Sunday, August 19, 2007
something i realized about myself today, for better of worse. if anything, it gives me a glimpse into my head, and offers me further understanding of how i go about my business.
today, i woke up, and i was angry. i was angry, because i was broken out of my dreams. and worse, i forgot what was happening in my dream instantly, and i sat there, awake, and i felt like my life had been taken away from me. and as the day went on, i kept coming back to this moment, and realized that most of my days are pretty much the same. thinking about it, i realized that most days i am disappointed when i wake up, because more happens to me in my dreams that makes me feel like i am living my life than happens when i am awake. i feel more at home, more myself when i am dreaming, and so when i wake up, it feels like i am entering a secondary, almost purgatory-esque state of being.
it makes sense in a few ways. the fact that i am more at home in my subconscious isn't anything new. it also isn't surprising that most of my days awake are identical, since they are, partly by design to get past them quicker. this process comes into focus now. i am speeding through my days. in fact, i sleep walk through my days. i am never fully present in the moment, there is always a part of me that is reaching into my subconscious. that is the main constant in my life, i guess. i am always in touch with it. it used to be, whenever i closed my eyes, the world would fade away and i would be immersed in my thoughts. now i don't even have to do that anymore. any time i have a second without any outside stimulus to distract me, inevitably there i am, back inside of my mind. it literally takes effort to pull out of it. unless i am doing something that links my subconscious mind with the world around me, it is simply a backdrop for my thoughts.
and so, why wouldn't my dreams be the peak of my day? it is an extend stretch of time where i am fully immersed in my subconscious, with no distractions absolutely no outside stimuli to split my attention. it is like a movie about me. when i watch a movie i am the same way. i let it fully wash over me. i go as far inside of it as i can, try to live it with the characters, live as a character with the camera as my perspective. i let it completely synchronize with my subconscious, so it is the new reality, and i am a part of it, observing and making jumps in logic like i do normally. in away, my dreams are the visual representation of my novelized self. when i read, it is like how i described watching a movie, only i control the point of view entirely. the visual element is not quite as acute, of course. my eyes and mind fill in a lot of gaps, so the imagery is a little more fluid and ethereal. but my dreams combine the two. i am trying to remember right now whether the final piece of the puzzle is there. do i hear music in my dreams? i am not sure. i can definitely see it being possible. there is something that propels my opinions of the action, controls the mood much like a great soundtrack does in a movie. this is something i will try to focus on remembering.
now that i have it in the back of my mind, when i am dreaming i will remember, and then that thought will be in my head the next time i think about it when i am awake, and that memory will be adapted to my waking mind by association. i have talked before about memories i have that didn't really happen, and i think i have my answer there. that is the way my memory works, by association, and my memory doesn't differentiate between dreams and reality unless i force it too. those memories of dreams fade away, but some of them are vivid enough to linger afterwards. some of them i can conjure up at will, but i am sure some of them don't return until there is something that draws them to the surface by association. you know, the way my mind works is mirrored in the way i experience dreams. there is so much i know is below the surface that i just can't remember when i leave my subconscious. there is a subtle barrier there that blocks me. i can travel back and forth, but i don't always bring things with me. i think this is the core reason that propels me so easily back into my mind. in my subconscious, i have access to everything i am. there is nothing i am locked out from. all of my memories and thoughts are available to me, and it is like veil being drawn back. i can see clearly, and act like myself. there is nothing blocking me, it is my mind open to me in its entirety.
if i have a soul, a core of my being, that is where it lies, in my subconscious. it all seems so obvious now. what is sleep? what is dreaming? it is the mind freed of all of the chemical interruption. the body shuts down entirely, and as a result, the mind is suddenly left to act completely unhindered, with no menial physical functions to distract it. it can act as it wishes, and the subconscious is the result.
i can see now what i need to do to gain access to the parts of myself that are hidden to me, the master store of knowledge that isn't quite available, but i am constantly seeking. i need to find my subconscious self inside of me, and combine myself with it completely. this should open doors that have remained closed to me. the question is, will my mind be strong enough to keep control over the menial physical functions? that is a rhetorical questions. my subconscious already tries to take control of my body while i am asleep. it can definitely control what my body receives from my mind, and vice versa. i have been seeing an increase of sensory activity in my dreams that has increased the realism even more. i have always been able to see, and hear in my dreams, and occasionally feel things. my sense of touch while i am dreaming has had something of an awakening in the past few years, and now i can't even tell the difference anymore between what i feel in dreams and feel awake. the real thing that has surprised me lately, is i have been smelling and tasting. it is still not complete yet, but i remember last night, vividly, the smells around me, and the taste of food when i sat down to eat. the first three senses were enough to fool me, but these last two are new, and make me feel as if i am approaching a new level in my dreaming, or maybe i should say a new fuller connection with my subconscious.
i feel like i am trying to hack into myself, like there is a system of controls that have been keeping me out. maybe this is good. knowing myself, and knowing my dreams and thoughts in their entirety, the perverse to the enlightened, there is a certain fear of letting my subconscious take control. but there is so much there that i need. there is so much knowledge that i have gained that is mine already, but i am being shielded from. so much i have experienced, so much growth that has occurred beyond my waking state that i should be able to draw from without some sort of outside trigger. i want it. i want to be able to use that knowledge any time, not just when necessity dictates. i can only imagine the webs of logic i will be able to build, sheets of possibility of ever increasing density. i want full access to my mind, permanent access, not just glimpses and fleeting ideas.
that is what inside the black core inside my head, the void i can't see into. that is what i will find when i go inside, just like i have always known, the full breadth of me. i will see into my soul, and the black void will turn into white light born of insight that will bathe everything i know now in the glow of fuller comprehension
today, i woke up, and i was angry. i was angry, because i was broken out of my dreams. and worse, i forgot what was happening in my dream instantly, and i sat there, awake, and i felt like my life had been taken away from me. and as the day went on, i kept coming back to this moment, and realized that most of my days are pretty much the same. thinking about it, i realized that most days i am disappointed when i wake up, because more happens to me in my dreams that makes me feel like i am living my life than happens when i am awake. i feel more at home, more myself when i am dreaming, and so when i wake up, it feels like i am entering a secondary, almost purgatory-esque state of being.
it makes sense in a few ways. the fact that i am more at home in my subconscious isn't anything new. it also isn't surprising that most of my days awake are identical, since they are, partly by design to get past them quicker. this process comes into focus now. i am speeding through my days. in fact, i sleep walk through my days. i am never fully present in the moment, there is always a part of me that is reaching into my subconscious. that is the main constant in my life, i guess. i am always in touch with it. it used to be, whenever i closed my eyes, the world would fade away and i would be immersed in my thoughts. now i don't even have to do that anymore. any time i have a second without any outside stimulus to distract me, inevitably there i am, back inside of my mind. it literally takes effort to pull out of it. unless i am doing something that links my subconscious mind with the world around me, it is simply a backdrop for my thoughts.
and so, why wouldn't my dreams be the peak of my day? it is an extend stretch of time where i am fully immersed in my subconscious, with no distractions absolutely no outside stimuli to split my attention. it is like a movie about me. when i watch a movie i am the same way. i let it fully wash over me. i go as far inside of it as i can, try to live it with the characters, live as a character with the camera as my perspective. i let it completely synchronize with my subconscious, so it is the new reality, and i am a part of it, observing and making jumps in logic like i do normally. in away, my dreams are the visual representation of my novelized self. when i read, it is like how i described watching a movie, only i control the point of view entirely. the visual element is not quite as acute, of course. my eyes and mind fill in a lot of gaps, so the imagery is a little more fluid and ethereal. but my dreams combine the two. i am trying to remember right now whether the final piece of the puzzle is there. do i hear music in my dreams? i am not sure. i can definitely see it being possible. there is something that propels my opinions of the action, controls the mood much like a great soundtrack does in a movie. this is something i will try to focus on remembering.
now that i have it in the back of my mind, when i am dreaming i will remember, and then that thought will be in my head the next time i think about it when i am awake, and that memory will be adapted to my waking mind by association. i have talked before about memories i have that didn't really happen, and i think i have my answer there. that is the way my memory works, by association, and my memory doesn't differentiate between dreams and reality unless i force it too. those memories of dreams fade away, but some of them are vivid enough to linger afterwards. some of them i can conjure up at will, but i am sure some of them don't return until there is something that draws them to the surface by association. you know, the way my mind works is mirrored in the way i experience dreams. there is so much i know is below the surface that i just can't remember when i leave my subconscious. there is a subtle barrier there that blocks me. i can travel back and forth, but i don't always bring things with me. i think this is the core reason that propels me so easily back into my mind. in my subconscious, i have access to everything i am. there is nothing i am locked out from. all of my memories and thoughts are available to me, and it is like veil being drawn back. i can see clearly, and act like myself. there is nothing blocking me, it is my mind open to me in its entirety.
if i have a soul, a core of my being, that is where it lies, in my subconscious. it all seems so obvious now. what is sleep? what is dreaming? it is the mind freed of all of the chemical interruption. the body shuts down entirely, and as a result, the mind is suddenly left to act completely unhindered, with no menial physical functions to distract it. it can act as it wishes, and the subconscious is the result.
i can see now what i need to do to gain access to the parts of myself that are hidden to me, the master store of knowledge that isn't quite available, but i am constantly seeking. i need to find my subconscious self inside of me, and combine myself with it completely. this should open doors that have remained closed to me. the question is, will my mind be strong enough to keep control over the menial physical functions? that is a rhetorical questions. my subconscious already tries to take control of my body while i am asleep. it can definitely control what my body receives from my mind, and vice versa. i have been seeing an increase of sensory activity in my dreams that has increased the realism even more. i have always been able to see, and hear in my dreams, and occasionally feel things. my sense of touch while i am dreaming has had something of an awakening in the past few years, and now i can't even tell the difference anymore between what i feel in dreams and feel awake. the real thing that has surprised me lately, is i have been smelling and tasting. it is still not complete yet, but i remember last night, vividly, the smells around me, and the taste of food when i sat down to eat. the first three senses were enough to fool me, but these last two are new, and make me feel as if i am approaching a new level in my dreaming, or maybe i should say a new fuller connection with my subconscious.
i feel like i am trying to hack into myself, like there is a system of controls that have been keeping me out. maybe this is good. knowing myself, and knowing my dreams and thoughts in their entirety, the perverse to the enlightened, there is a certain fear of letting my subconscious take control. but there is so much there that i need. there is so much knowledge that i have gained that is mine already, but i am being shielded from. so much i have experienced, so much growth that has occurred beyond my waking state that i should be able to draw from without some sort of outside trigger. i want it. i want to be able to use that knowledge any time, not just when necessity dictates. i can only imagine the webs of logic i will be able to build, sheets of possibility of ever increasing density. i want full access to my mind, permanent access, not just glimpses and fleeting ideas.
that is what inside the black core inside my head, the void i can't see into. that is what i will find when i go inside, just like i have always known, the full breadth of me. i will see into my soul, and the black void will turn into white light born of insight that will bathe everything i know now in the glow of fuller comprehension
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
i am sure the was actually something i wanted to talk about instead of just pixels and transparency.
ah screw it, i'll be back
ah screw it, i'll be back
work damn you work brain work! you know, one real downside to not smoking anymore, is that i don't have any way to distinguish between my brain's relaxed mood and its working mood. before it was pretty easy. i felt stoned and happy, or i felt awake and aware. now i feel caught in some sort of in between state all the time, never quite at full capacity, and never quite as content as i would like. guess i should have seen that coming, oh well.
so anyways, on to the new friv. i am still not quite satisifed with how it turned out. the concept is much better. the css files are all smaller (not that 1.3 kb is particularly large), and instead of having 6 images, i now have one image that stays on every page. it has definitely been something i have dreamed about, having the color switches be a literal color switch. the only thing that really changes now are single words in single lines of code, and the main logo just stays loaded in the cache the entire time. but the gif file still isn't working the way i would like. the current version you see is the 10th version i have had so far. there was a 2 hour period where it was changing every 10 minutes or so as i tested it out on the live site. i still think it would be funny if someone was actually surfing during that time, and kept seeing things change. but anyways, i know what is wrong with it. i am not quite sure how i want to fix it yet, so i think i need to work through this from the beginning.
originally i had this simple picture of a stylized circuit board i was using as my base picture. it was blue and turquoise, so i ran it through photoshop a few times, i set it to greyscale and reversed it, then tried to make a copy of just the parts i wanted, then tried to make a solid white overlay over the entire thing, but it didn't quite work. i had a few decent options that ended up being second only to the version you see up now, but the were nowhere near acceptable in terms of the transparency theme. so i tried different techniques with photoshop, and different source drawings, but nothing was working. so in the end, i went into paint and did a pixel by pixel drawing of the pattern you see now, white on black. it was just a pattern of random lines i made to give the representation of a circuit board, since that was the theme i was going for. it turned out pretty good, and went well in photoshop when i removed all the black parts. but stupid gifs and their stupid lossy file format, half of sections that are supposed to be filled with transparencies are now filled with god damn grey lines instead. i am a little irked. the image works incredibly with the grey theme, and ok with the lighter green and yellow themes, but looks like shit with the blue and grape ones. also, looking back, the pattern isn't really great. i wanted the whole friv.net text to be a little more subtly imbedded in the pattern, instead of popping out immediately like it does. and, it just looks kind of stupid. all in all, there are a lot of things i really like about it. i really like the combination of the big white friv lettering and the more subtle black :// symbol. i really like the way the image itself makes the top and bottom borders on the right hand side. but it doesn't work as well as it should.
so, to fix it, i have a few ideas. right now the whole circuit mess is a little blobby. i wanted it to taper a little more, and be a little more open. i still need the one part thick with wires to overlay the friv.net text over, but it doesn't need to be as thick as it is. i also noticed very quickly that it needs to extend farther to the left. i made the title text bigger so there isn't quite the void on the left as there was, but i can extend the circuits a little more. i also really like the idea of having the white circuits come from the friv text, but right now it doesn't quite work. i think it should either just come from the R through the top of the F, or just come from the bottom of the F. i haven't decided yet. also, there needs to be less random twists, things all need to flow in one directions a little more, instead of looping as much. the circuits should extend more as a fan, instead of meandering around so randomly. also, there needs to be more variation in the sizes and spacing of the wires. right now, there are only two big wires, then the upside down u. all of the others are the same. the spacing on it all needs to be a little more to make sure the colors pop through on the transparency. also, i need to see if there is a way to save it at in a little higher quality. right now the image is only 30 kb or something, so a little more sharpness wouldn't make it too big.
so far, the ideas are working alright though, they just need to be refined a little. i am not satisfied with the results yet. i am not really looking forward to making a whole new paint drawing again, although that was the tactic that definitely worked the best. oh well.
so anyways, on to the new friv. i am still not quite satisifed with how it turned out. the concept is much better. the css files are all smaller (not that 1.3 kb is particularly large), and instead of having 6 images, i now have one image that stays on every page. it has definitely been something i have dreamed about, having the color switches be a literal color switch. the only thing that really changes now are single words in single lines of code, and the main logo just stays loaded in the cache the entire time. but the gif file still isn't working the way i would like. the current version you see is the 10th version i have had so far. there was a 2 hour period where it was changing every 10 minutes or so as i tested it out on the live site. i still think it would be funny if someone was actually surfing during that time, and kept seeing things change. but anyways, i know what is wrong with it. i am not quite sure how i want to fix it yet, so i think i need to work through this from the beginning.
originally i had this simple picture of a stylized circuit board i was using as my base picture. it was blue and turquoise, so i ran it through photoshop a few times, i set it to greyscale and reversed it, then tried to make a copy of just the parts i wanted, then tried to make a solid white overlay over the entire thing, but it didn't quite work. i had a few decent options that ended up being second only to the version you see up now, but the were nowhere near acceptable in terms of the transparency theme. so i tried different techniques with photoshop, and different source drawings, but nothing was working. so in the end, i went into paint and did a pixel by pixel drawing of the pattern you see now, white on black. it was just a pattern of random lines i made to give the representation of a circuit board, since that was the theme i was going for. it turned out pretty good, and went well in photoshop when i removed all the black parts. but stupid gifs and their stupid lossy file format, half of sections that are supposed to be filled with transparencies are now filled with god damn grey lines instead. i am a little irked. the image works incredibly with the grey theme, and ok with the lighter green and yellow themes, but looks like shit with the blue and grape ones. also, looking back, the pattern isn't really great. i wanted the whole friv.net text to be a little more subtly imbedded in the pattern, instead of popping out immediately like it does. and, it just looks kind of stupid. all in all, there are a lot of things i really like about it. i really like the combination of the big white friv lettering and the more subtle black :// symbol. i really like the way the image itself makes the top and bottom borders on the right hand side. but it doesn't work as well as it should.
so, to fix it, i have a few ideas. right now the whole circuit mess is a little blobby. i wanted it to taper a little more, and be a little more open. i still need the one part thick with wires to overlay the friv.net text over, but it doesn't need to be as thick as it is. i also noticed very quickly that it needs to extend farther to the left. i made the title text bigger so there isn't quite the void on the left as there was, but i can extend the circuits a little more. i also really like the idea of having the white circuits come from the friv text, but right now it doesn't quite work. i think it should either just come from the R through the top of the F, or just come from the bottom of the F. i haven't decided yet. also, there needs to be less random twists, things all need to flow in one directions a little more, instead of looping as much. the circuits should extend more as a fan, instead of meandering around so randomly. also, there needs to be more variation in the sizes and spacing of the wires. right now, there are only two big wires, then the upside down u. all of the others are the same. the spacing on it all needs to be a little more to make sure the colors pop through on the transparency. also, i need to see if there is a way to save it at in a little higher quality. right now the image is only 30 kb or something, so a little more sharpness wouldn't make it too big.
so far, the ideas are working alright though, they just need to be refined a little. i am not satisfied with the results yet. i am not really looking forward to making a whole new paint drawing again, although that was the tactic that definitely worked the best. oh well.
