lxpk
Personal Ideas
| My Idea | Idea Group | Category | Details | Edit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| empower thyself | empower thyself | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Stop the North American Union! | North American Union | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Life's Too Short To Waste | Life's Too Short To Waste | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief If you're killing time, it's the other way around. We'd be fooling ourselves if we believed that there was ever "nothing worth doing" or a bad time to do something cool. I like to skip wastes of time like commercials because I can never get those 30 seconds back. If I see a bad movie I walk out of the theatre. Why? Because I'll never get those 2 hours back. I avoid watching things that sound like a waste of time because I have a huge list of cool things I'd rather be doing. | |
| Leave No Trace | Leave No Trace | Belief | Percentage: 80 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Think For Yourself | Think For Yourself | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Consciousness Raising | Consciousness Raising | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief It seems to me that a good number of important things need to be made more widely known and understood and it is up to us to master the art of consciousness raising so that we can spread the word and lead the way forward in humanity's evolution. The women's rights and civil rights movements showed the way forward for big important truths to find acceptance and justice for all. It may begin with people teaching their friends to use reusable shopping bags and CFL bulbs but those could build confidence and sharing abilities to the point that we can tackle much larger matters. | |
| Wear Message Shirts Every Day | Wear Message Shirts Every Day | Belief | Percentage: 90 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Boycotting | Boycotting | Belief | Percentage: 90 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Examplopedia | Examplopedia | Belief | Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief I think we should implement this Examplopedia system to store the real-world examples of how all the pieces are put together to get something done. All of the mediums in the mediapedia have a right-hand column called "EXAMPLES" that emphasizes just such examples, but it would be even better to have those databased with automated ways of adding to them links to the various resources they exemplify. Good thinking man! | |
| New Environments, getting offworld so humanity survives | New Environments | Belief | Percentage: 75 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Evolution | Evolution | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief I'm convinced that emergent complexity and evolutionary natural selection explains the origins of life and consciousness in the universe. Evolution accounts for how we got here and why we are the way that we are. I'm opposed to the teaching of supernatural creationism in schools. I sympathize with those who do not understand evolution or whose religion discourages them from understanding it. I encourage everyone to learn more about evolution to better understand and appreciate the amazing and wonderful splendor that has evolved and how fortunate we are to be alive. Thank goodness! | |
| Good and virtue | Good | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief Asking "How do you define good?" is not a good reason not to believe in good or to do the best you can to do good. You might say I believe in doing one's best to do good. I like the way Benjamin Franklin set about to achieve perfection of character by listing his virtues and tracking his performance in a table. I think we can do something like this in an Empowerment database with Personal Ideas. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/franklin-virtue.html | |
| Pronoia | Pronoia | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Purpose In Life | Purpose In Life | Belief | Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Everyone Can Do Something | Everyone Can Do Something | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Big Problems Demand Comprehensive Solutions | Big Challenges Demand Comprehensive Solutions | Belief | Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief Empower Thyself is such a comprehensive approach to tackling so many different angles of the apathy problem that it can seem a little overwhelmingly complicated at first. I am working hard to make things clearer and simpler to understand and contribute to, because comprehensive solutions needn't be overwhelming. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something, and we can contribute to little pieces of the puzzle that ties into the pieces other people are working on and add up to a larger purpose. Working on all these components in an integrated fashion ensures that we can achieve much more than isolated projects can do on their own.
| |
| Rules To Live By | rules to live by | Belief | Percentage: 99 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief My top three rules to live by: 1. THE RULE: My next choice influences every choice I will ever make, so in a choice between doing the strong thing for great justice epic win or doing the weak thing made of fail, I must always choose strength. 2. TRUTH AND GOOD ABOVE ALL: I will always seek the truth and do the greatest good that I can. 3. Safety third! | |
| You Decide Your Level of Involvement | You Decide Your Level of Involvement, Start Simple and Progress Rapidly | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Category: Belief | |
| Universal Empowerment Creates Common Ground | Universal Empowerment Creates Common Ground | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Dune | Dune | Belief | Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Empower Thyself Manifesto | Empower Thyself Manifesto | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Philosophy | Philosophy | Belief | Percentage: 100 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Existentialism | Existentialism | Belief | Percentage: 99 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| DIY (whenever efficient) | DIY | Belief | Percentage: 75 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Safety Third: Risk Smart | Safety Third: Risk Smart | Belief | Percentage: 80 Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief Burning Man 2006. I stood in front of a sea of flaming coals fifty feet across, an inferno so hot it belched fire tornadoes. The crowd circled, a hundred thousand thronging faces aglow in firelight. Some of the revelers seperated from the orbiting masses and gathered at either end of the burn, looking intently into the flames. One by one they mustered the courage to to cross the hellish fires, braving what looked like deadly peril to emerge on the other side with an ecstatic, exhilirated sense of accomplishment in their faces. I felt drawn to crossing and the rush of adrenaline thrilled me until suddenly it happened: Just as I was about to brave the burning gauntlet, a man crossed with recklessly clumsy haste. He lurched halfway across before he tripped and pitched forwards into the flames, dissapearing into a shower of sparks. Firemen suited like astronauts leapt forwards to carry his melted body towards a medivac helicopter and I know not if he lived or died or which would be worse in his condition. Should this man's gruesome example dissuade me from trying it? Or was there an opposite lesson? I looked at the charred but unmelted shoes of those who had crossed already and realized that the heat however great was as nothing compared to the danger of painicking and making a rashly fatal misstep. Crossing was safe, fearing was deadly. I calmed myself, gave up the thrilling pleasure to be had in scaring myself, and walked calmly across. I ignored the alarm of my heat blasted skin and recrossed to return to where I stood, unharmed. | |
| Inner Peace | Inner Peace | Belief | Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Sort Yourself Out | Sort Yourself Out | Belief | Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| The Empowered Symbol | The Empowered Symbol | Belief | Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| You Decide Your Agenda, Empowerment Just Helps | You Decide Your Agenda, Empowerment Just Helps | Belief | Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief | |
| Cyberpunk | Cyberpunk | Belief | Idea Group: Idea Category: Belief The 'cybernetics' part of cyberpunk is important. Cybernetics means making intelligent learning systems with control mechanisms that "steer", guide, organize and adapt themselves to achieve equilibrium in complex environments. Mastering technology is merely a means for cyberpunks to master themselves and shape the future before it shapes them. |
Personal Skills
| My Skill | Skill Group | Category | Details | Edit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brazilian Jiu Jitsu | Brazilian Jiu Jitsu | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning I need to learn Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and I'm considering my options. I may enroll in Paragon BJJ Santa Barbara and teach what I learn there to my friends at the Infoshop. I'm presently very busy with Empowerment work and I would love to start by learning directly from another student of BJJ who could teach me or point me to some DIY starting steps. When I have more time I could enroll at Paragon and get more out of the membership cost. My friend Nicholas is teaching me basic BJJ and I need to spend more time with him to learn more. | |
| Dellintoshing | Dellintoshing | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning | |
| iPhone Tethering | iPhone Tethering | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning I really really want to get tethering to work so that I can have a full computer Internet connection wherever I find myself cut off from WiFi. About half of the time that I would like WiFi to be there, it is not. I completed a tethering tutorial but I must have done something wrong because I was unsuccessful. I will try again soon and ensure that I set the iPhone autolock to Never so that it doesn't shut off, initiate an EDGE connection through iPhone Safari to the test site first to ensure DNS information is present, and disable IPV6 on the Mac's airport. I have yet to master this skill but I will not give up! | |
| Drupal Module Development | Drupal Module Development | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning | |
| Source Engine Development | Source Engine Development | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning | |
| C++ | C++ | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning | |
| Math | Math | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning | |
| Jumping | Jumping | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning | |
| Backup Discipline | Backup Discipline | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning | |
| iPhone Development | iPhone Development | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning I hav started learning the iPhone SDK. I made a tabbed app and discovered from a documentation search that I had to add images to the Resources folder for them to show up. Now I need to learn Objective C and further explore the docs. I won't be doing most of the iPhone coding, but I want to learn how to do this anyways. | |
| Objective-C | Objective-C | Learning | Skill Group: Skill Category: Learning | |
| Acting | Acting | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I recently began acting. In the upcoming movie Harrison Bergeron based on a Kurt Vonnegut story, I played point man in the Handicapper General enforcement strike team. I directed my team in weapon handling and tactical maneuvers and helped choreograph the home invasion fight scene in which six of us struggle to arrest the titular character. I'm going to be in a theater piece called Snow White and the Seven Sirens on New Years' Eve. I can see myself doing more acting in the future as I quite enjoy working with my friends in the industry. | |
| Conserving | Conserving | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I try not to waste things. I save money by buying only that which I really need for myself and for DOSPEC testing. I've begun using reusable shopping bags as a first step towards reducing my packaging waste. | |
| Prepositioning | Prepositioning | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Music Producing | Music Producing | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Driving Manual | Driving Manual | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I need to learn how to drive my new Toyota Corolla's manual transmission urgently and Dave is going to teach RiZen and myself how tonight as we embark on our Barcamp LA 5 road trip. UPDATE: Dave took me out to a parking lot near city college and I got the hang of it in about an hour. Then it was onto the freeway and zoom I learned the ins and outs of driving stick. I'm still bewildered by the experience but I've basically got the hang of it. | |
| Recruiting | Recruiting: Help People Start | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I find myself recruiting people to all kinds of things all the time. I am passionate about a great many things, chiefly Empowerment, and it is a great pleasure to share things I love with people who I think might appreciate them too. I am also very actively involved in recruiting team members to contribute to Empowerment. I am getting better at this all the time and as the team grows and the Missionpedia collaboration process evolves our ability to recruit great people does too. | |
| Event Organizing | Event Organizing | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Comics | Comics | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Drupal Theming | Drupal Theming | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Drupal Development | Drupal Development | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| CSS | CSS | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Writing | Writing | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill Writing has always been a big part of who I am. A voracious reader, I wanted to tell the kinds of stories I enjoyed reading. I tried to write my first fantasy novel in fourth grade. My interest in role-playing games led me to writing my own RPG game systems. I shifted to nonfiction when I became more interested in philosophy and technology. Most of my own writing focused on exploring ways to use technology to empower people in ways that combined philosophical principles with technological solutions. I began writing EmpowerThyself as a realistic cyberpunk role-playing game book, but I realized that if my real interest in writing an RPG was to tackle real-world issues, I would be better off developing a sort of real-life RPG manual. Empower Thyself is like a Player's Handbook for strengthening your "character" by developing your "skills" and having "adventures". The book became too large a project for me to do on my own so it transformed into the EmpowerThyself web site. I am constantly writing to develop this system. Now I find myself working on the most challenging writing project I've ever had: The core empower thyself manifesto, an introduction to the fundamental philosophy of self-empowerment and overcoming apathy. I am gathering and synthesizing the many ideas that I have written about and discussed verbally over the years. An elegant, persuasive and inspiring explanation of empowerment is long overdue. | |
| Learning | Learning: Learn To Learn | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill My most prized skill is my ability to learn. It is the skill and passion that makes all other skills possible. I want to develop the Learning skill guide and Skillpedia system into an incredible learning tool for universal empowerment. | |
| Activism | Activism | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Networking | Networking | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Software optimization | Software optimization | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I recently optimized icons module to use a very fast php algorithm to display icons such that it is scalable to an infinitely large arbitrary set of possible icons without slowing down. This made empowerthyself.com much faster and eliminated the use of javascript for icons. I think this both makes the site faster and allows more icons which makes it prettier. | |
| Quoting | Quoting | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Second Lifing | Second Lifing | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Digging | Digging | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Talking | Talking | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill My top 3 skills are 1. Learning, 2. Doing and 3. Talking. Talking is the ultimate medium. What could I possibly hope to communicate through artificial media messages if I could not better articulate it in person by talking about it with people? And what could I hope to learn from other people unless I talk with them and listen empathically to gain understanding of what they have to say? I find that most of the best ideas for EmpowerThyself have arisen in conversations with people when we ask questions of each other and come up with answers out of the blue as though we already knew what they would be before we even knew what the question was. I think anyone who wants to communicate things in the world through media should first practice talking about their ideas with as many different kinds of people as possible. This is the surest way to improve your communications and learn from responses. | |
| Zineing | Zineing | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I'm in the process of gathering the manifesto and select ideas, skills and tools for the first Empower Thyself Manifesto Zine. The Infoshop has a whole rack of zines and I look forward to adding ours to it. I've self-published before but this will be my first zine. | |
| Timing | Timing | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Iconing | Iconing | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Spelling | spelling | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Easter Egging | Easter Egging | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Texturing | Texturing | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I've been doing a lot of texturing for Second Life and the Empowerment SLHQ. It is primitive! The hardest part was lining up seams for pockets on the 511 pants. There has to be a better way to texture SL skins without repeatedly saving and upload previewing. | |
| Teaching | Teaching | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Calling | Calling | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I have found myself doing mass calling of the group contact list to announce events at the SB Infoshop. It takes patience but it gets results! | |
| Swimming | Swimming | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Critical Thinking | Critical Thinking: Seek Truth | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Firespinning | Firespinning | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I've been firespinning staff since Burning Man and now I enjoy sharing spinning with others. | |
| Nonviolent Communication | Nonviolent Communication | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Typing | Typing | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Tabling: Set Up | Tabling: Set Up & Talk | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Testing | Testing | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Copiloting | Copiloting | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I frequently engage in complex trips in target-rich environments where a competent copilot is invaluable. I make a point of briefing my shotgun riding passenger what is expected of them so that our mission will not be made of fail. I also try to be a good copilot when riding with another driver. My iPhone comes in handy because I can get maps from anywhere to anywhere and look things up on the Net. | |
| Music | Music | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill Facebook may be the most powerful method ever devised for friends to share almost anything with each other and I'm developing Empowerthyself's whole system to link into our Facebook social networks. Most anything worth doing is worth sharing with your friends. | |||
| Evolutionary Biology | Evolutionary Biology | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill | |
| Naming | Naming | Skill | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill I'm good at coming up with names and naming conventions for things. It may take me a while to find the right name for things, but I stick with it till I have something apt and memorable. | |
| Postering | Postering | Skill To Teach | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill To Teach | |
| Sneaking | Sneaking | Skill To Teach | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill To Teach Sneaking is something I got into as a part of airsofting. Now I find myself automatically ninja walking at all times, instinctively making as little sound as possible. Stealth is my forte in airsoft and I have earned a reputation as a ghost. | |
| Doing | Doing: Get Things Done | Skill To Teach | Skill Group: Skill Category: Skill To Teach Doing is the ultimate factor. Nothing can influence the outcome of that which you have already done. This is the ultimate field of study which I find myself drawn to. All other phenomenon are mere influences. | |
| Gaming | Gaming |






