I need to redo some of Pysche as this article has won me over. I’m also very interested in XML now; as my previous thoughts have indicated, I believe that the possibility of extreme data-mining from the web is one worth pursuing and the powerful markup of XML could facilitate an AI’s ability to comprehend human- (or program-) created data. I might just try something out. I have loads of exams next week.
Loads.
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
I’d better start revising soon; we’re on half term and I don’t know when my next exam is. I could easily find out but I don’t want to. Instead many other projects have distracted me: I spent some of today playing chess against my brother and sister, which was interesting and almost fun. However, most of the day was spent doing things like trying to revive a half-dead asparagus plant and thinking about tidying my room. I’ll clean up and start working tomorrow, I think. As I recently agreed with Will, Web 2.0 sites are very aesthetically pleasing and good for procrastination (my cited example was flickr).
I’m also pondering actually doing something; I want to make a small, simple mechanism of laughable complexity that will still make me extremely satisfied: it’ll be some arrangement of a push-to-break switch that’ll effect the automatic activation and deactivation of the store cupboard light - I know, such daring! Such wit!
Watched an episode of House today - the one about naphthalene (it does have that extra “h” in there) poisoning. It was good but I doubt anything could dislodge Hustle from my Thursday-TV-brain-drain session.
Time to sleep, lest I wake up at 13:00 tomorrow. That would be bad and, as Cyrus puts it, waking up late makes one “feel like a wasteman for the rest of the day.” He’s right.
Pax
Information and communication are the keys! Information handling is impressively developed, but communication techniques fall short: programming languages and markup formats like HTML are living (well…) proof of this, although more dynamic systems like XML are a step in the right direction. Imagine a web browser that isn’t simply an interpreter (something that shows you a picture of what the web developer had in mind) but is instead a sort of personalised display (not unlike an RSS aggregator) that could digest information and display it to your specifications. Perhaps legacy “art” browsers would remain, allowing the information to be presented as it is now. The “art” browsers would be to the new aggregators as ornately decorated manuscripts are to modern minimalist books in terms of appearance. Perhaps there would be a level of “digestion” that would be user-controlled (i.e. the user could move a slider to tell the browser how much it should re-sequence the data that are presented to it, changing it from its “intended” form to a more useful, categorised form. Maybe in time, “form” would be forgotten, no tags would be required and computers would read websites like we read books - understand them, not simply interpret them (like we would, say, read out a passage in another language which we vaguely know how to pronounce but not understand - I remember wasted days in my youth during which I would phonetically read out passages from the Qur’an to some old teacher, never knowing what I was actually saying).
Linguistic awareness of some kind is highly important. An AI doesn’t need to think very hard; it simply has to use basic algorithms to process data as its predecessors are no doubt doing as I type and furthermore use more complex algorithms to make its other algorithms more efficient, complex and useful. The data must be digested. We must teach the machine. The greatest processing power, in this era of pre-quantum computing, is us. We teach the web and it in turn teaches us. We tag, sort, prune, remove and add information. There are many people involved. A significant chunk of everyone is involved. Soon we will be replaced by programs (at least in terms of information sorting if not even adding) but until we are, we must endeavour to power this interesting sociological experiment that is, in my opinion, one of humankind’s greatest achievements (the other main one in my mind being the internet…).
I was previously asking myself whether I should pursue maths, physics or computer science but now I have a feeling it’ll be all three in copious amounts in the friendly package that is quantum computing.
I don’t know why I feel this compulsion to make computers think. It would be a magnificent system, a being created manually (so to speak) by a large group of other beings.
It would make my fucking day.
In chess, Elliot and I are making good progress with the middle- and endgame but our openings, although now familiar and underpinned by good intention, are still highly random and in need of consolidation. Over the summer I think my routine will comprise proper formal practice the following:
This is a war!
Pax
Despite the blanket of GCSEs suffocating me (particularly English. I’m so confused. I’ve bluffed every previous English exam and never done badly - and each time I became more complacent. Now it’s the real thing and - what if I’m expected not to bluff it?! It’s too late. I was too slow!), I think I’m more happy. Which is bad. This is who I am, I think. I am an insecure and annoying, marginally successful boy with a fistful of busted 3A fuses and some gadgets in my pocket and a gallium arsenide-coated piece of silicon stuck on my trousers and a whole load of (mostly incorrect) stuff in my brain.
This is it.
Pax
Sixth form teaching has for the most part just ended. No more lessons. Easy term; just exams.
This is it! I am no longer a conscious being; I am now a vessel of hatred, arrogance and greed and all my actions are symptoms of human delusion. Exams! Racking up A*s! No matter how much I hate pressure or failure or being continuously outclassed, I have to say, this is good. This is what I was born to do.
To those of you doing exams, I say:
To those of you competing at life, I say:
* Writing your answer down is very important too.
** Preferably the best move.
To paraphrase Joshua Waitzkin, it’s the second mistake that gets you. Make a mistake but then make the best of the resulting scenario. Such is the grand compromise.
Such is death.
Pax
I’m laughing out loud and carrying no notion of what this is about. Make no mistake - no matter how many times you get patted on the shoulder and told that results mean nothing as they can’t tell you what really happened, they mean everything. This is a fight to the death. Sure, some people will have a harder time of it than others but what it comes down to is results. Real results are all the world should ever need. They can’t lie. They can be changed but that shouldn’t happen. The real result makes your brain lock up and your heart sink but it is the closest thing to God we have! It is truth! It is purity!
This is a game; a competition. Whether your overbearing or highly intelligent parents have shaped you into a winner from the day you could talk or are altogether more emotional about life, you are here and you are fighting. Everyone is fighting. It is the human way!
Stand fast on your podium because I am now hellbent and will not hesitate to throw you from it if it means getting closer to the truth and pulling humanity a little further back from the event horizon of decadence’s black hole. If it should slip, there will be no going back.
Pax
P.S. I am a little more confrontational than usual. You play your fiddle, I’ll play dumb.
Yes, I am ruined and I am here again. For all my complaints and motions against the enemy’s flaws, it has struck me down and charged me however many thousand yen it takes to kill an adult whale. No-one could tell me if I could be like the others! Don Jaime de Astarloa spins in his grave as I lose again and again. My heart blackens in the face of even petty adversity. However, tick, tock; I will never be all alone. I might just pull through.
“Hold your trump card till the end!” yells some purple-haired young-but-old man. What a joke! I didn’t realise that the whole world smiled cutely and lured me into complacency while preparing to strike. Now I do and let it be known that I will fight - I will actually fight - to beat this down. I put myself back together and next time is never.
I don’t even know what you want when you evangelise about your own power. Sometimes, I must confess, I want to shout. There is no way I can get A*s in every exam, by the way. Sure, everyone says it won’t matter, but if it doesn’t matter, why even try? For sport? Then it does matter, at least a little. This double-standard-mania-death should embarrass all of you! I will strive never to make you deceitful windmills proud. Never. I will die a number! I LIKE DYING A NUMBER. Make some room.
Hand me down. It’s better when I’m not around. I feel good and I look like I should, but I could never make you proud. 
Pax
I fail at everything I want to be good at - and most things I don’t, with the principal exception of failure. I’m good at that. However, this ridiculous self-deprecating deathbag alter-ego cunt chutzpah Weimar reinstallation FUCK FACE RADIO FREQUENCY SHITBAG will not break me. Neither will the continued success of others slapping me in the face every day, or the death of everything I cultivate (that really happens). No! Because I am decadent! AND THE BOURGEOISIE JUST DON’T DIE.
You know what? FUCK THIS SHIT. I scapegoat no-one. I only have myself to blame, so I do. It’s simple - why doesn’t it turn out right?
Maybe this is how it’s meant to turn out.
League tables, pressure, depression, failure, hormones combined with comfy middle-class decadence. I’m not good at sport and I’m not good at academia. I don’t mean anything to anyone. If I studied hard I could improve and then be my reputation. They’ll grade us on a curve! They’re including everyone! Shit, fuck, fuck it. Fuck. Did I mention fuckshit? Well, I tried. I tried fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck cunts. I don’t believe your lies! I don’t even want this to swim cunt. SHIT. Don’t give up on me! Wait, do. That way it’ll be less disappointing. TROGDOR! You may see someone tonight. Will you be the one that saves my life?
:’(
Pax
The PowerBook has had its broken US keyboard replaced with a new UK one - and its failed hard drive replaced. We just have to pick it up from the Brent Cross Apple Store. Hooray for AppleCare. I have no idea what’s going on. I have an obscene amount of work to do. I will never reach the higher level. I am glad that God does not exist. I am so sorry.
My brain is becoming even less… good. Things are looking clear now. That is almost not. What I say? 2
The guys at the Genius Bar there deserve a cookies or someti23
Pax
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