Random Stuff
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/04/2012 - 21:47Last night, I had another one of those dreams about trying to find my way. In this case, it wasn't about finding a room in a hotel, it was about finding my way home. Mostly there are just fragments of the dream remaining. We were riding in a car that my brother was driving. Barreling down a hill we came to an abrupt end of the road. My brother couldn't stop in time and we went over the embankment. Airbags misfired, no one was injured, but the car was unusable.
So, we got out and started walking. Along the way, we were befriended by some bears that travelled some of the way with us before getting reunited with their families. All of this was in some sort of national park. We continued walking along the road, until we saw a sign indication our destination was something like thirty-six miles away. We headed off in that direction and soon left the park. The area were were traveling felt abandoned, in some not quite post-apocalyptic way. Eventually we got to an area where there were some people and it was about this point that I woke up.
Meanwhile, back in non-dream space, I had a pretty busy day at work. I found out that the order for the Raspberry Pi at Amazon had gotten lost. I don't know what happened with that. The Raspberry Pi was one part of a larger order, and the rest of the order has gone through and been delivered. I called up Kim to make sure we hadn't been billed for it, and we hadn't.
However, Kim discovered that we had a strange bill from Rackspace. Initially, I thought it was just the normal billing for the hosting service for my website. However, the amount was not what it had been. It turns out that Rackspace had migrated my VPS to the cloud, resulting in a new billing structure. Fortunately, this cut the cost of my service in half. So, this evening, I spent some time getting used to Rackspace's cloud service. There are a bunch of upgrades I've been meaning to do, and now that my server is on the cloud, it makes more sense to try and do them.
I did find a different place to order my Raspberry Pi, so there are all kinds of geeky things that I should get done, as well as upgrading my personal cellphone which has been out of commission for a while.
Beyond that, I'm trying to organize my calendar for the coming couple months, do some of my reading for the Health Fellowship, get more writing done here, and generally try to keep my head above water.
#visionforum - Finding My Religion - Picasso's Theory of Relativity
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/03/2012 - 07:32Saturday evening, Kim and I went to the Connecticut Forum discussion, Vision and Brilliance which featured Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neri Oxman and Neil Gaiman. The event was sold out; packed with geeks that most likely rarely make it to the Bushnell. I must admit that the only other time I've been to the Bushnell as to see Blue Man Group a couple years ago.
Others have written about what a great event it was, so I'm going to share a few of my thoughts about specific parts of the content. In the slides before the event started, it mentioned that the hashtag for the event was #visionforum. Yet then they played the standard announcement at the beginning of the events at the Bushnell about turning off all electrical devices and not taking photos. A lot of people had their cellphones out as the event started, but the tweeting subsided pretty quickly. Unfortunately, but my phone and Kim's were low on battery power and I didn't get to tweet as much as I would have liked.
John Dankowsky started off with a standard introductory question and the panelists answered the way I had already heard them speak in YouTube videos. Then he moved on to a question about what is vision and brilliance? Where does it come from. The three panelists all seemed to agree and give the same answer in slightly different ways. Vision and brilliance comes from doing what you love. From having a job you don't want to take a vacation from. Tie to that was an important aspect of keeping at your passion, even though others might not understand what you are talking about.
This played out particularly notably between Neri Oxman and Neil Gaiman. Oxman went off on topics about 3D and 4D printing; printing cartilage, printing DNA, and time after time, Gaiman seemed to say, that gives me a great idea for another story. Picasso's theory of relativity, a house seed, and several other ideas.
Oxman had talked about Cubism and the Theory of Relativity emerging at about the same time and how closely related they were in her mind. They were both about taking observations and trying to make sense of them. They both built upon the what was known at the time. It led to some interesting talks about intelligence. Intelligence, at least as it is measured by humans is about learning from others, from not having to rediscover tools or fire in each new generation. I could almost hear President Obama paraphrased into, "You didn't discover that by yourself." I could imagine some conservatives writhing at the idea about how connected and dependent we really are on one another.
After the break, there was a discussion about science and religion. It seemed to fall back on what I believe is a misguided false dichotomy between religion and science. The discussion drifted into the idea of "God of the Gaps", God, described in terms of what science can't explain. I got tired of that discussion over three decades ago in a science and religion philosophy class in college. Tyson spoke favorably about Jefferson's Bible, where Jefferson left out the miraculous and supernatural stuff.
Yet this struck me as anti-science, a sort of science of the gaps. Science is about observing, forming hypotheses and testing them. It is not about discarding observations that contradict current scientific theories. It seemed that Oxman managed to capture the spiritual aspect much more wisely, with an ability to appreciate the beauty of both arts and sciences.
Recently, there was an interview on NPR about a new book about prayer, which broke prayer down to three key forms: Help, Thanks, and Wow. I thought the author was brilliant. We all pray those three prayers in different ways, and Wow is a special place where science, arts, and religion can all meet. It also sums up, fairly nicely, the response to many great ideas that were shared at CT Forum's panel discussion Vision and Brilliance.
The tweeting continued until Sunday, with people talking about another CT Forum nerdfest; perhaps making it an annual event. I know that I have plenty more to write about the event, but I wanted to get these initial thoughts down before the new week started.
Happy golden days of yore
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/02/2012 - 17:35Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.
The young men and women of the Amity High School Chamber Choir stood on the stairs of the Thomas Darling house, their faces scrubbed, shiny and expectant as they looked to their director standing at the bottom of the stairs. A large crowd had come in from the neighboring room with the cookies and punch to hear them sing. Several held up their cellphones to record the performance.
For over two decades the chamber choir has sung in this house. The house itself has stood in Woodbridge for over two centuries. While the cellphones recording the performance and the handheld video games of some of the younger folks attending the open house are new additions, there was something timeless about the event.
The pure a cappella carols, and later, the carol sing around piano in a different room harkened back, not to a simpler time, for life has always had its struggles, just different struggles. Instead it was a reminder of what we have in common, gathering around in friendship and music, appreciating beauty and the hope and joy we can find, if we take a moment to look.
After they sang, the choir rushed off to their next event in Orange and others lingered to share stories of the history of Woodbridge.
Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/01/2012 - 14:45Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. Another month starts, the final month of 2012. Last month was a challenging month, simply in terms of the amount of stress in my life,and this month, while I hope it will be less stressful is likely to remain challenging.
The month starts off with World AIDS Day. I put up a blog post on my work blog about World AIDS Day. There is a bunch of other stuff in the pipeline for work related blogs.
For the holidays, money continues to be tight, so it is shaping up to be another DIY Christmas. For me, that's a lot more fun anyway. I've been researching online and kicking around different ideas. Some are fairly simple. Some are fairly complex. We'll see what actually gets made.
Meanwhile, this evening, Kim and I are going to the Connecticut Forum this evening to hear Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neil Gaiman and Neri Oxman talk about Vision and Brilliance. Perhaps this will inspire more ideas.
In terms of inspired ideas, I want to give a shout out to Miranda's Idea Blog. I hope to write more about this later.
Moonlight on Snow
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/29/2012 - 22:44It was about five in the morning when my youngest daughter woke me up. Her earache was getting bad again. I stumbled into the kitchen where I heated up a few microwaveable pillows that would hold their heat and sooth her ear. Outside, the light from the full moon lit up the snow on the deck.
I gave Fiona the warmed pillows and headed back to bed. I would try to rest a little more before launching into my day.
For the past couple months, life has been difficult. The stress has worn me down. I don't know if it is stress, allergies or just lack of sleep, but my eyelids have been twitching a lot. I worry about catching any of the colds or viruses going around, and I'm trying to stay as well rested as possible.
I have been remembering more of my dreams recently. They are all fairly different, but there is a recurring theme. I am at a hotel and I'm trying to find my room. When I first started having these dreams, I was trying to find where to check in and get my room number. Later the dreams evolved to having checked in, and trying to find my way to the room for the first time. Last night came the next evolution. I've checked in, been to my room and I'm off somewhere in the hotel, trying to find my way back to the room.
This morning when I awoke from the dream, it struck me that most of my efforts to find my room have been anxious. What about if I looked at them as a fun adventure, a chance for exploration and discovery? When I got back to sleep, I found myself in a different dream. I was back on my sailboat. Was this the room I was trying to find? For those who don't know, I lived on a sailboat for several years in New York City. One of the issues of living on a sailboat was when the bilge pump didn't work. In my dream, the bilge was full and needed pumping, but the bilge pump wouldn't come on. My anxieties came back. Would the boat sink before I could reactivate the bilge pumps?
And beyond all of this, the full moon was shining on the snow. It had a certain zen feeling, like the strawberries eaten while hanging on to the root of vine over a precipice.
Now, I shall head off to bed again and see what this evenings dreams bring.
