Author Archives: danijel

The five year cycle

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The fact that every piece of IT gear needs to be replaced every five years is something I find increasingly annoying. It’s as if I’m on a five-year subscription.

Recently, Biljana and I had to replace phones – not only because the battery was on its last legs, but also because the 12th-gen iPhones have weak batteries by default and it was kind of a problem since we bought them, so merely changing the battery wouldn’t do anything useful. Also, the new operating system is designed to strain the battery more. Also, the radio transceiver (wifi/bluetooth) is slow and we had issues connecting to it via hotspot mode. It all kind of accumulated to the point where we had to do something about it.

Also, the first-gen Apple Silicon gear that we bought in 2021 is now five years old. My M1 iPad pro has a cracked screen in the corner, because I put it on something unstable when I was working, and it fell corner first on the concrete floor. Yeah, not great. However, that was when it was less than a year old, and I refused to do anything about it, seeing it as a punishment for not paying attention, so it’s still cracked. Also, the touchscreen is acting up lately, and there’s yellowing in the edges of the amoled screen – 2-3 cm. I’d replace if it were important, but I use it as a secondary device, for reading books, playing silly mobile games and occasionally surfing the web and taking handwritten notes. The M1 air is also banged up – I destroyed the tab key, probably by pressing it too violently when something wasn’t working, and I had to remap tab to caps lock in software. Also, the battery started showing signs of age in the new OS, which is probably running all kinds of useless garbage in the background, but I solved that by turning on the low power mode. This helped the battery life significantly, and I don’t see any bad side effects. The machine has only 8GB of RAM, which was always its weak point, and it gets worse as they fill the OS with all kinds of slop. I bought the 15″ M4 air a year ago so it’s been “replaced”, but the thing is, I never throw away the “replaced” gear, at least until it’s worn out and broken to the point of being completely useless. I just repurpose it for some secondary task. The M1 air is in the bedroom, and I use it for checking the mail and text messages in the morning, and for writing things down when I have ideas while in bed. It’s actually useful. People use phones for that, but I find phones almost completely useless, since they don’t have a keyboard, and if I have ideas, I need to write them down quickly, and my patience for technological innovations that limit me is non-existent. To me, computer is something with a keyboard and an OS that’s designed for switching between applications quickly and getting things done. It’s interesting how both the M1 tablet and the M1 laptop are essentially the same computer, but the lack of a keyboard on the tablet makes it significantly less useful to me.

I also noticed that the laptop form factor matters a lot. The 13-14″ laptops fit in my lap better, leading to a better hand position which makes typing easier. The 15-16″ models on the other hand are much better when I have to do anything photography-related, or view some web sites where javascript misbehaves on smaller screens. Yes, unfortunately that’s a thing. I have all sorts of laptops, mostly old and obsolete, and one would ask why do I have that many. The answer is, I often have to do things quickly, for instance unload a complex article from my head. I need to have a computer available the second I have to do that, and I don’t have time for messing around. Sometimes, I need two computers, side by side, because I’m running chat on one screen, writing text on the other, and the Mac OS seamlessly connects them both into a single working unit. Being able to do things more effectively because the computers actually help is very beneficial. But it’s sometimes not even that – sometimes, I need a cheap/obsolete/easily repairable laptop when I go out and sit under a pine tree that can drip resin on the keyboard or the screen. That’s what the T14 gen1 Thinkpad is for. If something messes it up, screens and keyboards are cheaply available on ebay and I can install them myself. With a Macbook, it would be a total loss of an expensive device. So, a cheap Thinkpad gives me a peace of mind when I want to have the laptop outside because I want to finish some line of thought without being always at home. Also, the Thinkpad has the advantage of not feeling like I’m on a 5 year lease cycle – the battery is cheap and easy to replace. The SSD is easy to replace. The RAM is socketed and easy to replace. The keyboard, screen and touchpad are easy to replace. All parts can be sourced from ebay. The machine is significantly less pleasant to use when I’m pouring thoughts into the computer compared to the Macbooks, but it feels like it’s going to last forever and it’s repairable.

But here’s the thing: yes, the Apple stuff is on a 5-year renewal cycle, but after 5 years the technology usually advances enough for me to actually consider upgrading not just because the old device is on its last legs, but also because you do actually get something for the money. The iPhone 17 is significantly faster and battery lasts for multiple days, which is a serious upgrade from iPhone 12. The new generation of laptops is amazing, but the M1 Air is also good enough that the only real reason for replacing it would be the accumulation of wear and the lack of RAM. The tablets, on the other hand, all do the same thing and I’d replace that one only when it literally stops working, because otherwise it would feel like a terrible waste of money. Basically, my iPad pro M1 is fast and good, it does everything well; it’s just somewhat broken and the battery is worn out, so it won’t be a replacement because technology got better, it would be replacement because of the unfortunate 5-year cycle.

I feel like complaining about it and saying that technology should last longer than that, but honestly, it doesn’t actually come up as a problem as often as one would think, because I tend to use my devices hard, and my keyboards and mice tend to look like they went through a war after five years. Monitors accumulate quite a bit of working hours too. The SSD drives accumulate wear. Sure, the LiIon batteries artificially limit the life cycle, but I had several situations where I replaced the battery, trying to prolong the life of a phone or a laptop, but I had to replace the device anyway because of other reasons – either wear or the fact that new computers got much faster.

So, what am I saying here? Mostly complaining because it’s been five years since 2021 when I bought most of the gear, and replacements cost money. I hate spending money on gear, but I like having new gear. 🙂

Compared to computers, photography is much more reasonable. I still have lenses from the 1980s and 1990s. I have all the lenses I bought with the Canon 5d in 2006, except the one I sold. They all work on the new gear just fine. The lenses I bought recently, the new and optically superb stuff, are also expected to last forever. My camera replacement cycle is 9-10 years, and that’s because of technology development, not stuff breaking. Cameras have removable batteries and storage, so when that wears out I just buy new batteries and memory cards, not the camera. It’s all modular, quite repairable, and very durable, and I think it’s the example of how things can be done.

Pause

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We had a slight pause with photography in the recent days, for several reasons. The most important one is that the amount of karmic mass for spending that we had to deal with has been consistently high, and then periodically it increases exponentially and ruins my day completely, because I need to focus only on that and can’t even pretend I’m doing something else. The second reason is that the weather has been very windy, and since the main subject matter now would be lavender blossom with insects on it, you can imagine how long thin stalks of lavender behave in the wind.

The stalks can move multiple centimeters per second in the wind. Dept of field is 2-3 centimeters max. So, we kind of have an excuse to not go out and take pictures.

Romana got more into photography lately and so I explained to her last night how I don’t just go out with a camera, see a butterfly on a flower and take a picture. Most of the picture is pre-planned before I leave home. I think about what I’d like to shoot, and then I visualise what I would like the picture to look like. The light needs to be like this, the scene needs to be lit like this, the composition needs to look like this, and then I come to the equipment – what lens do I need for such a picture, at what aperture. Then I wait for the time of day when the light will look right, and go to a place where the light will strike from the right direction, and I expect some subject matter to exist. So, before I even took out the camera, most of the picture elements have already been set up. Then I find the “background subject matter”, basically the kind of flowers and leaves that will look good in that light, and then I try to find cooperative insects to compose them into that as the motive that will carry the composition. So it’s not that I just happen to get lucky. Part of it is luck – if I’m hunting for butterflies, there’s no guarantee that I’ll find any, and especially that I’ll find cooperative ones that came to the flower bush to eat, and not just fly away across the path. I need it to stand there and eat, on the right flowers, in the right light, and I need to have the right lens on the right camera. So, basically, I need to have everything else pre-selected and hope I get lucky with the butterfly. Sometimes I come back empty handed, and you don’t hear about that. Sometimes I get lucky and the butterfly that’s just right lands on the flowers that are just right, and it looks easy.

What does it mean, that I don’t just spontaneously take those pictures because I happen to live on Hvar and I happen to have great equipment that does everything? 🙂 Oh shock, oh betrayal. 🙂

Of course it’s all planned and technical. It’s not that meditation turns into pictures by pointing the expensive camera in the general direction of the island.

Masks

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One of the biggest surprises to the souls departing from this world is how similar humans all look down here, and how vast the differences turn out to be when you strip them of flesh.

Just think about it: the three convicts hanging from crosses on the Golgotha. One is in mortal sin and is on the way to perdition. One is a repentant sinner and is on the way to heaven. One is a person of God, changing the nature and destiny of the world and about to return to his Father.

To the crows, they are all the same: food. To the Romans, they are all the same: convicts to be terminated before the Passover. To the Jews, the opinions are split, and are mostly a matter of faith. To Mary Magdalene, one is the Lord, and the others are not important. To Sanhedrin, one was a threat to the existence of their nation, and the others are not important.

Strip away the flesh and look with the eyes of a Judge, and one is nothing, the other is normal, and the third one is a cosmic entity, manifested from the primordial chaos of creation. The difference can’t be bigger even if you artificially tried to set it up to be shocking.

Soon, the masks of flesh will fall, and the human masquerade will end, revealing the concealed truth.

Unwarranted assumptions

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I understand some people might find this disturbing, but all that New Age and religious “spirituality” is based on certain assumptions nobody actually bothers to verify, and the reaction of the “guys up there” seems to be bewilderment, in the sense of “who even told you that?”

We have a local saying here in the Balkans – “to make the bill without the tavern owner”. It loses in translation, but you will get the general idea. Basically, people made all kinds of assumptions about spirituality, spiritual evolution, enlightenment, liberation and so on, and nobody actually bothered to check with God whether any of it is actually true. It’s all basically guesswork and emotions – it would be great if x and terrible if not x, and since we live in the best possible world, the most pleasant thing we can think of must be true; or, if not, the truth must be even better.

That’s not how reality works. Ask the Dinosaurs whether they lived in the best possible world for Dinosaurs. Oh wait, you can’t because they went extinct.

Basically, the assumption that something must be possible because it would be terrible if it weren’t possible is completely unwarranted, because why the fuck would the world be designed to avoid terrible things? Does it even look as if it’s designed to avoid terrible things? Mosquitos do terrible things. Parasitic insects do terrible things. Disease does terrible things. Old age does terrible things. All of that is a natural part of the world. It’s easy to invent bullshit about how wonderful the world is or should be, from your sofa in some sheltered part of the world, but that’s not the real world; it’s your cocoon. So yes, it would be terrible if the world were a trap, and on its default settings it was designed so that nobody can get out and be saved, or even perceive anything transcendental. Every exit, every hint of transcendence, every ray of the light of God had to be bought with the blood and tears of God.

It’s terrible, but it has the redeeming virtue of being true. All kinds of sugar-coated theories sound better, but unless you have actually tested them, just be quiet, please. For all you know, everybody who ever practiced them failed terribly.

Also, about having options. You may think you have them. That, however, might not necessarily work the way you think. You may think you don’t have to listen to me, because you have Jesus, Buddha or Krishna. That may or may not be so. It may be so if you actually had darshan of said persons of God and they told you to ignore me because they will guide you directly. That’s quite possible, and darshan always has priority over other, less direct means. However, if you merely read some book, talked to some people, are a member of some religious organization, it most likely amounts to nothing. I would agree that if you have direct experience of Lord Jesus or Lord Vishnu, absolutely go with that because that’s an authentic alternative to listening to me. Even in heaven, were I restored to my actual condition and full power, that would be a valid, authentic alternative. Choice of a person through which you worship God is yours to make, and it’s one of the few actual choices you get to make, because in most other cases the choices make you, rather than the other way around. You would be fully justified to come into the place where five persons of God sit and have coffee, politely greet them all and then focus on your ishta devata and ignore the rest. That’s not seen as rejection of God, it’s seen as how things normally work. But that’s not how things normally work on Earth. Here, ideas about persons of God are usually just ideas, something equivalent to ideas about characters in some other book you’ve read. To every single person that didn’t actually have direct spiritual experience with Jesus, Jesus is a character in a book, like Gandalf or Harry Potter. You can think this or that, but until your ideas have been confirmed by God in person, it’s just making a bill without the tavern owner, as we say here. You think, you feel, you believe, but until God gives you His approval, it might all be a nothing-burger, or “onions and water”, as we say here, meaning a very thin soup. So, that’s something you should be aware of when you think you have alternatives. Your alternatives might actually be far less substantial and meaningful than you think, and equivalent to what the Jews who rejected Jesus because they “had Moses” thought they had. It was all nothing, but they lived under a misapprehension. When the Sun appears, saying “no thanks, I’ve got the Moon and the stars” isn’t a choice for light, it’s a choice against it.

There’s a price

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I am always half amazed, half shocked when I see people doing certain things as if there won’t be any consequences; none of it’s real anyway, it’s all psychology and games. Let’s invoke demons, let’s talk to spirits, let’s do Wiccan magic with menstrual blood, let’s sell our souls to Satan, let’s convert to Islam. This belief that only physical matter is real and everything else is mere psychology, and, as such, inconsequential, is giving me the chils.

It’s all real. It all has consequences. There’s always a price to pay. All those spiritual contracts are real. Even if God wanted to save you from the consequences of your idiocy, the price would still have to be paid. It’s just that God would have to pay it in order to spare your sorry arse.

You don’t live in the world you think you live in. Its “materiality” is an illusion. It’s a persistent, very convincing illusion with terrible consequences, but an illusion regardless. Many things you may think to be illusory, such as souls, are in fact real; much more real than physical matter. All kinds of things that are being masked by the physical world, are incredibly important.

Also, you think you have all kinds of choices. Well, yes, you do, but if almost all of them are fatal, are they really the choices you want to keep in your pool of viable options? Thought so.

So, if we remove everything fatal from the pool of your options, and intersect this with your karmic tree, so that we see what of this is valid for you personally in this point of your life, it often turns out that your options are extremely limited, and the fact that this limitation is hidden from you by the illusion of abundance of choice doesn’t make it a pretty sight. It’s like being a young girl who thinks she has all the choice in the world because everybody wants to fuck her. It’s not about who wants to fuck you; it’s about finding the one you want to marry, and having him want to marry you. If you put it that way, suddenly all the “choices” turn out to be a barren desert. You can count all your actual options throughout your life on fingers of one hand, with enough leftover fingers to order multiple drinks.

If you sell your soul to every demon you encounter, will any options remain for you down the road if you decide to choose God? Will God have to buy out your contracts signed in blood, in all sorts of unholy places, and hide this fact from you, so that you don’t know what horrible price He had to pay for you? Or will you simply be lost on that road, and I will get more trash to clean?