Gradin.com » intention

A Drum Circle Arrangement of “Galang”

Olaf — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:00:54 +0000

I’m imagining some possible scenarios where I could lead a drum circle into a sort of performance. Most facilitated drum circles enter into spontaneous or random rhythms and are then led to compose the music. I would really like to lead people (sometimes naively) into known songs. There’s an extra sense of excitement when you realize you’re playing an actual song. Even if you don’t know the song, being led through a composed set of rhythms is very rewarding! I spent about 10 minutes this morning and worked out the basic rhythms within M.I.A.’s “Galang.” It’s a fun piece of music if you haven’t heard it (YouTube link provided below). My intention in recreating it for a drum circle is not to play the song succinctly, but rather to have all the parts present and accounted for. When and for how long each part plays is up to the facilitator. If the groove is held well, someone could play the voice part through a solo drum!

Drum Circle Arrangement, Galang: [See post to access streaming content!]

M.I.A., Galang (emebedding not allowed)

Tips for Blogging, Puddin’ Brain

Olaf — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 21:03:21 +0000

I was just reading “16 Tips for Blog Idea Brainstorming” to try and kick myself out of my latest dose of writer’s block. I’m slowly coming to the realization that it’s not writer’s block that I’m experiencing, but rather “pudding brain” (or some scientific explanation therein). Pudding is a wonderful substance. It has great things mysteriously captured within it and converted into the silky, sweet bliss that is puddin’. It’s worthless really, but wonderful in the moment. At some point though, you may realize that you’ve eaten 13lbs of pudding and now you’re having trouble getting up from the couch…let alone back to solid foods. So pudding brain is something like that. Others may refer to it as a sort of mental hiatus. But when you’re on a mental hiatus, you can only come up with puddin’ brain.

Tangents aside, the 16 tips that John Pozadzides offers are decent enough, if not mostly well known. I did find one real error in John’s ideas. It doesn’t take into consideration those afflicted with Pudding Brain. I hit Thoof on his list of aggregators to read – one I hadn’t seen before – and got really stuck. It’s one of those new-fangled aggregators that automatically load more items as you get closer to the end of the scrolling page. You can waste a lot of time there!

There’s something to be said for focus. Hitting the hot spots on the web for news is well and good, but it’s probably more productive to focus on those places that can offer you something to comment on, rather than simply steal your attention away from what you came there to do. Sites like YouTube, Thoof, and even Digg (though less so for me) are real time sinks. When it comes to blog idea hunting, I have more success trusting my own RSS aggregation. It may have a lot of the same stuff, but it’s interspersed with other sources and is slightly less accessible because RSS is abstracted from the website. I also like the idea of hitting the unpopular sites our there with very specific information to get ideas. It’s more likely to be original and it’s probably something you’re very specifically interested in.

Now, that said; I haven’t been inspired to write about much lately. But it’s not so much about my sources as it is my own intentions. The number one tip for blog idea brainstorming is this:

Take an interest in what you have to say.

If you have no interest, you have no story. You can see right through a post that is paying lip service to its readers by reposting content someone else has written. John mentions in his tips that he goes the extra mile to do some research on topics he is reposting. That’s exactly the right idea in my mind. He’s taken an interest and is providing original commentary on a popular topic.

So in between original content I fill in with interesting things I find elsewhere, or current news events. But I don’t just re-post other people’s content.

A Surreal Morning

Olaf — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:29:19 +0000

Monday morning I began my day like many others. It was the first day of school for many, and it was the beginning of the work week for me. I also managed to get out the door in record time (related) that morning; the sun was just creeping up above the horizon as I set out for work. As the roads were particularly empty, at least in the opposite direction to the commuter’s pilgrimage, I noted a single SUV driving opposite my direction across the median. I noted it, though it was for no reason other than my significant training in Zen Driving. Over the next 7 seconds, I would take special note of this vehicle as it careened out of control and ended up on its side in the middle of the lane.

It began as what I took for childish misuse of an SUV by brazen young kids on their way to their first day at school in the new year. There was a wild swerve into the median – a hard hit against the curb wall followed by a brief foray on a narrow median, ending in the erratic jerk back into the vehicle mainstay. This was the opening act for several more wild swings of the SUV’s rear end as it tried to come to terms with the perfectly straight road. You might say it was going through corrective maneuvers, but each swing seemed wilder than the former until the wheelbase could no longer handle the large vehicle’s centrifugal force. I witnessed the slow and labored moment where the driver-side wheels lifted off the ground and I knew the driver had lost. The truck rested on its side in the middle of two lanes; as though it had happened sometime in the night when no one was there to see it, and now it is found with the surrounding mystery of how it got there.

I pulled around at the very next median break to see how I could help. I have a cell phone, vague knowledge of CPR, and I’m 2 meters tall with great dexterity – surely that makes me useful in some ways. However, people were already running out from stores on the side of the road and other cars behind me had stopped in the road to lend their hands. In seconds, the scene was covered in people looking down into the truck’s interior. I have no idea what happened in there, but I can only imagine a few circumstances. A) There was a fight between the driver and at least one passenger. B) The driver had a seizure. C) It was intentional. All of these are pretty bizarre circumstances in my book. The oddest thing is that it has taken me three days to actually blog about this and I didn’t mention it to anybody until late Monday. The whole event seemed to have taken place in my imagination. It was difficult for me to keep the memory from being a nebulous dream in my mind.

DiY PC: Antec Nine Hundred (Case)

Olaf — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:00:15 +0000

I’m in the process of building out a new custom PC for the house – the first one in quite a while now. Contrary to what you might think, as a technology guy I’m usually a little late for getting things up-to-date around the house. As such, I’m replacing an old Intellistation dual-proc Pentium 3 XEON. It sounds phat, but trust me, it’s showing its age.

I tried once to just hit this project with one blow-out purchase and be done. Just as I was ready to do it, something else came up that took priority over discretionary money. As such, I’m going the incremental route and starting with the components that are least likely to change over a short period of time.

This post begins my adventure in building out what should be a great rig.

The case decision has always been a hard one for me. I have a memorable scar on my right thumb where I was attacked by a sub-$50 tower case back in 1996. I was attempting to push out metal break-outs in the case’s rear slots with my thumb. It was difficult at first, but when the razor-sharp edges of the slot sliced off a third of my thumb’s width, it slid in easily. Er – that wasn’t the intention, however. Some-odd stitches later (three through the thumbnail – ouch!), I was ready to get back to work on the case. I used a Clark’s head screwdriver and some pliers to finish off those slots. As fun as the ER visit was to break up my day, I was not entertained by the next case-catastrophe. I wanted to test out the case power and front L.E.D.’s before I began installing components. Holding firmly to the exposed metal from the case’s chassis, I pushed the large power button on the front bezel. Oh vengeful gods! 110 volts coarse through me, there’s a loud crack, and smoke boils up from behind the bezel. Unshaken (actually I was literally shaken, but still determined), I unplugged the power supply and reset the breaker that had tripped. When I investigated the power switch and back-side of the bezel, I found that it had welded itself onto the case. Having the equipment (a hammer and screwdriver), I gingerly broke the weld (gingerly, for an ogre). Turns out, the case’s sharp edges had struck again. During shipment – possibly before – the switch leads had been sliced and exposed. Unbelievably, I replaced the switch and went on.

With the exception of some minor cuts (again from the chassis edges), I experienced no further catastrophes with that case. It wasn’t until I had done some fancy coupling of two power supplies with one switch and electrified the entire case while the system was on that I finally ditched it. Good times.

What this painful experience taught me was that I would no longer spare any expense when it came to cases. Disregarding the beautiful custom cases out there, I seek out full tower cases with lots of room for hard drives, bays, and plenty of cooling options. As you might guess, I also check the status of the chassis edges – deburred or folded are the terms I believe they’re using now. I also look at cases that generally don’t include power supplies (PSU). Included PSU’s are probably cheaply made and may have suffered damage within the case during shipment or installation.

This brings me to my case of choice, the Antec Nine Hundred. It reminds me of the Spartan 300, but has nothing to do with that. My first choice was actually a Gigabyte (3D Aurora 570) tower, but it didn’t go on super sale when the Nine Hundred did. I chased the deal for a little while on the net where it bounced around from site to site at $89.99. I missed the deal on ZipZoomFly where shipping is generally free and got it at Outpost (Fry’s) – there I had to pay shipping and tax, but it was a far better deal than $130+ you see it elsewhere.

As I build out the actual system, I’ll be sure and add my feelings on this case. Until then, here are the spec’s directly from Antec’s site:

Unique Top mounted 200mm TriCool exhaust fan to cool the hottest system
Perforated front bezel for maximum air intake
Two front loaded HDD cages for up to 6 hard disk drives
The HDD cages act as air ducts to take air in more efficiently. Optional middle 120mm fan bracket to cool the hottest graphic cards or CPU
Two 120mm TriCool blue LED front fans to cool hard disk drives
Window side panel comes with an optional 120mm fan mount for maximum VGA cooling
Top mounted I/O ports for easy access
Top tray for your MP3 player, digital camera, etc.
Power supply mounts at the bottom of the case (power supply not included)
Advanced cooling system:
- 1 top 200mm TriCool fan with 3-speed switch control
- 1 rear 120mm TriCool fan with 3-speed switch control
- 2 front 120mm special black TriCool blue LED fans with 3-speed switch control to cool HDDs
- 1 side (optional) 120mm fan to cool graphic cards
- 1 middle (optional) 120mm fan to cool CPU or graphic cards
9 Drive Bays:
- External 3 x 5.25″; Internal 6 x 3.5″ for HDD, or
- External 6 x 5.25″; Internal 3x 3.5″ for HDD, or
- External 9 x 5.25″
Motherboard: Fits micro and standard ATX
7 Expansion Slots
Top I/O
Power & reset button with blue LED
2 x USB 2.0
1 x IEEE 1394
Audio In and Out
Case Weight Net: 18.52 lbs, Gross: 24.36 lbs
Case Dimensions: 19.4″ H x 18.4″ D x 8.1″ W

$105.78 through outpost.com (Tax & Shipping incl.)

Emily Yoffe Learns ‘The Secret’

Olaf — Sat, 12 May 2007 14:25:07 +0000

Emily Yoffe at Slate.com recently wrote a piece for the Human Guinea Pig column regarding The Secret. I haven’t read the book myself, but I did read The Power of Intention which I am to understand is a similar concept. Emily retells her two month account of following the book’s advice and finds inspiration for her comic genius.

As self-absorbed as I already am, I loved the permission the book gave to sink deeper into a Jacuzzi of megalomania. As The Secret points out: “You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life.” Just as I’d always suspected!

She exemplifies my biggest problems with the latest sweeping fad in intentional living. Materialism is one of the more obvious ones. I realize that these books include other ideas for using intention, but I suspect that the authors and marketers all know that pushing grandiose ideas of wealth attainment are sure-fire methods to lock-in people’s attention.

The appeal is obvious. Forget education, effort, performance. Everything you want—money, power, comfortable shoes—is yours simply by wanting it enough.

Amy and I talked about it at length. She’s a fervent supporter of the ideas of intention and recognizes this type of energy work, along with many others, as being ancient wisdom that the world has ‘forgotten.’ I agree with caveats. Which is another way of avoiding an actual argument over the details, when at the core we’re saying mostly the same thing. Essentially, we’re both on board with the idea of positive versus negative thinking and the direct effect on your perception and dealings with the world around you.

What I don’t like is the new bubble gum wrapper that’s been applied to the philosophy – I liken it to Yoffe’s discussion on watered-down Eastern philosophy. But it’s hard to make a best seller if you don’t present its teachings in a way that the mass public can understand. Despair.com reminds us that “none of us is as dumb as all of us.” So instead of writing a qualitative essay on setting goals and remaining optimistic – we could even push the energy aspect and explain the sociological effects of our attitude – the author of The Secret and other author’s modern adaptations of age-old concepts have chosen to ‘market’ these concepts to a mass, oft fickle, audience. I can easily see the argument against writing a technical essay on individual energy projection. If you don’t dumb it down some, you’re not getting your message out to people that wouldn’t have otherwise come to these ideas themselves. Unfortunately, I think the only way to teach complex philosophy is to live it. It requires success, failure, and time.

Byrne writes: “A shortcut to manifesting your desires is to see what you want as absolute fact.” … Secret-speak requires this odd future-present construction, which my husband came to call, “sounding like a moron.”

Yoffe captures my concerns about the modern inception of philosophical teachings. Not by coming out and saying it, but by a simple inference from her experiences. I’ll remind my readers that I’m not bashing these teachings, only the glossy cover and Cliff’s Notes by which so many establish their adoption.

I’ve Got The Secret: What happened when I followed the best-selling book’s advice for two months. — Emily Yoffe

Make Sure You Have Clean Underwear

Olaf — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 19:55:26 +0000

Balthazar received his second backpack in life – this one more official than the diaper bag/backpack we taught him to carry. He perked awake this morning with the clear intention of this backpack accompanying him to daycare (a.k.a. school). All morning he held onto said pack and eagerly considered the jealousy in his friends’ eyes as they drooled over (and on) the canvas glory of Nemo and friends. Having arrived at school, it suddenly dawned on him that he might want to pack something in the bag. His first thought centered on some underwear he spotted in the recesses of the car. Lucky for Amy, she happened to have the right item for the job. He promptly put the bag in the pack and happily carried it in to present. Amy thought it particularly unique that he was packing underwear in his backpack, but having prompted the ladies up front to guess what he had, they already knew. Blast! Apparently, it is of no surprise that a child of 3-4 would want underwear in their bag.

Talladega Nights

Olaf — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:29:05 +0000

We watched Talladega Nights Sunday evening and were pleased, at least, that we chose to pay the reduced matinee price. Maybe I’ve outgrown the comedic pratfall and slapstick routines of Larry, Moe, and Curly, but I’d like to think that Talladega Nights just wasn’t that funny. My wife and I decided that it was probably hilariously funny to make and be a part of, but that personal comedy is lost a bit on the audience. What was funny about the movie was the audience response. Amy and I both felt that it was geared strongly towards a great eye-poke at Americans. I felt that the creators really got what they wanted from the response, and the joke is on the audience. The irony of the film is in the humor. It isn’t always delivered well and it’s not always apparently applicable to the movie, but when the audience laughs, they’re being laughed at. The Frenchman, Jean Girrard played by Sacha Baron Cohen, has an unconvincing accent and portrays one of America’s stereotypes of the French. Girrard is gay, French, a sophisticate, and impossible to understand. This all plays into a more sinister attitude towards the French by Americans. Talladega Nights also takes advantage of a theme that envisions adult-oriented lines given by children to be funny. The lines aren’t funny coming from real actors and fall flatly to my ears coming from children. I understand what they’re doing, but I just prefer that good comedy be left to real actors. There is certainly good comedy in the movie, but it could have been summarized in some Saturday Night Live skits and sufficed. I enjoy Will Ferrell’s humor, but I find that his comedy is more appropriate as a sideline or co-star role. His pieces in the Austin Powers movies still rings truly hilarious to me. I contrast this movie to the masterpieces (they were masterpieces, weren’t they?) The Naked Gun, Dragnet, and Police Academy of yesteryear. Not the brilliance of those classics. I was also reminded in a discussion with a co-worker that it was probably not the intention of the creators for this movie to be intellectually analyzed. Maybe so, but I truly believe that Talladega Nights was more than a silly comedy about Nascar and perhaps just someone’s personal joke on our state of being as Americans.

Kibbles Wrap-Up

Olaf — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:09:48 +0000

The experiement has failed to a certain degree. As of Monday morning, we are now both officially off the diet. We fell wuite a bit short of our goal of eight weeks, but it was for good reasons. Isi’s system let him have it after just three days of dog food. He has GERD, so to some degree there’s an obvious factor to it. He started vomiting on the third day and wasn’t able to hold down the amount of food needed to keep himself healthy anymore. I, on th eother hand, was not having any noticeable problems until at least Day 4. On Day 4 I acquired the discomfort of heavy gas after (I mean immediately) every meal. Nothing else suffered until Day 5. At that point my mouth was feeling largely raw after chewing so much coarse, dry dog food. Rather like the feeling of having burned your mouth with scalding liquid or having eaten a large amount of hard toast. Again, uncomfortable, but bearable. Day 5 was also a Saturday, which was my first weekend. The weekend offered a particularly difficult challenge culturally. As Amy didn’t want to see me eat dog food, nor did she want Balthazar to see me eating it, I had few options left to fill myself at the appropriate times during the day. On Day 6, I was down to just 2 cups (from 5) for the entire day and knew I couldn’t keep doing that every weekend. The internal gas was uncomfortable, mouth was sore, and I would have to be a loner at home. Tough odds. It was also after a rather unpleasant experience in the bathroom involving things like pine cones, sharp rocks, or possibly a complete toy train with working steam engine that I decided I should stop while I’m…er…still going as it were.

In the end, I learned quite a few things about the viability of a product if it were to be created in this aftermath. I still firmly believe in the concept, but there are certainly some considerations to be put into the product (maybe some future testing scenarios ;) ).

Also, Isi lost 12 lbs. (presumably water-weight) while I only lost ½ lb., if that. I don’t actually have any water-weight to lose, and it was never my intention to. I retook my blood and urine tests at the end, so I will post any noticeable comparisons between the two.

No One Gets It

Olaf — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 13:45:10 +0000

I have a bust of my head in my cube at work, of all places, and no one gets it. It’s damn funny I tell you! People are generally very impressed at the craftmanship of the sculpture. Maybe they’re trying to be respectful of my decoration choices. The intention of my bringing a life-size replica of my head (14-year-old head, that is) was humor. Maybe I should bring in a pedastal to prop the head upon. Surely that would exasperate the point.

Falun Gong Cultivation

Olaf — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:51:34 +0000

It is not my intention to become an activist, nor is this site a place to vent my political views. In general, I am incredibly bored by politics, and activism is not a lifestyle. That said, I’d like to talk a little about Falun Gong and its oppressed members in China. This is relative to the BODIES, the Exhibition I attended recently (Intro., Wrap-Up).

In summary, Falun Gong is a Buddhist/Taoist practice introduced to China in 1992. The spirituality is based upon internal cultivation and the power of qi, known more popularly as chi. Falun Gong’s more metaphysical aspects include a great ability in healing and the cultivation of spiritual bodies. This is the practice of qigong (a meditative breathing-induced energy).

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1999, it is believed that the Falun Gong and the Chinese government had a falling out and bad things happened. Originally, Falun Gong was supported by the government because of its apparent scientific and medical philosophies. In time, the religion took off and was finally noticed by Communist supporters. In a short time span, several reports were publicized showing that Falun Gong was being treated as a religion and should not be. There were discreditations and malpractice demonstrations of Falun Gong. Protests were held. There is some question as to whether or not the government had any doing in the protests. One theory is that the government staged at least one protest to show Falun Gong practitioners misbehaving with law enforcement. One such report speaks of a young teenage girl pouring gasoline on herself and igniting it. According to other Falun Gong members, this could not have been a protest by a Falun Gong due to their view on suicide. This encited further protests and things really started cooking. Now, the government is in an all-out war with the Falun Gong and has arrested tens of thousands of its members.

The Chinese government has been accused of a failure to respect human rights in their persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. There are reports of torture, wrongful imprisonment, and executions en mass. The latest of these allegations includes the wrongful harvesting of organs from conveniently unidentified prisoners. The idea is that Falun Gong are arrested, then held in various labor camps all across China. In at least one such case, a cadaver processing plant existed very near to the labor camp and claims have it that the government is wrongfully taking organs from those dead into these plants for the sale of human organs. The situation draws a bleak picture where the government kills off political prisoners in order to harvest their organs and sell them at top dollar to other nations in need of the tissues. It’s like a tissue cultivation farm when looked at this way.

I recently saw the BODIES exhibit, where it is rumored that the cadavers on display are actually those of the Falun Gong. Could be. But I don’t compare this to ivory blackmarket trade. The prisoners are being executed regardless of whether or not people are buying organs and bodies. My western thinking has me believing that it is at least an honor that a body may be taken from total loss to help educate the rest of the world in anatomy. I understand that it is a great cultural divide. I also understand that what is happening to persecuted people of China is a travesty. However, if anything good could come out of this, it’s the medical and scientific discovery that is the BODIES exhibit and others like it. I don’t feel responsible for the deaths of the Falun Gong because I’ve seen and support the BODIES exhibit. I actually would like to go again and see them in possibly a different light; one of even greater respect and awe. I feel that the Chinese government should stop their treatment of those expressing their rights to speech and religion, but I’d be willing to bet that China will still be the biggest supplier in cadavers and organs. They are still the most densely populated country.