tHog

DIARY 2003

(2002)

DECEMBER

NOVEMBER

OCTOBER

SEPTEMBER

AUGUST

JULY

JUNE

MAY

APRIL

MARCH

FEBRUARY

JANUARY

2003

Fri, Feb 28

<15:43> Before going off for a pardey weekend, thought I'd mention the SF/fantasy book featuring spiral auras, which I finished reading the other day. Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood is something of a classic, a very SF approach to fantasy themes and I like it that way. As a whole there's perhaps something missing as it's not as majestic as LoTR, the Rama series, The Anubis Gates or similar masterpieces, but this may be corrected in the sequels which I've yet to check out.

As for the auras, many people are reported to be able to see them without any extra guidance, and the fact that I saw one while in a sensitized state is not a big deal. Still it's quite fascinating.

Wed, Feb 26

<02:52> Consider the following:

  1. Throughout the history, the spiritually inclined ones have used weird substances and rituals to help them come into contact with deities and other higher powers.
  2. During my experiences on June 20 2002, I could see a spiral pattern around a tree.
  3. Eight months after the experience I'm reading a fantasy/SF novel where a tiny detail catches my eyes: trees have a spiral aura. *chills*
What the heck is going on here? After a bit of googling, I'm still a bit suspicious if the book is right on this one, but at least the general opinion seems to be that Chi comes in spiral forms, and that goes quite well with the tree. Of course this is a huge subject, possibly involving galaxy formation dynamics and the torsion of spacetime.

(Traditional cosmologies assume zero torsion. However, if the universe has nonzero net spin, it might have torsion, which for a closed universe means a Möbius-style closure. The guys at MRAO/Cavendish in Cambridge actually work on this stuff using Geometric Algebra :-)

And now for something completely different. On Monday I happened to walk past the cinema when Pahat Pojat was about to start, so I went and saw. The true story of the Finnish Dalton Brothers was good and well told, but that's about it for the great movie moments. I'm disappointed by the photography and technical side, although there were some nifty ideas like showing shadows only for some stealth action. On the other hand, the movie is quite accessible to younger people, and it could work on a TV screen as well. So the important societal message is easily spread around.

Fri, Feb 21

<18:31> Watched Starship Exeter: The Savage Empire and liked it. The initial disappointments with picture quality and lack of CGI turned into fascination as I realized it's emulating The Original Series of Star Trek, and it does this quite well. This and other fanfiction I've found via the Star Wreck discussion board.

Mon, Feb 17

<22:35> Weekend's all Wrecked up in Tampere where I arrived on Thursday -- Oh Thursday! -- in time to meet up with Milja and Jussi as they were leaving for a weekend trip for her birthday celebrations. The Wreck filming would be on Saturday so I had spare time for the whole Friday, unfortunately suffering a headache from red wine (not the alcohol part, mind you, I hate to explain this over and again).

Jussi has some nice SciPhi books and I grabbed a Rudy Rucker book on infinity and the human mind. Totally cool stuff. Remember the idea that inside each elementary particle there is a universe? Well, one stunning idea in the book was that physical scales "wrap around" so that the inner universes are "on the same level" with ours.. and one of the sub-universes IS our own universe. But it's not the first time I saw this idea; it was also proposed by Paul Kustaanheimo, and it's mathematically described by modulo algebras. Cool stuff which I'll have dig deeper :-).

Didn't quite finish the book as I headed for town on Fri night to meet Emilia. Discussed the usual stuff about life and the universe, but also bit more personal questions. While this revealed further fundamental disagreements between us, it felt good to go through.

By the way, on Thursday on my (rail)way to Tampere I had some synchronistic experiences with the book Omon Ra by Viktor Pelevin. It's a Russian space odyssey which got my interest initially, but overall it was one positive surprise after another. It goes right into deep ideas without any extra drabble, like the point on the second page that there's some specific event for everyone that defines how your personality starts to evolve. In addition there are many subtle references, but it was the Pink Floyd one that really got my attention, as it focused on one particular song which was the one that hooked me into PF back in the day @cam. It's a rather complex issue involving my relation to Cambridge, but enough of this, go read the book yourself, and you'll probably find a personal connection which is rather different from mine.

Saturday is not so much to describe literally about. Started the day at 9am and filmed until about 7pm. It was the demonstration/riot against Pirk's dictatorship and naturally the crew needed people for the crowd. Bloody cold it was though, but some heck of fun. I got a few photos, mainly from the party that was arranged as a reward. Nothing grand about the setting in the clubroom of a student hall, but it was a special selection of geeks, not some mundane folk, so it was pretty fun. There was even sauna which was a great thing after the day of freezing our asses. Overall the day was almost mesmerizingly fun, I felt really alive, which is funny when you consider that geeks are sometimes (erroneously) regarded as no-lifers. I managed to chat with a few of the gods, including Timo the director, Atte the co-director and Esa the sound engineer. Benevolent gods and nice to get to know. Now waiting for the release even more as I'm invited to the opening night :-).

Mon, Feb 10

<07:57> Hard to watch Trek with a straight face after all the Wreck parodies. I woke up early and watched First Contact while it was still dark. While this movie does have more humour than the previous ones, much of the fun came out of parallels with Star Wreck 5 that kept popping into frontal consciousness. Can't wait to see Wreck 6.. maybe released before the 24th Century?

Sat, Feb 8

<14:54> Completely remade rio.mp3. It's not much different, but overall better -- except for singing. I really should focus on the engineering and get someone else to do the vocals :-).

Fri, Feb 7

<12:07> Another piece of rough experimentation. Probably with more comedy value than the previous one.

Thu, Feb 6

<04:29> I hacked a piezo element into my acoustic guitar (the piezo isn't really a mic, but works), and did some experiments. The result is here and at best it might even have some comedy value, like those B films that are so fun because they're so bad. My music page tells more about this poor man's multitrack studio.

The Animatrix' first episode was released. Pretty funky stuff. It's no fanfic, even partly written by the Wachowskis. I had some problems with the Quicktime file with MPlayer, but it works after some patching. I also converted it into divx, see here.

Sat, Feb 1

<19:57> Enough with these DOS soundcard problems. I'm sticking to Linux for games.


Risto A. Paju