Blog Archive — Page 66
This is part of my blog, which I have long since stopped maintaining. The page has been preserved in case its content is of any interest. Please go back to the homepage to see the current contents of this site.
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Half-Life 2
Gamers of a sensitive disposition may wish to turn away now.
“Best FPS ever” my arse. From my experience so far, I have to say I found Doom far more fun. And I’m not talking about Doom 3 here. And HL2 Deathmatch? Excuse me while I play something that doesn’t have broken sprites and models and BSODs whenever you Alt-Tab.
Back to UT2004 for me. Oh look - it has vehicles, better weapons, better maps, is much more fun, has proper Linux support, and actually sodding works.
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BSc Procrastination
It’s now been nearly a week since I went to Uni. In this time, I’ve missed five lectures, a compulsory problem class, and three hours of compulsory labs. Up until this morning, I’d also done no work at all in that time. If there was a degree course in procrastination, I’d have an Honours. But sadly I’m doing a Physics course, so the next two weeks are going to be insane with work. The holidays are in sight, though - only two weeks left…
Also, my apologies for the lack of updates recently. An awful lot has been going on in my head, but since turning this blog into the usual angsty self-loathing LiveJournal fodder is going to achieve nothing, I decided not to publish two of the planned entries. Anyway, despite all the mental weirdness of last week, I think I’m recovered now. (Four days of oversleeping and overindulgence equals much regained sanity for me!)
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Obvious, but Still a Discovery
Chasing impossible dreams is the only thing left to do once all the achievable ones fade away…
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Another Prize-Winning Day
I first woke up this morning at 9am. By 1pm, I’d got used to the headache enough that I could be comfortable if I lay completely still. It’s now after 4pm, I’ve missed my compulsory Photonics labs, and I’m used to it enough that I can sit still at a computer. It still really hurts to move…
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Once More with a Lack of Feeling
Yet again, another night of 13 hours’ sleep. Yet again, I wake up and gaze out of the window at the sun setting behind the trees. I guess that, slowly but surely, this much rest must be letting me recover. At least, I hope so. If not, I must try to resist my sudden urge to hibernate. Winter, as always, brings its own new set of wonderful emotions and feelings - and yet, I do long for the sunshine again…
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Still Managing to Survive
It looks like friends, fun and 13 hours of sleep let me recover from Monday’s weirdness. It’s for the best. I feel much better now, and nothing’s really changed apart from that.
Today taught me an important lesson though - films that you love are best seen without an audience. With luck I managed to block out most of the two hours’ worth of comments, so Nausicaa hasn’t quite been ruined for me yet.
Plus, Anime Society angst continues. It’s slowly beginning to dawn on me, though - although I’ve been effectively removed from my committee position without any kind of vote or AGM and the society’s been pretty much taken over by one person who’s appointing committee positions as he sees fit - I really don’t think I care. Everything comes to an end sooner or later, and maybe it’s best that this dream of mine ends now rather than lasting any longer.
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Tiny Shards of my Fractured Reality
“Forever has gone, today is infinity…
and yesterday’s dreams, today a faint memory…
forever has gone, today is infinity…
it’s time to move on, forever has gone…
Two eyes in the face of billions of voices,
I saw the flashing lights move further in the distance…
(the) Dream was not meant to be.
…And outside these walls I have created,
the sound of stars colliding echoes in the distance,
and dreams - they shatter…
Let it break into a thousand pieces, let the wind blow it all away
Dreams are fragile but our hearts grow stronger from the memories…“
— Lia - DisintegrationI’m sitting here, as I have been most of the afternoon, refreshing the LiveJournal friends page of a ficticious character in the hope that other ficticious characters will write interesting things. And this is something that really matters to me - I’ve chosen to spend my free time today being bored as a ficticious character rather than being productive as myself.
This is pretty symptomatic of my whole attitude to life recently. I have discovered myself to be totally lazy - I should have written a few e-mails to people at work at the beginning of October, and it’s now nearly reached December without me having written them. Likewise, I should have set about finding a new housemate back in October, or September even. But no, it’s nearly December and I’ve done nothing. And the start of December used to be a time of year I really looked forward to - advent calendars and Christmas decorations and all the rest. But now, it just seems like it’s nothing special.
I have a lot of Uni work to be doing, but somehow I just end up sitting here, quietly, with a blank mind. Listening to music isn’t enjoyable anymore, reading isn’t enjoyable anymore, cooking isn’t enjoyable anymore, the internet isn’t enjoyable anymore, games aren’t enjoyable anymore, anime is barely enjoyable anymore. Just about thhe only things that seem to be able to focus my mind on something other than blankness are my friends, or pointless immersion in self-psychoanalysis. In fact, “friends” may even be too broad a category. As time goes on, living here, I think I’m slowly drifting away from my friends back home…
It’s getting towards the point where I’m not even sure if I have a core personality or not. So much of my time is spent pretending to be someone else, with different emotions and a different personality and i
n some cases in a different world, that I might be losing my grip on the nebulous concept of “me”. I think Richard said it best over MSN this afternoon - I have no problem getting in-character, but I’ve yet to master the ability to get out-of-character again.
Then again, I’m not sure if it matters or not. I suppose it’s the eventual result of having the kind of philosophy that I have - the realisation that a desire for self-identity is meaningless. There’s an extent to which it doesn’t matter whether or not “Ian” exists, because there’s no real reason why Ian should be any more important than any of the other personalities that I have buzzing around my mind. Perhaps, after all, it means that the philosophy that I believed to be so useful was ultimately self-destructive. But if I give that up now - even if it was possible to, which I’m unsure of - I’d lose so much. The story which I hope will be a lasting memory of my life will suddenly become a mere unimportant dream, and I will lose so many of the fictional people I’ve grown to love - I’ll lose Malachai, I’ll lose Kotori, and most importantly of all I’ll lose Tsuki.
If I were to lose that much, I don’t know what I’d be left with. No dreams, and no emotions… Maybe I’d become hard-working, or reliable, but I’d have lost the most important thing of all - love. Love, both for other people and for my dreams
, has always caused pain and always will. But it’s something that can’t be given up, no matter what. It’s the one single important thing that makes life worth living.
So, in the end, even though it means I have days when I feel like this, I can’t give up the part of myself that loves and dreams. I have to take the bad times when they come, along with the good times. Just like everyone else, when I think about it. It’d be foolish for me to think that I could have a life where only good things exist.
I’m back where I started, and yet at the end of this little outpouring of my mind. I apologise to anyone who’s sat and read their way though all of this - in a way I don’t want people to read it, don’t want people to know… But I learnt once before - the hard way - the results of hiding emotions that are so powerful they dominate my mind. It feels good to have written something like this… Now I just have to hope that I can get away with having written it, and not have things change around me in unwelcome ways because of it…
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Wondering What's Real
Only a few days after the whole Malachai thing, it looks like Kotori is strongly vying for a position as an anthropomorphised part of my mind. At least 12 hours and an overnight sleep since the game ended, I’m still thinking like her…
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New Entries in "Understanding Minds" File
I made quite a few notes on characters’ behaviour in the World of Darkness game on Thursday, and I’ve just got around to adding them to my file of notes on character and player psychology.
I felt it was probably best to put these notes online for players to read, and argue with if you feel that there’s something I’ve got wrong.
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This Small Moment's Ending
And so, another week finishes… Rarely have I been as glad to finish a week as I have been this time. So much of the last week was spent working, and although I still technically have a backlog of stuff to do, for now it feels like a few days of peacefulness are stretching ahead of me.
For now, though - and I don’t know why - I’m feeling wide awake and longing for something to do. I’ll probably go and write up some more notes for Dreaming Awake.
Also, the AvP film is great ^_^ Sooooo cheesy!