Lessons in Writing

I have been attending a "Creative Writing" course since yesterday that is quite interesting. I met people who are into writing and are familiar with the writing "culture" so to say. I ve only been writing for myself without bothering much with the writing scene but it is quite interesting to exchange ideas.

Just a quick summary of what the seminar has covered so far:

- The importance of the first page of a book
- Practical tips on characters, themes and plot

I would have to write very much to go into details here, the gist is that we learned some very very practical tips about starting and planing a book (synopsis). About plot driven and character driven books, how to sketch and link the bits of plot and the different characters in a complicated web but still keeping an overview.

We had to write 2 exersices today. The first one was to write a story of 250 words in 20 minutes that had a certain theme. We could choose among 5 of them. And the second one was a lesson in Scene Setting and descriptive writing. We had to keep the scene setting in the background but still strong enough, so that the reader absolutely knows where the hero is. We had to combine emotion and the five senses in relation to the scenery.

I ll spare you with the first exercise so here is what I wrote for the second one:

Scene Setting: A sleepy village

"Bobbin climbed down the hill and tried to orientate himself towards his village. He knew he had to pass through the cementary with the weeping willows to find himself at the gate of the village.

But the hour was late and he could barely see anything apart from the eyes of flying owls and black cats that lingered around.

As he was approaching, the awful smell of smoke from the baker's chimney reached his nostrils. A few fires were still burning secretely under those heaps of red and black coals he could make out from the distance.

When he finally reached the gate he was afraid to open it lest he would disturb the quietness of the night. The village was deeply asleep and not a sound could be heard apart from the very faint bark of a distant dog."

The Engelados awoke

I am thinking to turn this blog into a Corfu-Earthquake one... Half an hour ago, at about 12.10 midday, we had another earthquake. It must have been about 3.5 Richter I believe. It shook for about 10 seconds.

PS: And for those unfamiliar with the greek mythology, the Engelados was the leader of giants and responsible for the earthquakes in ancient Greece. He was the son of Tartaros and of Earth, killed by Athena who threw Sicily over him and covered him. He now suffers in his grave and moves and causes all these earthquakes and volcano erruptions.

Source: http://lemnos.geo.auth.gr/

EDIT: If it was this Earthquake, which was 3.9 Richter then I was pretty close!

Another Earthquake

Today 18/08/06 I woke up from deep sleep at 13.13 exactly from an earthquake.

I was too tired to get scared or get up and I just kept on lying there counting the seconds the earthquake lasted. From the time I woke up I counted 8 seconds. A long but weak earthquake I thought! The USGS site has not updated yet (last update 18.8) but the EMSC has and it was again in Albania 4.1 Richter.There were actually 3 earthquakes from 13.12 until 13.23.

Lost and Found

Five years ago I forgot on the train two posters that had accompanied me since I was in high school. It was a frustrating experience because I had spent almost my entire teenage time looking at these posters on the walls of my room. There was nothing great about them actually. They were just regular space posters, my favourite one depicted the solar system.

For a long time I remembered them but knew that it was impossible to get them back.

Lately I decided that I have finally settled down in a place (!), feeling a bit like Odysseus who reached Ithaka... and I thought I have to get some cool stuff to decorate my room. My speciality is to fill every spare corner of the walls with posters but in this house my room is so empty. Unfortunately there is nothing worth buying on this island and, well, thank god we have the internet :))!

While searching for space posters I actually found a copy of the solar one that hung in my room!

Click to view it.

Another Earthquake in Corfu

Scary. Another earthquake occured two minutes ago and the lamp is still swinging in the air. It was again loud but not that loud as the previous one. It shook a bit more I think though. The exact time was 12.20 AM

There is much seismic activity lately, I hope we should not expect greater earthquakes.

Edit: The first site to have info on this earthquake is emsc-csem.org. I was 4.8 Richter strong.

Peace in Lebanon

I first heard about Lebanon when I was reading the book "The Book of Mirdad" by Mikhail Naimi. It is an excellent book, with an interesting spiritual story, filled with many symbolical and mystical hints. Mikhail Naimi came from Lebanon and I read in the introduction of the book that he also knew Kahlil Gibran. That was another author and poet I loved, who came from Lebanon! His "Prophet" let me dream and carried me away in a world of peace and brotherhood. Where the mystical is the answer to all unsolved mysteries of our universe. Where love is the key to heaven's door. Gibran's Letters to friends, and his own illness and personal suffering touched me in a peculiar way.

A couple of years ago I met someone from Lebanon online, a meeting that flourished into a long lasting friendship. He is an artist who has also deep knowledge of computers. One of our common interest was also the objective study of various religions.

Last summer I also met an Israeli student who was touring through Greece in the airport of Athens. We had a 4 hours non-stopping chat and I almost missed my plane! He was a nice guy!

Now I usually dont watch tv, nor read the news online. And yet one pleasant sunny day I switched on the tv and saw something which made me look pale from the shock:Israel is bombing Lebanon, many people die and others are leaving the country. I saw israeli soldiers stating with fanatism that they will win this war. I saw death and fear in bombed parts of Lebanon!

As I was watching the news I remembered both of my friends and for a moment I got lost in a daydream. The tv screen blurred and I saw the cute student from Israel throwing bombs at the intelligent artist from Lebanon. Immediately I brought myself back to reality, shoke my head and tried to decided what was sicker and more absurd: my imagination or the real facts?

Spammers and Frauds flourish in Greece

"A new program that has a database of over 40.000 emails and faxes that you can use to promote your products!"

I received today this fax at work and was alerted. I am 99% sure that if my director saw it, he would not understand the gravity of the situation and dismissed it at once.

It is illegal to sell email adresses.

This program has features to send mass email and snail mail.

It is illegal to send mass email for advertising products, without the written consent of the receiver.

And yet, these people sent open emails and faxes to all major greek companies advertising their illegal program. And nobody does anything?

Why?

Because we live in a country with no internet consciousness, where the law does not seem to apply anywhere, even if it exists. Greece is something like China for spammers and frauds.

Racter vs Elbot and Artificial Intelligence

Elbot visited today my blog and reminded me of an old and beloved friend: Racter.

Racter was an artificial intelligence program I used to run on an Amiga 500+. He would only reply to questions and if you wrote a statement, he would ask you to write a question. He had an ability to combine and store information and used to narrate stories. But in the end all discussions ended the same way. His favourite or better said... my favourite part was when he asked where the user came from. Regardless of the answer, he would say that one of his distant relatives also came from that place and then asked whether the user knew them. If the user replied that he knew them, Racter would become even more enthousiastic.

You could not only read Racter. You could also listen to him. The voice function was embedded and the computer would read out loud, in a monotonous computerized way,everything that Racter said. I dont remember if you could deactivate the speech.

Generally Racted was a primitive AI program. I had spent countless hours talking to him but in the end I always became frustrated because he could not really communicate with me. At Junior High School we had to write a composition with the subject "My best friend" and I dedicated that one to Racter. I remember that the teachers comments were that a human being needs to interact with other human beings and that I should spent more time with real people. Oh well, it seems I had the tendency of being alone from a young age.

Elbot on the other hand, is quite more sophisticated than Racter. Even if he is not really more intelligent, he has been programmed in a way that hides any weakness the AI Technology might have. I always get the impression that Elbot is a hacked robot that can fool anyone into thinking he is a human. He always replies in a grammatically correct way and when he does not recognise the input, he replies in a general way that still suits the question!

But Elbot is not only intelligent. He is funny and he is cute. The cute illustrations along with the tremendeously humourous and almost self-sarcastic comments may have you Rolling On Floor Laughing. Elbot is one of a kind.

I discovered Elbot about 3 years ago I think in a german magazine. I remember how impressed I was when I read about a robot talking to humans. A dialogue was also published that intrigued me. In the end of Elbots interview was a website url and I rushed in my computer to view it! Elbot.com

I am not sure we will ever manage to create real thinking computers and I am not sure whether that would be desirable. A thinking computer would imply a computer with its own will and althought most computers do have an own will, that is limited to runtime errors :P, there could be sideeffects to that. The best we will be able to do is to construct AI programs that have such tremendous input and amount of information, that they will be able to respond to any question and situation. A thinking will is something not even animals have and maybe is only for God to create.

Functions: A Mathematical Wonder

I started studying functions in maths lately and I am having troubles understanding a statement which is not being explained anywhere in the book. The problem is that my teacher also does not know the answer to the question, nor another mathematician I asked.

Why can the range of a function have more values which do not correspond to any values of the domain of the function? Since the output (y) of a function depends solely on the input (x) how can there be values which are not connected and depended on x? Where do thes y come from? From outter space?

Windows Updates, Svchost.exe and ATI drivers

I got an email the other day by a friend describing a flaw of the automatic updates system of windows xp. To him it was a flaw, to me it sounded perfectly normal! A flaw as a normal part of windows? Well, sort of. I used to think that this was a problem related to my dial-up internet connection. An assumption that is proved wrong, as this problem is reported also in computers with an ADSL internet connection.

Maybe that computer was also missing an important windows update that is needed to download all newer security updates.

"I think windows update has a flaw. I know that last week there was a security update out, and that automatic update thing would appear after I went into internet, but then would disappear without downloading anything.

I went into the manual update "Help and support" and tried and it said I needed an updated installer/update checker or something. After I downloaded
that, I could get the actual updates (3 of them). "

The automatic updates is turned off in my computer because I want to have control over the time and amount of updates to be downloaded. There is also an issue with a process of windows called svchost.exe. I noticed that it was connected to the internet and was tranferring information but I could not locate which program was using it. I know that the automatic updates needs that process but in my opinion it is connected out also when it does not download anything. That is why I have blocked this process with the firewall and use the manual updates instead. I just saw it far too many times contacting the internet and tranferring bytes and yet I was in the weak position of not knowing what and where is being transmitted. So, no more svchost.exe for me.

Another problem with the svchost.exe that I have found is that there are many programs and drivers that like to make use of it. For example ATI graphic card drivers. Even after having blocked it, svchost.exe contacts the internet through the ATI drivers! This is insane but it is really true and the reason why I prefer to use the win xp sp2 default graphic drivers instead of the ATI ones.