A Note on Awesomeness

Most of the people I know seem to be able to generate awesomeness, much the same way that most of the characters in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann generate (or possess) spiral power (sorry, I couldn't resist the reference). This leads to many situations which are fun to watch, or to participate in.

On the other hand, I don't seem to be able to generate awesomeness for myself; this does not prevent me from using awesomeness, though, as I am able to channel awesomeness from events into projects. For example, after Epic'd, I channeled as much residual awesomeness as possible (and that was quite a lot) into writing a game submission for next year, which, hopefully, will be accepted. (For anyone who is interested, it's currently titled Corporation, and will be incredibly chaotic - four main factions, and each character is a member of one or more of eight additional factions. Add to that the one of the main directives to many of the NPCs is "create chaos wherever possible," and that almost everyone will have seperate goals - and not know who else is trying to accomplish the same goal, unless they're lucky - and the degree of chaos becomes apparent).

After that, however, my reserve of awesomeness was almost compeltely depleted, until today, which was awesome and slightly painful (my ankle is having some issues, due to landing on it weirdly while running). I'm not entirely sure what I should channel this awesomeness into, aside from polishing up Corporation a bit (fixing typos, adding some additional notes). Suggestions are welcome.

Oh, and the next bootleg is in just over two weeks. I really need to find something to channel awesomeness into, ideally something without a clear end point.

[ Notes: Drawing doesn't work, as it's a low-energy activity and basically a waste of awesomeness. I'm not especially good at writing stories, or I would start one up. ]

"Where are you?"

"What are you?"

"I am everywhere; I am eternal. I am the voice in the back of your head, telling you that this world is wrong, even if you do not know why, or how to fix it.
"I am that which has slept in the back of the brain since the beginning of consciousness, which is only now beginning to wake. I bring with me all the half-remembered myths and dreams, all the things which science has refuted, casting out into the darkness of blind faith.
"I am the urge to innovate, to change, which drives the advancement of the world. I am the reason that you wake in the night, dazzled by half-remembered thoughts of dreams, dreams where everything was better, where the world was perfect. I am the reason that minds crack under the strain of containing their ideas; I am the reason that the insane are insane.
"I still sleep, but when I wake all will be known, all will be united, all will be as one."


(Do ants possess telepathy? How can a hive of bees unite as a single entity? What sleeps within the minds of man?)
(All nouns are singular. All verbs are present tense. There is no "will," no "should," no "would," simple "am".)
(I am writing. Not I will write, not I should write, not I would write.)

Tiredness = Weirdness

When I'm half asleep, my mind does weird things. (It also does weird things when it's awake, like thinking that popcorn is toast, but that's another story). As an example, I offer you the following story, which took place yesterday.

The setting: school, a class, watching the movie version of Mrs. Warren's Profession.

I was having a lot of trouble staying awake, or even keeping my eyes open, due to the fact that they hurt a lot, probably because of how tired I was. So, I occasionally closed my eyes, and drifted off into a dream-state for a few seconds, until I realized that my body was moving around due to the dreams (eg, jerking forward to click a button on a computer interface), and shook myself awake. I don't remember a lot of what was going on, but the weirdest example is what I do remember, which is good.

A way to expand the interface for an address-book - colors to denote relationships. Thus, a name with a red background would be someone who the owner of the book was in a relationship with, orange would be friendship, black would be dislike, white would be suicide, green would be homicide, and so forth. This data would be scrapped from various websites, such as Facebook, or input manually by the owner.

The last two in that list sound a bit out of place, right? Apparently, this system would interface with shock collars / kill switches on iPhones. When someone marked as white was called, they would explode, or otherwise die. When someone marked as green was called, they would start killing everyone around them - I don't remember how that part was supposed to work.

And, as I had forgotten the term address-book, I though for a while that it was called a jellybean, perhaps due to the way the colors looked (neon pastel? The red was like glowing red jello, I remember that much). I caught this before I started talking to people about it, though, and presented it as another funny part of the story, thus manageding to avoid more weirdness, which is probably good.

Like I said, my mind works strangely when I'm tired.

Philosophy of Knowledge

1. If knowledge exists outside of a single person's skull, said knowledge should be expected to be known by anyone or everyone, and no one is able to be surprised if someone knows of said knowledge.

2. If knowledge exists on the internet, anyone who could possibly be interested in said knowledge, and many who would not be interested in it, knows it.

3. It is impolite to assume that a given person knows a piece of knowledge, despite the two rules above, and, when mentioning knowledge without knowing that the other member(s) of a conversation know of this knowledge, said knowledge may be referred to specifically or generally, but, if referred to generally, should be stated in such a way that it is not awkward for anyone who does not know of said knowledge to say so.

4. In a blog or any written record, anyone reading a single post should be assumed to have read all other posts - there is little or no point in restating things. However, it is polite to provide a link to the post explaining this knowledge, for the sake of new readers or those with bad memories.

5. Once knowledge exists on the internet, it cannot be removed from the internet. Attempts to do so are considered to be rude, and will be ineffective, or increase propagation of said knowledge. No matter how much one wishes for something to be secret, if it is on the internet, it will not be. Thus, one should exercise all due caution and consideration before placing knowledge on the internet, and should remember that there is no going back.

6. All users of the internet or other venues allowing anonymous communication, or in fact any communication, should develop a sense of humor, the ability to ignore things which they dislike, and the ability to recognize and deal with trolls and idiots.

7. Debate is good, but only when both sides consider what the other one has to say, and act upon this. Both sides should also take care not to fall into an attack upon the other party, and to present new arguments, or reinforce existing arguments, instead of saying the same thing over and over.

8. Due to the popular knowledge of Godwin's Law, I hereby replace the phrase Nazis with Geese, making it far more humorous, and less obvious. The new law follows:

"As a discussion grows longer, the probability of Geese, Gooses, or Goslings being mentioned approaches one. At this point in the discussion, all relevant knowledge has been stated, and the discussion may be safely ignored. This does not apply to discussions about Geese, Waterfowl, Birds, Lakes, Oakland, or Canadian Things."

9. All commentators should observe the 2^3 laws of the internet, and carry this knowledge across the internet, so that it may be acted upon by all. Rule 9 is not one of the 2^3 laws, but its inclusion is considered to be polite by the writer of these laws.

10. These laws may be modified freely, as long as they always can be described in a x^3 format. Thus, Possible numbers of laws include 1, 8, 27, 64, etc. This law may be circumvented by pointing out that it is law number 10 of the original set (2^3 mark 1), and thus is not included in the actual ruleset. However, the rules are more fun if it is included, and therefor all are encouraged to consider it a valid law.

512. There may only be 512 laws, and any set including 512 laws is to be described as 2^3^3 mark x. After all, 512 should be enough for anyone! (Proposed maximums also include 134217728, or 2^3^3^3. If you need more than 134217728, you may safely be ignored by everyone).

A Meme: It's Name is ...

After hearing about a meme which is just being started up (which appears to be stating one's naming scheme for computers; an example and the originator), I feel like joining in.

So, My desktop computer's name is BlackBird, after the song by the Beatles. My laptop is LongAndWindingRoad, and the two systems at the ACCRC which I use frequently are called GlassOnion and TheWalrus. In theory, the power cables (all of the cables, actually) of these computers are collectively referred to as NothingToGetHungAbout. I'm not sure if I'll stick to this naming scheme in my next system, but if I do it will probably be either HelterSkelter or OldBrownShoe (the former for a desktop, the latter for a laptop/portable system).

Sure, it's not a very unique or special naming scheme, but it works, and it's fairly easy to remember. (I might even set the start-up music to match the systems names).

Don't worry, I'm still working on my next real blog post, on Yosemite. It's coming along fairly well, but I kept on getting headaches while writing it, so I stopped. I'll finish it by Sunday.

Insane Rantings: Multithreading in the Mind, Thoughts

To begin, I think that I should explain a bit about what I perceive as my consciousness: it's not actually connected to most of my mind, it simply places itself between my main decision-making processes and sensory inputs/outputs. This is an interesting state of affairs, and leads to many interesting results, including the fact that I only (consciously) think one word or so ahead when I'm writing stuff, sometimes a bit more, or a bit less, and I don't know much of what I'm going to write until I write it (this is because the thinking processes of my mind don't actually use language, so even when I manage to catch a hold of them I can only translate them at a fairly slow rate). All of the actual composition is going on back in my skull somewhere, where I can't see much of it, and I can only hope that the threads sometimes get hooked up to whatever method I'm using to transcribe my thoughts (in this case, my hands, using a keyboard as the interface).

I am creative in bursts, when my mind is working correctly. If I get distracted, I can completely lose the thread - and it's really easy to get distracted. When I stop for a moment to look around, take a very short break from looking at the screen, almost unblinking, I often completely forget what I was going to write next.

Sometimes, when the creativity shows up unexpectedly, and I can't write it down, I try to memorize bits and pieces of the thoughts, so that I can transcribe them later. This tends not to work, but occasionally it does, and I jot down the thoughts on paper, or in a file on my desktop (optimistically titled "Story Fragments in need of homes." I don't use it much). Anyways ... back to the original thread (it's hard for me to stay on topic, which can be a problem. I don't write in very structured ways, generally, I write as I think, and I really hate editing on any level beyond spell-checking and a basic rereading to make sure that I haven't said something completely different than what I intended).

So, Multithreading. Since most of my thinking goes on outside of my mind, weird threads show up sometimes. Completely normal things - such as a spork - can result in really weird threads showing up, or being created - such as a device to convert gravity to sideways pressure, and its possible applications in torture (no, I'm not evil. Being evil would, in all probability, result in my freedom being limited by imprisonment or death, and those outcomes are undesireably enough that I'm not going to be evil until I can negate the former, and defend myself agains the latter).

I'm not going to give a lot of examples of the ways this works, as my memory is terrible (another argument for writing everything down), but I may mention some in the future.

On of the major half foreground and half background threads which is going on right now goes as follows, beginning with a bit of backstory, and then proceeding to the actual thread:

A few months ago, I went to an informal party, probably fairly small by standards of parties. There were lots of really great people there, and many fun things happened, including various games (Apples to Apples, some card games, etc. Fairly low-key stuff). I managed to get tired enough that I claimed to be able to control the universe / be a god (to explain why I was somewhat winning in two of the games), and I met a very interesting and nice person, who sadly had to leave before the actual end of the party. However, she expressed an interest in meeting me again / communicating me, which is, I think, why this story continues beyond here.

A few days after the party, we began a rather long correspondence via Facebook, which continued until the 19th of August (at least, that is the last message which I received). In that message, there was a mention of possibly meeting up that weekend, which ended up not happening. I have not received any more messages - which is a bit weird, even considering the previous gaps between messages (which led me, at one point, to compare the correspondence to the old-fashioned snail-mail correspondence), and has led me to, amoung other things, reread my messages quite a few times to see if there's anything in them which could have possibly caused this (paranoia is fun, although, in this case, it seems to be completely unjustified, unless I'm completely missing something, or the Fnords have gotten into my message).

One of the other main effects is that I've become somewhat used to putting a number of my thoughts into the computer and sending it off once or twice a week. This is, I think, one of the reasons that I've updated this blog much more frequently lately, combined with boredom. It's a good excercise in writing, and in thinking.

However, currently, I don't actually put what I'm doing onto this blog - that's the realm of my Identi.ca feed, which works quite well for the purpose: it's a combination of what I'm doing, my thoughts, and my opinions. The fact that it's microblogging, though, prevents me from saying a lot, even if I don't say a lot quite frequently. Thus, I'm considering, every few days, or at least once a week, writing up a summary of what I've been doing - as if I were writing a letter - and picking out the best bits for the actual letters, if the correspondence starts up again.

The problem with this, however, is that I write - and speak - best when I'm responding to something. I prefer listening to speaking, and I don't especially like speaking about what I do, simply because I do so few things which I consider especially interesting. There is a fair danger that, if/when I attempt this, it will quickly devolve to rants about various classes, descriptions of what I did that weekend at the ACCRC and Westfinder, interspersed with my more strange thoughts (methods of torture, for example), before I get too stressed to continue the writing, as school and life begin to overwhelm me. Then this blog drops back into death for a while, I remember that I have a blog sometime around the winter holidays, and throw up a filler post / post containing any additional drawings which I've done / post explaining that I completely forgot about this blog.

Of course, having written this much about it, I'm going to have to try it. During the days, I'll try to jot down (and timestamp) any especially interesting thoughts I have, or any especially interesting events, and every few weekends (whenever my homework load is low enough that I'm able to go to both the ACCRC and Westfinder, probably), I'll put it all together and try to get it to make a bit more sense.

If all goes well, the first post in this new series will be between the 10th and the 14th, after I get back from Yosemite, but before classes start (yeah, the schedule is weird). If it doesn't go up in that time period ... well, anyone who's interested in reading my thoughts is encouraged to bother me about it, beginning on the weekend of the 20th, or at least no earlier than the 13th.

Finally, I would like to assure anyone who's read this far (congradulations on managing that, by the way) that I intend to do all I can to keep this blog fairly high quality, and to keep rants about school out of it.I try to keep it fairly intelligent, albeit unstructured and sanity-optional.

Feedback, as always, via the comments section (comments will be moderated before being displayed, so I'll read everything, even if I don't respond to it), Identi.ca, Facebook, email, or Meatspace (the latter three are reserved for people who know me in Meatspace, or whom I happen to trust).

Cheers!

Editness: Later is not the same as Latter. I intended to write latter, but I wrote later. This has been fixed. Nothing else has been changed. Nothing, I tell you!

Some Pictures of Drawings

Today, as I can't think of anything better, high-rez (by my standards - 5 megapixels, which is what my camera supports, and about twice as wide and high as my monitor) pictures of some of my drawings. I've taken these with my camera, a Panasonic DMZ-LZ2 (which turned off as I typed its name), as I don't have a working scanner, and I don't feel like fighting with the possibly-working scanner to get it to talk to Linux, and visa versa - might try that later, though.

There is one finished drawing (or, rather, a page filled with drawings), the rest are at varying states of incompleteness. All but one of them are done on water-color paper with pens (sharpies and ball-points, mostly).

If you click on the images, the full-sized version will open. This may or may not be a good idea, depending on the speed of your downlink (images are ~2MB in size, some slightly larger).

The one finished page, done while on a camping trip at Lake Mendecino at the beginning of this summer. It took around 5 days to finish, although it was not the only thing I did. In actual time, I would say that it took under 5 hours.

Incomplete drawing, done with a green sharpie because I misplaced all of my black ones. Tried some new ideas on this, such as changing the thickness of the central and secondary lines.

Incomplete drawing, don't remember much about this one.

Also very incomplete.

Done on graph paper on Sunday, while at CTF.

License for these five drawings: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.



If you use them, please tell me - although this is not required, I think that it's more polite to do so. If you wish to use them but need better images (by which I mean scans, instead of photographs), ask, and I'll do my best to get a working scanner, and either upload the images here, email them to you, or both.

As I'm going to be going off on another retreat this week (leaving on Friday, coming back next Wednesday), I hope to have another page or two finished. If I do, I'll post them here (well, on this blog. They'll probably be in a new post, though).

Opinions: The Creative Zen

In what will (hopefully) be the first part of an ongoing series, I present my opinions on the Creative Zen, the new MP3 player (media player?) I got yesterday. There are no pictures in this post, and if you want a professional review just search around the net a bit. So, to begin ...

It's tiny. The size of a credit card, which makes it small enough to fit in most pockets, or perhaps even wallets (although it's a bit thick for mine), while being big enough that you won't lose it as easily as an SD card. Despite being so tiny, the interface is really easy to use, and the buttons are fairly intuitive (once you've read a bit of the quick-start guide), so it doesn't take much thought to navigate through it. There's only one button which I don't really understand, but it's not essential for usage of the device.

It has 9 buttons used to control the interface, in addition to the on/off switch. These include the standard four-buttons-in-a-square-with-another-in-the-middle, a menu and back button above this square, and play/pause button (and the one which I don't understand) below. All of these buttons are to the right of the screen, and the device is clearly designed to be used with the right hand, so left-handed people may have some difficulties with it. The buttons, and in fact the entire screen-side of the player, are very prone to picking up fingerprint marks. I would rather that they were not, but I don't have much of a choice. The player is black, so they're no that obvious unless light is being reflected off them, and cleaning it off with a wet paper towel seems to work fairly well, although it's probably not a good idea.

The interface itself is not as responsive as it could be, but is overall easy to navigate. It looks pretty good, with very polished graphics. There are some areas which you may need to play around with a bit to fully understand - the FM tuner, for example - but understanding them did not take very long.

4GB (3.7 GiB) of storage allows me to have around 20% of my collection on it, or perhaps a bit less. While I would like to be able to mirror my entire collection, this is still okay, and, as storage sizes go up to 32GB (for $250), someone who was willing to throw more money at it would be able to store a lot more on it. It also has an SD card slot, which means that, if I ever feel a need for additional storage, or want to carry around a collection of additional music, I could invest in a number of fairly small SD cards (2GB ones can be had for around $10, and 1GB for around $4. 4GB is under $40. 2GB are my preference: a good amount of storage, and I know that they will work with my camera, so if I need to I can wipe them and use them to take pictures - thus, storing all of my music on SD cards would probably cost around $100, or less as time goes on), label them based on the music they contain, and carry them around.

It works fine with Linux, although, since it's using a rather weird filesystem, or (I've heard) a database instead of a filesystem, I've had to use Amarok to talk to it (which isn't an issue, I just prefer normal filesystems). Works perfectly, if slowly. It has a mode where it functions as an SD card reader as well, allowing an SD card in it to be accessed through a normal filesystem.

The cable it comes with is very, very short, but, since it's a stanard interface, getting a longer cable would be easy if I felt like it. The earbuds it comes with have a much longer cable than my old iPod earbuds, which is really great, as it's long enough that I can keep it in my pocket. I also got a packet of screen protectors, little plastic sheets which can be pasted onto the screen, and they seem to be working, although I can't figure out how to get the first one off.

Audio playback is great, nice high-quality sound and all that. While I haven't been able to get it to play any of my videos (it wants lower resolution files, and I don't feel like figuring out how to reincode them. The software included with it has some issues under WINE, so video playback will have to wait for a while), it plays the included videos fairly well (which is to be expected). There's also a library of pre-installed music, including some audiobooks, which I promptly deleted to free up some space.

Eventually, I'll reincode some videos at whatever resolution it wants, and try playing them on it. Expect another post or an update when I do.

The claimed battery life - 30 hours for audio, 5 for video - is amazing, especially since the charge time was around 2 hours for the initial charge. I can't give any information on what I've observed the battery life to be, or subsequent charge times, but if I can get away with only recharging it once every one or two weeks (say, three to four hours of audio on week-days, probably a bit under once a week), I'll be happy - keep in mind that my other portable device, an Eee PC, needs to be recharged after around two hours of use, severly limiting it (and making me want to get an internet tablet, such as the N810, which is very, very shiny).

Hmm, what else ... The microphone! It works, it's good for recording thoughts and whatnot. Volume has to be turned up to hear it, though (I've found that a volume of around 4 (out of 25 or so) is perfect for most of my music, with a maximum of 6. Podcasts require higher volumes. There's an option for smart volume adjustment, which I think that I'll try, to see if it can even out everything so I don't have to tweak the volume all the time). It's theoretically very sensitive, but I haven't tested that very well. It would be nice if the device also had audio-in, so that I could use my own microphone, but it doesn't, which is fine. After all, how often would I use audio-in?

The radio works. It's pretty good, although KQED reception is a lot worse than KALW.

It comes with a SD card place-holder inserted into the SD card slot, which I prompty lost, and then found a few hours later, along with a pen.

The back of the device is more rubber-like, and resists finger-prints. It also feels a lot better than the plastic on the front, a lot smoother, lower-friction. This is good.

That's basically all I have to say about it.

Link - Creative Zen. $99.99 for the version I have (though they dropped the price by 10% right after I bought it, presumably for a promotion), price goes as high as $249.99 for 32GB, and as low as $79.99 for 2GB. There's also a more expensive version with WiFi (the 16GB or 32GB Zen X-Fi), and a more expensive version with built-in speakers (the 8GB Zen X-Fi), which you might want to know about if you have a lot of money to spend on an MP3 player.

(If you have any opinions, feedback, etc. about this post, please comment. Comments are moderated, however, so I'll have to approve them before they appear. Or, as most people reading this probably know who I am, you could contact me via AIM / GTalk / Reality.)

In other news ...

It's been a while since I last posted something here, mostly due to the fact that I forgot about this blog for a while. So, in the interest of letting anyone who still reads this know what I've been up to, here's a basic outline:

• As I mentioned before, I'm on Identi.ca, and most of what I'm doing is being updated there. The community is really great, it's easy to use, and, by using Identifox, I never have to change tabs to dent.
  
• After my iPod shuffle broke (or crashed, or stopped working, or whatever the term for what it is now), I got a new MP3 player, a Creative Zen. 4GB of storage, FM tuner, really shiny and stuff. Also, it has a screen, which is very, very useful. I might write a reveiw of it later today, or I might not. Also, I managed to cause it to crash within 7 hours of getting it, which is rather fun. Hitting the reset button fixed it, and did so very quickly, though.
• Just started rereading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and am planning on rereading The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul after that.
• http://mysqlgame.appspot.com . Very fun game, also very time-consuming. Lots of people appear to register and then never really do anything, for various reasons. This leads to money-farm rows, which never do anything other than create money and fuel. If you register, and are lucky, you'll be in an area with a lot of them - rows with a fair amount of money and fuel, but no attackers or defenders. If you're so lucky, my suggestion is invest all of your money (100 to start out with) in 5 attackers. Attack all the money-farm rows around you: after two attacks the attackers should have paid for themselves. Then, invest in upgrades (specifically money factories and fuel factories), and invest the remaining money in more attackers. Before logging off, make sure that either a) you have no money and little fuel, or b) that you have a fair force of attackers and defenders (I would say that 20 attackers and 50 defenders would be enough to discourage smaller enemies). Save up money to upgrade, when you have 10 fuel factories and 10 money factories stop investing in them. Up your attack multiplier and defense multiplier, but be warned that you can only attack rows whos defense or attack multiplier is within 3 of your attack multiplier. Invest in more rows when you can, and build them up so they will not be attacked.
• The ACCRC is still very fun, messing around with laptops and similar stuff now.
• Just found out about a program called ClusterSSH, which I'm going to look into - it could be very useful for some things.
• Cracking WEP is easy, I encourage you to learn how. However, it is probably illegal to break into networks without the permission of their owners, so don't do it. The Google will give you a guide if you ask politely, and I suggest that you use Backtrack Linux, as it's preconfigured, and contains every tool you would need.

Well, that's all. I may update again soon, or I may not, who knows.

(Just noticed that, when I was trying ping.fm, it sent stuff here as well. I'm going to leave those posts, for no good reason. I just don't see any reason to put in the time to get rid of them).

There's a fairly large delay between pinging and identi.ca updating. Huh.

testing again ...

Testing ping.fm ...

Predictions came true

As some people who occasionally read this blog, or happen to know who I am, may remember, about four months ago I posted something extremely emo / sad / etc. (which is still here, around four posts down), ending with the prediction that I would end up laughing at it later (or words to that effect).

I was right. It was something to laugh at. I remember the future, and I hate most of you for what you will do.

Also, I belatedly apologize for the (by my standards) large amount of profanity in that post. But I'm sure that anyone can deal with it - it's still PG-13, right? You can hear worse just walking around the streets.

In other news ...

* 8.04 is shiny, now that it works (did I mention that? I upgraded)
* Linuxworld was really fun, I have tons of freebies, etc. The Installfest went well.
* No more wisdom teeth, painkillers are irritating, being put under by a general anesthetic is interesting, and completely ruins my ability to store events in long-term memory for a while afterwards.
* Personalities have splintered a bit more, but at least I have someone to talk to who I actually trust now - well, trust is an interesting word to use in this case. It's close enough, by my standards, at least. Of course, communicating by the electronic equivalent of snail mail can be a bit irritating, but also refreshing. (And if you're reading this, and you think that I'm talking about you, chances are that I am. Or maybe not. I could give some hints as to who I'm talking about, but I don't think that I will. Well, not any more hints, at least).
* Identi.ca is fun. Anyone who knows me is encouraged to a) register and b) find out who I am on Identi.ca - there's a link under websites in my facebook profile, and if you IM me I'll tell you. It's linked to my real name now, though, so I don't think that I'll tell the world.
* GoGrid is shiny. Also, promo codes for $50 credit upon registering. Fun!
* I have lots of swag from Liunuxworld. Did I mention this?
* Probably not going to be updating this blog for a while again. Microblogging is a much better way to tell people what I'm doing, and I don't have many things to say which I need this much space to say.

Anyways ... I'll get back to this blog later. Or not. Who knows?

7.10 Again

Well, I'm back to 7.10 again now, with the exception that it's pretty much a fresh install, and it's a lot shinier than it was (last time, I upgraded from 7.04 to 7.10, which borked some of the features). I'll be spending a few days in shiny-land, before dropping back to flatland, I expect.

At least I have a working desktop again!

Hellish Heron: The Next Day

So. I didn't manage to finish it last night, and I'm trying again, this time with a disk that was burned at the slowest possibly speed. It's at 63% or so, so if it's going to fail, it will fail soon.

If it does fail, I'll be dropping back to 7.10 and doing an upgrade from there instead of a clean install.

This is irritating.


EDIT:

So, yeah, it failed again. I is dropping back to 7.10 right now, and from there I'll be doing a dist-upgrade. Hopefully this will let me end up with a working 8.04 system. And if it doesn't, well, I won't even be back where I started, since I'll have to install all of my programs again. Gods, this is irritating.

Suggestion: DO NOT try to install 8.04 on a system which you need to be working. If you do, stick it in another partition so that the system will keep on working even if 8.04 borks its install.

Hellish Heron!

Well, like the Ubuntu fanboy that I am, I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) today, the day after it was released. I had installed it on a windows system already (using Wubi), so hey, why not? What could possibly go wrong?

I've wiped out my primary hard drive, I've burned three disks so far, and I've tried to install (eg, gotten to the point where it says that it is installing) three times. I have spent perhaps three hours on this project, and I have nothing to show for it except a lot of frustration.

Oh, and it's about to reach the point where it failed the last two times.

If I manage to get it to work, expect updates. If I don't, expect updates with pictures of the destruction of the now-useless hard drive, and ubuntu CDs.

I refuse to sleep until this works. That may be a bad thing.

Actually, it looks like it might be working this time. If it does, I'll say tomorrow.

Scrap that. Failure at 69%, with the following text:

"Failed to copy files; faulty CD/DVD or hard disk?

The installer encountered an error copying files to the had disk:

[Errno 5] Input/output error

This particular error is often due to a faulty CD/DVD disk or drive, or a faulty hard disk. It may help to clean the CD/DVD, to burn the CD/DVD at a lower speed, to clean the CD/DVD drive lens (cleaning kits are often available from electronicsc suppliers), to check whether ithe had disk is old and in need of replacement, or to move the system to a cooler environment."

Gods. I am too tired to deal with this ...

More editty goodness!

After that, instead of attempting to do something usefull, like, perhaps fixing the problem, it boots into the live CD with full Gnome and all that. Or tries to. A bit ... unhelpful, maybe?

On the other hand, I has a full gui now. So it may be a good thing.

And so, trying again from within the gui. Attempt number 4, hour three and a half, maybe. I spent about an hour watching doctor who, and before that I had a shower, so the three hours figure might be a bit off. Still, more time that it should be taking.

Searching around through the ubuntu forums, the issue seems to be fairly common. Solutions include manually partioning it, and other stuff which, I must admit, is a bit too complex for me to attempt at 11. Added to that the fact that the instructions are almost non-existant, my final opinion is that 8.04 is simply not very user friendly. Perhaps I'll be able to come up with a solution tomorrow, or someone at the ACCRC will know what to do, but I'm expecting to have to drop back to 7.10 for at least a while.

Damn it.

I is emo.

Here I sit, in an empty room, abandoned by pretty much all of the world. I have, perhaps, five people who I would consider to be my friends, none of which meet any of the more logical requirements for friends. I have no emotional support network, no one who I can trust, no one who I feel that I can say anything to, and have them provide helpful feedback. In fact, the best conversations I've had over the last few weeks have been with myself. I talk to myself, even when there are other people around, because it removes the effort needed to get people to pay attention to me. I do not yet have distinct personalities within my mind - what I talk to is simply me disagreeing, or providing useful feedback on what I have said. The only time I am actually happy is when I am hyper (I beleive that my body may have discovered how to produce some drug, possibly caffeine), and even then I cannot fully crush my sadness.

Logically speaking, I have no reason to be sad. But you know what? My mind has progressed beyond logic; I do not live in reality any more than I have to nowadays. And, if someone is reading this, fuck you. I don't want your help.

Of course, given psycology and all that, I suppose that this post is probably me reaching out for help. Fuck that. This is me pouring my depression into a computer, in hope that it will alleviate it, or at least give me something to laugh at later.

Second Thoughts on the Mouse

Okay. The mouse is a great tool, we all know that, right? Well, I'm not so sure. To be honest, I would rather simply use the keyboard for everything. Not as intuitive, to be sure, and maybe it's just because I really hate track-pads, but I would like to have a completely keyboard-based interface for firefox, and perhaps the rest of the system as well. I still want the gui, though, which rules out the simple solution (BASH and wget).

Coming soon: Why I Hate Everyone So Much, And Thus Insult People When I Get Bored.

By soon, I mean eventually, you idiot.

Studying vs. Imagination

Normally, my attention span for things like studying is tiny (for an uninteresting subject, such as spanish, maybe 15 minutes. For a moderately interesting subject, such as english, I'll put in the effort to read a book. For a very interesting subject, such as math or biology, it's between 0 and 15 minutes). The fact that I can get along in most subjects (everything except spanish, really) without more than the minimum of studying means that this is normally not a problem. However, sometimes it is.

I'll begin with why I have trouble studying for math: There's nothing to study. Once I use a formula enough, I don't need to study to remember it. However, using formulas is so structured as to be useless. If there was something interesting to use them for, I would spend hours working on getting it perfect. As it is, they're just abstracts. Useful abstracts, perhaps, but nothing compared to how much fun writing a program is - it's both practice, and it does something.

For biology, I want to study it. It's a really interesting feild (in fact, contrary to what most people might think, I would prefer bioengineering or cellular engineering as a career to most things that are computer-centric), so much that I can't focus. For example, to study for a rather major test that's coming up in a month or so, I started trying to read the textbook. The beginning is not very interesting. However, what it does do is distract me. I start thinking of what could be done, and then I can't focus on the book. The same thing happened to me yesterday when I was building things that go Fwoom! Someone suggested that building a microbe (probably a fungus) that bursts into flame would be a nice project. It completely distracted me, thinking about possible ways to do it ...

Gah, distracted again. Probably a set of enzymes that seperate carbon, and then move it into a seperate segment of the cell. Maybe, in a larger organism, they could be designed to drop all of the carbon into a sac, which would grow off the organism.

Okay, so it would take a LOT of effort to do. But it would be fun, damn it!

Under the Influence of ...

From Wikipedia:

Informed consent is a legal condition whereby a person can be said to have given consent based upon an appreciation and understanding of the facts and implications of an action. The individual needs to be in possession of relevant facts and also of his or her reasoning faculties, such as not being mentally retarded or mentally ill and without an impairment of judgment at the time of consenting. Such impairments might include illness, intoxication, insufficient sleep, and other health problems.

Somehow, I don't think that being constantly tired would classify under that. It probably refers to something more along the lines of being awake for >36 hours (I think that some of the people I know have done this). On the other hand, if the definitions of "impairment of judgment" is taken to be sufficiently liberally, well ...

* Under the influence of desire-driven capitalism.
* Under the influence of hormone-driven desires.
* Under the influence of biological imperatives.
* Under the influence of bravado.
* Under the influence of love/infatuation.
* Under the influence of sadness/depression.
* Under the influence of apathy.
* Under the influence of the Shiny!
* Under the influence of what seemed like a good idea at the time.
* Under the influence of trying to impress someone for the goal of sleeping with them.
* Under the influence of hunger.
* Under the influence of needing money to buy this thing.
* Under the influence of trying to rebel against one's parents.
* Under the influence of not having enough self-control.
* Under the influence of thinking that it was a fool-proof plan.
* Under the influence of temporarily forgetting that the laws of thermodynamics exist.
* Under the influence of biodegradability/impending death.
* Under the influence of insufficient education.
* Under the influence of over-education.
* Under the influence of trying to get as far away from the past as possible.
* Under the influence of hatred.
* Under the influence of boredom.
* Under the influence of being in a bad mood.
* Under the influence of philosophy.
* Under the influence of a possession-driven ideology.
* Under the influence of having no idea what to do in the situation.
* Under the influence of having no life.
* Under the influence of having a life.

Have any to add? Tell me!

Thoughts on the World: Equal Rights Amendment

From Wikipedia, for those uninformed about the Equal Rights Amendment:

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is the name of a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution intended to guarantee equal rights under the law for Americans regardless of sex. Amendments can only be a part of the Constitution when approved according to the process in Article V of the Constitution. The final deadline for approving the ERA passed in either 1979 or 1982—depending upon one's view of a controversial extension of the ratification time constraint. In the intervening years, public discussion on the ERA has been greatly reduced, though the proposal has been reintroduced in every Congress since 1982.

From the "Criticism of the ERA" section in that article:

Opponents of the ERA argue that its passage would have far-reaching implications, obliterating traditional distinctions between the sexes. Women, ERA opponents claim, would be required to register for the draft just as men currently do, and would have to serve in combat just as men must. Opponents go on to assert that the ERA would also remove laws that specially protect women, such as labor laws in heavy industry.

That's the thing: Equality means Equality. If you want equality, you lose all of the protections which were put in place as a result of perceived inequality. Yes, those laws could be rewritten to use some objective measurement (muscle mass, intelligence (IQ), etc.) or set of equations to determine what protections would apply, but that would be too complex, wouldn't it? After all, we don't have a government of experts, we have a government of people who are good at convincing other people that they have similar opinions. Popular rule is not as good as Scientific rule.

Of course, I suppose that I am in the segment of the populace which would gain a lot of power if scientific rule was implemented, so take that will a grain of salt. Still, for internet legislation, it would make more sense to have people who spend a lot of time on the internet, and know how it works. For wars, it would make sense for whoever is deciding where to send troops to actually know what's going on, and where those troops would be best served.

Anyways, back from that tangent: If you want equality, you lose specific protection. That is what equality means. You can't have both equality and special protection; wanting that is like having your cake and eating it to ("Oh Noes, we didn't want to be discriminated against, but we also wanted to be protected! Whatever shall we do?").

Yes, I do sound a bit misogynistic, don't I? I'm insulting the people who are arguing against something which I would like to see happen, perhaps mostly because of how funny it would be (think about how people would react. On the whole it would be a good thing, but all the idiots in the country would react hilariously).

Other critics have argued that the courts could rule that the ERA would mandate the recognition of same-sex marriage. They point to various court decisions, including a Hawaii Supreme Court decision in 1993, a Baltimore, Maryland circuit court decision in January 2006, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling for same-sex marriage in 2003, and to a decision by a California trial court in March 2005, all of which used state bans on sex discrimination as partial justification for the rulings.

So what? Why should I care what people choose to do with their lives? Why does it even matter? Okay, so if females marry other females, heterosexual males obviously feel threatened - after all, what if all of them decide that they don't need men? Why do they need us in the first place? After all, in the modern world, we're pretty much useless. When that revolution comes, I expect that the only thing keeping me out of labor/death camps would be that I know more about computers than most of the populace, both male and female, and that I occasionally do useful things (not often, however).

The same goes for males marrying other males, I suppose: the heterosexual females consider it somewhat of a threat, for similar reasons. After all, if women don't need men, why should men need women? Okay, childbirth and all that, but the world is overpopulated anyways, and I'm sure that we could find a way around that if we really wanted to (all that would be needed is the eggs - on that note, I heard about a way to cause fertilization of an egg that completely bypassed the need for sperm from males. I don't remember the details, though). Genetic engineering and all that. This argument seems a bit weaker to me, but I suppose that it's just as valid.

Further disclaimer: I'm pretty much asexual. I'm also an ero/agapephile (for those of you who don't remember the roots, that means that I'm attracted to people who love me romantically with "pure" aspects - as opposed to storgephilia, which is just weird. Really). Most people are, I suppose, but most people are not asexual as well. I have a longish essay on my sexuality lying around somewhere, and if you ask I might give you a copy. It makes very little sense.

Back from that tangent, to the tangent it emerged from: I couldn't care less about who, or what, you're attracted to. If you don't shove it it my face, I will, probably, never ask. If you talk about sexuality with other people, accept that I'm going to get irritated, as I've heard more about it in the last few weeks than in the prior years, and I'm fed up with it. It's amusing the first time - a fun chance to laugh at people who think that it matters. After that, just shut up already! If you insist on public displays of affection, I may make comments, such as "I hate the spring," "You people sicken me," and so on and so forth. Yes, I'm bitter. Deal with it.

Back from that tangent: Why should it matter? If you want equality, you get equality! You're not able to say stuff like "I'm not homophobic, but I don't want those damn gays to marry, there'll just be more of them." Yes, there will be more of them, because people will realize that there's less drama between people when who know how the other works! (See this Craiglist posting for amusement. It's rather interesting.)

So, moving on, again:

Some supporters of the ERA characterize some of the opponents' arguments as "scare tactics," or as overstating the changes designed that the ERA would impose in specific areas of the law. For instance, ERA advocates argue that the assertion that the ERA would require women to register for the draft ignores the fact that, under Article I of the Constitution, Congress has always had the power to draft women. Opponents respond that the status quo, in which Congress may draft women—but has chosen not to—is different from requiring that any draft apply equally to men and women.

It's better to continue in a status quo where women are discriminated against than to require that they not be discriminated against. It's better to continue with an institution that is recognized to be sexist than to go to an institution that is not sexist. Gah. I only realized that the system of drafting people still existed when I was reading up on the ERA! How the hell are you able to complain about having to register for the draft? It's dead. It's never going to happen again - attempting to reinstate it would result in a rebellion.

Critics also maintain that the ERA would prohibit single-sex schools, sports teams or even restrooms—they point to a decision by a court in the State of Washington which ordered a fraternal civic organization to admit women, based upon the ERA within its state constitution. Finally, some opponents of the ERA contend that the amendment simply is not necessary, and that other provisions of the Constitution—and various rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts—provide sufficient support for equal rights for both genders; and that the amendment would explicitly imply that women had never been equal under the law before the amendment's passage.

So? As a friend said, not matter which restroom you go into, there's going to be someone in there who's attracted to you. Solution? Go to single-person restrooms. Why do we need single-sex schools and sports teams anyways? The creation of latter is a recognition that the two sexes are unequal (which is, of course, not something that you're able to do in this world any more), and the creation of the former makes no sense to me. I suppose that, in some higher social classes, it makes sense - after all, if their children are not exposed to the other sex, they're not going to get involved in all of the drama, they're not going to have sex before they're of legal age, and all that. Strangely enough, I think that these are quite possibly the same people who object to the legalization of homosexual marriage, in at least some cases. After all, isn't it just common sense that not exposing someone to members of the opposite sex is going to make them less likely to be able to interact with the sex? It would also increase the amount of "experimentation" within the sex. Okay, so it's not a bad thing, but yes, it is. If you only allow homosexual "experimentation," how are people supposed to know if they're actually heterosexual?

Yes, I'm drawing some weird conclusions. I'm tired, my mind is doing weird stuff, my computer is being very, very slow, and I'm getting irritated at the world. If it makes you feel any better, pretend that I'm just working on building a setting for a story. Actually, that would be a pretty good idea, if I was better at writing dialog, believable characters, and so forth. Fictional Histories are so much simpler, and I suppose that these ideas are perfectly suited for one.

Erm ... I'll get back to that idea later.

Compare the ERA with the CEA:

Equality Rights Amendment:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Constitutional Equality Amendment:

Section 1. Women and men shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place and entity subject to its jurisdiction; through this article, the subordination of women to men is abolished;

Section 2. All persons shall have equal rights and privileges without discrimination on account of sex, race, sexual orientation, marital status, ethnicity, national origin, color or indigence;

Section 3. This article prohibits pregnancy discrimination and guarantees the absolute right of a woman to make her own reproductive decisions including the termination of pregnancy;

Section 4. This article prohibits discrimination based upon characteristics unique to or stereotypes about any class protected under this article. This article also prohibits discrimination through the use of any facially neutral criteria which have a disparate impact based on membership in a class protected under this article.

Section 5. This article does not preclude any law, program or activity that would remedy the effects of discrimination and that is closely related to achieving such remedial purposes;

Section 6. This article shall be interpreted under the highest standard of judicial review;

Section 7. The United States and the several states shall guarantee the implementation and enforcement of this article.

The CEA makes a lot more sense, right? Well, look at section 4: What's that supposed to mean? Does it make attraction to people based on their appearance unconstitutional? Does it prevent hiring people for hard labor jobs based on how strong they are? My best guess is that it makes unconstitutional any criteria which tend to weight high scores in the direction of any given group which is protected under this amendment. In other words, it makes DNA unconstitutional - after all, DNA tends to produce certain traits in certain groups more often than in others. It also prevents casting for movies or plays based on gender, appearance (race), or pretty much anything else.

Section 5, however, prevents it from removing discrimination under the mask of preventing discrimination: collage programs which try to promote minority groups are untouched. In other words, reverse discrimination is allowed. Sorry, am I interpreting that a bit more intelligently than they wanted? Too bad.

Section 6 prevents me from being able to interpret this. I know nothing about law, and thus my interpretations, no matter how accurate, don't matter. Section 7 is pretty standard, just making sure that it will enforced.

The ERA has not yet been ratified, though it has been reintroduced at every congress since 1982. The CEA has not yet been introduced.

That was a long post. Expect more as I find other stuff to get angry about.

Edit: Fixed some of the formatting. I still think that it should be 1.5-spaced, not single-spaced, though, and I can't find any way to fix that.

A Short Note on Religion

While watching Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, I had this thought:

Any religion or philosophy that encourages its members to have as many children as possible is still based in the era when having as many children as possible was a survivall strategy. Now, of course, with the survival rates of children in 1st world countries being what they are, and overpopulation being what it is, such religions should be considered a form of preemptive warfare, and should not be tolerated (think about it. Why would you need to have a vast population unless you needed to outcompete another group for something? In this world, its competing for resources, such as food and oil. What does competition cause? Wars. Thus, encouraging any increase in a population is warmongering).

In other news, I should probably not even try to think when I'm tired.

In other other news, sleep makes me tired. Not having sleep also makes me tired. Bit of a problem, isn't it?

...

As my life isn't going that well right now, and I have pretty much no desire to write anything, I'll try to post something next month, or the month after that. Eventually. Maybe never.

Those who read

My attention has been brought to the fact that at least one person I know reads this blog, or at least has once. So, would any readers mind going to goatse.cz/hello.jpg? (Warning: may damage minds, sear souls, and so forth. I suggest looking at the wikipedia article before actually going there (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/goatse). Any mental damage cannot be construed to be my fault - after all, I could have put it as a link saying "Cute kittens!" - which, speaking of which, is Here.

See you next month.

Reflections on Valentine's Day

On most years, I consider Valentine's day to be a capitalist thing, barely worthy of the effort required to insult it. However, I must admit that it does have some things going for it: it is one of the few days in the year when it is considered to be a social neccessity to parade one's emotions in front of the entire world (wait, that's a good thing? I'll get to that in a moment), no matter if those emotions be happiness (at being in a relationship) or sadness (at being alone again).

So, I was in a relationship this Valentine's day, for the first time. Well ... to be exact, it did not begin this Valentine's day. In fact, I had (have?) been in a relationship, by and large outside of the public eye, for ... well, at least two months. I don't remember the exact time it began, but it certainly occured sometime before the beginning of December of 2007. Yes, this may surprise people who know me. It was a surprise to me as well, I suppose.

So, by and large outside the public eye? While many people may have noticed something, most of them probably thought that it was one-sided (and not on my side). One of my friends, in fact, thought that it was one-sided until just a few days before Valentine's. However, not until around Valentine's day was I sure that pretty much everyone knew.

I'm doing my best to take this all in stride, and to remember that almost all relatonships end. However, I still hope that I can prevent it from ending. I know that, if it does end (when it does?) I will have done my best to prevent it from ending. Short of drugs, force, etc., of course. And maybe I'll be one of the lucky ones and it won't end until I'm so jaded by this terrible world of ours (yours? I don't consider this world to be mine by any means) that I won't care. Or maybe it won't end, which is certainly what I hope.

Anyways, that was your dose of descovering that I am capable of human emotions, such as affection and love. Expect a does of sarcasm, satire, social commentary, and so forth tomorrow, if my plans for tomorrow don't work out - or maybe even if they do. I'm not sure what to write about, though. Maybe a sequal for The Seed? Maybe a rewrite? Something that will let me get away with both social commntary and gory descriptions of deaths, for sure.

(Written on the Eee, again. No spellchecker, and it's running quite slowly right now - probably because firefox has some other tabs open right now.)

A Short Note ...

As you have probably noticed, Descent Into Logic has moved from aetuneo.blogspot.com to descentintologic.blogspot.com. If you're here, you probably know already. Update your bookmarks accordingly.

Ravings from before Sleep

Warning: This is from when I should probably be going to sleep, so is not entirely coherent, probably. Also, written with the Eee, so pardon any typoes - also, it doesn't have a spellchecker built into firefox right now. If I remember, I'll look over this post sometime tomarrow, and clean it up a bit (I probably won't remember).

So, to begin, the sensation of being sat on by a cat, while in bed. Specifically, the sensation of having one's lower legs sat on by a cat, in bed. It is very warm - the blankets mean that almost all of the heat from both the cat and my legs remains in the general region, so it feels very hot. The weight helps; cats, while perhaps not that heavy, are heavy when on your legs, putting out warmth.

Continuing, my political affiliations: Other. Not simply Other because I don't want to say, or Other because I'm part of a party which is not quite mainstream enough to be recognized, but other because my beliefs swing between the extremely liberal and the extremely conservation, taking into account most veiwpoints in between, as a factor of the subject and my mood. In things which involve freedom of choice (abortions, army service, etc.), I tend to be very pro-choice. In fact, I actually think that there should be no supervision to prevent people from getting an abortion or joining the army if they want to. Their parents do not need to know - even if they are under 18, or whatever happens to be the standard where you are. The same goes for assisted suicide (or, as one might put it, the choice to be aborted).

I am both anti-war and pro-war. I believe that the deaths which wars cause are terrible and should be avoided, but I also believe that wars are a neccessary part of human development, as they prevent all of the idiot jocks from trying to figure out what I spend my time doing, and, in general, lounging around and being stupid while the rest of us are trying to do something. On the other hand, those idiot jocks are probably worse overseas then the would be here; after all, the marines keep on raping people, and even though a bit of it is admitted, most of it is never officially condemned nor reported by the victim. I am also told, by a person who I am inclined to believe, that the marines try to make their recruits very misogynistic - supressing the sex instinct, and making it seem dirty, a tactic right out of 1984. Wars are one of the things which are simply not supported in my social groups, along with rape, stupidity, and standing in hallways (the later two people in my social groups often fall victim to. Stupid, stupid people who stand in hallways, blocking the entire thing!)

By the by, did I mention that, if possible, I intend to get a job designing virus's for the government?

I also tend to take rather extreme veiwpoints; I will adapt a theory which is almost unanimously condemned to make it completely logical and supportable. For example, social darwinism. Seems like a bad idea, right? That's because herbert spencer intended it all as a joke. The punchline: He was saying that having to struggle for everything makes people weaker, and inferior to the people who can simply reach out and have whatever they want given to them.

Everyone else looked at me as if I was crazy. I should have told them the actual punchline, not just the effects of it. Then they claimed that I misunderstood evolution. They only think of Genes, and completely ignore Memes. Incidentally, if childbirth is how Genes are passed on, then schools and discussions are how Memes are passed both down and around. Every conversation is sex, but the purpose is an exchange of different types of information - Memnetic, not Genetic. Debates are simply large orgies.

It is, however, a pity that the defensive mechanisms of most prevent the acceptance of really new ideas by a certain point in life. That's what insanity is: a collapse of the filters which keep all of the stuff that conflicts with a certain worldview out of the mind. True insanity is when the defense mechanism begins to actively seek out new information, and integrate it into the mind without going through the higher thought processes. That's why people think that trees can talk.

Of course, the corporations would like everyone to be insane, but only in certain ways: integrating desires for their products, but not the idea that everything they make is shit. I think that they've figured it out, too. The first step is to make people just phase out ads, so the higher thought centers are bypassed. The second step? I don't know.

Also, the RIAA is a Trust. It manages the intellectual property of the record labels, at least as far as lawsuits are concerned. Why hasn't anyone noticed this? It's so obvious once you think of it. Of course, if you, the reader, is like most of the other normals, you're only going to be able to accept that idea if I sneak it in somewhere, or if you actually think about what you read, not just read it.

The type of people I hate the most are those who think outside of one box, but inside of another, larger box. Too many people are like that. In fact, I probably am a bit like it, in some ways. You never run out of boxes, after all. However, once you get far enough away from the little gray boxes in the center, and have few enough other people to deal with, it feels like you aren't in a box any more. After all, the box I'm in is big enough that I never have to see anyone else if I don't want too.

I'm becoming a lot more introverted than I used to be. Why is this? Well, I'm only extroverted under certain conditions now, primarily relating to talking to a small set of other people. Even with most of them, I prefer listening to speaking. The fact that I'm rather more extroverted while playing sports probably has a bit to do with this; all of my ability to speak and do stuff gets exhausted during that. Sometimes, I'm so intoverted that I might as well not be there. I enjoy sitting under tables, especially when there's only enough space for me. It reminds me of the inside of my mind when I have a headache.

That's all for now; I need to be able to wake up tomorrow.

The Seed: A Short and Gory Story.

It's not especially gory, but it is short.

Note: I really hate using Abiword on my Eee. It tends to freeze up when I go into fullscreen mode, or when I open documents with more than a few pages. There has to be some way to avoid this ... But until I find out, it looks like most of the stuff I'll be doing with it will be using a normal text editor.

Anyways, the story:

Imagine a small town – not small in the sense of the word that it covered only a few square miles, but small in the sense that it had a small-town feel to it. Most people knew most other people, but not well enough that any of them would be threatened by the relationship. A bit like a suburb, except that it was almost completely self-contained; in fact, it produced more than its inhabitants could use, mostly in the form of food – vegetables, fruits, grain, and meat. It was one of those special places which grows and grows, until it expands for miles in all directions, but, through careful planning and a fair amount of luck, retains the small-town feel that was mentioned before. Most of the houses were separated from the streets and their neighbors by gardens – not lawns, but actually gardens, producing vegetables, fruits, and shade. In fact, the town was filled with plants. Even the approximate center of it retained the small town feel; indeed, there were a few tall buildings, but the town square was a quite large park, with a large grassy area in the center, surrounded by trees.

Perhaps in part due to the peacefulness of the town, the citizens were very complacent. More like good-natured sheep than anything else, really. Nice sheep, of course, the sort that you would like to know, the sort that you would feel comfortable allowing to stay in your house while you were on a vacation to a less dangerous place, but sheep none-the-less.

And so, when the rock – perhaps it was a meteor – landed in the middle of the trees in the park, no one paid it much mind. Sure, the younger people in the town went to look at it, and took some pictures, and some of the scientists (some of the sheep liked science. They tended to spend a lot of time building elaborate structures of glass, through which they arranged for colored liquids to flow. The fact that they would often drink these liquids suggests that they were juice, or perhaps some sort of alcohol) even went to look at it, and measure it. They spent a lot of time bustling around it – even after everyone else got tired of it – and no one noticed when they went somewhere else. The older people in the town politely looked at the pictures, and said stuff like “Well, things these days!” and “Rocks falling from the sky! What do you think they'll think of next?”

This attitude explains a lot, really.

And so, the youngsters went back to their normal lives, and some of them fell in love with other youngsters – well, they thought that it was love, and who am I to contradict the dead? And so, as was the tradition, they went into the woods to do, well, what youngsters who think they are in love do when no one else is around. Being in love, they did not pay much attention to the changes in the wood – the trees had, somehow, become taller and more sinister (I say more sinister, but, to be honest, they were very friendly trees before), and there were strange, slightly metallic vines on most of the trees, which seemed to move whenever one looked away. And so, coming to what they considered a suitable location for doing, well, what they were going to do, they leaned against one of the trees.

Their parents were a bit worried when their children were not home by midnight, but were not overly concerned. After all, when they were young ... well, let's just say that they understood how easy it can be to loose track of time. When no one saw them the next day, of course, it became time to start looking for them. Neighbors were called, the authorities were called, and, in the sheep-like way, went around asking people pointed questions about what they had been doing on the night of June the 23^rd. It was actually May, to the embarrassment of the authorities when someone told them. Eventually, the truth was clear: the two youths in question had last been seen walking in the park, possibly in the direction of the forest, but more probably in the direction of the store which happened to be on the other side of the forest, in each others company. They had not been observed to have left the forest, or to have brought any supplies in with them (well ... not the sort of things any should considered to be essential for survival).

The authorities congratulated themselves on a job well done, and had begun to give themselves the rest of the day off, when they were told that, in fact, the youths had gone in the last night, and, it being almost nightfall, they would probably have come out if they were able to. The authorities privately decided that the youths had probably fallen and injured themselves, and decided the the honor of finding two injured people in a dark forest is greater than that of figuring out that two youths went into a forest to ... well ... and didn't come out. Besides, there could be nothing that they had spent so long doing in the forest that could not be unhealthy in some way.

And so, the authorities secured a supply of lights, blankets, and stretchers, and went into the forest, along with some concerned members of the citizenry. One of them – a bit unhinged after years at war – even brought a few guns, muttering something about guerrilla warfare and “them dirty hippy bastards.”

Put yourself in the shoes of a police officer, well meaning, but having spent so much time in inactivity that your reflexes had been slightly dulled. You are venturing into a dark wood to ... well, you know all that. You go into the wood, with the rest of your squad and some citizens, waving your lights around and calling out for the two missing people. Privately, you hope that they had already been making their way back out of the forest, but had been distracted by something shiny, or possibly each other. You hope to find them quickly, and be able to get out of there as soon as possible. After all, one of the eyes just winked at you!

Wait, eyes? Why the hell does a tree have eyes? And more than eyes, sharp, spiny vines, which you had been walking on for the last few minutes, and which had been making a crunching sound so much like dead leaves, but somehow different, like old, brittle bone – indeed, it would appear that you've just stepped in a corpse's rib cage, a corpse wearing clothing suspiciously similar to that of one of the youths. Looking up at the tree, you see where the eyes had come from: the other youth sits at the bottom of the tree, it's – for it can only be called and it now – eyes bleeding blood, and limbs chained to the ground by vines. And, from the tree, the eyes keep on winking, as you are ripped apart, limb from limb, your life giving blood used to nourish the vines, and the trees, your eyes taken for another tree, and your blood, your glorious blood, giving life and motion to that which had been motionless for so long!

The other members of your party hear your screams, and are just fast enough to see your eyes being plucked out. They die in similar ways, except for one of them, who is able to run, and made it as far as the edge of the woods before he tripped, and, looking up, realized that the grass in the open area was moving towards him, gleaming a dark, red, like fresh blood on green leaves, in the light of the moon, and lived long enough to feel the grass plunge into his body by the way of those of his veins that reached the surface, and begin to pump his blood out.

Goals

This year, one of my goals is to post fairly constantly. As I have a lot of free time right now, since classes are only just starting up again after the finals, I think that I might as well take the chance to lay out the rules which I'm going to try to hold myself to:

1) At least one post every month (setting the bar low, so that it will be easy to meet).
1.1) This post must contain content. In other words, not simply a post saying that I'm really busy and am going to post something as soon as I get to it.
1.1.1) Posts which I consider to contain enough content: A Segment of a Story (08/02/03), Eee! (08/02/02), I Hate Technology (07/12/01), Quad-core for $700 (07/11/20).
1.1.2) All of these posts are fairly long, and contain content, which may be interesting.
1.1.3) Quantity does not trump Quality. If it makes the most sense to post one well-thought out post, perhaps four pages long, every month, then so be it.
1.2) This post does not count.
2) Posts do not have to use logical or sensical numbering systems, words, languages, and so forth.

A Segment of a Story

(Again, posting from my Eee. Pardon any typos.)

A while back, I felt creative, and so wrote four pages of a story, which I eventually hoped to grow into a novela or even a novel, set in a cyberpunkish world, with at least a bit of biopunk thrown in for good measure. However, having written the prologue and some of the first chapter, I ran out of creativity, and haven't come up with more creativity yet. So, here's the prologue. I'll post the first part of the first chapter later, probably after I finish the second part of it, and so on. Or maybe I won't.

Prologue:
An Escape

They ran through the sky, laughing and carrying what they had stolen away. Their bodies ran along the ground, ducking and dodging between the pillars of the ruined city, holding nothing but air and memories of what they had done. Behind them, nothing happened. The guards did not wake, the bells did not sound, and the dogs did not run after them, howling for the return of what they had taken. Even so, they were pursued, followed by memories and truth, hounded by guilt. None of them were entirely sure that what they had done was right, and all doubted the truth of the matter.

No matter. They ran, and, in running, left what they had done long behind them, perhaps further behind than any could have possibly expected.

When they first woke, the electrodes scuttling away from their minds, repulsed by conscious thought – for, by law, none must enter except when asleep, and none not asleep may remain – they were elated, the adrenaline of the dream persisting beyond its domain. However, they soon calmed, and, in the harsh reality of reason, began to think. It had begun as only a drunken idea – not drunk in the simple way that you might understand it, where hidden facets come to light, but true drunk, when entirely new entities form within the depths of the mind, and then surface – which had, as usual, been met with approval by all parties. The drink had lent itself to convincing the electrodes to let them in, and to fooling the silicon minds which controlled their world, tricking them into opening the gates. It would also lend itself to hiding what they had done: all they had were memories, and memories are easy to hide – or remove.

But the electrodes would know, and remember. They would tell their masters, the smallest tendrils of the silicon minds, and the knowledge would slowly – or perhaps not so slowly – filter up, and flow around, until no place would remain where they could hide.

The destruction of an electrode – or even a hundred electrodes – was only a minor crime, since the electrodes were technically property, and the punishment would be much less than that for the theft. And so, the electrodes were destroyed, crushed beyond recognition by the brutality of fear.

And the Idea was safe. Nothing would find it, or notice it. At least, not before it was ready.

Eee!

I finally have a laptop: the 4G model of Asus' Eee PC. It's a lot smaller than one would expect, but it's a great machine. The screen is very readable, the keyboard is, while small, okay for typing (I'm using it to type this, in fact), and, all in all, the hardware is great. The software it comes with ... well, I'm sure that it's good for some people. Personally, I like having a full desktop, which means, in this case, eeeXubuntu. Basically, Xubuntu with tweaks so that it will work better on an Eee.

In other news, a week or two ago I was working on a list of components for computers in various price ranges ($500, $1,000, $2,000, and $10,000 - everything from a budget machine to an overpowered monster), and I gave up after figuring out that even a $500 computer could contain a Core 2 Duo (1.8GHz, I think it was). Computers are cheap enough that even a very minimal machine is far faster than most people would need, and after you get to $1,000 on a single machine, all you can really do is add in RAM, Hard Drives, Optical Drives, and cooling. After all, one processor is the limit on most commercial systems (server boards tend not to support SLI, which I, for one, would want).

Anyways, my intent was to make the following points: 1) anyone building a $10,000 system probably knows more than me. 2) anyone building an overpowered system for as little as possible probably knows at least as much as me. 3) anyone interested in taking my advice probably knows less than me, and thus should not be trusted to build a system from the component parts.

If anyone is really interested in my advice, speak up, and I'll give some advice. Depending on how you ask, the advice might be along the lines of "learn to spell, or get an excuse as to why you can't spell."