Category: Life

Poetic Justice, Kung Fu Style

John Winkelman

This past Saturday was the Midland Open Martial Arts Tournament, hosted by Sifu Henry Chung and his students. Eight of us from Master Lee’s class attended, and between us we brought home, I think, fifteen medals in forms and sparring.

During the past two tournaments Rick — our senior student– and I have been attempting to perform a Broadsword vs. Spear set, and for various reasons have not been able. Two years ago a mis-communication found me at lunch when the two-person forms event was held, and last year I zigged when I should have zagged and caught a spear in the eye.

So this year Rick and I sorted out all of the possible contingencies (if one of us loses a weapon segue to an empty handed form; if one of us is hurt that person determines if we continue or stop, based on number of limbs remaining; etc.). Well, it all worked, because not only did we take first place in our division, but about halfway through the form I chopped the tip off of the spear. The same spear which stuck me last year.

So, as Zathras said, at least there is symmetry.

The rest of the weekend found me wandering around trying to find the most comfortable patch of grass in town for a nap. I found a good one, but it is my secret.

Putting My Ducks In a Row

John Winkelman

So I realized on Tuesday that this weekend is Memorial Day weekend, which means I have a kung fu tournament to attend on Saturday. That means a lot of work, umm, today and tomorrow. This year will be the year I redeem myself for getting hurt last year and being at lunch during an event the year before.

Also, I have finished creating the Infinitely Extensible XML/XSL/XHTML Weblog Template System. Not all I need is a content mamagement screen or two and this puppy will be ready to bundle up and offer as freeware/something for my clients… should I ever have any clients… should my current job go sour…

Well, it was a spiffy thing to figure out, and undoubtedly the most useful thing I have created since I started in this line of work.

In two weeks is the BIG kung fu demonstration at the Grand Rapids Arts Festival 2002 (1:00pm on Saturday, June 8 at the adult involvement stage). The day after, I am off for a week of vacation in sunny Richmond, Virginia, in the care and keeping of a beautiful woman.

Sometimes life is goooooooood.

A Brief Interlude

John Winkelman

ES.O has a new look, obviously. Vertical rows of squares get old in a hurry. I like the aesthetic, but something like that needs to be more subdued, or made so blatant that nothing else exists on the page. As the saying goes, too much is too much, but way too much is just right.

I spent a lot of time over the weekend reading, and writing, and thinking. Much of it was random and uncoordinated (like this site!) but I think I came to some realizations about the nature of cause and effect. The way I understand Nirvana (from the Buddhist perspective) is that to achieve Nirvana is to escape from the cycle of birth and death, cause and effect. But is it possible to even conceive of such a state?

Here is an excerpt from an email I recently sent to someone very close to me:

“…I have been writing a lot, trying to stay sane during all of this insanity. One of the side effects of keeping a journal is that you tend to get a lot of free psychoanalysis: I did this. Why did I do this? How does that make me feel? What does that feeling remind me of? How does that make me feel? What does that feeling remind me of? How does that make me feel?”

And so it goes. The next major changes to this site will (hopefully) be completely invisible to you-all, as I am working on rolling my own extensible XML-driven web logging application. In theory simple, but in practice… a whole lotta work.

Pre-launch Blathering

John Winkelman

I built ECCESIGNUM using a combination of XML, XSL and PHP on the back end, and XHTML and CSS2 on the front. Thus I have a site which I can change completely by modifying two files: the XSL stylesheet and the CSS stylesheet. One for structure and one for presentation. The XML file contains all of the information necessary for markup and structure, so I could, in theory, have a choose-your-preferences panel which would allow the user to set up combinations of preferences which would make the site look completely different from one user to another.

So now I have to go through and re-create the rest of the site in XML. The largest of the files (the archives) went together smoothly, and the rest await inspiration.

We at BBK Studio have been busy enough that I can hardly bear the sight of code or mark-up at the end of the day. We are meeting handoff deadlines at the rate of about two a week, a feat not easily matched in the web development world.

So to take my mind off of computers I have been reading Son of the Morning Star by Evan Connell. I may post a review when I have finished grokking. I can tell you this, though: Custer was an extraordinary individual, with a temperament and sensibilities more in line with East European nobility than with the men he commanded.

Malfunction

John Winkelman

Today I was laid low by a visual migraine. If you have never had one of these, it feels like what I imagine a stroke feels like. Severe headache. Brilliant, beautiful, fractured light pattern somewhere in the field of vision. Information coming in from eyes doesn’t quite make it to the cognitive centers of the brain. Short-term visual memory goes kaput. I couldn’t process what I was reading, and couldn’t see the mouse cursor on my monitor.

My first visual migraine scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know what it was and thought I had just suffered some form of brain damage. After an hour or so in a dark, quiet room, it went away. This time, it turned into a full-blown migraine which I currently have in check with massive amounts of powerful medication.

If this sounds familiar, there is a better description here , and over here is a drawing of what it looks like from the inside.

Maybe I should make a Flash demo of a visual migraine… when this one ends.

Small Minds

John Winkelman

GEARS!

Six months ago we all grew up a little.

A friend of mine recently told me that the owner of the graphic design company he worked for, made comments which I feel are pretty much typical of Americans when they think no-one is looking: After the first tower came down, Mr. Owner told his employees to come up with patriotic flag-covered t-shirt designs, because sales of flag covered shit always go up after events like 9-11. And, he said to print the designs on the cheap shirts because people will buy any old ratty shirt as long as it has a flag on it.

That friend quit a few days later.

Carrying around a flag makes you a good American in about the same way going to church makes you a good Christian. In other words, it really, ultimately, means nothing.

Frames of Reference

John Winkelman

I was rearranging my bookshelves today and came across one of my old college texts, a small novel called Flatland. The story takes place in a two-dimensional world, told from the point of view of A Square. At one point A Square is visited by an extra-dimensional visitor: a sphere. The sphere takes A Square on a tour of the dimensions, from 0 up through 3, and maybe even 4. I forget; I last read the book almost ten years ago.

One concept which I still find fascinating is one of the incidentals to extra-planar travel (as described in Flatland) — namely, that from the point of view of dimension n+1 , an observer can see into the middle of a solid which resides in dimension n . Consider: from the point of view of the 3-dimension world in which we exist while traveling through 4d space, we can see into the middle of a 1d (line) or a 2d (plane) object. A square, seen from within it’s own dimension, is a line. A line, seen from within its own dimension, is a point. And a point(0d) is the only thing which exists within its own frame of reference.

So an observer in 4d space would be able to see into the middle of a 3d object. This intuitively makes sense. Assuming time to be the fourth dimension, pick a point at a particular location in space and time, and watch: When a 3d solid intersects that point, the part of that solid which occupies that point will be visible.

And, as these thing go, I have been reading more on memetics, and the points of view of the inhabitants of Flatland, when encountering an occupant of Sphereland , correspond with a concept I studied briefly in college — memetic engulfment .

Memetic engulfment is that which happens when you get so caught up in your your self-reinforcing world-view that you forget that what you see and experience is not the entire world. I studied this in the context of The University, and the idea that the what was taught — the experiences and information imparted to students — was becoming more and more removed from what was actually necessary for existing in “the real world”. The University Meme slowly crowds out the rest of the world.

But all of that was a long time ago, and now I wonder if, given the appropriate metaphors and practices, a person could perceive, with 3d sensory apparatus, the 4d world from the point of view of a 5d frame of reference. In other words, perceive the flow of time, from outside the flow of time…

And if you managed it, how would you get back?

Epitaph

John Winkelman

Alas, the world has lost another saint. Chuck Jones, animator extraordinaire, responsible for Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and the rest of that gang, passed away on Friday at the age of 89. Chuck made me laugh when there was little to laugh at, from the age of four up until… Hell, he still makes me laugh.

Last May we lost Douglas Adams. We are losing our jesters, the ones who point out the nakedness of our emperors. We have beadles, sycophants, and village idiots beyond number, but the jester is an endangered species. I take solace in knowing that our current village idiot, the one who is happily groin-kicking the rest of the world, is pissing off enough intelligent people that a new crop of jesters will undoubtedly arise, just in time to make us laugh through the next world war.

On Thursday/Friday I pulled my first 24-hour work shift. Thursday 7:00 am to 5:30 pm, then back at 9:00 pm to 12:00 noon on Friday. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I don’t want to do that again, any time soon.

Love and Death

John Winkelman

I heard an interesting statistic today: historically, more people die on February 14 than on any other day. Apparently this is a trend which has been going on for some time across the entire world. Maybe, if I feel motivated, I will look up some statistics.

It took a few days, but I have added destructive capabilities to my tank. You can find it here . Once again, arrow keys move the thing, mouse controls aiming and firing. It weighs in at a whopping 4k.

I have not forgotten about my artificial evolution experiments; they have, of necessity, been set aside in favor of learning more about Flash. Work has been taking up a lot of my time, too.

A word about the current sidebar: Is it a construct known as a Magic Square. It reads the same in all four directions. It is an interesting pattern puzzle to come up with other phrases which work as a magic square, while making sense, linguistically and grammatically. Numerical magic squares contain number grids which, when added together in rows or columns, always result in the same number. If I feel motivated I may post a couple in a few days.

I’m just not feeling very motivated right now.

Happy freakin’ Valentines Day.