I’ve come to the painful conclusion that I might actually have to go through an unpleasant re-training process. My brain became so accustomed to effortlessly cruising along, fueled by the little magical orange candy for $30/month, that it seems to have forgotten what real effort is. Now I mentally recoil at the thought of making myself DO something.

So I haven’t  spontaneously re-awakened after a year (@#%$!); I guess it’s time to be systematic about it. Set some goals or something (recoil! recoil! recoil!).

And so I started thinking – how DO we actually perform a complex task such as finding the shortest path? At first glance, there is no answer really, “we just see it, it’s obvious.” But of course, something very complex IS happening, in the unconscious nether regions of the brain.

I think the first step in approaching the problem is to remove the visual sense, as it’s a distraction. The eyes bring information from any given scene in, but the visual sense doesn’t actually have anything to do with the actual pathfinding computation. Once the “scene” is in the brain, it exists as some sort of model, described by the brain’s fundamental language, and completely hidden from our conscious mind.

Another way to think about it is that the visual representation is simply a manifestation of the model that is in the brain. You can close your eyes and visualize the scene, and find the shortest path in your “mind’s eye,” but the work isn’t being done in the “mind’s eye,” it’s simply one view of the data residing elsewhere in the brain.

For me, getting rid of the visual sense makes things much easier to work with, because understanding what the sensation of vision actually is, and how it relates to our self-awareness, is kind of an intractable task. But now it’s out of the way!

So we’re left with trying to understand the technical details of how our biological computers solve the shortest path problem, which is far more approachable.

The next problem is – how is the model represented, fundamentally, in the brain? The brain obviously has it’s own, innate language. It has nothing to do with spoken language – a person who was raised in complete isolation (therefore had no concept of language) will still find the shortest path!

Of course, once you figure out the language of the brain, you now have to find out the rules by which it manipulates the data. If the language was binary, then the manipulation would be the logic gates, based on transistors (neurons).

But, as far as I know, we have no idea what the innate language of the brain is, or the rule-set by which it processes data. I imagine it is similar to trying to visualize the 4th dimension. I don’t remember which greek philospher/scientist it was, but he thought he’d proved the fourth dimension can’t exist, because all dimensions much be mutually perpendicular to each other. So he thought, if you take a stick, and lay it across another stick so that they form a cross, you have two dimensions. If you take a third stick and hold it perpendicular to the first two sticks, you have a representation of three dimensions. His proof that no more dimensions could exist was simply that you can’t add another stick that is mutually perpendicular to the first three.

What the fellow didn’t understand, however, was that our brains, never having encountered a fourth dimension, simply can’t comprehend it. It is like someone blind from birth trying to imagine what “red” looks like. That person can’t even begin to imagine it, because his brain has no concept of color, having never experienced it. Our physical world that we live in is 3-dimensioned, and so that is all our brain can comprehend. The fact is, in reality, there can be an arbitrary number of sticks, all perpendicular to each other. Don’t go trying that, of course. : )  For whatever reason, the physical state of the universe restricts our experience to 3 dimensions.

My point in going into that tangent was – I suspect that the language and processing of the brain might be genuinely beyond comprehension.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not solvable! Mathematically, working with 4 dimensions is only slightly harder than working with 3 (mainly because the equations get much longer). Just because we can’t comprehend the fourth dimension doesn’t mean we can’t work with it. Similarily, just because we might not ever comprehend how the brain works, we can still understand it, and work with it.

And figure out how it solves problems like finding the shortest path.

But who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Heck, maybe the brain works in binary. I kind of doubt it though - I imagine the brain does not even have a discrete alphabet forming it’s language, but rather a fuzzy, statistical alphabet. Maybe the answer will be found in quantum mechanics.

The last  observation has to do with artificial intelligence. So far, we haven’t been able to work with the 4th dimension (although it has been indirectly observed, as massive objects like the sun affect it by gravity). Indeed, it seems to be beyond the realm of our physical capacity (not capability, capacity) to work with it. In the same way, maybe it’s beyond our physical capacity to reproduce what the brain is doing.

That’s a hard chunk to swallow, but – we’ve observed the effects of gravity upon light via the 4th dimension, just as we’ve observed the effects of the brain’s operations.

So it maybe creating AI IS an intractable problem. That is – it’s not that the solution is difficult; it’s simply not possible.

Of course, again, maybe it all is just the biological equivalent to binary and transistors, in which case AI is inevitable (if humans are around long enough to figure it out).

In that case, maybe, when I find my way through an obstacle course along the shortest path, my brain actually applies a grid to the scene, and runs A* on it. : D

 Instructions: drag to fill squares, shift-drag to erase, space to run, r to clear all cells.

If you play with it, you’ll notice that the path always veers slightly into concave “barricades.” Some times it even just seems to arbitrarily wander off course by one cell, when it should be going in a straight line.

Why? The g cost of a diagnol movement is supposed to be 1.4 times the cost of a “straight” movement. I left that out of the algorithm for 2 reasons:

1. For reasons I haven’t quite figured out, it runs 3 to 4 times faster without it.
2. The imperfect solution almost looks more natural, with a little bit of random-ish looking meandering.

Here are a couple of examples of some of the quirks:

Speedwise, I don’t know what is typical for A*, but in Flash player, the time varied from 12ms to 23ms, the latter for very concave maps. In comparison, the graphics usually registered 0. So I’m sure there’s tons of room for improvement.

Class AStarMap

• gridWidth
• gridHeight
• AStarMap(_gridWidth:int, _gridHeight:int)
• setEndPoints(originX:int, originY:int, destX:int, destY:int)
• solve():Array
• getPath():Array
• getCell(xx:int, yy:int):Object
• setCell(xx:int, yy:int, cellType:int)
• toggleCell(cellX:int, cellY:int)
• reset()

Typical usage:

   var map:AStarMap = new AStarMap(20, 20);
   map.setCell(2, 4, map.CELL_FILLED);
   map.setCell(3, 4, map.CELL_FILLED);
   map.setCell(4, 4, map.CELL_FILLED);
   map.setCell(5, 4, map.CELL_FILLED);
   map.setEndPoints(2, 2, 18, 18);

   var solution:Array = map.solve();

The returned Array is an array of cell objects. Each object has the following properties:

   cell.x
   cell.y
   cell.parentCell  

Note that this class does NOT address graphics: it is purely “math space.”

I created this as I worked through the excellent A* Pathfinding for Beginners tutorial by Patrick Lester, bless his heart. My app is actually not 100% done, in a way that will make it sometimes not take quite the shortest path.

Note that this demo, as opposed to Patrick’s tutorial, does not allow for diagnol movement (as my final application will use a more zelda-esque movement).

Here’s the code.

Nike says it best: Just Do It.

I wonder how many would-be successful people will never BE successful, because they spend so much time READING about how to be successful.

Again, it’s really a simple application, and uses rather little of the API’s capability. Even so, its raises exciting possibilities.

It’s been over a year now, since I first bookmarked it. Life interfered, see, so I haven’t done much of ANY programming for nearly a year. Anyway, I set myself, today, to the arduous task of learning something new.

D.eval is basically an AS3 interpreter that will run arbitrary code on the fly.

I was floored by the possibilities this offered. Obviously at the time, BoxCAD was on my mind, and so my initial excitement was so directed. Over time though, new possibilities made themselves evident. Basically, this API opens the door to limitless application extensibility. Using BoxCAD as my primary example, this API could allow end-users to add new, powerful functionality to the application, in a language they already know (my target audience in BoxCAD was AS3 developers).

Or, as in the swf below, it can serve as a very interactive tutorial tool. Go ahead… define functions, variables, loops, etc, and then run it. As you’ll note in the default code, variables are created and dynamically typed on the fly.

Now, for the really nifty thing, copy this in: removeChild(txtDevalOut);

txtDevalOut is simply the name of the output TextArea object. The base class extends sprite, so all sprite methods are available (i.e. removeChild, addChild, etc).

The way I set up D.eval in this little app is such that the context is that of the base class. So you have access to every property and function of the compiled class! The application can modify itself.

There are so many possibilities here. Mutating/Genetic code, dynamic loading of user-coded modules, scripting, etc.

Thanks to the folks at http://riaone.com. The simple app in this post is just a trivial example of the capabilities of the API.

Here’s the code. You’ll have to install the component (free) from the aforementioned website.

July 4th of 2007 – all  of my “4th of July” memories are secondary to my “4th of July on Adderall” memories. Indeed, almost all of my memories from 2007 through 2008 are anchored to Adderall in some way.

“Oh, yes, that was the month I first ran out over a week early. I remember taking my last dose at 3am.”

“THAT was the time I took 60mgs at once. My feet turned blue, and my chest felt so tight that I simply had a lie motionless for an  hour. That was ok though, because lying there motionally, I had a flood of inspired ideas [for coding].” [And they WERE actually great ideas, that I will have time to pursue... when I win the lotto.]

“I do remember that… it happened a couple of days after my first experience of having the sun rise and birds start chirping while I was speeding away.” [It's very depressing the first few times the sun rises on you... when you first notice the cracks in the window blinds have gone from black to slighly gray.]

I can read through code I’d written (mainly for BoxCAD) and remember what time it was, what mood I was in, and how much Adderall I had left.

It’s not surprising that all of my memories are associated with Adderall in some way, considering that I had an explicit thought about the stuff literally every ten minutes max.

The “funny” thing is, in almost all of those memories, there is a vague unpleasantness. A hovering feeling that something is very wrong. While I might have been pleasantly speeding at any given time (I won’t lie – it’s very pleasant), my credit was ransacked, my wife was crying or angry that I was still dosing after two or three days awake (and my oblivion to my son asking to “go to the park,” among other things), and my house was starting to look like it had been abandoned.

So where are we now?

I haven’t touched Adderall for four or five months. An accurate measure of my obsession can be found in “Time between thoughts of Adderall”:

Just after last dose: 5 minutes
Week after last dose: 10 mintues
Month after last dose: 10 minutes
Two Months: 15 minutes
Three Months: 1 hour
Four Months: 1 day
Current: Every other day

I no longer crave it. I’m at about 90% of my pre-Adderall functionality.

But what would I do if I found a piece of Adderall laying around… that had been misplaced? I feel like I could resist, but I also know that the beast is simply asleep. It will probably never be dead.

There’s a lot more to say – things that might be helpful to other addicts in withdrawal. But, I have to say – I write at about half the speed I did before I quit. :\ So I will have to say my “more” in a later post.

It’s commented “tutorial style” – so I won’t say more about it ‘ere.

Thank you to Karura of Azure Flame for the clean, simple sprites. There are many more if you follow the link – and any can be substituted directly into the aGame.fla file (in the source zip).

The last time I gave in (3 weeks ago), I asked the doctor for a 20mg/day prescription, down from 45mg. I did not use it as a continuous taper, but rather as two spaced binge events. My last usage was two weeks ago.

There are two primary withdrawal effects that plague me. First is drowsiness. For the first few days, I slept about 18 hours per day. Now, two weeks after last dose, I sleep about 12 hours a day.

Second is (initially profound) anhedonism and lethargy. And I’m not using the word “profound” lightly.

During the first week, I took about 2 showers. When I wasn’t sleeping, I was playing games on the computer. Or reading. I haven’t worked with music (normally an obscession), programming or anything else. Nothing sounded worth the effort.

Now, two weeks later, the anhedonia/lethargy is strong, but not as crippling. I still have very little interest in “hobbies”, but I have been able to work some.

More and more, I have very brief sparks of inspiration, where hobbies actually sound fascinating again. But it’s a very fleeting feeling. It seems like my brain is an engine trying to turn over; some times it fires a couple of pistons then sputters out.

Forcing myself to do “things” causes intense agitation. Earlier in withdrawal, simply taking a shower would cause feelings of childish tantrum throwing to run through my head. It’s not that severe now, but I still become mildly irritated if I attempt to work at something for any useful length of time.

Appetite wise – well, I’ve gained over 10 pounds over the last two weeks. Most of that was in the first few days. My appetite is currently at pre-Adderall levels.

So, why is this the “almost” epilogue? Because I know from experience that I will at some point face a seemingly irresistable compulsion to ask my doctor for a refill. Overall though, while I may end up doing so (as I have a couple of times already), I am making real progress. Each “quitting” cycle, the urge to abuse decreases, and I use less. I am currently in new territory; I HAVE made it two weeks before, but I didn’t feel this “well”.

Perhaps more encouraging than anything, according to my wife, “it feels like you’ve been gone for a long time, and just came back.” Indeed, my mood has improved – but there are much more vague, subtle ways that Adderall impacts your personality, and it’s in those details that the real changes have taken place.

One last note – I’m experiencing a near-total inversion of normal circadian rythms. I’ve always been a night-owl, but lately, I literally wake up at night as if it was morning, and literally go to bed in the early morning hours. I’ve also experienced some intense sleep-onset paralysis (something I have not experienced for 4 years or so). I read somewhere, once upon a time, that after chronic amphetamine use, sleep patterns continue to be modified for up to several months after stoppage. So I may have a ways to go…

Ah well. One thing at a time.