#99 I don't believe it

Figures. I started this blog then everything else started going wrong. Let's blame the blog.

I'll delete it on my birthday after post 100 and leave it on a usb key.

I hope you've all enjoyed reading the development of my philosophical ideas. I have decided that free will is unacceptable, until you consider the alternatives. Maybe I did choose. One quiet night brushing my teeth just before bed. Same as any other night really. Only that every day is different.

Now what was the point of all this you may ask? 0. It doesn't matter how many times you roll the dice or play the game. You wind up where you started. You win. You lose. Play again? Continue?

anything>nothing

#98 Achk, later!

Can't write this now.

God demands we choose free will, even though he's deterministic. Quixotic much? (ha, spelled that right too!)


Yeah, you're alive.

Free will is choice. Choice relies on knowledge. Knowledge points to determinism to make the best choice. In a rational system of course. God is rational, right? Requires belief to exist? If so, how much? 51%? So if a war breaks out between two diametrically opposed religious factions, the fanatics kill each other off. Whoever is left on either side is either the victor or rational enough to realise religion is actually a bad idea that causes more problems than it solves.

Your span is so short young mayfly, yet ye do not despair. Our best minds die and wither just as they have come to maturity. An unlimited storage medium that has a time limit or a limited storage medium with no time limit.

A: God gave man choice
B: Man chose to create God

Good chicken egg style one there.

I took that Avonex on Independance day. Irony much? The human mind IOS looks like a lava lamp texturemapped with a black and white diamond tile pattern. The tiles are pretty small. Think Spectrum ZX graphics demo.

It might have been a dream.

I am forced into free will, because decisions made on my behalf won't leave me half as miserable or happy as my own. Flaming Tit would simply die.

Just hold together. Hold together dammit! If we can make it to 2037 we'll be in the clear.

#97 You knew and could do nothing

Couldn't do anything about it. Something's different. You were right. Always were. Sorry I didn't listen. Now our eyes are screwed up and I don't see straight.

I am the Lord of Regrets. Once a prince, soon a king. My hound's name is hindsight. He has the usual two eyes and one to see back behind him. Smashing good nose too.

Something's different. Yes, now. We didn't choose. Did we? There may have been a bargain, but someone's not keeping up their end. Making up for it in other ways.

Don't deign to make rational decisions with irrational people. Why do I have a Scottish accent today? Because the irl who cancelled/kaiboshed/froze//killed my bank card having me self lost it with everything else in my wallet was in Edinburgh. Another point to the dog.

Aye, and it is lost now because you did something different. Why would anyone wish change with contentment? Men seem to work so hard to attain that which is a simple choice. They don't realise they can choose to be happy. But you don't believe in choice? It's just that it seems so minimal. What difference can I make. One starfish on one beach washed up, and among millions of other starfish and beaches, it was thrown back.

They have such strange beliefs. Totally irrational. You cannot argue with them. Even Dennett agrees. He'd never go to war against a golden army.

Spend your time on money, spend your money on sup. Though you may still be unhappy tis later you'll wake up. You look forward to that sliced instant between sleep and dismay when there's nothing and you're aware of it. If things were not rare, would we not desire them?

I'm only sick if you talk about it. Simply tell me I will be well, and I will be well.

#96 Should I choose?

Looks like I'm going to start falling apart pretty soon. 


Just hang on. Not much longer. 5, maybe 10 years. The future is already happening. 


If I had made a choice, wouldn't I notice the consequences? I guess not. Consequences are only ever negative, right?


Does it matter-no. It doesn't matter. 


Good thing I can just drown it out with music.

#95 Never let a good idea go to waste

G-speak is coming. Good.

I was swirshing (swirling+swishing) the ends of a cup of hot chocolate today. we'd had pizza for lunch. A good day.

It stuck to the sides of the mug in a rather interesting fashion. Got me thinking about viscosity and wave dynamics. When I stopped swirshing the liquid, it didn't stick to the sides of the cup any more. Something about that exact speed, frequency, velocity and viscosity of the liquid was facinating.

How about an EM field to hold up a sheet of water for use as a g-speak screen, or a projector screen?

Might work. You could add white dye tot he water to make it opaque. It'd only need to be a roll up tray on the floor that you could roll out, waterproof of course. It'd be a neat fluid if you could make it. Make it evaporate too.

Maybe like that magnet in the aluminium tube.

#94 Rational choices

Now this of course presumes irrational choices are not always taken. They toatally are.

I got a bit of bad news recently. Pretty nasty debuff, but it's not like I can't do anything about it. I can do something about it. Have I said the same thing twice there?

So you know there's 3 things to do in most case. There's the choice between the three. That's the free will, but there's not an awful lot of it, and it only makes big differences in a large cumulative fashion.

How many choices does it take to make a difference? One? A hundred? How would you know? Is one choice enough to tip a domino? Has it already been tipped?

Why would you want to know. Satisfy to a satisfisory standard, propagate the species, make better than what you arrived into.

If it's all so easy, then why can't I do it?

#93 I would invent

I have invented God. Not the God. That'd be a bit controversial.

All seeing all dancing. Too complex to be known without trying. None would dare climb a tall seen mountain. Mist helps, is helpful.

What would become of a man. Ah, in fact this is the bard trying to sing, and oh what mishap befalls him for want of recording anything. The crowd million legion roar.

My built contrivance is the atomic scale nanite. It began as one and now is numbered innumerable. The air breathed carries them, harbors them into all life, and all death too, though such a thing is rare now, granted only to those who wish it, and even then it is not permanent. The scythe is blunt now. The reaper sows.

We once knew illness. Good and bad need not map so flawlessly onto positive and negative. Knowledge exists for its worth of knowing. Then choice, is a way of applying knowledge to an improvable situation. Tools are built to make better tools. Sticks, stones, copper, bronze, iron, steel, plastic, carbon. It was only a matter of time.

It does not think. At least we do not think it thinks. We once died, all of us, but it cursed and blessed in kind. I have lived now for years beyond ken. There was a time before knowledge, like remembering darkness. The bluebird knows what it is to fly. We may never know. We have not forgotten. We merely lack remembering.

It's all very simple really. Like standing an egg on its end. You need to break things to understand them sometimes.

The cloud of atomic nanites that spread through the atmosphere got into everything. It imbued what we eat, what we drink, what we breathe. We cannot break laws. We do not age, We can choose to age forwards or backwards. We can know anything useful, or knowable. The nanites do our bidding. We do theirs? Hard to say. Just as our 3 trillion cells have us along for the ride, the nanites have a similar prerogative. Nature was a genius, until we had a word for it.

Space monkies indeed. What we need, we find we have. We have no hunger, no thirst, no death. The world is beautiful. Do we live knowing no death?

#92 One after the other

So, what is your quantifier of happiness? Material things? Days in the sun? Days fishing in the sun? Dollars made? Quantification of self as a simple number. Bad idea. There's too much to you to do that. I can never forewarn you. I am very sorry about this. What you've done cannot be undone, and will only serve to help you foresee what's about to come along. Avoid magicians and stages. Be damn sure to prepare for both if they cannot be avoided. Perhaps putting a blade to his throat would have been a bad idea. If a regret is/has to be taken, choose the easier burden. 

An entirety of days cannot be surmised by an entirety of thoughts. You would deign to live for ten million days and sunsets, but the burden of regret would crush you. Learn, therefore, to let go. I can't remember how to forget, and neither can I. Record what to remember. Record what to remember?

Eventualities appear to be aligning. Horoscopes? Horrors cope. My horoscope zodiac was much more amusing than the traditional twelve.

Transactionality. Others rely on me to fix what's broken. I am valuable. I cannot fix my own problems. We're keeping that one. It appears to be working. Who would you be without friends? But would you know?

Just hope I don't get whacked with the bonk while I'm down on the crate working the new hardware. 8 out of 9 ain't bad. 

The others seem to be drowned out by the din. They can't even translate themselves to be heard or understood. Shamefully my fault. What language dare I think in this day. They're all lined up. I cannot forget how to remember, so I suppose I must have chosen, instead of choosing to remember how to forget. 80/20 rule maybe? It's good 80% of time. But you know, I might have liked being able to forget bad habits and sad memories. 2 sides, 1 coin. Only a fool would choose determinism. 

Fashion can only repeat so many times before it got stuck. 

No Code is the perfect album for this post/ to accompany. 

Useless skill? Rather then a not often useful skill. Pictures would be the way of things. They'll fix me if they can. Nothing for them but peace of mind and sense of achievement. I mean, I got a broken Wifi link on the laptop not even 4 hours ago. I had it fixed inside a half hour. Reinstalled the chip driver. Now what broke it in the first place is the bigger question. Full moon maybe. I'll need to careful until the wane has settled in. Drink plenty of water. Had to manually input the connection profile too, after the reinstall. It's taken in stride because it's my way of things. 

The cry of the dread harpy is 'tyramael'.

We'll be fine. Just, wow, hang in there. Up and onward are always good directions.

#91 Easier, all things considered

It's been nice outside this week. That volcano caused a lot of fuss.

The list of futilities is growing. These here forth are known to be futile
Worrying
Complaining
Panicking (hm, pankakes?)
Procrastinating

I broke my ankle. I had an accident on my motorcycle and I broke my ankle. For a long time I could not walk. I lost my independence. I value my independence.

I bought a new laptop. It's a bit too heavy. Some of the installed parts were wrong.

I applied to go to Canada. Maybe I should try getting a job here first?


I am lost and adrift, because since as long as I can remember, all my goals have been directed towards video games. I don't think this will save many lives. What can be done with a futile ici gai


So you see. I can solve your problems faster than I can solve my own. .


Books are a safe bet. 


Happy Anniversary to the Hubble Space Telescope

Free will exists, but only for what we would deem to improve. Don't doubt your clout.

#90 You seem troubled Klaus

That was a good game. 6 on the griddle. This isn't going to make a lick of sense later on. None of it will. Pointless things are stupid. Stupid things are pointless. A waste of time was worthwhile at some point.

I opened the door of that nightclub and man it was cool, like a fridge, full of easy singles. Sorry for the cheesy joke.

What are your misgivings Lord?

I have no long term plan. I will go to Canada. The great white north? the great unknown.

Having given nothing to the government, am I entitled to nothing from the government?

Some people have it worse than I.

Heal dammit. I need to go places and I miss my independance. Indy pen dance. Indy pen. What amusing opines it writes.

Functionalism is fine, but reductionism has a few wrinkles I just don't like. Sure, you can casually link your whole life as a chain of events back to your birth and back and back and back to the big bang, but it still doesn't explain the source of notions.

I wouldn't know much about cameras. Haven't had much exposure to them!

I am here to help.

#89 Extra time

Yep.

I mean that's pretty much all I want to write. Tired of being fed up. Leg works again. Good.

Laptop isn't finalised yet. x64 is also a bit of a disappointment.

With regards to longevity, I sure hope it works. I guess I need to add 2 more boxes to the chart! Now I'm supposed to be


No, sorry. Out of time. Good night.

#88 New rules

a

Yep, new rules just in.

Don't complain
Don't worry

#87 That's better

Depression can be caused by constipation, cabin fever and dehydration. dry end wet, went end dry also applies to adults.

I honestly didn't realise they also sold sofas. Sorry about that.

Must. not. break. router.

#86 overcast downswing

You graduate 3 times, wind up with a broken ankle, 25 years downriver and still no job. I've been called gloomy, but more often optimistic.

I think I'll quit until my birthday, or until lent ends.

#85 Reason and Conjecture

My ankle is broken. It has been just under 1 week since. I nearly slipped in mass. Fun. Eoghan is still in hospital. Flaming tit was left instructions, but he ate them. With ketchup. He finished the ketchup and hasn't bought more.

Half moon. Only a few hours left to tackle the college assignment.

It's just a broken ankle. It's the apocalypse. Personally, it's the end of the world. It's really just a broken ankle.
It is very inconvenient. I'll be fine.

Time to choose. Wisely done. No regrets Mr. Freeman.

I'll be fine.

#84 Thems the breaks

I died on Monday and came back a blink later. My ankle is broken. My motorcycle is not damaged, though it would be best to have it checked.

My ankle is broken. It was an accident. I hit a slippy patch on the road. I hit a patch of gravel on the road. My back wheel lost traction. It bobbled. I aimed for the kerb. The front wheel bounced over the kerb. The bike landed well, albeit on my right leg.

My ankle is broken. I cannot walk without crutches.

I will be alright. There are challanges ahead. I think I'm worried. No adjectives. It feels swollen.

My ankle is broken and I'm wiggling my toes. It will heal. I think I could apologise to it again. Sorry right ankle.

Morphene is most interesting.

Accidents happen. After so many journeys, I suppose the statistics finally got me.

As is this blog, I must decide if I want to sail forth to health and forget about the mishaps or rue the day. Was Torment right?

Seo linn an ceacht.
Lessons rarely leave scars. Scars usually leave lessons

#83 Maybe another time perhaps

Ach, this code isn't being nice to me.

I put myself down easier than some discarded dog. Ruff, ruff, yeah, great.

That which confounds must have once confounded the confounder, or, we all start at square 1.

I stuck my hands together with bits of sticktape today. It was the most worthwhile thing I've done in a long time. Procrastination is surely an art form by now.

#82 Where's the fun in that?

I'll try my hand at comedy. 3 pages of writing seems to produce 2 good jokes, so it's a bit like gold mining in some ways.

I dislike coding because I can't play with it. There's no fun in it like there is in gaming. Gaming throws the fun right in your face. You don't have to work for it like you do with coding. It's only 3 weeks in and I'm already falling out of love with assembly. Bummer.

Here comes the downswing.

And coding is so not like lego. There aren't nearly as many shapes and colours with coding as there are with lego. Nothing I try with coding fits together either. I can't chew code. I loved chewing lego. I think I might have even swallowed a few bits. Can't quite remember. You can't swallow code. It's not for you. It's for the machine.

#81 Not quite what I had in mind

I've never blogged this far away from home before. Pubs bore me dreadfully. I knew I was bored when I found a speck in the paint on the wall. I looked up at it and thought, "This is the most remarkable wall speck I've ever seen." True enough, it did resemble a halbadier, but at that very moment, I realised how wretchedly bored I was. Pubs are not for me. I'm beginning to think Cons (as in conventions) aren't for me either. 200 miles and 4 hours on a bus for this? Deary me. Dreary me too far that matter.

Pascals chart needs updating if Aubrey de Grey gets it right. Adding 2 more variables will make things a lot more complicated. I'm still ending up with permutations of the old question set, but I had hoped for a few answers. Wishful thinking.

Stains wash, wounds heal, memories fade, eventually. What power we would have if we could forget!

#80 Good as new

It's best not to say things I'll regret later. Now I have to wonder, is a regret for a thing said an easier burden than a regret from a thing unsaid?

I went to my first assembly language class today. It went well. I managed to get the first section of the assignment done. All I have to do now is learn how to code up for loops and if-else statements. Then I have to figure out how to serialise pixels in from an external source. A simple case of boil down work the problem. Plenty of good questions for the lab on Friday. I hope the chaps in the Engineering block has spare PCs.

Turns out I do need a laptop though. The LG 30" screen I have my eye on costs a grand. Chickens, eggs, hatch. I'd prefer to wait until SSD drives are common in laptops (about 2011), but there's no question that there'd be benefit. Mo money mo problems. I'm getting by without it so I should continue thus. Things owned, things own you. All trades are their tools, without which they are but men (and women). Doctors are helpless without modern pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals? Yep, got it first time. So too are mechanics found wanting without the tools of their trade. I sought to become better by knowing, and having the means to know, to garner, inquire, ascertain. To learn. So I became a computer nerd.


I'll hate myself in 5-10 years reading this. I just know it. Sincerest apologies to mine future self. It's my fault you didn't turn out the way you wanted to be.

I guess regret works in both directions.

Are brainwaves a field or a particle?

My exam results. poo. D-. Tailstrike scrape-by. 230 quid for to do the resit. poopoo.And I know I can do better. A costly mistake. I hope benevolence can pick up the tab.

Not time critical thankfully. For problems in life I think perhaps it important to distinguish between those with a critical time component and those that don't. You could easily argue that all problems (which are sometimes solutions to other problems that we don't see) have a time component of one kind or another.

I'll be alright. It's just that the waiting game sucks. Folks are working my case and deserve thanks. I think they know who they are.

#79 Backstab

I read about lumbar puncture and fainted. That's interesting. Back to college tomorrow. I fix things and nobody notices. I bet I could brick the router and nobody would notice. Maybe I need to learn how to better accept thanks. They're grateful when it's back working, but I seem to remember their complaining longer than their thanks. I could not go through with it. 2 weeks before I get to flash with dd-wrt.

If particles emit radiation, can they also emit fields? Folks haven't looked into how much gravity is involved. How many electrons do you need before you start to feel weight?

I'll get a second opinion I guess. Moving and shaking begins in 24 hours.

#78 Begin new line

We got a white new year this year. Only problem is, I wound up staying up until 6am, so I slept in, with my new electric blanket (ftw!) on and then my shift started without me. No biggide though. They weren't delivering anyway.

Time to get to work. The jigsaw is fitting together, so I'm getting a sense of knowing where I'm going now. The northside is still less well known, but I'll get there. I won that race last night so I can win more.

They tightened up my specs to a drum. Much better. I can see straight in the mornings. The chillblains are a bother. I hope that guitar gets played. Risky present, but extrememly nice.

Brain still hasn't come up with a line to change the world, but I can't expect things to happen overnight. Much as I'd like to. Another box filled, another to fill. Work is learn or earn. Anyone for tea?