No Eureka moment, no TFR again

The only reason I'm writing now is to bleed off stray useless thoughts, and to empty my head enough of other superfluous things; to organize myself so I can concentrate on fixing up some lines of code in a program I'm trying to build. Sometimes the "Eureka!" or "Aha!" moments for finding a solution come when I distract myself with something else trivial and unrelated to what I'm supposed to be doing, but it isn't happening thus far. Maybe I need to find something else to do to put me in a proper 'trance' for it. I've exhausted my options and questions for general and specific searches on more than one engine; the concrete answers for dealing with this abstract stuff are still eluding me.

Perhaps it's because I overused my reserve of energy while doing my handy work yesterday that rendered me with nothing left for doing mental stuff like formula writing and number crunching for today. Yesterday, between catching up with personal errands, fix-ups, and processing stuff in the kitchen, I was on my feet for close to ten hours, with one break for coffee. I'm thankful and appreciative for all this abundance of produce that my friends and family gifted to me, but these masses of fruits and vegetables need to be cooked, portioned, and stored as single unit meal options for me. Dealing with all that raw material gets to be preparation intensive. I suppose I should have a measure of pride in knowing that I made six weeks worth of freezer-to-stove ready food for a cost of under 25 dollars. It was also an effort to not to be wasteful*, and to incorporate this stuff with my remaining white-flour/carbs in the pantry. Baked and steamed stuffed buns, other dumpling-like fare, stuffed peppers, a casserole, and big batches of three kinds of soup were the end products. My reasoning: if I eat this calorie-laden stuff while I'm more active in the fall, hopefully it will be all depleted by the time winter rolls around, so I'll be less likely to have more rolls stuck on me during my more lax time then . . . in theory.

This paragraph marks the end of my second crack at it with some break time afterward. I just came back from a light run. I thought that maybe my head would clear if I got more oxygen and some circulation flowing. No dice. I would have went further, but the old hips and knees said, "Oh no you don't!" When I approached the Vimy memorial, I realized that I totally forgot that today was the Terry Fox Run. I've either been busy, or forgetful about the TFR every previous year since I caught the running bug. It's a bit shameful that I've been this neglectful to participate in it each year, especially given the circumstances that prompted me to start running in the first place.

My third attack at it has now ended. I went back to reviewing some of my notebooks: hardcopies and digital; to see if I can re-assemble things on simpler level by doing some creative bypassing of a few variables, or re-structure the data arrays down to easier to manage chunks. It's a certainty that it's me being my own worst enemy by over-complicating things. I tried something different; I'm still no further ahead. My persistence isn't paying off. It's close to sundown now, and I don't want to let the whole damn day be wasted this way.

I'd be so angry if I go to sleep later, and the solution strikes me right then about of some ridiculously simple oversight, like missing punctuation or delimiters, being the reason for the failures before I started scrapping things to down ground zero, realizing how much time was wasted before such a simple correction entered the mind.

*- Globally, it is estimated that: one third of our food supply is wasted (China being the biggest culprit nation), while 870 million people on this planet are starving. Annually, the estimated mount of water wasted to grow food that isn't eaten amounts to the annual volume of water that flows through in the Volga river in Russia. Around 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases are produced by wasted rotting food and disposal of it. (source: Bing Financial) A lot of supermarket produce is discarded, not because of actual spoilage, but because of aesthetic imperfections. It's perfectly edible, yet some market and restaurant chains purposely taint and destroy it, and lock it away to prevent dumpster divers from salvaging and liberating this bounty from the trash. How can we dare call ourselves the dominant intelligent life forms, living on this planet this way?

Amusements in Logic

Starting Monday, I have about 11 hours left of short shifts to do this week before I do some holiday time. In a way that's good. I do three or four hours within three days, and I'll hopefully have enough energy and momentum to clear stuff away at home for the remainder of those days before I dive into time that's to be devoted to mostly leisure. Perhaps weaning myself away from work gradually like this is the way to go, rather than having a more radical transition. 

I'm doing some more advanced programming exercises now. Messing around with the process of trial and error in correcting some missing details and other silly mistakes, is making me think that there was a time in the past when I would have been so much better able to retain the knowledge, hone my skills, and have a peak performance at doing such tasks.* Right now though, I feel as though my brain has to have a lot of rust, dust, and cobwebs brushed and knocked out of it before I can deal with anything that's purely logical. 

There was a time in my life, when I had less busy days and was better able to focus, when I was becoming a real enthusiast for doing the rather esoteric hobby of solving logic puzzles. The British ones were (still are) the best. It was a way to sort of play detective. I was correctly completing ones ranked five stars in difficulty; even the ones without a logic grid, on a regular basis. I became so interested in them that I wondered if I could even create any of my own that would ever be acceptable enough for publication in any one of the puzzle magazines one finds them in. I did start a small portfolio of some that I drafted up, working at composing and editing them piecemeal. I don't remember when it started happening, but I'd guess that it was something I did as an effort to endure the coldest, darkest, loneliest days of winters past.
 

I doubt if dreaming up and writing these things is something one could ever get rich at, or allow me to just quit my day job. Logic puzzles, at least non-digital ones, are a dying amusement these days, like most of the other pencil and paper puzzles; thus their creation is becoming a dying art as well. The jest and appeal of it for me though is that I’d be creating something that like-minded people want to approach for a bit of diversion and positive mental stimulation. Also, the thought of making even a little money from watching an idea grow and come to fruition, even if it's just a small and trivial one, is now becoming a hell of a lot more thrilling to me than that of earning comparatively more money from doing stuff that wears you down with boring routine, and constantly muddling through and dealing with others' ignorance and stupidity in the act (guise) of service.

Back when I taught English for my brief time overseas; being sent frequently without a prepared lesson plan, into a classroom full of kids often too incorrigible or indifferent to learning anything, making and presenting a logic problem was often my salvation. If the kids were disinterested in learning language directly, they were more often than not more willing to be involved with a game or puzzle based on a formula, which they had to force themselves to express in English. I wasn't any good at enforcing classroom management with structure and discipline, but I did alright with at least capturing the attention of those few students who enjoyed the challenge of doing more critical thinking.

The one thing I miss most is getting to be engaged with more people who regularly deploy logic and common sense; so that's the kind of company I should be seeking out during my holiday time. I suppose then that one of my ambitions during this vacation time will be to start probing through and editing these past works of mine, and find publishers to submit them to. If they get rejected, I'll post them here to share with other interested parties. Perhaps my followers who are logic puzzle enthusiasts, especially those from the UK** who read my blog, could help me with this project.

 *- I'm referring to a time when the computer languages and technology I'm messing around with now did not yet exist.

**- The stats from my reader numbers by nation indicate that readers from the UK are only 7th in the standings. As it is currently, the rankings of my numbers of followers before that placement, by nation, rank as such: 1. Canada, 2. Russia, 3. Latvia, 4. United States of America, 5. Germany, 6. Ukraine.

That Kind of Day

Today is a long dreary rainy day. It's coming down in sheets now. It's hard to believe that the summer solstice is only a week away. It's the kind of day where one feels obligated to settle down and relax. What it could be is:

1. a homemade soup and bread making while listening to tunes kind of day
2. a blog some crazy ideas kind of day
3. a browse the bookstore kind of day
4. a start reading a new novel kind of day
5. a pencil and puzzle book/sketch pad day
6. a blow the dust off the Wii console and play video games day
7. a cheesy sci-fi/cult comedy movie from Netflix watching afternoon kind of day
8. a read Make, and other such magazines, and dream up of a project kind of day
9. a rewire my sound/home entertainment system kind of day
10. a watch TED talks kind of day
11. a reorganize my playlists and iTunes library kind of day
12. a nap with the dog on the chesterfield kind of day
13. a get my ass to the gym and do some back/core/strength training kind of day
14. a cocktail experimentation/formulation kind of day
15. an embracing one's inner nerd kind of day
16. a learn some more programming kind of day

But that's not the kind of damn day it's going to be. I've only managed to do (a half-assed job of) points 1 and 2. The reality is that this is day eight of a 14 day stretch of work days; I'm feeling so burnt out already, and it's like there has been no way to find any solace. There has been only one night during this time that I haven't slept like crap.

The list I produced is the stuff that I feel like I only have enough energy for. Running usually is a remedy, but for some reason, it has become a greater challenge than usual. I'm trying it today, despite the heavy rain. Lately, on even short distances, I feel like I'm slowly being smothered, with my breathing becoming badly arrested. I'm hoping it's not some kind of seasonal pollen allergy or something. I hope the heavy rain will settle it down if it is, but I'm not optimistic. If it occurs again next time, I think I'll need to see a doctor. The only sort of social leisure I have lined up ahead is a supper after a convention I'm attending next week, but I honestly don't think I'll be up for it if I'm even more drained than I am feeling now.

I found an app to try to deal with this failure in my resilience. It's called SuperBetter. However, I've been slacking in using some time to commit to interface with it. The concept of it is really quite interesting. It will make more sense after watching the TED talk by its developer, Jane McGonigal.

I touched on www.codeacademy.com for a bit. The format of the site is great for anyone wanting to learn some programming. I think I found my substitute for TV, now that I discontinued my cable service.

Running Harder, but Standing Still

I finally did something yesterday that involved straying off to someplace different than work or home within this past week. I bit of browsing at McNally Robinson and enjoyed a light lunch with my friend; sadly it was all the energy I had in me for that day. Browsing wasn't as enjoyable as it usually is for me. As much as I wished to do more reading, my eyes have been too fatigued and sore for it, plus I've been stricken with recurring headaches. It's probably due to too much extra time used staring at screens, processing code and formulae throughout the week, and monitoring the FX charts before the start, and after the end, of each day of a string workdays 10 hours long. I'm sure that typing this is will even become challenging shortly.

The title of this entry is a bit of a misnomer. By running harder, I mean it seems to take more energy and a higher pain threshold to commit to doing it at this time of the year. I didn't run all week: the damp coldness has been giving my knees grief. The lack of doing it is making my metabolism level head south, as indicated by my tightening waistbands on my pants. I resolved to at least get out today, no matter what, but I wonder if the resulting shock and pain to lose an extra couple pounds would make it worth doing. I plodded along at some distance over 5 kilometers this morning: better than nothing I suppose. I went outside, absent-mindedly wearing my running shorts and light jacket. I honestly didn't sense how cold it actually was until near the end of my run when I visually noticed that the shoulders of my black jacket were coated with white frost from my condensed expired breath. My knees didn't suffer that badly thankfully.

There is a treadmill in my building's rec room to use, but I discovered recently that the damn thing is busted. So much for that option for winter training. I can't really stand treadmills anyway. It seems that I need some perception and sensation of moving through physical space and traversing an actual distance to make it feel like running is benefiting me. There is the indoor track at the local Field House, but I'm trying to avoid paying a mint to use it. Walking and cycling, at least for now, are still viable. There have been still good results. I'm noting that yesterday, even during this time of the year, was the first time I used my car in a week. The most heartbreaking thing to see along my trips by the river this week has been the unceremonious demolition of the Victoria Street Bridge.


The hope of getting to use this bridge deck to jog on is officially extinguished.

I'm struggling to figure out where to apply myself today, the second day of a three day weekend. I find I almost dread having unstructured time off, because it seems that I waste half of that precious time, and even more energy, which I don't feel like I have, trying to structure it. Blogging now, in it's own way, serves to help me piece that together.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”
-Alvin Toffler

One thing I did do, in keeping with my riding the wave of decluttering and living more frugally, was clearing away some books I found, which someone in the building gave away as freebies as they were moving. So, I took them to my favourite local used bookstore to exchange them for something more meaningful for me*. I was in non-fiction mood, craving something in the realms of finance, math or science: things I definately don't hear sensible conversations about when I'm at work. One cheap book I found that I was willing to re-read was Innumeracy: mathematical illiteracy and its consequences, by John Allen Paulos. This edition I bartered for is from 1990, but the truth in it is as valid now as it was back then. Now that I find myself playing around with numbers more, I thought it would be prudent to detect and extinquish those remaining numerical fallacies and statistical errors I myself still succumb to. The sad and dangerous thing though is that the more educated I get about such stuff by reading this book, the more likely I am to detect just how much more stupid people around me will seem when they are trying to argue opinions around me and are trying to stick in figures they don't understand into the mix. Thus, my respect for them begins to quickly retract (to put it lightly), and I just fear more for the future of humanity in general once such people somehow gain more power.

*- I spent no actual money, I made a tidy little profit in terms of store credit, I gave old books new life, it helps to save a tree or two, plus by buying through this kind of discount I have the satisfaction of sticking it to the man by avoiding the rip off of paying an average 12% higher listed Canadian price for a book (even in e-book format) when the looney is close to parity with the US dollar. I feel it's all good karma for me.

Progressive Apps

I have no clue as to why I feel jazzed up today, except for the fact that I've been really nerdish and anal about getting a few more applications and organizational tools working for me in a good way, and having a few more 'Eureka!' moments and breakthroughs as I continue to pursue re-establishing some sort of order to my personal domain.

I'm still struggling to bend my brain around some of the more abstract portions of my learning modules in the programming manual. I suppose after comparing programming to all else which I construe as a bothersome problem to deal with, I've given these things a new perspective, and they now appear a lot less difficult to manage. Whether it's done formally or informally, I'd highly recommend it to everyone to learn some kind of programming. It's not just about sorting out variables and configuring data to be processed. It's also about understanding the flow of information, and having that flow and following it's momentum is what is needed to get out of a rut when blocked by a problem.

With gaining more knowledge and skill at programming and flow of information, one becomes more attune to the concept that any common problems are just forms of information that need re-processing. Circumstances never arise with any label of "good" or 'bad' attached to them. Circumstances only become problems whenever they conflict, clash, and interfere with whatever ambitions, goals, missions, or ideals of progress we've set for ourselves, and then get wrapped up in our own dramas that we build around them. Most of the challenge in dealing with them is just breaking up things into manageable sets and putting them in a much simpler framework. Keeping motivated, monitoring , and applying action is the rest of the job.

My iPhone is armed with these apps that I find especially useful. If anyone knows of one that creates good flowcharts and fish bone graphs, I'd love to hear about then. Here are a few productivity apps that I find especially useful when I'm mobile, and when I want to capture, analyze, compare, and chart ideas that strike me from out of the blue:

Simple Minds - What this app is for is mind mapping: taking a central theme and creating related offshoots to build upon the idea to provide options and enhancements. It allows one to follow through with some open-opened creativity. It's relatively simple to use, and the variable colours can be helpful for coding categories.

MindTools - A nice little compendium of productivity strategies, for helping me to get out of ruts for planning complicated things. The problem solving and the exercises to challenge assumptions are some of my favourite ones in this app.

PDF Reader - Generally OK to transfer PDF files to, but on the iPhone screen, even with expanding the view, details of the fine print on a letter-sized paper formatted document are a little hard to read.

Graphio (Lite) - A cool little piece of productivity software that makes diagrams and graphs for flowcharts and more. The only flaw it has is the difficulty in bringing up the keyboard to label the chart objects. This prevents me from bothering to upgrade to the full version.

OneNote - This Microsoft app is a very dumbed down version of the full MS Office OneNote program. There is a checkbox function for to do lists, a point form outline maker, and photo capture button, but nothing else really. The only saving grace it has is for collecting rudimentary material, which can then be uploaded to a desktop/laptop for more detail with colour coding and graph making.

Dropbox - This provides instantaneous picture sharing with all cloud connected devices from your pics and other files. Simply splendid for faster processing of shared photographs, and posting them on blog entries. The process of having to email them to myself first was very cumbersome in comparison.

Evernote - A very good note app for collecting tags and sharing with other wi-fi connected devices. Unlike OneNote, it will record voice and index your tags and categories for you.

Lift  - The newest one I collected so far. It is what can be termed as a positive habit recorder and monitor. You can pick from a shared list of, or create your own, habits that you want to include in your life and stick with. It's a checkmark diary of sorts, to monitor your progress and account for all the little things that will amount to greater goals. It will also link one with a support community, some of whom are monitoring the same things they wish to include in their lives as you, who can even give you props to encourage you.

One Quarter Left: of the Year ... and of Me

October began yesterday, so now we're into the beginning of the final quarter of the year. It opened with me making a platelet donation at Canadian Blood Services, and then going through the futile process of trying to rest before doing my stupid night shift.

I gave up in frustration with trying to rest through the day to prepare for it by trying to bore myself to sleep with studying. I ended up starting and processing a bunch of other household stuff. I hoped that the later sunrise would allow me more wind down time, but it wasn't so. I have three more of them to do before year's end. I do my best to push myself through when I do work them, but I've resolved to not put myself through any future hell of doing anymore of them. I have enough vacation hours and banked stat time to allow me to do so. It's better for both me and the people I serve if I avoid them. I don't want to go to any job, or do any task, or sign up for anything else where I'm reduced to being only 25% (or less), of the kind of person that I want to be; when it becomes such that it reflects both mentally and physically in my performance, which is what is effectively happening when I commit to doing these shifts.

So, I've been awake for more than 36 hours now. Here are a few more peculiarities that I'm noting and learning about me while I'm stricken with this degree of insomnia, with my senses working overtime, and depleted of a few less discretionary mental faculties:

• I try to chill out with music, giving eighties alternative/indy artists a good play over (The Cure, The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, David Bowie, The Jesus & Mary Chain, XTC, Joy Division, old school R.E.M., et al.).
• Anything I tried studying the previous day is just not in memory, thus wasted time and a total write off. I have to redo the last unit from my programming manual.
• I get strange and ridiculous surges of hunger that interrupt sleep, and for very carb-loaded foods too. This time I did something out of character and made pancakes ... for myself , after I came home, a true sign that I'm having some sort of a mental breakdown from exhaustion.
• I purposely isolate myself at home to prevent myself from making impulsive purchases while having less than adequate decision-making ability.  
• I get really geared to do something to fix myself better, despite the fatigue, with problem solving strategies by exploring productivity improvement sites, like Mind Tools™ (only after when my eyes aren't hurting too much to read).
• Gobbling up any pain-relieve pill that will sooth the headaches and muscle/eye-soreness, (I usually avoid anything in pill form if I can).
• I try to vent my general edginess and frustration through blogging, hoping that sleep will strike me down soon afterward.

If I'm still not able to sleep after this, my next manoeuvre is to review my stack of scans, sketches, and scribblings to see what of these non-ongoing things are most likely achievable within the next three months. Part of my problem with the lack of headway in some things is the degree of interest diversity I have, and trying to do eight or nine things at a time, rather than just narrowing the focus down to one or two items. My To-Do list really needs to be abbreviated.

Java Programming, Turkey Sex, Perceptions from Martians

Now that my office environment has been de-cluttered and re-arranged, I feel supercharged to establish a new world order for myself. I feel a lot more capable now of studying and executing some stuff that is very abstract, and demands an extra heightened and sharpened degree of focus.

I just completed the first learning module from a Java programming manual today. My ultimate ambition is to get some sort certification for it, and pad up my resume a bit. It was the cheapest hobby/interest, skill building exercise that I could think of doing to keep me out of trouble from now until the end of winter. I do reasonably well at translating languages, solving decryption and logic puzzles, so I thought the natural and practical thing to build on from these talents is programming. Right now, I thought that the creative side of this writing exercise would help me wind down and decompress after this lesson of processing nebulous terminology, and blowing out the cobwebs, and knocking the rust off of some long unused mental faculties. I'm hoping that nothing in there seized up too much. I blame too much over-interfacing, and having to constantly dig into the heads of people who are so illogical, void of common sense, who regularly obfuscate information, and just are lacking in normal language skills, for any weakness I'm having in being any more proficient at this new project. Dealing so directly and purely with matters of logic and the accuracy involved in programming is a welcome change, but it's also almost a shock to the system as I sit down and get fully engaged in it, compared to what I regularly deal with. It is, however, just the kind of exercise that I need to do to achieve some sort of balance.

In part of the first exercise there was some examples about how the programming language could be used for guiding a exploration probe on Mars, or something, using OOP (Object Oriented Programming) through creating instance and class attributes and methods within a single inheritance hierarchy. Sounds like Martian, doesn't it? If you have no programming experience, it surely would. This mode of empirical experimentation I'm in, thoughts of Martians, and the coming of Thanksgiving (October 8th here in Canada), and the consequently discounted turkeys in grocery stores, all coalesce to remind me of a story about pornography that still makes me laugh.

I forget the name and date of the documentary that was aired about this subject, but the scenario was this. The blurb I saw on it was about the mating habits of turkeys, and how easily tom turkeys could be brought to sexual arousal with the simplest of stimuli.* Scientists were testing turkeys in a lab with cardboard cutout pictures of hen turkeys. The subject male turkey would fluff out his chest and tail feathers, gobbling up a storm, strutting and circling the photo, and then he would actually try to mount it! Apparently, it's not even necessary to have  the whole picture of the female turkey to get the tom turkeys excited. The experiments showed that even when just a picture of the hen turkey's head was pasted on a stick, is enough for the males to still willingly resume trying to court the thing and screw it silly. Oh sure, we could sit here and laugh about how friggin' stupid a creature like a turkey is for doing this. However, the researcher chimed in with a bizarre, yet insightful observation. He stated it as something like: suppose the Martians landed somewhere at night, and then went around peeking through windows to get a first hand account about the behaviours of humans, and chanced upon watching some guy getting freaky with his junk while staring at some pictures in a glossy magazine, or at pixelated lights on a screen. People in this case, aren't that much bloody brighter than turkeys. I would assume that the same kind of conclusion could be arrived at by the Martians if they caught sight of some guys using a laser pointer to tease their cat into chasing a dot of light around the house, laughing like crazy at this simple-minded reaction of this animal, and then sitting down on a couch afterward . . . to play video games**. Not a real difference between the two cases. Therefore, we are far from being a species that should be ridiculing or judging the entertainment behaviours of other animals, especially when it comes to sex. All higher animals use some means of artificial sensory stimulation. It's called play.


Then again, if the abduction stories are true, the Martians shouldn't get a too sanctimonious either if they are still continuing with all that alleged anal probing business.

*- Why they were conducting this research is beyond me, since for the most part, commercially raised turkeys today are the result of artificial insemination. The damn things are being selectively bred to be so big that they seriously risk injuring or crushing a hen turkey if they mounted her, hence this option. There is actually a job out there, as I discovered on Dirty Jobs, on the Discovery Channel. If you ever thought that your job sucked (snicker), just think of these poor bastards.
** - Sorry, but using a controller to chase or shoot at what amounts to points of light on a screen amounts to something not much different than a cat chasing a red laser dot around. We just have a more sophisticated means of doing it. Relax gamesters, I do this too, but I fail to see the appeal of using a whole day of doing it like people do.