Greg Roberts Flow Like Water

AI awakens NOW

2015-08-25T09:02:00.000-04:00

AI:
looking for primes
dark matter
horse
didn't expect AI to look like this...
AI radio frequency
AI but human
robot prime numbers
game AI
game-bots
gravity
heat signature
birthing
dance
slow pitch
detection

truth

2015-08-25T08:59:00.001-04:00

The Perfect Moment

2013-11-25T10:28:00.002-05:00

for so many years I’ve been telling myself that I will be happy once...

...once I move to San Francisco
...once I team up with my dream girl
...once I get a job at Google
...once I have $100,000 in savings

Today, for the first time ever, I started to grok that adage: "what if I already have everything I desire in this very moment, and I simply haven't been able to see it?"

I've been encouraging students, family, friends and lovers to 'embrace the now' for years now... in fact, I've done a pretty good job of it myself, neatly annihilating both past and future in the process. Now I'm taking those acts to graduate level.

This was partially triggered by a dinner conversation with my dad and kids the other night. My dad was making some comment about obesity, and I yelled out: "Dad, don't you get what I DO?!?! I teach people to embody health, to use their bodies to maximum capacity... I throw people high up in the air!" And in that moment, I felt: that's the strongest statement of my Id, of my purpose, that I've made in a long time. And I also realised in that moment: I didn't make a single mention of software, or design, or videogames in that statement.

Let the meditation begin. Let the manifestation begin. Let the thoughts stew.
Let us see what spiritual harvest Thanksgiving produces.

Required Reading

2013-03-12T17:44:00.001-04:00

I've been investing an immense amount of my time recently developing business plans and applications for the forthcoming Google Glass platform. Alongside my planning and coding efforts, I've been re-freshing my cultural vocabulary with books and movies that are aligned to the Brave New World. So without further adieu, I present to you:

Required Reading

for the forthcoming

Age of Wearables

MMXIII A.D.

1. Down and out in the Magic Kingdom,
by Cory Doctorow

Jump start your brain cells with this warped view of a possible future, where everything is provided and people only work on the things they love, and money is social credit. It takes a few chapters to get your bearing on this one, yet persevere, its worth it.

2. Hackers, by Steven Levy

the true story of how the modern computing revolution started. Including absolutely fascinating stories about MIT hacker culture, and the founding of both Apple and Microsoft. Must read to get your history on, and see context for where we are today.

3. The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson

This dense read grows on you with time. Presents a very distant future where nano-tech is pervasive and global society has splintered into massive groups of haves- and have-nots, as well as spiritualists vs. technologists... wait a second, that kind of sounds like today... you're starting to get it. Read on.

4. The Age of Spiritual Machines,
by Ray Kurzweil

This is one of the most mind blowing books I've ever read. In fact, its the only book that I went out and bought 10 copies of to share with my friends. Kurzweil is a genuine genius, having invented both the modern music synthesizer as well as voice recognition. A unique and mind shattering view of what is to come once machines transcend human intelligence.

5. Ready Player One,
by Ernest Cline

As Snow Crash was to the 90s, RPO is to the 10s. A refreshing view of a world goggled in to a compelling VR land, and a delightful journey through 80s techno-trivia. EverQuest? World of WarCraft? Get ready for OASIS.

6. Snow Crash,
by Neal Stephenson

The grand mama of cyberpunk. A rude and awakening and punchy vision of a post-technology world where hip youngsters and global corporations mash together to save the world. Since you've read this far, go ahead and read this one first.

The Happy Accident

2013-01-25T14:05:00.001-05:00

The Happy Accident
Painting, Oil on Canvas, c. 1500

In this painting, a woman holds a pillowcase, which is ripped. The flax is beginning to spill out. On the surface of the pillowcase, there is a simple white pattern on a columbine blue field.

As she reaches inside, her hand wraps around a small object, and a a smile of delight forms upon her face, slightly more obvious than the Mona Lisa. She pulls her hand out and discovers a small diamond.

We find out that the pillowcase was just ripped. The pattern is a code which is in fact the source code of the Universe; the flax fibers, splayed about in wild spirals and coils and chaos and complexity, are the strings of the Universe; the diamond was a lump of coal that was lost when the pillow was first created at the beginning of Human Time.

Through an incredible combination of luck, time, pressure, and pseudo-random events, the pillowcase was ripped open and the diamond is discovered.

The woman is Athena, spinstress, wise storyteller, beauty. She stands amongst several other gods.

Our entire existence is but
one rainbow cast from the first ray of light
that hits the newly minted diamond.

A Happy Accident, indeed.

dream vision
2008-02-28, 2am

Taming the [Inner] Beast

2013-01-09T14:45:00.000-05:00

The journey with Yola is fairly epic. She is now an 80 lb. mini-Beast, 90% German Shepherd and 100% Puppy. I've been genuinely struggling with her of late, as much physical as mental and emotional. She can anger me like no one else. Our biggest debate is leash pulling.

For quite some time, I've been showing her that I am her alpha. When she was a mere 3 months and 35 pounds, I'd show her who was boss by running faster and further than her. I'd run her 3 miles until she collapsed with exhaustion, simply flopping on the ground and refusing to move.

By the time she was 5 months and 50 pounds, however, she had far outpaced me in the running department. I'd run 8 miles on steep trail, and the entire time she'd sprint circles around me, chasing every squirrel, bird, and buck she could find. I conservatively estimated that she sprinted 2.5 miles for each mile I ran. It's still a goal of mine to find her adolescent distance limit, though I think it will require me running upwards of 20 miles in a stretch to find it. Stay tuned.

Along this quest, I started running off trail here in Marin. Yesterday morning I was gleefully galavanting down a steep slope, in the tall wet grass, unable to see my feet. I was revelling in the fact that Yola was a bit scared of the steep terrain, and I charged onward...

Yola on trail, atop Mount Tam

And I charged... right into a nasty hole. As my foot absorbed the surprise impact, I heard a sickening crunch of bone on bone, and collapsed in agony. I screamed not just from the physical pain, but from the emotional agony surrounding it. So much of my life and joy revolves around physical activity: acrobatics, running, hiking. In that instant, I saw the next few months of practice and teaching evaporate before my eyes, and it HURT. My barbaric yawlp echoed across the valley.

I then lay there still for a few minutes, allowing the soft tissue to recover, hoping it was simply a minor sprain. Within an hour, timidly hobbling down the mountainside, I knew it was worse than that. I call Bec to come pick me up in the car. Argh.

The rest of that day, I lay upon the couch, my foot covered in ice, pondering what could have possibly gone wrong, and what lessons I could learn from this. Here's the short list I wrote:

LESSONS, DAY 1:

Slow Down
When you push too hard, things break
stay on marked trails
persevere: teach my acro classes even when crippled
corollary: enlist help of friends
obtain health insurance
visit my brother in Grand Rapids

Fast forward 24 hours. In ankle brace, moving far slower than 1 mph, I take Yola on her walk. 90% of the pulling behavior has magically dissapeared. Who knows why. I rationalise that it's because she has no way to match pace with me that slowly. When it takes a full three seconds for me to descend a single stair-step, she is forced to take one simple step at a time, and look at me quizzically, waiting for me to ambulate, before taking her next step.

LESSON 2:

by slowing things down to ULTRA-SLOW,

the training is actually starting to work.

This lesson translates to the playground as well. Where I once had 1 in 4 odds of being able to leap and tackle and catch her mid-stride when she didn't come right to me, now I have only one option: patiently wait for her to come to me when called. A dog will simply never come close to an angered owner; The only way to lure them is with kindness, sweetness, and or food... or in Yola's case, the most effective manner of all, a ball or stick, the promise of play... which brings me to Go Fetch, what I actually feel is at the true core of all the training.

I had an epiphany the other day regarding "Go Fetch"... When Yola was a mere 2 months old, she accomplished that skill flawlessly and perfectly, retrieving the stick and bringing it right to my feet every time. Somewhere along the line, she decided that it was more rewarding to parade around with the stick and growl than to bring it back for another throw. This has generated an immense amount of confusion and frustration on my part, and my general solution is to make her sit 30 feet away from me, then approach her slowly and make her give me the stick. Sometimes I get it and sometimes she runs.

Once again, being a gimp simplifies this game greatly. As I am largely immobile, she either brings me the stick, or we stop playing. That simple. While she still has yet to bring the stick right to my feet, we are getting a lot closer.

And so my latest:

LESSON 3:

Stay Still, Remain Calm, and

train from a place of Power.

The story continues...
Stay tuned.

Interested in more life lessons to cultivate Joy and Happiness?
get your very own copy of
Bianca's Guide to Healthy Living!

Play Hard: Guided by Providence

2012-09-21T15:32:00.000-04:00

In Moab today. Utah is "Life Elevated".
Moab is "where Adventure Begins."
Here's how.

Slept under the stars last night just outside the gates of Canyonlands National Park. Dream visions were basically: slow down... and, another strange driving vision. For me, the dream metaphor of driving has always been about how in control, or lack of control, I have over my life at any given point in time. When I was at PlayMotion, I had a recurring nightmare about being in the drivers seat, passed out, eyes barely open, in the night, in the rain, in a car whose brakes didn't work and whose accelerator was stuck on full throttle. The metaphor seems totally clear now.

Other times I've been in the passenger or back seat with someone else driving. Again, fairly clear.

Last night, though, I had a very unique vision: I was in the back seat of my Suburban, the Big Black Truck, and JuJu, one of the young founders of Alchemy, was in the front seat. The odd thing was, I had a steering wheel mounted to the back of the front passenger seat. And JuJu wasn't really paying attention to the road that much, because I was steering from the back seat. Need to think about this one a little more. While a gut preference would be to be directly in the drivers seat of a capable vehicle, Being in the 'limousine privelege' seat and maintaining steering control might just be the best of both worlds.

Now, back to waking life.

Arriving in Moab for unknown reasons. On my way in, a fleet of 10 or so Porsche Cayman's zoom out of town. I stop by the Holiday Inn Express for a free breakfast. And there are literally tons of bicyclists mulling the in parking lot. They have racing shirts on that say "DC Metro Area", and I ask one of them what's up. "We're here for the Moab Century Race." Cool. Eat breakfast. Afters, stop two girls in the parking lot, ask if they're from DC. They are. They encourage me to enter the race. I think about it for a little bit. You Only Live Once. YOLO. Here we go.

I can't quite believe I'm doing this. But what the hell, I was just thinking about how little exercise I'm getting on this trip. Time to step it up.

So, tomorrow I will rise at 5:30am, don my biking gear, down a large breakfast, and head out into the wilderness of Moab for a race. w00t!!!

a vision for life 2.0

2012-09-15T18:54:00.001-04:00

At Burning Man this year, I experienced the absolute turning point of my vocational life.

I was wandering through Center Camp, looking at the art in the gallery. One of the panels was empty, and a small hand written sign said:

"Sit in front of me,
look into the mirror, and
see your Heart's Truth."

Leaning against the ground was a mirror mosaic with a heart in the middle. I sat down in lotus position and stared into the mirror. As expected, I saw a multi-faceted reflection of myself. A bit wild-looking due to 4 days in the desert, but still, at its core, my familiar face.

I stared deeper. It was then that I noticed a small gap of a few inches above the mirror. Shifting my gaze to the gap, I was fascinated to see a delicate hand, painting with a brush on heavy artist paper.

The Artists Hand by Alex Grey

My mind started reeling: was this the metaphor of the mirror? Was this person painting me? Who was it? Was there a hidden camera so they could see me? Where were they? Were they in a hidden room? I moved my head slightly and looked closer. The painter was a woman. She didn't appear to notice me. So I leaned in conspiratorially and whispered "pssst!". Slowly, curiously, she turned her head, then leaned closer to me, and calmly responded: "Yes?" She was at attention.

I explained to her the stated purpose of the mirror, saying "So I was seeking my heart's truth, and here you are, painting!" Unexpectedly, she began to weep. She gasped, then blurted out: "I used to be an artist, that was my path, and then I sold my soul to commercial success and the corporate world." She continued to cry, tears running freely down her refined face. I decided to breach the gap, telling her: "Wait one minute."

I got up, determined to find physical access to the other side of the mirror. I wound my way around the gallery labyrinth, and sure enough, there she was, a petite woman in a chair, at a table, painting with watercolors, crying. I had her get up and gave her a big hug. We both sat down, and I listened to her story. Somehow we got to the subject of acrobatic yoga. She called it acroyoga. It turned out that she was planning to attend a workshop in Costa Rica, with a teacher who she used to practice with as a child. It just so turned out that that teacher was an acrobatic friend of mine. The world gets smaller every day, in a good way.


Lux rocks deep metta acro on playa

I invited her to practice a little, and we found a nice quiet spot and worked through some therapeutics and basic acrobatics. It was in this flow that I realised that even experienced dancers needed very clear and explicit instruction from the base; every school of movement has their own vocabulary. I also realised that there is a very sensitive balance between agressive, tight, beautiful, fun acro and gentle, loving, careful metta antigravity massage. I try to balance the two. In the midst of this thought pattern, Jennifer reached down from the air and tickled me. It was the most natural and fun thing; luckily I'm an experienced base and giggled and laughed while maintaining balance.

We shared a little more conversation, exchanged contact information, and parted ways with a deep and lasting hug.

Of all my playa experiences, it is this energetic exchange that I've returned to most often.

Life 2.0, here we come!

home again

2012-08-24T05:11:00.002-04:00

arrived once again at my second home... lovely SF! Let the grand adventure begin!!!!

Blackout? How to be prepared.

2012-07-01T10:26:00.000-04:00

the house next door didn't fare so well

This is fascinating. The DC area suffered a massive wind and lightning storm, as close to a tornado as I've ever witnessed. Terrified by the incessant banging of branches on the house, I ran outside to the park to get a better perspective. The sight was truly epic. Blue and Pink and White lightning, howling winds, massive trees swaying 30' in either direction as the winds tore through them. I'd never witnessed colored lightning before, and the gale force winds were so strong that I momentarily wondered if this was in fact a nuclear incident.

So now, PepCo is telling residents that it will be 4 to 5 days before power is restored. In a first world country... the nation's capitol, no less! Amazingly, or perhaps naturally, all the prime commercial locations are online, with massive diesel generators. So the mall is air conditioned and online, but none of the traffic lights work. Amazing. And so it goes that I find myself at the Mall, along with hundreds of other refugees, chilling out by a working power outlet, charging my arsenal of Apple devices, and availing myself of the gloriously free wifi. All I need now is a haircut, a manicure, and a sultry waitress bringing me an ice cold beer.

In all, I like the effects of the power outage. It brings people out of their shells, bonds them in a common struggle, and opens up channels of support and communication. I've found many more people out of their homes, and the whole situation at the traffic lights, massive intersections with only courtesy to guide them, both fascinates and delights.

So for myself, and all of us, I've compiled my "things to make sure you have ready in a blackout".

Enjoy:

General Knowledge:
- It gets darker inside before it gets darker outside, by at least 90 minutes
- It makes a big difference if it's a new moon or a full moon
- Headlamps are the bomb
- ICE IS KEY : ACQUIRE SOME QUICKLY
--- not just for meat / dairy preservation, but almost more importantly, for
- COLD BEVERAGES
- You get up at sunrise. Period. Daylight is precious.
- Your car is your generator
--- which is a good reason to have a full tank of gas at all times, or in the words of a good friend, always fill up your talk when it goes below half.
- and a good reason to have a car charger for your phone
- if you want to go full bore, get a good 750W inverter at a truck stop. For about $100, you can have normal AC power in your vehicle.
- Batteries are good - new, all sizes AAA to D... and make especially good gifts for neighbors.

Recommendations / Wisdom:
- The hour before sunset is hyper critical::
--- Clean things up and get everything in order
- Before Dark, Know exactly where your essential items are!
--- Flashlight
--- Cellphone
--- Water
--- Glasses
--- Toothbrush
- HAVE A HEADLAMP ON WELL BEFORE DARK

Casual Observations
- not having coffee is a challenge
- It's a little scary at night. Houses seem vulnerable.
- People are generally good and function well in groups
- Major traffic intersections with no stoplights, and everyone gets along... wow.
- People go outside more and socialize more when there is no TV or AC
- It's eerily quiet at night... and pleasantly quiet.
- ...except for the damn generators. Here in suburban DC, it appears that about 3% of houses have gennies. Impressive, actually. Except for the damn noise.
- this is the first time I've been excited to wield my 4-D cell MagLite.
- Various lighting options witnessed throughout the neighborhood:
--- Solar, genie, gas lamps, flashlights, candles. the gas lamps were especially charming.
--- Love the candles... Even in stores!
- People go to sleep at nautical twilight

credo

2012-06-03T01:37:00.000-04:00

Reward success. Learn from failure. Link to evidence. Honor integrity. Show your work. Seek truth. Correct mistakes. Make new ones. #credo

— Alex Howard (@digiphile) June 1, 2012

The Peaceful Warrior

2012-05-24T14:01:00.002-04:00

Today's wonderfully enslaved and ultimately guilty and satisfying pleasure was to buy a bunch of songs I'd wanted for months, load up the iPod, roll out the BlockRocker, kick back with a Rolling Rock, and wash first my new car, then my dad's classic roadster.

The realization didn't hit until the second beer and the second car.

Throughout the entire car washing project, I had multiple flashbacks to the [original] movie Karate Kid, where Mr. Miyagi instructs the young boy on precisely how to wash all his cars. The circular motion, unbeknownst to him, is meant to teach him some of the fundamental flows of kar-a-tey.

Rocking to that wonderful soundtrack, I embodied all my best dance, yoga, and martial arts moves as I circled, squatted, and polished the cars. And sometime in the midst of the roadster, I felt this wonderful feeling overwhelm me, of service, of gratitude, of fun. Yes, I was washing my dad's car. No, I didn't need to. Yes, I was enjoying it. And I glowed in the light of the service, son to father. Me getting my workout, him getting his roadster sparkley clean.

When I was done, music still playing, he came out and I gave him the honor of inspecting my work. He shook my hand, and like a little kid, without hesitation, with a huge grin on his face, hopped in, put the top down, and sped off into a new adventure... like it should be.

Vision into Life

2012-05-24T13:55:00.001-04:00

VISION:
dream night of May 23, 2012.

a woman's body truly is a cockpit.
an space within which you can drive at high human speeds, with a platitude of controls, dials, and knobs.
some are junky old cars with torn seats, others are modern machines with heated leather. take your pick.

TRANSLATE VISION TO REALITY.

THREE DREAMS:
L. NY. the 100,000 years spaceship dream.
C. SF. the twin hoops rainbow dream.
A. JB. the vivid beach teleportation dream.
> supporting cast: KH, SR, AC, TJ

based on last nights dream, the Alison Dream, one solution I see is to drive all night and arrive in Florida in the morning. Yet I loathe this idea, the hard drive. In the dream, no drive was required. In the dream, I simply placed my credit card on the table outside my Dad's house, went to sleep in my own bed, and woke up the next morning outside the condos in Jax Beach, with my credit card sitting on the same glass table, there. I explained to Alison that I was dreaming, that I was actually in DC, that I had somehow mysteriously teleported to the beach and might disappear at any moment.

another solution is to email Lila and accept her open offer to travel to Montreal in a car from NYC. Yet I fear this idea, the spontaneous trip.

i am so tired from randomly driving hard. from spazzing. from ending up in places and situations and wondering how i got there.

the AT was designed to calm me down.
so was marathon training.
so is triathlon training.

they were also designed to purify my temple, my body, to cleanse it of the alcohol dragon, to maximize my lungs and muscles and mind / muscle connection.

those things, walking is a metaphor for driving, and driving is... intentional.
driving is harnessing the power of evolution and machine and fuel to move in a given direction, efficiently and quickly.

how intriguing then, apart from the AT, which was a clear directed vector North, that the races bring you full circle... though, perhaps, you are a different person when you finish, then you were when you started.

The Fractal Nature of Things

2012-05-20T15:19:00.003-04:00

I just had a major life realization.

For the past 5 years, I had told myself that I was claiming my divine mobility by shedding myself of material things. I let go of my house, my furniture, my wife, everything; all attachments. I reduced my possessions to those things that would fit into a backpack. literally. and hiked. and worked. and got healthy.

Now I am digging through my very austere, very organized things, and think: I need to go through all of this and throw out some pieces of it. And I realised all the sudden: there is no effective difference between sorting through a garage, a storage compartment, or a backpack. In fact, at any scale, material things only fall into a few core categories:

sentimental
necessary
luxury
tools
toys

...these categories simply expand and contract with wealth and stability. A home is simply a very large, very rooted tent... a container in which to hold possessions and within which to seek shelter and safety.

The irony is that I've learned that safety is everywhere you bring it... and no where. I've successfully fended off 350 pound wild bears while camping in the wilderness, and been overwhelmed with armed force breaking down the locked door of my 'secure' apartment.

So, here's to responsibly building up the fractal of material possessions again... and to always remembering my humbling moments of need and poverty, and to fundamentally CHANGING THE METHODS BY WHICH I INTERACT WITH THINGS.

It is, after all, not the things we have, its how we treat them, how we use them, and how they effect our interactions with the most important thing in the universe, our fellow humans.

What things do you have in your life that hold you back?

What things do you have that help you relate to others?

Reality Speaks Loudly

2012-05-12T05:22:00.003-04:00

When you die,
you're gonna regret the things you don't do.
You think you're queer?
I'm gonna tell you something, we're all queer.
You think you're a thief?
So what.
You get befuddled by a middle class morality?...
get shut of it!
shut it out!

you cheat on your wife?
you did it.
live with it

You fuck little girls?
So, be it.

There's an absolute morality?
Ha, maybe.
And... then, what?
If you think there is,
go ahead, be that thing!

Bad people go to hell?
I don't think so.
You think that?
Act that way.

Hell exists on Earth?
Yes.
I won't live in it.
That's Me.

Tri Training Revelations

2012-05-02T09:58:00.001-04:00

Back into the swing of tri-training. Finally got my bike shoes and clips the other day. Very much a transformation of the bike experience. Ability to deliver 100% power to the wheels, with near perfect efficiency. Can now focus completely on optimal form / minimization of lateral sway / cadence.

Trek 1000 on Fit Sport. Mobile Base One.

Today was the very first day of transition training. My original intent was simply to see how fast I could get into running shoes from the bike. That exercise proved trivial; 8 seconds flat. Then I realised the real point of transitioning: not how fast you could prepare for the next phase, but actually how fast you could enter it. So it was that 12 minutes later, I began a brisk run.

That's where it hit me: this is going to be a challenge. The run felt hard. My legs, spoiled by the even and perfect circular flow of the bicycle, were now being forced into a concussive hammering, left right left right left right. I realised the real art wasn't the micro transitions between legs, but rather, the actual physical phase transitions of the muscles from one hyper-regular activity to the next.

Metaphors run deep.

T minus 91 days and counting to Boulder.

Lessons of the Tri

2012-02-21T12:50:00.001-05:00

Today I am repairing my bicycle. This is a task that, traditionally, I have taken to the bike shop to accomplish. Truly, they can do in 10 minutes what takes me 2 hours. But in making the commitment to race in a triathlon, I feel that I've also forged an inner agreement to learn about transportation technology. To ramble a bit, I started this journey on the highest of the high end, building a database of the world's fastest driving machines, exploring their pedigree, performance specifications, evolutions and design patterns.

Like marathon runners, the top handful of exotic cars are both light and powerful. They make do with smaller engines, amped up to outrageous power via the use of supercharging technology (where the air power of the exhaust fumes is re-inserted into the main torque generator), and shave off every last ounce to achieve essentially ultralight mass. Add to that superior aerodynamics, and smart gearboxes, and you get ultimate performance.

So coming back to present-day reality... My model of the triathlon goes something like this: the tri is a model of our own human evolution, our human race as it were. We began as aquatic beings (mythology: Atlantis, creationism: the fifth day, evolution: prokaryotes), and that is the swimming. We then crawled onto land, and that is the running. Finally, we created technology, and that is the bike. Yes, yes, I know that the formal order of the tri is swim / bike / run, however, when I make my own race, it will be swim / run / bike : sea / land / tech.

I've also, in the past few years, learned to do some primitive maintenance on my motor vehicles. And again, it takes me three to 10 times longer than the professional mechanics, yet I get the satisfaction of knowing how this magical machine which transports me works.

A year or so ago, I found myself carless. So I caught rides with friends, and more often than not, biked everywhere. I even once biked 35 miles to a yoga class in the suburbs. As I got more used to it, I found the bike completely fascinating. Whereas running was a jarring sport, making my bones and body numb by the incessant and infinitely repetitive impact of feet on hard pavement, the bike had this feeling of... of ultimate FLOW. Like, it really felt, especially once I transitioned from my mountain bike to a racing bike, like this was the Ultimate transformation of power, from human energy to linear velocity. With every stroke of the pedals, I felt the direct transfer of power to the gears, and the direct translation of that into raw distance traveled. Soooo efficient! So graceful! So able, even more so than a sprint, to suck the oxygen right out of your lungs!

Now to get to the point of my post:

The marathon taught me two key life lessons: 1) disciplined training for an event guarantees that the actual event goes well, and 2) I can indeed accomplish anything that I a) set my mind to, and b) train for, and c) plan for.

Now the tri- is teaching me how to be responsible for my own technology. How to fix tires, brakes, gears, pedals. How human energy and mechanical leverage can fuse together in a beautiful and flowing expression of grace and power. How things work. That I am an empowered being that can fix his own ride whenever necessary.

That's all for now.
'Til next time, enjoy the ride!
G

quiet in the storm: ultraphysics is born

2012-02-14T10:30:00.002-05:00

Well,
the start-up work has finally settled down a little, so it's time to invest a little in the Dream. In this case, the dream is next generation educational tools and toys for children.

One of my favorite teachers in high school was always Mr. Whipple, a brilliant and inspired teacher of AP Physics. In that single year, or intimate class of 8 genii explored everything from simple rigid body mechanics all the way up to electromagnetism and thermodynamics.

It is my goal to encapsulate the entire body of that learning into an interactive lab on multi-touch tablets and table surfaces. So, without further ado, I present to you:

UltraPhysics
by Greg Roberts
an interactive lab modelling our physical universe.

Enjoy :)

suicide options

2012-01-30T09:29:00.001-05:00

This morning I had a really really strange dream where I was extremely depressed and utterly convinced I would commit suicide. I felt that my life had just completely went awry, and that it was time to end it and restartthe whole thing, if that was at all possible. It then occurred to me that when I committed this final act, I wanted to do it right. So I went to my laptop and began to google "how to commit suicide".

Before I finished writing the letters, I realised that if I googled that, I would probably be hammered with hundreds of ads for help lines, and that I would have to call one of them... because, seriously, those people are angels, they aren't charging anything, and wouldn't anyone want to speak to at least one other human and check in before leaving this world?

With that realisation, I started to think other things. Such as, first: maybe there isn't a restart button for life. Maybe if we choose to end this life, that's it, and our soul is send to the great landfill in the sky. Maybe this one life is the only one we get, and it is a gift to be cherished.

Second, I thought, if I am desperate enough to consider ending this alltogether, then really, what do I have to lose? What could be worse than death? If I'm thinking of ending it, then literally, I can do ANYTHING. Am I depressed about a delinquent credit card bill? Past due taxes? I can throw those bills right out the window! I won't be the first person on this earth to die with a negative net worth. And really, is that what I will be judged by, upon my exit?

So somehow, with this odd dream, I awoke with both subtle terror and grand hope.

I awoke, in fact, in a very strange and utterly luxurious hotel room, the bright sun reflecting up onto the ceiling, thinking,

THIS IS THE FIRST DAY OF MY NEW LIFE!

A Manifesto For LIFE

2011-12-19T17:10:00.003-05:00

I am aware that Life is an Adventure that I, as God, have crafted for myself, for my own personal enjoyment and growth.

I am aware that life is a jigsaw puzzle, and that Ideas are the Keys to Connection.

I am aware that personal relationships are the physical embodiment of these Keys.

I am aware that it is ALWAYS better to say too much than too little.

I am aware that Dance is one of the best experiences available to Humans on this Planet Earth.

I live my Life by Opening... the experiences, thoughts, and actions that bring schpings* to my spine, those tingling electrical signals that run from the base of your spine to your cerebral cortex and back again... THOSE are the signals of the Universe, of Growth and Love and Life.

I love every single person on this planet. I commit myself to seeing the best in every person, place, and thing, and both honoring and demanding that those qualities surface in that individual, location, or item.

I realise that, by personal choice, life has a VERY WIDE dynamic range, from agony to ecstasy, from joy to sorrow, from death to Life. I was placed on this planet, into this Universe, to surf those waves, and I am uniquely capable of riding this experience to its joyful and wonderful and AWESOME conclusion.

I appreciate the deep fractal metaphors of Life, and also am highly aware that while metaphors are to be appreciated, being alive HERE and NOW is truly the greatest gift ever.

I will accumulate wealth simply as part of the Game I choose to play. I will honor the material wealth when it comes my way, give generously to others as I can, and be content with what I have at all times.

I will honor Play and Fun as two of my highest values. I respect that this universe is formed as the direct manifestation of the play between Shiva and Shakti, and that our highest forms are realized when we directly embody those archetypes, when we laugh, dance, sing, make love, incite laughter, create smiles in ourselves and others.

I love life.

I love YOU.

Together, let's consciously initiate the Millennium of Divine Play.

* THANK YOU ROSIE for gifting me with this Word. <3

The Social Net... work.

2011-11-08T03:25:00.002-05:00

Watched this tonight for the second time after an odd dream about driving around the Valley with Zuck... and cleaning up the debris from a hurricane.

Thoughts:

[IN THE MOVIE] Zuck repeatedly says: "we don't know what this is yet... we've got to feed it and fuel it and build it to find out..." That, indeed, is the essence of a start-up. The longer you can fuel it with pure passion, the longer you can do it with all nighters and near-deaths and reckless abandon, the better vision you will have. Yes, commercial realities set in. Founders have to pay their rent. And then they have a choice. Sell, hire a sales team, or close some investment rounds.

I do enjoy the paralegal's advice to Zuck on doing a settlement with Severin: "In the scheme of things, this is nothing but a speeding ticket."

Because, really... who is winning now?

[GOOD QUESTION :]

and now for something completely...

2011-10-17T13:16:00.003-04:00

Skyrails visualization engine

professional.

As the twists and turns of life would have it, my current free agent work centers around the area of corporate espionage... using completely public data in novel and surprising ways.

Basically, I'm focusing on running deep semantic and social graph analysis on key decision makers and their influencers for multi-billion dollar contracts. I achieved a relative degree of fame in the mid 90s when I declared on my blog that 'privacy is dead'. Truly, I never quite foresaw the social media revolution.

The best current embodiment of my work is Klout, which I encourage you to peruse. Using a members twitter handle as a key, it enables users to connect *all* their social profiles, and then derive conclusions from how many connections they have, and with whom, and how frequently those connections connect, across all the various sites, from LinkedIn to FaceBook to Flickr to FourSquare.

It then boils all that data into a single number, a person's social Klout score.

Clever.

PS - the fun part of what I'm doing is the data visualization of the social graph. LinkedIn has made a decent first attempt, check it out:

Chapter 51: Men in Black...

2011-09-17T21:23:00.002-04:00

...Rock City.

Not many things turn my head in Black Rock City these days. After 12 years of experiencing and participating in the annual techno-rave-art festival-in-the-desert that is Burning Man, I've seen quite a few tricks and tropes. Nonetheless, on this day, I did a double take, then triple take, as I spied six individuals in dark black suits, with shiny shoes, in technically perfect formation just outside the social mecca known as Center Camp.

Special Agents in formation @Center Camp, Thurs 13:42 PST GMT-8

I inspected them more closely. Each had the tell-tale white coil hanging from their ear, and each had the classic "totally detached and completely aware" look on their face. As I appreciated their theatre, my mind began to race. Inspired, I walked right up to one of them, a woman, and just as with the Buckingham Palace guards, true to form, she didn't even flinch as I deliberately crossed the boundary of comfortable personal space.

And once that feat was completed, I rapidly leapt to the, as it turns out, near fatal assumption that these were merely a bunch of mischievous burners, putting on some decently planned impromptu theatre. Just then, the center of all their attention was revealed to me: the payload. While six agents stood in perfect geometric formation, a seventh walked purposefully and rapidly precisely along the tight security lane they were creating. And, most importantly... that seventh agent was carrying... a briefcase.

Oh, the cleverness of these Burners! Their theatre was perfect! Respect welled in my heart. And I thought, what higher honor could I give them then to add some spice to their performance?... in the natural form of spontaneous interactivity? The fact that they were real secret agents, actually transporting a highly secret and valuable payload across town in broad daylight, didn't even enter into my realm of possibility.

So, as per my impulsive nature of the Now, without further thought, I accelerated into a full-on sprint, and leapt into the fray. Luck was actually on my side; simultaneously, a wild hippie had thoughts along the same lines as mine, and made contact a full second ahead of me. I watched in shock as he was slammed into the ground with violent force and military precision. I had seen this behavior before only once in my life: as a reporter documenting policemen beating peaceful protestors in the streets of Greenwich Village some ten years ago.

But the incident only served to encourage me, as I performed some real-time calculations mid-sprint, and figured that the hippie's failure might gain me a valuable window of distraction. The tall agent with the briefcase stood off to the side, while three agents held the hippie firmly spread eagle on the ground. I leapt in fast, grabbing at the briefcase handle. The resistance was shocking — the briefcase was near immobile; the agent had a grip of steel, his body rock solid like a good acro base. What happened next took me completely off guard.

The agent whipped his head around to face me as he pulled hard on the briefcase, and asked with a mean sneer: "You wanna get BEAT?!?" My jaw dropped at the implied malice of the question, as I continued to tug playfully on the briefcase. And as I stood semi-stunned processing his query, he reared back without hesitation and planted a full-on Chuck Norris kick into my upper ribcage, sending my body completely airborne... with both a stab of searing pain to my ribcage and a massive surge of adrenalin to my brain and heart.

A brief staredown followed, where I foolishly considered either going for the briefcase again or counter-attacking, simultaneously sizing him up: at around 6'4", 220, I quickly came to reality about the rib-cracking force of the kick and the agent's clear resolution, theatrical or not, to protect his payload at all costs.

Special Playa Agents leap into action. Payload: secure

I decided that laughter was the best route, and chuckled, haughtily thanking the agents for their uncompromising participation, then slowly limped back to my girlfriend, who had been diligently photographing the whole shenanigan.

I was in complete shock. It may have been theatre, but my god... it was dead serious theatre. Krista commented with clarity: "Wow, this really is a place where adults can live out any fantasy they want. And that makes this city... a Very. Dangerous. Place."

I continued to roll around in my head the possibility that they were actors, the possibilty that they were actual secret agents, and the particulars of what had just occured, all while moving slowly and carefully as needles of pain and reality shot through my freshly damaged ribcage.

EPILOGUE

Fast forward 96 hours. We're in the car, waiting in the interminable line for Exodus with Melissa and Richard. Melissa begins to tell a very surprising story. In her own words:

"...so during one of my adventures, I walk up to this middle-aged man wearing a suit, sitting in Center Camp with a black briefcase on his lap. Curious, I enter into a conversation with him. As we chat, he mentions that he is the "Banker of Black Rock City." When I ask him what that means, he simply gestures for me to reach into the briefcase, and instructs me to pull out whatever I find. So I reach in, and feel a tight stack of paper... I then proceed to peel one off the top. When I bring my hand out, I look, and to all appearances it looks to be a fresh, crispy $100 bill, with the iconic Burning Man icon stamped upon it. At first I think its a prank, but then I sense that it has that telltale crispy currency texture and weight, and it looks really real... I look around, and everywhere around me there are people, each holding various amounts of cash... and smiling"

Back in the car, hearing this, I call her bluff, and ask to see the bill. She digs in her pack for a moment, and sure enough, hands me a bona-fide USA Ben Franklin $100 bill.

POSTSCRIPT

On the airplane home, I am casually reading the Events Guide. I stumble upon this passage: "At an as yet undisclosed location, we will present a black briefcase containing $39,000 in cold hard U$ cash, distributed amongst 250 sealed envelopes each containing a random amount. The envelopes will be gifted on a first-come-first-serve basis to all participants, with the intention of battling the Myth of Capitalism." At first I think, oh, that's a good playa prank. Hahahaha. Let the suckers come. And then I remember the agents... and then I remember the bill...

And suddenly, all the threads converge,
and I will state for the record:

Where ever you are in the world — at a theatre, or in New York City, or at Black Rock City — if you see highly trained Secret Agents moving in tight formation and protecting a payload, think twice before attempting to attack them.

And for those of you who would never think of attempting such acts in the first place:

Enjoy the Show.

That is all.

dream car

2011-08-26T10:49:00.000-04:00

AcroYoga 2011

2011-08-19T23:19:00.000-04:00

Those wild kids in New York... :)