Orbis non sufficit
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Life goes on
So, what's been happening lately...
Well, I have exams obviously. One down, another tomorrow morn and all done by next monday. Then it's on to Albury to learn some martial arts from the grand master.
My first exam was strangely easy, but with one very random question in it. I don't think the lecturer actually taught us how to deal with it, and there was tonnes of stuff that he did go through that wasn't on the exam. So strange. I'm not expecting a repeat performance tomorrow though, it's fluid mechanics and will most probably be harder.
It's amazing how total chaos can result in absolute stillness. Just thinking about my glass of water sitting on the table. Now, there are uncountable (well, actually thats not true) billions of water molecules zapping all over the place in that glass, with fairly significant average velocities which manifest as temperature. Some even gather enough speed to escape the pull of their neighbours and tear off into the surrounding air. Yet it looks perfectly motionless to me; a timeless and unchanging glass of water. And that's not even worrying about the deeper levels of it.
Where was I? Hmm, oh well.
It's been a bit strange sitting around here at home, studying all day and not really stepping outside the house much. I guess it's because I'm the only one here. Nothing unexpected happens, everything stays exactly the way I leave it. While I was at uni I didn't notice it that much, I was never really home anyway. I was at uni or off doing the things I do after uni. There are plenty of people to talk to around there. Now there are some days I barely talk to anyone in person. I'm sure that will end after I finish exams and am once again free, but its pretty weird for now. I think I miss my uni friends, and you guys of course. Though I'm closer to you guys than uni people, even though I probably see more of them. I think I just wish I was better friends with some of them, that I knew them better than I do. It's kind of hard though with all the stuff I do together with living so far away from them all. I don't have as much time to hang out as I would like. And now that holidays are coming and I do have the time to hang out I don't feel like I can call them and see what they're up to, and not just because I haven't gotten around to getting phone numbers from all them. I might have to see what I can do about this situation. I can hardly stop doing my martial arts though, it's rather a large part of who I am. I need army for money, plus I like it and the guys there are friends too. My music I definately need since a lot of the people I'm talking about are in the orchestra and that's the only time I get to see them. Thankfully there's another music camp coming up soon so I'll get to hang with everyone then, though I can't make the summer concert because I'll be away with the army.
I really need to get myself a pocket sized diary/day planner type book, there are too many dates I need to remember and cross-check to use my phone. I'll do that tomorrow I think, when I go and pay the ridiculous fines that the council dish out for your dog roaming the streets. It's something like $250 for the roaming and another $250 for her not being registered, plus the $100 I payed to get her out of the pound and the other $100 or so to register her. Something like $700 all up, which is totally ridiculous. Thankfully my dad said he'd pay for it (grudgingly), since there's no way I can afford that, plus the registering stuff was his fault anyway. Still, you'd think the council would have slightly better priorities. What's a speeding fine these days? $120? $250? They've been having their little campaigns on TV crapping on about how people are killed all the time by speeding drivers and whatnot, yet they whack you with $120 for parking in a loading zone and $700 for your dog being on the streets. Did anyone ever die from those things? Unless you had a frickin psychotic dog that you probably shouldn't have had in the first place, I think not! Governments need to get their fracking priorities straight. Clearly I could go into much larger issues with that statement but I feel that they are obvious enough already.
So, what's been happening lately...
Well, I have exams obviously. One down, another tomorrow morn and all done by next monday. Then it's on to Albury to learn some martial arts from the grand master.
My first exam was strangely easy, but with one very random question in it. I don't think the lecturer actually taught us how to deal with it, and there was tonnes of stuff that he did go through that wasn't on the exam. So strange. I'm not expecting a repeat performance tomorrow though, it's fluid mechanics and will most probably be harder.
It's amazing how total chaos can result in absolute stillness. Just thinking about my glass of water sitting on the table. Now, there are uncountable (well, actually thats not true) billions of water molecules zapping all over the place in that glass, with fairly significant average velocities which manifest as temperature. Some even gather enough speed to escape the pull of their neighbours and tear off into the surrounding air. Yet it looks perfectly motionless to me; a timeless and unchanging glass of water. And that's not even worrying about the deeper levels of it.
Where was I? Hmm, oh well.
It's been a bit strange sitting around here at home, studying all day and not really stepping outside the house much. I guess it's because I'm the only one here. Nothing unexpected happens, everything stays exactly the way I leave it. While I was at uni I didn't notice it that much, I was never really home anyway. I was at uni or off doing the things I do after uni. There are plenty of people to talk to around there. Now there are some days I barely talk to anyone in person. I'm sure that will end after I finish exams and am once again free, but its pretty weird for now. I think I miss my uni friends, and you guys of course. Though I'm closer to you guys than uni people, even though I probably see more of them. I think I just wish I was better friends with some of them, that I knew them better than I do. It's kind of hard though with all the stuff I do together with living so far away from them all. I don't have as much time to hang out as I would like. And now that holidays are coming and I do have the time to hang out I don't feel like I can call them and see what they're up to, and not just because I haven't gotten around to getting phone numbers from all them. I might have to see what I can do about this situation. I can hardly stop doing my martial arts though, it's rather a large part of who I am. I need army for money, plus I like it and the guys there are friends too. My music I definately need since a lot of the people I'm talking about are in the orchestra and that's the only time I get to see them. Thankfully there's another music camp coming up soon so I'll get to hang with everyone then, though I can't make the summer concert because I'll be away with the army.
I really need to get myself a pocket sized diary/day planner type book, there are too many dates I need to remember and cross-check to use my phone. I'll do that tomorrow I think, when I go and pay the ridiculous fines that the council dish out for your dog roaming the streets. It's something like $250 for the roaming and another $250 for her not being registered, plus the $100 I payed to get her out of the pound and the other $100 or so to register her. Something like $700 all up, which is totally ridiculous. Thankfully my dad said he'd pay for it (grudgingly), since there's no way I can afford that, plus the registering stuff was his fault anyway. Still, you'd think the council would have slightly better priorities. What's a speeding fine these days? $120? $250? They've been having their little campaigns on TV crapping on about how people are killed all the time by speeding drivers and whatnot, yet they whack you with $120 for parking in a loading zone and $700 for your dog being on the streets. Did anyone ever die from those things? Unless you had a frickin psychotic dog that you probably shouldn't have had in the first place, I think not! Governments need to get their fracking priorities straight. Clearly I could go into much larger issues with that statement but I feel that they are obvious enough already.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Cool Computer Program
Ok, this is the maddest thing I've seen for a while. I'd be entertained for hours with one of those hooked up to a wall in my house.
Ok, this is the maddest thing I've seen for a while. I'd be entertained for hours with one of those hooked up to a wall in my house.
Tubular
"My heart is sore pained within me:
and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling have seized me:
and darkness has overwhelmed me.
And I said: o that I had wings like a dove!
For then I would fly away and be at rest.
Lo, would I flee far away,
and live in the wilderness.
I would wait for him who will save me
from my cowardice and from the storm.
PSALM 55 "
For all its weirdness the bible has some good quotes in it. That one is from one of my favourite books, "The Many Coloured Land" by Julian May. When I looked up the actual passage on the net it was different in every source; translation issues I suppose, but the version the author used is cooler than them all. It's possible he took some poetic license, or maybe his version of the bible is just cooler than the rest. Strangely I also came across this passage from "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" which is also cool:
"'I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story,' said Ford.
'Eh?'
'Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?'
'Yes, of course I do.'
'Your God person puts an apple in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise, surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting 'Gotcha.' It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it.'
'Why not?'
'Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end.'
'What are you talking about?'
'Never mind, eat the fruit.'
'You know, this place almost looks like the Garden of Eden.'
'Eat the fruit.'
'Sounds quite like it too.' "
Ahh they were good books too. I may have to read them again soon.
Anyway the main point of this post was to have a chat about YouTube. I never really paid much attention to it till yesterday, when Amy showed me that Hugs video. Kind of made me realise that when you get millions of people posting up videos then every now and again you're going to get something quite special appearing. There's a certain strange feeling you get when you watch a video like that knowing that millions of other people have watched it too and felt the same way you do. It's perhaps an inkling of some kind of collective worldwide spirit of goodwill, or a shadow of some kind of great and beautiful higher state of human existance that may one day be achievable, if we can get the number of people embracing that spirit to 10 billion rather than 3 million. There's certainly a long way to go and lots of fucked up things that need to be fixed before it can happen, but maybe there is some hope for humanity in the distant future.
Aside from that aspect of YouTube there was also the video of the guy who took a picture of himself every day for 6 years. I've seen time-lapse videos before but there was a different feeling when it was over six years and it was a persons life flashing past. His hair was rather messy and he managed to position himself in almost the same spot for every photo, so it had a rather cool effect of him standing there with his hair getting blasted about by the winds of time while the world rushed past around him. Seeing things like that always makes me consider the nature of time and our perceptions of it. It's really an amazing phenomena, somehow allowing us to experience our little piece of eternity.
"My heart is sore pained within me:
and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling have seized me:
and darkness has overwhelmed me.
And I said: o that I had wings like a dove!
For then I would fly away and be at rest.
Lo, would I flee far away,
and live in the wilderness.
I would wait for him who will save me
from my cowardice and from the storm.
PSALM 55 "
For all its weirdness the bible has some good quotes in it. That one is from one of my favourite books, "The Many Coloured Land" by Julian May. When I looked up the actual passage on the net it was different in every source; translation issues I suppose, but the version the author used is cooler than them all. It's possible he took some poetic license, or maybe his version of the bible is just cooler than the rest. Strangely I also came across this passage from "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" which is also cool:
"'I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story,' said Ford.
'Eh?'
'Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?'
'Yes, of course I do.'
'Your God person puts an apple in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise, surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting 'Gotcha.' It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it.'
'Why not?'
'Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end.'
'What are you talking about?'
'Never mind, eat the fruit.'
'You know, this place almost looks like the Garden of Eden.'
'Eat the fruit.'
'Sounds quite like it too.' "
Ahh they were good books too. I may have to read them again soon.
Anyway the main point of this post was to have a chat about YouTube. I never really paid much attention to it till yesterday, when Amy showed me that Hugs video. Kind of made me realise that when you get millions of people posting up videos then every now and again you're going to get something quite special appearing. There's a certain strange feeling you get when you watch a video like that knowing that millions of other people have watched it too and felt the same way you do. It's perhaps an inkling of some kind of collective worldwide spirit of goodwill, or a shadow of some kind of great and beautiful higher state of human existance that may one day be achievable, if we can get the number of people embracing that spirit to 10 billion rather than 3 million. There's certainly a long way to go and lots of fucked up things that need to be fixed before it can happen, but maybe there is some hope for humanity in the distant future.
Aside from that aspect of YouTube there was also the video of the guy who took a picture of himself every day for 6 years. I've seen time-lapse videos before but there was a different feeling when it was over six years and it was a persons life flashing past. His hair was rather messy and he managed to position himself in almost the same spot for every photo, so it had a rather cool effect of him standing there with his hair getting blasted about by the winds of time while the world rushed past around him. Seeing things like that always makes me consider the nature of time and our perceptions of it. It's really an amazing phenomena, somehow allowing us to experience our little piece of eternity.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Tears in Reality
Writing that I suddenly realise that you can't tell whether I mean rips or little water droplets from your eyes. From the context I'm sure you can figure it out though. Stupid English.
I've been doing a "self-paced learning package" at army recently which is supposed to teach me proper english, so that I'll be able to write unambiguously for defence purposes. It's in preparation for an admin course I won't have to do for a while. You'd love it Jason, it tries to teach correct grammar and word usage (I've been doing a section on 'confusables', stupid words like practice and practise, among and between, and fewer and less, and when you're supposed to use them. I've so been using a lot of them wrong. Apparantly "fewer" is for things you can count and "less" is for things you can't, ie 'less sugar' or 'fewer grams of sugar'. Actually I probably used that one right, I just never knew why, just one of those things that sounds wrong if you use the wrong word. Among and between was interesting, though it makes sense when you think about it. Between has to involve only two things, while among must be more than two, ie 'between the post' or 'among the players'. 'Between the players' sounds right too, but it is actually only right if there are only two players.
I've barely done a third of the package, theres a lot left. It has increased my vocabulary a bit though, two of the words were 'elicit' and 'illicit'. Illicit I knew but elicit was a new one. Apparantly it means 'derive by reason; "elicit a solution"', 'to draw or bring out or forth; educe; evoke: to elicit the truth; to elicit a response with a question.' Bit confusing.
Anyway, enough of that. Perhaps you read Steve's blog a noticed he wrote an essay on M-theory. It's very interesting, you should go read it. I also wrote an essay for the same class, mine was on Cosmic Strings. These things are extremely cool (they may or may not exist) and are what my title refers to. They aren't exactly tears in reality, but they are defects in our 'reality' if you like, which have trapped within them regions of a previous 'reality', a high symmetry state the universe was in at the dawn of time. Anyway it's here if you'd like to read it.
Writing that I suddenly realise that you can't tell whether I mean rips or little water droplets from your eyes. From the context I'm sure you can figure it out though. Stupid English.
I've been doing a "self-paced learning package" at army recently which is supposed to teach me proper english, so that I'll be able to write unambiguously for defence purposes. It's in preparation for an admin course I won't have to do for a while. You'd love it Jason, it tries to teach correct grammar and word usage (I've been doing a section on 'confusables', stupid words like practice and practise, among and between, and fewer and less, and when you're supposed to use them. I've so been using a lot of them wrong. Apparantly "fewer" is for things you can count and "less" is for things you can't, ie 'less sugar' or 'fewer grams of sugar'. Actually I probably used that one right, I just never knew why, just one of those things that sounds wrong if you use the wrong word. Among and between was interesting, though it makes sense when you think about it. Between has to involve only two things, while among must be more than two, ie 'between the post' or 'among the players'. 'Between the players' sounds right too, but it is actually only right if there are only two players.
I've barely done a third of the package, theres a lot left. It has increased my vocabulary a bit though, two of the words were 'elicit' and 'illicit'. Illicit I knew but elicit was a new one. Apparantly it means 'derive by reason; "elicit a solution"', 'to draw or bring out or forth; educe; evoke: to elicit the truth; to elicit a response with a question.' Bit confusing.
Anyway, enough of that. Perhaps you read Steve's blog a noticed he wrote an essay on M-theory. It's very interesting, you should go read it. I also wrote an essay for the same class, mine was on Cosmic Strings. These things are extremely cool (they may or may not exist) and are what my title refers to. They aren't exactly tears in reality, but they are defects in our 'reality' if you like, which have trapped within them regions of a previous 'reality', a high symmetry state the universe was in at the dawn of time. Anyway it's here if you'd like to read it.
