October 30, 2015
The Fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper
As a child we have all been told of the fable of the grasshopper and the ant. It tells the story of a grasshopper that has spent the warm months singing while the ant worked to store up food for the rainy days. When the rains came, the grasshopper finds itself hungry and begs the ant for food. The grasshopper is rebuked for its idleness and told to suffer the consequence of its improvidence. We were told that the fable gives us an ambivalent moral lesson about the virtues of hard work and planning for our future.
If you ask me, I think the story is half done. If you grew up and live all your life in the Philippines, as I do, where floods brought about by torrential rains, storm surges, high tides, tidal waves and tsunamis is an in-your-face experience every year without fail you'd come to expect that when "rain" is mentioned in a story it will definitely be followed by a harrowing or hilarious "flood" story. And failing that a "rain" story seems incomplete without the "flood" part. And thus, I submit that when the rains came in the story, the ant's colony could have been flooded and as a result the ant drowned. As for the stored food, in all likelihood it would have been washed away and ended up as flotsam in the rising floodwaters-- easy picking for the hungry grasshopper.
There is no moral lesson to be learned here. If there is anything at all to be learned it is that there are two kinds of people:-- grasshoppers and ants.
Ants are the hard-working people who work all their life in the hope that the future would be better. Grasshoppers, on the other hand, are people to whom good things come without much effort on their part.
Though I'm eternally gratefull for the things that have come my way I can't say that I got them with ease. I've fought and worked hard for every bit of scrap I have and so if indeed there are but two kinds of people-- then I'm probably an ant.
Oh, one last thing since ants are scavengers the stockfile of food in the story could be-- dead grasshoppers!
Think about that for a moment.
August 6, 2015
Reading Ulysses with Marilyn Monroe
Damn it. I've done it! I've scaled the Everest of literary snobbery-- and survived. I've read James Joyce's Ulysses (First Vintage Books Edition, June 1986; which follows exactly the line divisions of the critical & synoptic edition of Garland Publishing, New York, June 1984).
It's silly but what actually led me to read the book was an Eve Arnold's photograph: "Marilyn on Long Island (New York) Reading James Joyce's Ulysses" (1955, Magnum Photos, Inc. New York, U.S.A; see above). It was (I think) a magazine cut out pasted on the bare wall of the passageway leading to the bathroom of our two-storey apartment in Cubao, Quezon City (--it was already there when we moved in). Thus it may be said that it was juvenile voyeurism that led me into reading Joyce's Ulysses. I was twelve years old then.
I would be in my 20s when I had my first encounter with Joyce's book. It was in a pile of pre-owned (probably stolen) books being clandestinely peddled in a back alley in Sta. Cruz, Manila. I immediately recognized it from the photograph. After handing over a few pesos for it, I opened the book to browse it (the vender wouldn't allow me to even open the book-- which was wrapped in plastic, until I've paid for it) and quickly realized I was in way over my head. The book is peppered with text I can't even pronounce much less understand (-- there are fragments of French, German, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Scandinavian and perhaps other languages I did not recognize). I tried to exchange it for another book but the toothless vender menancingly pointed to his "No Return No Exchange" sign.
After realizing that the book is not an easy read I wondered if Marilyn Monroe was really reading it or was it just a prop. Upon reaching home I looked at the photograph again and noticed that Marilyn Monroe was on the last few pages of the book. I leafed through the pages of my copy. Ms. Monroe was apparently reading from the final episode of the book-- Molly Bloom's soliloquy (which I later found out was reviled by the censorious as that "dirty book's" most "dirty part"). I was intrigued. But to get to the "dirty" part I have to wade through the entire book. It was much too dense for me. I gave up.
Two decades would pass before I picked up the book again-- no, not the copy I bought, but a digital copy. Ulysses, perhaps more than any novel, was made for the digital age. Why you ask? Well, I have to read three other books to read this one book! To carry three extra books to be able to begin to understand a book seems too taxing intellectually if not physically. But, something that could be accomplished with an iPad.
Ulysses has a reputation for density and inscrutability that makes me suspect that many who claimed to have read the book is at worst lying or at best didn't understood what the book is all about. I've tried several times in the past to read the book in its entirety but soon encounter texts that daunts me; frustrated, I give up. I have resorted to episodic rather than consecutive reading and could claim, at that point, that I have managed to read only three of the eighteen episodes (or chapters, Joyce didn't say)-- "Telemachus", "Nestor" and "Calypso"-- which introduced Leopold Bloom, the book's hero. I skipped "Proteus" which came before "Calypso" (The original text did not include episode titles, Joyce simply numbered them consecutively; the titles originate from the Gilbert schemata; Stuart Gilbert claims that Joyce referred to the episodes by their Homeric titles in the latter's correspondences to him). In "Telemachus" and "Nestor", Joyce's meager use of punctuation makes it difficult to distinguish between third-person narrative, interior monologue, and dialogue. In "Proteus", the difficulty is not on how to distinguish the narrator's (Stephen Dedalus) monologue from everything else, but more on how to follow the twists and turns of that monologue itself. Joyce's stream-of-consciousness technique, structuring and experimental prose— full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, make the narrative quite hard to follow. I soon found out that I would encounter the same literary roadblocks when I picked up the book again, but I wasn't giving up this time.
Two schools of thought exist about one’s first reading of Ulysses: some staunchly advise reading it cold without recourse to outside materials, and others recommend reading it in parallel with all the guidebooks one could tolerate-- I myself managed to move forward by the second approach for the simple reason that my education and life experiences did not equip me with the tools to decipher Ulysses.
The good news it that there is a glut of guidebooks, summaries and annotations out there in the world wide web that could be easily procured extra-legally. The bad news is that these guidebooks could get in the way of your reading. Or worst you could end up poring over the never-ending details provided by the guidebooks, lose your way in the labyrith and totally forget about the book you're suppose to be reading in the first place. I stuck with those that came highly recommended and I settled on three:-- Harry Blamire's (1) The new Bloomsday Book, A Guide Through Ulysses, 3rd Ed. The New Bloomsday Book is a sort of Ulysses-for-Dummies book that summarizes each episode in easy to comprehend language.
I also have Stuart Gilbert's (2) James Joyce's Ulysses, the most famous of the guidebooks. Be warned though that critics have described Gilbert's contribution as a dour book that managed to suck all the fun out of Joyce's work. And my go-to guidebook, (3) Don Gifford’s indispensable compendium of Ulyssian knowledge, Ulysses Annotated, Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses, 2nd Ed. It's a must-have for a first time reader, who-- like me, has no reference point to the world where the characters in the book live in and has a limited literary background. It's a quick reference of Joycean words and phrases. Gifford clarifies passages which otherwise would almost certainly remain hopelessly opaque to first-time readers. As bonus, Gifford provides maps of the action traced through the Dublin streets!
I didn't just read Joyce's Ulysses, I also listened to an audio-book. I was actually reading along as I listened. Honestly, it was the only way I could go over the really incomprehensible Latin words that Joyce had put in his novel. I also listened to Joseph Campbell's "Wings of Art" lecture series on Ulysses (along with Joyce's "Portrait of a Young Man as an Artist" and "Finnegans Wake"). And to top it all off, I watched the 1967 British-American film adaptation of the novel. The film was obviously a low budget stab at an "unfilmable" book but it served me well because I had a glimpse of Dublin (though Ulysses was set in 1940, the film portrayed the city as it was in the 1960s). The infamous Molly Bloom soliloquy takes up almost a quarter of the running time of the film and perhaps as an admission of defeat, all that the film maker could muster was a voice over of the whole thing.
It took me thirty years to read Ulysses the first time. I'll read it again but I would like to see a digital edition of the book with links to annotations, maps, summaries and commentary-- and perhaps even with an accompanying audio book that could be played as a read-along companion for the literary challenged, in a single "book". Maybe they could throw in the film adaptation as well to make for a total experience.
In 2018, I finally got hold of a hard copy-- an actual book, of Ulysses. The text is still unwieldy, still indecipherable.
August 1, 2015
Arduino is not just a bar in Italy
We are in the midst of the resurgence of open-source hardware and it's paving the way for a return of build-it-yourself electronics. At the forefront is the Arduino, a credit-size micro controller described by its makers as "an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software". It basically means you can use an Arduino as a tool to accomplish DIY projects where someone else has done all the hard work. All you have to do is follow the directions to get it done.
While I consider myself as a tinkerer it took me sometime to get into the Arduino. For one, I have no idea where to start. The Arduino Uno R3 itself costs only about Php1,400.00 so getting one is not really a major life changing decision. But getting the rest of the electronic components that you'll need in a project would be a dicey propositon at best especially for somebody like me who have no experience creating wiring circuits. The best way to start, I think, is to get a kit. And so I went for the original Arduino Starter Kit.
The kit includes, among others, jumper wires, LEDs, an 16x2 LCD, a few potentiometers, a handful of push buttons, an array of resistors, temp/tilt sensors, transistors, a breadboard and of course a genuine Arduino Uno Rev.3 board. The kit even provides a laser cut wooden base for the Uno (I have since enshrined my first Arduino Uno in a cool acrylic case from Seeed Studio). It also comes with a well written and informative Arduino Projects Book. You could probably get all the components in Raon for perhaps a third of the price and top it off with a Chinese Arduino Uno knock-off (then download a pirated digital copy of the book), but nothing beats having an original-- which has a small map of Italy and the words "Made in Italy" on it.
Almost a year on, I have procured three more boards-- all Chinese knock-offs, bought a bunch of jumper wires on-line and have since made several trips to Raon to replenish my stock of electronic components. I have since created a digital clock (using an RTC module), an array of lights to simulate KITT's Larsen lights (if you don't get it, you are clueless about the 80s!), a matrix of LEDs, a morse code key.
Arduino offered an affordable way to explore physical programing (though programming isn't really required to get started because you could simply piggy back off open source projects, tweak it and claim it as your own).
(N.B. The name Arduino comes from a bar in Ivrea, where the founders of the project used to hang around. The bar, in turn, was named after Arduin of Ivrea, who was king of Italy from 1002 to 1014.)
July 31, 2015
A Nifty Little Hacking Machine
On its first boot I plugged the RPi2 to an Ethernet, an old Apple aluminum keyboard and a 40-inch Sony flat screen TV and watched the gobbledygook scroll up the screen. Truly boring stuff-- much like watching paint dry, so in the meanwhile I pinged (using "Fing" on my iPhone) my router and zeroed in on the RPi2's IP address. With that info I moseyed over to my trusty old MacBook and SSHed to the RPi which surprisingly just worked without further configuration. I unplugged the TV and the keyboard and proceeded with the rest of the update/upgrade/configuration headless.
Going all out portable on the RPi2 I dug up my Edimax nano WiFi adapter (Php650.00) and a power bank with a 5V/2A output a friend gave me (I used it as a back-up power for my MacBook). To my surprise the Edimax is plug and play and the power bank supplied ample power.
Last week, I got a 2.8TFT capacitive touch screen (Php2,300.00) and got it to work on the RPi2 with a kernel patch. Though the touch screen works fine for finger input, it's more for show than for practical use. I intend to get a mini keyboard later on (Rii mini keyboard-- about Php850.00). In the meantime, I'll be using my full Apple keyboard-- which needless to state, is an anti-thesis to the concept of portability.
With the prospect of a cheap portable throw-away hacking machine all it needs now is some decent hacking tools. And so I installed the Kali-Linux. I imagine myself sitting in Starbucks and wardriving the unwary tech-savvy posers-- something I used to do in the early days of WiFi before things got complicated and posers became somewhat smarter.
Installing Kali Linux was a breeze. Getting the 2.8 TFT screen to work took some time to figure out (--basically using a kernel patch) but what really got me stuck was getting the RPi2 into the air-- I just could not make the Edimax nano WiFi adapter (EW-7811Un) to work (which, by the way, is plug-and-play in Wheezy). I knew and have confirmed that Kali Linux recognizes the Edimax with a "root@kali:~# dmesg". Running "root@kali:~# lsusb" likewise shows the same thing. But after trying all the work-arounds to make it work, it was a no go.
After much head scratching and googling, I stumbled upon the information that since kernel version 3.0 of Kali, a driver (rtl8192cu)-- which supports the RTL8188CUS chipset of the EW-7811Un, is buried deep within the Kali distro. But, unlike in Wheezy, Kali doesn't auto-load the driver upon boot up. I should say that it was just plain stupid of me to try to make the WiFi adapter to work without first checking if a driver for it had been loaded in the first place. There's a lesson to be learned here but who cares if you're having so much fun-- as in life, the problem with being on the wrong side of the street is that it's so much fun.
A "root@kali:~# find/ -name **8192** -print" showed that indeed there is such a module. Obviously, it wasn't loaded by default. Thus, I loaded it manually:-- "root@kali:~# mod probe 8192cu". A "root@kali:~# lsmod" confirmed that it is now loaded. A "root@kali:~# ifconfig wlan0" show that the Edimax is up and running. I opted the easy way out and invoked the built-in graphical WiFi manager of Kali to configure it.
I had some success using this nifty little WiFi penetrating machine to hack into my MacBook wireless connection. Yesterday, I took the RPi2 for a test war drive. It's my idea of a lazy Sunday morning-- sitting in a coffee shop that offers WiFi, sipping latte while scooping up data from the wireless packets in the air (this morning I used airodump-ng). As I sit there totally engrossed with mischief some friends happened to come by. It didn't take them long to figure out that I'm up to no good but when they saw the RPi2 it scared them probably realizing how an attacker could wreck havoc with a simple pen-testing machine (less than Php5,000.00) that could easily be carried around or stowed in a table drawer or hidden in a suspended ceiling to eavesdrop on an office network.
June 6, 2015
A Byte of Raspberry Pi
I've written before that I consider myself a hanger-on to the first home-computing revolution, a revolution which swept across the United States of America in the early 1980s and eventually spilled over to our shores in the late 1980s when pre-owned, refurbished and/or cobbled together remnants of the first personal computers were dumped here. You could see tons of these machines piled on top of each other in every other store in Greenhills. Somehow I got my hands on a pre-owned Commodore 64-- the C64, as it came to be known. It looked like a breadbox with a keyboard on top. To get it going you plug it into a television-- I had my C64 plugged into an banged up Philips portable B&W TV. And that was how I started to learn to code.
Back then when you turn on a computer, you are greeted by a solitary cursor blinking on the upper left corner of an otherwise blank screen. If you want to play a game, you have to "load" it up first and coax the game out from the void by typing a few indecipherable text on the uninviting blank screen. As crude as it was the C64 could be used both to play games and create games and other software. This, I think, made all the difference. Basic programming was made accessible to the average user. With a C64 one could learn to program if he chooses to; and if he opted not to he can still use the C64 as a game console. It was a computer and a game console in one machine. Somehow someone figured that most people are too dumb or maybe would prefer something simpler and thus the blinking cursor was masked over by a graphical user interface. The C64 and others like it thus gave way to dedicated game consoles and home computers that could be run with pointers and clicks. Self proclaimed "computer literate" users who have owned and used PCs for years have never typed a command on the terminal and probably never even knew that a terminal existed within the OS of their PCs. The chance to be intrigued, challenged and to learn programming was put out of reach of the average user.
Thus I welcome the coming of the Raspberry Pi. I've read about the US$35 (about Php 1,500.00) credit-sized computer that runs on stripped down Linux distributions and the fantastic things hackers, makers and just about every tinkerer are doing with it. And when the second generation Raspberry Pi came out last February 2015-- with a faster 900MHZ quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU and a 1GB RAM, I got one as soon as it was available here in the Philippines.
The Raspberry Pi 2 features three upgrades-- it replaces the single-core, 700MHZ ARM11 processor; it doubles the available RAM; and it packs four full USB ports, twice the number of the original. It also now have a jack for combined 3.5mm audio and composite video. But, I think what tinkerers will highly appreciate is the 40 GPIO pins (the original only had 24), CSI and DSI connectors for direct connections to expansion boards, displays and more. Collectively, the upgrades give the Raspberry Pi 2 a speed boost and almost doubles the fun of connecting to it whatever a tinkerer could imagine.
As soon as I got my Raspberry Pi, I loaded it up with the recommended Linux-based Raspbian OS. I must say that the installer is well laid-out and will get you up and running in no time. I opted to boot up sans the LXDE graphical desktop and as the Raspbian OS finished its booting sequence, I looked up at the screen and saw an old friend-- the blinking cursor.
May 1, 2015
An LRT story
The LRT crawls southward along its elevated track; it judders past warehouses and gleaming stainless steel water tanks precariously perched on run-down rooftops, past bridges and half-finished structures, past derelict tenement buildings, their windows plastered with yellowed newspapers ostensibly to keep the sun out, more likely to prevent prying eyes from looking in or maybe to prevent the occupants from looking out.
Hanging by my wrist on a handrail as the coach rock from side to side and back and forth, I watch the buildings roll past me like a tracking shot in a movie. My mind wanders to the days when I had to take the trains to go to work; twice a day I am offered a passing glimpse into other people's lives. I always take the middle coach of the three-car train. Getting in thru the last or the next-to-last door depending on which had less people pushing in. From there I make my way to the middle of the coach and take my place on the pivot section of the train. At that time, there was no air-conditioning yet. It could become quite stuffy inside the coaches and sometimes it smelt like you got a sock-- drenched in sweat, stuffed in your nose. It wasn't always that bad though. Sometimes the weather was pleasant enough. The opened upper window helped. It let in a steady stream of air. Not fresh but it would do.
Out of habit, I got in the next-to-last door. These days I seldom take the train, but when I have to go to Manila, particularly in the Sta. Cruz area I'd rather take the train than take my car. Parking the car and leaving it on the side of the street makes me anxious. The LRT trains are different now. The coaches are bigger and they're air-conditioned. They are still packed most of the time but somehow it is generally a more pleasant ride than before.
It was already early evening when I took the train back to Makati. The weather was agreeable and there was a cool breeze. It was still rush hour and so the trains are packed. It would be uncomfortable I know but it would still be faster than taking a taxi. Traffic was horrendous at this hour.
Two-thirds into my commute the train made an unscheduled stop; pushing away the cobwebs of stupor that commuters sank into as a shield against the drudgery of public transport I realized that the train was stranded between two stations. It wasn't unusual. The train is old and poorly maintained. Lately, there were more and more of these stops. It's all over the news. Settling back into stupor my eyes were lured into the window of a crumbling two-story house. The house looked pre-WWII. It is mostly in ruins. Darkness envelops the structure. I welcomed the distraction. My eyes scanned the ornate cornices and moldings, picking out more and more details as errant streaks of light danced through the facade. Gazing onto the blackness of the window directly in my line of sight I could faintly discern the shape of what looks like a portrait hanging on the drywall opposite the window. Soon enough a stray stream of light cut through the darkness. It was a portrait of a woman-- I think.
The train stirred and jerked an inch forward. After a few seconds more the train purred back to life. Somehow my attention was drawn to a finger on my left hand. I caught a splinter in it a few days ago and the Band-Aid I wound up around it now looks like a dirty sock. I pull the soggy Band-Aid off the end of my pinky and look at the pale, wrinkled, pulpy flesh beneath, blood caked between the finger nail and the dead-looking bloated flesh-- a zombie finger. When I looked again the train had pulled up to the next station. I looked at the white metal plate that flashed before me. I took a mental note of the station indicated. My mind floated back to the image of the woman. The woman on the painting-- or was it a photograph, was holding up two fingers in what looks like a peace sign. Her eye close to the forefinger is captured in what looked like wink. A corner of her lips curled up in some kind of a naughty half-smile. Or so I think. It was like a mirage. And maybe as the image melts away from memory I imagine more than what I actually saw.
I took the train again the following week and as the train was passing through the area where I remember the intriguing structure was, I looked for it but somehow missed it. It was mid-afternoon still. Maybe the harsh light somehow affected the way I perceived things. I let it pass.
It was early evening when I passed the area again. I wasn't actually looking out for the building but there it was. And as the train passed by it I looked through the window and there was that painting again. This time I took note of the surrounding landmarks and without further thought got down at the next station. This is crazy. I do know what seized me but as my foot hit the pavement I stopped. For a moment I stood there-- and then reason drained out from my body. Before I knew it I was walking towards the house.
And there it was. I actually couldn't see the house from where I am even if I stand on my toes. A line of galvanized iron roofing sheets surrounded the house. The overgrown plants on the yard conspiring to cover it up even more. I was about to turn away when I noticed that a section of the galvanized fortification was hanging slightly askew on a hinge. Probably a workmen's ingress. Metal scraped concrete as I pushed on the makeshift door. Stray cats scampered away. "Tao po…" No answer. I walked up the driveway.
I walked through the main door-- or what's left of it. The roof is gone too. Moonlight gave the place an eerie glow. I walked up to the main staircase. It was banged up but the concrete structure held. I walked up and stood at the landing to get my bearings. I made my way to the room. It was a bit tricky but I made it to the door. I pushed. Surprisingly it opened with nary a squeak. There was a gaping hole on the floor and so I carefully inched my way inside just enough to see "The Woman". I blinked and waited a second or two for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. It wasn't a painting. Neither was it a portrait. It was a mirror. I began to turn around to see… and then it hit me. It was sharp. There was a moment of pain. I was dead even before I hit the floor.
Days had passed when they discovered the twisted body. It was a murder-- stabbed in the heart, probably as he was turning around. Curiously, the dead man seems to be reaching for something. Indeed, just out of his reach is a portrait-- or was it a painting... of a woman. She was holding up three of her fingers-- like a boy scout.
November 5, 2014
My constipated Brain
There is this trick I do in High School where I would browse thru the pages of a magazine then I'd ask somebody to pick a page. I would then describe the randomly picked page. It's not a word for word thing though, I would only point out, for example, that there is a picture of a girl on the right side of the page or that there is a soft drink ad on the left and so forth. It required no effort at all. Sometimes I could see the "pages" in my mind and I could even "flip" thru them to get to the one I need. It was more of a visual thing-- I could only recall the pictures and I forget them after a day or two. I could not recall text. Well, sometimes I can but not every time. It was a hit-and-miss.
If there's one thing that can be said about the study of the human brain -- and especially in the field of memory -- it's that even today, it's notable less for what is known than for how much is not known. The workings of our brain remain, for the most part, a mystery. But if there are areas of consensus in the field of neurology, one of them is that the notion of "photographic memory," in which a person can take mental snapshots and recall every detail at a later time, has never been proved to exist. Scientists say it could be a version of "eidetic memory," which is, essentially, the medical term for crazy, crazy freakish recall.
Am I making this up? Fat chance. My schoolmates would have figured it out on day one. It's something everybody talks about every time we have class reunions. Photographic memory or not one thing is for sure. Whatever it is it had served me well in school and in my profession as well. I had a leg up when examinations week comes up. And for the longest time I did not carry a datebook but remembered all my appointments. It was all good until I hit middle age. By that time I have been accumulating memories since I was maybe two or three years old. I should say that it isn't as if I have a day to day recording of everything that happened in my life. I only retain life events that made an impact on me and only those I personally experienced. Like there's this piece of memory that I vividly recall waking up a day after a flood and seeing millions (no, not really millions, but there was a lot) of hito on the yard of our host in Legaspi City. It's fragmented and I can't really connect it to other events but I do recall all the people I interacted with on that particular day. But as memories piled up-- the good as well as the bad, the ability for recall became more of a curse rather than a blessing. When an entire life is perpetually available, that life exists, in a sense, forever in present tense. And sifting through a perpetual and onrushing flood of memories is less fun than it sounds. It's hard, after all, to erase bad memories when you can't erase any memory at all.
And that's the rub, I suspect that all these years I may have been suffering from depression stemming from the inability to forget unpleasant memories and experiences from the past. Particularly memories that had caused me so much pain. I think that this thing is likely the result of obsessive-compulsive thoughts rather than "photographic memory". I'll leave it to the experts. As far as I'm concerned I look forward to old age and the day I, hopefully, will be able to forget most if not unload all these "bad" memories that have clogged up my constipated brain all these years.
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