Cookies and smiles and a bad night's sleep
I just ate an Oreo. Mmmmm.
Ever get that horrible feeling where you're lying in bed, and just can't turn your brain off? I'm usually knackered by the time I'm in bed and get to sleep in seconds flat - but last night I just couldn't disengage my brain-cogs. They were spinning like tops in my head! I have no idea when I eventually dozed off, but I ( Read more... )
Ever get that horrible feeling where you're lying in bed, and just can't turn your brain off? I'm usually knackered by the time I'm in bed and get to sleep in seconds flat - but last night I just couldn't disengage my brain-cogs. They were spinning like tops in my head! I have no idea when I eventually dozed off, but I ( Read more... )
It's hard not to love all the tribes in that series. They're all so deeply happy and honoured to have someone come to see how they live rather than just point out how they're so stuck in their ways and western life is *obviously* better. Let's all just go live with the Anutans, shall we?
Did you watch that Tribal wives show?
I was an incredibly active roleplayer from the age of 12 until about 4 years ago when I moved away from home. I was part of several groups, both playing and GM-ing. Played loooads of different stuff, but for the most part it was AD&D 2nd edition (3rd edition later on, but nowhere near as much), Call of Cthulhu, World of Darkness stuff (Vampire/Werewolf/etc 1st-2nd ed), Rifts (I literally had more sourcebooks than I knew what to do with, often a point of teasing), Palladium Fantasy, BESM, Over the Edge, Marvel Superheroes (both oldschool FASERIP flavour and newerschool storyteller/card based flavour), and a few more I'm struggling to remember. Oh, bit of Rolemaster too.
I count myself lucky for having different styles of group too - sometimes it was just daft dungeon-hack stuff, other times it was really emotionally in depth, in character stuff. I'd still tell anyone it's the best hobby for really getting to know your friends, it's more socially active than anything else I can think of.
Loved your picture of your werebadger btw, one of the only things I ever used to really enjoy drawing was pictures of my favourite characters. I should scan some of them for the internets someday, maybe soon. Inspiration woo~ :)
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Can the fight be like that?
I've not seen Tribal Wives, how did it work out? Were they as AWESOME as Bruce? Did they manage to integrate well? It sounds intriguing, and I'm rather jealous!
Am impressed with your RP CV! I've really not done enough at all, partly because it took 4 years to settle the issue of me wanting to be a werebadger, but mostly because it's so hard to coordinate people to do it. I think especially I've rarely had 'groups' of friends (this is partly what's so novel about Brighton for me, I found a ready-made group!) I've tended to have lots of individual friends, and then trying to unite them around a common cause is difficult because they have completely different lives, schedules and geographical locations. Even here it's difficult to make the D&D game regular and we all live within 5 miles of one another!
So I'm pretty envious that you had that level of commitment and organisation from your friends. Sounds a lot of fun! Especially the more emotionally in-depth stuff, I like the idea of that - for me that's the whole appeal of the fantasy genre anyway, that it gets a lot more emotional and epic than daily life and weekly goals.
Thanks for pic praise! I was really happy with that when I did it, though the coloured version needs a lot more work really. You should definitely scan your pics! That's my favourite thing about the net, how you can see into peoples' lives literally beyond the conventional confines of time and space...You can share your old experiences and adventures through images (that of course speak minimum 1000 words) from afar from the past! WOW
Ah look see I'm doing the cold-addled 'being weird' again :( but i did get lemsip from the newsagent opposite so the day is on a definite up!
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Roleplaying. It's something I know I'll get back to doing more one day, even if it is just a one-night-a-week dungeon crawl with some mates from work. Used to play AD&D with two of my closest friends, and we used to really get into character. it was really exciting and immersive - one character in particular who was blessed with an Intelligence score of 18 (and being forced to roll 3d6 in order for stats made this particularly impressive) really brought out some kind of genius in me. Some of the things I'd come up with to get out of scrapes still make me wonder how on earth *I* came up with them - it was so cool to be that character to the point where I thought like he did.
I was pretty lucky to have at least 5 different organised groups of friends to roleplay with. There was a lot of crossover between 3 of them to be fair, we were all a bit obsessive about playing_as_much_as_possible. The geographical issue is one of the reasons I'll probably never play with my favourite group of friends regularly ever again - one lives in Canada, one in Stoke, one in Nottingham, one in the Army (thusly Afghanistan/Iraq/Ireland a lot), and me in Southampton. Boo hiss!
I don't think you're being wierd at all! - I've not had such consistently awesome LJ conversation ever, I think. :D
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SO, a long-winded way of saying I'm glad you don't think I'm sounding weird, I too am enjoying the extensive lengthy lj-convos! Yeigh!
Re: Tribal Wives, it's the whineyness that I was interested in, I can imagine some found it very difficult indeed! It's a mind-boggling concept. I just can't imagine what a tribe like that would make of some western woman who couldn't hack it at all. How did it change people? I'll have to learn torrenting at some point to download stuff but apparently if Virgin (my new provider) notice you doing stuff like that they cut you off! I still need to buy the Tribe box set, waiting to get it cheap in CEX, but I did record a lot off tv at my parents' as they have that hard drive thing with sky...
Mad props on your top Intelligence roll! That sounds so cool. I love the idea of becoming so immersed that you start to think and feel like a character - my old housemate Simon and I were a bit like that with our characters in a graphic novel we hope some day to create called The Magic Garden Detective Agency; we sort of wanted to base them on us so we had an easy template, but ended up learning about their characters and emulating them ourselves!
Sucks that your group dispersed so much but at the same time, what an awesome life progression to be able to look back on, world domination-style! Maybe you can meet in all those different locations...I love the idea of one day being able to meet up with all my con friends, but where we rent out the Savoy because one of us is a millionaire or we all made it or whatever. Just the world becoming more accessible...anyway, w00t for Southampton, didn't quite register that you were a coastal crew too!
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I'm glad you're enjoying blathering with me. You're a proper kindred spirit, you are :)
There were some exceptionally whiney women. It was a real culture shock for all of them, and they did adjust with varying degrees of success. One woman who visited a Hawaiian tribe was an utter workaholic who was this massive ball of stress and worry. She micromanaged her day down to the last minute, and found it pretty hard to unwind. But, after a few weeks with her tribe she looked and sounded so much less bothered by everything. I think she came home, quit her job and set up a new recruitment company by herself directed towards female professionals who wanted a decent work/life balance. Good stuff.
Bit of a bugger about Virgin monitoring your internet use like that. Net Neutrality please! We're with Sky who don't seem to care, thankfully.
I like the title of the Magic Garden Detective Agency, sounds like a cross between Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency :D
How far away from Southampton is Brighton? I am so rubbish with Geography, you've no idea!
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However, seems that there is more to you than mere(!) Gibson appreciation, and for that I salute you!
Southampton is about 60 miles away I think, it's still quite a long journey, but I commuted straight to work from Minami this year on the Monday morn and it took maybe a couple of hours? I threw up on the train and my memory of that journey is hazy...For some reason I am now wildly elated to discover that anyone lives south of London, I guess to validate my having moved down from there? And I think anywhere that takes less than 5 hours by road is near - I go to Bath often enough!
Magic Garden Detective Agency is actually named after these, my FAVOURITE thing!
I want to live with a Hawaiian tribe. How amazing! I love watching stuff like that though where someone starts something in a negative place and you get to see a positive experience change their whole life approach. It's so uplifting! But I have noticed that I'm definitely reaching the coldy point where I start talking a lot of rubbish, I was just on the phone to my boss and was reaching the point of rudeness and telling him that I was certain a vendor who didn't show up today was evil and that I had predicted this and I just couldn't make myself stop, AAARGH!! Precious home in an hour...
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That's a pretty interesting idea for a dissertation, although must have been pretty tough to stretch it out that far! I'm sure I read somewhere that Gibson based Laney's divination on his own method of sifting through stuff. Maybe theres more to it than I give it credit :D
Soton is only an hour and a half away from Brighton! Wow. I got a bit confused with Bournemouth for a bit (obviously, as people do) when I looked around at the train station last night. Bath is pretty nice, I've only been there once I think. Anyway, it's nice to know there are more top people in the south! it's the only place to be.
Those things look very cool, remind me of Chia pets (Idoru woo~) a bit?
Hope a good night's sleep helped your cold!
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I'm not sure to what extent he focussed on nodal points as a thing, I think he extended it into the real world, and I was really interested to hear that because I'd always thought it sounded like how I used the net. And it's even more interesting to hear that it's actually based on a real life skill, because I had always identified with it. The other way it resonated with me was how you can predict things about peoples' behaviour without being able to break down the psychoanalytical justification for it - like there are some cognitive triggers for comprehension that just make sense, prior to deeper understanding of it. I thought it was a really creative way of extending the skills the mind already seems to demonstrate (nodal points I mean).
I don't know where Bournemouth is so we're even! I probably only know where Soton is because of many Minami misadventures...
The Magic Gardens are just salt crystals and dye, but I love their retro packaging - they have ALWAYS had that box, at least since I was like 4, and they still do!
Thanks, I had a bad night's sleep as Shauna has an exam this morn and was alternating fretting about that and fretting about boys til about midnight, then everyone else works earlier than me so work me with their shenanigans. But the Drugs Did Work!
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Predicting people's behaviour is a really bad habit of mine. I always feel bad when I know exactly what someone's gonna say and finish their sentence for them as part of expressing my understanding of what they're saying. Or I'll spot a problem and fix it while someone else is fixing it... It's mainly a work thing, thankfully - but sometimes I worry it rubs people up the wrong way?
I'm glad someone else doesn't know where Bournemouth is! Score, we can form a club.
Fretting about boys, le sigh. What is there to fret about? We're all rubbish and smelly :D
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I'm not that good at predicting behaviour on an immediate basis, more anticipating what it is that people want when I'm directly interacting with them and understanding their driving motivators and incentives. Hopefully this will make me *good* at language teaching...But yeh, don't you get reminded of Laney then if you subconsciously identify patterns without concrete basis? I guess it depends how you do it, how people respond to it - for example, my friend Ben always predicts (incorrectly, as it turns out) that I can't walk down a street without crashing into everyone, and manhandles me out of the way of oncoming walkers - this annoys the hell out of me as it makes me look like I can't think for myself! But when someome anticipates your needs and acts accordingly that can be really gratifying and also make you feel like you're on the same wavelength. And then again, some people just don't like to feel that they're predictable, like it's a slight to them or something. Hm.
There is A LOT to fret about boys, and it can regularly deprive us of sleep!
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I am going to write a lett0r in a moment, as soon as I have made a cup of char and settled into an appropriately calm manner after a bracing walk around Eastleigh town centre. It's a pretty harrowing place to be.
Althoughsaying that I did genuinely smile when I saw a mum and her kid coming out of one of the many charity shops in town. The lad was holding an almost pristine boxed Megadrive 1 (with the volume slider and everything - SO cool) including Altered Beast. He looked so chuffed with himself! I was a tiny bit jealous, but mostly happy in imagining that he'll probably be laughing at the incredibly bad sound effects like me and my friends used to back in the day.
WWWIIIIIISE FWOMM YOUR GWAAAAAVE~ :D
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I am TOO EXCITED for words about this historic re-enactment society otherwise known as 'writing letters'. Wow! I used to write (and receive) letters a lot as a kid, and even at school my mates and I would write letters to communicate more personal things and hand them to each other in the morning.
this is how far I had gotten when I spoke to you! longest.day.evar!
Anyway, the moral of the story is, that is one lucky kid right there! My mate's band actually named a song after that game. I too would have been a tiny bit jealous, that is a pretty awesome find!
Today seems to have been a really uplifting day all round, looking across the internets and such. It's really nice! And motivating and uplifting and so on. I'm full of ideas about things I want to do, including Shakespearian poetry, and yet I am damned by the stupid tefl course. Which I *have* to do this week. Not in work the next 2 days though which means I may not be as avidly online or perhaps more so, hard to say. I need to draw more. You need to upload more arts! What shall I draw? Task me up!
And now it's nearly time for me to head off - all time unsuccessful day, sold 2 pairs of shoes and coded nothing!! Gonna go pack up the shop.
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I used to write letters to girls quite a lot when I was at school. It was the done thing! Didn't get that many replies though, for some reason girls didn't want to talk about Soundgarden and roleplaying games and whether or not they had wierd deja vu sometimes or how you'd read in a fanzine that the new Dragon Quest game was going to be ace? Other than that, I used to exchange postcards with my friend Graham an awful lot when he was studying catering all over Europe - generally just to blather stupid things at each other and take the piss remotely! Also went through a phase of writing letters to my friend Nathaniel in the margin of my geography notes. I used to write adventure ideas, short stories, all sorts of things!
It's been all quiet on the Laura front all day, so I guess you've been good and got on with your work. Good good!
Task you with some drawing? I'd like to see your take on Count Zero himself, Bobby Newmark. Think 'Jacked into 14 terminals with his feet up on an old desktop' :D
I'm obviously pants at all this artistic stuff, but I'm open to a suggestion if you think I should try to 'draw' something too :)
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I'd forgotten but this comment reminded me that actually right into year 10 and 11 when I moved to a mixed school, I used to exchange letters with guys in the other half of the year who I didn't get to have lessons with, as a way of getting to better know each other, and it was they who initiated this, so must have been a done thing at that school too! One of them is now deputy editor for a local magazine here in Brighton so there's a nice symmetry there; he might get me work writing articles too. He always did write very clever letters, it's cool to see that that was a forecast of things to come!
LOVE the idea of writing letters in the margin of your geography notes as a habitual thing, like NO other subject and no scrap paper, geography or bust!
Write more adventure stories!
I'll give Count Zero a shot but not sure if it'll be that good without me re-reading it so I might re-read it now. It's one of the 18 books I actually have in my room, all the rest are on a bookcase downstairs, but the most urgently required I keep to hand! (also includes Eldar Codex and The Art of War haha)
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I've just had the WORST morning ever. Well, it was kind of exciting too - my adrenaline levels are going nuts.
Got in first thing, and was informed politely that one of the more important builds was broken and it needed looking at asap. Cue three hours of frantic headscratching, -ing, lsof-ing and the use of a smattering of other spanners from my linux toolbox. It was broken in a really wierd way - instead of firing up a single process to 'do it's thing' as it should do, it was spawning between 27-51 threads instead!! Everything ground to a halt around me, and I was drawing blanks all over the shop. Just finally nailed it moment ago. Got a tiny 'Hello World' program to sleep for 10 seconds before exiting and tried running that instead of the build process... voila, 32 threads. Did it as a different user... and got one. Compared their shell environments - sorted. 2 stupid little environment variables that had been added by the Oz team for some lameass reason! removed them, rolled back some changes and restarted cruisecontrol. All fine and dandy, and the builds are now failing for the right reasons - ie nowt to do with me :D
I'll write a story that's been stuck in my head for a while. Creativity now! :)
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What is the story about? Write write write! Can't write more right now as I HAVE to get my household chores done, I'm so unmotivated today!
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