vale[ blog ] diary of the last hollow soul

I don't feel like working on my presentation, which is virtually done, or on my reports, which are most definitely not, instead launched SciTE and started working on the blog code—again. If someone would not happen to be following this blog long enough, this is something like a recurring joke: i've been rewriting the blog for roughly three years now, if not more, ever since i completed the current version. You can't really see into it, i guess and i hope, but i'm actually quite surprised that this crappy code works at all. For the time being, i'm putting up code snapshots for you to see, test and comment. Of course it's nowhere near functioning as of now, but it's in progress.
Calling my old code crappy (and not only crappy, but also incomplete, just for your information nothing works in the admin area except for managing posts—everything else is phpMyAdmin) reminds me of what Sartre said about humans: we don't let ourselves be defined, because as soon as that happens, the definition is already invalid. We move on. Just as when someone points out an until then unknown habit, we change. And we can break rules. Surpass ourselves.

Yesterday while researching solipsism for my report for japanese class, i came across Wittgenstein's private language argument, which states, as in my understanding, that language is a tool for communicating mental images, ideas and thoughts to other minds, thus if the solipsist has a language, that implies the existence of other minds that he could communicate with.
I'm not a solipsist, though i have to say that i long considered the possibility, but it's an endpoint of ontology and epistemology at least, of the branches of philosophy, and as such, it's not fun. Of course this is not an argument about the philosophical validity or possibility of solipsism, what i want to point out that philosophy is a love of wisdom, and as for me, i enjoy developing or even just understanding a system that could explain how and why the world is, how we sense and so on. Solipsism simply kills that fun.

Read the full post

Oh, i'm both and it sucks (unlike the In flames song of the same title, which also centers aroud the same topic). Mostly the irrelevant, because there's no easy helping that. Six-seven times ten on the ninth (billion or whatever you call that in whichever english) people is just too much inertia in the world, and i can't see that unstable point where i could be the small change in a chaotic system that results in large effects—you know, that flip of the butterfly's wing in China.
Even Naruto (what a banal example, isn't it?) is about how plain hard work can bring results equal or better to naturals or genii (genius (plural: genii (classical roman mythology) or geniuses (colloquial)), and now i'm mythological too, though not logical). The only problem is that it still is terribly frustrating to see the talented get to a much higher level much easier and much quicker. Of course most people (i dare not write everyone) has talent for something. If i was in a shiny and optimistic mood, i'd write that of course you can still do better than any genius, if you work hard, and it'd probably be affirmed as true by many. Just not too many people will take on the challenge of competing with naturals in their own field, simply because it takes tremendous efforts in most cases. On the other hand, after a while they (the genii) have to work just as hard as well, simply because there are limits as for how far their talent goes. And the hard workers will always be catching up. Always. The good point, that will make no difference to aforementioned hard workers to work hard further. But it will take a hell even out of a genius to learn how to learn and work hard, if all went light and easy until then.