Projects

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88 posts • Page 2 of 5

Title card for KALI, Song 16 of Out of Your Mind: a small stick-figure bunny and a tall four-armed silhouette of the goddess Kali with a halo of flame, dancing together inside a burning ring on a dark cremation ground, a Napkin Films production
• 5 min

KALI: an Alan Watts film about the dark that turns out to be the ground

KALI is Song 16 in Out of Your Mind, and the fiercest one. The dark goddess is not the enemy of the light. She is the ground the light stands on. Destruction is creation seen from one side. A dignified dark C minor bed that turns from a dirge into a dance, a fierce spit-rap instead of a sermon, a four-armed silhouette in a ring of fire, and a bunny who walks in and dances with her. CC BY 4.0.

Title card for STOP LOOKING, Song 13 of Out of Your Mind: a stick-figure bunny mid-search in a cool slate-blue field with question marks drifting around it, a Napkin Films production
• 4 min

STOP LOOKING: an Alan Watts chase film about the seeker who is the sought

STOP LOOKING is Song 13 in Out of Your Mind, and the chase film. Stop hunting the one who is looking, because the thing you are searching for is the one doing the searching. The eye cannot catch the eye behind the scan. Watts told it as a comedy: a thief climbs floor to floor with the police behind, up to the roof, nowhere left to go. The film chases hard over a Bach-toccata EDM, then drops into a dead-still heartbeat, and the thing the bunny was hunting turns out to have been here the whole time. CC BY 4.0.

Title card for THIS IS IT, Song 12 of Out of Your Mind: a stick-figure bunny standing in a warm flood of dawn light with two faded met-selves to either side, god-rays opening from a glowing sun, a Napkin Films production
• 5 min

THIS IS IT: an Alan Watts radiant film about the it that is already looking

THIS IS IT is Song 12 in Out of Your Mind, and the radiant film. It is the warm twin of One Hand. Where that one was a black void and silence, this one fills with light. The it you have been looking for is the one that is looking. You are it, already, you just disguised it so well you forgot. So the film does not climb to its point, it settles into it: a pre dawn field, a bunny walking toward you, and then the light blooms and two more selves are simply there. A Hildegard chant score that was always already home. CC BY 4.0.

Two libraries across a dark city joined by a single thread of light that a storm is breaking, an image for distributed data and the tradeoff between consistency and availability
• 7 min

The Data Wing: Six Short Films on How Distributed Data Behaves

Six short films on what happens to data the moment it stops fitting on one machine: the forced choice, the dial, taste, the cache, the branch library, the shard. The first wing of Learning Maps, the durable principle under each rented AWS label.

Anubis on a gold howdah throne riding a great elephant across a moonlit desert of pyramids and stars.
• 3 min

ELEPHANT: a whole track built on one word

OG Bobby Johnson built a whole trap cut on one word. A beat-locked "EL...EPHANT" hook, an elephant-trumpet that blasts on every drop, and Anubis riding the elephant across a moonlit desert.

Title card for ATMAN, Song 15 of Out of Your Mind: a glowing stick-figure bunny with nested smaller selves behind it over a turning golden galaxy in a deep cosmic star-field, a Napkin Films production
• 4 min

ATMAN: an Alan Watts cosmic film about the self with no smaller container

ATMAN is Song 15 in Out of Your Mind, and the most reverent. Atman is the self in the vastest possible sense, not the small self in a bag of skin but the Self with no smaller container: behind the self you call you is another self, and behind that another, nested all the way down. Your breath is the galaxy turning. A grand Tallis choir that modulates up forever by rising thirds, a matryoshka of nested bunny selves over a turning galaxy, and a cosmos that turns out to hold a figure made of stars. CC BY 4.0.

Title card for ONE HAND, Song 11 of Out of Your Mind: a stick-figure bunny meditating in a black void inside a self-drawing Zen enso circle, ripples spreading from a bell strike, a faint constellation above, a Napkin Films production
• 4 min

ONE HAND: an Alan Watts silence film about the koan that breaks the answer-machine

ONE HAND is Song 11 in Out of Your Mind, and the silence film. It is the one about the koan. Watts said the koan is not a riddle to solve, it is a device to break the machine in you that needs an answer. Hear the sound of one hand, now explain it, and the explaining stops. So this film is the opposite of every other one in the series. A black void, a pool of light, a meditating bunny, an enso drawing itself, and a sparse Honkyoku Zen score. The empty space turns out to be full of stars. CC BY 4.0.

Title card for THE RESERVATION, Song 10 of Out of Your Mind: a stick-figure bunny at a green felt card table, chips scattering up into a constellation overhead, a Doberman dealer across the felt, warm saloon gold, a Napkin Films production
• 5 min

THE RESERVATION: an Alan Watts card-table song about betting everything and laughing

THE RESERVATION is Song 10 in Out of Your Mind, the Napkin Films series built from the Alan Watts lectures. It is the one about the inner reservation, the quiet knowing that it is only a game, the thing that lets you bet everything and still laugh when you lose. So the song is a card table. A Plan 9 bunny pushes its chips, shoves all in, loses the pile, dusts its paws, and walks off grinning while the chips scatter up into the stars. Ragtime that lifts into EDM, in F major. CC BY 4.0.

A napkin sketch contrasting a cathedral with a sticky note, over a row of library buildings, in deep indigo ink on warm paper.
• 3 min

Just Enough Agreement: read your writes, and why not to over-buy consistency

Just Enough Agreement is Episode 3 of Learning Maps, a Napkin Films series that turns system design into story. Strong consistency is the expensive default, a cathedral when a sticky note would do. The skill is buying the cheapest guarantee the story actually needs: read your writes, monotonic reads, session consistency. Hand drawn on a napkin, narrated by two cloned voices, scored with a 14 Hz focus layer. CC BY 4.0.

Hero frame for MAYA, Song 09 of Out of Your Mind: a stick-figure bunny on a skeleton rig throwing its arms up in a hall of mirrors, god-ray beams fanning from a vanishing point, nested reflections receding into the dark, a Napkin Films production
• 4 min

MAYA: an Alan Watts hall-of-mirrors song where a stick figure dances inside the illusion

MAYA is Song 09 in Out of Your Mind, the Napkin Films series built from the Alan Watts lectures. It is the one about the convincing illusion of separation: lift one mirror, another one lights, and each reveal hides one more until the audience is you. So this one is a literal hall of mirrors, and the Plan 9 bunny dances inside it on a real skeleton rig over a proper EDM score with an anthem hook. CC BY 4.0.

A napkin sketch of three library buildings labeled A, B and C, a write landing in two of them and a read drawn from two of them, in deep indigo ink on warm paper.
• 3 min

The Dial: quorum, R plus W greater than N, and tuning consistency by counting

The Dial is Episode 2 of Learning Maps, a Napkin Films series that turns system design into story. Consistency is not on or off. It is a dial you set by counting: with N copies, when your reads plus your writes are greater than N, a read is forced to overlap a write and see the latest truth. Hand drawn on a napkin, narrated by two cloned voices, scored with a 14 Hz focus layer. CC BY 4.0.

A napkin sketch of two buildings joined by a phone line, a storm breaking the line, and the CAP triangle, in deep indigo ink on warm paper.
• 4 min

The Forced Choice: CAP, PACELC, and the trade every database already made

The Forced Choice is Episode 1 of Learning Maps, a new Napkin Films series that turns system design into story. A storm takes down the phone line between two librarians, and what happens next is the deepest fact in distributed systems: the CAP theorem, its twin PACELC, and the trade every database has already made. Hand drawn on a napkin, narrated by two cloned voices, scored with a 14 Hz focus layer. CC BY 4.0.

Title card for SAME NERVE, Song 08 of Out of Your Mind: a split frame, a stick-figure bunny on a jagged red nerve in cold blue on the left and the same figure on a smooth gold wire in warm light on the right, one nerve, two readings, a Napkin Films production
• 4 min

SAME NERVE: an Alan Watts mirror-song where pain and pleasure share one wire

SAME NERVE is Song 08 in Out of Your Mind, the Napkin Films series built from the Alan Watts lectures. It is the one about pain and pleasure: the same nerve fires for both, and the suffering is the resistance, not the sensation. So the song is a literal mirror, the same melody and the same words harmonised first in C minor and then in C major, while a Plan 9 bunny walks the nerve like a wire and learns to ride the pulse it used to brace against. CC BY 4.0.