I went to fencing last night, and ended up going to bed around 10:30 - getting up at 6 am was hard for me this morning. I’m considering moving my alarm up to 6:30, because I don’t really need the extra time, but this is as good a time as any to make this post about how early I actually go to bed.

        My schedule this semester is this: I have class at 8:30 AM from Monday until Thursday. It can take a good 40 minutes to get to school, more if I get really unlucky, so it’s best to leave early - the other thing is that early in the morning, the buses are less busy because there are fewer people making their way to work. Busier buses means it takes a lot longer to get to school. So, that’s why I get up so early - I’d rather spend half an hour extra at school than half an hour extra in transit and get to class right on time.

        I happen to like getting up early, and don’t mind going to bed early to do that, which makes me the polar opposite of just about everyone I’ve ever met. A couple people barely every sleep, the rest are all night owls, and so I have this problem where every couple of night at 9 PM I get messages from people who aren’t going to bed any time soon. Maybe they have something important we need to talk about, maybe not, but of course I want to talk. Then I end up staying up for two hours and start getting ready for bed at 11 PM instead of 9, and then I end up crazy tired and it’s not really anyone’s fault. The thing is, I was likely online for hours, and they probably were as well, so why this almost always happens at 9 PM is a mystery to me.

        So here’s my request: By 9 PM, I’m already winding down for the night - I’ve been up for 15 hours already, and I need to sleep. Talk to me earlier. Talk to me at 5 PM. Just keep in mind that I have a totally different sleep schedule from you.

        Actually, there is another option - if and when I mention that it’s late/I’m getting ready for bed/I should sleep/any other not-so-subtle hints, tell me to go to bed and refuse to talk to me. It’s so incredibly nice for you to consider my best interests like that and I’m actually grateful towards the one person who ever does that for me. So that’s something else you can do that takes into account the fact that I may not be ready for bed yet.

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        Listening to an episode of the Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’ Podcast titled Come Here Uli, and here’s a brilliant quote about game design:

        “In a movie, you’re being asked implicitly to empathize with a character. In a game, you’re trying to do two things at once: you are trying to empathize with a character and to be a character at the same time. In something like inFamous, if you’re just trying to empathize with the character, when his girlfriend comes up like ‘raah I’m angry about stuff and later on you’re going to have to decide whether to save me or not’ then you can look at that passively, as in ok, we’re going to learn something about who this character is by how he decides to deal with his girlfriend. When you’re controlling him, and your girlfriend is like 'raah I’m mean at you for blowing up the city completely by accident and not your fault and later you’re going to have to decide whether to save me or not’ then it’s no longer a matter of 'what would Cole do, I’m interested to see how he grows’. It’s like ok, I guess what am I doing in this situation? I guess I’m supposed to manufacture a two year history, mentally, with this girlfriend I’ve just met, and in the entire time I’ve known her she’s just been a bitch to me, but I’m supposed to extrapolate that at one point this character, and therefore kind of me, but kind of not, once cared about her.”

Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson

I bought a Kindle copy of Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson and, thanks to that, managed to finish the book after… a year and a half. Below is a conversation between two characters near the end of the book that I really enjoyed, and reminded me of Socrates style philosophical dialogue. I’m posting it because I liked the book enough to buy it twice. So, yeah, I liked it a lot.

        ‘In the world, there are attackers and there are defenders. Most of us possess within ourselves elements of both, but in a general sense a person falls to one camp or the other, as befits their nature.

This is not to say that aggression belongs only to those who are attackers. Far from it, in fact. In my talent with the sword, for example, I am for the most part a defender. I rely upon timing and counter-attack – I take advantage of the attacker’s forward predilections, the singularity of their intent. Counter-attack is, of course, aggression in its own way. Do you see the distinction?’

        ‘I think so.’

        ‘Aggression takes many forms. Active, passive, direct, indirect. Sudden as a blow, or sustained as a siege of will. Often, it refuses to stand still, but launches upon you from all possible sides. If one tactic fails, another is tried, and so on.’

        ‘Yes. What you describe every child learns, at the hands of the bully and the rival.’

        ‘Excellent. Of course you are right. But bear in mind, none of this belongs solely within the realm of childhood. It persists and thrives in adult society. What must be understood is this: attackers attack as a form of defence. It is their instinctive response to threat, real or perceived. It may be desperate or it may be habit, or both, when desperation becomes a way of life. Behind the assault hides a fragile person.

Cultures tend to invite the dominance of one over the other, as a means by which an individual succeeds and advances or, conversely, fails and falls. A culture dominated by attackers – and one in which the qualities of attacking are admired, often overtly encouraged – tends to breed people with a thick skin, which nonetheless still serves to protect a most brittle self. Thus the wounds bleed but stay well hidden beneath the surface. Cultures favouring the defender promote thin skin and quickness to take offence – its own kind of aggression, I am sure you see. The culture of attackers seeks submission and demands evidence of that submission as proof of superiority over the subdued. The culture of defenders seeks compliance through conformity, punishing dissenters and so gaining the smug superiority of enforcing silence, and from silence, complicity.’

        ‘Is there no third way of being?’

        ‘In my long life, I have seen many variations – configurations – of behaviour and attitude, and I have seen a person change from one to the other – when experience has proved damaging enough, or when the inherent weaknesses of one are recognized, leading to a wholesale rejection of it. Though, in turn, weaknesses of different sorts exist in the other, and often these prove fatal pitfalls. We are complex creatures, to be sure. The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.’

        ‘Passive.’

        ‘Of a sort, yes. It is more a matter of warning off potential adversaries. In effect, you are saying: Be careful how close you tread. You cannot hurt me, but if I am pushed hard enough, I will wound you. In some things you must never yield, but these things are not eternally changeless or explicitly inflexible; rather, they are yours to decide upon, yours to reshape if you deem it prudent. They are immune to the pressures of others, but not indifferent to their arguments. Weigh and gauge at all times, and decide for yourself value and worth. But when you sense that a line has been crossed by the other person, when you sense that what is under attack is, in fact, your self-esteem, then gird yourself and stand firm.’

How to read my tumblr

Over the holidays, literally half of my friends asked me about my “tumblr thing.” I’m glad that more than one person is actually reading it now, so to make sure everyone who finds my “tumblr thing” keeps reading, I’m going to lay out the three main ways to keep track of my new posts.

The simple way: Bookmark the site.

The convenient way: Make a Tumblr account and read it on your dashboard.

The nerdy way: Subscribe to the RSS feed.

        I’m sure you know how to bookmark a site, but the main problem with that is that you have to keep checking my ugly site and never know when there’s a new post. Eventually you’ll end up forgetting or just miss posts completely.

        The tumblr dashboard shows you all the new posts by the people you’re following, which is great, and that’s what I do. Probably what most people do. It’s easy to post your own stuff and follow a whole bunch of people and keep up with their posts.

        If I were only reading one person’s tumblr, though, I’d probably just use RSS. I think the easiest RSS reader to use would be Google Reader on a computer, but if you’ve got a smartphone of some kind I’m sure you have an RSS reader in there somewhere.

        As long as you check your RSS reader/tumblr dashboard, you’ll see the brand new posts at the top of your list and it’ll be great.

I’ve been thinking about something for a little bit and couldn’t manage to explain it last night, so I’m going to attempt to work it out here. I’ll edit before posting until I’m sure it all makes sense and I haven’t exaggerated anything.

        What I’ve been thinking about is how I’ve long had a kind of ideal image of Britt in my head, and that holding onto that was what kept me hopeful for a long time after we broke up. It’s not like I was completely deluding myself, just that I liked to think everything could go back to the way it was. Of course I knew it wouldn’t happen, but it was still a nice thought, and I had the odd dream about us getting back together and things like that.

        The problem, though, is that this ideal I had in mind didn’t change at all in the last two years, regardless of the ways she’d changed. In some way, I still thought of her as I did during the summer two years ago when (relatively speaking) everything was going well. Which isn’t really that horrible, as the worst consequence to come out of it is probably my consistent surprise at her unhappiness. My reaction tends to be something like “oh, I thought maybe it might get better…” because that’s just how I’d like the world to be.

        I started thinking about this a couple of weeks ago after a dream I had that, essentially, was really about this ideal image of Britt. I forget the details, but it was a nice enough dream, so take from that what you will. When I woke up, though, I realized that Britt isn’t anything like how she was in my dream - and that’s what made me question the fact that I’ve been doing it all along.

        Britt and I spent the day together two days ago, and that was great - I think it’s the only time we’ve expressly hung out as friends… At least, it’s the first time I felt that way about it. Essentially all we did was cook brunch, talk, cook supper, and talk some more. Fun seems like an overly exciting way to describe it, but I enjoyed the visit a lot and it was just good to see her again. What I wanted to mention, though, is that it also let me recalibrate the way I think about her. I’m one of those odd people who like the idea of platonic love, so I’m going to go ahead and say that I love her as a friend, and I’m happy with that. Despite the things that have changed over the past few years and plenty of disagreements, we still get along, and that’s awesome.

        So here’s to you, kid. These past five years have been wonderful. Looking forward to five more.

2010 Recap

I started my tumblr in April, so my 2010 recap is actually a recap of everything I’ve posted. Which is why it’s a good thing everyone suddenly wants to read my tumblr, because they can just read what’s on this list and that’ll be good. Mostly, this is all my long posts, so if I’ve missed anything you think is worth mentioning, let me know. I can do a recap of music/downloads/links that I’ve posted, if anyone wants to see that, because those are pretty much the remainder of my archive. Oh, and this is in chronological order - from oldest to newest.

• The Introduction That Wasn’t
• Personal Post Redux
• Ms. Barrett’s prediction for my future
• AP Exam/Ms. Barrett is awesome
• Valedictorian Speech
• Prom
• Graduation
• Modern Neurasthenia
• Depression
• Connecticon
• How to Write an Essay
• In Which I Debate the Use of Free Time, or, a Long Post that Ultimately Goes Nowhere
• FF XIII Endgame
• The Web Is Dead?
• Comorbid Depression and ADHD in Children and Adolescents
• Halloween Party
• The Strength of Heart Required to Face Oneself
• Tour-Onto
• Cotton Candy Perfume
• How to Help a Friend with a Problem
• Some thoughts about Britt

I think this is pretty representative of my personal growth over the past year. Overall, I think I’ve grown and matured a lot in 2010. Tumblr probably helped in some way, not the least of which would be serving as an outlet for me to organize my thoughts. If you haven’t gone through my archive yet, there you go - now you’ve got all the best ones right here.

BCN Christmas loot: Now with less candy

I’m not going to include the things like candy, body wash, and socks that I received - know that I received at least two of each of those in addition to everything else.

• A two-way bus ticket to Toronto and two concert tickets (an early gift)
• A good (i.e. expensive) electric razor
• The World Ends With You (DS)
• Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (DS)
• Folklore (PS3)
• The Sly Cooper Collection (PS3)
• Two pairs of slippers - one to keep at my mom’s, one to keep at my dad’s
• New pyjama pants (timely given that my second pair just disappeared)

        The games and trip were all at my request, but the razor was a very nice surprise. My mom was buying things for my brother even yesterday to even out the spending - I couldn’t figure out why, because I thought the things I had already picked out for my brother were enough (Epic Mickey and Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and Rune Factory 3 for DS, Azumanga Daioh omnibus, Gunslinger Girl season 1, The Witcher + The Last Remnant + Super Meat Boy from Steam, a Lego boardgame thing, and a book) but I guess that was an expensive razor.

        Bonus: You now know what my brother got for Christmas. Also he got a pair of skates but that was one of those “you really didn’t need to” gifts.

I’ve already posted that I’m with my grandparents for Christmas, and I ought to mention that Christmas is a religious event for them. Christmas, for me, has been purely commercial from a young age, without even getting into my lack of faith. They don’t mind going to Christmas mass - being stuck with far too many people in a hot, sweaty church listening to an excessively long sermon, late at night when you’d rather be in bed. I’ve been able to shirk the responsibility of going by way of my father a few times, because he isn’t religious either, but now I have no excuse.

        My mother, it seems, is either religious or feels compelled to be religious to please her parents - I’ve never figured out which, as she doesn’t really . She has tried a few times to bring us back into the fold of Christianity, especially around the accepted ages for first communion and confirmation, but eventually we’d get lazy and stop going. So I’ve had my first communion and I’ve been confirmed and I’m “a member of the Catholic church” and as I told her today I don’t want or need that status. And, I think, she feels like it’s her failing as a parent that I’m not particularly faithful.

        Earlier my mom told us that we would, in fact, be going to Christmas mass. A shame, really, because I was planning to learn Python at that time. Anyway, she took my brother and I aside to tell us that we would be going and we would be participating in communion (I’m sure that’s not how you’re supposed to say it). Some more backstory: I decided not to do communion at my brother’s confirmation, though I don’t remember what inspired that little rebellion. I know that I told my mom it would seem dishonest to do that when I don’t actually believe. At any rate, I told her that I would do the socially accepted thing and avoid making her look bad in front of her parents. She said that she knows we don’t go to church often, and that she’d like to fix that, and asked whether I would go to church with her in Ottawa. I said no, and that I don’t need or want it.

        The part that makes me suspect she feels responsible for my lack of faith, and that it’s bad/wrong for me to not be religious, is that she said there might come a time in my life when I want to be religious so that my children will have a place to belong. I feel bad about that, but I’m doing my part and going to church tonight. I don’t, however, have an hour or more to waste every sunday morning. Sunday morning is when I buckle down and do schoolwork. If I’m going to replace good working time with something else, it’s got to be worth more than whatever work I could be doing, like fencing practise.

        There’s no real moral or purpose to me telling you this, I just felt like making a post about it for the sake of exposition. So now you know, and my disk defrag is done, so I can get back to using my PC. My dad used to run a disk defrag overnight and forbid anyone to use the computer until it was done, and I guess I picked up the habit.

My vacation’s going pretty well. I’m catching up on my Read It Later list, I checked out a number of to-do list managers (spoiler: I realized I didn’t need any of them), and today I’m going to keep reading and start organizing music in my library. As far as what I’m reading, yesterday I read The Little Prince, a few Lifehacker articles, and a number of Click Nothing articles. Reading more of the latter today.

        Highlights of the day, which I definitely recommend: LastPass - a cross-browser password manager - a program that tints your monitor based on time of day. LastPass is pretty nice, it integrates nicely into your browser and can autofill forms for you and hang onto personal info and stuff. Most interesting is their Security Challenge, which checks all your passwords and kicks you in the butt about having bad ones. It can also generate randomized passwords for you - such as 8DIy@!Y2%EtO - but the downside to this is that you will never remember these on your own, making you rely on LastPass forever. The reality is that you need to know the password (what if you want to check your e-mail on another PC?) but you’re more likely to lose the password to a database compromise (oh snap Gawker) than to a brute force attack. Anyway, have a strong master password and then modify it as needed.

        Second recommendation is Flux - a program that tints your computer monitor to simulate a natural light cycle. In the morning, it’s the usual bright blue-white that’s guaranteed to wake your brain up and stop the melatonin flow. Later in the day, it’s a warm red that is a lot nicer on the eyes. It seems really drastic when you use the preview of the entire cycle at once, but if you change it to the slow setting (takes an hour to transition) it’s very subtle. When you first come to your computer and it’s a strange kind of red, it might throw you off, but it’s… oddly comforting. Trust me, it’s good for your eyes and your brain, so try it out.

        Third thing that may not be any use to you is custom address bar search engines in Firefox and Chrome. If you’ve used chrome, you’ll know that typing something other than a website will automatically do a google search. Great, but it gets better, because you can add search bars from sites and access them with a keyword (at least in Firefox). Go to a site, right click any search bar, and click “add a keyword for this search”. I did this for a french translation site - so I type “enfr bus” and it gives me the translation for the word. You could do this for your favourite torrent tracker, for a blog, whatever site you visit that has a search bar.

        You can also add keywords for your bookmarks by right-clicking and going to their properties - type f for facebook, t for tumblr, w for wikipedia, whatever. It’s pretty good. You should do it.

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        Went to a family supper last night, but it wasn’t actually an awkward sit-around-and-chat kind of affair. We ate our food and rushed out to a coffee house at my cousin’s high school to see him play. Some of the music was bad, some of it wasn’t, eh. Honestly I don’t have much to say about the whole event! We didn’t spend hours together and it wasn’t horrifically awkward, so… Yeah, I guess that’s it. In a few days I may have a good story to tell.

What I’ve been up to: December edition

So I realize I haven’t been posting much, and there’s a very good reason for that: exams. I even had to skip fencing practice saturday because I wanted to do a bit more studying… I kinda spent too much time talking to people on thursday and friday.

        But anyway! The past week has been like this: Linguistics exam on monday (took me about 40 minutes), tuesday was Applied Linguistics (roughly an hour), wednesday was French (a little over an hour - my essay as twice as long as it was supposed to be, lol). Thursday I almost literally didn’t study, friday was more or less the same. I studied 3/7 chapters in those two days, which is like an hour and a half of studying across two days. And I read the easy chapters because I didn’t feel like studying. Friday I spent 3 hours writing up ineffective instructions for Rainmeter, and thursday I was talking to Britt pretty much all day. I even claimed I was leaving to study only to keep talking for a few more hours >.> So that’s why I avoid talking to people when I have things to do.

        Saturday I thought I had my Computers exam at 5 pm. Around 5:30 pm I realized it probably wasn’t at 5 pm. I was hoping to use one of the public computers to check my exam schedule, except some stereotypical jock was on facebook for 45 minutes and then TURNED IT OFF WHEN HE WAS DONE. You know how display consoles at Wal-mart are in little boxes where you can’t touch them? Imagine how rude it would be for someone to turn one of those off, because nobody can turn them on again without opening the case.

        So I was still afraid my exam might start any minute and didn’t want to spend 20 minutes going to get my cell phone, so I used a pay phone to call my mom and get her to check my exam schedule. As I feared, the exam wasn’t set to start until 7 pm. I told her I should be done by 7:30, because it was 45 multiple choice questions and I generally average 45 seconds per multiple choice. At least, on a normal multiple choice question.

        This was not a normal multiple choice test. I was there for an hour and a half, spending five minutes or more on some particularly crazy questions. The questions required you to check every single possible answer - “which of these is not false”, “which of these is not a problem with this code”, “which of these statements is most true” - and was generally designed to be a total asshole. So that was unpleasant but at least it’s over.

        We left my mom’s house by 7 am yesterday (sunday, day after my exam) to drive to my grandparents’ house in Fredericton. Took us ten hours total to drive there, only stopping once for gas and simply eating food we brought with us. My grandmother was worried we might be stranded in a snow storm (the weather was great) so we had supplies for two days. During the drive I finished reading The Art of Manliness, read chapter 9 in my psychology textbook (the first chapter we’ll be doing next semester, or so I assume) and read a bit about Python. Eventually I realized I couldn’t really learn Python just by reading about it, so I stopped.

        Now we’re here, and today I’m going shopping for shoes, winter boots, and pants. I’ll be staying here until the 27th, at which point I’ll be taking a bus to PEI. Staying there until the 31st, then we’ll drive back home. And the best part is the realization that I don’t have to do anything. I read ahead for my psychology course, sure, but aside from that… I really should just relax for the next two weeks. And that’s awesome. I’m going to do whatever I feel like doing, and it’ll be great. Demon’s Souls got an extension on its server expiration date, and they’re doing a Christmas event again this year, so I’m going to play a whole lot of that :D Of course I’ll have to go visiting and shopping and things like that, but I’m old enough now to not cry and complain over not getting to play video games for 12 hours per day.