have several in-depth answers, and maybe even a link to a tutorial( written by an unpaid member of this forum community) on how to resolve my issue. But with more complex things like building a Hackintosh, or Rooting and flashing custom ROMs to my Android, the entire community is made of people who figured out, or wrote code (eg Tony Mac x86) to actually do these things. But the killer part is, they simply give away all of their brilliant engineering and programming for no charge whatsoever. Their only interest is to make the lives of other people better.

Or in the creation of indie games like ADOM, Dwarf Fortress, or Dig-n-Rig. These games are extremely addicting, feature-rich and people would definitely pay to play them. BUT-and that's a big but-the developers like to develop and just give away their hard work for free. That is America, my friends. That spirt of community is contagious, because it is just so exciting to see everyone enjoy free

//If you have a specific topic you would like to see me post on, comment below\\

version 1.0

Style

What is style I wonder? What factors exactly lead society to the "realization" that a certain meme is cool. Be it words, clothes, methods of wearing clothes. Be it pants, hats, sun glasses etc. How does the mob determine what is good and bad of these styles?

I struggle to understand this sort of hivemind the crowd takes on, because almost everybody takes an instant liking to a certain trend and reproduces it, and launches it into sociological stardom. I hypothesize that it may be more of a hysteria type situation. Almost relating to the work of Dr. Zimbargo and the Stanford Prison Experiment. How a group will make crazy decisions, that when viewed from the outside, ie old people, looks and is understood to be rediculous, but whenever someone is on the bleeding edge of fashion or style, they understand these styles and trends and believe them to be popular. It would certainly be interesting to see some research done on this topic. To exactly pinpoint how and why a amorphous group makes seemingly unanimous decisions simutaneously without discussion or communication. They simply see it and ba-boom. A style is born.

Food for thought, my friends.