"I am going to 3D print my own quadcop drone, install a few pairs of Go-Pros and use an onboard Arduino to live stream 360 stereo views of downtown SF to my Oculus Rift ready WebGL visualizer.", says the techno-hipster maker with zero creativity who confuses "putting things together" with "inventing something", and the words "cool" with "relevant".

if you come to me with a question, i won't give you an answer.

if you ask for my advice, i won't give you a recommendation.

at best i'll give you a pointer, a suggestion. perhaps a direction, a map. you'll then start walking, creating your own route, getting lost and finding your way again. you'll see other people's footsteps often, some old and some fresh, and sometimes you'll walk open territories no one has visited before. you'll meet Eureka and dance together and laugh in joy, you'll cry with Despair, which is not a bad thing.

if you want a lesson, i won't give you instruction.

if you want guidance, but i won't show you.

i want you to have fun too. i won't spoil your journey.

or maybe i just have no idea and this is my fancy excuse to slip away from the situation?

I just learnt that the Golden Gate Bridge is officially ... orange! And the sky is what, green?

somebody had this brilliant idea. problem. solved.

In this city, people criticize the techies, people complain about the homeless, people make fun of the hipsters, people hate the landlords. The only group that is universally loved is the gay. Unless they are a gay techie, a gay homeless, a gay hipster or a gay landlord. I think it's pretty reliable to conclude that it's in people's nature to hate/dislike/criticize. I do it too. It feels good sometimes!

there's this sweet and very popular spot in the city where people gather to relax on the grass while having a chat and a beer, or maybe just to listen to some music, which has the fantastic view of downtown in the background and the so called Painter Ladies, some victorian houses, in the foreground.

when i'm there, surrounded by hundreds of people, i wonder who lives in the Painted Ladies, and i feel sorry for them, for not being able to live their lives without being observed, for being unable to open their windows and walk around freely. and then, i think that if i lived there myself, i'd put the toilet right by one of the windows, keep it open, and i'd take my shits there, relaxed, enjoying the view of hundreds of people see my happy face through the window.

it's not that i find it especially exciting, but the though comes to my mind every single time i visit the place.

today i cleaned my apartment. well, i cleaned my life.

i am a man of few possessions, i have not many material belongings. i own one piano, one desk, one computer on it, one pair of skis, one bicycle and one bed. the rest are all tiny things of enormous meaning, which fit in one box and which i consider non-material (for most practical discussions).

today i did one of those apartment cleanups where you get rid of stuff you no longer need. i donated to goodwill, to the public library, and also i simply threw things away. when i moved here five years ago i realized my whole life fitted in a handful of boxes really. but today i realized i had way too many things. so i cleaned up my apartment.

and once i got rid of the stuff, i went though those tiny things of enormous meaning, carefully deciding in which shelf, album or box they'd go. i surely cried. of nostalgia, and sadness, and especially of happiness. how lucky i have been, and i still am. many of these memories are old, very old. some are very recent. and some are new, but feel old. i can't still believe how much has happened to me in the last five years, which feel like fifteen really. i never though i'd go through that much. yet, after cleaning the apartment, in the intimacy of all the recollections and memories and thoughts, i was more certain than ever that i still am the same me that i have always been.

also, another thing that hasn't change is that, it seems, my life still fits in twelve boxes. well, plus a piano i guess.

i'm sure you have heard, many times, of the classic proposition that somehow all books and stories already exist. according to that view, writing a book is the art of choosing the right combination of word, and creativity the skill of navigating that space of all possible stories successfully in order to find the interesting or relevant stories.

you probably have also stumbled across the debate of whether mathematics is actually discovered rather than invented, or in other words, whether mathematics is observational or experimental/inspirational.

in my opinion, the proposition that all books are written and the illusion that mathematics are discovered, are both wrong and fall victim to a common underlying phenomenon. i'd venture to assert that we humans are extremely good at taking new knowledge, concepts and content. and i'd say too that we feel equally as comfortable working with this new concepts as with the old ones. also, it seems to me that as soon as we invent something new we immediately incorporate it to our repertoire of knowledge easily, effortlessly. and because of that ease, the line between the new and the old blur, and the action of creation passes almost unnoticed. if not forgotten. as if things had been there forever.

of course, the illusion of pre-existence is not only an easy one to fall for, but also an intellectually appealing one, or perhaps, a convenient one. a reality that we don't create or invent, but we simply discover/find, is a static and finite reality. easier to understand, easier to digest. and depending on your psychological wiring, more satisfying.

but no matter how comforting it is to thing of pre-creation, or how naturally and harmoniously new ideas, stories, theorems or values sit with the rest of the pre-known, those things were not there until we created them. we are just incredibly plastic at absorbing, but not because of that should we forget how incredibly remarkable we are at creating as well.

what i am told: "sir, please, you _have to_ fasten your seat belt for landing"
what i think: "fuck you, you cannot tell me what to do, i'm an adult now!"
what i do: "click"

The couple of times I have gone for a massage, it has been no good.

Both times I got in, I gave my discount coupon, removed my shoes as instructed, and waited in a beautifully decorated relaxed room with soft Thai music, some candles and a fountain. Then an attractive petite lady arrived and asked me on a childish voice to please follow her though a dark corridor into a room where I had to remove my clothes and wait for her laying down in the massage platform. So I removed my shirt, my pants, had that inevitable though of the happy ending that all men in this planet who don't lie to themselves do have for a fraction of a second, got naturally over it, and laid down. Exhausted from the day, I was so happy to be in such a relaxing environment, so ready to get massaged, so ready to get that little sweet lady do magic on my body while listening to the soft peaceful music.

Then the woman arrived, and all I remember is cracking and smashing and punching and bending and breaking and pain, like an animal stomped all over me. By the time I left the room and I got offered a cup of tea by that same petite woman in her childish voice, I didn't feel like getting any fucking cup of tea, but like punching her in the face.

just to add more confusion to the subject, it seems that jesus was born the year 4 BC.

i never know who (or how many) i am writing for. but i keep writing regardless, and sometimes i meet great and brilliant and special people because of it.

when it comes to insults, i feel like i'm surrounded by amateurs. insulting is an art, and mediterranean cultures have a long tradition in arts.