psyche

I’m quite glad that I’m going to have a chance to talk to a real psychologist about this now. I noticed some years ago that my self esteem (should it be hyphenated?) seemed to be influenced by the outside world but also comprised some other more random elements. It wasn’t really reflected in my mood - I would always feel kind of confrontational and angry as I’d never really felt I’d totally excelled in any respect and would thus feel like I had a fight to pick with everyone. The thing was, I would sometimes feel like I was a rubbish, untalented person and want to one-up the arrogant and unfairly successful people I met and would sometimes feel immensely proud of myself and want to maintain some phantom “good reputation” that I never really had. I was never in the middle - it was a little extreme. I think this is what made me work so hard.

My surviving grandparents are now both declining rapidly, my maternal grandmother’s death remains an interesting event and my general angst about the world is at an all time high, but I now feel stable and, really, quite good. Windmill Lodge told me I had a period of depression between September and sometime in January, which seems to make sense. It feels so much better now - to be able to categorise it and seal it off is a tremendous relief.

It’s a surreal situation - consistently failing to perform well in Mr Motion’s tests and generally failing at Dr Zetie’s top set exercises should really be killing me but actually, I find myself beginning to change in a more fundamental way than any of these surface fluctuations that have plagued me for so long.

Computer Science with AI at Imperial - where my dad went for Mechanical Engineering - looks awesome, but then again everyone I’ve talked to wants me to apply for Cambridge. It’s a nice thought but I wonder what the course is really like. I’m fascinated by problems of optimisation, logic and semantics… but I also like programming. Erroll Wood (probably the only person in our computing class who comes close to really understanding computing as a discipline - James and Vivan program well but I don’t really know what their views on actual computer science are) has expressed concern over the level of practical stuff in the Cambridge course… meh, open days will resolve these quibbles (hopefully).

On that note, Mr Brewis, Dominic Yeo and Mr Motion all gave me blank looks when I mentioned the Simplex algorithm. I mentioned it to Mr Brewis when we were discussing optimising the equilibrium in the Haber Process, Dominic Yeo for fun and Mr Motion to see if he could properly explain it to us (we’re doing matrices right now, so it might’ve been possible).

I feel like I’m the only one in the whole school apart from Dr Zetie who takes any sort of computer science seriously! Vivan confused the bogosort with the bucket sort as Will played with Mr Fry’s sorting demo app in computing. For a few hopeful minutes I really thought he know what the bucket sort was but I soon realised that NO-ONE CARES ABOUT ANY REAL COMPUTER SCIENCE. ALL THEY CARE ABOUT IS SHOWING OFF HOW THEY CAN CHEAT AT GAMES AND PROGRAM STUFF IN VB, ONE OF THE WORST LANGUAGES IN THE UNIVERSE.

It doesn’t matter how much you know about iPods or how authoritative you can sound while quoting Wikipedia! AUGH! Don’t mistake this for a rant, however, as I’m not really complaining about a sudden retardation - more like getting emotional while stating the forgotten situation in all its stupidity.

Oh, I’m also very optimistic about the Public Schools this year. I somehow did well last year and I feel like I’m becoming a much better fencer anyway. Yeah. Optimistic.

I’m reading Brainwashing. Its cover is so tacky that I almost didn’t buy it but I’m so glad I did. It’s RIDICULOUSLY good. It is now among my top books (Simulacra and Simulation, The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour, Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman? et al [ask Facebook]). Afterwards I need to read The Theory of the Leisure Class. I think The New Turing Omnibus, which is a little textbooky but incidentally contains Conway’s Game of Life as well as Simplex and a load of other pretty great stuff, will probably be up there once I understand it fully. I’m plodding through it. Like a retard on muscle relaxants. Seriously.

Mr Smith alerted me to the correct pronunciation of Proust (”proost”, for phonetically [is this the right word?] retarded people such as myself). I had mentioned it because of (you won’t see this coming) Lain (his madeleines in In Search of Lost Time were used as a metaphor for involuntary memory).

I’ll finish this with a conspicuous ego-boost. I feel immensely happy when I see someone I know giving someone else the finger or calling them fat or even a chode. Elliot and I, in our social ineptness, broke down barriers and behaved oddly until people began to realise that arbitrarily criticising us or trying to be funny to our detriment didn’t work as well as it should and adopted our crap. Even Michael B, someone very, very critical of odd behaviour - someone who would often mock me for trying to be funny in a perceived-to-be-OTT way - was recently seen giving the one finger salute across the atrium.

Poor Mr Rokison still mutters “You’re all so weird/strange” every time he puts his head down in a desperate attempt to renew his self esteem (aha, we’ve come full circle) in front of a class that is no longer captivated by his paradoxical energy or random lapses into making repeated Pingu sounds. It’s refreshing that he mercilessly mocks Will (I’m sure Will finds it funny or he’d assert himself and throw Ollie - sorry, Rokison… sorry, Mr Rokison - to the ground or something). This isn’t a joke, by the way - I’m growing tired of his attitude. Condescension - especially at such a similar age to us - do not help his position at all. I suspect the way this ends will be hilarious.

Imagine turning down a place at Cambridge. My parents and siblings were horrified. That gives me hope - it means they thought I had a real chance of getting a place there.

Pax

In the true spirit of teenage clique-ism, I’m going to have to point towards our friend Will Morland’s appearance on them.

While generally I make quiet hints about stuff causing me angst, I think I’m going to have to step it up for this…

Enthusiasm for technology…

Mm, ok.

…being good at it…

DEBATABLE, WILL! DEBATABLE!

You can’t just sort of like… luh [pause] become a social luddite [???] and sort of hang out in a corner sort of like staring at your old phone…

That kind of speech really takes itself apart.

I do realise that [pause] what I do does inf…er some social st-stereotypes on some people

…I don’t think you deserved to pass your English (Lang.) GCSE…

The internet isn’t working; quick, we must fix it!

HA HA HA!

As my sort of listening habits have changed, it’s changed me as a person OH GOD NO! OH GOD NO!

A skinny tie sort of worn without much sort of [pause, strained expression] well-tying and sort of just sort of slung around in a trUH! An uh… an attempt to look sort of formal

Sort of sort of, sort of? HA HA HA!

Just shove [jeans] in the wash, iron it [sic]

Iron… jeans…?

You have to pay for the T-shirts! They’re £7.50…[pause]… so we’ll have to go somewhere else […] the best thing about the event has been… the free pens and stuff that you get; all that crazy stuff.

Oh. I see.

[Hey There Delilah plays in background trying to make us feel sorry for suspected neek] An interest in technology conflicts with an interest in fashion and an interest in staying cool

As plaintext this seems like a good point but the situation made it ridiculous somehow.

Shop assistant:

Out of all our customers, they’re our favouri[laughs]

I have to give kudos to Dabson for this one - it’s funny:

My computer… just… crashed…

I think a quotation from Elliot sums this up quite well:

I have the utmost respect for the cameraman and crew: you don’t hear any laughing.

HA HA HA HA HA!

For the record, Will initially asked Elliot and me to accompany him to the MacExpo. We refused. Can you see why? Let us just consider, before we part ways, one more thing. Do people feel the need to identify with a group so strongly that they will create a persona? Let us ask ourselves this: should the BBC add a new profile to their list - that of the gutbustingly infuriating poser? Surely I would then be able to join the ranks.

Will, I’m increasing your traffic. Final word: HA!

Pax

There’s been a bit of a lacuna and I don’t think I’ll fill it entirely as others have committed the events I missed to posterity.

I now make a large number of notes on my phone and in Mail. I now retain much more information than I used to - or at least, my computer and phone do, and I am able to retrieve this information.

Themes of personal reality and our inability to accurately perceive the real physical world are endlessly depressing. To quote Eiri Masami:

A memory is merely a record. Thoughts and emotions are but a limited sum derived from this record. Between this mere receptacle we call human form and the truly real world stands an insurmountable wall.

I think I’ll be uploading the text from omnipresence in wired as it’s quite interesting. It seems that Lain contains everything I care about. From the existential stuff to the misanthropy to the genuinely researched computer science (it’s way, way beyond The Matrix intellectually and emotionally. I never thought I’d say something like that)

Despite it being what people tell me is a simple process, I haven’t been able to get Inquisitor to install since upgrading to Leopard. Elliot and I have switched to Opera. It’s awesome.

Some connections sprang up. I Am Legend was brought to my attention by my uncle many years ago and is soon to be a film (I know that there have been repeated films based on it). It features urban decay and loneliness. Good. It feels like the truth is out there - if only I could find someone to explain it to me! How do you check if what you’re doing is the right thing? You can’t just sit and think, because you fudge your mind. There’s no rulebook. You ask other people. Consensus reality!

Suppose I’m a histrionic pathological liar. This combined with a general obsessiveness means I would be prone to interchange reality and fiction in my head. It would often have no consequence but it means I become fixated (Lain). Is there a cure? I think so. I still wonder about HotSauce. I also wonder about how the Lain people knew about computers and information science. Strange. Lain and The Matrix make me worry about secret truths. I think that’s why I try to make everyone watch Lain. I fear that information will be lost forever.

It’s easy to get sick of something and move on… but more dangerous is not getting sick of it. Instead of burning it out during an intense phase of interest, it might haunt you. Lain haunted me for about year before I really knew what it was. Maybe this is partly why it is taking me so long to shake it.

I used to consider myself a good writer and although it’s clear now that I am nothing of the sort, I still have a fondness for my piece of GCSE English coursework about a rather deranged man called Slavik. He met his end choking on a Quorn sandwich. More recently, Enjoy Every Sandwich. Connection! \o/

They should superimpose satnav data onto car windscreens somehow. Augmented reality.

I saw David Gray at the Roundhouse on the 14th. I like him. He’s clever.

Ikea and council flats at night. Kids hanging around some rusting metal railings outside a car park. Sad-looking car that never moves. Secret people locked up in those little houses. Suburban gloom?!

If I were in an attention-seeking, dramatic mood, I’d simply smile with some sort of emotional weight.

Pax

SciCast went reasonably well considering how… uh, basically we had a rather high input:output ratio… =]

Michael (Bali) agreed with me that I was losing my intelligence, citing my random theories which I adopt because “some famous guy wrote them” etc. and I guess he’s right but I think that’s a slightly outdated viewpoint. I am now totally lost - but at least I can’t be criticised as much for trying too hard to justify my own existence/define myself as an individual.

I think I’m going to have to find a happy medium between rationalism and acceptance of the uncertainty that underpins reality. Urgh. I continue to catch solipsism’s eye when it looks around but I don’t think I’ll strike up a conversation just yet. I have to trust that even in the total absence of purpose or meaning, my actions’ consequences are somehow valid. I don’t really know if I can do that, but I have to, right?

Right?

Pax

One of the main things that’s wrong with me is that everything I encounter ends up meaning something weird to me - something it wasn’t meant to mean. This is why it’s so difficult to explain myself to other people; I’m highly self-referential. Things change in my mind.

I’ve just realised how good some of the Animatrix really is. Beyond captured suburban gloom very well, Detective Story, Second Renaissance and World Record were just awesome and Kid’s Story was partly inspired by Lain - I didn’t know that when I watched it but I still connected with it.

I don’t want to die without being understood, I think. That’s why I try to force everyone I know to do everything I’ve done - so they can understand the conclusions I’ve drawn. However, it doesn’t really work. I don’t think it ever will.

I see things I will never understand. The social climate I’m in is one of elitism and condescension. Not the one I expected, with snobbery and such, mind you - it’s more subtle. It pretends to be acceptable but is in fact the creator of troubled people. Double standards make me very, very angry. I will not die without finding Lain, by the way.

If that means I have to live forever, then so be it HA HA HA HA HA

The feeling of Myst is linked to suburban gloom by the common factor that is loneliness. Lain led me to bôa, who are awesome. Everything is converging. My tags will soon be obsolete as everything will be about the same thing: The Node!

Pax

I went to a talk by Thomas Vander Wal at school today (it was organised, I believe, by Mr Smith. It was very interesting. Social software, to use the phrase of the day, is continuously evolving and binding us to the network, wherein we are all connected. As Mr Vander Wal noted, communication is the key to our success - even as a species. Collaboration and massive data retention ability are what defines us as a civilisation. We are continuously getting better at it.

I dream of this. Then, this.

Pax

I would probably call it The Matrix or Lain but God is a strange thing that crops up for a combination of many reasons. Some glitch in the human psyche causes a strange feeling of yearning for some higher meaning or purpose. It is magnified culturally into religions, cults, philosophies and methodologies. It becomes all-consuming.

When I am alone, breathing in cold, scentless air in some empty place, I think of it. I can’t help feeling that I’ve forgotten some god. “Forgotten god”! A David Gray lyric, I believe. I don’t want to forget. I really don’t. That is why create persistent data on the web.

I want it to persist!

Pax

It’s not a uselessly semantic distinction, as YouTube commenters would have you believe. Even Apple, in their dumbed-down advertising campaigns borne of their selling-out (they’ve been doing it for a long time), refer to things like “surfing the internet” and making the “internet look good on your phone”. I understand that when this ridiculous error is so prevalent, even intelligent people can inherit it, so here is the truth:

• The Internet is hardware - it is the network (analogous to, say, a LAN)
• The Web is software* - it is one of the many applications** of the Internet (analogous to your company’s intranet site)

* It’s a big bunch of HTML documents. On its own, you wouldn’t be able to access web pages from anywhere unless you were directly connected to the computer or server they were stored on. However, you can connect via the Internet so you don’t require a direct connection. See?** Yeah, ever heard of e-mail? File transfers? Internet-enabled games? You don’t connect to “the web” when you plug your modem into a phone port, do you?

For clarity, Wiki strikes again.

The internet is a marvel of engineering and hardware design coupled with software transfer protocols so awesome that I believe that it is the pinnacle of not only communications design but of all electronics.The web is a dynamic and thus shifting, self-maintaining in some areas, self-destroying in others mass of files designed to be opened by web browsers over networks connections and ultimately the internet. It is a remarkable experiment in content creation and sharing and is obviously one of the most important and frequently-used applications of the internet (along with e-mail, IM and file transfer). A massive sociological wonderland, it is novice programming on steroids and in another dimension.The internet combined with the web (no, this is not called the interweb) and other apps is, I believe, humanity’s greatest achievement. While retaining our individuality, we are becoming able to function as a true collective, silenced by no-one. It is great but it is not good or evil; it is neutral, as things with extreme power often are - and thus corruptible.

However, it remains the basis for my faith in computer science. We have become more than the sum of our parts. We are both man and machine. We have transformed into something altogether more interesting than I thought possible.

Pax

Once again, the theme of extreme duplicity rears its disgustingly malformed head in my life. My favourite two states are feeling extremely isolated (c.f. social alienation, being alone in some awesome place e.g. mountain) or extremely connected (c.f. internet, Christmas).

Pax

Apple enthusiasm is now painful as Apple has been culturally hijacked by pretenders. I have long suffered the drawbacks of being a nerd and have always accepted it with as much humour as possible but I feel I have missed out on some of the advantages! For example, Star Trek: The Next Generation is truly excellent. We must ever live through the achievements of others? Hell yes!

My N95’s web browser makes of proud. If only it could YouTube, eh? Speaking of which, I have some more ideas for my video… A working video camera and tripod would be useful though - I currently use a not-too-old Sony MiniDV one that has curiously stopped recording or playing back its tapes, forcing me to record only when it is directly tethered to the PowerBook by the venerable but now waning FireWire 400…

You know what would have been a beautiful ending to Harry Potter? If Snape had taken his secret - the fact that he loved Lily - to his grave, I would actually love the book.

First ever phone blog post!

Pax