Hot Conceptual Action

[mangosteen]

Let's talk about things that get you conceptually aroused, but not in a directly (or even indirectly) sexual way.
Things that give you a mental woody.
Things that make you squeeee in geeky glee very thought of them, due to them hitting just the right part of your brain.
Things that give you a rush of "I gotta GET me one of these!", where "these" can be pretty much anything.

[Poll #559639]

I've answered the poll as well, just so you know what I have in mind.

Comments

[armandae.livejournal.com]

Hot movies: Pi, the Cube, A Beautiful Mind. Cryptography! Cyphering!

Number pr0n, mmmm.

[bookly.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot stationery. :)

[mangosteen]

Apropos of your poll answer, I'll be taking Elementary Chinese (mandarin) in the fall. If my employer partially pays me in product, I may as well take advantage of the fact. :)_

[bookly.livejournal.com]

Tai hao le! Women he Leon yinggai qu chi fan lianxi shuo hanyu.
Too good ASP! We and Leon should go eat rice practice speak Chinese.

Excellent! You, Leon, and I should all go out to eat and practice speaking Chinese.

[mangosteen]

Thank you for the literal and figurative translation. :)

Indeed! Sometime in a couple of months when I can actually put a sentence together. :)

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Oh my. There are so very many movies (and I can't extract specific scenes from most) that do that for me. Blade Runner is an intellectual orgasm all the way through. So is Brazil. And Sneakers, The Breakfast Club, Dead Poets Society. The warehouse scene in Reservoir Dogs! The last scene in American Beauty, where the blue-and-white striped shirt is reflected in the pool of blood.

I found more of these "yum" moments in Shakespeare than in any other writer's work, but that may be because I've spent more time reading Shakespeare than any one other author.

Cyrano de Bergerac

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

"Big nose"? Is that all?

You are curtailed, young man.
One could say... Oh good Lord, if one began
Varying the tone, come, let us just suppose:
Emphatic: Sir, if I had such a nose,
I'd cut it off, so much 'twould cut me up!
Helpful: It oft must dip, sir, into your cup
Best design a goblet with a special shape.
Poetic: 'Tis a rock, a cliff, a cape!
A cape quotha? Surely a promontory!
Curious: What's that thing sir? What's the story?
Is it a toolbox, or perhaps a writing case?
Gracious: You must love birds, sir, to have a place
Paternally prepared. I call it sweet,
To make a safe perch for their tiny feet.
Biblical: 'Tis the Red Sea when it bleeds!
Pragmatic: 'Tis the sign the chemist needs.
Predatory: We must shoot it where it lies.
Or last, like Pyramus, with streaming eyes:
Surely Hippopelephantacamelos
Was made to carry, certes, such a nose!

My man, had you one grain from learning or from school
You would not have just branded yourself such a fool.
You might, before these galleries, displayed
Such witticisms as I myself portrayed.
Instead, as you lack both quill and panache
We now all know that you are but an ass.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

There's too much for me to list. I've listed the main one, but I could just as easily have said "the flow of information, observing, controlling, filtering it". I was doing that to a certain extent on 7/7 with undergroundgoth, london_070705 and my own LJ; I could do it so much better now I have three computers (laptop, desktop and Mac) at my fingertips - multiple screens around me. You wouldn't believe what a rush I got doing that.

The idea of doing this on a much larger scale - now, that I find almost unbearably conceptually sexy. Have you ever read Warren Ellis' Global Frequency? The Aleph character; that's who I want to be.

But the Hacker Ethic as applied to computer systems and sysadminning is also something that gets my pulse racing. There's something intellectually pure and stimulating about bending a computer system to your will; wielding power over it, tracking down problems and solving them with a few keystrokes, setting a whole network silently humming with data and power invisibly, fluidly, cleanly. Getting this job means more to me than I could really explain, because it's truly my dream job - it allows me to get my feet on the ladder to becoming a sysadmin.

Maybe it's sad of me to harbour secret dreams of becoming a sysadmin, but it's something I've wanted since I was 15. I never thought I'd ever have the skills to pull it off, but suddenly it's there within my grasp.

Just wait till I get root. ;-)

[reddragdiva]

You will know you're a sysadmin when you actively avoid being given root ;-)

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Amen. It's a corollary to the wise answer to "Can you fix the photocopier?" always being to say "no".

[mangosteen]

I could do it so much better now I have three computers (laptop, desktop and Mac) at my fingertips - multiple screens around me. You wouldn't believe what a rush I got doing that.

I'm reminded of the bad old days when I worked for an ISP in Manhattan, and one fellow had four Huge-Ass Monitors(tm) hooked up to 2-3 machines in varying configurations in a semicircle on his desk. I sat down in his chair, and immediately said "I could control the world from here!"

...and yes, I felt compelled to read Global Frequency after finishing Transmetropolitan. Spider Jerusalem is the asshole that I want to be when I grow up. :)

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm... Too many movies, too many moments. Blade Runner is, indeed, an intellectual orgasm all the way through. The Matrix has it, in parts. But I look for a sense of otherness as well as the beautiful image...

Think back to Star Wars and dusk on Tattooine: why does it feel so strange and 'offworld'? Years later, I discovered what it was that played this subtle trick on the subconscious: two moons. The sight is more disturbing than you realise. And, perfectionist that he is, Lucas made his figures in the landscape cast two shadows on the sand.

But the one that has the best effect of all is still Alien, as they explore the hulk. Again, it's a subtle trick that makes a coherent and well-composed whole seem alien and disturbing: there are no corners. No lines, no circles nothing of the geometry that marks out human spaces; it's orderly and logical and perfectly consistent, and all composed of parabolic curves and cubic spirals. Your first sight is a sudden whisper in your mind: ' nonhuman! ' and you never lose that sense of otherness.

All other attempts at portraying the alien and the strange are parodies, moving bits of scenery in the familiar landscape of humanity, men in funny suits playing human fears and oddities.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

mangosteen -- The scene in "The Fugitive" where Tommy Lee Jones takes over the investigation, and issues instructions.

Wow. That scene gets a strong reaction out of me too, but it's the reaction of wanting to grab the nearest blunt object and kneecap him into sitting down, shutting up, and playing well with others. That kind of type A shit gets me going postal.

[mangosteen]

Whereas for me, the strong reaction is due to the impression of him creating order out of chaos and wasted effort.

Rapid network deployment isn't just about TCP/IP.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Chaos is an extreme, sure, but so is Order. Reality is in the middle. As Nietzsche put it, ordnung is an imposition of will on reality. As such if there isn't accord, it can be a violation of the will of others.
The element that ticked me off in that scene (and similar) isn't exactly him organizing things, as that had obvious merit. It's that he did it with total disregard for inquiring into the reasons why anyone else was implicitly or explicitly doing something (or not doing something). It wasn't coordination or even cooperation, it was a blatant act of control.

I heartily agree that network deployment isn't just TCP/IP. Networks are distributed systems; any attempts at leadership are points of failure that weaken the whole. Then again, your keyword there is 'rapid', but rapidly imposing a flawed system rarely is as short-term a solution as it's proponents suggest.

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

Another good movie bit is in What Dreams May Come, where Robin Williams is creating
a world like a painting.