The thoughts of a slightly twisted mind

I appear to be back on daytimes again. This happened by going home to my family and being forced to be awake during the day. It took a rather unpleasant period of staying up all night twice in order to get there, and some major jetlag after.

My plan to try and maintain it is to go to bed before midnight every night no matter what. That way, assuming I get to sleep before 1, I can wake at 9am after 8 hours sleep and get on with things.

Let's hope I can keep it up.

I hate Windows Vista. I'm not alone in this, but I thought I'd add my own rant.

Yes, it looks pretty and shiny. But that's about the only good thing I can say about it. To put things in context - I have been installing stuff and sorting out my aunt's laptop. The usuals like antivirus software, firewall, spyware stopper etc. Also setting up her wireless and doing all the Windows updates. And it's shite.

Vista is painfully slow. The specs on the laptop are the same as the specs on this one. But this one runs XP and doesn't do it too badly at all. It's also paranoid about security, every time you run a program, it asks you to confirm that you really want to run it. This wouldn't be so bad if there was an option to say "Yes this program is safe, stop fucking asking me". But there isn't.

Printer drivers have trouble with it. So do simple programs like Ad-Aware that run fine on XP. It crashed and froze on Vista. Urgh. And the sheer number of unnecessary gizmos and gadgets that just get put in automatically and that have to be disabled so it doesn't run like a crippled sloth.

Bleugh. Give me XP for as long as possible.

I finished a chapter of my thesis last night.

I believe that I've only got one chapter to go (not counting the few pages of introduction/abstract/dedication/legal mumbo jumbo). This is a big chapter... but it's the last one.

I am a happy happy Cal. This afternoon, for want of anything better to do (I'm too sleep deprived to work effectively, and I'm at my parents), I set up the emulator BeebEm, and started playing through some of the old BBC Micro classics. Labyrinth, Ravenskull, Repton, Citadel, Palace of Magic, Arcadians etc.

And I got to playing Citadel. Now, to describe it quickly, it's an adventure platformer. You control a person in a huge citadel, and your goal is to retrieve and sacrifice five crystals. The trouble is that they're scattered all over the castle, hidden behind obstacles, puzzles, out in the desert, etc. It has some similarity to the Dizzy games, but complicating matters was the energy. You had 150 units of energy. When that ran out, you were dead. No restores, no lives. Just that 150 units. Anything harmful drained it, the single projectile attack you could make to kill the enemy drained it, and it naturally dropped by 1 every 30 seconds anyway. of course, there were supplies of energy around the castle, but they were finite, and once used up, were gone.

So it's not just a puzzle platformer adventurer, you have to plan your routes carefully, play carefully and make sure to collect every bit of energy. A really quite hard but cool game.

And this afternoon, I completed it for the first time. Now, completing a computer game isn't a big event, but I first played Citadel... at least 15 years ago, and I never even got close before. Nor have I beaten it on the times I've emulated it over the years.

But today... ( Cut for images )

You have no idea how satisfying it is to see those screens after 15 years of on and off trying. Perhaps I should try completing a more modern game now ;-)

After the morning, there are two things of note I did today.

( The Beer Festival )

( Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - warning, contains spoilers )

Just had a phonecall. They want me to come along for a second interview this Friday morning at 9am.

Let's see how it goes

*nerves*

I don't often dream. Or more strictly speaking, I should say that I don't remember dreaming very often at all. But I remember solid and unusually coherent dreams happening over the last two nights, and waking up unsettled. Once due to my alarm going off, once waking naturally. Two in a row is very unusual for me, and I'm wondering if my subconscious is trying to tell me something. I'm no believer in the "mystical" side of dreams, but if I'm dreaming and remembering it two nights in a row, then either I'm mentally troubled, trying to tell myself something or just in the middle of a coincidence.

The dream two nights ago... was odd. It had a structure. A quest into somewhere below, looking for an object which wasn't entirely clear. I can remember scenes from it, taking an elevator down into the darkness with thin and spindly stairwells clearly visible, in rainbow like arches. All done in black, with red things hanging on the walls. Tools of some kind. Going down through a shop run by an odd-looking woman dressed in red. And returning to the surface empty handed to find someone else (old schoolfriends) had gotten there first and done it without difficulty. It's faded now, but it was very vivid when I first woke up.

Last night... equally odd but unrelated. The structure of this one was a war of some kind. This one was clearly drawing from recent experience, as many of the locations and people resembled those from Loom, a graphical adventure that I played through recently. But the voices were all my own, those I've created or impersonated for various voice acting reasons. This one I clearly remember finishing before the end of the "story". I remember waking and thinking that I wanted to see what happened. A battle of some kind, about to be fought between the armies of green and those of white, that never got started due to waking up. Fought on a green field as bright as day but with a starry night above.

I'm slightly weirded out by how much my dreams tend to resemble a movie or a computer game. I'm not sure whether I want to dream tonight or not.

During my random Wikipedia browsing, from link to random link, I found a computer game today. Planescape Torment. It wasn't that that caught my attention, it was the description of one of the characters...

"She runs the Brothel For Slaking Intellectual Lusts, a forum whose staff offer intellectual and emotional stimulation rather than sexual services."

I thought that was one of the greatest ideas ever. I love debate, argument and learning new things, and I'm just wondering if it would work in the real world.

Imagine it... a place where you can go, for a reasonable price, to... have someone explain a concept you don't grasp to you. To discuss your theories about any scientific subject and have them ask reasonable questions, listen to you, and assist you with conclusions. For counselling or self-analysis. To be educated on a subject of your choosing. To assist with preparing a presentation. Or just to give you confidence in your field. To talk philosophy and have them enlighten you.

What do you all think?

Have a random meme, borrowed from mangoflush

Comment and I'll...
1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a colour, a photo, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ.

I finally found a nice quote for my thesis

"When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it."
-- Carl Sagan

I think it works very well.

EDIT: Bah, it figures. The moment I think I've found the ideal quote, I find another immediately after. Quotes are clearly like buses.

"The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand."
-- Frank Herbert

Well, my biannual night of pointless drunkenness ended. And the aftermath is a mild hangover, but a sore shoulder where I slept on it.

I'm back down to a Basic Livejournal account again. I don't believe that it's worth getting a paid account here. Ohnoes! I can't make polls or have more than six userpics! How will I ever express my wide variety of internet emotions without my fifty seven pictures of fluffy kittens?

I do this quite rarely. Probably about once every 2-3 months. Getting rather pissed on a variety of alcoholic drinks. I started in the Carlton earlier with a single pint of cider and a single glass of wine.

I've continued it at home with several shots of vodka and some of Glenfiddich. I suspect I will regret it in the morning, but... once in a while it's nice to let go of all responsibilities, obligations, sanities and the works and just be totally free and uninhibited. Out of control perhaps.

Regardless, it's nice to not care for a while :) Can't do it too often of course (like the random good mood of earlier mention) but once in a while, it's probably good for your psyche.

EDIT: I may have had a teensy bit too much vodka. But meh :) Once per quarter won't harm me too much.

I get these occasionally. I end up being in a really good happy cheery mood... for absolutely no reason at all. Nothing has changed in my life when I get them, but they come anyway at infrequent and irregular intervals. A combination of caffeine, enough sleep and nutrients? Success at an insignificant task? The company of good friends? No idea what causes them.

Tonight, I started being pointlessly happy from the moment I walked into the Carlton (around 7.15ish) and it's continued up to nowish. I just wish it wasn't so rare, being happy for no reason at all.

Then again, isn't that part of the point? The unexpected 'gift' of contentment and smiling? If it was everyday, then it would become the average state and thus not special.

Either way, I'm enjoying it while it lasta.

I've got a 15 inch flatscreen TFT monitor that I'm going to be selling. In good condition, with no dead/wibbly pixels. Max resolution 1024x768. You lot get first refusal, but if there's no bites I'll sell it on ucam.adverts.forsale.computers :) So... make me an offer, I might say yes.

Climbing into a warm freshly made bed, with crisp never-slept-in-before bedsheets, having just showered so you're entirely clean too.

The universe seems to enjoy screwing with me. I just got an email saying that 3 more months funding may be available. I'm applying for it, and my supervisor thinks I'll get it.

This is good news of course :)

Well, my recent attempt to sort out my sleep pattern has failed. Went to bed at 10pm last night... woke at midday today. 14 hours asleep. Back into late waking again, woo bloody hoo.

Plus I got another rejection letter. Looks like today will be a day of job applications. Again.

Just got an email from the company I applied to. Didn't get the job. Am currently firing off applications to other places, let's hope one of them nibbles.

I'd originally thought to be going over to frithonthehills's place tonight for films, but illness prevented it. So, I've sat at home trying my hand at something I dabble with from time to time. Artwork.

Which was probably a bad idea. I'm a perfectionist. When I do my 3D stuff, my fractal stuff, my levels for various games... I tinker endlessly with minor details to make it look right. And I'm usually happy with the result.

The problem with traditional art - be it pencil, paint, chalk, mouse on GIMP, or tablet... until you get to at least a decent level, through some degree of practice, almost everything you output will be shite. Here's an example



Now, that was the best thing I produced in three hours.

Which is why I find drawing to be so immensely frustrating. Yes, if I put the time and the effort and the repeated practice in, I would be able to draw so much better than that, but until then, every single thing I output makes me feel crappy, because... well, this sounds silly...

I can see what it should look like in my head so very clearly. The lines, the colours, the shadows, everything, in full three-dimensional glory. And it makes me feel sad every time I look at what I draw, because I'm not able to reproduce anything from inside my head on paper. I have what I consider to be a very vivid and visual imagination, I can see things so amazingly well in there, and it frustrates me not being able to reproduce it. e.g. trying to draw a mask today. A simple carnival mask, and I could not get it right. The outline was three curves total - one at the top, one for the left side, one for the right side, all slightly differently done to suggest it's looking at an angle. And every single time I drew a curve, it would not look right. It was always too curly at the end, or too straight in the middle. Something.

And I find it so discouraging that without spending a very long time on it, there's no way I'm even going to be able to represent the simplest things inside my head. And that everything I produce in the practice phase will make me unhappy because it's nothing like what I want it to be, nothing like the image I have in my mind. So... frustrating. At least with the 3d packages, they might be cheating, but I can at least approximate what I see in my head.

Yay for LJ angst about pointless crap.

That rather hurt.

Was cycling back up Gilbert Road, having been to Tescos for various bits and pieces. It had been raining but was now clear and bright. Unfortunately, one of the trees on Gilbert Road had clearly decided it needed a fashion change, and there was a small patch of very slippery wet leaves/stuff in the cycle lane. I went right over it, skidded, slipped, came off my bike with a rather painful bang.

Hit my hip/backside/back, and my hand. Nothing broken, my hand has a small cut, but my hip/leg is going to be stiff for a few days. It hurts quite a bit :) Ow.

I guess I should be grateful though. Being overweight means I have padding, had I been slimmer it would have been worse. But either way. Ow.