Ready for more crazy philosophy?

Consciousness is the derivative of the brain.

As I type this, my brain is constantly throwing signals around, constructing sequences of ideas and then translating it all into English. The internal state of my brain is animated. I am changing my mind.

If you were to take a snapshot of my brain, it would not be a snapshot of consciousness, even if you were able to represent whatever mental image I had in my brain when the snapshot was taken. Maybe I was picturing a red balloon. Maybe there were a bunch of items hanging out in my short term memory that also get represented in this snapshot. But no matter how accurate and detailed that snapshot of my brain is, it is still not a snapshot of consciousness, because it is static. The moment my brain stops changing is the moment I lose consciousness.

If you were to freeze me, or put me in so-called "suspended animation", and then reanimate me an hour later, I would lose and regain consciousness. This makes intuitive sense, but I feel that this is a clear, clean example of precisely what consciousness is: an animated brain. Or, more generally: an animated, self-modifying system.

Caveat: The popular definition of "consciousness" excludes sleep and dreams, but mine does not exclude dreams. I feel that dreams are more of an interruption to awareness than to consciousness.

Most computer programs do not change their mind. A human programmer writes a program once, and then the program remains static, aside from shuffling some data around using a predetermined algorithm. This is why conventional computer programs are not conscious.

Current Music: Kevin MacLeod - Skye Cuillin

I posted Planet of the Forklift Kid on two well known Flash game websites. After five days, it has been played over 340,000 times, and is hosted on roughly 100 different websites (stolen) (including non-English-language websites), and its popularity is still rising, and strangers are sending me emails either to tell me they like it or to ask if they can send me money (and put their logo on it).

Note to self: the Internet (the one that isn't a dumptruck) is really big and fast. o_O

I made another Flash game! ^_^



Planet of the Forklift Kid! It's physics-y.

The title for this one was randomly generated by the Video Game Name Generator, and the rest flowed from that. Though it wasn't the first name that it generated for me; I went through a bunch of names before I settled on that one. A runner up was "Custom Sex Disaster", but I decided such a game would be too epic. I just don't command the resources to build that game at this time in my life, so I leave it to your imagination. ^_~

I made a fanart! ^_^ Click the thumbnail.

I couldn't not mention this: There is a band, called The Protomen, that released an album called The Protomen, that is a rock opera about Mega Man.

And it's really amazingly good. So good that I had to make my first LJ post in over a month about it.

That is all. I'm still alive. I'm still not using LJ. I will be back, but not now.

Just a quick note to pimp my latest artwork: Love Nazi Boxing! It is a gift, though if anyone wants to pay me to make this sort of thing, that would be awesome. ^_~

I made Zaphod Beeblebrox fanart! :D

I want to have a second childhood. No, I don't mean like what adults do at their midlife crisis. I am perfectly capable of acting like a kid right now if I want to. What I mean is that I want to be reborn, in a city this time, to a low income family, and I want to have several younger siblings and I want to get in fights with them and my friends at school and I want to be teased and backstabbed and I want to get drunk and make out with strangers in the back of a car and I want to be rejected from my college of choice and I want to go to a state college and meet all the punks and frat boys and the drama people. I want to make all the mistakes that I never made and no longer have the opportunities to make. And then I want this second childhood to merge with my first one, with me, right now. And together, in one head, we will be perfect, and we will rule this world, because we will have twice as much experience as anyone else, with the wisdom of the first me and the passion of the second me.

Perhaps the other me is already out there, waiting for me to find it and merge with it. Maybe these things are called significant others. Maybe not.

Current Music: A Perfect Circle - The Noose

They're hiring concept artists and background artists for the production of an animated Castlevania movie right now. WANT.

Now would be a good time for me to have a better portfolio. >_<

Current Music: Russel Cox - Prelude to Darkness

So, I was cruising around in my motor vehicle today, when I saw a billboard with a little black girl holding a stethoscope up to a teddy bear's chest. Awww. And then I read the caption, "Born to be a nurse." (with a phone number, presumably for some nursing school or hospital or whatever, I stopped reading at that point)

People are scary. :(

Current Music: Garbage - Shut Your Mouth

This short from Nickelodeon is currently my favorite thing in the world for some reason. I think it's the "rhombus". O_o

EDIT: Moved link to youtube because google video is mean.

Current Music: Lemon Demon - I've got some falling to do

I finally got a good digital camera for Christmas. (thank you! ^_^) Here is what I've been taking pictures of:

( I specialize in textures )

( But here are some other things! )

Current Location: Back in Pittsburgh
Current Music: ThouShaltNot - Inside Of You In Spite Of You

Mouse, regarding The Matrix:

You have to wonder now, how did the machines really know what Tasty Wheat tasted like, huh? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like, uh... oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken for example, maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything.

The consistency of Macaroni and Cheese changed a few weeks ago. I eat two different brands of Mac & Cheese, Kraft and Valu Time, though lately I've been mostly just eating Valu Time. I had a bunch of boxes of it in my cupboard, all purchased at the same time. One day I made myself a batch, the same way I always do, and it was different. It was much thicker and stickier than it was the day before. I made myself some more the next day, and it was thick and sticky again. I finished the rest of the Mac & Cheese in my cupboard and bought some new Valu Time boxes, and they were all sticky too. I assumed that something was wrong with the Valu Time brand, though I had no idea what.

Today I made myself some Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. It was much thicker and stickier than I remember Kraft being.

...I don't mind the change, I guess, but it makes me feel like I just switched into or out of a reality where they got the consistency of Macaroni and Cheese wrong.

I made some Sandman fanart. :)

Current Music: Sminky - Puppies in the space & Everything's Good!

Current Mood: confused

I type the word "penis" so rarely that sometimes I forget how to and it comes out "penus". I kinda like my version better. But anyway, nobody ever uses that word for some reason that I can't fathom. They'll always use "cock", "dick", "wang", "member", "thing", "corndog", "man-missile", "flesh flute", "joystick", "bilbo baggins", "excalibur"... I guess they're less scary? Funnier? But really, "penis" is a perfectly good word on its own.

"Hey, dude."
"Yeah?"
"I like your penis."
"Hey, thanks man. Likewise."

There, that wasn't so bad, was it? That's an acceptable use of the word between any two gay or straight men (but not between a gay man and a straight man, that would be awkward).

I am considering writing some open source code for a drawing program.

Current Music: Stemage - Metroid Metal Prime Intro/Menu Theme

This morning I met two interesting people.

The first was a black guy with a wide-brimmed hat in an expensive car. It would be unfair to describe him as a pimp, as he wore no purple nor tiger stripes nor bling, and I can't remember whether his car was a Cadillac, but that was nevertheless the impression I got.
He greeted me with, "Hey, um, do I know you? You look familiar."
"No."
"Are you sure? Eric, wasn't it? What's your name?"
"John."
"Oh, hmm. Where are you going?"
"Home"
"Want a ride?"
"No thanks."
"Are you gay or straight?"
"Ha!" I laugh. For some reason, I think it's really hilarious when people do exactly what one expects, and this guy definitely seemed to have sex on the mind. "Straight." I figured accuracy is less important than making sure this guy doesn't get any fancy ideas.
"Oh, man, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked that."
Then I walked away.

On the whole, I think the experience brightened my day. It's nice to know that I'm attractive enough for people to hit on me, even if they are creepy gay pimps.

The second person was an old white guy walking down the sidewalk, alone, saying out loud, "I'm not going to shut the fuck up, don't you ever tell me to shut the fuck up again," over and over. This kinda broke my brain for a moment.

Current Music: Iceman (the band, not the Mega Man stage!)

Sunday totally did not go as planned, but accidents are often more fun than plans, and Sunday was no exception. But I apologize if you said you wanted to hang out and I didn't contact you. There may be more hanging out today (Tuesday), particularly to watch Nausicaä, which looks like it'll be a lot like all the other Miyazaki movies I've seen. I say we meet at the entrance of Wean Hall around 8:00 PM to see the movie. And if you can find me earlier than that, you can help me look for the things on my birthday wishlist:

1. a cosmic banana peel
2. anti-gravity toothpaste
3. Pittsburgh
4. a meme
5. nature's smiley face
6. makeshift birthday cake
7. pants
8. 2^8
9. milk & butter for Mac & Cheese
10. singularity
11. movie showtimes or a DVD
12. His noodly appendage
13. the Pokémon... all of them
14. a themesong
15. mass confusion!
16. a jamaican accent
17. a freudian penis
18. the win
19. a backrub
20. an entropy reverser
21. a katamari

Current Music: my ipod battery died. :(

I AM GOING TO RANT AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME BECAUSE THIS IS MY JOURNAL SO THERE. This post isn't interesting unless you like reading about stupid, stupid problems.

I ordered Verizon DSL last week. They were supposed to send me a self-install kit. It was supposed to arrive earlier. It didn't. They did, however, send me a UPS tracking number. So I go use that at the UPS website to find out what happened to my package, and see this error:

THE APARTMENT NUMBER IS MISSING OR IS INCORRECT. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION. A POSTCARD HAS BEEN SENT TO THE RECIPIENT REQUESTING THAT THEY CONTACT UPS.

Question: How do you send a postcard to the recipient if you aren't sure what their address is? Of course, I haven't seen any such postcard.

Problem: I don't have an apartment number. I live in a duplex; it's a house with two floors, and I live on the second floor. "2nd Flo