Dream: President strikes deal with devil

The president, currently an old white male, tells me, "You know, a deal with the devil could greatly benefit America." Then the devil appears. He is a normal-looking guy who is bald. But he is very big, like a giant.

The devil asks the president, "Mr. President, pardon my bringing up a matter of intolerable insignificance... but is there a fly on my head?" pointing to the normal-looking fly on his bald head.

"Why, yes," answers the president. The devil then grabs the fly and flicks it towards the president. While sailing through the air it becomes a large palm-sized mosquito. The president catches this mosquito in his hands and clutches it like it is a valuable piece of gold, speechless with reverence and awe of the devil. But his facial expression soon changes from admiration to dismay, as he chokes and dies from mosquito-poisoning.


More or less what the Devil looked like


More or less what the president looked like

Ideas for the future of gaming

Games are becoming more and more cinematic, featuring almost-photorealistic graphics, 7.1 surround sound (better than a home theater), stereotypical Hollywood music (not a bad thing), and stereotypical Hollywood special effects (not a bad thing either).

After all the technological advances recently made, the biggest pitfall of modern games is still the mode of input. Allow me to explain.

Here I am playing the story for Modern Warfare 2. This scene is set in a sub-urban setting that uncannily resembles Pleasanton. We're driving down a small street in a tank and I see Pleasanton-ish houses to either side, one of which is hanging an American flag from their wall. The unmistakable American format of the "Speed Limit: 25" sign is an intense reminder that this war is being fought in the US. I think to myself, "holy shit this is intense; I've never played a war game set in such a familiar place." And now there are people shooting at me, and I have to run for cover. Behind a house with wooden fences that look exactly like the ones we have in Pleasanton. Oh, and there's 3D sound.

Given all this awesomeness you'd think we'd have invented by now a way to simulate running around and crouching. But no. Just like 10 years ago I still used WASD and the mouse to move. To sprint faster all I have to do is press shift. Oh so hard. In fact the funniest part was the intense scene in which I have to pull a knife out of my stomach to throw it at someone, and it takes like a whole minute to pull it out because I am in pain, and the screen is all blurry and intense, and... the way to take it out is to press F really fast.


Ideas for the future of gaming:

1. An omni-directional treadmill on which you can run. People are trying to develop something like this but so far, demonstrations have not been able to go beyond walking speed.

2. 3D goggles or contact lenses that span your entire vision. This is the one I'm iffy about. Even with one eye closed, we still can choose where to focus. Is it possible to simulate focusing on 50 meters away with the screen is 0.1 inches away? Dunno.

3. High-resolution "texture" (in a literal, not graphical sense) gloves. Each finger of the glove will have a matrix of tiny "pixels" that can be raised or lowered. A rough material will probably have staggered raised pixels. A smooth material will have all pixels at the same level. To simulate sliding your hand across something, simply perform translation on the pixels as you would an LCD screen.

4. A way to simulate parkour: Is there some way to simulate doing a pull-up by using a full-bodied suit with joint locks and strength resistance at every joint, and a treadmill that can also rise and lower in elevation? What about a cat grab (parkour move)? I've been thinking about this and can't come up with a solution. I think maybe if the suit was given an extremity that can stably attach to the ceiling, it would work. Or the treadmill can spontaneously spawn obstacles when you get into range, by folding and unfolding wood really fast.

Feel free to steal any of these ideas as long as it means progress will ensue. I look forward to the day that I can play Mirror's Edge with my entire body instead of just mouse and keyboard.

Oh and I know someone might tell me it would be simpler to just "do this stuff in real life." But it is hard to jump across a 20-foot chasm between two skyscrapers in real life, while pursued by a mob of machine gunning helicopters.

The Ultimate Philosophical Question

One of the most intriguing questions in philosophy (and religion I suppose) is "why was there a world, instead of nothingness?" Well, I've got an even scarier question. It is:

Why is there such a thing as your first-person consciousness? (from my point of view, I substitute "your" for "my")



That question is the ultimate question and sadly slips by many people's brains. I have pondered it since I was three. It was extremely hard for me to word, and I tried to ask my friend this question years ago to no avail; he kept misunderstanding me. He kept saying "because I was lucky enough to be born into this world," which, although true, is completely unrelated to my question.

Hopefully, now that I have worded it a bit better, people will understand the question. In a nutshell, what I am asking is "why isn't the world just full of he's and she's? Why was there a ME?" WARNING: I am not marveling at my fortune for having been born, or put forth in the world, or existed or whatever; instead, I am marveling that there is such a thing as a "me" consciousness in the first place.

Do you understand my question? If so, please discuss, or offer better wordings.

The Ultimate Philosophical Question

One of the most intriguing questions in philosophy (and religion I suppose) is "why was there a world, instead of nothingness?" Well, I've got an even scarier question. It is:

Why is there such a thing as your first-person consciousness? (from my point of view, I substitute "your" for "my")



That question is the ultimate question and sadly slips by many people's brains. I have pondered it since I was three. It was extremely hard for me to word, and I tried to ask my friend this question years ago to no avail; he kept misunderstanding me. He kept saying "because I was lucky enough to be born into this world," which, although true, is completely unrelated to my question.

Hopefully, now that I have worded it a bit better, people will understand the question. In a nutshell, what I am asking is "why isn't the world just full of he's and she's? Why was there a ME?" WARNING: I am not marveling at my fortune for having been born, or put forth in the world, or existed or whatever; instead, I am marveling that there is such a thing as a "me" consciousness in the first place.

Do you understand my question? If so, please discuss, or offer better wordings.

Emo Dream -- Girlfriend Murderer (featuring an original soundtrack by Max Loh!)

The first thing I remember is having a gas-leaking canister shoved in my face.

I'd been walking down a slope towards my UC Berkeley dormitory late at night. This creepy Asian guy in a hooded black sweater had walked towards me and shoved a small smoke-emitting object at my nose.

I felt dazed, even high, and could barely think. Clearly, this gas was potent and life-threatening. (The thing about the dream-state is that it can simulate drugs very, very convincingly. This is because dreaming and being high are quite similar experiences. So I truly believed that this was real and I was going to die.) Immediately I turned away, held my breath, and began to run away from the dormitory. The murderer paused for a moment, then decided not to give chase; he only had a limited amount of time before he either got caught or died, and his target was the dormitory building full of sleeping students.

I ran to the outdoors dining area, which resembled the lunch area in Harvest Park Middle School. Though it was late at night, there were large crowds of people eating there, so I felt safe. I grabbed my phone and flipped it open, still feeling high/dazed. The phone's advanced AI knew I was in danger and therefore automatically dialed the local "911," which was 0900. When greeted by the female receptionist, the first thing I said was, "I'm high." This turned out to be a retarded decision, since it was followed by a slew of "reassurances."

"There's this guy -- " I kept saying, but was constantly interrupted by "calm down, calm down, it's okay." Finally I erupted and yelled "WILL YOU PLEASE JUST LET ME FINISH WHAT I'M SAYING!!!" and they became silent.

"There's this guy with a canister... and it's emanating gas!"

"We were told that 10 times already, Max. Victims are to meet at the east edge of Telegraph Avenue," the 911 girl said. Apparently they had already gotten numerous 911 calls from the dormitory building. Also, the 911 girl recognized my voice. Interesting (NOT AN IMPORTANT PLOT POINT).

So I start to make my way towards Telegraph. Although I am walking through a residential area, dense crowds of people fill the streets, perhaps walking towards the same meeting spot due to the current murder situation.

Someone calls me from an anonymous number. I pick up, "Hello?"

"Where are you?"

"Huh? Who are you?" I retort.

"I'm... Stanley..." says the man at the other end of the line. Then I hear him laughing with his friends just before he hangs up on me, saying "damn I fucked that up so bad." The murderer had attempted and failed to determine my location by calling me.

The murderer is clearly after me, but the crowds are so dense that I feel safe hiding amongst the multitude of faces. Unfortunately, before long one of the murderer's accomplices spies me and yells, "Here's Max!" The killer, who had been walking in front of me, turns around and runs after me. The people around us don't know what's going on, so they try to restrain both of us. I tell the guy who's restraining me, "That guy is going to literally murder me. He's a killer." He lets me go. Still, the murderer approaches rapidly, and I am running very slowly due to low-gravity dream-running. "Were I wearing my running shoes," I tell myself, "I'd be able to outrun this guy easily."

I parkour onto a thin ledge about 5 feet above the ground and grab hold of the chain link fence behind it. My real-life girlfriend and dream-world ex-girlfriend Fernanda emerges from the crowd. She is the murderer (due to a dream detail glitch, I have forgotten about the creepy Asian guy and therefore changed the identity of the murderer). It is raining. Her skin is wet, and her hair long like when we first met. She pleads with me to take her back, because apparently I had time to break up with her earlier when I found out she was a murderer. Naturally, I tell her that I broke up with her because she became a murderer, and I ask her why she tried to gas me. She ignores the question and continues to beg me to take her back. A small crowd has gathered around the scene. I gaze down at her from the ledge. She is so beautiful, and I yearn for her. Yet, she is insane and will attempt to kill me again if we get back together. I am torn and begin to cry. Soundtrack to this scene: a 2-measure phrase that I subconsciously composed that loops over and over again, included here. I made this in two seconds using Logic Pro.

The end.


Representative of the murderer's garbs, but not the setting.

Scary Dream for Musical Nerd

I woke up in my bed, and starting stretching and yawning. I started to make typical yawning wake-up sounds but soon realized that my voice was quantized to the pitch of low A. I lowered my voice just a bit and it jumped to low D. I lowered and heightened my voice rapidly and it fluctuated between this perfect 5th interval D and A. This was extremely scary, since I was unable to make any sounds other than D and A. I sounded like some sort of weird tribal shaman.

Then I woke up for real. Just to be sure I was really awake, I sang an A, and then a G#. My voice produced an A and a G# instead of A and D. PHEWPH!

Music is like food

Traditionally, people liken music to traditional visual arts, such as painting or sculpting. This is rather erroneous. Music is more like food than anything else.

-There is the "composer" (the person who invented the recipe) and there is the "performer" (the person who cooks the food). The composer is credited as the intellectual creator but the performer has the freedom to insert his own artistic interpretations/deviations, just like in cooking. Some "folk songs" (well-known popular recipes, e.g. burrito) have been around for millenia but people are always finding new ways to "remix" them.

-Music and food are both artistic creations that cater towards the masses. We have our Britney Spears (McDonalds), Coldplay (In-N-Out), and Radiohead (Chipotle). The food n00bs who like sugary milk chocolate tend to also like tasteless music. The food pros who dislike sweets usually avoid bad music.

-Often, a band will be famous for one or two songs, e.g. "The Eagles are ok, but their song Hotel California rocks my socks." Similarly, some restaurants are famous for just one or two dishes.

-The average person, upon hearing a song, feels emotions but cannot identify the exact pitches being played. A skilled musician hears a song and knows exactly what notes and chords are being played by what instruments. Similarly, the average person, upon tasting some food, feels some emotions but cannot identify the exact ingredients being used. A skilled chef tastes some food and knows exactly how much salt and what types of oil were used.

-Skilled chefs (such as the ones featured on the TV program Iron Chef) are often creative, thinking of new ways to make their food more uniquely tasteful and beautiful. However, food doesn't have to be cooked by a top chef to be enjoyable; it can be as stereotypical and uncreative as a hamburger or ice cream cone. Similarly, skilled composers strive to find a way to affix a unique sound or style to their music, but some people such as Jason Mraz still find success in the extremely overused I V vi IV chord progression. In either case, whether it is original or stereotypical, the end product must still be enjoyable.

This is why the new 21st century "avant-garde" musicians are going down the wrong path. These people pride themselves with composing music that sounds somewhat interesting and extremely horrible. Imagine if a chef mixed together some orange juice, syrup, vinegar, poo, and eggs together into an ornate bowl and said, "Voila, zis is avant garde! I am proud of my creation because normal people will never eat it!" Perhaps if avant-garde musicians treated their music like food rather than modern art, they would realize that originality isn't everything, and that the end product must still be tasty.


Catering to the inferior half of America