Isaac Mizrahi is an American Fashion Designer who influences/affects your life more than you know. He does high end designs for TV (many things you might have seen) and also designs custom merchandise for Target ( I have an Isaac Mizrahi designed cups and plates from Target maybe you have some other things too). He was invited to TED and gave a presentation which blew me away.

He talked about inspiration. This is one thing I have tried to master, to remain inspired at all times. I have found inspiration to be very fleeting. It comes and goes randomly, but it feels really great when you feel inspired, you see things you know are exclusive, groundbreaking and game changing but how do you keep this mindset? how do you make inspiration stay? How do you make it come when you want it to? A good friend of mine calls it tapping into the universal collective. He describes creativity/inspiration as a stream of answers to all the worlds questions flowing unseen above our heads and once in a while we are granted connection to that stream just for a few seconds (like an erratic internet connection) and then you SEE the answer you have been looking for. As a web programmer and blogger/writer I seek inspiration all the time. I am always looking for that great new Idea, that perfect sentence to end my post, that color to make the most beautiful site.

In his presentation he explained why I sleep so little but still feel fulfilled. Why I always seek to work in colorful places (The Idea Factory and Javas at RIT). How I find answers in mistakes or tricks of the eye. Why I watch so many TV shows and why repetition makes me bored too quickly. The scary thing was that he was describing himself but he explained me in the process. This video is more about the way he works rather than explaining the concept of inspiration but I advice anyone who seeks inspiration on a regular basis for whatever they do to spend a little time looking at this video. The only thing he does that I don’t do for inspiration is cook…maybe I should get on that.

Steve Job explained inspiration and creativity best when he said: Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.

Link to video

The biggest problem in acquiring world peace is the fact that we all see the world in different ways. When these perspectives clash that’s when we have disagreements, arguments and wars. Secondly we are too self absorbed, because we feel we are the only ones in the universe, we have no other enemies but ourselves. We have no one to point fingers at for our downfall or problems but ourselves (humans) so it is only natural for us to pick a fight with people who have a different view, culture, look or behavior from us. But trust me if there we were aware of another intelligent species hostile preferably. That are capable of driving cars like us, communicate with each other like we do and maybe even crank that soulja boy like we do. People from all race and class will unite cause a new set of bad guys in town and Al Qeada will be the least of our worries.

So trying to save the world again (the super hero that I am) I started trying to think of what can give all of us in the world a common perspective on things. Solutions like Hypnosis and brainwashing, were too elaborate and will be too hard to implement on a couple of billion people at the same time. So I came up with an easier solution. Fabricate an Alien attack on Earth.

Now you can’t  make a cheesy video with puppets and distribute it on Youtube, that’s not gonna work. You have to go for something more intense and real like it was in  that movie with Will Smith “Independence Day”. There will be a decent amount of collateral damage and people dying but all these things were gonna be destroyed anyway (in one of our wars) so just look at it as doing the greater good.

What I am saying is that if an (intelligent) Alien life form is to appear and is totally different from us, the natural thing to do is to hold on to the familiar, we would see ourselves more as the human race “US” and the aliens as “THEM”. We would stop fighting ourselves because there are other people to be weary about now. This was seen when middle easterners became the new black people. As soon as Osama blew up those two towers white people forgot about their black neighbor they thought was gonna stab them and started worrying about that middle eastern waitress that could blow them up at Starbucks. Now we have a black president, who could have guessed it would happen so soon.

Showing a foreign hostility will bring people closer together and just like in those tragic world saving movies, maybe you can get a few people to fall in love while you blowing up the staute of liberty and stuff. I am not saying its gonna be easy but I assure you the world will wake up the next day with a new perspective on life and people will stop sweating the small stuff.

I have always been a Spiderman fan, that was the first Superhero I was infatuated with, I picked him over stronger superheroes like Superman (Who was my first love until he was stolen) because of his weaknesses, he was more believable, he could die and he needed wit and intelligence mixed with his powers to stay alive so everyday will be an adventure. The Spiderman 3 movie just KILLED all my fantasies when they decided to make Peter Parker into a p@$$y!

So I started another superhero search, dreaming up super cool action sequences in my mind as various Superheroes. The one that fit best with me and my style was Iron man (Tony Starks). After watching the iron man movie I realized this dude was perfect. He is #10 on the Forbes list of richest fictional characters (So I have enough money to buy toys). Did you see his house in the movie? If they featured it on MTV cribs it would be a season finale and they will never make another MTV cribs after that. I like his swagger, he is confident, knows what he wants and knows what he needs to do to make shit happen unlike Batman who has emotional problems and keeps whinning about, if what he is doing is ethically correct. He is what a super hero should be like, he can also die and is intelligent so this dude totally eclipses Spiderman, the more I think about it the more I cannot understand what I liked in that loser. My only qualm with Iron man is his name, it is the most uncreative Superhero name on the planet. It is as if the creator of the character was German and just learnt english so he named the character the most obvious name he could think of because that is all he knew. To all of you out there that keep stealing my favourite stuff from Super Heroes to my pro-evo teams (You know who you be). I am making an offical announcement, STAY AWAY from Tony Starks he is my favourite Super Hero now.

RocknRolla is a typical British organized crime movie about a renegade Rock and roll artist, his criminal father, a filthy rich Russian and a couple of scum bags in between all this.  The movie’s characters were very British, very few popular faces but the acting was good and so were the action sequences. Without revealing a lot, the movie felt very much like other British organized crime movies like Layer cake which is a good thing. The dialogue was on point and the directing was impressive and there was even a lucky painting they refused to show us throughout the whole movie.

What struck about the movie was the criminal lifestyle as well as the mindset. Have you ever watched a movie about bad people (by societies standards) but at the end you wanted to be just like them? One thing movies like this do is show us a glamorized view of a criminals life, a very narrow perspective highlighting what is attractive about becoming a gangster, a killer or a RocknRolla. The sex, the adventures, the power, the money and all that comes with it, but it is easily forgotten that this Mafia don that has a sophisticated criminal empire and is untouchable is also someone’s dad, someones best friend and has personal problems too. When I watch these movies I sit back and say wow I want a life exciting like that where do I sign up? where are these people? is this life so exclusive? but NO! these people live all around us, you may just know them as Andy’s dad or Jenny’s cousin and you cannot understand/see that this person plays another role in society due to how you know them but they have a different life from what you know. With this realization the life style doesn’t look that exciting anymore cause these guys are not so different from me and you, their life is not all that glamorous, it just is if you decide to take out every other boring thing.

Even I can pull of a hit reality Tv Show if you decide to delete all the boring parts like where I think up and type up blog posts like this and other mundane things I do cause I am human. Now I feel cheated, I feel lied to cause that cool, exclusive life I have always dreamt of living might not really exist, well if you know where I can get one please let me know and I will be indebted to you for the rest of my exciting life.

Although this movie was not the greatest thing I have seen, it was worth my ten bucks, well it just made the mark. If you like movies like Snatch and Revolver (typical Guy Ritchie movies) then you would love this one as well, its just a new script put into his old formula. I’ll definately watch this again cause it is one of those movies that turns out better the second time you watch it, so if your bored and looking for some adrenaline rush go check this movie out.

A major problem for me when I walk into a book store is that by the end of my stay I want to leave with about 10 books but nothing annoys me more than owning an unread/unfinished book. It is so frustrating to want to read/learn something but do not have the time. When I see books with great presentation and packaging, on interesting topics, I just want to eat them. I love information and I just cannot get enough of it, in fact I am so passionate about learning new things that sometimes I can relate with Syler (In Heroes) problem. His hunger for a new power, to understand it, to learn it and to use it, which actually drives hm to kill people to obtain these powers. Well I am not that bad but sometimes I wish I lived in a book store. My friend Obilo once said he wants to sleep in a room like the one Evey in V for Vendetta woke up in, filled with books.

Waking up to a gallery of Ideas, to a gallery of perspectives must be inspiring. I want a room just like that. I also recall my professor in my ethics class who said It would be amazing if her brain was constantly connected to the internet (Wikipedia). I totally wish the same too. There is so much to know, so much to learn but not enough time.

What language do you dream in? What colors do you dream in? she asked. “English” I said “and my dreams are in the same color as my vision” I continued. “Are you sure?” she asked. At first I was sooo sure, but when she asked me to think more about it, the more I thought the more doubtful I was. Dreaming in English I was pretty sure of, it is my primary and most expressive means of communication but the color of my dreams eluded me. I remember dreaming as I see but for some reason I doubted that was how I dreamt. She also asked if I thought I dreamt as I saw because that is what I expect or if that is how I really dreamt.

The conversation went on and on but what was interesting to me was how similar life is to dreaming. What is the difference between the way I thought I dreamt and the way I REALLY dreamt? Our reality is based solely on our perception, the way we think things are is actually the way they REALLY are to us. What we see and feel is our reality as supposed to what is really there. It is amazing the power of the mind and how it shapes our individual worlds. This raises big questions like Why do we dream? How do we know we are awake? What is real?

It is suprising to know that upon all the scientific break throughs scientists have achieved they have not discovered the reason for our dreams or their meainings. Due to similarities between life and dreams I cannot help but wonder if the meaning of our lives are in the answer to the meaning of your dreams.

What struck me a few seconds later was that this famous lady neither wrote the song, nor produced the beats. All she did was sing someone’s words over another person’s beats and then she later took home a Grammy that year. This makes me question what her musical talent really is. The more I look into it, read Wikipedia pages and music blogs I realize that Rihanna is a musician engineered by Jay Z and some other people. We have this misconception that most musicians are diamonds found in the rough, we feel many of the people we see on TV worked so hard and had sleepless nights and finally made it to the top, we forget to see that many of these people were engineered to the top.

There are traits in the world that we think come to happen due to some cosmic calculation that we have no power over. Hapinness, love, fame, wealth, epidemics are all things we are told that happens to some people and doesn’t happen to some because that’s the way the world is. When we realize that with the right information you can make any of these things happen for you, you realize what it really means to decide your own fate. You are not tied down by your talents or interests, you are free to imagine how EXACTLY you want your life to be and make it happen, when they say the sky is the limit, armed with the information you need to do what you want to do your only real limit is your imagination.

I am a very passionate person. My main drive in life is following my passion. If it touches me the right way I am willing to spend a lot of time dedicated to make something happen. Lose sleep, food and maybe human interaction, but when you flip the coin it is totally opposite. If I have no interest in something I cannot force myself to focus.

After reading Rob Goodlatte’s (facebook project designer) post on passionless pre-professionals I was left speechless. I have not seen a post that explains the story of my life as clearly as this did. He clearly outlined how many of us go to school studying that thing that will give us more money but is not what we are really interested in. In my case I thought I was interested in something I was not and was chicken to admit it till much later, consoling myself with the incentives completing the particular major promises after graduating.

After moving to New Hamshire and analyzing what makes me tick. I realized staying in a major (Computer Engineering) where I care more about Monkeys dancing than what processes I need to go through to create a micro processor was just enslaving myself. I knew I will never apply for a Computer Engineering Job and I have no plans of being locked behind a cubicle but that is what I have spent the last four years doing, setting myself up for, a life I knew I did not want. I am a software guy, I enjoy the instant gratification of coding something and you can immediately see it work, I like the idea that your mainly self sufficient and need little support from third parties to make your imaginations come true, if something breaks it was most likely your fault and lastly the elegance in code, looking at the way lines of text control a machine is just astounding.

In order to prevent slavery. I have taken control of the steering wheel and officially changed my major from Computer Engineer to Software Engineer. Now I think things are gonna turn for the better and my last year is gonna be fun. You should really read the post above, it is an easy read that shows how many of us pursue something for the wrong reason, what is scary about that is that we cannot self actualize because there will be always something missing.