LouieATX

Only 100 cheers left to reach my goal of giving 1000 cheers. :)

I recently talked with the admins of a related project (PrimeGrid) and they are going to begin collaborating with us by allowing their users to run work from our project (SB) on their system!

This is great! PrimeGrid is a well-run sister project that has a solid platform and a large user base. In fact, they already have over 20,000 users as of Jan 2009 so by joining forces, I effectively achieve this goal!

So I’m very excited about our collaboration. Yay!

It’s common advice to tell people who want to lucid dream or have better dream recall to watch movies or read books / online tutorials about it. It not really the information that helps, but just being in the frame of mind where you’re thinking about having amazing dreams that does it.

Well I wanted to report that watching Walking Life before I go to sleep is a very effective way for me to stimulate my own dreams. I consistently have more vivid dreams that are easier to recall in the morning for my dream journal when I watch this movie.

I recommend this to anyone trying to improve dream recall or get full-on lucid dreams.

100 closer to my goal of giving 1000 cheers. :)

Reading more about AI at http://www.singinst.org/ourresearch/publications/GISAI//mind/consensus.html

I like this excerpt:

“In a rainbow, the physical frequency of the light changes smoothly and linearly with distance. Yet, when you look at a rainbow, you see colors grouped into bands, with relatively sharp borders. And it’s not just you. Everyone sees the bands.

It gets worse. Consider: The frequency of light is a linear, scalar, real number. The visible frequencies of light rise linearly from red to blue, bounded by infrared and ultraviolet. But if you look at a color wheel on your computer, you’ll see that it’s a wheel. Red to orange to yellow to green to blue to… purple? ... and back to red again. Where does purple come from? It’s a color that doesn’t exist, seemingly added on afterwards to turn a linear spectrum into a circle!

It turns out the color purple and the bands in a rainbow are both artifacts of the way humans perceive color space, which in turn is a result of the way our visual cortex has evolved to distinguish objects in the ancestral environment and maintain color constancy under natural lighting.

The color purple, and the bands in the rainbow, aren’t real.”

Makes you realize how subjective our “reality” really is. We’re not so much living in reality, but at best, in our own minds interpretation of it.

I’ve found that real growth comes when you do things outside of your comfort zone.

I noticed this goal randomly and was initially very freaked out by it. But the more I thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense to be afraid of something so natural like this.

I’ve decided to take on this goal just so I can confront my fear around the thought of doing this.

In general, as you live your life, you try to steer reality into a particular region of possible futures. When you buy a Corolla, you do it because you want to drive to the supermarket. You drive to the supermarket to buy food, which is a step in a larger strategy to avoid starving. All else being equal, you prefer possible futures in which you are alive, rather than dead of starvation. When you drive to the supermarket, you aren’t really aiming for the supermarket, you’re aiming for a region of possible futures in which you don’t starve. Each turn at each intersection doesn’t carry you toward the supermarket, it carries you out of the region of possible futures where you lie helplessly starving in your apartment. If you knew the supermarket was empty, you wouldn’t bother driving there. An empty supermarket would occupy exactly the same place on your map of the city, but it wouldn’t occupy the same role in your map of possible futures. It is not a location within the city that you are really aiming at, when you drive.

In an effort to help use online fundraising to make the world a better place, Fundable has begun supoorting Kiva.org’s micro-loan program:

http://www.fundable.com/static/blog/international-fundraising/

I quit using shampoo cold turkey 3 weeks ago.

I read that it is best to also not rinse too much even with water because then the oils build up faster and eventually dissipate quicker back to normal levels than if you rinse every day.

Well so far I’m having nothing but terrible results. I’ve never had my hair be this oily at the scalp and dry looking everywhere else. And I don’t have long hair either so it’s amazing how bad it really is.

I broke down and bought some more shampoo again today. I’m gonna try and use very little and see if maybe just washing with a little every few days can give me some positive results. I’m a bit sick of not being able to touch my head or have anyone else touch it for the past month.

100 closer to my goal of giving 1000 cheers. :)

Wow. Just wow. The Quran is such a joke. It’s by far the most vacuous, morally bankrupt religious text I’ve ever read.

Half the book so far has been dedicated to discussing how corrupt Jews/Christians are and how they should all be murdered. The other half has been co-opting their stories from the Bible BUT claiming that all the Prophets were actually Muslims (Adam, Moses, David, Jesus, etc). I seriously had to go look-up verses online to make sure this was really a real copy of the Quaran. I thought I had somehow found a fake copy made by someone hoping to slander Muslims. Their book is really that bad.

Thank goodness most Muslims don’t actually read and follow their own book… just like Jews and Christians. They just carry it around and assume it says nice things about loving people because that’s what their cleric says.

I still plan to finish reading it and continue taking notes for completeness sake. The Bible also has no redeeming message for the first 80% of the book and at least a few unique, valuable ideas towards the end. Perhaps the Quran has something to offer like that as well??

I haven’t made much progress on my goal to be a vegetarian in the past. Hasn’t even been on my mind.

Then suddenly, I was at a restaurant I always go to and nothing felt right except the vegetarian dish. Then the next day and the next.

I like how this is unfolding because it doesn’t feel like I’m giving anything up, just eating what feels right for me right now.

I just released a new version of “Seventeen or Bust” yesterday.

It’s 4% faster so it should speed up the effort with our current users that much more. We have also gained a few hundred more users in the last few weeks too. That’s always a good thing!

Fundable.com has now helped over 3,000 individuals and groups raise money for their goals! Still aiming for 10,000 completed fundraisers. 30% there! :)

I also recently published a new article with tips on how to run an online fundraiser during the recession:
http://www.fundable.com/static/blog/fundrasing-recession/

100 closer to my goal of giving 1000 cheers. :)

This is the coolest meta-goal I’ve ever taken on.

I learn so much by reading about other people’s goals and enjoy giving back the love!

Half way there and still excited about the other 500 cheers I have left to give to reach my goal.

In Thailand, I bought a lemon tree sapling and raised it for several months. It turned out to be a lime tree but I loved it all the same. :)

Just picked 5 limes from him. Went well with a couple San Miguel!

Only took a few days to do this. Really rewarding and learned lots of good knowledge along the way.

I wrote a new article that explains why it’s a mistake to wait for the “perfect” conditions before starting an online fundraiser:

http://www.fundable.com/static/blog/the-perfect-fundraiser/

Here in Thailand, there is an ancient art called Sak Yant. You can get special tattoos designed to confer spiritual gifts and protection.

I was lucky enough to meet a master here would performed the ceremony for me and gave me a wonderful experience. My tattoo was inked with sesame oil so there is a small welt where the oil pierced the skin but after it heals, it remains invisible, but the protection remains.

Nifty ritual and very unique. Would recommend for anyone interested in tattooing or folks traveling through SE Asia.