Life Is Not for the Fair

Life. I always expect it to be fair. I expect it to be easy, that it won't hurt you. That if you want something bad enough or love someone bad enough, that is enough. That somehow it will always turnout for the best.
Then I'm always surprised that when I have a particular strong emotion, especially if it is directed at someone. Nobody notices it. Nobody can feel it. My emotions sometimes scream in my head. It sometimes feels as if the power of the emotion is enough to turn the whole world inside out. And sometimes I can feel so connected to someone, it feels as if maybe our auras connect, like some kind of energy intermingles and surrounds us both. Like I can feel the warmth flow between us, it feels so good. I really wish I could share it with someone..
People are so blind towards one another, it's really scary. How do we survive as a species if we cannot even communicate our strongest feelings or our deepest wishes? Isn't it depressing that a synonym for our "strongest feelings" is "our deepest feelings". As if we by definition are not allowed to tell anyone what we really feel, as if we are supposed to hide them, deep in our selfs, where nobody can reach them!? God forbid, they might find out what we feel. It is cruel that our inner feelings are so separated from the world out there...

My love to you all!

What I Really Want...

What I really want is to be me. I always wanted to be a few things.
First of all, a movie director. Yep, it sounds lame, but I do. I once made a (very) short film. It wasn't brilliant or anything but it was the single most best thing I ever did. I so much loved it! I knew exactly what I wanted and it was just having pure fun from there on out! (Ok and quite a lot of work, but it was worth it!)

Another thing I always wanted to do is be a writer. I really love the idea of creating wor(l)ds, inventing people and imagining relationships between those people. But more than that, to sketch and explore interesting circumstances and strange social entanglements. And to inspire people, to make them think and to give them something to think about and even cry about, to make them see the world just a little bit differently than before.. I wish I could do that...

Also I want to study medicine. I know it is something completely different than the things above (maybe except for the romantic notions involved) but I have always had a strange fascination with how people work. In a lot of ways, but mostly anatomically. I have some kind of insight into that. Somehow I can see the human (and probably more generic the mammal body) as a sort of abstract machine in my head. From the neurons in our brain and central nervous system to the blood vessels all over our body, to the digestive system to the inner workings of our cells.. It just really interests me!

There are just so many interesting things in the world, not even speaking about the universe. I wish I could see it all. But luckily it means that I'll won't get bored in the coming eons! ;)

Time for bed boys and girls!

The Notebook of My Life

I have a notebook. In that notebook I write things. Different kind of things, but the one thing they have in common is that they are all important to me. I write about story ideas. I write about philosophical stuff that pops up in my head. I also write about girls I like. I am a passionate person, sometimes the only way to get something or someone out of my head is to write it down. Interestingly enough a lot of those things that I write down have something else in common. They make perfect sense when I write them down, but when I read them back at a later point in time, they usually just don't make sense to me anymore (ok, maybe except for the things I write down about girls, those I usually still can relate to in the future).
A few examples of things I wrote down and I don't fully understand anymore or that I don't get at all:

• "Now I am who I wanted to be... Now only to find my self in it...".
• Movie idea: "A woman with an orange headscarf".
• "Brain Images/Ideas. But don't know how to express them!".
• "This is where it's about: - Inevitability".
• "The split-second laps in faith of understanding".
• "The over my shoulder perspective".
  

But there are also some things that I still get. Here is an example of something I wrote that I liked to read back. It is written at a time in which I was reading (part of) The Illuminatus Trilogy:

"Enlightment

Maybe the acceptance and lack of taboo of/on sexuality is an act of enlightment? Because is the act of being who you are and accepting the self and building from there on out not enlightment? Wat more is there to seek than peace of mind, body and soul at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel of life, learning, living, feeling, being, traveling, experiencing, seeing. What I seek at the end of that tunnel is wisdom and the purest wisdom, I think, brings enlightment...
... The Search For Light ..."

This are the kind of things that I write about in my notebook, this are the kind of things that preoccupy me, this are the kind of things that I think about.. Maybe I'll put some more of my notebook in here later.

Sweet Dreams!

The Seven Gates

I'm currently reading this book called The Gates of the Necronomicon which is basically about magic and it sort of gives an interesting overview about things that ancient and not so ancient religions and/or mysticisms have in common. It is interesting to see how many of them seem to be based on learning how to do magic. And also that they are sort of interrelated, such as having gods or key figures that have very similar names and functions. Such as the Egyptian goddess Sheshat who, among other things, helped the builders to line up pyramids with the great celestial gate (called The Stretching of the Cord) which was the area of the heavens where, according to the ancient Indians and ancient Chinese, humanity came from. She, or at least someone who has a similar name, function and symbol (a seven pointed star on a pole) above her head, also shows up in other mysticisms.
Furthermore it tells about gates between our plane of existence and another plane. Which is the underworld or maybe just the spiritual world. If you gain access to this world you can learn the nature of magic or even achieve immortality. But it is dangerous to go there, you need to make sacrifices, you need to come apart or go insane (the destruction of the self) before you reach the end (where you are reborn). There is an interesting Sumerian story about the goddess Inanna, who descents unto the underworld and, during which, at each of the Seven Gates must remove a piece of clothing. She comes to the end of her journey naked..

O well, it's just interesting, that's what it is ;)

The Innocent Casually Smile Dilemma

I am a very curious person and I also am a rather perceptive person. You might think that is a good combination.. well, it is most of the time, but you know what the problem is? If you are perceptive, you see more things to be curious about! It can be very frustrating. I can look at a picture of someone I know and think nothing about it at that moment, but then lay awake remembering the simplest thing, like her smile and all of a sudden I am very curious; what is behind that smile? That sort of mysterious though innocent smile which she sort of almost casually throws into the world.. what kind of thoughts and what kind of emotions are behind that smile? I am almost jealous, for she knows it and I do not..


Good night, my friends!

God Natured

Hi everyone,

Maybe I am in an optimistic mood, but I'm having the distinct feeling that we have done something right, we as a species, that we sort-of like have past the global-warming test or something like that. Do you know that optimistic feeling you get when you see that progress is made? The kind of progress that is sort of pivital, that might possibly be a catalyst for more good in the future? That "god" (note: I don't believe in a traditional god, I use it as an analogy) has decided that we might be fit for the future after all.
Look at some of the advancements in science that happened in the last few days; a cancer fighting drug is found in dirt, advancements in fusion technology... Ok that's all I can think of, but there might be more. Still I have that feeling! :)

Greetz, Mart!

Robot Fever

This period I did a Robotics course in which we (in teams of about five) had to program a robot to do one or more of the tests of the RoboCup @home league. This league is made to be more realistic than the RoboCup soccer leagues and is set in a random living room and kitchen environment. There are a number of tests in which a robot can participate, all of them are pretty hard and rely heavily upon advanced vision and user-robot interaction.

We participated in three tests: Follow & Guide, Lost & Found and Who is who. To make it a little easier we only ran in the proof of concept phase, in which we could tweak our envionment a little. Which meant we where allowed to use brightly colored objects. This made it a little easier for us on the vision side, but we still had to deal with things like color-consistency (If for instance light from outside shines on an object, for a camera it has a different color as opposed to when another kind of light source illuminates the object. The same thing go's for shadows as opposed to not-shadows. This problem is called the color consistency problem).

In follow our robot had to follow a random human, in lost & found our robot had to find a not previously specified object and in who is who our robot had to learn to recognize four persons and after that it had to identify an intruder (someone who wasn't there before).

During the match, which was yesterday, our team competed against four other teams. There where a lot of problems for everyone, us included. But we gained the first points and despite that we had a time shortage problem and didn't test a lot and our vision obstacle avoidance wasn't finished, we did pretty well. We came in fourth. This doesn't sound all that well, but considering the difficulty and the small amount of difference in points between 3th and 4th, we are really happy! And sort of glad that it is over, because it was a tremendous amount of work for seven weeks..