all things wild and wonderfull

All things wild and wonderful, all things bright and beautiful, all things wild and wonderful.

All things grey like the flint grey sky

where does the weirdness come from? Where does it go at night? Onto the streets and into our minds.. slowly gnawing away at the sensibilities within our brain. Adding in etOH and all proverbial hell breaks lose at the seams of existence. well not always, just sometimes. How much of our perspective is based on our perspective of normality? Where does the illusive normal part of the curve of our existence lie on the continuum of life....

this was started some time ago ..

yes we are at that time of the year again .. a time for reflection..
time to wonder about the year passed and the year lying in front of us..

what to wonder about? do we have to wonder or can we treat it like the continuum it is? or is there an actual stasis and rebirth at this time of the year or is that all just marketing :-)

and the storm winds blew

and the storm winds blew

the wind pulled writhingingly through my number 2 hair style..
standing under the deep blue and purple clouds
the wind tearing at the soul
pulling, pushing and moving me
moving everything around me
the earth the sky everything moves
the leaves tear in the wind

the essence of timing

Much of what we experience in life comes down to the poetry of timing, life weaves it endless waves and lines through the dimension we call time turning certainties in uncertainties and visa versa...

I was watching Californication last night, what a series with an amazing script, but what resonated most with me was the inevitability of his characters self destruction and how the reality of life permeated through his character, yes it is obtuse and in a fair portion of society vulgar and exhibitionistic.. it still rings true for all of us in that there are always consequences to events in life, both good and bad.. seemingly no different to the SECRET, yet showing the flipside of the coin. No matter how much the intent to change exists, the underlying basis of ones personality will permeate through your existence... bringing me to one of my pet concerns, which has an underlying thread through my existence.. my questioning of the value of these quick self help mind "correction" books like the secret, paulo cohelo books and the likes where the author spurts or exacuates common sense labeled as infinite wisdom and truths? This may be my academic trainign, if i can call it that, the in bred drive to question the reality and perception of life as i experience it? Who knows? Maybe they do have value?
Can things ever be taken at face value? or is there a deeper hidden meaning in things we experience around us, or is that merely a construct of the thing we call our mind?
There is no knowing ?

We have to consider all that goes on around us and chose if that
{
Ah now after Blogis interuptis I continue on the path of rambling along.. a day or so later}
?? no idea what i was saying there :-)

but one would imagine that something in the lines of

which we perceive around us is what it is, how complicated is life, how much belongs to things we can change? how much is controlled in another sphere we cannot control?
Can we influence our life? One would imagine that what we can do is not impact on our lives negatively.. one would imagine that this is something in the lines of what the authors of the "secret" were trying to say. You can stop making your life worse, which in turn makes it better, but changing things in another way is far more difficult, we can remove the hand brake on our lives and continue forward in the direction that our inertia pushes us .. yes one would image that we can moderately alter the way we experience our life, but there are certain things that we cannot change .. if we are born with one leg, we can only experience life with one leg .. but there are contradictions to this .. namely the Blade runner .. he was born with legs but lost them at a very young age .. and yet he can still activly participate in athletics .. suppose that is a testament to human nature...

But the question we have to ask is? Do we all have this ability or not, one would imagine that there is predisposition for this in all of our make up.. But we are often bound by the way our life has turned out.. we can do what we can, but that is a contradiction..

I suppose we can all bootstrap ourselves much further than we could imagine, I suspect it is the amount we can bootstrap ourselves, all within the milieu of chaos and predestination and the amount we allow ourselves to compete in the game of life..

This brings me to an analogy I was just briefly considering...

Flyfishing .. we can learn the skills and we can cast and catch fish.. But what determines how much and how large a fish we can capture? when three people of similar skill levels go fishing for a determinate period of time, why is it that certain people can catch more or larger fish? How does that work? we all stand casting our lines ... catch fish, no it is not that we all dont catch or do catch fish.. but one person has a purple patch? How is that explained? things are chaotic and random, yet not..

Someone standing on the outside notices that we are all using the same skills and are dealing with the same environmental variables, "But our catch rates differ throughout the day and the weekend.. Yes there is an element of skill.. there is an element of confidence.. Now there is a paradoxical statement.. how is it possible for me to say that?> It is a very strange perception. FF has a lot to do with confidence.. it does not always pay off, but if we truly believe we will catch the bigger fish.. and the many fish or should i rather say much fish like my children..

will have to think a little more on this and try to write this more coherently.. but for now this is enough..

back to the old stuff

back to the old stuff....

sometimes... no I lie .. often i wonder about human dynamics ..
you may wonder what i wonder about ..

I wonder a lot i think a lot .. maybe to much..

I believe like a lot of other ppl that i have a fair judge of other characters,,,,

But do we ever?

no this is nothing ominous.. just some questioning on the nature of the human kind, where do our, their and other allegiances lie?

maybe allegiances is a strong word for what i want to say? maybe it should rather be re-phrased as mental awareness of those around us. No before you wonder, this is not a depressive diatribe that is developing. this is rather a questioing of human nature and how we as humans experience it from the outside or rather as an observer of a moment (wanted to say an?), how are our perceptions built, how are they formed. To return to an old thread can we ever really ever be objective about anything, let alone people and their motives and thoughts? Can we ever stand outside and look in and ever understand the complexity within base don the exterior facade or representation that we/you, they or them portray to the world.

Within the silent world of the intelectual, I wonder why?

What is it that the intellectual, or the external view thereof hold such anguish and questioning in those who feel they are not an intellectual equal. In the bible it is said we are all granted talents, strangely as a child i always believed them to be coins? Strange thing that? coins depicted as coins? But i ask with proverbial tears in my eyes? what makes us different?

how if we stare through the cold reality of truth that, what we are is not enough? Why is it that perceptions are so slanted against that which is the reality of the experience or life we, they them, us you view when looking at the person in front of you? We stand un-affronted and look at those around us and create images and perceptions of what it is that people are...

WE stand WE look we perceive and conclude with little view of the reality, yes this is human.. we can but only view life as an image or rather a reflection of our life in the terms of the reflection we see that is not ours.. we judge, we view, we believe we understand.. When did the reality and the individual disappear? When did the value and the integral nature of the individual fade into the milieu of society, most probably long before me and long after me. Our perceptions of relaity are tainted by that which we believe and experience and often we drive our perceptions into a place which is not real. Yes there is good within, there is bad within, there is life within. we tend to humanise the experience, where the experience is not which we perceive? We read markers and flags that society plant on the hill that we call humans. On this hill we crucify like that which was biblically documented, no this is not a christian diabtribe, but rather a comment on the society we see and experience and live..
The markers are there, the experience is there, the impact is however unknown to us or those around us, and even less is the impact of the perception or experience thereof. The flags stand there high and waving or fluttering in the wind of the life we are or experience. How often do we understand? And no this is not excluding me as the observer at this point, but as the recipient and the observee ( yes maybe i should have used observed, but i liked that word more) ..

All that remains to be said is that all we have is the experience and the interaction thereof and how we interact and represent in our minds eye..

you may be confused, read it again.. this is not a finger pointing as I may have done in the past, but rather an observation on human nature.. WE are, WE Observe, we view and in the same light we are Observed. Where does this go. Confusion and misunderstanding relating to the nature of humanity. Is this a good or bad thing? I am not sure, but this is just the nature of humanity.

you are most probably asking what the frigin hell am i trying to say.. it should be clear if it isnt, then it isnt. no more will i say for now. I may say more later. But this is a multifaceted thing, this thing we call life and living as a human. Bound by the humanity of our existence, bound by the observation and observed, bound by the interaction, bound by the nature of the mind which we all know just to well is not what we think it is..

enough said for now :-)

and now for the normal stuff

and i was wondering again about a whole lot of really trivial things again..

i think i will allocate at least a small portion of this blog to my nagging concept of the social cairn as i have most ineptly named it.. :-) i am really wondering about the term i have coined for this really Arb construction within the realms of my mind .. i wonder how many of these things are really just accidental and how many are planned?

let me pose one item as an example:

this is a picture which in all consequence is most probably an anomaly, a freak of coincidence, but it is amazing?

One would image that in our daily life our path is crossed with any number of these insane anomalies, some planned, some unplanned like this one.

how often do we stare past a pile of carefully arranged paper clips or others? stones carefully arranged in a pile of dust without noticing?

But Like i said this are absolutely arb :-)

just a thought

I was sitting at my machine again the other day, or should i say still..

i was typing to no avail, nothing was happening.. i did not click into the actual box where the text goes..

this is something i have experienced often and am sure that you have experienced .. But my thought is ...

Where are all those words.. where have they gone .. IS this something like the monkey in front of a typewriter .. do those words combine somewhere in the ether so make a story. And if so is this story something like the tree falling in the forest when there is no one to listen.

the sound of one hand clapping, the beat of a butterfly wing, the words of unspoken words drifting through the ether..

if there was a key logger on all machines globally and these lost words were combined would it create a deconstructivism William Burroughs like novel?

or is
THIS just not likely?

if enough people type randomly into nothing on their computers will it create the greatest deconstructivist novel of all times? Or is it in fact the greatest piece of writing in progress. By nature it could land up being the greatest form of art?

after a little reading i realize that in fact it is Deconstruction and deconstructivist ?

semantic, vernacular?

either way it could well be sub conscious art?

from wikipedia on the interweb :
J. Hillis Miller has described deconstruction this way: “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently-solid ground is no rock, but thin air."^[1]


in a similar way the social cairns are deconstructivistic .. yet not really, rather disparate and unconnected? or is that not the connection? or are they subtly all joined at a sub conscious level?


btw..

project n on a list of manuy things to do is to capture the social cairns on electronic media, thus destroying them like Schroedinger's cat..

But that is us as humans looking to see to understand to destroy.. whilst only trying to understand. do they need to be understood and seen, is that the next step in the evolution of this form of social expression, is it something that has been around for long or not, or is it new, or is it a new name for something old? we will have to wait and see wont we

operational readiness and project success

Part 1:

a thought totally unrelated to the normal stuff i blog about has just not been leaving my neural pathways, i began wondering about the effect of the organization on the effectivity (this does not appear to be a word?) of the outcome of an IT project.So often we are quick to pull out the simple anecdotal multidimensional matrices which combine scope, people, process and other simple project attributes, but in 90% of the cases we tend to miss out on one whole dimension of data that is very important to the success of IT projects. Let us call that dimension of data the operational readiness of the organization. This can be broken down to a panacea of different attributes. Where to start?
I suppose let us start at the simplest and easiest to determine, that is in the milieu of the organization. that being infrastructural readiness. This is often only seen as the ability of the customer to deliver the appropriate hardware and environment in time for the deployment of the development test and production environments. Something we never take into consideration is the ability or rather the agility of the organization to be able to adapt to changing requirements due to business or technical constraints and technical incidents. How often does the project not at loose at least 10% or in many cases upto 180% of the time of the project to delays in this simple task? This is geared up for both fixed cost engagements as well as time and material engagements. The difference being the cost is just shifted at the end of the day. The thing that is not taken into consideration is the impact on the human capital on both sides of the equation. The longer the engagement, the longer the extensions of changes to the initial plan the higher the incidence of project fatigue and ip and human capital loss. With project fatigue efficiencies drop on both sides. This is in the domain of the team leaders and project managers to correct these human impacts. In the more advanced methodologies this is where the change specialists step in and moderate the impact of delays on the customer, but what if anything is ever done for the development team. I have digressed slightly, but will faithfully return to the thread of the discussion. Back to operational readiness and efficiency in implementing change. As i mentioned before it is the measure of the agility of an organization that allows it to cope with the inevitable catastrophes and disasters along this road. We more often than not depend to heavily on the inherent ability of the vendor to deliver according to acceptable configuration instructions and management of complexity for the install process to go through simply. Please keep in mind we are talking here about multi-tiered application server and software installs and not your run of the mill single contained application installs, yet even these can give problems.
The question is then how to mitigate and manage this process?

when setting up scopes and technical specifications and processes, is it not better to then make sure that these factors are built into the management of the process and its outcomes and more importantly the ensuing time lines.


But something else that often lacks before this process even kicks off is the vision and drive by the organization to go down the cataclysmic pathway of a development or implementation process(in most cases my reference is towards business intelligence delivery, but this applies just as well to the other forms of technical magic woven by IT guru's sic!). How often when a project is defined the total cost is never totally defined or envisaged upfront.. so often as a project manager or system/technical architect or similar we tend or put in what we call as FAT in he plan and attempt to bolster best laid plans with an acceptable variance. Is this maybe not where we should put he most effort in when a project is designed and planned. Yes in most cases budget and time line and rapid delivery are key outcomes. We must however be totally cognisent that without effective planning at this stage we will fail.

This brings me back to the question of operational readiness and how we determine it. How often as a vendor we recognize a requirement in a customer through the sales and lead process and chase down the deal. In an attempt to deliver and maintain sales forecasts and budget we just don't seem to take into consideration the implementation of the change process within the organization. the vendor and implementation company strives of agility and the ability to deliver through adversity, whereas the customer is not geared up for these levels of change. At the end of the day i suspect this is the challenge for most organizations and vendors supplying services and deliverables. How do we ensure this level of operational readiness? The foremost question that actually comes to mind is to determine the most parsimonious route through this challenge. How is responsibility determined and how are its impacts or the effects of the lack of change managed and mitigated in the life-cycle of the project? Is there a way to manage this change process and its impacts to the organization. If we look at the statistics, albeit that they are deceptive and evil, what is the eventual success rate of most IT based projects. Experience teaches us many of these things, but by the time the experience is paramount how many of these practitioners have suffered massive burnout and no longer have the drive to deliver change and results to a new customer. The best way would be to develop a methodology that is both usable and practical for the implementation, in this case BI, of a project. And there are many existing methodologies and processes that have been defined, but how do we modify and augment them to work in the environment we find ourselves in? Often methodologies or frameworks are only as strong as the team and management both on the side of the vendor and the customer. At best we could wish for some form of partnership between the customer and the vendor. This of course is not possible if the operational readiness of either parties is lacking. So we may have to devise a framework or methodology that can cope with this.

the f word and rain creation and other anomolies like not using the W word anywhere near Sterkfontein dam

I was thinking about some anomalies in the time space and rain continuum. A while ago i was listening to radio and saw some news reports about the faith like potato dude praying and then the rain fell. And over the years there have been many different rain making ceremonies and festivals, from leaving brooms above the front door to many other historically more perverse and brutal options....

But something that has proved to be a winner in my case would be the fishing word .. can say it now because A decided that i should go fishing on sunday .. and for a change it wasnt even me who prompted or even said the word .. and what an untimely and insane cold front is on its way across the country .. bringing rain for the whole of this week up to and past next weekend .. so maybe a thought of fishing brings rain but a proxy thought of rain is even worse?

it may be coincidence, but it does seem to be better to just pretend to not want to go and then go at the last minute then u might be guaranteed for it not to rain of have the wind blow us away. this could be considered as the bain of the flyfisherman.. but on a more obtuse note .. us as humans read a lot of sense into coincidence and make meaning out of the patterns in our lives without realization of the randomness of events. I may of course be totally wrong and things may be driven by some higher power or by some form of divine intervention, my bad for not accepting it i suppose? can we pray for rain?

if enough of us have the state of mind to change soemthing will it change? if we believe hard enough and enough of us believe will we grow fangs? i know not what the future holds?

maybe we are bound by my cynicism and others like me, who without the world would be a different place with faeries and dinosaurs roaming our back gardens or the space between our minds and the world we live in?

something on a different note completely? I was speaking to pastor aquaintance of ours on religious matters .. yes i was dont be so surprised? these things happen and he descrived a metaphor for me that was facsinating to the nth degree, he said he likened the faith, or belief in a god or a higher being and a bible to a bucket... how could you explain to someone about what you believe if you have a bucket full of water from an amazing river, I suppose the same goes for flyfishing? and many other things .. how can a fly sitting on a tbale at my desk even come close to the experience of flyfishing other than to those who know the truth? what is the truth .. what can a book translate to us about the truth of a situation? i suppose that is what makes good authors who can translate the living into words.. not to be confused with the living word.. now that is something completely different?

I sometimes wonder a lot as i am sure you have noticed about a lot of trivial and unimportant things that go on in the world around me. having noticed the interactions between people in a closed environment .. wierd is ll i can say..

But is suppose the relevance of our lives are only in context to those around us? or do they ahve inherrent value of their own? Now that is somewhat of an eclectic and non sensical statement to make? but i made it? it a likens to something in the vain of does a falling tree make a sound in a forrest if no one witnesses the demise and fall of the tree? we may see it days, months or years later.. the tree fell we see the tree, we know it happened? but did it happen, we never experienced it? similarly the sound of one hand clapping? who knows? do goldfish sleep?

Does it really matter?

how complex the web we weave, the web woven around this mortal coil of life, something so essentially simple yet infinitely complex. size and nature of life and its complex weave we cannot understand, the simplicity of the blue sky, the depths of our minds and the woven paths?

what crap..

oh yes tomorrow we view my view on GT through my modern day box brownie .. or rather my nokia 5000 1 mega pixel camera?

enough rambling for now, more later on in the week

just some things

i was wondering about a new term?

Social Cairns, something similar to flash mobs if people are involved, but more in the lines of something like performance art or anonymous art. Think if we were to create small insignificant beacons throughout our social landscape. small Cairns indicating the presence of an activism or awareness of those around us who partake in the activity. do not get me wrong this is nothing new, it may just be a more abstract and no group based expression of this phenomena. the Free masons and other trades often created messages and symbols of their existence or interaction with inanimate objects by means of cryptic signals, messages and symbolism. So what would i be proposing, now there would be something that would destroy the notion of this anarchistic representation of this form of symbolism, in some ways the graffiti artists do something similar. The graffiti artists sic! if we can define them as such are more an expression of a homogeneous anti-societal collection, which through its anarchism and behaviours tend rather to be homogeneous and constrained to a general underlying thought. what i am proposing is something far less structured than this, something far more unconstrained by bias and preconception. the only similarity or conformance of the notion is that it exists. I am not sure how long something like thsi would take to gain momentum and or to even gain conscious momentum. It could land up taking very long and gain immense momentum yet not ever actually be recognised or even be noticed by anyone.

technology

oh i hate technology and its manifestations ..

how i could have sat for 3 hours fixing up something .. for it to be destroyed by some or other electronical stuff up ..

oh well we all learn lessons through this .. type in another interface and the copy it accross ..

Damn this is frustrating ..

oh well another lesson learnt, this is through the cyborg nature of our lives, living through our fingertips .. that is why this happens .. these ramblings should be verbally transmitted around a fire with a lot wine or sherry in some location and not over the wires and electrons of a BLOB..

oh well seeing that i started this i supppose i had better finish it ..

where does this leave us, or more so me specifically -- even more distant and segregated from reality, not closer even though there is a translation of things from the realm of the electrons within my cerebrium or some or other part of my brain .. through to an interface through electrons pulsing through my nerves into a plastic and metal device with more electrons .. somehow i think the uncertainty is just to great .. isnt that what we expect from electrons .. well

i should have listened to the post on xkcd that i saw today ...

http://xkcd.com/658/

all that i have done is increase the uncertainty by trying to look at where the electron was..

all i know now is that the cat is dead or isnt it?

oh well onto something new .. tomorrow we start something new .. the format changes for a while

a correction

on the significance of f stuff seems to have gotten completely corrupted and dont think it will make any sense even to me
..

appologies

this is frigin irritating cos i spent about 3 hours writing a whole lot and it is all gone to only be replaced with crap little <<>> stuff

On a whole lot of ((little) things:

On a whole lot of things:

Something I have been pondering for a few brief moments is the nature of humanity and what constitutes humanity as a whole. Is it the individual or the collective? Does the individual hold more inertia than the collective? You may ask why I ask that? Or what a frigin stupid question. It has more to do with some thoughts I have had about the continuity or perpetuity of the human race…
Are we not a large mosaic of dynamics and individual inputs that together make a conglomerate. Supposing that the conglomerate is uniform enough to indicate a commonness that we all hope to see. Or are we more a nougat of life being melted and molded together into one or maybe cassata would be a better analogy .. But I digress .. it could be closer to a load of olive bread, but that is for later .. not now ..
My actual question is more along the lines of how much the individual partakes and is constituent of the whole or the sub whole of humanity on a regional or meme base. The actual question we have to ask is are we a self defeating organism .. something like a yeast? We grow .. we exploded our exploits and living destroy our own existence and break ourselves down, only to pop up from the remnants of our existence.
How important is the individual and how important is the collection of individuals in society and its makeup. One of the things we can observe is that in many cultures or subsets of society are very homogonous and in other cases very heterogeneous. Which of these creates a homeostasis or chaos. Do humans tend towards homeostasis or towards chaos? These may seem like silly questions, but guide us to our eventual destiny?
Something closer to home I was thinking about was the value of politicians as a whole.. What value do they actually have for us in their current manifestation.. and yes that is an open ended question.

How much value does the individual deliver to society..

How much value does society deliver to the individual?

Are they interchangeable, or is the one more important than the other, where do we start to debate this from? Do we look at the anarchists, the nihilists or do we look towards some form of divine intervention or direction. Who knows what is more effective in guiding the Meme’s we call culture. How sustainable are the memes we follow or promulgate. In general how sustainable is the human race as a whole. Apparently humans are fairly sustainable in the short and medium term. How do we measure the cost of being human in the long run? Should we attempt to or be part of the phylogenetic inertia that we are part of? That is not meant to be depressing in any way.

As a totally different subtext myself and a few others, have debated the un-humanness nature of owning a GPS. What does it take away from our ability to find adventure and excitement in our daily lives…. That is not saying that there is no Technical value in GPS’s for specific applications, but the thought of navigating myself to work and back on a daily basis staring at a little screen taking away our natural/unnatural ability to find our way home or get lost in the process thereof.. It has taken away our ability to utilize the internal zen art of navigation which has for many years served us as humans very well in a way to either expand or limit our lives. I think in an urban context there could be some perceivable value in using a GPS, but to be real what benefit does it give to us on the proverbial road trip other than to take the road less traveled. Sometimes I think we should rather focus on the journey, what we see and experience rather than the temporal break between being at point A and then being at point B. Fundamentaly I believe that when we go on an extended journey the benefits of not having a GPS by far outweigh having one, that is unless we are bound by some form of temporal constraint to be at point B by a predefined point in the timespace continuum. Often the route through or eventual ending in point C may actually develop our humanity more than we could ever imagine. That is I must now interject and highlight that I speak from a specific meme within society and not from a “general perspective” whatever that General is;-) I suspect the ability of road tripping in most peoples lives no longer exists and will at some point reach a mythical perspective or manifestation, something like the tales of the Argonaut or the search for the golden fleece. When did the eventual Golden fleece become more important than the journey and the people and places that where interacted with both humanistically and tangentially than finding the Fleece. Lets try and imagine .. Jason picked up his GPS plotted his course on Google earth found the Fleece and sent it to sotherbeys to auction over the internet.. End of the story. Maybe this exact point explains to me why there is this huge (re)surgence of computer games and especially those of the role playing nature. It was always something that perplexed me beyond internal rationalization why people would choose and alternative reality to that which we experience on a daily basis. I suppose how exiting our lives are when we sit behind a desk staring at the electrons darting over our LCD or CRT or PS or whatever.. and rush home switch on another screen. Humans seem to have lost the propensity to be able to interact with their own environments in a healthy and interactive way. We have been bound to the media and their interpretations thereof .. I am not saying that there is no place for fiction and media, what I am saying is that in my belief it has taken away from us the ability to be human. What is it that makes us human, this of course could in turn lend itself to an unending diatribe of disparate philosophical or phenomological debates? But as a small aspect of it, how many people actually ever get to appreciate walking on their lawn, the lawn in front of their flat, the nearby park without their shoes on, let alone walking without shoes when the lawn is wet or heaven forbid muddy or dusty. When last did the general populace consider what it is they are doing when they eat a vegetable, a piece of steak. Whn last did you watch the sun rise or set.. and not accidentally whilst driving to or from work? Dunno somehow us as humans seem to have lost perspective on the zen art of navigation of our own lives. Do we need to have a route planned, is the route that life choses for us not to be appreciated and embraced to try and get as much out it as possible.
Just as a subscript for those negative people out there…
(Not MLC rather an appreciation of life to be experienced by all)
Not to harp on this for another 100 pages or more which I could .. maybe another day, or as I stated to someone today, did I answer you or did I think about it in my head and have a meaningfull one way discussion with myself and come up with fantastic outcomes and conclusions.

And now for something totally different:

Recently I went fishing in the north west somewhere .. I was punished by the development of our infrastructure, or better put infrastructural upgrade.. it turned a medium length journey into a substantial journey, that is not the point.. yet it is.
I had a fantastic time, thought of nothing much other than the fishing and standing hip deep in a river and watching the otters, birds and zillions of other things swimming and floating by. The point being that I did not feel like I should submit myself to the arduous journey through the unending roadworks and enforced stops where the large road was put into a single directional lane being swopped around every now and again… like every 20-30 minutes.. note from my previous paragraph, yes we can choose not to take some journeys and do not have to travel the same road twice .. especially when it is bad .. So I decided that there must be an alternative route back home..
Then specifically chose to only get vague verbal directions as to the 350km detour through towns and roads I have never traveled before let alone even knew of their actual location .. thus with the aid of my Zen internal GPS and without looking at a Map drove through the center of the freestate on my way home on very long very straight roads that very few people have ever been on.. What value u may ask… but what if I got lost, would I not be late.. sure there was a chance.. but in principal most roads eventually lead to gauteng in some or other way.. this was specifically liberating to be able to get in a car and allow my internal compass to guide me along the route home. Now before you even attempt to find some kind of spiritual message in this .. there are none .. this was purely just something that happened.. with little or no real outcome other than exposing myself to the universe and its wims.. I know to specific readers of this blog there will be an inordinate number of explanations and objections against this.. yes some of them may be true, some not, depending on when and how you look at it all these explanations will change and may be true and even in retrospect. The past changes as much as the future with enough shifting in perspective..

Oh well enough for now ..

On something more tactile ..

Notes on baking bread .. that was the original or one of the original purposes of the blob…

I have discovered something of value to me and maybe you when u want to bake an awesome bread ..

I found that the high foam beer yeast works like bomb .. for south Africans the “big yellow sorgum brewing yeast packet “ and then also recently have found that brown bread flower definitely tastes good in this configuration. Another pointer is making the dough about 5% more moist than you would expect, this is logical, but never thought why.. u think about it .. then for baking it I now bake only round breads inside a flat bottomed heavy cast iron pot with a lid .. it just seems to work better .. maybe it contains the moisture better and stops the bread from drying out.. still makes a crust ..

Oh well enough for one day.. more down the temporal line

something short

i have more than a few half completed comments on life and everything around me ..

but don't seem to be able to commit to them, things are strange, people are stange or stranger than i would ever had imagined, a worl implodes, a society implodes around us.

yet we are still bound to find some meaning in it on a daily basis.

something that has struck me is that we are all the same yet totally different. We all have the same gripes the same complexities to deal with in different ways ....

things just need clarity within us, only we can give clarity but we are often unable to see the wood for the trees.

more will follow tomorrow

on the significance of f stuff

A flash from the recent or slightly longer than recent

I wrote this piece about 2-3 weeks ago and am debating if i will publish it?

< and yes am still wondering a few months later....
and pondering about some of the content
and waited and procrastinated >

And damn it is sentimental and out of my character, those who know will know that my mind took a holiday on its own .. left me to deal with reality and it sucks.. this was somewhere in the middle of all of it.

<>

Over time I have wondered what constitutes a friend and how do we measure them or should we even?
and how serious we take the little things in life?
that is being at a cross road in my life ..no dont panic .. not like that or like that or like that ..

< << just got me thinking again about things and stuff..
>>>


keep in mind that this was written well in the past just something .. that switched or should i say snapped in the fabric of my reality, maybe i should have gone through the purple veil and seen whats was on the other side... no not now.. then when i had chance how often do we have the chance to view the other side of the veil, for those who do not know what the purple curtain is you will have to ask?

<<<>>

back to, yet only briefly. I would like to thank those, I will not mention you in person, but out there for being friends.. Even though at times I assume that my aloofness and insanity drives people to absolute distraction :-? But honestly thanks to those which have made a difference.. even though most of you would not know when or why, that is in relation to my apparent ability to only communicate in gorilla speak




.. But how do we evaluate and or relate to our interactions with others and what value do the have to our lives, and even scarier for me is what influence or impact do i have on others lives?

<>

Now there is a horror thought at this point in the day. But enough of this sentimental crap down the nuts and bolts of our existence and the entry into the or through the purple curtain of existential existence onto the other side of our existence, and no this is not in all cases a spiritual venture into another realm, it could be it could well be a view into a micky dee's for all i know. what stands behind the curtain I personally have only had glimpses of the other side, more often than not through observation of others and situations and life it self. Is there in essence another side to life that we are not aware off, yes there is always another side, another way at looking at things .. but is it there? What is there standing waiting behind the curtains that hold the fabric of life and time together? Something, nothing the boogey man? It is there something we seek, something a lot of us seen in glimpses, visions of our mortality and life. how do we not pigeon hole our lives, I should have said Whole .. for more obvious reasons.. as this is the extent to which we constrain our lives, No please do not for a moment think that we shall all abondon that we we know and rush headlong into the throws of anarchism. But there is something else to all of our lives that remains hidden or constrained behind the rigours of the jail we create within ourselves to protect ourselves from the impacts of our daily existence. Things to strive for that we more oft or not put to the side because we are absorbed, consumed and paralyzed by the life we live for our selves, note you were expecting me to say create.. no we do not create our lives at best we surf on the frenetic catastrophic wave of stochasticsm that we call life, pretending to be in control of the small and bigger things, when we are such small players, well most of us in the path of the world, our lives and the universe. Yes there are those who quote the butterfly flapping its wings .. dman the sprinkler is on .. back in a flash .. yes the garden is now soaked.. i am sure to lose what iw as trying to ramble on about .. byt WTF oh well it took a few days to get back to this.. exactly a few to be exact .. once again thanks to those who matter it has been a trying time for me at a number of levels .. there have been challenges to my daily life, my mental state, missing loved ones and in general a wake up call in terms of what is important to me.. geez please stop me if i start sounding like oprah or dipak at worst .. but we do have to learn how to appreciate what we have and .. Myself have allowed myself to become obsessed in the dark recesses of my mind... and boy did i travel, which is both good and bad for me and those who know me, but at times i think we all need to go and investigate those places inside our minds, the outcome may not allways be positive, but it is part of what and who we are and it is things we need to deal with at some point.. and boy it tends to be traumatic for all thsoe involved or not involved :) some thanks from a long time ago firstly and foremost .. thanks for the flowers even if it appears that I am aloof I appreciate the gesture tremendously.. and the minimal time that you had available... and for the recipient of my insane emails .. thank you for being understanding .. yes this me me .. at my most confused .. well it was and of course thanks for putting up with all the crap at that point .. it was painfull for all involved at whatever level you were exposed. don't expect it in reality unfortunately my makeup does not allow for that form of social gesturing and those who have endured my endless messenging .. and then for those who only answer on the odd blog I appreciate it all.. But where this actually leads to I have no idea ..

< totally="" moderately="" field="" employ="" us="" reductionistically="" driven="" technique="" attempt="" give="" holistic="" value="" interpret="" work="" obsession="" with="" meta="" albeit="" very="" interesting="" perspective="" down="" evolutionary="" path="" terms="" information="" unrelated="" reading="" an="" article="" about="" 10="" worst="" ideas="" disasters="" happened="" verge="" amoungst="" them="" was="" one="" peve="" gps="" cellphones="" how="" thsi="" able="" see="" rider="" everyone="" then="" u="" wonderfull="" built="" rfid="" tag="" place="" already="" triangulating="" ourselves="" phone="" towers="" new="" dimension="" logging="" tracking="" humans="" potential="" impact="" could="" your="" privacy="" all="" will="" mean="" tele="" sms="" mms="" other="" forms="" marketing="" just="" wait="" till="" geocontextual="" spam="" ariving="" many="" general="" populace="" refer="" cos="" bulk="" intelegentia="" longer="" cell="" phones="" rather="" small="" portable="" multimedia="" devices="" that="" masquerade="" everything="" driving="" next="" point="" additional="" virtualization="" experience="" daily="" plotted="" monitored="" permanently="" connected="" social="" networking="" portals="" like="" facebook="" good="" bad="" knows="" it="" definitely="" has="" massivly="" dehumanising="" effect="" thsoe="" who="" partake="" in="" real="" time="" exposure="" their="" lives="" need="" internet="" on="" mobile="" have="" home="" pc="" s="" where="" no="" get="" me="" wrong="" am="" i="" feel="" line="" individual="" device="" seems="" merging="" form="" yes="" stage="" we="" do="" not="" fullfill="" classic="" definitions="" at="" end="" minds="" now="" being="" wired="" central="" consciousness="" adds="" yet="" detracts="" from="" our="" ability="" to="" be="" human="" even="" more="" creates="" much="" larger="" rift="" between="" is="" technically="" defined="" as="" first="" and="" third="" jsutr="" a="" thought="" out="" context="" what="" etirely="" delayed="" copy="" this="" current="" instantiation="" blog="" contains="" but="" these="" the="" ramblings="" of="" my="" which="" brings="" into="" question="" if="" they="" are="" open="" source="" or="">>

This is just another day in all of your lives .. this will be a fleeing moment in Text on a screen.. oh then also to my wife for worrying herself silly over the sms's I appreciate it ..

<<>>
If only i could be better at expression on a personal/ interpersonal level .. and yes to you .. the other persons/people appologies about the glib and senseless comments as to your midnight smsing to people .. we all have our crutches/crosses to bare ..:-) ROTFL .. we all do .. we have all had these moments in our lives.. ................ well it still needs to be told and appreciated in context. think back to more sensefull stuff that is in context to the way my mind works or appears to work .. I would strongly recomend two movies to watch for diametrically opposite reasons .. the one being black cat white cat .. AWESOME .. and then thanks To IJ for telling me that Watchmen is good to watch .. read the reviews .. was not exited. .. DAMN that is a Kewl comic move .. yes it is gruesome ... but watch it .. is real and raw .. but more back to some things I was thinking about a little while ago ... no the thoughts wont stop just a slight perspective shift ... but for now there is a chicken in the oven .. and food needed for hungry kids .. maybe i post tonight .. maybe not .. we will all have to wait and see .. ok done ..lost that thread .. will have to think a little more .. .. later on something else .. i have done the unspeakable .. i joined twitter .. the home of twits .. for work purposes no less .. But have been following lance of TDF .. interesting either an interesting dude or an amazing marketing machine? more in a while sorry this one is going to take long ... very long to finish back again .. only a handful of words to add.. so go forth and experience the world in its full glory for tomorrow things will be different.. <>

no i decided it is no good to retract anything I say ..cos thats life .. and either u knew or the randomness is just additive ...

more later .. this will be long and drawn out....

this is merely a glimpse of something that ran through my brain, in context out of context. I dont believe that we should ever let ourselves be consumed by society and our existence to any level that is detrimental to ourselves and those around us. Keeping in mind that this blog you have read is entirely disconnected pieces and flashes of moments and contains certain things said and the gaps in between portray much more that was not said and much that should have been said and told to others with or without qualification ( the qualification i speak of here encompasses almost all of the meanings u find in a dictionary)


now to re-read for a change and decide if this needs more qualification or less.. and if i will publish some of this or replace it with dots?

more on this subject later

<<< on some other unrelated things:

i must admit that i must partially retract something i said about gps's and slightly relating to google earth.. Google earth is an anomoly in this whole train of thought, on the one hand it demystifies a lot of the planet .. for example go and look at the nacza lines in south america.. something u would never be able to without this tool .. other than in pictures on websites or books .. but in other cases it takes the adventure away from us .. but it does make other things more accessible like looking for micro sand patches for tiger beetles .. but i must admit in some cases this humanizes our planet far to much .. it takes away the "dragons be there" imagination from us.. dunno will have to rethink this one.. maybe there are places we should not see .. and only stumble accross .. but it is to later to debate that now retrospectivly??? maybe i am only short sighted about GPS's but not sure about it?

and lastly for this tirade ... something more to contradict something i ahve said previously .. is what is the nature of the urban cowboy?are they real cowboys in a different paradigm? or are they a elevation of another archetype? This could be seen as a form of social evolution or devolution .. not sure .. the william gibsons and compatriots wrote them into folklore with the cyberpunk genre.. this may all be part of the new human ..
the cyborg or more accurately virtual cyborg with virtual links between keyboard and brain and mobile device? is that all that we are devolving into?
but who am i to comment on this commenting through some of the associated media .. this is all to convoluted and disturbing at far to many levels ;) ><>>

on the colelctive and the indivudal and the falicy

i was following the internet and news over the last few days and the whole strike issue reared its head again ..

made me think a little about the collective and the union and its eventual impact on the lives of those it supposed to be looking after. more esentially i was looking at the num etc etc strike which impacts almost every sphere of what is happening in the country at the moment .. the hi way development the now almost infamous gautrain the 2010 stadiums and and and ..

now i am sure they have point going on strike IMHO .. but how do we measure the impact of real crippling strike at the end of the day.. how much does that now actually benefit the person who is trying to get a better wage? No i do not know enough details about the strike to know whether or not the strike is justified.. But at the end of the day .. this sends massive ripples through our society.. what happens if we lose the 2010 because of something like this? what impact does that have on those Workers and the millions of others affected? is the collective greater than the immediate collective representing the individual within the collective have more importance than the global collective being the country? That is of course saying categorically that I am terrifically opposed to exploitation at all levels of business .. how many of us are sufferers of one or other form of exploitation.. contractors .. through labour brokers .. teachers etc etc ..
where do we draw the line .. how do we correct the Evils in this case of capitalism.. were people make there buck along the "value chain"? Who knows .. should we move to socialist society that creates a truly equal person? Can we ever hope for any form of principled capitalism? Who is more important at the end of the day? The doctor the politician the MD the CEO? who is actually the most important.. and what about callings like education, caregivers and nurses? Do we not all deserve an equal life, opportunity .. bla bla fish paste.. Or is actually a case of survival of the fittest for the human race.. where through the structures we build we eventually implode the entire system, is it ever possible on a country, regional global scale possible to have a society like this..

I doubt this? I suspect we are rather selecting for the evil, manipulative, caniving and the downright exploiter that will eventually destroy all of society, till the individual creates a collective to destroy the apparent evil and starts the cycle all over again .. eys this is an old thread taking us back to Velikovsky and the likes .. but that is just the way it is ...


back in a flash


well it took longer than i thought ..

but existential crisis's do ..

on an entirely different topic :

i think i am silly and this may be one of the last broadcast blogs for a while.

not in any way other than..

I am not going to post out the blogs anymore .. they will be available on a RSS feed so it will be a choice thing .. unless an email auto-copy is requested,,

thank you all for enduring my blog abd its sillyness but this will be the last in its current format ...

the rss feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/GeneralRamblingsOnTheFlavourOfLife

for those who knw my email email me.. else just post a comment on the blog

adios

the sillyness now stops
it is time for a new leaf a new me ...

looking down the rabbit hole

on a more sinister note .. there has been another complaint about my spelling:-) oh well i will trie or should rather have been try?

who knows .. but the typing is fast and doesn't always come out so well formed...

but more on the rabbit hole..

what do we see when we look down the rabbit hole of life, or in another way the rabbi whole? we see what we want to see, often not seeing what is actually there. Is this a good or bad thing? I should not be the one to judge..

we often see things we shouldnt see, at times we see things that are there, or should i rather say inside us.. or in a place we perceive to be the reality, but that is rather a perversion of the truth. What grain of truth lies within these thoughts? How easily they can turn rom being a peacefull painted picture to a rapturous, dark and dreary place .. sometimes even filled with disparaging thoughts.. the question we have to ask subjectivly, note that we cannot really ever be totally objective is.. how true are those thoughts or rather stated.. are they a true reflection of what is actually going on in the world or our lives. The bulk of what we experience and the way we experience it is biased by the way we experience it. Can we ever be sure of what drives us or others around us to participate in what really happens? This may seem like a silly statement or rhetorical question.. but not really.. It brings me back again to a thread from some while ago where i questioned subjectivity objectivity and whole lot of other crap.. and something else.. We often stand tall looking into others lives and existences and throw a observational context onto their lives and intersect with ours. does this make us right or wrong, how often are we not clouded by our own inadequacies or granite slabs on our shoulders,, geez this sounding sillier and sillier by the minute.. But i am hopefully trying to get to a point in a moderately kidd gloved approach .. and yes it should have two d's cos that is the way i image the word to be..

To get back to a point that i know i previously have tried to articulate, but failed hopelessly in my attempt to translate random fleeting thoughts in my brain to electrons on the screen. But what makes for a good life, and how can we judge others and ourselves in contexts that are constantly shifting. I am skirting around the issue at a tremendous pace, looking for an entry position into what I am actually aiming at... silly i know..

But take a step back for a moment and consider how we, me, you, and all of us ( yes the comma is there 4 u2) perceive other people's lives in admiration, dastardly abjectness and pure horror. How we wish we could have part of what they have or in other cases would not wish it on our worst enemies. In Context I would like to stress that I have often looked at some others with an amazement at how close their lives live to the chaotic frontier of the universe and in other cases the absolute opposite. My question is of course can we actually judge people with seemingly insane penchants for the opposite ends of the continuum? I don't know, I really do not know at times how certain people who's lives cross mine are able to exist within the strict rigors of the pseudo western civilization/ de-civilization that we exist in. I find my self fighting my sense of objectivity or lack thereof.. and find myself looking at people and being amazed at the levels to which they are progressed in their apparent absurdness or directionality or lack of direction. But somehow that diversity of existence is paramount to the human condition.. that is IMHO only. In the same lines I see people living with extreme levels of irrationality and irresponsibility.. in my subjective framework of course, yet they appear to be living basically socially acceptable existences with many of the socially determined constructs and preconditions, yet at a micro level their is a disregard for the apparent rational or reasonable. I cannot fathom this condition at all... but who are we to cast a comment or judgment on others when our own existence is so fragile, how fragile the human condition actually is.

I hope you all appreciate the attempt to be slightly less moribund and self obsessed and darkly existential.. well I am trying to be in some way a little more positive or at least neutral on my perspectives of the human condition.

that is enough of my crap for a day or so..

although it was totally meaningless an fruitless it was at least an attempt at something less melodramatic ..

I will have to continue this at a slightly later stage when my thoughts are little cleared from their current internal haze..

looking down the perspectroscope

I sat wondering the same thought over and over and over which is rather strange to me.. not really knowing what this thought would bring ..

the smae thing that keeps popping into my brain, looking down the perspectroscope is it like looking down or through the whiskey glass? Pondering the future pondering the past we look for meaning through things that have been through things into the future like alice wondering through the looking glass?
what is it about the perspective of looking at our life and others that is just not letting go this time, as a preemptive i apologize for the self indulgent wallow in the same topic again, but i do feel it something that has to come out, but before i start on the journey rambling through the flavours of life i must reminisce about some things that have happened this week, and they of course may be the driver for some of the thoughts behind this endless rambling inside the enclave or inclines of your mind depending on which way you look at it?

But to start I was greeting one of the security guards, for some of my newer readers, the shortersec guard there at Teba, I greeted him goodbye and in the same way I was accustomed to greeting the others and the daily retort i have developed it was a standard greeting of goodbye and see you tomorrow to which he responded an utterance which held me fast in my step and even more in my brain, wrenching my brain out of the routine and straight into the rambling it continuously goes through... and geez i just spelled that right.. but it through my step, my soul and my existence.. he only replied " only God knows" and for those who know me the capitalization is important. It brought me back to phrase i have heard a thousand, maybe not , but many times that has a similar yet maybe not as powerfull implication and impact on me in the moment.. the standard muslem addage of God .. i can never remember the arabeic phrase .. but these both strike me as a perspective and view point on life that we in our western world miss.. not that I am implying it has anything to do with the belief or unbelief of God, a religeon or anything similar, but it is a rider and perspective on life that justifies the unknown the random, seemingly random event to be correct for all of those calvanists amounst us :-), but it is something whereby our daily existence is measured and the breaking of a new day is what it becasue it is what god wills, and that there is some for of existential stasis in their lives, that at least there is no point about worrying about tommorrow whereas our existence is driven by tomorrow and the importance and meanigfull justification and preparation for the day that follows and not just living today on merrits and what it presents to us, how we are bound by the preconceptions and details of our lives and what will happen tommorrow and how we must prepare for the future and for things to come, whereas there are a couple of my readers who will definitely live there lives in continous flow of experiential lifestyle where the days flow into the weeks and things change and time passes and life lives, whereas the bulk of us are caught in the worrying and perception of what the futire will hold fr us rather than foccusing on the current and present danger or life that is surrounding us, we plan we plot, yet how often do we gaze down the looking glass, seeing where life takes us, where ont he ebach nof life do we wash up as debris or flotsam, we are caught up in the panic and paralysis of life, missing life and not going forward and living one moment at a time,

on an entirely different note, most probably one of the bizarrest things happened to me, albeit a really small thing, i should have left the miustype as ting? but I went to the shops with my kidds and there when i returned i noticed soemthing small and red and shiny on the floor.. well not exactly after .. a little later when jens came past to pick up the coppper kettle .. which is another story altogether, but there under my car lay somethign that looked frighteningly like a chinese red shinny fish replica...

I looked past walked.. came back and was forced to look under the car, and lo and behold wht lay there a Goldfish, if i had been a believing man this would be sign of something? but more for another day.. there on the floor lay a living goldfish all battered and beaten.. not just a gold fish but a large goldfish? how wierd .. and it wasnt one of ours? enough ont hat for the moment ..
have to break this stream for a moment or two to make sandwiches for the kids ..

back again .. in flight of making the food..

bringing me bac to something more sinister and thoughtfull, what is it we see when we gaze down the looking glass, or more pertinant what is we see whislt we gaze down the whisky glass? do we see our future do we see our past, we for sure see something, do we see another reality, something we see ourselves in another perspective.. shifting and bending the reality that we know and experience all the time, we see and act in a way which is not consistent with our daily life, or for those really sad people, no that is not meant in a bad way .. that could be their reality and the lives they live is not, this of course is all of course being typed whilst i enjoy some well priced red wine out of tumbler.. you may say tumbler? but in my mind it seems more appropriate to drink wine out of a small conical tumbler than a wine glass .. who the frigin hell knows why .. but that is just the way it is... and that comes down to soem for of acceptanc eof the lives we live in relativity to thsoe around us .. our lives are so significantly different to the people around us, that is of course my self speaking in third person, I cannot speak to you or attest to your level of social homogonizastion .. who knows if that is a real word .. but if i use at least 100000 times all over the web and in other publ;ications there is of course a chance that it could become real .. that is the rule fo course.. are there rules to the life we live? who knows..

and how much life changes beneath your feet.. you can be standing still or running as fast as you want towards something, but life is bound to change beneath you, this is the only stasis and reality that we have. there are those o try to hold on for dear life on thoughts and moments in life, but it is bound to change, the longer we hold the larger our then spins into and insane cyclone of reality.. we cannot alter the reality of life, we can live it, we can exist, experience, but there is no way we can stop it.. it hurtles along in a direction unbeknownst to us, we can challenge and direct the general direction, but if the stochastity and for those calvanists predisposed direction of our lives is directed somewhere else .. then that is where it will go

more later .. reality now challenges my ability to challenge it .. food, children, life and dogs .. let it continue on its path.. where does it take me?

bootstrapping and the perspectroscope

how effective is the bootstrap?

who knows .. but it appears to be working.. dragging my inner ramblings kicking and screaming clawing at the melodrama .. but it appears as if i have managed to surface from the inner self pity .. so are we on the path to recovery who knows .. but it feels better..

but back to the more prominent discussion on perspective and happiness....

how much can we deceive ourselves within our own self pity losing all perspective on the world around us and life in general.. one would imagine that there are those who through time have managed to pull themselves through this from situations imaginable to the bulk of us .. there were those in abject poverty and absolute reign of despots and tyrants have managed to see the silver lining through the dark clouds .. when the rest of the western world on a hole appears to have lost this ability on a whole. It may be due to the constant programming through pulp movie and fiction that we have lost the ability to actually live our lives.. what is the essence of our lives and how do we perceive things in accurate way and how often do we create our own self fulfilling prophecies which pull us into our own depths .. how much can we blame on society, how much can we blame on ourselves how much can we blame on the medias constant obsession to sell the most horrible and depressing news.. sadness and tragedy sells the news..
this is something i just cannot understand ... and how this self fulfilling prophetic babble influences our lives.. and how the death of a superstar .. yes he was a superstar can mould the entire news on a world wide basis? Yes we have sympathy .. but seriaaaas.. seeing it flashed all day on the cnn and cnbc channels in the tea area of my office just seems to highlight something to ponder over..
well more for me to ponder over and for you to all ponder .. WTF why does he think that crap ..

But the longer I am and the longer i ponder the more i realize that there is a distinct segregation in society especially into those who consider and ponder and evaluate their daily existence and the existence of those around them and those who are bound to the media and its representation of their lives. I cannot say that this a new thought or even mine .. it is just something that i am gaining more and more resonance with.. that the life and the world around is definitely split into Jungian or similar archetypes of personalities and motivations.. i see one of the guys at my Gym who is a very successful director of a huge telecoms organization .. no not that huge..more in the least cost routing side of things .. but they have been in the news .. and i see him .. going to gym and reading his blackberry all the way .. running that hamster wheel raggid .. we have and are all there at certain times of our lives..
bringing me back to some other observations over the last week or so about soem of the personalities that we have to do with on a daily basis people with amazing abilities and people with amazing abilities to deceive those around them and some who even go so far as deci4eving themselves in the process .. how 'we' as humans build elaborate houses of cards around our existences .. how we throw stones in glass houses .. people who build castles of sand into the sky building empires without and conception or perception of the influence or impacts of their actions being driven my some of the bassist egotistical motivations for existence and self justification..

but enough on that for now .. you may all now begin to have some notion that i may have some form of deep seated hatred for people in general which in general is not true .. it is just i standing there as an observer watching waiting looking at what people do and what i experience of it on a daily basis ..

more another day dudes and dudesses

perspective happiness and objectivity

I must admit over the last few days the melodrama has been rife in the internal ramblings of my mind.. I have been pondering a lot ..

two friends of ours have lost their houses and almost everything due to the turn in the economy.. me considering then that i should be happy due to the fact that i still have a lot and have lots to be happy for did not ward off a wave of deep seated chronic depression.. no worries it is passing.. but what i was feeling is merely a mirror of what a lot of people are thinking at this stage.. the hamster wheel is turning faster and faster and taking more of our time due to the insidious traffic and traveling the bulk of us are subjected to on a bidaily basis..

We have to question the value and context of our lives as a whole in this rapidly spiralling economy and lifestyle we are all forced to partake in.

But at the same time are caught in the juxtaposition of perspective, when us the lucky ones still have jobs and cars to travel to work .. well most of us..
when the bulk of our countries populace has to travel in overcrouded trains, busses and insane taxi's .. when all of us know people who are directly and indirectly affected by the insane financial meltdown and are losing so much.. but this just makes it ahrder for us to digest the reality of our personal situations..
when we should be gaining some solace in our own comfortable lifestyles..

Does it make us bad to question the quality of daily exsistence when there are so many with much less and harder lives..

Brings us back to perspective on life, how often we are drawn into our own mental enclaves where we wallow in our own personal crisises and feel sorry for ourselves.. well maybe not all of you.. many of you may be able to remain in more chearfull demeaner .. Bringing me back to my previous questions on objectivity and subjectivity.. is it ever possible.. are we ever able to be totally objective about the thing closest to us .. our lives.. it is so much easier to look ouside viewing the world through the scope and view everything around us and view the abject poverty crime and unhappiness and suffering and in total humaness not be able to view our lives in context to this, Is this possibly becasue this outside of our real context.. how absoloute are our lives, how much do we live within or without society..

onto more cheerfull things .. USA beat spain in the soccer .. strange how a super power can be viewed as an underdog with a different perspective on life ..? very strange the way we rationalize things? now only for bafana bafana to overcome the brazillians? is this in any way possible who knows..
this lead me to a discussion I had to day with some of the people i work with .. and we questioned if we are actually a nation of chokers or not? Does our society breed a nation of people who can see it all the way to the end of a struggle? we have fantastic fight, often giving up at the finish line.. just not being able to cross the finishing line.. tripping at the last step.

But other than that so where to now .. how do we bootstrap ourselves into happiness. is it possible...

maybe with a healthy dose of objectivity in its truest sense and a conserted effort to overcome our internal deamons we should be able to have a more focussed and possitive outlook on life .. but maybe not.. maybe those 'clever' brain shrinkers and their associates are all right and it is all about chemicals.. how often or not there are those who think and those who dont ..
what does this difference mean? who knows .. i am not thinking now :-)

on a sane note.. if in anyway ever possible can we forge forward into the darkness seeking light where there is apparently none?

by clear reference and perspective on what we have and what we ahve achieved sic! what ever that means itis possible to destroy those feelings of unhappiness and self pity and convert them back into an enthusiasm and movement forwards .. starting to sound a bit like a deepak chopra lecture .. now that is Sad..

I m just considering where to now .. no not at any level other than my mind .. our mind is the vesel life creates the chemical journey that we experience, augmented by the fine wine dying on the vine .. or in a more socially sensitive way .. or politically correct or whatever ..

And to all those sceptics and evil others no .. this is not a MLC .. :-)\\

but just a seasonal deep introspective retrospective subjective existential crisis :-)

Later dudes
and dudedesses

Order out of chaos and the tale of the … comma and proto-autoretroscope

How do we equate the search of order from chaos with any level of rationality, they appear to be inherently contradictory? Is it possible through artificial manipulation to convert a system in a chaotic state back into some form of stasis? At what level can we play god and recover things to a level of apparent homeostasis whilst things spin so inevitably out of control in the world around us. How much of the chaos has been derived from our human behaviour to try and understand, map manipulate and describe those systems? Or is it from the lack of understanding that we have this apparent stochastism or anti order or even chaos. Is it through an absoloute lack of understanding or due to too little understanding? The question that begs to be answered is if systems tend to a level of stability over time or to instability, both in the natural and the human derivation and or the construct we now call humanity? What ability do we have to manipulate the contribution of entities within an amalgam of entities? I think we can extrapolate this to natural, human, agricultural, cultural, and all possible systems. I think at systems levels the tinkering and messing about definitely increases the inherent stochasticy or chaos as we perceive it. From the little I remember from the ecology I dabbled with somewhere in the time of Noah it seemed a lot to me that the stability of a system is often dependent of the multiplication of actions from each of the different entities, often the greater the number of entities the higher the stability. Some of the simpler analogies show the fox and the rabbit population dynamics and an example or premise of this process, attempting to reduce all of this stability and interactibility into simple, or complex, mathematics, yet always reducing things down to their smallest grain. Is this exploration of the individual or measure thereof often not the undoing of the understanding, or at least the parameterization of the impact or effect of the individual’s entity within a system. We often as humans make the mistake in trying to control each of these interactions, as a simple example we go to the old woman who swallowed a fly and lands up killing herself by having to swallow a large bovine beast ;-). In Agriculture I think we play this game really strongly, substituting natural processes with augmented processes and treating it by viewing it all through a retrospectoscope… In stock markets we do a very similar thing, we pre-empt the future with visions from the past, drawing correlations and deductions from things that happened in the past without ever considering what other possible permutations may have resulted in these anomalies, or normalities as most of our cleverer mathematicians or actuaries do. But through this and the understanding/lack thereof make decisions and create trends through the actions they have applied either on purpose or by accident. Often these choices are done not with the eventual stability of the environment at heart and we treat the environment around us as if we are natural disasters, the hand of God. But this is all a lesson we must learn in getting to grips with the world around us. In the same vain I wonder a lot about the diversity of people and processes and ecology, how much can we dictate the inherent homogeneity or heterogeneity of the system. We plant huge tracts of land full of the same plant not expecting the flow of the system to take any strain. We attempt to homogonise the human race through the great meat blender of western civilization, communism, socialism what ever the flavour of the day is. Does it make more sense to have highly heterogenous societies brought together from many different origins and types. Or should we be homogonous or apparently like some of the larger “super” powers.. What dictates stability within the human race, is it the similarity or is it the diversity within, why can we not learn lessons from those around us. It is difficult to quantify the effect of homogenising cultures or not?
Just got interrupted here for a few days and have totally lost my own thread there 
But on the whole I wonder how much the homogeonizing of our cultures benefits or deteracts from their ability to move forwards? In certain cases the mingling of cultures definitely appears to enhance through the cross pollination? But I wonder what effect large moulding and conforming of societies do? A point in case are America and China? Do we benefit from the larger numbers of similarily thinking people? Does this generate new thought and improve the human condition or does it have the effect of dumbing people down? Difficult to decide….

But on a more ominous note, I went to a presentation recently where the title of the talk was about the flat earth and the shrinking planet. The long and short of the entire thing is the level to which things are going to go in terms of information…. The larger mega it vendors especially the data management vendors appear to be moving into a world were everything is documented and tracked through our every movement with RFID tags and cross referencing of our every action for marketing and behavioural modeling and augmentation.. It is a very scary thought that they will soon be plotting our every move and our future moves and trends .. it seems like large scale dehumanization in the name of technology and advance.

But who am I to be a soothsayer of the things to come … I just found this very scary.. To think that we are now really on the brink of a big brother society.. The astronomical growth of data is also becoming a real concern, it appears that we are doubling the amount of structured and even more so unstructured data at a rate beyond our own comprehension. I feel that at a point there will be some much information around us controlling everything to such a level that we will merely be cogs with a purpose and no humanity. Not that we are not cogs already.. we will become real controlled cogs, being told it would be best to do this and that and the next thing … insane .. and one of the most insane new technologies we were introduced to was concepts of analyzing streams of data in flight .. so that descisions can be made


Part # 37: The episode on the twits, men behaving like they shouldn’t and more insights on stuff.. and generations of the alphabet

Was carefully minding my own business this morning in gym.. just watching the people in the gym.. thinking quietly to my self and the one dude mentions to me .,. why am I being to quiet .. little did he know.. so I wound my self yup and sprouted that .. yes it was true that I was being rather quiet .. but that did not really mean I was not thinking a whole lot .. he then got the brunt of a verbal barrage ..
I then went straight to the point and mentioned that I had been considering whether or not it would be in inpolite/untactful/rude to ask him why he was weathings mens perfume .. and not that I thought this was specifically wrong, but rather that I found this rather silly.. and attempting to difuse this by mention of generation Y and him being part of it .. and a little on self entitlement .. and generation X, baby boomers and and .. not that this made it any better .. but that is life .. he chose a bad time to ask me about something ..

But this alphabet generation thing .. is quite interesting .. gen x,y, baby boomers, yuppies etc etc .. all this categorization name giving for times in our cultural .. or should I rather say a-cul;tural history ..


Part # 24 The retroscope, the autorestroscope and the preemptive autoretroscope and the myth of objectivity

To continue on some other rambling before this .. maybe a brief explanation of the retroscope TM (Slats Naair Circa 21st century unpublished works). The retroscope is something akin to the 20-20 vision delivered by hindsight.. Yes it is much easier, or at least we think so, to view our past with a certain level of clarity and (as)surance that whilst looking into our past we can very clearly define and clarify some of lifes decisions and choices and deliver some verdict on this… This is why I have included a few aberrations of this terminology .. I think the prior descripotion should be altered to the autoretroscope .. which implies self referencing view of the passed where we view our passed with an apparent level of objectivity without any bias or subjectivity we think.. In it’s purest form the retroscope is a view which is unbiased and manages to view the past without bias or …. Cannot remember the word .. but the theory is that it is a purely neutral view of the past and it’s implications, actions and what should have been could have been etc etc ..
But I do think that we more often that not apply the autoretroscope which is a self referenceing and fulfilling view of the past where we view the past and its events thorugh a distinctly rose coloured window pane, from which we have not wiped the steam and grime and dust.. This retroscope is not something which is specifically objective, but often a self satisfying view of the apst as we wished to have seen it .. factors, incidents and events are changed to protect the innocent  as before I do not think it is within our power to actually be objective .. life is about the subjectivity of living.. And I do not think that it is possible to be objective.. Is life not based on the subjective experience rather than the objective one? WE are by nature subjective beings .. I am slowly but surely wonder if objectivity is not but a myth that humans .. or more exactly scientists have generated,, which may incertain circumstances be termed as the pre-autoretroscope .. the view that we are objectively viewing the present and future as if through a retroscope, which is already an autoretroscope .. just a thought .. is our objectivity not just a finely tuned subjective view that draws on the subjectivity of others peoples retroscopes. When cammus viewed himself in an emotionless state in the outsider and other books.. He views life with a clinical introspective view on life.. Not a view of sadness, not a a view of regret just an outsider viewing in.. there are many others who have said similar things… are the mystics, soothsayers, shamans, witchdoctors, and church ministers just proto-retroscope disseminators .. giving us a view of the possible mingling with the past, the future and the unknown? More on this another time..


Part # 117: The tale of the fishpond, the polycuture and the perfect aquaculture system

This is a dream.. not to sure if it is at all a current practicality :-0 After some serious levels of testing and attempting to implement this we surge along .. more a bout this another day ..


I must appologise .. I could not post due to serious technical issues … network nazi’s broken 3g cards ?

on something and nothing

on something and nothing

i wonder a lot

sometimes i thinkt o much i suppose there is to much to worry and wonder about, where i should rather be wondering about thing about me .. all in the samantics we say .. the wonder and happiness and sadness grief and anxiety around us drives us forward like tsunami on a good day on others we lay still like boat stuck in the middle of doldrums ..

yes there are spans of half finished blogs sitting on my laptop at work .. why .. procrastination // no maybe rather the quest for perfection .. maybe not perfection, but rather incomplete fragments of thoughts that for some or other reason i never get to complete .. beit time, anxiety confussion or what..
but on a lighter note it is the rugby this weekend.. the ipl has passed .. the soccer comes..
man u lost .. who the hell actually gives a damn .. well a lot of people it appears ..

that is something for another day

something small

appologies for the delays, but there is a bumper edition on my laptop in waiting ..

but something that struck me strongly this eve was that .. yes wait for it ..
it is not the actual destination of the journey that really matters, but rather that we are on the journey and that we are going somewhere .. it is the slow stagnation of our brains that is the rot that feeds on us from the inside..
we cannot say that we are alive if we do not travel in body, mind or spirit most of us never leave the couch inside our heads let alone the couch inside our house, office or car.

is the escape of the body or the mind of more or less importance? difficult to say, but all that i can itterate is that we have to take this leap of ... I wanted to say faith, but this is not a leap of faith rather a journey to within or without.. somewhere to go to in our minds and our lives.. rather than crawling around in the dark recesses of our pity and melodrama .. life is only what we live of it .. it might seem like a misspellingism .. no it isnt that is what I meant to say .. bla bla fish paste .. But where we live is where we are albeit in our minds, our experiences our expressions of life.
I had a lot to say in my long and bumper edition but caught up in slef doubt and concern, not being able to commit to the word and releasing the xpressions of arbness flow from within and pur into the withoutwards .
to slightly more serious note I was thinking about things that motivate me, or should motivate me o did motivate me or whatever.. things that bring the expression to life within my existence.. be it a picture a photo a moment and expression.. and within my withdrawness I have SUFFERED my own self pitty and have given into it and slowly and surely just given into the nothingness and void of living.. why you may ask? rather say dont ask me ask yourself cos it is you, not me inside you that is hindering and stopping your own expression.. my life and expression is of little consequence within yours.. albeit as a periferal anomaly or aberance.. but ther are those who do have an effect those who do have an impact and it is those that we have to look out for and appreciate . and appreciate the moments that we ahve and enjoy life as much as we can within the deep recesses of our minds and the jails we build for oursleves within the confines of the wrld and society, we, me, you may or amy not fight against being part of..note the implied ambivoilabnce there .. you can choose :-)

no on a more serious note .. my heartfelt appology to certain of ou who actually gave a DAM and read this and did not Cry :-) no seriously I was under the impression that no one of consequence read this till soemone mentioned that they did .. and then that drove meeven further into a spiral of emptiness an doubt within the word space in brtain.. stoppping the words from flowing from the part within me .. but seriaaas ..t here were things over the last while that have inspired me beyond belief.. more on that another time .. things that have dismayed me more often than not the entire human race and its insane penchant for self destruction .. and of course the rest of all the shit ..

but let it be know that this will at least now return to normality in that i will spurt more or less crap \


but back to essence of where this began and the bread.. and the life within.. I was baking the other day .. yes no not just sitting in the sun whilst the life steamed out from my ears int eh sun .. no actually gave it some thought and experimented with some new breads... and to my happiness and dismay the bread was good yet not at all waht i ahd expected.. those damn yanks really dont know anything about making real bread .. but it sure tastes fine ... made soem or toerh american breadie thingie with eggs in .... ineteresting is all that i can say ...

but nice ..

but as they say enough is enough and i have to go

adios

and if you get chance whatch fanboys .. that is if you enjoy the kevin smith jeanre no frigin idea how to even spell that word at this stage of my brain .. but it is really not to bad .. silly but nice with a flavour of the force for all those star wars fanatics with a healthy dose of anti-trekkiedom with a really neat cameo by william shatner as himself .. that man is a legend .. ahve you ehard him sing ... now there is someone with goedspa :-_) and his role in boston lega l .. awesome :-)

adios china's

an ode to a lost humanity

as i sit here alone filled with melancholy
i ponder on about time and things passing
i wonder of world passing through time
things have changed
time changes everything
i wonder as life it passes
we grow we change we ponder
life continues on its inevitable passage through childhood, puberty and adulthood
the earth it follows, its cries screaming out
why it screams why it screams

the answer hangs in the air think and dank with an amber fading light
existence, humanity it cries
why why why
we torture the world around us, ignoring the screams
are we deaf, can we not hear the world crying around us
the pain, the tears, the dust, the smoke
a society in flames and tears
why i ask
why
the human nature
why have we lost our touch with nature, humanity and those around us
a tear wells up inside me
tears for lives, and nature gone
what for a piece of paper
paper representing that which we deem as wealth
why
is it that important
we lose our touch we lose our existence, yet we plod along as humans, why the tears of our run deep furrows into its dry and cracking skin..
why I ask
Why
..................

an appology

even to me my miss spelling and chaotic verboseness has reached a new level.. that is after reading my recent blog .. which i seldom do ..

But it is in an attempt to cement that which is flowing through my brain in moments, sub moments of time into words that cannot or will not easily be expressed ...

sometimes i wonder if ... actually i am not sure what i wonder about .. lonesome wandering through the parts of my brain known and unknown even to me. the thoughts .. where they come from i have no idea.. why i write them .. well because this way you have to listen without showing boredom or confusion.. no that is a reality .. in the existence i experience as my own .. albeit a self referencing one .. things are a cloud of inner doubt and moment by moment experience of the world around us... i suspect that most of us battle to comprehend the amount of information entering our brains each moment of the day wishing for some solace and peace from the maddening croud .. sounding more and more simple as i plough throught the words eminating from the fingers of my hand .. the extension of my sould that is visible to a select fiewl, not by choice, but more likely by random observation or alocation...

on a more lucid view of these times in chaos .. i have little more to offer than they are .... times are random, time is fleeting ... i cannot get a hold of it .. is it possibel that we as a human race are losign a grip on reality .. no not that this is something new.. we are now moving into a new ground or at least i belive so.. there are those who belive otherwise .. that this merely a phase thatw e as a human race have been through before.. nothing new nothing different .. just a different manifestation of the human races ability to rock the boat .. punch holes in the hull of life.. slowley the waers of life invade our existence, note nothat punching a hole in the hull of life we lose life, we are letting life in.. and life, living and existence is chaotic.. are we just opening pandora's box again.. .. yes we are doing it to ourselves .. maybe there are to many people on this ship to many views.. to many things .. all these conflicting views .. metling into a pot like never before.. in the past geographic speration time differences, language differences and the likes kept us apart and killed us .. now slowly or rapidly depending on your frame of reference as we melt together int his mixing pot , all the good.the bad, the unknow we cannot even begin to predict the outcome of what to expect .. the number of intractions increase per second, the stochasticy of life starts to grow and develop into thebeast with many heards fighting with itself, the end is neigh .. or is it just the beging of a new phase .. what do we have to endure to go through this pahase in our human existance ... more sadness dismay, happiness, unending life .. countries at war people at war, idealisms.... nothing new .. al as old as the sun .. is it merely yhe elvel of observance .. and like I mmentioned before does the chaos increase or decrease with the increase of observance of the human existence and the increase in observants? or situations being observed.. are we testing the limits of what can and cannot be experienced, observed and controlled.. how long before we spin away .. thrown intot he chaos we as a human race have created turning back to most banal and primitive ways of survival ... llok at our worldin chaos .. financial systems imploding due the fact that they as a premise had not premise at all but were only a construct of those who built and profited out of them .. how could things become so bstract on the one hand .. and so simple ont he other hand .. life is no becoming more real and more of a challenge .. food crises brought on by the nature of futures, profit, greed and insanity ...

where does it stop .. where did it start .. are we acountable for what happens .. does it make a difference when we make a difference, what is the critical mass to make a change ..
the one thing that ahs allways worried me about the critical amss of change is the speed at which we live our lives and experience them.. things happen.. how long is it before what happened hasbeen clouded in a maize and smoke cloud of life around us .. 9/11 ... not that that is without its doubt .. is almost forgotten ? yet int eh same vein poppy day is not .. the relative importance and volumes of day to day information that we are being bombarded with tends to skew our perspectives.. disregarding the smokescreens of marketing being fed to us by the goverments of countries that we as a people sic! have voted for ... why is no goverement accountable to their people for their deeds? and not this is not a stab at our goverement .. but all goverments.. the lies .. the deceit .. the "protection" they deem is neccesary in their descision in what to tell us .. does global warming exist as a manifestation fo the human race .. or is it merely a cycle of this wonderfull planet we live on .. is it neccesary to polute the waters of our rivers .. not it isnt .. but isnt it neccesary to stop people doing this .... yes .. but why in name of humanity do we allow it .. i realize that us as people .. as individuals have a difficult time doing anythign about anything .. without being spewt underthe carpet of growth equality and capitalism or marxism .. no matter which way you look at it .. there has to be some jsutification for the actions of the human race sa a whole ..

i ask you with proverbial tears in my eyes .. why is it that humans do what they do......

and NO THIS IS NOT AN EXCUSE to find an escape from your role in the existance of the human race.. it is your kick up the but to work out how we can change the world....