neděle 7. prosince 2008

Estrangement

What I feel in the recent days, could be described as estrangement. I know that this word is modern but don't know if I mean the same as its modern users.
I mean: I don't like it here but I'm stuck and trapped here. That here means in this epoch, situation and role. Nevertheless, Idunnodeway oudahere. I don't know how to change my role (e. g., my job) without causing hurt to anyone.

My boss is a good friend of mine and I just cannot say bye to him. Besides, I just cannot imagine a concrete job that would fit my needs better. Doesn't mean there isn't any but I just have no idea.

It's a twisted puzzle because my work exhausts me, it consumes me completely, especially when our company is (or seems to be) pretty much dependent on every move of mine. Still my partial success or effort doesn't seem to rectify the situation anyway! Not to mention my bosse's work – he's near to the end with his stamina. Or sometimes he speaks so. So I don't want to leave him in that storm but I am no miraculous wizard. Every work of mine goes very slow, slower than expected and wished. My work is maybe too pedantically systematic when it (as believed) doesn't need to. But they want it quickly! What a damned word, faster, quickly! People, I need time to finish it in any reasonable fashion and working state. That's something that the bosses maybe just cannot understand. Am I such a sluggishly slow one?

Every computer takes its time by working on a long or complicated task. But the computer doesn't care if you wait or not, it just does it, computes, converts, copies… Some errors during run? Gotta start it and wait again? You care! But I am not a computer, I am a human, I need to rest, to use my creativity, to love someone, to have some time for my hobbies (which I especially desire).

So my fellows, I must change this. Please don't give me advices that I have to return to nature or that I ought to obey natural time cycles (as some strongly recommend). Don't even mention the word "regime" in front of me. Because this all is miles from the right cause and effect (as I think). It would become a laugh into my eyes. Everyone just only needs to live his own life, to cope with his ideas and plans. The software is already preinstalled from God in us. Let's don't try to reinstall a soulless primitive input-output routine over it. Let's do not exhaust our unique, precious and rare sources of inspiration, fantasy and creativity by something that is honestly called the job work.

Even if our boss is our good friend and our company ballances all the time on the edge of a crisis … And that's the hardest part.

úterý 28. října 2008

Partial Chess

Some minutes before, I have meditated about artificial intelligence and the game theory, so to say. I have had an idea about chessplay.

One step was, it would be great to watch a competition.
Not between a human player and a classical chess playing program (which uses huge memory of already played games and the computer's computation speed to overcome the human player); but between such a classical program on one side and a program using some kind of connectionist or emergentist method like a neural network.

Beside the amusement of watching "who wins", and "how the intelligent one learns", this method would be great to train some kind of more human-like opponent. It's always great for chess disciples to have an appropriate opponent. The classical programs are predetermined by the way how their algorithms are designed and they just "think" in completely different ways so when a human player wants to be trained well to play against other human players, he or she needs human opponents to practice. It's still the best way.

Some people however — when a computer is closer than a human to play with — may prefer to play with it, e. g. when they cannot fall asleep, when they travel by plane or when they just don't feel "sociable" at that moment… or when they don't have access to the Internet for some reason at that moment and so cannot play chess on line.

So for some chess apprentices it would be great to have a computer opponent that would be still closer to the human way of thinking. They could even teach it (or him or her, depending of the sight of view) how to circumvene their own tricks that they are settled to use so that they would be pushed to change their strategy as their "program" opponent grows in experince with themselves ☺

Learning chessplay is practically a never ending process for a human. For the computer, using standard deductive and enumerative approach, it's all solved already, though theoretically. It's only a matter of computation now. But an inductive, intelligent program stands in the same situation as a human being: the process nearly never ends for it. Let's experiment with that. It's going to be a lot of fun ☺ It's also heavily probable that somebody has (or many have) already tried that.

The second step is to narrow and simplify the chess down. It's mere a matter of the game theory now. Again, I think someone must have been already engaged by that idea. Maybe I discover America again and invent the wheel again. But therefore I write it here, to query if someone knows such simplified chess to be a formalized type of game or a teaching approach.

There's already a response I know of: For the purpose to study chess, the specialists build up model situations that emerge at the end of a game. The specialists study the possibilities and combinations of moves that the players can perform to win. Such models already constitute some form of such "simplified chess" I'm in serach of.

Just imagine that the chess game doesn't start with all the figures on the field but only with two knights, each player having one.
Let's try also to imagine a chess field not with that classical 8×8 measure but only a 4×4 square. Wouldn't that be just a childsplay to learn the outcoming rules? Yes, and that's how probably children could be better taught to play chess.

The level of knowledge and experience of the opponent could be a satisfying simplification… but there's another reason: a basic study of the elements of chessplay and chess strategy.

What would be this all good for? Just to study the game of chess and to learn chess basics more instructively and smoothly. This would help especially me to learn chess better ☺, me being a chaotic evergreenhorn ☺ And … to return to the first step … such a type of chess game would be suitable for the first steps with the intelligent machine-learning chess programs to go. If I had the time, I wrote such a program. But I don't have it at the moment and have other plans — so whoever is interested herein, go and code it and become inspired ☺

středa 24. září 2008

Diagnosis

Several months ago I made psychotests and last week I got the first brief results. I wished that they removed my old diagnosis, the schizotypal disorder. I thought this disorder would have been only an old memory by me. In the last eight years, I was cured "only" for slight depressions. In the tests, there had three times appeared some slight traces of neurosis and mood and personality abnormalities only. For the fourth time, when I hoped the old "craziness", bearing all the stigma, odd thoughts and bad prejudice and disgusted associations that people produce hearing the words such as psychiatry, schizophrenia, psychosis, neurosis… would disappear and fall off me, the opposite became true :-( Now I have my old "friend" back:

My doctor (a psychiatress) said that there was a slight decompensation of a schizotypal disorder found in my test results. This is a long, very long, heavy and unpleasant story that is not alone in the world.

Not only that an old diagnosis is renewed. I was some visits before very disappointed when I heard the doctors have never discontinue this diagnosis! That is what I really thought. I didn't have to take antipsychotics for a couple of years! Well, the eight years, 2001–2008, I spoke of – maybe we should count fewer years in the case of the medication but I don't care for now – so for a relatively long term. And now it's back. A pretty disappointment and mix of feelings.

My diagnosis also changed whenever in the time without my knowledge! I told you of the schizotypal disorder only for simplicity. It's the original one. I just don't know when and why but along with the information that some decompensation was found I was told that my diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder. This is just another diagnosis! Who ever told me that it was changed? No one! This is how the Czech medical services work :-( Never try to catch any illness in Czechia since you'll never be told what are you actually cured for and why :-D Just pay your bills or let the state pay it and take silently and obediently your meds, you are your doctor's daily bread.

People often just don't know what it is to be mentally ill. But 20% of all population suffers from depressions – most of them don't even know it! They're often punished or prejudged for laziness or irresponsibility from their social environment. But they are just ill, they have the responsibility they just cannot handle.

And when you are on the boundary of a disorder, with only slight traces as I am, you can still live normal life, think and feel almost a normal way but people don't know what to do with you – where to store you in their categories – when they know you are ill … but only a bit … or don't know but still watch some odd thoughts or behaviour by you.

When you are just simply ill, mentally or physically, people tend to help you, to serve you … and to underestimate even your own thinking abilities. You don't have to go to work for some time, you can take a vacancy or you get fired and then you just can't find a job. Your individuality and personality becomes suppressed in the name of others wanting to help you. In other words, you have to follow their instructions if you don't want to suffer even more for your inability to live normally. You become dependent. When you are adult you become a child.

On the other hand, even when you are relatively sane and healthy, people await much from you. They count with your full responsibility, full energy and full performance. When you are healthy and don't give the full expected quantitative or less often also qualitative output you are just lazy in the view of others or an ineffective or irresponsible worker or a bad husband or wife or a problematic family member. As a child not giving the expected results you can earn many punishments, including bitter laughs from your "friends" and the worst degrees, names and "personality remaking" from your (let's say, uninformed, too tired or unprofessional) teachers.

All this is what I know and experienced. Who didn't? Maybe there are people who din't and I wish them all the best. But I'd wish to no one. What was the reason of such pain in my childhood? I was only a bit fat, a bit more intelligent but slow and used my left hand more than the right. This is sufficient for the others to take advantage of you. Nothing of shouting visibility such as if you missed a leg or wore strong glasses. Of course, I tried to resist but never understood it well. Why do they want to harm me and laugh on my account when I don't? Why do they wish that I was other, especially thinner, and worked faster, when they must have noticed that every one has his own personality and I just cannot do it any quicker way but I must prefer quality and imagination before speed? Was it so hard for them to follow that I'm on my limits? Yes, it was. Maybe because they weren't on theirs. But that's a common experience of peaceful people that others may behave aggressively against them or want to win, even going an unfair way ;-) Nihil novi sub sole.

Let's end it here. I'd wish to write more. Editing is possible here so I will maybe write more. I must return to my work – needed to throw some thoughts away and now I need to fullfill some of my job duties ;-) I still hope somebody will find this article interesting and, most importantly, truthful.

… Still holding the original writing. Just cannot leave the crucial facts and feelings unspoken. I see myself reading this all for long time and many times – it often helps me to clear and straighten my thoughts, hope some of that help could also reach the reader :-)

Yet another thing to mention – my problems are really slight. The most bad feelings are mostly concentrated in the mental tiredness, headaches, breaking of the thoughts and a bit distorted speech (I maybe more often than others forget what I was trying to say, sometimes in the middle of a sentence…), I also don't like to be in the middle of many people often (so I could describe myself as an introvert) and an annoying lack of concentration! (That stinks when somebody works as a programmer :-D) But that's almost all trouble I really experience. I also had some delusions, irrational fears, inner dialogues, self-speech and obsessive thoughts, some suspicions and many nights without sleep but filled with geysers of various thoughts – almost in the time it all began, as I was fifteen. But it was half a year after a brain commotion and after a week with my pubertal class in Italy, in a crazy country, the langauge of which I didn't understand, after a diarrhea happening after some washing-only water from Tiber (don't ask me what I did then in the Vatican Museums), after being forced to leave my father's swiss army knife in the gates of Vatican and never more find it, after falling in love with a girl from our class that wished only a plain friendship, after about five days without any piece of meal (somebody stole us the food and I just didn't know how to ask others for it and didn't find the time and courage to buy it…) and after taking medicine against the diarrhea (from one teacher) that caused the opposite problem to me, thinking it worked against mental problems, after a week alone among many people, being the last everywhere, the most tired one that tends to get lost, a walking burden to the class that should be on a nice trip… A bit absurd journey, would you survive that untouched? :-D

After we returned home I was a human ruine. My parents consulted a doctor that diagnosed that schizotypal disorder and prescribed neuroleptics. But the sleepiness and tiredness caused by them… So I got a ticket for another journey – with the "Air Psyco Ltd." if you allow. That's been partially described higher.

So after all that happened I can say – thank God, I'm doing well ;-)

pátek 29. srpna 2008

My Friend's Blog

Hello folks,

I want to tell you that I have a friend that also created a blog at Blogspot, far in time before me.
It's called "A Hedgehog's Still Corner" (Marta, did I translate it correctly?? You are the specialist here.), „Ježkovo zátiší“ in Czech.

Well, it's a she. And further, she's a relative of me. Oh… sh… should I go out with it? …
… OK, please don't beat me! She's actually my niece – and here you have the gossip :-)

Go and read … If you understand Czech, of course. You may also go through some Latvian, is that right with you?

What Linux should change

A guy from the Lazarus Integrated Development Environment for Free Pascal discussion group (yeah, English is great in aggregating nominative appositions) wrote in his blog about some things that Linux in his opinion must change, mainly concerning removing cryptic and too short names from the filesystem and system commands. He requests them to be more descriptive and (as we could possibly complete) of more intuitive use. So see and read it for yourself and take a look at my response :-) P. S.: In my response, I stated that the usr directory name in the Linux/Unix filesystem hierarchy means user files. Actually, this is wrong. usr means Universal Serial Repository.

čtvrtek 28. srpna 2008

Welcome

Hi all good people,

welcome to my sparse thought sharing corner.
I really don't plan to post very often here but when the time comes I'm in state to cover some sheets of paper during one day. Not too bad, or is it? :-)

Why Cigydd and Butchery?

Because:
  1. My real surname (family name) in Czech is Řezníček that means Butcher with a diminuitive suffix. So kind of a Smallbutcher.
  2. I like Celtic culture (with the exception of religion; in that region of my heart another faith resides – the Czech prostestant Christianity ;-) ) and from this (yet foreign) culture the languages are of my greatest interest. From point 1. you can guess what Cigydd stands for. And in what language? Actually, it's Welsh.
  3. Semantically, the Butchery is also of some sense, though randomly caused. It's an appropriate description how my mind often processes things: I cut the problems down to small pieces just like a butcher does and often don't make a conclusion. It's often a pure analysis. Didn't I say catalysis?
OK, I'd like to be a catalyser of truth (maybe a catalyser to God's Truth) but that's a bit too ambitious desire. For the realm of faith Bible is here as a catalyser and in the dominion of reason, science serves this purpose well. So sometimes my thoughts could sound a bit narcistic and self-alike. But what others do by blogging? Ehm, let's say every one has his own piece of himself to bring to light so I hope my exhibitionism won't cause much harm. I enjoy the freedom and opportunity that Internet gives us to meet others and share thoughts (and also information but let's not confuse information, thoughts and meaningful thoughts). Maybe to make the world a happier place to live in, even in a measure of millimeters (or twelfths of an inch or so ;-) ).

As a good start you could visit my old home site. For those not reading Czech, I apologise – no translation is available :-( For you this b-log was started :-)