the devil that you know

playing the devil's advocate
would be a useful endeavor,
if the devil actually existed.

Love

Is not squeezing the breath out of each other in a hug, is building an infinite garden to explore and be true selves.

Swimming

Water hugs me, not hard as strangle, When I move, it flows with me. I am mostly water, yet so far behaved.

Probabilities

A great *sunny* day in the bay area. I was taking the bus and kept my bag on a seat.

The *last* guy getting in the bus, at the *last* stop that was boarding people settles in an empty row next to me and feels the need to tell me:
 - "Somebody might want to use that seat".

My reply:
 - "You seem to have forgotten your umbrella."

He didn't get it.

Software Engineering

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Just because you don't need it, doesn't mean you shouldn't.

Pretentious Chaos

There is no particular order to the world. Except what my mind tries to make out of everything it senses. But even that doesn't last long. Expecting information in a particular arrangement, color, voice tonality, logical sequence... is much like being deaf.

Sense

I'm so little. Unimportant. Forgotten... by the world... by me, Meaningless! Look ahead. Find hope again. Seek beyond the horizon. Redefine. Dream. I know what to do. I don't do it. I wait for the end. Proudless.

Reality Check

In my dream of dreams
I've seen a glimpse of happiness.
And from my dream of dreams,
I've learnt that it is so easy to be sad.

Gamers Explained?

OK I'm a gamer. I admit... guilty. And if I am to add it all up I think I've spent several thousands of hours of my life playing games since I was about 14 or so.

I still remember the summer I was supposed to learn for my university admission exam; really serious business if I ever wanted to get a bachelor degree/education; I remember all I did that summer, from morning to dawn, was to play hot seat games with my friend trying to postpone the inevitable (having to prepare for the exam).

Was it wrong? Not a chance it was probably the best thing to do, I would have gone crazy had I spent all that time learning instead. It actually helped me study much faster, because it was in the way, I needed to get it done so I could play. :)

Now at some point in a gamer's life comes the question: "was I really wasting all of that time doing totally unimportant things when I could've been saving the world instead?". Or substitute "world" with whatever feels important for the person. This question, while important I admit, won't last long as soon the next gaming session starts in a try to forget about it and evade any answer :)

Jane McGonigal doesn't answer that question either, but she changed it from "Are gamers wasting time?" to "How can we make RL more like a game?" or "How can we design games that have an impact on RL?". Nice twist:



Who knows maybe our jobs would be so much more cooler if it were like an RPG. "Awesome, I've submitted another CL and got 200xp so I got to level 10 software engineer!" :D

And I share her believe, if you make a gamer believe it's a game... they can accomplish almost anything! As soon as we think the outcome doesn't really matter as "it's just a game"... we're doing so much better.

There's Beauty... in evil and diversity

Beauty is lost when rationalized.

It's me... Like we all are.

Alone on a preset path. Trying to do my best. Trying to get as far.

The Hermit

" - You have grown in the shadow of others and are found of it. But when lights go off and darkness takes you, when silence quiets you... you are always alone. The demons you face came all from within you."

Bacteria... know what they're doing

So apparently bacteria function like organized criminals or the secret societies: quiet until they reach the required infiltration level to be sure an attack cannot be stopped and then they fully launch their attack. I like the thought that even single cell organisms outsmart humans at times.

Aging into God

When all else fails, God is left.

Said in the '70s... to no effect?

We will see how very important it is to bring about, in the human mind, the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness. A crisis that cannot, anymore, accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. And, considering what the world is now, with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression, and so on… Man is still as he was. Is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive. And, he’s built a society along these lines.

J. Krishnamurti

Perhaps more than 30 years after these words were spoken I sent them to most of my friends in the form of a video. Some fell asleep on it in the first minute. Some didn't find the time for it, considering the demands of modern life. And in my opinion, all are cases of the omnipresent ADD of the modern man.

I (used to) enjoy sharing and discussing matters of the life. Yet now, my rare occasions of a discussion resembles web surfing. My conversation partner reads through my words and before I could finish my statement follows the links in a word. In less than a minute we're talking about completely different subjects. But just like web surfing, we both have the vague impression that somehow the conversation is still linked to the "home page" we've left of.

EDIT: Initially I didn't want to post the videos just to make it more entertaining to search and find it, for the easily distracted :-)

Farming

Farm·ing
a.

Pertaining to agriculture; devoted to, adapted to, or engaged in, farming; as, farming tools; farming land; a farming community.

Farm·ing
n.

The business of cultivating land.

Or so Webster's Dictionary says. I think I have a vague memory of that. But I am not sure. Think I might have met a farmer once, and he was doing exactly that, but it was early in my childhood and my memory wasn't well formed.

Farming is the killing of monsters for the purpose of gathering items, experience, gold, Faction, or promotion points and is considered to be one of the quickest and easiest ways to amass wealth.

Ah, now that sounds more familiar. You learn more about it here.

So yes, I do like playing video games and I happen to play Guild Wars, why that and not something else is besides the point (they're all the same). Now let's go back to the dictionary again:

game
n.

An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime: party games; word games.

So... who exactly was the sick mind behind the idea of "farming" in video games? I can imagine the following discussion in a team developing games:

"- Oh shit! We worked 5 years on this game and the test users finished it in 10 hours! What do we do? What do we do?"
" - Oh well... we can't provide new content, that would actually mean working to make the game interesting and exciting. And even if we did that for a month or two, we definitively don't want to do that for the next two years! I mean that would mean us really working on the thing!"
" - Yeah, but what to keep our players busy with while we monthly take money out of their accounts for doing nothing?"
" - Well... I know! We can make them like work!"
" - Work?"
" - Yeah, you know like when you have a daily job and you have to go mine for ore or something."
" - Hmmm... mine for ore. So we just put some ore mines here and there... oh I have an even greater idea make the mining succeed or fail randomly! I mean it's not like a real miner in a mine, though some of them were dying weren't they?"
" - Yeah, that's a great idea! If we make mining to give in return random items and the cool ones will be rare I bet players will just mine forever hoping to get the rare items. I mean you know hope dies last!"
" - Excellent! That should keep many busy, but how about those that don't like mining?"
" - Oh well... make them farm!"

Brilliant, just brilliant. From game "an activity providing entertainment or amusement" to "mining and farming". Brilliant I tell you. No one would ever want to farm or mine in RL (that is Real Life) but they would all do it online! As if the modern man has so much free time and his job is not "job" enough, so we need to give modern man another "job" for the spare time.

---

WTF? Really! WTF are you people doing? WTF are you gamers doing? Farming? And WTF are you game developers doing? Throwing work at people and *charging* them for working??? And making millions while at it?

I want a *game* I am *not* looking for a job! And I find mining and farming to be crappy jobs even if i was looking for one.

all things to do...

were done already.

So I am really bored. Sometimes. Most of the times. Maybe I am going into some middle age mood, though I am not officially that old. I just don't really find things interesting anymore. Like none at all. Not even a bit.

I find everything I do, and everything the others do... dull, boring and repetitive. Only that I have a better memory than others, and it bothers me more. Or that's how I like to explain it to myself. I wonder what others tell themselves to get over it. Anyway. So I am bored. And then I say to myself: "OK go dig up some old hobbies and try them". But I don't get too far.

So I used to like photography. I used to put care into any picture I ever took, try to find hidden things to the naked eye that the camera will augment and stuff. But in the end, the picture is much narrower than the real thing and I've spent like five minutes trying to get it (or fake it depending on what I'm trying there) and I forgot or lost my chance to actually live that thing. Like see it with my own two, you know?

Never mind, I usually catch up with the wonderful trips I'm taking and the wonderful things I've seen when I get back at home and look at my own pictures. Not to mention that there isn't any centimeter on this planet that hasn't been already photographed. So why bother? You'll find the centimeter you're pointing your camera at on the web anyway. Even better quality.

Oh, and then there is blogging. Like if photographing all centimeters of the planet was not enough. We want to also record and share all the crap anyone could ever produce. Textually for a change. Well I am bored of text and writing as well. All letters have been already used in all possible combinations. Like try to find a name for a new blog for an instance, that is the real challenge.

So how do our chances of originality in this world stand? Like anybody cares. We just need to forget fast enough and there we go, we reinvented originality. So I reckon the attention and memory span is going down in the modern world... this ain't going to be good for me.

Now back to work people.

I do believe in God

But...

• God does not tell me my religion is the only "true" religion and the only way to reach Him.
  
• God does not tell me to be intolerant with other people believes.
  
• God does not tell me I should make everyone believe in what I believe.
  
• God does not tell me to be intolerant with other sexual orientations.
  
• God does not tell me we did not evolved from monkeys.
  
• God does not tell me I should ignore scientific facts.
  
• God does not tell me to blindly follow believes and give up my reasoning.
  

People do!

And I don't trust people.
Specially people that "speak God's words".
God does not need people to speak for Him.

Synergy

I wonder if our children will know Forests. Because you know a collection of trees does not make a Forest. There is so much a child can learn from the Forest.

See Ahead

What is Winter if not the opportunity of next Spring.