What a palaver

What a strange day. Called someone out on a lazy sexist stereotype, in a civil way that totally left it open for discussion, and she told me to fuck off and left the way open for anyone who agreed with her to weigh in which they duly did. Wil's right; it's clearly troll season.



NEVER MIND HAVE A PUG THAT CAN'T RUN

 

Home

I feel oddly restless when I come online. There was a time I'd go to a forum, but I've more or less abandoned those. Or I'd log in to IRC, but I don't do that any more. And since I restarted my twitter account (foolish, foolish me), there aren't many people to talk to there either. So I fire up my laptop, open firefox, and feel...

Unsettled. Unhomed.

My dissertation is going to be about home, and what that means. As a student, I move from house to house every year, so that's not home. My parents' house isn't home, not any more. Home has become something a bit more elusive, a bit less defined.

So, I suppose part of me is looking for something to get obsessed about. A website or event or group of people I can relate to, connect with, belong with. Likeminded people. Ah well, I can keep dreaming. There may well be thousands of people with minds a lot like mine, but I wouldn't know where to find them.

Life: that thing that stops one from blogging

Well, the impossible seems to be happening! I'm (slowly) improving my eating habits, (mainly by snacking on bowls of cereal), getting on with my work (by being paranoid about deadlines and writing them down everywhere), and finding time to kill zombies and splash at the beach with my friends. Could be doing a lot worse! And as soon as uni ends, I'll work on the haircut-and-room-tidying stuff I've been letting slide.

My sister texted me today to say that she was trying on her wedding dress... it's really not long now, and soon I'll have a brother-in-law!

Oh yeah, about that. My sister's getting married. I've just realised that I don't actually write about a lot of life-related things on my blog, being caught up as I so often am by minutiae and trivialities instead. So, let's see, what things should you know...

1. I am still very much in love with my boyfriend, and have been with him for coming up to three years now. Weird.
2. I still live in Cardiff, and love it here, but I'm really missing home (again!)
3. I like Glee, and I feel no shame about this.
4. My twitter addiction continues unabated, having recently just passed the 10k tweets mark. In case you don't know how many that is in the grand scheme of things, it's this many: too. Too many.
5. Other things taking a back seat until uni finishes: Calligraphy, ukulele, photography, reading everyone's blogs. If I haven't commented on your blog in a while, leave me a comment here and I promise I'll catch up soon.

I love the website Hacked IRL. It's not quite as revolutionary as it could be, but the little graffiti / culture jamming examples it gives are pretty fun. Here are some of my recent favourites:

And here are some more pictures; unrelated, but awesome.

Little Brother

This is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside-down. Now I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, I'll tell you how I stayed up way too late reading an incredible story.

Yesterday, while researching the Digital Economy Bill, I stumbled across mention of an ebook called Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. I knew the author's name, of course; Doctorow is something of a big noise on the interwebs, though I'd never read anything of his before. The Creative Commons license on Little Brother and the price tag (£0.00) intrigued me, so I downloaded the PDF and decided to come back to it later.

That night, I was in Gavin's spare room. Our sleeping patterns are so different (me being a student and all) that I usually bring a book with me to read until I get tired. In the absence of a book, however, I resorted to reading on my phone; PDF wasn't an option, but such is the magic of Creative Commons that it was available in loads of different formats. I ended up reading the HTML version.

For five hours.

I got wrapped up in the story: a teenage boy and his hacker friends. A government that responds to terrorism with shows of force. A prison kept secret from the public. All these elements caught me up and kept me reading, long past the point where it was just 'something to do until I got tired.' For the first three hours, I told myself that when my already-low phone battery died, I'd go to sleep; but when it finally did, I went downstairs and got my phone charger. I endured multiple phone crashes, every time patiently restarting and scrolling to where I'd left off.

At some points, I had to stop reading just to catch my breath and let my heart slow down. At others, I completely forgot where I was - I couldn't have cared less, all that mattered was the story! It's hard to classify, exactly. It's technically a dystopic, futuristic sci-fi, I suppose; but it could be non-fiction within a couple of years. That alone makes it deeply unsettling, and thoroughly in the spirit of Orwell's 1984, for which it was named.

Being the excitable little fellow that I am, I couldn't even wait until I finished it before telling the world. I announced on Twitter: "Head full of thoughts. Too excited to sleep. Damn... You KNOW when you're reading something that will change you." It's been an awfully long time since a book's done that to me.

Obviously, I can't promise that you'll react the way I did, or even that you'll like it. But I feel compelled to share it. There's a lot of information in the book about what you can legally do with it and why, and Doctorow's kindly allowed for the fact that I want EVERYBODY to read it. I have the PDF on my USB key; I will leave a copy on the desktop of everyone I feasibly can. Is he losing money on it? No, I fully intend to buy a copy, something I wouldn't have done previously. Another small victory for the new way of doing things, I think.


Read Little Brother for yourself. The link will go in my 'interesting things' sidebar.

PS I'm listening to a Podcast of the Lib Dem debate on the DE Bill, it makes for very interesting listening.
PPS For something less serious and more noodly, check out Spaghatta Nadle.

Round-up time

I haven't really updated people on my life in a while. One of the reasons I started blogging was so that old friends could check in on me and see how I was doing. With that in mind, this is what I've been doing lately:

I've started that photography course! The first day was on Tuesday. It was fun, explained things nice and clearly, and I've got high hopes for the coming few weeks. At on point we were left to roam the streets for a while taking photos with a particular theme in mind, and this was a LOT more fun than ambling about by myself! I took this one during that free-range half hour:

We're going to get some dark-room time at some point, which I was very excited about until I actually saw it. Red lighting is possibly the creepiest lighting imaginable.

I've been getting to the gym more regularly, which is already making a difference. I still feel fat and wobbly, but at least I can do sit-ups now! No kidding, I couldn't do one the first time I went. I plan on getting better, especially now that the gauntlet's been thrown down...

Oh bring it ON. I know what Gavin's thinking now. He's fearing the moment we get to the gym, I lie down, and say (with a glint in my eye) "How many can Rich do? HOW MANY?!" From what I know of Rich, it can only end with one of us dead. So if you know Rich, you might want to say your goodbyes.

I went to this thing called Trydan today. It's pronounced "trudd-en," for no good reason other than that it's Welsh *shrug*. Crazy language, I'm telling you. Anyway, it's basically a Cardiff social media café (nerdy people talking), and it's fantastic! I finally got to meet @carlmorris, who is a lovely and very interesting chap. I'm thinking of getting on the Wiki and suggesting that we introduce board games to the process... we meet at the Juno Lounge, which conveniently provides board games! Must check that out. I'd love to run a connect-4 tournament. Or Chess Wars! Amazing.

Right! the other thing I wanted to do was catch up on all the "interesting thing of the days" that I've been steadily accruing and forgetting to share. So, with apologies for the link bombardment, here we go:

Tweenbots. Little cardboard robots that need human help to get to their destination. I like to see it as evidence of basic human goodness.
Freakangels. I'm nothing short of ashamed that I haven't posted this before. It's a stunning online graphic novel (worlds apart from a webcomic). The art and story are superb, and the fact that its creator is a mad bastard should not dissuade you from enjoying it. It may even enhance the experience.
Datamancer. I've written about steampunk before, and Datamancer's breathtaking computer mods have come to epitomise steampunk design for many. I mean, c'mon, look at this laptop. It's a thing of beauty!

Run. I posted a link to this on my Twitter, it's a simple and addictive flash game. I can't finish level 50, and that knowledge will gnaw at my soul for all eternity... click at your own risk!

Alright, I think that's your lot, hopefully you'll be hearing from me again soon.

Just a quickie

For a while now I've enjoyed writing drabbles - stories of 100 words. I've got a fair few up on my DeviantART, but I've been presented with a new challenge in microfiction... yes, it was inevitable, there's a twitter fiction account.

Their site's here if you're interested in submitting.

Interesting Things

Listen guys, I keep accumulating neat things to tell you about and forgetting to put them in my posts. So here, for your delectation and delight, is a list of Interesting Things.

First off, we have the delightful FaceYourManga, a simple, fun and versatile facemaker. This is me:

But to be honest, creating these was much more fun!:







Second we have an amazing little flash game called The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2. The physics of it feel natural, and it's charming and original. I absolutely love it! One mini-level is an homage to sonic, and despite the simplistic graphics you could almost believe it was made by the same people. Watch the backgrounds too, keep an eye out for the batmobile!

Thirdly I'd like to recommend Forumwarz. For the internet savvy among us, the terms 'emo kid', 'camwhore' and 'troll' conjure up familiar archetypes. Well now's your chance to play as one of them in the beautiful game that is the internet. By the time you realise that you're addicted to a roleplaying game it'll be too late! I'm a level 7 camwhore, and my only gripe is that you get limited activity per day unless you pay for more.

I think I'll leave it at that for now, but remember I do honestly enjoy sharing this stuff with you. Let me know if you check them out, and tell me what you think!