Fooling with Randomness
01/12/2010 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIt's a most peculiar thing how the approach of the winner finish line has a strange effect on motivation to keep on squiggling
Was going for a nice round 56,000 words but once the magic 50,000 came and went, along with the weekend at work without access to Scrivener for squiggling, somehow the Inner Inquisitor with the Cat O Nine Tails promising all sorts of punishment for failing to meet the daily quota sort of slackened off.
On Friday faced the choice of slinking back to the Lair at 2pm for a snooze and then the rest of the evening squiggling which worked out every well the week before or the alternative of staying in the city gobbling coffees in order to attend one last Write In at 6pm
Figured that following the new formula of doing something different would tend towards the write in since it will be a whole 11 months until the next one.
So sat in a big fat comfy leather chair near a window of the Milligan Street Dome cafe and finally got started on reading a very interesting green book with a mysterious black cat on the cover.
The other treat in store is Douglas Hofstadter's "I am a strange loop"
The first giggle got from reading "Fooled by Randomness- the hidden role of chance in life and in the markets" (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) was in the introduction when the writer talked about Lucky Fools who do well and attribute their success to talent and not luck and the problem is that nearly everyone else does too until their luck finally runs out. And by then it is invariably too late and the damage has been done
The main thread of the book is about the crazy things that happen when humans find patterns, messages and meaning in randomness when none exist at all
He had been asked about why he decided not to do things the other way around and why he does not seem so concerned about the situations 'where patterns and messages may have been ignored'
Since this so very rarely happens, he figures it is not worth investigating and also that the consequences of mistaking a signal for noise and talent for chance are just so infinitely less tragic on the very rare occasions they do occur
He has great fun with post modernism and literary theory which have elevated the human tendency of finding something in nothing to a most amusing art form
Where poets and writers are informed of deep, esoteric meanings in their work that even they did not know exist. All attributable to the subconscious of course
So got to thinking that in a way that this year's nano squigglings were in their own way an offering to the Gods of Chance
Constructing a plot line based on nothing but a bunch of randomly drawn tarot cards was a rather chancy thing to do.
While the particular deck was chosen as being most appropriate for the theme and setting which was deliberately chosen, everything else that happened was based largely on trying to generate meanings from 22 sets of 4 cards drawn at random from the deck
Not completely and totally at random as for that it would be best to use some computer algorithm.
There was a bit of tweeking and cheating involved - each group of four cards was chosen only from the 56 minor suit cards and often in groups of 3 or 4 in order to guarantee that at least in that bunch there would be no redrawn cards
Introduced the other 22 for the last four chapters - due to getting seriously tired of constantly turning up the knight of swords, three of cups and four of wands
They then took over the whole show but that was most likely less due to some grand design but lousy shuffling. And this scheme still did not stop that pesky knight from once again leaving his calling card
So once the sequence of 88 randomly drawn cards were chosen, the next procedure was to find some way of linking each one to the next and the one that came before and of course to any recurrence of that particular card earlier or later amongst the 88
The game then would be to just pile on the symbolism, occult and strange esoteric meanings until the story looked almost inevitable and predetermined
This trick had the major advantage of being lots of fun to do and being a wonderful way of avoiding writer's block. After all there is no excuse for being unable to add something to at least one of those 88 segments rather than remaining stuck at one single spot in the construction of this dark satanic tower of cards
Here's hoping that next year's deck will be the very wicked and twisted Russian version of the Victorian Gothic. In it's own strange way it is even creepier than its so called dark Bohemian Gothic sister.
Getting ones paws on that elusive little beastie truly is a game of chance with the odds stacked firmly in favour of the Baba Facebook groupies and those Cyberian citizens who stay glued to their screens constantly clicking the refresh button
There's also the old favorite Dark Grimoire from last year but will be needing to have lots of book stores, libraries and mutant monsters in a certain sleepy spooky little town down south to take account of just how ridiculously often they appear in that deck.
It might be time to use a real random generator and not fumbling serpent fingers so that we can be assured of being a genuine worshipper at the altar of Chance
But one other thing the serpent has learned, time spent away from the screen is not wasted time but an opportunity for plotting and scheming and scanning the surroundings for snippets to snatch
And also there's a treasure trove of freaks for the taking at the day job and it would be a shame to waste them. So got a whole year to fill up files of crazy characters in very great detail so that the lot of them can be getting on with plotting ready to be let loose from their starting stalls as the clock strikes midnight next Halloween
Due to such slacking, realized on returning to work on Saturday 20th that there were two very juicy characters there for the picking who had gotten totally left out and another two newbies who bear an uncanny resemblance to some of the people in the cards. That very scary High Priestess and the crabby old batty 4 of pentacles lady look so exactly like certain very real people that even those without the misfortune to know them would recognize them instantly
It might be a good start to do some of that with the present inmates of Lucifer's Gardens as there's plenty of room for fattening them up.
Was going for a nice round 56,000 words but once the magic 50,000 came and went, along with the weekend at work without access to Scrivener for squiggling, somehow the Inner Inquisitor with the Cat O Nine Tails promising all sorts of punishment for failing to meet the daily quota sort of slackened off.
On Friday faced the choice of slinking back to the Lair at 2pm for a snooze and then the rest of the evening squiggling which worked out every well the week before or the alternative of staying in the city gobbling coffees in order to attend one last Write In at 6pm
Figured that following the new formula of doing something different would tend towards the write in since it will be a whole 11 months until the next one.
So sat in a big fat comfy leather chair near a window of the Milligan Street Dome cafe and finally got started on reading a very interesting green book with a mysterious black cat on the cover.
The other treat in store is Douglas Hofstadter's "I am a strange loop"
The first giggle got from reading "Fooled by Randomness- the hidden role of chance in life and in the markets" (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) was in the introduction when the writer talked about Lucky Fools who do well and attribute their success to talent and not luck and the problem is that nearly everyone else does too until their luck finally runs out. And by then it is invariably too late and the damage has been done
The main thread of the book is about the crazy things that happen when humans find patterns, messages and meaning in randomness when none exist at all
He had been asked about why he decided not to do things the other way around and why he does not seem so concerned about the situations 'where patterns and messages may have been ignored'
Since this so very rarely happens, he figures it is not worth investigating and also that the consequences of mistaking a signal for noise and talent for chance are just so infinitely less tragic on the very rare occasions they do occur
He has great fun with post modernism and literary theory which have elevated the human tendency of finding something in nothing to a most amusing art form
Where poets and writers are informed of deep, esoteric meanings in their work that even they did not know exist. All attributable to the subconscious of course
So got to thinking that in a way that this year's nano squigglings were in their own way an offering to the Gods of Chance
Constructing a plot line based on nothing but a bunch of randomly drawn tarot cards was a rather chancy thing to do.
While the particular deck was chosen as being most appropriate for the theme and setting which was deliberately chosen, everything else that happened was based largely on trying to generate meanings from 22 sets of 4 cards drawn at random from the deck
Not completely and totally at random as for that it would be best to use some computer algorithm.
There was a bit of tweeking and cheating involved - each group of four cards was chosen only from the 56 minor suit cards and often in groups of 3 or 4 in order to guarantee that at least in that bunch there would be no redrawn cards
Introduced the other 22 for the last four chapters - due to getting seriously tired of constantly turning up the knight of swords, three of cups and four of wands
They then took over the whole show but that was most likely less due to some grand design but lousy shuffling. And this scheme still did not stop that pesky knight from once again leaving his calling card
So once the sequence of 88 randomly drawn cards were chosen, the next procedure was to find some way of linking each one to the next and the one that came before and of course to any recurrence of that particular card earlier or later amongst the 88
The game then would be to just pile on the symbolism, occult and strange esoteric meanings until the story looked almost inevitable and predetermined
This trick had the major advantage of being lots of fun to do and being a wonderful way of avoiding writer's block. After all there is no excuse for being unable to add something to at least one of those 88 segments rather than remaining stuck at one single spot in the construction of this dark satanic tower of cards
Here's hoping that next year's deck will be the very wicked and twisted Russian version of the Victorian Gothic. In it's own strange way it is even creepier than its so called dark Bohemian Gothic sister.
Getting ones paws on that elusive little beastie truly is a game of chance with the odds stacked firmly in favour of the Baba Facebook groupies and those Cyberian citizens who stay glued to their screens constantly clicking the refresh button
There's also the old favorite Dark Grimoire from last year but will be needing to have lots of book stores, libraries and mutant monsters in a certain sleepy spooky little town down south to take account of just how ridiculously often they appear in that deck.
It might be time to use a real random generator and not fumbling serpent fingers so that we can be assured of being a genuine worshipper at the altar of Chance
But one other thing the serpent has learned, time spent away from the screen is not wasted time but an opportunity for plotting and scheming and scanning the surroundings for snippets to snatch
And also there's a treasure trove of freaks for the taking at the day job and it would be a shame to waste them. So got a whole year to fill up files of crazy characters in very great detail so that the lot of them can be getting on with plotting ready to be let loose from their starting stalls as the clock strikes midnight next Halloween
Due to such slacking, realized on returning to work on Saturday 20th that there were two very juicy characters there for the picking who had gotten totally left out and another two newbies who bear an uncanny resemblance to some of the people in the cards. That very scary High Priestess and the crabby old batty 4 of pentacles lady look so exactly like certain very real people that even those without the misfortune to know them would recognize them instantly
It might be a good start to do some of that with the present inmates of Lucifer's Gardens as there's plenty of room for fattening them up.
