---
title: Hamiltonian
date: 2013-08-21
techne: :done
episteme: :log
---

<%= youtube("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI2GauQ1eiU") %>

Hey, internet! So a lot of stuff’s been happening. As I alluded to in
some off-hand comments here and there, I’ve been busy transitioning into
adulthood, or whatever passes as that for me anyway. (I’ve internally
just begun to call it Chapter 1, and everything before now Prologue,
because I’m stupid like that.[^stupid])

This process is still ongoing, but instead of waiting for another 2
months or so and then recapping, I thought I could just get back to
writing now, while stuff’s still happening. Crazy idea, I know!

I am, in a certain sense, done with my CS degree, and as you can tell by
that weaselly phrase, I mean that I’ve dropped out instead of continuing
that torturous phase of my past for yet another year. The only real
reason I even started the degree was because I didn’t have any other
idea what else to do, and was using it to cheaply buy time. That worked
out reasonably well - in total, I got half a decade out of it, and grew
enough in the process (and met the right people, and ideas) that I now
think it was absolutely the right decision. Maybe there would’ve been
better alternatives (if so, I still don’t know what they would’ve been,
beyond a “don’t take so long to stop being lame” reminder that’s
probably only applicable with hindsight), but regardless, well done,
past-me, It wasn’t fancy or heroic, but it worked just fine.

Still, it took me probably a good year to actually make the decision to
drop out after I knew I wasn’t gonna continue this path and had begun to
see an alternative. Sometimes more legible options appear stronger just
because they are legible. A degree is of fairly straightforward value -
you can easily look up income statistics and job requirements, compare
it to the time investment of college, there ya go - and any part that
isn’t easy to quantify gets thrown out of the evaluation. Like for
example, despising virtually all options it opens up, not having much
use for it on the paths I *do* like, and continuing now that I have
actually found said real options would just be a waste of time.

You are now allowed to shun me based on my lack of academic credentials.
I don’t mind - destroying academia is on my todo list, and regular
reminders why it has to go probably help.

---

So did I mention I actually [started a tumblr](http://muflax.tumblr.com)
for random snippets and stuff? I’m still not sure if I’m gonna use it or
anything, but nice pictures keep popping up, and maybe I end up writing
a few short thingies over there. So far I’ve mostly been reblogging
[Homestuck](http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6) ships.

Like I said over there, I’d like to eventually talk more coherently (and
not just meta, but also directly) about ships, and art, and related
things (, and the Oxford Comma), but I’m still not quite feeling it, so
maybe it’s just not the right time, or I don’t have enough interesting
things to say, or whatever. We’ll see. Anyway, it exists now.

Look, a pug!

---

So instead of being a productive member of society, I was mostly busy
with <del>building additional pylons</del> figuring out how to money, keeping
Mother Bureaucracy updated and working on moving in together with my
[moirail](http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Quadrants)
[^moirail][^otp][^language][^footnotes]
somewhere in the UK, which will happen in about 2 months when my
contract at the university runs out and I can leave the country.

(This might be a good opportunity to point out how
[Homestuck](http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6) has one of the saner
models of romance and gender, and that this is one of countless benefits
trolls bring to any story they touch.[^trolls] It also
highlights by analogy some silliness in the conventional human model by
showing similar silliness in the troll model. While some trolls insist
that *ideal* relationships divide nicely into the Four Quadrants, it’s
clear that in most cases this isn’t the case and it’s much fuzzier, even
though the quadrants still represent some important components, so wiser
trolls would realize that and take a more reasonable stance and oppose a
system that tries to enforce restrictive norms (which, for all we know,
they *do* - troll society and history is… complicated, as it should be).
But in contrast to that, trolls *already* have a much better position on
gender than the humans, who do the same essentialist “two ideal
categories” crap trolls do with the quadrants.

So there.)

On a completely unrelated note, I just want to note how weird it is that
“yay I’m happy” posts can cause some seriously bad side-effects, and
that I remember being personally pissed off by them in the past,
thinking something along the lines of, “well good for YOU that you’re
happy, I’m still a lonely mess”, and so even though saying (and feeling)
these things is very important, I still feel uncomfortable talking about
it, and so will abstain from any more details for now. Compassionate
community norms are *hard*, and I wanna at least think about them some
more.[^sharing]

Regardless, actually moving (especially to a different country) means I
had to adapt some of my setups.

I won’t be able to bring my guitar with me for now, but might be able to
fly it over next year or so. I’m kinda glad I opted for gear that is
fairly mobile, so transport should be fairly easy once I don’t also have
to bring all my *other* stuff with me. I’m still committed to the frugal
ideal that everything you own should comfortably fit into one car at
most (or you end up limiting your freedom too much), so it’s mostly the
amp that’s causing trouble (and it’s still primarily monetary concerns
that I didn’t pick an even smaller one, which oddly enough cost *more*;
if things go as they usually do, I’ll eventually just build my own).

I’ve also gotten rid of my old PC setup. I used to have one
Frankensteinian desktop machine that I cheaply turned into a decent-ish
gaming rig, but I’ve long intended to retire it. I also had two old-ish
laptops, and loads of small drives for backups and stuff. The desktop
was kinda the central machine and everything else synced with it. I now
switched to one fancy 13-inch MacBook (still running Gentoo, after some
headaches), kept my
[keyboard](http://www.diatec.co.jp/en/det.php?prod_c=763) and mouse for
work that requires them, and put the two large 1.5TB drives from my
desktop (which mirror each other) into a portable NAS. My total space
capacity went down a bit that way, and I lost the ability to play some
high-end games (for now), but meh. (I still kept the old netbook for
some additional mobility though, but it’s semi-retired.)

That simplifies my synchronization and backup needs somewhat. All
small-ish things are automatically copied to various online places. Each
laptop does a daily backup to the NAS, which also stores most of the big
media via git-annex. The NAS runs a custom Debian, so it’s also a server
for all kinds of minor things, including Nethack. Every time I get my
hands on any other drive I copy as much data onto it as I can fit
(because why not; I just put my old drives in a box at my parents’ - no
reason to throw them out), but that’s now gonna be a maybe-once-a-year
event. (Also, git-annex on an SSD is finally fast enough to be fully
usable.)

I was afraid that losing my two big monitors would hurt the most, but
because I spend most of my time in a text editor or browser anyway, it’s
actually not a big deal. Workspaces work just as well as additional
monitors, and 13 inches is plenty. The only thing that’s a pain is if I
still had to use Eclipse for Java work, but screw that - I’m finally in
pure Ruby and Haskell nirvana. (I wouldn’t *reject* more monitors if I
had them available, but I’m not gonna try to carry any around with me
either.) And finally, not having a “central” machine I can’t move means
I can now easily snuggle up next to someone and still code, regardless
where said person happens to be. That’s *so* much more important than
screen size.

I still feel kinda sentimental about a “cabin in the woods” setup with
lots of ancient hardware that runs some custom setup where you wrote
half the tools (as I used to run for the last few years, and would like
to have again some time), so having just one main machine (and one
server-in-a-box) is kinda weird.

Guess I’m a nomad now.

---

Hahaha, oh man. Do you guys remember how over a year ago, I made a List
Of All My Problems? It was like 260 items long and I thought, yeah,
that’s probably *it* - some issues might’ve been vague, sure, and others
irrelevant, but I didn’t think I’d have forgotten anything important.
Who doesn’t know what their Main Issues are, right?

I recently looked at this list again and it’s *ridiculous*. It’s not
just incredibly petty sometimes, many things that have deeply bothered
me for years and are reason enough to plunge me into suicidality
whenever they seem unfixable aren’t even on there!

It’s liberating when radical agnosticism shifts from not knowing most
answers to not even being sure about the questions. If I don’t even know
what my real problems are, how can I possibly be upset about them?

(Also basically everything important on that list has been fixed by
now.)

---

So what’s next?

Step 1, the prototype: teach a complex skill and make it no longer hard.

After considering various options in detail[^options], we’ve
decided to start with German for English speakers. Because we’re still
developing the courses and improving our teaching skills (well, learning
from scratch based on ancient scrolls, really), we’re gonna spend a few
months solely on that and in-person testing, and then Disturb The Peace.

So if you wanna learn German For Reals Without All The Tedium And Crap
(or just wanna meet up with me and talk whatever (I’m totes sociable now
(when I’m not a paranoid ball of anxiety (but I now have a superweapon
against that (it’s not nested parentheses (just in case you
wondered)))))), and you’re somewhere in the UK, just leave a comment or
[contact me](/contact/) in any way you want, and I’ll put you on The
List and try to make stuff happen as soon as I’m able. (Once the thing
has been sufficiently tested, there will be an automated, and more
importantly, online version, of course. Can’t change the world with just
one meager town and face-to-face interaction, but direct feedback makes
early development so much easier, so yeah.)

(Step 2-10 are left unmentioned to maintain the Unspoken Plan Guarantee.
Things will become clearer eventually.)

---

Regardless, that means the next few months are completely filled up by
logistics, development and being amazed how I can continue to fall even
more in love every day. Some of that might eventually get better, some
might not, but I don’t expect too much writing to happen for a while,
unless I find a way to harvest the power of smooching to produce some
wicked posts. (I’ve also lost parts of my writing urges for various
reasons[^reasons], some likely permanently so, but these things
come and go. I’ve had quiet years and hypergraphic years before.)

In terms of kinda-planned drafts, I’ve begun to write down my way too
elaborate Jesus RPG campaign. I’ve given up on ever running it and just
want it out of my head. I’m about 4k words in, might actually finish the
thing soon enough, maybe start posting it in small-ish installments once
I’ve sketched out the whole post structure.

So overall, I think it’s a good idea to just declare Mission
Accomplished for the daily logs. I’ve done my first crazy miracle and
I’m busy working on the next. This site is now officially “whenever,
whatever”, as long as its kinda coherent. The rest goes to the tumblr.

…

Man, [being an adult](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ) is
*awesome*.

[^stupid]:
    This is stupid for several reasons:

    -   it smushes everything before now into one Prologue, when really
        there are multiple clear “everything changed forever” events
        during that time (e.g. first anime, first time taking Ayahuasca,
        first website (on a shittier version of Geocities, no less)) and
        there’s no overarching unified progression during the whole
        thing (like, Batman loses his parents in his prologue - what one
        critical thing happened to me, exactly?)
    -   it places great emotional importance on events that haven’t even
        unfolded yet, like I have secret insights into God’s Narrative
        or sumthin’
    -   it uses linear narratives, not
        [shandified](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwlt4FqmS0) ones
        (who’s to say I won’t *return* to Chapter 1 at some later
        point?)
    -   it implicitly assumes one arc has one theme, or at most several
        exactly parallel ones; in other words, whatever Chapter 1 is
        about *ends* with Chapter 1, and if some other stuff happens
        during that time, it either has to end there too, or it must
        just not be what my life is really about
    -   it strongly suggest there must chapters after it, thus
        undermining my ability to Fix Everything Forever Like I’m Made
        Out Of Pure Fixeverythingium
    -   and seriously, “1”? you can’t even name it something cool, like
        The One With The Robot Snake?

[^moirail]:
    Don’t know what a moirail is? [Read the
    link](http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Quadrants). While the
    concept strongly overlaps with “bros” and similar things, these tend
    to not get the romantic component of it, or imply weird ideas like
    how this kind of relationship is inherently asexual (fuck no),
    partially I suspect because just mainstream romance/sexuality
    discourse is retarded, so I’m declaring a Special Snowflake
    Exception for “moirail”, as it seems easier to repair these
    misconceptions in a troll-originated concept, than to get [bros to
    finally suck
    cock](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeIAmA/comments/1j3uo9/explain_the_term_bromance_like_you_are_a_deeply/)
    and not feel guilty about it.

    Incidentally, the pronunciation of “moirail” is delightfully trolly.
    Personally, I use “meow-rail” for normal use, and “mwah-rail” (with
    implied kissing) when flirting.

[^otp]:
    I’d also like to note that even though this establishes a canon (and
    muflax-endorsed) \<\> and \<3 dual-ship of muflax+Owen (and I’d
    argue in favor of OTP here), this only expresses my (and Owen’s, and
    arguably the universe’s author’s) opinion, and is no reason to
    abandon other ships or your personal headcanon. I oppose any central
    authority on these matters, even if it might happen to agree with
    me.

    (I also find it really weird to use two different types of names,
    but I wanna be consistent about only using “muflax” for now, even
    though using my first name would allow for an S+O=SO pun, but then I
    hate the “SO” term, so nevermind…)

    I’ve only dabbled in o8\< (mostly by not-always-intentionally
    trolling certain people by acting as a proxy for mindfucky ideas by
    other (crazier) people, and so leading them to write wonderful “the
    fuck is this stuff even about?! I never knew about X until last
    week, and now I’ve realized I’ve hated it MY ENTIRE LIFE!” posts; I
    noticed I’m doing this when friends in 6th grade told me I was the
    one who introduced them to kink, somehow), and I’m totally lacking
    in \<3\<. I mean, I kinda hate
    [Polycarp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarp) but not quite
    enough, and if the [alveolar
    trill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_trill) were a person,
    I’d wanna have angry hatesex with it so hard, but I’m not sure that
    counts.

    So the most promising shipping research topic is probably who my
    arch-nemesis is gonna be. Somehow I mostly get into fights with
    concepts, not people.

[^language]:
    Also, I’m *really* unhappy with established terms to talk about
    “person who I love, like, THIIIIS much”. Like (girl|boy)friend? Fuck
    that. “partner”? Like, the government gets to call ‘em “partner” if
    it wants, and I find it kinda adorable what weirdly formal language
    it comes up with, but it’s not really a very affectionate label, is
    it? Seriously, all options are either super-formal, horrible or real
    silly. (I’m *never* gonna use “SO”. This is too stupid even for me.)
    I’d be ok with “lover” if it didn’t have this connotation that it
    isn’t a serious thing, or “mate” if Australians hadn’t ruined it. So
    for now until I find a term (neologic if necessary) I’m happy with,
    I expect to mood-swing through “partner”, “moirail”, “love” (and I
    really wanna use “hon”, but then I’m tempted to practice a Southern
    accent all day and never get anything else done), and whatever else
    feels slightly less awkward that day.

    Man, /language/, amirite?

[^footnotes]:
    That’s a lot of footnotes for one word! It’s as if there’s a
    correlation with how important the topic is to me, or the thing it
    refers to…

[^trolls]:
    Seeker, wear the [troll
    hide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_mask), learn [the
    signs of the
    dakinis](http://buddhism-for-vampires.com/dakinis-karma-mudra) and
    wander into the [Bohemian
    forest](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moulin_Rouge!), where you will
    find a [four-headed statue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perun)
    proclaiming Beauty, Freedom, Truth and Love, which grants liberation
    to all who know the magic song. A servant of [Grandma
    Bonylegs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga) once sung it to
    me, but I can never quite [keep it in my
    head](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvFpJBJSPRA)…


[^sharing]:
    Part of my writing philosophy has always been “write what I actually
    wanna read more of”, and so I’m pissed at myself that I *don’t*
    share a lot more here, cause this is exactly what I’d love to read
    about, and so not doing it is a concession to lameness itself. But
    I’m also paranoid about various perverse incentives and
    substitutions (i.e. writing more about the thing than actually doing
    the thing, or in this case, person (BOOM FLAWLESS INNUENDO)), and so
    for now I’m gonna be mostly silent while I think it through.

    The other problem is that *this stuff is hard to write about*. It’s
    weird how “this is not a *real* medium” is one of those statements
    that *incredibly* piss me off, like every time someone says “games
    aren’t art” or “but you can’t trust someone over *text*” (aside from
    the retarded conceptions of “art” and “trust” that underlie this
    nonsense), and so *not being able to write about something* because
    I just wouldn’t know how is a deep moral failure for me, and when I
    find myself thinking “I can’t write about that, who would want to
    read that?!, and anyway, I don’t even know how to english it to
    begin with”, I feel like I’m Failing At Life, and everything that
    matters *at all* gets betrayed because of some stupid sense of
    boundaries or expectations.

    So I gotta figure something out, and beat this old narrative machine
    into a decent enough approximation of half my feels. Just gimme some
    time to adjust.

[^options]:
    Also considered, among other things:

    -   different places, most importantly Canada (but their bureaucracy
        tries to cockblock me as hard as it can while still claiming
        they want valuable immigration with a straight face), and Berlin
        (not ideal for the skill set we currently have, but I’d still
        like to re-visit at some point in the near future, maybe in the
        form of some grand Europe Tour)
    -   different language, primarily French (possibly the next one),
        Japanese (would love to do it next, but I really want either
        more teaching experience or a fluent speaker to work with first,
        so it had to wait) and English (not enough resources right now)
    -   math and physics up to undergraduate level or so (much harder to
        get a properly incentivized audience, but real high up on the
        list and long-term mandatory (and I like everything about it,
        including teaching it), but not the right thing to bootstrap
        with)
    -   different timeline / “business model” / major reordering of The
        Plan (long story, but tl;dr: everything else is predictably
        stupid-in-retrospect, and so doesn’t make sense)

[^reasons]:
    Various reasons:

    -   much lower need for outside approval, and actively working on
        lowering it even more; [Arline’s
        Mantra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Do_You_Care_What_Other_People_Think%3F)
        “What Do *You* Care What Other People Think?” helps a lot to
        clarify and work through these issues, but kills ranty blogs
        dead
    -   after some discussions with
        [David](http://meaningness.com/metablog/how-to-think) and Owen,
        I’m pretty strongly in the “most philosophy (i.e. the stuff I
        talked about a lot) has only negative value by removing
        misconceptions” camp now, so the only interesting stuff for me
        is foundational stuff that directly leads to engineering stuff,
        and so I find myself only reading Skinner, Mill and similar
        folks, if even that
    -   too sane; I kinda have a tendency to get worked up about stupid
        shit (in entertaining ways, at least, but still) when I don’t
        have a calming influence in my life; have that now, feel much
        less crazy (except in a good way)
    -   speaking of Feynman and craziness, you gotta *do* crazy shit
        occasionally so you can later *talk about it*; currently in that
        phase
