Blog Archive — Page 58
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Thoughts of the Unconfident
I wonder if, perhaps, I’m being over-friendly, that she’s gone from whatever she thought about me before to finding me annoying or even creepy…?
And… I’m overanalysing again, aren’t I? When the realisation of my feelings hit - and I needed to be told - I never thought it’d involve quite as much trying to second-guess people…
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The Campus in Autumn
Years ago - four years, in fact, it seems a strangely long time - I had a feeling of what University life might be like. Warm and comfortable, studying books or taking notes, while outside rain fell and cold winds blew leaves from the trees.
It turns out that, now in the final autumn of my time here, I might have been right. For a while, today, that was just how the world was.
In the end, though, an existence that is just like that all the time would be lonely. I’m so very, very glad that along with that kind of moment, the rest of my life is full of wonderful people and wonderful things.
Today on the interweb:
Star Wars, the 168kB GIF: http://x2.putfile.com/10/29405035849.gif
Hello Kitty plane: http://www.popgadget.net/2005/10/hello_kitty_jet.php
Because no blog can be complete without a link to a Jack Thompson-related page: http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/censorship.html
Shiny casemod #349170239481: http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/yes-god-is-a-pc-case-132714.php
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Physics and Piracy
Today, I tried to get my Light and Matter problem sheet done. It went pretty well, and I got quite a bit of work done. Then I took a break for coffee and chocolate, and Mark’s family came over, and we watched anime and had take-away delivered and played silly board games and… all hope of working was lost.
However, it was an awesome day. And pirate board games (now purchased for the games society, woot!) are much more fun if you all speak with pirate accents and there are at least three replica guns within reach… =p
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Rainbows after the Rain
As we headed into the city centre, the morning’s wind-whipped sunshine turned quickly into a shower and then into rain. It fell in sheets as we sheltered under the awning of a shopping arcade, and dripped around and through my umbrella as we dashed quickly from one shop to another.
But by the time we walked home, the rain had once more been replaced by only dampness and golden light. Over in the east, a rainbow shone brightly as it hung over the city.
Today on the interweb:
I want this coffee machine. http://www.keesvanderwesten.com/index2.html
I want this phone. http://cgi.ebay.com/EMS-Art-Deco-Collectable-Chinese-rosewood-telephone_…
Mario Level Editor. http://fusoya.panicus.org/lm/
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Ubuntu
That’s it, I’ve had it with Ubuntu. Damn “user-friendly” junk, it seems to develop problems if you’re using anything except a generic GNOME environment and no -extras/-backports, and I rarely get replies to forum posts. Back to Gentoo for me…
Today on the interweb:
Captain Jack is dead! http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=de_en&url=… (Babelfish warning)
Long live Captain Jack! http://smallscreen.monstersandcritics.com/article_1055556.php/Torchwood_…
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Joyful Illness
Feeling a bit shivery, stomach doesn’t feel great, I have a sore throat and am feeling a bit dizzy.
I guess it was impossible to escape Freshers’ Flu after all… (damn freshers =p)
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A Feeling I'm Not Used To
There’s a feeling, or perhaps it’s more like a lack of a certain feeling. Everything in life seems lighter, happier, more easily dealt with. I think, for the very first time in a long time, I’m not angsting.
I’d forgotten how good it felt.
Last week’s problems seem now… skipped over, if not actually dealt with, but the effect is much the same. The problem with running the game on Saturday vanished along with Saturday, and I have at least a little confidence in my ability to run it now.
And then there’s Angst Cause #1. Now that I think about it, though, there’s little to angst about. I’ve made a decision, everyone who knows supports my decision, so it’s time to go ahead and try. Now it’s just a matter of courage and cowardice, of nervousness and resolve. But not angst, not angst anymore. For now, anyway.
For now, all I have to do is… make opportunities. And use them.
Today on the interweb:
{int}chan breaks…, episode three: Mahoraba Heartful Days. http://cgi.4chan.org/f/src/nanako(thatgirl).swf
{int}chan breaks…, episode four: Sonic the Hedgehog. http://cgi.4chan.org/f/src/Sonicween.swf
Dawn of the Dead, knitted: http://www.flickr.com/photos/electricbiscuit/tags/dawnofthedead/
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Something Like an Explanation
Okay, here goes a fairly major update.
Wednesday
Wednesday has not since been mentioned. It is better that way, I think.
Thursday
Did nothing. Avoided RockSoc pub-crawl due to Wednesday issues and the Dungeon being full of RockSoc people.
Friday
Met with my final year project tutor for the first time. This project is going to be really awesome, if only I can get over the insanely-difficult and my-partner-appears-not-to-exist issues. Avoided Library Skills thing in the afternoon, as it appeared to be a gigantic waste of time.
Intention: spend the evening preparing for Saturday’s Dreaming Awake game.
Reality: hung-over Racheet Soul Calibur 2, Pascalius Gaijin Smash, dinner choice decided by alliteration (satay sauteed potatoes), Dogtato-kun and Comic Party.
Whoops. Nonetheless, awesome day.
Saturday
Day One of the great Can-Ian-Run-A-Game experiment. Verdict: yes!
Well, more-or-less. I was worrying throughout that I was concentrating too much on some characters and not others, and I had a hell of a time convincing the lot of them that they could actually stand travelling together, but it all seemed to turn out okay in the end.
The “please be painfully honest” advice from the players at the end - not that I was doing badly as I suspected, but just that I need to be more confident. Good news, I think - confidence is something that just about everyone’s trying to teach me at the moment, and although I initially doubted that I could improve very quickly, I think I might be getting there. Slowly, and there’s still a long way to go. But I’m trying.
Thankfully, as I hoped, the characters’ actions are shaping the world nicely. Slowly but surely things are starting to tip away from the book’s plot, which I think is conclusive proof that the characters really are having an effect on the world. They also spawned about a dozen NPCs, spread a few rumours… It’s going to be difficult to keep track of how this all propagates, but it’ll be awesome when it does. And, what’s more, they’re now quite heavily involved in a sub-plot that didn’t even exist until one of them chose to poke around inside a rotten old sea-chest. Rapid plot-creation for th
e win!
Part II of Saturday involved a huge and awesome Chinese meal at the Panda on Carlton Road, at which for the first time I met Shea, the possibly-infamous Steve and two people whose names I have now forgotten. Go me, and my memory. After that we headed to the Dungeon (I’m glad I turned down two offers, otherwise this’d be the fourth day in a row I’d been there!) where I mostly hung around chatting to people. As Racheet commented afterwards, that’s probably a good sign that for me the Dungeon is now more of a place to see people than a place to drink and dance.
It would appear from recent events that Racheet’s two main freind groups in the city are now rapidly merging. It’s gotta’ be a good thing - first, because it’s not good to have to divide time between two separate groups of people, and secondly because it means I get to meet a whole bunch of new and awesome people!
Also, I managed to be asked to burn a copy of Bottle Fairy for someone about three hours after meeting him for the first time. I love my life when it does that kind of thing to me. ^_^;
Today on the interweb
{int}chan breaks…, episode one: The Ring. http://www.fourhman.com/extra/sada_end.swf
{int}chan breaks…, episode two: Salad Fingers. http://cgi.4chan.org/f/src/Salad-Fingers-Saged.swf
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Racheet Psychology 101
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a happy post. I’m not sure quite what it is - it’s both angsty, and angry. At least, as close as I can still get to anger. When I first started writing I was very pissed off, and by the end was in tears.
Also, this post is visible to everyone except Racheet. I’d be grateful if no-one let him know that it exists.
I’m sorry it’s come to posting this, but I need to get this off my chest - all of it, and as soon as possible. Feel free to just skip it all, it’s not a pleasant read. But… if you have the time and the inclination, please read it. It would make me a lot happier right now to know that someone’d read this, that someone appreciates what went on in my head today.
Right. Business. Can anyone shed any light whatsoever on what the hell’s going on?! Twenty-four hours ago, Racheet seemed fine and normal. Actually, let’s go further back. Around a week ago, Racheet asked me to do him a favour, find out about something for him. I’m not sure how many of you know what this was, but suffice to say I found out for him and told him and it wasn’t the result he wanted. His response, over the phone, was something like “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine with it.” Not a tiny strand of my mind believes that to be the truth.
Racheet is still angsting over it. Clearly still angsting. Although, as I said, twenty-four hours ago he was being focussed on generating characters for his Uresia game and doing a very good job of hiding his emotions. Of course, I dared think at that point that he may actually have gotten over it.
Today… he seemed fairly normal at lunchtime and when he started running the game. Halfway through, he got a call from Neil telling him that there was a birthday party being organised tonight. Today was Racheet’s birthday, if you didn’t know. There’s back-story about this as well. A few weeks ago, he asked me to try and organise a birthday party for him - he said it didn’t matter if it wasn’t much, so long as it was something. But… I failed. Every day, weekends included, it’s been impossible to get everyone together. There were planned trips, to the Dungeon and even the aborted Slimelight trip, that got in the way and threatened to eclipse any idea I had. In the end I latched onto the idea of Nick’s meal this coming weekend as the closest I could get to one.
Then, with just a phone call, Neil organises everything, on the day, with everyone there - including all the friends of Racheet’s that I have no contact with and so could never have convinced to come to a party I was organising. I remarked to Racheet after the call, almost light-heartedly, “I guess that puts me even further down in the failure stakes.” His reply: “Yes. Yes it does.”
That’s it; that breaks me. I’m now incapable of playing the character I’m trying to play in this game, and that makes me angst further, and gets joined by the other two big things I’m currently angsting about and renders me utterly useless. Later on, in the Stag’s Head, I have to go and sit outside for half an hour just to return to a condition in which I could talk to people. Back inside, feeling a little recovered, I bought Racheet a drink and sat down. Barely got to talk to anyone, so resumed angst. By the time I ended up talking to Andy, angst was all I could talk about.
Later, we went to Pizza Hut for a meal, and everything was fine and good. By that time, Mark and Andy had managed to wring most of my angst out of me. We were all laughing and joking as usual, although Racheet was being awfully serious when talking to Donna. Either way, as far as I knew we were all enjoying ourselves.
Next stop, the Dungeon. Again, things seemed to be fine. Racheet seemed a little distracted at times, but nothing out of the ordinary. For a while. Before long he was dashing about all
over the place, looking stressed and unhappy. At one point I offered him my drink, which he downed before heading off somewhere else, but the next time I offered a drink his reply was something like “what’s the point if all I’m going to do is sit and cry over it?”
Shortly afterwards he whispered some instruction to me that I need not repeat here, suffice to say it was a request that involved some minor amount of social manipulation. However, as he and everyone else knows pretty well, I’m socially inept. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel comfortable doing what he asked, I actually had no idea how to do it. His response, I think, was “pathetic”.
I had little to do with him for the rest of the night, I chose to sit with Andy and talk about angsty things instead. I was - as I am now - still unsure what was troubling Racheet: whether it was still fallout from a week ago or whether there was something new, or even if it was my own incompetance. While talking with Andy I resolved that after the club closed, I’d ask Racheet what was up.
One o’clock came, and I approached him. Before I even got a chance to ask, he grabbed me and said “If you’re going to angst at me or be pathetic any time in the next few days, just don’t.”
My reply: “I was going to ask if you were okay; what the problem was.”
“Don’t.”
At that point, I walked off. There was
nothing I felt that I could do.
What am I doing wrong? Does anyone even know?
I spent so long, last year, talking with him about emotional things; telling him how I felt and letting him help. And I’m so very thankful for it.
But why can’t it happen in reverse? Why can’t I help him?
Am I just not worth his time? Am I really that pathetic?
Now that I think about it, a lot of the times that I’ve been near him when he’s been drunk, he’s given me the impression that he thinks I’m pathetic.
Is that the truth of what he feels, does he feel that all the time but only sometimes bother to come out and say it?
Does he even realise how much, no matter how much it’s true, it hurts me to be told?
I want to give up, now. I want to stop caring, I want to not speak to him and not answer the phone and not see him.
But I don’t know if that’s what he really wants, and I don’t know if it’s what I really want.
Why can’t life be simple again? Why can’t people be the people I think they are?
How come everyone can read me so easily, like a book, but I’m so bad at knowing how others feel?
Right at the point that, more than ever, I need to believe and trust in my friends and have them keep me happy and sane, they’re either angsty themselves or just walk all over anything I try to do?
But that’s selfish, isn’t it? I learnt before, three years ago, about being selfish. How I shouldn’t care about myself as much as I care for others, how if I can make others happy at the price of only my own happiness, I should.
But this works differently. I want to make everyone’s unhappiness mine so that everyone can be happy, but I can’t anymore. All I’m doing is making myself unhappy without improving things for anyone else.
Thanks… thankyou to anyone who sat through all of that. I’m sorry for taking up your time so selfishly, but it does me a world of good just to realise that someone out there might read it and understand a part of what’s going on inside my head.
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October
Once more, yesterday, the world attempted to rekindle another piece of summer. Once more, today, haze fills the sky and chokes the city. I used to go through life longing for the return of summer, but I don’t think I’ll do that anymore. The next summer will be my last here - and I hate that. Maybe it’s irrational to want to stay with my friends forever, but can’t help it - that’s what I feel; and that’s what makes me, deep down, loathe the coming summer. But I can’t let it show. I have to enjoy this little time we have left to the best of my ability. I have to live 100% of myself, each and every passing day…
Edit: The new ISS machines in the Physics building are weird! They’ve finally upgraded them to machines that can actually handle running WinXP, which is good… They’ve also given them 15-inch TFTs, which are okay, but they’ve kept the original huge desktop cases so the screens look really tiny compared to the computers! ^_^;
StumbledUpon today: http://snowflakes.lookandfeel.com/