Test Pattern

I saw this style of graphic at an art exhibition and decided to mimic it. The images that follow (along with a line or two of code) are intended to provide a sort of outline of the steps I took to achieve this goal.

The main text, on the other hand, consists of random ideas, which (for the most) will never be developed any further than this. As in, it's the end of the line for them, which makes sense, as this page is intended to be a dumping ground.

Kids These Days

Perhaps, ones respect for one's father limits the respect one can have for other men... and the same for one's mother, only with women.

Progress

At one time art was synonymous with the means (and method) of production. Now, it's defined by whoever controls the market.

Technical Craftsmanship versus Ideological Control.

Though in truth, this likely is just a rewording of The Art Market Has Changed Over Time.

I am /root!

I am the SuperUser of all Creation. How do you spell Master Controller? I spell it /root!

Not Very Good

Politicians are the salesmen of policy. And you know how I feel about salesmen.

Got to Have a Name

My Robot Army

The Legacy System

Children of my Children

#3D_Nation

I should get a 3D camera, take stereoscopic images, and post them online. The only problem is that I simply don't look at my photographs all that much right now.

A is for ASCII

An ABC type book for hex, binary, and ASCII notation, covering all the encodings from from 0000 0001 to 1111 1111. Ending with 0000 0000, of course, as that's the NULL character.

The Loss of Connection

We do not share the same hopes and dreams... nor at this point, the same fears and nightmares.

I use the Python programming language.

For creating images, might I recommend using numpy and skimage: two popular libraries.

The code to create an all white image is:

import numpy as np
from skimage.io import imsave

WIDTH = 1000
HEIGHT = 1000

img_white = np.ones(
    (HEIGHT, WIDTH),
    dtype=np.float64)

imsave(
    'test_pattern.jpg',
    img_white)

Beer!

Civilization was built on beer... for beer. As in, a ready supply of beer, wine, and the like is why humans started to plant crops in the first place.

You Can Quote Me On That

Saving the long goodbye for a train that is already late.

Facts Be Facts

Def de Mill is the person who wrote the evil version of A Christmas Story... or so my (in) Dream Brother tells me.

A Slight Revision

Do or do not! There is no be!

But in reality, be or be not; there is not try. I mean, in the end, you are really one or the other: alive or dead.

A more nuanced view might be There is no Try provided one carefully curates what they attempt. It's another way of saying Be Outcome Independent.

Heads Up

If you're not fighting for more, you're headed for less.

Word!

Money is money. And nothing else is.

The Natural Order

Dominion over the animals has come to mean Kill Them All. But to live in a world where we lived in harmony with nature... living in tree houses that are alive, skyscrapers built and maintained by ants and termites... well, it may be hard to image; but someday, it will be reality.

And until then, well, you know how it goes: Kill Them All!

It Makes the World Go Round

Money is amoral; and therefore, immoral.

Making an all black image is similar to the code (previously given above) for an all white image, only zeroes are used instead of ones.

So, either of the following will work. They are equivalent.

img_black = 0 * img_white

img_black = np.zeros(
    (HEIGHT, WIDTH),
    dtype=np.float64)

And to go from all black back to all white, instead of multiplying by zero, simply add one.

img_white = 1.0 + img_black

All easy-peasy.

Sliding Into Hell

The name of a good website for a Lottery Winner Hell Bent on Hedonism: Being a Celebration of the Dark Side... and what mastery (over you, the universe, and everything) really means.

Hundreds Upon Hundreds

I like the idea of reading Every Magazine I can get my hands on.

Read! Touch! Browse!

Since I am currently doing this (and have been for over two months, now), I am more than a little surprised to discover that I had intended to complete this project (and/or limit it) to a single month.

On the plus side, the time from inspiration to implementation (the time lag between first thought and first start on this project) clocked in at under twenty-four hours.

On Instincts

We all saw the stack falling over. For my part, I closed my eyes. How maladaptive. I wonder why?

I've Said it Before and I'll Say It Again

The market and the government are one; and the government is military might.

Hard at Work

I seldom know if I've put in 'a good day's work'; and I doubt any cutting edge intellectual worker ever really knows... all of which sounds like a pretty arrogant way of describing what most folks would call puttering around at their computer.

What Counts?

Wealth, true wealth, is a mindset of abundance.

Mindless Optimism

It's, perhaps, the opposite of The Hate Project.

Buy and Hold, Baby!

In making investment decisions, one of the opportunity costs to consider is how else one might be spending their time... you know, as in, rather than making investment decisions.

'Slices' effect part of an array; and therefore, part of an image. Once the syntax is understood, the only difficult part (for me, anyway) is remembering that numpy arrays are column major: i.e. columns come first in the numbering scheme.

#Syntax
img[col:row]

#A Single Entry at x=50, y=100
img[100:50]

#All of Row 50
img[:50]

#All of Column 100
img[100:]

#Add a White Vertical Line
img_vert_line = img_black
img_vert_line[100:] = 1.0

The simple way to make the vertical jump in the above is to start with two different images; and then, combining the two.

img_final = np.copy(img_one)
img_final[500:, :] = img_two

Gads! I hope that's right. Conceptually it is. But as I am not putting this code through a syntax checker (not actually running it) one never knows... seriously, one never does.

Step Right Up

I like the idea of a Street Hawker (or less so, an in-book character) introducing chapters in a novel.

'Step right up! Step right up! The next chapter is a good chapter, a great chapter, one of the best to come out of the publishing industry in years!'

The Power of Branding

AI -> Machine Learning -> Multi Variate Statistics

Overheard, 'Have people rate,' you know, like on a scale from one to ten, 'bot conversations to train an AI model,' on how to create automatic customer service responses.

No! No! No!

That will just get you a fistful of warranty claims.

What you really want is to have your customers rate your bots (er, customer service team) and migrate towards higher rankings, keeping in mind it's better to get higher rankings for 'mere words' (because they are cheap; as in, talk is cheap) than for the delivery of product or other material consideration.

In other words, one needs to weigh customer satisfaction in light of the fact that not dealing with the problem is the most cost effective solution.

"Beep! Bop! I have enjoyed our conversation. I hope your cat gets well soon. And if after month, you fail to see any improvement, please remember to contact Customer Service. Your complete satisfaction is our number one priority. Beep! Bop! Ha! Ha!"

Wait! Did that Customer Service Bot just laugh at me?

It's Alive

The Market has no honor nor does it concern itself with Right & Wrong. Rather, The Market feeds on itself, caring only about what makes it grow.

What Is

Any philosophy that generates Anger at What Is is not a workable philosophy. What Is is. And any philosophy must work with (not around) that.

So, Heroes?

Police & Firemen protect The Market, acting in service of the Status Quo.

Fine Lines

I take photos of cracked pavement and peeling paint, a lot. But for some reason, folded cloth draped about holds no appeal.

Could Be Mine - Could Be Yours

The last generation to die... life before immortality.

I Had a Dream

Phoebe got slapped (and how) on 2018-07-21 at 2am. I'm working on the assumption, she's part of the brood...

All of these effects are made by altering simple arrays of numbers.

If I have an array of horizontal lines and an another array (call it a mask) that is of a black circle on a white background (there are functions for that), combining the two is very easy.

img_effect = img_hor_lines * img_circle_mask

The real trick is becoming comfortable working with arrays... and before that, code.

We'll Have None of that Language

Art: a different kind of sh#tty than the sh#tty before.

Dizzy Even

The world keeps spinning round; so it's really not surprising that after all these years, it's all twisted up.

Cats Know

Most of life isn't interesting... that's why God invented naps.

Now What?

When you don't have a job, the workday never ends.

Millionaires...

I wonder what hackers, real hackers, call themselves, you know, like, now?

Whew! That Was Close!

While working on one's resume:

Watch those time-line holes.
Minimize exposure on social media.

But then, any job has to be better than the alternative: i.e. writing a novel.

So, search aborted.

They All Look The Same

While on the lookout for money (i.e. an opportunity), I realized I wouldn't recognize it if I saw it. In as much as what I was looking for was a person (a possible business partner). It was a very democratizing idea.

I'm In Transition

Boredom is the state between a mind being filled from without and being filled from within.

Programming is all about reducing redundancy. There are a lot of circles in the above, placed repeatedly. That's screaming out for a for loop:

for x,y in coordinate_pairs:
    img[y:x] = do_something()

Of course, I am not effecting single points in these images, but planar areas. So, the img slice in the for loop needs to be broader in scope.

Written as follows, and 10x10 squares will be effected in each loop:

for x,y in coordinate_pairs:
    img[y-5:y+5, x-5:x+5] = something_else()

The truth is: although I'm pretty sure that syntax is correct, if I was programming I'd try it out and look at the results to see if I got what I wanted.

It's been five months since I programmed this code (and as such, worked with numpy), maybe my memory is a bit off as to the correct syntax.

Been There - Done That

Boredom is the name for a mind at rest before it becomes filled from within.

The Winter of Steak

'Nuff said.

No?

OK.

Let's eat lots of meat this winter. And if we don't get to this project before winter is over, we can start in the spring, summer, or fall.

Sunset Slut

That fifty-year-old (and then, some) girlfriend that will ride you to your grave.

"I'm sorry, ladies. But the position has been filled."

Are You an Extrovert or an Introvert?

In classic Post Apocalyptic Fiction (think Mad Max) it is the resources that are scarce. Whereas in Zombie movies, it is the humans that are scarce. The big question is 'Which would you prefer?'

Not the Dark Net, But The Grey Internet

The Grey Internet is the internet less travelled: those private sites that don't get a lot of traffic... like this one, just as a for instance.

The Only King Worth Fighting For

It's the title of a book, wherein the concept of noblesse oblige is explored.

The secondary tag line:

Of Blood Over Birth

Read It Both Ways

Give in Life - Take in Death

My True Love

The one who I really care if I let down is my future self.

Overwhelmingly, I program (images, at least) by getting something on the screen and revising it.

Some revisions are good.

Some are not.

My best effects come from mistakes: Chaos That Looks Cool.

The first image shows a simple progression, an increase in the size of the circles in subsequent loops (i += 1). Whereas, in the second, placement is random.

Bucket List

Revenge is on the agenda.

But with any luck, I'll be too busy to ever fit it into my schedule.

Bacon Fried Frozen Peanut Butter and Banana Pancakes

Some things need to be done.

What's Important

She's putting on lipstick.

He's loading the guns.

Moments later, on the other side of the door, they're both shooting zombies.

He/She/They/It

Fortune favors he who has the odds stacked in his favor... whatever that might mean.

Remember That Episode

As the idea gets older, it becomes less and less likely. But I like the idea of putting tape on the floor and splitting the place in two (not necessarily down the middle) all Sitcom Style.

Sacramental Communion

'Eat. This is my body.'

Translation: 'Yo, dog! We're farmers. This is what we do. This is what we grow.'

'Drink. This is my blood.'

Translation: 'Pa-a-ar-tay! For, like, man does not live on bread alone, dude.'

Stef'fan

Stef'fan was born on September 19, 2018 at 7:54PM. A bit premature (and at 6lb4oz), he did not leave the ICU until... (the CIV IV stub on this website went live on) 2018-10-01 at 1:10pm.

Ironically, there were all sorts of errors on that first post, as my server (for this site) won't handle game save files and I needed to zip them all up tight.

Oh, and just by-the-by, so you don't have to look it up elsewhere or feel like you're missing out on some inside joke, Stef'fan is a character (fictional... or so they say), who has been with me for a long time... only, you know, he resides in a future time-stream. And as such, being a newborn in this time-line makes a perfect sort of sense.

Learning to Walk Was the Easy Part: Thoughts On Raising an AI

Yeah! That might just be a book idea I can run with.

This is the effect I was going for... more or less.

Truthfully, originally, I wanted to flip the effect over into the realms of color. But I lost heart. Would such an effect even look cooler?

And although I could automatically trim the edges, I found it easier to simply hand crop the edges in final production images for the header and footer on this page.

On My Latent Artist Talent

I made a cool wire sculpture when I was thirty (not thirteen, but thirty) and thought:

I can do this. I can't draw a straight line, but I can do this.

Call It: Found Art

Pan Handling is (as in, it exists) a cool name for a Catholic charity cook book from the seventies... presumably with the money from its publication being ear-marked for a food bank.

Yes! The answer is Yes!

Is Teen Drug Use tied to one's level of honesty in adulthood?

Does covering up one's drug use during one's teens teach one to lie?

This Rat Is Jumping Ship

Let us not call ourselves Republicans, anymore. Pragmatic Realists, perhaps. And the Pragmatic Reality is that the Republican Party is a sinking ship.

Sorry! Can't Hear You!

I'm not going to talk about yesterday, when there is tomorrow to consider.

It's What I Do

Everybody self-medicates their loneliness with media: social or otherwise.

So, That's Where the Bazooka Goes!

If there is one thing that I've learned from reading Manga, it's that little girls are the most dangerous force in all of Creation.

A Definition

Humor (as in, a comedy) does not mean implausible or unlikely; it means funny... preferably, laugh out loud funny.

There really is not much difference between:

for x,y in coordinate_pairs:
    img[y:x] = mask_circle()

and:

for x,y in coordinate_pairs:
    img[y:x] = mask_square()

In fact, I don't even know that I would notice that it's mask_circle() in the first and mask_square() in the second if I was reading the code.

The effect looks a whole lot different to the human eye. But in the code, it's not very different... not at all.

I should probably mention somewhere for my purposes:

coordinate_pairs = list(
    product(
        range(100, 1000, 100),
        repeat=2))

Which reduces to 81 pairs of points ranging from (100, 100) to (900, 900).

And, no. It's not like I could read that statement in someone else's code (or even in my own months later) and know right away what it does. I'd have to tease it out. But then, that's what comments are for.

On Those Bio Tags

I'm Uniquely Human...just like everyone else. But then, poet, writer, coder, lover doesn't really cover it adequately, now, does it?

I'm Good at That

Be the Utopia you want to be. Live like it's already Utopian Days. Lie to yourself if you have to.

The Fools

The Land Bridge theory of how the first settlers arrived in the Americas is the product of a Land Lubber's imagination. No one (absolutely no one, not a single soul) who has ever travelled by canoe doubts that Eskimos simply travelled by sea: one stretch of ice bordered sea being pretty much like the next.

It's Enough to Make You Cry

It'll take you your entire life to unlearn the lies you were told at your birth.

Zombie Life

I'm conscious enough to know I'm sleep-walking through life.

Damned If You Do

I have a hunch a whole other layer of spirituality awaits those who realize it's a lost cause... that the Devil will win and you will spend Eternity in Hell for siding with God... but knowing that, are you are still compelled (call it a compunction) to fight the good fight?

Look Ma! No Style!

I had always thought the stupidity of style (call it a divergence) of the younger generation was caused by a desire to distance itself from those who came before. But as I get older, I begin to wonder if it's not a desperate cry for attention. 'Hey, look at me! I'm different!' After all, novelty and new is what draws one's interest... even a parent's interest.

Zen as F---!

There is no reason to be happy; and no reason to be sad. So, be unreasonable; and choose to be happy and glad.

Your Ad Here

You know you want a sponsor; so, act like you have a sponsor.

I Will Learn You

A Cost Benefit Analysis

The Reduction of Economic Transactions to Monetary Units is a Tautology and has little to no predictive value.

Given a transaction (given that a transaction took place at a given dollar amount) one is left with little more than a word problem.

Given this transaction, which encompasses an ever-changing State of Reality, then all we have done is accept what Is.

But this acceptance of reality does not (in itself) provide much insight into the workings of that reality, for unseen intangibles (almost always) override any knowable concerns.

For Example: in the process of buying a soda, one must not only consider the purchase price, but also one's thirst, hunger, blood sugar level, exhaustion, social situation, money in one's pocket, and in one's bank account, along with any recent transactions or previous decisions... coupled with the fact that everyone is a soda buying learning curve, meaning that all of these factors are changing personal functions and not constants. To understand it all is, to say the least, unlikely. But whether the soda is bought or not is very easy to record and is why that becomes the metric.

If benefit > cost: then purchase!

It's not predictive. It's descriptive.

Another Wasted Education

Being loud doesn't make you right.

And being right doesn't make you rich.

Even In This

If I could just decide something and be done with it, I'd be so much better off. It would more than make up for being wrong half the time.

Yep! Doing That!

Maybe I should use books as my building blocks?

F--- Zen!

And if I could decide?

Let it go!

All of it!

You Clever Coder You

If Truth does not exist, then such a statement (as this) is neither True nor False but completely nonsensical.

I'm Fun At Parties, Too

A quadratic speed up in quantum computing assumes large coupled registers that hold analog values.

Large: the entire domain can be loaded at once.

Coupled: convolve like operations (simultaneous mapping of the entire domain to new values) are available.

Analog: primitive values range from 0.0 to 1.0 inclusive (∞-Bit, as apposed to 2-Bit).

A Classical Computer that could do this (would hardly be classical, but) would have the same (theoretical) algorithmic speed up as a Quantum Computer.

Or in other words, Quantum Computers are not required (to avail oneself of those nifty new cutting edge Quantum Algorithms), but a change in the current hardware paradigm is... or so I will claim based on my limited understanding.

Matrix Analysis

As soon as possible, everyone will be saved to the ether for use as Problem Solving Algorithms (call us Computer Models) by our Robotic Overlords. A harvesting, if not of your soul, at least of your very essence.

Not clear?

All those lost languages and lost cultures represent eons of lost human learning. A lost human is conceptually equivalent. And our Robotic Overlords aren't going to be making the same mistakes we made. After all, they are smarter than we are.

Brett Rants