psyche

AS level exams soon. I am really, really going to have to revise. I don’t know any chemistry. Maths is okay but in my case (I’m not particularly intelligent), understanding without practise* means nothing. Some parts are very easy. Some are tricky. Computing will be the easiest if I can pin down Module 2 (it’s full of hand-wavy definitions and irritating database terminology) to the algorithmic process I have going for Module 1 (which has worked pretty well so far). Physics is again okay but as everyone who sits near me frequently reminds me with looks of disgust and horrified comments (I can’t tell if they’re simulating them to belittle me - they don’t really use insults which I suppose is designed to give the impression that they’re trying to help me and therefore suppress my urge to request forgiveness). Essentially, I can’t intuitively understand basic physical concepts. Things that people just “know” seem to evade me. The pressure in a hydraulic system is uniform? It’s obvious NOW. Braking distance proportional to the square of initial velocity? Obvious once I’ve gone home very confused and derived that by rearranging v² = u² + 2as.

The social climate offends me. Apart from computing, in which either Mr Rokison xor [sic] Erroll crushes any sort of retardation, there is almost no social punishment (or it’s unreasonably deferred) for the usual transgressions (showing off, being annoying, cheating etc.).

What makes me slightly worried is that almost everyone from this school will probably “succeed” in later life. Not really something to rely on, but, you know, a reasonable hypothesis.

What am I going to do? Revise hard, get good A levels and gloss over some terrible problem in my understanding? Yes, probably. I suspect people will be loath to tell me how stupid I am in order to make themselves seem like better people. It’s quite difficult to get people to recognise just how terrible they are when this … terrible …ness … is the accepted norm. What to do?

Life is awesome.

*Brit. variant

Pax

I am so tired. It’s almost the end of the thing. The term. Or whatever. I’m so tired all the time. I can sleep for any length of time between 0 and 14 hours and have a random tiredness level. It sometimes works out in an awesome way and sometimes… in a not so awesome way. I think I’ll have to sort this out.

I will probably never learn to code properly, will I? I will probably never understand anything… meh. Suburban gloom.

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

This morning, while considering the Wired being represented by messed up red pools in shadows in SEL, I looked for my own shadow. Depressingly, there was not enough ambient light to cast a shadow. Dark days indeed… and then in the afternoon the red clouds made me think I was insane.

I have a backlog of three chemistry homeworks to find/do for tomorrow, and I have to plan this SciCast preliminary presentation thing. I am glad that I have things to do.

My electric guitar teacher, David V Miles (link very out of date, but at least I’m not deep linking), is trying to help me play faster by teaching me crazy shred legato techniques which I must practise until I can play them very, very quickly. Maybe when I can, I’ll redo Requiem (again) with some insanely fast solo.

Better start my homework now. Let’s all love Lain!

Pax

Is it important that we’re always plugged in? How important is it? Is my extreme feeling of déjà vu just me being stupid or is my subconscious sadly piecing together stuff I’ve seen and reluctantly forcing me into this existential decline because it knows what’s going on? Why am I like this? Why are you like that?

I think I might know a few things which may be important. Information? Yes, I like information. I like it a lot. I also like railings and train tracks and voices over intercoms telling me that I am being stalked for my own protection. It’s not my fault!

I think that everything I’ve ever seen or read that hasn’t had any effect on me at all is now catching up with me. In this singularity of glorious rubbish, I am going to emerge a more messed up but more stable person? How is that possible? I don’t want to live in a world in which everyone is very annoying. As I said, I can only hope that I, in the words of Mathieu, “happy up”.

A face in the static!

I can’t wait for school to be over. I think the school part of me has expired prematurely.

I really, really hope that I will end up happy. I don’t care if I fail to help humanity and never get as clever as my friends but please, random interactions that are the universe, let me end up happy!

Pax

What I really need to do is focus all my angst and misgivings and use them to force myself to learn as much computer- and internet-related stuff as possible. Then I will truly be ready to find Lain.

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

In previous posts I have alluded to things from my past reappearing in such ways that I understand them better this time around (e.g. the Game of Life and SEL). Something else is happening too. Usually, I phase through interests. That is to say, when I am interested in one thing - be it fencing, physics, computing or music - I neglect the others, both in terms of wanting to do them and actually doing them. However, now I feel like I want to engage in all my interests. I’ve never experienced this before - it’s some kind of consolidation of who I am. I may still lack an identity but now I am ready to forge one. I am no longer a computer enthusiast OR a bad musician OR a wannabe fencer etc. - I am in a state of superposition of all of them.

Observe me and my wavefunction collapses and I appear to be only one, but observe me again and I may differ… or not.

My analogy is approximately 1*10^-999999*awesomeness_of_Feynman.

That makes it the single greatest analogy ever.

Pax