August 2011
Dreams
I love dreaming. Whenever I can, I try to do lucid dreaming, although I only succeed in that rarely (and mostly on weekends). When I have an interesting dream in the middle of the night, I replay it in my conscious mind before going back to sleep again, so that I'll remember it when I eventually wake up. For dreams that happen right before waking up permanently, they always came back to me about half an hour after waking up. Sometimes I'm in a train going to work, sometimes I'm having breakfast in a hotel, and then suddenly I remember my last dream in clear detail.
The really interesting or emotional dreams I write down in a dream-log, to keep track of the things I dream of most and the things that keep recurring in some form of other. I often dream of places I visited in my childhood, despite having no strong (conscious emotional connection to it any more in my current life. A similar pattern happens with people: people I've met ages ago and sometimes haven't seen for years often occur/recur in my dreams, whereas the people who are currently in my life rarely show up. Perhaps it takes my subconscious a very (very) long time to process the introduction of new people in my life? Strange.
Trying to explain my dreams is another great pasttime. Sometimes they are really easy to explain. For example, last night I dreamed about a friend I had seen online just before I went to bed. In the dream, this friend was in some kind of trouble, which clearly correlated with the message she sent about the hurricane approaching New York, where she lives. In the dream my subconscious completely twisted that information out of warp though, and changed it into a very wacky situation where her bicycle was broken and we had to take the bus instead. And rather than a hurricane, there was massive snowfall instead.
Those dreams are easy to explain, but every once in a while I have a dream that mixes locations, persons and situations that have no connection at all. For example, I once dreamed about an ex-girlfriend killing my mother by blowing up her caravan. As I chased her I ran into an army of nazis. How peculiar is that? And there was no just-before-sleep event that had any relation to the dream either. I wonder if the just-before-sleep things you do only trigger dreams you have right before awakening. Or perhaps those dreams you get right before you wake up are just the ones you remember the most strongly.
Ah, I like weekends. Plenty of chances to dream.
GIT and Eclipse
Recently I'm using GIT quite heavily, and I find that it doesn't interact very well with my favorite IDE, Eclipse. The egit plugin integrates quite well and mimics the behavior of the SVN plugins almost perfectly. There's just one major problem: it's crappy-ass slow. Committing things is near instant, but then for some reason the tasks just enters a waiting state which lasts for hours. This is not a major problem as it doesn't affect anything. I'm suspecting it might be a quirk of the Windows version of GIT that I'm using.
What's really unfortunately slow is the synchronize perspective. It takes forever to get the list of changes, which is strange, because the command line version will do it for you instantly even for quite large projects. As a result I only use the synchronize functionality of Eclipse once: right before committing my code. I really want to make more use of the synchronize functionality though.
Lastly, one thing that the creators of egit did do very well is that they let you use the command-line version of GIT as much as you like. Eclipse just picks up the changes and continues functioning normally. I remember having more troubles with this in the past when I was still using SVN.
I haven't really noticed any of GITs advantages yet. Branching and merging is supposed to be easier with GIT, but I've never really worked on an SVN project with as many users as my current GIT project has. GIT does have a generally faster and more robust feel to it, but that effect is negated if you're using Eclipse because the IDE integration makes it just so horribly slow. In short: no verdict yet. Need more playtime.
Solitude
I'm noticing a severe lack of concentration in myself for anything outside of work. After a one-hour commute back home I just can't be bothered to write a meaningful blogpost, watch a quality movie or play an entertaining game. My attention span shortens and before I know it I'm back into my usual routine of checking Facebook, then Twitter, then a news website, then another news website, then Facebook again... ad infinitum. This is decidedly unhealthy behavior. I used to avoid watching TV to avoid falling prey to this kind of looping boredom, yet now I am stuck in it anyway.
The previous blogpost relates to this idea quite well. It's easy to muster up the strength to change the world when you're well-rested and you have all your mental facilities at your disposal. Alas, after a long day of work, you often don't. This blogpost is a perfect example of this phenomenon being manifested, as I didn't at all intend to write about this topic, rather I wanted to steer the conversation somewhere else but my brain did not cooperate. Thus I ended up ranting about the same thing again.
The washer is beeping at me. More things I have to do. I can't wait to have peace of mind again.
Posted in
Thoughts
This is water
A speech on how to deal with the tedium of daily life and still keep an open mind. It might be a bit long but it's definitely worth the read. I certainly recognized myself in some of the situations described. It is really difficult to remain awake when you're at the supermarket, waiting in line after a long day of work. Some people are, like mentioned in the speech, defaulting their behaviour to not being awake, and there's all kinds of reasons for that. Personally, I do everything I can to avoid tedious, boring, 'supermarket' situations like that exactly because I know it will numb my brain. Stay awake, people!
Posted in
Thoughts
New version of Moodlogger
Had a bit of time today and decided to work on Moodlogger for a bit. The new version is awaiting approval in the app store. The new version has two new features:
- Moods are now ordered by category, and you can swipe up and down to switch between positive, neutral and negative moods.
- I added a Stats tab which shows you your online statistics.
Yup, it still works.
Cycled around London a bit. Tried the Endomondo app but it turned off on me halfway through. Oh well. Here's the result.
Posted in
Cycling
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Uncategorized
