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Just a quick entry today. I was pondering on the transient effect of influential books to, well, influence me. They tend to do so profoundly in the days and weeks that I am reading each book. They do so in a way that appears life changing, and so noteworthy that I feel I will surely retain and apply the salient messages contained thererin.

However, as you no doubt have also observed, the influence rarely lingers long after the book is closed. We seem to be driven to move forward, and therefore away from the past, regardless of the value of the lessons of the past, even if profound.

Much like the ‘last time I will  get that drunk’ type hangover.

This facility to forget, as I have mentioned before, is more valuable than detrimental to our lives. But it seems a shame that we cannot override this unerring tendancy to forget when recalling on a regular basis would really help us.

One of the hallmarks of the ADD (Attention Defecit Disorder) mind is it’s tendancy to jump around. One flavour, or maybe consequence, of this tendancy is the connecting of disparate thoughts. For me, this happens occasionally, often when in an elevated mood.

I have just made a connection that I thought both illustrates this connectivity, and makes an interesting, and I believe, legitimate proposal.

The context for this particular connection - the first thought awaiting connectivity - has been covered in a former blog. Itself the result of a connection of separate ideas, described how I feel that the mind is significantly more capable than it generally shows itself. For example, or memory for facts is generally pretty poor, and astoundingly so when compared to Kim Peakes, the savant who remembers 85% or more of every book he has ever read.

This first thought, or concept, then, is that our brains are intentionally mostly idling in low gear so that we can integrate well socially.

The second thought arose from a meeting with new people. They recommended that I read the book “Food of the Gods” by Terrance McKenna. The Amazon information about this book describes an anti-establishment stance on psychoactive drugs. The author believes that we grew up thousands of years ago with a healthy relationship with this mind altering drugs. That used sensibly, they liberate our minds into new areas of creativity and growth. He believes, or should I say, believed, since he is sadly no longer alive, that it was at least in part due to the enhancing effect of these drugs that we evolved to where we are in modern times.

As I pondered this later, my brain made the connection to the first point, concluding that the drugs were not so much enhancing our mental faculties as liberating them. Very much in the same way that alcohol liberates by lowering our inhibitions. Both it seems,  take away a layer of suppressionin our brain that is vital for normal day to day social living. When the day to day needs are gone, and we have time to relax, these drugs do not so much enhance as enable our capacities for a more powerful and relaxing ‘time off’ from duties.

This is already creating a new mindset for myself, and I have to say I am particularly proud of this connection.

Strange to say, the only credit I (the ‘I’, that is my conscious, deliberating mind), can take is in submitting the connection here. The hard work was done by my subconscious mind.

I am not an authority on the technology of cameras, but I believe sufficiently well informed to shed some light on the excessive attention paid to the number of mega pixels a camera has.

Part reason for the timing of this post is that my friend and I have recently bought two very different cameras. Both use CCD sensors (Charge Coupled Device). Mine is a 10 megapizel Panasonic FX37 compact that fits snugly in my pocket. His is a 50 megapizel Hassleblad that does not fit in his pocket. My main camera is a 12 megapixel Canon 5d, that sports a CMOS sensor (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor).

CCD and CMOS sensor types are different - each with a set of pros and cons.

The lens on my 5D, with a sensor pixel count only slightly  larger than the Panasonic, is probably100 times the volume of the lens on the latter. The sheer amount of glass, superior design, and design, allows it to resolve greater detail than the Panasonic. Depending on the lens aperture and focusing distance, it can yield detail that falls short of and exceeds the 12 mega pixel sensor.

The Panasonic lens uniformly fails to resolve to the sensor capacity - most images yield about 3 megapixels of detail. Detail that is smeared across 10 mega pixels. Additionally, because the sensor are so small in compacts that 10 megapixels results in tiny individual pixel sensors. One or two microns across or less. So they receive very little light in many situations - so little that noise manifests itself even at the slowest ISO speed.

The 5D has a large sensor, with much larger individual pixels. So the noise level is much smaller.

Detail resolution and low noise simply make for much better pictures.

However, this is not the whole picture. You might think that each pixel was measuring whatever colour light hit it. This is not so. A filter lies above each  pixel. One in two pixels only detect green light. One in four pixel detects red light, and one in four detect blue light. (We are most sensitive to green, hence double the number of green sensors).

So if you have a nice swathe of red, only a quarter of pixels are registering anything. If you were to photograph a grid of alternating red and blue lines that were very close to the pixel pitch, then some red lines would be missed, and some blue lines would be missed. From a distance, this mix of red and blue - maybe the weave in cloth - would look purple. But if more lines of red pixels were to light up, you would get the wrong colour.

So a thing called an antialising filter also sits in front of the sensor.

This blurs the image from the lens. Honestly!

It spreads light points out so that a single pixel sized light source will be sure to hit all 3 pixel colour types, and thereby get a better colour.

This is why camera images ALWAYS need some kind of sharpening. But this sharpening will not reinstate the lost detail.

It just so happens the Hassleblad has no Antialiasing filter. The computer software can compensate (apparently) for errors that ensue from this problem. But it means that the 50 megapizels from the Hassleblad are naturally sharper than from most cameras. The images are breathtaking.

It still uses Red, Green and Blue pixel filters, so cannot guarantee to get the exactly correct light level, but less detail is lost.

Strangely, the sensor is made by Kodak.

Now, Kodak developed a prototype sensor with red, green, blue and clear sensing pixels.  Half the pixels measured just light - no colour information. This makes sense - we are much more senitive to luminence than colour. But there rae no indications that this has been adopted yet. Maybe the antialisaing filter had to spread so much that too much blurring resulted. A shame, because such a sensor would be much less prone to noise.

If the 10 megapizels on my Panasonic are way too much for the resolving power of the lens, are we being cheated? The answer is yes and no. No, because 10megapizel images come out of the camera. Yes, because it is fattened out to that size. And the reason why? Simply because Joe Public tends to latch onto a quanifiable differentiator when buying a camera. Much much better for the manufacturers to give the pizel size - a better indicator of quality - but 1.2 microns means nothing in comparison to 10 mega pixels. A better 6 megapixel camera will simply not sell. Sad really.

It is the convention to say that what you are is what you think. Alas, this misses the point in two dimensions.

The number of times I have been told that I think too much and that my problems are in my head. True on both counts. But the implication that the problems would simply go if I stopped thinking too much is delusional.

The 1st missing dimension is that it is not so much what you think as how you feel. If the World and your thoughts generate intenese emotions, then the problem is not the thinking as such - more that you are emotional reactionary. And remember, emotional reaction tp a situation always precedes conscious awareness - we are programmed this way.

My friend Nick, for example, is emotional over-sensitive to expressions on the faces of others. Because the emotion is strong and immediate, he tries to work out a reason - why has his mind reacted so strongly?. He tends to read into these expressions much more than is often there, simply because his inappropriate emotional reaction is raising the expression to too high a status. So his thinking is not the cause of his misplaced reaction, but the consequence of his handling of the emotion, which is in turn amplified by his thinking.

Of course, he can compensate for this over reaction, but this is very tiring and easily forgotten.

The 2nd dimension missing in this glib statement is that what you think now is but a dip in the ocean of your life time of thoughts. Great chunks of the lifelong stream of thoughts, entangled with associated emotions gets stored in your subconscious. So it is very much more what you thought in the past rather than what you think now that defines you.

Whilst you can leverage change to the mental and emotional weight of this life time of memories, for example, via cognitive behaviour therapy, or a more positive, accepting attitude to life, there is a lot to reverse.

For example, I can be awoken, as last night, by deeply anxious feelings. I often awake to these feelings from relaxed, delightful dream states - the contrast is enormous and always surprises me. The point is that the anxiety is historically caused, bearing no relation to my dream state, nor my thinking, since I was not awake!

In spite of this legacy, we should still try to turn any negative thinking around - to try to counter established bad thinking and emotional habits. But when people complain that what you are thinking now is sole cause for your mental plight - that what you think today defines the whole you -  then they are missing two dimensions.

There is a lot that is said about the capability of the human brain. People such as Einstein are cited, of course, along with the autistic savant, Kim Peeks. This extraordinary fellow can read two pages of a book simultaneously - one page per eye - in about 10 seconds. Upside down as well. He retains virtually everything he remembers. And is not deterred by the tedium of telephone directories either.

Such ’savant’ abilities tend to be marginalised, along with the social problems that accompany them. I’ll question both these decisions.

First, Peeks’s brain is likely to be only slightly larger than the norm. So within the physical constraints of a brain comes extreme ability. His memory is order of magnitudes more accurate than ‘normal’ people. This is a key point to make.

Second, this huge memory facility is at least part cause of his social problems. If you can remember everything everyone has said to you, relationships can be difficult - past hurts can not so readilt be forgotten.

That the brain has, in principle, this inherent capacity, yet most of us are denied it, seems,  at first glance to be unfair or at the least a strange evolutionary matter. But it is, in part, the marginalising nature of extreme abilities that makes them rare. The genius in school cannot readily equate with his less capable cohorts.

But socially,  there are other factors. My friend Nick, who I occasionally mention, is highly energised each day, always, without fail, sleeping soundly, awaking full of life. He cannot really equate with the rest of us who struggle through some days. What is normal for him is extreme for us.

And part of socialising, of equating with others, is to be able to emphasise with them. Most times, empathy requires that you tune into problems. If you do not suffer health problems yourself, the talk of ill health by others  is just talk. Children often fail to socialise with adults since they cannot understand the responsibilities of adults and how much they weigh down on them. Children are in an extreme state - mostly unhampered by responsibilities or the emotional baggage they can bring.

Not too sure if I am drifting off theme here - am very tired.

Anyway, returning to my friend Nick. He regularly emigrates abroad to set up a new life, returning in a few weeks or months, when things do not pan out. He is now planning to convert the upper floor and loft of his house into one wall free room. Great idea, but the point is, his endless daily energies kind of oblige him to take on grand projects. The blessing of high energy is at the same time a burden.

But maybe I am missing the point here. Thoughts?

Apart from loving this word - it rolls off the tongue so well - it aprtly describes what happened to me a couple of days ago.

I was recently on the KGS Go server - an Internet service for playing and watching the games of Go - the Oriental board game. I reported antisocial behaviour of one player to an administrator. The matter was resolved and I ended up chatting via the keyboard to the Admin man.

I happened to mention that I’ve been writing a book teaching the Oriental game of Go for the last 3 months.

He may have been the best man in the World to do so - hence the serendipitious aspect to this chat :

1. He himself has been teaching Go  for a year or so
2. He has worked commercially as a book proof reader
3. His wife is a professional Go player
4. He offered for a free review of my book by himself and his wife

I necessarily took up his offer. His feedback was intense, and was a shock, exposing severe shortcomings in my understanding of Go (even after 18 years of playing), it was exactly what my book needed.

Today, I was introduced by a friend to a Historian called Melvyn, on the grounds of potential common interest. My friend knew I was looking to publish a book of photographs of a district of Cardiff.

We had a good chat, and I tentatively agreed to attend his presentation later this week.

After lunch, I walked to the lake here in Cardiff, and had a cuppa in the coffee shop. The only vacant seat in the sun was opposite a gentleman. I asked if I could sit down, and then realised it was Melvyn. We had a great chat and I now have a new friend.

I hope that I am not spreading this happiness writing too thinly across these entries.

I have just watched a superb video on happiness :

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2975222748330605245

It elegantly describes Nietzche’s view of happiness, relating it to modern life. Worth watching.

The salient point that is emerging is becoming, in my mind, as short as these entries :

“To enjoy life is to embrace all that it offers. The more time we spend embracing rather than enduring or avoiding, the more we are enjoying life.”

Taken to an extreme, if you become dismal on ‘bad’ days, waiting for the day without a headache (yes, that’s me), tiredness (me again),  chores to do, bad weather, then few of your days will you be fully alive and embracing life.

You see, I have noticed a strange pattern in my own life. Today and yesterday, I have been highly energised by fabulous nights of sleep.  These are a rarity for me, and I long for one when I am tired all day. But the strange thing is that I am restless with this energy - I feel compelled to use it. OK, I did, but had no inclination or ability to relax calmly.

I assumed that these ‘good head’ days were bound to yield happiness. Instead, I have noticed that the ‘bad head’ days see me more naturally content and relaxed - I have no energy to be otherwise.

By embracing life, I now plan to see different days as bringing different ways of being. Different, not better or worse.

A common theme occured to me whilst meditating tonight. Which did of course mean that the meditating had not actually happened yet - I was caught in my thoughts. You see, the key to meditation is to observe without engagement. To let your thoughts flow by - to observe the chatter until it diminishes.

This theme, I realised, is common to the therapy for overcoming chronic, sustained anxiety - to observe (and accept) the physical symptoms without engaging them. A kind of day time meditation. With no fuel to sustain them, the symptoms, and hence the anxiety fade much as your thoughts do when meditating.

Finally, in pursuit of happiness, you do not predicate your happiness on events or things, but on your attitude. If you are in pain or discomfort, you accept this wihtout fighting or feeling hard done by. This sustains a more balanced outlook on life.

Fighting a negative situation, such as a restless, ever chatty mind or waves of anxiety, it seems, merely fuels and legitimises them. Just as striving to achieve happiness is a misfocus - you have the capacity for happiness already, and do not have to do special things to make it appear.

It occured to me this afternoon that the route to happiness I described in my 1st Happiness article has a paradoxical flavour. The very ellusiveness of happiness, being achieved by an attitude of mind rather than from events or things is in the end its robust saviour, making it immune from events in your life.

Consider a couple saying to themselves that when we get the extension completed and sort out the dog infection, then things will be more ship shape and life will be back on an even keel and happiness will ensue.

Or when you get to the other side of a bad bout of flu, life will be rosy again.

We keep waiting for greener grass. If we simply accept the colour of grass we have now, then happiness will follow.

Acceptance seems to be a very pivotal psychological method. Vendettas, vengence, a sense of injustice are our instinctive behaviours, at least some of the time.

On a slightly different note, when some problem manifests itself, try to accept that it has happened, and see how you can focus on resloving or learning from the problem, rather than dwell on the bad emotions that follow the event.

For example, having completed my book teaching the Oriental game of Go, I saw a review of a game I had on the Internet. It was particularly demeaning of my play.  I naturally got upset. But, as has been my way, the emotions were so strong that I dwelt on them, and on the possible consequences - am I really a legitimate Go book author? Will my words mean that much to a beginner. I lost confidence in this book project.

Uncharactersitically, I chose to turn the problem around. I have had a number of copies of my book draft printed, and will now seek feedback from the intended audience. Better for beginners to tell me if my book for beginners helps them learn the game than guess that I am on the right track.

Problems can become leverages to new things, rather than sources of negative contemplation.