Held back with no Good Reason

Hey Everyone,

You know when you have that moment where if you don't take a chance you could lose that moment forever? something you simply can't get back unless you had the convenience of a time machine? missing the last bus so to speak. Well there are many many things that we lose each day without any good reason due to a bizarre mentality from a bunch of callous, selfish and backwards people who can't seem to see what they have caused and continue to cause each day; they are their own enemy.

This mentality locks up knowledge that everyone should have the right to access without some kind of exuberant fee or VIP pass, knowledge like mathematics and many other fields that for some reason they don't want people to know, but them; possibly derived from an arrogant elitism: you can't copyright the laws that govern our universe and we would be far better off if such information was open to the public. Many, many things could be solved in our world if the right person sees the right information, at the right time and does something with it, it bothers me how many moments have been lost due to this keeping back of information and assuming that you need qualifications and a diploma to make a difference, how many diseases could have been cured and many lives saved or simply improved as a result if only the right mind was spurred with the right knowledge. Keeping it locked up only slows our development as a species and prevents creativity, involvement and competition to make our world a better place. Academics have lost their creativity and ability to think beyond the standard rules because they forget that the standards are simply a current approximation of known variables; it would be arrogant to think otherwise. What's worse is most of the people in control of the information are too close to the information to be able to think outside the square which happens to literally every field out there and they tend to forget this side effect of the human mind. There's a humming of potential just outside the doors, just open them and lets us in and watch the magic.

Some things that people might consider trivial are also effected, for example; they lock up games, music and movies, including many other things to the point of no recovery. The only reason we still have any today is due to a bunch of what should be hailed as heroes of the IT field; people who hack and crack DRM so that our cultural entertainment isn't lost to the void. Most companies bull**** this out of proportion; aka lie, in order to make them appear as the victims even though statistically the loss of money due to piracy is microscopic at best; usually only around a few percent or less and make substantial profit while destroying the image of a geographic who are saving our world from losing what we care about. These people are shunned for breaking the code and allowing us to enjoy our games and music again even though the companies have no desire to preserve them or to give us ownership of which we bought. The amount of talent and skill these people have is remarkable, they have so much experience within the IT field that any company would be foolish not to hire them, resulting in better software, better service to the user base. Everything simply improves including, ironically, the company's income.

Did you know that most people who pirate actually end up buying the products anyway? the irony is that piracy is one of the best forms of advertisement in the world but companies are too stubborn and arrogant to see it and prefer the more dishonest way while making enormous amounts of money in the process all the while making these amazingly talented people look bad.

The reason and cause behind the shoddy attempt to manhandle the internet, also known as SOPA and its continued remakes with just the name swapped for another acronym, was caused by these exact kinds of companies who only desire profit while not adapting to modern standards; they don't care about freedoms and are willing to sacrifice ours just so they can get an extra buck from the government or their own plans. What's worse is these people are living hypocrites who pirate software and music while trying to force a law against it, thanks to the Anonymous hackers we now know they did this. SOPA wasn't just for their agenda, it was also an excuse for the government to police society due to internal corruption which would violate any and all constitutional rights that many cultures have developed in developed areas; DRM for the internet basically. I can't even comprehend why these companies even try, all it shows is a clawing, desperate attempt to hold on because they seem completely incapable of adapting to the future and making money honestly while giving us quality products that we can hold and own ourselves.

DRM is completely and utterly useless, it costs thousands to maintain and all it does is cause suffering for many people as a result; even to the point of trying to take away our very freedoms which many many people had to fight off including myself; literally the internet fought back and showed how foolish the people are who tried to hold back society and how utterly ignorant they are of how the world is developing; the very thing they are meant to uphold and maintain the rights of.

Internet is one of those remarkable things that no one has the right to control; I can't even begin to formulate a sentence to describe just how important it is: literally as important as breathing air to be completely honest. It brings us together regardless of what language we speak or where we live; breaking the cultural barriers and destroying everything that is bad in society like racism, sexism, corruption etc. It give us a voice to speak out to the world and our governments without being pushed or shunned away, to share opinions and to find others like ourselves; it's fundamentally important to our way of life and for the future. It needs to become a freedom that everyone can enjoy without having to pay money, nothing is going to stop it and it's only going to get better and better and better.

Thanks for reading,
Ashton.

Repaired my Laptop's Power System Today

Hey Everyone,

There's nothing worse than a computer failure especially if the computer itself is fine but you can't recharge it and turn the thing on.

Recently my laptop stopped accepting energy from the power supply; lasted a good year and a half before this. It took a lot of fiddling to get the recharge light to turn on so I could use it but after a little while even that stopped working, I tried to De-oxidize the connection surface by cleaning it with some alcohol but even then it still didn't work.

When I was younger I had a tendency to take things apart; I was very curious of how things worked, sadly at that time of my life I had a habit of not putting things back together but thankfully I've learned better since then.

I decided that it was time to repair my laptop once and for all; by completely replacing the power connection inside, I had some spare electronics that was no longer of use that had a power socket which was compatible with a plug I had lying about so I De-soldered it from the board. It took a while to open up my laptop; finding all the hidden screws and storing them away safe so I could put everything back together eventually: I had actually opened my laptop a few times before this out of curiosity so I got pretty good at opening it this time. Once I had opened the laptop I unscrewed the power board and detached it, I aligned the new power socket up for comparison and it looked like it would fit inside perfectly so I began work on the power system. I detached the old socket and aligned the new one up, soldered it on and made sure everything looked ok.

Here you can see the new socket attached and the old one on the right:

After the new socket was successfully attached I discovered that one of the surface mounted components had disintegrated into powder under the heat of the soldering iron, it was just too close to the socket. I needed to know what I destroyed so I could repair it, I performed a continuity test and one side connected to positive and the other to ground which indicated to me that I had destroyed a small capacitor used for smoothing out the power coming in. I got out one of my 0.01uf micro farad capacitors albeit much larger than a tiny surface mounted one and attached it on the other side which had much easier to access connections that the ones the original component was using.

Here you can see the new capacitor attached and ready to go:

Once everything was soldered I double checked everything and placed the board back inside the laptop making sure to attach all the wires. I aligned it up and began to screw it back in place and thankfully it fit like a glove, here you can see it back where it belongs:

I hooked up the power supply to my new plug, it's one of those power supplies that support multiple connectors that attached to the end so I had to adapt my connection to it. I made absolutely sure that it would not break for a long time by layering heat shrink as these kinds of connectors have a tendency to break and bend otherwise. Here you can see what I came up with:

It worked! The charging light is lit and I have power again:

Sure beats the thought of buying a whole new laptop.

Thanks for reading,

Ashton.

Orange Blue White

Hey Everyone,

Ever since I was a kid and sat in the back of the car as my parents would drive me about I simply loved looking out the window at the trees and the clouds in the sky, I also enjoyed night time when all the street lights were lit; mostly orange though some are white and I could have sworn I saw a green one. A fun little thing I discovered was If you look through the blue sun strip built into the glass at the top and watch the orange street lights through the glass, the moment an orange light would pass through the strip it would turn a shade of white.

I always found it fun and fascinating even though I understood at that age that the sun strip absorbed the orange light and what was left behind combined with the blue of the strip formed the white colour but it's small things like that that kept me thinking and helped me develop my analytical mind for the future. I always enjoy remembering the things that influenced me as a kid; no matter how subtle or what some might consider meaningless.

Thanks for reading,
Ashton.

Promethien Burnout

Hey everyone,

I just got back from watching Prometheus and it left me shaking my head on how many scientific mistakes were made, the movie was ok though regardless but only in respect to the special effects since a lot of the show was mediocre to say the least, things just need to be said about it.

I was reading an examination of the show by 5 scientists who were interviewed for their opinions on the movie which was done by Forbes here. This video they linked to definitely asks a lot of questions that I was asking myself pretty much through the entire video, it's pretty funny so I recommend that you watch it too. Another good rant from someone who actually works with DNA can be read here.

There's so many good rants out there already about the show so I can only contribute a little if at all in respect to them, so here's my amendment / rant thing:

The biggest mistake made in the movie was related to pretty much the entire story of the aliens making humans and ignoring the s*** tonne of evidence for evolution and the fact that we are 98.8% or so similar to apes due to our evolutionary ancestry, additionally you wouldn't get a 100% match with the aliens DNA since there were extreme differences in their make-up; the eyes, the extra muscle, their 8 foot tall height etc would have all contributed differences in the genetic sequence similar to us and apes or even another human. You'd either have to throw away all notion of natural selection which has happened for around 4 billion years or so, ignore all the fossils and other myriad of evidence laid out like a banquet in front of you which would end you up getting an F in biology but either way you won't get a job in science. The story would have been better had they said they made all life unintentionally leading up to the humans etc and not this arrogant "we are superior to animals since the creator's made us" anthropocentric way of thinking like most religions like to imagine, derived from some kind of superiority complex or narcissism and pandered by creationists who intentionally miss inform and lie to you and the less informed public while knowing full well what they are doing for political and personal gain. The story would have been better if everything related to the creator's story simply described how the aliens came about from being in their ships, escape somehow and then turning into the alien we recognise once inheriting the right genetics through chest bursts which by the way is a form of mutation related to the very system that founds evolution ironically in which the alien changes its look depending on the creature that had the egg laid inside it, simply scrap the part about the humans entirely.

We are far from superior in all honesty and there's evidence that certain species are much better than us at certain things; take for example the test being done on apes having a far better photographic recollection of where a set of numbers were on a quick flash screen. Species that can hear below or above our hearing range, species of birds and lizards that can see ultra violet light which exceeds our vision, not to mention the species of mantis shrimp that not only see visible light and ultraviolet but also polarised light; both linear and circular, these animals have eyes a million times better than ours and we say we are superior? There's a myriad of species that can run faster, think and react quicker, live longer or forever etc and even dolphins understand what the term zero means. Personally I think just saying we are superior; this arrogant thinking process is enough evidence to prove we are not in any way shape or form and personally makes me sick. Don't people realise that we wouldn't even function if it wasn't for all the bacteria in our bodies that we take for granted which we have a symbiotic relationship with to keep us alive? How dare we marginalise the amazing species of our beautiful planet and call ourselves superior just to feel better than them and polish our ego, we are their equal; each animal is great at something but there is definitely not a species that is great at everything and I think that's a good thing personally. We are so far behind it makes me laugh; we still have wars, still deprive others of equal rights based on bigoted prejudices. A "superior" species if ever one came about would have left these primitive notions behind a long, long time ago where they belong.

Now I'll let that settle for a moment while you watch this video of a bird fishing with a piece of bread. Don't get me wrong, there are many wonderful people in this world many that I look up to and admire but they are sadly few and far between but they exist and that's what matters. We as Humans have our own beauty just like each and every animal on this planet and thanks to our evolutionary path to abstraction and lateral thought we can now take advantage of nature and as the expression goes "Those who have power have great responsibility". Though dependant on nature to keep us alive we can push the boundaries, speed up evolution by enhancing our lives, we express ourselves through art, music, literature and voice to the world we share and thanks to the internet, we can see that we are all the same and many of us have a strong will to make our world better; I guess you could call me an eternal optimist. Sadly there are many who are corrupted and desire money, fame and power all of which are fleeting just like that of fossil fuels. We can love and express our emotions but we are still part of nature, still an animal like all the others so let us not belittle them and subjugate them to lesser ideals. In order to learn and discover things we have as a result caused some damage to this world but we can be forgiven due to our ignorance and our ancestral desires for we have the ability to make things right again. I feel technology has matured enough that we can reverse this damage and restore our world, emulate nature by mimicking what nature has solved over millions of years. Science has given us the tools and we now have the ability to bring back the myriad of species that have unfortunately been made extinct to our endeavours. Hopefully we aren't too late to reverse global warming by implementing green technologies to remove the dependencies on fossil fuels, we just need to use our money more wisely and get solar and other free sources of energy into every home. We are still young as a species but we are responsible for our world, responsible for all the life forms that inhabit it. We are Earth's guardians in a sense and I'm humbled to be apart of that and to do what I can even if it's small; if we all work together it will all add up in the end and the future of our children and those of other species will be all the better for it.

Thanks for reading,
Ashton.

A Congregate of Symmetry, Science and its Beauty

Hey Everyone,

Something I enjoy doing each day is thinking and contemplating reality. I have no qualifications in physiology or any major field of scientific research but I do have an advanced diploma in computer science as a programmer but even so, I do consider myself a scientist / theoretical physicist. All my perceptions and understandings of reality are self derived from my own perceptions and thoughts over the period of my life time. I strive for accuracy and refinement and I love learning new things and thinking about things I already know but in different ways, an introvert with a curious mind.

I went for a walk outside today and looked at the garden; I find beauty beyond just flowers, I see it in everything: the leaves, the structure of the plant or tree itself. I look up at the clouds, then back down to a stream of water and see a similar beauty. This innate yet subtle structure that many seem to overlook, the same structure that governs the way my brain forms a neural net, the way my veins grow to deliver blood to the rest of my body. Even in entropic systems where weathering effects the formations of the planets, all you need is a satellite with a camera or even a microscope and you'll see the same pattern of blood veins that I see in my arm. In all underlining systems that makes our universe form and yet derived from an elegantly simple iteration algorithm also known as a fractal.

Some people seem to want to find and preserve symmetry like an obsessive-compulsive disorder but usually just in a conventional way; like side by side in a mirror, but there's so much more to it than that. Circular symmetries exists like the splash of a rain drop as well as the notion of self-similarity where regardless of the position on a fractal, you'll see a similar pattern from your former position. Even if something doesn't appear symmetric, all you need to do is look a little closer or further away to find it.

As I was walking passed the spearmint I noticed it was starting to bloom. Normally a spearmint would be splitting leaves at 90 degree intervals; hence its iterative fractal structure but what intrigued me was the fact that the plant had changed the rule-set that founded that fractal in order to start growing flower buds. I'm not familiar with any articles on the subject but I'm sure there's one out there derived from the plants biological processors that result in this change but I was interested in how such biology and chemical reactions changed the fractal structure itself. I took some pictures so others could see the stages the plant was going through; each one at a different phase and some still making leaves, some making flowers as well as those in between.

(Edit) I'm now aware from a recent scientific article that plants / trees use molecular patterns that specify how different cells will stretch when a leaf grows which results in all the different leaf patterns, I'm guessing that all aspects of plant growth would derive from this pattern mechanism to facilitate the growth of stems and flowers too. Pretty amazing.

People say that science destroys the mystery which some people crave but that couldn't be further from the truth; Sci-Fi is one of the best mediums to date that spurs our imaginations and makes us think "there's so much more to discover, learn and to see what's possible" the so called thinking outside the box and that exact notion is why science is so wondrously exciting. The evidence is overwhelming as each and every day, new and wondrous things are being discovered, improved and devised that can help a huge number if not all institutions including our very lives and deepen our appreciation. New cures for cancers, better ways to make electricity; devices that can save Africa from poverty. I couldn't think of a more honest system than science, yes there's people who are dishonest who lie and make up fake science for money but real science doesn't lie, it will never let you down, it will always admit when it was wrong and seek out the answers. People imply that because of such scientific views that others like myself can't appreciate or understand what beauty is like they "apparently" can, lacking the aesthetics so to speak. I beg to differ; they fail to understand that not only can I see this beauty they speak of, but I can understand it in more ways than they could possibly imagine: thanks to science. To know why a flower is the colour you see, why the stem is green or red and why it smells so pleasing. Knowing these attributes of the flower feels like my appreciation and the beauty I see is amplified 10 fold. Science isn't cold or black and white, it's the reason you have colour TV, the reason you live a life at least 4 times that of your great great ancestors by creating life saving cures and not to mention the moments when medical scientists aka doctors and nurses spend over 15+ hours in a hospital operation room just to stabilize one person's life, the reason why I can see with my glasses and why I can fix something when it breaks, making my life and others around me so much better as a result. These people with such shallow perceptions might take science for granted but I am honoured and privileged to have science as a tool that I can wield to make this world a better place, to truly understand its beauty and to know implicitly why life and this earth I stand on is so precious.

The next time you want to be thankful for something, try thanking science and don't just wait for a "Special" day to do it either; for each day in your life is just as precious as the next.

Thank you for your time,
Ashton.

From Complexity to Elegance

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to share some thoughts that I have when I program.

Every time someone decides to program something, in its essence your trying to solve a problem; how do I get the result I see in my mind by using the programming language I know, to instruct the computer to represent that idea and intern the solution. I always find it fascinating how one takes a path to a solution; each problem has a different amount of complexity and depending on your programmatic knowledge defines how fast you reach a solution. In general you take a path where the code is inefficient, complex and it's only once you find the desired solution that you begin to format the code to perform more efficiently, improve readability and form an elegant and simple version that solves the problem you started with.

This concept isn't just applicable to programming; I see it in many different fields too: take technology for example. You start with just the basics, needing resources to develop and the only tools we have were crude and damaged the earth just so we could get the raw resources from the ground; how could we possibly know a better way until we discovered it? or realised that we were causing environmental harm and change the way we develop accordingly? people say bad things about it but always ignore the bigger picture. Just like programming, we need the basics, no matter how crude or inefficient to begin with before we can move towards more efficient and environmentally green technology, the same way we need assembly before we get C, C++ etc. We seem to take a direction in the exact opposite to that of nature yet we are influenced by nature's solutions; nature started with the simple and put together the pieces to form life and the beautiful complexity of the universe though it took a very long time. We are just too large to grab the atoms and put them one by one to make what we need like nature does so we need a different way to make things, we need to start large, with large equipment before we can develop smaller and smaller tools and over the millennia we have finally reached a point were we can place atoms one by one and start to develop technology with no environmental impact; following nature's example and hopefully not too late... you can thank the dark ages for the delay.

Another example is in mathematics and algebraics; we start with a sheet of maths and end up with a much smaller and simplified equation, though small and can fit within an inch, it still contains the same complexity and powerful implications as that sheet of maths we started with but within an elegant form. We can compress the maths behind why the sun shines in just a few expressions. We can place the maths of string theory within an inch or so and the ultimate equation of all beyond the standard model that defines our initial condition of the universe's mathematical structure; the solution to everything, could probably fit within a few centimetres.

For every problem there's an elegant solution just waiting to be discovered, it just takes a little time and patience.

Thanks for listening :)
Ashton.