Chaos Iguana - Music from Maths (the logistic map in the chaotic regime)

This is what the logistic map sounds like in the chaotic regime.
Well, after you map the continuous outcomes to the chromatic scale.

A little ditty I dreamed up while I was Mr. Botak  (Guess I still am, Botak means bald in Bahasa Indonesia) for the occasion of the inauguration of a dynamical professor.

Also a tribute to a great monologue by Speed Levitch in Waking Life and a great poem by Lorca

"It looks random, but it is not"

(Edward Lorenz in the Essence of Chaos described deterministic chaos and similar phenomena as "Things that look random, but are not")

天

day 12: Origins #2 – Lost Archetypes, Fading Shamans and Unfinished Labyrinths

Part #2

Chilly Interlude

After that we changed our name to Chill.

Musically the best period.
All jammed, improvised and structured in the moment.
Sentient Chaos and Random Order indeed!

But no more additions to the Confessions trilogy.

Koen had already moved to SF.
Bjorn to LA, but you know that already.
Michiel to Joop van de Ende.

The 01/03 - Unsolved Labyrinth - version

Then Auracle happened...

Which was Mythica at first, but Epica beat us to it and so we came up with a way cooler name. They were Fortuyn-enthusiasts from Limburg, at least some of them were and probably voted Wilders in the last election, so who cares what they have to say. Write about the wise and rich Islamic culture for a change ;-) I was also enthusiastic about Fortuyn as a debater and would have loved to see him shake hands with Bush, but would never have voted for him and really wish he were here right now instead of the new guy.

And Joris created the best version of confessions yet. The lyrics which now also included part of “All in a day’s Dream” and stage two as well were changed a bit to accommodate the new music.

Eventually ex-Scrythe/Chill drummer and good friend and the one who’s girlfriend’s brother Hank.... well you know that story, Marco joined the band.
He lives in Norway now.

Amazing... when I type in “Confessions of a Demi-God” in google you get to the strangest pages. With Torrents, Rapidshare links, wow! I love it. Very good reviews as well (90/100), also of the follow up (88/100). Even to pages with full info on our demo’s that I don’t even posses anymore (certainly forgot about all the details like the year):

Mythica - Confessions of a Demi-God (2003) - Rating: 9.4 / 10
Auracle - Crystal Lies (2005) - Rating - 9.6 / 10

It says in Spanish: “Here I present you another band, they only have two demos. How I would love it if they would make an album... If you want to hear a very beautiful song by them (which is not encountered on the demos) go here... Enjoy :)” It links to a dead youtube vid.

Yes, we had a fully recorded album, just some vocals missing. It sort of disintegrated as bands so often do.

I don’t really care whether I should or shouldn’t, here’s a snapshot of something that could have been popular at least in some spanish and german speaking countries :)

[caption id="attachment_325" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Auracle"][/caption]

[audio:Confessions of a Demi-God.mp3]

Oh, right, for those of you who didn’t know...

I traded my guitar for bass-hide.

Better match.

So, press play and read.
Great performance!

Confessions of a Demi-God

And of all the voices I had ever heard,

this voice was the softest,
the deepest and the most frightening one. Then he took a piece of my brain
and as he slowly merged
with the dark surroundings
he said: "You won't be needing this." Overt and blurred
The race for time begins now!
Naked and hurt
I breathe life! Silent, unstirred
The virgin universe cries
Forced to compel
Infinity! -
Systems within systems
So relieved to have found the shores of reason
The burning dream I left behind
A testimony to my treason
- Wild guesses, my new vessels
Across the planes of panic
Beware of the two-faced trespassers
Their touch will leave you frantic The attempted blend with reality
Left me blind to the light of relativity
Crippled, in a way, I seek my refuge
To keep me from collapsing in continuity Systems within systems
I release the firm hold
And dive into a free-fall
Of distance through cold Reach for my land
Intangible leash
Can’t be set free! Somewhere between stimulus and response Tempt me all you like There is just one way Out of this apocalypse Strife drowns my pride Forget
Reject
Relay
The will to crave [new “lyrics”] I can see you
I can hear you
I can feel you

[formerly known as: stage two with lots of new stuff] So I was wrong to believe in the absence of structure,
never claimed to be a soulless one,
I found that chaos speaks to us through order, Mastering the flow of reality
Blinded by the light of causality
Precognition?
In a way
I saw my fate re-designed and of all the places I had ever searched,
this place was the strangest,
the gravest and most mysterious one This is the evil playground,
the factory of lies,
built in the city
where truth was born. Overt and blurred
The race for time begins now!
Naked and hurt
I breathe life! Silent, unstirred
The virgin universe cries
Forced to compel
Infinity! Oh no!
Not again,
Not now
Recounting my years in captivity,
Twenty-one and some,
A raid of ego to bind the last to the least,
The anguish arrives!
Here it comes!
HERE I GO!

 

From Lost to Last

My guess is that the Spanish he or she is talking about the “Last Avatar” video recorded at the Mezz, which happens to be the last song lyric I wrote about 4-6 years ago. And ehh, I can’t find it. Don’t have a digital version. The lyrics actually reflect most of what I would have liked stage: free to be. Oh well.

I found some other, ancient scribblings for that part however:

Confusions of a semi-God

Stage: Free

The Lost Archetype

i - East, West, where’s my Quest?

Walking the path of virtue with no concern for the truth,
I roam the eastern hemisphere in search of a long lost (hidden) youth.
Trying to forget analysis, without losing sight for facts,
I crave for western atmosphere on the verge of an ancient arcane act.

ii - The Void (Reductio ad infinitum)

I am here, the space between matter,
I realise what I found and relapse in confusion,
So I was wrong to believe in the absence of structure

Like coincidence, it is in the mind,
It’s here, even inside this void,
A hint of evolution?
Or a fragment of infinity?
Or maybe it's just me.......

iii - The Lost Archetype (Reductio ad absurdum)

To wonder "What if?", a waste of precious time,
And time is still my cage
Forever trapped inside it's invisible walls
I am a prisoner in uproar

My futile conquest of relativity
Had reduced me to an absurdity
Strengthened in a way, mind and body aligned
I saw my fate redesigned

iv - The Master will be proud (Or: Can I have that piece of brain back now?)

I was reborn from the ashes of deceit,
Hope was regrown in the gardens of sleep.
As for you, the ghost of agonies' past,
I will exorcize you, and you will not be the last.

I think parts of this have been used for the most amazing never performed or finished Auracle song called “Perpetual Requiem”

Maybe it’s not a coincidence I stopped writing lyrics after Auracle.
Back to making music...

With Hoer, Xtort and as Mr. Botak

Very nice but... not live enough for me

Now I met these two guys who have their controls set for the centre of the galaxy where the supermassive black holes reside

We are not bothered by any ambition or neatly polished songstructures



Here’s a few tastes, it’s all improv.... jamming again you know, you know mon?
ya’man... 2 mics and 1-take and 1-track mono recordings this time

tørdsåls:
[audio:tordsalsa.mp3]

d-låid:
[audio:d-laid-3.mov]

 

[gallery exclude="367,385" columns="4"]

“Hey, en als je hem kent mag je meezingen he!”

[audio:Auracle live @ popei 07 - Confessions of a demi god-6.mov]

Auracle @ POPei

Some links:

Chill: http://www.myspace.com/chillnomore

Hoer: http://www.myspace.com/hoerindustrial

Xtort: http://www.xtort.nl/ - http://www.myspace.com/xtortmusic/

Auracle: http://www.myspacecom/159920328 - http://youtu.be/d0aULOcm13c - http://youtu.be/b3ZlfEkEqRQ - http://youtu.be/jmHLfy-6aw4

Mr. Botak: http://www.myspace.com/mrbotak - http://www.youtube.com/user/MisterBotak?feature=mhsn

 

 

 

天
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day 10: She’s Back!

[caption id="attachment_311" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="She's back!"][/caption]

What is so butter about these flies anyway?


Follow the link by clicking the picture, wait for the applet to load and hit the start button on the page. Now the applet window pops up. Fill in the applet as shown (just the dX0 box), hit Reset and then Start, speed it up by moving the slider.

This is the butterfly attractor of the Lorenz system for two different initial conditions. The amount by which the initial conditions differ is in this case 0.0001, what you filled in at dX0, but you can make it even smaller: 0.0000000001

[caption id="attachment_312" align="alignnone" width="407" caption="Lorenz attractor applet"][/caption]

After a while the trajectories start to diverge. At some point both trajectories predict the complete opposite atmospheric conditions. Each coordinate (x,y,z) corresponds to a state of the atmosphere and hence the weather. Imagine that the left wing represents predominantly sunny weather, the right wing could be a nasty hurricane and this difference is “caused” by the very small difference in initial conditions at dX0. It could represent a sneezing butterfly, so small. At least the speech was a storm in glass of water at the other side of the globe.

Must have been my Grog.

It’s apparently a difficult question, about the flying butter.

Chaos is much easier.

Huhuh... He said: “that which gapes wide open, is vast and empty”

Gaaaaaaaaaape...


doh!

Gape-Gaap-Looks random, but probably is not...

day 7: New Blood vs. Rael - A continuous Sunshine in my Stomach

[caption id="attachment_303" align="alignnone" width="800" caption="Peter Gabriel"][/caption]

I’ve got tickets!

for the voice of Brittain before the Daily Express, that is

17th of september, Gelredome, he’s bringing a symphony orchestra



Thank god it’s getting better in my wardrobe
I’ve kicked out the colony of slippermen residing there

Peter Gabriel discography (studio albums as a solo artist)...

(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
us
so
up
scratch my back
The first four albums are untitled...
Actually...
I guess they aren’t called albums, but projects...
he aslo did some other stuff in between and before...
Anyway (nice effort)...

The last project consists of “just” covers with new arrangements, played by a Symphony Orchestra:
1. "Heroes"  - David Bowie
2. "The Boy in the Bubble"  - Paul Simon
3. "Mirrorball"  - Elbow
4. "Flume"  - Bon Iver
5. "Listening Wind"  - Talking Heads (David Byrne)
6. "The Power of the Heart"  - Lou Reed
7. "My Body Is a Cage"  - Arcade Fire
8. "The Book of Love"  - The Magnetic Fields
9. "I Think It's Going to Rain Today"  - Randy Newman
10. "Après moi"  - Regina Spektor
11. "Philadelphia"  - Neil Young
12. "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"  - Radiohead

It will be followed up by:
I’ll scratch yours

On which the people whose music he covered, will cover a song from him, so called: reciprocal covers
Some of them have already been released as double A-sides on Itunes

The Magnetic Fields - “Not one of us”
Bon Iver - “Come Talk To Me”
Paul Simon - “Biko”
Lou Reed - “Solsbury Hill”
Elbow - “Mercy Street”
David Byrne - “I Don’t Remember”

Well... not everyone will cover a song. Apparently Radiohead resigned from the project after they heard Gabriels recording of Street Spirit.

Guess they didn’t read this quote:

“If you’re going to reinterpret something, then really do something. Nail your colours to the mast and say: This is different, and it isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.”

I really cannot imagine that talented musicians like Radiohead would respond in such a way. It’s just internet buzz of course, but it appears they have some more cages to escape from (It’s not quite the same Phil). If I listen to the way the song The Boy In The Bubble is being discussed in the video below I would be honoured even if I hated the result. you do know I’m also a fan of lyrics right? Actually, one of my favourite lyrics is “For Emily, whenever I may find her” by Paul Simon (and Garfunkel). Also covered by other great artists: if only I could do this



Anyway (again), for someone to include songs by Bowie and Simon, Reed, Young and the Heads, but at the same time Elbow and Regina Spektor (first albums 2001) and Bon Iver (first album 2008), who the fuck are you be a critic to such a an open mind?

Oh well... I still love you Radiohead.

Oh my god! I forgot how cool David Byrne is, he covered “I don’t remember”
It’s Peter Gabriels favourite reciprocal cover

Listening Wind/ I Don't Remember by RealWorldRecords

I guess there’s a difference between “talented musicians” and “legendary artists”

Most of these covers and their returns are available on Peter Gabriels site as soundcloud streams, take a moment to check them out

it will be worth your while

hmmm

heavy downpour or worth your while?

Oh!

Supper’s ready

Sigh...

I’d rather trust a country man than a you-tuber with a cam, who can not spell (theyre all pointing), film and thinks this song is about believing in god I guess the literal interpretation of the lyrics should have been a warning.... take me away!!!

Where’s a Supernatural Anaesthetist when you need one?

day 6: Rainy Reflections (three of them)

[caption id="attachment_297" align="alignnone" width="216" caption="I {heart} Noëlla"][/caption]

Rainy weather is always good for reflection

(i) I think “heavy downpour” is now my favourite English collocation. It easily surpasses the much acclaimed “cellar door” in phonaesthetics and I am certain everyone agrees it beats “beautiful phonaesthetics” in spellaesthetics. As far as I know the word or concept of spellaesthetics does not exist. For me it is really strange there is no antonym to the “the claim or study of the inherent pleasantness or beauty (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound of certain words and sentences.” Apparently there is eugraphy and cacography. They refer however to aesthetics of handwriting or funny misspellings or to semantics or images, since eugraphy may be used as an antonym to pornography. NOT to the aesthetics of the arrangement of the letters. The form, or “picture” of the letter string. To call it a painting would be too much I agree and conjures up images of calligraphy which is not what I mean: No matter what font, or which handwriting, there is a certain beauty in some letter sequences. Not just in digraphs (like ae, eu, ou,ei) and tripgraphs (like eau, sch,ieu). Beyond that. The beauty of “heavy downpour” for me lies in the following:

(a) The sequence “wnp”, which is not a trigraph, but a trigram with a low frequency of occurrence

(b) The fact that the second and the second-to-last sound are represented by a digraph: “ea” and “ou”

(c) Two letters protrude above the baseline, two below: “h-d”, “y-p”

(d) These letters are in fact each others diagonal reflection: “h-y” and “d-p”. There is a third: “u-n”

(e) o = o

(f) vy ≈ w

(g) I don’t like the r, except that “h____ _____our” is probably the reason I associate a long period of time with the downpour

(h) It’s a kind of feeling of symmetry that, if you look very carefully, still isn’t really there.

(ii) I think Feynman has swapped places with Bohr and Einstein as my favourite awe-inspiring physicist. I’m reading QED - the strange theory of light and matter. In which he explains the most successful theory about the workings of the universe ever to be produced by human minds, by talking about the reflection of light. In just 152 pages, no equations, your mum would understand it too. In Quantum Electro Dynamics (now Quantum Field Theory) the predictions of the theory and the results of measurements are in accordance down to the 8th decimal place! That’s why 20 countries invested 6 billion euros to build the Large Hadron Collider in eight years. That’s how certain they are in all the uncertainty. Apparently Feynman was also a proponent of spelling reform of English, a sensible man in all areas.

But that’s not why I think he’s awe-inspiring. Also not because he: “... was regarded as an eccentric and free spirit. He studied Maya hieroglyphs, was a prankster, juggler, safecracker, bongo drum player, painter, and even developed his own pickup artist method he tested in bars.” Nope. That’s standard for awe-inspiring people. 

This is why: He explained and understood the universe through pictures. He brought back a visual form or conceptualisation of the constituents of the world around us: The Feynman Diagram. In this case a conceptualisation of gluon radiation. I think its beautiful too. I won’t bother you with the details, because... I don’t know the details. If you can make a picture of it, it does not necessarily mean it is has become easier.

What I do know and understand is that some of the things he helped discover are so universal that they will need to be introduced into psychology at some point in time. One is he path integral and another (and more important one) the least action principle on which it is based and, of course (gauge) symmetries. I will come back to that at some point later this year.

 
(iii) I think I do not have a favourite awe-inspiring mathematician yet. Not that one needs to. The obvious candidate, Benoît Mandelbrot is actually much more. I am (also) reading Gaussian Self-Affinity and Fractals: Globality, The Earth, 1/f Noise and R/S. It is not like anything I have ever read before. The first line reads: “This books subject matter is nontraditional and its style and organisation are unconventional” It is a collection of papers and new texts and comments and observations, exploring the concept of self-affinity, another very important notion for psychology.

There is a pattern here. Mandelbrot is also someone who likes to represent and conceptualise things with pictures. In fact, he claims that all mathematics stem from geometry. This picture here is the ‘fundamental phase diagram’ for a symmetric three-interval generator. Of course he generalized this to a grid free functions (i.e. all-intervals). This time I do know the details, but I still won’t bother you with them. Just that I think he deserves the Nobel prize for this.

What actually struck me in the book are the passages on being an outsider and maverick in science. About maniacs, who will take an idea and proclaim it ubiquitous and universal. About deniers of whom there are many and about bashers who will do anything to keep things as they are. He calls himself a ferocious moderate and gives a very striking example of what happens to me almost daily (3.3 and 3.4): 


























He also calls himself a philosopher. Something which has been held against me several times last year by empirically oriented colleagues. Interestingly my view of philosophy is the same as his: “I'm certainly a philosopher—how do you say?—entranced with unifying ideas. However, I don't only study books; I study nature. Also art of the past, for the purpose of finding artifacts that I could embrace.”

Reflect on that!

day 4: He’s back!

A true hero.

[caption id="attachment_219" align="alignnone" width="430" caption="He's back!"][/caption]

Survived the chicken attack.
Miraculously.

This time he tripped over one of those green leaves.

And to think I called him a snail.

It’s a slug:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="459" caption="Parts of a slug"][/caption]

Maybe it’s a jumping slug:

day 3: Where is fred? (Or: what’s in a name, place, race, religion orpuppy?)

Fred as a puppy

Noey calls this a “when you were a puppy” photo.

That’s the puppy-me (Frederik Willem Hasselman) on my fathers lap (Frederik Marie Hasselman). His name was Fred too.

My brother (Dirk Catharinus Johannes Hasselman) is in my grandmothers arms (Edith Ethel Hasselman - von der Pfordten). She was Bavarian nobility and died in 1979 at the age of 90. She was a Sufi. I guess this photograph dates back to 1975 or early1976, because my sister (Edith Olpha Catharina Dorand - Hasselman) was not born yet. Olpha is the name of my fathers first wife (Oplha Helene Lauten) who died of cancer, like my father eventually would. Catharina is the name of mother Ine (Catharina Maria Josefa van Barschot), who gave birth to me a year after she married my much older father, who married her a year after Olpha died. Catherinus Johannes (whom my brother was named after) was my grandfather (Catherinus Johannes Hasselman) who apparently died as a result of being weakened by the “hongerwinter” in Haarlem exactly one month after the Netherlands were liberated.

"Grandmother(left) and Grandfather(right) Hasselman in Glugur Indonesia"

My uncle Jack (also Catherinus Johannes Hasselman), my father, Olpha, my grandmother... they were all in Sumatera, Indonesia when the Japanese invaded. They were all sent to (seperate) civilian camps, except for my uncle Jack who was a soldier at the time, so he was sent to Burma to work on the infamous railway. I’m not sure where the other children were at that time (Charles, Dick and aunt Edith). Jack died recently at the age 92. He would not have allowed me to use the word Japanese, it’s “de Jap” and nothing else. He didn’t think Thailand was a place to spend a vacation and when I mentioned I had to take pills against Malaria he said he had suffered from Malaria 7 times and was still around. I guess that’s how you survive such an ordeal and reach an age of 92, still driving around, painting nudes that sell for 500 euros and basically dying because he could no longer take care of himself anymore after he became immobile. According to himself, he survived because he ate fresh lomboks in the Jungle and the British just wanted chocolate and cigarettes. No, he didn’t speak much about it.

He wasn’t pleased however when not long after 1945, just after having survived Burma, he was called for duty to go back to Indonesia and take part in the infamous “politionele acties”. Family history says my grandmother sent a letter to the Queen asking for my uncle to be relieved of duty. The latter is what happened, the first I can’t confirm. “Vadertje Drees” was also something you would not day when around my uncle.

In the 1950s my father moved to Japan with Olpha. To work there. For the Japanese. Yes... In Japan... ehh... I don’t know... My mother says he said something about not being able to hold a grudge forever. No, he didn’t speak much about it. The grudge and  such.

Later he moved to Australia and Brazil where he worked for a toy factory. My uncle Jack never held his moving to Japan against my father and was apparently very close to him. When I last spoke to my uncle he told me my father wasn’t the strongest of the brothers, but could win any fight, partly because he was his mother’s favourite, but mostly because he was “Very sharp... with his tongue”. Apparently he inherited this from his grandfather (Charles Albert von der Pfordten) whom he described as “a great Malteser”.

Which could mean a large version of a usually small lion-like dog or a chocolate sweet.

Well, it is the guy sitting on the bench, with the mustache. Somehow I can see what he was trying to express.

Great-grand family von der Pfordten

Behind him is Fred (Frederick von der Pfordten),

the brother of my grandmother. I was named after him. Or after my father, who was named after him as well. Let’s just say I inherited some of his good looks :)

Where is Fred?

He went to India and was never heard of again.

So said my grandmother.

My cousin Margaret who lives in NY (Mary Margaret Hasselman) told me once she used to be afraid of my grandmother as a child because she was performing strange Sufi rituals all the time. I just remember boterbabbelaars.

She was much older when I was just a child.

Grandma

Searching for Fred I did find a Frederick George von der Pfordten on the web. It was how I got to the site of Eddee. This Fred was my great-grandfathers brother and one of his children Arthur Reginald von der Pfordten who converted to Islam, was a Japanese POW during WW II and the grandfather of Eddee von der Pfordten who lives in Kuala Lumpur, whom I thank for his site and research!

Baron Freiherr von der Pfordten

Amazing.

We have the same great-great-grandfather: Baron Karl Ludwig Heinrich Freiherr von der Pfordten, professor of Law in Würzburg and Leipzig, minister of culture and foreign minister of Sächsen, foreign minister and two times prime minister of Bavaria:

First time (1849-1859) he resigned because his attempt to create a “third power” between Austria and Prussia failed. He was reinstated by Ludwig II (yeah he was funny in the head) in 1864 and resigned again in 1866 when the Austro-Prussian war was lost. The family was then “kicked out” by Bismarck as the family story goes. I guess they just fled because of the Kaisersbrief and the coming of the first German Reich. (Back) to Maltathat is, where he was a consul to Bavaria and Hanover.

Baron Karl apparently was also controversial in that he played an important role in the acceptance of a bill that gave more rights to Jews in Bavaria. The sharp tongue must have been present then as well:

Speech by great-great-grandfather prof.dr.jur. Baron Freiherr von der Pfrodten

More about the speech: The people speak!: anti-Semitism and emancipation in nineteenth-century Bavaria by James F. Harris

I can’t relate another vdP to Ludwig, but there is also a Theodor von der Pfordten, a Bavarian who participated and died in something called the Hitlerputsch (coup) of 1923. Quite the opposite opinion I would say.

That happens a lot in these families. If you look at the family crests:

Hasselman

The crescent moons mean they participated in one of the crusades. That was against islam, yes. Yet my grandmother was -and a whole new branch of the family are- muslim.

von der Pfordten

I think that’s great! Just wait a couple of centuries and we’ll all change our minds again.

Why Malta? I wonder if it has something to do with this special category in the Malta Genealogy site: Crusade Families

The links to the Hasselman geneology are all from Fred A. Hasselman’s (unrelated) site, but originate from het Nederlands Patriciaat (Hasselman, Betuwe tak). A booklet of genealogies maintained by the Dutch state of families which have played an important role over a period of 150 years in Dutch society: Science, Politics, Culture.

Hendrik Dirk Stephaan Hasselman (www.oranjehotel.org)

There are the Hasselman ministers of Colonies or my grandfather’s brother (General-Major Hendrik Dirk Stephaan Hasselman) who was a member of the stijkelgroep but was arrested and executed in WW II, or the fact that the family used to own a large part of the Grachtengordel in Amsterdam a very long time ago and there were mayors of towns like Tiel and such. I’m in also in the book, so is Fred and Fred as well.

BRP Hasselman major of Tiel

My father was asked by the Bavarian government to take over my grandmothers title when she died, but he didn’t. I guess it’s the same with titles as with grudges: You can’t hold them forever.

A new Hasselman puppy was recently born, Finn. Uncle times 5 now!

Let’s see if we’ll make the Dutch Patricians the next 150 years as well. At least we have some stories to tell about his ancestors.

Anyway, I’m very glad that should we move to Millingen a/d Rijn, I can say my grandmother was from Duffelward (mother’s side: Willems) and my grandfather (mother’s side: Willem Cornelis van Barschot, that’s where the Willem comes from) from Groesbeek. No coats of arms, no patricians, no titles, but a hell of a good taste for picking a place to live. I also would have loved to learn from them about farming and keeping livestock.

I’m still right here.

In case you were wondering :)

day 1: Welcome to the jungle

 

[caption id="attachment_189" align="alignleft" width="450" caption="Meyboske"][/caption]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am on a two week mission to finish up on some writing that is due almost 5 years now.

I headed out into the Dutch jungle also known as the Achterhoek (which roughly, yet appropriately translates to “rear-corner”).

Surrounded by corn fields, some chickens and a whole lot of nothing, I put up camp in the backyard of an old farm. I let the locals carry the frozen rations, the local brewski and all the coffee I brought with me.

For they dared not touch the devilish technologies I wanted to set up so close to their lodgings.

“How can a piece of aluminum be a controller
for a computer that is itself just a piece of aluminum?”

Black magic indeed, all without wires.

...But there is a magical nothingness here
I can even see the grass grow...

...just heard a snail trip over a grain of sand...

...the sneezing of a butterfly...

... may cause a storm in a glass of water
on the other side of the globe ...

Yeah, I think I’m getting in the right mood here.

Vacation @ Paradise - Inlander

We waved goodbye to the dreamy beaches, the amazing coral reefs and the seafood BBQs of Gili Trawangan...
Are those tears in our eyes you say?
No it's the wind caused by the 4x200 break horse power fast boat which will take us back to Bali in 1 hr! We went away from the coast to Ubud to be precise:



On our way to ubud we saw this family, dad is wearing a leather jacket in reverse in 34 C, underneath the little hat is a baby!



Ganesha welcoming us at our hotel



There are a lot of these guys around



and so are these guys!



The only way to tell if rambutan is ripe: There need to be ants on the shell



people wear flowers in their hair here









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Vacation @ Kuala Lumpur

Ok so we made it!

Well one more day stuck at Kuala Lumpur which could have been worse :)



Those stars for hotels appear to have different meanings in different countries...



Buffet dinner is definately different! Jummy!!



Sweet sensation was rocking da house



:)



Accidental foot shot #2



Kuala airport

See u in paradise!

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Vacation @ Schiphol

Well, you know that story about that plane we needed to catch today?

It didn't go :(

Technical probs, we still don't know when we will depart.

Luckily they put us in a four star hotel with pool and sauna...

So here's an impression of our vacation @ schiphol:



Vacation @ Schiphol



Stranded Lunch



Voucher says: Mr / Mrs Stranded



Accidental foot picture shot through glass table... no we're not bored :)

Music: Marillion - hotel hobbies

Hotel hobbies padding dawns cobbled corridors

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Contagious Affirmation - dub step / electro - thingie

Completely forgot about the last track I made (more than a year ago)...

I tried to add some dub step flavor to the Mr. Botak electro sound judge for yourself how it turned out.

Also tried a different approach to the visuals: Slowly changing, not necessarily visualizing the beat, or changes in the music... (Yes, those are pages from the Voynich manuscript )

Check it out on YouTube:

Where were you this morning at 5 AM?

Well officer....

I was writing a pre-proposal for research funding, because the deadline was today and planning is on one of those pages in my dictionary which was accidentally removed by brute force.

Anyway.
Since chances are slim I will be invited to send in a full proposal (because my #@XX%&@ is not finished yet) there will probably be about three people who will ever read it. So, for the effort, I'll post it here as well :)

Here's a part of my alibi (including spelling errors and general awkwardness :) ):

On the origins of the discrete contents of the mind

How and why do we translate our continuous external environment into an internal environment, which consists of matters predominantly discrete, bounded and categorical? Even our actions in the external world can be described as discrete movements or movement patterns. These discrete contents of our internal world are often the objects of study in Psychology. Examples are speech-sound categories extracted from a continuous acoustic signal, the individual words they are compiled into and the categorical semantic information the word conveys. Colour labels attributed to specific ranges of a continuous distribution of electromagnetic radiation are another example. Attitudes towards a minority population and gender stereotypes may be viewed as the outcomes of a categorization process as well. Many streams of information from different sources need to be combined and evaluated to designate a category label like “us” or “them” or “Masculine” or “Feminine”. It is evident that the process of transforming the continuous flow of information from different sources into distinct categories requires a mechanism operating across different spatial and temporal scales. It is also evident that an answer to the question might benefit from an interdisciplinary approach.

Stored and static or emergent and dynamic?

The dominant theory used for the scientific description of the discrete cognitive world is one in which cognitive processes may be understood as algorithmic operations on abstract symbol-like mental representations of stored information. The mental representation of a speech sound would consist of information about the range of frequencies that would trigger the activation of the representation if they were to be detected.

Many objections can and have been made against this machine-metaphor of cognition. One objection is that it is not clear how these discrete representations are created from the continuous stream of perceptual information. It often appears psychologists assume the external world to be as discrete and sequential as the representations and the algorithms. Moreover, many categorical boundaries and algorithms are assumed present at birth and thus coded in our genes. More important is the fact that abstract mental representations of categories are static. Their boundaries should be at certain critical values of a feature variable. Several studies have shown however that perception of category boundaries on a continuum of an acoustic parameter is subject to well-known nonlinear phenomena as hysteresis. This means that the boundary between the categories is not perceived at one critical value, but changes to other values dependant on the direction the continuum is sequentially traversed. [1,2]. These results were successfully modelled by a potential model describing the categorisation performance: The speech sound categories were conceived of as the discrete attractor states whose relative strength was influenced by the value of the continuous acoustic parameter, but also by previously perceived trials.

If we generalize this dynamic account of categorical speech perception to the broader question of the apparent discreteness of the contents of mind, we may arrive at the following conjectures:

1. The apparent discrete nature of the contents of the mind can be understood as the emergence of discrete attractor states at the macro-level of cognition from the continuous interactions between system components at the micro-levels.

2. The emergence of a discrete attractor state occurs as a consequence of the strength and the nature of the coupling between system components at the micro-levels

3. As the system self-organises its way through an ever changing landscape of attractor states this may appear as a sequential succession of discrete cognitive content. The changes are however driven by the continuous interactions of processes at the micro-levels.

4. The coupling of two previously independent systems will create discrete attractor states in a shared phase space depending on the strength and nature of the coupling

It is the main goal of this project to investigate whether these conjectures are universally applicable to all phenomena characterised by discretization of a continuous variable. A sub goal is to evaluate whether it can serve as a plausible alternative ontology to the machine-metaphor. Plausible in this case would mean not only by scientific standards like empirical support and evidence from simulation studies but also relating to the strong intuitive validity of the machine metaphor.

 

Droste effect in music video

The Droste/Escher effect is a technique with which you can make some amazing pictures.
I learned how to use it from a tutorial by Josh Sommers on Flickr, check out his amazing work.
The code used to generate these images is based on the maths these guys from Leiden produced to complete a litograph by Escher who apparently could not figure out how to complete it himself.

Browsing through Josh's Flickr gallery (which I can recommend) I came across this link to a music video using the effect as an animation... Amazing!



Wild Beasts - Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants. Dir: OneInThree from OneInThree on Vimeo.