Castalia

I think someone should write a series of novels combining Castalia from the Glass Bead Game and Psycho-history from the Foundation series. And that the plot should revolve around math and logic puzzles. Maybe a little like The Name of The Rose.

http://castalia.stever.cc/

winter lake -
only my eyes
disturb the view

—Chaffinch

http://tinywords.com/haiku/2007/02/15/      

'Always come back out the way you went in (if this is convenient). The purpose being to ensure that the universe maintains its structure as this expresses itself in the individual.' Anon Domino

About the author: Chaffinch: sunbeam_city7 at hotmail dot com

Hackers and Painters

If a hacker were a mere implementor, turning a spec into code, then he could just work his way through it from one end to the other like someone digging a ditch. But if the hacker is a creator, we have to take inspiration into account.

In hacking, like painting, work comes in cycles. Sometimes you get excited about some new project and you want to work sixteen hours a day on it. Other times nothing seems interesting.

To do good work you have to take these cycles into account, because they're affected by how you react to them. When you're driving a car with a manual transmission on a hill, you have to back off the clutch sometimes to avoid stalling. Backing off can likewise prevent ambition from stalling. In both painting and hacking there are some tasks that are terrifyingly ambitious, and others that are comfortingly routine. It's a good idea to save some easy tasks for moments when you would otherwise stall.

In hacking, this can literally mean saving up bugs. I like debugging: it's the one time that hacking is as straightforward as people think it is. You have a totally constrained problem, and all you have to do is solve it. Your program is supposed to do x. Instead it does y. Where does it go wrong? You know you're going to win in the end. It's as relaxing as painting a wall.
- paul graham

"A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and he'll never crow. I have seen the light and I'm crowing."
-Muhammad Ali

Be Drunk

Be Drunk
by Charles Baudelaire Translated by Louis Simpson
You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it--it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

Discovered Baudelaire

I mean it's not as though I wasn't aware of existence. But I didn't realize how much I liked his poetry until I read the Nikopol Trilogy.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire
... If rape or arson, poison, or the knife
Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
Of this drab canvas we accept as life—
It is because we are not bold enough!

(Roy Campbell's translation)

"To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life."
-Walter Pater