Is Sand still around?

Post Reply New Topic

Jeez, this is morbid. He probably got fed up with the same banter. He logged in but didn't post so that just shows that he was looking back here and for some reason didn't want to talk but maybe was curious to see if anyone missed him so checked to see if he got any emails. If nobody messaged him he probably just figured that he had no real friends here so left for good.

That's pretty cool. I remember once having a fight with Sand and I didn't really like exactly how it played out, but it's still cool to know he's out there.

Dude, I used to fight with you like hell.

What amazing stuff. Glad to hear he's OK.

Hi,
Still around. I will be 89 next February 2 so I can't guarantee I'll make it, but I'm still healthy, can still run to catch a bus. My blog is at http://open.salon.com/blog/jsand and my poems at http://www.poemhunter.com/search/?q=Jan+Sand

Jan Sand

I've got to admit the the people at this site are more interesting than those at Open Salon. I cannot say I am definitely autistic but I am some sort of misfit and I have a massive talent for pissing people off. At my age I have given up trying to be a normal human and never found that particularly attractive. I was born in New York City and grew up there but found the people in general here in Helsinki more to my taste although my Finnish is still pretty primitive. Mostly they leave me alone and I make friends with the birds and small animals in the nearby wild park. I don't know if I would return to this site since I get along pretty well by myself but I'll keep it in mind.

Long time no see.

Thanx for dropping in. Feel free to drop in again.

Hi Sand, I remember getting encouragement from you in a PM, per the potential of getting well from some of my illnesses and weaknesses.

I found out I had better genetics than I thought I did, then.

I just had to find a way to more fully tap them, and I did.

I think now I just might make it to age 90 as well, as many of my ancestors did, and even over that age. :)

Glad to hear you are doing well and keep running for those rides. :)

I'm glad to see you're still here on WP. I still remember your kind words when I got into a verbal tussle with another Aspie early on in my WP membership - that always meant a lot to me.

Yeah you can find plenty of sand at local beaches in deserts all around the world!

Bloody brilliant, one of the most insightful, articulate and intelligent posters on this forum rears his head, please, please Sand do not make it a fleeting visit.

Ditto.

Glad You appreciate him. Especially as from memory you were the subjects of one of his most memorable quotes, when he compared you to a beautifully crafted sports car that had been erroneously fitted with bubble gums wheels. The wheels being an analogy of your religious beliefs and the way your beliefs cloud your intellect.

Good to see you posting again Rho, looking forward to crossing swords with someone with a brain, debating with creationists is not very stimulating. From memory your theology is not set in creationist cement

I've always like Sand. I credit Sand with helping me overcome my fear of baking. And, yes, I'm absolutely serious about that. I was inspired to modify a bread recipe, and it's rare that we buy bread or pizza. We're much more frugal, and Sand had a part in giving me the inspiration to take it up. We've had our disagreements, sure, but that doesn't preclude one from recognizing wisdom.

I've gotten too busy to give PPR the attention it's really due. It's not for lack of desire. I've just been neglecting my creative interests for too long.

As far as creationism is concerned, I do consider myself a creationist in the sense that I believe God created the heavens and the earth for His own purpose. It belongs to Him and He can do with it whatever He pleases. Whether it took a week or 3-4 billion years is just not a debate I feel is worth getting into since it misses the point of the creation account. It's a big internal fight that Christians have with each other and something I prefer to avoid. And I certainly don't enjoy debating it outside religious circles, either. My position is that I wasn't there when it happened, I didn't see it happen, and therefore I don't know with any level of certainty how it happened. It's pure foolishness to take sides on the issue. I don't see anything wrong with being a creationist who prefers leaving the book open. Incidentally, I feel the same way about evolution, hence why I've consistently rejected the hard empiricist position as well as both YEC and OEC hypotheses. I know what the Bible says and am content to go with that. I'll leave it to much smarter people than me to hammer out the particulars of it.

I'm a bit surprised I made such an impression. I have a tendency to go into combat mode on certain subjects such as politics and religion, being rather ignorant on these areas but most curious. As a former New Yorker I am quite upset over the results of both of these areas lately in view of the impression I get that they are both hastening the demise of life on the planet.

Insofar as religion is concerned I am gradually coming around to the concept that there is something of an intellectual quality of the universe itself - a kind of extension of the Gaia concept and the current exploration of string theory seems to indicate there are multiple universes. Since exploratory thought usually capitalizes on extending known patterns into unknown possibilities and there is now theoretical thought on multiple universes, perhaps our universe is a member of a gang or a herd of universes that discuss amongst themselves about the rather nutty ideas their planets might generate. Something similar to our own gut bacteria who seem to have emotional influences on our thinking.

I wouldn't take my ideas too seriously, I certainly don't. I'm just a rather old guy who never found it interesting to grow up since grown-ups, generally, are too busy earning money and raising kids to make much sense of anything else. I took a shot at those but never found myself particularly good at either.

Incidentally a few of my poems are on this site at the arts and music discussion. I've been looking over many of the poems I've written and many look pretty crappy but occasionally there's an interesting one.

Sand: You gave me the idea for doing Lumia boxes. I still don't have the technical/mechanical/financial ability to put together a physical realization of a Thomas Wilfred work. However, it has inspired me to put together computer models of them. I still haven't figured it out to my complete satisfaction, but I've enjoyed the results of the experiments I've done thus far. What eludes me is modeling aspherical lenses. I can't do a ray traced render of a refracted image without pointing the camera at the lenses at a 90 degree angle. What I've done at this point is render that as a movie and use that as a lamp texture, like a movie projector. By projecting that image onto an object at an angle, I can ALMOST get the effect I'm going for.

What's frustrating me is my lens experiments end up looking like some kind of recondite lava lamp, which I only find out after borrowing someone else's computer to render over a weekend. I'm trying out different ways of faking it, like using noise to warp the object I'm using to reflect on (think crumpled foil). The results usually are either too complex or not complex enough, and there's no happy medium yet. But I'm not giving up yet!! !

My point being I feel you've really helped me break out of some self-imposed limits. I'm starting to view light as much as a musical element as sound and silence, and I feel I have you to thank for that.

Not going to flood a PPR thread with off topic youtube videos. I'll just post a link to "Arrival." I don't have anything with the aspherical lenses yet--that will be next. This one just has the movie projected at an angle onto a stationary warped plane. By rotating the plane and placing the camera closer to it you get a less complex, continuously evolving image, which is my goal for next time. If only I had the time to spend on it…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-vkHEz_C2A