Guitar Hero

Y'all with the coloured buttons and "Star Power" ain't no Gee-tar heroes, this guy is. He even got a hero beard.

Memory Etearnal

Computers forget less than elephants do. Which is good, because remembering stuff is one of the main things we use them for. Having an archive of your entire life sitting under your desk is a little spooky sometimes too. Some things you'd rather were not remembered.

While looking for something else buried deep in the archives of my "My Documents" folder today, I came across an old text file. "Poetry to steal your smile.txt". Poetry is a very generous description of the contents, but it possibly passes as evidence that I invented "emo" several years before anyone else. It's got some good lines (if cheesy super-angst), but I apparently lack the creative flair to turn one good line into anything resembling a good peom.

I quite like the "glass eyes and porcelain smiles" description of commuters on a train, and I'd be very suprised if the line "you're all my dreams come true, and all my nightmares too" isn't in several other more professional works. The concept of the inhabitants of a city being faceless, silent drones while the city itself is loud, angry and lustful is a good one too, I just did a fairly poor job of expressing it.

I was an angsty pathetic whinger even before I got a blog! Anyone know a good psychiatrist? I have ... uh... a friend... who possibly needs one.

Face Off

Of the many random thoughts that have drifted through my mind recently, one was "I wonder what it's like to wake up with someone else's face?" It's a common plot device, various movies and books have been based on the concept of living someone else's life for a bit. Tom Hanks in "Big" springs to mind first, but there's been a whole raft of them. I think there was a mother/daughter body-swap thing fairly recently (a year ago or something no doubt, I'm not so current-affairs in the media arena).

There are people who live this surreal moment daily - face recognition is a brain function and thus can malfunction or be damaged. It must be very odd to not recognise your own face in the mirror. It must always feel a little like there's a mime the other side of a window copying your actions. You know (because the same strange thing happened yesterday, and the day before that) that it's just because your brain is a little out of whack, but you'll never quite shake the feeling something is a little off with the guy staring back at you out of the bathroom wall.

In the movies of course, while our hero/heroine is wearing someone else's body, they're still "themselves" and pretty certain they know who that is (they generally even learn something about themselves in the process of course, usually that was the universe's intention in orchestrating the body swap in the first place). So the thought that quickly followed on from the first was: "What about the inverse of that - what does it mean to wake up one morning and realise you're not the person you thought you were?" I suppose in a way, we all fall short of the person we imagine ourselves to be, or the person we think we ought to be, fairly often. For me, I set myself impossibly high standards in everything I do, so failing to be the person I think I should be is a very regular occurrence.

Life has a way of chewing up your best laid plans, your dreams and ideals, and spitting them back at you as twisted shadows of themselves. I think what really defines "who you are" is how you deal with that situation, not the plans themselves or their eventual failure.

I think when I started this post, I had a point. But now I can't think of it. Chalk up another failure.

Al Gore: Climate Change

Look! Evidence some Americans worry about stuff other than the fact Barak Obama can't bowl straight!

Al Gore is probably the highest profile adovate of Climate Change action, so his newest presentation on the matter is well worth a look. I'm not sure many people here in Europe still need convincing that climate change is a human-induced problem, but plenty still need convincing that it's something we need to do something about in a hurry, and that it's something they personally need to do something about. It's something we must all take individual responsability for. Not just with the lightbulbs and the walking rather than driving stuff, although we do need to do that, we also need change the perception of politicians. The sort of policies that are required at a national and global level are largely seen as unpopular, or at the very least not "vote winners". We, as a society, need to make the environment and thus the future survival of our planet and race, an issue politicians can "run on".

Tempting Shinies

Sports car, or house, that is the question. One is an investment, the other an extravagance. One is exciting and the other practical. Both are huge cash sinks, and I almost certainly can't have cake and eat it.

Mmm, sports car...

Simple Equation

Techs + Beer + Directors = "Oh shi....!" moments.

There's honesty, and then there's honesty. And while I'm perhaps guilty of being all too willing to be the bearer of bad news (I have my share of Chicken Little "The sky's falling in!!" episodes), at least I don't tell directors that I spent the last two years thinking of programs I could name after Batman characters... There are some aspects of the small games we all play to break up the relentless monotony of an office job that shouldn't be communicated too high up the tree.

Yes, we can.

Schizophrenic post coming right up!

Are we doomed to repeat the sins of our fathers? The future is built on the past, but is it also bound by it?

The optimistic parts of my fractured personality believe strongly in our power to change. Even small steps in the right direction send ripples through what Luke would call The Force. While The Force is undeniably a work of fiction, it has a resonance with us. All life is bound together in a sense. The individual human mind is ridiculously complex, and the interactions and influences between them even more so. Much like particles in a gas, predicting the path of any one life is pretty much impossible, even if larger groups demonstrate predictable behaviours most of the time (if you ignore individual behaviour and look only at the group).

The current election process in the US is fascinating because Obama is a fairly unconventional candidate. He's staking a lot not only on his own ability to precipitate change, but also on the electorate's willingness to accept their own role in the situation they're in. Even if it's just fancy speeches and rhetoric, it's interesting rhetoric. Accepting personal and collective responsibility for the failures of the past is a hard thing to do, but is fundamental to real change. Obama, I think, understands this, but I'm not sure the electorate really do. We'd all much prefer to vote for a magic wand, as if simply electing a new government will fix all that we perceive to be wrong with society. It's so much easier to hope that the difficult choices we'll have to make start and end with which box to place your "x" next to on election day. And then we can carry on with our lives, insulated by ignorance from the rest of the world while someone else fixes all our problems.

While governments and presidents undoubtedly wield a lot of power, fundamental change happens elsewhere, they simply get to set the tone. Real change demands that we each see the world for what it is, stripped of our prejudices and comforting over simplifications. It requires that we each take the decision to leave our comfortable ruts (even if we hate the rut, it's got a reassuring familiarity) and step out into the unknown. And that is hard!

Of course, it's all very well me preaching change. I've got more than my own share of comfortable ruts I find it next to impossible to leave. I step out every now a then, when some carrot is offered up by life, but it's painful. It's stepping outside in winter with only your dressing gown on. Every second, every aspect of your being reminds you that this place is uncomfortable, and asks if it wouldn't be a good idea to go back inside.

So far this year I've spent a lot of time shivering in the cold, and my life feels ridiculously out of control as a result. But I need to be here, I need shift my perspectives and carve myself a new rut in a slightly better place. I don't know if I'll succeed, how much longer I'll successfully fight the urge to go back inside and hide, but I'm not ready to go back in just yet.

Change is possible. It's hard, and it's risky, and repeating the problems of our past usually comes with a handy bunch of excuses to ease our guilt. Failure to try, however, is the worst sort of failure. And one I've been all too guilty of.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. And Poll Results.

And no, it's not a post about the America presidential race (although I guess any argument about irrational assessments of subjective values that might lie behind this rant would apply there too).

All things are relative, and so we instinctively compare ourselves to others. Various networking sites (Facebook being my own personal experience, but no doubt many other such sites have similar tools) "facilitate" this process by adding a layer of anonymity and statistics to it all. It's an excellent way of producing graphs and charts and all sorts of other fun things that look significant, but ultimately are not.

Thus, my friends have rated me as a reliable, organized chap (which is blatantly untrue) but rather disappointingly haven't rated my hair as all that good (only 40% success rate there - on the plus side my hair is apparently my best feature) Seems only one person has ever been asked how crazy I am (and readers of this blog will surely know the answer: very).

Bizarrely, I'm apparently #10 for both "more loyal" (with a 1:0 win/loss ratio) and better singer (with a 0:3 win/loss ratio). I'm clearly not a better singer than much more than a cat that's been skinned in most of the many ways it's apparently possible to skin one. I'm ranked #12 for "better sense of humor" but #21 for "funnier", how does that work folks? I can be a cynical misery at times I know but I rather thought my sense of humor was one of my few social strengths. I know it's not shone through so much recently though.

My main weaknesses (both with 0:3 ratios) are apparently singing as mentioned above, and being happy (or rather, not being - too many of my facebook friends also read my blog I think). I also score poorly on all those questions I'm frequently forced to skip such as "more attractive", "rather kiss", "a better body" etc (although I do have a single success on "rather sleep with", so I pity the poor sap I was being compared against on that occasion!).

Of course, all this is plagued quite badly by the issues of a small sample size. Most categories have only a small handful of votes, so the numbers aren't especially robust.

You can do the reverse, and group up your friends based on how well they've scored from just your own rankings. Apparently I don't have enough female friends because they all manage to fit into the "most desirable" box. Presumably because I rated their eyes as better than my chunky chemist friend at some point.

Breaking the Habit

Watching "The Bridge" on More4 about people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge probably wasn't a good idea.

I'm capable of thinking some extraordinary things about myself. Suicide is a good example of this. I've been fascinated, if that's the right word, by suicide for most of my life. It's not really an interest in other people's suicides (which I feel is always tragic, and it troubles me that these people feel such pain, so hopeless that they take their lives) it's more an interest in the concept of killing myself... yet it's not really thinking about actually doing the deed in a planning sorta sense (much as I whinge here often enough about how pathetic and hopeless I am, I have much to live for). I'm really going to struggle to actually explain what I mean. Do other people ever think about it? I really have no idea.

It has occurred to me, on and off, that life would be a whole lot easier if I wasn't living it. Yet I have no reason not to, beyond the fact that life is complex, difficult and I really don't understand so much of it. I find it darkly amusing to suggest that the only reason I'm still here is the embarrassing prospect of having to explain myself in the afterlife: "why'd I kill myself? Dunno really... I just couldn't be bothered with living". It's a pretty poor excuse for bailing out. It's not really true of course... but there is an element of apathy there. And maybe that's more depressing than anything else. I could probably make so much more of my life than I currently am, I just don't put the effort in.

I could probably whinge on for a long time about the state of my life and the way I live it.. and most of it wouldn't even be true. Some of it I'd kinda believe, much of it I'd mostly not believe but say it anyway. I'm not sure I understand why. I'm not quite sure why I talk myself down as much as I do either... I talk myself out of taking any real risks, making any real changes, and I talk myself into thinking things are much worse than they are. I don't imagine I even get close to the short of despair "jumpers" must feel... but I don't what they must feel. I don't know, in all honestly, what the inside of anyone else's head looks like at all. I'm inclined to believe I'm the only person on the planet that thinks the way I do, that everyone else is somehow reading from a different set of rules and life makes perfect sense to them. But maybe everyone else feels that too.

Slaves to Grass

My next post was going to be about games, but as with all other posts that are vaguely about me, it very rapidly descended into an angst-ridden whinge about how pathetic I am. I have no reason to believe anyone is especially interested in me telling myself I'm a failure as a person (and I'm pretty well practiced at dissecting myself and coming up with a diagnosis of "complete loser"), so I'll blog about something else instead.

The more eagle-eyed of you may have noticed that a substantial number of links over on the right hand side of this blog are TED talks. (On reflection, I think the number of people who visit this blog often enough to notice changes in the sidebar despite my complete lack of posting is probably about zero).

Top of the sidebar right now is This one

It's an interesting concept - to view ourselves in evolutionary symbiosis, in the same way we view other species. We understand that flowers and fruit evolved the way they did to attract birds, bees and monkeys. We know (despite our instincts to anthropomorphise everything) that getting eaten is the intended purpose of the fruit. However, as Michael says, we don't see ourselves in similar relationships. Your stance on ecological issues largely just casts you as "omnipotent guardian" or "omnipotent exploiter". We believe ourselves to be separate from "nature", and we certainly feel we know best what's good for "nature" (although again, our tenancy to cast all animals with human emotions and desires is somewhat counter productive here).

I don't think the ideas behind the Polyface Farm model he mentions are anything especially new (indeed, before industrialisation and the introduction of an endless list of chemicals to farming, farmers largely had no option but to do this kind of thing, go check out medieval farming) but it's always good to see someone using and promoting a relationship with nature which is a little more sympathetic to the way it works. I hope the idea catches on, but I doubt it will.

Take a look at a food chain diagram in almost any school text book, and I bet you find grass at the "bottom" of the chain. The lowest of the low, eating nothing but sunshine. The argument here is that this is an oversimplified view of the world, that the relationships are much more complex and thus "bottom" depends entirely on your perspective. Grass is a hugely successful organism, covering (I think) more of the earth's surface than anything else (except the ocean, which doesn't really count). It's a king of species - after all, it's convinced humanity to tend to it - to plant it, to feed it, to water it, to weed out the competition.

Our view of the world puts us at the top, the pinnacle of evolution and the rightful masters of all we survey. Maybe this is just because the idea that we might not be in charge is something that scares us. (a significant number of our collective phobias relate to a loss of control) But it reminds me of another worldview, which in days gone by put the earth at the center of the solar system, and really it's just as wrong. We need to step back a little, and view the entire planet as a single system, one we are part of, not just custodians of.

Christmas Blog

Merry Christmas to anyone reading this (stealing a few moments away from the family like me). I'd include some suitably festive photographs, but I didn't bring the USB cable for my phone, and the bluetooth on my parents laptop does work, so they'll have to wait until I get back to the flat. Also waiting until I get back to the flat is introspection and a review of the year I've had (New Year's Eve seems a good time to post it, if I get around to it at all) but I hope you've all had an enjoyable and rewarding year

Christmas presents this year cross off another of those items on my "I should really get.." list that I never quite seem to get as far as making decisions on (this is mostly large items - car, house, etc, but also includes smaller items). Mum and Dad got me an espresso maker. I need all the assistance I can get to get up on a morning.

Anyway - back to the festivities, even though I don't live here any more, I've got to play the good host.

The Morph

Someone said to me today, "you're morphing into a manager". It says something about the culture (and management) at my company that a) this is something that can be said of me (I wouldn't say "managing" is what I'm doing at the moment, coping... hanging on for dear life.. something like that) and b) this isn't intended to be a compliment.

But it does raise some interesting complexities that, I imagine, all manager types face. I think the comment was basically that I was being too "on message" and not nearly cynical enough. It just happens that I do believe in the potential for, and power of, positive change. But in many ways, it doesn't matter what I actually think. People look to me for leadership and guidance, whether they admit it or not. I'm supposed to be the guy with the answers, and if I admit to doubts then this only reinforces their own. I must act to counterbalance rather than amplify any anxiety and concern, regardless of my own level of comfort. It doesn't mean dishonesty, or relentless false cheer, this is counter productive in that it destroys trust. It means "managing my message" or somesuch empty sounding phrase. It means I must make an effort to point out the things that are going right. But this doesn't come easy for me... I'm a natural cynic.

Internet People are Real People

There's a curious feeling in non-geeks that "internet people" (as in, people you're only ever likely to meet in a virtual sense, on forums, in chatrooms, and if you're really tech-savvy, some sort of VOIP) aren't "real people". They know this isn't true of course, they're not quite like the characters you meet in single player games, all scripted dialogue and simple action-response AI. But somehow the impression they're less than real persists, they seem to be 2D in some way.

Thats a rather long-winded introduction to the following links, a pair of my favourite recent discoveries: Merlin Mann - how can you not like a guy called Merlin? - who runs 43Folders.com a blog-cum-productivity advice site; and Jonathan Coulton a ex-coder musician who releases his work under a creative commons license, and whose excellent catalogue includes Code Monkey and the credits song for Valve's Portal, you probably have to play the game - and you really should - to fully appreciate the genius of the song though. So here's the guys, (and this is the link) being entirely too human and interesting for "internet people".

Part 1
Part 2

Billions and Billions

This Oooooooooold, but you gotta love StumbleUpon... no wait, I meant, you gotta love John Stewart's ability to sum up the absurdity of the world. This one is on Us Foreign Policy over the last couple of decades. Reminds me somewhat of a story from my childhood, about a carpenter making a table. When he's finished, he found one leg was a little too short... so he chopped a bit off all the others... only now one of the others was too short, so he chopped a bit more off the longer legs... and so on until he presumably ended up with a coffee table or a crude version of garden decking. For a very small garden.