Goodbye week.

Friday is upon us!  Run!  Run for the hills!

No, don't do that, it's cold out there.  Stay inside where it's warm.  Anyway.  The week is coming to a close and it's quite exciting.  I have a gig tonight, no obligations tomorrow and a party to go to on Sunday.  All in all it sounds like a pretty good weekend.

Although the holiday juggle is fast approaching I'm a little relieved right now to have a little less on my plate.  November got to be a bit of a cluster with all the things I ended up getting involved in.  A musical, out of town work trip, two gaming groups, quadcopter planning, Thanksgiving, Warhammer tournament and most importantly spending time with the wife.  It was a busy month indeed.

I just can't help but get myself bogged down with tons of hobbies.  I just love doing so many different things.  It would be weird if I only did one or two things but it would probably be good to do so for awhile.  Right now it seems like everything is only quarter finished.

I started working on a book last year and this time I was doing it right.  I got a planning book and started doing all kinds of outlining.  It's a fun book completely outlined but I still haven't set aside the time to actually write it.  Instead I started writing a different book for some reason that is a few chapters in and going fairly well...except that I haven't touched it in almost two months.

I really like writing but on the other hand I really like playing music and after joining a band last spring it has has really opened up my opportunities to play.  It's only one gig, maybe two a month so it's not the biggest time hog.  I worry however about getting offered too many side projects.  The musical was a fun side-project but it was quite draining.  Doing the musical of course led to talk of other projects.  It's a strange phenomenon that happens when new musicians get together.  You start sharing your similar interests which of course leads to how fun it would be to do a certain project.  So there's a couple new ideas in the works that will be fun but time consuming.

This doesn't sound all that bad except that all this playing time has taken me away from the music I was writing on my own.  I was making some good progress on some new songs and having fun writing some soundtrack music.  Much like the book I haven't touched it in ages and I keep wondering when I'll get back to it.

Then there is the gaming.  Gaming is an exciting creative outlet for me because it combines so many of my interests into one activity.  I can design a world but I don't have to write the book because the players drive the plot.  Additionally I get to invent equipment and weapons for the game to tickle my inventive side.  Then there is the fun of creating game materials for the players which is just silly fun.  Writing entire letters with old-style dip pen on parchment paper is really fun for some reason.  Plus I'm seriously considering penning an entire source book by hand with dip pen.  Silly...yes.

Those are just the major things I enjoy doing which makes for quite the busy week indeed.  Throw in that I have a house that needs renovations, full time job, snow to shovel and a wife that would like to see me once in awhile and it gets to be a little crazy.  I'm not complaining, maybe a little, but not really.  I'm just taking a step back and realizing that maybe I should cut out a few projects for awhile and get something done for a change.

Legend

Hopes for a Friday:

Frazzled nerves and tired bodies will flock downtown in search of sweet release.  Liquor will relax sore muscles and beer will melt away stress.  Music will spill out into the cold night air and attract the masses searching for a warm retreat.  Numb toes will be warmed by dancing and cheers will rise as the music stirs life back into the crowd.

Jackets, scarves and hats will be piled to the side as the temperature climbs along with everyone's spirits.  Laughing and revelry will replace groans and sighs.  For one evening everyone will forget that there are many months of winter to come and simply enjoy themselves.  The crisp air on the walk home will feel invigorating instead of oppressive after a long night of defiance against old man winter.

At the end of the night, after many obliged calls for encores, we will lay down our instruments with satisfaction.  Our job was done with the world warmed a bit through music.  Smiling faces, breathless dancers and lifted spirits will be our creations.  We have fought the good fight against the darkness, the cold and the effects they have on the spirit.

Snow Days

I wish there were city wide snow days.  That would be amazing.  Stories!

You wake at six-thirty in the morning to your alarm and crawl out of bed to peek out your bedroom window.  Outside the world is engulfed in snow, a good foot on the ground with more continuing to fall with no signs of stopping.  Checking the weather app on your phone you see that it is expected to continue for most of the day and total accumulation expected at many, many inches.  

Currently this means you will be having a truly bad day as you will most likely have to shovel out of the driveway just to get the vehicle out and even then the plows won't be getting to the side streets near your house until the late afternoon leaving the roads quite treacherous.  With no time to spare you hustle to get your shoveling clothes on and blurry eyed you make a path just large enough to get the car out so you can get to work.  With your usual morning time spent you frantically head back inside and change clothes and try to make yourself presentable in the few minutes left to you.  Back outside your heart sinks as the snow is falling so fast it is barely recognizable that you just shoveled.  Nearly late already you clean off the car and say a little prayer that you'll make it out of the driveway.  Gritting your teeth you hit the accelerator, the tires spin, snow flies and you somehow end up in the road facing in approximately the right direction.  The white knuckle drive seems to take hours while your wiper blades do nothing to keep your windshield clear.  Your headlights cannot pierce the white curtain and for most of the drive you wonder if you're even on a road.  Somehow you get to work, which of course is a no-mans land because everyone else called in stuck and the customers have all elected to avoid leaving their houses because of the high chance of death.  Eight hours pass and all that goes through your mind is how bad things are going to be on the drive home.  You have plenty of time to think of course because the store has barely made enough in sales to pay the employees and keep the place heated.  At one point you sneeze and you can hear the echo from the far back wall.  Someone three departments away says 'Bless you' and you can hear it clearly.  With your shift over the great adventure begins anew.  Your car is buried, literally, as the parking lot was plowed three times during the day and it seems as if they piled all of the snow on top of it.  The determination to get home drives you onward and you free the vehicle then slide your way home sideways.  Once you return the driveway is impassable as the plows have made a snow bank across it that looks like it could stop a tank.  With the last shreds of energy left in your body you engineer an opening and get your car off the road where it was only nearly hit four times by traffic on the ever narrowing roads.  Sure there are the sidewalks to shovel and the driveway will be impassable in the morning but you simply don't have the energy.  

OR

After seeing the mess outside you notice that you received a text from the city emergency notification system.  The town has been put on snow alert and all citizens are advised to stay in their homes for their safety.  Travel is restricted to emergency travel only and all non-essential services and stores are shutdown for the day.  You smile, walk downstairs and make yourself an omelette with ham, cheese and tomatoes.  After a few cups of coffee and an episode of Doctor Who you strap your boots on and leisurely shovel the drive and the walk.  Afterwards you enjoy a hot cocoa and take a hot bath to thaw your toes then settle in for an afternoon of bad movies and a craft project.

I like option two. 

Death of Fun

The holidays are upon us and that means sales on video games.  In years past I have gobbled up the cheap games like holiday dinner items but this year something odd happened.  After browsing through the deals I realized that none of the games looked interesting to me and more than that I didn't even recognize many of them.  Were they just not popular games and the really good deals were yet to come?  Am I out of touch with the games that are out there these days?  Option two seems more likely.  

It's alright I think, not knowing about new video games, since I'm getting older.  I don't have the time to play as many these days so it's natural I suppose.  The sad part of this story however is what happened when I actually did buy a game.  

The X-Com reboot was on sale so I purchased it but then something terrible happened.  I didn't care to play it at all.  No  interest at all to load it up and try it out.  It's installed, ready to go but even with an entire Sunday afternoon free I didn't even bother.  The thought of diving into a new game brought me no joy whatsoever.  What happened?

Things have changed quite a bit over the last few years for me and I realize now that video games don't hold the same excitement for me anymore.  After buying a house that I want to work on, joining a band and having more social hobbies now there isn't much room for video games.  It makes sense but the realization was a bit of a shock.  

After thinking about it for a while I realize now that it's all about what I gain at the end of the time invested in a hobby.  The band gives me the fun of playing music and some extra cash too.  Fixing the house gives me a sense of accomplishment as well as adding value on my investment.  Writing and designing games works my brain and provides entertainment for my friends.  Designing and building a quadcopter gives me a quadcopter in the end.  All of these things give me something in the end whereas playing a video game gives me much less in comparison.  Sure there is some fun and sometimes it's nice just to relax with a video game but when the game ends I don't have much to show for it. 

It comes down to getting the most of the time and energy I expend.  Less and less video games provide enough return on the investment compared to other things in my life.  I won't stop playing them, I'm not crazy, however it will be more likely I'm going to invest in an activity that produces something.  It's a strange realization and shift in my life but one for the best.  Maybe it means I'm finally growing up?  No...I still like ninjas too much for that.  

Wednesday

Oh God....not again.

The holiday are upon us and more than the tragedy that is the Black Friday shopping mess the thing that I hate the most is the family and friend juggling.  It's not that I hate any of my friends or family, quite the opposite, I love seeing them all.  The problem is getting to see them all in some sort of organized fashion that doesn't make me go mad.

If life was like a fancy car commercial, it would be as simple as a single quiet evening with the friends one day where we drink by a fire and laugh about being rich; followed by a picturesque family meal the next where we all meet in the driveway and admire each others newly leased luxury cars.  Boom, two days and done.  Life however is not a commercial and I drive a sensible vehicle simply designed but not made by Germans.

In real life it's never that simple.  Are all my friends going to be in town on the same days and all have the same night free?  No.  Are they all going to want to sit by the fire drinking wine?  No.  Hell, I don't want to sit by the fire drinking wine.  Wine gives me a headache.  I'm getting too old for the huge meeting of everyone at the bar like we used to.  It's too loud and chaotic to have any real conversation with anyone.  Plus for my non-drinking friends it's just rude to them.  Then there's the problem that they're all juggling multiple family visits as well and with only a few days in town time get's thin.  So you end up seeing who you can when you can and miss a few visits.  The reality is that's just what happens when you start getting older.

The next problem is juggling the families.  Being married with two sets of family in town and with siblings living in somewhat close driving distance it adds to the visitation options.  The sad thing is that there's never going to be enough time to visit everyone.  Then you're picking and choosing who to see and that's a little sad.

Then there's the worst problem that makes all the other problems possible.  Work.  Time off for the holidays gets less and less each year.  If the world was like a Norman Rockwell painting we'd all put the closed signs in the window for a few days and have all the time in the world to enjoy our holidays.  These days, most Americans are at the mercy of their corporate overlords that want to squeeze every holiday dollar possible.  Stores stay open as late as possible for the 'last minute' shoppers and then open back up as early as possible for super-sales to get rid of the crap that didn't sell.  So the amount of time off to spend with friends continues to shrink.

I like the holidays, it makes the onset of winter easier and gives you excuses to have a little more fun than usual.  It would be nice however if there was just a little more time to enjoy them.  Quiet time with those important to you is being replaced by shopping sprees or working those shopping sprees.  Everyone's losing out, shopper and worker alike.  I hate having to ration time like it's water and I'm stuck in the desert.  Maybe I'll start a 'secret' holiday in May, when the weather's nicer and it's easier to get time off.  No big meals requiring grocery store trips, no presents and no stress.  Relaxmas.  I like it.

Aliens!

I watched an interesting little movie this weekend that debunked the claims made by the History channel's show, Ancient Aliens.  I recommend it.  It's called Ancient Aliens Debunked and you can find it on YouTube.

One thing about the Ancient Aliens theory that really bugs me is the insistence that it was impossible to build things like pyramids with the knowledge mankind had at the time.  It really does a disservice to human ingenuity and creativity when they make those kinds of claims.  They even become silly when you find out archaeologists have found tools and even instruction guides for some of the 'alien' built structures.  These impossible tasks that the Ancient Aliens claim are continually proven to be much simpler than originally thought.

I just watched a documentary about how the statues at Easter Island were moved.  The ancient story told by people in the area says they 'walked' into place.  Ancient aliens people claim that means they were levitated into place but a documentary I just saw showed a much simpler explanation.  They figured out that by attaching ropes to the sides and back of the head, the stone statues could be rocked back and forth or 'walked' quite easily.  It wasn't that they just made this technique up either, it was developed based on the positions of statues that fell during transport.  All the statues going uphill were on their backs and all the statues going downhill were on their faces.  Plus they found that all the statues that didn't make it to the final areas had handy-dandy rope notches on their heads right where it would be most advantageous to have them for the 'walking' technique.  It matched the original story, it explained why all the statues fell the way they did and why they were cut the way they did.  It was also found to be a very quick way to move the giant stone statues as well.

This is why I hate the Ancient Aliens theory.  It's fun to talk about, sure, I'm not going to say it isn't.  It's always fun to wonder:  What if?  However if you say there is no possible way a person didn't come up with some clever way to do it then you're just showing you're not that clever yourself.  Plus it shows a complete lack of understanding on how things worked in ancient times.  If a living god told you to build something you'd probably figure out a way to do it.  Do you really want to make a living god angry?  I wouldn't.

The pyramids are a great example of the dedication a people can have to accomplishing an enormous task.  Unlike the common misconception that the pyramids were built with slave labor, there is evidence that shows they were actually built by the common people. (http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-egypt/pyramids-tombs-giza-egypt.htm) Farmers and workers had a few months off each year during the break in the growing season and instead of enjoying the time off they went to build the God Pharaohs resting place.  It's tough to imagine volunteering to do months of back-breaking labor for some rich dude but it wasn't back then.  That rich dude was talking to the gods for you so your farms would produce enough food to feed your family.  Why wouldn't you do everything you could for that guy?  Plus when you were on the job site they had free beer!  Free beer!  I've done jobs for free beer.

In the end I think it's more fun to think of how amazing it is that people in ancient times came up with ways to build these incredible structures.  The inventions and techniques they came up with to move stones and shape them are awesome.  Who came up with the idea to use a copper tube and sand to cut round holes in stone?  That's brilliant!  Saying aliens did it is a horrible thing to say and I think it can be harmful.  We should be promoting that there have been brilliant, inventive people throughout history and in primitive times there was that spark of creativity that makes us unique.  Why would we want to claim that the seemingly impossible was only done with alien help when we can rightfully claim that it was the work of our ancestors?


 
I

Tanks!

Recently I've become obsessed with the World of Tanks beta on Xbox 360.  I couldn't nail down why it was so fun until I started comparing it to other games I've been playing online recently.  It was then that I started to see the genius that Wargaming.net has poured into this game.

Online gaming has been around for some time but it's really exploded in the last five years.  Five years is a short time to gather data on a social movement for study.  You can look at server traffic and number of games sold to see what constitutes a good game but that data is flawed.  Just because lots of people are playing a certain online game doesn't mean that it's a good online game.  What you have to study is how people are playing these online games.

The powerhouse in online gaming for consoles is first person shooters.  If you've ever played one you know that the way people play them is far from the way that you'd expect them to.  There is little to no teamwork with many players going 'lone wolf' in order to amass the greatest number of kills during the match.  These games further the desire to be the star of the show by awarding points to the players that can be used to further tailor themselves into killing machines.  First person shooters do include awards for playing the support roles but these are less gratifying than being the top killer in most cases.

What you end up with is individuals fighting for personal glory and points.  The more kills the more bragging rights the players walks away with.  It's a single player game where the difficulty and fun is increased by playing against humans rather than predictable AI opponents.  It might be a successful online game when you look at sales but it's not a good online game when you look at the way people are playing it.  

This problem is furthered when you add vehicles to a game.  The Battlefield franchise puts a wide variety of vehicles into their games which are supposed augment the troops on the ground.  The level of teamwork required to use helicopters, tanks, jets and boots on the ground is astounding.  It's rarely done well and most of the time is done poorly.  A common scene in this game is players standing around the area where the vehicles appear then fighting over who gets to drive.  Their goal isn't to actually win the game but rather to play with the toys.  This is frustrating to players who actually want to win.

World of Tanks does some things that solves many of these problems.  First of all everyone gets a tank.  In fact you are a tank.  Even better is that there are many types of tanks to choose from.  Fast tanks, heavy tanks, tank destroyers and long range artillery.  The best thing about these tank options is that they are all  useful and fun to play.  There is no super unit that can dominate the field on it's own and everyone must work together to win.  It's well balanced.

This balance is furthered by a remarkable matchmaking system.  Tanks are rated and teams are made of only similarly rated equipment.  In addition, it does it's best to make sure each team has the same number of tanks types on each team.  Rarely have I ever joined a game where the teams were not identical.  It's extremely well done.

Perhaps the best thing they've built into this game is the option to quite without penalty.  It's the smartest thing that I've ever seen in a game.  In all the games once you are dead you are dead.  Your tank stays on the battlefield until the game ends but you don't have to stay and watch.  The game lets you retreat back to the menu, select another tank from your garage and join another battle.

By doing this the designers have done a few smart things.  First off, it keeps people rushing back to the matchmaking queue, reducing wait times for a new match.  Secondly, it forces the player to experiment with different types of tanks, making them appreciate all the roles on the battlefield.  In most first person shooter games you can always play as the class you at anytime.  There is no function built in to make people expand their horizons and keep teams balanced.  You always have a large number of snipers and rocket launcher wielding soldiers and are always short on medics.

With all the amazing things this game does the best part about it is that it's fun.  No matter what tank you use or what game you join you always feel like you have a chance.  (Unless your teammates are really bad.)  Plus when two lines of tanks meet on the field it's intense.  There are explosions, noise and smoke everywhere.  It's fun.

World of Tanks is a good online game because people have fun and work together.  People use the voice chat function to actually coordinate attacks rather than insult each other.  It must be successful too because they are coming out with two sister games soon.  A version in beta where you fly WWII airplanes and sometime in the future a sea combat game.  If their setup similar to World of Tanks they should be fun.

That's my rant about World of Tanks.  Play it.

Time Travel

Time travel is impossible.  Sorry.

     We love the concept of time travel and all the fun that it could provide us but really there is just no pulling it off.  What has happened has happened and what will happen cannot happen until we go through the motions of the present.  We can change how time affects us relative to other objects in space by speeding up and slowing down however, which is kind of like time travel in a way.

     Man has proven that when objects move faster, time 'slows' when compared to an object that is stationary or moving slower.  We've proved this by putting sensitive clocks on airplanes and then comparing them to identical clocks that stayed on the ground.  The clocks on the airplanes had less time elapse.  In essence, the airplane landed on the ground in the future.

     In science fiction this problem is often ignored when you have starships traveling at insane speeds all the time but there is no time issues.  In Star Trek, they travel at warp speed constantly but when they return home, they have experienced the same amount of time passage as the people that stayed behind.  What?  For the people on the starship, a week may have gone by but back on a planet months should have passed.  The original Enterprise was supposed to be on a five year mission.  Is that  five year mission to them or people still on Earth?  Either case is bad.  They would go out for five years and come back to find Earth progressed a thousand years and the machines have enslaved humanity.  In the other scenario, they'd get a few weeks to run around before having to return home to check in.  That would be a pointless mission.

     So obviously there has to be something going on to allow everyone to age the same despite all the time relativity problems.

Just a theory...

    To solve this we have to look at the favored way that starships in the Star Trek universe get around at faster than light speeds.  The warp drive.  Now, I rambled about warp drives a bit in a previous blog so I'll summarize briefly on how they work.

     Warp Drives work by putting the ship into a sub-space bubble that allows them to exist slightly out of the physical universe and escape the problem that traveling the speed of light causes infinite mass and probably death.  It's an easy way to make anything you want to happen the way you want it too.  It's magic for science fiction.

    In the real world that we actually live in however, we won't be getting into sub-space anytime soon.  However, there are ideas out there on how to travel at great speeds while avoiding some of the complications.  We can disrupt the fabric of the universe a little to create a gap that we can travel through to avoid dealing with all those traditional physics laws holding us back.  It's a cheat.  So what about time?

    Well, time and space are connected.  Time changes with us moving and expending energy.  So is time simply an illusion caused by matter and energy displacing each other?  If we expend little energy and don't move, time speeds up for us.  This is why the clock seems to crawl when we're stuck at a desk doing boring things.  We're looking out into a world with time actually going slower.  When we expend large amounts of energy and move around a lot, time slows down for us.  In this case, we exist in a world where time is going faster than us.  'Watch pot never boils' and 'Time flies when you're having fun' type of situations.

     So.  If time is connected to how our personal mass and energy interact with the mass and energy of the universe; then what happens when we separate ourselves from the universe?  In the case of a warp drive or 'rip apart the universe' drive, we are no longer interacting with real space on a normal level and no longer dealing with time normally.  In fact, since you're not interacting with energy or matter since it's being shunted aside by the 'warp' field, you would be treated as standing still when figuring the relativity of time.

     Looking at it this way, it is completely probable that you could take a spin around the galaxy in the USS Defiant with Commander Worf (Michael Dorn is awesome), and not come back to find Dax in a new host because Ezri died of old age.

Light Side vs. Dark Side

     Talking about balancing things in my last post got me thinking about Star Wars.  To be fair though, almost anything can make me think about Star Wars.

     Mainly I got to thinking about the Force.  So the force, as explained by Yoda, is an energy field that is created by all things and bind the galaxy together.  Gravity?  Sounds like gravity to me.  If it's not gravity then it's a separate force that is unique to their galaxy.  Fair.

     So they have this force and people that can tap into this great energy field to do amazing things.  Somehow there are light and dark sides of this energy.  Unless this is a living energy force then it can't really have a good and bad side.  It could exist with both positive and negative charges however.  The two charges attracting to each other like some cosmic glue that 'binds everything together' or whatever Yoda said. 

     So we have this one field that has both positive and negative charges that can accessed by mortal beings that are sensitive enough to feel and manipulate it.  The problem is that this energy is converted to real energy on the physical plane of existence by these 'force users'.  Each side, light and dark, is tapping into their favorite polarity of the Force to make things happen.  This drains their portion of the field though...weakening them in the process.  Not very smart if you ask me.  

     If all these boy-scout do-gooder light side Jedi go around only tapping the light side of the force, they will be consuming the positively charged portion of the Force and create a terrible imbalance.  The Force as a whole will be in turmoil.  If the force gives them such wisdom and clairvoyance you'd think they'd figure this out.  The smart road would be to learn to balance the use of both light and dark so as not to disrupt the integrity of the Force they repeatedly use over and over to save their lives.  

    Not that the dark side is any better.  The Emperor runs around creating high energy lightning out of his fingers all the time which cannot be good for the negatively charged part of the Force.  Again, turmoil in the field and his preferred side is now weakened.  It the only real attack he's got left after getting soft sitting in comfy chairs being the emperor.  Bad move, Palpatine.

    In the end, it's Luke Skywalker who turns out to the smartest Jedi in history.  Crazy.  He doesn't get much in the way of training which is actually a good thing.  He's so undertrained that he just uses whatever side of the Force will work for him when he's in a pickle.  It's just the Force to him.  One big giant energy field of power.  (I'm excluding post movie stuff where he went all dark side in the comics.  Sorry.)  

   This is perfect because he uses all the power afforded to him and keeps things in balance more.  He uses the light side when defending himself and hiding from Vader during the epic finale of Return of the Jedi.  Then he turns and taps that dark side awesomeness to beat Vader down viciously.  He uses his emotions!  He get's angry, he doesn't want his sister getting hurt, which is fair.  Why can't he get angry at someone messing with his family?  I'll allow it.  The dark side doesn't win him in the end though because he has something of a grip on reality.  He uses the force as he sees fit so there's no build up of one charge or another in him to sway him.  He has balance.  

   To summarize, Jedi are silly.  There, I said it.  

   

Gaining Momentum

Momentum is pretty fantastic.  Learn more here!

     In physics you have to understand that most of the things you learn about aren't actually things but rather concepts to explain why things do the things they do.  We often say that object have a certain velocity or have a certain amount of potential energy.  The objects don't actually have these things.  They're not carrying around little briefcases filled with velocity  or potential energy.  It's not something that physically builds up in an object like a static charge or a bacterial infection.  

     Momentum is an attribute we came up with to explain why being hit with a rock hurts so much.  Simply put, momentum is the level of determination an object has to keep on going.  This is us speaking as if rocks have a will of their own but of course they don't.  It's a rock.  We when we talk about momentum, we usually say something 'builds up momentum'.  It doesn't actually build up anything.  Things don't build up a physical thing called momentum like teeth build up a sticky film during the night.  (Brush your teeth kids.)

     Why do we bother making up these things if they don't physically exist?  It's because we have to.  Physics is all about balancing equations.  Sir Isaac Newton came up with all these laws that explained some important fundamentals of physics.  The big one was that you cannot destroy energy.  In any situation, the same amount of energy that it started with must be present when it ends.  So that means we have to start assigning attributes to things to make our equations look good.  Things must balance.  (Big rule of the universe kids.)

     Then momentum was created to explain where all the energy went when the idiot threw a rock at you.  The rock has momentum because someone expelled energy to make it move.  It has a trait now that we can write down on our equation and balance things out.  Balance is maintained.  (Yay!)

Just a theory:

     Now that we know about momentum, we can start applying it other things in our lives other than rocks.  Physics helps us explain how things in the physical world work.  Our brains are physical things that run on energy so why don't we apply momentum to the way we think?  We do!  Let's exploit it; shall we?

     Mental momentum is something we all have experienced at some point in time.  It's what happens when we 'get in the zone' or are 'on a roll' if you will.  Time flies, we get lots of things done and we come up with great ideas out of nowhere.  Most of the time this comes out of nowhere but maybe we can harness this.

     To begin, we should understand how momentum is built.  In the physical world, momentum is the combination of the weight of the object and it's velocity.  The bigger and faster something is, the more momentum it has.  So when we want to have mental momentum we have to apply those ideas to our brain.  Instead of a big object, we have a big event.  Instead of an object traveling faster, we have our thoughts moving faster.  There are a few things we can do to help build mental momentum using these two traits.

     First is the event gaining size.  Whatever this event is, it must be built up in our brain as such an event that it overshadows all other things we need to do.  It must become the most important event in our lives.  Think of a party.  We look forward to it, we plan for it, we can barely contain how excited we are for it.  We build anticipation.  Anticipation is like the mass of our event.  So if we're trying to use mental momentum for something mundane, such as cleaning a room, we need to build anticipation.  To aid us, we should start adding things to our job to make it more grandiose.  We could plan on watching our favorite action movie while cleaning.  We could buy special coffee for the occasion to treat ourselves for cleaning.  We could also plan on capping off our accomplishment with a refreshing gin and tonic when we are finished.  All these little things add up to make simply cleaning a room an event worth looking forward to.  Our anticipation grows as we wait excitedly to treat ourselves with all these new rewards for cleaning.

     Secondly, we need velocity.  We must never forget that the mind is subject to the whims of the body.  Physical activity releases chemicals in our brain that help us keep going.  Adrenaline, endorphins and the like.     These are in place to convince us that physical activity is a good thing and keep us sharp in the face of danger.  We can use these chemicals to aid us in the mundane as well.  We can build in a small workout before our room cleaning to get the body releasing these wonderful little drugs.  We can give our body a little boost with our special coffee we bought for the occasion.  When we get to actually cleaning, we can be smart about how we do physical activity as not to strain ourselves and slow our progress.  Lift with the legs, don't get too comfortable and allow the body to relax and so forth.

     We have now prepared for the event and when we get started, we will have the momentum to get our task done quickly and better enjoy it while we're doing it.   Mental momentum can be used for all sorts of things in our lives to help us out.  I recommend trying it out next time you have something dull to do.

Thanks for stopping at Just a Theory today.

 

Birth

It's lives...somehow.  SCIENCE!
Seriously though, all the free time is going to packing the website with content so there won't be much for updates at the moment.

Sorry folks.