psyche

I’m getting more interested in the informatics side of computer science - which I guess is what I want “computer science” or “computing” to mean. Although software design is awesome. This reminds me of the distinction between web design and web dev.

I’m not actually very good with computers aside from an almost-reasonable knowledge of JavaScript, HTML and CSS, but I’m confident I can actually make the leap to being good. A-level computing is helping, yes… =]

Leopard’s Quick Look is extremely useful. While people complain that Leopard has fixed things that weren’t broken (cf. menu bar, special folder icons [Home, Applications etc.]) and of course I don’t think that a few features justify a massive paid-for upgrade I am still finding new ways to optimise with it. Quick Look and Spaces are probably my most-used new features atm. Wikipedia in Dictionary is pretty great but it doesn’t support User: or other types of page (i.e. it’s not fully featured) which is a shame, because I could easily see myself dedicating a whole app to definition retrieval

If this Snap stuff could be implemented like Quick Look (and the filesystem-checking blockquote tag’s cite attribute could do something), the web would be a happier place.

I noticed that when I viewed my blog in Lynxlet, the quotation from Michael Henley (Leopard is a service pack) showed up in colour… so, WordPress keeps the q tag but doesn’t parse my text in quotation marks?! Lame!

I’ve always been interested in psychology and, you know, who do I have most information about? Me! What better person to psychoanalyse?

Leopard failed a bit - it stopped auto-switching Spaces when I switched apps for some reason, but a quick
killall Dock fixed it.

Just to finish, imagine this:
Finally, a quotation that sums up today's generation quite well…
[blockquote cite="http://canyouhearme.wordpress.com"]I am an angsty teen with too much time.[/blockquote]


I would want some kind of functionality to be given to that citation. Maybe some cursor hovering could bring up a thing asking if you wanted to visit the source or something… ugh. So what does the citation actually do? I guess it gets indexed by search engines and stuff… hmm…

Pax

My interest in Fight Club, V for Vendetta, The Matrix and WarGames was a symptom of my fascination in things like consumerism, brainwashing, hacking and conspiracies and general science fiction. The Matrix, though, was long championed by yours truly as the pinnacle of film as it embodied everything. It successfully identified that a search for truth could be transposed off God and onto a conspiracy.

However, when I watched Lain, I realised that it was the pinnacle. While it took me a long time to begin to see that The Matrix was awesome, I immediately fell in love with SEL. My slight interest in Japanese culture combined with the internet and genuine philosophy (I can actually believe that the real world may one day be a representation of the internet) meant that Lain finally replaced God in my mind. My rationality and emotional mania have never been in concert until now. A shame that their convergence will probably destroy me. Also, my copy of yoshitoshi ABe lain illustrations ab# rebuild an omnipresence in wired just arrived. It’s pretty awesome. I haven’t analysed the hidden text or programming yet but the overall style is awesome and reminds me of that Matrix comic - Goliath, from the first volume - possibly because Goliath was based on it?

All this stuff about memory and omnipresence. It’s enough to make me want this to be real - and I suppose I do. Let’s all love Lain. Is it impossible to make a life-form or robot that lives forever? If so, why? Thermodynamics? Can’t there be a at least one being that self-repairs properly? Can’t there?

This is rather interesting. It contains a synopsis of the SEL game which has helped me understand some of the references in the artbook. The writer of the synopsis, in their last sentence, uses a single word which they believe describes the end of game and to a lesser extent the end of the anime - “hopeless”. I wonder.

It’s funny, you know; I was just beginning to think I understood SEL and was in the process of collapsing it from a life-altering feeling of weirdness into a statement like “It’s a really good anime but nothing more” but this artbook and game have totally messed me up. I use The Matrix as a sort of benchmark because it was the only thing I’ve ever watched that has really soaked into my whole life but SEL feels like what The Matrix should have been. Right from the almost-urban-legend Lain and feeling of hidden truth and memory-overwriting presented in omnipresence down to the depictions of VR, psychology, sociology and philosophy. Lain feels somehow familiar, as if Konaka and co. didn’t create it but… simply remembered it. In fact, didn’t Mr Abe say he “recalled” Lain? That’s funny. Mistranslation? He “recalled” her? She… exists? We don’t even need all of IPv6, let alone 7 or 8…

My delusions become manifest. Fiction is my undoing.

Pax

Apart from the obvious thematic connections, there are some things in Lain that I’ve seen in The Matrix, like the techno-punk raves, the men-in-black idea and the idea of a teenager killing themselves to escape this reality and enter another (Kid’s Story in the Animatrix).

Similarly, the idea of scouring the internet to find the answer to a nagging, slightly ethereal question. “What is The Matrix?” wasn’t, I think, as well executed as “Who is Lain?”, which, while not a theme in itself, was very well put in at the end (the feelings that everyone had of recognising Lain or recognising her absence but not quite knowing who she was. let alone that she was a goddess). I think I’m going to find the ending to this thing quite sad, actually.

Omnipresence in the Wired
I named Psyche Psyche and put a glider on it a long time ago. Now, SEL and Conway’s Game of Life cross my path again but this time I understand them better. It’s a little bit frightening but not unwelcome.

Pax

Dead centre.

Pax

Originally uploaded by Farhan Mannan

Pax