more articles ported

content/experiments/dude_time.mkd

@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+---
+title: Dude, Where's My Time?!
+date: 2011-02-03
+techne: :done
+episteme: :believed
+---
+
+A few days ago, I got up at 6:00 and went to bed around 22:00. During the day, I felt I worked rather well. Maybe not optimally so, but still pretty well. When I was about to fall asleep, I thought about what I had accomplished and couldn't help but feel disappointed. I could remember about 2 hours of work or so. But I was awake for over 18 hours! Where did all my time go?
+
+Months ago, I kept logs about my activities (via [ashuku][]) and noticed that I would massively over-estimate how productive I really was. I would think I studied all day for an upcoming exam, but logged about 3 hours, max.
+
+The highest I ever got was almost 11 hours of productivity. Right after I got up, I would take a little notebook and write down my exact activity I would try to do for the next 20 minutes, say learn some vocabulary or read a book. I would set an alarm and do only this activity. When the time was up, I would go back to the notebook and repeat this process. After about 4 hours, I would take a nap. But note that I did this while I was still polyphasic! I was awake 20 hours a day! I got barely more than 50% productivity!
+
+# So where *does* all my fucking time go?!
+
+Yesterday, I set up a webcam and did a complete [profile][Profiling]. Almost 18 hours of video, plus screenshots every 5 minutes. I tried to work typically and not let the recording affect me much. I was slightly tired and maybe below-average productive. Regardless, at the end of the day I thought I had gotten useful stuff done and there wasn't much I could've done better. Maybe 1-2 hours more work if I wasn't tired, and I played a few hours of Civ4 at the end, but that itself wouldn't have been such a huge problem, right? I mean, 3 out of 18 hours spent on games is totally fine.
+
+Today, I opened a spreadsheet, watched the video and wrote down all activities plus time spent on them. *All* of them, including toilet visits. Here are all the interesting observations:
+
+- Out of 18 hours, **34 minutes** where spent on stuff on my (comprehensive) todo, mostly Anki reps and reading a biology textbook. Not even one hour!
+- **45 minutes** went into selecting which out of 3 biology textbooks I would use for studying. I spent more time deciding what to read than actually reading!
+- **1.8 hours** went into reading [LessWrong][]. This didn't feel particularly much, so I expect that I typically spent more than 2 hours or so a day on that site. I can't say I don't learn a lot, but is this really efficient? I could read at least 3 books a week just in the time I'm on LessWrong! Very questionable priorities.
+- **1.3 hours** I was on Reddit, plus **1.4 hours** on various blogs and comics in my RSS reader. And I thought that's "just some news and a lolcat"!
+- **1.6 hours** I fiddled with my [XMonad][] config. I encountered [a little bug][Xmonad Bug], tried (and failed) to read the documentation, asked for help and got it fixed. I thought that took maybe 15 minutes. And I thought "To get an accurate time estimate for a software project, take the best guess you can, double the number and step up one unit. So if you guess '1 hour', it'll really take 2 days." was a joke!
+- **1.2 hours** I spent only on eating and pooping. Srsly!
+- Finally, that "3 hours of Civ4"? Really **5.8 hours**.
+
+# Conclusions
+
+I totally suck at estimating time. My priorities are fucked up. I waste much more time on things than I ever thought, even when I try to pay attention. I have almost no fucking clue what I'm doing, focus only on trivial details, rationalize when I really should be experimenting. If I were my own employee, I would be fired.
+
+Admitting that you have a problem is the first step. Now the important part: don't stop there. *Fix* the problem.
+
+Knowing how incompetent I am gives me strong motivation to try new techniques. Before, I thought that explicit schedules were a waste of time. Now I see how poorly I perform without them. I have several ideas how to proceed. I will experiment and set up the webcam again in a few days. Let's see if I can't get my time back!

content/experiments/magnetic.mkd

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+title: Persinger's Magnetic Field Hypothesis
+date: 2011-01-01
+techne: :done
+episteme: :believed
+---
+
+Normally, I'd do an introduction who [Michael Persinger][] is, but I'm not in the mood, so let's just say that he is a (awesome!) mind researcher who developed the infamous God Helmet, which induces just the right kind of magnetic field around a brain to trigger, in most people, a sense of wonder and presence of somebody invisible being with them in the room, and in few, a full-blown religious experience. Also, there's his great lecture on drugs:
+
+<div align="center"><object id="VideoPlayback" style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" width="100" height="100" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="src" value="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=4292093832329014323&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=true" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed id="VideoPlayback" style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" width="100" height="100" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=4292093832329014323&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=true" allowfullscreen="true" /></object></div>
+
+So, the real point. Persinger once hypothesized that small fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field might cause changes in the temporal lobe, triggering in extreme cases spiritual experiences, and more typically, raising the rate of reported UFO abductions and so on. He suspected that earth quakes would be sufficient to cause these magnetic fluctuations.
+
+Regardless if that is true, there's a more reliable source of magnetic disturbance available - the Sun. Its magnetic field fluctuates quite a bit. You can find the current data on [NOAA's site][NOAA]. The bottom-middle diagram shows the current Kp index, which is just a simple classification how rapidly the field changes right now. &lt;4 means the field is quiet, 4-6 is a normal storm, &gt;6 is huge. Normal storms are enough to disturb international radio transmissions, huge one's might even fry unprepared electronics in orbit. A storm typically lasts about half a day.
+
+So, like any self-respecting empiricist, I decided to test the hypothesis. If Persinger is right, then an index &gt;4  should be enough to trigger a noticeable change in the temporal lobe. My brain is sensitive enough to go in full-on religious experience mode when probed and I strongly suspect that I have mild to normal temporal lobe epilepsy, so I'm the perfect test subject. If *I*> don't notice anything, then it must be bullshit.
+
+Of course, I can't just look up the current value and ask myself, "Am I more spiritual today than usual?". Confirmation bias, self-fulfilling prophecies and nastier stuff would wreck my results. So I just subscribed to the official NOAA mailing list and archived the Kp index. I also took an automatic screenshot every 10 minutes so I could later reconstruct what I did that day. I then let two months pass (May and June) without reading any of that mail.
+
+So, what are the **results**? Well, I had 6 very quiet days (Kp index 0), 5 turbulent ones (5-6) and the rest very normal, typically about 1-2. I noticed that on all 6 quiet days, I got almost nothing done and slept a lot. On 4 of the 5 turbulent days, I didn't just feel very spiritual, but read lots of Buddhist literature and had multiple strong insights. The 5th day I played NWN2. (This was the only time the storm happened during the day. The temporal lobe (and matching epileptic seizures) are most active around 0-4 at night, due to hormonal levels.) Of my 7 really productive days during that period, 4 were the turbulent ones and one came after the NWN2 session. Furthermore, I had no really lazy or spiritual day during the rest of the time.
+
+That's... a strong confirmation. I didn't believe my data, so I continued to measure. Another 2 months, similar results. Now another 4 months, similar results (but I did look at the measurements in advance this time). So I guess I'll  have to believe the basic idea now. It's definitely among the crankiest beliefs I have.

content/experiments/synesthesia.mkd

@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+title: Developing Synestesia
+date: 2011-01-27
+techne: :done
+episteme: :believed
+---
+
+Synesthesia is the automatic connection of different senses. Typical example: perceiving numbers as having a color. Or the LSD version: seeing music.
+
+![](/pigs/cat-lick-funny-stamp.jpg)
+
+Many years ago, I was fascinated by the idea and really wanted to have this myself. Tasting sound would be awesome! Alas, I didn't seem to have any synesthesia nor did I ever find a way to replicate it.
+
+Well, until now that is. Some months ago, I started taking cold showers for my skin. To make it less painful, I started to pay very close attention to the sensations as they arose. I figured, the worst part of it is the anticipation of unpleasantness, not the actually coldness.
+
+I then noticed that "aw, cold!" consisted actually of four parts. First, there is a feeling of "cold", then slight pressure as the water hits my skin, almost simultaneously, there's a response of "retreat", with muscles contracting, blood rushing away and so on (each being a separate, but hard to isolate sensation) and finally, there's aversion, a mental pulling-away - the actual awfulness.
+
+I found it easy to drop the awfulness by just concentrating on the other parts. They were way too interesting anyway. (That made taking cold showers much easier.) But I didn't stop there. I wanted to perceive clearly what the first three parts were *like*. What does it feel like to perceive "cold" versus "pressure"?
+
+Problem is, the closer I looked, the more they merged. I couldn't tell them apart! I could tell spatial dimensions, duration and (roughly) chronological order, but there was no "intensity" or "quality" at all! Temperature, pressure, touch, muscle movements and blood flow were all *the same kinda thing*. The only thing that had any intensity at all was the aversion.
+
+So I extended this search to other perceptions. I meditated and wanted to see what "thoughts" were like. Or "music". Or "pain". Or "light". But whenever I introspected, I found them breaking apart into two components - "sensations" and "aversion", with all sensations being fundamentally identical and interchangeable and only "aversion" being seemingly different. (I'm not sure if "aversion" is a good name. "push/pull" seems fitting, but not perfectly so. "Expansion/contraction", as Shinzen Young uses it, may be better, but I'm unsure if that's what he means by it.)
+
+The result is that all sensations merge, especially in meditation. I see sounds, hear pain, feel light, touch numbers and so on. This shouldn't surprise me, as the Buddhists have been telling me this for some time now, but I still didn't see it coming. I still don't really believe it. Color and sound are different, gods dammit! But whenever I pay attention, I can't find differences. I'm confused.
+
+> Not the wind, not the flag - mind is moving.
+
+The main result of this is that my ontology is now strongly leaning towards idealism. I consider mental events as ontologically fundamental (instead of, say, numbers, logical structures or matter[^1], as most rationalists currently seem to do). I'm still very uncertain of it, but suspect that all mental events are fundamentally identical. The idea of different <em>kinds</em> of perceptions seems wrong to me.
+
+[^1]: Personally, I find "matter" slightly embarrassing by now. The definition has shifted so much in the last 150 years, from atoms to quarks to fields to configurations to all kinds of other things that the claim that modern "materialists" have anything to do with [materialism](/tl;dr#materialism) as conceived before the Enlightenment is laughable. It very much reminds me of religious folk talking about "God" and meaning dozens of completely incompatible things, but presenting it as unity. </ad hominem>

content/history/index.mkd

@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+---
+title: Digesting History
+is_category: true
+---
+
+<%= category :history %>

content/morality/vegetarian.mkd

@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 ---
 title: Why I'm Not a Vegetarian
+alt_titles: [Vegetarian]
 date: 2011-12-20
 techne: :done
 episteme: :believed

content/references.mkd

@@ -4,15 +4,26 @@ is_hidden: true
 
 <!-- personal links -->
 [Blog]: http://blog.muflax.com
-[Config]: http://github.com/muflax/config
 [GPG Key]: /muflax.asc          
 [Google+]: https://plus.google.com/105665518912548939532
 [LibraryThing]: http://www.librarything.com/profile/muflax
-[Pororo]: http://github.com/muflax/pororo
-[Source]: http://github.com/muflax/muflax.com
 [Twitter]: http://twitter.com/muflax
 [whatiswrongwith.me]: http://whatiswrongwith.me/muflax
 [Antinatalism Tumblr]: http://antinatalism.tumblr.com/
+[Beeminder]: https://www.beeminder.com/muflax/goals/
+[PredictionBook]: http://predictionbook.com/users/muflax
+
+<!-- software -->
+[Github]: http://github.com/muflax/
+[Config]: http://github.com/muflax/config
+[Source]: http://github.com/muflax/muflax.com
+[Pororo]: http://github.com/muflax/pororo
+[RBS]: https://github.com/muflax/scripts/blob/master/rbs
+[daily screenshot]: https://github.com/muflax/scripts/blob/master/daily_screenshot.sh
+[backup video]: https://github.com/muflax/muflax.com/blob/master/backup-video.rb
+[fume]: https://github.com/muflax/fume
+[fumetrap]: https://github.com/muflax/fumetrap
+[ashuku]: http://muflax.com/software/ashuku.html
 
 <!-- external links -->
 [Alan Dawrst]: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/suffering-nature.html
@@ -78,6 +89,13 @@ is_hidden: true
 [shamus bible]: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=12768&cpage=1#comment-231273
 [Devil Pascal]: http://squid314.livejournal.com/301735.html
 [Hell Employee]: http://feelafraidcomic.com/60.php
+[Blackmore Free Will]: http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Chapters/Brockman2005.htm
+[Fry God]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kKOS4I6pUuY#t=45s
+[NOAA]: http://www.n3kl.org/sun/noaa.html
+[Gwern URL]: http://www.gwern.net/Archiving%20URLs
+[Samsara Talk]: http://arobuddhism.org/audio-teachings/samsara-suffering-and-suspicion-the-path-to-endless-enjoyment.html
+[LessWrong]: http://lesswrong.com
+[Xmonad Bug]: http://www.reddit.com/r/xmonad/comments/fdp4o/let_focus_follow_mouse_only_on_certain_layouts/
 
 <!-- Wikipedia articles (and similar) -->
 [A-theory]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-series_and_B-series
@@ -146,7 +164,14 @@ is_hidden: true
 [Nagarjuna]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna
 [Satan]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satan
 [Discordianism]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism
-
+[Core Dump]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_dump
+[Michael Persinger]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Persinger
+[Flanging]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanging
+[Kasina]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasina
+[Jhana]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhy%C4%81na_in_Buddhism#Usage_of_jh.C4.81na
+[Sutrayana]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutrayana
+[Vayrayana]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajrayana
+[Profiling]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiling_(computer_programming)
 
 <!-- internal links -->
 [RSS]: /rss.xml

content/reflections/through_wall.mkd

@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+title: Why Can't I See Through This Wall?
+date: 2011-05-20
+techne: :done
+episteme: :believed
+---
+
+*At times I look back on attainments and ask myself what life was before them or what working up to the change felt like. This post is an emotional core-dump for that purpose.*
+
+I sit down and the world shifts. Everything flickers. I look at a wall and it flickers. A little plush sheep, it flickers. I hear a car outside, the sound flickers. Everything is unstable, keeps popping in and out of existence, at high frequencies. Rarely, things [flange][Flanging].
+
+Few thoughts are in my head. I'm quite content. I don't get distracted by thoughts anymore when trying to concentrate. I just get bored. Because I can't see through this fucking wall.
+
+And this is not a metaphor. I sit down to meditate and stare at the wall. There's a [Kasina][], but really, I don't care. It blips out of existence soon enough, merging with the wall. I stare. It blips in, it fluctuates, the wall throws a few waves, occasionally the whole visual field moves as if someone was carrying away the screen in front of my eyes.
+
+I don't care. [Jhana][] arise. Maybe even some happiness. It matters not to me. I ignore it, push it away. Because I want to see through this fucking wall.
+
+It shifts again, it try modifying the intensity of my concentration, but it has no effect. Flickerflickerflicker, wobblewobblewobble, shiiiift. That's all that happens. I get bored.
+
+Why do I even think I can see through this wall? Well, ok, that's not really what I'm trying to do. But that's what it feels like. Really what I'm doing is trying to trigger a buffer underrun. I want to pay attention to something while there isn't actually anything scheduled to be investigated. Whenever a sensation arises, "I" dislocate. At first, it felt like "I" was getting pulled to wherever the sensation arose, noticed it, then snapped back to the default somewhere behind my eyes. This is false. Really the sensation has its own space around it that it instantiates. As such, "spatial awareness" is part of the sensation, not of the actual act of paying attention. Or in other words, abstract space is itself a sensation and not always there.
+
+Even motherfucking space flickers. Oh, a nice relaxing wave goes through some muscles. My spine straightens. I don't care. You flicker too.
+
+In between each flicker there's a gap. It's really fucking short, but there's a gap. I try to perceive it, but I just get the wall or abstract space or some happy little bliss-wave instead. Go away, I don't like you, I want the gap! There's one thing that doesn't flicker and that's what I'm trying to catch. I picked the most solid thing I could find. *Looking at a wall*, pretty solid sensation. But "I" constantly dislocate and now the wall flickers. Sometimes I count each time the wall is actually there. I just go "t-t-t-t-t-t-" because even "tick" takes too long to think. I want to see what's there when the wall isn't there. Enormous pressure builds in my head. My eyes are shaking. I get triple vision. (That's when you get double vision, but you also have an afterimage that interferes with it.) I feel like jumping up and strangling someone. Or something. Maybe this wall.
+
+I try to calm down, pay some attention to the body, to the breath. Breath doesn't flicker so badly. Muscle contractions don't flicker much and they feel good. A bit of pressure goes away. Then I hear some bird outside and wham my attention jumps "breath-bird-breath-bird-breath-bird" flickerflickerflicker. Gah. Back to the wall.
+
+My attention widens and narrows arbitrarily. Depth perception sometimes goes offline for a bit. My eyes constantly lose focus and twitch. My visual fields keeps moving upwards even if I don't move my eyeballs. Light levels morph, the wall becomes almost black sometimes.
+
+I don't care about any of that. I just want to see through that wall.

content/religion/samsara.mkd

@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
+---
+title: On Samsara
+date: 2011-08-02
+techne: :done
+episteme: :broken
+---
+
+> [The teacher] said, "You know, most of you are not qualified for *samsara*! Let alone the pursuit of nirvana. Do any of you have *jobs*?" And what he got on to was this question of being successful at samsara. It was really an important issue. There is this idea of *revulsion with samsara*. People hear this, "You must become revolted with samsara in order to become a Dharma practitioner!". And many people seem to misunderstand this as, yes, I'm revolted by samsara because I can't keep my bank balance in credit, I've got a problem with personal hygiene, whatever the issue is, people don't like me, I'm always doing the wrong thing and yes, it's miserable, I wanna go and live in a nice Tibetan center where I don't have to deal with it anymore.
+> 
+> This is not revulsion with samsara. When I'm talking about *success* at samsara, I'm not talking about getting rich. I'm simply talking about having an idea and being able to follow that idea through.
+>
+> So I want to learn a language, so I learn a language. I take a class to learn to do something, I do it. I get a job, I fulfill the role of the job, etc. I'm not always getting the sack because I'm useless. Now, the interesting thing is, in order to be successful at samsara, you need *desire*. And your desire has to be *sufficient* to going after what you want and *getting* it. Put the work in to get what you want.
+> 
+> Then you *get* what you want and *then* you experience samsara. Until you're able to get what you want and go after it and obtain it, you don't know what samsara *is*.
+> 
+> Because that point where you get what you want is extremely interesting. There's nothing wrong with it. It's actually quite *delightful*. But then when you have what you want and you're sitting there with it, thinking, "This is a jolly nice thing!", there's a certain strange edginess about that, which is, "How long can I sit here and admire it?".
+> 
+> Now, from a [Sutrayana][] perspective we would say, that is because this thing that I desired so much does not have the capacity to satisfy me. "The things of the world are hollow and worthless!" (This is not actually true, you know. They are pretty neat, things of the world. I love 'em. More more more!) [...]
+>
+> And the important thing about this, from a [Vajrayana][] point of view, is that there's nothing wrong with *things*. The things *do* contain the capacity to make us happy forever. It is *we* who get in the way of this process. Because what I want to be doing is not *having* what I want, but moving *towards* it. So that when I *get* what I want, the discomfort of that situation is that I'm no longer in motion. The process has come to an end and in that position, although I *have*, it's a position of emptiness because there's nowhere to go. That is why people do not like to be happy. They like to be moving *towards* happy.
+> 
+> Because happy is *useless* from the point of view of samsara. "So I'm happy. What now? Where do I go?"
+>
+> -- Ngak'chang Rinpoche, excerpt from talk on [samsara, suffering and suspicion][Samsara Talk]
+
+Compare [Gospel of Muflax][], written October 2010:
+
+> - TOKSHI said, now is good, tomorrow never good enough.
+> - TOKSHI said, don't wish for things because then you will get exactly what you wished for and it will totally suck and you will look stupid.
+> - TOKSHI said, don't be happy.
+
+About a month later, I wrote in a draft:
+
+> I experience no dukkha.
+> 
+> What is dukkha? It is one of three marks of existence, according to Buddhism. It means unsatisfactoriness or suffering, in the sense of an axle of a horse cart tumbling in a poor hole, which is the origin of the word. Overcoming it is the whole idea of Buddhism, experiencing it is why the Buddha started his quest in the first place.
+> 
+> I am not using a semantic trick. It is not an exaggeration, not a koan, nothing like this at all. I mean it, straightforward. *I experience no dukkha*.
+>
+> I understand what dukkha is. I see it in other people, quite clearly. I cannot find it in me.
+> 
+> The teachers cannot help me anymore.
+
+I declared firmly that I want to experience dukkha. Shortly afterwards, I sat down and swore not to rise again until dukkha would appear. Pain came and went, fear came and went, boredom came and went, but no dukkha. Finally, all pain dropped away and I arose happy.
+
+Some days later, dukkha came. I wrote in another draft:
+
+> > I've yet to have an experience of any kind - game playing, sexual, food, travel - where I said, 'This is the most fun I could ever possible have in my entire life. I couldn't imagine, for one second, this being more enjoyable.'  I never said that.
+> >
+> > -- Gabe Zichermann, talk on Game Design
+> I actually did. I managed to do exactly this, multiple times in fact. The last time I reproduced this, when I put down a video game controller and felt as happy as I ever could possibly hope to be, yet still unsatisfied, I knew it wasn't just a fluke. There's an upper limit to happiness, I can reach it any time and it still doesn't make the sucking stop.
+> 
+> This was the turning point for me. I realized that I couldn't just "solve my problems" and live a happy life. I realized that it was fundamentally impossible for me to do so. Not officially, not consciously, but psychologically, I became a Buddhist this day.
+> 
+> This feeling, this essential unsatisfactoriness, which Buddhists call dukkha, is what I think makes some people get the idea of enlightenment and others not. If you never felt it, you will not understand what it's all about. I don't know what actually makes the difference, what is necessary to feel it. Maybe you need to have lived a carefree and fulfilled enough life for long enough to max out your personal happiness (like the Buddha or I did) or maybe you need a special kind of mind to have the patience to actually optimize for happiness and fail, and have the clarity to realize it. I see no reliable pattern in the kinds of people to feel it, but if you do, welcome to the path. May it be your last.
+
+Not long after that, I broke. (And started the blog.) I thought at first that something was wrong with the *things*. That my goals sucked. Half a year later, I [gave up on happiness altogether][Stances]. I always suspected there was something wrong with being happy. Wireheading seemed simultaneously attractive and evil. But I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Any unsatisfactoriness seemed to just come from me sucking  or following the wrong goal. I hadn't actually done a good job at getting exactly what I want. Luckily, I managed that, often enough to notice something. Two months ago, in another draft:
+
+> You know that feeling when you're almost done with a great game, when you realize that this is the definite last level, there are no more upgrades, no more quests, just this one last obstacle and the boss at the end?
+> 
+> But you aren't ready to quit?
+> 
+> So you draw it out. Organize your inventory. Finish all those minor sidequests you've been ignoring. But nothing can push away that realization. It's about to end. Soon, the boss will go down and then what? Credits, memes and a highscore? Big letdown.
+> 
+> And that's how I feel about life right now. For a while, I thought that's just some depression killing the fun. But I'm not so sure about that anymore.Things are still fun, in a way. It's just that there's not much of an achievement left. None that I care about, anyway.
+> 
+> (I mean, it's not *literally* the end. I don't exactly expect to *die*. Still got a few decades, I guess.)
+> 
+> I'll soon be fully enlightened. I mean, a decade ago I didn't even understand what that meant when I decided to go for it. Now I kinda don't want it to happen. In a way, life was more interesting with a big liberation story behind it. Actually being free? Not so fun.
+> 
+> I really got this playing Minecraft. In a way it's perfect. It's almost exactly what I thought heaven would be like. (Needs more machinery and no height limit, though.) But when I had built a little house, I realized that there's no point to it. I stared upon the vast landscape, knowing that it would be impossible for me to ever be *satisfied* with it.
+> 
+> There is peace, but it's the peace of a blank screen. It is not victory.
+
+Now I have a useful idea what the symptoms are. I understand that the purpose of self-help for me was merely to create new problems so I could always have something to fix. I never wanted to *arrive* anywhere. This mistake I have fixed.
+
+Liberation can now begin.

content/software/backup.mkd

@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+---
+title: Backups
+date: 2011-11-12
+techne: :rough
+episteme: :believed
+---
+
+![](/pigs/backup.jpg)
+
+So, I spent two hours today and further [gwernified][Gwern URL] my life. Seems like a good time to summarize my backup strategy. Maybe it inspires someone to save more of their own data. As the saying goes, nobody wants backup, but everybody wants restore.
+
+# Strategies
+
+1. All data in /home is synced between my laptop and desktop machine. That's the most basic level of redundancy.
+2. Everything except TV shows etc. is backed up every 6 hours on a dedicated backup drive. I use a custom [rsync script][RBS] for incremental backups. That way, each snapshot is self-contained, but snapshots share hardlinks and save on space. A new snapshot of ~200GB of data takes ~150MB and takes ~6 minutes. I do it this way because I often restore stuff and found rdiff-backup horribly slow. I have 2 weeks of snapshots for everything, plus unlimited monthly snapshots for most partitions.
+3. Most TV shows, music etc. is also mirrored on the backup drive. (This isn't really crucial because Piratebay is a good backup strategy in itself.)
+4. The whole backup drive itself is mirrored on a second backup drive. (To preserve the backup history.)
+5. I have a third backup drive that I update every couple of months or so and store at my dad's workplace. (I never throw away old drives. I just put a backup on them and let them rest.)
+6. I [take a screenshot][daily screenshot] every 5 minutes and store it on the backup drive. Useful to reconstruct days or restore content other strategies miss.
+7. Everything that *can* be open and online, [is so][Github]. I'm currently transitioning my notes to my website and some of my daily task tracking to [Beeminder][]. As Linus said, "Only wimps use tape backup: *real* men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it.".
+8. I put everything I edit in a git repo to preserve its history. Especially my private notes, tracking data and so on. I have a cronjob that commits my notes every 20 minutes so I don't have to think about it.
+9. I backup my notes, mails and Anki deck on Amazon's S3 every month in case my house burns down <del>or the police raid me</del>. Takes up about 1.5GB and costs me ~30 cents a month. (I don't sync my Anki deck with ankisrs.net because its pretty large (>14k cards, 900MB of media) and I don' want to burden Damien. Once he allows me to pay for my account, I'll sync again.)
+10. I [mirror all videos][backup video] I link to on my website because they have a bad habit of getting DMCA'd out of existence. I run linkchecker once a month to fix broken links.
+11. I also let Google track me completely. Hey, they aren't more evil than future me and my search history has saved my ass a lot in the past. If they also profit from my data, good for them.
+12. I [track][fume] all useful daily activities (and [time spent][fumetrap]) so I can see how much time I waste. (My task suggestion script also balances activities.)
+13. I log all chat communication. This was my very first backup setup and is tremendously important. "Huh, didn't I talk about this with him before? ...\*grep\*... Yup, 7 weeks ago. \*quote\*". In fact, if anything has a log option, I use it and never throw away the logs. Text is easy to compress.
+14. I use Gentoo, and so save the sources and binaries for all packages I use (and back them up as described above). Every once in a while, a library breaks something and I need a clean package *now*. Or an obscure program disappears and no-one mirrored the sources. Sucks. Don't let it happen to you. Don't clean your cache. (Or at least, have monthly snapshots).
+15. I try to put my beliefs and predictions on [PredictionBook][]. Keeps me honest and forces me to turn empty beliefs into ones that actually predict something. And I now have proof whenever I say "Told you so!". Good for my hipster cred.
+
+That's about it. This is all more-or-less automatic, so no effort on my side and it's all cheap. You only really notice how valuable backups are when you have them and can constantly restore stuff. "Oh, that pdf from last week I thought wasn't useful? Need to quote it.",  "Crap, deleted the wrong file.", "Nah, that paragraph sucks, lets get the first version.", "I watched this amazing pr0n a month ago, but the link is dead. What's the name?", ...
+
+# Future
+
+There are a few things I'd really love to store in the future.
+
+1. A webcam in my room. I already have one and modded it to record infrared as well. (Most chips do, but have a filter, typically on the lens. Just scrape it off.) So it also works reasonably well in the dark. I just need to set it up and can get IRL screenshots as well.
+2. I really need to record my thoughts more, but I don't know how. I already try to write them down as much as I can, but that's cumbersome. I thought about using an audio recorder, but that isn't as automatic as I want either.
+3. Similarly, I'd really love to record IRL conversations, but current tech still sucks too much. Luckily, I'm enough of a loner that I barely have any non-text conversations, but you know. Need to win some more debates with my mother. ("No, I didn't say that at all! Here, listen!")
+
+# Rules
+
+So to summarize the summary, I think the most important rules to backup are:
+
+1. Use it. You *will* need your old data at some point and hate yourself if you don't have it. Life is already horrible enough. Don't increase your suffering through laziness.
+2. Automate it. The less you have to think about it, the better. When in doubt, just backup it. Space is cheap.
+3. Histories matter. Don't just save your files. Save your histories, ideally in something like a git repo. Keep old backups.
+

content/software/xmonad.mkd

@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 ---
 title: Meditation on XMonad
+alt_titles: [XMonad]
 date: 2010-05-03
 techne: :done
 episteme: :discredited