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Monday, November 23, 2009

reprogramming with two m's.

i guess i meant to finish that last one but i forgot.
here's a new attempt.

in it's simplest terms, the human is a creature of habit. it likes to wake up (or sleep in) at (or until) an established time. it likes to sit in the same seat during class and eat certain things for breakfast. it likes to be around people that it likes and is comfortable with and say things that it knows will illicit a particular reaction from a known audience. it likes to wear familiar clothes and take the same routes to stores and other popular destinations. it likes to listen to the same kinds of music and watch a tv show with characters it understands and knows already. it has a distinct type of handwriting and a way with words that is individual and unique. it likes a hairstyle, a jogging trail, a brand of macaroni, a time limit for awkward hugs, a type of mineral foundation, a pair of shoes and a football team. it knows how many times it should fail before giving up and how to push all the right buttons at all the right times.

it is so many things, and yet...such a calculated mess.

in the theatre, we have these lights. they're smart lights...studio spotlights (or SS's, for all intents and purposes)...they move around and change color and texture and focus and all sorts of things. but sometimes they get confused. their sensors start to go bad or they stop finding their focus points and suddenly they don't look like they are supposed to. the light thinks it's making the right colored light and shining it in the right place, but it's really not.

these SS's have what is called a "global reset" button. when the light is confused and you can't figure out why it is doing crazy things, you can hit this button and it will re-home itself ("homing" is the word we use when the light is orienting itself with the world...also a fitting term) and everything (usually) (hopefully) (most of the time) (sometimes) is fixed. it's kind of a last resort...you don't want to do it if you don't have to, but it fixes most problems very well. and yeah...that's a global reset.

so i think that's what i want. some combination of the two, that is.

to reorient myself with the world.
+
reprogram myself to function better within it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol.

that is a tall order.

those lights reset by running through a series of internal diagnostics and running to limits, usually. some have sensors and are smart enough to detect when the gears reach the end but many are dumb stepper motors that just run until they detect the voltage peak (you've reached an end) and then they save that position in memory.

when the lights get confused, it's either the memory has become corrupt or the motor skipped a step, it's out of synch and doesn't realize it.

after it sets all those positions in memory then it resumes normal operation, it's been 'initialized' and it knows it's position and it's limits.

um, not sure if that helps.

anna. said...

hah...yet another reason why i'm a designer first and an electrician second ( :

Anonymous said...

yah,

so -- go to your limits

then you'll know where home is.