on a lighter note.. .'.

I remembered how to activate the "pleasure centers" in my brain - I can currently cause pulses that start in my head and circulate through the body.

Haven't managed to get it going as a background task yet though. So it's more like a seratonin boost that lingers for a while and tapers out.

If you're interested in trying it - it's kind of like spontaneously dropping (rising?) into a clear, medititive state - if you can do that, you can isolate the release itself. and there you go.

I feel it on both sides of my head, making a 1.5-inch equilateral triangle with my medula oblongata. - where do you feel it?

Am I making sense, or do I sound like a hippie? :)

this was induced by reading Toby's blog, his most recent post has a link to a really cool set of cards he made, based on Timothy Leary's 8-circuit model of the brain. Did a little search to brush up on my details and found myself (disappointingly enough) ticking the boxes next to many of the lower circuit symptoms, reading about the fifth again reminded me of the above "Bliss" - In - A - Can.

Pre-work musings .'.

I am currently involved in a couple of communal projects that could, for want of better words, be described as "startups." We have no funding, everyone is effectively working for free, but there is the intention of money on the horizon - this introduces questions as to how people get paid at the end (if we get there).
If project funding already existed, it'd just be a matter of logging our hours and trusting that everyone was logging appropriately (ie. only logging time where they were truly working), paying them accordingly, maybe setting an upper limit to paid hours per week, etc..
As it is though, the projects currently move more like "open source" development, in that people do a bit here and there, when they feel like it... some people feel like it more often than others, and so it probably isn't "fair" to split up the winnings equally at the end. Also, we've recently run into the question of outsourcing, again not a problem in standard development - but when there's no budget to draw from, and you can't assume that people will be as happy as you are to work on your little project for free, you have to find some happy alternative.

Disjointed preambles and disclaimers aside, I was considering the possibility of a "peer reviewed, infinite share" system. Rather than people logging hours as they work, or just plain old arguing about "fair amounts" of the final income, people post a review of the work they've completed (ie. "I worked for two hours, fixed , added ") and the group vote on the appropriate/proposed share value of that work. Shares could effectively be thought of as representing "hours of work" but in the more abstract sense that, even if it took you five hours, if it's only really two hours of work, then you'd get two shares (or if everyone is in a grumpy mood, none ;-P) (note: actually, shares would have to have a lower value than that, to allow for variable rates of pay: neatening up the wiki would, for example be paid at a lower rate than say, programming or art)

Obviously, this (like any) approach will have it's shortcomings, and (like any) relies on level-headed judgements, but it allows people to "earn" in a moneyless environment, and probably will reduce the risk of argument later on in the game.

As with any "share" oriented system, there is still risk, outsourced work is still, to some extent, faith-based in that people are paid in shares and "hope" that said shares are eventually worth something. But really, what monetary system doesn't operate like this?

Sorry for this boring tripe, but hey - it's _my_ blog :)

any comments/ideas/suggestions/criticisms?

Oh dear... .'.

Pyroptix sent me this link.
here's a snippet:
(feel free to read as much background reasoning as you want into my choices of what to keep and what not to, but I assure you that any analysis you make will be redundant by the next time I make an entryfnord)

** 60 Actual Newspaper Headlines (collected by journalists) **

1. Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
4. Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case
7. Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
10. Prostitutes Appeal to Pope
11. Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
13. British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands
20. Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Ax
22. Miners Refuse to Work after Death
23. Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
24. Stolen Painting Found by Tree
30. War Dims Hope for Peace
31. If Strike isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last a While
33. Enfields Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
34. Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge
36. Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
39. Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft
40. Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
41. Chef Throws His Heart into Helping Feed Needy
43. British Union Finds Dwarfs in Short Supply
46. Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
47. New Vaccine May Contain Rabies
48. Man Minus Ear Waives Hearing
51. Steals Clock, Faces Time
56. Some Pieces of Rock Hudson Sold at Auction
57. Sex Education Delayed, Teachers Request Training

along similar(ish) lines, I picked this up at the cafe today

Laughter and the Union of the Minds .'.

If you're close to me, you've probably heard me ramble about laughter increasing the cooperation between the two hemispheres of the brain. (if you're really close to me, you've probably grinned while I repeat it for the fifth time..)

I have mentioned this study in passing many times since I read it a few years ago - though it's always been a foggy, summarised interpretation - and I feel that Scientific knowledge is certainly far more interesting when you are aware of it's origins.

Jokes, ice water and magnetism can change your view of the world--literally
(You can find the original artical over at Scientific American but I think it requires registration..)

In a culture of hearsay, partial truths, romanticism and urban myths, it is nice to have a horse's mouth to play with occasionally - even if most people believe what they hear without any question (or even any thought!), as one study says:

"..People are ten times more likely to believe something in quotation marks."

-- Pentaphobe

Believe it or not, that probability increases the more outlandish the claims are! As an earlier study showed:

"quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur"

-- "Anything is more impressive if you say it in Latin"

..click here for more..

Some Bad Digital Mojo 'round here.. .'.

Wow. okay. get this.

So Rachel arrived late on Sunday night, sans luggage (they sent her to the wrong place, and the luggage to a different wrong place - I won't go on about it, but they handled it terribly, she'd call, they'd say "dealing with it.." she'd call back later, they'd be no record of the previous interaction, they'd say "okay, putting a note on the computer, dealing with it" etc... etc... took an average of seven phone calls per day just to make sure someone had more than a 10 second attention span)

FINALLY, she got her bags back this evening, but the piece of luggage that was "slightly" over weight and thus couldn't be brought on board was lighter by the exact weight of her laptop.

yup.

not much laptop luck here...

Rachel's back, so I'm "AFK" for a while... .'.

here's a silly thing I scribbled down - needs work, but I needed something to put up here :)






"AFK" - Away From Keyboard

www.ancientscripts.com has some really interesting things including a nice list of writing systems (which I find particularly interesting)

Insomnia and biofeedback .'.

Well, super tired and wide awake - I've done my drumming drills (2 hours, hands under the pillow under my head), read some, drew some, tossed and turned - eventually ended up on the subject of biofeedback..

I really want to make myself some biofeedback devices, not only would it be something to do during insomnia, but also, I think it'd be quite interesting, if not, illuminatingfnord - and worst case, pretty fun.

WARNING: this post is probably going nowhere, to paraphrase "Jack" in Fight Club, "When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep and you're never really awake.."

One can't help wondering though - if I'm watching a screen which is showing my brain activity in almost real time - what kind of changes the observation itself is making, or even the base action of plugging in?

Perhaps this is the reason that some people feel inclined to question the usefulness of biofeedback therapy, saying that the results only stay as long as the biofeedback mechanism is in use - comes down to the whole "quantum uncertainty" thing, you're never operating on your brain, but rather one of your brain's eigenstates that only exist during biofeedback...

Ever plugged a video camera into a television and pointed the camera at the screen? can that happen with biofeedback? could I enter a strange or infinite loop inside my own head just by thinking the right thought and looking at the right point?

Another thing that would be quite nifty is an extensive synaesthesia kit, oh gee - I can't express how nice it would be to push those mental limits - I've worked for years to push my (very modest) synaesthetic capabilities forward, but have met with more blocks than when I was trying to uncover that memory with the big light in the sky, and the large, vibrating, metal thing.fnord!

When I was on tour, one of the dancers got hit on by these two guys who wanted to demonstrate their "invention." She wasn't stupid, so she invited them over to the big table, and they pulled out an object about the size of a AAA battery, attached to a wire and a small box.It was basically a small vibrator, with a microphone hooked into the speed of the vibrations. So the pitch and volume of your voice were totally realised in the modulations (and undulations) of this little toy... I don't think a single person at that table held that in their hand without -however briefly- considering what that'd feel like in places more sensitive than your hands.. but I digress..

There are a few items out there that could sheepishly be called synaesthetic devices, but so far I've yet to find any that can mimic the symptoms of naturally synaesthetic people - it's said that they can
identify absolute tones because they're "the right colour," some can taste sound, some are induced to climax...

...my synaesthesia seems to be limited to feeling unbelievably nauseous every time I hear brittany spears.

This spell checker has issues with the following words:

eigenstates
undulations
synaesthetic / synaesthesia
colour

... what do you think?

Birthdays and absinthe .'.

It was my mate Chris's birthday today - only found out yesterday, so I spend this afternoon/evening making him a card - here are some quick snaps (forgive the poor quality, but I was late for the party as it was)..


(the main logo reads "Chris" forwards and mirror-wise, it came to me whilst half conscious this morning, stressing out about not being able to afford a present..)

Someone brought (quite nice) homemade absinthe to the party, I had a few goes. Very good, in fact, good enough to remove any inhibitions I had about lopping my hair off... here's a photo of the result (green background is a tribute to the absinthe ;-P )



time for passing out now, here's hoping I don't wake up in the morning wondering why my hair's gone :)

Stripped down and stripped back up again... .'.

In the moments I have between working and looking for more work, I've been developing a new backend for Pentaphobia.

At present it's kind of a mish-mash of different bits of code and coding conventions, but the new version will be of a somewhat wiki nature.

It won't have many of the usual wiki features, and in their place there will be gallery/audio support and other such things.

This should lead to the page being updated more frequently, as the current (dreamweaver) templated pages makes it far too awkward to make broad sweeping changes (in the absence of dreamweaver).

..more..

This would have happened a lot earlier if I could be certain about SQL on this server, but as I can't, I'm using flat files - although it'll be (maybe) a touch slower, I'm implementing a basic generic DB interface in PHP that will be used for all of the future content of the page.

This will allow for more detailed access/searching of the site content.

more soon...

Heheh.. whoops.
I forgot to disallow search engine access to TUNGI so it seems yahoo spent the evening perusing genetic imagery :)

hehe

Does a kat have the Buddha Nature? .'.

Kaimana is the name of the cat that lives with my Mother and Sister in Australia, his name means "Diamond" in Hawaiian, fitting, since in his youth he had a prominent diamond on his forehead. (He's a scorpio to the best of our reckoning :)
For convenience we often found ourselves referring to him as "Kai," which led to my discovery that "Kai" meant "Ocean" and "Mana," like in many languages and cultures represented a sort of majiqal force or energy.
Quite an interesting bit of tribal linguistics there, Ocean-magic = Diamond. Makes perfect sense really.

Anyway - was poking around on Wikipedia and ended up at a plain-text representation of the Necronomicon (certainly not the nicest version I've seen. If you want to check out the Simon version of the Necronomicon, there's a (3mb!) pdf file at Fnordfiles. check in texts:eBooks:Occult) which mentions "Kaimanu" as being Sumerian for Saturn. (I assume that's in reference to the planet)

However: Saturn is son to Gaia (who I always associated Kym with) and according to wikipedia's page on Saturn(the God), during the festival Saturnalia(a celebration in his name) "...the roles of master and slave were reversed, moral restrictions lessened, and the rules of etiquette ignored." -- a fitting celebration for a cat if I ever heard one (Whoyou callin' a "pet"?)

Also - one of the rings of Saturn (the planet) is apparently the foreskin of Jesus Christ shot off into space (they sure knew how to hold a briss back then..)

So.. my cat is the foreskin of Jesus, and the English translation of my sister's name is in reference to the Crown of Thorns.. sheesh.

I should upload a photo of the jacket I got in Canada whilst on tour, I got it because it looked warm, and had a cool fluorescent logo on the back, I later realised that it was made by a company called "GSUS Sindustries" and the "cool" logo was a stylized crown of thorns :)
hehe.. whoops.

forgive the rambling I'm just having a laugh, and also forgive the poor research and bare in mind that it takes a _LONG_ time to flip between windows on this iMac, so all of this link pasting was quite the effort :)

Lots of visitors .'.

Well, I must say, it's nice to see there are people coming in and checking out the music and the gallery, folks from all over the place. (my server stats report an average of 7000 requests per month at the moment, or approximately 800 unique page views)

But no comments! ... I know, I know - it's a web page, people come - take what they want and leave..

however since everything's kind of mishmash, experimental like, it'd be nice to hear some feedback from these invisible folk.

We're averaging a couple of hundred meg of music downloads every couple of days at the moment and not a single comment from anyone :)
Maybe I should go the route of the old mp3.com and drop cookies in people's browsers, get 'em to register and such like.. but I'd (of course) prefer to keep it open and just have visitors volunteer feedback...

must. avoid. temptation. to. be. web. nazi :)

anyway - how about a little incentive? If you have come to visit and give me some feedback, I'll put you on a special majickal list of "cool people" who can have access to high quality streams of new stuff as it comes out, or (provided the postage isn't too much, or you're willing to pay it) I'll send you out a CD or t-shirt when they are released.

a few words for a few sounds.. fair 'nuff right?

"When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary."
- William Wordsworth

So it seems the playlist thing has been working badly, if at all. I played around with it a bit this morning while drinking my coffee and ironed out a few glitches.

...not that I'm saying it will work now, but it (at least) is playing the whole playlist through now rather than stopping after the first track and waiting for you to press advance(or whatever). Turns out I wasn't sending the Content-Length MIME header.. if yer interested :)

The audio section now has playlists.
At present it will take whatever audio is onscreen to be your playlist,
so you can basically choose all of a category, all by an artist or just
plain all.

I'd greatly appreciate it if people would have a go at it - it works on
this iMac, but I have no access to an IBM compatible to test it on.

please Drop me a message and let me know if it
works and if there are quirks, just don't be a jerk.

--pph

Banksy is at it again... .'.

After a little bit of downtime, Banksy's website is back up in a new form.
Some beautiful art in there.. and quotes like:

"I strongly recommend if you only ever read one book in your life...

you keep your f**king mouth shut"

Also, have a look at Stelarc

Down with The Phobia .'.

Well - what an amusing co-inky-dink..
Pentaphobia's server (Web Axis) was down for a while and (obviously) pentaphobia was too.
Turns out Rachel's site was down too. There's some weird electronic mojo floating around at the moment..

I have to give kudos to them though, that's the first down time that it's happened and it was very brief - excellent job guys!

So yah, if you came to check things out, my apologies - but it's probably one of those "If a website falls over in the forest..." things.

Seems a bit silly for me to say this now, but if you're looking for hosting - I really recommend web-axis, they're cheap (always a good thing), reliable and fast. And for the cgi oriented peoples out there, they keep things nice and up to date.