Andy's Mind

Looks like I have some explaining and catching up to do on this blog, as it can be clearly seen that I haven’t posted in quite a while. First explaining then – there are two reasons behind the recent lack of updates: first I had some technical trouble again, this time with my home computer. Not to bore you with details my Windows XP broke down on Tuesday and it was only on Friday that I gave up on trying to revive it and did a fresh install. I guess it was due to fail after 2.5 years since its initial installation, it’s miracle it did hold so long – Microsoft’s stuff has a nasty habit of degrading with time by itself. Installing anew wasn’t easy as my hard disks are packed tight with data and I don’t want to invest in my desktop since I plan to acquire a state of the art laptop at the end of September. But, somehow, by Friday afternoon I got it up and running again.

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My blog/site was down since last weekend, when the hard disk in the server it runs from crashed. It is not a professional operation, but rather a server kept and maintained by a group of friends who share the costs. So, at first everyone thought it’s just something simple that would be fixed quickly, but it turned out that the biggest and newest hard disk in the server broke down. It is a 200 GB Maxtor bought just about six months ago.

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Yesterday I finally went to see this movie – “Bombon. El Perro”. And as I suspected judging from the reviews and what friends said I loved it. It’s basically a very simple story of a few days of life of simple men and a dog. All this set in contemporary Argentine, an impoverished country in deep crisis despite modern scenery where those less fortunate really struggle to survive.

But, there is another layer to all of this. The whole movie is “dualistic” in this sense, that it is so simple yet is speaks of the most complex problems of normal lives. After all, characters just try to get through life seeking happiness and avoiding suffering, just like we all. A subtle sense of stoic melancholy with which smiling “Coco” Villegas faces everything life throws at him remains as a vivid memory from this movie.

One of the high points of this movie is its music. It’s very positive, yet at time melancholic and plays very well with the pictures. It’s also worth noting that main characters are played by non-professional actors who even appear under their own names.

Highly recommended.

I came up with a simple idea for timing my meditation. At the beginning I used a stick of incense, but I had to look at it to check whether it is burnt out already or not and I found that distracting. I prefer the way it is done in the zendo, with a bell being struck at the beginning and end of each session. However, at home I don’t have anyone to do this for me and it would be impractical even if I had.

Then I heard of meditation clocks like this one, which I think are a great idea but are not available here and I would like to see and hear it personally before buying. But, I thought, I could use my computer for this, if only I had an appropriate program and upon searching the web I found some. But they were either old or not free or not for my operating system, but I realized I already have the program I need – the mp3 player.

So, I downloaded a recording of a zendo bell, processed it some and created an mp3 with the sound of a bell being struck once and another with the sound of the bell being struck three times. I also generated three mp3 files with just silence – 5, 10 and 15 minutes of it. Now by arranging them in a playlist I can have as long a meditation as I wish. And it works very well for me.

I use my laptop to play it, as the desktop is too noisy. I think I could eliminate the noise altogether if I had a portable mp3 player connected to a pair of speakers. In fact even with headphones it could act effectively as a portable meditation clock.

I decided to share this, maybe you would find it useful too. You can download the set of mp3 files and a sample playlist by clicking here (it’s 7 megs approx). It’s also available in BitTorrent, click here for the torrent file.