Infinite State Automaton

I talked about the situation in the comments from the preceding post in private.

The situation is resolved.

Thank you for the people who did write comments to support.

I am not saying everything is 100% sweet, it will take time for people who have damaged trust to recover and so on, however, the situation is stable.

I never put a limit on people who posted here and I don't delete posts, even things I was later embarassed to write. Please continue to write if you have something to say, add, or enquire about, however - I don't want anything that rocks the boat right now, please. I will break my rule about non-deletions if I see confrontational words - even from me.

It's late so I am going to bed. I don't know if I will add to this, but for tonight, I am happy.

Take care and be well,

Sky

EDIT: Ah, is my pride really so big I won't make some changes to what I wrote? I know it makes me seem a liar to delete posts and leave THIS post unchanged, but I think it's better this way. There's no reason to leave words that only hurt laying about where others can trip over them.

I bought my first piece of furniture, some Antonius shelving things. It's not very classy at all. In fact they look ugly and skeletal, but luckily they nestle perfectly in my wardrobe so the only time they can be seen is when I open the doors. I bought one five draw kit and I have space for another three (or five if I decide to stack them) and at $50 a pop for five drawers, I actually feel it's a really good deal. Next is to actually gut the contents of my cupboards out and put them in the drawers, and yes, I am using 'Write my blog' as a means of procrastinating to avoid doing it.

This week was a very up and down week. Food has been so-so. Well really it has been good but I won't be 'mission accomplished' until I can go a whole week without buying fast food once. An unexpected problem is that healthy food is not very filling. Every afternoon I am terribly hungry. I have to prepare a proper lunch and health snacks for the afternoon so that I can go the whole day without giving in to an urge for chocolate. I compromised and bought health bars and munched on them whenever I got hungry.

Annie and I went bowling with her e-club last night. We had a really good time! Actually I am terrible at bowling, and only scored 74 >.> The second game I think was even worse, my arm was so tired AND I had some alcohol in me. I dropped the ball three times. Once I fell in to the bowling aisle, the second time the ball went backwards, and the third time my finger got stuck in it, so the ball just dropped straight down and rolled forwards. I couldn't bear to watch so went to sit down, but then everyone was yelling to look - I had thrown it so slowly, it had come to rest in the gutter a few metres from where I had thrown it. So, ah, I sneaked down the wax surface in my funky clown shoes and threw it again ^_~

I was the only person on the team who didn't get a strike. Bowling is just not my game it seems. Ah, but it was a lot of fun ^_^

The book I read was 'The Prince', by Niccolò Machiavelli. I did not know it but I actually have quoted or paraphrased from this book many times before, the work is that common. I am surprised that I had not come across it before. My first encounter with this is from the Command and Conquer: Red Alert instruction manual - "There is no avoiding war. It can only be delayed to the advantage of others." A friend of mine gave me some advice from this book so of course I applied what I had learned recently from it to the whole situation. From this I had some better understanding of the motives of my friends and the reasons for their behaviour.

The question Anonymous asked below, what's the common factor - I am not entirely certain. If I knew, I would say. I am not sure there is one factor.

This word 'maturity' is thrown about a lot these days. I have many people, both online friends and in real life, saying 'person x behaves in an immature way' or 'this person just likes to cause drama/get attention' etc or whatever. You know, 'act your age' etc etc.

I think people have different ideas of maturity. My idea of maturity is a person who takes responsibility, acts with honor and integrity, helps other people, and defends those who cannot. Other people might say things like reliable, gets results, has 'class', has great knowledge, is unemotional, or many other words.

The thing is, none of these people are psychologists. At best we are some kind of person who has read a self-help book or manual, or maybe watched some good inspirational videos. But maturity is an intangible concept. It's not something you have, like a car, or even something like a relationship (which is intangible but still _definable_). Maturity...like many other things...is in the eye of the beholder.

People judge you not by who you are or who you think you are but by what you do, the results you get. Actions speak louder than words.

I will always admit to an error, and I will never hide from punishment. Discipline won't kill a person, but it can save them from death! The person who does not learn does not change state. They never break out of their circle until they can change.

I don't know what the common factor is (except, of course, for me). Often what has hamstrung me, though, is fear - fear of hurting others, fear of failure, fear of financial disaster, fear of heartbreak. Because I am too afraid to take action, the result is - take no action. But, you know, if actions speak louder than words, and people judge you by your actions, and I take no action...

EDIT: I have removed some text from this entry. Some of it really only pertained to the people involved in the situation, and since it is now resolved, leaving it here is kind of awkward. For this reason also, I removed one of my comments, and with the permission of one of the contributors, one of their comments also. So! Let's move on from here and try not to look back. The place we didn't go to yet is always more interesting than where we just left.

So, recovery.

I lost sight of my goal and so I was wandering randomly. Because of this, I did not follow the steps that I had laid out for myself to follow to reach the result. My motivation was gone. I didn't see any reason to try anymore.

I read a really interesting book and had a few very interesting conversations. Then anonymous said below,

"everything is a riddle

the answer to getting out of a circle is to start moving in straight lines..find a starting point and an ending point."

Actually I was going to write something like this, so it's really a great cooincidence that this person would say such a thing.

Well, what do I want? There are some different spheres to move in.

Friendships: I am not talking very much with the two people who I hope to be my close friends. I want to recover these friendships.

Relationships: I have a lot of work to do. I can't write about it here. My new motivation is from here. I said it before; now I am sure of it - I am not good boyfriend material. "If she is worth it, she will wait for you." I shouldn't keep her waiting for so long. We don't live forever, after all. This leads me to...

Finances and food: I have been unable to save any money. Up until now I had only been looking at the big things and not understanding that the little things added up. After tracking it for a while, I learned I was wasting between $150-$200 a week on food. Every morning at work I am buying food from the shops, then for lunch, then for dinner. Often I also buy dinner for my brother.

Breaking out of this habit will be very hard but I have to do it to escape.
The first thing I did was take a bowl and spoon to work. Then I bought some breakfast cereal and milk, and I will eat this very cheap food for breakfast from now. I don't have breakfast at home, I am not hungry when I first wake up so I don't want to eat. I also use the bowl to eat soup and noodles at work for lunch, instead of buying the expensive canteen lunch.

This is only half of the problem. The other half is to get in to the habit of planning meals and cooking them at night. I have a good friend who has promised to help me do this since I have been unsuccessful so far on my own to learn it.

Food and finances are the foundation that I need to build on. I am currently semi-tidy; I threw out my old bed and got a new one, there is no junk on the floor (still some on my desk though) and no glasses or food or yuk in here. When I was cleaning up I threw out a lot of old things that I did not look at for ten years, but had just been keeping "Just in case I wanted to look again."

So I looked at them one more time then got rid of them. Things from ten years ago...well, some was painful. I had written many promises and lofty goals and dreams that I did not meet. But carrying around all this junk in my life was just weighing me down and holding me back from going to a better place.

And well, some of it was just junk. Now that I have graduated, there is no reason to keep my old assignments around to copy from >.>;;

It seems I am in the same position I was at the start of the year. Wanting to improve my finances, my health, my fitness, my career. Actually, really I am. I made some small progress in all of these areas, but I am not satisfied.

So, the start point is 'here'. First is, fix up eating and spending. Next is fix up cleaning and shopping and being tidy in all areas.

The end point is, move to USA 2009 and take up the job I always wanted to do.

I am not going to do Masters at UniSA. In June they will re-evaluate my contract. I will ask to be put on as academic staff (rather than professional staff). The difference is, I will be expected to produce research papers for the company. I have two very good and experienced researchers who wish to support me in this. The proviso is, I have to finish the SRET kit prototype before my contract runs out. They want some proof that I will finish what I have begun before they will invest in me.

I think that's a very fair thing. When I look back, I can see many times where I have said "I will do xxx" and then did not actually achieve it. So I can respect that people might be dubious of my ability or intentions.

So my short term goals are:
Recover my friendships, if those people want to be my friend still
Sort out my home life: cooking, cleaning, shopping
Get down and dirty with my job and finish with style, not sliding in to the end like my final assignment

So, now you know my hopes. Later if these things work out, I can say more about my dream. But after having so many failures, I feel too embarassed to say about something in great detail.

The hardest subject that I attempted and passed was Limits of Computation. It was the mathematics and theory behind a thinking machine.

Computers are finite state machines. A computer exists in a certain state, and continues to cycle between different states as changes to the system are made by/in response to the user.

This is a very simple state diagram.

This machine has only four states that it exists in, and a number of state change paths that it can follow or cycle over. A system must remain in a planned state - a controlled state - and it must not have unplanned exits. A state diagram always starts at So, and goes to Sx, where Sx is a single state denoted by two circles. In the diagram, it is S3.

If this system ever entered S2, it would go in to an infinite loop and never terminate correctly. This happens when your computer 'hangs'. If the computer tries to go to a state that doesn't exist, it doesn't know what to do. Programmers try to catch these errors and make your programs handle it in dignified manner. When they get it right, programs can continue to operate after an error - the error message pops up, "Hi, this thing broke! T_T I am sorry. Please don't be mad!" and you hit ok and move on. When an unhandled exception occurs, you get the blue screen of death.

It's called a finite state automaton because there are limits to the number of states the machine can go to. It can only make decisions and change states within the predefined bounds of the programmer. It's not a thinking machine. It can only make decisions and change states. A computer is a very powerful tool but it can never make any new thing on it's own.

Humans have states too. In addition to states, we have status - additional features tacked on top of whatever state we are in that is carried around with us until we enter a state where that status effect is removed. IE - you were working all day and got sleepy. When you go to sleep - the sleep state - the effect of the sleep state is to remove fatigue. You don't have a state 'tired'. You have a state 'working', 'sleeping', 'playing', etc etc. You can only be in one state at a time, but a person can change between them very, very quickly. If you pick up many status effects - such as fatique, illness, sadness, hunger - and you don't remove them properly, they can start to stack up.

Eventually the person can't cope with all these things going on and has an unhandled exception - they crash and burn. In an extreme case, they have a nervous breakdown. They just can't handle everything all at once anymore so they drop everything.

A person is an infinite state automaton. Our brain is a thinking machine. The limits on our computational ability are not finite. A human has unlimited potential. We can do and be many, many different things. However, the machine needs direction. Unguided and without a goal, the brain can wander in to many strange places, or begin to follow a pattern, and cycle over and over.

You have surely seen it. Some person who keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Not small things like forgetting their credit card number, or to pay their bills. Problems on a grander scale - not knowing how to budget, always getting into the same doomed relationships, having some kind of addiction to something - this is a cycle that a person may not realise they are in. They think they are in control of the situation, and any time they want to, they can leave it. Since they are in control, they don't worry about what it is doing to their lives. They think they can stop at any time, so if they are enjoying themselves now, why stop? It's not until they realise that they are hurting other people that they think it's time to change. And then they suddenly discover that they are in a cycle that maybe they need help to break out of.

People change state often. Most of the time it is a controlled change, even if they have to react to an unplanned situation. This is because we ARE learning machines, and when we make mistakes we usually remember the result. If one way doesn't work, try a different way next time! People exposed to a completely new situation often freeze up and don't react well. It takes initiative and applied learning to handle a new, unexpected situation. A persons instinct is to react to the environment until they are comfortable and understand it - then they make changes to that environment to suit their needs, and the needs of others.

That is the reason that 'practise makes perfect'. You become, over time, attuned to a situation, familiar with it, and you know what to do. The danger is that one can become too familiar, and wary of breaking out of the cycle. It is comfortable. I am happy. Why should I change? You see, we are learning machines. Learning is what we do. Time is always moving forwards. It's the final end state that all humans have to go to. We don't know what is after the Big Server Crash. All these 1's and 0's that make up our world, we don't know what it counts for. It's better to have a life full of many different states rather than only fill it with the same thing over and over.

I have spoken on this blog and in other places about being caught in a repeating circle, of circles within circles. This year has already been a great triumph in breaking out of these repeated circles. The new cycle I am in is to overcome a problem, then consolidate my position, recover, and plan the next step. I try not to make uncontrolled changes. Uncontrolled changes leads to a crash. I already crashed once late last year and nearly failed because of it.

Now I am in recovery state. Next is to check out the current situation, and look at what I want to do. There are many chances in the near future, and I need to properly plan out my path. I want to cross as many states as I can, without getting bogged down in bad cycles, and ensuring I still reach my goals.

Humans can do anything, but not everything is good for you.

I have several different things to write about, but all of them are unrelated. So I am going to go with the fun thing first and roll on to the less-fun things in subsequent blog posts.

On Sunday I played with a young Vietnamese girl who enjoyed singing and drawing pictures. So I tried to teach her a bit of the Australian National Anthem – now, she was five years old and I am not sure of her reading ability, but at the very least she could mimic what I was saying (except r’s were a bit of trouble) and at least pretend she was following my finger pointing to the words. She did a very good job! “A booty witch and red” is the result from “A beauty rich and rare.” In hindsight picking the sentence with the most r’s in it for a child who had the most trouble with r’s was probably cruel and evil, but it didn’t occur to me until after a few tries. ‘For we are young and free’ came out much better.

I also played hide and seek (badly) and also enjoyed some fine Vietnamese cuisine, and got some more insight in to Asian culture. I have another cute picture on my fridge from a child – one is a small alpaca, the other is a house with…ah…somebody? I am not sure. It is not me. I am usually very popular with very, very small children (because, you know, they aren’t old enough to know better) on account of my inherent immaturity.

Well, maturity is a word that is thrown around a lot in some of my circles of friends lately. Adults enjoy saying to others “That behaviour is immature” or “you are acting like a child”. But that is the topic of another blog post.

I also played dodgeball. It was my first time playing it since Scouts. Back in Scouts, I made a game where everybody would throw balls at me – footballs, basketballs, tennis balls – and I had to dodge and evade. The rules were, keep throwing until I fall over and die. This was the indoor version of Fuji. Scouts was a strange situation. I was feared, hated and liked at the same time. For some reason I had a reputation of being a dangerous adversary and powerful ally at Scouts, while these same people at school would bully me. A uniform did very strange things to people’s minds. The Fuji game worked like this – whenever we were camping, everybody would try to hunt me down and attack me. But you see, they would split up in to small groups to find me, so I would encounter them in these little groups and counter-attack. Nothing major, just jump out, push them over, then go run and hide somewhere else. Eventually other people joined my group - so then we had Fuji, Muji, Guji, Suji...It was a lot of fun, up until the Scout masters had an issue with people running around in the Australian hinterlands in total darkness. So the indoor version developed. Everybody loved to play it, even me, because dodge ball is a lot of fun.

So! I played dodgeball. The only part of me that doesn’t hurt today is my left arm. We won, by a big amount. I think it was 40 to 16 or something. It started very badly because it was my first game and my instinct from softball was try to catch everything that came anywhere near me. The rules of dodgeball are: If you catch somebody, they are out, and one of your team mates can come back in. If you are hit (or even if you try to catch and stuff it up), you are out. Keep going until one team is all out or nine minutes is up. So when a ball came past and I dived to catch it and missed it, I was out. This happened a few times until somebody came over and said that it was a better strategy to miss a catch than to be hit. So I pretended that it was my plan from the beginning, not that I had been unconciously trying for everything...

I am not very strong so I don’t throw very well, and after the first match my arm was tired and I didn’t have much attack power. The teams were mixed, three boys and three girls a side. I was able to make some semi-decent catches, but I only took out two opponents from throwing at them. My main contribution was to fossik up loose balls and pass them to the more experienced players.

Also, the team name was Epic. No really. It was “Epic”. The irony was that the team colour was grey. Nobody appreciated it except me.

I meant to write something here earlier, and really, there is a lot that I could and should put up. But I feel sick today. Symptoms are - dizzy, feeling nausea, lethargy.

Anh; I read your comments that you made a few days ago, and I appreciated what you had to say. You are always welcome to write here, even if you disagree with what I say. From conflict, comes learning ^_^

I found out the reason I was unable to save money and have taken steps to rectify it.

Gym: There was a new situation in my life that meant that some of the things I planned did not occur. I intend to pick this up again next week.

Food: This was pretty good with some fails. Last night I cooked dinner again (maybe that is why I feel sick now >.>) but the major win was that I went shopping and bought food for two weeks rather than my usual 5 minutes notice thing. It's lucky because my younger brother will be staying for a few days and I know all my food will disappear.

I did not make much progress in work this week. I have been worrying about some other things and had some trouble concentrating. Also I am being continually distracted at work by a co-worker who is very passionate about a game and continues to bug me about it.

I don't feel so good so I think Ill leave it here for now.

oh right

I have been talking with the new president of the Golden Key chapter here. The old president is the one who gave me such trouble and said things to the group like "We don't want Chris as a president, he has an unglamorous job and it reflects poorly on us". This is off the back of one of the old executive seeking me out to complain about the old leadership. She said that after I left, most of the structure I had established was immediately changed.

The Chapter I had built was based around small groups that focused on tasks that were interesting to them; an individual from each group would then meet with other group leads and once every three or four weeks we would meet up and have an executive meeting. This encouraged largely autonomous group participation and meant people with varied schedules could still engage in the running of the Chapter - nobody was left behind. I recognised that people had different schedules and that a single mother who was studying had different time needs than a student in their teens with little responsibility.

This structure worked well; the main feature was that LOTS of people could join in and there was room for them to pursue their own goals - one person was interested in art, so organised students in her field to meet up with local artists, for example.

However after I left the new president had her own agenda and cancelled all of this thing. She molded it into only benefitting the people in her career choice, and her partner. My friend said to me that I made the Chapter into a friendly, group oriented architecture, where the focus was on mutual support. She said that she was touched that I made the time to seek out people who couldn't be involved as much and supported others who were trying new things.

But the person who replaced me made it in to a business like thing. If you could not meet the schedule of this person, well too bad! You could not participate in the group. My friend said many people had left the executive because they could not meet the demands of this president. This person said that she felt decieved; the purpose of the society had become subverted. Golden Key's premise is simple - those who are fortunate and successful have a duty to care for those who do not have the same advantages that we do. Specifically, not every body has access to the same level of education. We recognise that a person who could not attend classes because they have other responsibilities such as families or work should not be abandoned.

However the chapter had become a self service thing. Instead of using pooled abilities to help others, it was now using others support to promote the leadership group. My friend felt guilty approaching new members to recruit them because she felt they would be used by the leadership and discarded once they were used up. The same people were the ones to always 'win' the free trips to the conferences - the chapter had essentially become a fundraiser to pay for the President and her partner to fly overseas.

That is what I was told. Is it true? I desperately hope not. But, I already saw the start of this when I left. So reluctantly, I have to believe at least some of it.

As I am a graduate, I can't fulfill an executive role. But...in 2006 I was five votes away of being the leader for the entire Asia-Pacific region. The society has great potential for helping others. I am interested in rejoining - the president asked me to help out at some events, so.

It can't hurt to go along and find out for myself the situation, right?