It's hot and humid as can be in Japan these days. What this usually means is that I'll set my air conditioner to dehumidify my room when I go to sleep, on a 3-hour timer so it doesn't run through the entire night. It's the same function I use when I'm doing laundry and hanging it to dry in my room, which usually works well enough.
For the past two days, though, I wake up in the morning freezing to discover that my air conditioner is on, and set to cool the room down to 22 C. The first time it happened I brushed it off as some sort of bizarre happening, but the second time it happened I can't help but wonder.
On a side note, self quizzes tell me that I have sleep apnea, a curious sleeping disorder where you constantly drift in and out of sleep so the time you spend sleeping doesn't really rest you. This would explain the bloodshot eyes and listlessness and lack of energy, but it doesn't tell me why.
Thus began my little quest to find out what the hell is wrong with me.
After some poking and prodding, it seems like the culprit might be.....tea. And when I think about it, things got bad after I started drinking lots and lots of tea (in lieu of drinking water) way back in January or so, sometimes green tea sometimes red tea sometimes oolong tea sometimes some other random variety of tea. I'm going to try out not drinking tea for a week and see what happens...hopefully this'll clear itself out, and I can have non-bloodshot eyes for my vanity (hahaha vanity) and some energy and motivation for my sanity.
On a random sidenote, what's with people who like to claim that they're insane? Really crazy people never say they're insane...not even the Mad Hatter.
Wow, hits for the past week took a nosedive. It's not that I'm expecting a huge number of hits or anything, given the general vapidity of my usual content, but wow. On the other hand seeing how I hardly updated then (and am hardly updating now) I think it's perfectly reasonable for that to happen.
So then. An update.
I've been thinking lately on the way document structure works, particularly the way hypertext is supposed to transform things. Maybe this is a result of working with structural layouts of circuits too much, but I was thinking that it'd be really neat to develop some sort of structural representation of text.
Consider your traditional representation of text, the printed kind, where you have chapters, sections, subsections, etc. All fine and well, but the limitation of print is you can't do cool things like click (I guess the physical manifestation would be "poking") a word and jump to a definition of it, or related topics, etc. etc.
Hyperlinks were supposed to change that, and have to some degree of success (or failure, depending on how you like to look at things). You can hope back and forth really quickly between chapters, jump to pages on related topics via links, generate dynamic content, and do all sorts of Really Cool and Nifty Things(tm).
The problem is, you don't really get a sense of structure when you're doing this. For some people, the freedom in moving around wherever you want to on the web is awesome, and I agree that for a good deal of the time being able to do that is great. But let's go back to the printed text. You have a table of contents which tries to lend some structure to things, but if you read any sort of technical book (e.g. math book, computer science book, signal processing book, etc. etc.) you end up thinking to yourself "okay, great, now I know ____, but so what?"
So here's my idea.
Extending the idea of the hyperlink, you add structure. Instead of having a table of contents, you have diagram of how everything's laid out, like the floor plan of a house. Instead of looking at a chair and seeing just a chair, or seeing a lamp and just a lamp, you can see a dining room set, where everything has a reason for existing and there's a reason to care.
Consider learning what the Laplace transform is. Traditionally, you go through the motions of integrating a function with respect to time multiplied against a complex component, and then kind of get led through a few applications when you do exercises. Imagine instead that you see from the very first step that the Laplace transform is a subset of control system modeling, or more generic system modeling. Once you can properly answer the question "Why should I care?" then you get motivation, clarity, and ease of understanding. You show the whole picture, and then dissect it into puzzle pieces.
You can apply the idea to other fields too. If you can visually show, at a glance, a simple relation between the Calvin cycle, the Kreb cycle, the electron transport chain, etc. etc. then suddenly they're not just abstract ideas that you're forced to learn for the sake of learning them (or passing the final), but something you learn because it has a place, a role, a function. You show its purpose, and that makes it significant.
Traditional textbooks seem to try and patch up the haphazard guide a table of contents provides you with by filling in the holes with text. But if you don't see the point of learning something, why would you bother reading the text carefully? While a willingness and a discipline to learn things thoroughly is applaudable, making things more easily learned is my goal, so for the people in the world who find themselves able to learn just fine from textbooks these days, more power to you, but for the other folks, I'd like to try and make something that'll make their lives easier.
@llen was goodly enough to give me a gmail invite, but now that I have one I have no idea what email address to use. Everything based remotely close to something that has to do with my name is already taken.
Times like this I wish my name were more unique (apparently Chester didn't have a problem getting his at all, grr).
In the meantime, if you're reading this and are bored enough to leave me a suggestion please do (even if you do it anonymously)
In keeping mostly up with writing in my Japanese blog daily, this one's gone rather neglected for the past week or so. I don't have much to say at the moment because I've been busy with my work here in the lab (and haven't shown up at all at my regular translating job for the past two weeks).
And since I'd made a mention of it before and having it hang over my head is starting to irritate me, the entry I made a few days back has to do with a break up while I was here. I don't particularly care to write anything about it here, but people who care can ask me about it later.
I'll be heading back to the states in a month and a half, and right now that's the last thing I want to do. There are some things I miss about being back in the US, but I've grown thoroughly attached at the hip shoulder and knee to this country and lifestyle, the people and the way the seasons actually change (even though I'll bitch about how hot/freezing it is on a day to day basis), and all those curious little quirks that make Japan, Japan.
It's hard to spend a year with people and then just disappear, knowing you'll probably never see them again. I'm in the process of trying to find ways to keep in contact, some way to hold on to some sort of bond so even after I'm not here there'll still be some way to stay connected. Since the lab does some presentations in the states (and all sorts of other places) from time to time, maybe I'll be able to see them again at conferences. Motivation for me to try to make something out of myself, and publish a paper or few.
I spend my days from morning time until ten, eleven, sometimes midnight (and every now and again 1 or 2am) at lab, either working on my things, bumming around online, or goofing off and playing poker with my labmates. But it doesn't feel like work, not a moment of it. Every line of code I write and every minute I spend figuring out why it is circuit A isn't interfacing properly with circuit B is a joy.
Wandering outside and seeing the landscape of Japan on the weekends (and on days when I just don't feel like being inside the lab, which happens every so often) is relaxing and puts me at a state of peace I'd have a much harder time finding in the states. The closest I had to that was when I'd go down to Stephanie's place and visit her and her parents (family friends) for a weekend, getting away from the Berkeley mess and hopping back into suburbia for a bit. But she's all grown up now and is off doing her thing at CMU so damn.
Mostly, I'm just not inclined to go back to the states. I'd love to have all my friends here so we could go out and run around the cities and towns, and by no means are they out of sight or out of mind. They're the only motivation to go back to the states, really.
"Home" just isn't really home anymore.
It's come to my attention that some people in my lab (at least one anyways) read this blog too. While that's certainly nifty as can be, I can't help but hope that they're not trying to learn grammar from this blog. That'd be so terribly awkward.
Speaking of the word "so," there seems to be a tendency for people in this country to say "thank you so much" as opposed to "thank you very much" when they're speaking in English. While I can see "thank you so much" being used in situations when something that's memo-worthy is done, it seems that the phrase is used in a much more common setting here. I wonder, then, is it just a California thing where "thank you very much" is more common? Maybe just a US thing? Maybe elsewhere in the world it's more common to use "thank you so much" instead. Or maybe it's just a bizarre translation/teaching of English in this country.
Ahh languages are fun. It feels like the less I write in here the worse my English becomes. With each passing day it fades away from me like the shadows of a pleasant dream the night before.
There are predominantly two auras you can project when facing an opponent you wish to defeat.
The first has been better said by both Zongxun Yao and expanded upon by Chester, which I shamelessly copy & paste below:
*****************
"In combat: Head desires to smash them, hands will strike them, body will destroy them, steps will pass them, feet will to stomp them, spirit will threaten them, the breath will assault them.
When you do this, both the spirit and flesh of the opponent will come under extreme pressure. In this way you can capture the essence of controlling your opponent."
Years before I read this, I had stumbled upon a similar conclusion. I said that in combat, you need to feel as if every part of your body, the gaze of your eyes, the desire of your heart, and even the breath you exhale seeks to extinguish your opponent's life. This isn't a hateful thing. It's just a cold, matter of fact, "their life will end" feeling.
It seems that on some primitive level of our brain, we still perceive this unspoken predator/prey relationship. When this is executed, the opponent panics, cowers, and is reduced to a paralyzed broken prey. Don't do it to your friends!
*****************
The second is to draw everything in, to remove all the intent from the air. Stillness, absolute and unmoving. Your opponent expects someone who will attack them, who will have an air of aggresiveness and violence. When you are a void, your opponent's spirit will be thrown off and scattered. You will be unknown, unexpected, unpredictable. By keeping everything within you reveal nothing, expose nothing, never allow your opponent to have anything to find weakness or flaw with.
I'm curious to know what would happen between two equally skilled fighters, one adopting an aura of aggression, the other of void.
The more time I spend living, the less I feel inclined to write in here. The weeks are filled with things to do. Sometimes I feel like there's no better time than the moments I spend walking around campus at 10 or 11pm when I'm taking a break from working and catching a moment or two for myself.
The solitude of night offers its own brand of solace. Without so much as another person's breath being caught in the air or the sound of shoes swish-swashing through the grass those fine patches of darkness tucked between lightposts and building doors are pockets of peace. I've become inclined towards solitude. I find that I'm often thinking to myself that I'd rather walk by myself through the grass and trees than sit around and chat with someone. There's nothing I really want to say, and I like the feeling of motion when I'm walking. It's calming, therapeutic and healing in its own way.
I haven't forgotten saying that I'd expound on the topic from last time (see below); it just doesn't seem to need any words. Anything I can say about it now is forced, a formality to inform those around me of the state of affairs in an attempt to prevent, or at least limit, future awkwardness.
No heart no soul.
Without at least one or the other, these words are meaningless.