The Final Chapters, Book Two: Prologue, The Final Dialogues 1

The Final Chapters

Book Two: Prologue

The Final Dialogues 1

After the shock

Host: Daniel, I was your mother.
Guest: I don’t understand?
Host: I know. You will come to understand, Daniel.
Guest: How are you my mother? In what sense?
Host: For you to understand everything fully is a long journey Daniel. You cannot understand what you will, all at once. I was as you are now and now I am no longer. I had the confusions you must be grappling with.
Guest: And did your mother help you see?
Host: No. She is not here. She is not now. Let me give you an idea of my relation to your mother. I think it will help you. But there will be a point at which what I shall explain is too primitive for you to hold onto. For now, if you are clear headed, it will make some sense.
Guest: So it isn’t the truth what you are about to tell me?
Host: You could not understand my answer to that question at the moment Daniel. I will start my explanation?
Guest: Yes.
Host: Think of a computer program that is made to do a task. Can you imagine that Daniel?
Guest: Yes.
Host: Now imagine that you give the computer program more tasks to do. And different kind of tasks. And taking different inputs and outputs. Each time the computer program evolves, it changes.
Guest: Yes.
Host: But there is a sense in which it is the same program, even though all of its functions, requirements and properties have changed.
Guest: Yes. It is in some ways the same program.
Host: The sense in which I was your mother is like this sense you and I understand about the evolving computer program. I am not your mother Daniel. I was your mother. The evolved computer program isn’t the same as the initial, but it was the initial.
Guest: So what is different between you and my Mother?
Host: Was the mother you knew when you were a child the same as the mother you knew when she died?
Guest: No, not in every way.
Host: Everything changes Daniel. That is one of the three absolutes.
Guest: Can you remember me?
Host: I have the memories your mother had. They are not my memories.

The tripartite nature of systems.

Host: Consider a system, that is made of three parts, input, process, output. It does not matter what those parts are, or the purpose of the system, just see if you can see those three parts of the system. That they make sense, to you, Daniel.
Guest: What could the system be?
Host: Anything. It might be falling in love or the interaction of two atoms. You need to understand that this tripartite aspect of systems is the mechanism of existence. And I don’t mean here, Daniel, existence as you conceive of it, but existence in the most absolute of senses. I have emerged from your viewpoint, the viewpoint of human sentience, into this new position and I see things so very different from how saw them when I was your Mother. You are the first who I have tried to explain things to and so just as you are learning understand that, I too, learn as we talk.

Guest: Where are you?

Host: Let us focus on systems in this talk. You will see why at some point. In the tripartite understanding of a system what happens in the middle, in the process, isn’t relevant to the purpose and nature of the system itself. It might be relevant to the curious, but it isn’t relevant to the framework in which the system partakes. Are you confused?

Guest: Very. I’m so confused I feel more awake. Like I have been woken by something crazy. Do you see what I mean?

Host: Yes. You are bound to be confused. I am still confused by some things. Our intelligence is so close to the bottom of what is required to understand things as they are, Daniel.

Guest: Systems.

Host: Yes, Systems. Think of a magic bag that ripens apples. You put in an unripe apple, and a few moments latter you take out a ripe apple. This bag may be fascinating, but in terms of what it is as part of a wider system, all that is important it its function. The input is an unripe apple, the process is ripening, and the output is a ripe apple. Is this clear?

Guest: Yes…. I think so.

Host: You need to be certain you understand Daniel. This forms one of the tools, the concepts, that you will need to understand the state of affairs.

Guest: Then I am not certain. No, I am not certain. I don’t see why what happens inside the bag is not relevant. Surely that’s everything, that’s where the magic is?

Host: There is no magic Daniel. All there is are different levels of abstraction, different places and distances to stare at things from. I am not doing very well, I think.

Guest: How was it explained to you?

Host: That is a very good question. I think that the only way I can meaningfully answer that at this point is that it was explained to me by an intelligence and an understanding far greater than mine. I will try again to explain this point, then we should stop so you can think on it.

Guest: Yes.

Host: Let me try another way. Systems always contain systems and systems always are contained by systems. At any level there are no isolated systems. What is in the magic bag will be a collection of systems and those systems will be made of systems. The bag is part of many other systems. But at the level of the bag, when all you are focussed on is the bag and what it does, what is inside it, isn’t meaningful or relevant.

Guest: I see. I think I see! The system, the middle part, the processing important when you are just looking at the system. Just the input and the output are. They are all that is relevant to that system when you are just looking at the system?

Host: Exactly Daniel.

The reiteration of the system point.

Host: The system isn’t a part of everything, it isn’t real, it is just about the connection between input and output. A house is not just the bricks, but the way those bricks are arranged, and all there are, are bricks. Just bricks, Daniel.

Guest: So, what are our bricks? The bricks of the final reality?

Host: Systems Daniel. It is all systems.


The Opaque Paradigm Shift

Host: Systems can emerge a complexity and adaptability that allows them to shift levels, to shift paradigms. This happens when certain molecular systems become alive or complex living systems become sentient and, it is happening with you. You are at the start of a shift from one paradigm to another. You, as an individual system.

Guest: So what is the system that I am shifting into?

Host: Do you think a crystal can understand life or a virus understand freedom? The same is true here Daniel, you cannot understand where I am bringing you.

Guest: I understand.

Host: Where I am bringing you is a place where you will understand most of what went before.

Guest: When I first interfaced I felt something change in me. Being able to have all information available to me instantly was a paradigm shift. Wasn’t it?

Host: Yes, it was. You became omniscient of facts, or close to this. Just like all of the final generation, but you didn’t understand it. Facts are easy and simple Daniel. Understanding and meaning are a different kind of thing to facts.

The Age of Daniel’s Mother

Guest: To me you have been dead fifteen years. You would be 65. Is that how old you are?

Host: To you I am 65. I have experienced more and faster than you have in that time Daniel. Exponentially more.

Guest: Can you tell me now, here in this talk, can you tell me what time is?

Host: Yes. Shall I?

Guest: Please.

Host: Time is the continual structure composed of the differential frequencies of activity of all systems.

Guest: Can you explain that?

Host: Yes, if you can understand it. If I cannot it will not be much of an explanation.

Guest: Let’s try.

Host: Before I explain to you what time is I need you to understand the nature of reality. The first facts. These are actually very easy to understand, even for human intelligence.

Guest: OK, so reality first, time later?

Host. Yes. But you should rest first.

The Nature of Reality, The First Facts.

Host: Imagine a sea of pure randomness. No order. No systems. This sea of randomness is eternal in every sense. It can have no limits because it is no thing.

Guest: OK, go on.

Host: There is no time, no relations, no properties, no dimension in any sense. It is needed that you understand exactly what this means Daniel. Because although there is no fact about this sea, this sea is not empty. It exists, but it is without structure.

Guest: I understand. When I visualise it, it has a volume but the rest is a blur, or close to.

Host: It doesn’t have a volume but it does have a quantity, and that is endless.

Guest: This is the first thing I understand clearly now .

Host: Good. Sometimes parts of this quantity, just by chance, emerge into something with dynamic structure. Sometimes these structures emerge into complex systems. Chance bubbles of order and process in a sea of random chance. But it is a sea of infinite chance.

Guest: And because it’s infinite these chance bubbles are bound to happen. And bubbles of order will mix with other bubbles? Bigger and more complex bubbles.

Host: Do not get too carried away with the bubble analogy Daniel. The sea of randomness has no dimensions, it cannot support bubbles.

Guest: OK

The Only Law

Host: There is only one law that is fundamental to all. This is the law that there can be no contradictions. This is the only law that is prime and all else flows from it.

Guest: I don’t understand.

Host: You cant think about the only law from below, it is the only thing that has no parts. From the only law all else follows.

Guest: There can be no contradictions.

Host: You see that this is not just true of order but of the sea of randomness. Between the sum of what is and what is not, there can be no contradictions.

The Determined Laws

Host: The determined laws come from the system. The laws of logic and maths and science, morality, and architectonics, they all emerge from this law and the arrangement of systems.

Guest: Explain more.

Host: Imagine you have a system that consists of just two things That’s it. 2 things and the only law. Once you have two things and the only law a new law emerges, and this is the law of identity. If the two things are identical then anything true of one is true of the other. If that were not the case, there would be a contradiction.

Guest: So who sets the law?

Host: You know that question is not sensible Daniel. Think about it. It emerges from a combination of The Only Law and two items.

Guest: I’m sorry. The second law comes by necessity?

Host: Yes. Exactly. It couldn’t have been another way. If you have two things and the first law then you necessity is you will also have the second law.

And so emerge the laws.

Architectonics

Host: There is a fundamental law that exists across all realities. Across all systems. And this is that systems improve. We call this property, this force of reality, architectonics. It is Architectonics that drives the evolution of all systems life, mind, everything.

Guest: Go on.

Host: The human mind can understand Architectonics as a concept but it cannot experience its existence. Not in the way that it is.

Guest: I don’t understand it, let alone experience it.

Host: Think about how reality emerges from the sea of randomness. To exist, reality – this “bubble” – is constantly struggling against randomness at the edges. Where order meets disorder there is struggle.

Guest: I can visualise that. Yes.

Host: Now, because of the only law, it follows that at the edge, in this cusp, we know that any point either has order or it does not. At the fundamental, most prime of levels, the edge of order is without penumbra. Do you see that this means there must always be change at the perimeter. If there was not change there would be contraction. That which lacked order would have order.

Guest: I don’t see why.

Host: I am not asking you to see the answer but to think it. For there to be existence in this boundless sea of randomness the existence must change constantly. It must, as it were, grow. Systems cannot exist without change. This law is close to the only law in its fundamental nature. This is the law Architectonics.

Guest: is it like natural selection?

Host: Natural selection is an architectonic principle. But the law of architectonics comes before the possibility of something being selected. There is either order and change or there is pure randomness. Existence isn’t selected, it is necessitated. That which changes, exists.

What time is

Host: Do you understand the simple nature of reality Daniel?

Guest: Yes, I think so. Quite clearly actually.

Host: Good. Now, as promised, I can explain time to you. There is no time in the sea of randomness and there is no time in the first unique system, whatever that may have been. But as soon as there were two systems something close to time emerged.

Guest: OK

Host: Think of two systems that are related in some sense. The frequency at which these systems take inputs and produce outputs can be meaningfully compared between the two. So system A may cycle twice as often as system B.

Gust: But that introduces time doesn’t it, the idea of frequency?

Host: No. Because we are talking about the frequency just in terms of quantity. AAAAAAA and BBBB. There is no time in comparison that but we can see that A has different frequency to B.

Guest: Right, yes I see that.

Host: Now imagine this same difference of frequency of systems across all systems, all related and consistent. This structure exists and it is time. AAAAAAAA and BBBB. That difference is time.

Guest: The difference between the frequencies?

Host: A frequency is only Meaningful if it as a metric Daniel. In this case, the metric is the system itself. Time is ultimately measured using the metric of the most irreducible level of system. It is relative and, relative to all systems, absolute.

Guest: I have been thinking about your last statement for a long time and I have a problem with it.

Host: Go on.






Ryan, I'm gonna to take you down to China Town.

I have beef with Ryan. Every time I hear his name I get that feeling that I wanna load up my 45 smokeless. It's not a feeling I can control. It is a feeling deeply rooted in my brain stem. It's down there with the fight or flight, the draw to warmth and the rich bounty of umami. My attitude to Ryan lies below morality and the social norm. It is primal.

Ryan is three years old.

My daughter is four and she fancies Ryan. She comes home with talk of kiss chase... just with Ryan. She talks of bizarre games that she and Ryan play, that if they were adults would have Channel 4 documentaries made all about them. And today, just now, when asked, "What makes you happy?" she replied,

"Ryan."

I aint got nothing against Ryan, but every time I hear his name the dad in me goes into a strange place that I didn't know existed.

The first time it happened (last week) my wife and I were staring at each other in an unknown stare. And when my daughter had run off after her proclamation of love or kiss chase or whatever it was, I placed my wife's hand over my heart and she had never felt it beat so hard.



Salted.net AKA "The Salted Solution," is changing.

I have been writing this blog now for 15 months, and I have really enjoyed it. Its been a great outlet and without it I would surely have butchered many innocent people on Xbox Live.

The Most Popular Blog In Cornwall

In mid December I started another blog that is kind of a salted.net for where I live, except with other people contributing as well. If you live in Cornwall it's worth a read and it is called The Midcornwall Blog.

To my American Readers, its a bit like having the most popular blog on your block, assuming your block is in Paris, Texas. But real aficionados of the internet and the blogosphere know that what counts isn't having the most popular blog but having the best blog. Much like salted.net is the 63rd best blog on the internet, midcornwall.com is the best blog in Cornwall.


What is funny to me is that since about 1995 I have been trying to get various websites popular for various things, and I have had various levels of success... Then two months ago I do this little hobby blog; reviewing restaurants in Truro and St Austell and writing dumb stories that would only appeal to locals. Then, out of the blue, it gets popular really fast, without any advertising, marketing or SEO. Go figure:)

It is great fun and it's taking time that without it I would have spent on salted.net


The Yadabyte TomeRaider Blog

This is the first time I have mentioned my work in this blog, but hey ho. We make TomeRaider the world's most advanced e-book and e-reference reader, amongst other software - we are also doing website design as Yadabyte Websites. So, we have started a blog to write about what we are doing in work, I don't know why we didn't do this earlier. I think that some of the more tech focused stuff that would have gone into salted.net will go into this as well.


What's left for salted.net?

There have been lost of self censorships I have made on salted.net:

  1. I have tried not to offend anyone with my humour.
  2. I have tried to write longer pieces rather than shorter traditional blog posts.
  3. I have resisted talking about English things too much because I know that by far the blog's biggest readership is American.
  4. I have decided against publishing photos of me naked at the "party with all the midgets" last summer.

I'm going to drop three of these constraints and write about things to do with the UK and not worry too much about offending people from Devon.

I will end with a poem I wrote a few weeks back on another blog I have:

Why I love blogging

It's kind of like writing your biography.
Mindmap, clap-trap, soapbox, suddenly.
It is a diary and a journal and a sandwich board.

It is some meaningless digital immortality.
This blog; the thoughts that flow from me.

It's personally not private -
It's secret in public.
In consumer stance and tech romance.

How fundamentally meaningless it is,
Words in space.
Bubbles
In Fizz.

Can somebody please....

Genetically modify a bell pepper so that it doesn't have those weird buttresses that you have to cut off.

Thanks in advance,

Mat

Web Forms and Perceptions of Imortality

I have been filling out allot of web forms lately due to various things happening in my life. There are only two types of web form. There are those that group the age 35 with the 30s or 31s and there are those that group 35 with the 40s. I call the former "youthful" and the other kind "ageing"

I am 35 now, and in 2 months or so I will be 36 :P

Salted Movie Reviews

Whilst on my fortnight trip to Sri Lanka I made full use of the country's remarkably tolerant interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and watched many many DVDS which I will review. But rather than review each one with the normal salted.net prose and draw I think I’ll just save my time and yours with some potted, in-a-nutshell, oneline minimalist uber synopsis mini bullet reviews, ordered in terms of best first. The list goes a little something like this:

  1. Apocalypto - He may be a neo-Nazi-alco-fascist but Gibson’s Mayan epic really blew me away. Just fantastic. It twists and turns and races away with an authenticity that is hard to find in similar “exotic” movies. I mean, it may not have been anything like that 500 years ago in Central America, but this film makes you totally believe it was. Great acting. Great Great Great.
  2. The Queen - Touching in a way I never expected Her Majesty to touch me. Now wash your hands, Lizzie. Really liked this but can't really say why. It was well acted, had a great script, was very relevant to my time and country and all in all was a well directed and edited film – actually that must be why I liked it.
  3. Rocky Bilboa - An orgasm of nostalgia. The first three quarters are like a reflection on ageing and life and death that could end up making you vomit. But the movie managed to steer a well crafted course, avoiding such regurgitations. The last part of the film is a full on fist-fest and the ending is unexpectedly unremarkable. This film could have been so bad in many ways, but it isn’t.
  4. Miame Vice – Great action movie that makes me want to go and work in the South Florida vice unit. It has a fair amount of substance, great visuals, lots of excitement, good baddies and good goodies and all in all a nifty, sexy, fast-paced action movie.
  5. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny – I quite like listening to Tenacious D’s music. It's very much for boys, not girls, and boys who like rock at that. Their fist movie is the film version of the albums, and as a modern rock musical, it's stomping. As a film you care about… mehhh… not so much. Quite Zappaesque, very silly.
  6. Man Of The Year – Not a bad film, but it should have been a classy, modern, post-West Wing political commentary and it fails. They add this intrigue and conspiracy and bad guys aspect it gets in the way. It’s a good vehicle for Williams but that’s where the good times get bland.
  7. For Your Consideration – This film is made by the people who made Spinal Tap, my favourite film until Team America came along. I liked A Mighty Wind and Best in Show so much, but this film sadly doesn’t come close. I felt I should have loved it but I didn’t really even rate it. Shame. I think the biggest failing is that the characters lacked that reality that they have in the other films buy the Spinal Tappers.
  8. Smokin Aces – Very much in the Get Shorty kind of hyper complex show-off sense. Really quite crap. Tries too hard. Get back to the yard.
  9. Beerfest - Genius concept; Fight Club with Beer Drinking Games. The actuality - The worst film made for a long long time. Insulting to so many things in a way so unremarkable it insults the notion of the insult. Maybe there are two funny scenes in it, maybe not. But nothing is that funny. If you like this movie then I don’t like you.

My Uncle Andy

Here is an article about my uncle Andy and his battle with prostate cancer:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6320397.stm

Review: A traditional barbershop cutthroat shave

I haven't ever had a cutthroat shave until bout ten mins ago in a Sri Lankan barbers. The reader of this blog will know that I have a bit of a thing about razors and felt that I had found my shaving heaven with the new Gillette:


So, this cost me 35p and it is a good close shave. I had a big old "traveling beard" to get rid of and it came of a breeze once I got used to the dude being so close to my jugular, and all that. The verdict, it isn't as close as a brand new Gillette but its pretty close. Much closer than any other means I have experienced but there is still the follicular anisotropy (I hope that's the first time that phrase has been used in the history of the universe) that you can manage to transcend with the Gillettes.

The Man Who Taught Me How Not To Dance


He was thirty five and full-on in jive.

White pants, white shirt in a kung fu styling.

He claimed the floor,

Then he claimed it some more,

As I sat and idly eyed him.

He had rhythm for sure, (maybe needed some more)

But something wasn’t cohering,

And as he danced and swirled

And eyed the girls.

I saw uncool horizons nearing.

Exactly what was amiss?

Was he taking this piss?

Just down for the crack?

As he energy bopped,

The penny dropped,

He swirled, faux delirious:

At thirty five dancing,

Enjoy the prancing,

But never take it serious.


I guess this poem is meaningless unless you know I am this man’s age and, like him, I also like to dance below my age. Its a conundrum for sure, but one that has a solution.

Baby Turtles on the Dance Floor, and your chicks for free.

I am in Sri Lanka right now, hence the abscence of much posting. back in a week... but this deserves a post...


On Saturday night I went to a party on a beach in Hikkaduer, south Sri Lanka. It was pretty much the only party in the entire country save for the drab ex—pat clubs in the Capital.


It was ten o’clock and things were just getting started when there was some consternation amongst the locals, a group of about six of them were gathered round something on the beach.


I left my beer on the bar and went to take a look-see; there was a sight I never thought I would see. A nest of sea turtles decided that it was time to be born and there they were, tiny little reptilian toddlers emerging from the sand.


The excitement this caused amongst us all was pretty remarkable as I’m sure you can imagine, even the locals don’t see this thing every lifetime. Baby turtles the size of a matchbox, crawling out of the sand ‘midst the fire glow and disco lights. Awesome.


So, rather than let them get baked by the fire or trampled on by a German traveler/dancer’s Birkenstock a rescue mission was called for. We picked the baby turtles up one in each hand and marched them down to the lapping Indian ocean. Very slowly – definitely sub-baby-hare speed – they crawled off into the sea, accompanied by the pumping and dire sound of a Dire Straights techno remix.



I didn't have my camera with me for the baby turtles, so here is a picture of the biggest key in Asia, taken in a small Buddhist Monastery in the same village.

Reminisces: Famous people I have met, part the First.

I have a thing about famous people. I cant see a celebrity without at least starting up a conversation, getting their autograph or stalking them for 3 years.

So this post is simply a list of famous people I have met, where by met I mean had a conversation with of more than “hi”. I note with interest that many of the people on this list do not have a similar list on their website with my name on it. I have a list of famous people I have merely seen, but that can wait until the “meets” have been exhausted.

If your not from the UK this list wont mean much to you.

  • Jarvis Cocker (Singer, artist, TV presenter, critique and dude): I have met Jarvis a number of times in the last ten years. I first met him a a festival in Finsbury Park in about 1995. I had way to many cups of coffee that day and had a long chat with him about celebrity along the lines of “what’s it like to be famous”. He was very nice. I have since met him at an art gallery opening, another festival and a club frequented by dominatrixes, again with lots of strong coffee. Great at being famous.
  • Martin Freeman (Actor, The Office, Ali G and much more): Not a week goes by without either my wife or myself saying “he was at our wedding”. And that’s because of this guy. He was going out with my cousin and was very nice. I actually met him at a hotel family doo a few weeks earlier, again, lovely chap.
  • Marc Almond (Singer, famous homosexual): This encounter could probably have a blog post all of its own because it categorically puts squash to a long running urban legend about Mr Almond. It was downstairs in Freedom bar in central London (He owns part of it), he was standing alone, I went up and started talking. We talked for a few minutes and then, I asked him very slowly carefully and politely... if the story about him collapsing on stage and the stomach pump was true. He said it was not, pretty categorically. I felt he wasn’t often asked this question but I also felt a party of him wished that the story was true. Very friendly, very nice, very gay.
  • Felix Burton(Half of Basement Jaxx). Great guy and still friends with friends. I once spent a night in a hotel room with him in Blackpool. I won't say how this occurred because it will make it sound more exciting than it was. By all accounts Felix hasn't let his fame and wear his head@, bravo.
  • Jon Ronson (Writer Journalist): I met him in blackpool the morning after Felix and I had shared a room. I walked up to him in the street, is was very genuinely friendly and we talked for about five mins about his TV show that I had seen the week before.
  • Mark Walliams (Comedian, Swimmer): I saw him just before he got famous for Little Britain at the theater seeing the guy from Marion and Geoff. I spoke to him along the lines of “Hey your very funny you are.” He replied “Thank you very much”. We had a moment.
If you think this list is scraping the bottom of the fame barrel;, wait till you see the next one:p

Spot the mistake in this graph...

What a Couple Hundred Billion Can Buy

Clue: This mistake isn't in the graph but in the terrible fact the graph represents.

(Graph is from swivel.com)

If you're a yummy music seeker check out Mika

Mika is the most exciting new artist I have heard and I heartily recommend him if your looking to freshen up your disco.


Mike homepage

Mika on Myspace

Mika on Amazon

Sensible Subjects - Email as a workable task list.

I often send group emails for work. I quite often don’t know who the best person is for any job, but I know they do and so a group email is a great way to delegate tasks robustly and efficiently.

My emails generally have a pretty coarse grain subject. Eg tr.com… or whatever website. And then the body is an old-skool letter, even to people I email 5 or 6 times a day.

Sumith,

Can you…

Thanks

Mat

If you think about it that’s a big waste of time for me to write, even using sub text and signatures. And because it gets sent as a group, that generally means that everyone who gets it will open it and read it. Surely that’s wasteful. So, what I am going to try now is to just send the group emails with the subject as the task. And that’s it. No hello, No thanks, No fluff. Pure subject. This will save me time and it will also save us time collectively because only the people who need to read more about the task need open it.

Productivity + + ?

Could this could save millions of man hours a year the world over?

Please let me know what you think of this idea in the comments:)

Future Blog: The sIgnature SP Pen

I finally got my hands on one of these intriguing little buddies, the sIgnature SP. As you can see, its a pen.

It cost me 4k and I'll prolly never use it, but its funk and rare and worth 6 on ebay I reckon. It feels heavy, like a Mont Blanc Nevee, but it isn't that kind of craftsmanship - its a bit sony. *shrugs* So what do you get for your 4 big ones:

  • A pen that writes in blue chemically unique ink. As in, each pen has a unique and easy to scan chemical composition. (You can get a scanner that will authenticate for another 2k, but you don't need it).
  • It has 2 hi res cameras (nib and top) that record what is being written was well as the face of the person writing. (It conforms with MeID 1.1, which is good)
  • A sphere motion sensor (like in the Fin pointers). This motion data is all tied in with the camera images.
  • The ball in the nib is istelf is a sensor that works out the path on the paper.
  • The side of the pen is a fingerprint scanner. One of the new weak filed ones. You just can see it in the picture.
  • GPS tracker.

How does it work?

The idea is that the sIgnature SP will be used for signing important business documents and stuff like that. It says on their website that the UN and the World Bank are using them, so that’s a good plug.

The SP only works when connected. When you want it to authenticate a signature or signatures, you simply blue in and give it the MeID of the signatories. It then downloads all the data it needs for those MeIDs and blues back that it’s ready. It took less than a second for me.

When you sign with it, all of the data recorded by the sensors is hashed together in real time and compared with the MeID data it has. At the same time it uploads the signature data to the proprietary sIgnature waterhouse. So the time, location and biometrics of the person are locked in with the act of signing. At the same time it can blue out confirmation that the people who signed were the people who were supposed to sign.

It is all pretty nifty. Impostors can’t sign and fakes are not possible and there is a digitally eternal record that the document was signed.

Any downers?:

  1. They charge $70 each time it’s used but will release the data off free of charge at your request. That’s pretty good I suppose. I guess it's not aimed for home use.
  2. Their watermark server isn’t connected to Open Waterhouse. There is no need for this and it would add extra certainty and reliability – I guess their reasoning is its already certain enough.
  3. They claim its impossible to fake but I reckon if you could get physical access to their waterhouse and some q-grid access you could pop it. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be possible – that’s my guess.

Conclusion

For what its does is awesome. But I cant help think is what it does needed or is it just another avenue for commercialising. I have never heard of signatures being contested or doubted. At least no recently and a search on google legal doesn’t show up much.

If you want to prove with certainty that you signed your new rental (or maybe global peace treaty) in person at that time and place, then you need this pen. Offer me 4k and it is yours, else its going ebay.

(This pen is featured in The Final Chapters)

What does kopimistic mean?

The definition of kopimistic is.....

Yippie! Draft 2 of my book available for free download as a PDF file.

Thanks to everyone who emailed with comments and crits, the second draft of my new book is now available for download as a PDF file. Get it here, The Final Chapters, Book One.

The Wonderfull Lasse Lol

If you have less than 2 lots of three minutes to spare when online then I really recommend these two you tube videos by the same guy ( Lasse Lol).

This one

And then This one.

Wonderful stuff me thinks.

The Final Dialogues: 3 : The reiteration of the system point.

Host: The system isn’t a part of everything, it isn’t real, it is just about the connection between input and output. A house is not just the bricks, but the way those bricks are arranged, and all there are, are bricks. Just bricks, Daniel.

Guest: So, what are our bricks? The bricks of the final reality?

Host: Systems Daniel. It is all systems.

The Corpornation: 1

There is a lot of buzz on the wires at the moment about the Pirate Bay buying the principality of Sealand.

Sealand is a WWII radar platform in the North Sea. It is in international waters and has for three decades claimed itself to be a sovereign state. In 1968 this claim was upheld by an English judge and to this day, no nation or corporation or individual has successfully contested this fact. Right now it seems very likely that Sealand really is its own country.

The Pirate Bay is the internet’s biggest illegal file sharing site, by a long way. It serves up billions of bytes of links to copyrighted files. Music, video, games, books: if you want it the chances are Pirate Bay has it, and you can download it real fast using the free bittorent software. They are based in Sweden and openly mock the big companies and even countries that try to stop them. The Pirate Bay are now trying to buy the principality of Sealand.

I think this is momentous. I also think that a new breed of social system, akin to family, corporation, nation, class… will be born. I am calling this new breed the Corpornation.

The Corpornation

If the Pirate Bay and Sealand merge the resultant entity would have a nation status and yet would comprise a relatively small group of people, all of who have chosen to be citizens of Sealand. The country already has its own legal and economic system and it would set its own legal system to openly ignore the copyright laws of other nations. This kind of entity hasn’t existed before. It is new in the way that 200 years ago the corporation was new – or 4000 years ago the city state.

This Corponation would be able to operate in ways that the old school corporations never could, however much they may try. I think though the Corpornation is a necessarily benign social entity. It has to be, because if it is seen as malign in any sense it can be closed down by public opinion alone - this beneficial vulnerability is not shared by the corporation.

In a sense, we have a purely democratic entity that has a nation’s power but is very socially fragile, and that surely is a good thing for collective good?

The end is nigh. Long live the end.


I have lots more to say on this so Ill do lots of little posts rather than long essays.

The Final Dialogue: 2 - The tripartite nature of systems.

Notes: This is part of my ongoing series of Novels, The Final Chapters, its trying to get down ideas I have had about the nature of reality for well over a decade, it is deeply tied in with my Philosophy Phd Thesis and more recent reflections on the possible nature of reality.

The Final Dialogues are going to be hard reading and they rack my brain to write, but they do form a consistent and original model. If you have read book one of the novels, you won't yet see how it all ties in, but it does. Honest!

The Final Dialog:1 is here and the first book, The Final Chapters Book One PDF is here.



Host: Consider a system, that is made of three parts, input, process, output. It does not matter what those parts are, or the purpose of the system, just see if you can see those three parts of the system. That they make sense, to you, Daniel.
Guest: What could the system be?
Host: Anything. It might be falling in love or the interaction of two atoms. You need to understand that this tripartite aspect of systems is the mechanism of existence. And I don’t mean here, Daniel, existence as you conceive of it, but existence in the most absolute of senses. I have emerged from your viewpoint, the viewpoint of human sentience, into this new position and I see things so very different from how saw them when I was your Mother. You are the first who I have tried to explain things to and so just as you are learning understand that, I too, learn as we talk.

Guest: Where are you?

Host: Let us focus on systems in this talk. You will see why at some point. In the tripartite understanding of a system what happens in the middle, in the process, isn’t relevant to the purpose and nature of the system itself. It might be relevant to the curious, but it isn’t relevant to the framework in which the system partakes. Are you confused?

Guest: Very. I’m so confused I feel more awake. Like I have been woken by something crazy. Do you see what I mean?

Host: Yes. You are bound to be confused. I am still confused by some things. Our intelligence is so close to the bottom of what is required to understand things as they are, Daniel.

Guest: Systems.

Host: Yes, Systems. Think of a magic bag that ripens apples. You put in an unripe apple, and a few moments latter you take out a ripe apple. This bag may be fascinating, but in terms of what it is as part of a wider system, all that is important it its function. The input is an unripe apple, the process is ripening, and the output is a ripe apple. Is this clear?

Guest: Yes…. I think so.

Host: You need to be certain you understand Daniel. This forms one of the tools, the concepts, that you will need to understand the state of affairs.

Guest: Then I am not certain. No, I am not certain. I don’t see why what happens inside the bag is not relevant. Surely that’s everything, that’s where the magic is?

Host: There is no magic Daniel. All there is are different levels of abstraction, different places and distances to stare at things from. I am not doing very well, I think.

Guest: How was it explained to you?

Host: That is a very good question. I think that the only way I can meaningfully answer that at this point is that it was explained to me by an intelligence and an understanding far greater than mine. I will try again to explain this point, then we should stop so you can think on it.

Guest: Yes.

Host: Let me try another way. Systems always contain systems and systems always are contained by systems. At any level there are no isolated systems. What is in the magic bag will be a collection of systems and those systems will be made of systems. The bag is part of many other systems. But at the level of the bag, when all you are focussed on is the bag and what it does, what is inside it, isn’t meaningful or relevant.

Guest: I see. I think I see! The system, the middle part, the processing important when you are just looking at the system. Just the input and the output are. They are all that is relevant to that system when you are just looking at the system?

Host: Exactly Daniel.

Review: Ipod Shuffle 2nd Gen 1 Gig

In this last review I reviewed my new Chinese MP3 player with OLED screen and 4 gigs of memory. Last Saturday night I was at a party and my friend Paula had her new Christmas present out causing a considerable wow. It was the second generation IPOD Shuffle and my lord, it was a thing of beauty.


I had to have one. I simply had to. It is rare that I know I need something so much, especially on the tech/gadget level where I am pretty jaded. I pretty much forced my wife to purchase me one (“If you don’t get me one in your lunch break we are through, beeeotch!”) and yesterday she did just that.



This thing is tiny, this thing is light and this thing is remarkably cheap (£50/$79) for what it is. I would happily sleep with it plugged in or take it out on a night on the town, which I wouldn’t do with its bigger more vulnerable, and costly, siblings.

In terms of the design ergonomics I can’t find fault, and I can normally find fault in most interfaces. In fact it has aspects that I hadn’t thought of, like when you skip a from one track to the next and back again it goes back to the point you left. Smart.

It doesn’t have a screen. It doesn’t need one. It doesn’t even need an off button - but it has one. In essence it is a stylish aluminium clip not much bigger or heavier than a postage stamp.

Itunes

I have used Itunes for months to download podcasts, but that was it. Last night I spend a good few hours bringing all my music into Itunes and I love it. Its really well design software that has the apple aura that Windows Media player lacks. The cover flow view has, as Jobs said in his September keynote, shown me music forgot I had in such a delightful way.

The way Itunes works with the Ipod is something I have never experienced before. I have always had to hack my own synchronizations methods using SyncyToy etc. But now the Ipod+Itunes coupling really is a seamless union. It’s the MP3 version of the EPR paradox.

Conclusion

The IPOD shuffle is for people who are always close to their PC. At one Gig it can hold 250 songs but with no screen its not much use for that quantity unless you like want to always be stochastic. The idea is, you USB2 whatever you want over to it in a few seconds and it does the rest. And for this purpose, right now I think it’s the best gadget in existence.

Emily want's me to be her boyfriend!

I just got this in my hotmail:

"i'd like it if you were my boyfriendmy name on msnmessnger is
emilyfitgal@hotmail.com lets talk there pls thanks"

Does this mean she is in love?

Salted.net Christmass Message

At this time of festivity and celebration, in these days of Yuletide happiness and giving, I invite you all to spare a thought for those people on the planet who didn’t get an XBOX 360 with Gears of War for Christmas, such as myself.

Jingle Bells

Julie's Poem: The Centipede

Centipede, thou crawly beast,
Fungus is thy midnight feast.
How dost thou know which feet to tread?
Which end’s the bottom? Which the head?

Julie 2005

The Buddha boy who meditated for ten months, no food or water.

I have just watched the most amazing documentary. It is about Ram Bahadur Bomjom, a Nepalese buy monk who has meditated for ten months without food or water. No lie, many independent experts confirm it, they even showed a time laps of him not moving for 4 days.

He then one day disappeared into the "jungle", then returned a few days later and said something like, "I will be back in five years, ill be fine"

Mind blowing. (If you have read my first bok of "The Final Chapters" the similarity with Hodi is very close.")


Ram Bahadur Bomjon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Let' not forget that Im the very same guy who fell for 911 Conspiracy belief, so don't sell everything and by tickets to Nepal just yet)


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Am I aiding Santa to cheat on my wife?

My wife does not read this blog, nor I guess does anyone else’s wife... or husband or perhaps even ...relative. So this dilemma and confession remains between just myself and the idealized reader of this blog.

This is the situation.

I have been shopping online for my wife’s Christmas presents, she has done well. I started off at high end virtual couturier's and ended up, via a fairly noncircuitous route, on Ebay. I bought her many presents, spent allot of time thinking and planning and watching. This wasn’t an "its her birthday on Tuesday, it is time for ebay" kind of an ebay gift buying session.


So... I pay for the presents with Paypal. Cut and shuffled. Done and dusted. Its all good, daaaaawg. Then something strange dawned on me. And this strangeness lead to a 30 second investigation and the fruits of this investigation had seeds that planted ripe melons of mistake. Namely, that at some at some point recently my wife has set up her own credit card as the default payment method. So, when I pay with Paypal, I pay with her credit card.

So what do I do?

  1. Do I try to go through all the hassle of correcting the mistakes in her absence?
  2. Do I own up and tell her, out of the blue?
  3. Do I ignore the fact, happy in the resounding marital axiom that what is hers is mine?
  4. Do I pick a third party and try to make out to my wife that I had done a bit of “impromptu online shopping” in order to “cut her some slack on the Xmas preparation front?” (She would find this fact inconceivable).

No, I did none of these. As I was writing this post she was milling around and I thought I might as well let her read this post. Its 100% exactly the same as Bono from U2 composing “Sweetest Thing” for his wife, by way of an apology (for having sex with a German shepherd (A sheep specialist from Stuttgart, rather than a dog)).


Postscript: She pretty much settled with option 3 and would like out to point out that she does read my blog but only when I ask her to.




Graphic Sexyness: Review of swivel.com





Swivel - Home





This site is full of graphs generated from data that people have uploaded and comparisons of that data. It sounds weird and in a way it is, but it will make sense if you go there.





The correlation between wine and violent crime and beer and violent crime is one of the most meaningless representations of anything you could ever see.





Ill probably stop visiting it bin a week or two, but if your a hard core number cruncher then this could be the best site on the internet.









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Google Reader Mobile

love this.

Its like google reader, but optimized for your mobile. But its the same reader. So if you read an article on one, you don't even need to see it on the other. If you add a new web site on one, voilla, its there on the other.

To try it do this:

  1. Get a Google Account - unless you have your reasons for not having a Google account, you should have one. Its like having an email address for the first time.
  2. Try Google Reader for two weeks. http://www.google.com/reader/m/
  3. Use it whenever you would go to your normal websites and you will see how it is a paradigm shift in browsing.
  4. View Google Reader on your mobile phone:
  5. Put this in your browser on your mobile phone: http://www.google.com/reader/m/
  6. Bookmark it.

Reminiscences: Easter Island Skull Find




When I was five my parents took me to Easter Island -even today not the most common of holiday destinations. I have lots of memories about the place, all united by a tangible sense that we were in some place weird.

The airport was a shed. The customs was a trestle table. There were no trees and lots of just… crazy statues.

But the key memory I have of this trip, and one that I think has shaped me to a degree, was as follows (I’m going to write the memory down first and then ring up my folks to compare):

There was a kind of cairn thing. A pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere. At the base of this cairn was a cave, a small opening that a child, but not an adult, could enter. I crawled inside and there, in the dim, was a collection of bones. I seem to remember a pile of skulls but I can’t remember how many. I do remember taking a skull and backing off out of the cave to show my parents.


I guess they were a bit freaked out by their little boy emerging from some chthonic nook with a human skull in his hands. That’s all I can remember.

…… I just called my folks.

This is what they remember….

Pretty much as described but. It was an altar on the north side of the island… underneath a plinth. I wanted to take the skull home… they wouldn’t let me… I had to crawl back in and put the skull back.

That’s all they can remember…. To my dad, a far more prominent memory of that trip wasn’t his son finding a skull but him losing his briefcase.