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An imperfect world

There is a lot wrong with this world. People are dying everywhere. We are destroying our environment. There is a lot of corruption and injustice. And most people don’t care. This can be very frustrating. What should be done?

What’s this blog about

I like to write down some of the things that occupy my mind. I do this because I hope that it helps other people that read it. I also use it as some sort of reference for myself. I care more about the actual content then about formatting and presentation. I do see the use of those two, but it costs a lot of time and effort to have it look good. So until I have nothing better to do, I will leave that as it is.

Why do we have morals

Definition:

The term “morality” can be used either

1. descriptively to refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society or,
   1. some other group, such as a religion, or
   2. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/

If everyone would be allowed to steal from each other whenever they could, then everybody would have to watch their possessions constantly. This costs a lot of time and effort. More time and effort than an individual would gain by stealing from others.  That is why most people eventually agreed that it is not okay to steal from each other. So the people who agreed enforced their idea by putting in charge people to protect their properties.

The same applies to murder. If it was okay to murder someone, everyone had to watch out constantly in order to protect himself. The benefits of not being murdered outweigh the benefits of being able to murder someone and get away. Therefore at a certain point it was agreed that it is not right to murder someone, so that everyone can be safer.

What is happening here is that things that don’t benefit the community overall are being banned. Things as murder, theft or inequality. This can only happen if a majority of the population has come to an understanding of the value of a certain principle. This is how morality evolves. Every moral code is evolving towards a better one. Sometimes moral codes from different cultures merge. This usually speeds up the evolution, but is often met with a lot of resistance.

 

Most people do not steal, rape or murder, because they know that in the long run it will not be benificial to them. Most people will recognize that the chances are pretty high that they will eventually get caught, and that the trouble is usually not worth the gain.

There are other principles that not everyone understands as good as the former three. These are principles that usually do not have severe consequences when violated, or principles that have no laws against them. These are principles like being respectful, helping someone out, or trivial things like diner rules.

When we consider a person’s morality, we point to someone’s ability to understand and apply these principles in his life. However, it is often very hard to determine which moral code is better, since the world is complex and the results may be difficult to predict.

Who am I?

This is a question that I have been asking myself for a long time. Here is a summary of what I got so far.

I grew up in a very orthodox christian environment. As a child I was diagnosed PDD-NOS which is an ADHD and autism related anomality in my behavior. From a young age on I was very attracted to computers and programming. I played a lot of games when I was young, and I also made some games myself. Later on I started to study IT and making business applications, web apps and the like. In my spare time I studied all kinds of topics on the internet, like artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy and religion. I had a couple of relationships, but I was not able to maintain them. I am not very good at communicating so I kind of gave up on having a good relation hehe. I have communication problems at work as well, and last year I got in a depression. I started believing in conspiracy theories and ultimately dropped my belief in a god. That is something I am very grateful for and I am now on my way to recovery. I can still get very enthousiastic when talking about religion, sometimes to a point where it gets emotional. I am now trying to avoid that and learning to communicate in the best possible way. When I feel motivated I work a bit on websites that I make, like sociorating.com or amsterdamspliffguide.com, or my website martiendejong.nl. I try my best to help others in whatever way I can. I’m also open to any feedback if there you would be so kind to leave any.

Simplifying SQL SELECT

In my opinion, any SQL SELECT query, or for  that matter any select query, can be described by four properties:

 

SELECTED OBJECTS

A table, some joined tables or a query. The source always represents one business object, which is optionally extended with one or more other business objects, through a relation. In SQL this goes in the FROM clause, and has effect on the GROUP BY clause.

 

SELECTED PROPERTIES

A list of tablefields, values, functions and derived things. The property always represents a property of a business object that is listed in SELECTED OBJECTS. In SQL this goes in the SELECT clause.

 

CONDITIONS

An evalution that determines wether a record is selected or not. Multiple evaluations can be combined through boolean operators. An evalulation always represents a property or a relation of a business object that is listed in SELECTED OBJECTS. In SQL this goes in the WHERE or HAVING clause.

 

ORDERING

A list of tablefields, values, functions and derived things. The property always represents a property of a business object that is listed in SELECTED OBJECTS, optionally accompanied with a property ‘invert’, which reverses the sort order. In SQL this goes in the ORDER BY clause.

 

The SELECTED PROPERTIES, CONDITIONS and ORDERING are all dependent on SELECTED OBJECTS. With a map from our business model to the database we can generate the SELECT query from a business representation using only these four properties.

On the business side, the structure looks something like this:

object -> property*
object -> relation*
property -> datatype
relation -> object

On the database side, it looks like this:

table -> field*
table -> foreignkey*
field -> datatype
foreignkey -> table

As you can see, the two  models can be mapped very easily. So what are the benefits of using a map instead of directly writing the query?

You can have:

• Nice field names
• Customization of the presentation
• Formatting
• Multilingual support
• Input validation
• Form generation

All these things require some sort of ORM, since most databases do not provide these functionality by default.

As for the select simplification, Doctrine seems to deliver a lot of that:

http://www.doctrine-project.org/docs/orm/2.0/en/reference/query-builder.html

We really need more superheroes, and I think we can have them too

We are currently moving into an age where humans seem to be able to gain access to amazing new capabilities, much like the ones advertised in superhero comics and movies.

Right now there are superhumans among us, like for instance the ice man, electric man, hammer head, mister eats all and more.

There are already individuals out there who are acting like some sort of superheroes (http://www.reallifesuperheroes.org/)

And then I’m not even mentioning the status that some celebrities have gained.

Soon the technology will be available for every one of us to become their the superhero (or villain maybe) of their choice.

It seems like fiction is becoming reality once again.. 🙂

What do I really want to do

I want to make a list of things that I really want. to do. This list is indefinite.

Be Me

The first and most important thing I want is to be myself. I should always try to be the best version of myself, but that is still just me. I am a unique creature, carefully created and polished by my surroundings. An artwork if you wish. I function in a particular way. Things that work fine for someone else may not work for me and vice-versa. My greatest wish is to just be me.

Make the world a better place

When I see things that can be improved, I like to change them. I really hate to do unneccessary work and when see others struggle with something I like to help them out.

Computer programming!

I love programming so much I can do it all day long. I am usually a bit distracted because when I find something that I like I switch into looking into that. So for me it really helps to have a task list or agenda at hand, which is fortunately not that hard nowadays.

Socializing

I like to hang out with other people and share ideas. I’m a usually quite shy and silent, but when I talk about something that I like I can quickly change my mood into a very enthousiastic and persuasive one. It took me some time to figure out that this can be quite annoying too, but I think I learned that now :p.

 

 

more to come!

First steps towards feeling better

Last tuesday I asked my boss if I could get some time off to recover from my bad feelings. I was stressed out and had trouble keeping myself under control emotionally. My boss agreed so I am off since wednesday.

My plan is to get myself to feel good again as soon as possible. The first days I used to relax a lot and calm down from the stressful moments at work. I also worked on ideas that I have. I feel quite a lot better already from the fun things that I did so far.

My plan is now to pick one goal that I think is most important to me right now, and focus on it so that I will get it done. If I have completed the goal I will pick a new goal, but not look in the future or be distracted.

I am planning to reach my boss tomorrow morning, to give him an update of my status.

My depression

This is a topic that I have difficulty talking about, but I feel that I have to share. For me this topic quite embarassing because it deals with negative feelings I have about myself and the world around me. My goal is to help you get a better understanding of me, and also I hope to get a better understanding of myself.

For the last few years I’ve begin to feel very depressed and insecure. Some things happened to me that I perceived as real turn-offs, and I began to question the usefulness of my life.

 

I broke up with my partner, and I had a lot of trouble finding a job that suits me. I want to meaningful things for the world, but I don’t succeed in the things I do, and it seems that noone is interested in what I do.

I see the many mistake I made and I feel really bad about them. I constantly feel that I am not productive enough and must do more to earn my space.

I want to reach further and evolve, but Im stuck.

 

I now find myself unmotivated to take good care of myself. Things like eating on time, washing clothes, cleaning the house, visiting friends or family all do not matter much to me anymore.

Having fun or socializing seems like a waste of time. Other people around me are wasting their time and energy on such nonsensical things. I have real difficulty why they just won’t understand me, or listen to me.

I feel caged and I really want to break free.

 

Well, that’s it for now (pfew). I hope it makes some sense.