net slum

pyramid of goals

Posting here because Google Docs currently thinks I speak Czech, and generally I just dislike Google Docs and will just post this here. However, I’ll miss the pyramid.

This is in response to this article that Demi showed me.

— —

immediate goals will not be documented because I put them in Simplenote and will certainly not be updating this post in lieu of simplenote

recurring goals

health: stay fit, keep a good physique, adopt better sleeping patterns

learn about anything and everything

short-term goals

release MurCity

obtain a much greater source of income

begin honest work on the development of the game 3 engine

start a nice Guild Wars 2 career with Eve :}

long-term goals

stop being so angry about everything

complete the game 3 engine

secure permanent lodgings

marry Eve?

primary goals

own nine-person game studio

achieve zen-like state

become an inspirational paragon; utopianism?

~~~~~

Indeed I have no idea how I will stop being so angry about everything; I believe that my general temperament will be more positive through achieving these goals in a reasonable time and that should help me. My kids aggravate me a lot and that will only take time to stop as they get older.

Full spectrum lighting, entering captcha info transcribes books, and parellel universes.

Full spectrum lighting! My workplace should be getting our office completely done over in these really nice lights. If you haven’t heard of full spectrum lighting, in short they can:

give you vitamin D

make you feel better

see better, less eye strain

actually view the color of objects without a yellow tint

give you cancer

Wait, what? Yeah, UV rays can kind of give you cancer. Thankfully, my company bought the lights that don’t have UV rays in them! ^O^ I asked a sales rep from the supplier regardless:

A site operator will be with you momentarily. Please wait. Thank you for your patience.

All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.

All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.

You are not currently in a chat session.

All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.

You are now chatting with ‘Audrey’

(11:57:04 AM) Audrey: How may I help you today?

(11:57:53 AM) you: Hi, my company is installing some bulbs from your company.

(11:57:55 AM) you: “Natural Spectrum Fluorescent Medium Bipin”

(11:58:11 AM) you: I’m looking this up and at the bottom for the F32T8VLX4, it says the tubes contain no UV.

(11:57:23 AM) you: What is the significance of UV on your bulbs?

(12:04:53 PM) you: Are you there?

(12:29:53 PM) you: Should I just call in?

(12:58:53 PM) you: Where’d you go? I miss you so. Seems like it’s been forever that you’ve been gone.

(2:30:53 PM) you: boop

So yeah full spectrums, I’ll buy some for the house soon. This is the kind of technology I want to be seeing.

~~~~~~

Entering captcha info for Google will help transcribe books! How interesting.

http://www.google.com/recaptcha/digitizing

Our sharp project manager asked “Well if we’re transcribing, how do they know it’s right?”

They don’t. They take a best guess, and then people key the word in 20 times and they’ll see what it’s most likely to be. This means, in fact, that you only have to get one of the words right. Remember this knowledge, but do not use it to your advantage; it would be dystopian to key in one word and then lazily spam the rest.

~~~~~~

Finally, parallel universes!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_universe_(fiction)

I’ve been having a time (a time) with figuring out what exactly I want out of game 3’s world. Right now I’m settling for a world very much like ours, but tainted with a different course of history due to various fauna and flora of the world, and generally some other law-of-nature bending that would make it interesting. This spells creatures that generate a form of renewable energy, humanity figuring out how to harvest and generate an electricity equivalent, and thus discovering a very great energy source. Further, various other implementations can exist like steam and clockwork being popular for the time. (perhaps the creatures are too scarce but are being bred; perhaps manufacturing hasn’t caught up to plastics yet)

The best part is that with this world, my needs as a writer are met: I can be very creative, and even at worst if I have to be a bit arbitrary with my imagination, I have the room to nurture that idea into something solid. I have the freedom and proper restraint to make my world both fascinating and believable. Sure, if we found some slugs in a forest that are just full of energy we can harvest - such as the way we milk cows - why would humanity fart around with giant generators and fossil fuels? Breed the damn things, store their milk, and throw it into your vehicle.

Okay, and if some folks go insane and start creating death masks, happen to unlock some innate ability within humans to expand the laws of nature a bit, and happen to sacrifice their bodies to spread their plague that will slowly turn the earth into their own psychotic utopia… why in the world wouldn’t that make sense?

1793 - William Blake pwns Swedenborg

From “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”

—

I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning:

Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho’ it is only the Contents or Index of already publish’d books.

A man carried a monkey about for a shew, & because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conciev’d himself as much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg; he shews the folly of churches & exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious, & himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net.

Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth:
Now hear another: he has written all the old falshoods.

And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro’ his conceited notions.

Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all superficial, opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further.

Have now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents may from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborgs, and from those of Dante or Shakespear, an infinite number.

But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.

— 

The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg’s theological work Heaven and Hell published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake several places in the Marriage. Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg’s conventional moral structures and his Manicheanview of good and evil led Blake to express a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are equally part of the divine order, hence, a marriage of heaven and hell. The book is written in prose, except for the opening “Argument” and the “Song of Liberty”. The book describes the poet’s visit to Hell, a device adopted by Blake from Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

obiwanjacobi:

“What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other’s shoulders and kicking each other’s teeth in. It’s not a pleasant situation. And yet, you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us - the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons. This is something, culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people’s convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture. Yet we glorify the creative potential of the individual, the rights of the individual. We understand the felt-presence of experience is what is most important. But the culture is a perversion. It fetishizes objects, creates consumer mania, it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines.”

As a protocol, I always ask myself how much whatever various political party will help us, whenever I see posts like this. I ask how they can defeat the human condition. How they’re going to make it impossible for greed to exist in a political system. Anything out there: communism, socialism, capitalism; libertarians, anarchists, neo-anarchists, even objectivists - we will all fall victim to our inherently selfish nature.

It cannot be unlearned. To unlearn it is to unravel our DNA. We can only cope. Even our religions believe it. However, original sin begins in the gene. I try to pretend I’m the most correct with my current understanding of politics - that objectivism is the way to go - but I know I can’t be right. Nothing can be the best for humanity. Because we are biased creatures capable of laughing at the same joke a friend’s told, as the one we haven’t laughed at that a stranger told.

My dear Jacobi, for all we riot and protest and have our revolutions, realize it’s all part of the system. No one intended to design it in, but it’s part of the plan now. Any reasonable mind is preparing for it.

“There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay, and that life’s end is death.”

(Source: starsinhereyes)

Enable single-click, now.

I want you to take this post very seriously. This could save your right index finger.

http://www.lytebyte.com/2009/06/09/how-to-change-double-click-to-single-click-mouse-selection-in-vista-and-windows-7/

Recently I installed Linux at work, and I have found very little reason to continue double-clicking on things. It really amazes me how much this habit had become part of my cyberspace life. You probably really think you need to double click on a folder, but you don’t. All the buttons on the web are just fine, you don’t have to double click on them. Do you want to have a simulated file system in a browser, and then double click to move between directories? No, because there’s no point.

There are two reasons you wouldn’t want to switch: 1. You don’t want to accidently hit the option. 2. you like selecting objects! Maybe you want to select it and then hit delete on the keyboard to easily delete it!

In both cases, you are doing something wrong.

1. You must be very careful. That’s all. Don’t lazily drag your mouse all over the place and oh - you hit the wrong thing! Well, if it’s a directory, there’s a back button. Else, learn to make your actions more meaningful. You have received a slap on the hand by the operating system, and you deserved it. Pay attention.

2. Hey, me too. But honestly, right-click delete does the same thing. You know what? You can even select it if you want to, for example, search all your music files for a sample band. Just highlight the file/folder and wait. It will select itself. You didn’t even have to click anything.

Looking back at the double-clicking… I really wonder how poor my hands would feel without it. I’m not even joking. I’ve saved so much clicking, and I’m sure this somehow translates to microseconds of saved time, and wear on your mouse.

It is utopian to at least try this. I know it’s hard to break your reliance on double clicking, but believe me: it’s worth it. You will feel so pro.

Dark Internet and Nous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Internet

I became aware of the darknet today - only read about it. Dark Internet is different than darknet. I haven’t really seen much of the “dark internet”, for obvious reasons. As for the darknet, perhaps if I had little value for my own life and no one cared about me, I would venture forth into it. Do some googling on it.

~

Nous! A game by Digipen students.

https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24646

Word on the street is it’s shockingly accurate.

Goals for 2012

As an eternal testament to my schedule and scheduling abilities, this post is 17 days late. I suppose some things never change. :}

2011 was very eventful. I learned a lot, became a much better developer, and took some major steps into becoming a grown-up. At many times, however, and even a few times this year I have been quite lazy. I hope to remedy that this year. I will now detail my major goals of 2012.

— —

Exercise. For certain, I’ll be getting my old physique back. This is a bit tough with how much I’ll be working and playing, but I think 15 minutes before bed shouldn’t be so hard. (eve takes a while to get ready anyway) I want to finish out the year by weighing 126 pounds at least, perhaps 130 ideally. I won’t be building for mass, just incredible toning. I have yet to find a good solution for cardio, because my beloved Pump It Up setup just won’t be working out here.

Learning. For lack of a better term, anyway. While I’m always open to learning, I’m not the sponge I used to be when I was doing ChaCha. I believe after playing Skyrim for a bit, I’ll have a burst of learning - game design, but many other topics. I need to round myself out a bit more. I’m starting to feel one-upped in my dealings with others, and that simply won’t do. I’m certain I should be able to finish Out of Control and totally understand all of it now.

Development. For sure, MurCity will be released. The BCN site’s release makes it clear that I plan for expansion in the future: the engine I’ll be building enables me to bang out a new app within a three-month time frame. Layout and all. That’s my goal with it: plan the concept and storyline out, and then enact it through the engine. A game that takes me 3 months to make, should be finished in one month’s time by the player. That’s just an example, of course; I’m not certain that I would make a game that only takes me 3 months. And hey - what’s this game stuff? I might even one day be making “experiences” with the engine! :}

The engine will be built around game 3’s needs. The five tracks I have planned means that I’ll be able to do a lot with the engine out of necessity.

For example, we have the criminal track, which uses the burglary and pickpocket systems. Now by creating these two systems, any time I need to simulate a break-in for a quest in another track, I simply write it into the engine. Done. The pickpocket system should (!) treat NPCs as objects to loot from, which will in turn act as the metal-gathering system for the inventor track. The inventor track itself is a real bastard: it uses the information track’s crafting system with a spin on the creation of information, to be things that are invented with schematics.

So there’s a little preview of how excited I am for this engine. It’ll be very simple to create another game, and even author content from others - I spoke briefly with The Great Crate and it’s very possible, even lucrative for him to create content. I have absolutely no problem with him getting 40% of what’s made from his storylines that are pay-to-play. Suffice to say I’m really excited for development this year. :}

~

That is mostly it for this year. I would like to write, “Ease temperament.” or, “Become a better father.”, but I don’t think I’ll be able to pull either off. I think I will still hate (dislike) many things in our world, and I have no reason to believe I’ll simply understand as some “enlightened” individuals out there would convince me is possible. I’ve tried to understand by listening to Bright Eyes’s new album, but even as I listen, I just can’t agree. “I’m still angry with no reason to be.” — Bright Eyes, but I think I do have some reasons. Perhaps more at myself for believing I had it in me to be a daddy. That I had the patience to deal with others that I’m not dealing with as well.

I hate to say that I think general acceptance of everything may be growing up - because I’m unsure of that. I haven’t really accepted working in a corporate environment. I still, to this day, don’t like their bullshit. I accept it because I have to get paid. Is that grown-up? Unsure. Perhaps in that it’s just what happens when you finally break down and stop fighting it, because it’s useless to fight. If that’s wise, and wisdom equates to learning from experience, and experience comes with age, perhaps it is childish to speak of my dissatisfaction with life in general - not my own actions, but for example, the terrible packaging on the stickynote wrappers in my corporate environment I work in.

I doubt at the end of this year that I will find true peace with everything. I think I will ultimately find peace when I work for myself once again. Nothing makes me happier than the thought of doing what I love in a place that I love to do it - my house, which could one day expand to an office. Maybe one day even become a multi-person operation.

Well, that’s that for this post. Those are my goals. I’m sure I can stick to them.

EXTRA, EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT!

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2743456&page=1

OLD CLOTHING SOLD in THRIFT SHOPS! African shippers paying TOP DOLLAR for your used clothing! EXPENSIVE LINGERIE used as AUTOMOTIVE RAGS! Poverty itself EXPORTED to developing nations!

Summary of 2011

Last year, I posted a very detailed analysis of each month to produce a summary of 2010. This required me to go through every tumblr post of that year and find the most monumental news. As much as I adore my ambition, the time constraints of a real adult life now just don’t make that possible. I’m going to summarize the largest happenings out of memory with just a very tiny bit of help from my tumblr’s archive.

—

Of course, I had my son three days into the new year. Abel’s almost 1 now and he’s getting pretty big. I’m still not a terribly great father, but the kids get progressively easier with how much older they become.

I’d love to say there were monumentous moments everywhere, but really, work took 9 hours of my day away and general life obligations make it such that there’s not always the most time. Yet…

MurCity has gone through quite a few changes. MonBre was officially condemned. Black Coat Studios is a thing. I’ve learned, grown, as anyone should. As a web developer, I’m very strong now. Only getting better. I think it’s a lot easier to just summarize what’s happened based on the goals of last year, so onwards!

—

In respect to my hopes for 2011:

My job is actually worth $17 from an expected $15/hour. I’m pretty pleased with it for now, but I wish the place was a bit more coder-friendly. Still, I’m grateful.

It definitely would’ve been nice to hold off on the apartment for another year, but I’m happy (truly) to say that Eve and I moved in together a year earlier than I thought we would. This was mid-October from the expected Christmas-time of 2012.

I did end up saving up $10,000, and now I rest at $4k in the bank! :} Definitely no car, though - but I am considering a loan soon, not too comfortable with this car’s running quality.

As for my internet endeavours, I honestly have greater plans for myself than to be happy with releasing MurCity last Spring and BCN in the summer. While those were “failures”, that I did not get to do, I believe the idea of even releasing murcity as it was… is just not good. As for game 3, which I’m glad to say I’ve been planning for a while now, it’s now an entire engine. I hope you understand how my visions in what I’m capable of have grown; my total understanding of my abilities is not that “something needs to be done” but more, “I know what I can do, and will take the time to do it right.” Regarding the BCN, the irony of having it something mentionable before the end of this year will not be lost on anyone soon enough.

I definitely will not be, in any way: making music, writing andellan, or learning Spanish. I only claimed to write Andellan, of course; just reiterating. Andellan will be written across multiple train or bus rides some day. A little sad is the PTO - paid time off. I was actually hoping to have this very time of my life off from work. Unfortunately it’s more lucrative (worth $1,100+) to just continue working, especially since we’re even doing overtime. The $1,100 is due to me simply not using my PTO, so it cashes in and I get a new ‘set’ at the end of the year. I could definitely use micro vacations here and there with a thursday/friday off for a four-day weekend.

~

My hopes and goals for 2012 will come soon. <3

Wow, I’m lucky!

Guys, I just had this amazing offer come in through my email. I’ll truncate it and show the most relevant parts, because it’s longcat long.

— —

Dear Beloved,

Compliment of the day, I know that this letter must come to you as a big surprise, but I believe it is only a day that people meet and become great friends and business partners. I am Barrister Otero Perez Jose, an expert at co-operate and legal claims. I got your mail through my private search and out of desperation I decided to reach you through this medium. I am contacting you in respect of a deceased client of mine, Mr, Kurt Kahle, a German who owned private business, schools and also a property magnate who died in Concord AF4590 crash since in the year 2000 along side with his entire family (his 37-year-old wife and son Michael).

My heart beat a little faster at this point, I thought maybe I was in trouble, but then:

Before his death, my client deposited ($10.700 000) Ten Million Seven Hundred Thousand Dollars in a bank here in Spain…

Could he really be talking about…? My hands are shaking!

I want to invest this money in your country, the need to move out this money arose when the European Community Leaders generally agreed that some of the money held in dormant accounts would be used to fund youth and community projects, you can confirm this in the website below.

[…]

I would process the release of this fund to your possession; you would be entitled to 40% of the said funds and 60% for me. For security reasons, I have decided not to add more information into this letter.

It’s hot in this house, and my skin was on fire by this point. Even as I type this, my skin is quite hot. I haven’t told Eve about this yet.

In conclusion, it is my concern to demand your ultimate honesty, co-operation and confidentiality to enable us conclude this transaction. I GUARANTEE that this process would be executed under a legitimate arrangement that would legally protect you from any breech of Law. Please get in touch with me (perez.jose@lawyer.com) immediately you acknowledge the good receipt of this message.

This guy has an @lawyer.com email address. He has to be serious business… all he asks is that I send a scan of my ID, my bank account information, and a piece of my hair for something about “poly juice”? I can’t really tell on this poor-quality image attached to the email that gives me instructions on how to get this money.

Guys, this is like, huge. He has about $4,000,000 dollars to transfer to me. That’s like 4,000 years of MonBre’s profits. I think I might do it. What do you guys think I should do? Can I trust Perez Jose?

Visited mom.

I thought it’d take me to 21:30, but I actually came home at 23:00. No complaints, except paying $40 for a top-mediocre meal.

During dinner, mom said something along the lines of, “You never even showed me what you do, I just tell people you work on the systems for a security company and sometimes you’re creating a game.”

So I made a point to show her everything I did, what Vael Victus is (she’s not too fond of Vael or Eve) and I’m glad I finished my new website just in time to show her! Except her resolution is not so good for viewing the site… :P oh well

Well, she did like the site. I think a lot of people do, though I haven’t gotten much feedback. So I explained to her how I was different from Farmville, and as I showed her MurCity, she asked “So you… did all this?”

Yeah. O.o I stared at my own creation in front of me. Sorry, MurCity, it’s just that when I’m imagining teaching players philosophical ideas through a Kino’s Journey-esque exploration system, I forget how actually good you are. Sure MurCity’s got some rough edges, but those will be smoothed out before release. If the player can just grasp the concept of progressing by doing both nothing and doing something, I’m sure it’ll be a fun game.

Showing it off in this fashion temporarily gave me a new set of eyes; I really haven’t given it serious development for about 6 weeks now, with all my other projects. I’m actually quite excited to release it, and inject some meaning into it. That’s all for now, folks.

Why “Vael Victus”?

This is actually a pretty interesting topic. Why have we chosen to call ourselves what we do? On the ‘net, we get to choose what we wish to call ourselves. This usually reflects our personality or is the outcome of some event. So let’s begin.

In the Spring of 2008, I decided to drop my old username because it wasn’t marketable. I started using my real name, because I was a clueless teenager. I didn’t realize my name was unmarketable too. So, I didn’t really care, and just went back to my regular username.

I had become interested in cosplay/ers and was spending some time around 4chan’s /cgl/ board. Since I like to leave my mark in places, I started using a trip code, but nameless. I eventually thought to myself, “It would be so funny if I trolled people so hard that they put me on Encylopedia Dramatica!” and the creation of Vael Victus began…

I knew I wanted something dark, lavish, and memorable. Isn’t it? It rolls off the tongue and everything. It’s short, it’s just fabulous. Vael Victus. I went to a name generator for vampires and eventually came up with Victus. I sat on it for a while, probably a week. I kept trying things like Wethen Victus, (within victus! I was a great teenager) and like Salvage Victus or something, just something memorable.

Unfortunately I don’t remember where Vael came from, just like I have no idea why I decided to call my beliefs “utopianism”. I just did, one day, and at the time, I didn’t think it mattered because I was just 4channing.

It hardly worked. I was clueless and didn’t realize people would want to see my picture or whatever cosplay I could do. There were people that spent much more time there than I did, and they didn’t have articles. I probably gave up in September, when I had started going to college.

After that, I really started to get into the idea of Vael Victus. I tried to think, “Maybe I could pretend I’m an alien, it’s kind of a gimmick, and I’m here to inspire people!”. I wrote an embarrassing little doodad on my site, someone in TF2 made fun of me for it, and I never returned to the idea. (those of you who remember Play may remember a part about Vael; it was sorta like that)

I dropped my old username completely at the beginning of 2009. I got “vael.tumblr.com” and for some reason, I felt special for it. I started posting about trains. I dunno, I just slowly became Vael Victus, I guess. I was doing the alien stuff until the summer of 2009, I’m pretty sure. That’s also when I started development of MurCity and began to become a decent web developer. ;o

The bottom line is that my name was actually manufactured for success. It’s not like I was a big fucking moron, I was always ahead for my age. I just knew how to make a good name, I guess.

BONUS ROUND TIME

• When I first started, people kept saying, “you’re miss-spelling vae victus” and “hey are you a Legacy of Kain fan?”. That seems to have died down now, and I got google to stop suggesting people meant vae victus when searching my name.
• Some people pronounce it “Vile Victus”, particularly non-westerners. (easterners may imply asians)
• I call myself Vael in my head and once almost introduced myself as Vael to an important meatspace acquaintance. I saved it by saying “Vaaaaaa-errrrrrry nice to meet you.” :}
• I had an alter-alter ego, but you’ll never know who they are! Probably!
• Number one rule in this game: never call him by his real name.

Also lol Seeking Mr. Victus’s Name.

(Source: lamattgrind)