Pinball Wizard

The Pinball Wizard (Elton John) looses against the blind Tommy (The Who lead singer)...


Pinball Wizard

Ever since I was a young boy
I've played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played them all

But I ain't seen nothing like him
In any amusement hall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

He stands like a statue
Becomes part of the machine
Feeling all the bumpers
Always playing clean

Plays by intuition
The digit counters fall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

He's a pinball wizard
There has to be a twist
A pinball wizard
He's got such a supple wrist

How do you think he does it?
(I don't know)
What makes him so good?

Ain't got no distractions
Can't hear no buzzers and bells
Don't see no lights are flashin'
Plays by sense of smell

Always gets a replay
Never seen him fall
That deaf dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

I thought I was
The Bally table king
But I just handed
My pinball crown to him

Even on my favorite table
He can beat my best
His disciples lead him in
And he just does the rest

He's got crazy flipper fingers
Never seen him fall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball




Tommy - the movie.

Lyrics from elyrics.net, via IKN's Otto Rock.

Practice Map

A personal selection, overview, and reference of some (life) practice material by Ken McLeod (and maybe related teachings by other teachers as well):

2012-06-17

Purpose, Method, Effects, and Results

Why People Practice
Progression

How to simplify your life

Willingness, Know-How, Capacity [2012-08-21]

Attention
- Breath
- Power, Ecstasy, Insight, Compassion

Working with Pain and Difficult Emotions
- Five Step Practice [2012-08-11]

Mind Training

Death and Impermanence


Reactive Emotions and Patterns

Six Realms
- Hell
- Hungry Ghost
- Animal
- Human
- Titan
- God
. Real Life Examples (from Monsters Under the Bed Retreat) [2012-07-22]

Five Elements / Five Dakinis
- Earth
- Fire
- Water
- Air
- Void

The Four Immeasurables
   Verses and Exercise
   Transcript and Podcast [2012-06-23]
- Equanimity
   . What is Equanimity? by Shenzen Young [2012-06-23]
- Loving Kindness
- Compassion
- Joy

Taking and Sending

Relationships
Conflict
Grief
Depression
PTSD
Emotions
Happiness

Materializing Things
Making Things Happen

What Do I Do Now?
Who Am I?

Scale of Universe

The Scale of the Universe

Pointer via George Draffan.

Ant Bots

Google Artificial Intelligence Challenge Competition



A 21 year old German student has programmed the best fighting ant colony bot, here is the German Spiegel article about him:

Der Spiegel: Der Ameisenkönig

Final Rankings

[Update 2012-03-04: The winner gives a detailed run down of his thought process and algorithms. Available is also the source code (less then 2000 lines of code for the main strategy class.]

Following is a list of different interesting games you can replay online...

Different styles, a bit chaotic

Smaller map, but very impressive fighting taktic by Xathis.

Very interesting, without the Xathis favorite, but GreanTea takes the win.

Xathis turns it around. Smaller map.

Big map, big fight

My favorite, thought Komaki makes a big mistake in the end leaving the flank to Xathis wide open...

Small game, GreanTea wins against Xathis

Ants, ants, ants (Xathis loses)

medusa vs Xathis. Xathis loses a hill early on, still wins in the end.

Tight fight, Xathis wins, but not clearly.

Interesting water structures, GreanThea.

Xathis, GreanThea, almost 1on1. The Final? Interesting retreating/frontier pattern.

protocolon beats Xathis and GreanTea. GreanTea makes a big mistake in the beginning. Also Xathis loses the home base early on to carlos.guia, but then protocolon has already grown very much.

Big armies, fun to watch

Loss and Longing

Or life, love, loss.

Father and Daughter HD


Better to directly watch on the YouTube site for bigger video resolution - and make sure to turn the sound on...

Thanks to Youyou.

Natural Awareness

George Draffan's Natural Awareness Blog with wonderful buddhist wisdom.

Cheers!

Focus

Steve Jobs about Focus at AppleInsider:

Jobs outlined Apple's intense focus during an interview with Fortune in 2008. "Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we've got less than 30 major products. I don't know if that's ever been done before. Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully," Jobs said.

"I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done. The clearest example was when we were pressured for years to do a PDA, and I realized one day that 90% of the people who use a PDA only take information out of it on the road. They don't put information into it.

"Pretty soon cellphones are going to do that, so the PDA market's going to get reduced to a fraction of its current size, and it won't really be sustainable. So we decided not to get into it. If we had gotten into it, we wouldn't have had the resources to do the iPod. We probably wouldn't have seen it coming."

Do I Want This?

One day, while staying at a friend’s house, Nasrudin peered over the wall into the neighbor’s yard and saw the most wonderful garden he had ever seen. He noticed an old man patiently weeding a flower-bed and asked,

“This is a beautiful garden. I’d like to have one just like it. How do you make a garden like this?”

“Twenty years hard work.”

“Never mind,” said Nasrudin.

From: Three Questions from Ken McLeod

Seung Sahn

From Open Buddha: “Completely Become One” by Zen Master Seung Sahn

After one week, my heart was only making one or two mistakes, and my doctors said, “This is wonderful! Most people take two or three months to come down to only one or two mistakes each minute!” So I said, “Thank you very much; you have helped me, so I can get better quickly. But this is only fix-your-body meditation. This is not correct meditation.”

“Why isn’t this correct meditation?” they asked.

“You can fix your body, your heart, your diabetes. In Korea, China, and India, there are people who do yoga. They go to the mountains and do breath-in, breath-out meditation. They can live 500 years and not get sick. Keeping their bodies for a long time is possible; even flying in the sky is possible. Trying this style body meditation, anything is possible. A body is like a car. Use the car a lot, and in three years, it is broken. Only keep the car in the garage, then keeping it for a long time is possible. But finally, after 500 years, then these yoga people die. Then what? Live a long time, then die; live a short time, then die–it is the same! Dying is the same.”

The doctors understood. “What is correct meditation, then?”

I told them, “I always try meditation. Meditation means always keeping one mind, not-moving mind.” They thought meditation meant only concentration and keeping your body still. So I said, “Meditation means keeping one mind. You must understand–What is life? What is death? If you keep one mind, there is no life, no death. Then, if you die tomorrow, no problem; if you die in five minutes, no problem.”

“What do you mean, no problem’?” they asked.

“Maybe you do fix-your-heart meditation. Then, ‘My heart is good; my body is good.’ It is very easy to become attached to this meditation. But, when you get old, and your heart is not so good, then you try this meditation. Maybe it is still not so good. Then, ‘Why doesn’t my meditation work?’ Then your body, your meditation become hindrances. If your meditation cannot help your body, then you don’t believe in your meditation. Then what? So, this style meditation is no good.

“Correct meditation means correctly understanding your situation moment to moment–what are you doing now? Only do it! Then, each action is complete; each action is enough. Then no thinking, so each moment, I can perceive everything just like this. Just like this is truth. Sick-time, only be sick. Driving-time, only drive. Only go straight–then, any situation is no problem.”

2010-03-13

Reminds me of this exercise by Ken McLeod.

Amanda in Wonderland

Amanda Baggs is autistic. If you give her three minutes, she starts speaking/typing in our language:

In My Language



And from Alice:

Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on 'And how do you know that you're mad?'

'To begin with,' said the Cat, 'a dog's not mad. You grant that?'

'I suppose so,' said Alice.

'Well, then,' the Cat went on, 'you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.'

'I call it purring, not growling,' said Alice.

'Call it what you like,' said the Cat.

Pointer via Caroline Birks on unmind.ning.com.

Gone With The Sand

This is great! Give it three minutes. Already 12 million views on YouTube, so not the first one to recognize it, yet in case... Also the audience alone is worth the money;-).

Kseniya Simonova - Sand Animation (Україна має талант / Ukraine's Got Talent)


Pointer via When Martian Unicorns Dance.

Intergalactic

Quite old and you might have seen it before (the book or the film in school), but in case you haven't, it is a must see (also nice for a refresher) and here it is at YouTube (who knows for how long):

Powers of 10


Did you know we (our Milky Way galaxy) are headed for a big crash with the Andromeda galaxy?! With huge consequences for both of them. Well, not sure anyone can explain what it means exactly. But as a buddy in the office responded when we first learned about this fact: "Well, it is not my biggest concern at the moment."
10 things you don’t know about the Milky Way Galaxy

Thanks to Alvis.

Talking of concers, well, looks like we will soon find out if the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will create mini black holes or other beasts or not (and if so how small and long lived they will be:).

2010-01-28

The video above has been removed from YouTube, but here it is again! Cheers.

Overview of Addiction Research in NYT Magazine

http://www.treatmentonline.com/treatments.php?id=782

So what made all those lab rats lose their minds? Bruce Alexander and his research team had a rather simple hypothesis: The rats had awful lives. They were stressed, lonely, bored and looking to self-medicate. To prove it, Alexander created a lab-rat heaven he called Rat Park. The 200-square-foot residence featured bright balls and tin cans to play with, painted creeks and trees to look at and plenty of room for mating and socializing.

Alexander took 16 lucky rats and plopped them into Rat Park, where they were offered water or a sweet, morphine-based cocktail (rats love sweets). Alexander offered the same two drinks to the control group of rats he left isolated in cages. The results? The rat-parkers were apparently having too much fun to bother with artificial highs, because they hardly touched the morphine solution, no matter how sweet Alexander and his colleagues made it. The isolated and arguably depressed rats, on the other hand, eagerly got high, drinking more than a dozen times the amount of the morphine solution as the rats in paradise.