Is this intentional lucid dreaming a skill you've developed or did it come naturally? I've heard you can increase the probability of having a lucid dream by keeping a dream journal, doing "dream checks" in everyday life, etc... but i've never heard of a surefire way to have them.
It's pretty cliché, but an abundance of cheese during the day has occasionally resulted in lucid experiences for me, or at least vivid dreams I remain strongly aware of the next day.
That aside, the most reliable and intense series of lucid dreams occurred in my teens while experimenting with psylocybin -- unlike the parent comment, sometimes also affecting the dream's setting or the behaviour of people in it.
My favourite (and probably the simplest) experience from that period was repeatedly exhaling steam on a frosty day, marvelling at how the steam and everything else I could sense was a figment of my mind, before waking up giggling and in a wonderful mood.
I'm not sure if I would classify it as a developed skill. The ability to go back into the same lucid dream is something that randomly happened once, and since then I've just been able to do it. I don't have any methodology or trick. I just have the intention before falling asleep, and then it happens.
I am so happy this thread exists. Reading a bunch of raw, honest, and insightful stories about the journey through an industry fueled by reality-distortion is like a breath of fresh air. This feeling must be what people mean when they talk about the "old HN". Glad to see its spirit still lays beneath the surface.
I think that there are a lot of professional-quality robotics projects that one can do, if you look at specialties that use robots. "Robot" is a loaded term that conjures up generalized images of the stuff you read and see in movies. Look into keywords like "automation", "mechatronics", etc...
Examples: Silicon wafer handlers, pick-and-place machines, vacuum cleaners, beer pourers, recycling sorters, package handlers, CNC machines, etc... An especially interesting field is open-source prosthetics.
There are prosumers making these types of robotics projects in their garages/local hackerspaces. There are many online forums where people sharing their builds as well, and many times these builds are actually used in production situations.
Also a high-quality robotics platform in no way needs to cost $1000. If you're on a budget just go to a local hobby shop, spend $100 on a chassis + wheels + motors and order some $0.10 sensors online.
Beautiful visualization. One thing missing though is a color-scale for age. Difficult to tell what color represents older vs newer and what are the magnitudes of the differences in age.
Thanks, good point, the colour-key box should change when the "age" colour scheme is selected. For now: the newest papers are red and oldest papers are gray, and, as you may have noticed, the gradient from gray to red is 1-1 but not linear with age. For a bit more of an explanation see this post: http://blog.paperscape.org/?p=60
You can search through any files that are in your project workspace. When you start a project, just "Add Folder to Project" and include the ruby gems directory and the ActiveRecord source directory.
At the risk of sounding Zen, the philosophical stuff taking a backseat is the progress. Even if you wind up in the same place doing the same job as before, there was progress if you no longer wonder 'what if'. It's when you believe that the grass is greener on your side.
I think that the comment was more about death by cancer than death itself. Cancer can happen at any moment in your life, and some types can occur without any apparent cause that we can determine(aside from twiddled bits in our DNA). When it happens, our own bodies rebel against us. Death by cancer can be long and extremely painful for the person dying as well as loved ones. Death is always difficult for the living to cope with, but it is a part of life as you mention. I think that a 'graceful death', one that occurs quickly/painlessly after a long life well-lived, is not a bad thing to want.
I would argue the exact opposite. Online printing turnaround time is slower, costs more(for printing in batches), and is inconvenient when UPS/Fedex keep leaving "sorry we missed you" notices because you're at work.
In-store pickup is nice in that once it's there, it's there. You can just go grab it at your convenience, instead of dealing with the "can only pickup during this small window" thing UPS does.
Wierd. UPS Delivers to my door only when I am at work. Then, if I don't want to/can't take time off, they tell me I must pick it up between 7 and 9 pm, as those are the only acceptable times, unless I call and arrange a pickup at the office instead of a delivery. If I am really lucky, when I call and arrange for a pickup, they will actually keep it in the office, and won't send it out on the next day's truck. After 3 attempts at this, they return it to sender.
I guess you don't live somewhere interesting and/or don't leave the house.
It's all about perspective. 1day turnaround is very slow for software but extremely fast for hardware. In the harware world, high-quality parts turnaround in 1 day is revolutionary.
