Plastic Electric 'Blog

2003-07-30T22:38:00.000Z

Thank You

Thank you for your messages of sympathy, etc. (I might have missed some, due to Enetation playing up, but I know there were at least two more than are currently showing up (because I saw them before they disappeared).)

I don't know if Tigger's ashes have arrived back from the vets', yet. The vets themselves don't do the cremation, but it's done via them. Tigger's ashes hadn't arrived yesterday, but they might have arrived today (I haven't checked, yet). I suspect the scattering will be done this weekend.

Ben's ashes are scattered near a bush that he used to like sleeping under. Lara's ashes (if I remember correctly) are scattered very near by, next to what used to be a fur tree. She liked the tree stump. Tigger's ashes will probably also go very nearby, as she liked sleeping in little nests of grass nearby.

The house, strangely enough, doesn't seem strangely empty. It's not an emptiness as such. It's different. It's as if it's smaller. There's less to this house now. It's as if a space that was occupied by Tigger, a space which existed for Tigger throughout this house, has closed up. This house feels smaller, and simpler, as a result. It's quieter. There's less life to it.

Still I glance in the bathroom in passing, and wander into other rooms, as if looking to see if Tigger is there. It's an old habit now, but now it just reminds me that Tigger's no longer here. Every evening meal I remember that there's no need to set aside bits of food anymore. When I wander into the back garden, it can't be to see what Tigger's doing.

Henri, our tortoise, is still around, though. She was our first pet, and, once again, is our only pet. She hasn't been our only pet since 1975. (She's been microchipped, so there's no point in stealing her. She also has a lot of distinctive scarring from before we had her, so there's even less point in stealing her. She's far too recognisable.)

Lara's death was sad. She was the first of our cats to go. But she went at a ripe old age - seventeen!

Ben's death was sadder, as we only had one cat left (Tigger).

Tigger's death has been the saddest, I think, because now all three of our cats are gone. And because Tigger was the cat who chose us.

I would like to have cats again, sometime in the future. But, as cats can be very long term things, I don't plan to have any until my life is sufficiently stable, and that sort of thing. But any such future cats would be no replacements for Ben, Lara or Tigger - they are irreplaceable.

Anyway, thanks again for your messages of sympathy.

2003-07-23T18:21:00.000Z

Tigger

(How Blogger has changed since I was last here!)

Well, my blog's a mess, and much neglected, but I'm not here to do anything about that right now.

I'm mourning.

My cat Tigger, who was approximately 21, has just died.

I am, of course, upset by this.

She was not eating much at all yesterday, and wasn't eating again today. Except a very small amount of stuff. And she was quiet, and seemed to be not too well. She wasn't obviously suffering, and was doing her usual things, except she wasn't eating, and was visibly sluggish in her movements.

So, she was taken to the vets' this afternoon. (They made her Cat Of The Year recently, in her honour.)

Recently, in this hot/humid weather, Tigger's taken to sleeping in a little 'nest' of grass out in the back garden. She loves it there. She was sleeping there this afternoon.

Then it came time to take her to the vets'. I didn't take her; my mother always takes her. She was taken down there, and was to stay overnight, on a drip, as she was dehydrated.

Last night, while I was watching telly, Tigger did her usual thing of standing on me while I lay on the sofa. She turned and walked around on me, enjoying getting attention. It seemed she wasn't feeling too bad, despite being off her food.

The vets' phoned late this afternoon, and reported that Tigger's kidneys had finally, truly failed. There really wasn't anything to be done. She'd also had a severe fit while at the vets'. The recommendation was that she be put to sleep.

My mother went down there, so that Tigger would not feel abandoned. Tigger recognised her owner and carer, and was reassured. She went swiftly and peacefully.

She's been brought back here, just for tonight, and I have said a postumous fairwell and goodbye. She's curled up in her 'visiting the vets'' basket, in a way she curls up when she's really happy and content and comfortable.

I am, of course, crying.

No more nice bits of food thrown to her on the floor.

No more crawling over me, purring, late at night.

No more being taken for walks around the garden.

No more sleeping on my mother's pillow, with my mother having to share Tigger's bed.

No more being brushed, purring away, enjoying being groomed and taken care of.

No more nice treats to eat right after being given pills (which she didn't like), or after coming in from the garden.

No more curling up in her little bed in the bathroom.

No more listening to the radio or television, so that she doesn't feel completely alone when we're not about.

Now, it's just like she's sleeping.

She loves sleeping.

2003-04-05T14:09:00.000Z

I am Honoured

Many bloggers fear the time when someone they already know, someone from 'real life', will find their blogs. It can be an irrational fear, a manifestation of self-conciousness as a kind of paranoia, but a fear that still afflicts many bloggers. I have been one such blogger.

Today, I got an email from an old friend, Michael. He has found my blog! He stuck 'barsticus' into Google, the stalker's friend, and found me that way. To my relief (not that I had terribly great fear of what he'd think, for I have very much come to terms with being a blogger), he spoke well of it. Or wrote well of it, or typed well, as the case may indeed actually be.

To my honour (is that the right way of wording it?), he has even been inspired to start his own blog, Diary of a Supernaturalist. Although new, it is already a good read. (And I'm not just saying that because he wrote nice, complimentary things about my blog there.)

I have known Mr Michael since, oh, the mid eighties. Haven't had much contact with him for a while, though, but that's because we blokes really are crap at keeping in contact. But I shall leave you to read his blog if you want to know more about him.

Anyway, I now feel as if my own blog has 'graduated' to the next level - a blog that has inspired the beginnings of another blog! Now, finally, I feel as if my blogging really is somehow real in a way that it wasn't before.

That's all, for now.

2003-04-04T18:56:00.000Z

Been Busy

This last week, I've not been too well. Sunday, which was Mothers' Day, was a day on which I felt unwell enough to declare to myself that I was unwell. The rest of the week has had me feeling generally naff, a bit down because of it, lethargic and generally naff.

I'm feeling better now. I've just had chicken'n'chips.

I'll spare you the details of earlier on in the week. Except to mention a spate of monster turds, and toothache that turned into some kind of gum ache, very much in the style of a molar seeking to erupt, but not managing to do so.

Other than being not so well, I've been getting rather bored with job seeking. It's already become a chore. And writing a splendiferous CV to put up on the web is something that's beginning to make me feel a bit miserable.

Other than that, I was quite enjoying preparing a bunch of XHTML documents and stylesheets to be my all-new, personal website. An official one, that is. One in which I give my full name, and stuff like that. One for the potential employers to see.

But, augh, CV writing is just something I never, ever enjoy.

Also, I've been following the war. Those Americans still seem to be shooting the wrong people (Brits, civilians, bus passengers in foreign lands...). Haven't heard of them bombing any Chinese embassies, yet.

It's scary. Americans are crap at urban warfare, and they're going to have to resort to something like that to take Baghdad. We Brits, on the other hand, have lots of experience of it, largely from Belfast. It'll be interesting to see how the American invasion of Baghdad compares to the British invasion of Basra. But scary. Those Americans are just too ready to shoot civilians rather than face the risks of war, it seems.

Ah, so much I could say about this war.

2003-03-15T23:57:00.000Z

I have no Style

As you may have noticed, I have no style! Due to the need to stick my CV somewhere on the web, I've decided to reorganise things a bit. Or even a lot. So, my BTinternet webspace has been cleared. I'll have to sort out some new webspace for my personal stuff. My personal personal stuff, that is. Stuff like this. Perhaps I'll get even more personal.

2003-03-13T20:58:00.000Z

Looking for a Pimp

After doing job searching until midnight last night, I overslept terribly. Got up after one in the afternoon, with a headache that's lasted all day.

So, this afternoon, I quickly sorted through nearly 50 jobs from yesterday to consider further. Only nine were really worth acting on, as most were duff jobs that really do amount to scraping the barrel. Many I now have to fax my now finished resumé to, but I've never faxed anything before. My modem's s'posed to be able to send faxes, but I doubt that that'll really be an option (for technical reasons). I think the local library's got faxing facilities, though. Anyway, at least I know I can phone up places without suddenly getting lost for words and tongue-tied. Oh, and I typed, printed and posted my first letter of application, too!

Tonight, I think I'll search around for job agencies to register with. I fancy being a rent boy.

2003-03-12T16:27:00.000Z

Nervous Patient

I've just come back from the dentists. Well, I only saw one of them, but they have several there.

I was nervous, but not terrified, when I got there. More sort of apprehensive. The nurses in the reception area got me to fill out a medial history form, as it had been so long since I was last there (or at any dentist's, for that matter). This, fortunately, gave me a good opportunity to say, in writing, that I'd taken several years to overcome my irrational phobia of dentists.

After not too much waiting, it was my turn to go up. But this just meant going up to wait in the smaller, upper waiting area. It was just a few chairs at the end of the landing (their dental surgery is in what otherwise would've been a domestic house). But the nurse was already there, and it was my turn to go in!

I went in, and the quiet dentist (potentially in a scary way) greeted me. Very gently. I took the opportunity to mention that I'd taken a number of years to overcome an irrational phobia of dentists, and he stretched out his hand to greet me more, um, thoroughly, I suppose.

Then he invited me to take the chair. This was not scary in and of itself. I find dentist's chairs really quite comfortable and relaxing. But it meant that he'd soon be looking into my mouth. Instead, he sat by the door, and asked me what I was looking for in the way of dental stuff. I said I was there for a general assessment, mentioning that my teeth were in a terrible state. He clarified his question by asking what sort of results I had in mind. I hadn't really thought about it much. I said I'd like to be able to use my teeth pretty much normally, but that I wasn't that interested in all that cosmetic stuff (though I wouldn't mind having fetching teeth - as long as they don't look falsely 'perfect'). He summed it up as basically a matter of reconstruction work, saying that the cosmetic stuff tended to pretty much come with it anyway.

Then he lowered the back of the chair, switched on the light (which, for some reason, I kept looking at, until it occurred to me that I wasn't in an optician's), and I opened my mouth. He turned away, putting a mask on his face. Was he so repulsed by the horror he saw within? No, he was just getting himself some hygiene gloves, that's all.

The bit when he did look at my teeth was the bit I'd been dreading over the years. It's 'cause that's the time when the dentist can devastatingly say, 'Oh,' as if disapproving of abysmally low morals. He didn't. There were no signs or expressions of any kind of disapproval at all. He just carried on with the same, quiet, gentle voice.

The next thing I feared was the bit with the pokey thing. I just knew it would hurt, and hurt a hell of a lot, when he stuck it in two or three particularly delapidated teeth. There was one tooth in particular, the molar which inspired this trip to the dentist's, which I was particularly fearful of having probed. The moment came when he stuck that metal spike in it - and there was no pain. There was no pain! Perhaps that tooth's really dead. Actually, I did very slightly feel it, but nothing much. I think he must've been being really careful.

Anyway, I've basically got to have lots of crowns, fillings, and plenty of root canal work (that stuff that Woody Allen's always having trouble with in his films). Phew! My third fear was that my teeth would be a gonna, and that it would be glasses of water for my teeth to sit in each night from now on. Perhaps that fear was somewhat exagerated, but still, there have been moments when I have wondered.

Basically, at least from this preliminary examination, it seems that all my damaged teeth can be saved. No extractions! That was quite a bonus. But, I have to remember, this was a preliminary examination. There will also need to be X-rays, and that sort of thing, too. But still, it's really put my mind at rest. Well, nearly.

There are one or two remaining things for me to consider. Firstly, there's the issue of sedation. It sounds quite attractive, but there are reasons to be fearful. Secondly, there's the cost of all this work (though it'll be done in stages). Even with getting a bulk discount of something like forty to fifty percent, the estimate is £4411.60!

I'll definitely have to see if I can get such work done on the NHS instead.

Anyway, one of the things that amused me during the course of the visit was the montage type picture of various bits of Monet paintings on the ceiling. It's conveniently and thoughtfully placed so that patients can admire some samples of his work while lying back in the chair. I suspect Monet was chosen for his relaxing qualities. Another was that they kept referring to patients like me as nervous patients.

After thanking them for their time, paying the fee for the check-up (£24.60, but I thought it was only going to be £20), and departing, I was happy. I was pleased with myself for triumphing over my irrational phobia, and particularly pleased that I hadn't really been that nervous after all. Most of all, though, I'm very relieved that my teeth can be saved. They have the technology; they can rebuild them.

2003-03-12T09:34:00.000Z

Dentist, Dentist, Dentist, EEEEEEEEE!

Finally, today, I am going to see the dentist. I'm scared! My appointment is at 2:50 this afternoon, and I just know that I'll be terrified by then. But I've got to go through with it.

I've also managed to mismanage my finances, again, this month, and am now a bit strapped for cash. I have just enough to pay for the basic checkup. Investing in a new printer and good quality printer paper had done it. But one cannot skimp when one's applying for jobs, yeah? And I got two reams of paper for the price of one, which was particularly good, as they cost £9.99 each. (A ream, by the way, is 500 sheets, 'cause that way it's 1000 sides. So, I literallly bought reams of paper yesterday.) I hope my jobseekers' allowance comes through soon!

Damn, I'm really not going to be able to concentrate on much today. I've still got some of my resumé to finish. It's now that final editing stuff, of trying to get it to fit on just two sides (two millireams? or four? (single sided)), of trying to avoid needless repetition, of trying to get the bad bits from seeming so bad without resorting to dishonesty, and so on.

I'm really scared about seeing the dentist.

I really must do some real jobsearching today, too. I'm s'posed to keep a record of what I've been doing, but so far it's mostly stuff about buying a printer and trying to sort it out, and writing the dreaded CV, of course. (Actually, it's a resumé. 'CV' literally means something along the lines of 'the course of one's life'. A resumé is just a sort of short summary of skills and stuff, and that's what I've been writing, as that's the kind of thing that the advice stuff I've been reading is saying. If I was to write a full CV, it would be several times the length, be much more chronological, and would be much more difficult to keep from looking dismal.)

I'm really not looking forward to going to the dentist's. I'm scared! I don't wanna go! Please, can somebody hold my hand? Help!

Perhaps my next entry will be made with no teeth.

2003-03-11T11:01:00.000Z

I Have Too Much Length?

Good news! I can write my own resumé without going mad with depression! It's not finished, yet, but it's well on the way. Should it really be taking a few days to write, though? It's only two pages (seems that resumés are s'posed to be short here in the UK), but I can be confident that I'm making a good job of it. And I've been continuing to pursue printer things, too, which takes a bit of time.

Back in the mid nineties, I noticed that there was a rather sad tendency for some blokes to boast about how 'long' their penes were. These boasts were made in some social discussion fora on the web (but those particular fora have ceased to be). They would try 'clever' strategies, like asking what the average size was, and if seven/eight/nine/thirty-four inches was too short. Then there were the 'sad' stories from blokes who claimed they couldn't have relationships because women were always frightened away by the sizes of their 'enormous' appendages. Why these sad pathetics thought the rest of us wouldn't see through their dismal ploys I just don't know. I liked to reply by saying that I don't have a fixed-length penis, but have a nice, modern, hydraulic one that changes its size according to circumstances, and that it also doubles as a crude thermometer the rest of the time.

Why do I mention this? I am reminded of it because of a phone conversation I had yesterday. Not with a bloke who was bragging about his exagerated penis, but a girl working at Lexmark's customer service thing.

I'd phoned up about my printer troubles (I'm still not entirely satisfied, and it's a real pain when the printer software springs a major haemorrage of a memory leak (I've hit my computer's reset button twice!)), so as to exhaust that particular avenue. During the course of the conversation, though, which had swiftly moved into areas she was not trained in, she told me that it was too long. It, that is, is my USB cable. It's three metres, but she told me that it should only be 1.8m. The areas she's not trained in are those of Linux.

The conversation went something like this (though I'm summarising here).

Hello, Lexmark customer services. How may I help you? asked the call centre girl. (I'm really tempted to write a perverted, as in pervy, version of this. 'Hello, how may I service you? asked the call girl.') She had quite an appealing Irish accent.

Hello! The other day, I bought a Z25, and the box said ≥ Linux RedHat 7.0, and I've got 7.2, but it's not recognising the printer properly, and your website says 7.0 and 7.1, but not 7.2.

She said something I didn't really hear clearly about not being familiar with something. I'd forgotten that I could increase the volume on my mobile. I'll just look it up. There was a pause while she looked it up. It is compatible, she said. It says here that it's compatible with 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2.

Oh, I said. Oh, that's good. But the system's still not recognising it properly. The printer configuration stuff doesn't show any printers. And it's not always managing to print.

She got me to perform a printer self-test thing, which the printer passed successfully. Then she asked, How long is your cable?

Three metres.

We don't support cables longer than 1.8 metres, I'm afraid. Your cable is too long for the printer.

No, it isn't. I enjoyed saying that.

The printer itself needs the cable to be no more than 1.8 metres. You'll need to use a shorter cable. A three metre cable would explain why it's not working properly, and not always printing.

No, the cable's fine. I've got my USB driver configured for verbose debugging, and there have been no error messages at all in the system logs for USB. The problem is at a higher level of the operating system. I particularly enjoyed saying that.

She repeated the stuff about how she wasn't trained on my kind of system (Linux), and that she'd never had a call of this nature before. So, as she was unable to offer further assistance, she took my details, and arranged for someone who did know about Linux to call me back (or email me, or something). And guess what she said then? Our system's just gone down, so I can't enter your details. But you can use your printer's serial number as a case reference instead. Amazing.

Well, I haven't had a call or email from them. Perhaps I'm s'posed to phone them back? Maybe that's why she told me about their system going down.

I also spent a few hours checking out the other printers in the Argos catalogue, hoping that I might be able to get a substitute that's at least equivalent to the printer I bought as advertised. There was only really one, and that was a Lexmark Z55se, priced at £69.99 - 2p over three times the price of the Z25 I bought! There were also HPs and Epsons, which are supported by the open source community, and some Canons, which seem quite unsupported for Linux at all.

I phoned up the Argos customer service people, and explained that I'd checked on the box before purchasing, and that it had turned out to be seemingly incorrect. The woman agreed that there were, indeed, grounds for me to take it back and get a full refund. She said she'd also have to contact the supplier (presumeably Lexmark) and tell them about the misinformation, as well as telling the catalogue people about it. She was also going to phone the shop I purchased it from, to let them know that I'd be bringing it back.

Rather than returning myself to the situation of having no printer, and an Argos voucher to use, I decided to decline for the time being. I mentioned that I was waiting for Lexmark to call me back, and that I hoped that that would lead to a resolution of my problems. I said that I'd called Argos just to check on the situation, to see how things stood. I thanked her for her assistance, and that was it.

Now, if, instead, I'd been offered a substitute product, I think I would've taken it. It would either have been an Epson or an HP, or that Lexmark Z55se, but either way it would probably have been better than the Z25 I currently have. But was I being greedy? Well, maybe there is a little bit of opportunistic greed lurking here. But let's be honest: I bought a printer sold as being compatible with my operating system when, in truth, it's not quite compatible. And anyway, a full refund does seem quite reasonable, so I think it would be greedy of me to go for a substitution. And it's not Argos' fault, anyway. I do have a concience :-)

Oh, it also seems to be printing out my (unfinished) resumé very nicely!

2003-03-09T13:15:00.000Z

Printing

Yesterday was another busy day, but rather more successfully. It was, again, a day spent trying to get my computer to talk to my printer.

In the morning, I was fearing that I would have to resort to flashing my BIOS, just to get the BIOS to set the guts of the computer itself up correctly. This is a scary thing! Fortunately, I wisely decided to pursue less drastic options first. The less drastic option I tried was to restore the BIOS settings to their defaults, and then make a few, necessary adjustments for my system. It worked! Linux recognised the USB stuff first time, and even recognised my printer! I was very relieved and pleased.

Then came actually installing the printer software, which had to be downloaded from Lexmark for Linux. It all went well, and the test page came out properly first time (I think it came out properly, but I don't remember there being a reference image to compare it with).

But did this good streak of fortune last? Nope. While Lexmark's own printer software worked, the operating system in general (RedHat) didn't seem to recognise it. I spent a few more hours trying to sort it out.

It was a little tiny bit depressing, and quite frustrating and annoying. As I investigated Lexmark's site, I found that the printer (a Z25) was deemed to work with RedHat 7.0 and RedHat 7.1, but the RedHat 7.2 column of the table didn't have a mark in it for the Z25. That made me a little angry, as I have 7.2 (and am bloody well not going to downgrade to an earlier version just for the sake of a cheap printer), and the box the printer came in says, and I quote, ≥ Linux RedHat 7.0. I even checked in the shop first, to make sure that I wasn't going to get stuck with a printer I couldn't use.

Thoughts went through my head of storming back into Argos, glowering with disgruntlement, to require at least a refund. Or telephoning Lexmark to have a go at them. An even more delicious idea, though, was the one about getting a replacement, alternative product that would be at least equivalent to what I was sold, and that would work with RedHat 7.0 and above as advertised. That could, for all I knew, easily mean a much better printer! I was even quite looking forward to that, though I hadn't got as far as checking whether or not that would be an option.

In the hope of finding a less greedy (but lazier) solution, I visited the Linux printing site. There seemed to be quite a lot of displeasure there about Lexmark. Both Lexmark and Canon get singled out on one of the pages for special mention for lack of support for Linux. (The inclusion of Canon surprised me, as I'd always understood that they were decent, quality people, who wouldn't want to be lumbered with a bad reputation among system administrators.) Things did not look entirely good, though there were a few mentions of Z35s (almost identical printers, but I think they come with a black ink cartridge, as well as a colour one), and it seemed that some people were having success with similarish operating systems.

The warranty stuff that came with the printer said something about how users had to make use of customer support stuff before returning duff products. The phone number given on that leaflet type thing apparently came with a charge of something like £7! That seemed unreasonable, but I remembered that there had been a number, possibly different, in the software's help stuff. I decided to reinstall (for the umpteenth time) that printer software, just so that I could get at that number. Calling their support staff seemed like one good way of getting the opportunity to have a go at them for supplying a misleadingly advertised printer that I would not have bought otherwise.

Just as a final check, I decided to try printing something out. It worked! Wow! I tested again, and it still worked. My printer did work with RedHat 7.2 after all! I was very pleased and very relieved, but not entirely happy that I'd had to spend a few hours working at it. I'm still not terribly pleased that it's still not fully recognised by my system, but that seems like it might be due to RedHat (who seem to prefer new, seemingly unfinished configuration software to older, much more complete tools).

So, now I've used up something like a quarter of the ink just trying it out. Something did, at one point, spring a memory leak, and it was so bad I had to press the reset button on my computer (not good at all!), but otherwise things have gone fairly okayish. I made some sort of blunder printing out a thirty-something page manual for my motherboard, though, so it just turned into a waste of paper and ink, but at least I know it prints nicely. Images are a bit cheap, but that's okay, as I bought it as a cheap printer anyway. I will mostly use it for text.

Of course, with it being a new toy, I now want to have lots of fun playing with it. What can I print out? What can I justifiably print out? Well, a CV and letters of application for jobs would be a good start. I'd better get writing!

2003-03-08T08:43:00.000Z

I've been busy. Well, relatively busy.

On Wednesday

On Wednesday, I:

spent hours searching through UK jobsearch sites;
had an interview at the jobcentre (not for a job, but just so that they can assess my claim to be available for and actively seeking work);
popped into a recruitment agency type place to ask about registering;
bought a (cheap, Lexmark Z25) printer (from Argos (craply browser-specific site), partly with a token I got at Christmas);
and spent a few hours trying to get the new printer working.

The stuff at the job centre went okay. I wasn't nervous (hooray!), but was very quiet. The interviewer even commented on my quietness when it came to considering a job which involved telephone sales (or something like that). My quietness saved me from having to apply for that one.

As for the purchase of the printer, I feel a disturbance in the force. The printer was only £29.99, and came with a colour ink cartridge. Individually, those colour cartridges cost almost as much as the printer itself. Something's wrong. Something's badly wrong.

On Thursday

On Thursday, I:

spent hours trying to get my computer to work with my new printer;
posted a letter at the pillarbox just thirty seconds from my front door;
discovered I'd locked myself out when I returned from posting that letter;
investigated 'breaking' into my own home, but decided against it (no breaking actually required, as I'd left my window open, and would just need to climb up to it somehow);
phoned my mother, to confess to having locked myself out, and was relieved to learn that she just happened to be on her way home from Sainsbury's;
compared front gardens along my road while waiting;
got back into the house;
proceeded to try to identify my computer's motherboard, in the hope that this would help lead to a configurational problem which is preventing Linux from dealing with my computer's USB;
got up again from under my computer desk;
found a small piece of brown, sticky stuff on my hand, but did not know what it was;
looked at my shoes, and saw that one apparently had mud/earth on the underside;
went out onto the patio, to clean it off, incase it wasn't mud;
was hit by the smell of dogshit;
realised that some earth had been picked up by the dogshit, effectively covering and shielding the dogshit, which is why I'd not smelt it earlier;
proceeded to clean the affected shoe, trying not to gag and retch, and using plenty of disinfectant;
returned to my room, to continue trying to solve my computer's configurational problems (something to do with PCI interrupts);
smelt dogshit in my room (the aroma must've previously built up gradually, such that I did not notice before);
looked under my desk and chair, and elsewhere, for signs of dogshit contamination, but didn't see anything;
opened my curtains to increase ventilation;
and spent the rest of the day (many, many hours) trying to sort my computer out (which involved discovering that the motherboard is a PcChips M747 (version 5.0), and that the trouble seems to have something to do with such motherboards being cheap'n'crap).

Dogshit is horrible.

Yesterday

Yesterday was completely taken up with still trying to get my computer to work. But I also brought my system up to date (RedHat). And built a new kernel. And built another new kernel. The configuration problem is still not solved.

It's felt like a busy week. It was supposed to be spent doing lots of job searching stuff, not lots of computer configuration problem stuff, though. But I need to be able to print out my CV, when I've written it.

Looks like I'll be having a similarly busy weekend. My brother, in contrast, is in Brussels.

2003-03-05T01:27:00.000Z

What Shall We Do with the Open Spaces ... ?

Still a bit anxious, still a bit nervous, still a slight mixture of slight excitement and slight fear. Perhaps I'm still a little bit agoraphobic? Just a little tiny bit?

I thought my agoraphobia was long gone. Now I'm wondering if, perhaps, it's just a lot, lot milder than it was. It was always on the mild side anyway, but I'm wondering now if it's still just lingering on a little bit, so mild that it's barely recognisable as agoraphobia. Or maybe it's just something else. I still don't really know.

Anyway, yesterday, I finally got around to going to the job centre. It's changed a bit since I was last there. They're having some building work done, so they're temporarily seeing people in their upstairs, open-plan office area. It's all rather temporary, and seems rather too quiet. Hopefully that means there are very few people looking for work round here, and therefore there are plenty of vacancies? I hope so.

One thing I don't like is trying to explain what I've been doing. It just sounds so crap. What have I been doing? This is where depression sees its opportunity to strike back, to leap out from the darkness and take me down. It's why I find it so hard to write a CV.

It's the lack of evidence to show that I can do good, useful stuff. It's the lack of references, the lack of referees. It's the lack of jobs on my CV, the lack of 'proper', paid work. It's the lack of qualifications, the lack of a degree, the lack of recognised training within the last decade. How do I explain it all?

But I mustn't do what I did last time I made a real, serious attempt at finding 'proper', paid work. I must not fall head-first into another pit of depression. That's what happened last time I decided to really, determinedly seek a 'proper' job. It was bad, it was grim, and it set me back quite some way. Not good.

Yesterday, though, I felt quite positive. I can explain what I've been doing all these years. I can apply for jobs. I can ask the job seekers' advisors what I can do about my lack of referees. There are things I can do. It's still depressing, though, explaining that things went pear-shaped in the mid-nineties, and that following that I've been afflicted by agoraphobia and stuff.

Now I've got an appointment for today, to have an interview thingy with one of the people at the job centre. It will be a positive thing. I'm even managing to look forward to it more than I'm not looking forward to trying to explain my apparent, chronic crapness. This is good. I'll ask about what I can do about my lack of referees. I'll not be ashamed of myself. I'll instead take some pride in my independent-mindedness. I'll even make a point of how I need 'proper' work in order to improve my CV!

Yesterday, on the way back from the job centre, I passed a recruitment agency type place. I decided to pop in and ask about registering. A noticeably pretty girl (but not in a terribly interesting way) came, and asked if I had a CV with me. I didn't. She gave me their email address, and said I should email one to them. Hmmm, I wonder what they'll make of it?

So, that's another thing I've got to do today. I've got to bring my CV up to date. I think I'll just write it again from scratch, and see how positive I can make it all sound. Hmmm, I'll need to put it up on the web, too. I'll have to do some rearrangement of web stuff, I think.

Anyway, it's a good thing. I'm setting about making getting a 'proper' job my number one, full-time priority for the time being. Things are looking better. I can say, when asked what my hobbies are, that I'm learning Welsh. I can say, when it comes to what I've been doing work-wise, that I've been working on computer related projects, and the like (and that I still am). I can avoid sounding like a dismal failure of a human being. I am not a failure, I'm just different! :-)

So, let's see what's out there...

2003-03-04T06:42:00.000Z

Oh, Yesterday

Yesterday,

Tigger the cat fell off a table (actually the night before),
my tortoise woke up,
I deprived myself of sleep, and
I helped my computer illiterate client to get to very basic grips with transferring photos from his new, digital camera to his computer (and stuff).

These four things are mostly unrelated, except for the last two. My body clock's crap, so I had to deprive myself of sleep in order to go and help my client.

When Tigger fell off a table, she hit the floor with quite a thump. The thump was soon followed by a plaintive yowly cry. My mother and brother both got up to see if Tigger was okay (my brother, I think, had been sleeping in the room next door to my mother and Tigger), and I made my way upstairs (from watching telly) for much the same reason. Tigger was fine, and was happily purring while being made a reassuring fuss of.

There's not much to say about Henrietta the tortoise waking up. It's barely March (which depresses me for other reasons, as it seems this year is passing too fast and I'm not doing nearly enough stuff), so it seems a bit early. Perhaps it's just global warming. But it's nice to see Henri again.

The sleep deprivation was because I had to go and help my computer illiterate client yesterday afternoon. He's still spectacularly acompetent. Faced with a computer, his brain shuts down. I kept mentally sighing - and my heavy heart joined in. I privately lamented to myself when he'd misplaced a cable, which he thought he must've thrown it away. I secretly wilted in despair when he needed to be told how to close the window with the full size photo image in it (how the fuckety fucking fuck can he still not know that (almost) all windows are closed by clicking on that red 'X' button in the top-right-hand corner?). I was truly appalled when it turned out that his problem with his printer not printing any colour was because his colour cartridge had run out, and he hadn't bothered trying a new one until I was there. Sometimes I think he's just lazy.

Perhaps because I'd been awake since the evening before, I felt rather heavy inside. Lack of sleep does that to me. I start thinking about things I'd rather not think about, things that I'd rather were not the case, things that personally bother me for personal reasons. I just couldn't really manage to be enthusiastic in what I was doing yesterday afternoon. I just got on with it, and sailed through, as it was all easy enough. Still, it took a few hours, but only because we kept having to go back to the start so that he wouldn't get confused.

Blah. But it was nice to be paid £35 for my time.

I'm still feeling the effects of yesterday's sleep deprivation this morning. I feel sort of melancholic. Phlah.

2003-03-01T00:32:00.000Z

Double 'D's

Ach! I did make an error - a silly one - with the Welsh alphabet and its pronounciation. 'DD' is voiced. But I knew that. Why, then, do I keep conciously thinking it's unvoiced? I don't know. When I say 'Pontypridd', I voice that 'dd', don't I? If I try saying it without voicing the 'dd', I say it differently to how I normally say it. Hmmm. Anyway, voicing it certainly makes pronounciation generally easier. Welsh seems to be a language with ease of pronounciation in mind - even if things like 'hwyl fawr' appear to suggest otherwise.

2003-02-25T17:59:00.000Z

Mumbling Welsh

One of the things that puzzles many English speakers about Welsh words is the apparent shortage of vowels. Take place names such as 'Ynysybwl', 'Ynyshîr', 'Mwnt', and even 'Cymru'. Where are the vowels? How are they to be pronounced?

Well, they've actually got plenty of vowels in them! You see, 'Y' and 'W' are both vowels in Welsh. We're not unfamiliar with 'Y' being a vowel in English ('slippery', 'by', 'gryphon', etc), but we don't usually see it used in the way often found in Welsh. 'W' as a vowel is just something we're not used to (in English, anyway).

In Welsh, 'Y' is pronounced like an 'I' or a 'U', and can be long or short. From what I remember, 'Ynyshîr' is pronounced something like 'unusee-r' (or it could be 'unisee-r', I'm not sure). 'W' is pronounced something like the double 'O' in 'book' or 'Chinook' (rather like the 'U' in 'Linux', as it happens), but can also be long (same sound, just longer). So, 'Mwnt' is pronounced sort of like 'moont', but with the 'oo' being short. 'Ynysybwl', then, is something like 'Unisubool' (I think).

Just to make things even more confusing, 'U' is pronounced like 'I', again with both long and short versions. Fortunately, Welsh words tend to be spelt very phonetically (though there are pairs of letters which, in Welsh, constitute single letters). 'Cymru', then, is not pronounced 'simroo', but 'cumri'.

Something I've found rather amusing about Welsh pronounciation and grammar is that the Welsh language actually has mumbling built into it. How would you say 'yn Caerdydd'? What if you mumbled the start of it? Well, you might say something like 'ungaerdeeth' - and you'd be right! It seems that even the spelling changes to reflect such things, so that it's 'yng Ngaerdydd'. (Such things are called mutations, which amused me.) How can one not respect a language that actually embraces the human tendency to mumble?

Now, let's see if I can remember the Welsh alphabet (shouldn't be too difficult, I was exposed to Welsh place names every year of my life 'til I was eighteen).

A: A vowel, like 'A' in English, pronounced like 'a' in 'spank' or 'bad'.
B: A consonant, just like 'b' in 'balls'.
C: A consonant, just like 'c' in 'come' (but never like an 's').
CH: It's a single letter in Welsh, even though it's composed of two Latin letters. It's just like the 'ch' in 'loch' or 'bach'. It's a consonant (if you haven't already guessed).
D: A consonant (again), just like 'd' in 'Dick'.
DD: Another consonant, and, again, a single letter. It's like 'th' in 'thing', but I don't think it's ever vocalised (like 'th' in 'the').
E: A vowel! It's like 'e' in 'jet', but can also be long (sort of like 'air', or the 'air' in 'hair') (at least, I think it can be long).
F: A consonant. It's like 'f' in 'of', so that it's like a 'v'. It's never like the 'f's in 'muffin', though.
FF: Consonant; single letter. This is like 'ff' in 'muffin', but not like 'v'.
G: Consonant. Like 'g' in 'give', but not like 'g' in 'gently'.
H: A consonant, but not really pronounced. It's what's called a breathing, which is where you don't have a glottle stop. It's like the 'h' in 'an hotel', not 'an 'otel', or 'a hotel'.
I: Vowel. It's just like 'i' in 'it' or 'thing', and can be long or short.
L: Consonant. It's like 'l' in 'lick' or 'lubrication'.
LL: Ah! The notorious Welsh double 'L'! It's a consonant, of course, but how on earth to pronounce it? Well, you just put your tongue into the usual 'L' position, but you don't do anything with your voice or throat. All you do is just gently blow by the sides of your tongue - and that's it! There's no 'cl' to it (even if it sounds a little bit like that), it's just nothing more than blowing by the sides of your tongue when holding your tongue in the 'L' position. Easy once you know how :-)
M: A consonant, like the 'm' in 'moist'.
N: Another consonant, like the 'n' in 'noises'.
NG: Yet another consonant, like the 'ng' in 'thingy' (but perhaps, I think, with the 'g' at the end slightly pronounced).
O: Another vowel, like the 'o' in 'hot' or the 'or' in 'pork'.
P: Consonant. Like the 'p' in 'poke'.
PH: A consonant, and I think it's pronounced like 'ph' in 'phenomenal'.
R: A consonant, but always pronounced. It's also supposed to be rolled, but it only needs to be barely rolled. Also, it's the sort of rolling done with the tip of the tongue, not with the back (?). It seems to be enough to just fail to actually roll it the way the Scots do. So, it's like the 'r' in 'raging' or 'hairy', but not like the 'r' in 'car'. It's always pronounced, so that the 'Treorchy' is pronounced 't'reeor-rchi', not 'tshreeawchi'. (I've had a little trouble with that, as I can't roll my 'R's much at all.)
RH: Consonant, and seems to be the same as 'R'.
S: A vowel. No! It's a consonant. Like the 's' in 'smooth', but not like in 'comes' (I don't think it's ever vocalised).
T: A consonant. Like the 't' in 'touch' or 'tight'.
TH: Another consonant. It's like 'DD', so it's like the 'th' in 'things'. I don't think it's ever vocalised.
U: A vowel, but pronounced like 'i' in 'prick', or the 'ea' in 'steamy'. (But in north Wales, they pronounce it in a more French way.)
W: A vowel, like the 'oo' in 'look', but can be long like the 'oo' in 'cool' when 'cool' is pronounced in the sort of way which isn't silly like 'kewl', but is still emphasized a little.
Y: A vowel. 'Y' clear is like 'i' in 'thick' or 'ea' in 'gleam', while 'Y' obscure is like 'u' in 'butter' or 'muffin' (I don't know if it's ever pronounced in a long way, though, when obscure).

And that's it! Oh, all the pairs of letters in that alphabet are single letters in Welsh, by the way. But there are also dipthongs, too. 'ai' is pronounced like 'y' in 'my', and 'ae' is pronounced like 'a' in 'making' and 'ay' in 'hay'. 'wy' is also a dipthong, and is pronounced a bit like the 'oy' in 'Lloyd', but with the 'o' a bit more like the 'oo' in 'look'.

:-P :-)

So, there you have it! And (having just checked) the only mistake I made in the alphabet itself is that I put 'NG' in the wrong place. It should be just after 'G'. But we're allowed one error, yes?

That's all, for now.

2003-02-24T12:42:00.000Z

P'nawn Da!

Simon ydw i. Rydw i'n byw yn Essex ac rydw i'n siopa yn Essex, ord dydw i ddim yn gweithio yn Essex.

(I am Simon. I live in Essex and I shop in Essex, but I don't work in Essex.)

That's about all I can say in Welsh about myself, so far. I've been learning since Saturday.

Pwy ydych chi? (Who are you?) Ble rydych chi'n byw? (Where do you live?)

I had to keep looking stuff up to write that, but that's okay, 'cause I've only just started.

Currently, I'm using the BBC's site for learning Welsh, particularly the Catchphrase part. They've even got what looks like a soap opera called Ysbyty Brynaber, which seems to star some real dolls.

Why, you may ask, am I learning Welsh? Well, it's because I'm Welsh. I'm Welsh in the sense that my mother's Welsh (or was Welsh before she decided to renounce her Welshness out of shame). It's also because there's just something appealing about knowing an ancient, Celtic language which is nearly dead, and having some sort of personal association with it. It's also one way for me to gain a bit of a better understanding of my Welsh roots.

So, um... Hwyl fawr!

2003-02-24T01:26:00.000Z

It's Just a Cultural Misunderstanding

You know in Mars Attacks, where someone releases a dove of peace when the Martians are first visiting? And the Martians start killing everyone? And they later apologise, 'cause it was just a 'cultural misunderstanding'? (Except it wasn't at all, and they're just wreaking havoc for the fun of it, invading Earth, and so on.) Well, that doesn't really have anything much to do with what I'm writing about in this entry. Even though this entry is sort of related to WAR and AMERICANS and THE UNITED STATES (where there is plenty of room and scope and opportunity for cultural misunderstandings the likes of which haven't been seen since, oh, earlier today, probably).

Recently, I've been noticing a particular misunderstanding, the sort that prompts the hackneyed pseudowiticism that Americans and Brits are 'divided by a common language'.

Consider the statements, 'America is just being so, so stupid. I mean, they're seriously arguing that there are links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, as if such claims are at all believable!' What do those statements mean?

Many Americans, I've noticed, tend to point out that there are plenty of Americans who don't believe such stuff, who aren't stupid and ignorant, even though there do seem to be rather a lot of Americans who believe such nonsense.

To us Brits, while that's a good, relevant point, it's not directly relevant to the sorts of statements in question. Why? Because when we Brits say 'America', or 'the United States', or 'Britain', or 'the UK, or Australia, or Iraq, or wherever, we don't actually mean the people of those lands, those countries, those states and nations. We would even say, referring to our own country, that we strongly support the war. At the same time, we would also say that we strongly oppose war, at least without having a second UN resolution authorising it. The first we refers to the United Kingdom, but not necessarily the people of the UK. The second we refers to the people, not the state.

It seems, to me, that Americans take references to countries as referring to the people of those countries, rather than those countries, nations, states, as represented to the world by their governments. That's the difference. We don't mean the American people when referring to America; we're referring to the state (composed of fifty states) as represented (or misrepresented) by the government in the White House.

Now, I wonder how it looks the other way? What's the American perspective on this? I'd like to know.

2003-02-22T12:25:00.000Z

Breadsticks

Why am I nervous today? I don't know. I just am.

It's that kind of nervousness when you've got something like public speaking looming in the near future, and it's close enough to prevent you from concentrating properly. The topic for you to speak on will be ergonomic principles of modern toilet design. You know you'll be cacking yourself when the time comes to actually stand up and speak. Fortunately, you're a frequent user of modern toilets, but you're still unsure about how it's going to go down.

It's like when you're going on a date tomorrow night, and you're already more nervous than you want to be, 'cause it just means you'll be mangling all your words when trying to make entertaining conversation. You'll also drop breadsticks in your drink not once, but twice! And you'll giggle nervously, trying to make a joke of it. Or, at least, that's the sort of thing you fear will happen. More specifically, you fear they'll be terribly unimpressed, and will never really want to see you again. (What will actually happen is that you'll drop a breadstick in their drink.)

It's the sort of nervousness where you could put the nervous energy into preparing, except it's too soon to get ready. There are very, very slight butterflies in my stomach, except they're still caterpillars. What is it I'm nervous about?

Perhaps I'm falling in love, but just don't realise it. Can't think who I'd be falling in love with if that were so. Actually, no, it's not really like that at all. I'm just fishing around for what it could be. Hmmm, it's more like the sort of nervousness I had yesterday morning, but less so. Perhaps it's left over from that? Except I'm not seeing the dentist now for another two and a half weeks. It's far too early to be getting nervous about it. And I just know that that's not what it is.

Talking of first dates, I never actually had that nervousness on my very first ever date. I already knew the girl, as we were friends. It was one of those things where things just sort of moved from being friends on into being more than friends. I can't even remember what that first date actually was! I don't think there was one.

That's how I prefer it to be. I've never actually done proper dating as such. It always sounds rather American, anyway. And if I say, 'I'm dating someone', I'll feel like I'm saying something that belongs to women. Sexist? Silly? Maybe. But I'm just not into dating anyway, and never have been. 'Seeing someone' is how I'd much prefer to put it.

Hoping to impress the other party is, I have to say, something I really dislike. It's not that I don't want to come across well, but that I don't want that itself to be the issue. I much prefer casual, friendly, relaxed type stuff, much more like just being friends, but with there being more to the feelings, and a closer intimacy. Of course, you've actually got to get to know the person for that, unless you just happen to click right from the start (which is delicious!). So, I'd much rather end up in a closer, more intimate relationship via the casual route, rather than the dating route, if you know what I mean. I just don't want getting into a relationship to be the concious objective, but instead I want it to be just something that happens. (It doesn't help when my brain decides that I'm going to have a crush on someone I don't really know too well, though.)

But anyway, that's not what I'm nervous about now. As far as I can tell.

Perhaps it's not nervousness as such, but more a kind of anxiety? What am I anxious about? Well, there are some things for me to be a bit anxious about, such as my current cash-flow situation, but that's not the right sort of thing for this feeling I've got. It's in my stomach, in my upper abdomen, and is stroking along the sides of the tops of my forearms occasionally, and along over the little-finger-sides of the backs of my hands. And it's in my knees a little bit, too, from time to time. And my ankles.

Perhaps it's just the prospect of going to the job centre on Monday. Only it feels more exciting than that.

What can it be? Maybe it's just the anticipation of finding out what the answer to that question is.

I want to go out somewhere, and be with people.

2003-02-22T01:57:00.000Z

I was going to go to bed, but with Tigger being unwell, I've just gone on into that extra time.

Something I want to say: the blog that I've got is not the blog that I want. Just something I've been feeling for a long, long time, but haven't bothered to get to the point of even saying it in my head before now. Sometimes that extra time beyond tiredness can provide a bit of a different perspective, and lead to seeing things that were always being overlooked before.

2003-02-22T01:16:00.000Z

Blah

Today (as in Friday) just hasn't gone very well.

I was s'posed to go to the dentist's, but couldn't, due to a cash-flow situation that decided to bite today. Ended up having to make a new appointment instead, so now I've nearly three more weeks before my teeth get seen.

I was going to go to the job centre this morning, to set about trying to find a suitably naff job to do. Instead, along with being nervous and anxious about the dentist's, I spend the morning trying to find a way to be able to scrape together enough money to be able to pay the mere £20 for the intended dental check-up.

Having worn myself out with nervousness, anxiety, etc, I was too tired this afternoon to go to the job centre. I just spend the time playing a computer game instead.

And within the last hour, I've found that Tigger the cat appears to have cistitis, yet again. I woke my mother up to let her know, and she came downstairs to survey the situation. She wasn't entirely pleased, not because I'd woken her up, but because of the inconvenience and cost. Tigger will have to have yet another unplanned trip to the vet's. And, of course, having cistitis is not at all pleasant for Tigger herself.

My mother also kept farting.

2003-02-21T13:50:00.000Z

Commmmments

Are my comments too long? (I'm crap at concision.) Do I comment too much? (I'm crap at following more than just a handful of blogs at a time.) It's just something I've been wondering these last few days. I know that I'd have no problem with lengthy comments, if people chose to write them, but I know that most people's comments in various blogs tend to be quite a lot shorter than mine. So, I was just wondering, that's all.

Oh, and I've now got a new appointment for the 12th of March. That's, um, nearly three weeks. I hope I'm not struck down with the agony of toothache in that time! Maybe I'll shop around for some other dentists in the meantime.

2003-02-20T18:29:00.000Z

American Beauty

A few weeks ago, or several weeks ago, or however long ago it was, I watched American Beauty on telly. It was, I think, a very good film.

And I think I understood it. I'm pretty sure I understood it. That bit where that boy with the right-wing father is showing the most beautiful thing he's videoed, which happens to be a discarded bag or something being blown around by the wind with some leaves, was something I didn't have any trouble understanding. I could just see what he meant about it being beautiful.

There was that contrast between fake 'beauty', like that seemingly shallow cheerleader chick that Kevin Spacey was having an adolescent crush on, and the beautiful absence of such falsity. But not just that absence. There was a beauty in what was videoed itself.

And that cheerleader chick (I can't remember any of the names of any of the characters) turned out to be beautiful in the end. When she was about to get porked by Spacey, she shed that facade, that persona, and let her vunerability be revealed. It was now the real girl, not the persona, who we were seeing. A beauty, which I find remarkably similar to the beauty in that boy's video, became apparent, and was no longer hidden.

It was not that her clothes were coming off, but that she was putting her ugly persona aside. Perhaps the shedding of her clothes somehow symbolised that, in some kind of way.

Anyway, it seemed to be a very simple film in the end. I liked that. I liked that a lot. It was a film with the same kind of beauty that it itself was about.

2003-02-16T16:22:00.000Z

Owww :-(

My mouth hurts.

It's nearly two weeks since I realised that I had a frighteningly deepening cavety in one of my bottom-right molars. Since then, I've been chewing mostly on the left side of my mouth. But now my mouth is sore on that side from chewing a mouthful of food with only that half of my mouth. It doesn't help that my teeth on that side aren't too good, either.

Less than a week, now, until I see the dentist. I can still conceive of myself actually going to the dentist. This is something of a relief. Hopefully, in the final few days, I will not have a sudden relapse into the old phobia. It's not the dentist I fear anymore (if 'fear' is even the right word), but the instruments of torture (I know it will be torture). But I can face that. I am quite prepared to yell out as the dentist pokes that hard, pointy pokey thing in my cavety and elsewhere. It's going to be horrible.

There are basically two things that worry me now. Firstly, of course, there's the fear that things will be grim, that my teeth/gums/whatever will be too bad, and that I'll have to have all my teeth ripped out. Hopefully, this is just a normal fear of things being worse than they actually are. Secondly, though, I fear that work that'll need to be done will be too expensive for my current finances. The combination of those fears, of course, is that my teeth could be saved, repaired, and so on, but that it would cost too much, so the dentist will say that it'll have to be dentures instead. That would be so naff, wouldn't it? It would be like saying to someone, 'You're going to have dentures, not because you actually need them, but because you're just crap.'

I think I'll give my teeth another clean, as that toothpaste for sensitive teeth really is especially nice on those few occasions my mouth's actually hurting.

2003-02-13T06:48:00.000Z

More Thoughts on The Iraq Saga

Oh, it turns out that the Franco-German plan for a UN force to assist the inspectors has been denied by Paris and Berlin. Seems it's really the old idea, yet again, of throwing more inspectors at the problem, and that sort of thing. But the problem is not the number of inspectors, but that Saddam Hussein's regime won't fully comply with such inspections in the first place! I'm back to supporting the British position, but with some reservations.

Firstly, it really doesn't help for the US and UK to demonstrate just how little evidence they can show of Iraq's noncompliance with UN resolutions. Secondly, it really doesn't help for the US to try to persuade the world that the recent al-Qaeda tape proves a link between al-Qaeda and Saddie-boy's regime. It would be like claiming a link between the current American government and Fidel Castro if the US and Cuba happened to have a common enemy. Hell, there was far more of a link between the US and Stalin's Soviet Union back in the early 1940s! Hmmm, does that mean that President Roosevelt was a commie? I s'pose, given what Washington is saying these days about Iraq and al-Qaeda, that he must've been.

One problem with the Anglo-American emphasis on weak, shoddy 'evidence' is that it draws attention away from any real evidence there may be (and there is some). Another is that it boosts Iraq's case that it doesn't have, and isn't developing, weapons of mass destruction (otherwise why else would so much effort to prove otherwise have resulted in such weak evidence?). Yet another, of course, is that it persuades the world that the American and British governments aren't necessarily entirely trustworthy on such matters. And yet another is that it rather reinforces the view that America and Britain are desperately trying to find an excuse to go to war. All of this draws attention away from the real issues, the real evidence, such as the question of whether or not the regime in Iraq really is fully and truly complying with what's supposed to be its last and final chance.

The ridiculous interpretations of the al-Qaeda tape, which are that it shows a link between Saddie-boy's gang of thugs and bin Laden's web of terror, really does demonstrate how stupid the American regime can be. If, instead, they all wore T-shirts stating, 'We're determined to invade Iraq, no matter what the UN say', we'd surely have greater respect for them, simply because they'd be being honest (though we still wouldn't necessarily have much respect for them overall). Perhaps Bush thinks that arguments which he finds persuasive and convincing will persuade and convince enough of the American people (after all, he's in the White House, which means that the majority of Americans voted for him, yeah?), and that what's persuasive and convincing for the Americans will be persuasive and convincing for the rest of the world. (Yes, I know he didn't get elected by the majority, but it's the sort of line of 'thought' I can imagine him thinking along.)

Bin Laden detests Saddie's regime. If America and Britain, along with some others, bring about a change of regime, he'll probably see it as an opportunity for his 'version' of Islam to gain greater influence in Iraq. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's actually hoping that we'll invade, so that it'll be infidels fighting infidels, and infidels destroying each other. So, could it, just perhaps, be that Bush's regime is so stupid that they're actually playing into bin Laden's hands? I fear this may be so. There are reports of bin Laden having a lot of support in the Arab world as we prepare to invade.

Anyway, this really is an opportunity for the UN to further regain previously lost credibility when it comes to Iraq. I don't think France, Germany, Russia and China are helping by promoting 'solutions' which aren't actually solutions to the actual problems, but I do think that there's a great opportunity here for them to support something like a resolution requiring the establishment of a UN force in Iraq. If Iraq complies, then peace will have more of a chance than it's had for a long time. But if Iraq refuses, then there'll be little doubt that invasion would be the only option left.

Well, there is another option. That other option is to leave the middle-east to deal with the problem itself. After all, there are a lot of people in the Arab world who really don't support military action against Iraq. That, I think, would be a very good reason for the US and UK to withdraw. But, of course, if Iraq did then invade Kuwait and/or Saudi Arabia, we'd surely be criticised for having ceased to defend them against a known aggressor.

2003-02-11T06:11:00.000Z

Skipping

I've just got no attention span today (tonight (today (etc))). Can't concentrate on anything much for long. Feeling alive, though! Listening to music on the radio (something I've kept forgetting to do for months), and, um, just passing the time as if a little bit hyperactive from ingesting things with certain kinds of additives in them (no, not those sorts, just the usual kinds of additives, the legal ones, that make some people, often children, a bit hyperactive).

We've got another skip. It's a bigger one. Some of the things that were too big and bulky for the other one have gone in it, and there's more to be done. But this time, we're taking advantage of how we can have the skip for a whole week. But already we've pretty much got our chessboard patio back (which was where the accumulated junk was being kept). (We liked the giant chessboard in Hyde Park, Sydney, you see.)

Included in the junk this time are some bulky parts of an old computer, which was thrown out in my direction, having previously been thrown out in someone else's direction, originally from a bakery. It was a Sharp BA 2700; dated back to circa 1980; and was less powerful than a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. But it was massive! It was bigger than a piano (one of those standy-uppy ones), and dominated by a printer that could take A2 sheets of paper. And in a somewhat smaller, peripheral unit were two, eight inch floppy disk drives (I've kept the drives themselves, and each is the size of a shoe box, along with various other useful things, like cables and stuff). It certainly wasn't designed to fit in a small space! (What I'd really like is one of those old minicomputers, you know, the ones that took up whole offices and were painted orange so that they'd blend into their surroundings.)

There's other stuff going in the skip, too, though. Already the case from my previous PC has gone in (it wasn't a proper PC case, anyway, but was from some other old computer, which itself had been made out of bits), and an old music centre (a hi-fi from a time when it was popular to call them 'music centres'), too. Oh, and a gearbox from a car. And, I think, some other stuff.

We'll also be putting a shed in the skip this week.

2003-02-10T08:43:00.000Z

Iraq and the United Nations Force

Just this morning, on the telly, I saw about the Franco-German plan to get a UN resolution to have a UN force in Iraq to support the weapons inspections. Sounds like a damned better way forwards to me than the US pushing so hard for war! (The BBC have a section specifically on the conflict with Iraq.)

For ages, now, I've been somewhat resigned to an invasion being ultimately the only way to deal with Saddam's regime. After so many years of mucking about, and especially with how the UN has finally made some real progress only once the US gets all beligerant, it really seemed that there was no other way. At least, it just didn't seem that anyone else was really managing to come up with anything truly credible in the light of history.

Well, I had, occasionally, wondered about the possibility of something like a UN resolution requiring Iraq to accept some sort of UN force, and it's an idea I've heard raised occasionally over the years, but it never really seemed plausible. But it seems bloody plausible now!

I also have to say that I've been truly impressed with just how successful the threat of war has been in getting Iraq to be a lot more compliant with the UN. Can anyone really, seriously deny that the huge change (all the way from no inspections to much more thorough inspections than ever before) hasn't been largely due to that threat? The threat of war has also been very effective in getting the UN itself to make real and serious progress.

Of course, Bush's agenda is so bloody transparent to the rest of the world that it's quite amazing (and really puts many of the American people to shame if, as seems to be the case, they really can't see what the Bush agenda really is). Not that that agenda is necessarily wrong, as there are more problems due to the current regime in Iraq than just the issue of weapons of mass destruction. But this whole thing of it being part of the war on terror, which got off to that spectacular and spectactularly awful kick-off on September 11th, really is stretching it, and treats the American people as idiots (unfortunately, it seems rather appropriate in many cases (but let us not forget that there are also plenty of Americans who aren't ignorant, who are most certainly not idiots, as Miss Marybeth demonstrates)).

And then there's Blair, standing shoulder to shoulder with America, being Bush's poodle, with the UK being the US' feisty little side-kick. Except that's not how it is. It's really a matter of Blair holding America's leash, Bush's leash in particular, as best he can, seeking to guide the US away from being a rogue state and towards the international, UN route. (This, by the way, is the theory I've had since just days after September 11th, and it's still holding up magnificently.) Though I am concerned that Blair will, at this late stage, make the wrong decision, and stick with the US despite this truly good plan being sought by France, Germany and Russia.

Perhaps this will sound like I'm licking Blair's arse (eugh!), but I do think he's done a splendid job, under the circumstances, of keeping the US on the right side of the line (but only just!). After all, if Clinton, who was much more outwards looking than the very much inwards looking Bush, was prepared to launch cruise missile attacks against suspected terrorist targets abroad, then surely, after September 11th, Bush's America would indeed lash out in some way! But that just didn't happen. Instead, time passed, and then, once it was clear that the Taliban were harbouring Al-Qaeda, and that Al-Qaeda were indeed responsible, and the Taliban refused to cooperate with international demands, war was waged (and Afghanistan's a much better place for it, even though it's still in an atrocious state compared to the rest of the world, and so much more needs to be done to rebuild that country (the sort of thing the US never seems terribly interested in these days)). And, yes, I believe that Blair has been pivotal in that. Without Blair's involvement, I don't doubt that America would have lashed out in 2001, and would have commenced an invasion of Iraq by now.

And look at Kosovo. There was NATO, including the UK, bombing Serbia, and, with us Brits leading the negotiations, managed to talk our way into Kosovo! Now that's a feat to be proud of, don't you reckon? If it had been the Yanks, well, we'd've had to fight our way in. (Incidentally, when the Serbs said 'yes, okay, you can come into Kosovo', we were already at the gates (literally), waiting to go in. But the Americans held things up, because they were in Greece, staying at a relatively safe distance. Well, they do have a reputation for turning up late for wars.)

Blair, I hope, can do it. My hope is that Blair can, and will, persuade the US to go with the Franco-German plan. After all, the resolution would effectively call for something like an occupying force, which is what there'd be after an invasion anyway. And if Iraq refuses to comply? Well, then it'll be obvious that invasion really is going to be the only way. After all, how else would such a resolution be enforced? It really does seem to be the right way forwards, the way to resolve the growing international split on Iraq, and continue to give peace a real chance.

But I fear it may be too late. Germany's already managed to piss Bush off, and that's just made it more difficult to keep the US from going it alone. And, with so much of the UK's military amassed in the area, we seem to be effectively committed to any war that America now starts with Iraq. After all, if Iraq strikes back, they're going to strike back at us, too. What do we do? Leave our soldiers, sailors and air people to be sitting targets? I just fear it may be too late. But I hope, I dare to hope, that Blair will seek to do the right thing, and will seek as best he can, along with the rest of the British government, to keep the US on the UN route.

2003-02-07T03:24:00.000Z

Thinking of a Memetic CounterAttack against Spam

Isn't it daft how spammers try to evade spam filters? I've seen h-y-p-h-e-n s-e-p-a-r-a-t-e-d s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g-s, mlsspe11lngs, Re: fake replies, and, of course, the usual hi there, pretending to know you ones. It's just silly. Why on earth have the spammers not realised that if someone's using a spam filter, they're just not going to be interested in spam? Why don't they think it through far enough to see that there's just no point in spamming people who dislike spam enough to do something to try to prevent it? Are the spammers thick?

Here's one way that the spam 'industry' operates. You, the schemer, come up with a spamming scheme. You advertise this scheme, perhaps by doing a bit of spamming, and you get some suckers to join the scheme. They invest some money, which more than covers your initial costs, and you provide them with some spamming software, email address lists, and some spam to send out. Some (perhaps all) of the spam is advertising your scheme. The spammers spam away for you, and a very tiny proportion of the recipients also turn out to be suckers, and invest in your scheme. And so it grows.

You only pay the spammers for successful responses to spam. Of course, the number of such responses is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total amount of spam sent out. The money you get from those few suckers who choose to invest dwarfs the amount you have to pay (if you bother to pay it) to the spammers. Soon, the money you get from them is almost pure profit. And they keep spamming, and some more spammers sign up, and they keep spamming, and so on, and so on.

Another approach is to rely on how people won't bother claiming their commissions if their commissions total no more than, say, 70p or so. That way, you can theoretically owe thousands of pounds to your spammers, but not have any more than a tiny fraction of it claimed. You can effectively run your spamming scheme in a bankrupt state, yet still making and pocketing a nice profit from advertisers and the investing spammers.

It's just that old goldrush thing where the only people guaranteed to get rich are those who are selling the pick axes and shovels.

So, why do people get sucked into spamming? Is it because they're stupid? Is it because they're desperate? Is it both? I suspect stupidity (as in not bothering to really, truly think, rather than being unable to think) and desperation (things are so bad that, hell, it's worth a try) are probably the main reasons. Naivety (no, that's not a misspelling, it's just my choice of spelling) and gullability are probably also significant factors, too, of course. Still, I do find it quite incredible that spammers think it's worth spamming those who obviously dislike spam.

Perhaps there needs to be some sort of educational campaign, to educate spammers and potential spammers to the fact that spam doesn't pay. But how? Who would fund such a campaign? Ummm, dare I suggest that it be done in a similar way to, erm, spam? Perhaps, with the right memetic properties, the message could effectively propagate itself, much in the way that jokes do? Yes, I think that, perhaps, could be the way...

2003-02-05T00:52:00.000Z

Rubbish!

We got a skip today. We filled it in just an hour and a half, but it was only a small one. Still, it had an internal capacity of approximately two cubic yards, and I'd reckon we managed to put a ton or two of stuff in there (maybe more, but I'm being conservative with my estimates). Even so, we've still got at least a skipload (and probably needing a bigger skip) of stuff left. (The reason I know the capacity of the skip is 'cause my mother measured its dimensions to the nearest inch, and then drew a diagram of it.)

I've also done some more clearing out of accumulated stuff from my room. Threw my old matress away (it was falling apart), and dared to face The Stuff Under The Bed (no, not that sort of stuff). I even dared to rediscover what's in the trunk at the end of my bed (still not that sort of stuff). It was mostly computer and science magazines that were over a decade old. Had a damned good hoover under the bed, too.

But clearing out junk'n'rubbish is not the only thing I've been doing today. I also went to the library, to print out a form so that I can sell a bunch of naff shares I won over three years ago. 101 000 shares that are worth, oh, about 0.085p each? Only now are they collectively worth enough for me to bother selling them.

Think I might try writing a CV tomorrow. If the experience doesn't bring on insanity, I may even go on to seeing about registering with some job agencies. I think I can now mentally cope with the idea of being pimped out for naff work.

Oh, I should also mention that my mother was particularly diligent and keen to get the stuff packed in the skip as compactly as possible. And I must say, I've never seen a skip so neatly filled. I think we can be proud of what we've achieved today.

2003-02-04T00:31:00.000Z

Actually, I'm quite shaken up by the whole dentist/teeth thing. And quite annoyed with myself that I ever let myself develop such a mental block in the first place. And for not being more diligent with the toothbrush. But, well, that road just leads back to beating myself up about getting ill with clinical depression in the first place, blah blah blah. Best not go back to that.

But yes, I am in a little bit of a state. But other than that, I'm fine :-)

2003-02-03T23:50:00.000Z

Teeth

Today, something good happened. Something unexpected happened. That something is this: I could finally conceive of myself going to the dentist.

My teeth, and dentists, are something I've barely been able to even mention, let alone write about. Even now I feel stressed just writing this!

Somehow, back in the mid to late nineties, I ended up with some sort of irrational, mental block about them. Some kind of phobia. Not about the drills and stuff, though they're not particularly pleasant. But about the dentists themselves, the actual people who are those dentists. A fear that they will moralise, that they will express some sort of disapproval. So strong this phobia became, that I just could not conceive of going to see one. Even just for a check-up. I just could not cope with the concept. Just a disapproving 'Oh' from a dentist would be enough to destroy me, and turn me into some sort of gibbering wreck. It made no sense, but that's the nature of irrational phobias and mental blocks.

In more recent years, my teeth have not been doing so well. To be frank, they are now truly shocking. There has been sensitivity, but I have been spared the agony of toothache. There are plenty of cavities. It is far - very far - from good.

Now, I've often thought of going for some sort of treatment, some sort of professional help, to get over this immobilising, debilitating, irrational mental block. But, alas, the mental block just extends to that, too. While I know full-well myself that my teeth badly need urgent and major attention, just admitting this to others has been somewhat impossible. It's that same, mental block, somehow. And, of course, the idea of having to explain it all when it's not even rational, and just doesn't make sense, to begin with.

But today, this morning, the sight of a deepening cavety somehow did the trick. I can just see it getting too close to the pulp. And, somehow, this sent me across the threshold. Seeing a dentist became conceivable!

I knew I did not have much time to lose. I knew that I had to seize the opportunity once it had arisen, before it faded again. Not only was the idea of seeing a dentist plausible, but it was not even something I was afraid of! Financial implications could wait, as there was no need for me not to see about making an appointment just because it might be financially problematic. I had a bath and stuff, and then set out to the dentist's.

Once I got there, I could feel the fear beginning to return. The irrational mental block had not left entirely, but had sort of stood to one side. Standing in the short queue, I could feel it creeping back. But I held out against it. It was no big deal, after all, I was just seeing about making an appointment.

I managed, without much difficulty, not to break when it was my turn to talk to the receptionist. Not only did I manage to make an appointment (for later this month), but also managed to briefly enquire as to what the charges are like. I even managed to indicate that my teeth are in something of a bad state! I received the appointment card, and, thanking the receptionist in the usual, everyday way, I left.

I felt a little shaken up, but just a little, after that. I had not only crossed the threshold in my mind, but had begun to cross the threshold in actual action, too. I'm not sure how well I'll hold out, but seeing the dentist is now what's going to happen, rather than something inconceivable. I'll just have to keep looking at that cavety, and keep myself on the sane side of the line.

2003-01-30T20:53:00.000Z

It's Never Snowed There Before!

I thought it was feeling cold in my room. Due to the direction of the wind, I've actually had snow settling on the inside of my window! I've now closed my window, and pulled the secondary glazing across.

I'm glad I forgot to launder my curtains yesterday, otherwise it would be damned cold in here!

2003-01-30T20:44:00.000Z

Dreaming on a White Birthday

It snowed on the day I was born.

I don't actually remember that, but I've been told a number of times that that's what happened. Just now, I've been told again. The day started off with no snow, and finished with snow on the ground.

Interestingly, it's snowed today. And it's settled. A few inches deep. I thought we'd already had our 'deep' snow for this winter. Hmmm, I've heard of white Christmasses, but this is the first time I can remember having a white birthday. (Well, there've probably been a few previous ones, such as the day I was born, but I just can't remember them.)

Today has also been the day of coming up with the idea of a shop that sells jigsaws of your dreams. I don't mean your ideal jigsaws, but jigsaws of dreams you've had, you know, while sleeping.

There'd be a section of nightmares, a section of those particularly vivid dreams, maybe even a shelf of lucids. Of course, there'd be those jigsaws that are just impossible to do, and they'd be the dreams that were just impossible to follow mish-mashes of stuff that don't even have the prospect of making sense. And, perhaps, there'd be the adult section. Just imagine wandering into that shop, and spotting your parents in that section of the shop of your dreams.

I've also just wondered if, perhaps, sometime in the future when I'll have money to spend, and I buy digital telly, that I'll find there's a channel actually broadcasting dreams I've had. It'll certainly be handy for when I have dreams that are just so good that I wish dreams could be recorded. (And I don't necessarily mean those sorts of dreams. But I bet they'd broadcast them, too, late at night.)

I wonder if I'll have good dreams tonight. I've just eaten pizza.

2003-01-30T05:36:00.000Z

I'm now 31. I don't want to talk about it. Yes, that's a bad sign, not wanting to talk about my age, especially on my birthday. But I feel I ought to at least mention it.

2003-01-29T07:05:00.000Z

My Back is Bad Today

When I got up today, as soon as I started the process of just getting out of bed, I found myself to have a bad back.

It had that feeling, a strong feeling, of being dangerously close to great pain. It had that strained feeling, that almost good kind of achy feeling from when having exercised for the first time in ages, but with the volume turned up and a richer, less healthy flavour to it. (I say flavour, metaphorically, even though I perceive pain, and other such tactile senses, with a little bit of colour, nonmetaphorically. This morning, my back was going orange, but it does go back to a sort of darkish, but still vaguely vivid, grainy brown.)

It was because of my bit of a clear-out yesterday. There was some not-so-good stretching, combined with some heavy moving, so I'm not really surprised that I've actually strained my lower back. My back will always be on the weak side, always susceptible to such things, due to lordosis and kyphosis when I was growing up. (Wow, they sound really serious, don't they? All they mean is that I had a spine in the shape of a question mark, '?'.)

So, I've started off today by moving around very carefully, hoping not to cause myself pain. It's eased off somewhat, but still, it's still not as it should be.

It's quite different to the usual kind of backache that I get, which is usually brought on by sitting over things in chairs, or just sitting in chairs with backs that are too straight and hard, or sitting on stools. (That's a kind of icy light grey sort of feeling, as if drawn on white cartridge paper. Really nothing in the way of colour. Both colour and brightness are of relevance, it seems.) Doing jigsaws usually brings on that kind of achiness.

My back is bad today.
Bad as in orange, not icy gray.
Bad as in strained, not tired, but pained.
My back is bad, but I'll be okay.

In the morning dew.

2003-01-28T16:43:00.000Z

The Way to Control your State of Being

Today, so far, (and the day is far from over,) I have:

done some catching up with Monkey's blog;
read more about Searle's Chinese Room (but I've already written about that);
done some more of The Big Clear-Out;
and ended up feeling really quite satisfied.

Actually, I could go into some more detail on The Big Clear-Out: Part [whatever the number would now be].

This time, I dared to tackle my wardrobe, which, for quite some time now, has been pretty much full of bags and boxes of stuff just waiting to be sorted out. I didn't sort out all the bags, but did still manage to throw away an almost overly full binbag of stuff. This is good. What's more, the wardrobe also had quite a stack of old magazines (still not those sort), which I also threw away. Those magazines themselves must have taken up a couple of cubic feet of space.

It wasn't just throwing away of old stuff, though. It was also a bit of a crude tidying and sorting of stuff. And a bit of relocation.

I found, when putting some stuff back in the wardrobe (for next time), that there was a huge amount of space left in there! What to put in it? I decided to shift a load of books in there, so that the shelves (which aren't really bookshelves, but used in that capacity none-the-less) can be used for the more frequently used books. This is good, because those books were just floating around, always getting in the way.

There was still plenty of space. What to put in there?

Well, the bags of stuff which I didn't sort out went back in there. Also, there's an old record box, for ten inch records (yes, there really were such things, filling the gap between seven and twelve inches), which was in there, and back in there again. But this time, it's full of videos (not those sorts), instead of telephone cable (its previous contents).

Oh, and I put my purple velvet jacket in there, too. In the wardrobe, that is, not the ten inch record box. And a couple of bags of ties. And a blue scarf with a Welsh dragon on it. And some bags of cassette tapes (some of which came out of the wardrobe anyway). And there's still some space left!

Now, this time, I did not end up being perturbed - even a little tiny bit - while sorting through stuff. Instead, I feel really quite satisfied.

I feel like today has actually been a day of true variety. Alright, not that much variety, perhaps, but compared to my usual day it's been a whole kaleidoscope of variety. A very cheap kaleidoscope, with only three bits of plastic falling around at the end to make patterns with, but any kaleidoscope's better than none, right?

I also feel less burdened. I feel there's less of a weight weighing on me, somehow. A weight I'd got used to, and had stopped noticing was there. Well, there's certainly less weight weighing down on the floor of my room! I feel more sorted out, which is what my room now is. I feel that I'm actually in a better state. Could it, perhaps, just simply be that one's state of being is nothing more than a manifestation of one's state of room? If I had a really empty room, would I myself be empty inside? If my room was jam-packed full of pornography, would I have a dirty mind? If my room was full of money, would I be rich? Well, yes, probably.

2003-01-28T13:15:00.000Z

The Chinese Room

(No, it's not a PseudoOrientally Themed Bouduoir in a Brothel)

For a couple of days now, I've been reading lots of stuff about John R Searle's Chinese Room.

It started when I read a mention of it in Marybeth's archives. A Chinese Room argument? AI? Can computers think? Fascinating stuff! So, I just had to look it up on the web.

I first came across The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on it. That just made me want to know even more. Already it seemed to me that Searle was making some fundamental mistakes.

I came across some more pages on the web, including:

Philosophy 156: Searle's Chinese Room;
Minds, Brains and Programs (which I understand to be Searle's original article, and which kicked this whole debate/debacle off);
SearleCentral (which has a bunch of links about the Chinese Room (some of which I repeat here));
Is the Brain a Digital Computer?, in which Searle writes more in argument against strong AI;
Minds, Machines and Searle;
Think, Volume 2 (1993) Number 1 (which also includes some things linked to here);
The Failures of Computationalism;
Harnad responds;
Searle's Chinese Box: Debunking the Chinese Room Argument (which I'm finding is rather like eating bad porridge to read (so I'll probably give up));
and The Searle Workout: Connectionism hits the Chinese Gym.

(I'm sure there are plenty of other things on the internet relating to Searle's Chinese Room, but I've only just launched into this.)

Now, I'm so fascinated by this whole thing, that I've decided I really will write an essay (or a whole bunch of them) on it. I've got things to say! In particular, I have this to say: John R Searle's making a real hash of it.

It's one of those things were I find that I've already thought about these kinds of things, had these sorts of ideas, thought about such ideas, reached conclusions, and so on. I didn't realise that I was already familiar with the Chinese Room idea (I believe I'd already heard of the Chinese Room, but didn't actually know what it was about, really), but just hadn't realised that it was already known as the Chinese Room. Reading through the stuff these last couple of days, I've recognised so many ideas that I've thought my way to and through. It gives me a great feeling of immense self-satisfaction, because, hey, these people are famous (or infamous, even) for thinking such things! It's why I've just got to seriously, properly (and officially) study philosophy one day (well, not all in one day, that would be a bit too much to ask).

Anyway, I'm finding myself increasingly persuaded, by what Searle himself writes, that Searle ain't no philosopher. It's not that he seems to get things confused (which he does), and it's not that he's got ideas that I disagree with (there are plenty I don't disagree with!), it's that he seems to be relying on the prior assumption that computers can't, in just being computers and nothing more, ever think.

He introduces this assumption in dubious ways, sort of in disguise, and then proceeds to work towards and draw the final conclusion that computers, in just being computers and nothing more, can't ever think. It's just circular reasoning! Of course if you start with that as an assumption (however well or badly disguised), it's no surprise if you then end up drawing that assumption as a conclusion.

Anyway, it's really got me absorbed and hooked and fascinated and stuff, and I'm just bursting to express what I think on these matters. But at the moment, it's bursting too much! And I haven't yet fully studied the relevant stuff, yet, either. I'll just have to try and contain myself, take notes and stuff, and that sort of thing.

Ahhh, if only I could be an official student doing these things...

2003-01-26T06:11:00.000Z

Tigger the Cat in Perturbing Dreams

Recently, I've been having some rather vivid dreams about Tigger the cat.

I can't really remember the dreams particularly well, but they were really quite intense. The general theme was that Tigger was somehow unwell, with this possibly being how she'll finally go (as in die), but with there still being a hope that she'll be okay.

Or was that the theme in the second one? I don't think she was, but she was still in it, and it still had much the same kind of intense, vivid feelings in it.

In the first one, there was some catastrophe in the kitchen. This, I think, was based on a public information advertisement thing on telly some years ago. It involved a little boy who'd put some cans of dog food in the cooker, and they then exploded. But, come to think of it, it wasn't a public information thing, it was an ad for an insurance company! But anyway, there was dog food all over that kitchen, and the cooker was a cooker no more (but was somewhat open plan instead, in that it wasn't all in one piece). Anyway, our kitchen in my dream looked vaguely similar.

There was, I think, some problem with the plumbing. In particular, it had something to do with the boiler, which I think had exploded. Tigger, in the meantime, had something wrong with her back (which, somehow, was supposed to be related to the disastrous state of the kitchen, which had water everywhere). She was extremely thin around her waste, and her fur around all of her latter half was extremely short, as if it had been recently shaved off. Her spine was twisted right round. If we tried to untwist her spine, she couldnt' walk properly, and seemed to be in some sort of pain. But if we left it twisted, which obviously wasn't how it was supposed to be, then she seemed okay. It was, by the way, twisted a full 360°!

In the latter dream, I had somehow ended up agreeing to visit my father, and stay the night, or weekend, or something. His wife's children were all there, too. (They're all grown up, by the way. They're 'children' in the sense that they're her offspring.) But somehow I felt I'd been tricked into going there, or something. Or that I'd been kidnapped by my father. There was something about conditions being broken, but he'd broken them because there was no other way he'd get to see me.

Anyway, I'd taken Tigger along in a bag, or in her basket (with caged front, for when she goes down the vets), depending on what part of the dream it was. This was either something of a condition, or she'd been brought along when I got kidnapped, or it was being seen as a violation of a condition I'd agreed to, but the agreement didn't hold because my father had already broken the agreement, or something. Or maybe it was that my father was trying to retroactively apply the condition that Tigger not be brought along.

Anyway, in both dreams I was concerned for Tigger. I was worried about what would end up happening to her. I wanted to protect her and look after her, and keep her safe. I was worried that she'd end up hurting herself somehow, either by straying into an unsafe part of an unsafe house (my father's house), or ending up wounded in part of the catastrophic kitchen.

Dunno what these dreams mean, but I was definitely in a beligerant mood towards my father!

2003-01-26T05:55:00.000Z

Some More Self Assessment, Looking for the So-Called Bigger Picture

You know, my bout of insanity in the middle of last year seems to have been more profound than I'd thought.

From what I remember from the first half of last year, I was really trying to give up smoking, aiming to get some sort of a job, seeking to generally become healthier (such as putting on weight), and so on. But in the second (and final) half, things seem to have been rather different.

I think it was that sense of resignation, when I resigned myself to just not being able to get a job until I'd solved the catch-22 I was in. That catch-22 is that I have a terrible CV which I stand no chance of getting a job with (not one that won't drive me insane, anyway), and it's damned difficult to do anything much about it while getting a job remains so implausible. It's compounded by the fact that I lack references, which, similarly, are difficult to get without getting employed in order to have employers to then act as referees.

But make no mistake, it was wise of me to accept that I'm stuck in that catch-22. It would have been silly of me to deny it! It's just that that sense of resignation seems to have extended beyond just that catch-22.

In the second half of last year, I really didn't try to give up smoking (not good!). I didn't do much to put on missing weight, or exercise, or whatever. I've been crap at getting things done, and have not sought a social life (social lives tend to cost money, after all). And I haven't even particularly bothered watching TV!

But is it really that I'm overly resigned? I'm not sure that it is. At least, I don't think it's entirely an overextensive sense of resignation.

For the last several months, I've been trying to find ways to get myself out of this catch-22. Firstly, I want a CV that isn't going to doom any attempt I make to apply for a job. Secondly, I want to think of a way to get myself some referees. It's that first one that I've been working on most.

The solution I'm pursuing is that of releasing open-source software, so that I've got that to put on my CV. That'll hopefully turn it around quite magnificently. So, I've been trying to think of good software projects that I can do myself, and pursue them. That's what my parser framework library project thing is for. But, of course, it takes time.

There are various other projects that I have pursued at various times (I'll work on something, leave it for a while, come back to it, leave it, and so on), but generally they've not been the sorts of things that could really be turned into viable open-source products by just me, though were very much solo activities. Or they were more of an academic nature, and so really need me to be in some sort of academic role officially, which I'm not. Or whatever.

The parser framework library project seems to be the best choice, because it's something that I can build other projects on top of, and generally use in other projects I have. It's good, because it's something I can do myself (important for rescuing my CV), and doubles as part of other projects, further boosting my CV. It shows intelligence (I hope!) at the same time as showing ability, and generally should work as a way for me to showcase my talents/skills/etc. It seems to be a damned good solution to the CV problem. And so I've been working away on it.

But it took me a while to settle on that project. It took me a few months to really find that that was the project to go for. My grammar description language project (which is not the same) just doesn't quite fit the bill. It doesn't itself lead directly to software, even though it implies implementation in software. It's also a rather long term thing, and I need something a little bit sooner! But anyway, I eventually found a suitable, good project to do (sort of a resurrection of the project which mutated into the grammar description language project, anyway), and that's what counts.

I've been so determined to find something, and to pursue that something, that I seem to have done little else over the past six or seven months. So, it seems it isn't really that I'm overly resigned, but rather that I've been really trying to do something about it! And I certainly haven't felt like I've been in a state of pathetic resignation. Rather, I feel that I've been facing up to my situation, and managing to stick to seeking a solution.

But here in my blog, which was somewhat neglected for a while (and which now seems to be read by no one, but that matters not), I do feel somewhat introspective in what I write. That's okay, I think. I just have that need to take a good look at myself, at my situation in life, and do a bit of self-assessment. It just seems that there isn't much else that I write about here! I'm just a little bit self concious of that.

Generally, I don't seem to have much to say. Not watching much TV, and having no social life, and no working life in an environment with other people in it, and not going to the cinema (though I'd like to!), and so on, there's really not much opportunity for me to have interesting things to write about. I could write about my project, but that's something I do too much anyway, in documenting what I'm doing (it's important to document such work as it progresses). And it would seem to be generally a rather boring subject matter for what's s'posed to be a personal blog, anyway. So, I'm just using this space to bounce my thoughts off myself.

But oh! I would like more to my life than just this! I do want a social life! I do want more variety! Well, just variety at all! I've just got good at accepting my situation as it currently is, without failing to hope and look forward to better times. I just need to remind myself, sometimes, that it's all worthwhile (assuming things philosophical, that is), and to remind myself of the so-called bigger picture.

2003-01-25T00:59:00.000Z

Ones Memory

I'm wondering about my memory. This is what I was a little bit perturbed about yesterday. I'm not sure how good it is, or how bad it is, but I do think it's improving. Then again, maybe it's getting worse, and I just can't remember it being better than it is now.

For a number of months now, I've been remembering things that I'd forgotten to such an extent that I was even surprised that I'd even had such things to remember. I don't mean like remembering to do this or pay that, but remembering things from the last thirty years of my life generally. It's been challenging the way I've come to understand the last five years or so.

One of the problems with trying to determine how good ones memory is is that one cannot remember anything that one's forgotten. One can only remember things that one remembers. The consequence of this would seem to be that one is in danger of concluding that ones memory is very good. That, of course, is as erroneous as inferring that one has seen everything, as one has never seen anything that one has never ever seen.

One has to assess the quality of one's memory in less direct ways, such as taking note of how many times one remembers something that was previously forgotten. However, if one is in doubt about the quality of ones memory, one may also need to take note of times when things are remembered without having been forgotten. Further compounding this is the question of how good one is at remembering to note such things.

It's a little tiny bit perturbing, but not much. I do happen to remember seeing stuff on telly about just how bad the average memory can be. Well, I hope my memory's not so bad that I'm forgetting just how incredibly bad my memory might actually be!

2003-01-24T12:32:00.000Z

I am a Bit Perturbed

I've just had a bit of a clear out. 'A bit of a clear out', that is, in the sense that it's the latest instalment of The Mighty Big Clean Out That Takes A Few Years (taking that long largely because I'm lazy).

But it's left me a little bit perturbed.

2003-01-22T03:24:00.000Z

Download the internet.

2003-01-17T23:17:00.000Z

Over and Over Again

I feel like I keep writing the same stuff over and over again. This is because, recently, I have been writing the same stuff over and over again.

It's my parser framework project. I had to write a description of it to apply to have it hosted at SourceForge.net. Then I wrote another description of it as the first 'news' item for that project. And now, I'm writing much the same stuff again (though in rather greater detail) to document the design of the framework. And that itself, too, involves some repetition. (It has some repetition because I wrote an overview section before getting into the detailed sections.) Oh, and before I even applied to have it hosted at SourceForge.net, I was already keeping my own, private, personal project log.

Soon, I'm going to know more about this project than I do!

Anyway, I've got lots more to write. I'm only on the section about grammars and parsers, and am yet to get onto the sections about grammars (in detail), parsers (in detail), lexicons, semantics, and so on. It feels like I'm writing a whole book! Well, it'll save time if I ever do go on to write a book about it, I suppose.

2003-01-15T19:17:00.000Z

Real, Unpaid Work

Now that I've got my parser framework library project hosted at SourceForge.net, I really do feel like I'm really working, even though I've been working effectively full-time on this for a little while now. It's just having it public, having it out in the open, that makes it feel really valid and legitimate.

I seem to be doing pretty much eight hours a day (including an hour for lunch, or whatever), though some days I don't do as much. But that's okay, because it's normal to have weekends. I just have my weekends in smaller, more frequent bits, distributed throughout the week.

I almost feel like I've got a job, even though no one's paying me to work. I am my own project manager, my own supervisor, my own boss. The only 'will this be acceptable?' issues are just ones of 'will other people actually use my software?', and, 'is this a worthwhile way for me to spend my time anyway?' The answer to the second question is certainly 'yes!' The answer to the first rather depends on what others think of my work, and whether or not they actually need such a thing (and I know there are most certainly many uses for such a thing!).

Anyway, now that it's a published, open source project, it just feels more real, as I've already said.

Perhaps I'll have to sort out some sort of donations scheme, so that people can send me money (and maybe other things) to work on free software?...

2003-01-12T09:35:00.000Z

License to [long, complicated details that would take a team of lawyers to misunderstand correctly]

Aren't legal things confusing? I've spent the last couple of days trying to decide which open source license to release my parser framework library under.

Back in 1998, I bought Microsoft Windows 98. When I got it home, I opened up the box, and found an installation boot disk inside. It was inside it's own, little envelope, with stuff printed on it. That stuff claimed, quite ridiculously, that by opening that envelope, I would be agreeing to Microsoft's EULA.

Supposedly, the way these sorts of things work is that one can only copy copyright software with the permission of the copyright holders, no matter what form that copying takes. That copying can be things as simple as just running the software, 'cause it gets copied into the computer's memory. Installation is another form of copying, so that, too, supposedly requires the permission of the copyright holders.

The copyright holders have the right to decide who can and cannot copy their copyright material. That means that they get to decide under what conditions they'll give that permission, and what kinds of copying they will permit. That means they can attach all sorts of conditions, such as having to become Bill Gates' personal toilet cleaner (there was a Dilbert cartoon (I think) with something like that in it). And, as it's their right to decide on such things, they don't need any prior agreement from you, or anything like that. (They can't impose things on you, as you can always decide not to do any copying.) And so, the licenses accompanying copyright material can be entirely unilateral. When it comes to copying, anyway.

But there's always the reasonable use thing, and the issue of making private copies for one's own, personal, private use. Copyright has limits.

Buy a piece of software, and you expect to be able to actually use it. Any copying that occurs as a result of just using it, and just installing it, of course, must surely come under reasonable use. It must surely be copying that is implicitly permitted, the permission to do so being implied by the copyright holders' decision to actually sell it to you (directly or indirectly) in the first place!

So, on those reasonable, surely legitimate grounds, I do not accept things such as end user license agreements for purchased software as legitimate, as permission to use, and therefore copy for the purposes of normal use, has already implicitly been given. (But such licenses are, of course, legitimate when it comes to copying that would not be in the normal course of use, copying for which permission has not implicitly been given.)

The EULA which came with Microsoft Windows 98, then, did not automatically apply, and at least one of the claims made on that little envelope with the installation disk in it was incorrect. It was just an attempt, my Microsoft, to automatically retract permission postpurchase, and surely just does not stand up.

Furthermore - and this is where it was really ridiculous - just opening that envelope - the act they claimed would constitute agreement to their EULA - did not actually constitute nor require an act of copying anyway! It was just really silly of them.

Such licensing strategies are really not very wise, anyway. Overdo it, and you (if you're a copyright holder and licensor) run the risk of having your licensing claims overruled by the courts - which is potentially costly! You can end up with a self-tarnished reputation, inspiring the distrust of your own customers, and may possibly even end up having to refund all those people who turn around and say, 'This isn't fair! We want our money back!' And, of course, it just promotes the alternatives - such as open source!

Anyway, I've decided to release my parser framework library as open source because, well:-

copyright is becoming even less enforceable as copying technology, and various kinds of copying, become increasingly more common, normal and routine (not that infringing copyright should necessarily be considered 'normal');
I need to do something to rescue and resucitate my chronically 'real work, real jobs' anaemic CV;
I like open source, and would like others to freely use my software!

But there's a problem: licensing.

Open source licences, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL), can be long and complicated, and include political stuff which doesn't necessarily speak for eveyone (and doesn't really speak for me). They can even have clauses which appear to forbid people from using any software licensed under such licenses if they do something such as seek legal action for alleged patent infringement in just one such licensed piece of software, as appears to be the case with The Open Software License (clause 10).

Open source licenses which require your agreement with those kinds of political beliefs don't really seem entirely consistent with the principles of freedom and openness which open source software is supposedly founded upon. It just seems a bit self-contradictory to me. Some of the conditions that sometimes appear in such licenses seem just as excessive - if not more so - than the sorts of objectionable claims that can be made in or with closed source licenses. I just won't license my software under such licenses.

What I want is a license that's clear, simple, not excessively long or complicated, doesn't make requirements of the user's political beliefs, is reasonable, and which actually works. That's not an easy set of requirements to satisfy!

In copyright law, there's all this stuff about derivative works, aggregate works, translations and transformations, modifications to work, and so on. This is where it can get really quite tricky with things like libraries, as compiled software which uses such libraries could be considered to be derivative works, for example. Use, derivation, modification and copying all sort of overlap, and the edges are difficult to identify (and can depend on exactly how the libraries are used in the source code, and exactly what the compilers actually do, and so on).

So, what I've decided to do is to go for the zlib/libpng License, which seems to sum up what I want very nicely! It's short, concise, appropriate, and, if common sense prevails (which I hope it will), clear and easy to correctly understand.

Agh, software licensing can be such a minefield.

2003-01-11T07:08:00.000Z

Last Night's Adventure

We were in the old club, seeing how things had changed, seeing what was still the same, and catching up with the staff behind the bar. It was basically a nostalgia visit for old time's sake.

While we were chatting to the ladies behind the bar, one of my companion's friends arrived, rather unexpectedly. I recognised her, having been introduced on a previous occasion, and greetings were exchanged.

(I'd better say at this point that I'm not naming names, due to the nature of these events. This is making it a little tricky for me to write this as naturally as I otherwise would, but still, I think I must record what I witnessed. Anyway, I couldn't remember what my companion's friend's name was anyway - and still can't!)

There was quite some delight expressed in the greetings exchanged between my companion and his friend. You know, real joy, but not excessive.

It did make me wonder for a moment, though, if I'd been a dullard, and had failed to recognise that his friend was actually his wife. But no, his wife was, as far as I knew, still back on the other side of the country, where they lived. He was just up here on a brief visit, no more than a few days. Still, I wondered if the greetings would be quite so openly joyful if she was also here.

After not much chatting, barely through the initial catching-up stuff, my companion's friend cluched her abdomen and let out a cry - she was going into labour! I hadn't noticed, until that point, that she was pregnant. And she didn't look as pregnant as I thought she would be for going into labour, not that I'm experienced in such matters.

It's not s'posed to happen yet! she exclaimed, grabbing onto my companion's shoulder. He was immediately quite concerned - quite concerned? He was very concerned! He was nearly in a panic! Anyone could have thought it was his baby she was carrying, and about to drop.

Not entirely discretely, my companion said to me, [My wife] mustn't know about this. Oh, dear. Oh dear, oh dear. It was his. It is his. He's had an affair, and I'm here to witness the consequences. I was really quite surprised, and a little disappointed, but mostly surprised. He adored his wife, and just surely would never do something like this. But, evidently, he had, risking not only his marriage, but his wife's marriage, too!

Obviously, she had to get to hospital. We went out into the car park, where one of their cars was parked. I don't know whose car it was, though, and there was that feeling of common ownership about it, as if they were married. But they weren't married, were they? Well, it didn't matter whose car it was. She was in pain, seemingly in premature labour, and he was in something of a panic.

I'll drive, I said, and was swiftly given the keys. We didn't even talk about whether or not I'd be insured, but I thought it was a safer risk than either of them driving.

I got in, and started the car. In third gear. Initially panicked, and somehow managed to career once around the car park before getting back in control. Don't know quite how I managed that feat - it should have stalled! Anyway, I was obviously more out of practice with driving than I'd thought.

My companion and friend got in, and he navigated. It was nice to be driving again, and I could feel this car had a nice, big, powerful engine. In only a few minutes, we were at her house. I didn't really think about why we had rushed to her house rather than the hospital, but anyway.

It was a nice, big house, with a particularly large sort of lounge/living area, rather open plan as it were. And very yellow. Yellow walls, and lots of brown furnishings. Perhaps a little on the dark side, but maybe that was because of the choice of lighting. It had the look and feel of a place that was just really comfortable to just hang out in. But this wasn't the time to just chill out.

Once my companion's friend was sitting down, and she had satisfied him that she was okay for the time being, he went off to another part of the house to do some packing for her. Again, there was that feeling of overfamiliarity, as if they were married, when, in fact, they weren't. I really did have to double check that she wasn't his wife after all.

I'd better just send a text message home, just so they know I'm okay, I said. I just knew it was going to be a long night.

As I fiddled with my phone, she got up and came over to me.

He mustn't know this, she began, in slightly lowered voice. He can't know this, but I don't think it's his.

Really? Are you sure?

I don't think it can be. The timing's all wrong. But he mustn't know this.

2003-01-09T04:46:00.000Z

Confessions of a Christmas Card NonSender

It's a long time since I last wrote anything here. I've just not felt like blogging, and/or just haven't got around to it. But just now, mere moments ago, I felt like writing something here.

So, it's 2003. Christmas has come and gone, and my new year's resolution is to generally not be so crap.

My Christmas

My Christmas was pretty much completely standard. I was exceptionally crap at sending Christmas cards (didn't send any!), and didn't do my Christmas shopping until just a few days before the day itself. Bought the usual few presents, too, for immediate family members - tokens and chocolates.

Christmas day was very much standard. Turkey for lunch, followed by leisurely present exchanging. And this year, Tigger the cat wore a red ribbon (red tinsel last year). Watched Chicken Run, and got the joke about how Rocky probably wasn't even a real American. Also got the Klingon joke, but was unfortunately reminded of a rather childish, lavatorial joke from when I was at school:

Q: What did Mr Spock find in the toilets on board the USS Enterprise?

A: Captain's log and a couple of Klingons.

Obviously, it's a shit joke.

Okay, enough with the bad jokes. Now, where was I? Oh yes, my Christmas was very run-of-the-mill. But good. Except the bit about Christmas cards.

Why I'm Crap at Sending Christmas Cards

I did mean to send Christmas cards this year. But, somehow, it's just a bit of a duty thing, and I'm crap at duty things. The thing is, you're supposed to send Christmas cards. You're supposed to send Christmas cards to show that you care, to show that you're thinking of people you haven't seen or whatever in a while. The implication is, of course, that if you don't send them, then you don't care, or just don't think of whoever you're not sending them to anymore. So, you've got to send them. And so it's become a duty thing.

But that's not the way it's supposed to be, is it? It's supposed to be that you want to send people Christmas cards, you want to add to their Christmasses, in that small but meaningful way. It's supposed to be a delight to send Christmas cards!

So, um, I was crap, and didn't send any. I just had the wrong attitude towards them, as usual.

But it's not that I didn't think of people, it's not that I didn't wish others to have a good Christmas. And this isn't just something I'm saying now so that I can lamely say, 'It's the thought that counts, right?'. I really did have the thoughts that count, but I just didn't express them - particularly in the form of Christmas cards.

This aversion I have to sending Christmas cards is really quite longstanding now. I think it must have started when I was still at school. It was sort of a cynical thing, 'cause Christmas card greetings and messages are supposed to be real, and genuinely sincere (as opposed to the fake, plastic 'sincerity' about which my cynical ire is irked). But anyway.

So, I hope you, anyone who is reading this, actually did have a good Christmas, and is already having a happy new year. Really! :-)

Anyway, I didn't mean to go on about my personal issues with Christmas cards. What I meant to write was, well, I dunno, really, I hadn't thought about it. I just felt like writing something.

Recently, as well as being crap, I've been not crap. I've been not being crap with busily writing a parsing library for C++. In just a week and a half, I've written about 3500 lines of code! That includes blank lines and comments, so it's just an average of, say, 20 characters per line, but I think that still counts, as good formatting and commenting is important for readability and maintainability.

Um, I've also been looking, occasionally, at the snow. We haven't had snow like this since 1995, or 1996, I think. And this year, people on telly were going on about The Big Freeze before the snow had even fallen! This global warming is just making us southerners even more silly about Winter being Winter.

Anyway, I've just downloaded the DocBook book, 'DocBook'. I think it's about time I learned DocBook, so that I can use it for writing stuff up.

2002-10-01T21:27:00.000Z

Messy and Fun Custard that's Strange

A few days ago, I made some of that strange custard stuff. I just wanted to experience it for myself.

If you don't know what it is, well, it's just two parts plain custard powder mixed with one part water, roughly. But it's strange. Well, once you've got the proportions right, and it does seem to take a little trial and error. Oh, and it's not for eating, either.

Once I'd got it to that stage where trying to mix it more than slowly just made the mixture behave all wrong and break (which is how it's s'posed to be), I found it was all true - I could roll it into a plastic ball in my hands, but when I stopped, it turned back into a liquid.

It's messy, but its fun.

2002-09-23T03:08:00.000Z

Earthquake!

I just learned that there was an earthquake, just over three hours ago, in the west of England.

Apparently, it measured 4.8 on the Richter scale, which sounds surprisingly big for Britain. I didn't notice anything, though. Then again, I'm in the south-east, quite some way from where it happened.

It was, however, felt in north and south Wales, Birmingham, and Merseyside. It's reckoned to have been centred in or near Shropshire (the sort of county you never expect anything to happen in).

I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't notice anything, though. For me, having lived all my life in England, earthquakes are something of a novelty. I'm still an earthquake virgin.

Oh yeah, here's a link to a BBC news report on it. Apparently, it could be felt in London, so perhaps if I'd been paying attention...

2002-09-20T23:08:00.000Z

I'm Not Completely Lazy

Well, I seem to have got over my technical-writers' block, though I'm taking quite a bit of time to actually write much. Seems to be a very long pregnancy, but when I finally give birth to this baby, I'm hoping it'll be a real cracker.

But after that, I'll have to design an appropriate syntax tree model, and then start doing stuff like writing an implementation of it as a source code library. And then there are actual applications of it, too.

So much to do.

But what if no one uses it? What if no one thinks it's any good? What if no one likes it? What if it doesn't get anywhere? What if it turns out to be a red lemon, or yellow lemming, or Ian herring?

It'll all be a bit pointless if no one ever uses it. Sure, I've learned lots of interesting stuff doing this project, but I'm still a little worried that the actual effort I'm putting into developing it properly will just go to waste.

2002-09-19T16:17:00.000Z

Back Home in Australia

Just had this amazing dream.

I was on a plane, arriving somewhere in Australia, having flown from the UK.

I had some food with me, or sweets, or something, and I was debating whether or not to scoff (scough?) the food quickly, 'cause of how I'd have to throw whatever it was away before formally entering the country. Somehow, I was having this debate with my mother, even though I'd travelled alone, and she was back in the UK. I think she was doing a Ben Kenobi, as it were. Or maybe it was by mobile phone. Anyway, I didn't know whether to scoff or discard, but I didn't let it hold me up, 'cause I was eager to get through customs. (This debate seemed to occur while I got off the plane and walked into the airport building.)

Then I was going through customs. I went through on a British passport, but I wanted it to be an Australian one (my father's from NSW, you see). Even so, I went through very quickly and easily, a lot quicker and easier than I expected. The passport checking person seemed very relaxed and friendly, and I felt as if I was being casually welcomed home, even though I was on a British passport.

I also knew that my stay could only be limited, say six weeks, or a few months. I wasn't sure how long it could be, but I wasn't letting that bother me right now. I just knew I wanted to be able to stay for longer.

Having breezed through customs, and not wanting to waste any time, I headed off through the airport. I wasn't really paying too much attention to where I was going, though, and found myself passing through a shop in the airport. It was a sort of newsagents, sort of general stationary store, sort of combination kind of thing. With lots of book. I passed through an aisle with lots of brightly covered paperbacks on either side, and I thought of Shauna's novel writing ambitions.

I headed on without browsing, and soon found myself a bit lost in the airport, but I was walking quite quickly and confidently. You could even say I was marching along! Soon, I found myself outside, even though I hadn't located my luggage. I did have an old bag on my back, with not much in it, but that was it. I couldn't even remember if I'd brought any more luggage with me, though I could picture the suitcase I thought I should go back and fetch.

Outside, it was bright and sunny, and warm without being unpleasant at all. I stopped and stood and looked about. I was in Canberra, on the coast, which meant it was also Sydney, and it was slightly Athens as well. They just happen to be the three cities, outside of the UK, that I can clearly remember really liking and enjoying being in. But I was definitely in Australia.

I looked around at what I could see of the city, and the bay ahead of me, and saw a sort of monument thing in an unkempt area of grass. It was a small monument, but then I recognized it from the last time I'd been there, over twenty years ago. It was the ANZAC war memorial. As I looked around again, I recognized the city generally. It was familiar, and I felt like I'd come home.

I have to say, the light was bright, and the colours were strong and clear. That was clearly something of a visual theme in this dream.

I walked over to the war memorial, as I could go back for my luggage a little later. It was sort of a stone block, just a couple of feet high, about three feet wide, and five feet from front to back. At the back, there was a small statue of a soldier or two, and in the middle of the worn, slightly moss-covered block, was a raised dish sort of thing. I looked in it, and saw it went down into the block. There was clean, clear water inside, and I wondered what it represented, what it symbolized. I couldn't see any coins in it, so I didn't know if it was a wishing well (to wish for no further such wars?), or if it was some sort of place to drink from (water of life? or something?).

The statue had, somehow, become a person, a young man, quite fit and healthy, and quite naked, who was leaning forwards over the block. He was stationary, but his flesh was real. I wasn't entirely certain that he was part of the monument, but somehow I knew that one way or another, his presence, his naked resting of his torso over the block, was entirely appropriate.

More people arrived, including at least one other naked young man, and I walked around the block to see this memorial to the dead from the other side. I now suspected that the naked man stretched over the block was both just a visitor to this memorial, and a part of it. Then he got up, and he was a part of it no more.

I noticed that some people had stuck some notices on this side of the block. They didn't really seem to have anything to do with the wars Australia had fought in. One which caught my attention was on pink paper, and had some photos attached to it. It was of some sort of social gathering, a party or something. People having fun, having a good time, getting on with their lives. Just ordinary people doing ordinary things.

(At this point in writing up my dream, I've suddenly realised something significant about that last bit, even though I didn't really know why people had stuck ordinary, mundane notices on a war memorial, as if it was just a notice board. And, I have to confess, my eyes have just welled up with tears. It's because of the sacrifice of those soldiers that Australians can just get on with their lives like normal.)

I thought I'd better go and look for my luggage, before they threw it away as abandoned. However, on my way back towards the airport, which was a very short walk, I met some young Australians. They were friendly, and seemed almost to be expecting me. One, a girl, seemed to be in some sort of coordinating role. It seemed I was in some sort of tour party, or, at least, they thought I was in some sort of tour party, or something. I wasn't sure if I was, as I couldn't remember anything about being in a tour party, but that didn't seem to matter. They were nice and friendly, and we started chatting.

We ended up sitting round a table, in a sort of open-air bar sort of area that we happened to be next to. Interestingly, the table was rather like the war memorial.

The subject of my father came up, and the coordinating girl said something about contacting him so that he could come and collect me. I declined the offer, stating that I didn't want to have any contact with him.

It was getting later in the evening, and the sun was heading towards setting.

It felt really good, really natural, and the people kept being really friendly. It was as if they already knew me, and I already knew them, even though we'd never met before. I felt I belonged there, but felt I was a visitor at the same time. It felt like I was home, but that me being back home in Australia hadn't been fully realised. I was aware of how my stay could only be for a limited duration, but I felt a sort of gentle longing for the freedom to be able to be in Australia whenever I wanted, for however long I wanted.

Then I woke up.

On waking up, I quickly knew that the familiar places, the familiar sights, were quite incorrect. It had been some sort of dream familiarity, but I knew the places in the dream represented real places. Sydney and Canberra combined, with the war memorial in Canberra, but, it's just struck me, rather more like the grave of some of my forefathers in Dural (hence the unkempt grass, I suppose). Tears are welling up in my eyes again, as I wonder if this means that the history represented by the war memorial in Canberra is a part of my own cultural history after all. My Australian grandfather fought in World War II, but I never knew him. He died some time before I first visited Australia.

This dream seems so rich in meaning, I'm glad I decided to record it here. I'm wondering what else is in it?

Anyway, the main thing about the dream, even though the war memorial seems prominent, was that I was returning to Australia, but that while I was back home in a sense, I was also only there as a visitor.

I'm almost in tears at the thought of making that dream come true.

I can't write any more right now.

2002-09-18T15:48:00.000Z

Animal Noises, 'Things', and Erotic Knees

When I was at university, I'd sometimes fail to understand something. I don't mean in lectures and the like (which I'd've had to attend in order to fail to understand things in), but socially, with friends.

Thinking that I was probably having a dull moment, I would indicate this, along with my failure to understand, by issuing a neandethalesque, slightly drawn-out 'Uh?'.

Soon, this would be responded to by a chorus of emphasized 'Uh? Uh? Uh?'s. It seemed to become my noise.

I preferred being known as someone who came up with good, nickname-esque descriptions for people. Examples include, 'Anthony-who-talks-too-much' ('cause he did, and I think he liked it, 'cause it was 'his thing'), 'Suzanne-the-muppet-monster' ('cause of her tendancy to show off her braces in photos, in such a way as to look like one of those muppet monsters on The Muppet Show that were big, baggy suits with people inside, and prominently wide-open mouths (which was the key thing)), and, um, that's all I can remember right now.

Oh, I was also known for squealing most amusingly when people spidered my knees.

(Spidering, by the way, is when you put all your fingertips and thumbtip of one hand together, kind of like when you're about to have a conversation with your hand, and you put the tip of the 'beak' on someone's knee. Then, barely touching their knee, you spread your fingers and thumb out quite swiftly, so that your fingertips and thumbtip gently pass over their knee.)

Having my knee spidered tickled me greatly, and made me squeal in a very high-pitched voice. But I eventually put a stop to it when I explained that I had 'erotic' knees. I had meant to say 'erogenous', but chose the wrong word. Nevertheless, giving it sexual associations did the trick, and I was spidered no more. Not that my knees necessarily are erogenous, but it was all I could think of to get my Christian Union friends to stop.

As for animal noises, I will never forget the time I was driving with friends, and we had to brake hastily, lest our car attempted to mate with the car in front (tortoise style, that is (the male will follow the female, and keep knocking his shell into the back of her shell, you see (to indicate that he wants to 'knock her up', of course)). Rather than scream or aaagh or whatever, we all made these cute animal sounds, kind of falsetto (sp?) 'ahhh's.

I don't know what 'my thing' was at school. I think it was just that I was me. Well, it probably included my tendency to be unkempt. And probably still does. I just like to look academic, but in a slightly wild sort of way, if you know what I mean.

This seemed to still be true at university, when there was a bit of a fad for growing goatees, and similar kinds of partial beards. I just had a beard out of laziness, out of forgetting to shave.

You see, the president of the Christian Union decided to grow a goatee-type-thing, but others reckoned it just didn't work with him. He mentioned two other bearded people, one of whom was me, asking why beards were okay for us. Aunty Sara (not my nickname) explained that Matthew's beard just looked quite natural, while for me, she said, Well, he's just Simon.

Another 'thing' I have is that I can loudly click both my ankles on demand, any number of times in a row. Oh, and fold my left thumb behind my left index finger knuckle. Both good things for making the squeamish squirm. But not a patch on having a missing extra finger.

2002-09-17T22:33:00.000Z

Writers' Block

I've got writers' block.

It's with this grammar description language project. I'm trying to write some of a first draft of a formal specification for it, but I'm just getting nowhere.

For months now (or even longer), I've been gradually developing this grammar description language, learning things as I go along, and making some very satisfying progress. It's been going well, better than I'd hoped, but now I can't seem to be able to formally express what it is! It's frustrating.

I can't even think of a proper name for it, so I'm still calling it 'Cromwell'.

Now, I have no trouble using Cromwell itself to formally describe its own grammar. That's become easy. That's become something I'm actually really pretty damned good at. But defining it in English?

It should be easier. English is, after all, my first language, and BNF (on which Cromwell is based) is not. But the words just aren't coming out. Things just aren't flowing down my arms, through my fingers, and into the keyboard. It's just not happening.

Anyone got some tips on how to overcome technical-writers' block?

2002-09-17T13:36:00.000Z

Having a Fit

Tigger the cat has just had a bad fit. Well, about half an hour ago, maybe, but still.

I was told as soon as the fit itself had ended, though I'm told it was a long one. I went to see how Tigger was doing, and she was visibly disoriented, as she usually is after a fit. I stayed with her a while, while my mother got some food for her. She always eats like a horse after a fit. (Tigger the cat, that is. Not my mother.)

Tigger seems to be pretty much back to normal, though she'll probably sleep for the rest of the day.

It was horrible when she first got up on her legs, though, 'cause her legs looked all wrong. She seemed all skewed and misshapen.

But she seems to have survived.

2002-09-16T13:09:00.000Z

The Earth Seems To Be Moving

The house is shaking. And it's a brick house, not one of 'em wafty wooden ones like what they have in the US. It shakes and then it stops, shakes and then stops.

It's not an earthquake, or earth tremors. 90% of British earthquakes are so small they couldn't be felt by humans even if we were paying attention. And, it seems, most of the remaining 10% are so small that people don't notice they are earthquakes. But this certainly isn't an earthquake.

It's rhythmic. Shake, pause, shake, pause, shake. And then, after a few shakes, nothing for a bit. And then it starts again.

Each shake starts with a sort of bang or thump type sound, with a general background sound of big machinery.

I suspect it's the people who are redoing the footpaths down our road (sidewalks, I believe they're called, in other parts of the English speaking world). But I haven't yet looked to see if that's what it is.

Yes, I just checked, and the kerb on our side of the road has been ripped up to right outside our house.

2002-09-15T23:24:00.000Z

What To Do?

Feeling frustrated. Sort of pent up but unable to express effectively. Irritated by little things that ought not to be the way they are. Annoyed by bigger things that I don't want to be the way they are.

Could do some catching up, but I've run out of concentration for today.

Feeling restless, but nothing to do. Or far to late tonight, anyway.

Legs want to walk, but nowhere to walk to. I feel like a conversation, but no one to talk to. In person. In a pub. Or in a lounge. Or in a street. Or somewhere. In person.

I think I'll settle for chatting online.

2002-09-14T13:41:00.000Z

Where's My Fight?

A thought that's been hanging round in my head for the last day or so is that I don't seem to have the 'fight' in me that I used to have. Do you know what I mean?

It's like I've been living in a kind of defeated state for the last several years.

At this point, I'm thinking of that cliché in movies where something happens to the 'defeatful' character that somehow puts the fight back in him. (I imagine the character to be male, perhaps because I am male, or perhaps because it's the way the cliché usually seems to be.)

Anyway, seems to me that I need that 'fight' back in me. Not a literal fight, of course, which is why I keep putting it in quotes. And certainly not a resurrection of old conflicts.

Definitely not a resurrection of old conflicts! (I don't know how I'd go about resurrecting one, anyway.)

Nah, what I need to do is regain my 'fight' despite defeats in life. Drive forwards in life, rather than just drifting onwards, if you know what I mean.

Trouble is, I've not had an event, or incident, to really do that with. Well, not for the last year or so, at least. Perhaps I missed some opportunities?

Anyway, the last several years has not been without progress. I'm not having problems with agoraphobia, I'm a lot less paranoid (but I'm probably still more paranoid than I think), and I'm making progress with a groovy project. But I still lack that 'fight'.

How can I get it back?

2002-09-12T21:29:00.000Z

Entry number 40 in my guestbook is a bit odd. Turns out that the link given leads to a site entitled 'BLAH SQUARED', and seems to me a 'Christian' site.

'Christian'? Supposedly it's proCatholic, but I doubt, somehow, that it really is representative of Roman Catholicism. It seems more, well, like some kind of militant, pseudoEvangelical thing. Lots of hostile stuff, but very little real substance.

There's an anti-abortion page that's just, eugh, horrible! It's obviously supposed to revulse people against abortion, but I suspect it just revulses people against that kind of pseudoChristianity.

I don't know why these people bother. The way they present their stuff is just so hostile and insulting that it's sure to turn people away from their message (whatever their message is), rather than get them to listen.

However, there are some amusing bits, but not the way the author intended, I suspect. For instance, condoms are included in a list of idolatrous things. I can't help but imagine people bowing down in worship before a giant condom. And there's a recommendation on one page that readers use a dictionary with that site, despite various misspellings such as 'whot' and 'haveta' and so on all over the place.

The more I read, the more difficult I found it to read (wonder what sort of dictionary I should've been using?), as it was just more of the same raving (like a lunatic) and ranting (also like a lunatic).

It's also a fine example of the sort of website misdesign that's reminiscent of the mid-nineties.

2002-09-12T14:57:00.000Z

A Year and A Day

So, yesterday was the first anniversary of September Eleventh. (We Brits generally don't call it '9/11', 'cause giving it a brand name is just taking it too far.)

When it happened, as well as being surprised and stuff, I felt, 'America: welcome to the world!' That might cause a lot of offense to Americans, but really, death and destruction are normal things in many parts of the world. Okay, it happened on a spectacular scale in New York, but still.

A year on, and I just don't get the impression that Americans generally have learned that what they thought of as 'normal' before September Eleventh was really a matter of being lucky and fortunate.

Instead, it just seems that Americans have had their ignorance reinforced by September Eleventh and the so-called War on Terror.

Perhaps it's because what happened was so exceptional. It wasn't lots of terrorist acts that gradually ratcheted up the death toll over many years, but a one-off (or so it seems) that can all to easily be regarded as not what's normal.

Northern Ireland, however, is a place where terrorism became normal, and 'normality' is something different. The same goes for the Palestinians and Israel. And then there's Eta in Spain, and the Mafia in Italy, and Russia's not without it's own problems.

This kind of thing is normal - normal in the sense that it's what happens. That doesn't mean it's good, it doesn't mean it's right, it doesn't mean it's how things should be, but it's how things are.

The US has been very fortunate in that it's generally been spared the kinds of terrorism that much of the world already knows. Americans want to get back to that 'normality', but so do most of the people of Northern Ireland, the Israelis and Palestinians, etc, etc.

Alas, America still seems a predominantly ignorant, rather than innocent, nation. I bet most Americans still think of the international community as being something 'out there', outside of and apart from the US.

2002-09-12T14:37:00.000Z

Uncreative Writing

Oh yeah, I've reached the conclusion that creative writing isn't for me. Finally. After many, many months of not really doing anything much about it, I've decided not to bother even trying to try.

I doubt I have a talent for it, as it's just one of those things that rarely flows naturally from me. Not that I've really tried enough to really know for certain, but I think if I did have a talent for creative writing, I'd just know that from pretty much the start. It would just come naturally, wouldn't it? But it never really seems to.

There are ideas I want to express in the future, and I'd hoped creative writing might be one way of doing that.

But I don't think it matters if I don't use creative writing as a way of expressing such things. What's important, I think, when it comes to such expressions, is that I express such things as comes naturally to me, as long as the way it comes naturally to me is a good one.

2002-09-12T14:30:00.000Z

A Fight I Didn't Have

One of my few, distinct memories of infant school was when someone insisted on challenging me to a fight.

I can't remember how, but somehow he'd got me to go with him off the playground to the fence at the side of the school grounds. I don't think we were supposed to be on the grass at that time of year, but I do remember feeling afraid of him. He was bigger than me, and didn't seem very nice.

He said he was going to fight me, and put up his fists. I didn't know what to do. I can't remember if running away occurred to me, but seemed unviable (I was a very slow runner), or if it just didn't cross my mind.

All I could think was that I was supposed to put my fists up, too. So I did. The wrong way round. I must've looked pathetic.

He then started pushing me against the wire mesh fence, near one of the painful looking metal posts. He pushed me against it a number of times. I didn't fight back.

Afterwards, I went and told the dinner ladies, and they got me to turn around, as they seemed to think I'd been pushed against the post. It was just next to the post I'd been pushed, not onto it. There was, indeed, no huge gash down the length of my body where the metal post would've sliced me, as I imagined it would've been.

All I can remember after that is feeling misunderstood.

2002-09-12T14:23:00.000Z

Hankerings

I've got a hankering for chicken'n'chips. But I can't afford that, so I'll wait until my evening meal. This is 'cause I could cook myself something now, but am too lazy.

But I really should eat more.

And give up smoking.

2002-08-24T23:28:00.000Z

Intermittent Ink

The other night, I washed my pen.

It's a fountain pen, nothing special, and it's served me well for a few years. But then, all of a sudden, it started to behave like it was running out of ink. The cartridge was still half full.

Being a lazy individual, I had never done the recommended thing of washing it through with water before.

I took it into the bathroom, and proceeded to rinse its parts. I was impressed with how clean and new the nib looked! And, also, I was surprised at how much ink had accumulated in the cap.

Then, with the cartridge back in, I had to do a lot of scribbling and flicking (something I've not done since school age) to get it to write with more than just water (but it did occur to me it could be a neat way to do invisible writing (whether or not it would be readable is another matter)).

Now that the water's cleared, and it's well and truly back to ink, I find that it's doing the same, beginning-to-run-out-of-ink thing that it was before.

Perhaps the new, washable black cartridges aren't so good. I'll go back to the permanent ones.

2002-08-24T16:30:00.000Z

It's amazing how much someone can write about their own vagina.

2002-08-22T14:31:00.000Z

Amazing, but True

(And also full of smug conceit.)

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

(That was taken from a page entitled AI koan.)

Yesterday afternoon, he phoned me again! This time, it was his printer. It had, as Canberrans seem want to say, died in the arse.

Back in his little office, he showed me the piece of paper that had jammed in the printer, and explained that the printer had done nothing since. Even the print heads hadn't centered themselves when the front cover was opened.

I pulled the power lead out the back (there is no on/off switch), and fiddled around for several seconds as I tried to plug it in again. Once it was back in, the printer worked.

He said that when he'd tried that himself earlier, it hadn't worked. I remembered the koan quoted above, but did not tell him it, because I did not want to seem a conceited smart-arse. Two miracles in one day were enough, I thought.

Instead, rather than be mystical and obscure, I decided to mention that it's a good idea to leave the power off for a count of ten (supposed to be ten seconds, but we're all impatient when computer stuff goes wrong, aren't we?). I explained that it can take several seconds for the circuits to settle down when power's disconnected, and ventured that that might've been why his attempt earlier hadn't succeeded. This made sense to him, and he was a damned sight more enlightened than he would've been if I'd just koaned at him.

2002-08-21T11:57:00.000Z

I Charge Shitloads for My Services

Another trip to solve computer problems, but this time he provided car transport ('cause I wasn't in the mood for walking).

On the phone, it sounded serious. The laptop had failed to wake from sleep (he never switches it off, which is good). There was, instead, a worrying message on the screen. I knew I was in for a long day ('cause I have to learn on the fly what to do).

I got there, and, with just two key presses, the problem was solved.

The scary message was just a simple menu offering two options, one of which was to resume the reawakening process. But, being a text menu, he had been completely thrown by it. The mouse, you see, was completely unresponsive, and the touch pad didn't work.

So, another very short visit, but this time one with a successful, satisfactory conclusion. Especially the bit about getting paid. Come to think of it, it must've worked out at something like, oh, £10 000 per hour? Pity it only took a few seconds.

2002-08-21T01:05:00.000Z

Vibrating Electrical Appliances

You know the thing about sitting on the corner of the washing machine during the fast spin cycle? Where does that come from? Did it first appear in a film? Or a book? Or what?

I've got an incling that there's some sort of quote, some character bemoaning her fella's crapness in bed by commenting about sitting on the corner of the washing machine instead. Or something.

Or am I just imagining that?

Or am I getting confused with some story about a woman who discovers orgasms that way? I'm sure there's a play, or something, about that.

Anyway, it's been bugging me.

2002-08-21T00:54:00.000Z

Wasted Time

Yesterday, I spent several seconds helping my computer illiterate person to remember that his new printer wouldn't work with his old computer. Fortunately, it was a convenient excuse to spend forty minutes walking. And I could always do with more exercise.

Today, I deleted lots of spam and other no longer needed emails. This is because I couldn't go online, as we were waiting for the vets' to phone to tell us about Tigger the cat.

Last week, Tigger went for a flu jab, and the vet there found an apparent irregularity with her heart beat. So, just to be on the safe side, Tigger went back there for an ECG this morning.

At half four this afternoon, my mother phoned to find out what the situation was. Tigger was ready to be collected, so off she went, and Tigger returned.

It turned out that Tigger never had the ECG, 'cause the vet (a different one) didn't know how to work the machine! But he did give Tigger (who was getting increasingly annoyed at being kept there all day, and then prodded about a lot) a thorough check-over. No problems! Well, no knew ones, anyway. Apparently, she's in incredibly good nick for such an old cat.

It was, I think, a nice thing that the vets didn't charge us anything.

2002-08-17T12:35:00.000Z

Hot and Sweaty

On Thursday, it was hot and humid. It was about 30C (about 86°F), but humid enough to make people feel wilty and ill.

Today, it's around about 32C (about 90°F), but not as humid as on Thursday, so it doesn't feel as hot. And it's a little breezier, and the breeze does feel nice.

I reckon the thing about humidity making it feel hotter is that it's all to do with sweat.

For liquid water to turn into vapour, it's got to get some extra energy. This is 'cause the water molecules have little electric charges in them, such that water molecules attract each other, a bit like magnets. To turn into a vapour, those molecules need to be moved apart from each other, with the forces of attraction being overcome. That takes energy.

Liquid water already has some energy available in the form of heat, but not enough for all of a quantity of water to just turn into vapour. Each bit of water that turns into vapour does so by taking some of the heat away from the rest of the water, and so the rest of the water cools down a bit.

That's how sweat works. As each bead of sweat loses a little bit of itself by evaporating, the remaining bead cools down a bit. Heat from our skin heats it up again, but our skin cools down a little bit as a result. Which is nice.

But this process of evaporation cuts both ways. If there's moisture in the air, in the form of vapour, it can condence into the beads of sweat. When it does this, it releases that extra energy into the bead of sweat, heating it up a little bit.

For us to get cooler, we need to sweat enough for evaporation to happen at a sufficiently higher rate than condensation. The more humid it is, the more we need to sweat.

But in order to sweat more, our skin needs to be at a higher temperature. And, as our skin is what tells us how hot or cold it is, our skin will tell us that it's hotter. So, I reckon, that is why greater humidity makes it feel hotter.

Yesterday, I looked round the shops for one of them humidity measuring things. What are they called, hygrometers? Hydrometers? I can't remember. I didn't find any, anyway.

2002-08-12T02:54:00.000Z

Brain on Overdrive

I also had a moment of revelation yesterday. Not in any spiritual or religious kind of sense. It was to do with functional programming languages, logic programming languages, and higher order attribute, two level grammars. I think I might have made an original discovery - but I've got to check first to see if it's already been published by someone else.

2002-08-12T02:49:00.000Z

Friendly Ghosts

Talking of cats and dreams, I am very occasionally visited by my other cats in dreams.

Such dreams don't usually consist of much. Or if they do, I just forget the rest of it, 'cause it's so nice to see Ben, or sometimes Lara, again. Ben's the one who usually visits, but their visits are few and far between.

It's nice, 'cause they're dead. Not in the dreams, though. Except they are. I know they're dead in the dreams, and that's how I know that they're visiting me, to say 'hello'. It's nice that they sometimes choose to visit. They seem quite happy.

2002-08-12T02:43:00.000Z

Cats and Dreams

After feeling a bit down and stuff yesterday, I had a dream.

Tigger the cat was at the bottom of the garden, but my mother was at this end of the garden. I was a little concerned that Tigger might venture beyond the garden without someone holding her lead (as she's twenty, and has occasional fits, we're very careful when she goes outside).

As we walked down the garden towards Tigger, we heard someone calling out, as if reacting to an intruder, from a neighbour's house. We rushed there, 'cause my mother knew the occupants from her home-helpery work.

The back wall of the house seemed to be somewhat lacking a, um, wall, so we could walk straight into the back room. In a middle room, which was separated from the back room by large, sliding patio doors, there was a very tall and rather skinny man, who was rapidly pacing up and down in a rather deranged and demented fashion. He seemed to be the intruder, yet was the one who was disturbed.

I slid the glass door shut, though it wouldn't close securely. It seemed to be hanging off the top rail, not slotted into the bottom of the frame.

I started waking up at that point, my dream beginning to feel like a nightmare.

The really odd thing is that as I lay awake, not feeling particularly disturbed at all, I started to get that nightmare feeling. I began to worry that I was going to have a seizure or something, that something was wrong with my brain and that I was in danger of triggering something adverse. It was a bit horrible!

I had to go downstairs and watch telly for a couple of hours while I recovered. Tigger joined me before curling up asleep on a nearby armchair, though I did notice that she seemed to be watching some of the adverts.

There were some nice documentary type things about cats - particularly big ones like lions and tigers.

I like cats.

2002-08-11T04:41:00.000Z

Actually, I just want to hide away from the world today.

2002-08-11T04:15:00.000Z

[Whatever title is appropriate.]

For some reason, I don't know why, I'm feeling rather down. Sort of sad. And a little tiny bit deranged. But only a little bit.

Maybe it's too much functional programming language stuff, and the like.

2002-08-10T13:20:00.000Z

Dream Interpretations

While offering an off-the-top-of-my-head interpretation of a dream, it occurred to me that dream interpretations may say more about the interpreters than about the dreams themselves. More specifically, it could well be a matter of saying more about an interpreter's perceptions of the individual who dreamed the dream than about the dream or the dreamer.

This gives me a thought: perhaps asking people to interpret your dreams could be a cunning way to find out about how they perceive you? Then again, I s'pose you could just ask them: 'How do you perceive me?'

2002-08-03T01:31:00.000Z

Tigger the Cat

Back in early 1983, there was a small, black kitten that used to visit from two doors down. Tigger was its name, and our two cats, Ben and Lara, probably had something to do with its interest in us. Not that Ben and Lara were entirely keen to have a visiting cat. But they were fairly tolerant of the intruder.

Eventually, Tigger's owners, who had got bored of the novelty of a kitten, said we may as well keep him. But he turned out to be a she. Still, the name 'Tigger' had stuck, and could easily be abbreviated to 'Tiggie' and 'Tigs'.

She also turned out to be quite deaf! Her ears were full of mite-ridden gunk, and her health was generally not too good. But it was soon apparent that her health was improving, mostly because the fur growing where she had been shaved for getting spaid was plainly of much higher quality than the surrounding stuff.

Due to her deafness, her meows were just squeaky mews, but once she discovered sound, she just kept on mewing! She would greet us, reply to us, practically have conversations with us. And attack our ankles as we tried to walk up and down the stairs.

Due to her bad start in life, there was always the expectation that she wouldn't live as long as the others. This was just reinforced by various episodes of ill-health along her life. These various illnesses, and the like, have included: a number of bouts of cystitis; thyroid tumours courtesy of Chernobyl; a broken leg; arthritis; a dislocated knee involving a torn tendon; partial blindness; a very slightly wobbly heart; and failing kidneys.

She should be dead by now.

Instead, on Thursday, we celebrated her twentieth birthday!

2002-07-29T15:05:00.000Z

Hot, Cold, and Relatives

Supposedly it's a heat wave. All it really is is that summer has made an appearance. It's about 30C round here, which is about 86°F in old money. Dunno what the humidity is outside, but it's certainly humid in here!

Several years ago, some relatives from rural NSW were visiting. It was a hot, sunny, summer's day in my home county of Essex, and they were complaining about the heat.

It gets hot back home, into the 30s, 34 or so, but never like this! my uncle's wife said.

It was only 28C.

I suspect it's the humidity. It does tend to get humid when it's hot round here, I suggested.

Yes, it's the humidity. That's what does it, she agreed. But still, it doesn't get this hot back home!

In contrast, Marybeth has found that hot, sunny, summer days in London feel comfortably cool and very inhumid!

Perhaps what we need is some sort of humidity factor adjusted temperature scale? A bit like wind chill factors? Then we can get a better idea of how hot or cold the weather will actually feel.

2002-07-28T14:00:00.000Z

La Chat's Merde

As I was about to sit down for Sunday lunch, I plonked the remote control on the settee beside me, and felt it hit something. I looked to see what it was, and saw a cat turd!

It seems Tigger the cat had been unwell, and had been actively unwell at both ends, but the turd had been overlooked. Fortunately, the turd was a good, solid pair of bonded turdlet, so there was no residue on the remote, or the settee. Nevertheless, we applied some disinfectant to both.

The other thing about Tigger the cat is that in a few days, she'll be twenty! I hope she doesn't die in the meantime.

2002-07-26T12:36:00.000Z

Mormons!

This week, I have been mostly developing a design for a virtual machine to be used in a lambda calculus interpreter. Now I've got to develop another virtual machine to say how the first virtual machine will work!

But anyway, earlier this week, I got an unexpected phone call from a Mormon missionary. Apparently, I'm on their call-back list. Anyway, I was invited to meet with them (they always come in pairs), so I agreed.

We met in the high street on Wednesday evening, and found a suitable quiet place to sit and talk. I told them of how the last pair of missionaries, six or so months ago, had got as far as the fifth of six sessions with me, and that I'd then reached the conclusion that their founder, Joseph Smith, had been a false prophet. It was all to do with their Doctrine & Covenants, which seem to contain false prophesies and broken promises, despite the first section claiming that they'll all be fulfilled.

We had an interesting discussion, but there was nothing particularly conclusive. They've taken my observations of apparent disproofs as questions to raise with their president (sort of pastor-type person, I think).

Something that amused me was that the Mormons seem to have me on file. Apparently, their notes for me say that I'm very intelligent! What does that mean? That I actually think about what they say?

During the discussion, I commented on how what's felt seems to be somewhat important to Mormons. Indeed, it's all to do with the idea that the Holy Ghost produces feelings in us. This lead me to the question: how can we distinguish between feelings caused by the Holy Chost, and our own, human feelings? It seems that if the Holy Ghost was to produce feelings in me to confirm that the Book of Mormon is true, then I'd just know it. There must, it seems, be something extra in feelings from the Holy Ghost, and something that I've never felt before. Hmmm, I could be spending all my life waiting for that special feeling!

Anyway, I'll see what answers they come back with for my questions, the apparent disproofs, and proceed from there. I'm still skeptical, but I hope we'll have some interesting, and enlightening, discussions.

2002-07-21T08:55:00.000Z

In My Dreams

For the last week or so, I've been having lots of dreams.

I've had a New Year's meal thing with the Queen, family and friends. Well, it was mostly with a few, very minor royals and friends, but the 'main' part of the evening was a sort of banquet thing. Most of the time, though, it was a fairly separate, much less formal party in one of the residential flats in the back of the palace. A very nice evening. And they all seemed to be in their twenties (ignoring all the boring other people who were also at the banquet part).

The following year (in that same dream), I didn't have anything planned. I got casually invited along to the palace again, for another party with those same minor royals and friends. I wasn't able to entirely relax, though, feeling I hadn't had time to make sure I was properly presentable. I kept worrying about my hair.

The minor royals, and aristocratic friends, were very nice, though. They were just like normal people, only with posh accents, expensive clothes, lots of money, and living in palaces and the like. Still, the kitchen area had a nice, informal, studenty feel to it.

That's about it for distinctive, memorable dreams. The rest of the dreaming has been like watching daytime telly - you know you've been watching, but you can hardly remember any of it.

2002-07-19T09:56:00.000Z

I Can't See Any Comments I Can't See

Comments have been disappearing? Oh!

Well, the phenomenon of their disappearance seems to have now disappeared itself. Or, perhaps, the comment service provider isn't sending the right HTTP headers.

Anyway, erm, I just thought I'd confirm that seemingly disappearing comments did actually reach me :-) Well, at least the ones that I read :-P

Anyway, thanks Monkey and Shauny for mentioning it!

Having now written the title for this entry, I am reminded of the idea that there isn't anything other than that which we perceive. Every single thing we've come across, directly or indirectly, has been (even if only indirectly) perceived by us. In other words, we've never seen or heard of anything that isn't, at some point, seen or heard by us. So, the dubious reasoning goes, there isn't anything that never gets perceived.

And that, in turn, reminds me of the problem of circularly referenced objects in computer science when it comes to reference counting.

The idea is that each object (a number, a string of characters, a piece of code) keeps count of the number of things that refer to it. When that reference count drops to zero, it gets deleted, to free up memory for use for something else.

But what happens if, say, A refers to B, and B refers to C, and C refers to A? Even if nothing else refers to any of them, they'll never get deleted! Memory leaks can happen that way. (There are some solutions, but I've never been much interested in garbage collection.) Such things are a bit like things that aren't being perceived, but exist anyway.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how to avoid circular references 'cause of stuff I'm doing with lambada calculus.

2002-07-17T23:39:00.000Z

Thursday?

Oh my word! It's over a week since my last entry, and I've probably been falling behind on reading various blogs, too.

It's already Thursday (in the sense of it being Wednesday night), and I'm still thinking of it being round about the weekend. Where have the days been flying? Or the nights, even?

Well, I've been busily learning lambda calculus (which can be used to compute anything that's computable, and was developed by Alonzo Church back in the 1930s), and developing a functional programming language based on it (which is nothing new, there are plenty of functional programming languages). Oh, and my language is also based on combinatorial logic (which Haskell Curry had something to do with, but was originally developed by someone else, I think).

Anyway, having been terribly absorbed in that, I've been negligent (how is that spelt?) elsewhere. And, um, I've been using up a lot of paper!

Yesterday, I realised I couldn't even remember what day it was. Was it Tuesday? Or Wednesday? I drew the conclusion that it was Tuesday, 'cause I couldn't remember any day but Monday since the weekend. But it was Wednesday.

And as for attempts at creative writing, well, I've just been completely crap at even trying to attempt it for weeks! Perhaps creative writing just isn't for me. I've been thinking that for a long, long time. But I'd like to be at least competent at it, 'cause it might be a useful vehicle in the future. Perhaps.

2002-07-10T22:14:00.000Z

Oh.

I've just been in a bit of a bad mood today. A playing-music-very-loud kind of mood. A quickly-getting-cross-with-things kind of mood. Not really a stormer. Just: a bit of a bad mood.

Realised I'd commented on something that wasn't supposed to be commented on.

Didn't have quite enough cash for a pack of twenty (cigarettes).

The first shop I went into didn't have packs of ten.

Two boys were calling out Baldy! from a safe distance as I walked across the car parks on my way home.

Computer kept being annoying in little, repeating ways.

Turned the volume up on TV when beginning to eat (so that I could hear it over the sound of my own mastication), just in time for them to say something about smoking. My mother was also in the room. I really hate it when things like that happen.

Browser still keeps crashing, despite being three releases on from the beta releases.

A small, flying insect kept bothering me.

Don't have enough CDs. Certainly don't have enough music suitable for when enjoying being in a bad mood.

It hasn't actually been a bad day, though. I was just feeling stroppy since I got up. Nothing bad's really happened. Nothing major has gone wrong. Just a day of enjoying being stroppy about little things, really.

Hmmm, yeah, I really do need more strop CDs.

2002-07-06T12:31:00.000Z

Relaxed

Wow! I haven't written anything in nearly a week! I just haven't got round to it, haven't felt like it.

I've just felt different this week. More relaxed, more laid back, that kind of thing. Not sure how that'll help me get some kind of paid work, but anyway, it's been nice.

So, um, I still don't know what to do about my lack of paid work situation.

hmmm, I really don't seem to have much to say today!

2002-06-30T19:34:00.000Z

Emails, Blogs, and Somewhere In Between

Inspired by a comment by Rach in the comments on Shauny's mailache entry, it has occurred to me that newsletter type emails could be a sort of halfway thing between public, personal journals and private, personal emails.

The thought has occurred to me a number of times over the years that I could have a newsletter, which I'd write and email to multiple friends. It would save time on sharing news, in much the same way as, say, a personal blog, but would also be private, and have more of a personal feel to it. It would be just for those who I would send it to. Not quite as personal as one-to-one emails, but more personal than public journalling.

There are, however, two reasons why I've never actually started such a newsletter:

It would feel terribly egotistical, pretentious, 'hey, I've got a newsletter, and it's all about me!' type thing. I mean, who am I to write and send a newsletter that's basically about me? Even if it's just about things I observe but which don't involve me, it's still going to be things that I observe. It would, it seems, suggest that I feel myself to be somewhat more important than others. After all, I've never been on anyone else's personal newsletter emailing list!
There is very little news in my life. Such newsletters would, in general, be very, very short. Ajnd very infrequent. Of course, I could write stuff that isn't really news (as is the case here in this blog), but what I said in the previous paragraph would seem even more applicable.

And yet, despite the first reason, I have this blog. But, I think, the key difference is that people choose whether or not to come to this blog, but I'd choose whether or not to send them newsletters (though, presumeably, they'd sign up or something to begin with).

Even so, the newsletter idea does seem to me to be a potentially good kind of halfway thing between public journals and private, one-to-one emails. Kind of like regularly having conversations with groups of friends down the pub, but in email form. Perhaps it will be the next big meme? Or perhaps it might just be terribly cliquey.

2002-06-29T18:10:00.000Z

Meeting Miss Marybeth

This morning, I travelled up to London on the train (it's handy that I live just outside), and on the tube to Picadilly Circus, where I met Miss Marybeth.

Now, this is the first time that I've met someone off the internet (other than a bunch of Linux nerds a couple of years ago, but that doesn't count (please don't let it count! It was a one off, a mistake not to be repeated. They were Linux nerds, after all.)), so I was a little nervous.

We elected to have luncheon at Garfunkel's (which I've never eaten in before). But just when we were about to head over the road, a parade of Christians arrived, ambling down the road with a police escort. Apparently, Jesus saves us. I couldn't help but cringe a bit. They even did this - what was it they called it? A 'power wave'? Some kind of wave. It was, um, not very impressive! Quite, um, amusing.

Anyway, once the Christians were out of the way, we headed over for lunch.

It was a good lunch, comparing notes on similarities and differences between the US and UK, and the like. She certainly has lots of good, interesting things to say!

(Now, for some reason, I'd always imagined that Missouri was one, big swamp. I was surprised, therefore, to learn that it is, in fact, one, big swamp. Or, at least, that it used to be (and still is when it rains, or the Mississippi (sp?) floods).)

Anyway, it was a good lunch (though I felt my conversational skills were rather rusty). And it's good to know that there are Americans, such as Miss Marybeth, who don't forget that the rest of the world exists (two or three minutes of world news in an hour or so long news programme?). There should be more Marybeth's in the world.

2002-06-28T20:41:00.000Z

Time for something interesting to happen to Fictionelle, I think.

2002-06-27T00:33:00.000Z

Feeling Horny

We'd be gathered around the teacher's work bench (he had one all his own), in our aprons (which we'd previously made in needlework classes), as he told us about what we'd be doing that metalwork lesson.

Now, I didn't fancy him. I did not fancy him one bit! But, for some reason, with all us boys and girls gathered around in our aprons, I'd inevitably get an erection. I'd just be horny. (Fortunately, having my hands in the front pocket helped hide any evidence. But no, I didn't play pocket billiards!)

I don't have an apron fetish, mind. I'm not sure what it was, but the smell of the metalwork room had something to do with it. Perhaps it was the idea of getting physical with tools and bits of metal, and that I'd be doing this in the same room as nubile girls who'd be getting similarly physical.

As I stood there, standing in more than one sense, I would start to fantasize. I can't remember what, particularly, but as I was a horny adolescent it was probably just the idea of having sex at all. And there were some deliciously nubile girls in the class.

I think it was that we were gathered round closely. This meant standing in very close proximity to one another. Looking back, I can still feel the excitement as a girl next to me moved her arm, and I'd feel it! What a turn on! Wow!

Well, it was a turn on back then. And I'm sure that just having the pleasure of holding hands with one of them would've made me erupt in my pants. Oh, how the hormones surged in my youth.

Not that they don't surge now.

As I walked to the petrol station to get some cigarettes and some chocolate this evening, and began walking across the forecourt, I noticed one of the customers filling up.

Female? Yes. Age? Early twenties, at a guess from behind. Skin? Pleasantly tanned. Hair? Pleasantly tanned. Clothes? Wow! A tight fitting black top with a patterned, see-through panel in the middle of the back, all the way up to the neck line, and all the way down to the waste. And jeans, I think. And no bra! Wow!

A few seconds later, and I had passed, and was entering the shop. On my way out, she was on her way to pay, so I got to see her from the front this time. She looked quite pretty, I have to say. (No, I didn't leer!)

But, of course, I have no idea what she's like as a person, who she is, or anything like that. It was purely physical. Her physically attractive body, adorned in that sexy black top. That's all it was.

It's moments like that that really make me feel like a horny adolescent again. Just briefly.

2002-06-26T22:06:00.000Z

Daniel's Spiritual Survey VII

7. Do you believe that there is some stream of conciousness that continues after your biological body becomes a corpse, or do you believe that conciousness is an illusion generated by biological processes that will stop when those processes stop? Feel free to elaborate. (Simple version: do you die completely or continue on?)

Yet again, I do not know. But I hope there's a continuation of consious existence!

A few months back, I found a programme on television in which some experts (philosophers, a neurologist, and some others) were discussing the phenomenon of consiousness, of self awareness.

One thing they agreed upon was that, for centuries in the west, no one's been able to really conceive of a way in which consiousness could arise from mechanical processes (be they biological, or whatever). And I've thought much the same thing for a long time (but much less than centuries!).

Let's suppose there's nothing but that which is physical, and that it's all deterministic. By that, I mean that given a certain state of a complete, closed, physical system, such as the entire physical universe, all subsequent states can, in principle (though, perhaps, not in practice) be calculated. There is no free will in such a universe.

It's like a game, where the rules dictate what each move must be on the basis of the current state of play. Playing such a game is just a matter of following the rules, and finding there are no choices to be made at all. Conway's game of life is an example of such a thing.

But how could consiousness arise from such a mechanical, deterministic system? I don't think it's important, as there would be no free will anyway. And, without free will, we can't help but make whatever choices we make, we can't help but do 'wrong' or do 'right', believe the wrong thing or right thing, and so on. We'd be just automatons. We might think we have choice, free will, and so on, but it would be some kind of illusion.

But what if the universe is not deterministic? Quantum physics seems to mean that the universe is, indeed, not deterministic. At least, not entirely.

But could there be consiousness if there's nothing but a physical, partly random universe? Would randomness, in the sense of unpredictability, be the fundamental source of conciousness?

I don't know.

But something that strikes me about trying to explain consiousness in terms of physical systems is that it seems, possibly, a bit backwards.

Our knowledge and understanding of physics relies significantly on what our senses tell us. We see the outcomes of experiments, we hear phenomena occurring which we then want to explain. We examine things through microscopes, and so on.

But what if the way we perceive the natural universe, of which we seem to be a part, isn't really how it is?

We rely on our senses, but how do we know our senses are reliable in the ways we think they are?

We can examine our senses. We can disect eyes, probe ears, look at tactile sensory nerve endings in labs, but we're still relying on our senses to learn about our senses! If our senses are unreliable, in some way, then we could easily end up being mislead by them about how they work themselves. Seems to be a bit of a conundrum.

When it comes to the phenomenon of consiousness, how do we experience that? It seems to be something so immediate, so direct, that we can often overlook it. It's there all the time that we're aware, rather like the music of the spheres. Is it, perhaps, a more direct, immediate perception of reality than we get through our senses?

Perhaps we should seek to explain physical things 'out there' in terms of what we know from just existing, in terms of the phenomenon of consiousness. But I'm not sure how that would work, and I don't even know if it's an endeavour that needs to be embarked upon in the first place.

What I do know is that, one way or another, there is a mystery about conciousness. The mystery, it seems, could be the mystery of how conciousness could arise from physical processes. Or it could be the mystery of what it really is that we're perceiving through what we perceive to be our senses. I think the latter way of putting it is better, as it doesn't rely on the circular reasoning about our senses being sufficiently reliable.

But back to the question, I can't actually imagine myself not existing. To imagine myself to not exist, I've got to imagine something contradictory. I've got to imagine myself, in some way, not existing. But if I didn't exist, there would be no me to imagine not existing! So I can hardly conclude that the cessation of concious existence is impossible on the basis of my inability to imagine it.

I'm open to the possibility that there is no continued conciousness after death, and I'm open to the possibility that there is.

I hope that there is, because I don't like the idea of people I care about just ceasing to exist one day. I'm not too keen on ceasing to exist myself! Not that I'd mind once not existing, but I would like to carry on existing indefinitely.

Whether or not this issue of continued existence after physical death has anything to do with how we ought to behave, etc, I do not know. But I can imagine it could well be relevant.

After all, if we all just end up ceasing to exist, then what does anything really matter in the end? All pain would be temporary, and erased at death. Perhaps pain matters while we are alive, but for that to be the case, we ourselves have to matter somehow. After all, if we humans don't matter at all, then what does it matter that we suffer?

But if we matter, then what about death? What if we do just cease to exist? How is that consistent with us mattering? I don't know, but I'm wary of drawing the conclusion that we should assume that there is some sort of eternal existence beyond physical death.

2002-06-26T00:23:00.000Z

Sarky Sarge

Sarky Sarge, we called him, as he was always sarcastic. It could be a little, or a lot, but there was always an element of sarcasm in anything he said.

He was a good teacher (although there was that one time when he told us something plainly wrong about how phase inversion in reflection of light results in mirror images being the wrong way round, but we soon put him right on that one). He was, in his way, popular. We liked him.

And we enjoyed the fact that he was sarky.

It helped keep physics fun. He was, perhaps, no Richard Feynman (who famously summarised the scientific method as being just a matter of coming up with a guess and seeing if it didn't work), but, in his own, sarcastic way, physics lessons weren't boring.

Well, I found physics interesting, anyway. But there was a good kind of dynamic (most of the time) between him, the teacher, and us, the pupils. Like the aether, the underlying sense of humour just kept things enjoyable, even when they would've been dealthy boring otherwise.

I mean, how interesting is it to count how many times a pendulum swings in a minute? Or measuring the speed of a ball bearing as it grops through glycerine? Or finding out how fast heat conducts through a disc of rubber?

He just, somehow, set the right atmosphere. I hadn't thought about it like that before writing this.

One day, he asked us to speculate about some puzzles in physics that we just didn't feel in much of a position to speculate about. But then he told us that physicists tackling such problems were basically relying on the same grounding we had been given during the course. His view, it seemed, was that doing a degree in physics was more a matter of going into much greater detail than it was about learning new stuff.

Looking back, it was quite an inspirational kind of thing for him to come out with. I wonder if it was intentional? Did he plan to inspire us, and to make physics lessons enjoyable by always being a bit sarcastic?

Probably not. If he had had such a passion for physics, he wouldn't have left to become some kind of head teachers' management trainer, or whatever it was.

2002-06-25T21:02:00.000Z

Anyway, enough self analysis!

Let's get back to that freedom!

...

Can't think of anything to say!

No worries, I'll think of something later.

Ahhh, freedom...

2002-06-25T20:48:00.000Z

And After Sleeping?

Man, I feel much the same way as I did when I went to bed (yes, I'm craply nocturnal at the moment). But I do like the liberatedness of just typing whatever comes into my head. It is, I think, a case of just letting myself go, to a degree, but perhaps not to the extent I did last night!

But something definitely snapped.

It's not what I wrote that came from the snappedness, though, as I'm sure you can tell if you read it. It really was just typing whatever came into my head. There's nothing insane in that! (And, having read back a couple of things I wrote elsewhere (cringe), it does, indeed, come across as an attempt to sound mad, instead of really being mad. At least, that's how it comes across to me. Even though that's not what it was supposed to be anyway!)

But something did snap, and I got it into my head that just writing whatever popped into my head was the best thing in the world - no matter where I wrote it.

I just got so miserable last night. So miserable, I just kind of fell through the bottom. It was like bursting into tears, but in an all wrong kind of way.

Now I just feel kind of phased, uncertain, unsure. It feels sort of free. But I also feel sort of like I've been crying loads, even though I haven't physically been crying.

I think I need some kind of a break from something.

2002-06-25T09:57:00.000Z

Oh, Nooooo!!!

Oh, no! I wrote demented crap last night. And not just in my blog (see the last stream of entries, and you'll see what I mean). There were a few comments, too, and at least one guestbook entry.

I just hope they're, um, somehow interesting. But I was just letting rip with whatever came into my head. Must sound like some kind of drivel, or word association gone wrong. Daren't read most of it.

Now I just feel kind of, erm, phased, I suppose.

Something certainly snapped inside my head last night. 'What a good idea to just be free!' I thought. I don't know if I've made an embarassment of myself or not.

Still, it was fun while it lasted.

hmmm, maybe I should sleep on it, and see how it looks when I wake up.

I do feel rather, um, liberated, though.

But I really don't think I should've done it beyond my blog! It's not what other people's comment things are for.

Sorry about that.

2002-06-25T05:23:00.000Z

Mincing Machines

And now it's Hammer To Fall! I like that track, too.

This is so good! It feels so good now! I'm racing along, getting things done, but that's not the point.

I AM MEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

At last, after a long subdue, I am finally myself again. Never entirely quite managed it before. Well! Hell! I did, at times, but now I'm really me! It's the release! It's the fluency! Oh, this is so wonderful! I'm back and I'm proud!

Isn't this wonderful? And I'm blogging like never before.

Now, this ain't your old 'practicing to just type freely' malarkey. No! This is an outpouring of self! And not indiscriminately, either!

You see, after a while, the churned up meat clogs things up. It kinda makes it all go slow, and it gets worse and worse. A good clean through, a thorough rinse with industrial Listerine, if you will, is what's required.

Or it's like a volcano that's been smoking, and it finally gets shot of that plug in its vent.

My computer's like that abatoir machine I was on about in the paragraph before the one before this. It gets clogged up and slow. I think it's the screensaver, mainly, but other things, too.

Anyway, my clog's out of the way.

But I wish it had happened over a year earlier. I feel I've made a heel of myself.

2002-06-25T05:17:00.001Z

A Small Note

I know I'm being lazy with links, and attributions, and mark-up, and stuff. It's just that there isn't time. Please forgive me, I'll mark it up later.

2002-06-25T05:17:00.000Z

The Arse Shines Out Of Some People's Suns

There wasn't much to do. So I said that the planets were about the size of ping pong balls. They believed me! They seemed to think I really meant it. They thought I was going mad. I was just winding them up.

But I had a few, good points. We trust what they tell us or show us on telly. Or even if we're skeptical, we trust that what they're talking about is, somehow, real.

They can argue about the Gulf War, and we can say, 'No! You stupid politicians! You commentators! You've got it all wrong!', but, like the man said, we still believe there's a war. We still believe that part's true. We just get cynical about what we're told about it.

But how do we know? It could be like in 1984, where it's all a fiction, a created 'reality' to replace the truth, and hide the truth, and make the truth go away. It could be that the world is so different to how we think it is, but that the illusion is so thorough, and we're so used to it, that we don't know any different.

They used to think the world was flat. They used to think the sun went round the earth. Someone said to someone else, "Hey! They must've been really thick before Copernicus, thinking the sun went round the earth!"

"Yeah!" said the other person, lulling his victim into a false sense of security. "Just imagine how things would have looked if the sun really did go round the earth!"

2002-06-25T05:11:00.000Z

Hector and the rabbits

It's that track! I Want To Break Free! I do enjoy this track, even if it never applies.

I heard of a goose at university. It was called Hector. There were lots of geese there on campus, hanging around the lakes. I used to boldly walk straight through them, and they would part either side of me. If you showed confidence, they didn't bitch ya.

Hector used to guard the entrance to the library from the students. "Can't finish the assignment, 'cause Hector wouldn't let me!" the students used to bawl to their tutors. And so Hector was retired to a place for retired geese to retire to. Or maybe that just meant he was killed?

They used to nuke the rabbits from time to time. Too many rabbits. The campus lie was that two had escaped from the biology department. Hah! Just as much a lie as the one about the library being built upside down. But it was true they got two of the towers in the wrong order.

Once I cycled over a rabbit's neck. I didn't mean to, but it kept dancing in front of my bike as I cycled along. After a few swerves, I managed to neatly cycle straight over it's neck.

I stopped.

The rabbit was in some distress, but got up and sort of danced around a bit, in a distressed kind of way. It got onto the grass, still doing its distressed bit a bit, but had joined the other rabbits. It was okay, it seemed. I cycled on. It was a novelty, but not a good one.

2002-06-25T05:06:00.000Z

Skipping and Repeating

No time to waste! I've done that much too much already. So, on I go.

My CD cleaner thing, a CD for cleaning the drive, has been used many times, mostly repeatedly. My drives are ropey. One's not too bad, but the other's rubbish.

Sorry! I've said this before. On to the next post.

2002-06-25T05:03:00.000Z

Its' in the Wash Bag

Sorry, I got a bit foggy last time. Still a bit foggy. Losing my concentration?

I was never good at concentrating at school. Not unless I was interested in it anyway. I would concentrate if it was interesting. Maybe I'm tired.

Anyway, I was crap at concentrating. I would do naff at the boring subjects. Or, at best, I'd do okay. But I found it so easy to do really well at the subjects that really interested me. Physics, and various other sundry items that ought not to be mixed up?

You know, I've never been good at that laundry thing of separating whites from others. Sounds like apartheid, as I type it. But it's just to do with dyes and pigments of fabrics, so it's a different kettle of fish. The controls on the knob just confuse me, and it's because of the instruction manual. So I go for the common denominator, the safest option, and things turn out okay.

Don't like fabric conditioner. I like clothes to be hard. And towels. I really feel I'm being dried if the towel is hard and rough. It's more absorbent.

There was a complaint on something on telly, a consumer programme, about fabric conditioners on towels. It made them less absorbive. And in hotels, I've heard it said, the towels are lovely and soft, but leave you just as wet as when you began.

I still haven't done my laundry.

2002-06-25T04:58:00.000Z

Still Listening to the Same CD

Sometimes it would be gone, and I would wonder what was wrong. Only sometimes, and not for long. But I would wonder all the same.

But then it would be back, and all would be well, or so it would be said. Dismissed? Or what? I do not know. I do not know, and that's what I know. Or do I? I don't know.

It's a long, hard fight, is what they're singing. Queen, that is. It's not usually that it's still playing a few times later. Not on repeat, I mean the other way around.

But now it's another track. Could be dodgy.

2002-06-25T04:56:00.000Z

Having a fit

No time for the dumping diary this time!

Reminded of my cat tigger, by constipation, she sometimes has these fits. She has fits after a gradual build up. Sometimes constipation features in advance. She gets cranky, a bit restless, yowling and stuff. She demands attention and won't settle. She's fussy and not in a very good mood. Then, perhaps because of rustling paper or a plastic bag, she has a fit. Dopey afterwards, and subdued. She recovers okay, and is much more relaxed. Much better.

I remind myself of her sometimes.