Miriam's Dreamwidth blog

This is a test to see if I can use picture servers for Dreamwidth.

Here is a test picture of the awful incident that happened at Tiananmen Square, way back in 1989, and one person's extraordinary bravery

imgBox

link to the picture

Thumbnail link:


Direct link to the picture


facebook

Hmmm... haven't worked out a way to make facebook images display yet...

Well, last night was definitely NOT fun, though it certainly was interesting. I spent almost 6 hours trying to resurrect my computer. The kind of Linux I use is Puppy Linux, which has a number of aspects that I like over other kinds of Linux. One being that it can be run from external media (CD, USB, etc.), or can be installed on the internal hard drive in the more common way. When booting from CD the user can choose to save their settings and work in a savefile or a special directory (called a frugal install).

When I bought this very cheap laptop I disabled the UEFI booting system and deleted MSWindows from the machine, then booted it from CD, intending to do a full install at some time in the future. I had come to feel there must be a way to do a frugal install that boots entirely from the hard drive. Last night I decided to bite the bullet and work out a way to do it.

After a lot of reading on the topic I gave it a shot... and lost my system. I could still boot from the CD, and I could see all my files were there, I just couldn't persuade my computer to boot up with all my settings and software. [sigh]

As I say, it took me many hours, but I finally have my system back, however I'm still booting from CD. I'll do more reading soon, probably tonight, and try again. I'll likely keep trying until I succeed. It is a bit scary though. :)

My favorite work of Interactive Fiction (IF) is "Galatea" by the incredibly talented author Emily Short.

So, what is IF? You have probably heard of Choose Your Own Adventure stories, where you are able to make choices at various points in a story and it branches depending on what you decide. They are often called "text adventures".

IF lets you type in what you want to do and the program updates your situation. Most use pure text; some use pictures and text; some use animated images. (I always wanted to write stories that play out interactively inside virtual worlds -- I call it VRFiction. There have been some brilliant such works, such as "The Last of Us" and "The Last of Us Part 2"). But in spite of all the potential for graphics, plain old text IF is still often the most complex.

Galatea has around 30 verbs, but more than 150 nouns. You can type in "help" (without the quote marks) to get hints, such as some words the program will respond to.

Most IF has some kind of quest, or story, or puzzle that you are supposed to solve, but Galatea is unusual in that it is a character study which can go hundreds of different ways, depending on what you do or say.

Expect to be frustrated at first, but it can become quite addictive to play over and over again, making different choices and getting different outcomes.

You can download Galatea as a file to be run on your computer, or you can play it online:
http://pr-if.org/play/galatea/

If you want the downloadable file so you can play it offline, you can get it at:
http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Galatea
or
https://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/art/if-artshow/year2000/
You will need a reader program. I recommend Gargoyle, which can read many Interactive Fiction formats.

Woo hoo!!!! I just enjoyed a lovely bit of Linux magic. My favorite Linux is a bit old, but I have it working just how I like, with a lot of programs installed and a lot of things I've set up exactly how it suits me.

Unfortunately time moves on, and I was given some h265 (hevc) encoded videos recently. My favorite video player, mplayer, doesn't have a codec to play them though (at least, not this older version), so I've been converting them using ffmpeg into h264 format, which I can play. It takes about an hour to convert a video, and I end up having to store the video twice, once for each format.

Tonight an idea hit me. If I can get ffmpeg to decode the hevc video and pipe it out the standard output (stdout) to mplayer through its standard input (stdin) then maybe I can play videos directly. After experimenting for a while I found a way that actually works!!!!

ffmpeg -i "video.mkv" -f mpeg - | mplayer -cache 10240 -

-i tells ffmpeg to use the video file "video.mkv"
-f tells it to output mpeg format
- by itself tells it to output on stdout
| is the pipe character
-cache tells mplayer to use a cache (in this case a large one) to prevent seek problems
- by itself tells mplayer to take its input from stdin

Now I just need to work out how to get it to display subtitles as well. I'm so deaf these days I have to watch everything with subtitles.

Ah... I think I've just worked out how to show subtitles. Mplayer has an option that lets it take its subtitles from a separately named file. I'll give that a shot.

Yes! It works! Extracting the subtitles from the original file takes just a few seconds:

ffmpeg -i video.mkv subtitle.srt

Then I add the -sub subtitle.srt option and I'm good.

ffmpeg -i "video.mkv" -f mpeg - | mplayer -cache 10240 -sub subtitle.srt -

Ta-da!!!!! :D

It seems to me, realising that a blind, unfeeling universe gets to be conscious through us, and thus able understand itself via our minds (for we are the tiny, infinitely precious, conscious bits of this vast universe), provides far greater comfort than some mythical stone-age god which threatens you with an eternal lake of fire and torture if you disobey some bizarre, often inappropriate, primitive laws.

Some religious friends have told me that their god gives them purpose and that without it they would be lost. I try to explain to them that they haven't thought it through completely. They don't know the mind of their god so can't know what purpose it might have (it moves in mysterious ways), so the only meaning they have is in giving up looking for one, and accepting instead broken and outdated fabrications from our primitive, superstitious past.

On the other hand, it's easy to derive genuine meaning and moral goals from the real world around us.

There are two basic forms of material in the universe: alive and non-living. Living things have a main simple purpose: to continue life.

Some living things have developed brains to help them live, and that brings another purpose on top of, and in aid of life itself: to learn.

Some intelligent creatures form social groups in order to better survive and that gives yet another purpose: to care for our fellows.

Humans are special. We have developed phenomenally oversized brains which grant us expanded purposes. We can learn about far more than just the things our survival depends upon, and in that learning we can see that all life is interwoven and that we depend upon all those around us, so we need to look after all life, not just our own. We can see beyond ourselves, and our family, and our tribe or clan, beyond our village or city, past state and national borders, even past species boundaries to realise we are all brothers and sisters -- not just all humans, but all the other mammals, even all other vertebrates, all other animals, and even all life.

The power, beauty, majesty and duty of reality far exceeds the pettiness of any parochial stone age myth.

You're on your way to a business meeting that could make you a lot of money. Ahead is a bus and a small car parked on the side of the road before a bridge and a lot of men milling around. Several of the men frantically wave you down as you approach the bridge. Reluctantly, because you don't want to be late, you stop and ask the men what's up. They tell you the bridge ahead is dangerous and you shouldn't cross it.

You peer at the bridge and say it looks alright to you.

Another man saunters over and says to ignore them; the bridge is fine.

One of the men who warned you growls that the bridge is definitely unsafe and anyone driving across will cause its collapse and they'll fall to their death. He says you should believe them because they are bridge engineers on the way to an engineering convention. There are 97 of them in the bus, and they unanimously agree that the bridge is unsafe. He points to the guy who said it's okay and says that fellow and two others came in the small car parked behind the bus. Those three say it's safe, but they're not even engineers. One is an economist, one is a geologist, and the third doesn't seem to have any qualifications at all.

Do you risk the bridge anyway, or do you thank the engineers, and take a less direct, but safe route to your destination?

97% of scientists warn us we're causing catastrophic climate change. 3% deny this. The deniers are mostly economists, geologists, and others who are not climate scientists.

Do you choose a safe path, or risk collapse and death?

Theory of mind is an interesting concept. It lets us understand what another person sees. We generally develop this ability at about age 4 years.

Here is a common way it is explained: A father phones home and his three-year-old daughter answers. He asks her what she's been doing. She answers, "I've been playing with this." She doesn't understand that he doesn't know what she's looking at.

Last year an artificial intelligence was able to demonstrate theory of mind. This is a big deal. It is the beginning of empathy. There's still a long way to go yet, of course, but it's still pretty damn amazing.

I've begun to wonder if theory of mind is not the solid thing it is generally assumed to be.

I often help friends and family with their computer problems over the phone. It is extremely rare for a person to describe what they are seeing. Usually they seem to assume that I can see what they do. And it isn't just because they assume I'm an "expert" with computers. Often they'll do this with computer interfaces that I've told them I have little or no experience with. I'll jokingly tell them I haven't developed telepathy yet, so don't know what they're looking at, so they need to describe for me what they're seeing. But for some reason I've never understood, this is almost impossible for most people to do. Instead, I have to describe what I think they might be seeing and ask them if that fits or not, going through multiple descriptions until, either one fits what they're seeing or they become too frustrated and call an end to it.

Why is this? I'm not exceptional. Why can I describe things, but most other people can't? On rare occasions I have met people who carefully detail what they see and it's like turning on the light in the room. I can see what they see and quickly help them to the solution, if I know it. This makes it even more obvious there is something very strange going on here.

(A lovely friend, Dorejejaguar, prompted me to write this last night.)
I've often wondered why I'm happier than most people. After reading a fair bit on the topic I've come to the conclusion that I was just lucky that my upbringing accidentally gave me some very useful tools. My old girlfriend, Margaret, missed out on them and she makes herself miserable.

Here are the tools I've been able to figure out so far:

Gratitude
I am deliberately grateful for things. There are lots of things we can be grateful for -- I have my eyesight (despite losing some in one eye), I can hear beautiful music (despite gradually going deaf), I have the use of my hands and my legs, I have thousands of books (both on paper and as ebooks), I have a lovely little companion doggie, I can pick up the phone and ring my wonderful parents who are less than an hour's drive away, I live way out in the country where birds and frogs serenade me, I have oodles of amazingly interesting videos to watch and talks to listen to (most downloaded from the net)... and so on. Studies have shown that feelings of gratitude boost enjoyment of life.

Helping people
I help people when I can. We are social creatures so our brains are wired to generate pleasure when we help others. But this has to be genuine help otherwise it backfires. For example getting frustrated with someone because they don't use your help the way you'd expected, or they don't appear to appreciate it, makes you upset instead of happy because you are actully doing it for yourself instead of for them. It can be difficult, but it's a nice buzz when you get it right.

Postivity
Find ways to view anything in a positive light. I like to boast that I can see the silver lining in the darkest cloud. It's not entirely true, but it mostly is. I can turn around almost anything to see the positive in it. It has become habit. (Margaret does the opposite and she often rings me depressed about something trivial that she's worked up into something worse than it should be. That's her habit, and she doesn't realise how it hurts her.)

Some examples make this clearer. Recently I hurt my back (I probably tore a muscle by picking something up the wrong way.) It was astonishingly painful. I could barely walk and couldn't sit at the computer for very long. I turned it into a positive by using it as an excuse to get a lot of reading done, lying in bed.

Here's another example: about a decade ago I was on chemotherapy, lost much of my hair, and was constantly exhausted. I had to pause walking up just a few steps to catch my breath. I turned it into a positive by studying the changes and understanding them. It was fascinating to see how the treatment made me anaemic, and I really enjoyed observing the effects in myself. It gave me greater understanding of, and empathy for, people who are similarly afflicted. It was an opportunity to learn because it doesn't matter how many times we read about something, or are told, we don't truly understand it until we experience it.

Another example: Some time back, I was listening to an interview with a writer who said that when she was little and she hurt herself or some other bad thing happened to her, her mother (who was also a writer) would say to her, "Don't worry dear, it's all grist to the mill." In other words it becomes part of her life experiences. It used to annoy the absolute crap out of her when she was a kid, but now that she's grown up and is a writer too she realises her Mum was exactly right. All those experiences -- good and bad -- give her a wealth that she can draw upon. I feel the same way. One time I was having a scary-looking mole cut out and when the doctor started cutting he said that if I can feel that to let him know and he'll inject more local anaesthetic. I said that it was okay because the pain was interesting. He looked at me funny, but I meant it. It wasn't overpoweringly awful, and it was an experience you don't get very often.

A last example: when I was visiting Margaret in New Zealand a few years ago I was helping her by mowing her lawn. When I took the mower from the back lawn around to the front lawn I switched off the mower and was clowning around running down the driveway acting as if it was a racecar. I swerved suddenly near the front gate, but didn't notice the concrete there was mossy. My feet went out from under me and I went down hard, tearing a hole in my pants, badly grazing my knee and one hand. But I focussed on how ridiculous it must have looked and collapsed in laughter punctuated with "Ow, ow!"

I'm not saying that I'm special. I'm just lucky that this has become a habit so I don't even have to try to do it anymore.

Accomplishment
Getting something done gives a nice jolt of pleasure, whether it is cleaning the kitchen, or writing a small computer program, or learning a song, or drawing a picture. Weirdly, sometimes I get the greatest pleasure from simple things that take very little effort, but fulfill a need or desire.

Sleep
Always make sure you get enough. If you don't have sufficient sleep, don't worry about it, catch up later with a nap.

Don't seek it
One very important thing about happiness. I've noticed that seeking it seems to push it away. It's like that tip-of-the-tongue feeling when you're trying to remember a particular word; the harder you try to remember it, the further it recedes from your grasp. The best way to catch the word is to stop trying to catch it and it will pop into your mind later unbidden. Happiness is like that. I've met people who try and try to be happy and it makes them miserable. But you use tricks to elicit happiness while doing something else.


Some things that work for many people, but I don't need:

Bright light
Sunshine can boost the brain's production of melanin, which can make some people happier. You don't need a lot of sunlight to get this effect. It's why some people feel more unhappy during winter.

Happiness diary
A happiness diary can force people to notice the good things in their life. Just note down the good things that have happened to you each day, but not the bad things. It helps the good to loom larger in your view. The bad things will always be there and don't need help, but if your view is mostly uplifting then it sets your frame of mind.

Friends and family
Having contact with friends and family seems to boost happiness for most people. (I enjoy my friends and family, but I don't need that to make me happy -- I love being a hermit. I don't get lonely.)

Activity
Physical activity can boost pleasure. Sweeping the floor, going for a walk, dancing, calisthenic exercises. I am not a fan of heavy exercise. I prefer it gentle.

Resources
There are a few resources I highly recommend. One is an excellent documentary titled simply "Happy". I haven't been able to find it online but if you ask me I might be able to find a way to get it to you.

Another great resource is Dan Gilbert, a scientist who studies happiness. He's written a very interesting book called "Stumbling on Happiness" which is about how we can find (and lose) happiness in unpredictable ways and what we can learn from that. He's given some TED talks on the topic:
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy

Movies or books that are uplifting, especially comedies, can do wonders. One of my favorite YouTube videos is a Russian one of ordinary people helping each other. It never fails to choke me up and make me feel very happy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzBInt4zljQ

Laughter truly is a marvelous medicine. Even hearing a laugh can cause happiness, especially if it is a baby's laugh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4abiHdQpc

I love listening to Radiolab episodes. They are almost always uplifting human-interest talks with a good dash of humor. My favorites are the older ones. They have more than 200 of them online and new ones come out every couple of weeks.
http://www.radiolab.org/

Finally, stay away from the mainstream media. Its entire business model is centered on making people fearful and angry. It is very successful at holding audience attention, but it makes people unhappy.

There must be a simpler way to do this. I was looking for words similar in meaning to "back" or "previous" or "before" but beginning with the letter "d".

My awk is a bit rusty so I used sed, which I seem to use almost every day, wonderful, ugly command it is. Here is what I came up with:

dict -d moby-thesaurus back | sed -z 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[[:space:]]*//' | sed -n '/^[dD]/p'

dict looks up "back" in "moby-thesaurus"
pipe to...
sed gulps it all down as a single line using the -z option and, for all commas, substitutes a newline
pipe to...
sed removes all whitespace characters from start of each line
pipe to...
sed prints only lines that start with "d" or "D"

The choice of pattern is important, for example '\<d' also finds multiple word results where one of the words starts with "d" (e.g. "lay down").

But there must be a simpler way. Jeez!
I can hardly wait for general purpose AI.

I just finished reading Cory Doctorow's latest book Walkaway. I really enjoyed it. I think it's his best yet. The ideas in it come thick and fast, as they do in all his books, but this one has the most hope and the most desperation. It also has the most believable characters.

I love Cory Doctorow's vision of the future, where the idea of people helping each other becomes the most important thing, not gaining wealth and possessions. In all his books there is a message about that, but this was by far the most overt and clearly thought-out one. He carefully presented a path to that future. I hope we take it, and I hope we embrace it more completely than the world does in his story. We could do without the clashes and strife accompanying the birth of that better world.

Given recent events though, I think he may have accurately gauged the strength of the forces against it. Recently I volunteered to build a website for the Sunshine Coast Community Halls.
http://sunshinecoastcommunityhalls.com/
It was a pretty cool experience. There are a lot of amazing people doing wonderful things. However when I listed the Coolum Community Centre I also mentioned the fact that the hall had been moved once by the Council -- a sore point with a lot of people as it was moved to make way for a MacDonalds (which I didn't mention) -- and that now Council is going to move it again, far away from its present location, which has hundreds of locals annoyed. Bear in mind that this was just two short sentences in a long page of description about the hall, its history, and the people and their activities at the hall, just as I have done for every other of the twenty-odd halls.

Well, the Council was angry and I think threatened about it, so I was asked to remove the offending two sentences, which I did after querying whether they really wanted to draw attention to it like that. Then I had to remove the entire page about Coolum. Coolum was cut out of the festival. It made the Council look very petty and mean.

Because I was reading Walkaway at the time, I was struck by the similarity between how standard power-structures act in that story and how they were acting in reality. When challenged, no matter how meekly, they are met by ridiculously disproportionate force, so that small disturbances are utterly demolished. And then the authoritarians are genuinely puzzled when nobody trusts or likes them.

When I was a child growing up in the bush I liked to go walking kilometers to some of my favorite places. I remember on one occasion trying an experiment with black bullants and red bullants. I approached the black bullant nest and waved my arms. Some bullants would aggressively move toward me, rightly seeing me as a threat. The black bullants were quite mild and would only chase me for about a meter before realising I wasn't a threat and turning around to go back to their nest. However the red bullants were much more aggressive. They would chase me for about 3 meters from their nest before figuring I wasn't a threat. I've often wondered since, whether we white-skinned humans are like those red bullants: far too easily provoked to insane overreaction. Perhaps it's why we've so successfully populated the Earth. If so, that strategy is now endangering us.

Oh, and I've begun re-reading John Wyndham's Trouble With Lichen for the umpteenth time. Wonderful story. I'm thoroughly enjoying it again. Compared to Cory Doctorow's story it is so polite and understated. Interesting that both books are about equally world-shaking ideas, but told in such different ways.

I haven't been doing much writing myself. :(
Two books to finish and no writing getting done. [sigh]
Blocked on one, still writing out ideas and bits and pieces for the other.
I've been thinking about doing some programming on some ideas I have for artificial intelligence (AI). That might help one of my stories (it is about AI).