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sabrenHey all. That's me on the right. Cute, huh? :)
My real name's Michal. It's pronounced the same as "Michael," but spelled without the E. I didn't pick it, so don't ask me why.
Sabren's a character in a story I wrote. One day I signed it when I logged onto the net, and that's been my nick and handle ever since. It gives me a chance to play at someone not quite me, try on new behaviors, etc. I usually pronounce it "say-bren", but some people like to get creative.
I change my behaviors a lot. Always looking to improve. I succeed sometimes.
Sometimes, it's back to the drawing board. I guess that's life.
I realized one day that my world revolved around three broad interests:
That all manifests in my life as fascination with a new form of psychology called NLP, a desire to make good freinds, and a lot of time spent thinking about the web and artificial intelligence. If you want to learn more about these things, hop up a directory and visit manfiestation.com. If you'd rather learn about me, read on. :)
Think of a person you really like. Do you see a picture in your mind? Hear their voice? Or talk to yourself about this person? What feelings do you have in your body?
Think of someone you don't like at all. Ask yourself the same questions.
How do you represent these people differently? How do you keep track of which one you like, and which one you don't? Notice the details: is one image brighter? Are they in different locations? Are the tones of voice different? What about the tempo? Does one feel warmer?
When you see a movie, you know what to feel by the lighting, the way the camera moves, the type of music. Our thoughts and memories are like that, too. Examine the way you think about that person you don't like. Make it more like that other picture of the person you do like. Make it brighter or darker, clearer or fuzzier, pull it towards you or push it away. Adjust the volume and tempo of the sounds. Breathe the way you breathe when you think of the person you like as you think of the person you didn't.
Notice how it's changed.
Your brain does this kind of stuff all the time. It's what keeps you sane. Crazy people don't have a system for telling right from wrong, things they like from things they dont, things that happened and things that didn't.
When you use this information to change people's lives for better or worse, we call it NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming. If you'd like to learn more, you can play with my neurotoys or invest in one of the NLP books in the station's bookstore.
I got into NLP as a self-help thing. Tony Robbins talks about it, and Tony's a self-improvement guru, so back when I was one sad and lonely little guy, I tried it out, it worked for me, and I kept learning.
When I started to teach reading, I spent a lot of time researching and making up ways to use NLP to help kids learn. I became quite active on the alt.psychology.nlp newsgroup. One day, I flew to Atlanta for a seminar, and wound up spending the next six months studying under the trainer for free in exchange for doing computer work. I moved in with a brilliant young woman who uses her NLP skills to master darn near everything she does.
It's safe to say NLP is a big part of my life. It's something I love, and something I'm constantly using. It allows me a structured way to learn and shape myself. It's how I know I'm always getting better. Oh yeah, and it's fun.
I'm one of those people that can't stop having ideas. I have so many I'll never use them all. I keep notebooks with me, and I write my ideas down. I post ideas to newsgroups. I tell my friends. Sometimes, I put them into action. Most of the time, I save them for later.
One day I noticed how many notebooks I'd piled up. I realized they weren't doing anyone a lick of good.
So I had an idea.
What if I put all this stuff on the web? Set up a little search engine for my ideas? Then I could type in a cool idea, and the computer would save it, and remind me of related ideas I had in the past. And why not open it up to the world, so that anyone could add their ideas? Enter the station.
I wrote a short novel a while back, called Manifest Destiny. If you remember your American history, you'll recall that Manifest Destiny was the crazy 1800's idea that the United States would stretch across North America from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
In the novel, Manifest Destiny cropped up again, and human beings were spreading out through the universe. You can't control evolution like that, but a huge bureaucracy was doing everything it could to try. I called the place Manifest Station.
Well, there's not much bureaucracy on the website I created, manifestation.com, but there's a lot about evolving into the future, and it's growing in size - little by little every day, a bit like a coral reef.
The station is my grandest project. I really see it as a tool to make life better for people all around the world. It'll be a long while before that manifests, but it's getting there.
I write a column on the internet, just for fun. It used to be called Hacking the Buddha. Lately, it's just called htb. It changes a lot. It's still evolving, and people keep subscribing, so I guess I'm doing something right.
It's been an awesome opportunity for me. So many people have written me to share their experiences and their ideas. In a way, sharing with so many people is like living in a spotlight. When I'm doing things right, friends all around the world are there to cheer me on. And when I screw up, there's always someone bold enough and kind enough to point it out.
When I sit down to write, I feel a bit like I'm gathered with my tribe around a fire, telling stories and enjoying the company. I like that feeling, so I'll probably keep writing.
You can read it online, of course, or get it in email. I never know when I'm going to write an issue, but I always do. Check it out when you have a chance, and let me know what you think.
I'm a firm believer in the old cyberpunk saying: Information wants to be free. Having ideas and keeping them a secret is great for capitalism, but not so great for the future of humanity. I'm so happy to see the internet, where people can make lots and lots of money by giving stuff away for free. That's good for everybody.
I'm a firm believer that software wants to be free, too. That's why I use Debian GNU/Linux instead of Windows 95. I paid for Linux. I could have downloaded it off the internet for free, but I chose to shell out thirty bucks for the three CD's. According to the user manual, if I'd bought all the stuff that came with Debian commerically, it would have cost me over one billion dollars.
What's more, free software comes with the source code. That means anyone who knows how can make it better.
I tried it myself. I wrote a javascript port of Eliza. I set it free. Someone came along and made it better.
These days everybody's doing it. If you're interested, check out the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the paper that opened me (and Netscape) up to the idea of free software.
This newsgroup is my home away from home. I'm always posting something new up there, always sharing ideas. Like any newsgroup, it's got its share of flamewars, like the recent battles between Carmine, the trainer I worked for, and Ross, another trainer who teaches men to use NLP to seduce women. Or the people who start talking about what can't be done, and the people who rush in to relieve them of their limiting beliefs.
But it's all in good fun, and I'm always learning. Despite all the flames, there's usually a lot of value up there, and that's why I stay. You can see some of my recent posts to the newsgroup on dejanews.
Lori is one of my closest friends in the whole world. I've written about her quite a bit in HTB. She doesn't have a web page, but she's mentioned from time to time that she'd like to contribute to this site. If only she weren't so busy running her own company and coming up with brilliant ideas in the real world... :)
I met Monica in the UTD drama club, and she's one of the few people I've kept in contact with since leaving school. She's one of the smartest, warmest, most beautiful people I've ever met.
Sean's a 3D graphics guru from back home in Texas. He's been one of my best friends since high school. Check out his art on his website.
I'm also known to hang out on the Atlanta IRC channel on EFNet.
Well, that's what I do for a living these days, anyway. I work for Abel Solutions, where I do all kinds of fun stuff with intranets, databases, and the web. I designed the backend of this telecommunications database for the Georgia Public Services Commission. Lately, I'm doing a lot of work for CARE but it's all internal, so you couldn't see my stuff without a password.
I'm pretty happy there, but if you're thinking about offering me big heaps of money, you might want to take a look at my resume. :)
I worked for Reading One to One before I left to Atlanta. It's a really structured program at the University of Texas at Dallas. I wasn't always thrilled with the structure (we had a whole book of exact procedures to follow) but I loved working with the kids. More importantly, they really got a lot out of it.
When I started, I worked at J.L. Long middle school in Dallas, and later switched to Salidivar Elementary. I don't know which age group I liked better. I just love teaching!
I also worked at Summerbridge Fort Worth for a year. They don't have a website, but there's other summerbridge programs around the country.
Summerbridge is a really intense six-week program where high school and college students teach school to small classes of middle school kids. We worked 16 hour days for next to nothing and loved every minute of it. The kids get a chance to really learn from people not too much older than themselves, and are really challenged to excell. If you've ever wanted to work with kids and you're willing to immerse yourself in an incredible experience for two solid months, then I highly reccomend this program.
(And if you're a student, and there's a summerbridge in your area, you owe it to yourself to check this out!)
I write stories, too. My senior year in high school, I won first place in a writing contest held by the society of children' s book writers and illustrators. I've yet to be published, except here on the internet, though. You can read my novella, Manifest Destiny, online. :)
Gumbella was a story idea that got out of hand. It's a little imaginary island in the south pacific that serves as the setting for a lot of my metaphors and stories. When I get a better connection to the internet, I'm going to create a MOO based on it, to serve as a test world for some of my AI bots...
NLP looks at the structure of experience. NLP books talk about everything from linguistic patterns to content-free therapy. I think a large part of what we know about the mind can be easily encoded into a computer to create a truly effective online therapist or success coach. That's the idea behind Sabrina. She's mostly in the planning stages at the moment, but I feel confident that she'll someday take the AI world by storm.
The turing test is a simple contest where a machine and a human compete via an IRC-like interface to convince a human judge that they are human. If the computer can convince the judge that it is the human, then the computer can honestly be called artificially intelligent. Every year, Hugh Loebner holds a modified turing test. No one's ever won. I plan to enter Sabrina in the 2000 competition, and perhaps change all that.
Tumboodo is my other major project. It's basically a translating dictionary for programmers. I know how to program. I know how code works. Yet I've spent hours hunting down a single command in a new language because of poor or non-indexed documentation. Why not create a central programmer's reference that lets you use what you already know to find what you don't know yet? That's the idea behind Tumboodo. It's also pretty long-term, just because I don't have a lot of time to work on it, but I think that once it takes off, it'll deserve a domain name and website all of its own.