Category Archives: slice of life

Mysterious illness

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As mentioned in my slice of life journal, my pulse is 25-30 beats above normal this evening, after having been some 15 beats above normal for over a week. I have not been able to exercise during this week, or rather I have quickly become stiff and tired even from walking. Apart from that, the symptoms seem to vary randomly. Something is happening inside this body, but I have no idea what.

This is just a heads-up, really. Sympathy (or antipathy for that matter) won’t make a difference, my body will have to handle this on its own. Right now it is too vague to even involve a doctor. (Besides, it is extremely few times in my life that a doctor visit has led to anything at all besides spending time and money. It has happened, but it is not the rule.)

Goban

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Instead of the traditional bowls to hold the playing stones, this goban (Go board) has a slide-out empty triangle to keep them in. Not recommended for families with small children, as the lightweight plastic “stones” are almost exactly like M&M.

I finally bought a Go board – or goban as they are called in Japanese – from Amazon.com. This board was made from cheap and lightweight wood, not something a professional would want to be seen with, but better than just printing out the board and playing with buttons. Of course, I have used computers (and tablet) up till now. I just felt that it would capture the feeling of the game better if I could have a physical board. I was thinking of replaying other people’s games on the board.

I am not sure it was such an awesome idea, but it seemed reasonably harmless. A healthy hobby, at least by my standards. Now that I am sick with Mysterious Illness, I am no longer so sure this was a good investment. Good thing I bought the cheapest model I saw. (It does not seem to have any problems beyond the stones being more lightweight than I had expected. So, tentatively recommended, unless you have small children. Choking hazard, swallowing hazard etc.)

My subconscious and I

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In the anime Hikaru no Go, the boy Hikaru can actually see the great Go player that resides in his subconscious. No one else can see him though. I can’t even see mine. It’s OK, he is probably not as good as Sai – just better than me, and that doesn’t say much.

I sometimes say to my subconscious: “There is a reason why you are the sub.” But this is not one of those occasions. Sometimes it just shows off. This was one of those times. Make that TWO of those times.

On my bus commute, I took the opportunity to watch a Go match on my Android tablet. It was a 7-dan player against a 6-dan. For me, that is comparable to a first-grader watching two English majors debating Shakespeare. While I find it vaguely interesting, I don’t really aspire to understanding a game on that high a level. My subconscious may disagree: At a certain point, it basically said “Black is going to play there”, pointing to a spot on the (virtual) board. Plop! Black put down a stone right on the spot.

I looked closer at that particular move, and actually it was pretty clear that bad things would have happened had black not secured that spot right away. But the thing is, I had not seen that by thinking logically and reading ahead. Rather, some corner of my pattern matching brain must have picked up enough Go to expect the next move based on what it had already seen of successful (and, in my own case, utterly failed) games. Now, as high-level games go, this particular move was one of the more obvious. But the fact remains that I did not see it with my rational conscious mind, but instead a “voice in my head” (not literally, but more like an independent thought) spotted it straight away.

Later in the day, I took a look at the opposite: A lowbie game, still on the Pandanet-IGS (Internet Go Server). A 17-kyu – the lowest rank on IGS, but still way above me – was playing someone in the Beginner Class. As it happens, the beginner was in the process of winning when I arrived. Looking over the board, I quickly spotted a large group of white stones that were dead as a doornail. (We say that a group is dead when it can be caught by the opponent and there is nothing to do about it.) In this case, black could kill it in three moves, and there was nowhere else on the board where such a big opportunity existed. (Or if it was, neither I nor they found it!) I watched intently, but neither of them seemed to pay the slightest attention to the huge group, 15-20 stones by my counting. In the end, they both passed, which ends the game. They counted the territory, and still no one of them made a move to remove the dead group.

It was glaringly obvious to me as an observer, so I thought by myself: “If a 17-kyu player does not see something as obvious as that, and I see it, I must have made quite a bit of progress.” So I fired up the Go-playing robot program in my tablet. It crushed me again, just as badly as it usually does. I had made no progress at all.

And this, dear congregation, is the story of my life. I can see things that are above my play grade, with the help of the imaginary voices in my head. But when it comes to myself, I seem to make no progress at all.

A lesson from Go

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Evidently the Japanese are not entirely unfamiliar with the Dunning-Kruger effect (“How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” in the words of the original study).

To get back to something less disturbing, I am still trying to learn Go. I can feel that I have come further than I ever have before. (I try to learn Go every time I have watched the anime series Hikaru no Go. So at least three times now, probably four.) This time, I feel like I have achieved lift-off, in a sense: I can actually watch other people play Go and understand some of what happens. When watching 17-kyu and beginner games, sometime their intentions are pretty transparent: They are trying to cut off the opponent, or capture stones, or avoid getting stones captured. So I watch and think: “He is not going to fall for that. He is going to connect at A, and you will have to play B to save your own group.” And sometimes the other player does fall for it, and I have this unfamiliar feeling of having actually seen something another Go player did not see (even if it was another beginner like me.)

And then I go back to the 13×13 training board against my Galaxy Tab, and it crushes me mercilessly. I don’t see the traps when they are for me, and once it takes the initiative, I never get it back. I am chased and either cut to pieces or besieged in a small territory while the computer reigns most of the board supreme. I guess Go is a lot like real life: It is easier to see what other people should do, but hard to see the same when it comes to myself!

An online friend (or nearly so) has just taken up playing Go as well, and described his first meeting with a Go robot as a lesson in humility. I guess that is one way to put it. Did you know that this ancient board game only has 5 rules, all of the quite simple? You can learn it in a couple minutes. And yet professional Go players have usually practiced for hours a day for a decade or so. Over the course of about 3000 years, no one has been able to master it, to find the sequence of moves that cannot be surpassed, the theory that can win every game.

That is the challenge of one of the world’s simplest games. And yet there are people who think that their amazing powers of logic lets them understand life, the universe and everything. If not in detail, then pretty well. Good luck with that.

Life and death and Go

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 “I can learn how to control my emotions!?” Judging from your expression of shock and disbelief, I’d say you still have a way to go! But yeah, it is considered one of the virtues of Go, the ancient Oriental board game.

Should I study the life and death of stones or humans? Both?

No, not yet my death or even anyone in my family, although I am sure we are not immortal yet. Rather, I have finished re-watching the inspirational anime Hikaru no Go, about a young boy and an old ghost stirring up the world of Go (or igo, as it is commonly called in Japan), the ancient board game which holds an even greater reputation than chess in Japan, Korea and China. It is seen as not only a game, but a cultural activity, and fitting for people who have retired and want to spend their last year in a dignified way.

This, dear reader, is my problem with it. I don’t want to spend my last days or years on Earth playing a game; I want to spend them preparing for the hereafter: Studying esoteric books, reflecting on myself, meditating, praying and conveying my accumulated wisdom to the public domain in my journal.

That is what I tell myself. But actually observing myself, I see that I easily spend an hour or two a day playing computer games, more during the weekend. Add another hour watching family-friendly anime, and I have enough time to become a decent amateur at Go/igo. I may no longer be in the uppermost percentile of IQ, but it is not because I have fallen and hit my head; rather, the younger generation has closed in on me, being noticeably smarter than the kids I went to school with. Perhaps it is because they have grown up in front of the computer, while my classmates spent their free time outdoors chasing a ball. If we had  played Go instead, we geezers would still rule the roost… ^_^

So it is not that my brain can’t learn anything new. Rather, I have this mental block, similar to Hikaru in most of the episodes from 60 to 70, thinking that if he played Go ever again and liked it, something terrible would happen: The spirit that had accompanied him day and night for the last years would disappear forever. That is a pretty dramatic threat, I can assure you, because I cannot imagine what I would do if the Spirit were to suddenly disappear and not come back. I would be in Hell. So the question is rather whether I, like Hikaru, have misunderstood the spiritual value of Go.

In a way, I think Go would be preferably to Master of Magic. Go is after all a two-player game, so I would please someone else in addition to myself. (Of course, we don’t want to stretch that particular phrasing too far…) But basically, it is less selfish than many – most? – of my free time activities. On the other hand, having a more reputable hobby would make it easier to justify as good and right, rather than accept it as a sign of human frailty which I am slowly working to eradicate. I worry that it may become a part of my soul. They don’t play Go in Heaven, do they?

So I’m kind of compromising. I am reading “how to play Go” pages on the Internet, and watching low-level games on the International Go Server. But I am not playing there. Yet. Instead I am solving Go problems of life and death. This is an actual phrase in the culture of Go: It is essentially a war game, only simplified to the purest essence (far more so than chess), so groups of stones are said to have life if they have escape routes (liberties) or are connected with other stones of the same side which have such. Otherwise, the stones are said to have “died”. Studying life and death of stones is an essential activity for the beginner. But it is hard for me to do without thinking of life and death in Real Life.

Reading weird books

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Esoteric books

Recently bought paper books, sorted in order of descending weirdness. (Most of my recently bought books are e-books, not easily photographed.)

I felt the urge to read Boris Mouravieff’s Gnosis again. It is a rather specific urge, like the book is wordlessly calling to me. So I’ve nibbled at it again. It is interesting as usual. Some things seem very likely to be true. Some seem out and out weird.

For instance, obvious truth: As ordinary people without esoteric practice, we are swept away by the currents of emotions and influences but are not aware of it, thinking instead that we are acting of our own free will. Once we have studied esoteric Truth, we begin to become able to notice when we are being swept away, but we are still not able to stop it. The “A influences” as he calls them, the influences of this world, are still far too strong for us. To attack them head on would be like attacking windmills. Windmills 1, idealist 0.

What people usually do when they begin to observe that they are rarely in control of their own mind and body? Lie. “Cheat until caught, then lie” as a friend used to have as his mail signature. Avoid the truth like the plague. As if it were the rotting corpse of an Ebola victim, ready to infect anyone who passes downwind of it. Construct a fake personality that is the captain of its own fate. I did it all on purpose! Unless it was illegal or hurt someone, then it was someone else’s fault.

To study this more closely, I have picked up a book recommended by Farnam Street (the blog of secular wisdom seeking mentioned in my previous entry). The book is The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty by Dan Ariely. It is about the observation that all normal people cheat a bit, but few dedicate their life to swindling. Therefore there must be a different mechanism behind the everyday cheating and lying that you and I do, different from the all-out sociopath swindlers who are bosses of Wall Street corporations.

I have begun reading it. It is borderline boring so far, but I need to know what I am doing to pull the wool over my inner eye. So I intend to persevere in reading it. Some day.

JulNoWriMo has started

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Regular readers will know that I each year take the month of November off, more or less, to participate in NaNoWriMo, the (inter)National Novel Writing Month. Tens of thousands of people do this now, after the movement has grown year by year. But some are not satisfied with just one novel writing month, or they may have all or some of July off and are not spending it traveling. So some years ago JulNoWriMo was born. It has never really taken off the way NaNoWriMo did, and may well be headed for extinction: NaNoWriMo has now expanded with “Camp NaNoWriMo” in June and August. It is NaNoWriMo with fewer participants and a different atmosphere, people join into small virtual groups (if they so desire) rather than a “zerg” (stampede).

On the first day, I have written 8343 words, so that is a pretty good start. (Except it was Sunday so I didn’t need to work.) It’s a new story, but yes, it has lots of amazing books. ^_^

Payday

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There is something called “first world problems”, but I think this one must be categorized as a “zeroth world problem”:  I have a straight salary, no variable parts, no overtime. (Travels, which I avoid when possible, are refunded separately.) Now today it was payday again, and for some reason I felt the urge to know how much I was receiving. But unfortunately the corporate website hosting my electronic pay stub was overloaded, so I could not find out until after closing hours.

I might want to interpret this as “I am not particularly interested in material goods”, but my new computer would like to argue the opposite. Perhaps it is more that I have lived for so many years, I can’t really go around remembering how much I earn for each year. It will surely change again if I live for another year. Probably upward, although I am not sure this is in my best interest. The more expensive we are compared to foreigners doing the same job, the greater the profit that may be had by outsourcing our job.

But for now, we here in Norway seem to think the trees will grow into the sky. Of course, that’s what I remember from my American friends some five years or so ago, too.

Sleeping while still alive

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Sometimes I just lie in bed, looking at the shining plumbbob suspended in the air above me – no wait, that’s my sim. Me, I tend to fall asleep almost as soon as I get my headphones on. It is just getting there that takes a long time!

There is a saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, and sometimes I wonder if a part of me is thinking that way. Unfortunately, this attitude is likely to bring on the final sleep much earlier than necessary.

Over the last few days I feel more and more “run down”. It takes less exercise to make me stiff and sore. I believe sleep may be the missing ingredient. I have found in the past that physical exercise requires more sleep. For mental work, such as my job, a nap will do wonders. But when I actually burn off 500-1000 calories and use my muscles in slightly unfamiliar ways, my body needs the downtime to put itself back in full working orders.

Unfortunately, of late my good ideas appear as on cue around 11 PM.  Well, they may not be “good” in the Biblical sense, but they certainly are ideas. Whether journal entries (which may or may not ever be posted) or fiction, they emerge with unprecedented clarity when the clock should have encouraged me to put head to pillow.

I don’t generally suffer from insomnia these days. Well, to some small degree from the insomnia of the asylum seekers upstairs, who still tend to move their shouting closer to the bedroom at 0 – 1- 2 AM, but I have largely gotten used to that. Besides, I have the delta brainwave entrainment. But neither sleep nor delta entrainment go well with writing fiction about magic worlds or unexpected college romance. Or for that matter entries like this, finished around 23:55 European time.

New computer: Asus N56V

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Asus N56V – the superlaptop. Here running The Sims 3.

The day before yesterday, my main computer – the black tower desktop from Multicom – started rebooting randomly. Well, not entirely randomly: When playing games – including browser games – it turns itself off and back on every few minutes. When using just Opera or yWriter, it lasts hours.

The reason this started was probably the tropical heat, but cooling the machine down doesn’t seem to help it now.

A better man than I might have taken it as a hint from Above to stop playing games and get on the Jacob’s ladder of love, wisdom, self-reflection and progress,or something like that. But I am not a better man than myself, so the thought did not even strike me until after I had already bought a new laptop that is more powerful than the big black beast from 2009.

***

 I have searched Google for reviews of the Asus N56V, but there are pages and pages of copy + paste of the same review, written about a pre-production model. Guys, don’t do this, copying and pasting other people’s reviews. Just link to it, for goodness sake. Like this: Asus N56V review at Techradar. Don’t fill up my first six Google pages with copy and paste.

That said, the machine is so new, there probably aren’t a lot of reviews up yet. And this one says it pretty well without going on and on. This is not a compromise between weight and performance: It is performance without compromise. Well, it is still a laptop, so you can’t put in extra video cards or extra hard disks or things like that. But everything you can do with your desktop that’s too heavy for a toddler to topple, you can do with this laptop.

OK, I may exaggerate slightly. But the machine is more powerful than my desktop from 2009, at least. It has a quad-core processor too, but more modern and faster; each core runs two threads. It has 6 GB of RAM – the tower machine has 4 GB but can only use 3.25 GB. Since some of the memory is used by Windows itself, any extra memory is available to programs. In the case of Sims 3, the difference is quite noticeable. It is pretty much the ultimate Sims 3 machine. And of course it can handle any sane business use, including speech recognition. So, the future has arrived, and it is portable.

(I still intend to fix the desktop. Someday.)