Meaning moral insanity.
I'm trying to get back into writing on this thing because I'd like to be able to have something to show for my free time. As ever, I'm writing this late at night, so it's unlikely to make an awful lot of sense, but I'll just go with the flow of my train of thought.
So, firstly, I'm thinking of helping a charity by the name of Time To Change next summer. Time To Change are a charity involved in ending mental discrimination. That is to say, they are working to remove all and any stigmas attached to mental disorders such as depression. I will be joining this charity on a roadshow of the UK, talking to young adults (and indeed anyone that wishes to) about depression, combating it, and how it is nothing to be ashamed of at all. Depression affects one in every ten adults, and more than half of those who have an episode of depression in their life will have a recurrence in later life. So, it is massively important that this stigma of shame associated with depression is removed. Sufferers need to feel like they can talk to people about their disorder without being judged. Depression can be caused by a number of factors, both environmental and genetic, so those who suffer from depression are not "weak", nor are they "crazy". Working with someone who suffers from depression to help them in any way possible is the best course of action. Talking to them, spending time with them will make a world of change to them.
I'm not, by any means, saying that you are responsible for anyone else's happiness. Far from it, in fact. Those who suffer from depression have to really want to get better, and have to be prepared to work at it for a long time. But it's not hard work. In some cases, anti-depressants can be prescribed with minimal, if any, side effects. Little lifestyle changes, such as going for a walk (increases vitamin D levels and serotonin) or consuming a healthier diet can make huge changes to your mood.
But I am trying to help remove this stigma of depression being a shameful thing. Depression can hit anyone of any age and any gender. Bipolar disorder is also known as manic depression.
Billy Joel (singer of Uptown Girl) suffered from depression; as did Jim Carrey, J.K. Rowling, and Winston Churchill.
The first hurdle to jump when fighting depression is to make those with it feel socially accepted.
"Art saved me; it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence."
Tuesday 27 September 2011
Friday 26 August 2011
Backpfeifengesicht
German, meaning a face that is crying out for a punch.
I was very amused when I found that word. Well, I would be if I currently had the emotional capacity for humour. You see, I am currently taking fluoxetine to treat my depression (moderately severe manic depression, to be precise. Yippee.). The "street name" for fluoxetine is Prozac. The doctor has prescribed me - of all people, me - Prozac. When I first started the course of medication, I suffered quite badly from minor side-effects such as nausea and confusion, gradually progressing onto worse ones such as aggression, agitation, insomnia and vivid dreams. While I still suffer a slightly reduced form of the bad side-effects, the nausea and confusion have subsided. The Prozac has left me with the emotional depth and capacity of a shot glass (a really small one that maybe small insects or single-celled oragnisms may use). That is, I am somewhat emotionless at the moment. It is strange, but it's pleasant not suffering as much stress and pain as usual.
However, it is somewhat worrying being on 40 milligrams of Prozac a day for the next year and a half (at the very minimum). It is also unnerving having the recent events of my life used by a therapist to explain why I am, and I quote verbatim; "self-obsessed and narcissistic to the point of psychotic delusion.". Beautiful.
Still, I'm on cognitive behavioural therapy, Prozac and sleeping pills, so with that beautiful cocktail of mind-altering medication, it has to do something good. One might hope. I've been on Prozac for the best part of nearly three months. But I feel like I've turned a bit of a corner. Not massively, but I'm celebrating the small victories because it's rare that I get a big win. Of course, there are some things that my therapist has said that I need to do that are physically out of my control, because they rely on someone else. But generally, I think the illness is manageable in the long-term. It's just a case of maintaining the constant mindset over the course of a long time.
I mean, it's unpleasant seeing life going so smoothly and easily for some people who really deserve some sort of backlash from karma. But I guess it'll come soon enough. That's another thing that's getting me right now; I know how much destruction I could cause with a few things that I know, but it's more a case of proving to myself that I can actually be a good person and not need to hurt people to make myself feel better (which is, incidentally, a symptom of narcissism).
Still, I guess it all just remains to be seen and whatnot. I know I've got enough close friends that aren't going to be bailing on me any time soon. Small victory #2.
"Depression is when you have lots of love, but no-one's taking."
I was very amused when I found that word. Well, I would be if I currently had the emotional capacity for humour. You see, I am currently taking fluoxetine to treat my depression (moderately severe manic depression, to be precise. Yippee.). The "street name" for fluoxetine is Prozac. The doctor has prescribed me - of all people, me - Prozac. When I first started the course of medication, I suffered quite badly from minor side-effects such as nausea and confusion, gradually progressing onto worse ones such as aggression, agitation, insomnia and vivid dreams. While I still suffer a slightly reduced form of the bad side-effects, the nausea and confusion have subsided. The Prozac has left me with the emotional depth and capacity of a shot glass (a really small one that maybe small insects or single-celled oragnisms may use). That is, I am somewhat emotionless at the moment. It is strange, but it's pleasant not suffering as much stress and pain as usual.
However, it is somewhat worrying being on 40 milligrams of Prozac a day for the next year and a half (at the very minimum). It is also unnerving having the recent events of my life used by a therapist to explain why I am, and I quote verbatim; "self-obsessed and narcissistic to the point of psychotic delusion.". Beautiful.
Still, I'm on cognitive behavioural therapy, Prozac and sleeping pills, so with that beautiful cocktail of mind-altering medication, it has to do something good. One might hope. I've been on Prozac for the best part of nearly three months. But I feel like I've turned a bit of a corner. Not massively, but I'm celebrating the small victories because it's rare that I get a big win. Of course, there are some things that my therapist has said that I need to do that are physically out of my control, because they rely on someone else. But generally, I think the illness is manageable in the long-term. It's just a case of maintaining the constant mindset over the course of a long time.
I mean, it's unpleasant seeing life going so smoothly and easily for some people who really deserve some sort of backlash from karma. But I guess it'll come soon enough. That's another thing that's getting me right now; I know how much destruction I could cause with a few things that I know, but it's more a case of proving to myself that I can actually be a good person and not need to hurt people to make myself feel better (which is, incidentally, a symptom of narcissism).
Still, I guess it all just remains to be seen and whatnot. I know I've got enough close friends that aren't going to be bailing on me any time soon. Small victory #2.
"Depression is when you have lots of love, but no-one's taking."
Thursday 28 April 2011
Mabsoot
I'M BACK, Y'ALL. Probably with a considerably larger curse / swear-word count, but back nonetheless. And it's unlikely that I'll be posting regularly for a while, but hey, at least I've got something going. Today's word means happy.
Ok, so I took a brief hiatus due to being stressed. However, the reason for me being focused enough to write this blog is, ironically, stress.
Allow me to explain. My childhood was quite a stressful and traumatic one; my parents divorced, I've been surrounded by alcoholism, abuse, arguments, depression and other unhappy situations. Not little ones, but pretty big ones. But it leaves me with somewhat of a defence mechanism. If something trivially insignificant doesn't go my way, I freak the fuck out. If my vacuum cleaner isn't sucking the dust up powerfully enough, I'll feel a rage start building inside. If I break a glass, it'll push me to the verge of tears of frustration. But when I'm overwhelmed with stressful situations that actually matter, I seem to dissociate my body from my emotions and just focus on things, and deal with things slowly and in a logical matter. It's brilliant.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still nowhere near sorting everything out, but there's such a lot going on, it's keeping me focused. Which is a good thing so near to exams.
I've also recently taken up frisbee. I'm not the most sporty person in the world (if anything, I'm probably the least sporty), so any kind of physical activity that I enjoy is a good thing. I want to take up Ultimate (or Ultimate Frisbee as it is more popularly known, but since Frisbee is a trademarked name, they don't like it being called that because it genericises it and puts the trademark at risk). It's similar to netball but played with a frisbee, and it's much faster-paced. Not sure what I'm writing at the moment - kinda multitasking (or failing) but I'll see where this goes.
Another project that I've decided to take up is to create a set of music synchronised lights. This entails several LEDs connected to a 3.5mm headphone audio output, using capacitors, resistors and transistors to control the frequency range that each LED responds to. This will end up with a set of lights flashing to the music, similar to those found in discos and at live music gigs. I've already got a generic circuit schematic, now all I need to do is work in some values for the ranges I want, the resistors, et cetera and then I can make it.
I've run out of things to write about, so I'll leave it here.
"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
Ok, so I took a brief hiatus due to being stressed. However, the reason for me being focused enough to write this blog is, ironically, stress.
Allow me to explain. My childhood was quite a stressful and traumatic one; my parents divorced, I've been surrounded by alcoholism, abuse, arguments, depression and other unhappy situations. Not little ones, but pretty big ones. But it leaves me with somewhat of a defence mechanism. If something trivially insignificant doesn't go my way, I freak the fuck out. If my vacuum cleaner isn't sucking the dust up powerfully enough, I'll feel a rage start building inside. If I break a glass, it'll push me to the verge of tears of frustration. But when I'm overwhelmed with stressful situations that actually matter, I seem to dissociate my body from my emotions and just focus on things, and deal with things slowly and in a logical matter. It's brilliant.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still nowhere near sorting everything out, but there's such a lot going on, it's keeping me focused. Which is a good thing so near to exams.
I've also recently taken up frisbee. I'm not the most sporty person in the world (if anything, I'm probably the least sporty), so any kind of physical activity that I enjoy is a good thing. I want to take up Ultimate (or Ultimate Frisbee as it is more popularly known, but since Frisbee is a trademarked name, they don't like it being called that because it genericises it and puts the trademark at risk). It's similar to netball but played with a frisbee, and it's much faster-paced. Not sure what I'm writing at the moment - kinda multitasking (or failing) but I'll see where this goes.
Another project that I've decided to take up is to create a set of music synchronised lights. This entails several LEDs connected to a 3.5mm headphone audio output, using capacitors, resistors and transistors to control the frequency range that each LED responds to. This will end up with a set of lights flashing to the music, similar to those found in discos and at live music gigs. I've already got a generic circuit schematic, now all I need to do is work in some values for the ranges I want, the resistors, et cetera and then I can make it.
I've run out of things to write about, so I'll leave it here.
"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
Friday 25 March 2011
Quacksalver / Obelise / Blague
Maybe I'm pushing myself a little far to try and write three blog posts in one, but since I've missed so many, I need to catch up on the ones I've missed before I can get back into the rhythm of updating. So in the usual fashion, just three times over, today's first word means someone who pretends to have a knowledge of medicine. The second word, obelise, means to condemn as corrupt or spurious. I have, of course, saved the best till last. It might be noted that I am writing a blague blog, since it means pretentious nonsense. Wow, there's quite a bit of bold in there. Wicked.
Ok, let's get started on these posts (I've already lost focus around five times. It's awful.). I believe that in my last half-post, I mentioned about social networks being considered as a sort-of super-organism because all of the nodes (human beings in the case of a social network) are so closely related. They are so closely related in two manners. The stronger and more well-known phenomenon of the two is known as the Six Degrees of Separation. This is the theory that any one person in the world is related or has some connection to any other person in the world by a maximum of six degrees - that is, any other person in the world is only as far away as a friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend. Of course, friendships aren't the only type of connection between human beings. It can be as complicated as your spouse's brother's friend's aunt's coworker's son, but you get the idea.
Some of you must be thinking "How can this be possible?", so imagine this. If you know around 250 people (including Facebook friends, family, coworkers, et cetera), and each of those people know 250 people, and each of those people know 250 people, at only the third degree of separation we have almost 16 million people. At the sixth degree we have reached over forty times the Earth's population. This can be used to show that every node in the network is, in some way, connected with any other node.
The second and lesser-known phenomenon is known as the Three Degrees of Influence. This has less of a reasoning behind it, but is more of an observed phenomenon. It is shown, by monitoring a social network, that when a person, for example, gives up smoking, it creates a ripple effect throughout the social network with the behaviour extending to only three degrees of separation, after which the effect seems to have a negligible effect, rather like a ripple in a pond losing energy. The first and second degrees feel the most effect, with rises in the chance of giving up of around 50% and 30% respectively, and the third degree feeling only a meagre ~5%.
The actual effect on the social network is not just a standard outwards ripple effect, similar to a pebble being thrown into a pond. It is similar to a handful of pebbles being thrown into a pond. Why? Well, it is not only one person that may give up smoking at any one time. Many people may give up, each causing their own ripples. And these ripples may intersect, causing an effect of both of the ripples combined. For example, consider person X at two degrees from person A, who has given up smoking, and three degrees from person B, who also gave up smoking at the same time. Person X would experience a rise in the chance of giving up smoking of ~35%. Well, I thought that was pretty interesting.
My second and third posts are somewhat combined here.
Last night, I went to see a comedy gig in Camden (more specifically, Mornington Crescent, Dom). It was a thoroughly enjoyable gig (for those interested in watching the two shows that I saw, watch Stand-Up For The Week on 4OD for Saturday 19th March and Saturday 26th March, though the latter was considerably better. Mike Wilmot is a comic genius) at Camden's KOKO Club.
Koko's is an old, traditional-styled theatre that has been converted into a club / function venue. A beautiful venue, it has televisions and bars on every floor, while overlooking the main floor and stage, on which they frequently have acts and bands playing. Since the gig was free, they had unfortunately jacked the bar prices sky-high to make up for it, but on a normal night, the prices would have been more than respectable. It really gives a feel of the hidden side of London, with the classic theatre look and old theatre ticket booths still in operation. I would absolutely recommend this place to anyone, be it for a club night or to watch a show. The venue was fantastic, and even on the uppermost balcony you have a fantastic view of the stage.
On the journey, however, we went for a little exploration of Mornington Crescent station. Upon taking a flight of stairs down into the station, we discovered a corridor with several doors, all locked. This then began a train of thought (excuse the pun) that took me back a few years.
Back in the Summer of 2009, I met up with a handful of Muse fans from the online forum to do a spot of filming for an actual video (alas, the footage mysteriously disappeared, but we had a great day nonetheless). The task was to film ourselves singing in well-known and iconic parts of London, and being the utter genius that I am, decided that I'd take on the task of checking out filming in a Tube station. It appears that station staff get quite on edge when they see a group of ten people filming themselves singing in a station. And apparently, it's illegal to film in them or something. Still, we weren't going to be able to film without around six months notice and a whole lot of money. Neither of which we really had.
So I began looking into old, unused stations, and came across another one of London's hidden gems. Near Charing Cross and Strand, is an old abandoned station by the name of Aldwych. This isn't a station for which construction started and then ceased halfway through. It is a fully functional station that is just closed due to lack of use.
Aldwych Tube Station is a branches off of the Picadilly line (The 1933 Tube map shows this well - Picadilly line is in blue and the Aldwych branch is just after the Picadilly line crosses over the then-named Central London Railway), a branch solely created to serve that one and only station. The old branch-off can still be seen on a good day on an eastbound train on the Picadilly line, shortly after leaving Holborn station. It used to run only at peak times to save on financial losses, due to the low volume of passengers using it, before being cut down to just a single running line in 1917. It was then finally closed tothe public completely in 1994, when it was resulting in a net loss of around £150,000 per annum. There are still occasional tours of the stations, and for a fee of approximately £1,500 one can get into the station for filming and photography purposes for a day.
I cannot stress how incredible Aldwych Station is. Maybe it's the feeling of seeing an abandoned and disused Tube station, but it is also one of the scariest things I've experienced. For copyright reasons, I cannot publish any photos on here, but go here to see an almost complete tour of the station. I actually cannot look through these pictures right now, because it's late at night and they just creep me out so much.
"You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
Final note - I know I mentioned a few posts back about how London gets tiresome and that I prefer places like Cambridge. While this is for the most part true, there is no other place in England that has the beauty and intricacy of London. You can always find something new in London, another hidden secret from deep within its fantastic history. I know it sounds like a cheesy advert for the place, but I love places that keep battlescars from their history, be it an old ruin, or a network of tunnels buried deep beneath the city centre that no one uses anymore.
J.
Ok, let's get started on these posts (I've already lost focus around five times. It's awful.). I believe that in my last half-post, I mentioned about social networks being considered as a sort-of super-organism because all of the nodes (human beings in the case of a social network) are so closely related. They are so closely related in two manners. The stronger and more well-known phenomenon of the two is known as the Six Degrees of Separation. This is the theory that any one person in the world is related or has some connection to any other person in the world by a maximum of six degrees - that is, any other person in the world is only as far away as a friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend. Of course, friendships aren't the only type of connection between human beings. It can be as complicated as your spouse's brother's friend's aunt's coworker's son, but you get the idea.
Some of you must be thinking "How can this be possible?", so imagine this. If you know around 250 people (including Facebook friends, family, coworkers, et cetera), and each of those people know 250 people, and each of those people know 250 people, at only the third degree of separation we have almost 16 million people. At the sixth degree we have reached over forty times the Earth's population. This can be used to show that every node in the network is, in some way, connected with any other node.
The second and lesser-known phenomenon is known as the Three Degrees of Influence. This has less of a reasoning behind it, but is more of an observed phenomenon. It is shown, by monitoring a social network, that when a person, for example, gives up smoking, it creates a ripple effect throughout the social network with the behaviour extending to only three degrees of separation, after which the effect seems to have a negligible effect, rather like a ripple in a pond losing energy. The first and second degrees feel the most effect, with rises in the chance of giving up of around 50% and 30% respectively, and the third degree feeling only a meagre ~5%.
The actual effect on the social network is not just a standard outwards ripple effect, similar to a pebble being thrown into a pond. It is similar to a handful of pebbles being thrown into a pond. Why? Well, it is not only one person that may give up smoking at any one time. Many people may give up, each causing their own ripples. And these ripples may intersect, causing an effect of both of the ripples combined. For example, consider person X at two degrees from person A, who has given up smoking, and three degrees from person B, who also gave up smoking at the same time. Person X would experience a rise in the chance of giving up smoking of ~35%. Well, I thought that was pretty interesting.
My second and third posts are somewhat combined here.
Last night, I went to see a comedy gig in Camden (more specifically, Mornington Crescent, Dom). It was a thoroughly enjoyable gig (for those interested in watching the two shows that I saw, watch Stand-Up For The Week on 4OD for Saturday 19th March and Saturday 26th March, though the latter was considerably better. Mike Wilmot is a comic genius) at Camden's KOKO Club.
Koko's is an old, traditional-styled theatre that has been converted into a club / function venue. A beautiful venue, it has televisions and bars on every floor, while overlooking the main floor and stage, on which they frequently have acts and bands playing. Since the gig was free, they had unfortunately jacked the bar prices sky-high to make up for it, but on a normal night, the prices would have been more than respectable. It really gives a feel of the hidden side of London, with the classic theatre look and old theatre ticket booths still in operation. I would absolutely recommend this place to anyone, be it for a club night or to watch a show. The venue was fantastic, and even on the uppermost balcony you have a fantastic view of the stage.
On the journey, however, we went for a little exploration of Mornington Crescent station. Upon taking a flight of stairs down into the station, we discovered a corridor with several doors, all locked. This then began a train of thought (excuse the pun) that took me back a few years.
Back in the Summer of 2009, I met up with a handful of Muse fans from the online forum to do a spot of filming for an actual video (alas, the footage mysteriously disappeared, but we had a great day nonetheless). The task was to film ourselves singing in well-known and iconic parts of London, and being the utter genius that I am, decided that I'd take on the task of checking out filming in a Tube station. It appears that station staff get quite on edge when they see a group of ten people filming themselves singing in a station. And apparently, it's illegal to film in them or something. Still, we weren't going to be able to film without around six months notice and a whole lot of money. Neither of which we really had.
So I began looking into old, unused stations, and came across another one of London's hidden gems. Near Charing Cross and Strand, is an old abandoned station by the name of Aldwych. This isn't a station for which construction started and then ceased halfway through. It is a fully functional station that is just closed due to lack of use.
Aldwych Tube Station is a branches off of the Picadilly line (The 1933 Tube map shows this well - Picadilly line is in blue and the Aldwych branch is just after the Picadilly line crosses over the then-named Central London Railway), a branch solely created to serve that one and only station. The old branch-off can still be seen on a good day on an eastbound train on the Picadilly line, shortly after leaving Holborn station. It used to run only at peak times to save on financial losses, due to the low volume of passengers using it, before being cut down to just a single running line in 1917. It was then finally closed tothe public completely in 1994, when it was resulting in a net loss of around £150,000 per annum. There are still occasional tours of the stations, and for a fee of approximately £1,500 one can get into the station for filming and photography purposes for a day.
I cannot stress how incredible Aldwych Station is. Maybe it's the feeling of seeing an abandoned and disused Tube station, but it is also one of the scariest things I've experienced. For copyright reasons, I cannot publish any photos on here, but go here to see an almost complete tour of the station. I actually cannot look through these pictures right now, because it's late at night and they just creep me out so much.
"You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
Final note - I know I mentioned a few posts back about how London gets tiresome and that I prefer places like Cambridge. While this is for the most part true, there is no other place in England that has the beauty and intricacy of London. You can always find something new in London, another hidden secret from deep within its fantastic history. I know it sounds like a cheesy advert for the place, but I love places that keep battlescars from their history, be it an old ruin, or a network of tunnels buried deep beneath the city centre that no one uses anymore.
J.
Wednesday 16 March 2011
Topophilia / Fissiparous
The first of today's words means great love or affection for a particular place. And, since I'm doubling up due to a second burst of inspiration, the second word means a tendency to break into many parts.
I've been very very unwell this week (well, moreso than usual), and so it's been difficult to get this done, so I'm trying to double up while I'm able to.
In my last post, I spoke of using a piece of software to run my guitar through a series of emulated effect pedals. To cut a long story short, Guitar Rig doesn't work with analogue signals. I was running my guitars through the line in port on my laptop, which merely amplifies the signal recieved and keeps it as an analogue signal. However, when buying Guitar Rig, (something that I'd foolishly overlooked) an actual physical rig is provided. That is, somewhere to plug a guitar into that connects to a computer via USB. This rig converts the analogue signal recieved into a digital (to be pedantic, a signal that is converted to digital from analogue is known as a digitised signal) signal that is suitable for being manipulated by the Guitar Rig software.
A digital signal is essentially a binary digit. It has one of two states; on or off. The main advantage that digital music production has is its resistance to minor wave degradation. Analogue waves are far more sensitive to the degradation than digital waves, since an analogue wave is not of a discrete value like digital, it is more continuous, and so interference is not quantised and is merely amplified with the rest of the wave. However, where wave degradation is more pronounced, analogue systems produce a more recognisable sound, whereas the digital system will fail completely, trying to quantise the wave, and reading the degradation as part of the wave. I'm really hoping that this makes sense, because I'm exhausted and ill, and I can't really analyse my own writing very well right now.
Anyway, back on topic, I ended up having to give up on Guitar Rig and download a more analogue-friendly piece of software -- Amplitube. Now, this piece of software worked fine, but I've still got to get used to the controls and find the right effects that I need to produce an accurate replica of Map Of The Problematique. There's just one minor problem in that there's a little delay between the input and output, which is quite offputting when attempting to play in time.
I am, however, able to just use my built-in sound-card to amplify my guitars via the line in port, and send them out of the headphone socket. And from there, they are pumped quite forcefully out of sixteen speakers, including one very powerful subwoofer (Subwoofers are designed to deal specifically with lower-frequency sounds, producing a rich, deep bass). This is fantastic when I'm playing my electric guitars acoustically, since there are no effects run over the initial sound, and it doesn't suffer any distortion like it would do on a standard practice amp. However, when I plug my bass into it, a more beautiful phenomena occurs. The sound that fills the room is enough to knock the socks off of even the most seasoned rock Gods. At a medium volume, and with relatively gentle picking, the bass is enough to make the windows rattle. Literally speaking, with no exaggeration whatsoever, my windows rattle. I love it.
However, I've spoken about this for two (well, one and a half) blog posts now, and I have another topic to discuss here, so I am moving on.
Social networks. Facebook being the most prominent online one, with the now-defunct Bebo and MySpace fading quickly into the virtual ether. But first, let's dig a little deeper.
Before the Internet, what was a social network? In many terms, the same as it is today. It's just easier to monitor and analyse today with the Internet and social networking sites. But a social network is merely as it says. The way in which people interact. But they are so complex, so intricate even, that they must play a much wider purpose than just being the way in which we interact with our friends.
For example, take a dyad (a social network of two) of a married couple. They have been married many many years. It is observed that when one falls ill, the risk of the other becoming ill rises. Should the wife die, the risk of the husband dying increases. And so on. But surely this does not only apply to couples. Correct. It applies to every social network. To study how networks form and function, it is necessary to understand how they are formed. One cannot make friends with just anyone. We are governed by socioeconomic status, distance, even our own genes and DNA. Networks have been studied for years; for example neurologists studying networks of neurons. But the difference this time is that the nodes or vertices in the network are sentient, thinking, breathing, living human beings.
Already it is shown to be more than just a network. It can be considered as an organism itself. It grows, evolves, has its very own unique structure, function and purpose. Which shines a completely different light on the study. By interpreting a social network as an organism itself, we can assume that each node is strongly affected by any other nodes that are directly, or indeed indirectly associated. Don't believe me? If your mother was deeply upset, would you not too feel somewhat upset? Conversely, if your best friend has the biggest grin on their face, would it not make you too feel happy, or maybe even smile yourself? Imagine each of those scenarios and put yourself emotionally in them.
This interconnectedness that means that we lose some control over our own decisions. But this is not a bad thing. It is through this interconnectedness that we can overcome our own inhibitions and limitations, transcend ourselves even. As a powerful force, we can as a society do things that no one individual can do. Just as a brain can do things that no one neuron can do, a social network can achieve what a single person cannot. For many years, illnesses, human psychology and evolution have been analysed on an individual basis. But surely, as has been so far illustrated, human interaction has a much greater effect on all of these than just individual issues.
And with that, I finish. I'm feeling so horribly ill right now, so I might get some sleep.
"To know who we are, we must understand how we are connected."
I've been very very unwell this week (well, moreso than usual), and so it's been difficult to get this done, so I'm trying to double up while I'm able to.
In my last post, I spoke of using a piece of software to run my guitar through a series of emulated effect pedals. To cut a long story short, Guitar Rig doesn't work with analogue signals. I was running my guitars through the line in port on my laptop, which merely amplifies the signal recieved and keeps it as an analogue signal. However, when buying Guitar Rig, (something that I'd foolishly overlooked) an actual physical rig is provided. That is, somewhere to plug a guitar into that connects to a computer via USB. This rig converts the analogue signal recieved into a digital (to be pedantic, a signal that is converted to digital from analogue is known as a digitised signal) signal that is suitable for being manipulated by the Guitar Rig software.
A digital signal is essentially a binary digit. It has one of two states; on or off. The main advantage that digital music production has is its resistance to minor wave degradation. Analogue waves are far more sensitive to the degradation than digital waves, since an analogue wave is not of a discrete value like digital, it is more continuous, and so interference is not quantised and is merely amplified with the rest of the wave. However, where wave degradation is more pronounced, analogue systems produce a more recognisable sound, whereas the digital system will fail completely, trying to quantise the wave, and reading the degradation as part of the wave. I'm really hoping that this makes sense, because I'm exhausted and ill, and I can't really analyse my own writing very well right now.
Anyway, back on topic, I ended up having to give up on Guitar Rig and download a more analogue-friendly piece of software -- Amplitube. Now, this piece of software worked fine, but I've still got to get used to the controls and find the right effects that I need to produce an accurate replica of Map Of The Problematique. There's just one minor problem in that there's a little delay between the input and output, which is quite offputting when attempting to play in time.
I am, however, able to just use my built-in sound-card to amplify my guitars via the line in port, and send them out of the headphone socket. And from there, they are pumped quite forcefully out of sixteen speakers, including one very powerful subwoofer (Subwoofers are designed to deal specifically with lower-frequency sounds, producing a rich, deep bass). This is fantastic when I'm playing my electric guitars acoustically, since there are no effects run over the initial sound, and it doesn't suffer any distortion like it would do on a standard practice amp. However, when I plug my bass into it, a more beautiful phenomena occurs. The sound that fills the room is enough to knock the socks off of even the most seasoned rock Gods. At a medium volume, and with relatively gentle picking, the bass is enough to make the windows rattle. Literally speaking, with no exaggeration whatsoever, my windows rattle. I love it.
However, I've spoken about this for two (well, one and a half) blog posts now, and I have another topic to discuss here, so I am moving on.
Social networks. Facebook being the most prominent online one, with the now-defunct Bebo and MySpace fading quickly into the virtual ether. But first, let's dig a little deeper.
Before the Internet, what was a social network? In many terms, the same as it is today. It's just easier to monitor and analyse today with the Internet and social networking sites. But a social network is merely as it says. The way in which people interact. But they are so complex, so intricate even, that they must play a much wider purpose than just being the way in which we interact with our friends.
For example, take a dyad (a social network of two) of a married couple. They have been married many many years. It is observed that when one falls ill, the risk of the other becoming ill rises. Should the wife die, the risk of the husband dying increases. And so on. But surely this does not only apply to couples. Correct. It applies to every social network. To study how networks form and function, it is necessary to understand how they are formed. One cannot make friends with just anyone. We are governed by socioeconomic status, distance, even our own genes and DNA. Networks have been studied for years; for example neurologists studying networks of neurons. But the difference this time is that the nodes or vertices in the network are sentient, thinking, breathing, living human beings.
Already it is shown to be more than just a network. It can be considered as an organism itself. It grows, evolves, has its very own unique structure, function and purpose. Which shines a completely different light on the study. By interpreting a social network as an organism itself, we can assume that each node is strongly affected by any other nodes that are directly, or indeed indirectly associated. Don't believe me? If your mother was deeply upset, would you not too feel somewhat upset? Conversely, if your best friend has the biggest grin on their face, would it not make you too feel happy, or maybe even smile yourself? Imagine each of those scenarios and put yourself emotionally in them.
This interconnectedness that means that we lose some control over our own decisions. But this is not a bad thing. It is through this interconnectedness that we can overcome our own inhibitions and limitations, transcend ourselves even. As a powerful force, we can as a society do things that no one individual can do. Just as a brain can do things that no one neuron can do, a social network can achieve what a single person cannot. For many years, illnesses, human psychology and evolution have been analysed on an individual basis. But surely, as has been so far illustrated, human interaction has a much greater effect on all of these than just individual issues.
And with that, I finish. I'm feeling so horribly ill right now, so I might get some sleep.
"To know who we are, we must understand how we are connected."
Sunday 13 March 2011
Dacoitage
Meaning robbery by gang or by mob. Though, it appears that the elderly dislike this and are willing to fight them off with their handbags.
Now, I'm going to attempt to make up for the shocking lack of posts this week. Firstly, I do profusely apologise for not posting, but once again it has been a horrific week. Truly horrible. One that I hope to never relive, but know that this coming week will be yet worse. Still, to find the positives from this, it will be better after this week is over, and things are bearable at this particular moment in time.
In a bid to take my mind off of the absolute chaos of my week, I put down my electric guitar, and picked up my Dad's bass guitar (pun unintended (for those who don't know, picking is a method of playing a bass guitar (and any guitar for that matter (I think this may be the largest number of nested parentheses I've done in a blog this far (maybe))))). However, all tangents and whatnot aside, I am leading somewhere with this story. I picked up my Dad's bass and began playing. It's around the same average difficulty as playing a guitar, but some things are easier and some are trickier. For example, a bass guitar has only four strings, but is longer than a normal guitar to account for the higher weight (thickness) of the strings. Also, some basslines require a consistent, fast rhythm, often in 16th-notes, meaning that when finger-picking (it's exactly what it says on the can, picking with your fingers), my fingers get tired very quickly and I begin to lose time. Nonetheless, I managed to get going fairly quickly, especially seeing as it's strung right-handed, as are most guitars by default. I am a rarity, one-of-a-kind, unique, if you will. I am a left-handed guitarist.
Which means that instead of fingering with my left hand and strumming / picking with my right, I do the opposite. I finger with my right and play with my left. But since I'm holding the guitar in the opposite direction, the strings are reversed, so to get the right order, I often have to buy new strings, restring the guitar and trim the strings to fit. It's no trouble, but bass strings are more expensive than normal guitar strings. Still, this is only backstory to my actual article (which, funnily, might actually be shorter than the backstory).
Since I can play a guitar, bass, synthesiser and sing to a fairly decent standard, I have decided to cover a song that is a particular favourite of mine. Map Of The Problematique, by Muse. A song that references a book called Limits To Growth, which outlines a "global problematique" - a set of likely challenges that the world might face in the near future. It is also a musically unusual song since, while it revolves around a consistent four-chord structure, not once does it ever use the dominant chord in the riff.
This song utilises a pumping bassline, accented by a very pounding drum-beat, and quite spidery riffs on an electric guitar. And then come the eerily haunting wails of "Fear, and panic in the air . . .", referencing the two moons of Mars (Phobos and Deimos, the Greek Gods of Fear and Panic, respectively). To cover this song, I do not intend on playing all instruments simultaneously (I'm good, but I'm just not that good, I'm afraid), but I will be utilising a method called layering and sequencing. I will be recording individual instruments and effects individually (the layering part) and then splicing, pasting and metaphorically gluing all of the pieces together so that they work together and are in time with each other (the sequencing part).
To begin with, I will be starting with the primary electric guitar that plays throughout. It is an electronic fuzz that pumps throughout. I need a piece of software called Guitar Rig to pull this effect off though, because the effect requires the use of several pitch shifters, an overdriver, and a Fuzz Factory footswitch. It is cheaper and easier to perform these effects through a computer, and you get more control over the effect. Secondly, I will be recording the guitar on which a little twiddly bits are performed. This just requires individual effects to be switched on and off at different parts throughout the song (Guitar Rig can also be used to automate this). Thirdly, I will be recording the synth parts that accent all of the other instruments, before recording the trickiest layer of the song.
I'm not a drummer. The most I can extend to is the irritating drumming on the desk with pens. I know the theory behind playing drums and I have rhythm, but I can't multitask playing the kick drum with one foot, the hi-hats with another, and then using my arms and hands (with drumsticks, of course) to play the remaining drums laid out before me. But I will be giving it my best shot. I can only try and persevere, and hope that it sounds ok in the end. If all else fails, I can always record each drum individually (note to self: find more microphones to record the drums) and splice them together.
At this point, I will be left with a fully-fledged, beautiful (hopefully) instrumental of a beautiful song. And then comes the fun part (not that the rest won't have been fun). I get to add vocals. I do love to sing and it's not even a secret. It's a fantastic stress-relief and I thoroughly enjoy singing. I don't even need to add any effects, so I can just plug the microphone in and sing till my heart's content. Or until the song is finished.
I still need to get the software (note that I'm not actually saying that I'm going to buy the software) and I need to find a boom mic for the kick drum and several others for different drums to get the best quality, but I am seriously set on this idea. Anyway, that's one of the many (well, two) posts that I've missed this week covered. I leave you with the reason that Matthew Bellamy gave for trying Magic Mushrooms:
" . . . to experience something that's not always on offer. I'm not afraid of seeing something horrible. It's a way of connecting with yourself in a way that you can't normally do."
Now, I'm going to attempt to make up for the shocking lack of posts this week. Firstly, I do profusely apologise for not posting, but once again it has been a horrific week. Truly horrible. One that I hope to never relive, but know that this coming week will be yet worse. Still, to find the positives from this, it will be better after this week is over, and things are bearable at this particular moment in time.
In a bid to take my mind off of the absolute chaos of my week, I put down my electric guitar, and picked up my Dad's bass guitar (pun unintended (for those who don't know, picking is a method of playing a bass guitar (and any guitar for that matter (I think this may be the largest number of nested parentheses I've done in a blog this far (maybe))))). However, all tangents and whatnot aside, I am leading somewhere with this story. I picked up my Dad's bass and began playing. It's around the same average difficulty as playing a guitar, but some things are easier and some are trickier. For example, a bass guitar has only four strings, but is longer than a normal guitar to account for the higher weight (thickness) of the strings. Also, some basslines require a consistent, fast rhythm, often in 16th-notes, meaning that when finger-picking (it's exactly what it says on the can, picking with your fingers), my fingers get tired very quickly and I begin to lose time. Nonetheless, I managed to get going fairly quickly, especially seeing as it's strung right-handed, as are most guitars by default. I am a rarity, one-of-a-kind, unique, if you will. I am a left-handed guitarist.
Which means that instead of fingering with my left hand and strumming / picking with my right, I do the opposite. I finger with my right and play with my left. But since I'm holding the guitar in the opposite direction, the strings are reversed, so to get the right order, I often have to buy new strings, restring the guitar and trim the strings to fit. It's no trouble, but bass strings are more expensive than normal guitar strings. Still, this is only backstory to my actual article (which, funnily, might actually be shorter than the backstory).
Since I can play a guitar, bass, synthesiser and sing to a fairly decent standard, I have decided to cover a song that is a particular favourite of mine. Map Of The Problematique, by Muse. A song that references a book called Limits To Growth, which outlines a "global problematique" - a set of likely challenges that the world might face in the near future. It is also a musically unusual song since, while it revolves around a consistent four-chord structure, not once does it ever use the dominant chord in the riff.
This song utilises a pumping bassline, accented by a very pounding drum-beat, and quite spidery riffs on an electric guitar. And then come the eerily haunting wails of "Fear, and panic in the air . . .", referencing the two moons of Mars (Phobos and Deimos, the Greek Gods of Fear and Panic, respectively). To cover this song, I do not intend on playing all instruments simultaneously (I'm good, but I'm just not that good, I'm afraid), but I will be utilising a method called layering and sequencing. I will be recording individual instruments and effects individually (the layering part) and then splicing, pasting and metaphorically gluing all of the pieces together so that they work together and are in time with each other (the sequencing part).
To begin with, I will be starting with the primary electric guitar that plays throughout. It is an electronic fuzz that pumps throughout. I need a piece of software called Guitar Rig to pull this effect off though, because the effect requires the use of several pitch shifters, an overdriver, and a Fuzz Factory footswitch. It is cheaper and easier to perform these effects through a computer, and you get more control over the effect. Secondly, I will be recording the guitar on which a little twiddly bits are performed. This just requires individual effects to be switched on and off at different parts throughout the song (Guitar Rig can also be used to automate this). Thirdly, I will be recording the synth parts that accent all of the other instruments, before recording the trickiest layer of the song.
I'm not a drummer. The most I can extend to is the irritating drumming on the desk with pens. I know the theory behind playing drums and I have rhythm, but I can't multitask playing the kick drum with one foot, the hi-hats with another, and then using my arms and hands (with drumsticks, of course) to play the remaining drums laid out before me. But I will be giving it my best shot. I can only try and persevere, and hope that it sounds ok in the end. If all else fails, I can always record each drum individually (note to self: find more microphones to record the drums) and splice them together.
At this point, I will be left with a fully-fledged, beautiful (hopefully) instrumental of a beautiful song. And then comes the fun part (not that the rest won't have been fun). I get to add vocals. I do love to sing and it's not even a secret. It's a fantastic stress-relief and I thoroughly enjoy singing. I don't even need to add any effects, so I can just plug the microphone in and sing till my heart's content. Or until the song is finished.
I still need to get the software (note that I'm not actually saying that I'm going to buy the software) and I need to find a boom mic for the kick drum and several others for different drums to get the best quality, but I am seriously set on this idea. Anyway, that's one of the many (well, two) posts that I've missed this week covered. I leave you with the reason that Matthew Bellamy gave for trying Magic Mushrooms:
" . . . to experience something that's not always on offer. I'm not afraid of seeing something horrible. It's a way of connecting with yourself in a way that you can't normally do."
Monday 7 March 2011
Zygopleural
Meaning bilaterally identical.
I do apologise for missing one of last week's posts. It was a somewhat difficult week, and I was just exhausted by the time it came to blog and so I just shifted Wednesday's post to Friday and forgot to double up. I am, however, very pleased with how well-received the last post was, regarding religion. Though, I think today's might be so pushed against the boundaries that it may be a little too controversial to really blog about. But since when have I adhered to the safe side of things. It is massively unlikely that anyone will agree with me on this topic, but I thoroughly welcome your views.
Drugs. I'm neither pro-drugs or anti-drugs, I just think that I have quite a unique standpoint. Tobacco is a legal drug in England and pretty much worldwide. Tobacco cigarettes contain nicotine (the substance that makes cigarettes so addictive), along with tar (which clogs up your lungs), carbon monoxide (a toxic substance) among several other particularly harmful substances. Many people report a feeling of relaxation when they smoke a cigarette or any other tobacco product (pipes, cigars, etc.), but in actual fact, upon smoking a cigarette, the body mimcs the effect of a stressful situation. Blood pressure and pulse rate is increased, internal temperature rises, it even goes as far as to begin producing adrenaline. I won't go into the ins and outs of the way this works because I'm not a physiologist and I know that there is someone out there who will call me out on every tiny mistake that I make in that respect.
Comparing this to, for example, the effect of marijuana raises quite an interesting point. While it also raises pulse rate, it decreases blood pressure. It does, of course, also impair the ability to remember and the way in which we perceive things, but I'm getting onto that. Physiologically, cannabis is better for you than a similar tobacco-containing compound of the same mass.
The psychological effects of cannabis are the reason that it is becoming illegal across the world, but as far as I know, there is no reason that cannabis cannot be used for a valid and effective psychoanalysis of a patient. I do, of course, mean within reason. I have no wish to walk into the children's wing of a hospital and be knocked back by the smell of second-hand cannabis. I wholeheartedly believe that hallucinogens are a method through which a connection can be established with past and suppressed emotions and memories. For example, give a patient a dose of cannabis just strong enough to induce hallucinations, and place them in a secure, padded, but absolutely undecorated room under 24-hour watch. Without sufficient external stimulation, the hallucinations observed will undoubtedly have been a representation of an internal trauma or extreme of emotion, or merely a memory replaying itself.
A psychiatrist or psychoanalyst could then use these results to analyse the patient. A large number of physical problems are, in fact, psychological issues that have manifested themselves as some sort of physical malady. Of course, cannabis for recreational use might still have to be restricted, but for medicinal purposes, it could be a particular benefit. Maybe I'm talking out of my backside here, but these are only ideas. Musings, if you will. I know it's crazy. Anyways, I'm still exhausted. Things aren't getting easier right now and I'm still just trying to power through a brick wall of pure difficulty. So, I leave you with this:
"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've worked for me."
I do apologise for missing one of last week's posts. It was a somewhat difficult week, and I was just exhausted by the time it came to blog and so I just shifted Wednesday's post to Friday and forgot to double up. I am, however, very pleased with how well-received the last post was, regarding religion. Though, I think today's might be so pushed against the boundaries that it may be a little too controversial to really blog about. But since when have I adhered to the safe side of things. It is massively unlikely that anyone will agree with me on this topic, but I thoroughly welcome your views.
Drugs. I'm neither pro-drugs or anti-drugs, I just think that I have quite a unique standpoint. Tobacco is a legal drug in England and pretty much worldwide. Tobacco cigarettes contain nicotine (the substance that makes cigarettes so addictive), along with tar (which clogs up your lungs), carbon monoxide (a toxic substance) among several other particularly harmful substances. Many people report a feeling of relaxation when they smoke a cigarette or any other tobacco product (pipes, cigars, etc.), but in actual fact, upon smoking a cigarette, the body mimcs the effect of a stressful situation. Blood pressure and pulse rate is increased, internal temperature rises, it even goes as far as to begin producing adrenaline. I won't go into the ins and outs of the way this works because I'm not a physiologist and I know that there is someone out there who will call me out on every tiny mistake that I make in that respect.
Comparing this to, for example, the effect of marijuana raises quite an interesting point. While it also raises pulse rate, it decreases blood pressure. It does, of course, also impair the ability to remember and the way in which we perceive things, but I'm getting onto that. Physiologically, cannabis is better for you than a similar tobacco-containing compound of the same mass.
The psychological effects of cannabis are the reason that it is becoming illegal across the world, but as far as I know, there is no reason that cannabis cannot be used for a valid and effective psychoanalysis of a patient. I do, of course, mean within reason. I have no wish to walk into the children's wing of a hospital and be knocked back by the smell of second-hand cannabis. I wholeheartedly believe that hallucinogens are a method through which a connection can be established with past and suppressed emotions and memories. For example, give a patient a dose of cannabis just strong enough to induce hallucinations, and place them in a secure, padded, but absolutely undecorated room under 24-hour watch. Without sufficient external stimulation, the hallucinations observed will undoubtedly have been a representation of an internal trauma or extreme of emotion, or merely a memory replaying itself.
A psychiatrist or psychoanalyst could then use these results to analyse the patient. A large number of physical problems are, in fact, psychological issues that have manifested themselves as some sort of physical malady. Of course, cannabis for recreational use might still have to be restricted, but for medicinal purposes, it could be a particular benefit. Maybe I'm talking out of my backside here, but these are only ideas. Musings, if you will. I know it's crazy. Anyways, I'm still exhausted. Things aren't getting easier right now and I'm still just trying to power through a brick wall of pure difficulty. So, I leave you with this:
"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've worked for me."
Friday 4 March 2011
Obambulate
No, not something about the President of the United States, this means to wander around.
Usually, people don't trust me talking about religion, but since I mentioned that I wouldn't be talking about it in my last post, I've been asked twice (Yep, I got requests!) to actually write a post about it. So here it is. Before I start it, I'd like to just formally state that the opinions expressed in this post are purely my own unless stated otherwise. I do not intend to infringe on anyone else's beliefs, and I'd like to apologise if anyone is offended. Now that I've got my little "disclaimer" over with, I might as well begin.
I'm as tolerant as the next person with regards to religion - I believe that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and as long as they don't try to convert me or force their views down my throat, I'll let them just get on with it. It's not hurting me. But there is one thing recently that's been getting on my nerves quite a bit. I'm an Atheist, and I'm not ashamed of it. But I hate (I don't use that word lightly) being told by people that if I'm close-minded because of my faith or lack thereof.
I'd like to respond to this with a bit of backstory. I was brought up as a Christian. My father was of Church of England denomination, and my mother Roman Catholic. Up to the age of around fourteen, I was a devout Christian. It was at this point that I began wondering whether there was really a God, and started thinking about the world around me (I'll get onto this in more detail a little later in the post, just bear with me for now), and decided to convert to Buddhism.
Upon converting, I became a little happier with who I was. This may have something to do with the intake of healthier substances, or rather the lower intake of unhealthy substances. For a while I thought I'd found the faith for me. But, as I do, and as my level of scientific knowledge was increasing, I began thinking about the Afterlife. I mean, I was put off of Christianity because I didn't believe that a God existed, or more that I didn't want to. There was equally little evidence to support any form of Afterlife. After this realisation, I went through a brief phase of being unsure before settling on Atheism.
My life went very much off the rails here. I had no rules or religious laws to follow, and I felt a little chaotic inside and unsettled. But once I began to get used to myself and my lack of faith, I felt more comfortable than I'd ever felt in my previous faiths.
Ok, I'm now going to go into a little more detail into my reasoning. Christianity believes that an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent being, outside of Time and Space has laid out a divine plan for us all (to put it bluntly and in a rather generalised nutshell (forgive my generalisations here)). I struggled to believe this for several reason. I'm going to use a very basic argument here, because I just couldn't get my head around this, and it is one of the most fundamental arguments against Christianity. The presence of Evil.
(This may also apply to most of the monotheistic doctrines too) If God allows Evil, He is not omnibenevolent. Some may interject here, saying that He is allowing Evil as a test of faith. If it is a test of faith, why does it have to involve Evil? Surely as an omniscient being with a divine plan for everyone, He would know whether someone's faith to Him is strong. Thus, He is either not omnibenevolent, since He is allowing the Evil to exist; He is not omnipotent, since He is unable to prevent the Evil; or He is not omnipotent, since He does not know that the Evil exists. This was the main problem I had with Christianity, and it threw me. And, in my still-young mindset, I couldn't deal with a religion that had such a massive flaw.
Of course, as I am older and wiser now (Well, only marginally wiser, but wiser nonetheless), I can see that for Good to exist, Evil must also exist as somewhat of a measuring point. Without Evil, Good would become somewhat of a norm, and so paradoxically Good would not exist. I'm not quite sure if I'm making complete sense here. Since Good and Evil are the two extremes, our norm is somewhere in the middle. But without any Evil to balance out the Good, the Good would become our norm, and there would not be any extremes either side to measure from. It's a confusing concept and I'm not sure if it's making complete sense, but it's still there.
My second experience with religion came shortly after my Christianity bombshell. Buddhism is a religion that doesn't focus on a divine being (though it is still monotheistic because there is one primary religious deity - that is, the Buddha), but on right intentions and living a good lifestyle. I was intrigued by this religion because, not only was I studying it in school at the time, I liked the idea of a religion the focus of which was just to live a good lifestyle and do wrong to no one, including yourself. The main turning point for me was, however, the Noble Eightfold Path, being the Fourth of the Four Noble Truths. I'll outline the Four Noble Truths first, and then the Noble Eightfold Path.
The Four Noble Truths
1) Life is or is leading to suffering in one way or another.
2) Suffering is caused by craving.
3) Suffering will end when craving ends (by achieving Enlightenment)
4) Reaching Enlightenment is achieved by following the Noble Eightfold Path.
This was a fairly straightforward and logical way of teaching the way of a good life. "To eliminate suffering, you must achieve Enlightenment by following the teachings of the Noble Eightfold Path."
The Noble Eightfold Path
1) View life as it is, not as it appears.
2) Right intention
3) Right speech (truth and harmlessness)
4) Right action (non-violence)
5) Right livelihood (harmlessness)
6) Right effort (making the effort to follow the path and improve)
7) Awareness of life with clear conscience
8) Right concentration (to achieve Enlightenment through meditation)
These were the two things that really interested me and pulled me towards the religion. However, Buddhism follows a teaching of a cycle of rebirths. If you do not achieve Enlightenment in this life, you continue to your next life. If you lead a good life, you would move up a heirarchy of beings sorted by quality of life, and if not, you would move down. And, if you achieved Enlightenment, you would leave the cycle of rebirths and enter a state called Nirvana (or Nibbana) meaning literally "Cessation". The ceasing of suffering and craving.
I struggled to believe this because there appeared to be no proof of this. I know. It was a very childish and intellectually immature reason to struggle, but it made the religion difficult for me. My reasoning was simply that I struggled to determine between "soul" and "consciousness". I struggled to understand why a soul would not carry forward a cumulative knowledge of what had been learnt in previous lives to aid with reaching Enlightenment.
And so, I moved onto Atheism. Maybe as a wisened young man, I might have less of a problem with religion, but I'm happier and more comfortable with myself than I ever was when I followed any religion. Maybe it was down to just teenage hormones, maybe it was down to the religion. I'm not saying that it was primarily either of them, it's most likely to be a mix of both and goings-on in my life at the time. But right now, I'm comfortable with who I am, and I'm not going to be changing my faith just because I'm told that I'm close-minded due to my faith. Ironically, it would appear that atheists (as a generalisation) are more open-minded. Ask a theist (a believer in a religion) what it would take to change their faith and you will invariably get the answer; "Nothing will change my belief, for I have faith in my God/religion" or some variation thereof. Ask an Atheist the same thing and you'll probably get an answer along the lines of "Some proof" or, again, something similar. Theists are more close-minded (again, as a generalisation) since instead of accepting that some people might not believe in their faith, they just don't believe that these people exist. They believe that people either believe in their religion or just haven't realised that they believe in it yet. They are close-minded because, unfortunately, they have been taught to be close-minded. Most religions teach that it is a sin to follow another deity, thus perpetuating the cycle of close-mindedness.
It is such an unfortunate thing, and I am wholeheartedly glad that most of my friends that are religious are open-minded enough and intelligent enough to accept that not everyone follows the same religion.
As a final, completely unrelated note, I have been listening to some Bob Marley tonight, just relaxing with it. And so, I'm going to end this blog with the final words of the legend himself spoken to his son, Ziggy Marley;
"Money can't buy life."
Usually, people don't trust me talking about religion, but since I mentioned that I wouldn't be talking about it in my last post, I've been asked twice (Yep, I got requests!) to actually write a post about it. So here it is. Before I start it, I'd like to just formally state that the opinions expressed in this post are purely my own unless stated otherwise. I do not intend to infringe on anyone else's beliefs, and I'd like to apologise if anyone is offended. Now that I've got my little "disclaimer" over with, I might as well begin.
I'm as tolerant as the next person with regards to religion - I believe that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and as long as they don't try to convert me or force their views down my throat, I'll let them just get on with it. It's not hurting me. But there is one thing recently that's been getting on my nerves quite a bit. I'm an Atheist, and I'm not ashamed of it. But I hate (I don't use that word lightly) being told by people that if I'm close-minded because of my faith or lack thereof.
I'd like to respond to this with a bit of backstory. I was brought up as a Christian. My father was of Church of England denomination, and my mother Roman Catholic. Up to the age of around fourteen, I was a devout Christian. It was at this point that I began wondering whether there was really a God, and started thinking about the world around me (I'll get onto this in more detail a little later in the post, just bear with me for now), and decided to convert to Buddhism.
Upon converting, I became a little happier with who I was. This may have something to do with the intake of healthier substances, or rather the lower intake of unhealthy substances. For a while I thought I'd found the faith for me. But, as I do, and as my level of scientific knowledge was increasing, I began thinking about the Afterlife. I mean, I was put off of Christianity because I didn't believe that a God existed, or more that I didn't want to. There was equally little evidence to support any form of Afterlife. After this realisation, I went through a brief phase of being unsure before settling on Atheism.
My life went very much off the rails here. I had no rules or religious laws to follow, and I felt a little chaotic inside and unsettled. But once I began to get used to myself and my lack of faith, I felt more comfortable than I'd ever felt in my previous faiths.
Ok, I'm now going to go into a little more detail into my reasoning. Christianity believes that an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent being, outside of Time and Space has laid out a divine plan for us all (to put it bluntly and in a rather generalised nutshell (forgive my generalisations here)). I struggled to believe this for several reason. I'm going to use a very basic argument here, because I just couldn't get my head around this, and it is one of the most fundamental arguments against Christianity. The presence of Evil.
(This may also apply to most of the monotheistic doctrines too) If God allows Evil, He is not omnibenevolent. Some may interject here, saying that He is allowing Evil as a test of faith. If it is a test of faith, why does it have to involve Evil? Surely as an omniscient being with a divine plan for everyone, He would know whether someone's faith to Him is strong. Thus, He is either not omnibenevolent, since He is allowing the Evil to exist; He is not omnipotent, since He is unable to prevent the Evil; or He is not omnipotent, since He does not know that the Evil exists. This was the main problem I had with Christianity, and it threw me. And, in my still-young mindset, I couldn't deal with a religion that had such a massive flaw.
Of course, as I am older and wiser now (Well, only marginally wiser, but wiser nonetheless), I can see that for Good to exist, Evil must also exist as somewhat of a measuring point. Without Evil, Good would become somewhat of a norm, and so paradoxically Good would not exist. I'm not quite sure if I'm making complete sense here. Since Good and Evil are the two extremes, our norm is somewhere in the middle. But without any Evil to balance out the Good, the Good would become our norm, and there would not be any extremes either side to measure from. It's a confusing concept and I'm not sure if it's making complete sense, but it's still there.
My second experience with religion came shortly after my Christianity bombshell. Buddhism is a religion that doesn't focus on a divine being (though it is still monotheistic because there is one primary religious deity - that is, the Buddha), but on right intentions and living a good lifestyle. I was intrigued by this religion because, not only was I studying it in school at the time, I liked the idea of a religion the focus of which was just to live a good lifestyle and do wrong to no one, including yourself. The main turning point for me was, however, the Noble Eightfold Path, being the Fourth of the Four Noble Truths. I'll outline the Four Noble Truths first, and then the Noble Eightfold Path.
The Four Noble Truths
1) Life is or is leading to suffering in one way or another.
2) Suffering is caused by craving.
3) Suffering will end when craving ends (by achieving Enlightenment)
4) Reaching Enlightenment is achieved by following the Noble Eightfold Path.
This was a fairly straightforward and logical way of teaching the way of a good life. "To eliminate suffering, you must achieve Enlightenment by following the teachings of the Noble Eightfold Path."
The Noble Eightfold Path
1) View life as it is, not as it appears.
2) Right intention
3) Right speech (truth and harmlessness)
4) Right action (non-violence)
5) Right livelihood (harmlessness)
6) Right effort (making the effort to follow the path and improve)
7) Awareness of life with clear conscience
8) Right concentration (to achieve Enlightenment through meditation)
These were the two things that really interested me and pulled me towards the religion. However, Buddhism follows a teaching of a cycle of rebirths. If you do not achieve Enlightenment in this life, you continue to your next life. If you lead a good life, you would move up a heirarchy of beings sorted by quality of life, and if not, you would move down. And, if you achieved Enlightenment, you would leave the cycle of rebirths and enter a state called Nirvana (or Nibbana) meaning literally "Cessation". The ceasing of suffering and craving.
I struggled to believe this because there appeared to be no proof of this. I know. It was a very childish and intellectually immature reason to struggle, but it made the religion difficult for me. My reasoning was simply that I struggled to determine between "soul" and "consciousness". I struggled to understand why a soul would not carry forward a cumulative knowledge of what had been learnt in previous lives to aid with reaching Enlightenment.
And so, I moved onto Atheism. Maybe as a wisened young man, I might have less of a problem with religion, but I'm happier and more comfortable with myself than I ever was when I followed any religion. Maybe it was down to just teenage hormones, maybe it was down to the religion. I'm not saying that it was primarily either of them, it's most likely to be a mix of both and goings-on in my life at the time. But right now, I'm comfortable with who I am, and I'm not going to be changing my faith just because I'm told that I'm close-minded due to my faith. Ironically, it would appear that atheists (as a generalisation) are more open-minded. Ask a theist (a believer in a religion) what it would take to change their faith and you will invariably get the answer; "Nothing will change my belief, for I have faith in my God/religion" or some variation thereof. Ask an Atheist the same thing and you'll probably get an answer along the lines of "Some proof" or, again, something similar. Theists are more close-minded (again, as a generalisation) since instead of accepting that some people might not believe in their faith, they just don't believe that these people exist. They believe that people either believe in their religion or just haven't realised that they believe in it yet. They are close-minded because, unfortunately, they have been taught to be close-minded. Most religions teach that it is a sin to follow another deity, thus perpetuating the cycle of close-mindedness.
It is such an unfortunate thing, and I am wholeheartedly glad that most of my friends that are religious are open-minded enough and intelligent enough to accept that not everyone follows the same religion.
As a final, completely unrelated note, I have been listening to some Bob Marley tonight, just relaxing with it. And so, I'm going to end this blog with the final words of the legend himself spoken to his son, Ziggy Marley;
"Money can't buy life."
Thursday 24 February 2011
Ypsiliform
This beautiful word means shaped like an upsilon. I kid you not. I do love the English language.
Now that I've finished that painfully long review of a video game, I figured that I'd try and take a step towards the technical side of technology once more. I haven't gotten that sense of writing something worthwhile for the past two blog posts that I got from any posts before them, which somewhat negates the blog since I'm writing it for personal enjoyment.
Recently, what with my focus being almost non-existant and so forth, I've found myself procrastinating an awful lot. And because most of my work is online, it's mostly websites that form my procrastination, and I really want to stop my procrastination during hours that I dedicate to work. In order to do this, I am in the process of trying to write a piece of code to help with this. I'm only in the process of formulating what I want it to do right now, but I'm thinking of making its purpose to put some sort of delays in place, as opposed to just completely restricting my access. Pitting my want to procrastinate against my impatience as it were. For example, when I get bored I flip over to Facebook and refresh my News Feed (the main page that shows me all of my friends' updates). If, for example, when I wanted to load up Facebook, I had to load up a completely different browser and I set it so that to view updates, I'd have to close the browser and load it back up and log in again, I'd get impatient and stop doing it as often. This would then lead to higher productivity. I'll upload some flow-diagrams of what I want this code to do sometime tomorrow. Maybe.
On a different yet similar topic, Intel recently launched a new, high-speed method through which computers can connect to storage peripherals, or even any kind of peripheral for that matter. Similar to the way that USB 2.0 took over from FireWire and USB 1.1, and very recently, USB 3.0 took over from USB 2.0, the new project, codenamed Thunderbolt is looking promising for a takeover from USB 3.0.
I'm going to dip into a little history here for those of you who didn't already know this stuff. In 1986, Apple developed a system (called FireWire) via which data could be transferred between a computer and peripheral at either 12MB/s, 25MB/s or 49MB/s. At the time, this was fantastic. Computers barely had this much storage, so this was more than sufficient.
In 1998, USB 1.1 was released with a 12MBit/s transfer rate for data devices but a lower 1.5MBit/s transfer rate for peripherals such as joysticks, keyboards and mice. The main advantage to USB was that it utilised existing interfaces (USB slots already existed at this point) and simplified software configurations for devices.
These ran happily and sufficiently until music players and suchlike came along, and larger quantities of data were being transferred. A new data transfer protocol was required to handle such large amounts of data and reduce transfer times.
And so, along came USB 2.0. Not only did this new protocol increase data transfer by almost 40 times (USB 2.0 had transfer speeds of up to 480MBits/s) it also provided a 4-volt power supply for devices. Apple almost instantly began utilising this new feature fantastically. With their music players (the iPod), they no longer needed to provide both a mains charger and a USB data cable, as they could integrate the charger inside the data cable so that the iPod charged from the computer. And the new data transfer speeds meant that an awful lot of music (and miscellaneous files in the case of flash disks which were, at this point, becoming increasingly popular) could be copied to music players in a relatively short amount of time.
And so came the year 2010, moving ever closer to the heart of the Digital Age. With external hard drives reaching sizes of several terabytes, the need for an even higher transfer rate arose very quickly. Computer developers were ready for this incredible, exponential increase in digital storage, and had been developing USB 3.0. When the need began to seriously affect consumers, they began releasing the new USB 3.0 protocol. This new protocol pushed speeds to almost unheard-of highs. 5Gbit/s at the top end. This meant that a 4GB DVD-movie could be copied over to a local media server in less than a minute. USB 3.0 also decreased ppower consumption while simultaneously increasing power output.
And now, Intel have released "Thunderbolt". This new project has transfer speeds of up to 10GBit/s, double that of USB 3.0, but is limited by the materials used. Thunderbolt Copper uses, obviously, copper wiring inside it. Copper is a fantastic conductor for electrical signals which aids the high transfer speeds, but lately a better contender for data transfer has stood on tiptoes above the rest. Ever heard of Fibre Optic Broadband? This broadband allows for phenomenal speeds, because it uses fibre optics to transfer data in the form of light. If Thunderbolt Copper goes down well, they will be releasing Thunderbolt Optic. This form of Thunderbolt has speeds, theoretically, up to 100GBit/s.
Now, it might seem a bit silly investing so much money, just to save a few extra seconds transferring files, but with increased transfer speeds comes an incredible bonus. Memory.
For those of you running Vista or Windows 7, do you remember when USB Flash Memory Drives used to come with little stickers saying "ReadyBoost compatible"? (I know I'm going on a bit here, but I can't stop now)
Back in the day, when you had a lot of programs open and were running low on RAM (Random Access Memory, for those of you not in-the-know), your computer would allocate user-definable amount of physical hard-disk space as "Virtual RAM". This vRAM acted as normal RAM, but different in one way: its transfer speed was abysmal compared to standard RAM. With old-style hard disks (those with the magnetic disks that spun, with the clicky noise when it was accessing data), the data transfer rate was awful, but with the vRAM it allowed a little extra storage space to stop your computer from completely locking up and not doing anything at all due to having no free space to move data around.
Computers still do this, but with the invention of solid-state drives (similar to flash drives in that there are no moving parts) the transfer rate was higher, so the computer was (marginally) quicker when using the vRAM data cache.
ReadyBoost utilised the new, incredible transfer speeds by allowing a vRAM data cache to be created on USB flash drives with high enough access times. By utilising the new Thunderbolt Optic transfer speeds to develop external solid-state drives with high access times, massive vRAM caches could be created that run as quickly, if not quicker than normal RAM, resulting in cheap and easy methods of speeding up your computer massively. I should patent this idea; I'm not sure if developers have come up with it yet.
Anyways, I've written for far too long as it is, so I leave you with a somewhat related quote:
"There are three types of computer users: Novice users who are afraid that just pressing a button will break their computer; Intermediate users who don't know how to fix their computer after pressing the key that broke it; and Expert users who break other peoples' computers."
Now that I've finished that painfully long review of a video game, I figured that I'd try and take a step towards the technical side of technology once more. I haven't gotten that sense of writing something worthwhile for the past two blog posts that I got from any posts before them, which somewhat negates the blog since I'm writing it for personal enjoyment.
Recently, what with my focus being almost non-existant and so forth, I've found myself procrastinating an awful lot. And because most of my work is online, it's mostly websites that form my procrastination, and I really want to stop my procrastination during hours that I dedicate to work. In order to do this, I am in the process of trying to write a piece of code to help with this. I'm only in the process of formulating what I want it to do right now, but I'm thinking of making its purpose to put some sort of delays in place, as opposed to just completely restricting my access. Pitting my want to procrastinate against my impatience as it were. For example, when I get bored I flip over to Facebook and refresh my News Feed (the main page that shows me all of my friends' updates). If, for example, when I wanted to load up Facebook, I had to load up a completely different browser and I set it so that to view updates, I'd have to close the browser and load it back up and log in again, I'd get impatient and stop doing it as often. This would then lead to higher productivity. I'll upload some flow-diagrams of what I want this code to do sometime tomorrow. Maybe.
On a different yet similar topic, Intel recently launched a new, high-speed method through which computers can connect to storage peripherals, or even any kind of peripheral for that matter. Similar to the way that USB 2.0 took over from FireWire and USB 1.1, and very recently, USB 3.0 took over from USB 2.0, the new project, codenamed Thunderbolt is looking promising for a takeover from USB 3.0.
I'm going to dip into a little history here for those of you who didn't already know this stuff. In 1986, Apple developed a system (called FireWire) via which data could be transferred between a computer and peripheral at either 12MB/s, 25MB/s or 49MB/s. At the time, this was fantastic. Computers barely had this much storage, so this was more than sufficient.
In 1998, USB 1.1 was released with a 12MBit/s transfer rate for data devices but a lower 1.5MBit/s transfer rate for peripherals such as joysticks, keyboards and mice. The main advantage to USB was that it utilised existing interfaces (USB slots already existed at this point) and simplified software configurations for devices.
These ran happily and sufficiently until music players and suchlike came along, and larger quantities of data were being transferred. A new data transfer protocol was required to handle such large amounts of data and reduce transfer times.
And so, along came USB 2.0. Not only did this new protocol increase data transfer by almost 40 times (USB 2.0 had transfer speeds of up to 480MBits/s) it also provided a 4-volt power supply for devices. Apple almost instantly began utilising this new feature fantastically. With their music players (the iPod), they no longer needed to provide both a mains charger and a USB data cable, as they could integrate the charger inside the data cable so that the iPod charged from the computer. And the new data transfer speeds meant that an awful lot of music (and miscellaneous files in the case of flash disks which were, at this point, becoming increasingly popular) could be copied to music players in a relatively short amount of time.
And so came the year 2010, moving ever closer to the heart of the Digital Age. With external hard drives reaching sizes of several terabytes, the need for an even higher transfer rate arose very quickly. Computer developers were ready for this incredible, exponential increase in digital storage, and had been developing USB 3.0. When the need began to seriously affect consumers, they began releasing the new USB 3.0 protocol. This new protocol pushed speeds to almost unheard-of highs. 5Gbit/s at the top end. This meant that a 4GB DVD-movie could be copied over to a local media server in less than a minute. USB 3.0 also decreased ppower consumption while simultaneously increasing power output.
And now, Intel have released "Thunderbolt". This new project has transfer speeds of up to 10GBit/s, double that of USB 3.0, but is limited by the materials used. Thunderbolt Copper uses, obviously, copper wiring inside it. Copper is a fantastic conductor for electrical signals which aids the high transfer speeds, but lately a better contender for data transfer has stood on tiptoes above the rest. Ever heard of Fibre Optic Broadband? This broadband allows for phenomenal speeds, because it uses fibre optics to transfer data in the form of light. If Thunderbolt Copper goes down well, they will be releasing Thunderbolt Optic. This form of Thunderbolt has speeds, theoretically, up to 100GBit/s.
Now, it might seem a bit silly investing so much money, just to save a few extra seconds transferring files, but with increased transfer speeds comes an incredible bonus. Memory.
For those of you running Vista or Windows 7, do you remember when USB Flash Memory Drives used to come with little stickers saying "ReadyBoost compatible"? (I know I'm going on a bit here, but I can't stop now)
Back in the day, when you had a lot of programs open and were running low on RAM (Random Access Memory, for those of you not in-the-know), your computer would allocate user-definable amount of physical hard-disk space as "Virtual RAM". This vRAM acted as normal RAM, but different in one way: its transfer speed was abysmal compared to standard RAM. With old-style hard disks (those with the magnetic disks that spun, with the clicky noise when it was accessing data), the data transfer rate was awful, but with the vRAM it allowed a little extra storage space to stop your computer from completely locking up and not doing anything at all due to having no free space to move data around.
Computers still do this, but with the invention of solid-state drives (similar to flash drives in that there are no moving parts) the transfer rate was higher, so the computer was (marginally) quicker when using the vRAM data cache.
ReadyBoost utilised the new, incredible transfer speeds by allowing a vRAM data cache to be created on USB flash drives with high enough access times. By utilising the new Thunderbolt Optic transfer speeds to develop external solid-state drives with high access times, massive vRAM caches could be created that run as quickly, if not quicker than normal RAM, resulting in cheap and easy methods of speeding up your computer massively. I should patent this idea; I'm not sure if developers have come up with it yet.
Anyways, I've written for far too long as it is, so I leave you with a somewhat related quote:
"There are three types of computer users: Novice users who are afraid that just pressing a button will break their computer; Intermediate users who don't know how to fix their computer after pressing the key that broke it; and Expert users who break other peoples' computers."
Wednesday 23 February 2011
Sacchariferous
Meaning sugar-bearing.
I believe that I left my last blog a little unfinished, so now is when I will be finishing it (my neck is absolutely dying since I've been turned at an awkward angle playing the rest of the game this evening, and my eyes hurt a lot, so forgive any mistakes or anything)
The boss for Oil Ocean Zone is rather like that of Hill Top Zone. Dr. Eggman emerges from the oil in a submarine-style machine for a few seconds before retreating back into the safe depths of the ocean. Your chance to hit him is while he is in the submarine. After he's retreated come two waves of attacks. The first is easy enough to dodge. It is merely a spike on a chain that you either jump over or duck under as it passes overhead. The second wave is in the form of a laser-gun on a chain. Again, fairly simple -- dodge the blasts from the gun by either jumping or ducking. Watch out if a shot is aimed at the platform that you are stood on though; it sends a shockwave along the platform that you'll have to jump over. And this cycle repeats until you've defeated Eggman and he's run away again, leaving you to save the animals.
The final Zone is Metropolis Zone. This zone is jam-packed full of mecha-goodness. Watch out for lava, mantis-bots (they launch a pair of blades at you that are quite difficult to dodge), starfish-spine things that explode (firing spines in all directions) and of course, spikes. There are, however, three Acts in this Zone to endure with a fittingly difficult boss at the end.
Eggman descends from the skies in his standard carrier, surrounded by eight balls orbiting quickly. In my experience, I've found that you can't be afraid to lose rings in this boss battle. Just keep jumping up and hitting him. Each time you hit him, a ball will break away and turn into an inflatable version of Eggman. Just jump on it to destroy it. After you've knocked all eight balls away and destroyed them, he'll move to the side and start firing lasers. Just hit him once more and you'll have defeated him. Yippee (I wish I hadn't left the last one unfinished -- I'm really not feeling this review tonight . . .).
Sky Chase is a standalone level. You don't play a particularly active role in this level, it's merely a level of self-preservation. You are stood atop The Tornado (Sonic and Tails' little plane) as it is flown, chasing Dr. Eggman's flying fortress. Just collect as many rings as you can, and jump attack the enemies, avoiding any projectiles they might fire. The level itself doesn't go on that long, so don't worry too much, and there isn't a boss.
Penultimately, is Wing Fortress. The Tornado is shot down, and you need to start the level by jumping from the plane onto the fortress. Main danger in this level is falling off the bottom, since it's an open level in the air. Just make your way through the fortress (it's somewhat of a labyrinth with many entrances and exits hidden behind walls, so just make sure you check every available wall before declaring defeat in an area). Once you find you way to the cockpit of the ship, you discover that Dr. Eggman has just one more surprise for you in this level.
You are trapped between two forcefields at each side of the screen as two peripherals appear on he ceiling of the room within which you currently reside. One of them stays in the centre, and fires out three moving platforms with spikes on the bottom, and the other moves back and forth. When the moving one stops moving, jump on one of the platforms and jump attack the exposed part. Don't get too carried away, this thing fires out quite a beefy laser after a second or two. Nonetheless, the biggest danger is probably the platforms. It's difficult to focus on all three at once, along with the laser. Still, once you've broken the laser, Eggman runs away, and you have to chase after him, by dropping down out of the bottom of the ship. Before you do, jump over to the other side and jump attack around a bit to discover a free life, and then drop down and let the cut-sequence take control.
Finally (I love that word right now) comes Death Egg. The evil Doctor's spaceship of destruction. There are no rings in this place, making this the most difficult and frustrating level of them all. Why? There are two bosses. Two incredibly difficult bosses. And no rings. One hit, and you're a goner.
Boss #1 - Mecha Sonic. For all kinds of functionality, this thing just has to be made out of razor blades with the damge it inflicts. Hit him with standard jump attacks only when he is standing still at the sides. Dodge any other attacks by jumping or ducking. His attacks include rolling along the floor in a ball, doing the same but jumping in a ball, jumping in a ball while firing spikes, and running back and forth at high speeds. Respectively, the evasive procedures are jump, duck, duck and dodge, and jump. A real tip here is to be patient. Don't get carried away hitting him too many times or you'll die. After eight hits, he'll blow up and you'll move onto the final boss. Eggman inside a metal . . . well, Eggman robot. Don't get stuck behind him or you will die, no question. Jump over his arms when he shoots them out. Finally, attack him just once when he lands after leaping into the air. I think it takes twelve hits to beat him, but don't quote me on that. If you've obtained all seven Chaos Emeralds, you will see the "good" ending (I'm not one for spoilers, so I won't be telling what happens in either of the endings) and if not, you'll view the "Not-So-Good" ending (it's referred to as the bad ending, but nothing inherently bad happens, so I refer to it as the "not-so-good" ending.).
Ta-da. That's my very in-depth review/walkthrough of Knuckles in Sonic 2. Great game, as is every other game of the Sonic Megadrive franchise. If any of you are wondering, I used Fusion 3.64 as my emulator of choice (since Gens+ screwed up my graphics) and just downloaded the ROM of Sonic 2 & Knuckles. It's fairly easy to find with a Google search, but if any of you are particularly unable to find it, I'll post a link to them both up here.
"Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other."
I believe that I left my last blog a little unfinished, so now is when I will be finishing it (my neck is absolutely dying since I've been turned at an awkward angle playing the rest of the game this evening, and my eyes hurt a lot, so forgive any mistakes or anything)
The boss for Oil Ocean Zone is rather like that of Hill Top Zone. Dr. Eggman emerges from the oil in a submarine-style machine for a few seconds before retreating back into the safe depths of the ocean. Your chance to hit him is while he is in the submarine. After he's retreated come two waves of attacks. The first is easy enough to dodge. It is merely a spike on a chain that you either jump over or duck under as it passes overhead. The second wave is in the form of a laser-gun on a chain. Again, fairly simple -- dodge the blasts from the gun by either jumping or ducking. Watch out if a shot is aimed at the platform that you are stood on though; it sends a shockwave along the platform that you'll have to jump over. And this cycle repeats until you've defeated Eggman and he's run away again, leaving you to save the animals.
The final Zone is Metropolis Zone. This zone is jam-packed full of mecha-goodness. Watch out for lava, mantis-bots (they launch a pair of blades at you that are quite difficult to dodge), starfish-spine things that explode (firing spines in all directions) and of course, spikes. There are, however, three Acts in this Zone to endure with a fittingly difficult boss at the end.
Eggman descends from the skies in his standard carrier, surrounded by eight balls orbiting quickly. In my experience, I've found that you can't be afraid to lose rings in this boss battle. Just keep jumping up and hitting him. Each time you hit him, a ball will break away and turn into an inflatable version of Eggman. Just jump on it to destroy it. After you've knocked all eight balls away and destroyed them, he'll move to the side and start firing lasers. Just hit him once more and you'll have defeated him. Yippee (I wish I hadn't left the last one unfinished -- I'm really not feeling this review tonight . . .).
Sky Chase is a standalone level. You don't play a particularly active role in this level, it's merely a level of self-preservation. You are stood atop The Tornado (Sonic and Tails' little plane) as it is flown, chasing Dr. Eggman's flying fortress. Just collect as many rings as you can, and jump attack the enemies, avoiding any projectiles they might fire. The level itself doesn't go on that long, so don't worry too much, and there isn't a boss.
Penultimately, is Wing Fortress. The Tornado is shot down, and you need to start the level by jumping from the plane onto the fortress. Main danger in this level is falling off the bottom, since it's an open level in the air. Just make your way through the fortress (it's somewhat of a labyrinth with many entrances and exits hidden behind walls, so just make sure you check every available wall before declaring defeat in an area). Once you find you way to the cockpit of the ship, you discover that Dr. Eggman has just one more surprise for you in this level.
You are trapped between two forcefields at each side of the screen as two peripherals appear on he ceiling of the room within which you currently reside. One of them stays in the centre, and fires out three moving platforms with spikes on the bottom, and the other moves back and forth. When the moving one stops moving, jump on one of the platforms and jump attack the exposed part. Don't get too carried away, this thing fires out quite a beefy laser after a second or two. Nonetheless, the biggest danger is probably the platforms. It's difficult to focus on all three at once, along with the laser. Still, once you've broken the laser, Eggman runs away, and you have to chase after him, by dropping down out of the bottom of the ship. Before you do, jump over to the other side and jump attack around a bit to discover a free life, and then drop down and let the cut-sequence take control.
Finally (I love that word right now) comes Death Egg. The evil Doctor's spaceship of destruction. There are no rings in this place, making this the most difficult and frustrating level of them all. Why? There are two bosses. Two incredibly difficult bosses. And no rings. One hit, and you're a goner.
Boss #1 - Mecha Sonic. For all kinds of functionality, this thing just has to be made out of razor blades with the damge it inflicts. Hit him with standard jump attacks only when he is standing still at the sides. Dodge any other attacks by jumping or ducking. His attacks include rolling along the floor in a ball, doing the same but jumping in a ball, jumping in a ball while firing spikes, and running back and forth at high speeds. Respectively, the evasive procedures are jump, duck, duck and dodge, and jump. A real tip here is to be patient. Don't get carried away hitting him too many times or you'll die. After eight hits, he'll blow up and you'll move onto the final boss. Eggman inside a metal . . . well, Eggman robot. Don't get stuck behind him or you will die, no question. Jump over his arms when he shoots them out. Finally, attack him just once when he lands after leaping into the air. I think it takes twelve hits to beat him, but don't quote me on that. If you've obtained all seven Chaos Emeralds, you will see the "good" ending (I'm not one for spoilers, so I won't be telling what happens in either of the endings) and if not, you'll view the "Not-So-Good" ending (it's referred to as the bad ending, but nothing inherently bad happens, so I refer to it as the "not-so-good" ending.).
Ta-da. That's my very in-depth review/walkthrough of Knuckles in Sonic 2. Great game, as is every other game of the Sonic Megadrive franchise. If any of you are wondering, I used Fusion 3.64 as my emulator of choice (since Gens+ screwed up my graphics) and just downloaded the ROM of Sonic 2 & Knuckles. It's fairly easy to find with a Google search, but if any of you are particularly unable to find it, I'll post a link to them both up here.
"Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other."
Sunday 20 February 2011
Mathematicaster
I saw this word and just had to use it. It doesn't mean a mathematical magician, it merely means a minor or inferior mathematician.
This post is a bit of a toughy. I'm not blessed with inspiration, like I was on Friday (I won't lie, I loved writing that post). I have, however, instilled a fear of the Internet in myself, so that was a little stupid of me, but hey, can't have everything.
I'm writing this on my train to Cambridge again. It's more cramped than I've yet experienced on my travels, so any typographical errors are going to be blamed on the fact that I can't type comfortably, or even really move my hands all that much. Don't ask how I managed to get this laptop out. To cut a long story short, it was with a great deal of difficulty.
But I'm going off on a tangent. Short of inspiration today, so I'm going to just start writing and hope that it ends up somewhere decent, or at least readable.
[[I'm running out of battery here because I'm a fool and I did not put my laptop on a proper charge today, so I may have more inspiration when I finish this. For now, however, my laptop will have a little rest and when I get chance, I'll finish it off later today. But may God have mercy on the guy sitting next to me with his legs opened wide, crunching peanuts with his mouth wide open, for I may kill him.]]
Ok, I've hit a little bit of inspiration while relaxing with a childhood game of mine. I recently mentioned that I'd downloaded a Sega Genesis (MegaDrive) emulator for my PC. I decided that, in a bid to kill some time, that I'd play Sonic 2 & Knuckles, so in today's blog, and possibly a few ones after if it takes a lot of time or space, I will be writing somewhat of a walkthrough-review combination. (Forgive me if this post seems disjointed; I'm not particularly focused right now, but I'm gonna give it a try)
Sonic is a blue hedgehog who has the unusual ability (other than being able to walk on two legs, wear red trainers and talk) to run very very fast. Knuckles is a red echidna whose unusual abilities (other than, again, being able to walk on two legs, and talk) include being able to glide, and be able to grip onto walls with his . . . well, knuckles.
Sonic and Knuckles was a unique Sega Genesis game cartridge in that it could be played as a standalone game cartridge, but it also contained a game slot that could be used to combine Sonic and Knuckles with any other game from the Sonic franchise, allowing Knuckles to be implemented as a playable character and allowing the player to reach new areas using Knuckles' climbing ability.
The game begins with the beautifully harmonised "Sega!" as the Sega logo is shown, before moving to the Sonic 2 and Knuckles title screen. Here, the player can choose whether to play a single-player game or a two-player split screen race. (I will, of course, be player a single-player game. I'm a skilled gamer, but unfortunately not skilled enough to play as two players at once). The game is split into nine "zones", usually with two "acts", and a boss at the end of the final Act of the Zone.. Each Act is a side-scrolling level, through which the player has to fight past robotic enemies, created by the nefarious Dr. Eggman to imprison the innocent animals of the land and attempt to defeat Sonic and his allies.
The first Zone is Emerald Hill Zone, a beautifully picturesque landscaped zone, where the main risks are wasp-bots that fire a fireball stinger from above, fish-bots that leap up from under most bridges the Knuckles passes over, and spikes. For each of these dangers, a mere touch will cause you to lose all rings in your possession, and fall backwards. If you are unfortunate enough to touch one with no rings in your possession, you will lose a life and start back from the last checkpoint that you touched. Emerald Hill has some happy background music played on, presumably a synthesised (all music for these games were synthesised on 8-bit synthesisers, because the games did not have space for MP3s or the like) marimba or metallophone of some kind, with a bouncy little bassline.
If you pass by a checkpoint with fifty rings or more, a ring of stars begins to open up above the checkpoint. If you jump into this rings of stars, you are instantly transported to a "Special Stage". In these so-called Special Stages, you have the opportunity to win a Chaos Emerald. Chaos Emeralds are, and have always been a crucial part of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Once the player has obtained all seven Chaos Emeralds, and obtained fifty rings, the on-screen character can transform into their Super form. For Sonic, Tails (Sonic's friend, a young two-tailed fox who uses his two tails as a propellor to fly with) and Knuckles, their Super forms, respectively, are Super Sonic, Super Tails and Super Knuckles. In their Super forms, they are largely invincible to anything other than falling off the bottom of the stage, and will turn a golden or silver colour. A disadvantage to transforming is that for every second that passes in Super form, a ring is used up. Once all rings are used up, the character reverts back into their standard and vulnerable form.
During a Special Stage, you are required to collect rings (an instruction is shown on screen "Collect X rings!" where X is the number you need to continue) three times. If you have the number required or more by the first "checkpoint", you get a thumbs-up (I know, I wish I got such praise too) and a higher number to collect. If not, you get a thumbs-down and you get transported out of the special stage. If you collect enough rings three times, you reach the Chaos Emerald and add it to your collection, along with a tasty little point score bonus, and get transported back to the level.
The boss at the end of Emerald Hill Act 2 takes the form of Dr. Eggman in a car with some sort of spiked drill on the front. He drives back and forth across the screen, trying to spear Knuckles with the the weapon. An easy boss, to say the least, being vulnerable to Knuckles just jumping on top of the car eight times. Once you have defeated him (he'll crumble into a series of explosions and fly off in his little ship) you'll be permitted to pass and release all of the imprisoned animals from the Emerald Hill Zone.
From here, you move onto Chemical Plant Zone, a Zone with a new set of dangers. There are, of course, the standard shooting enemies, this time taking the form of wall and floor-clingers. They look like little pods just sliding up and down walls and floors, and if you get too close, they'll open up and throw a little ball of . . . something at you. Jump on them to destroy them. Another danger is the chemical jumpers. They emerge from pipes on the ground, and jump to another pipe, and are invulnerable to any of Knuckles' attacks. Other than falling off the bottom of the stage (a danger found in almost every Zone), drowning is a big danger. In the second Act of this Zone comes a place where the water is rising around you and you have to rely on moving blocks to find your way up and above the water level before you drown. Knuckles can survive around fifteen to twenty seconds below water until he runs out of air. Of course, playing as Knuckles is easier than playing as Sonic since Knuckles has the ability to climb walls and thus doesn't necessarily have to rely on jumping on the moving blocks to reach air level. The music in this level is honestly one that you'll find yourself bouncing to. It's a techno-funk groove going on (I actually have it in my music library) and I love it.
The boss in this level is a little trickier than the last. Eggman, this time, has a suction machine that he uses to suck harmful chemical waste from the bottom of the plant into a bucket that, when full, he tries to tip onto Knuckles. The tip for this boss is to jump attack him while he's filling the bucket and then try and avoid the bucket when he's trying to tip it. Be careful, however, of the flipping platforms. If they turn upside down while Knuckles is stood on them, he will fall off the screen and die. Once defeated, he will again explode and fly away, leaving you free to free the animals. Why are there animals in a chemical plant anyway? Bad Dr. Eggman.
Next comes Aquatic Ruin Zone, a ruins-style Zone (obviously), where the biggest danger is drowning. There are arrow-firing stone pillars, pirhanas, and harmful flies, but the latter two can be defeated with a simple jump. Avoid the arrows, though. Drowning isn't an issue if you stay above the water as much as possible, or when in the water, you use every air bubble you can find. If, on the ground underwater, you see a little collection of bubbles, with an infrequent stream of bubbles coming from it, stay near it, and wait for a big bubble to be produced. Then, jump into it to receive its airy goodness and replenish Knuckles air supply. Incidentally, if you've never played any of the Sonic franchise before, you are notified when you only have five seconds left by a Jaws-style change in music and an on-screen countdown. Two quite difficult levels if you can't find any air bubbles.
Dr. Eggman takes the form of a flying, mallet-wielding robot this time, who is frustratingly just out of reach. He raises two totem poles out of the ground that he hits alternately. Each time he hits one, it fires an arrow that will bury itself in the other totem pole. Knuckles can use these to jump onto to provide a platform to perform a second jump attack from to hit Dr. Eggman. I should note here that each boss takes eight hits to defeat. After eight hits, he'll fly off and you can free the animals again, blah blah blah. See the pattern here?
Casino Night Zone follows with its swanky Vegas-style layout of flashing lights. In these two Acts are an incredibly fun little perk. There are useable slot machines. If you see a slot machine layout with a little container for Knuckles to jump into, you can use these to gain rings very quickly. The best result you can get is three "Jackpot"s, gaining you a juicy three-hundred ring payout. The worst, however, is three Eggmans. If you are unlucky enough to get one of these, it will steal around one-hundred rings from you. The only up-side to this result is that if it hits you with no rings, you won't die. Other enemies include bouncebots, robots that use a shield if you try and jump attack them (Spin-dashing from behind is a good method of defeat). Another groovy, bouncy little tune accompanies you through this Zone too.
A particularly tough boss this time, he flies above you, dropping cluster bombs (bombs that, when exploded, release small clusters that can also harm you). You, however, cannot attack him from beneath, since he has an electric shield beneath him. A good trick is to spin-dash up the walls and leap off to jump attack him from above. Tricky nonetheless. Defeat him, he'll fly off, you can release the animals and move on.
Not one of my favourite Zones, but Hill Top Zone follows. It's not a particularly tricky Zone, I just find it a little, you know, dull. A new danger in this Zone, however, resides in some of the caves. Occasionally, you'll find yourself trapped in a cave, with the exit way above you and a floor of lava rising beneath you, and you'll have to slowly work your way up through a maze of platforms as quickly as possible to avoid being harmed by the rapidly rising lava. Other than that, just work your way through. Some enemies return from earlier Zones, such as the Wasp-bots from Emerald Hill, just defeat as you usually would.
The boss in this is around as tricky as the last. Three platforms, and two pools of lava. Eggman emerges from each lava pool alternately, firing a fireball (in a straight line, so fairly easy to dodge) and then returning into the lava. While he is out of the lava is your opportunity to hit him as many times as possible, but move onto the other side of the screen when he returns to the lava. The reason for this? Splashback. When he returns to the lava, he splashes some onto the two platforms either side, igniting them for a few seconds. Eight hits, he's defeated, flies off, you free the animals. Bish bash bosh.
Mystic Cave is next. A strange level, I can't really describe its layout, since it doesn't really look like a cave. Nonetheless, beware of spikes. They can emerge from almost anywhere here. Don't stand too close to walls, since some have spikes that will slide out when you're in the vicinity. Give yourself ample space to jump too. The most annoying enemies are the fireflies. You can defeat them with a normal jump attack, but don't go anywhere near them when they start flickering. When flashing they will hurt you. And infuriate you, but foremost hurt you.
The boss is a little easier if you know what to avoid. He drills down from the ceiling, causing all sorts of shrapnel (I couldn't think of a better word) to rain down. Most of it is fairly harmless, but avoid the sharp bits that look like spines. He'll then lower his drill horizontally and race over to you, before drilling back upwards and causing the shrapnel to fall again. Jump on him as he races across with the drill horizontal. And the usual happens again, with the freeing of the animals and whatnot.
Oil Ocean Zone is the final two-Act Zone in the game. It's easier to not fall off the bottom of the screen due to its namesake ocean of oil which delays the death as you slowly sink into the oil, but it's still a labyrinth from start to finish. Avoid the oil-spouting floating seahorses (are they still seahorses if they're not in a sea?) and try not to get flattened by the lid-poppers (and don't touch the flames that are beneath the lid when it pops off). These levels are particularly long and tedious, but once you get to the end, what's waiting for you?
Find out on Wednesday. Though, I'm sure you already know, since the game follows a fairly obvious pattern. My back hurts and I think I've written way too much for a single blog post anyway. But it's alright, I don't really have much else to do anyway.
"So you're going to sacrifice your life, for a taste of the greener grass? And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgement, He's going to kick my heathen arse."
This post is a bit of a toughy. I'm not blessed with inspiration, like I was on Friday (I won't lie, I loved writing that post). I have, however, instilled a fear of the Internet in myself, so that was a little stupid of me, but hey, can't have everything.
I'm writing this on my train to Cambridge again. It's more cramped than I've yet experienced on my travels, so any typographical errors are going to be blamed on the fact that I can't type comfortably, or even really move my hands all that much. Don't ask how I managed to get this laptop out. To cut a long story short, it was with a great deal of difficulty.
But I'm going off on a tangent. Short of inspiration today, so I'm going to just start writing and hope that it ends up somewhere decent, or at least readable.
[[I'm running out of battery here because I'm a fool and I did not put my laptop on a proper charge today, so I may have more inspiration when I finish this. For now, however, my laptop will have a little rest and when I get chance, I'll finish it off later today. But may God have mercy on the guy sitting next to me with his legs opened wide, crunching peanuts with his mouth wide open, for I may kill him.]]
Ok, I've hit a little bit of inspiration while relaxing with a childhood game of mine. I recently mentioned that I'd downloaded a Sega Genesis (MegaDrive) emulator for my PC. I decided that, in a bid to kill some time, that I'd play Sonic 2 & Knuckles, so in today's blog, and possibly a few ones after if it takes a lot of time or space, I will be writing somewhat of a walkthrough-review combination. (Forgive me if this post seems disjointed; I'm not particularly focused right now, but I'm gonna give it a try)
Sonic is a blue hedgehog who has the unusual ability (other than being able to walk on two legs, wear red trainers and talk) to run very very fast. Knuckles is a red echidna whose unusual abilities (other than, again, being able to walk on two legs, and talk) include being able to glide, and be able to grip onto walls with his . . . well, knuckles.
Sonic and Knuckles was a unique Sega Genesis game cartridge in that it could be played as a standalone game cartridge, but it also contained a game slot that could be used to combine Sonic and Knuckles with any other game from the Sonic franchise, allowing Knuckles to be implemented as a playable character and allowing the player to reach new areas using Knuckles' climbing ability.
The game begins with the beautifully harmonised "Sega!" as the Sega logo is shown, before moving to the Sonic 2 and Knuckles title screen. Here, the player can choose whether to play a single-player game or a two-player split screen race. (I will, of course, be player a single-player game. I'm a skilled gamer, but unfortunately not skilled enough to play as two players at once). The game is split into nine "zones", usually with two "acts", and a boss at the end of the final Act of the Zone.. Each Act is a side-scrolling level, through which the player has to fight past robotic enemies, created by the nefarious Dr. Eggman to imprison the innocent animals of the land and attempt to defeat Sonic and his allies.
The first Zone is Emerald Hill Zone, a beautifully picturesque landscaped zone, where the main risks are wasp-bots that fire a fireball stinger from above, fish-bots that leap up from under most bridges the Knuckles passes over, and spikes. For each of these dangers, a mere touch will cause you to lose all rings in your possession, and fall backwards. If you are unfortunate enough to touch one with no rings in your possession, you will lose a life and start back from the last checkpoint that you touched. Emerald Hill has some happy background music played on, presumably a synthesised (all music for these games were synthesised on 8-bit synthesisers, because the games did not have space for MP3s or the like) marimba or metallophone of some kind, with a bouncy little bassline.
If you pass by a checkpoint with fifty rings or more, a ring of stars begins to open up above the checkpoint. If you jump into this rings of stars, you are instantly transported to a "Special Stage". In these so-called Special Stages, you have the opportunity to win a Chaos Emerald. Chaos Emeralds are, and have always been a crucial part of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Once the player has obtained all seven Chaos Emeralds, and obtained fifty rings, the on-screen character can transform into their Super form. For Sonic, Tails (Sonic's friend, a young two-tailed fox who uses his two tails as a propellor to fly with) and Knuckles, their Super forms, respectively, are Super Sonic, Super Tails and Super Knuckles. In their Super forms, they are largely invincible to anything other than falling off the bottom of the stage, and will turn a golden or silver colour. A disadvantage to transforming is that for every second that passes in Super form, a ring is used up. Once all rings are used up, the character reverts back into their standard and vulnerable form.
During a Special Stage, you are required to collect rings (an instruction is shown on screen "Collect X rings!" where X is the number you need to continue) three times. If you have the number required or more by the first "checkpoint", you get a thumbs-up (I know, I wish I got such praise too) and a higher number to collect. If not, you get a thumbs-down and you get transported out of the special stage. If you collect enough rings three times, you reach the Chaos Emerald and add it to your collection, along with a tasty little point score bonus, and get transported back to the level.
The boss at the end of Emerald Hill Act 2 takes the form of Dr. Eggman in a car with some sort of spiked drill on the front. He drives back and forth across the screen, trying to spear Knuckles with the the weapon. An easy boss, to say the least, being vulnerable to Knuckles just jumping on top of the car eight times. Once you have defeated him (he'll crumble into a series of explosions and fly off in his little ship) you'll be permitted to pass and release all of the imprisoned animals from the Emerald Hill Zone.
From here, you move onto Chemical Plant Zone, a Zone with a new set of dangers. There are, of course, the standard shooting enemies, this time taking the form of wall and floor-clingers. They look like little pods just sliding up and down walls and floors, and if you get too close, they'll open up and throw a little ball of . . . something at you. Jump on them to destroy them. Another danger is the chemical jumpers. They emerge from pipes on the ground, and jump to another pipe, and are invulnerable to any of Knuckles' attacks. Other than falling off the bottom of the stage (a danger found in almost every Zone), drowning is a big danger. In the second Act of this Zone comes a place where the water is rising around you and you have to rely on moving blocks to find your way up and above the water level before you drown. Knuckles can survive around fifteen to twenty seconds below water until he runs out of air. Of course, playing as Knuckles is easier than playing as Sonic since Knuckles has the ability to climb walls and thus doesn't necessarily have to rely on jumping on the moving blocks to reach air level. The music in this level is honestly one that you'll find yourself bouncing to. It's a techno-funk groove going on (I actually have it in my music library) and I love it.
The boss in this level is a little trickier than the last. Eggman, this time, has a suction machine that he uses to suck harmful chemical waste from the bottom of the plant into a bucket that, when full, he tries to tip onto Knuckles. The tip for this boss is to jump attack him while he's filling the bucket and then try and avoid the bucket when he's trying to tip it. Be careful, however, of the flipping platforms. If they turn upside down while Knuckles is stood on them, he will fall off the screen and die. Once defeated, he will again explode and fly away, leaving you free to free the animals. Why are there animals in a chemical plant anyway? Bad Dr. Eggman.
Next comes Aquatic Ruin Zone, a ruins-style Zone (obviously), where the biggest danger is drowning. There are arrow-firing stone pillars, pirhanas, and harmful flies, but the latter two can be defeated with a simple jump. Avoid the arrows, though. Drowning isn't an issue if you stay above the water as much as possible, or when in the water, you use every air bubble you can find. If, on the ground underwater, you see a little collection of bubbles, with an infrequent stream of bubbles coming from it, stay near it, and wait for a big bubble to be produced. Then, jump into it to receive its airy goodness and replenish Knuckles air supply. Incidentally, if you've never played any of the Sonic franchise before, you are notified when you only have five seconds left by a Jaws-style change in music and an on-screen countdown. Two quite difficult levels if you can't find any air bubbles.
Dr. Eggman takes the form of a flying, mallet-wielding robot this time, who is frustratingly just out of reach. He raises two totem poles out of the ground that he hits alternately. Each time he hits one, it fires an arrow that will bury itself in the other totem pole. Knuckles can use these to jump onto to provide a platform to perform a second jump attack from to hit Dr. Eggman. I should note here that each boss takes eight hits to defeat. After eight hits, he'll fly off and you can free the animals again, blah blah blah. See the pattern here?
Casino Night Zone follows with its swanky Vegas-style layout of flashing lights. In these two Acts are an incredibly fun little perk. There are useable slot machines. If you see a slot machine layout with a little container for Knuckles to jump into, you can use these to gain rings very quickly. The best result you can get is three "Jackpot"s, gaining you a juicy three-hundred ring payout. The worst, however, is three Eggmans. If you are unlucky enough to get one of these, it will steal around one-hundred rings from you. The only up-side to this result is that if it hits you with no rings, you won't die. Other enemies include bouncebots, robots that use a shield if you try and jump attack them (Spin-dashing from behind is a good method of defeat). Another groovy, bouncy little tune accompanies you through this Zone too.
A particularly tough boss this time, he flies above you, dropping cluster bombs (bombs that, when exploded, release small clusters that can also harm you). You, however, cannot attack him from beneath, since he has an electric shield beneath him. A good trick is to spin-dash up the walls and leap off to jump attack him from above. Tricky nonetheless. Defeat him, he'll fly off, you can release the animals and move on.
Not one of my favourite Zones, but Hill Top Zone follows. It's not a particularly tricky Zone, I just find it a little, you know, dull. A new danger in this Zone, however, resides in some of the caves. Occasionally, you'll find yourself trapped in a cave, with the exit way above you and a floor of lava rising beneath you, and you'll have to slowly work your way up through a maze of platforms as quickly as possible to avoid being harmed by the rapidly rising lava. Other than that, just work your way through. Some enemies return from earlier Zones, such as the Wasp-bots from Emerald Hill, just defeat as you usually would.
The boss in this is around as tricky as the last. Three platforms, and two pools of lava. Eggman emerges from each lava pool alternately, firing a fireball (in a straight line, so fairly easy to dodge) and then returning into the lava. While he is out of the lava is your opportunity to hit him as many times as possible, but move onto the other side of the screen when he returns to the lava. The reason for this? Splashback. When he returns to the lava, he splashes some onto the two platforms either side, igniting them for a few seconds. Eight hits, he's defeated, flies off, you free the animals. Bish bash bosh.
Mystic Cave is next. A strange level, I can't really describe its layout, since it doesn't really look like a cave. Nonetheless, beware of spikes. They can emerge from almost anywhere here. Don't stand too close to walls, since some have spikes that will slide out when you're in the vicinity. Give yourself ample space to jump too. The most annoying enemies are the fireflies. You can defeat them with a normal jump attack, but don't go anywhere near them when they start flickering. When flashing they will hurt you. And infuriate you, but foremost hurt you.
The boss is a little easier if you know what to avoid. He drills down from the ceiling, causing all sorts of shrapnel (I couldn't think of a better word) to rain down. Most of it is fairly harmless, but avoid the sharp bits that look like spines. He'll then lower his drill horizontally and race over to you, before drilling back upwards and causing the shrapnel to fall again. Jump on him as he races across with the drill horizontal. And the usual happens again, with the freeing of the animals and whatnot.
Oil Ocean Zone is the final two-Act Zone in the game. It's easier to not fall off the bottom of the screen due to its namesake ocean of oil which delays the death as you slowly sink into the oil, but it's still a labyrinth from start to finish. Avoid the oil-spouting floating seahorses (are they still seahorses if they're not in a sea?) and try not to get flattened by the lid-poppers (and don't touch the flames that are beneath the lid when it pops off). These levels are particularly long and tedious, but once you get to the end, what's waiting for you?
Find out on Wednesday. Though, I'm sure you already know, since the game follows a fairly obvious pattern. My back hurts and I think I've written way too much for a single blog post anyway. But it's alright, I don't really have much else to do anyway.
"So you're going to sacrifice your life, for a taste of the greener grass? And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgement, He's going to kick my heathen arse."
Friday 18 February 2011
Fatalism
Today's word sounds very depressing but I'm pleased to tell you that it is as depressing as it sounds. Fatalism is the view that events are fixed and humans are powerless to change them. A very cheery thought, I know.
I don't anticipate discussing this in today's post, but I doubt I'll really stick to that. I don't plan my posts much. It makes them less spontaneous and less prone to my speaking my mind if they're planned. I only edit my posts to correct typographical errors.
I'm going to go all technopolitical on your derriéres tonight. That is, discussing the politics of technology. For those of you that don't know, the Cold War was a war between the Russian Soviet Union and the Western World that was expressed through nuclear arms. Since nuclear arms were in action, many countries in the Western World began building bunkers that were resistant to the inevitable electromagnetic pulse resulting from a thermonuclear explosion.
The Doomsday Clock is a fictional clock that shows how close we are to . . . Well, Doomsday, The End of The World, Hell, the Eternal Darkness, whatever you want to call it. At this particular moment in time, we are at 23:54 on the clock. Once we reach "midnight" or 00:00 on the Doomsday Clock, legend has it that mankind's survival is at stake. In 1949, nearing the climax of the Cold War, the Soviet Alliance pushed the clock to 23:57 by testing the first nuclear bomb. The USA pushed it a minute closer, to 23:58, when they tested their first nuclear bomb the following year. While it was pushed back to 23:43 in 1991 when Bush Snr. and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty; it's now twenty years on, Pakistan and India are in possession of their own nuclear arms, almost certainly North Korea too, Iran's motives and actions are unnerving the West, and the Doomsday Clock is ticking ever closer to our own self-destruction.
I think I've now laid a suitable foundation to begin my post properly. As we are ticking closer to our impending doom, would the Internet survive a global nuclear holocaust? Consider that a standard sized thermonuclear explosion would send out an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to easily knock even the biggest serve out of action permanently. You're probably thinking right now that the Internet would be one of the first things to go out of action, but it's quite the contrary.
At the moment, how many nuclear bombs are being used as warfare in the Western World? You're right, none. Or certainly as close to none as possible. So, what use do we have for the aforementioned nuclear-proof bunkers? They're certainly not being used for humans. They are, however, being used for server storage.
A site of particular note is the US Secure Hosting Center. It considers itself immune to a plethora of risks, with man-made conflict being only one of them. And with reinforced vault doors, 5ft thick concrete floors, walls lined with welded-seam steel (to reflect any electromagnetic pulses), and the vault doors being strong enough to withstand 800mph winds and a 20-megaton nuclear blast (that's 20 million imperial tons. To put this into perspective, a car weighs around 1.8 imperial tons), they are quite safe to make this assumption. And there are a handful or so others dotted around the globe to protect data and keep it safe.
These sites are almost completely impregnable by physical means. Even with a JCB digger, it would take probably around 6 months to get past the first few lines of physical defence. But by digital means? A lot of these datacentres may be impenetrable by physical means, but they have a large team of around-the-clock programmers working to prevent and route any DoS (Denial of Service - usually when a team attacks a server all at once, floods it with access requests and as a safety precaution, the server just shuts down) attacks or viruses (Any viruses that manage to get past the main lines of defence will be very powerful and very malicious, and will cause an unspeakable amount of damage to any valuable or sensitive data). If it takes a whole team of programmers to be working around the clock to prevent these attacks actively, there must be a large amount of attacks quite frequently.
I'm about to put into perspective the true, grim irony of what I'm trying to say. The Internet is a massive network. Anyone, anywhere with the right tools can find anyone, anywhere who is connected to the Internet. Still not getting what I'm saying? I'll be more blunt. The Pentagon computers are connected to the Internet. The Russian Federation Ministry of Defence computers are connected to the Internet. So are, I assume, the Ministries of Defence for all other countries in possession of nuclear warheads. Almost every country uses computers to activate their missiles and all other warheads. Still not making the link? If that team of programmers aren't on the ball 24/7, a hacker - it only takes one to get their foot in the door - can find their way into the Pentagon or any of the above mentioned Defence Ministries and set off every single last warhead.
They would, of course, need the launch codes. But codes are made to be broken. With the right algorithm and enough processing power behind it (which can easily be done by linking together the phenomenal processing power of computer video-graphics cards), we could be just mere weeks away from a 2nd Hiroshima, but magnified on a global scale.
It might not even be that complicated. When Clinton was president, he made what could have been a costly mistake. In his own words, he "misplaced the launch codes". He "couldn't recall when he'd last seen them". In that one insane mistake, the entire world could have been in danger.
The true, bitter irony of all of this? If every nuclear warhead in the world detonated simultaneously, would we survive? It's very very unlikely. Would our animals, our forests survive? Even less likely. The only thing that would be left on this barren planet, protected by our nuclear-proof bunkers would be our Internet. The very tool used to strike midnight on our Doomsday Clock.
"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had."
I don't anticipate discussing this in today's post, but I doubt I'll really stick to that. I don't plan my posts much. It makes them less spontaneous and less prone to my speaking my mind if they're planned. I only edit my posts to correct typographical errors.
I'm going to go all technopolitical on your derriéres tonight. That is, discussing the politics of technology. For those of you that don't know, the Cold War was a war between the Russian Soviet Union and the Western World that was expressed through nuclear arms. Since nuclear arms were in action, many countries in the Western World began building bunkers that were resistant to the inevitable electromagnetic pulse resulting from a thermonuclear explosion.
The Doomsday Clock is a fictional clock that shows how close we are to . . . Well, Doomsday, The End of The World, Hell, the Eternal Darkness, whatever you want to call it. At this particular moment in time, we are at 23:54 on the clock. Once we reach "midnight" or 00:00 on the Doomsday Clock, legend has it that mankind's survival is at stake. In 1949, nearing the climax of the Cold War, the Soviet Alliance pushed the clock to 23:57 by testing the first nuclear bomb. The USA pushed it a minute closer, to 23:58, when they tested their first nuclear bomb the following year. While it was pushed back to 23:43 in 1991 when Bush Snr. and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty; it's now twenty years on, Pakistan and India are in possession of their own nuclear arms, almost certainly North Korea too, Iran's motives and actions are unnerving the West, and the Doomsday Clock is ticking ever closer to our own self-destruction.
I think I've now laid a suitable foundation to begin my post properly. As we are ticking closer to our impending doom, would the Internet survive a global nuclear holocaust? Consider that a standard sized thermonuclear explosion would send out an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to easily knock even the biggest serve out of action permanently. You're probably thinking right now that the Internet would be one of the first things to go out of action, but it's quite the contrary.
At the moment, how many nuclear bombs are being used as warfare in the Western World? You're right, none. Or certainly as close to none as possible. So, what use do we have for the aforementioned nuclear-proof bunkers? They're certainly not being used for humans. They are, however, being used for server storage.
A site of particular note is the US Secure Hosting Center. It considers itself immune to a plethora of risks, with man-made conflict being only one of them. And with reinforced vault doors, 5ft thick concrete floors, walls lined with welded-seam steel (to reflect any electromagnetic pulses), and the vault doors being strong enough to withstand 800mph winds and a 20-megaton nuclear blast (that's 20 million imperial tons. To put this into perspective, a car weighs around 1.8 imperial tons), they are quite safe to make this assumption. And there are a handful or so others dotted around the globe to protect data and keep it safe.
These sites are almost completely impregnable by physical means. Even with a JCB digger, it would take probably around 6 months to get past the first few lines of physical defence. But by digital means? A lot of these datacentres may be impenetrable by physical means, but they have a large team of around-the-clock programmers working to prevent and route any DoS (Denial of Service - usually when a team attacks a server all at once, floods it with access requests and as a safety precaution, the server just shuts down) attacks or viruses (Any viruses that manage to get past the main lines of defence will be very powerful and very malicious, and will cause an unspeakable amount of damage to any valuable or sensitive data). If it takes a whole team of programmers to be working around the clock to prevent these attacks actively, there must be a large amount of attacks quite frequently.
I'm about to put into perspective the true, grim irony of what I'm trying to say. The Internet is a massive network. Anyone, anywhere with the right tools can find anyone, anywhere who is connected to the Internet. Still not getting what I'm saying? I'll be more blunt. The Pentagon computers are connected to the Internet. The Russian Federation Ministry of Defence computers are connected to the Internet. So are, I assume, the Ministries of Defence for all other countries in possession of nuclear warheads. Almost every country uses computers to activate their missiles and all other warheads. Still not making the link? If that team of programmers aren't on the ball 24/7, a hacker - it only takes one to get their foot in the door - can find their way into the Pentagon or any of the above mentioned Defence Ministries and set off every single last warhead.
They would, of course, need the launch codes. But codes are made to be broken. With the right algorithm and enough processing power behind it (which can easily be done by linking together the phenomenal processing power of computer video-graphics cards), we could be just mere weeks away from a 2nd Hiroshima, but magnified on a global scale.
It might not even be that complicated. When Clinton was president, he made what could have been a costly mistake. In his own words, he "misplaced the launch codes". He "couldn't recall when he'd last seen them". In that one insane mistake, the entire world could have been in danger.
The true, bitter irony of all of this? If every nuclear warhead in the world detonated simultaneously, would we survive? It's very very unlikely. Would our animals, our forests survive? Even less likely. The only thing that would be left on this barren planet, protected by our nuclear-proof bunkers would be our Internet. The very tool used to strike midnight on our Doomsday Clock.
"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had."
Tuesday 15 February 2011
Grandiloquence
Now, there's one very good friend of mine who will be quite pleased to see this. One of my best friends, Dom, showed me a book that would be amazingly useful for my blogs - it's just a book of long words - and I spotted this little gem. Well, Dom brought it to my attention, but it's really the same difference. Regardless, grandiloquence means grand or elaborate speech.
Since my last post, I've made quite a few decisions. Some of them I will discuss and describe later in this post, some later in the future and some not at all. Some of them don't really matter, and some of them are just for fun.
To begin with, a few days ago in daily free newspaper, The Metro, there was a story about a young man who decided to see how far he could get with just a penny, and just trading it. He ended up with a plot of land in Bulgaria, I think. So, my beautiful, mischievous, fun-loving nature has prompted me to decide that I'll attempt the same thing. Well, I'll be extremely lucky to end up as an international landowner, but you get the idea. I'm just going to try it and see if anything comes of it. I will also be updating the items that I am in ownership of via this blog. Maybe something'll come of it, maybe it won't. If the worst comes to the worst, I'll only be a penny down.
I'm also going to be doodling a lot, so I figure uploading them might be pretty funny. I need an outlet right now that guitar, singing and even merely writing isn't quite fitting. They may be depressing, they maybe cynical, but one thing is certain. They will be god-awful. My drawing skills are second to none, and so they will be shoddy stick figures or amusing technical drawings. And most probably on lined paper. Nonetheless, it's something to keep my mind off of my mind. Not that that makes any sense whatsoever, but I know what I mean.
Also, I'm going to go off on a rant that I got really really carried away with today, but that I quite enjoyed. It regards one Mr. Steve Jobs. Now, for those of you who do not know (shame on you, if you don't) Steve Jobs is the official founder (though technically, he co-founded) and CEO of Apple.
Apple was, as of Sunday, the second most valuable company in the world with share prices of $360 a piece, second only to Exxon Mobil (the oil and petrol company). Mr. Jobs wasn't always at the forefront of Apple, however. He began working with Bill Gates who, as I'm sure you all know, is the founder of Microsoft. He is a bad man, though. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were working on software development together, before Bill Gates took the software and ran to get it patented under his own name, leaving poor old Steve with nothing.
Mr. Jobs then went on to co-found Apple with a friend of his (I forget the name of his friend . . .) in 1976. He then, in 1985, left Apple due to disagreements with the board, and began yet another computer company (NeXT Computers) and joined an 3D animation company that is now very very famous. You may know it by its iconic desklamp sketches, or by the name Pixar. Yeah, that's right. Steve Jobs helped build the Pixar that we know today, and Bill Gates was left developing already buggy software. I think we know who came out on top here.
Meanwhile, Apple Co. were beginning a particularly sharp nosedive, and in a last bid attempt to save themselves, bought NeXT Computers and, by extension, the now infamous Mr. Jobs in 1996.
I have made quite an unforgivable mistake here, however. Whenever Steve Jobs is in the news, he is always compared to the likes of Bill Gates and other software developers. And these comparisons always fall short of the mark when attempting to explain the success of Apple and how Steve Jobs has managed to make Apple Co. the second most valuable company in the world. It's because he's not a standard programmer. He is, for want of a better description, an entrepreneurial programmer.
The success of Apple came from Jobs' ability to find a problem that even the consumer hadn't realised yet. The release that really put Apple on the map was the iPod and iTunes. But why? There were already many many different MP3 players on the market. It all came down to iTunes. iTunes solved the problem that many users hadn't even realised. It was rare that a user would have a music library on their computer, so when they wanted to upload music, they would have to trawl their computer for the files they wanted and then drag-and-drop them into their portable music player via a window interface. Now, iTunes provided an interface through which music could be organised and ID3 (the metadata tags associated with music files - i.e. album name, artist name, song title, track number, et cetera.) tags could be viewed and edited, a media player, and most importantly, a sync centre.
If, god forbid, your MP3 player became corrupted, you would have to format it (essentially wiping the flash drive inside clean) and then go trawling through your computer to find your media files and re-copy them to it. With iTunes, there was a neat little function that, on the rare occasion that your iPod for some reason became corrupted, you could format it through iTunes and then resynchronise all of your media back onto the iPod in one swift movement. It was the ease-of-use and organisation of your media that made the iPod and iTunes such a hit.
From then on, Apple has only become more and more famous. Once the iPod took Apple's name into the limelight, more technological advances were also highlighted. Apple's highly-efficient use of the processor, and other system resources, its smooth and elegant graphical user interfaces and it's fantastic capabilites for the media world (due to its efficient use of system resources). And since then, its success has just snowballed with the subsequent releases of the iPod Nano series, the Touch series, the iPad and, of course, the computers (the iMac, iBook, MacBook etc.). And the iPhone was a massive hit. Apple now owns a massive 17.25% of the smartphone markets, and an even more phenomenal 4.2% of the total mobile phone market.
But it's not primarily down to good software or good hardware. It was down to Steve Jobs' faultless ability to solve problems that had not even been realised. With that, he was just pushing at an open door.
And in the words of Mr. Jobs himself, I leave you with this:
"You can't just ask the customer what they want and try to give it to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."
Since my last post, I've made quite a few decisions. Some of them I will discuss and describe later in this post, some later in the future and some not at all. Some of them don't really matter, and some of them are just for fun.
To begin with, a few days ago in daily free newspaper, The Metro, there was a story about a young man who decided to see how far he could get with just a penny, and just trading it. He ended up with a plot of land in Bulgaria, I think. So, my beautiful, mischievous, fun-loving nature has prompted me to decide that I'll attempt the same thing. Well, I'll be extremely lucky to end up as an international landowner, but you get the idea. I'm just going to try it and see if anything comes of it. I will also be updating the items that I am in ownership of via this blog. Maybe something'll come of it, maybe it won't. If the worst comes to the worst, I'll only be a penny down.
I'm also going to be doodling a lot, so I figure uploading them might be pretty funny. I need an outlet right now that guitar, singing and even merely writing isn't quite fitting. They may be depressing, they maybe cynical, but one thing is certain. They will be god-awful. My drawing skills are second to none, and so they will be shoddy stick figures or amusing technical drawings. And most probably on lined paper. Nonetheless, it's something to keep my mind off of my mind. Not that that makes any sense whatsoever, but I know what I mean.
Also, I'm going to go off on a rant that I got really really carried away with today, but that I quite enjoyed. It regards one Mr. Steve Jobs. Now, for those of you who do not know (shame on you, if you don't) Steve Jobs is the official founder (though technically, he co-founded) and CEO of Apple.
Apple was, as of Sunday, the second most valuable company in the world with share prices of $360 a piece, second only to Exxon Mobil (the oil and petrol company). Mr. Jobs wasn't always at the forefront of Apple, however. He began working with Bill Gates who, as I'm sure you all know, is the founder of Microsoft. He is a bad man, though. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were working on software development together, before Bill Gates took the software and ran to get it patented under his own name, leaving poor old Steve with nothing.
Mr. Jobs then went on to co-found Apple with a friend of his (I forget the name of his friend . . .) in 1976. He then, in 1985, left Apple due to disagreements with the board, and began yet another computer company (NeXT Computers) and joined an 3D animation company that is now very very famous. You may know it by its iconic desklamp sketches, or by the name Pixar. Yeah, that's right. Steve Jobs helped build the Pixar that we know today, and Bill Gates was left developing already buggy software. I think we know who came out on top here.
Meanwhile, Apple Co. were beginning a particularly sharp nosedive, and in a last bid attempt to save themselves, bought NeXT Computers and, by extension, the now infamous Mr. Jobs in 1996.
I have made quite an unforgivable mistake here, however. Whenever Steve Jobs is in the news, he is always compared to the likes of Bill Gates and other software developers. And these comparisons always fall short of the mark when attempting to explain the success of Apple and how Steve Jobs has managed to make Apple Co. the second most valuable company in the world. It's because he's not a standard programmer. He is, for want of a better description, an entrepreneurial programmer.
The success of Apple came from Jobs' ability to find a problem that even the consumer hadn't realised yet. The release that really put Apple on the map was the iPod and iTunes. But why? There were already many many different MP3 players on the market. It all came down to iTunes. iTunes solved the problem that many users hadn't even realised. It was rare that a user would have a music library on their computer, so when they wanted to upload music, they would have to trawl their computer for the files they wanted and then drag-and-drop them into their portable music player via a window interface. Now, iTunes provided an interface through which music could be organised and ID3 (the metadata tags associated with music files - i.e. album name, artist name, song title, track number, et cetera.) tags could be viewed and edited, a media player, and most importantly, a sync centre.
If, god forbid, your MP3 player became corrupted, you would have to format it (essentially wiping the flash drive inside clean) and then go trawling through your computer to find your media files and re-copy them to it. With iTunes, there was a neat little function that, on the rare occasion that your iPod for some reason became corrupted, you could format it through iTunes and then resynchronise all of your media back onto the iPod in one swift movement. It was the ease-of-use and organisation of your media that made the iPod and iTunes such a hit.
From then on, Apple has only become more and more famous. Once the iPod took Apple's name into the limelight, more technological advances were also highlighted. Apple's highly-efficient use of the processor, and other system resources, its smooth and elegant graphical user interfaces and it's fantastic capabilites for the media world (due to its efficient use of system resources). And since then, its success has just snowballed with the subsequent releases of the iPod Nano series, the Touch series, the iPad and, of course, the computers (the iMac, iBook, MacBook etc.). And the iPhone was a massive hit. Apple now owns a massive 17.25% of the smartphone markets, and an even more phenomenal 4.2% of the total mobile phone market.
But it's not primarily down to good software or good hardware. It was down to Steve Jobs' faultless ability to solve problems that had not even been realised. With that, he was just pushing at an open door.
And in the words of Mr. Jobs himself, I leave you with this:
"You can't just ask the customer what they want and try to give it to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."
Saturday 12 February 2011
Rantipole
Meaning wild or disorderly. Rather like me.
Now, since I'm away this weekend, as I've mentioned several times, I think this is the only chance I'm going to get to upload this. So, after an eventful journey to Kings Cross, I'm now on my train to Cambridge. Well, actually, I'm not. I'm on a train to Welwyn Garden City. Because Transport for London is abysmal. Utterly atrocious.
Allow me to recount my day thus far. I begin at work (to those of you who do not know, I work in a garage, doing general body repair work). I wake up at 8am to get to work for 9am promptly. I'm not the world's greatest for waking up early (or in general for that matter), but I manage it, all in the name of money. It wasn't particularly awful to begin with, but then tragedy strikes. Well, not quite tragedy, but it wasn't particularly pleasant.
At work, we have a spray-bottle of brake-cleaner. This brake-cleaner is a potent mix of hydrocarbons that works efficiently and powerfully as a degreasing agent. When refilling this bottle, care is to be taken. Care that I do not have to begin with. The metal can from which I was pouring the cleaning fluid slipped, and spilt over my hands. It's not painful on unbroken skin, it just dries out your hands badly (hence the reason we have moisturising handwash). However, in a cut or graze, it feels like Satan's pitchfork is being stabbed into your cut (or graze) and wiggled around. Pretty intense pain. I imagine it to be quite an effective form of torture. Not that I'm sadistic or anything.
This, understandably, put me in a foul mood. I finished my work, and left to go home. The next hour or two was pretty uneventful, until I departed to begin my Journey of Fun and Delight to Cambridge. To get to Cambridge, one requires a tram to Wimbledon, a train to Vauxhall, a tube to Kings Cross, and then a single train from Kings Cross to Cambridge. Fairly simple, you think? Think again.
"Due to engineering works . . ." are the four most dreaded words to hear when departing on a long journey. These four words began a sentence while waiting for a train at Wimbledon. My train was delayed by ten minutes. I cursed under my breath a little, but accepted that there was, by and large, nothing I could do to change this fact, and so waited for my chariot pulled by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
I might add, at this point, that I am carrying three bags. One for my notebook PC on which I write this, one for my clothes and any other paraphernalia that I might require for the weekend, and one for the inflatable bed that I sleep on. On my train from Wimbledon to Vauxhall, not one healthy, unburdened young person allowed me to take the weight off my feet. I mean, it's only four stops, but they weren't to know that. As far as they were concerned, I could have been on that train all the way to London Waterloo. Nonetheless, this leg of my journey was completed (including waiting time and delay time) in around 35 minutes.
From Vauxhall, I needed to take the London Underground Victoria Line from Vauxhall to Kings Cross / St. Pancras. This train was, fortunately, not delayed. It's seven stops between Vauxhall and Kings Cross / St. Pancras. Again, not one inconsiderate human being allowed me to take the weight off my feet, being too preoccupied with their phones or makeup, or in one case, painting. And of course, refusing to make eye contact with me for fear of feeling guilty. And rightfully so, too. Regardless, it should only have taken me around 15 minutes to finish the second leg of my journey. How long did it take, I hear you ask? A further 35 minutes.
I had the choice of two trains. One in less than a minute that was inevitably going to be packed, or one in two minutes that would be a little less packed, so I had room to prevent my items being crushed. It seems that I may have annoyed an omnipotent, omniscient being up above, because this day is not getting any better. I choose the second, less-packed train to maybe save a few items from getting ruined, since they include the presents for my girlfriend for Valentine's weekend, and by the fates of the Gods above, it appears that the driver of the first train is unable to pull into Kings Cross station properly.
What does this have to do with me? Well, since my train was merely a minute behind, we were held at a red light signal until the driver had rubbed together his two little grey cells and pulled into the station properly, amounting to between ten and fifteen minutes. We were agonisingly less than a hundred metres from the stop.
[[It is at this point that I stopped writing this post to get the bus replacement service from Welwyn Garden City. Oh how my luck just got worse from here on in. I am now in Cambridge writing this, but goodness me how my journey went from bad to worse. But I will continue from where I left off.]]
From Kings Cross Underground stop, I needed to get to the National Rail station, which to be fair isn't a long distance to walk. But London is full of yet more inconsiderate people (I can think of much better words to describe them, but this is a family show) who seemed determined to hinder my travelling by simply walking in my way, and honest to God, there was one young lady, completely preoccupied with her phone who was actually oscillating between the two walls of the walkway and thus taking up the entire path so that I could not overtake with my three painfully heavy bags. After what should have been a much faster walk, I reached platforms 9 to 11 (the Cambridge platforms) and boarded the aforementioned train to Welwyn Garden City.
This train in itself was probably the most straightforward part of my journey today. There were no delays, no unnecessary hold-ups and it wasn't even full. A chance to relax and get a bit of the blog done, so I did. Now, once I reached my destination, I had to get a replacement bus service (it was really more of a coach, but this is hardly the time to split hairs over something so trivial) to Stevenage. Or so I was told. I waited for the bus to Hitchin to leave and then boarded my bus which took me to Stevenage in the company of a drunkard who felt the need to shout every little thing and sing songs with new crude lyrics that didn't even particularly make sense. You will be pleased to know that I managed to get to Stevenage without shoving my fist down his oesophagus and ripping out his vocal cords. Though I did loudly proclaim my wish to do this.
Upon reaching Stevenage, I was rather looking forward to just being able to get my final train in peace. There were, as you might expect, rail replacement mascots, if you will. Rail officers in high-vis jackets, with the train operator's name emblazoned onto them. I kindly asked where one might get the train to Cambridge from. The response? "Hitchin". I felt the fire in my stomach ignite, my blood began to boil and I nearly heatbutted the helpful young man. But I didn't. To cut a very long story short, I got another bus from Stevenage to Hitchin where, fortunately enough, my final leg awaited me, shimmering in the late evening sun (at this point it was around 6pm, four hours after I'd begun my journey, and the sun was just setting). I boarded my train in a positively unspeakable rage at how damn-near apocalyptic my journey had been, put my earphones in and immersed myself in the sounds of heavy rock, complimenting my dark mood.
I hope this has highlighted just how useless the public transport services are in London. Just as a final note (I'm sure you've read just about enough to be bored now) imagine how much worse this is going to get when the cuts hit public transport. So many people will lose their jobs, meaning that there will be fewer people around to help during these times, fewer people to actually operate the replacement services and, of course, higher costs for the privelige of this high level of service. Sigh, what is the World coming to?
"Look at all these buses now, asking for exact, exact change. I figure that if I give them exact change, they should take me exactly where I want to go."
Now, since I'm away this weekend, as I've mentioned several times, I think this is the only chance I'm going to get to upload this. So, after an eventful journey to Kings Cross, I'm now on my train to Cambridge. Well, actually, I'm not. I'm on a train to Welwyn Garden City. Because Transport for London is abysmal. Utterly atrocious.
Allow me to recount my day thus far. I begin at work (to those of you who do not know, I work in a garage, doing general body repair work). I wake up at 8am to get to work for 9am promptly. I'm not the world's greatest for waking up early (or in general for that matter), but I manage it, all in the name of money. It wasn't particularly awful to begin with, but then tragedy strikes. Well, not quite tragedy, but it wasn't particularly pleasant.
At work, we have a spray-bottle of brake-cleaner. This brake-cleaner is a potent mix of hydrocarbons that works efficiently and powerfully as a degreasing agent. When refilling this bottle, care is to be taken. Care that I do not have to begin with. The metal can from which I was pouring the cleaning fluid slipped, and spilt over my hands. It's not painful on unbroken skin, it just dries out your hands badly (hence the reason we have moisturising handwash). However, in a cut or graze, it feels like Satan's pitchfork is being stabbed into your cut (or graze) and wiggled around. Pretty intense pain. I imagine it to be quite an effective form of torture. Not that I'm sadistic or anything.
This, understandably, put me in a foul mood. I finished my work, and left to go home. The next hour or two was pretty uneventful, until I departed to begin my Journey of Fun and Delight to Cambridge. To get to Cambridge, one requires a tram to Wimbledon, a train to Vauxhall, a tube to Kings Cross, and then a single train from Kings Cross to Cambridge. Fairly simple, you think? Think again.
"Due to engineering works . . ." are the four most dreaded words to hear when departing on a long journey. These four words began a sentence while waiting for a train at Wimbledon. My train was delayed by ten minutes. I cursed under my breath a little, but accepted that there was, by and large, nothing I could do to change this fact, and so waited for my chariot pulled by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
I might add, at this point, that I am carrying three bags. One for my notebook PC on which I write this, one for my clothes and any other paraphernalia that I might require for the weekend, and one for the inflatable bed that I sleep on. On my train from Wimbledon to Vauxhall, not one healthy, unburdened young person allowed me to take the weight off my feet. I mean, it's only four stops, but they weren't to know that. As far as they were concerned, I could have been on that train all the way to London Waterloo. Nonetheless, this leg of my journey was completed (including waiting time and delay time) in around 35 minutes.
From Vauxhall, I needed to take the London Underground Victoria Line from Vauxhall to Kings Cross / St. Pancras. This train was, fortunately, not delayed. It's seven stops between Vauxhall and Kings Cross / St. Pancras. Again, not one inconsiderate human being allowed me to take the weight off my feet, being too preoccupied with their phones or makeup, or in one case, painting. And of course, refusing to make eye contact with me for fear of feeling guilty. And rightfully so, too. Regardless, it should only have taken me around 15 minutes to finish the second leg of my journey. How long did it take, I hear you ask? A further 35 minutes.
I had the choice of two trains. One in less than a minute that was inevitably going to be packed, or one in two minutes that would be a little less packed, so I had room to prevent my items being crushed. It seems that I may have annoyed an omnipotent, omniscient being up above, because this day is not getting any better. I choose the second, less-packed train to maybe save a few items from getting ruined, since they include the presents for my girlfriend for Valentine's weekend, and by the fates of the Gods above, it appears that the driver of the first train is unable to pull into Kings Cross station properly.
What does this have to do with me? Well, since my train was merely a minute behind, we were held at a red light signal until the driver had rubbed together his two little grey cells and pulled into the station properly, amounting to between ten and fifteen minutes. We were agonisingly less than a hundred metres from the stop.
[[It is at this point that I stopped writing this post to get the bus replacement service from Welwyn Garden City. Oh how my luck just got worse from here on in. I am now in Cambridge writing this, but goodness me how my journey went from bad to worse. But I will continue from where I left off.]]
From Kings Cross Underground stop, I needed to get to the National Rail station, which to be fair isn't a long distance to walk. But London is full of yet more inconsiderate people (I can think of much better words to describe them, but this is a family show) who seemed determined to hinder my travelling by simply walking in my way, and honest to God, there was one young lady, completely preoccupied with her phone who was actually oscillating between the two walls of the walkway and thus taking up the entire path so that I could not overtake with my three painfully heavy bags. After what should have been a much faster walk, I reached platforms 9 to 11 (the Cambridge platforms) and boarded the aforementioned train to Welwyn Garden City.
This train in itself was probably the most straightforward part of my journey today. There were no delays, no unnecessary hold-ups and it wasn't even full. A chance to relax and get a bit of the blog done, so I did. Now, once I reached my destination, I had to get a replacement bus service (it was really more of a coach, but this is hardly the time to split hairs over something so trivial) to Stevenage. Or so I was told. I waited for the bus to Hitchin to leave and then boarded my bus which took me to Stevenage in the company of a drunkard who felt the need to shout every little thing and sing songs with new crude lyrics that didn't even particularly make sense. You will be pleased to know that I managed to get to Stevenage without shoving my fist down his oesophagus and ripping out his vocal cords. Though I did loudly proclaim my wish to do this.
Upon reaching Stevenage, I was rather looking forward to just being able to get my final train in peace. There were, as you might expect, rail replacement mascots, if you will. Rail officers in high-vis jackets, with the train operator's name emblazoned onto them. I kindly asked where one might get the train to Cambridge from. The response? "Hitchin". I felt the fire in my stomach ignite, my blood began to boil and I nearly heatbutted the helpful young man. But I didn't. To cut a very long story short, I got another bus from Stevenage to Hitchin where, fortunately enough, my final leg awaited me, shimmering in the late evening sun (at this point it was around 6pm, four hours after I'd begun my journey, and the sun was just setting). I boarded my train in a positively unspeakable rage at how damn-near apocalyptic my journey had been, put my earphones in and immersed myself in the sounds of heavy rock, complimenting my dark mood.
I hope this has highlighted just how useless the public transport services are in London. Just as a final note (I'm sure you've read just about enough to be bored now) imagine how much worse this is going to get when the cuts hit public transport. So many people will lose their jobs, meaning that there will be fewer people around to help during these times, fewer people to actually operate the replacement services and, of course, higher costs for the privelige of this high level of service. Sigh, what is the World coming to?
"Look at all these buses now, asking for exact, exact change. I figure that if I give them exact change, they should take me exactly where I want to go."
Thursday 10 February 2011
Vaniloquence
Meaning vain or foolish talk.
Tonight, I'm struggling more than usual to focus. Which is bad. Why? Since I'm going to be away this weekend, I've decided to write both Friday's blog post (this one) and Monday's one in advance so that I don't have to spend too much time writing it, and I can just upload it on Sunday night.
Well, I'll just write and see if I come up with something at least readable that I can post. I woke up this morning with three distinct "wants" in my head. I wanted to play my old Sega Megadrive (namely, my Sonic collection), I wanted to play my old Warioland games (for the Gameboy series) and I wanted to build stuff with matchsticks.
There was a problem with each of these "wants". I can't find my actual Megadrive, let alone any of the games for it. My father might have gotten rid of it ages ago, but whatever the reason, I cannot find it in this house.
I play a Gameboy Advance SP which, for those of you who do not know, does not take standard batteries. It has a rechargeable pack, for which I've lost the charger. Oh, and I'd probably be unable to find any of the Warioland games anyway.
And for the final want, I have no glue (or matchsticks, it would seem).
I would just like to give a quick relaxation call for you all. This isn't going to be a long-running problem-solving matter, like it was with the Spyro 2 fiasco.
Since I needed to go out today anyway, I decided that while I was out, I'd pick up some glue to build with, so that was that problem sorted. Until I got home to discover that I have no modelling matchsticks. But I'll get some another time. Once I got home, I decided to sort the other two problems. Since I have neither of the working consoles to play these games on, and they were played on a system which relied on buttons as opposed to a joystick, I figured that a computer would be the most appropriate Plan B.
Now, back when I was in Year 9, this was how we killed time. Our school blocked any kinds of in-browser games and any websites that might provide downloads to them, so we downloaded them and brought them in on USB flash drives. There are only so many Flash games that you can play before the graphics get repetitive and boring. So, we decided that we rather missed the games from our childhoods and set about finding them and trying to download them. The best way of doing this on a school computer (fairly high-specification) was by downloading an emulator. A piece of software that emulated an old games console. For example, GENS is a Sega Genesis / MegaDrive emulator, SNES9x is (obviously) a Super Nintendo Entertainment Sytem emulator and so on.
GENS is the emulator I picked to play my Sonic The Hedgehog collection on (Brilliant games, showing the adventures of a blue hedgehog battling his way through insane levels to defeat the evil Dr. Eggman, who is trying to take over the world by imprisoning helpless animals inside robots) and several other old Sega games.
And VisualBoyAdvance is the Gameboy emulator that I chose. Both emulators work incredibly well on even low-spec computers, though at times framerate suffers.
Regardless, you may be thinking that Gameboy game cartridges and Sega Megadrive game cartridges don't fit into a computer anywhere. It's no problem. You download the games in ROM format to play on an emulator. I mean, it's not always easy to find the games that you want that haven't been hacked or customised, and it does take quite a bit of searching, but once you find them, they're not massive in size (usually around a few megabytes in size) and once you download them and unzip them, you can play them straight away on the emulator.
It pleased me for a while, to cut a long story short. I played Sonic 2 for quite a while. Some guy had customised it under the name Sonic 2: Hell! in which you just play Emerald Hill: Act 1 over and over again. Which is hell. I then moved onto some other hacks of it, before moving onto the WarioLand games.
I do quite love the WarioLand franchise. I mean, Mario and Luigi are the two famous Nintendo characters, but a set of games have been created for their more muscular, butch cousin, Wario. He's somewhat more invincible than Mario, in that just touching an enemy doesn't always harm him. And he can shoulder charge enemies, along with "butt-slamming" them. Great fun. Certainly something to pass the time.
Anyway, I'm not really in the mood to write another post right now, and I can't be arsed to wait till midnight to post, so this one'll be early. A quote to finish and I'm done:
"Idealism precedes experience. Cynicism follows."
Tonight, I'm struggling more than usual to focus. Which is bad. Why? Since I'm going to be away this weekend, I've decided to write both Friday's blog post (this one) and Monday's one in advance so that I don't have to spend too much time writing it, and I can just upload it on Sunday night.
Well, I'll just write and see if I come up with something at least readable that I can post. I woke up this morning with three distinct "wants" in my head. I wanted to play my old Sega Megadrive (namely, my Sonic collection), I wanted to play my old Warioland games (for the Gameboy series) and I wanted to build stuff with matchsticks.
There was a problem with each of these "wants". I can't find my actual Megadrive, let alone any of the games for it. My father might have gotten rid of it ages ago, but whatever the reason, I cannot find it in this house.
I play a Gameboy Advance SP which, for those of you who do not know, does not take standard batteries. It has a rechargeable pack, for which I've lost the charger. Oh, and I'd probably be unable to find any of the Warioland games anyway.
And for the final want, I have no glue (or matchsticks, it would seem).
I would just like to give a quick relaxation call for you all. This isn't going to be a long-running problem-solving matter, like it was with the Spyro 2 fiasco.
Since I needed to go out today anyway, I decided that while I was out, I'd pick up some glue to build with, so that was that problem sorted. Until I got home to discover that I have no modelling matchsticks. But I'll get some another time. Once I got home, I decided to sort the other two problems. Since I have neither of the working consoles to play these games on, and they were played on a system which relied on buttons as opposed to a joystick, I figured that a computer would be the most appropriate Plan B.
Now, back when I was in Year 9, this was how we killed time. Our school blocked any kinds of in-browser games and any websites that might provide downloads to them, so we downloaded them and brought them in on USB flash drives. There are only so many Flash games that you can play before the graphics get repetitive and boring. So, we decided that we rather missed the games from our childhoods and set about finding them and trying to download them. The best way of doing this on a school computer (fairly high-specification) was by downloading an emulator. A piece of software that emulated an old games console. For example, GENS is a Sega Genesis / MegaDrive emulator, SNES9x is (obviously) a Super Nintendo Entertainment Sytem emulator and so on.
GENS is the emulator I picked to play my Sonic The Hedgehog collection on (Brilliant games, showing the adventures of a blue hedgehog battling his way through insane levels to defeat the evil Dr. Eggman, who is trying to take over the world by imprisoning helpless animals inside robots) and several other old Sega games.
And VisualBoyAdvance is the Gameboy emulator that I chose. Both emulators work incredibly well on even low-spec computers, though at times framerate suffers.
Regardless, you may be thinking that Gameboy game cartridges and Sega Megadrive game cartridges don't fit into a computer anywhere. It's no problem. You download the games in ROM format to play on an emulator. I mean, it's not always easy to find the games that you want that haven't been hacked or customised, and it does take quite a bit of searching, but once you find them, they're not massive in size (usually around a few megabytes in size) and once you download them and unzip them, you can play them straight away on the emulator.
It pleased me for a while, to cut a long story short. I played Sonic 2 for quite a while. Some guy had customised it under the name Sonic 2: Hell! in which you just play Emerald Hill: Act 1 over and over again. Which is hell. I then moved onto some other hacks of it, before moving onto the WarioLand games.
I do quite love the WarioLand franchise. I mean, Mario and Luigi are the two famous Nintendo characters, but a set of games have been created for their more muscular, butch cousin, Wario. He's somewhat more invincible than Mario, in that just touching an enemy doesn't always harm him. And he can shoulder charge enemies, along with "butt-slamming" them. Great fun. Certainly something to pass the time.
Anyway, I'm not really in the mood to write another post right now, and I can't be arsed to wait till midnight to post, so this one'll be early. A quote to finish and I'm done:
"Idealism precedes experience. Cynicism follows."
Anaphalantiasis
Sometimes I wonder if there's someone out there just making up words for random things that seldom happen. Today's word is one of those unnecessary, ridiculous words, that just make me smile for the sheer uselessness of them; it means falling out of the eyebrows. I kid you not.
I'm not in a great way right now, and I'm certainly not getting any better. I'm on three different kinds of medication, and right now, they're not doing much. I've made some serious errors in judgement in my life, and a lot of these are choosing now to come back and bite me on the backside. I think I'm just dealing with things as best I can for now, and just waiting for things to just get easier before I can properly deal with them. Nonetheless, I maintain that things will soon get better.
These meds are seriously playing with my head though. On the plus side, it gives me interesting thoughts and . . . musings, if you will. I was wondering today what a good technical drawing of the timelines of everyone and everything might look like, showing all of the intersections where people meet and their timelines cross, and showing where they branch off as different decisions are made. Essentially showing the decisions and every possible outcome of every decision. It would quickly become massively complicated. To illustrate quite how complicated, I've drawn up a reatly simplified diagram, outlining a handful of events of three people, creatively named X, Y & Z. Yes, I know that ampersand is grammatically incorrect, but it looked pretty. Bite me.
I've truncated a lot of the paths, to show only one, but by just showing three people, and three event points, you can see how complicated it can get. Now, imagine this diagram showing every single person in the world, showing branches for every single decision they make. If you still don't think it's a lot, think of it like this. Just one person lying in bed. Their alarm clock goes off. Do they: (a) Get up; (b) Snooze the alarm for five minutes; (c) snooze the alarm for ten minutes; (d) Switch it off and go back to sleep; (e) Throw it at the wall and go back to sleep; (f) Reach for it, knock it off the desk and have to get up to find it to switch it off? Now, for each of these options (there are six in total, though there are an almost infinite number of possibilities) they can decide what to wear on their torso: (a) a t-shirt; (b) a button-up shirt; (c) nothing; (d) a vest-top; (e) a jumper. This person has 26 different paths to choose from (assuming that if they go back to sleep, they have no need to get dressed at this point), and they have only just gotten up and decided on a single item of clothing. The reality is far, far more paths. Surely you have more than one t-shirt or jumper? Surely you can choose from a wider spectrum of snooze times than just five and ten minutes? You get the idea.
Now, combine all of these individual timelines, linking them together where two or more people are in company with each other, and you have an incredibly complicated (but AWESOME) "diary" of the world. It would begin to get insane though. Trying to imagine how many times the lines would cross actually hurts. It would be damn-near impossible to understand and would be unbelievably large. A physical copy that is actually legible and readable as a map might span the surface area of the Earth several times over? A digital copy might take up more storage space than we currently have capacity, money and knowedge to create. Hopefully this is getting across the immensity of different decisions are made every day. Some decisions have more weight on them than others. For example, choosing what to eat for breakfast might not affect our future nearly as much as choosing whether to accept or decline a promotion that entails you moving house.
But you get the idea. I think I've said that phrase too many times in this post. Ah well.
I am leading somewhere with this, albeit in an incredibly long-winded and waffly fashion, as my Year 11 Religious Studies teacher used to describe my essays. "They're too waffly" or "Good, but you waffle too much.". Seriously, what is "waffle" in literature?
Right, imagine that, for every decision made, a new universe is created. A completely new one, identical in every single way to the current one, only in the new one, you've made a different choice. I'm linking back here, to the thing about parallel universes that I wrote about in maybe my first blog post.
What do these parallel universes look like from the outside? Is there a sort of super-universe in which all of these universes are stored? If our universe(s) are infinite, then what is this "super-universe"?
I get the feeling, however, that if I proposed this idea to Physicists, I'd get laughed out of every university in the world.
On a final, completely unrelated note, I dug out a book that I'd not yet read. If you're into chauvinistic (note, I'm so off-my-head right now, it took me five attempts to spell that correct) humour, anecdotes of a drunken, self-proclaimed dickhead and his hilarious and cringeworthy stories of sex, drinking and spontaneous trips to Las Vegas, go out and buy this book:
"I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell" by Tucker Max.
It is, honest to God, the best book I've yet read. I've never laughed at a book out loud. This one had me in complete stitches.
Nonetheless, I've been writing for far too long, and just nearly missed my Wednesday deadline, and I've still not uploaded my diagram yet, so I leave you with this famous quote from Albert Einstein:
"Only two things are infinite: The Universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former."
I'm not in a great way right now, and I'm certainly not getting any better. I'm on three different kinds of medication, and right now, they're not doing much. I've made some serious errors in judgement in my life, and a lot of these are choosing now to come back and bite me on the backside. I think I'm just dealing with things as best I can for now, and just waiting for things to just get easier before I can properly deal with them. Nonetheless, I maintain that things will soon get better.
These meds are seriously playing with my head though. On the plus side, it gives me interesting thoughts and . . . musings, if you will. I was wondering today what a good technical drawing of the timelines of everyone and everything might look like, showing all of the intersections where people meet and their timelines cross, and showing where they branch off as different decisions are made. Essentially showing the decisions and every possible outcome of every decision. It would quickly become massively complicated. To illustrate quite how complicated, I've drawn up a reatly simplified diagram, outlining a handful of events of three people, creatively named X, Y & Z. Yes, I know that ampersand is grammatically incorrect, but it looked pretty. Bite me.
I've truncated a lot of the paths, to show only one, but by just showing three people, and three event points, you can see how complicated it can get. Now, imagine this diagram showing every single person in the world, showing branches for every single decision they make. If you still don't think it's a lot, think of it like this. Just one person lying in bed. Their alarm clock goes off. Do they: (a) Get up; (b) Snooze the alarm for five minutes; (c) snooze the alarm for ten minutes; (d) Switch it off and go back to sleep; (e) Throw it at the wall and go back to sleep; (f) Reach for it, knock it off the desk and have to get up to find it to switch it off? Now, for each of these options (there are six in total, though there are an almost infinite number of possibilities) they can decide what to wear on their torso: (a) a t-shirt; (b) a button-up shirt; (c) nothing; (d) a vest-top; (e) a jumper. This person has 26 different paths to choose from (assuming that if they go back to sleep, they have no need to get dressed at this point), and they have only just gotten up and decided on a single item of clothing. The reality is far, far more paths. Surely you have more than one t-shirt or jumper? Surely you can choose from a wider spectrum of snooze times than just five and ten minutes? You get the idea.
Now, combine all of these individual timelines, linking them together where two or more people are in company with each other, and you have an incredibly complicated (but AWESOME) "diary" of the world. It would begin to get insane though. Trying to imagine how many times the lines would cross actually hurts. It would be damn-near impossible to understand and would be unbelievably large. A physical copy that is actually legible and readable as a map might span the surface area of the Earth several times over? A digital copy might take up more storage space than we currently have capacity, money and knowedge to create. Hopefully this is getting across the immensity of different decisions are made every day. Some decisions have more weight on them than others. For example, choosing what to eat for breakfast might not affect our future nearly as much as choosing whether to accept or decline a promotion that entails you moving house.
But you get the idea. I think I've said that phrase too many times in this post. Ah well.
I am leading somewhere with this, albeit in an incredibly long-winded and waffly fashion, as my Year 11 Religious Studies teacher used to describe my essays. "They're too waffly" or "Good, but you waffle too much.". Seriously, what is "waffle" in literature?
Right, imagine that, for every decision made, a new universe is created. A completely new one, identical in every single way to the current one, only in the new one, you've made a different choice. I'm linking back here, to the thing about parallel universes that I wrote about in maybe my first blog post.
What do these parallel universes look like from the outside? Is there a sort of super-universe in which all of these universes are stored? If our universe(s) are infinite, then what is this "super-universe"?
I get the feeling, however, that if I proposed this idea to Physicists, I'd get laughed out of every university in the world.
On a final, completely unrelated note, I dug out a book that I'd not yet read. If you're into chauvinistic (note, I'm so off-my-head right now, it took me five attempts to spell that correct) humour, anecdotes of a drunken, self-proclaimed dickhead and his hilarious and cringeworthy stories of sex, drinking and spontaneous trips to Las Vegas, go out and buy this book:
"I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell" by Tucker Max.
It is, honest to God, the best book I've yet read. I've never laughed at a book out loud. This one had me in complete stitches.
Nonetheless, I've been writing for far too long, and just nearly missed my Wednesday deadline, and I've still not uploaded my diagram yet, so I leave you with this famous quote from Albert Einstein:
"Only two things are infinite: The Universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former."
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