psyche

Well, would you look at that?

Pax

I Pownced this before but having been since removed from Pownce, I’ll put this here:

Alex Wright - The Web That Wasn’t (embedding was disabled by request…)

It’s pretty awesome.

I watched The Golden Compass and it was okay - they did the person/daemon thing quite well.

This is my critique of Will’s performance on them and I’ve posted my thoughts on his new podcast on the accompanying blog post.

It’s worth a listen as Will is really spearheading the “I like podcasting”… movement… at school… He’s right, though - twitter is worth looking into, although I use it and jaiku rather half-heartedly.

I’ve just realised that while sometimes my thoughts are ugly, I really do try to blog beautifully. Every English essay I have scored full or close to full marks on has been angst-ridden and cynical. So be it!

My father somehow won a second Nintendo Wii (???) by accident and I’m thinking that rather than selling it, I could do something involving some of this stuff? That is, if my brother will let me. He probably won’t. I wonder.

Abandoned playground? The Lain PSX game movie media038.avi (stuff mirrored here [much more disturbing than anime, only gave me sound when I used MPlayer]) contains a weird moving still of her on a swing. This reminds me a little of the Animatrix short Beyond. The whole atmosphere of Lain, The Matrix (first one), The Animatrix and the Matrix Comics is one of despair and confusion. It seems to be my favourite thing in the world.

It appears that the new I Am Legend movie again fails to accurately mirror the novel. This is a shame as the novel is awesome.

I was recently put onto Denno Coil by weirdo in #lain while discussing how I thought Lain showed “augmented reality gone wrong”. How chillingly specific this is.

Why has the iPod been so successful? Because it enables people to quickly and easily turn on, tune in, drop out…

Pax

I have to admit, I didn’t feel very heroic. The last sleep-deprived, nervous smiles we all gave each other were so strange. The commander’s voice, of course, was never heard, but the small but significant pauses in between each digital command told us that his heart was also heavy.

Number Four was grinning although he knew that if he failed this mission, it’d be the last mission he’d ever fail. He’d messed up too many too many times. He had always been good at coming to terms with those simple, soul-crushing truths. I felt like he’d never quite been what he’d meant to be, but he was one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen and I have to say I was glad he had missed whatever his true calling was for this. I didn’t believe that things worked out for a reason but I did feel an overpowering feeling of linearity, exacerbated by the commander’s driving countdown. Actually, we all knew that if we failed, this would be the last mission we ever failed. The group would be disbanded. After a few minutes of Number 6’s characteristic tactical genius, punctuated by silly laughs and statements of unfunny black humour, we knew that if the Core wasn’t taken out, the AA would not go down and as we swept round to escape, we would be taken out. As we smiled sadly and shifted in our seats, waiting for the bleep that would signal the start of preliminary launch preparation, we realised one by one that even if we succeeded, it would be the last mission we would ever succeed.

[snip]

It has been sixteen minutes, and the time is now 0312UTC - now I am going; goodbye. There is no-one left to say “I love you” to - how terribly sad indeed.

Ed: The CABAL Core was indeed taken out and, of course, the strike was the last order they ever carried out. The only EVA unit recovered was that of Number 9 which has, of course, yielded the above log. I, of course, am now leaving. Number 9, of course, should, of course, have, of course, felt a hero because, of course, he was. Of course.

Pax

I am working on a music video for Requiem in C# Minor and it’s well underway. I need a proper tripod, though - hopefully I can pick one up tomorrow. This kind of shows how much of an Apple fanboy I am; I recorded the song in GarageBand and am doing the video in iMovie. Speaking of iLife, we went to Brent Cross and I attempted to pick up the iLife ‘08. When I told the helpful selling guy that it would be run on a G4, he said “G4… hmm… I don’t know…”, looked at his mate (who pulled a face: “G4? Yeuch!”) and they somehow talked me out of buying it. Good salespeople indeed. At least I may have a real reason to upgrade soon. I actually hate most of the annoying, superficial losers that frequent the Apple store. They aren’t newbies, they’re n00bs. The difference is that n00bs never become productive, seasoned veterans - they keep their abrasive attitude forever.This is from a long time ago - it was recorded on my Nokia 6820 over at Elliot’s house. Warning: involves awesomeness.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_RVfECfFOI] I saw The Simpsons Movie and liked it, actually. It was good.I am going to screw up my exams when I get into gaming properly. The last time I could be even loosely classified as a gamer was back in Durston. A long, long time ago.Pax

This is the only blog post yet to be mostly copied up from hand-written notes I made while in Venice - so beware! (…)

This is the first time I’ve hand-written something hand-written non-school-related since I wanted to be a writer (excluding birthday cards).

Now I feel like I should properly re-read all the Harry Potter books. They are actually good. Combined with my idealised notion of J K Rowling writing in some quiet cafe (the feeling of which is extended by her well-designed Lightmaker website) the Harry Potter series makes me want to sit at my desk hugging a box set and cry. However, like everyone else, I will reduce this feeling to the sentence “The books are really good” or something, which, in various forms, recurs throughout all descriptions of things too emotionally powerful (for some people) to be expressed properly without seeming demented.

Although the post-modern philosopher in me balks at the idea of millions of people buying merchandise, books and film tickets that are all items with little use (well, books can stop bullets) and attempts to class the entire Potter phenomenon as a disgusting facet of modern consumerism and the commercialisation of “feelings”, some more sentimental part of me is glad that Potter is ubiquitous enough not to be forgotten. As you may know, I fear forgetting about things - usually fleeting feelings - and I think that my recent phase of writing things down is a behavioural manifestation of this. While not a literary type, and having turned my back on English despite it being interesting, I almost regret relinquishing the opportunity to learn more about the way in which people create fiction. I wasn’t so bad it it but my heart wasn’t it int. On a career front, I feel like I want to do something important and helpful - or is that just some artificial conscience speaking? I don’t know. I also want to fence and cook. Nice.

The Harry Potter games on the Game Boy Color were interesting. They also possessed the epic, emotional feeling - it’s in the same vein as nostalgia, I think - that impressed me as an element of the books. They also had some nice music. Unfortunately, they were cut short just after the completion of the second one and the less RPG-like GBA and now DS versions dominated quickly. Economics.

Venice is nice but I hate family holidays and being a tourist. Luckily, the Venetian display an admirable contempt for tourists. They have a dialect but, being in the north, it is similar to normal Italian (one of the few things my unobservant mind has noticed is them saying “ci” for “si” [as in "yes"]).

Harry Potter is tempting because of the fallibility of death it keeps dangling like bait. I could sit here smiling sadly, believing that I will have an eternity to meet people or think things that I did not have time for in life. It is extremely tempting. However, I think I will close this Potter book and shelve the Bloomsbury-bound book one last time and confine JKR to the shelf for now and evermore. Although infinity is reassuring when presented through religion, I find the closure of finiteness (finity?), while much less emotionally satisfying (no tightness in my chest or tears in my eyes), more acerbic but yet more welcome.

The power of people’s emotional response to fantasy and depiction of everlasting life (the Sundering Seas in LotR, tangible “memories” and other manifestations of people in Potter, heaven in religions) is just escapism but it fuels the segment of modern consumer culture dedicated to feel-good fiction.

I don’t know whether I should be praising or ranting at JKR - she created a comfort world that makes me sad. It makes people want to believe it while films like the Matrix scupper their own premise by simply existing as works of fiction (although now I tend to think of the Matrix as a metaphor for consumerism as opposed to a literal depiction of an VR-enslaved future humanity).

I think all the desserts I’ve had here have been alcoholic. My head feels awful.

My life feels quite purposeless but I do feel like I want to prepare for a war that will never happen or an important individual task that will never come. All these stories of heroes have made me acknowledge this as some latent inner desire of mine. I am meaningless. Fencing, video games, academia, chess - anything competitive t hat I am drawn to is a dilution of my Fight Club-esque dissatisfaction with modern consumerism and fascism - or what Mussolini (I wish he were still here, the water taxi’s always fucking late) would call corporatism.

As some video game - Metroid Fusion, I believe - once told me, our experiences delimit our consciousness. This is so true. Especially in the case of seasickness. I don’t get seasick and so I can barely bring myself to believe it exists. It would take a lot of evidence or actually getting the propensity to puke on board sea vessels myself to change my view, although by common sense default I always appear to believe in it.

Why don’t wizards study biology? Healers, surely? The sound of the sea here in Venice reminds me of starting out Myst. The food is good. The canals smell.

There’s a busker in Venice (we’re on the Lido) who plays every evening outside the open restaurants down the main road. He sings international things (”Let it Be”, “La Bamba”, “Baila Morena” [lol]).

It’s so painful to believe that dead people are gone forever. I like it. Are there American wizards?

I seem to read books and such very quickly but I don’t necessarily “speedread” as such - although I sometimes skip paragraphs that seem grossly irrelevant, it is easy for people, myself included, to underestimate the thoroughness of my comprehension of written texts. Take, for instance, the copy of “Guitarist” I’m reading. I feel dissatisfied, like I have read it too quickly out upon re-reading, everything feels uncomfortably familiar and stale because I have in fact read most of it. I find the same thing with moist books I read. This is highly annoying.

I have this recurring thing where I wake up believing I am holding something and my hand is closed and I feel so bad when there’s nothing there. Every time, I genuinely believe I have acquired something - but I haven’t. It makes me extremely upset.

I really, really need to start fencing again. There is a picture of an ancestor of the sciabola (sabre), taken in the Venice Naval Museum. Note my greatness. (link soon)

Today (this is post-Venice now) I went to my grandma’s old house with my uncle to pick up some of his guitars (he’s my dad’s brother and thus the grandma in question’s other son). He has an old Telecaster that I like the sound of, a nice Yamaha 12-string (the top three pairs of strings are tuned in unison and the bottom three in octaves, standard tuning) and an Ovation acoustic. I’ll probably put the strings we picked up for the busker in Venice on the Ovation if I can be bothered.

Pax

Yes, I have an annoying pain in my head after watching Harry Potter (and the Order of the Phoenix, for the record) and then playing on the Wii with Elliot, Vivan and alternate siblings for many, many hours yesterday. Elliot also complains of brain pain having had multiple injections. I thought Harry Potter was okay. I didn’t like it but that doesn’t mean it’s not good, right? I’m just pissed off that all films can’t be like The Matrix! Vivan didn’t seem to understand why I preferred it over V for Vendetta which is, incidentally, also one of my favourites. I think the reason is that The Matrix is full of little details and ironies. The way Neo is “plugged in” to his headphones and sleeping and is later in a small cubicle representing the pods and works for a software company and the way Smith tells him that one of his lives has a future without specifying which one and it turns out to be the other life and all the stuff that people have found - it’s just a much more interesting and well thought-out experience, even if there are goofs and stuff. Its metaphorical functions became stretched with the sequels so I can’t properly defend them. For some reason Psyche doesn’t render at all in Internet Explorer - there must be something wrong with my CSS. My life seems to be full of extremes. What I know will either mean a lot or nothing. I don’t want it to mean nothing! I DON’T!

Pax

I forgot to make the giant post I probably should have about this, so I’ll do it now. I got a Wii with three extra controllers and an extra nunchuk (so in total four controllers and two nunchuks). It came bundled with Wii Sports and I also bought Twilight Princess (although I’m finding it hard to like that, unfortunately… I guess I’m just stupid ). Wii Tennis is really annoying, as is putting in Wii Golf (argh it’s just so annoying) but it’s perversely fun. So is browsing the web. In the true hacker spirit, I managed to work out how to get my TV to get video input from the component HD cable I ordered with Will’s advice (he was here for The Grand Unpacking of the Wii) but sound output from the scart thing. I’m just kidding about hacker spirit, it’s just lucky I tried using the TV’s software menu before giving up.Watching YouTube and using Facebook on the TV is pretty good although it’s strangely low resolution. Will and I found that we can actually type fairly quickly with the thing although obviously nowhere near as fast as with a keyboard. “Multiplayer” is a word conspicuously absent from the Metroid Prime 3 article over at Wikipedia but it better be multiplayer. It better be. Or I’ll have to get some other FPS. OTHER, damn it. OTHER!I really liked Hunters on the DS (fragging Imran wirelessly and then throwing stuff at him in real life = awesome).

Pax

Command & Conquer 3 for Mac in July?! Never really thought that would happen. Strange. It’s a shame the game isn’t actually that good, and I’m going to need to run Windows anyway. However, that’s nice. User interface coherency? The Finder? What the hell?! This stuff is like…They’ve actually done a good job. Amazing. 

SAFARI ON WINDOWS? WHAT. 

Pax 

Check out this interview with Rand Miller. Myst is great. The Millers are great.

Great.

Pax

Ironically, having expressed semi-jocular fears about waking up at 13:00 today, I woke up at 13:08. This was pretty bad, but I still almost revised and made a podcast with Will. It was fairly disastrous because of bad connection and my own stupidity, but Will’s leet post-production will surely remedy this. I’m considering actually buying a Wii, but I don’t know if I can be bothered. I found my phone (it turned up under a bookshelf) so its alarm will go off at 05:20 tomorrow and I will jump out of bed as per usual school routine!

Pax