Hey!

Listen to “I Want To Hold Your Hand” by The Beatles. Is it blues? Standard 60s pop-rock? No, it’s Beatles music. That’s all there is. BEATLES MUSIC.

SOOO it’s been some time. What has happened? Well, I went to university. I was aiming for a first but got a 2i but fuck it.

I met this guy James who is a great guitarist and really into The Beatles. Since my mum was really into The Beatles and had downloaded them into my subconscious, and my brother was getting into them, it would be fair to assume I was a fan but, no, I wasn’t. James showed me some stuff and then I realised that they were fucking good.

So good that I had forgotten to listen. I’d just assumed they were 60s bubblegum pop. They were something else. They could make their insane blues/pop alternation seem seamless.

I fucking hate musical theatre. They love perfect rhymes so it all sounds either cliché or forced. It’s become the aesthetic but sometimes I just want to shout “Learn to rhyme!!”. I want to see the Enron musical.

Oh yeah. Anyway, I realised I want to be a musician. I mean, a proper one. So here goes.

I don’t want to drop out of university (although it would give me a lot more time) as some links are being forged. Though I am temped to just say “fuck it”.

I read a book called The Beatles by Bob Spitz and watched Nowhere Boy and Lennon Naked and that kind of stuff. What I hadn’t appreciated when I read the 10000 hours stuff about them in Outliers (Gladwell) was the suffering. They suffered. They came close to fucking dying. They played non-stop in Hamburg. Stuart Sutcliffe died of a brain haemorrhage. John Lennon was obviously eventually assassinated. It’s weird shit.

But yeah, that was it. They PLAYED. THEY JUST PLAYED.

I read Rock Venom. It’s funny how no matter which celebrity you look at, they all bring themselves down to the same level by bitching about each other EVEN IF IT’S VALID. Image doesn’t convey truth. You have to be like completely watertight. No, uh, complaining. The media is the media. Being famous isn’t interesting anymore. It’s just a different line of work. I wonder what percentage of the population cause what percentage of the opinions?

How many celebrities are there?

Just what the fuck am I saying?

So I’ve done a cover of All My Loving.

Pax

There’s no time to worry.

Work hard on things that you choose carefully. Separate your emotions from logic, but pay attention to both.

Fuck it.

Pax

I frequently get into arguments because of the following things I sometimes put forward and sometimes believe:

Theoretical computer science describes the nature of all process.

Applied computer science is rapidly becoming the enabler of all other sciences (which are just processes anyway, so that’s some theoretical computer science).

Maths is just another formal system which happens to be fun for pure mathematicians to mess around with and good for applied mathematicians to give to scientists to explain the world. The universe is based on some kind of rule set. It is a formal system, in some sense.

Artificial intelligence is the most important thing we could ever try to create, as by our nature we cannot solve human problems like hunger and poverty etc. Politics and so on are just us getting caught up in the complexity of a) civilisation and b) other ways of “managing” our own pointless lives.

Also I would like to restate that I am not using “pointless” in a pejorative way.

In summary: create AI for the lulz.

There is a blog post about Formal Verification that has been self-constructing for a long time. I may or may not post it. It’s becoming slightly chunderous.

Pax

Checking email with boxing gloves; this sweet computer science.

Pax

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five: she can tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eye. It’s interesting when people die - give us dirty laundry.

Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet? You know, the boys in the newsroom got a running bet. Get the widow on the set!

We need dirty laundry.

Pax

Others must ever live through our achievements

Pax

We must ever live through the achievements of others

Pax

The next generation - our children - learn by social conditioning and increasingly by “mass media”. No single advert or Disney film can be blamed for inadvertently or intentionally instilling subconscious stereotypes in us and colouring our lives.

However, anyone who becomes high profile has a sort of responsibility to think about how they might be affecting the lives of others in ways that we usually don’t care about. It’s important to be honest sometimes.

People will go to amazing lengths to protect their dream world. Why not just stop generating it?

Pax

This was originally a 600-word post but I think I’ve narrowed it down.

1. Life is pointless, but because of this we can create meaning and define ourselves in some (non-psychological) sense.

2. Even if God existed, you wouldn’t have to do what he told you anyway. He’s just another level up - no matter how powerful he is, HIS life is just as freeform and pointless too.

Lulz.

Pax

People raised on it think pop-rock is rock. Give them a flat degree chord and they’ll vomit.

It’s characterised by the dehumanisation of music. Looping. De-emphasis of progression. Melody as an afterthought. It always goes rhythm => chords => melody - not necessarily bad in itself, but there is no thought put in at any of these steps. It attempts to slavishy obey key, save for clumsy shifts up a tone or a semitone or accidentally setting all chords major on its computer. When catchiness is achieved, and it rarely is, it’s regarded as the ultimate end of the music’s existence.

Instead artificial catchiness is created by repetition of stupid but simple hooks until they get “stuck in your head”. Good pop writers are forced to also write terrible music in order to stay ahead in a chart dominated by machines.

Pax