Buster McLeod posted a photo:

bustermcleod: 8:36pm BBQing on Erin's balcony watching the sunset and waiting for works of fire.

Buster McLeod posted a photo:

Buster McLeod posted a photo:

bustermcleod: The Belltown Block Party in the parking lot behind my house is sooooo bad! Did Mars Hill put this on? I hope so.

1) True love
2) Happiness
3) Enlightenment
4) Innocence

Our society has a few things that it doesn't like for people to go after directly. It's futile, we say. Or perhaps, by going after it you forfeit it. There are lots of stories about great things being given to the one that actually didn't want the great thing, much to the grumbling of everyone that actually did want it. Let go, and it will come to you.

I wonder, is this a case where society really has learned what is best for us... sort of a natural selection of philosophies where over time the best philosophy survives even if nobody knows exactly why? Or is it something else? I don't know why, but today something about it feels sinister to me.

I guess that means I should go to the barbecue now.

Received on 06/30/05. Go to http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=70018926&trkid=134852 to rate it.

Received on 06/24/05. Go to http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=60011060&trkid=134852 to rate it.

Received on 06/22/05. Go to http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=958964&trkid=134852 to rate it.

A silly question perhaps, but do you think happiness is directly related to our behavior? We all know that effects come from causes and fruit comes from trees and you reap what you sow, but can such a fickle thing as happiness be tied down and understood at all by looking at what we are all actually doing (while being happy or unhappy)?

I'm in the process of trying to find out. I've been getting closer to it with the Morale-o-Meter for a while, but while it has been an interesting toy, I haven't yet come to understand any better how my sleeping, alcoholism, and caffeine addictions have impacted my morale over time. With a few free days, and a lot of frustration as I bang my head on my desk trying to figure out what the hell I'm actually trying to do, I've created a new system for recording and understanding my morale in relation to my behaviors. It's a bit crazy, but my primary goal is to figure this thing out, and for me the best way to try to figure it out is to build a crazy tool that only I'd ever be able to figure out how to use, and, unfortunately, I'm also probably the only person that can figure out what the hell all of the numbers coming out of it stand for. Here's my attempt to explain it.

I've grouped many of my behaviors under umbrella "beliefs" that they support... for example, the reason I want to try new restaurants and go to shows often is because I want to explore the city I live in, and because I think that by exploring the city I live in I will be a bit happier than I might otherwise be.

Then, for each behavior, I rank them within the belief umbrella that they're placed under. For example, I think going to shows is a bit more important than trying new restaurants, and by ranking them this way, going to a show will eventually be worth a little more than trying a new restaurant. Each behavior in the system has a point value relative to other behaviors in the system, which is determined simply by their ranking within a belief, and also the rank of the belief itself relative to other beliefs.

In addition, for each behavior, I set the boundaries for "good behavior", which for now are pretty much arbitrary and just something to start with. I've set the good behavior boundaries for going to new shows at 1-2 per week. If I go to 1 or 2 new shows per week, I get points. If I go to 0, or, say, 3 or more shows a week, I lose points. This goes the same for drinking too much (or too little), not getting enough sleep (or getting too much sleep), not watering my plants, not leaving the country, etc. In this way, it's pretty simple... sometimes I think it's a little too simple. Could this possibly have any value?

Now the crazy part. It's fun to create a point system for real life. But how do you know if it's a good point system? What fun is getting points simply for getting points? Since I'm determining the point system, I can't consider myself to be winning simply because I get a lot of points. So there has to be a way to measure whether or not the points are measuring the right things. And this is where the Morale-o-Meter comes in. Every day I rate my morale, or happiness, on a scale of 1-10. One way to find out if the point system is "accurate" is to see whether or not the points go up when my morale goes up, and the points go down with my morale goes down. If there is a direct relationship between the movement of my morale and the movement of my score, then I know the system is working, and I've not only found that there is a direct relationship between happiness and behavior, but I've also found which behaviors contribute most to the changes in my morale.

I'm guessing that to begin there will be no correlation between these two things. But at least I'll have the bio-feedback mechanism in place to begin to add behaviors, remove them, rank them differently, and try things out. Am I onto something or should I be taken to the looney bin?

long, objectivism, philosophy, small print

Have you heard of RoboCup 2002? It’s a yearly soccer tournament between robots that just ended last week. Last year it was in Seattle (see article), and I wish I hadn’t missed it, this year it was in Japan. Here are some robot pictures. The goal of the soccer tournament is to have a robot team by 2050 that can beat humans. I don’t think that should be a problem.

Why soccer? They say because it is a competitive environment that allows creative innovation in artificial intelligence and motor skills, and those innovations could be used in other areas, like disaster rescue. For example, rescuers after an earthquake or fire take great risk by entering falling or flaming buildings, and often don’t enter immediately. Robots could though. Although, is it worth risking a life to test a robot? I think practical applications of disaster rescue will probably come long after the robot soccer team wins. And if you can make a rescuing robot, whats to stop someone from creating an assassin robot? Fun times ahead, indeed. I only wish this RoboCup tournament was being televised.

Completed step three of the Novel Accountability Program, 29 days early.

Last Saturday, my old roommate and good friend from my first year at Berkeley found my website. I had lost contact with him about 5 years ago, checking google every 6 months or so for signs of life. I knew he occasionally posted to Adbusters, and that he had somehow gotten his feet into the biodiesel business, but I couldn’t find an email address or a mailing address to contact him with. He found me the same way, through google. Thanks to google, I got to catch up with an old friend.

Building myself a killer ROBOT! I bought a robot kit from amazon: TAB Electronics Build Your Own Robot Kit, which I’ll be using to create my first robot today. The cool thing about this kit is that you learn a real robot programming language and can give it unique behaviors, and also, you can add onto it with additional micro-controllers (robot brains) to make your robot even more powerful! I’ll report back in a bit, after I go buy the 9-volt battery that’s going to charge this little menace to all living things (including my cats).

This is a book I picked up about a year after I saw “High Fidelity” for the first time. Rob mentions it along with The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I also picked up and enjoyed thoroughly. It was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Nobel Laureate.

I never got around to reading “Cholera” because of outside restraints (work, school, etc.). After learning in my chem 1045 lab that HCN (hydrogen cyanide) releases a scent similar to bitter almonds when vaporized, i remembered the excerpt that resides on the back cover, which is also the first line of the book. “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”

It turns out that AuCN (gold cyanide) has a physical property much like HCN when it is heated. the effects on the human body are also similar. i’ve not completed the book yet, but as i consider myself an expert on subjects discussed this book, such as unrequited love and public service, i’ve grown quite enamoured of Marquez’s prosaic rhythms. It’s a book that makes me laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time. I will post updates on my progress and write a full review upon completion.

hi again. so i got married on the 17th of june and went to Paris for two weeks. i got back last night at 2am. the wedding was … and the honeymoon was … and now we’re back and we’re …

here are a few highlights i’d like to share and remember:

• a lot of people were here for the couple days before the wedding—it helped ease the nervousness that was docked in the back of my mind—how would i cope with the infinite variety of scenarios in my head and the one singular event of the wedding. would they clash or blend or harmonize or generate a feedback loop. it turned out that the wedding was both more chaotic, and a little more calm than i had been expecting. there were a few rough areas (like when the piano player didn’t stop playing once we were up the aisle and the best man had to kick his chair to make him stop, and like when my friends from utah were talking about K but i was in a zone and didn’t realize and sort of gave the impression of being really stressed even though i wasn’t.)
  
• nick, K’s six year old nephew was a tough competitor for my deserved spotlight as he delighted friends and family alike with his rapid succession of taking about 5 rolls of film from the disposable cameras dispersed about. he also showed us his cartwheel and his deft leap from the staircase to the ground.
  
• day one in paris: hot. our modest one room hotel hardly held our beds (yes, there were two twin beds nudged up against one another which they called a double bed). our shower was about 1 square foot. the window nicely overlooked the local paris university. during the second night there we realized that our entire neighborhood was consumed by the solstice festival which lasted all night. small cover bands lined st. michel street (one block away) and people filled the streets forcing cars to find another way around town. people climbed local monuments and hung from ancient statues symbolizing victory in war. this was the first of at least half a dozen fetes (festivals) that we experienced during the two weeks.
  
• we quickly found a favorite area of paris lined with cafes, bars, brassieres, and stores at the corner of st. michel and the seine. our first cafe au laits were purchased as we sat at a cafe where almost all the chairs were outside. the tables were arranged so that each table had two chairs on the same side of the table, so that customers could watch the street and the people on the street. this is the model that all the cafes in paris seemed to follow, much to our liking.
  
• this was K and i’s second trip together (the other being japan), and we get along well on trips since we both don’t feel like there’s any real need to hit all the hotspots one after another in rapid succession. instead, we’ll plan a day at a time and will spend a lot of time at a couple places that we really want to explore. we spend five days at the louvre alone, and saw probably two thirds of the exhibits.
  
• rick steves is a huge dork. he was so bent on making us experience the cheapest and most americanized version of paris that we read his book mostly for comic relief. in reference to his 90 minute walk through the louve he finishes his humorous essay with this quote: “once you get your gottas out of the way, head on over to the orsay”.
  
• the paris like football. during our last night there they won the european cup and there was chaos in the city for the entire night. again, they were hanging from statues and we joined them for a while running into the streets whenever the lights were red and pounding on cars and jumping up and down like little children full of glee, waving flags, popping champagne (alcohol is allowed in public, and often encouraged), buses danced around, people haning out of car windows and sunroofs, and even the ambulances and policeman would wave and honk their horns to the tune they had invented for the occasion…

well, i have returned from paris feeling full of inspiration to paint again, and will be continuing to collaborate with K on a story we’ve started and on a painting we’ve done some sketches for. also, this sight will undergo some redesign eventually. lots of things can now be cleaned up and reorganized in my life such as the money situation and the creativity situation and the job situation. looking forward to it.

sorry for the noted lack of non-event related material in this entry, i’m not sure what i want this diary to be anymore. whenever i go travelling i become very anti-record keeping. i feel animosity to those who carry video cameras always a foot in front of themselves and who have to take a picture of every little thing. you have to stop recording sometimes in order to enjoy what you’re doing at the moment. so i didn’t keep any detailed notes about the trip, and only took one and a half rolls of film during all two weeks. but here i am with an entry with the sole intent of recording. i can think of a few justifications for this and so can you so i won’t talk about them.

today, we cleaned the house (dirty still from visitors), and opened our wedding gifts—one of the best ones being a box filled with a particularly esteemed friend of ours’ ten favorite books, only two of which i’ve already read.

one other new resolution i’ve made is to start running again—i even bought an mp3 player to kick start me. i have been messing around with it today and love it. lots of new things. have you ever seen me so content.