Progress And A Return

The day has been long and unusual in respect to my waking at hours akin to those maintained by the rest of the population. Also of note today was my productivity with respect to the amount of content I covered during the eight hours of this solar rotation consumed by the digestion of information related to programming. Of late I have been quite sad, however I appear to have ascended somewhat from the lowly murk of weeks prior.

After three months of solidarity, I have come to the decision that Mac OS X is not the operating system in which I prefer to spend time. For this reason, as well as  my recent purchase of Grand Theft Auto IV I have undertaken re-partitioning of my hard drive and a re-installation of Windows Vista. While there are certain Mac users in my vicinity that might seek to render snide remarks about the superiority of OS X, I prey these factions shall remain ever silenced by virtue of the fact that OS X is still present on my machine and shall remain so for as long as I feel the need to explore it.

My course is going well, today I finished the last of the outstanding units in this module and will spend the next few days writing an application which will embody each of the concepts I have studied in order to make me aware of the nuances not visible when code is examined in isolation as it so frequently is in the study of programming. Christchurch City Libraries is having a book sale over the enxt few days that I hope to attend in order to procure some books or DVDs at a rate more fiscally comfortable than could be found when dealing by commercial channels.

I got a craving for Liz Phair today which I elected to satisfy, however when I did this I did not anticipate the rising of sentiments that would rise within me upon hearing the melody for “Why Can’t I”, alas I listen again and resign such thoughts to places less focal.

 

And now, before the night recedes further into day, I shall depart to sleep in preparation for the morrow, where I shall write once more in code, verse and word

Returning & Reinventing

It’s 3:32pm and i have only just reached the summit of my consciousness for the day. As I sit here reflecting upon the recent happenings of my universe, it behooves me to think of that which roars, and of code, which I have not written in a capacity productive to my training for some time. In scribe, I pause for want of fried products, at the forefront of such biological demands is that which would have me consume a large quantity of fries which are to be procured from McDonnell’s.

The lion sits upon my mind, it has returned and I fee a sense of contentment of sorts, despite its partiality, it’s presence is reassuring for some reason.

I am considering employing the services of an external to reduce the amount of cranial coating I possess by way of shaving. By the end of such an devour it is hoped that I would posses a crop which is easily maintained while enhancing my rugged good looks.

Yesterday I ventured out of the lair to retrieve those products of an organic nature which are necessary to sustain my respiration. Of the products purchased I am most pleased with the “red flame” grapes, while these morsels fail to live up to their namesake insofar as their relative inflammability, I will overlook this in acknowledgment of the more poignant trait of deliciousness which are exuded en masse by these delicious fruits. Unfortunately for me the price of such grapes is usually exorbitant and so the prospects for future consumption look bleak at best, however I shall buy them whenever an opportunity appears within a context of suitable thrift.

While much more has happened in my existence of late, my ability to verbalize these things in a sufficiently creative manner is somewhat constructed by my lack of sleep, hence I shall cease my literary ventures for the meanwhile and bid you adieu.

Death At Shocking Frequency

Of late, shock protectors in our house have been tripping and cutting power to the lounge and kitchen area. While I do understand that this is a necessary safety feature, and am grateful to not receive the shock being contained, I am somewhat annoyed at the frequency with which this occurs. If this were an event that just had an inconveniently high frequency, then it would not behove the recantation I have afforded it, which itself alludes to the greater significance of this event, especially as it petunias to network infrastructure.

The router and modem are plugged into a powerpoint on one of the circuits affected by the trip and so were violently removed from service. This alone is enough to pose risk to sensitive electronics such as routers, however the situation was exacerbated by it being unplugged and replugged again while trying to isolate the device that caused the shock protector to trip. I may be mistaken about the cause of the device aliments, I am however certain that the device no longer boots correctly which suggests one of the following may have occurred:

• Corrupt Flash
• Inconsistent hardware state

Both of these things could have occurred as a result of repeated disconnections, or the router receiving power in either quantities or places where it should not. Whatever the cause, I now have a very sick router that I hope a simple re-flash of the firmware will fix

Pedagogy, Domesticity, Stases

Today I feel average, but I do rest upon the cusp of good. I have spent this day ingesting the educational offerings of my course and appeasing that which behoves appeasement. Of all forces in the universe, the one which I detest with the greatest passion and rhetoric is domesticity. While performing the tasks that constitute this cesspool of discontent is not something from which pleasure can be derived, I do find a certain degree of contentment in the knowledge that, for the meantime at least, this most most awful requirement has been satisfied, and those who seek to decry me as negligent thereunto shall be branded as hypocrites by virtue of the state of my crockery.

And now, I am torn between pragmatism and desire; The latter would have me vegetate with some form of audiovisual content while the former would prefer that I return to my studies as this is the most beneficial course of action for the longer term. For now I shall let the conflict continue and remain in this stases of juxtaposition

Growing Up

I am me
Not the one you want me to be
I am the one who sits.

Disheveled hair
Without a care
Eyes glazed
Built of fear, ambition and very little sleep.
Caffeine is what fuels me

Once perhaps, you did know best
Set free, ’tis my task to mould the rest
I will not berate you, nor cast you aside
I will ask, let your life be yours
Let mine be mine

Life and Finding What You Don’t Know You Need

Today was a valuable day with respect to my introspection and internal self-awareness. Of late I have been feeling sad and confused because I don’t feel I am progressing fast enough toward my goals in life. As part of dealing with this, I identified that a key for the feeling I’m having was the fact that I was not enrolled in any course, and therefore was not progressing toward employment, which has always been one of my goals in life, and the one I feel most strongly affects my self-perception.

Today I enrolled in an MCP course. This certification will afford me some leverage into the job market and is thus critical to my greater life plan. There is merit in the assertion that my enrollment in this course should represent progress toward the aforementioned goal and should therefore trigger feelings of happiness or contentment, unfortunately for those daring enough to make such assertions, reality shall not oblige them and I sit now feeling great sadness and insecurity.

I am currently incapable of beginning work on the aforementioned course by virtue of the stymied that is the enrollment processing process. I hope that the commencement of active work will behoove a better state within me.

24 Inch Reflections: Mac vs PC vs Smurf

It’s been a while since I posted, this time however my hiatus was not fueled by a creative lethargy, but by a state of flux surrounding my computing environment. Thanks to a financial windfall, I found myself capable of purchasing a new box and after much deliberation I finally decided to invest in an iMac 24″”. Its been roughly a week since my purchase and aside from a few OS switches and re-installations, I am still very happy with my decision.

In terms of hardware this box has easily met any demand I have thrown at it including achieving a respectable 5.6 WEI rating and providing an excellent experience while playing Flight Simulator X.

The transition to Mac has been an interesting one, because it has allowed me to experience the Apple platform as participant rather than external observer.

I would certainly support the statement that Apple have a user experience that is significantly more polished than that of Microsoft, however i don’t believe it is necessarily superior to the degree that a Mac sycophant might suggest. To make such claims fairly, one must take into account the higher degree of work required to support the heterogeneous platform Microsoft maintain by comparison to the tightly controlled homogenous platform Apple have developed.

Given the complexity of maintaining reasonable parity of experience across such heavily varied hardware configurations, it is not unreasonable to expect less of Microsoft with respect to overall user experience by comparison to Apple for whom my expectations are greater given the level of control they have over hardware and the company’s reputation for product design and intuitive user experience

Evidence of this more polished user experience can be found in the subtle use of animation to give user feedback, as well as the vastly simpler “click-and-drag” application installation experience which appears to be the standard for the platform.

One disadvantage of this approach is that there is often a lot less user feedback about the precise changes being made to the system during software installation; while basic feedback is provided, if an installer were to crash, leaving the system in an inconsistent state, I’m not sure I could reliably assess or repair the damage as easily as I could with Windows.

While Mac OS has a good user experience in general, I have noticed that Apple do take a less aggressive approach to security and user awareness of security threats. This more relaxed approach is reflected in the lax configuration of the firewall which will accept all connections by default. This would be less concerning if Apple took a more aggressive approach to making users aware of security as a concept, however as it stands I suspect there are many iMacs running with this firewall configuration in combination with users who are unaware of the concept of a firewall, or the need for computer security in general. It appears negligent for a major platform vendor to ship with a poor firewall configuration while also proudly touting the security and stability of their platform and UNIX lineage.

With the hardware upgrade comes an upgrade to a 24″” display. This is the biggest display I have ever owned, and for all the criticism I have just leveraged at Apple I can not find fault with the quality and clarity of their monitors. I anticipate that this monitor shall provide ample screen real-estate for years to come, although given my shortsightedness and the rapid pace of change in the field of computing, it is highly likely that my prediction will prove untrue.

In summary, I am very satisfied with the purchase I made and slightly less satisfied, but still generally happy with Mac OS X 10.6. While I am not running Windows now, I anticipate that this may change when Windows 7 becomes generally available, but there is an equal possibility that my emersion in the Mac platform may veto the aforementioned change.

Transactional Discontent

When one considers that I am destined to be the next evil overlord of the peoples, provinces and properties that populate this planet we call Earth, the prospect of understanding my displeasure toward the concept of limitation becomes somewhat easier, but in case you are one of those people for whom reason and logic are foreign concepts, and for the sake of extending this post I shall elaborate on this point.

The ethos of one who attempts to acquire a global dictatorship is one which centres around control and the freedom to use that control for whatever ends I deem appropriate based entirely upon the sway of my whim at any given moment in time. I do not currently posses this control due to some constraints placed upon me by the existing establishment with respect to both my physical capability and freedom to act.

This afternoon one ramification of these constraints was thrust upon me electronically. While attempting to make a purchase for which I had entered all of the correct authentication codes I was greeted with the message “over sys limit” which is EFT parlance for

“Even though this is your money, and it is in your account, we aren’t going to let you dispense it at your whim in such large amounts, just in case you aren’t actually yourself and are somebody who is not yourself and therefore are also somebody who is somebody else”

After a quick verbal exchange with a bank-related demand satisfaction minion it was made clear to me that this arbitrary limit was part of their grand scheme and could not be usurped by incantations upon any given keypad, nor by sacrifice to a pagan deity.

I left the proprietor sans his proprietary bounty, but not before making a vowel to return after the sun hath twice circumnavigated this orb. With the benefit of forewarning my return shall see me capable of leveraging the necessary fiscal resources to successfully quench my purchasing desires.

Now You’re Gone: My Thoughts

I have just listened to Basshunter’s album Now You’re Gone in it’s entirety and as I expected it is largely filled with the kind of dance-pop that the forthcoming generation associates with dance music. While I do understand this from a marketing perspective, it’s sad to think that this will be many young people’s introduction to dance and electronic music in general because it lowers the bar considerably when compared with the older stables of dance music like Alice Deejay, Delirium and The Prodigy, which are experiences I feel no fan of dance music should be without.

The commercial bias of the album causes one to quickly become restless and irritated, however it is because of this mass-market sound that the few tracks on the album that escape this mould are accentuated more than they might otherwise have been.

Tracks I Can Stand:

1. Russia Project

2. In Her Eyes

3. Camilla

These are only initial impressions, so things may change in the future, while the album doesn’t appear to be anything special, I think Basshunter has some potential. Hopefully he can escape the mass-market dance pop sound in the future.

Paralysis and Fear

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m feeling tired, confused and emotionally fragile, I’m not sure if I want to be a software developer anymore, I’m not sure if I can, I’m not sure what I’d do if I wasn’t, I’m not sure how it is I can justify all these years of apparently wasted energy, or even if I really feel like being alive right now.

For some reason I bled a lot today from both my nose and my foot which it appears I cut without actually feeling anything at all, this is one of the benefits of having poor circulation.

I’m so confused about my life and its really beginning to depress me, and paralyse me, I’m not sure how, where or if I can move from here.