Once I woke up from a chaotic dream that wasn't a story but rather a mingling of unrelated and overlapping thoughts. The sort of dream that is often called NREM dream by hobbyists without having measured anything that could give indication of the sleep stage one was in at the time. I woke up very tired, with the realisation that what I had just thought of could be an ingenius idea for a story that, would I choose to invest the necessary effort and time that is required to become an author, could be made into a fabulous novel or movie. It was such a genius idea for a story that I would have been surprised if such a constallation of relationships and events had ever been made into a book or movie script without me having ever heard about it. A really good, new idea. I knew about the phenomenon of waking up with such a feeling with its source in a staggeringly trivial or even completely incoherent idea. People who record their dreams after waking up sometimes take such notes and realise later, when their brain is more awake, that it seems almost impossible that they ever thought this idea could be considered anything more than low effort at constructing a sensible sentence or a statement that at best could be seen as a true statement. So I thought it through before I started to write my idea down. I thought about the story and the key events that I felt were so genius. It really made a lot of sense. I stood up to grab my notebook and a pen. And the idea was gone. I couldn't remember a single thing about it beyond what I have written here so far and the fact that it was somehow based on or inspired by the story of "The Lives of Others" ("Das Leben Der Anderen"). I think I even had great pun as a title. (I like puns.) Sometimes I remember this feeling of disappoinment that I experiences maybe 8 years ago. But I long gave up remembering anything from my story idea or even the title that I had thought of.
Useless Memories (Part 2)
Entry created on 2021-05-03
Authors: steeph (376)
Categories: Dreaming (9)
Memory (3)
Story (5)
Thoughts (73)
Useless Memories (5)
Languages used: en (257)
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Useless Memories (Part 1)
Entry created on 2021-05-03
Authors: steeph (376)
Categories: Memory (3)
Thoughts (73)
Useless Memories (5)
Languages used: en (257)
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Before I started writing the sentence, I remembered something unrelated, switched the tab in my terminal emulator, fixed a bug, switched back... and now I can't remember what it is that I wanted to write about here. So I just wrote that because it's also related to thoughts and memory.
SBWG update - version 1.0 takes shape slowly
Entry created on 2021-05-03
Authors: steeph (376)
Categories: Bash (31)
Code (31)
Computer (78)
Linux (36)
Projects (41)
SBWG (18)
Scripts (28)
Software (53)
Languages used: en (257)
Topics: Projects → Code → Bash Scripts → SBWG (16)
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I rarely wrote updates on SBWG before now. I just worked on it whenever I had time and felt like it. And that was quite often. But this is my website where I want to feel fine with pretending that what I'm posting is of any real interest to anybody. So I may post more updates on what I did to approach my goals for SBWG 1.0 from now on. It is rare for me that I invest so much time in a single project. And since I'm starting this blog at the same time and want to fill it with a lot of content, it is time to combine the two.
Some things that I did and changed but didn't report on so far: The header format of entry and page source files has been changed completely (simplified), the generated HTML became more complete, the idea of a sourced settings file came (first to me, then reality), new tag types have been formed, the sorting of blog entries is much more mature now, many more customisation possibilities cropped up and I developed an overall vision of what SBWG will become.
The code grew so much over the time. But it was mostly for very good reasons. I'm feeling overall quite content with how clean the code became and how many contingencies I took into account. It's probably still not "professional" code. But it is a new level of professionalism for me and my Bash scripts. Should I ever come close to getting through all the tiny, small, irrelevant, important, stupid, huge, new and old to-dos, it would probably be quite presentable. So many small features have been added that I hadn't thought of when I startet to write SBWG. Multi-author blogs are supported now, tags can be substituted for icons, a basic RSS feed works, ...
SBWG - Topic Tagpage Sorting
Entry created on 2021-05-03
Authors: steeph (376)
Categories: Bash (31)
Code (31)
Computer (78)
Linux (36)
Projects (41)
SBWG (18)
Scripts (28)
Software (53)
Languages used: en (257)
Topics: Projects → Code → Bash Scripts → SBWG (16)
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The way tagpages of topic (top:) tags are displayed is pretty much complete and the way I intended it to look when I first thought of splitting blog entry tags into two tag types. Basically, categories (cat: tags) are like classic tags in blogs: a way to add keywords to entries and list all entries that are tagged with that keyword. Topic tags on the other hand are meant to tag entries that talk about a certain topic about which a visitor might want to read up regardless of when individual entries on the topic have been posted. A topic tapage represents an index on a topic. It lists all the entries that are relevant to the topic in a structured way. You could write a book, one chapter per blog entry and have it simultaniously presented as a weblog (with category tags) and as a orderly indexed book in which visitors up a certain chapter. I still have to make up my mind on how I want to structure my own blog entries. But the fuctionality in the software is there. I will very likely also add another feature that enables structuring entries and pages into custom menues. So the options for web site builders will be grand with this weird took.
World Science Festival
Entry created on 2021-05-01
Authors: steeph (376)
Categories: Neurology (1)
Science (6)
Shared (17)
Videos (4)
Languages used: en (257)
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The World Science Festical is an event that seems to bring scientists from different fields with highly interesting or intriguing thoughts and ordinary humans together once a year. I don't really know much more about it than the Wikipedia article says. But after wathing several of the panel recordings on YouTube I feel like sharing some of the (to me) most interesting topics.
This is just a small selecltion from similar videos that are way worth watching. The videos on their YouTube channel are sorted into playlists by topic category.
Entry created on 2021-04-30 Authors: steeph (376) Categories: Silly (32) Thoughts (73) Languages used: en (257) edit
I know the correct answer to every question that has ever been asked, will be asked, or even just thought of.
It's "That depends."
The Thing About Lucid Dream Induction Techniques
Entry created on 2021-04-18
Authors: steeph (376)
Categories: Dreaming (9)
Lucid Dream Induction (3)
Lucid Dreaming (12)
Thoughts (73)
Languages used: en (257)
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There are so many different induction techniques for lucid dreams. Especially in the large American community people seem to like to give them names (mostly acronyms) and share them like some kind of genius invention. But most of them rely on the same underlying principles of which not many need to be learned if you want to gather enough experience to increase your chances of having a lucid dream. Im no kind of expert in this matter. But I was involved in the lucid dreaming community for some years, read many books on the topic and tried many of the incuction techniques successfully myself. So I feel like I do know more about the subject than the average person. I just thought I'd share what I believe to be the basics that can be easily overlooked by somebody who dives into the subject and learns too much too quickly.
It would be good if we could rely on scientific research to determin which techniques and practices are most successful in bringing which type of practitioner closer to their goal. But I don't think enough studies have been done to even know which practices play the most important role for the average practitioner. And those studies that have been performed used different aproaches, different methodology, selected participants differently and collected different data so they can not be meaningfully compared.
That's why my entries on this topic will mainly be about the basics; in particular about those practices that either have been studied among a group of people under controlled conditions and those that appear to be so successful in the community that I'm not hesitant to recommend investing time into them if you want to have (more) lucid dreams. I will post about this under the tag top:Dreaming:Lucid Dreaming:Induction.