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Tuesday, August 25, 2015

AI awakens NOW

AI:
looking for primes
dark matter
horse
didn't expect AI to look like this...
AI radio frequency
AI but human
robot prime numbers
game AI
game-bots
gravity
heat signature
birthing
dance
slow pitch
detection

truth


Monday, November 25, 2013

The Perfect Moment

for so many years I’ve been telling myself that I will be happy once...

...once I move to San Francisco
...once I team up with my dream girl
...once I get a job at Google
...once I have $100,000 in savings

Today, for the first time ever, I started to grok that adage: "what if I already have everything I desire in this very moment, and I simply haven't been able to see it?"

I've been encouraging students, family, friends and lovers to 'embrace the now' for years now... in fact, I've done a pretty good job of it myself, neatly annihilating both past and future in the process. Now I'm taking those acts to graduate level.

This was partially triggered by a dinner conversation with my dad and kids the other night. My dad was making some comment about obesity, and I yelled out: "Dad, don't you get what I DO?!?! I teach people to embody health, to use their bodies to maximum capacity... I throw people high up in the air!" And in that moment, I felt: that's the strongest statement of my Id, of my purpose, that I've made in a long time. And I also realised in that moment: I didn't make a single mention of software, or design, or videogames in that statement.

Let the meditation begin. Let the manifestation begin. Let the thoughts stew. 
Let us see what spiritual harvest Thanksgiving produces.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Required Reading

I've been investing an immense amount of my time recently developing business plans and applications for the forthcoming Google Glass platform. Alongside my planning and coding efforts, I've been re-freshing my cultural vocabulary with books and movies that are aligned to the Brave New World. So without further adieu, I present to you:



Required Reading 
for the forthcoming 
Age of Wearables 
MMXIII A.D.



1. Down and out in the Magic Kingdom
by Cory Doctorow

Jump start your brain cells with this warped view of a possible future, where everything is provided and people only work on the things they love, and money is social credit. It takes a few chapters to get your bearing on this one, yet persevere, its worth it.
 2. Hackers, by Steven Levy

the true story of how the modern computing revolution started. Including absolutely fascinating stories about MIT hacker culture, and the founding of both Apple and Microsoft. Must read to get your history on, and see context for where we are today. 


3. The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson

This dense read grows on you with time. Presents a very distant future where nano-tech is pervasive and global society has splintered into massive groups of haves- and have-nots, as well as spiritualists vs. technologists... wait a second, that kind of sounds like today... you're starting to get it. Read on.

4. The Age of Spiritual Machines,
by Ray Kurzweil


This is one of the most mind blowing books I've ever read. In fact, its the only book that I went out and bought 10 copies of to share with my friends. Kurzweil is a genuine genius, having invented both the modern music synthesizer as well as voice recognition. A unique and mind shattering view of what is to come once machines transcend human intelligence.

5. Ready Player One,
by Ernest Cline


As Snow Crash was to the 90s, RPO is to the 10s. A refreshing view of a world goggled in to a compelling VR land, and a delightful journey through 80s techno-trivia. EverQuest? World of WarCraft? Get ready for OASIS.
6. Snow Crash,
by Neal Stephenson


The grand mama of cyberpunk. A rude and awakening and punchy vision of a post-technology world where hip youngsters and global corporations mash together to save the world. Since you've read this far, go ahead and read this one first.

Friday, January 25, 2013

The Happy Accident


The Happy Accident
Painting, Oil on Canvas, c. 1500

In this painting, a woman holds a pillowcase, which is ripped. The flax is beginning to spill out. On the surface of the pillowcase, there is a simple white pattern on a columbine blue field.

As she reaches inside, her hand wraps around a small object, and a a smile of delight forms upon her face, slightly more obvious than the Mona Lisa. She pulls her hand out and discovers a small diamond.

We find out that the pillowcase was just ripped. The pattern is a code which is in fact the source code of the Universe; the flax fibers, splayed about in wild spirals and coils and chaos and complexity, are the strings of the Universe; the diamond was a lump of coal that was lost when the pillow was first created at the beginning of Human Time.

Through an incredible combination of luck, time, pressure, and pseudo-random events, the pillowcase was ripped open and the diamond is discovered.

The woman is Athena, spinstress, wise storyteller, beauty. She stands amongst several other gods.

Our entire existence is but 
one rainbow cast from the first ray of light
that hits the newly minted diamond.


A Happy Accident, indeed.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Taming the [Inner] Beast

The journey with Yola is fairly epic. She is now an 80 lb. mini-Beast, 90% German Shepherd and 100% Puppy. I've been genuinely struggling with her of late, as much physical as mental and emotional. She can anger me like no one else. Our biggest debate is leash pulling.

For quite some time, I've been showing her that I am her alpha. When she was a mere 3 months and 35 pounds, I'd show her who was boss by running faster and further than her. I'd run her 3 miles until she collapsed with exhaustion, simply flopping on the ground and refusing to move.

By the time she was 5 months and 50 pounds, however, she had far outpaced me in the running department. I'd run 8 miles on steep trail, and the entire time she'd sprint circles around me, chasing every squirrel, bird, and buck she could find. I conservatively estimated that she sprinted 2.5 miles for each mile I ran. It's still a goal of mine to find her adolescent distance limit, though I think it will require me running upwards of 20 miles in a stretch to find it. Stay tuned.

Along this quest, I started running off trail here in Marin. Yesterday morning I was gleefully galavanting down a steep slope, in the tall wet grass, unable to see my feet. I was revelling in the fact that Yola was a bit scared of the steep terrain, and I charged onward...
Yola on trail, atop Mount Tam

And I charged... right into a nasty hole. As my foot absorbed the surprise impact, I heard a sickening crunch of bone on bone, and collapsed in agony. I screamed not just from the physical pain, but from the emotional agony surrounding it. So much of my life and joy revolves around physical activity: acrobatics, running, hiking. In that instant, I saw the next few months of practice and teaching evaporate before my eyes, and it HURT. My barbaric yawlp echoed across the valley.

I then lay there still for a few minutes, allowing the soft tissue to recover, hoping it was simply a minor sprain. Within an hour, timidly hobbling down the mountainside, I knew it was worse than that. I call Bec to come pick me up in the car. Argh.

The rest of that day, I lay upon the couch, my foot covered in ice, pondering what could have possibly gone wrong, and what lessons I could learn from this. Here's the short list I wrote:

LESSONS, DAY 1:
  • Slow Down
  • When you push too hard, things break
  • stay on marked trails
  • persevere: teach my acro classes even when crippled
  • corollary: enlist help of friends
  • obtain health insurance
  • visit my brother in Grand Rapids
Fast forward 24 hours. In ankle brace, moving far slower than 1 mph, I take Yola on her walk. 90% of the pulling behavior has magically dissapeared. Who knows why. I rationalise that it's because she has no way to match pace with me that slowly. When it takes a full three seconds for me to descend a single stair-step, she is forced to take one simple step at a time, and look at me quizzically, waiting for me to ambulate, before taking her next step.

LESSON 2:
by slowing things down to ULTRA-SLOW, 
the training is actually starting to work.

This lesson translates to the playground as well. Where I once had 1 in 4 odds of being able to leap and tackle and catch her mid-stride when she didn't come right to me, now I have only one option: patiently wait for her to come to me when called. A dog will simply never come close to an angered owner; The only way to lure them is with kindness, sweetness, and or food... or in Yola's case, the most effective manner of all, a ball or stick, the promise of play... which brings me to Go Fetch, what I actually feel is at the true core of all the training.

I had an epiphany the other day regarding "Go Fetch"... When Yola was a mere 2 months old, she accomplished that skill flawlessly and perfectly, retrieving the stick and bringing it right to my feet every time. Somewhere along the line, she decided that it was more rewarding to parade around with the stick and growl than to bring it back for another throw. This has generated an immense amount of confusion and frustration on my part, and my general solution is to make her sit 30 feet away from me, then approach her slowly and make her give me the stick. Sometimes I get it and sometimes she runs.

Once again, being a gimp simplifies this game greatly. As I am largely immobile, she either brings me the stick, or we stop playing. That simple. While she still has yet to bring the stick right to my feet, we are getting a lot closer.

And so my latest:

LESSON 3:

Stay Still, Remain Calm, and 
train from a place of Power.

The story continues...
Stay tuned.

Interested in more life lessons to cultivate Joy and Happiness?
get your very own copy of
Bianca's Guide to Healthy Living!

Friday, September 21, 2012

Play Hard: Guided by Providence

In Moab today. Utah is "Life Elevated".
Moab is "where Adventure Begins."
Here's how.

Slept under the stars last night just outside the gates of Canyonlands National Park. Dream visions  were basically: slow down... and, another strange driving vision. For me, the dream metaphor of driving has always been about how in control, or lack of control, I have over my life at any given point in time. When I was at PlayMotion, I had a recurring nightmare about being in the drivers seat, passed out, eyes barely open, in the night, in the rain, in a car whose brakes didn't work and whose accelerator was stuck on full throttle. The metaphor seems totally clear now.

Other times I've been in the passenger or back seat with someone else driving. Again, fairly clear.

Last night, though, I had a very unique vision: I was in the back seat of my Suburban, the Big Black Truck, and JuJu, one of the young founders of Alchemy, was in the front seat. The odd thing was, I had a steering wheel mounted to the back of the front passenger seat. And JuJu wasn't really paying attention to the road that much, because I was steering from the back seat. Need to think about this one a little more. While a gut preference would be to be directly in the drivers seat of a capable vehicle, Being in the 'limousine privelege' seat and maintaining steering control might just be the best of both worlds.

Now, back to waking life.

Arriving in Moab for unknown reasons. On my way in, a fleet of 10 or so Porsche Cayman's zoom out of town. I stop by the Holiday Inn Express for a free breakfast. And there are literally tons of bicyclists mulling the in parking lot. They have racing shirts on that say "DC Metro Area", and I ask one of them what's up. "We're here for the Moab Century Race." Cool. Eat breakfast. Afters, stop two girls in the parking lot, ask if they're from DC. They are. They encourage me to enter the race. I think about it for a little bit. You Only Live Once. YOLO. Here we go.

I can't quite believe I'm doing this. But what the hell, I was just thinking about how little exercise I'm getting on this trip. Time to step it up.

So, tomorrow I will rise at 5:30am, don my biking gear, down a large breakfast, and head out into the wilderness of Moab for a race. w00t!!!