It seems the jury’s still out on how, exactly, vampires are created. Some sources cite ancient beliefs (mostly useless superstition), some insist on the popular bitten-by-vampire myth, and some claim that you simply can’t “become” a vampire if you’ve been born human. Maybe there’s no single way. So, instead of focusing on any of the aforementioned approaches, I’ll describe three common vampiric features that you can attain without any supernatural help.

Hypnotism (AKA Mesmerism)

“True” vampires have it easy – some mind-control skills are supposedly included in the whole dark revenant package, along with good looks and sharp teeth. But don’t despair, … wait, no, despair is cool. Ahem. As I was saying, hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming are well within the reach of mere mortals, so you are free to learn and use it – even if your heart is still beating. Head over to Google or Amazon.com and check out the numerous sites and books available. Just don’t fall for the “forbidden secrets revealed!!” shtick and you should be fine.

To get an (optimistic) idea of what you might achieve, take a look at Derren Brown. He’s done some very impressive things (videos).

Night Vision

Excellent low-light vision is something I’ve always wanted. You can improve your night vision by using a few tricks, and science might eventually figure something out.

The most promising idea I discovered is NightWalking. The website has a heavy slant towards philosophy/spirituality that reminds me vaguely of Carlos Castaneda, but it also contains a detailed guide on improving your peripheral vision. As you might already know, in a situation when there’s very little light, peripheral vision is much more effective than central vision. Better peripheral vision = better night vision, so this is definitely something worth trying.

Dark and Mysterious

The “dark” part won’t be a problem – just pick something from the wide range of goth stuff available. Maybe invest in coloured contact lenses and/or appropriate makeup.

As for being mysterious, well… * nods and smiles knowingly *

Ah, okay, I’ll be more verbose. There’s a bunch of lame tutorials about “how to be mysterious” on the web, but they’re generally a crazy mix of the somewhat useful and the completely ridiculous. In my opinion the coveted “aura of mysteriousness” is a pinch of secrecy + a certain form of inner confidence. And it’s not the kind of confidence that lets you approach strangers and sing on stage. I’m talking about the kind that frees you from seeking external validation of your thoughts, actions and existence. This is something that very few people have, but it can be learned. Think.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

I suspect most people in the “how to become a vampire” crowd are looking for a shortcut to becoming cool (is that a pun?). That is understandable. My main reservation about this is that it’s an unlikely shortcut — and that most wanna-be’s don’t really understand what they’re asking for when they say “I want to be a vampire!”.

Personally, I consider the concept of blood-craving bona-fide vampires unrealistic. I haven’t seen any reasonable biological explanations for it, and the idea that “it’s magic!” doesn’t do it for me on this overall low-magic planet. Psychic vampirism is a different thing entirely, but there’s generally nothing glamorous about being unable to sustain your existence without becoming a (possibly unknowing) parasite. Okay, parasitism might not be the only way, but I won’t discuss that here.

Hey, this is probably the weirdest post on this site (so far)

Unfortunately there don’t seem to be any official plans to create a recommendation system. So, being the naive creature that I am, I went ahead and started building my own recommendation engine for DA. Maybe I’m in over my head.

Seeing is believing

Here are some screenshots of recommendations that my current system generated. They’re all of the “people that liked this also liked that” type – deviation-based. The script can also make user-based recommendations – “based on your past favorites, you might like this” – but I won’t post those screenshots here, because suggestions the script made for me wouldn’t make a lot of sense to you

Anyway, here we go. The “source” deviation has a red border, and the pictures are the top five generated recommendations. If you think I chose the best examples you are, of course, completely correct

The algorithm might be improved by taking into account what categories each deviation belongs to, so that the suggestions are similar to the initial image.

Getting Technical

I used the free version of Vogoo PHP Lib as the basis of the recommendation algorithm. Vogoo implements several collaborative filtering algorithms, including both item-based and user-based models. I have modified it to improve performance, because some of the original scripts do get sluggish when you have tens of thousands of rows in the DB. Sooner or later I’ll also start tweaking the suggestion algorithms – lots of room for experimenting there.

The rest of the setup is PHP + MySQL + Apache, all running on my PC (for now).

I’d love to put the system online and let other people check it out (when I manage to add at least a rudimentary user interface to it), but the harsh truth is that none of my shared hosting servers could possibly handle it. The script needs a lot of bandwidth and CPU power to effectively support more than a couple of users. And even if I had that, I’m not sure if I wouldn’t run into trouble with DA for downloading thousands of RSS feeds non-stop.

I could get a VPS… which would cost ten times more than my current hosting. Hmm.

Anyway, lets delve deeper into the technical aspects (or you can stop reading now if delving isn’t your thing ).

More data!

There are a few things that need to be considered even before you can start daydreaming about how to generate the actual suggestions. One of the tasks is choosing what to use as the source data, and how to obtain it. The first part is easy – your past favorites are a natural source of information about what kind of deviations you like. Getting that information is more complex. If a recommendation engine was developed by DA programmers this wouldn’t be a problem at all – they could query the DeviantArt database(s) straight away. However, a random hobbyist (I) obviously can’t do the same, and DeviantArt doesn’t have an API. I resorted to using the RSS feeds of user favorites, and checking the “Who favorite’d this?” lists on individual deviations.

So I’ve got a way to access the favorites… and I’ve got a resource problem. There are millions of users and probably billions of recorded favorites on DA. It would take a few years to download all that through RSS feeds (if you don’t want to inadvertently DDoS DeviantArt) and a decent server farm to analyze it. I decided to be selective and only download the info that is reasonably relevant to the users that use the suggestion engine (me and a few randomly chosen usernames). It goes like this :

1. For every “active” user I look at which deviations (s)he recently +fav’ed.
2. For every one of those deviations, I check what other users also favorited them.
3. For every of those users I also find what their latest favorites are.

Visually the algorithm could be imagined as a pyramid or an upside-down tree.

How much is enough?

As far as I know, recommender algorithms work better with more data. On the other hand, there are technical limitations to how much information you can store and process. So how much information do you need to generate decent recommendations? Here’s my experience :

• 300 favs processed – Meh. You’d get better results by picking random pictures.
• 2500 favs processed – So-so. Three or four out of 40 images were pretty good.
• 43 500 favs processed – Finally getting somewhere! About 30% of the suggestions were worthy of a +fav.

By the way, it took more than 24 hours to gather the 43 thousand favorites. That’s partly because my connection is slow.

In Conclusion

I wrote this post mainly because I wanted to see what reactions and comments (if any) I’d get. If there’s enough interest I might try and figure out how to get the script up and running on a public site somewhere. If nobody cares, well, at least I have another programmer’s toy to amuse myself with

Strong vs. Weak Magic

In the old days, people believed in wizards, sorcerers, shamans, priests and other beings of great power. A wizard (or some similar creature) could call down fire and lighting, control the elements, fly, and become invisible and more. Let’s call this “strong magic”. Tales of their abilities abound, yet I doubt the persons described were often seen by someone first-hand, if ever.

On the other hand, it’s likely that commoners could, if they so desired, meet a lower-ranking “witch” or a “wise man”. There’s a different name for these in every language, but basically they were said to possess, to some degree, an array of less impressive yet still useful powers like healing (possibly with herbs), limited precognition, the ability to lay a curse on someone, etc. Let’s call this “weak magic”.

Modern Magic

Nowadays, magic is a trendy thing. Astrology, intuitive readings, Law of Attraction, Wicca, ESP, bioenergetics – the list goes on. Note that I use “magic” as a blanket term, and yes, I’ve heard about “magick”, too.

Nowadays, people don’t really believe in strong magic. It seems like a cute fantasy, and it sure generates some nice profits for the entertainment industry, but that’s about it. Most people are content with /playing/ a sorcerer and don’t even consider becoming one. That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? You can’t really throw fireballs in the real life, right?

Nowadays, magic is a virtual commodity. People want to use it to solve problems, not explore the (im-)possibilities. People want to get fit, pay the bills and find a better job. It’s the Law of Attraction that gets called on, it’s the “Magic for Housewives”, not “arcane knowledge”. This might sound unbelievable, but the part of general populace that is aware of magic will either disregard it or treat it in a down-to-earth manner, using it to do what they’re already doing slightly better. And nobody really needs telekinesis to survive, don’t they?

The Law of Distraction

I mentioned Steve Pavlina in the title – that’s because he’s the one espousing subjective reality and LoA, too. The subjective reality concept is neat – it basically places no explicit limits on what you can achieve with it. Theoretically, you could fly, or use telekinesis, or do whatever you can imagine. Strangely enough, Steve hasn’t mastered levitation yet, and I’ll bet he never will, not in this life.

That’s because every noteworthy guru (& Steve sure is noteworthy; I’m not sure about the “guru” part) is either advocating weak magic or even “really weak magic”. They will tell you how to solve real, practical problems – financial troubles, weight issues, finding your “true self” and so on. That’s all well and good, but I miss the fireballs, I really do.

Ultimately Steve’s approach is about personal development rising ones consciousness, and that is extremely unlikely to lead to fireballs and lightning bolts. A person at high level of consciousness will have neither the need nor desire to solve their problems with a torrent of pure, deadly power – not even if they could. It’s assumed only those at lower levels of thought find fantasies of strong magic appealing. If you want it, you’re not evolved enough to have it, and if you were of high enough level, you probably wouldn’t want it anyway.

Damn, I still think pyrokinesis, levitation and power in general would be cool! Me want! Yeah, I know, I have issues, but I sort of like that.