and what the past built

In order to exercise my brain a bit, this post will be somewhat philosophical. I'm hoping that this will be a more structured entry. At least in relation to blog postings. My usual stream of consciousness style fits well with the blog medium, but I haven't had organized writing in a while. I take that back. I haven't had organized writing about a topic I'm interested in writing about in quite some time. Though I usually try to put at least one picture in my posts so as to break the monotony of text, I think this will mostly be one big wall of text. Apologies beforehand.

I have mentioned a few times in previous posts that I had wanted to do a little written exploration of consciousness. Perhaps consciousness isn't quite an accurate word for what I have in mind. I should add 'temporality' - if that's even a word - to be more accurate. The remainder of this entry will flesh out my opinions about the concept of 'time' and 'consciousness'. I hope I don't come across as pretentious. It's simply the exploration of things that tickle my mind.

What is consciousness? Once you sit down and think about it for a while, it's quite complex, no? Could a quick look at the dictionary entry shed light on anything in particular?

While the first half of the Definition [1] says nothing in particular, the second half is interesting. "Awareness of one's own existence" That's deep isn't it? Questions arise about what enables us to "be aware". Is it the concept of a 'soul'? Is it a God-given (by whatever God you may or may not believe in) trait? Or can chemical reactions and neural impulses produce a consciousness? Can consciousness be artificially reproduced? Although interesting questions, I certainly don't know the answer.

On a bit of a tangent, I thought I'd share a little snippet from my high school biology teacher. It can be stated that the co-existence of religion and science is difficult. As a foreword, the following quote isn't necessarily my own view. I simply found it an intelligent proposition to make. My teacher said something along the lines of, "While I believe in evolution and its development. It does not explain the miracle of life. I believe that God imbued this spark of consciousness." It certainly is a firm opinion. Who am I to dispute it? But should science be able to explain the concept of self-awareness, what will happen to religion? There's no answer to that, just think about it. I could go on to lay out my view of religion, but that would be veering too far off topic. Maybe another time.

Returning to consciousness, the mystery is: where does it come from? It's intertwined with the concept of time. A facet of consciousness is its understanding of the here and now. An unconscious person has no concept of time until they return from that state. Sleep can be thought of as being a state of subconscious. Again, the perception of time is distorted during this period. Sometimes the night passes in an instant; before you realize it, the alarm is chiming. Other times, it lasts a lifetime; an alternate time reference presents itself in your dreams. It's neat and at the same time it's scary.

Taking fear to its extremes leads us to the topic of death and its mysteries. We can only think of it as a permanent state devoid of consciousness. Who knows, it could be different - it could simply be an alternate state of consciousness. Transition into omniscience? If sleep is subconscious, could death be super-consciousness? I'm making stuff up now. But these are the points that can be made about consciousness when thinking of present time. That is, consciousness is based on perceiving the temporal immediate.

But that's not the only way we can view it. Another facet of awareness I find intriguing is our perception of the past. It's similar to the Heisenberg Uncertainty type dilemma. If you try to think about what you are doing at present, it immediately becomes the past. You can generalize about what you're doing, but this loses temporal accuracy. That's only the immediate past though. The most interesting part is the distant past - our memories.

We have vivid recollection of some memories whereas others are simply noise in the depths of our minds. When I first started college, I can recall thinking, This is going to take forever. Four years seems so far away. But here we stand in the present - nearing graduation. Remembering the past three or four years happens in an instant.

To me, therein is the paradox of time; perception of the present versus perception of the past. It never ceases to amaze me how time can both fly and crawl at the same time. As we consider the present and future, it often feels like an eternity. When will this class end... When will I graduate... When will I get a job... When will I have my own house... I plan to graduate in two years. But as with the previous example, once two years rolls around, it will be trivial to recollect the events spanning those years.

A duality exists between consciousness and temporality. Isn't it curious? Consciousness exists in the paradigm of 'now'. That is, consciousness lives in the present. But conversely, time exists because of consciousness. Awareness of the present creates the concepts of past and future.

I think that's all I wanted to say. Blogs aren't exactly conducive to structured writing. Also, spreading the writing over a few days didn't help with flow either. And I probably reverted into a stream-style writing with one topic sparking small asides. Hopefully I came full circle though. I'm too lazy to proofread (and I really should be studying for a test right now).

I have mixed feelings about types of writings like the one I just wrote. They don't seem to lead anywhere. They don't have any solid conclusion; by this I mean, there's no concrete final explanation. It's simply an exercise in explaining one's observations. On one hand, I ask myself, is it pointless to bother? There's no resolution to it. But on the other, I tell myself, if discarded for holding no conclusion, the ideas will never present themselves. And what is worse? Producing intangible concepts? Or holding back ideas?

Let's hear what you think. I'm hoping that this may incite some of you to do a post and not so much a small reply in the chatbox (though either is welcome). What's your take on consciousness, time, and even life? Maybe I'm just a huge conceited dork, but it's enjoyable sometimes to freely state your own thoughts. Hopefully the next post will be a lighthearted one. I don't know how much seriousness this blog can handle.

Until then, may your days be as bright and as wonderful as it was here in Atlanta today. Sunny, Blue Skies, with Refreshing Wind.

what the future holds

So the first half of this post will be somewhat of a journal post. Though I tend to shy from posting diary-esque content, this will be the exception. Perhaps I just need to put what's in my mind out into text. When there's just so much you're trying to mentally digest, it's best to just have it all laid out in front of your eyes. If you, the reader, are not interested, you can skip to the second heading in this post where the content is more in line with normal "from the nfinite" posts.

And there it is, the resolution to the source of so much anxiety since the beginning of this year. I'm relieved that it's a good one, as many of the plans swirling in my head hinged upon this letter. But where does this lead me now? Of course into more studies for another year (or possibly two) of studies. And as the hinge is now in place, I must fixate on building the larger door that goes with it. Before this point, I made excuses for planning the door because I didn't have the hinges; but now I need to carefully plan the next few years of my life. That certainly does sound ominous doesn't it?

There are things I want to do, and there are things I've told myself I should do. I should get an MBA while I'm still in school - while I still have the mindset and malleability to study. If not, once I enter the workforce, there may be no going back to school. Now is the time to do it - now is the time to fight procrastination. If I want to do this, I need to take the GMAT, write some essays, and get three letters of recommendation... Looking at the dual MBA program offered by my university, that's 39 hours - 18 classes. In the worst case scenario, my Computer Engineering Major requirements are 30 hours - 10 classes. I find it amusing that I just might be spending more time doing stuff outside my main area of interest during my graduate studies. But that can't really be helped now can it... Just gotta hit it headfirst and hope my head is hard enough...

And then there are the things I want to do. I want to do the LBAT-Japan program - Language for Business and Technology. This takes place next summer and requires that there are at least 10 participants. I truly hope this follows through since I delayed my undergraduate degree just for this purpose. If everything goes well, I can tack on a Japanese minor to my undergraduate diploma. Truly, we are just pimping out our degrees. I suppose it's a sign of growth and ambition too...

Another goal I had wanted to achieve during my undergraduate studies was to participate in a work abroad assignment in Japan. We have a great program here at Tech, previously sponsored by JETRO, but has now grown on its own. I was hoping to have a dip in that type of experience. After all, opportunities like this might not be so easy to come by in the future. So, it's now been delayed to be a graduate school goal... Though there are some extra snags that have appeared. As most abroad assignments are scheduled for at least 6 months, it would cut one Fall/Spring semester from graduate studies. While not exactly frowned upon by the ECE graduate department, it's not exactly encouraged to cut out one of these important semesters as summer semesters have fewer courses available. I have to get permission from some important person to be able to pursue this path. We'll see how that unfolds next year...

So I'm probably just making things sound more dramatic than they are. We're all guilty of doing such things on occasion. I have 2 or 3 months to organize this stuff, so maybe it isn't so bad. But it certainly is a lot to consider all at once. I just hope that everything will go smoothly. If it doesn't, I'll just have to deal with it when the time comes... *sigh I'm so used to my slow pace in life...　でも忙しくなりますね。。。

THE GOOD STUFF STARTS HERE

Alright! ENOUGH OF THE WORRIES AND THE BORING. I talked about getting a Zune HD in my previous post, and it got here a couple days after that post as I'd been hoping! It's quite sexy, slim, and light.

I'm not going to say the Zune HD is the greatest. (Even though I am usually partial to the devices I own) It has many flaws. I should probably outline those first so as to end on a good note. I have two main disappointments with this device. First off is wireless connectivity. One feature missing is WPA/WPA2 Enterprise support is missing. In addition, many browser-based login internet services do not work. Big problems with many university wi-fi services. Luckily, a relatively long forum thread has developed since release date with the culmination of acknowledgment by the Zune development team. Hopefully this means a firmware update will be coming in the near future.

The second disappointment was the weak excuse for an "Apps" section. With the success of the Apple's App Store, I was hoping MS would realize it's quite the lucrative business model. Unfortunately, all we got were a few games and two apps. What's worse is that it seems to be just the previous Zune XNA development API with support for the accelerometer and touch screen. I'm not exactly sure how App/Game code is loaded and run on the Zunes, but it seems they didn't change anything from the old Zunes. Maybe that's OK for forward compatibility, but it does not take advantage of the more powerful hardware available in the Zune HD.

The main reason I'm disappointed in this is because I won't get to play with the Tegra platform just yet. There's an amazing amount of computing resources available on this device. Dedicated GPU, dedicated image processor, dedicated video processor... I want to play with those. But no, XNA development is still locked to mainly drawing 2D sprites. Absolutely no evidence of being able to use the power available. There's the promise of a proper app store once the windows mobile team does whatever. I don't care much for the details, I want an SDK that gives me access to the good stuff.

So my two main gripes will probably be resolved in the future. The latter probably much later though. When it does come out, I'll probably play around in it some. You may see a really cheesy scrolling shooter come out of it. ... and not much more.

Alright on to the goodies of the Zune HD. I'll try to make it short because I feel this post has gotten quite long. The OLED screen is beautiful. The contrast on this thing is straight up delightful to look at. The menus are pretty as well, it has a fun typography video-ish feel to it. I very much enjoy it.

Sound quality is great as people say. And hey, that's what matters right? This is first and foremost a media player. The audio better be good. The picture viewer is very responsive with pictures looking much better than they did on the old Zunes. (On the old ones, they doubled the native resolution of the display so as to have better image quality when zoomed in, but the scaled down and zoomed out view looked very aliased and ugly). I only wish there was a rotate image ability in this newer picture viewer. A feature I thought would be inherently intuitive, but apparently not. You can tilt the Zune, but it remains in one orientation no matter the orientation of the Zune.

Ok rushing on to the next subject (since I feel this post is becoming quite long). I was pouring some cereal the other day and was like... WTF HAPPENED TO LUCKYSeriously, what happened to his nose? It turned into a snout. I didn't know leprechauns had snouts instead of noses. If you don't remember what Lucky looked like, I guess you can google him up. But for those of you who do, doesn't that look... awkward? Or is it just me... This redesign of Lucky disappoints me =(.

I hope you have no disappointments like this in your future. Until next time, I hope you enjoyed this quite long post... and weren't bored out of your mind.

busybusy

Hmm so it's been a pretty busy weekend with a pretty busy week to come. But this shall all die down fairly soon, if only to start up again in a few weeks again. Deadline for degree petitions are soon. I have to run around and see if my plan to go to Japan after graduating will be possible and if it'll affect the petition stuff. And also gotta go to the Co-Op office for certification in that...

In other news, I did some thinking recently and just today decided to drop some moneys on the new Zune HD. After winning that RAM and also getting a cheap Zune80 in the recent past, I figured I could resell some of my gadgets and be able to afford this new player. So before it goes on eBay, if anyone (or if you know anyone) who is looking to buy either: a 2nd gen iPod nano 8GB, a refurbed Zune80, or 6GB of DDR3, lemme know =) -- this is my shameless plug, yes.

Anyway, maybe I'll have some pictures of my new toy in a few days. There's part of me that's excited, since this will be my first pocket gadget with an internet browser. But the other part of me (the cheap and frugal side) is giving me a hard time - I'm just falling into the consumerism trap. I really don't need this thing and the money could be better spent in savings.

Too late, purchase made. Bought it from Dell b/c they have a 15% coupon... Even though it said shipping in 6weeks, I hope that's just a placeholder and that they will have them in stock on release date.

Anyway, I don't have much to say - haven't really done abstract thinking due to doing nothing but coursework and gaming... take care readers - until next time.

long post is long (maybe)

Ok so it's time for another round of...... let's talk about random things! YAY!
First up on our menu is toilet paper. Maybe I shouldn't have used food imagery with toilet imagery...

...

Anyway, this is something I've noticed only since living in an apartment with a shared bathroom. And it leads me to this question: Which direction do you hang your toilet paper? Please excuse the following horribly illustrated image. I didn't feel like creating a sophisticated looking diagram, nor did I want to take a picture of the real thing. So you must opt for the final choice of mouse-drawn MSPaint l33tness.

This is something that truly bothers me. I do the latter of the two choices. I ask because I wonder if people really do intend on doing the former? or if they're just being lazy when they put on a new roll and don't check on its direction of unrollage.

The problem I get is, we have a trashcan in the vicinity of the toilet paper roll dispenser thing. Having the TP roll in the former position always causes the edge of the TP to extend from its center of mass. And by that I mean..... IT FRICKIN DIPS INTO THE TRASHCAN. I don't want something that's dipped in the trashcan (or even brushing the wall) to be wiping my buttocks. The latter orientation of TP protects the loose TP from extending past the immediate radius surrounding the toilet paper. It also keeps its separation from the wall. The former orientation often swings and brushes against the wall. Anyway, that's just me being a neat freak.

On the topic of bathrooms, while typing those previous paragraphs I had a hard time choosing the proper word for bathroom. The main subject was the toilet. But the word bathroom has the term 'bath' in it - which is not the main subject I wish to talk about. I could have used toilet - but this can refer to both room or physical toilet. Also using toilet too many times is no good. And then there's washroom. But I don't speak English (in its strictest meaning), so that would just sound pompous coming from me. I now end this paragraph with no conclusion.

What sounds cooler? "End of Eternity" or "Resonance of Fate". If you said End of Eternity, you are cool. Resonance of Fate sounds like they're trying too hard. At least, to me it does. Anyway, Resonance of Fate is the localization of the JRPG End of Eternity. I just wish they kept the original title in bringing it overseas. Is it some copyright issue? Who knows, but I think End of Eternity sounds cooler. I'm looking forward to seeing more about this game though. An RPG featuring gunfights is unique enough to warrant some attention (and hype if they make it fun).

Speaking of JRPGs, I still need to finish Star Ocean 4. I think I'm at the final moments of the game... storyline-wise. Myuria is the cool character in the game. And if you're unfamiliar, I must clarify that it is not because of her ... assets ... that I like her character. Which reminds me of a character from another game that I liked. Viola from Eternal Sonata was awesome. I think that's enough of my dork comments.

On to the nerd comments. So recently I added 4gigs of RAM to my computer (like I said I might in that Win7 First Impressions post) for a total of 6gigs of RAM. And I've yet to get over 4gigs usage (I got close while playing Crysis with a buncha background apps). But I now idle around 2gigs with all my usual background apps running. Of course a problem comes up... of course.

So it turns out Creative sucks. (I know this, and I've known this, yet I still use their products. Stupid silly me) My first problem was a long time ago with the SCREECH OF DEATH plaguing the Audigy line. I'm sure you can google it if you're interested. But anyway, I've had a newer Audigy 2 ZS for a while now. Aside from crappy Windows 7 support, the specific problem incurred is this: Microphone input is extremely erratic and can result in a robotic type of voice. It's hard to explain, but let's just say it can be difficult to understand at times. (Especially while playing FPS games and chatting).

What's the cause of the problem, you ask? (You did, didn't you?) There is a bug in the Creative drivers. It manifests itself on 64bit operating systems with more than 4gb of RAM installed. Lucky me. So for the past week I've been trying alternative drivers and all kinds of stuff. No luck. Today I stumbled across a quite simple solution.

Turn on my onboard sound card! No, I'm not replacing my Audigy - it has too many features that I like. But instead, I can just simply use the onboard sound microphone input! Output from the Audigy, input from the onboard! Problem diverted! Ok, I still want a fix Creative! DO IT NOW!

And now the direct stream from the nfinite shall be terminated. I hope none of that was poorly worded and confusing (as it many times can be). But I don't feel like going back to proofread.

Enjoy life! And I hope you can solve your problems instead of just diverting them!