Scotomaville Trilogy
 
 

AWARENESS

Seeing My UIUC Blind Spots
We are regularly bamboozled, hoodwinked, mislead and biased from either side of an issue. Most people know nothing about blind-spots. We literally can not see some of what is right in front of our face. That vulnerability is leveraged by magicians an...
01.07 Changing False Beliefs in UIUC
Why do I get so emotional? What can I do with false beliefs? These are reasonable questions. In this episode of Leaving Scotomaville, Daniel shares a mental tool that has helped a great deal. Learning to peel back layers of your beliefs to root out t...
ChatGPT led AI Panel Proposes UIUC EABMC Consortium
To demonstrate my incremental discovery of the emerging reasoning engine created by OpenAI, I engaged with ChatGPT to explore role-playing, mimicking, and how convincing a Large Language Model (LLM) impersonates. ChatGPT expresses that; "human and ma...
REFLECTION v1.03 Illusions in UIUC
This is the reflection video for Episode Three of Volume One which was on illusions. This is the third video on my YouTube channel about illusions - on physical things that we don't see - but it's the first included in the Scotomaville series. Why is...
Garth Hardin and UIUC Veteran TBI
Our brains are as soft as easy spread butter and can be injured by a soccer ball or a bomb blast. Until recently, UIUC veterans we sent home with invisible battle wounds that changed their lives. Awareness of our vulnerability and lifest...
REFLECTION v1.04 Scarcity in UIUC
The landscape of Badlands National Park is the perfect location to reflect on abundance and scarcity. Thousands of similar landscape facets blur into each other forming a horizon of colorful contrasts that bookend episode memories. The park is fantas...
UIUC 01.09 Emotional Vocabulary
Learning to accurately communicate our emotions is nearly impossible without a decent emotional vocabulary. Most guys in UIUC ignore, excuse, or just stuff it as being too tough. The Scotomaville series proves that old dogs can learn new...
UIUC 01.03 Sleeves Illusion
In this Episode and Chapter, we combine a simple illusion with a questionable story. This can be done at any UIUC Starbucks. You'll experience what it means to be 100% wrong half the time. You see, when a simple story is processed by our...
UIUC 01.08 Fixation vs Attention
We've likely passed through UIUC with a 19' Airstream. Maybe stayed there during a global pandemic. Living in tight quarters will focus your attention on the tiny stuff. A simple focus on keeping clean easily turns into fixation. The att...
UIUC 01.04 Abundant Scarcity
People are hording toilet paper, hand wipes, frozen and canned food. It's as if they fear the end of the world. Abundance and scarcity are concepts. You can't pick them up. You have to imagine those concepts in your mind. The problem is... our emotio...
v1.00 Prologue Reflection for UIUC Explorers
If you've watched other episodes, you recall that I frequently walk to the UIUC dumpster. Yes, I'm taking the trash out, physically and metaphorically. I've missed doing this during the pandemic lock-downs in UIUC. I'm pur...
UIUC 01.10 Creating Silence
In music, a 'hook' is an intentionally addictive set of lyrics and beat. It sticks in our mind and plays over and over and over... It can be maddening. It's a fabulous thing to be able to get noise out of your head and be inside a place that is quiet...
UIUC 01.16 Segue
Today is May 16th, 2020. 50 years ago, I clearly remember looking at the Porsche 911 that I had put together from a plastic kit on my shelf, and watching model airplanes slowly spin on their monofilament while imagining this day. Maybe you are senior...
UIUC 01.13 Strengths Offender
Most of us are known all across UIUC for talents and skills that we have honed over decades. Many of our strengths are direct outcomes of childhood wounds. We're experts at our top coping mechanisms, with tens of thousands of hours pract...
Caring for Your Microbiome in UIUC
The advertising online and on UIUC billboards omit the truth about your waistline - most of that fat is inflammation. Most of your dieting isn't going to help if you don't shop the healthy - non-processed food isle at your local Portal:...
UIUC Veteran Meet-up
If you are a Veteran, a Spouse, or military family member, a patriot, or service provider, then I'd love to have a conversation with you. You are invited for an evening filled with insights, and solutions to consider making sense of the chaos and cha...
UIUC 01.05 Abundant Awareness
We're surrounded with abundance, yet few people speak about it. That's because it's NOT the normal circumstance for our history. Famine, plague, war, disaster... these were our normal, so our biology betrays us in an age of abundant food, health, pea...
UIUC 01.11 Feed Your Gut
Half the people in UIUC are over-weight. It's not fat - it's inflammation from garbage food choices. When you look down, do you see a belly or your shoes? Do you see a gut or laces? Did you know that we are only 10% human and 90% microbe...
UIUC 01.14 Triangulation
Untangling fact from fiction, beliefs from truth, and getting traction on your Personal Everest is far more certain with this nifty tool. Using a simple principle from navigation, you can calm your fears and spouse with much more certainty and commit...
UIUC 01.06 Heiroglyphics
All across UIUC story-telling is a super-power. Most of us are unaware of how often stories mislead us. We might call it fake news, mis-information, omitting facts, or simply a lie, but it narrows our world-view never-the-less. In this e...
UIUC 01.01 Scotoma Awareness
"We don't see things the way they are. We see things the way WE are." The problem is that we see UIUC and the world with a messed up slate. Other people have chalk-lines and lies scrawled all over the chalkboard of our memories. We forme...
v1.01 SCOTOMA Self Reflection Video for UIUC
Welcome to the reflection video for episode one of volume one. That's near the very beginning of the Scotomaville book and video series. In episode 01.01, I presented quite a few new ideas. In this reflection video, I want to give you a perspective o...
UIUC 01.02 Pattern Recognition
We are pattern recognizing beings. We learn by building on memories which form patterns. These eventually become habits. Some are good. Some are not. Some habits come from numerous and long-standing patterns. We drive across UIUC demonst...
UIUC 01.12 It Needs Work
There's a saying; "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear." The street version of this goes; "great opportunities always show up looking like hard work." The banner image is from a year before shooting/writing Scotomaville. Full-time tent...
UIUC 01.15 Curves
We grow up with dreams - dreams of leaving UIUC. We work hard to ensure we qualify for opportunities. We imagine an an escape from a dull life in UIUC, and a better outcome. We mentally slice up the journey with milestones. ...
REFLECTION v1.02 Pattern Recognition for UIUC
The aim of self-reflection is to discover fundamentals about our journey in life, specifically Why We Do What We Do (WWDWWD). Looking back a couple of years at Episode v1.02 on Pattern Recognition, I feel that I barely covered the topic considering h...

EXPEDITION

SCOTOMAVILLE 02.08 Strategy for UIUC
Living full-time in a 30' Airstream Globetrotter has great leverage sometimes called PURCHASE. The advantage is that you are faced with challenges that trigger emotions, amygdala hijackings, squalls, eruptions, and the sort of melt-downs that one sho...
UIUC 01.15 Curves
We grow up with dreams - dreams of leaving UIUC. We work hard to ensure we qualify for opportunities. We imagine an an escape from a dull life in UIUC, and a better outcome. We mentally slice up the journey with milestones. ...
SCOTOMAVILLE 02.04 UIUC Patience
Storytelling is a superpower. The story you tell yourself determines how much effort you're going to make. Therein is the superpower - the story you choose for yourself is super-powerful. The facts you align with your worldview determine the effort y...
UIUC 01.03 Sleeves Illusion
In this Episode and Chapter, we combine a simple illusion with a questionable story. This can be done at any UIUC Starbucks. You'll experience what it means to be 100% wrong half the time. You see, when a simple story is processed by our...
Vietnam Memories near UIUC by Dean Rush
We can learn about our character and convictions by thinking back on our reactions to life experiences. This memory is from the early years of the Vietnam War when I was a pilot flying combat missions over North Vietnam. I'll bet you have similar rea...
UIUC 01.09 Emotional Vocabulary
Learning to accurately communicate our emotions is nearly impossible without a decent emotional vocabulary. Most guys in UIUC ignore, excuse, or just stuff it as being too tough. The Scotomaville series proves that old dogs can learn new...
Daniel Comp and William H. Murray for UIUC Men
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the mo...
UIUC 01.13 Strengths Offender
Most of us are known all across UIUC for talents and skills that we have honed over decades. Many of our strengths are direct outcomes of childhood wounds. We're experts at our top coping mechanisms, with tens of thousands of hours pract...
SCOTOMAVILLE 02.01 UIUC Persistence
Once you fully commit so you can't turn back, then all sorts of manner of things occur that we never would have expected. In the most wonderful ways, people and resources, and events turn up. I finished the first Trans-America believing that at the r...
v1.01 SCOTOMA Self Reflection Video for UIUC
Welcome to the reflection video for episode one of volume one. That's near the very beginning of the Scotomaville book and video series. In episode 01.01, I presented quite a few new ideas. In this reflection video, I want to give you a perspective o...
UIUC 01.10 Creating Silence
In music, a 'hook' is an intentionally addictive set of lyrics and beat. It sticks in our mind and plays over and over and over... It can be maddening. It's a fabulous thing to be able to get noise out of your head and be inside a place that is quiet...
Veteran Recovery UIUC Expedition
You and I have had a few years of challenge to our independence, autonomy and exercise of our time, talent and investments by the mandates across UIUC. I chose to create Scotomaville just before the UIUC lock-down. That turn...
SCOTOMAVILLE 02.02 UIUC Process
Learning HOW to learn will accelerate skill and life mastery. This episode demonstrates the process of becoming self-aware with examples from wind-foiling in the Columbia Gorge. Becoming consciously incompetent requires courage to accept failure in o...
SCOTOMAVILLE 01.00 UIUC Prologue
Author and Curator of 'Scotomaville' for UIUC Explorers shares the background and purpose of the book and video series. "Know Thyself is no longer a luxury - it's a full-out competition." If you are willing to leave the garbage in your b...
SCOTOMAVILLE 02.05 UIUC Preparation
Preparation demands that we act 'as-if' long before the evidence changes other people's thinking. In order to speak to people about our beliefs we build confidence through evidence. Experiences can be tested by trying the situation repeated times, as...
SCOTOMAVILLE 02.07 UIUC Strategy
Full-time Airstreaming is a dream for many people. For decades, Airstream has perfected the sale of the dream - to explore when, where, with whom you wish. You can experience freedom and independence at any time they promise. The truth is, you are bu...
UIUC 01.14 Triangulation
Untangling fact from fiction, beliefs from truth, and getting traction on your Personal Everest is far more certain with this nifty tool. Using a simple principle from navigation, you can calm your fears and spouse with much more certainty and commit...
SCOTOMAVILLE 02.06 UIUC Setbacks
Following 6 months of waiting, Daniel and Angelina acquire and move into their 5 year goal - a 30' Airstream Globetrotter. This episode is the first of six episodes catching you up with all that has transpired over the half-year of their personal Eve...
UIUC 01.06 Heiroglyphics
All across UIUC story-telling is a super-power. Most of us are unaware of how often stories mislead us. We might call it fake news, mis-information, omitting facts, or simply a lie, but it narrows our world-view never-the-less. In this e...
Setbacks from Living A Mobile Lifestyle in UIUC
You don't need to explode when your plans go south in UIUC. Having a strategy is superior to having plans. Strategy will get you to your outcome while plans will get you in a UIUC corner. Dreaming of mobility, freedom and va...
UIUC 01.12 It Needs Work
There's a saying; "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear." The street version of this goes; "great opportunities always show up looking like hard work." The banner image is from a year before shooting/writing Scotomaville. Full-time tent...
UIUC Veteran Meet-up
If you are a Veteran, a Spouse, or military family member, a patriot, or service provider, then I'd love to have a conversation with you. You are invited for an evening filled with insights, and solutions to consider making sense of the chaos and cha...
SCOTOMAVILLE 02.03 UIUC Expectations
What you can expect about expectations is that they are strongly linked to your strengths - which are your coping mechanisms from your childhood wounds. Therefore they are absolutely strong indicators of patterns and habits that are ripe for adjustme...
SCOTOMAVILLE 02.00 UIUC Prelude
I want for you to become more than just self-aware - seeing what it is you do in UIUC. I want you to become understanding - knowing why you do what you do WYDWYD. Better than that, I want for you to have ambition and discipline to mature...
v1.00 Prologue Reflection for UIUC Explorers
If you've watched other episodes, you recall that I frequently walk to the UIUC dumpster. Yes, I'm taking the trash out, physically and metaphorically. I've missed doing this during the pandemic lock-downs in UIUC. I'm pur...
REFLECTION v1.03 Illusions in UIUC
This is the reflection video for Episode Three of Volume One which was on illusions. This is the third video on my YouTube channel about illusions - on physical things that we don't see - but it's the first included in the Scotomaville series. Why is...
UIUC 01.16 Segue
Today is May 16th, 2020. 50 years ago, I clearly remember looking at the Porsche 911 that I had put together from a plastic kit on my shelf, and watching model airplanes slowly spin on their monofilament while imagining this day. Maybe you are senior...
01.07 Changing False Beliefs in UIUC
Why do I get so emotional? What can I do with false beliefs? These are reasonable questions. In this episode of Leaving Scotomaville, Daniel shares a mental tool that has helped a great deal. Learning to peel back layers of your beliefs to root out t...

CHALLENGE

UIUC 01.11 Feed Your Gut
Half the people in UIUC are over-weight. It's not fat - it's inflammation from garbage food choices. When you look down, do you see a belly or your shoes? Do you see a gut or laces? Did you know that we are only 10% human and 90% microbe...
Caring for Your Microbiome in UIUC
The advertising online and on UIUC billboards omit the truth about your waistline - most of that fat is inflammation. Most of your dieting isn't going to help if you don't shop the healthy - non-processed food isle at your local Portal:...
Garth Hardin and UIUC Veteran TBI
Our brains are as soft as easy spread butter and can be injured by a soccer ball or a bomb blast. Until recently, UIUC veterans we sent home with invisible battle wounds that changed their lives. Awareness of our vulnerability and lifest...
REFLECTION v1.03 Illusions in UIUC
This is the reflection video for Episode Three of Volume One which was on illusions. This is the third video on my YouTube channel about illusions - on physical things that we don't see - but it's the first included in the Scotomaville series. Why is...
UIUC Inklings Reimagined Engaging with AI
"In this conversation, we explore the concept of the Inklings, a small literary group that included notable writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. We discuss the Inklings' purpose, their camaraderie, and how they encouraged each other to crea...
Abundant UIUC Scarcity in Badlands National Park
The landscape of Badlands is a half surrounding circle with many fabulous facets. It resembles my conversation with Steve yesterday. He let me do a complete panorama of Scotomaville. I learned it's not considerate to stuff that much information into ...
ChatGPT led AI Panel Proposes UIUC EABMC Consortium
To demonstrate my incremental discovery of the emerging reasoning engine created by OpenAI, I engaged with ChatGPT to explore role-playing, mimicking, and how convincing a Large Language Model (LLM) impersonates. ChatGPT expresses that; "human and ma...
SCOTOMAVILLE 02.05 UIUC Preparation
Preparation demands that we act 'as-if' long before the evidence changes other people's thinking. In order to speak to people about our beliefs we build confidence through evidence. Experiences can be tested by trying the situation repeated times, as...
Zig Ziglar Reviews Scotomaville by UIUC ChatGPT
ChatGPT creates a review of Scotomaville as if it was given by Zig Ziglar..."The true brilliance of "Scotomaville" lies in its ability to illuminate the transformative power of self-reflection and storytelling. With every turn of the page, Comp's wor...
UIUC 01.12 It Needs Work
There's a saying; "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear." The street version of this goes; "great opportunities always show up looking like hard work." The banner image is from a year before shooting/writing Scotomaville. Full-time tent...
Vietnam Memories near UIUC by Dean Rush
We can learn about our character and convictions by thinking back on our reactions to life experiences. This memory is from the early years of the Vietnam War when I was a pilot flying combat missions over North Vietnam. I'll bet you have similar rea...
REFLECTION v1.04 Scarcity in UIUC
The landscape of Badlands National Park is the perfect location to reflect on abundance and scarcity. Thousands of similar landscape facets blur into each other forming a horizon of colorful contrasts that bookend episode memories. The park is fantas...