Mind-Manual

Gender Differences

One thing that fascinates me is the attraction between the various genders of our species. Gender identities are also very interesting to me. I just finished reading Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent. Norah Vincent pretends to be a man for about 18 months, and the interesting thing isn’t that she passed convincingly but her insights into the male gender. I highly recommend it as a fascinating and often entertaining read.

One thing she mentions that stood out for me is how any sign of effeminity is crushed out by the culture of men. One way to explain that is by suggesting that anyone who was gay would thus be forced to at least hide themselves. My theory, though, is that this process helps men behave like men, especially around women.

One theory of attraction says that women emphasize features that differentiate them from men, such as clear skin, pouty lips, smallness, vulnerbility, etc. In the same way, perhaps, by forcing men to act like men–that is aggressive and not like a “woman”–men might train other men to behave in a way that will help them differentiate themselves from women.

Hmm, I’m not quite sure this theory works out, but it’s an interesting thing to consider.

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The World is Not Rational

Rationality is a lens we impose on the world. Take for example pages in a book I’m reading that say “This Page Intentionally Left Blank”. That’s a contradiction, because they have that written on them, so they’re not blank, but it says that they’re blank. It’s LYING TO ME! However, just because it’s a logical contradiction and a lie doesn’t mean that it ceased to exist.

And because we can understand this logical contradiction and likely not get fazed by it, I submit that human beings are also not entirely rational, though many of us endeavor to be.

I r prolly ramblin now. Cause I’m rambling man.

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There’s A Great Irony…

There’s a great irony in a dictator orating a speech on freedom on independance day.

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What if James Cameron Made Spider-Man?

Back in the early nineties, James Cameron (Titanic, The Terminator 1 & 2) attempted unsuccessfully to make a live-action version of Spider-Man. Later, of course, Sam Raimi made the current series of block buster movies.

You can get a look at the original scriptment (a treatment + story boards) here. A fascinating read, Cameron is an excellent story teller and I was gripped by even just this short treatment.

There is also this script, which seems to have changed radically from the scriptment, if they are indeed both by Cameron.

Cameron’s Spider-man is more like the recent The Dark Knight movie. It’s a dark film, where Spider-man’s confused by many things and it really is about him both growing up and growing into his powers and his responsibility. It really seems like he’s facing a villain who is insanely strong and there is a question of whether Spider-man can really beat him till the very end, which the kids call dramatic tension.

I’ve to say, even though I would have loved to see this get made, I’m kind of scared of it.

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Ironies

The irony about someone giving relationship advice is that to be able to get effective advice, you have to have had experience with a lot of different people. However, why would you want to take advice from someone who can’t keep a relationship together?

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The Fall of the Internet

In the early 2000s, there had been a great vision for the Internet. People could seek out important medical information, learn new skills, and even find soulmates online. It was thought that this trend would continue until will were all continually connected to everything. However, in 2013, everyone left the Internet.

In 2011, a consortium of corporations and private interest groups won a decisive victory over Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who were “packet shaping” to limit the speeds of peer-to-peer data. The main argument that the ISPs job was simply to deliver data to the consumer from the source, not to act as a filter. While the Internet cheered and proclaimed the saving of free speech, trouble was brewing under the surface of this victory, and its name was the Electronic Ad Network.

Often derrided as being a front for spammers, the Electronic Ad Network used the same argument against email programs, claiming that email programs must simply deliver the mail to the client, as with regular mail, and allow the client to sort through it. An overzealous octogenerian judge who would later be revealed to be a technophone and who had, in fact, never been on the Internet, ruled in favour of the spammers and this openned the floodgates. Because of the very high signal-to-noise ratio in email, people tried to find very obscure email addresses such as a234Aw5D@gmail.com, however the automated spamming programs were relentless in finding all working addresses and spamming them. People tried to move into using the private messaging feature popular on forums, but the spammers claimed that any filtering there was also an infringement of the first ruling and were again successful with the same judge and asynchronous communication between people fell to nearly nill. This is how E-mail, a staple of the Internet since its inception as the ARPAnet fell.

Realizing there was an opportunity, a number of Internet ad providers for websites realized that the same argument could be used against ad-blockers, including the pop-up blocking function in the world’s most popular webbrowser, Mozilla Firefox, as well as its most popular extension, Adblock Plus. The main force behind this push to ban ad-blockers surprised everyone at the time: Google, the fourth largest company in the world. Their motto, “Do No Evil” was modified soon after to, “Do what’s best for us”. To this day, “Do Not Evil” is still used sarcastically in conversation.

As the number of ads increased on the Internet, surfers fled to the few safe places which did not use ads. However, the additional traffic caused a dilemma for the website owners: covering costs. Some decided to introduce ads, but since they could not control the amount of ads on their site (at least pop-up/under ads), their sites soon lost the majority of their traffic. Other sites decided to charge for membership, which, while helping them cover their costs, destroyed the open and free nature of the Internet.

That is how the Internet, a triumph of modern civilization, fell. As surfer experience on the Internet deterioated, and the costs of having a good experience increased, the number of people on the Internet dropped by nine-tenth’s almost overnight. Last year, in 2020, less than three million people claim to use the Internet on a regular basis, a major drop from the peak of 4 billion in 2014. The Internet, which had become a major politicaly, cultural and sociological force, is a hollow husk of what it used to be. The Internet, which many had believed could not be destroyed, was eventually taken down by ads and overzealous lawmaking.

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Firefox Extension Dev: DOM Inspector & Finding Window IDs

First the tip!

I spent a ridiculous amount to figure two things out about add-on development in Mozilla Firefox 3.

1. DOM Inspector, that thing that can tell you information about firefox windows such as their id is not a part of Firefox installation anymore, it is an extension now. You can find the DOM Inspector for Firefox 3 here. Also, the link that’s most commonly thrown around for the extension (version 1.8 somin) is wrong. The real link comes up when you search for DOM Inspector at the Mozilla Firefox Add-On database as the first item (but not google, the one in google’s first page is wrong, too).  Only DOM Inspector version 2 and above will work with Firefox 3. DOM Inspector is a crucial tool if you’re writing a firefox extension, and a fun little thing even if you’re not.

2. If you want to add a button to the Firefox interface, in the status bar or in one of the menus, you’ll have to use what’s called a XUL overlay. To write that, you need to know the window ID of the window you want to add your button or whatever to. I have yet to find a list of the various window ids. However, the way to find the window id of a specific window or menu or whatever, is to open up DOM Inspector. Have whatever you want to find the window id of open now. Click on File>Inspect Chrome Document>Your window. The cool thing about DOM Inspector is that you actually use it to change the look of Firefox, ON THE FLY. You can find more information about using it here at the Mozilla Developer Center.

Enjoy!

Some updates:

Recently I quit my main part-time gig, partially because I did not want to be one of those people who stays at a place cause they’re too scared, and partially cause I’d outgrown that position. I’ve been casually looking for new gigs, too, so if anyone knows about somin I might be interested in, contact me for a resume or whatever. Anyhoo, now I’ve got plenty of time and plenty of energy (my last job was a big energy drain), so I’m working on projects!

Recently I completed a video, have almost finished a short humourous short (just waiting on the musical intro) and am working on a few other video projects, which I will release when they’re done. I’m also working on a Firefox extension, as well as a wordpress plug-in, and a PHP/MySQL database program which I might open-source later as well, all of which will be released when they’re done and no sooner. I will write up the process of creating a Firefox extension, not to be a tutorial, but more as an Anatomy of a Firefox Extension Development. Wow, that’s a diverse group of things. Awesome! I like my life.

Cheers!

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Windows File Management Utilities

I do a lot of work with files. I have a lot of files, too, so I’m always on the lookout for little programs that will improve things, here’s a few I’m trying out right now:

DiskUseAnalyzer - Analyzes your disks and helps you figure out which and where are the biggest files for cleanup. Unfortunately, this keeps crashing on my computer, so I use a command line utility from Microsoft called diruse, which in included in Support Tools for Windows XP and Windows 2000.

FlashFolder - Adds some awesome things to your Save As… dialog boxes, such as selecting open folders. A more detailed and excellent review with screenshots here. You can also set shortcut keys for things, like I have Ctrl-E for opening a list of open folders and applications. Very handy. Install required, but its a very light program.

Q-Dir - File Manager. I’m looking for a new file manager to help me setup my GTD system. Has a lot of nice features, including being fast, but the one feature I’m looking for is being able to open up txt files in the pane doesn’t seem to be there. Excellent all around. Review with screenshots here. No install required in Portable mode.

WinMerge - Tool for merging and telling you the difference between folders and text files. Very handy. Doesn’t have to be installed.

JkDefrag - Defraging program. Defragging can help speed up your computer. Might be faster than the windows defrag program, but I use it cause it doesn’t require you to have 15% free space to run. Review here. No install required.

DM2 - I keep Wikidpad, Palm Desktop and a few other programs open all the time, and I want to be able to get at them easily, so I want to put them in the system tray on the button right. This program allows me to do that + more stuff, such as minimize things to a floating transparent icon. I changed the shortcut settings so that middle clicking on the minimize button minimizes to system tray. Another less-featured(which isn’t a bad thing) alternative is TrayIt! Neither require installs.

I’ve just installed a few of these recently, so some of these will drop off the wire later during real world testing.

Criteria: I prefer programs that don’t come with installers (to prevent messy system sprawl) and are light on resources. I obviously prefer free programs, with a preference for open source. Programs have to be light, as well.

I’m trying to create a good system for managing GTD stuff on a computer. Reference is a key problem. I have a Reference folder, with a Folder-tree view on the side, but its not good enough, for a number of reasons: large folders get lost in there, so need some way to highlight the fact that a folder is large so if/when I have to cut some of the file usage, I know where to do first. I also have a lot of text stuff that I manage with WikidPad, that I would prefer to manage with a file manager similar to Linux which would allow me to open text files in the same window as viewing files. I also often have to store files related to an idea (pictures or internet shortcuts, etc). So I’m demoing a few programs for that, with Q-Dir being the first one.

BTW, I’ve decided to use my Desktop in two ways: 1. Inbox. I save stuff on there and process it later. 2. Workspace. I’ll keep shortcuts to folders/files in my Reference folder for projects I’m currently working on. I manage my GTD system with Palm Desktop and my Palm M125.

Cheers!

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The Most Important Piece of Career Advice You Probably Never Heard

Cal Newport over at Study Hacks posted The Most Important Piece of Career Advice You Probably Never Heard, and I agree. The big question to ask yourself:

Fix the lifestyle you want. Then work backwards from there.

Defining Lifestyle

What do I mean by lifestyle? Roughly speaking: a detailed feel for what your day to day existence would be like. Some questions to consider when imagining an ideal lifestyle:

• How much control do I have over my schedule?
• What’s the intensity level of my job?
• What’s the importance of what I do?
• What’s the prestige level?
• What type of work?
• Where do I live?
• What’s my social life like?
• What’s my work life balance?
• What’s my family like?
• How do other people think of me?
• What am I known for?

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Finance for Young Folk

A lot of systems for managing money focus on dividing up your income or figuring out your expenses, but what if you don’t actually pay for all your expenses or have your own income, such as if you’re young and in school? Say, your parents or loans could be paying for your lifestyle. These systems then fall flat on their faces for young folk.

The way I figure it out in a general way is thus: I calculate what I call Lifestyle Cost and then figure out what money is coming in, whether through income or loans, or just costs that I’m not covering myself.

Let’s take a hypothetical university student who lives at home and makes 600 dollars a month from a part-time job, in Toronto:

• Assuming cost of living will be around 800 dollars a month (eating out, clothes, rent, food, etc), even though “rent” and “food” aren’t actually paid for by this student, but instead by their parents.
• Assuming school related costs add upto 6000 dollars a year, or 500 dollars a month (I like to have a monthly number to work with, as I do my calculates monthly, year and daily).

Add them up and you get $1,300 a month is the cost of the student’s lifestyle, which is likely what they’d pay if they were paying for it themselves. If you’re in the States, then you have to factor in health insurance, which is mostly free in Canada.

From here, say the student takes out the whole school cost in loans of 6000 dollars a year, or 500 dollars a month. So, on the incoming side: $600 (job) + $500 (loan) + $200 (what’s left, picked up by parents, though they’re picking up more). You can figure out a good mix of what to do with the money for yourself, such as paying a sort of rent to your parents, for example, or saving it to pay down your student loans later, etc.

You can calculate this lifestyle cost into an annual or daily cost. Annually that comes out to $15,600 and daily it comes out to 43 dollars a day. If your income + parents’ help doesn’t make up $43 dollars a day, the difference could be in loans, meaning that’s more you of have to pay later when your student loans come due. I think that recognizing this figure can also help you figure out what it really might mean to live on a dollar a day as many people in impoverished nations do.

There’s two good reasons to know this number:

1. If you wanted to move out, this number would help you figure out how much it would cost. Though, it will likely be lower than what it will actually cost you (your parents aren’t trying to make a profit off of you, while a landlord will, so they’ll charge more for rent).

2. It can help you figure out where you stand in terms of quality of life in the world. You can take this lifestyle cost and plug it in to this Global Rich List and be surprised at how high in the world’s rich list you are. If you live in a developed nation, you’re pretty much automatically in the top 15%. IE, there’s over 4 billion people poorer than you.

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