Monthly Archives: June 2011
How to PWN Fibromyalgia with medicinal marijuana and some good healthcare
Copyright (C) 2011 by Thowi.
How to PWN Fibromyalgia by Thomas Winters is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at voodooinlisp.com.
So, as I read on NORMAL’s blog, members of congress have introduced legislation to end marijuana prohibition.
And what a perfective moment for me to start a blog! Many might be interested in my juicy story, which I’m just going to spew all over the internet[0]. Because it’s just too much fun!
I first became sick when I was still in high school over 20 years ago. Due to pain, I don’t get around much, and often just lie in bed all day. Especially when it hurts to much to concentrate. I just could not function, and have been on Social Security disability since around 1994 or so. I’m a single parent at 40 years, and there is just so little I can do, physically.
“Fibromyalgia means pain in the muscles and connective tissue surrounding the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Fibromyalgia is a form of generalized muscular pain and fatigue.”[5]
The worst part is what I call ‘Brain Fog.’ I just could not think clearly, and had a real hard time setting goals I could stick with. Even simple ones, like just tossing some stuff up on the Internet and calling it a blog.
Because of that, I spent a lot of time in what I call the ‘slacker’ side of geek internet computer culture: Playing video games, reading forums, doing high level computer science research to exploit, and so on. I had lots of things that needed doing, but were often beyond me. This did give me a lot of time to think, and figure some things out[1].
Most medical doctors told me it was all in my head. Depression, laziness, whatever the MDs wanted to call it. Anything but something physical. After all I was overweight, couldn’t exercise, why, I must just be lazy. I felt certain they were just full of it, but when your sick and on disability, no one listens to you.
Now, my BS[7] is in computer science, with a minor in psychology. That means I know nothing about psychology, and a little bit about computers. So I’m um… a crazy computer scientist or something[8]. But just in case, I started reading all kinds of self help books. A good teacher of mine 😉 taught me to start meditating. Wow, the way he described yoga sure makes me wish my body didn’t hurt so much that I could just start.
A couple of years ago, I enrolled at a university to pursue my master’s degree in applied computing. While I was sick, and could barely get around campus, I discovered something really quite wonderful. And for the first time in my life[2], I was able to get up and start moving. I bought a bicycle, started walking, and I lost a whole bunch of weight. During that time, I taught some college level classes[3], and did computer science research[4]. I think most of my professors thought I was pretty smart.
But it was temporary relief, and the real problem still lurked. Eventually, I ran out of time and money, and it’s been over a year now since I had to drop out. I didn’t grow up around it, and the only way I knew to get this certain medicinal herb was from college kids. You know, the ones that live in honor dorms? Plus it is illegal. Kind of a problem.
Without it, my body is growing weak again. I can’t walk everywhere anymore, no shiny new bicycle toy, and I just lie in bed most of the time. Wow, this sucks. Thought I was done with this stuff.
But instead, I’m just sucking up not quite enough social security disability money. Mmm… Yummy! Free tax payer money! But there is no real reason for it. With marijuana I could do oh so much more. And I could be earning my own keep.
And let’s be honest. My definition of ‘enough’ money and what I get on disability, are vastly different.[9]
If I wasn’t sick, of course.
But just a few months ago, I found a chiropractic doctor who could actually test for and diagnose the real, medical problem. My nervous system and brain had nearly shut down because the top bone of my spinal column had twisted, and was pinching my brain stem. Guess that explains the pain and brain fog.
However, after a series of spinal decompression treatments, that bone is back where it is supposed to be. And my brain started working real good, and I just got really, really smart. And I was doing comp sci voodoo (research) BEFORE. Sometimes I wonder just how smart am I?
My body is still broken, overweight, and I still have osteoarthritis. But the fibro pain is getting better. I can think clearly for the first time since I was a child, and I can start to moveing again. It is painful on my joints. Years of physical neglect have left me with osteoarthritis and obesity. Don’t worry, it’s much better than the fibro pain. If only I could some medicinal herb to help, I bet I could get in shape fast! I wonder what I might do then?
But I will get there, one way or another. It’s going to take a few years for my body to recover. I’m not sure I’ll ever be as healthy as a typical man my age, but I’m getting better. That is all that matters.
Thank you NORML! This is just the beginning of my story. If you want to find out what happens next, follow me @VooDooThesis on Twitter. Of course, I’m doing some scary comp sci voodoo…
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[0] Copyrightprotected Political Freespeechy thingies. Juicy details will only come if certain people ask me nicely! You know who you are 😉
[3] Some great stories about that, in future blog posts.
[.]
[1] See ‘Grok’, probably be a blog thingy sometime soon.
[4] This was the only one I could find fast: on LITS (search Winters and Paruchuri on Google scholar.) It was um… a joke… Maybe I’ll explain one day. And if anyone wants to read it (it’s dumb, you don’t) don’t buy it. It’s academic research and is available freely somewhere. If someone asks nice, maybe I’ll just post it on here, depending on the legality of it. And some of my other papers, when I can find them.
[1] See ‘Grok’, probably be a blog thingy sometime soon.
[5] See Dr. Jeff Smith’s book: Living Pain Free: It’s Your Choice
[9] I think the amount of taxes I pay on the money I could be making with my skills probably would pay back the American people every month. But hey, I just love lying around all day, being stuck inside, playing stupid games when I could be writing them… So thanks America! God bless!
[2] Will someone please explain what ‘420’ means? I mean I think I grok[1] it. This one time, I went to a fast food drive through, and my change was $4.20, I looked at the clock it said 4:20. I mean if the universe is just going to be BLUNT about it… 😉 @ hippy chicks!
[6] BS is short for bachelor’s of science. A degree thingy. Very important everyone stay in school and get one.
[7] See that funny show by Penn and Teller, especially the one on marijuana.
[pi] How many digits do you know?
Anyone interested in a wide area distributed genetic oh, let’s call it a Fantasy Name Generator
With a fun fun fun! Fitness function!
Copyright (C) June 25, 2011 by Thowi
All rights reserved.
// No Noobs! I will hurt your brain!
I’m not going to sketch any source code just yet, but I have an idea for a fantasy (or whatever) name generator. It uses a kind of genetic algorithm. It uses certain complicated algorithms[knuth] to create a large search space of possible names. Now this needs some work so you don’t end up with names like ‘Qj34lii’ or ‘Legooooloops’ or ‘Thowi’, so it’s going to take a bit of work to define fatal mutations.
But one thing that would be really nice, is to play a game over twitter, and allow people to ‘rate’ names (for various ‘traits’) and data mine the heck out of that to train an artificial neural network to become the fitness function to run that thing somewhere all by its self[runonsentencesarerequiredforstuffycomputerresearch].
Anyone interested in that? I know of at least one big MMO company that is running out of fantasy name space.
Love you! The Evil Computer Scientist, Thowi!
And for everyone who is NOT a computer geek…
Hi! I’m Thowi! I’m a crazy computer science major, and while I may love love many of you[HC], I’m just going to be doing the nastiest scariest computer science patented ‘I ain’t never seen that doodoo before!’ just right out in public. I’m almost ashamed of myself. But it is very very funny.
So, if I break your brain, you have been warned.
Now, if you think that is funny, you are probably who this blog is meant for!
Hacking in Poker: Bluff the protocol
Everyone is so fascinated by this whole ‘bluffing’ aspect of the game of poker. It’s not that big a deal. It’s important, because you can’t really win money if you don’t bluff sometimes. At least statistically.
It’s really simple. If you always have good cards, no one will call you, and then you can’t take their money. And that is very, very sad.
Bluffing is easy if you can grok this one thing (not to mention you grok grok.) The poker turn and betting sequence is laid out like a protocol. Each action is a statement.
// Warning, Poker VooDoo
For example, let’s say you have big slick and you’re under the gun. It’s wise to make a bet 2-3 times the big blind to say you’ve got something. And if you bet in that position, you’d almost better have something.
Now if you are lying with your bet about what cards you hold, they call it bluffing. I call it hacking, and I use NLP. And, well… here is one more tiny interesting fact: The whole poker betting protocol is much much simpler than TCP/IP.
<music type=”GypParadoyThemeSong”>Do do do dum, do dum do, Wait for it…. </music>
Grok it yet?
And later I’ll tell you how to hack the entire poker system. 😉
My definition of gambling
Copyright (C) June 20, 2011
by Thowi
While working on my thesis, I learned some top-secret scary government voodoo math called lambda calculus.
I’m going to do a blog post on that subject later, but I want to talk about poker for right now.
You see, poker is really a very, very simple game. (I know TCP/IP baby.)
It only requires some very simple statistics done with just whole numbers…Â And I can do scary voodoo math in my head.
So my definition of gambling:
How I take money from people who can’t do math. With Poker!
Of course there is this other fun game I’m interested in that uses fractions!
If I can get some research money, in about 6 months I’m going to write a book:
Game Theory and Financial Risk Analysis:
An Introduction With Poker
A Text book for a university level computer science course I would like to teach… with Lisp.
But it’s a language for thought… I’m not sure how to describe it just yet.
Thinking about starting a company…
int main() { std::cout<< "Hello world!" << std::endl; return 0; }
Updated on August 8, 2011
It’s taken me a while to decide exactly what this blog should be about. There is so much I want to write about, and share with you. I’ve talked about medicinal marijuana, and the mysterious illness that afflicted me as a teenager. I’ve also talked about hacking, and bumming machine instructions. And I want to talk about something called Neuro-Lingustic Programming, or NLP as it relates the the book-selling phenomenon called the Law of Attraction.
And while that is eclectic, all of it is related to how I am thinking of making a lot of money on the Internet. It seems like everyone these days wants to know how to make money with this Internet thing. And everyone says, get some traffic and sell a product, or just sell some ads.
So if you’re interested in any of these topics, and want to know what a smart computer science geek thinks about this stuff, well… You don’t have to PAY ATTENTION and READ THIS BLOG. But if you think about it from time to time… you just might want to.
Just keep in mind, I do call myself a Hacker.
Hacker and Geek Gamer Culture 