Month: November 2003

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

- Yann Martel, Life of Pi (author's note)

There was this guy again and he was saying that you know what there are a number of things that you should not forget. Whatever you do and whatever happens never ever forget these things that I am about to tell you. Listen carefully, very very carefully and do not speak back while I am explaining it. Be silent and absorb the sounds. When he spoke out loud and listed these number of things verbally in a monotone heavy voice and with a stoic expression and hands turning and arms flailing like subtle and undulating waves atop the ocean of awareness, it made perfect sense. Strange that it could but it did. Although it was not in any language with which any of us were familiar, the movements in time were just right to convey the real meaning to all of us standing there in the circle. Actually the number of things were not multiple nor were they disconnected: they were one and the very same thing. The feeling was that yes we would heed to this wise advise, spread out from this inner circle, return to where we had been, and then continue as if nothing had ever really happened. Off we went knowing in sadness and in happiness that we would never see the man nor any of the others again for as long as we lived.

Well I "thought" that I was still on the dole (receiving welfare), but I guess not any more...

Just discovered that the kind folks doing the welfare here have decided to terminate my monthly unemployment allowance. Starting the first day of this month and lasting onwards into infinity. Just like that. They did not even think of warning me in advance. Like it was important that they surprise me. Hey mister so-and-so, guess what?!

Now it is down to zero euros and zero cents per month. Unless I decide to stop pretending to me my own entrepreneur, e.g. close down shop and get rid of my upstart company. A kind of blackmail.

Are they crazy? They say that I can only receive my unemployment fees if I stop working altogether, sit on the couch in front of the television all day and apply for at least one job a week.

Maybe I should get mad or then maybe again I should not get mad and just accept things, relax and hope for the best.

Hey but in the last six months I have already sent off more than four hundred and fifty job applications, imposed myself at seminars and congresses around the country, telephoned endlessly all kinds of potential companies, begged the neighbors and friends and relatives, so now what?

Onwards into infinity I guess.

In one way it may appear to be a dichotomy, but when viewed from a slightly different perspective it really starts making more sense.

At least that is what I hope happens.

On the one hand we are mere droplets in an ocean of infinity while on the other hand reality is exactly as it is because each and every one of us is there to experience and perceive it.

Without us there would be nothing and with us comes everything else.

(I tend to write these things when trying to rationalize the seemingly unfairness of the world around me, in the end hopefully making myself feel a little better.)

The two extremes of very very much and very very little seem entirely different and mutually exclusive, but are they really?

Yes and no.

Makes you think about livin'
and what life has to tell
said Jed to Grandpa
from inside his cell.

Neil Young
Greendale
Leave the driving

On Friday, November 21, 2003 at 04:18:09 (PST)
the hit-count for Cyber-Gish.com is: 30000.

That is the number of unique visitors (not including myself of course) since way back on September 9th, 2001 when I first put up that future-famous web site of mine.

Pretty amazing, isn't it?

The domain name kiffin.org now points to the future famous cyber-gish web site.

In the meantime, I closed the old account and reopened gishteq.com on a clean environment so I can restart afresh and invigorated.

I still am waiting to nab the kiffin.com domain name, but that has already been taken by Mr. Gilbert. Maybe someday soon he will give it up.

At first it seemed that the best way to go was from here to there.

When that failed it seemed that there was a better way to get from here to a different there.

When that failed it seemed best to start somewhere else and then go from that new starting point to yet a different there.

When that failed it seemed that perhaps starting there and coming here might be a viable option.

When that failed it was time to stop and give it all a good think.

(Think, think...)

Obstacles only get into the way when you expect them to get in the way.

Pick a route without obstacles and/or choose to do absolutely nothing except wait wait wait and perhaps something else might pop up.

Totally and completely unexpected.

Isn't that what wholeness of surrender is all about?

I am working on a winning concept for my company. It is called the "three-pronged" approach, and I firmly believe that this idea has much potential for creating business in the short term.

The "three-pronged" approach is based on the following question:

"What prevents e-business from getting maximum benefit from their data?"

The way of answering this question involves the following three components:

1. Knowledge (lack of qualified personnel)


2. Customer behavior (too much data)


3. Technology (lack of technical resources)

Items one and two are covered by "professional services" and items two and three are covered by "advanced web products."

The Three-pronged Approach.

The whole system is supported by a framework upon which measurement leads to results and so-called "complete solutions" are defined and implemented through the proper analysis of these measured results.

For some very strange reason they were all wearing high-heels which was the last thing I could see as they went down. Zoom in close and then focus sharply on that black tip pointing upward. I could see this very clearly as each and every one of the women dropped over the edge of the high building on which I was standing. Standing and waiting and wondering at the same time. And then I was thinking, "You see this is a dream I am dreaming." What made the whole scene even more bizarre was the fact that they were all dressed up in a backless black satin dress. Like they were leaving some big gala event out the back door and then like a line of lemmings ever so nonchalantly dropping over the edge. They just dropped head first over the edge as if it were the most normal thing in the world. As I knew already that we were situated at least fifty-five stories high, I figured for sure that there was not a chance in the world that even one of these gorgeous female beings would survive. Not a one. What a waste so many young and beautiful women at the prime of their lives just falling out of existence one after the other. Was I the cause of it? The last I saw of each satin dress flapping in the wind was that tip of the high-heel pointing straight up. Like here I am going down and just to be defiant the pointed tip will direct my gazing eye to where they were REALLY headed. Alright for now, see you all later. "Nothing I can do about it." At least that is how I thought at the time, but I could have been wrong.

Sure it seems to represent a bunch of buildings of various shapes and configurations. Notice how the arrows seem to be pointing somewhere, but not really anywhere special. Various directions to the right and to the left but all of them aiming upwards. At the top of the drawing, the sun and the moon are prominent, but not overly so. Some might say that the tallness exudes some form of erotic motion, that being the longing part of the painting. But I am not so sure that I agree. It is not an exaggerated form of longing in the physical sense of things, but rather a slightly spiritual inclination. Maybe even a soft mixture of the body and the mind melting into each other. Note the yellowish and dreamy colors. That reddish fog smeared across the bottom of the scene. A longing in the religious manner which forms the platform, the structure, those pointing buildings, which define our very nature. In some ways not directly visible, but in a creative urge to attempt to define and/or describe that which does not lend itself very easily to such a process. Just a bunch of buildings around a temple and that's all.

Whatever you do, you cannot miss this. Spam Radio! This web site is a very hilarious parody on all those awful unsolicited emails which have been flooding the Internet.

"Using a complex arrangement of pipes and funnels we turn the junk mail that we receive into a streaming audio broadcast that can be enjoyed from anywhere on the Internet..."

Pretty darn funny. My favorite is 13ft ejaculation.

Alright, so I go rejected again. (Hey, I am over-qualified again...) No big deal. And now for something completely different. Took my jogging route counter-clockwise this time around. Quite an interesting new perspective on life, health and happiness, I have to admit.

There is this old guy on the television and he must be in his middle seventies. Maybe even older.

He has this hat on and is dressed up in a fancy suit with this long thin tie. In the background, loud music is blaring, some kind of house party trance techno type of beat. Thump, thump, thump.

Believe it or not, he is also wearing a pair of dark sunglasses.

There he is dancing away and making all of these jerking gestures with his arms and legs, just like the kids do nowadays. Upon closer inspection, I have to admit that he is doing an amazingly good job of imitating these motions, exactly to the beat. So good is his dancing style in fact, that if it were not for is old wrinkled visage poking through the youthful facade and exposing his true age, I could swear that he was an experienced house partier in his early twenties.

This old guy stops dancing and catches his breath. He says that he missed out on his youth. (The camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of a young boy of ten years old or so.) You see, he was raised by strict parents and he has never had the opportunity to go through the phase of life called "youth." The phase of life through which everyone deserves to pass. Like it was always meant to be.

And then when he grew up he had to work hard. Work, work and more work the rest of his life.

Now it is time finally to catch up, make up for lost time. Finally, at last. In the evening he will head on off to the local disco and have some fun. Check out the scene, scope the babes, toss down a few. Yes, it is never too late to make up for lost time.

In the end it is not lost time at all, not really.

In many respects the older one gets the slower one becomes. Not true for the running and jumping and skipping antelope who is yours truly. You see, I set an all time record this afternoon. Not bad for someone my age who tries to pretend that he is still a young-buck athlete.

That's how long it took me. Normally my afternoon lope through the countryside takes me somewhere between twenty-four-and-a-half to twenty-six minutes. Why all of a sudden the big spurt of acceleration and the tremendous energy? How did I completely blow away my previous record of twenty-four-and-fourteen?

(Then again, what are the odds that the very moment I crossed the finish line, the driveway of my house, and hit the stopwatch, that the hundreds of seconds froze exactly to "00" right in time? One in a hundred you might say, but I say not.)

The turnstile into un-reality. The black-hole taking me to nowhere. Whoosh and then there it was again. Don't die of a heart-attack or else.

How did it happen? Don't know, but it feels good anyway.

Life is unpredictable in more ways than one.

Take for example my mood swings and the crazy things I end up doing out of the blue only to have to undo them afterwards (slight embarrassment).

Here is how it went. I just happened to come across a fantastic last-minute deal in the newspaper. The Vliegwinkel was offering a round-trip flight to San Francisco for only € 326 which is a fantastic deal when you think about it.

I went for it without thinking things out first. And then the big mistake was that I told everyone afterwards. Without thinking things out first. Dumb.

The reasons I thought of coming were simple: I just happened to find a cheap flight on the Internet and got all excited; and, I felt I needed a long-deserved break from this depressing life of not doing anything worthwhile. And of course I miss the family and friends pretty badly and just felt an urge to visit them again. Nothing wrong with that now is there?

Still, when one sits down and thinks about it logically, I should now be more focused (seriously focused, young man) on finding work here first. First and foremost. That is, before I can entertain the luxury of going to the California, bumming around and blowing even more money. Who do I think I am?

An aside: (My father used to have the somewhat annoying habit of getting some exciting plan in his head, announcing it to the whole family, promising everyone adventure and fun, but in the end not going through with it. This abrupt and often gruff cancellation was often at the very last minute, resulting in feelings of tremendous letdown from us the kids. I guess I must have gotten this trait from him. Could that be possible?)

So I'm afraid that I probably won't be going until the situation improves here. That could be some time, never or whatever, but who knows what the future will bring.

Hopefully I have not caused too much inconvenience and/or confusion to the family and friends involved. Mood swings beware.

Life must go on, I guess.

This is kind of an experimet in taking a three-dimensional view of a given object, better known as me (the object). I got Lennart to pretend he was an avante-guard European film producer and shoot a sequence while he walked carefully around me in as round a circle as possible.

You can interact with this object in a number of ways, namely:

• Place the mouse cursor on the RIGHT side of the object in order to play the film (note how the mouse cursor changes).
• Place the mouse cursor on the LEFT side of the object in order to play the film in reverse (note how the mouse cursor changes).
• Do nothing, and after 10 seconds or so the film will jump randomly to a different view.

I hope that this is an entertaining object to play around with. For those of you interested, you can download the SWI-file (436 KB) for your own eveil devices

Believe it or not, I submitted this example to the Swish-Tutorials web site, and they were so kind to add it to the download section.

Have a look for yourself at 3D-view forward, reverse or random.

The best part of the day lately is the early morning when everything has been taken care of and I can finally sit in peace behind my good old laptop in the hopes that this will be a better day.

Alright you the better day please show your face. We can work together if you want.

Recent experience has shown me beyond any reasonable doubt that having a stellar resume and extensive skills is a serious drawback in finding employment.

How many more times will I have to hear that I have an impressive resume and I am a really nice guy, however we regret to inform you that you are too qualified for this given position? How many more times?!

(No please, I do not care, I will do it anyway, no problem at all, yes sir, no madam, that kind of stuff, alright.)

Although it does not sound very fair, that is the way things are now. To me it sounds like a clear case of age discrimination. Is that legal?

Take a deep breath and continue.

Time to blemish my curriculum vitae some, scrap the impressive parts, and scratch out anything even subtly implying a higher more responsible nature. Throw in a bunch of junior this and junior that. Truncate the chronological career rise around ten years ago.

(Subtract ten years from my age, glue a patch of hair to my forehead, dab away the gray spots with black hair dye, build up those biceps, trim those elongated nose and ear hairs, liposuction and belly be gone.)

Wear an earring, grow a goatee, listen to house music, carry a backpack and mumble my words. Whatever you do, do NOT speak articulately and avoiding making too much sense.

Maybe that will help.

On Tuesday, November 04, 2003 at 03:23:59 (PST)
the hit-count for Gibberations is: 26000.

Wow, that means that I have had one thousand visitors since October 20, which is only around 15 days ago.

At this rate, I will hit one hundred thousand in about 1110 days (1000 visitors per 15 days times 365 days per year) or almost exactly 3 years (and 15 days).

Of course, I am also expecting the use of Internet to increase drastically, so this will most certainly be less than that, probably much less.

Can't wait.

It has been told that in order to be really and truly successful in life, you must be YOU.

Y-O-U. Nothing less, nothing more and nothing else.

This is very sound advice, indeed.

But YOU also need to survive in the real world at the same time. That's the tricky part.

Working in Finland might also be interesting, don't you think? They are recruiting.

Lately it seems to be getting worse than usual, those long impersonal lists of possible job vacancies. After staring at them for awhile, my eyes lose their ability to focus and all I see is an endless blur. All the way from top to bottom, just an endless blur kind of thing. Just delete the bunch of email notifications for now without even checking them out in more detail. Just not worth it. That'll teach those dirty bums.