[entre chien et loup]

here is where you grace the nameless

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:33:36 GMT

I've been meaning to write here for a few days, but I've had some kind of nonspecific cold-y flu-y thing that I'm just starting to get over. Anyways, I've kept in reasonably good spirits, and I thought I'd share some information on what I'm going to be doing, both in the near future and next year.

First of all, I've applied to do two courses with the Open University, who I've studied with several times in the past. Starting in February, I'll be studying the short course Start listening to music; this should provide me with some background in music theory that I've been lacking in the past, and plus it should be a pretty fun subject to study. I've loved music all my life, and I think it'd be interesting to learn about new approaches to listening to it.

In May, I'll be taking Digital worlds: designing games, creating alternative realities, which I'm really looking forward to; having been into games in a big way for the better part of two decades, this covers game culture, design, and theory, along with having practical applications. According to friends that are either studying degrees in the subject or actually working in the games industry (fuzzylu, bluewoozle, I'm looking at you here), it looks like a good course, plus I believe you get to keep the software -- Game Maker Pro -- at the end of it. I have some crazy idea of getting into indie game design, but whether that's more than a pipe dream at this point remains to be determined.

That's not the end of the courses I'm planning to take. I've got in touch with Red Tape Studios, who I studied a course with before (though I was unable to complete it due to circumstances beyond my control); I've applied to re-do the course on Computer Music Production -- basically an introduction to Logic Pro 8 -- I was unable to complete previously, along with the NCFE DJ skills course. Both are portfolio-based and you receive a certificate at the end, which I think would give me a great sense of achievement, as well as something tangible to express my skills. I've applied for two even shorter courses at Red Tape, though they aren't listed on the website, only in the printed prospectus they sent me: one is on Keyboard and Music Theory Skills, which would be great as I've been making music for years now and I only have the vaguest notion of theory -- and I sure as hell can't play a keyboard. The other is called 'Mix Surgery', and involves ways of using Pro Tools and Logic to achieve a specific sound. Seeing as I still master everything in Cool Edit Pro (now Adobe Audition, but I still use the old version), I could probably make some progress here.

It's also worth mentioning at this point that I've finally put something up on electricdog.tv; it's not much, but it's better than the 'coming soon' page that's been there for years, or the cryptic message I had up; I forget which was more current. Anyway, mattlazycat, a good friend of mine and an awesome designer to boot, recommended I take a look at Blueprint CSS to make a better site; this seems to be a simple and elegant way to make a fairly simple site design quickly, and it looks promising -- I just hope it's not beyond my ability to learn how to best use it. I did initially try browsing ThemeForest at the suggestion of another friend, but I couldn't find one that suited my needs, though I was prepared to pay. I eventually settled on slightly reworking a free theme I found elsewhere; it'll do for now, I suppose.

I've also set up a new website for my music on BandCamp. I'll probably make an announcement of this in a post of its own, but I wanted to mention it anyway; this is almost certainly going to be the main source for new music from me for the forseeable future. Everything on there -- and, according to mikosquirrel, I'm hella productive, though putting things out at the rate I do feels normal for me -- is free of charge to download in a wide variety of formats, and everything is issued under a Creative Commons license. Thanks must also go to realityclinic and shirosirius for allowing me to pillage their Flickr accounts for cover art.

Another thing to mention, although I'm planning to make a post about this on its own, I've recently rekindled an interest in Taoism, and the martial arts, particularly Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong. I've got quite a number of books on these and related subjects (including the Confucian 'classics'), and without going into too much detail, it's influenced my thinking quite a lot. There is a lot to like in Taoism, for me, and it's something I've had an interest in for many years; many texts and periods of Chinese history point towards a syncretic unity of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, and indeed these three seem far more complementary than contradictory. Anyway, I'll go into more detail on this at some point; I just wanted to give mention to it.

Finally, I might be a bit scarce on the internets for the next couple of weeks. I have a hell of a lot going on; tonight ahsha is arriving and staying here for a few days -- I've not seen him in about 5 years(!) so it should be good. Next Wednesday I'm out in town as usual, then on the Thursday my mum and stepdad are visiting for the day, to bring some stuff, do some shopping, and generally just so we can spend time together; on Friday another friend's visiting for the weekend, the Tuesday after that I'm seeing my occupational therapist, Wednesday is town again, then on the Friday I'm planning to go visit kyu_diary and imperial_wolf. The weekend after that, tungro is meant to be visiting; I've not seen him in a long time either, and I'm really looking forward to it. The weekend after that, if I'm still in Sheffield, I'll be seeing friends, and once that's over I'll be going to my folks' for 2 or 3 weeks for Xmas/New Year stuffs. On top of that, I have a bunch of games to be getting on with as well as a lot to read, so the majority of my free time is going to be occupied -- though no doubt pleasantly, I hasten to add.

"We will reach out to the stars."

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 23:52:00 GMT

[It's] about going back to space, because it's waiting for us, and it's where we're meant to be.
-- Warren Ellis, from his introduction to Orbiter

Schrödinger's Dog - Orbit

(2009)

Inspired by both Clint Mansell's excellent Moon soundtrack and Jon Hallur's work for the sci-fi MMORPG EVE Online, Orbit is began life as an experiment in downtempo dubstep but quickly evolved into a two-part minimal/ambient epic, running to nearly 20 minutes in total. The sound is sparse yet evocative, with sweeping synths providing atmosphere and shuffling, evolving beats giving a sense of unease. Ethereal melodies float in and out of the music, but nothing stays exactly the same for long when you are in ORBIT.

Direct download: 31mb .zip

[4shared] [Megaupload] [RapidShare] [archive.org]

Sometimes, when you work on creative things, something turns out to be really special, maybe even a highlight of your career. For me, ORBIT is one of those things.

I'd write more, but I'm very tired. A few quick links: atomic traveller has freeware algorithmic music generators; moonbell creates generative sound from images of the moon's surface; Digital Expressionism has copyleft fractal art, which formed the basis of ORBIT's cover; making music hacks your hearing; Nicolas Fournel has some interesting music and sound tools; and @RichardDevine is where I got a lot of these links from. On a more thematic tack, Space Quotes and Space Quotations have a lot of things to say about why space is important, the spirit of which very much informed the creation of ORBIT.

"The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow."

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:59:21 GMT

As my prayers became more intense and deeper, I had less and less to say. At last I was completely silent. I transformed, which is probably an even greater contradiction to talking; I transformed into someone listening. At first, I thought to pray was to talk. But I learned that to pray is not just to be silent, but to listen. It is like this: To pray does not mean to listen to oneself talking. To pray is to become silent, and be silent and wait, until the one who prays can hear God.
     -- Søren Kierkegaard

It is difficult for a person who is too materially affected to understand the personal nature of the Supreme Absolute Truth. [...] Consequently, they consider the Supreme to be impersonal. And because they are too materially absorbed, the conception of retaining their personality after liberation from matter frightens them. When they are informed that spiritual life is also individual and personal, they become afraid of becoming persons again, and so they naturally perfer a kind of merging into the impersonal void.
     -- Srila Prabhupada, Bhagavad-Gita As It Is (4.10, purport)

God is the exalted father, and the longing for the father is the root of all religion.
     -- Sigmund Freud

[Bhishma] is saying that both theistic and non-theistic can lead to salvation; the critical consideration is the sincerity with which they are practiced—and that they are pursued with an ardent desire to attain the Supreme. So whether we are talking of [...] Buddhism, or [...] Vaishnavism, we can see that the wise Bhishma counsels that we should have respect for all such paths to Truth—for each leads, in good time, to the Supreme destination.
     -- Steven J. Rosen, From Nothingness to Personhood: A Collection of Essays on Buddhism from a Vaishnava-Hindu Perspective

If I saw no signs of a divinity, I would fix myself in denial. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I would repose peacefully in faith. But seeing too much to deny Him, and too little to assure me, I am in a pitiful state, and I would wish a hundred times that if a God sustains nature it would reveal Him without ambiguity.
     -- Blaise Pascal, Pensées

In summary, our species' awareness of inevitable death placed such a strong pressure on our cerebral (cognitive) evolutions that at some point during the latter stages of hominid evolution, nature selected those lineages which posessed a built-in predisposition to believe in or perceive an alternate reality, one that supersedes the limitations of this finite physical realm which can only offer us pain, suffering, and ultimately death. And so, a new reality was born in man, one which compelled our species to believe itself transcendent, to imagine that we are more, perhaps, than we actually are.
     -- Matthew Alper, The 'God' Part of the Brain

I didn't expect to be writing on this subject again so soon -- my last was just over two weeks ago -- but there's been a number of developments. Two of the books I've got most recently have been instrumental in my new thinking on the matter -- albeit in divergent directions -- and I've quoted both above: Steven J. Rosen's From Nothingness to Personhood: A Collection of Essays on Buddhism from a Vaishnava-Hindu Perspective, and The 'God' Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper. (Admittedly, the former is a little dry, and the latter is perhaps a touch oversimplified, but I digress.) To explain both trains of thought, I need to concentrate on each separately, and detail my thoughts and realisations in relation to them.

Firstly, I had read Rosen's Hidden Glory of India, an introduction to Gaudiya Vaishnavism (which had been given to me by a member of ISKCON; one of the few books I've had from them not by Prabhupada) and found it interesting and well-written; it made reference to From Nothingness to Personhood, and I decided to do a search online to see if I could get hold of a copy. In so doing, I found Bhaktivedanta Library Services, based in Belgium, who had this book and many others on similar subjects -- and, crucially, they weren't all by Prabhupada. I don't mean to defame his work in any way, but it's difficult to get a wide perspective if you only read the works of one author. (They also provided a link to Vanipedia, which looks interesting; I've yet to peruse it extensively, though.)

Anyway, I ordered about 6 or 7 books in total, though something compelled me to order both a japa mala made from neem wood, and a string of neck beads made from ocimum tenuiflorum, more commonly referred to as tulasi, and according to Wiki "Tulsi malas are considered to be auspicious for the wearer, and believed to put them under the protection of Vishnu or Krishna. They have such a strong association with Vaishnavas, that followers of Vishnu have long been called "those who bear the tulasi round the neck"." It is also referred to as Tulasi Devi.

(As a further note, I've ordered some new Buddhist books as well; given that Wisdom Books are having trouble delivering here, I had a look at Inward Path again; they offer books and CD's where you only have to pay the postage, so for less than £10 -- and, admittedly, up to 3 months' wait as they're sent surface mail from Malaysia -- I've ordered 12 books and 3 CD's, and I'm really looking forward to their arrival. I've had a few Taoist and Buddhist books from other sources too, but they're not really pertinent to this post.)

The only book I've read, of the ones I ordered -- admittedly the order only arrived on Thursday -- is Rosen's From Nothingness to Personhood, but it made me realise a number of things. Firstly, that there was less antagonism and indeed more compatability between Vaishnavism and Buddhism. I have found these two traditions to be the most believable of those I've directly encountered; Taoism, too, has made a lot of sense to me for many years, but I've never been to a Taoist shrine or met a Taoist monk, for instance. Related to that, it occured to me that although I cannot work out if I believe in God or not, if I decide at some point that I do, I believe he is as described in the Vedic literature of ancient India. (As an aside, I have over half of Srimad Bhagavatam now, and I hope to get the rest in the next two or three weeks; I've started reading it from the beginning, but it's pretty heavy going.) This is as opposed to how God is described in Abrahamic religions, for instance.

I've also begun using the japa mala I ordered to chant a Vaishnava mantra (Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare) which I have found, if nothing else, to be calming. With relevance to the Freud quote above -- and to Prabhupada's, as although I don't see myself as massively materialistic, I have trouble conceptualising God as a person; and yes, the idea of dissolving or merging into something greater holds more appeal than maintaining this personality, even in the best of conditions -- I feel that perhaps whatever desire I have for a relationship with Krishna (God) stems from my unsatisfactory (at best) relationship with my biological father. Something to ponder, at least.

Regarding the other book most influential on my recent thought, Alper's The 'God' Part of the Brain, this presents a more existentially troubling view, and yet one that makes sense. Basically it posits that belief in God, the afterlife, and so on, is just an evolutionary measure to allow humans to function in the face of inevitable death. I haven't got as far as his conclusions, which may yet provide some hope, but if this is the case -- and it's certainly persuasively argued -- it brings up all manner of worrisome thoughts. While it has also been well-argued that it's possible to act well without any religious aspect -- interestingly, note also on the same blog a post revealing that Buddhism is the fastest-growing religion in England’s jails -- if there is no spiritual dimension at all, no reward or punishment for good or bad deeds -- be that heaven or hell, a judgmental deity, karma, or anything else -- it decontextualises morality to an extent, and leads to a more nihilistic view in which one may as well do whatever is most pleasurable, seeing as death is inevitable and could come at any time.

Furthermore, it also suggests that at death, one's memories, thoughts, and other contents of the mind will simply vanish along with the body; in my case at least, I have no intention -- being gay -- of having children, and in probability all my other relatives will die before I do, so unless I achieve something great or do something terrible I will likely be completely forgotten in a fairly short time. It's been suggested that the only thing of real value is art, and even then, such a small percentage of works of art endure beyond the lifetime of their creator, let alone for significantly longer than that, that it's no more a vicarious means of immortality than any other endeavour. With modern people I suppose it's more likely that information will be preserved about them online for a while, but given how quickly the internet changes and the regularity with which sites disappear or lose popularity, there's no certitude in that either.

Before I go on I should point out two things: first, that The 'God' Part of the Brain makes a good case for explaining the terms 'religion' and 'spirituality': 'Religion' involves shared ritualistic behaviours like church/temple attendance, various customs, and other social and ideological features. 'Spirituality' on the other hand involves states of consciousness involving (for example) awe, serenity, and joy; as practices such as meditation, chanting, prayer, and ritual can evoke these states, it is often tied to 'religious' experience too. This, finally, makes sense of someone describing themselves as the cliché "spiritual but not religious", and also opens up the rather saddening possibility of "religious but not spiritual". To me it seems, by these definitions, that spirituality is the reward of religion; spirituality by itself is its own reward.

The second point I'd like to make, and also quite readily described with one of aerowolf's beloved 2x2 matrices, is that I've been giving Pascal's Wager serious consideration; things such as the existence of God cannot now or in a presently conceivable future be determined, so it stands to reason that if God exists, and one could derive benefit from such belief and incur lesser or no loss in doing so, then it is pragmatic to hold such a belief. (This has also made me want to dig out Immanuel Kant's somewhat impenetrable Critique of Pure Reason.)

All this being said, I think there is generally more advantage in religion than there is trouble. Even in the worst case scenario where it's all artifice, it brings people together, and most if not all religions emphasise being a 'good person'; Eastern religions in particular often focus on training the mind (and sometimes body), which can only lead to improvement. That being said, there are dangers in religion too; in terms of groups within my experiences, both Sahaja Yoga and the NKT are at best disingenuous and at worst dangerously cultic. I'm all for acceptance and nonsectarianism but when there is exploitation and misinformation a line has to be drawn. (For a more mainstream example, I find a number of aspects of Islam make me uncomfortable, but I don't pretend any familiarity with that religion.)

A final thing to mention is that both Eastern religion and Western secularism propose reasons for someone being interested in religious matters. In the East, it's said a person's karma can manifest itself in tendencies towards certain interests, among other things. In science, it's known as a genetic predisposition. I often wonder, if I had less free time, would these things play on my mind so much? On the other hand, that same free time affords me the opportunity to think and write on these topics, and perhaps even make some progression towards understanding. I may not know why I'm here -- there may, ultimately, be no 'why' -- but in trying to understand who I am, I can hopefully begin to understand things common to all human experience.

At last, to this end I'm also approaching things from a different perspective; I'm thinking of re-reading some Castaneda, and I've dug out some of my old books by Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson et al. -- damnit, why are they all dead? -- and (having glanced over the shelves) I may get back into some Kafka, Camus, and Hesse. The kind of stuff that makes me think, at any rate, and may provide some bulwark of comfort against existential/ontological fear.

[edit: A couple of things that I forgot to mention. Firstly, for a multitude of reasons, I'm considering seeing if it'd be practical to maintain a vegetarian diet. Secondly, I realised something that at least partially validates Buddhism's claims that suffering is caused by desire; when you want something, whatever that may be, you tend to imbue it with all good qualities, and when you get it, it invariably does not possess any or all of those qualities, and is thus disappointing -- and can make you wonder why you wanted it so badly in the first place. As a hypothetical corrolary, things which are spiritual in nature are exempt from this; being as they are not the same as material items, they are able to have good qualities which do not deteriorate and can live up to expectations. As a conclusion it would seem to make more sense to have spiritual goals than physical/material ones.]

aroo

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:02:19 GMT

Although it's been something I've been into for more years than I care to remember, I haven't really looked into werewolfy stuff in any great detail for some time -- with the exception of the RPG Werewolf: The Forsaken, I suppose. However, there's been a few items of related news recently, and I also delved into Amazon for a number of books on the subject, so I figured I'd talk about that here.

On the gaming front, I've got a few more supplements for Forsaken, and it really is an excellent game. I'd be happy to either run or play it at some point, so hopefully I'll get the chance. More to the point, though, I managed to track down a second-hand copy of its old World of Darkness counterpart, Werewolf: The Apocalypse; while I already had the second and revised editions of the game, along with maybe 80% or more of the supplements, I'd wanted a copy of the first edition for a while but never got around to doing anything about it, and now I finally have one - it dates from way back in 1991. (I'd also like the revised live-action rules, the Laws of the Wild, but the newer edition of that is still pretty expensive, even second-hand; I guess it's one of the rarer ones to come by.) As I've mentioned previously, I'm hoping to get hold of some more of the old Werewolf supplements, either through PDF or buying off friends.

The other gaming news that probably everyone has heard by now is that the werewolf-like Worgen as playable characters in World of Warcraft has been confirmed, as posted by everyone in the world ever. I used to play World of Warcraft a long time ago, and I quit just before Burning Crusade came out; apparently there's been a ton of improvements, and with this new expansion it looks to be even better -- so I'm finding myself tempted to try it again, although the outlay for the game and all three expansions will likely be steep. That being said, I mean holy crap you can play a werewolf for god's sake. That's enough of an incentive for me at least. There's also a few nice Worgen pictures in the concept art for Cataclysm, which is well worth checking out - though the Werewolf News post has all the Worgen concept art at a substantially higher resolution than the official site, for whatever reason. No word as of yet when the expansion's going to drop, though. (On the subject of art, check out this piece from Jerad Marantz - Creature Spot is a pretty neat art blog as a whole, too.)

Someone posted a link to this (werewolf cupcake! so cute!), and as a result I ended up searching Flickr for photos tagged "werewolf". In amongst all the Twilight related crap, there were a bunch of shots of this rather tasty fellow (sfw, pretty much) which made wading through all the other stuff almost worth it. For moving pictures, although the release date is slipping constantly, Werewolf News again comes up with the goods in the form of the Official Wolfman Trailer, which looks fucking awesome. I've got a few new werewolf movies to keep me occupied in the meantime, though; the first two, Big Bad Wolf and Wild Country, I got based on recommendations, and War Wolves just looked pretty entertaining for a low price - reviews aren't great, to say the least, but even cheesy werewolf flicks can be fun.

In terms of books, I've ordered quite a range (though I'm still waiting on a couple to arrive). Obviously at first I went for the 'classics': Sabine Baring-Gould's 1865 Book of Werewolves, Elliot O'Donnell's Werwolves from 1912, and Montague Summers' 1933 classic, The Werewolf. As for more recent works, a long time ago an ex-partner got me Brad Steiger's rather unimpressive Werewolf Book; more interesting among modern works are Adam Douglas' The Beast Within (which the aforementioned ex had a copy of, but wouldn't give or sell it to me), Leonard R. N. Ashley's Complete Book of Werewolves, and perhaps most interesting of all is The Curse of the Werewolf by Chantal Bourgault du Coudray.

While all of the above are (broadly speaking) non-fiction, I did come across a couple of novels as well. I got one by Russian author Victor Pelevin (described by the Independent as the "Zen Buddhist Will Self of the former Evil Empire"), with the irresistable title of The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, and one that I'm sure I had recommended to me but I can't for the life of me think of where I heard about it, Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar. [edit: completely forgot to link to Lycanthrope Library, a kind of werewolf book review service; one recent entry memorably features a "gun-toting, lycanthropic nun".] I've also had some enjoyable graphic novels on the same subject; I picked up the recent miniseries of Werewolf by Night, with the titular character being an anti-hero at best; I must say I preferred The Astounding Wolf-Man, in which the character uses his abilities for good, a rarity in werewolf stories. The artwork's awesome too; Jason Howard posts some of his work over on deviantART.

It's also worth mentioning that I have a couple of books on Real Actual Wolves that I've got hold of via friends; I have Barry Lopez' seminal Of Wolves and Men, along with The Wolf Almanac by Robert H. Busch, apparently one of the best available on the subject. Finally, I -- perhaps unwisely, from my bank account's point of view at least -- searched eBay for 'werewolf', and found all sorts of interesting things. All I bought, though, was something that immediately caught my eye -- a pair of Tibetan silver (were)wolf head charms, as pictured. The price was low, and as I had a spare silver chain lying around, I've decided to give the other charm to torque_tiger as a little gift.

needles & ink

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:36:45 GMT

Years ago, I used to have a whole bunch of piercings -- in total, I think I had about 6 or 7 -- and I've had two tattoos done as well. Now, at least two years ago, possibly longer, I took out all my piercings for some reason that presently escapes me, and figured that was the end of that.

A few weeks ago, though, I'd been thinking of getting some done again -- partially because friends were doing so -- and I ended up getting both nipples pierced, with these pretty awesome purple titanium captive ball rings. They healed up fine, and I like the way they look and feel. I've been thinking of getting more piercings done, but I can't really decide what; I like the look of snakebites, but I remember when I had a labret piercing before it took quite a long time to heal and was a bit irritating. I'm sure I'll come up with something, anyway, if I decide to get more done.

As for tattoos, this is where I get to show some pictures.

	This is the first tattoo I ever got, about... 7 years ago I think? Possibly longer. I got it done while I was down visiting ruadh in Exeter. It's on the back of my neck (hence it's not easy to take a picture by myself, and my webcam is horrible), and it's the Japanese kanji for 'wolf'. Symbolism's fairly obvious here; in some beliefs, the soul exits/can be removed at the back of the neck, and this is a kind of 'seal' on that. I guess. Also it looks cool.
This one's on my left arm, and I got it about 2 or 3 years ago in Amsterdam. It's Tibetan, and the word is "Rimé"; it means "no sides", "non-partisan" or "non-sectarian", and can be more broadly translated as "without boundaries". It can be most specifically used to refer to a movement in Tibetan Buddhism; more broadly it refers to my attitude towards religion and spirituality; and even more broadly, my views on politics and other conflicts.
	This one was designed for me by Premchaia, and it's probably one of the most simple designs I'm planning to have done. It's Sanskrit for "shanti", meaning simply "peace". It's going to go on my right arm, parallell to the "rimé" tattoo.
This one's going to go on the inside of my right forearm, and it's a little more complicated to explain. It's runic for Fenrir, the monstrous wolf of Norse mythology. In myth, when Fenrir was bound for the third time, he demanded that one of the gods put his hand in the wolf's mouth as a gesture of good faith. Only Týr was up to the task, and as Fenrir struggled, his hand was bitten off. The idea and symbolism of this tattoo is preparedness to make such a sacrifice.
	This is an idea that I've wanted to get done for ages, and I'm planning to get it done on the right side of my chest. It's the Symbol of Torment from the altogether awesome RPG Planescape: Torment; you can see some other folks with real-life tattoos of the same here. Without explaining the plot of the whole game, it was a story that had a lot of significance to me and, as I say, I've wanted to get this one done for a long time. I wasn't able to find a decent reference for it, though, and eventually I managed to get shirosirius to help me with it; he came up with the design you see here, which is pretty much perfect. Out of all of the prospective designs here, this may well be the one I get done first.
This last one comes from deviantART, and was the result of trying to find a decent infinity symbol design. I really like this one, and I'm planning to have it done on the inside of my left arm. I'd originally considered a tat based on Aura's infinity symbol from the .hack series, but I couldn't find a good reference for that; besides, I think I like the one I found on dA better.

Just as a couple of quick links (so I can close some tabs in Firefox), someone recommended to me using the free opensource vector graphics editor Inkscape for tattoo designs; I've downloaded it, but not tried it yet, though I'm told it's pretty good. A good place for designs (requires free registration) is Chopper Tattoo; I'm intending to go through it a bit more thoroughly when I have time.

songs of faith & devotion

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:43:20 GMT

Don't try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.
     -- The Dalai Lama

When you know for yourselves These teachings are beneficial, these teachings are without fault, these teachings would be accepted by the wise, these teachings, when fully taken up, lead to well-being, to ease, you should live embracing those teachings.
     -- The Buddha, Kesamutti Sutta

While Param-Atman is never in doubt, the individual always lives in doubt. Because of this he is always wanting miracles to happen in order to establish his faith. But even if a miracle does happen and his faith is established once, that faith is shaken again and again by subsequent doubts, and he wants fresh and repeated miracles to re-establish it. He fails to realise that he is constantly living in the midst of the most wonderful miracle, the world itself.
     -- Shantanand Saraswati, Good Company

Though each washes equally as water, a well is not a pond, a pond is not a stream or a river, nor is a valley stream or a ditch a sea. As the Tathagata, the world's hero, is free in the Law, all the laws preached by him are also like this. Though preaching at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end all alike effectively wash off the delusions of living beings, the beginning is not the middle, and the middle is not the end. Preaching at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end are the same in expression but different from one another in meaning.
     -- The Buddha, The Sutra of Innumerable Meanings

I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing and ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and recreates. This informing power or spirit is God.
     -- Mahatma Gandhi, Pathway to God

[Prefatory note: This post is a follow-on to previous entries made on Feb 26th and April 26th of this year; it may be of help to the reader to refer to my previous thoughts on the matter, if curious.]

This is a post that I've been meaning to write for at least a couple of months; here, I want to cover two things: firstly, how my thinking on spirituality has progressed in recent times, and secondly, what I've been doing both based on and inspiring those thoughts. I'll deal with the latter first.

While I wouldn't ever try and force anyone to believe anything, a few friends have been curious of late; I've sent Buddhist books to my long-time good friends footpad, aerowolf, and gravecat, and (more recently) I gave some to torque_tiger. Given that kitsunefury seemed very interesting when we went to the ISKCON meeting in April, I've put a few of their books to give him next time I see him, including their versions of the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Isopanishad, and a section of the Srimad Bhagavatam.

For my own interest, I've managed to acquire several more of ISKCON's books, and now have 10 volumes (of, I believe, 30) of the Srimad Bhagavatam; what I found particularly noteworthy was that I also got a couple of books not by Prabhupada, who has written, translated, or otherwise originated (such as transcribed speeches) the vast majority of their texts. Also, by way of comparison, I've got hold of a small book of Hindu prayers and meditations, from Wisdom Books, who are unfortunately having some problems delivering here; in a similar vein, I got a new translation of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, structured in much the same way as Prabhupada's translations (Sanskrit, transliteration, translation and purport). I also recently got two of the books I've quoted from above; the selection of Gandhi's writings, and the book of Shantanand Sharaswati's sayings. I feel these will give me a broader picture of HInduism as a whole.

On the Buddhist front, I've received an order from Inward Path, and may place another; they supply high-quality, interesting books on various aspects of Buddhism for free -- all you have to pay is the postage. However, as they're sent from Malaysia by surface mail, delivery to the UK takes about 2 months. (I'm not sure how long it would take to deliver to the USA or other countries.) I've also got a DVD of three talks by the Dalai Lama, though I've only watched part of one so far; applicable to the subject in a broader sense, I've watched the BBC series The Story of India and A Year in Tibet with great interest; both have accompanying books, but I only have the one for the latter series. Even more broadly to do with spirituality, I have a new book on Reiki meditations (with a CD; though many are skeptical of this treatment, in my experience it has good effects), and a book on neuroscience by Candace Pert, theorising a biochemical basis for emotion, and the degree of mind-body communication, which is interesting as it indeed presents itself as a scientific explanation for the effects of meditation and some alternative health practices; how much of that is convincing remains to be seen.

Back to my own thoughts. Lately, I've been reading books by the Dalai Lama, as I've always found his work to be very readable and interesting; however, there was one point I was not sure about. At the end of each chapter, there are a series of points on which to reflect; repeated a number of times over are considerations about whether the "I" is something the same as the mind-body, or something different. As both positions are faulty, the book says, the "I" must be set up in dependence on conditional thought. The reasoning goes as follows. For the former, if the "I" and mind-body were the same:

"I" and mind-body would have to be utterly and in all ways one.
In that case, asserting an "I" would be pointless.
It would be impossible to think of "my body" or "my head" or "my mind".
When mind and body no longer exist, the self also would not exist.
Since mind and body are plural, a person's selves also would be plural.
Since the "I" is just one, mind and body also would be one.
Just as mind and body are produced and disintegrate, so it would have to be asserted that the "I" is inherently produced and inherently disintegrates. In this case, [karma would not apply, or would take effect randomly.]

All of these points seem entirely reasonable, and it can clearly be understood that the "I", if such exists, cannot be said to be the same as mind-body. That is all well and good, but I find that the refutation of the "I" being different from the mind-body to be more doubtful:

"I" and mind-body would have to be completely separate.
In that case, the "I" would have to be findable after clearing away mind and body.
The "I" would not have the characteristics of production, abiding, and disintegration, which is absurd.
The "I" would absurdly have to be just a figment of the imagination or permanent.
Absurdly, the "I" would not have any physical or mental characteristics.

Now, maybe my understanding here is faulty, but don't these details that are refuted in fact describe the characteristics of a "soul", if such a thing were to exist? To my way of thinking, if there were a soul, it would be something different from the physical and mental; it would be unchanging; it would be eternal; and it would not be a physical or mental entity. I can understand why these points are made, but I can't come to a conclusion in my own mind whether a soul exists, despite accepting the idea that a substantial, pre-established "I" is, at best, a faulty conception, and at worst, a completely nonexistent entity that is a cause of trouble.

This being said, the Buddha says in the Culamalukya Sutta that he has not determined whether the world is eternal or not; whether it is finite or infinite; whtether the life force is identical or different from the body; or whether a 'person who has come to know reality' exists after death or not. The reason he gives is that determination of these matters is ultimately unimportant to the goal of Buddhist practice, which is liberation from suffering; the metaphor used here, and one I rather like, is that asking such questions instead of seeking liberation is like being shot with a poison arrow, and asking for details about what kind of bow it was, what flights were on the arrow, whether the shooter was tall or short, and so on, instead of asking for the antidote. So maybe I shouldn't worry too much about such things.

Another interesting point regards a book I got about the seven-line prayer to Padmasambhava; I can't find the exact quote in the book, but it is said that by repeating the prayer or the associated mantra -- guru padma siddhi hung -- one can improve the relationship with one's guru, or, if one does not have a guru (like myself), it improves the chance of meeting one. I repeated this mantra daily over the course of maybe a couple of weeks, and subsequently I unexpectedly drew the attention of Yaatriki on twitter. This person represents a religious belief I had not previously heard of, called Orthodox Maitreyism; I don't want to go into great detail, but it has aspects of both Buddhism and Hinduism, something which was of great interest to me as both faiths hold their appeal. While lengthy consideration has made me realise this isn't really suitable for me, I was inspired at the time by his blog posts You Don't Have to Ask Permission and The Great Convocation.

I'd like to end this section with a couple of videos I found thought-provoking, the second a response to the first.

Why the Light Side has to Win by morningmayan

@ morningmayan by Mathfails

To conclude, I'm barely much further in my thinking than I was before; I still consider myself a Buddhist, for whatever that's worth, although not everything makes sense to me at this point. I think ultimately that following the kind of practices that I do -- which, essentially, boil down to trying to be a good person -- can, at worst, do no harm; similarly, associating with others, be they Buddhist, Hindu, some other religion, or none, can (hopefully) only be of help to all parties. I hope by trying to explain these things to other people, whether that's by making posts like this, talking to people online or in person, or giving them books, that I do some good; I think more knowledge is always a good thing. In that spirit, I'd like to end with a few links which may be of interest both generally and for specific people. (My apologies to aerowolf, who was moving when I compiled this list, and thus I have no specific link for centres in his locality.)

For footpad, a number of Buddhist centres in Zurich;

For gravecat, Diamond Way Buddhism and the FWBO Centre in Liverpool;

For torque_tiger, fubuki_, and salith, although I've mentioned this many times, the FWBO Centre in Sheffield;

Some information on Buddhism for beginners (and sceptical Westerners);

Introducing Buddhism: A Guide for Western Beginners, in the Zen tradition;

And finally, a friend's insightful blog post on Religious Tolerance.

you could be my someone, you could be my scene

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:34:02 GMT

I had another date with torque_tiger last Thursday, and that went pretty well. We'd had to postpone it for a week because I hadn't been very well, but that wasn't a problem. We met up in town and greeted with hugs -- and, for a change, the weather was nice -- then proceeded to the first of a few bars. This first stop was the Dove and Rainbow, which I've been frequenting on and off pretty much since I first started coming to Sheffield. My snakebite and black went down pretty quickly as I was nervous, and I explained to Torque how the place often used to be the first stop on a night out, back in the day. We're thinking of heading to Corporation at some point, which should be cool; I've not been down there in ages. People don't seem to go that often anymore, and when they do go, it's usually been inconvenient for me. But I digress.

After another round, which I took at a more measured pace, we went to see if the Lion's Lair was open. It turned out that it's only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and only from 5pm (if I remember rightly); however, there's a lot of other pubs nearby, so we ended up in the Sportsman (which was virtually dead) for another drink to pass the time until the Lion's Lair opened. By this time I was feeling more relaxed (Dutch courage and all) and once again the conversation flowed very easily, and I felt very comfortable.

Time went on and we migrated to the Lion's Lair. We were the first people in there just as it was opening up; we ended up having a few drinks (I got an extra one due to one of the pumps apparently being off, though I didn't notice anything wrong) and they played some good music that stuck in my head (particularly, for whatever reason, Tracy Chapman's Fast Car and Puddle of Mudd's Blurry). It should be noted at this point that Torque was only having coke, and so although I ended up a bit inebriated I tried not to go too far. That being said, as the Lair is a gay pub and there was hardly anyone else there, I plucked up the courage to slip an arm round his shoulders. That little bit of closeness felt really nice, and not a soul seemed to mind.

We were getting pretty hungry by that point, and so the decision was made to go to Nando's, as it was fairly nearby and something we both liked. I ended up having a larger meal than I usually get there, but I managed all of it and it was enjoyable; I think Torque liked his too. Again the conversation was nice, and the food helped to mop up some of the alcohol.

When we'd eaten, there was a bit of indecision about what to do next; eventually, we ended up just sitting in the Peace Gardens for a while. Originally, we'd planned to do some photography, but by this time it was getting a little late, and Torque had forgotten his camera anyway -- another time, perhaps. The time passed quite pleasantly, a nice evening in pleasant surroundings, though after a while it was time to go home. Torque waited with me for a tram home -- which came pretty quickly -- we hugged, and he went to catch a bus.

At this point, I'm not sure when I'll see him again. Everything's going fine, so I'm sure it'll be sooner rather than later; still, I've already made the mistake of trying to rush things a bit -- I'd really like us to get together, but I guess it needs more time -- so I should probably take things easy for a while. I don't understand this whole dating thing.

Since then, and in general since I last wrote, things have been fairly quiet. I've generally been feeling alright, though, and while things have been going more slowly than I'd like, I've managed to get some stuff done. I finished X-Men Origins: Wolverine (and will review that at some point), and I think I'm already used to my new phone -- it now has this snowleopard as a wallpaper, music from Lost Odyssey for the ringtone/message alert, and the theme from Persona 4 for the alarm. (It's awesome in a massively geeky way.)

Talking of massively geeky things, I've been given links to a couple of nifty sites. Manga Fox has, well, manga (foxes optional; though beware occasional ad redirects) for free, including some pretty popular series, and Crunchyroll does much the same thing for anime.

Finally, because it's Music Monday (at least on twitter), I figured I'd post a couple of links. Indie Paws is a blog with a good selection of posts and quite a substantial number of free mp3's, which is always a good thing. (Also, m'friend Mag [edit: magrcon] writes for it from time to time.) I've also been listening to some Fall of Efrafa, and at that link their entire discography is available for free.

the land of the lonely

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:11:21 GMT

So this is an update I've been meaning to make for a while; just haven't found the time. Mainly it's about roleplaying stuff which all goes neatly behind a cut.(Thanks for sticking with me on this.)

I've been going along to Patriot Games semi-regularly of late, along with going to Wargames Emporium somewhat more often (as the latter is in a more central location). About a month ago now, it was Free RPG Day, and Patriot were taking part; I remember kolat_ray and fubuki_ coming back with quite a haul last year, so I figured I'd go along.

As it happened, although I didn't get there tremendously late in the day, a number of the free items had already gone, including an adventure for D&D 4th, promoting the (then) upcoming release of the Eberron campaign setting for that edition. I did, however, pick up quite a few things that looked interesting, in no particular order:

An introductory book for Dragon Warriors, a British fantasy RPG I'd never heard of;

A similar introduction to Paranoia, a darkly humourous sci-fi RPG I used to play years ago but most folks I know have a dislike for;

A two-in-one booklet featuring both character options for D&D 4e, and an adventure in an original setting using the 4e rules, though not published by Wizards;

A sample from the bestiary of the as-yet-unreleased (though interesting-looking) Pathfinder RPG;

An introduction to the new (and currently unreleased) Warhammer 40,000 RPG, Rogue Trader, which shares its name with the first edition of 40k, released all the way back in 1987;

A preview of the rules and a sample adventure for the new World of Darkness game, Geist: The Sin-Eaters, due for release in August.

Later in the day, I played part of the aforementioned Eberron adventure, which was pretty enjoyable; I've since bought the Eberron Players Guide, with the Campaign Guide having apparently just been released. I also had a poke around and found they had a few more free preview/adventure booklets for some of White Wolf's other games: one for Scion, which I was almost totally unfamiliar with, and one for Exalted, one of my favourite RPGs. There was also one for Hunter: The Vigil, and although I have books for both, I personally like Hunter the least of all in both the new and old World of Darkness.

Aside from the so-called 'core' games of the new World of Darkness (Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, and Mage: The Awakening), the rest -- presumably to include Geist -- are 'limited series', meaning that only a certain number of supplements will ever be produced for that line, and that they will be reprinted for a shorter period than the core lines.

This was a concept originally begun with the old World of Darkness game Orpheus, a sort-of follow-on to Wraith: The Oblivion. This interested me greatly, as Wraith was perhaps my favourite of the old WoD -- hence why I'm looking forward to Geist -- and thanks to the very useful Noble Knight Games (in the main, at least), I now have all six books of the Orpheus line, along with the one supplement I was missing for Wraith; it's satisfying to have the complete set of both.

The most interesting, to me, of the limited series in the new World of Darkness (well, at least until Geist comes out) is Promethean: The Created, which is very different to all previous WoD games, old and new. It's intriguing as a concept -- as the name implies, characters are alchemically-created beings -- and the game has a unique and unusual tone to it which is difficult to put into words. Upon finding out that this line was no longer being reprinted (in favour, I believe, of the more recent Changeling: The Lost, which while a huge improvement over the old WoD's Changeling: The Dreaming hasn't totally grabbed me), I got hold of the remaining supplements as quickly as I could, and now have all four.

I've also managed to pick up quite a few supplements for the old World of Darkness, particularly for the Time of Judgment line, which is otherwise (apparently -- with the exception of Gehenna) quite hard to get hold of. It's interesting to see how they ended everything -- I stopped collecting a few years before that line, though I still have a stack of old WoD books nearly as tall as I am, which gee, I should maybe do something with -- and it's a bit of a nostalgia trip too. Apparently kolat_ray's quite happy to offload some of his old WoD stuff onto me too, but I've not been over to his place in a while (again, circumstance) to look at what I might want.

Going back to D&D for a moment, I've been playing in something called Living Forgotten Realms at Patriot on a Monday night (though circumstances have made me unable to go for a couple of weeks); it's a persistent-world campaign, making it almost like a massively-multiplayer game of conventional roleplaying. Though, that being said, I was surprised to find that the way it's played at Patriot, D&D 4e is different to most other roleplaying games I've played -- there's less emphasis on, well, playing a role (due, I imagine, to the way the scenarios are written, which have their shortcomings) and more on combat events, which use miniatures, much like a small-scale wargame.

Don't get me wrong, it's still very enjoyable, and it's fun to build up a character and come up with good strategies in the game, working together with other players. If nothing else, it's a fun way to spend an evening. I also found out that the next Worldwide D&D Game Day will be on September 19th, for the release of the Dungeon Master's Guide 2; I suspect Patriot will be participating and I'm sure to go along. More locally, there's now a UK-specific D&D newsletter available at D&D News. (I also became a member of the DCI, at least according to the membership card, or possibly the RPGA -- the Wiki page makes that seem more likely, and the character sheets and other paperwork ask for an 'RPGA number'. Either way, I basically have a card that says I am officially an enormous nerd.)

I've also been picking up some minatures for Anima: Tactics; a small-scale tabletop wargame that I initially became interested in due to the high quality of the models, but would also like to play. (It's the first time in at least a decade I've bought miniatures other than at Games Workshop.) There's a catalogue of them online, with pictures, at Arcane Miniatures; satisfyingly, one of my favourite models, Samael the Black Lion, resembles very closely the image I had in my mind's eye of the Exalted character, the First and Forsaken Lion.

Now for some more fun stuff, and not just vaguely geeky links that I'm sick of having open in Firefox. First up, I got a new and shiny phone -- the Sony Ericsson W302 -- and I've been playing with that a bit, although in a rather limited way as I lost the memory card that came with it (due to a rather forceful eject mechanism -- it went flying and the thing's the size of a fingernail) and my 4gb one hasn't arrived yet. I also had recommended to me ITC, which if I hadn't already bought a new computer, I would certainly take a look at. That being said, the NatAmi Project looks ambitious and interesting, if largely conjecture at this point.

Finally some geeky music stuff. First off, torque_tiger recommended the oddly-named Mungyodance to me, some kind of DDR/StepMania/arrowsmashing type thing, which looks quite fun. Apparently it has several hundred tracks, and so it should at over 3gb in size. I'd still like to give it a try, so hopefully I can arrange for someone to burn me a copy -- it'd likely take forever and a day for me to download it.

Also, on IRC the other day there was some discussion of videogame music, and naturally the conversation eventually turned to OCRemix. After much discussion we came up with a very eclectic kind of top 9 -- it was a top 10 or 12 but some were a bit awful -- though these are in no particular order and should not be thought of as in any way authorative, being after all the choices of an arbitrary group of people on an IRC channel one afternoon. If anyone has any other recommendations, I'd genuinely like to hear them. There's some great talent out there. But without further preamble:

Harmony - Dragon Song (Secret of Mana)
This is such an amazing track. Some beautiful guitar and synth work as well as original vocals. I never really played any of the Seiken Densetsu series, but I can totally agree with the feeling in the track -- even when games were pretty primitive in both audiovisual and technical terms, they could really get the imagination working and make you feel invested in them.

The Wingless - Godspeed (Star Fox)
This is another good one, though it's different in tone -- completely electronica, far as I can tell, but it's got a great ambience. It's long but the two parts come together really well. Again I never really played the game, but it manages to have that feeling of flight which is appropriate for, well, almost any space-combat game, but particularly made me think of the Wing Commander series.

Star Salzman - Pillar of Salt (Xenogears)
I really loved Xenogears; in all its overblown pretentiousness, it was one of the first really good post-Evangelion stories out there. Sadly I never managed to finish it (though I still own a copy) due to my memory card crapping out. Anyway, this track is all kinds of pretty. It manages to maintain the distinct style of the original and have a unique identity at the same time. The middle-eastern feel combined with the sci-fi ambience reminds me of the best aspects of Assassin's Creed, too, which is no bad thing.

Scott Peeples - Another Inspiration (Chrono Cross)
Now, Chrono Cross I actually finished, despite it being (like Xenogears) only ever available on import here. It quickly became a favourite, although in my life when I was playing it, it wasn't a great time for me. Without wanting to sound over the top, this track reminds me of that time; it's got that little melancholy edge while at the same time being really pretty. And man, getting the end boss with the colours in the proper order was hard.

Arkimedes - Dreaming While I Wake (Shenmue)
Shenmue was one of the reasons I bought a Dreamcast. I loved that game, even with all the flaws. It's a shame that the story was never really continued beyond Shenmue II, though obviously some of us still hold out hope that Sega will stop making awful Sonic sequels and go back to a franchise that has plenty of life left in it. Anyway. THis is kind of... not quite synth-pop, but it's got that 80's feel certainly. I love the original vocals on this. It reminds me a little of lo-fi stuff like Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, and that can only be a good thing.

ceili, Sephire - Snowfall on Forbidden Lands (Shadow of the Colossus)
I do not have words for how unbelievably pretty this is. If you only download one from this entirely arbitrary top 9, make it this one. SotC was a good candidate for the whole games-as-art thing, and this remix is the poster child for how awesome remixes of game music can be.

The last few are a bit more light-hearted, but no less good for it:
The Megas - The Annihilation of Monsteropolis (Mega Man 2)
This is basically rivalled only by The Protomen, who made a Megaman Rock Opera, and really it's pretty difficult to beat that.

Arkimedes - Fall From Above (You Can't Stop) (Halo)
If I did not include a Halo mix at some point, nidonocu would kill me. This one I was a bit shaky about at first (the robot voice and the other vocals really shouldn't work), but somehow this manages to be pretty great.

Game Over - Little Mac's Confession (Punch-Out!!)
Don't let the pretty arpeggios in the intro fool you. This is from a Swedish band that does metal covers of Nintendo game music. If you think that sounds awesome then you are right.

I've been thinking of giving this kind of music a try, myself, though I'm not sure where to start -- I've only done a handful of remixes at all, and never really attempted anything with game music. One final related link, though I forget who I got it off: DA CHIP! is a series of chiptune reworkings of Daft Punk songs, and if that sounds like your kind of thing, then you should download it because it is free and made of all kinds of awesome.

Also? This video (SFW) shows a truly awesome Super Mario World ROMhack - no controller input at all after selecting the level. That is all.

[edit: oh yeah I forgot to add, Watchmen came out on DVD here yesterday so after some consideration I decided to order it, along with the Complete Motion Comic and the Tales of the Black Freighter animation; there's going to be a 5-disc edition in the US, but that seems to comprise basically a slightly extended director's cut of the film and the stuff I ordered, so not much point, even if it does get released here...]

1056/6113

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:38:02 GMT

Despite a messed-up sleep pattern, things have been going pretty well for me recently. There's quite a lot to talk about, certainly beyond the scope of a single post; but here, I mainly want to talk about one particular day, and one particular person, which made me really happy.

After having talked to him pretty much every day for a week or two, and having clicked on multiple levels and determined we really liked one another, torque_tiger and myself arranged to meet up on Friday, to go see a film and get a meal out. I like to refer to it as a date -- my first in about 3 years -- but I worry slightly that I might have misconstrued the situation; nonetheless, it was a great time.

We'd decided to meet at the Cathedral tram stop, and so after returning briefly home for my coat and umbrella, having noticed it was raining quite heavily -- just my luck! -- I set out to get a tram. Without much delay I arrived at the stop, and spotted Torque just a few moments after disembarking. I'd seen pictures on Facebook so I recognised him without any trouble, but I noticed a couple of things straight away: one, that he looked better in person than in pictures (he's really cute, at least in my eyes); and two, that he was littler than me -- not just that he's shorter, but he's generally of a smaller build than I am -- not that this is in any way a bad thing. I gave him a hug and we talked for a little while before deciding it'd be a good idea to go get tickets for the film, so as to avoid queues.

We hopped on a tram and talked about this and that, and just like online, the conversation flowed pretty easily. When we arrived, the queue for tickets was pretty long but moved relatively quickly; we'd decided to see Moon, largely as there was a dearth of anything else worth watching. While we waited, we discussed various other films we'd seen, and again it seems we have similar tastes.

Once the (expensive!) tickets were bought, we were considering going to the bar in the cinema, but figured it would be expensive too; there's also a bowling alley at the same place, which also has a bar, so we went there, but got distracted by the arcade. We tried Guitar Hero Arcade, but failed out about halfway through the song; there seemed to be some degree of lag, and the controllers were much heavier than the home version. They also had DS Euromix and its sequel (more commonly known as DDR); I gave it a try, but picked a track that was much too hard for me -- I'd not played in at least two years -- and failed out very quickly. Torque, however, was really impressive on it; certainly better than I was when at my best.

After that, it was almost time for the film, so we went to get drinks and snacks. Again these were crazy expensive, but that's always been the way in cinemas. As it turns out, the film was pretty good; however, it's one of those where it's difficult to say much about it without giving away the story. It was a surprisingly human sci-fi; clearly not made with a huge budget, but well done and thoughtful. (It reminded me of Solaris, more than anything else. And, secretly? I wanted to hold his hand during the movie.)

When the film was done -- and we both enjoyed it -- it was time to get something to eat. There were various food places to choose from, but we decided on Nando's as we both like it. During the meal I gave Torque a couple of things I'd got for him -- I'd picked up two books on Buddhism for him (I couldn't decide which to get, and they were cheap, so I got both) as he'd expressed an interest after seeing it was my belief, and I'd also burned a data CD for him of my music; he'd listened to the tracks I had online, and he really liked them, so I offered to burn him a disc. He was really pleased with what I'd got him, and said he'd wanted to get something for me too, but hadn't had the time; I didn't mind, though, I was just glad to give him something he wanted.

We stopped by the arcade again after dinner, and managed to do quite well on Guitar Hero -- though, disappointingly, you only get to play one track. Torque also played a few rounds of DDR, and he's scarily good. I had a go too, but I was very rusty and felt exhausted after playing relatively easy tracks. It was then time to head home, and we managed to get on a tram pretty quickly. We talked about a few things, but all too soon it was time for my stop; still, I got an unprompted hug as I was about to go, which was a really nice goodbye.

There's two things I've noticed with torque_tiger that I've not really felt in a while. First, he's given me some gentle encouragement at things, and given me more confidence in myself. So far, it's not been in anything of great significance; he convinced me to play Rock Band on Expert -- and I did pretty well -- and persuaded me to give DDR a try again after a really long break. Secondly, there's a thing in Buddhism called mudita, usually translated as 'sympathetic joy', and I think I've felt that here; I feel proud of Torque, rather than envious of him, when I watch him play games very skilfully, and (more importantly) I admire him as a person, particularly that he aspires to become a doctor.

I've got another person to thank, too; Toroka (confusingly, he was also/previously known as Torque) for introducing us to each other, and for having been a good friend for more years than I care to count. With torque_tiger, I've found, at the very least, a good friend who lives locally and shares a lot of my interests; yet, although it may be a little premature, I really hope that something more comes of it. He's a really sweet guy, and I could see things working out for us.

you are looking at the world without time

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:44:37 GMT

Around this time last year, I'd just bought my Asus Eee PC 701 4G, and replaced my broken Nintendo DS with a brand new DS Lite. Of late, I've got hold of various add-ons and equipment to add to the functionality of those, along with rekindling some of my other 'geeky' interests: comics, anime, and roleplaying.

First, the tech. To work with both the Eee PC and the DS, I picked up a Linksys Wireless-G Access Point, on mousit's recommendation, and I now have a wireless element to my network running (hopefully -- I've not tested it downstairs yet) throughout my house. For the Eee PC, it's a relief not to have to find a network cable every time I want to get online -- especially inconvenient if I have to move position -- and the DS, by its nature, can only connect wirelessly.

On that note, I picked up the Nintendo DS Browser, which comprises a lightweight version of the Opera browser, useful if I'm on the move and in a wi-fi hotspot, or if I just need to check something quickly without starting up the netbook or PC; more pertinently, it comes with an 8mb memory expansion pak, bringing the machine's total RAM to 12mb. While only the DS Browser officially supports this expansion, it's used in a number of homebrew applications, including a version of Linux, which might be interesting to try.

Again with an eye to homebrew software, I've got the Nintendo MP3 Player, a modification of the Play-Yan media player. It plays music only, whereas the original played videos and minigames; however, it is notable in that it accepts SD memory cards, potentially enabling the DS to have a 2gb solid-state 'drive'. (I have yet to prove if this can be accessed by homebrew software, though; still, my current MP3 player is on its last legs anyway.)

None of this would be possible without the R4 device, which huskion got cheaply for me. It takes Micro SD cards up to 2gb, and has the ability to run games (both DS and GBA, I believe), play music and possibly video files, as well as the all-important homebrew software. It's a very useful bit of kit, though I've yet to explore its full potential.

I believe I have all the expansion paks for the DS now; the Rumble Pak that came with Metroid Prime Pinball, the Motion Pak with Tony Hawk's Motion, along with the aforementioned MP3 Player, and the Memory Pak that comes with the browser. All of these, though mainly the latter two, have their potential uses outside of games.

Back to the Eee PC for one final thing. On Twitter, I heard about an offer for a 'free' (you pay postage only) 3G USB modem with a pre-pay arrangement from 3. I decided to order one, figuring it'd be useful if I was out and about with the netbook and away from any wi-fi hotspots; however, while a little internet research suggests it can be made to work under Xandros, it may be too difficult for me; it evidently is of some value, as I've seen them for sale at about £30, so I'm torn between keeping it and trying to make it work or leaving it sealed/unopened and trying to sell it.

The last things to mention are that I've still not set up my new PC that salith built for me (lack of time and a bit of laziness, really; that and I don't relish the idea of taking hours to set everything up just how I like it), and I'm having a weird error with this PC on some occasions when installing stuff. (If anyone has any ideas, it'd be helpful.)

As for the comics, I've been particularly interested in Ben Templesmith's stuff since seeing him on Twitter; interesting guy, and his artwork has a unique style. I've also been reading stuff by Garth Ennis, Alan Moore, and Frank Miller, to name but a few.

As to the anime, I've picked up the latest set of Naruto DVD's -- though I'm told that only the first five (of 13) episodes are part of the main story, and everything after that until Shippuden starts is pretty awful filler -- and, though I've yet to start watching it, I picked up the first 40 or so episodes of Bleach, at the recommendation of several friends and my own personal interest.

That ties in nicely with the roleplaying, as both series are often touted as inspiration for and/or examples of Exalted-level combat. While I'm still very interested in that game, and continue to acquire books for it, I've recently got (back?) into the new World of Darkness. I had the core rules, and (naturally) Werewolf: The Forsaken since the release of the latter, but until recently I had not really looked at the line at all. A few weeks ago I picked up another of the main 3 games, Mage: The Awakening; and on Wednesday, I was able to get hold of Vampire: The Requiem -- completing my collection of the core three games -- and Changeling: The Lost.

As of last week, we'd begun to play a Vampire game run by Miquel; it is thanks to his efforts and those of kolat_ray that I've got back into roleplaying, and I can't thank them enough. The game we're playing is set in ancient Rome, and so far has proved to be quite interesting; it's really held my attention despite me not being familiar with new Vampire, or overly fond of vampires or Roman settings in general. (I also got interested in Orpheus, as Miquel owns the main book; although that and at least one of the supplements is fairly readily available, all six books may prove difficult to find.)

I tried to find some places to get cheap roleplaying books from, and I was surprised to find Amazon had some good deals. I've ordered Promethean: The Created and Hunter: The Vigil to complete the set of new World of Darkness main books, along with 3 supplements for Werewolf and two for general World of Darkness use.

I'm vaguely considering going to the comic/gaming shops in the near future, possibly today, as I've not been in a very long time; it'll be interesting to see what they have.

(How am I affording this? Well, it was my birthday last week, and I am eternally grateful for generous relatives. Also? They let me have a credit card.)

“There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.”

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:25:41 GMT

Nitai, ISKCON monk, giving a teaching from the Bhagavad-Gita

There are many Indian religious systems that involve strong devotion to the guru, and there are many adherents who totally dedicate their lives to spiritual practice. They are impressive. Mindful of the impermanence of this life, they put great effort into religious devotion. But only Buddhism sees the very apprehension of self to be faulty, and instead puts forth a view of selflessness.

-- His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, Becoming Enlightened

The Wednesday before last proved to be an interesting day. For various reasons, I'd deferred my weekly trip into town until that day, and that's usually the day the Hare Krishna guys are on the streets. I got talking to one of them, and gave him a donation in exchange for a couple of CD's, and a book for kitsunefury, as he'd expressed an interest. The devotee also gave me some bread which was prasadam, "a material substance that is first offered to a deity and then consumed [...] The prasad has the deity's blessing residing within it." I'd not had prasadam before, and it was very tasty and satisfying, considerably more so than I'd expected.

Later in the day, I got in touch with kitsunefury and he was free for once, so we decided to attend the Hare Krishna meeting in the evening. I'd previously gone with him to the Buddhist centre -- salith and fubuki_ have both expressed an interest in going there, so I may well be accompanying them to an introductory course; there's one starting next Wednesday, but I digress -- so I thought he might be interested in these other spiritual teachings. We met in town and had some food before going to the meeting, and I gave him the book I'd got for him earlier.

We arrived at the meeting a little late, but we did notice a Scientology tent on the way -- it's gone now -- and steered well clear. Once we arrived, there were maybe half a dozen people present besides ourselves, and it was a nice atmosphere. There was quite a lot of singing/chanting, as well as an interesting teaching from the Bhagavad-Gita; that's when I took the photo above. At the end, some prasadam was given out and there was some discussion of a forthcoming festival; that was in Walkley today, but various circumstances meant that unfortunately I couldn't go.

There were also some second-hand books available, and I got a few: a handbook of Vaishnava songs and practices, and the 'Krishna Book' part one, though I was for some reason particularly drawn to an old, somewhat tattered copy of Sri Isopanisad. For days afterwards, the mantras and chants were echoing round in my head.

As regards other books, I've downloaded (with a rather neat Firefox extension, DownThemAll) a whole load of Bhaktivedanta Book Trust publications, and in amongst those was a sound file of Srila Prabhupada giving a talk. I found that his accent was too thick (and/or the audio recording too poor) to clearly understand what was being said, but some of his wisdom still showed. My contact in London is sending me some more of the ISKCON books on Tuesday, and has graciously offered them to me for free.

For Buddhist books, I've not had any new ones in a little while. I made an order with Inward Path, who only charge for postage, but they're shipping by surface mail, so I'm likely to be waiting a few more weeks yet. I usually get a few from Wisdom Books every so often, so doubtless within another couple of months I'll have another look; I admittedly have plenty already.

I'm planning to send Buddhist books to a couple of interested friends; namely aerowolf and footpad. I'm feeling very unsure of things myself, but I still want to somehow be helpful to others. kitsunefury certainly seemed to benefit, and I hope others will too. At least with another one of my main spiritual interests, Taoism, there's little conflict with Buddhism; indeed, in China for many years there was practiced a combination of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, and (if I remember rightly) there's elements of Shinto in the Buddhism of Japan.

Essentially, I'm still struggling with big questions like whether there's a God, whether there's a soul, and so on. I'm still inclined towards Buddhism -- because it makes a lot of sense, and I've been able to experientially verify some of what has been taught -- but I can't say "I am a Buddhist" with the conviction I previously could; whether that's a good thing or not is a different question. It's been on my mind a lot, though, and made me somewhat restless. I'm not in the right frame of mind to go into such detail as I did in my last post on the subject, but at least this will give some idea.

The one thing I will say, is that of all the meetings of spiritually-minded groups I've been to, the most at-ease, peaceful, and pleasant by far have been at the FWBO Buddhist centre, and it's there too that I've met people who seem to have made a lot of progress. If that's the measure, then Buddhism seems to work best. Perhaps I'll see what things are like now if I go with salith and fubuki_; I've not been in quite some time, and I probably should change that.

I suspect that in terms of spirituality, the only way you can say something is "right" is if it is suitable for the specific person, their circumstances, and the time; therefore things may change, and I don't think I'd ever abandon Buddhism completely, even if the ISKCON stuff is more on my mind of late.

we must admit there will be music

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:54:38 GMT

I know a kid who thinks he's hip hop cause he buys it
I know a kid who thinks he's hip hop cause he never buys shit
Underground or mainstream
Some are bound to change schemes.

-- Sage Francis, Underground For Dummies

So I'm listening to Sub.FM a lot lately -- I first saw it mentioned on Warren Ellis' twitter -- seeing as dubstep and its related spinoffs seem to be the in thing of late, and for once I actually like the genre. (There's also the more obviously-titled Dubstep.FM, but I'm not so keen on that one; DubTerrain is pretty neat though.) The quality of the stream's not brilliant, but in a conversation elsewhere there was some talk of audio enhancers. Normally I'm skeptical of these, but mikosquirrel pointed me in the direction of the DFX Audio Enhancer, which (on certain types of music at least) works really well; with dubstep, you can crank the bass to obscene, bone-shuddering levels, as it should be.

From listening to Last.fm's 'dubstep' radio (basically all the music it has tagged with that) I came to the label Skull Disco, and I would totally buy all their stuff (although the only stuff I could actually *play* would be the two double CD's) if I wasn't pretty much tapped out. Still, there's a free mix on their site which is pretty good.

Of course, Pitchfork has a regular column on the genre, with this post from around this time last year being a particularly interesting reference to the then-emerging Glasgow scene -- aquacrunk? seriously? -- and even the Guardian had something to say about this subgenre of a subgenre.

With a bit of luck I'll hear back from Red Tape Studios soon -- perhaps sooner if I give them a call or email, though they're pretty lousy at responding to the latter -- about the computer music production course, and maybe I'll be able to make some dubstep of my own.

In reflecting on the music I've written (there's maybe half a dozen tracks I've written in the last four to six months that I've not posted anywhere) I'm still somewhat dissatisfied with it; the last track that I did and loved was in 2004, and a lot of stuff I'm deleting before it even reaches the form of an mp3, so maybe if I get on this course it'll be something of a kick start -- though I dare say having a new PC will help matters too.

On a largely unrelated subject, I've been exploring other cultural interests of mine lately, and I'm pleased to find that there's actually a word for one of them: Nihonjinron. "The term refers to a genre of texts that focus on issues of Japanese national and cultural identity," and it's a broad subject that I've had an interest in for a long time, particularly in older works from the late 1800's to early 1900's, such as those of Lafcadio Hearn.

I have a good number of books of this genre, mostly gleaned from Postscript Books; I feel that my recent attempts to learn the language will help me understand the culture more readily. Additionally, I've got another book on sumi-e, and I intend to try to learn this type of painting in the near future, as I already have all the materials, including inks of various colours -- though traditionally only black is used, I have ink sticks in a few other shades.

This is not to say that I don't have interest in other parts of the world, though. I recently got hold of an illustrated version of Le Morte d'Arthur at a cheap price, and followed up that purchase by ordering the Mabinogion and Seamus Heaney's version of Beowulf.

On top of that, I got a good deal on a couple of Michael Palin's documentaries on DVD: Around the World in 80 Days, and Pole to Pole. I also got the books that accompany these journeys, though (for obvious reasons) I think my favourite of his is still Himalaya.

Finally a couple of arty type things that I rather like: Multicolr Search Lab lets you pick up to 10 colours and use them to navigate a selection from "10 million of the most 'interesting' Creative Commons images on Flickr". It's a nice idea. Also, New Math is all kinds of awesome; reminds me a bit of one of my favourite artists, Jenny Holzer.

there's a machine in my head

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:00:00 GMT

So, I've been following up with some of the tech things I've mentioned in past entries.

Regarding the Nintendo DS storage devices, huskion has got a R4 for me, and will be sending it as soon as possible; this means (among other uses) that I'll be able to run all kinds of homebrew software on my DS. I already have a 2gb MicroSD card that I'm not using for anything else, and that should be more than adequate capacity for everything I want to use. I heard of someone getting Linux running on the DS, which is kind of a neat accomplishment but I suspect it would be of limited use at best.

As for the FM3 Buddha Machine, I got an email saying that a new summer edition had been released; as far as I can tell, though, this doesn't have new sounds, and the only difference is the colours. It's not something I can afford right now anyway. I ordered some of the Buddha boxes that inspired FM3 -- small battery-powered things that play Buddhist prayers and chants on loops -- from a site in Hong Kong, and I'm really pleased with them. It's hard to describe their charm; they're evidently cheaply-made, but with that comes some degree of honesty and hope that listening to these prayers and chants will do some good in the world.

I'm looking to get a few more of these if I can; as my mum and stepdad are going to Amsterdam on Wednesday, I've asked if they'll look for such things in Chinatown. I've also asked jolantru to have a look (I believe she lives in Singapore), and I've recently got back in touch with hypnotistoflady, who some will know better as Ruin. She lives in Japan, and although she'd not heard of such things, she agreed to try and find some.

hypnotistoflady also offered to help me with learning Japanese. I have some DS software that should help (it's called My Japanese Coach and seems quite good, from what I've used of it so far; there's some good educational software on that system, and I also have a yoga tutor program, but I digress), and she pointed me to Tae Kim's Japanese guide to Japanese grammar, which looks very useful. Another friend recommended Jishobot, a vast English/Japanese dictionary that features kana, kanji and romaji. It's also available for the iPhone and iPod Touch -- not that I have either of those at present.

I found out that the likely problem with my Xbox 360 was an E74 error -- "related to video problems caused by either a faulty AV connector or, more often, a loosened ANA/HANA scaling chip" -- thanks to both snowfields and imperial_wolf for giving me that link literally within minutes of each other. As I'd heard estimates for repair being anywhere between £80 and £100 or more, I decided to look into getting hold of a new one, ideally with the latest chipset. It's looking like I'll need to get myself another PS2 as well at some point, though, as mine is having issues reading the purple/blue CD-based games, though there may be a way around that.

[edit: Sora helped me out with some advice on how to get my 360 working online; previously, I had a hard time playing games with other people as it would complain of various problems, usually something about 'strict NAT'. I know very little about networking, but with Sora's assistance I've managed to get it working perfectly every time.]

Anyway, I was able to find an X360 for a little over £100 in Playtime -- which seems to have since shut down, as the stores have their shutters down (in Sheffield, Meadowhall and Leeds at least) and the website has been "temporarily closed" for at least 3 weeks -- which was the latest Arcade model (i.e. without HDD, but with the newest chipset), and I've had absolutely no problems with it; it looked as if it had barely been touched, with all the manuals and documentation not even opened. I've since acquired (among others) and completed F.E.A.R. 2 and Silent Hill: Homecoming, and I plan to review them on GameFAQs at some point soon. I've also been playing the hell out of Persona 4 -- though I'm still a long way from the end -- which is the best RPG I've played in ages, and almost certainly the last great game for the PS2.

Thanks to salith, I should be getting a pretty decently-specced PC custom-built and ready within the next two or three weeks; we decided on the parts a few days ago, and I gave him a cheque yesterday. It cost substantially less than I was expecting it to, having looked at prebuilt machines of comparable specification, and it should be pretty expandable as time goes on. The only thing we were unable to find on the site used was the live bay thing for the Audigy, but I could feasibly take it out of this machine. I'm planning to keep this one around as a spare, as it still works OK and everything; it's just not very powerful. Alternatively, I may get a KVM switch so I can run both machines as necessary, but I'll work this all out when I actually have the new PC.

Talking of PC stuff, I found a couple of useful sites for desktop backgrounds/wallpapers. I've had the most use from DesktopNexus, though 4scrape has some pretty neat stuff too.

As there's been some malware going around on Twitter lately, LongURL Mobile Expander is a pretty handy add-on that lets you see the full address for shortened URLs, in case of any doubt. I recall reading somewhere that people are substantially more likely to click links in a Twitter feed than in an email, despite such things not necessarily being any safer.

"See? Aren’t smiling werewolves pretty?"

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:36:44 GMT

Werewolves are lame.

Well, at least that was my logic.

I hate the damn things. I figure they're these hokey old holdovers from another age where we actually used to find such cartoony monsters scary. They've seeped into popular culture now. You'll be more likely to find them in romantic comedies and kid's cartoons. They've been neutered, so to speak. And let's face it, they were always the poor second cousin to the vampire.

So I was asked to adapt a screenplay into sequential art, dealing with werewolves, no doubt to help sell it as a movie... and I declined. I just didn't want to go there. Visually I'm just not into them, and couldn't see myself gettng enthused at all. All I could think of was Teen Wolf.

Then I got a letter from the Colorado department of corrections or some such, explaining to my publisher that another of my books [...] had been banned from their fine institutions [...]

But I got thinking. Prison, eh? I'd been watching a lot of prison documentaries at the time anyway and wow, there are some messed up people in some messed up places... and something clicked.

After that, this thing sort of wrote itself to a degree. I sincerely hope you like it and want to desperately thank you for picking this here graphic novel up in the first place.

Whatever you do, just don't drop the soap.

-- Ben Templesmith, preface to Welcome to Hoxford

Needless to say, I don't think werewolves are lame; quite the opposite. And judging from Twitter, Templesmith doesn't entirely think so either, at least when they're done right; Hoxford is a prime example of werewolves done well (and scary, to boot). Apparently (and yes, I know I posted that link last time) it's going to be made into a movie, and there's a forthcoming "Wolfman" film from Universal, the studio who did it first(?) all those years ago.

Although I've not finished Hoxford yet, I've been interested in getting hold of the rather awesome-looking The Astounding Wolf-Man, though I don't think that's available in graphic novel format yet. I think the first werewolf comic I read was the late-90's reboot of Werewolf by Night, which ran for all of six issues before being assimilated into Strange Tales, which then only went on for a further two. Apparently there was a one-shot back in '07, and this year there's a four-issue miniseries; something to look for, at least. There's also the Western-themed webcomic High Moon, but I think I'll wait until the graphic novel is released towards the end of this year, as reading it on the official site requires use of a clunky Flash viewer; meanwhile the first volume of Strangeways, another werewolf Western that (from its description) reminds me of the RPG Deadlands, is out already, so I may well see if I can pick that up.

On a more literary note, I got hold of a cheap second-hand copy of Nancy A. Collins' werewolf (werecoyote?) novel Wild Blood, though I've not read it yet. I also got The Sight by David Clement-Davies, which strictly speaking is about wolves rather than werewolves, and (apparently) comes under the dubious heading of 'animal fantasy'. Also, while I was browsing the TVTropes wiki -- like any good wiki, you can waste a lot of time and find things that you weren't looking for -- I read about the Mercy Thompson novels, which look pretty interesting. I'm tapped out at the moment though, so they'll have to wait.

On the same site, there's the pretty interesting article called Our Werewolves Are Different; not that I've written much of anything fiction-wise in years, but it does show some good ideas and various options to make the creatures less 'generic', -- if that's even an appropriate term -- and a fairly comprehensive list of how they've been interpreted in various media. (I should probably not treat it as a shopping list.) Also, via a link on that page, I found that limyaael has an interesting rant on non-angsty werewolves; it's well worth a read, and it's where I gleaned the subject line of this entry from.

Finally, to inject a touch of humour, the last line of dialogue in this trailer for the godawful-looking Lesbian Vampire Killers ("Like an episode of 'Goosebumps' but with two swearing cretins") is... interesting... at least. And probably the only interesting thing about the film.

[edit: Thanks to Mr. Templesmith for linking here on his Twitter, and hi to anyone who came here via there... most unexpected.]

news from the 'verse

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:26:49 GMT

So, based on various people's comments, the view on Twitter seems fairly sharply polarised, with some people quite vehemently against it. (Personally, I like it a lot.) As this post is not so much about Twitter but more things from there, I think I'm safe to proceed with only a reference to nidonocu's rather eloquently-put post, "Twitter, or how I learned to stop worrying and love 140 characters". For what it's worth, although I still have the service set up to ship tweets to LJ, I've now set it so only tweets with a certain tag will appear, and even then (assuming it works) they'll be under a cut. And surely, if scrolling past a cut tag is that much of an issue, then it's not just my entries you'll have trouble with.

Anyway, without further ado, I'd like to present a few of the things I've learned about via Twitter in the last couple of weeks, at least partially because it means I can close some tabs in Firefox.

In no particular order, I found out:

How to write a haiku

Caravaggio used an early form of photography

Choose Your Own Adventure is back

Favtape is back up finally (I'm electricdog, though I have no mixes up right now)

People are still making awesome videos

Computer scripts can generate some really pretty art

Huskies!

There's been some pretty interesting developments in music and comics lately, too. On the former, Nine Inch Nails have just released a free EP from their current tour with Jane's Addiction and Street Sweeper, with two tracks from each band; it's available over at NIN|JA 2009, and it's pretty sweet.

Also, Jimmy Eat World just recently finished up their Clarity x 10 tour (playing the entirety of their album Clarity live at ten shows, to celebrate the album's 10th anniversary), and in a couple of weeks -- on April 7th -- they're releasing a digital-only mp3 album of the tour's best performances. Should be worth getting. I found a pretty awesome new radio station through Twitter too -- Sub.fm play dubstep and related filth, and it's good working music. (I'm also liking Last Days of Empire -- while not strictly Twitter-related, I thought I'd fit it in here.)

Regarding comics, there's an article about werewolves which references Ben Templesmith's new book, Welcome to Hoxford, which I've ordered; there's also some pretty sweet art from it over on his Flickr, with the A and B covers of issue #4 being particularly good -- I have the B cover as my desktop, presently.

Templesmith also featured in GQ's 20 Graphic Novels You Should Read article, with Fell (written by Warren Ellis -- who makes some pretty damn interesting Twitter posts -- and illustrated by Templesmith) taking number #16 (and a number of other interesting entries -- a version of Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely? Yes please) -- I promptly ordered that along with Hoxford.

Most of the rest can't really be grouped together, so it just comes in the order I get to it; I was particularly amused by The Complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1000 Words or Less (spoilers, obv.), and it was Worldwide D&D Game Day on Saturday, though I wasn't feeling well enough to go into town and play. On the subject of games, a friend recommended to me (and I passed onto others via Twitter) The Codex of Alchemical Engineering, a fairly complex and challenging (but rewarding) puzzle game done in Flash.

Talking of Flash, Adobe seems to hate me lately. I had problems getting Flash to accept that it was installed, and then had issues updating it; AIR just doesn't want to work on my machine whatever I try; and most recently Acrobat Reader has started crashing every time I try and open a PDF. A quick search later, and I found Foxit Reader, which is free and (in my view) a fair bit better than Adobe's own version.

Finally, although I don't presently have a great need for it, someone on Twitter recommended Borderlinx. This enables you to get a US address wherever you live in the world, and get items sent there (as some retailers need an address in the US); Borderlinx then sends everything to you whenever you're ready, so you save on shipping. Seems pretty neat, though I've not had a need to order anything from outside the UK in a while that's not been easy enough to get shipped here anyway.

listen to the box

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:05:00 GMT

So, I've been playing with a few new toys recently, both software and hardware.

First up, and my favourite thing in ages, is the FM3 Buddha Machine II, a teeny little box with a few controls that plays this amazingly soothing generative ambient music. I love it. It's been mentioned twice on BoingBoing, which I think is where I first heard about it -- cost me about £16 I think, and it's well worth it. I might get another one, and/or one of the first generation models. All of the sounds are available for download under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, so I may use some in my own musical compositions.

Via the comments on BoingBoing, I came across some very cheap Buddha boxes on DealExtreme; these are the original things that the Buddha Machine is based on, and are apparently quite common in Asia -- they play Buddhist chants on an endless loop, in much the same way as the Buddha Machine plays ambient sounds. I ordered a couple, but they've not arrived yet -- though usefully, the site ships worldwide at no additional fee, so it cost me less than £10 to buy two. Again, it's something I might use in music, though all of the boxes have their uses in meditation; listening to the loops can be incredibly soothing, if nothing else.

The comments also led me to Boodler, an "open-source soundscape tool"; it looks pretty interesting, but at present there aren't any binaries for the latest version, only source. Still, I may try installing it on my netbook (under weird Debian fork Xandros), or if I feel crazy enough, PS2 Linux. Subsequently I started reading up about binaural beats; it's all pretty theoretical, but no less interesting for it. I found a couple of free tools that I've been trying out -- SBaGen and Gnaural, both GPL and open-source, available for Windows, OSX and Linux -- and the results are interesting and quite effective, although the software isn't the most intuitive ever.

Regarding music, I've had a few things recommended to me: first of all is VisualJockey, a piece of realtime interactive animation software, which I'm thinking to use to make videos for some of my tracks, though I'm going to have to dig through the help files quite extensively before I get anything out of it. imperial_wolf also recommended another couple of resources: the simply-named free-loops.com, which is fairly self-explanatory but also has useful links to various items of software; and Kompoz, "a social workspace for musicians and songwriters", which enables you to upload a part of a track and have others collaborate on making something more complete. Could be interesting. I've also downloaded everything from now-defunct netlabel autoplate, and all the free releases of thinner; I'm on the lookout for some more netlabels to pillage.

[edit: I totally forgot to mention that I bought a small handheld DV camera while I was away, also. Haven't really used it yet, but it seems pretty neat, especially for the price; it's a Mustek DV316L, if that means anything to anyone. Hopefully I can get back into video work and produce some neat things like I did in college.]

The other gadgets I've been playing with pertain mostly to gaming. First of all, I picked up an EyeToy for my PS2, which came with an exercise-training software (EyeToy: Kinetic; I've subsequently picked up the more game-like EyeToy: AntiGrav by Harmonix, though I've yet to actually use either) and a wide-angle lens for the camera. More to the point, thanks to some unofficial support, I've installed it as a pretty good quality PC webcam, which was the main reason I got it -- I think ruadh was the first person I knew to use one on the PC, so I knew from him that it was possible. In the absence of knowing what software was good, and not wanting to actually buy anything further, I've been using Yawcam (outside of things that support it natively like Skype) which seems to be pretty good.

Talking of Skype, I've been talking a little with huskion, and one thing that came up was the various Nintendo DS storage devices, particularly the R4. This is something that enables you to play games, listen to mp3's, and use all sorts of homebrew software. However they seem to be comparitively expensive here; the cheapest I found was around £15 including postage from this site. According to huskion, they're very easy to find where he lives in Poland -- I've never seen them on sale in physical shops here, only online -- and cost about 50 PLN, which is less than £10. He says it'd be no trouble for him to get one and send it to me, if I can give him the cost via PayPal; either way, I've plans to get one soon, as I'd like to expand the functionality of my DS.

As for games themselves, I've had a few on DS, but since my 360 broke (and I still haven't got around to getting it fixed -- or just buying a new one, as kyu_diary recently did) I've been primarily focusing on the PS2. I've managed to get a number of surprisingly good games at a low price, and I'm really looking forward to a couple of RPG's I preordered -- Persona 4 and Mana Khemia. I've also picked up a few older PC titles (and had the 'fun' of trying to get them to run -- failing to do so in a few cases) as well as some more contemporary titles for the increasingly-hypothetical new PC I keep trying to convince myself I'm going to get. Hopefully the money I have in the bank left over from Xmas will be enough to cover it; failing that, some can go on a new X360, and a PC can wait until around my birthday.

While I was looking for something else, I came across the Wikipedia article on Suda51, a game designer I like, and found out he was involved with a PS2 game I thought looked of interest, Michigan: Report from Hell. However, it seems that game is now very hard to get hold of. It's been reported that one of his earlier Japan-only games, The Silver Case, is due to be re-released this year on the DS -- it should be worth looking out for.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that I'm looking into expressing creativity in writing; two books I got recently, Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down The Bones (which treats writing as Zen practice), and The Ode Less Travelled, a book on writing poetry by the ever-lovely Stephen Fry, have made me think about giving it a try.

karma and 2 by 2 matrices

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:04:39 GMT

The Dalai Lama [...] states that one may practice the dharma by following the teachings and practices of non-Buddhist traditions such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or Hinduism. [...] In this sentiment he hearkens back to the historical Buddha, Śākyamuni. [...] As he was about to die, the Buddha was questioned by some of his students, who were concerned that after the master's death people might begin propounding doctrines that had not been spoken by the Buddha himself and that these people might tell others that their doctrines were the actual words of the Buddha. In reply, the Buddha told them, "Whatever is well-spoken is the word of the Buddha." In other words, if a particular teaching results in greater peace, compassion, and happiness, and if it leads to a lessening of negative emotions, then it can safely be adopted and practiced as dharma, no matter who originally propounded it.

     -- John Powers, Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism

God creates our bodies, God bestows our nature. Inside and outside are both from God; how dare we derange them? We are within God, God is in our hearts; if we see the universe and emulate its purity, this is not different from the Great Way. If we have even a little selfish intent, we experience penalties that are not trivial.
The physical body is God-given nature; if you act in accord with God-given nature, you will spontaneously be free of the burden of human desires. Daily tasks are norms; act in obedience to the laws of God and there will be no mistaken excesses.

     -- The Cultivation of Realization, trans. Thomas Cleary (in Taoist Meditation)

[T]he Hare Krishna mantra is not sectarian. Because we are chanting these three names -- Hare, Krishna and Rāma -- someone may think, "These are Hindu names. Why should we chant these Hindu names?" There are some sectarian people who may think like that. But Lord Caitanya says, "It doesn't matter. If you have some other bona fide name of God, you can chant that. But chant God's name." That is the instruction of this Krishna consciousness movement. So do not think that this movement is trying to convert you from Christian to Hindu. Remain a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim. It doesn't matter. But if you really want to perfect your life, then try to develop your dormant love for God. That is the perfection of life.
[...]
You may profess any religion, but to test whether your religion is perfect or whether you are perfect, you have to see whether you have developed your love for God. Now we are distributing our love among so many things. But when all this love is concentrated simply on God, that is the perfection of love.

     -- A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, talk given at Northeastern University, Boston, Summer 1969 (as reproduced in The Journey of Self-Discovery)

So I've been thinking. While I was away, I got a number of books, as I often do. For a change, though, not all the non-fiction was on the subject of Buddhism. I got a number of Taoist books, and I was also able to find some more of the ISKCON books, specifically three volumes of Śrīmad Bhāgavatam -- I'm not sure how many volumes the full thing runs to, but I know it's a lot.

This is not to imply that I have neglected the subject of Buddhism; indeed, the majority of the non-fiction books I have bought recently have been on that subject, and I have got some fairly in-depth and significant texts such as the Kunzang Lama'i Shelung ("Words of my Perfect Teacher"), on the Longchen Nyingthig Ngöndro; the important Lamrim text Liberation in the Palm of your Hand; and the Visuddhimagga, which is almost like a Lamrim of the Theravada tradition, among several others. Unfortunately, I had to leave a substantial number of the books I'd bought with my folks, though they'll bring them for me when they visit in the next few weeks.

Anyway, the difference for me seems to be that a lot of what the ISKCON books are saying, despite being a branch of Hinduism at least partially heterodox to Buddhism, makes a great deal of sense. I suspect that the majority of people who get these books don't read them, or at least don't pay them much mind, but I've tried to consider them fairly. I have several, and I've just recently been in contact with someone down in London from whom I can get more, should I so desire; and, there are meetings here every Wednesday evening that are easy to get to, where, along with the practice of chanting and so on, they often have a number of books available.

There are two key points to consider in relation to the quotes I've put above. While there are several differences between Buddhism and Hinduism, many of them don't cause conflict; for instance, Hinduism posits the existence of God, whereas in Buddhism no assertion is made either way. So, the points in question are: 1) The practice of the traditions; and 2) The essential difference in outlook.

First, the practice. Buddhism has a vast array of meditation practices, including assorted visualisations and mantra recitations, too many to even summarise here. The practice of the Hare Krishna movement seems to be almost exclusively the chanting of their mantra, with an additional benefit in reading scriptures, primarily Bhagavad-gītā. It seems to me that neither of these practices is in any way harmful or contradictory to Buddhism, and in my experience produces -- if nothing else -- a more positive state of mind and a calmer outlook. The Gita is a classic in every sense, and Prabhupada's translation and commentary is excellent, while recitation of the mantra is similar enough to those in Buddhism that it doesn't feel strange. Both assert similar basics of morality, with more restrictions for monks/devotees.

Secondly, the essential difference in outlook seems to be that Hinduism in general and certainly the Hare Krishna movement specifically assert the existence of an unchanging, eternal soul, whereas Buddhism says that such a thing does not exist, and that all things are impermananent and subject to change. It all becomes a little cloudier when considering that both traditions have a belief in rebirth, but still, this is the key point. It seems to me that this is something that cannot be conclusively decided one way or another, and arguments on both sides seem well-reasoned. I was talking with aerowolf about this recently, and he suggested a logical way of looking at it, by mapping two variables against each other, and working out what would happen in each case, as follows:

If there is an eternal soul, and I act as if there is, what then?

If there is an eternal soul, and I act as if there isn't, what then?

If there is not an eternal soul, and I act as if there is, what then?

If there is not an eternal soul, and I act as if there isn't, what then?

It seems that in each case, assuming rebirth to be true (which I'm not going to get into now, it'd complicate things further), it would be desirable to perform acts and practices which would lead to a favourable rebirth, if not complete liberation from rebirth, regardless of whether any kind of soul continues or not. As with the practice itself, there seems to be no essential flaw in remaining undecided on the existence of a soul, as arguments appear valid both for and against -- in most day-to-day life, it's not something important, but if it does not exist, that's surely an exhortation to do as much as possible with a human life, as certainly Buddhism and probably Hinduism both posit that such a thing is difficult to obtain.

In fact, there are many similarities between the Hare Krishna beliefs and the Pure Land schools of Buddhism. There are distinct echoes of the Hare Krishna philosophy in this description:

One key concept behind Pure Land Buddhism is that Nirvana has become increasingly difficult to obtain through meditative practices. Pure Land Buddhism teaches that only through devotion to Amitābha Buddha and looking towards Amida Buddha for guidance can one be reborn in the Pure Land, a perfect heavenly abode in which enlightenment is guaranteed.

Indeed in several talks by Prabhupada the idea is expressed that it is too difficult to practice other methods leading to liberation, including meditation, in these times, and that the best -- indeed, only -- method is through bhakti-yoga, or devotional service to God. Similarly it suggests that it would be possible to be reborn in Krishna's abode (krishnaloka) in which eternal happiness and all sorts of other benefits are abundant; the Pure Lands described in Buddhism are akin to this.

The difference seems to lie in motivation. With the Hare Krishna movement, the exhortation is to love and serve God; Buddhism does not suggest to serve Buddha, but to practice mindfulness and compassion, and thus ultimately serve other beings. Buddhism suggests that liberation (nirvana) is the ultimate goal, with some traditions saying that the greatest thing is to become enlightened but stay in the world to help others as a bodhisattva; this branch of Hinduism asserts that serving God is a higher target than liberation of the self, and will naturally lead towards helping other people -- certainly, the Hare Krishna movement is involved in a number of commendable charitable works, particularly in terms of giving out free food.

These thoughts have been on my mind for quite some time, and it has helped me to resolve them by writing this. I have not been to the Buddhist centre or the Hare Krishna meetings since I've been back home, but hopefully I can start attending both again soon. Perhaps I'll get to go with a friend, possibly kitsunefury; I've recently been reading a book he got for me, Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, which is interesting in much the same way as Alexandra David-Néel's Magic and Mystery in Tibet.

To end on a less serious note, recently one of the Hare Krishna folks I met in town had CD's to give out to people who donated; I usually give some money, but I didn't think the CD would be very good. To my pleasant surprise, it turned out to be this pretty good 70's-esque psychedelic rock, which immediately put me in mind of nix_7c0 (who I'm back in touch with now -- but I digress).

Finally, after some searching, I found an archive of Bhaktivedanta Book Trust publications available for free. Similarly, Free Buddhist Audio, which I think I've linked to before, has a great number of audio talks on Buddhism and meditation, along with seminar and lecture transcripts. There are also a number of eBooks at BuddhaBooks.info, and Inward Path offers printed books for free except for shipping. All these are good resources for anyone who might be interested in learning more about what I've mentioned here, so I hope they may be of some use.

Addendum: aerowolf posted a response to my entry (which ~~you may or may not be able to see~~he has now made public) instead of a comment. He made many good points, but also made me realise I hadn't been completely clear in a couple of places.

Firstly, Buddhism not only says there is not an eternal soul, but that there is no soul at all; that the concept of "I" is an illusion and that illusion is to be dismissed through the practice of meditation. What is commonly referred to as "I" is just a combination of aggregates, or skandhas.

Secondly, a bit more clarification on Buddhism's lack of position on the existence of God -- to quote Aero,

In quantum physics, one of the more easy concepts to understand is that of the "superposition" -- that, until observed, a particle (essentially, something which can carry a bit of information) which state is unknown actually exists in all possible states until it is observed, and the state collapses into a single observed phenomenon.

Indeed Buddhism's view here (and on a number of other things) is technically a "superposition"; however, it is one of a number of questions the Buddha refused to answer; he made the analogy that one living in samsara is like a person who has been shot with a poison arrow, and asking such questions is like enquiring how many inches long the arrow was, what kind of bow it was shot from, and so on, instead of calling for a doctor to give the antidote. (The 'antidote' in the analogy being the dharma, of course.)

Also, the quote above from The Cultivation of Realization is atypical of Taoism; it is beyond the scope of this post to detail how -- I suspect it may be down to the translation -- but it seemed appropriate to the subject at hand.

Furthermore, aerowolf posited another 2x2 matrix of questions, which I will endeavour to answer at some future point, but will note here for reference:

If God exists, and an eternal soul does too, what then? What would it mean? How would you feel? How would you act, based on this belief?

If God does not exist, but an eternal soul does, what then? What would it mean? How would you feel? How would you act, based on this belief?

If God exists, but an eternal soul does not, what then? What would it mean? How would you feel? How would you act, based on this belief?

If God does not exist, and an eternal soul does not exist either, what then? What would it mean? How would you feel? How would you act, based on this belief?

He also suggests that I seem to want to "adhere to the dogmatic elements of others who adhere to the tenets of the philosophies" I have discussed, and also mentions "the most pervasive [negative emotion] of all, the feeling that one is valueless and has no purpose or place in the universe," which for me at least is a substantial part of the reason for spiritual belief.

I hope this clarifies all the unclear elements in my post. Whatever good is in it is due to those I have learned from; whatever bad, my own mistakes.

let my lustrous coat fill in

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:53:39 GMT

Well, I haven't written here in a while. First thing to note is that I'm going away to my mum's for Xmas/New Year tomorrow, and so for that period I'll be online substantially less often; on the other hand, I'll be spending time with my family (including Neil's mum and my grandparents), and I should hopefully also get to see massivesustain and shirosirius.

With that out of the way, onto what's been going on. I finished the photography course I was on, although I'm yet to receive a final mark for that [edit: ...and apparently won't know until around March next year...]; unfortunately though, I had to drop out of the arts foundation course I was doing for various reasons, not least of which was suddenly having a lot more of a social life. (That, and it seems I'm quite possibly unsuited for academia, much as I might wish otherwise; or maybe I've yet to find something with the right combination of interest, challenge, and amount of work required.)

So. About that social thing. For the last couple of weeks, as I mentioned last time, I've been playing Vampire: Dark Ages on a Sunday at kolat_ray and fubuki_'s place, along with salith, kitsunefury, and Miquel. Since then, however, we've also started playing Exalted at Miquel's place (myself, kolat_ray, Mark and benore as players, with Miquel running it), and I absolutely love it. I've bought several books for the setting, and Miquel kindly gave me a spare copy of the first edition core rules.

[edit: Forgot to mention, Miquel has worked in graphic design and is quite a talented artist, and he's doing a picture of my Exalted character, which I'll post over on dA when it's finished. If people like it enough, he's open to doing commissions at a low cost. He also told me that sometimes the odd jobs he gets require a photographer, and he says he'll let me know if anything like that comes up again -- might be a way to get a little cash boost from time to time.]

Interestingly, I also found out that a lot of White Wolf's roleplaying books -- including, particularly usefully, a large number of those that are out of print -- are available as PDF files from DriveThruRPG. The low prices of the PDF's compared to the actual physical books, coupled with the use of Lulu's print-on-demand service (as pointed out to me by salith), means that books are available at a cheaper cost, and out-of-print ones can be had in physical form without having to hope for a second-hand copy to turn up, which is becoming increasingly rare these days; seemingly most White Wolf fans want to hang onto their stuff. It's useful in this situation too to have Wiki's List of Exalted sourcebooks and List of Werewolf: The Apocalypse books, for example.

As far as Exalted is concerned, I came across another couple of useful resources, not least of which is the official wiki; there's also an unofficial wiki, and a lot of other resources on Bazzalisk's page. More generally, whitewolf_lj combines information on what's being worked on with some insightful comments about the development side of things, along with various other articles. It's pretty neat. Also, I know this has been passed around already, but in case anyone hasn't seen it, 1,175 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG is pretty damn funny.

Finally, I'd been considering getting a new music game after Xmas, but with GH: World Tour, Rock Band and RB2 all having different instruments with them, I wasn't sure whether I'd end up having to buy several peripherals if I wanted to play more than one game. Fortunately, someone (can't remember who, sorry!) linked me to Joystiq's Instrument Compatibility Matrix. Having tried at least 3 different guitar controllers on the 360, I think the best choice would be to get GH: World Tour with the guitar, and pick up both Rock Band titles on their own. [edit: I think I'll just get RB2, as apparently -- thanks Toroka -- if you want the songs from the original Rock Band, it costs 400 XBL points and 1.7gb of space to copy them for use in RB2. Any downloaded songs for either game work with RB2, though, so it's not like I'd be losing out on very much -- plus RB2 has more songs on the disc and better options anyway.]

That's about all the news I have, really. Though a lot of my focus lately has been on games, I've still been keeping up with reading Buddhist books (I got some last week, and I'm still trying to sort everything out with Wisdom so I can get the lost shipment replaced and delivered to my mum's) and various other interests. The only other thing I need to do today is pick up a repeat prescription from the doc's, to ensure I have enough meds to cover me for however long I'm away.

spaghetti con carne piccante recipe

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:26:51 GMT

I've been promising to post an updated version of this recipe at some point; it's evolved a bit since I first posted it over three years ago, and I've changed the ingredients to ones that are more readily available. I was also reminded about it when Warren Ellis posted his experiments in food a little while ago.

Enough preamble, on with the recipe:

Spaghetti Con Carne Piccante

This is usually something I make as a filling main meal for myself, although you can increase the quantities easily enough to feed more people. If you want to make it for more than two, though, you're going to need a really big pan. All the quantities apart from for the meat and spaghetti are given assuming you're making it for one person.

Anyway. Start off by boiling some water, and put dried spaghetti in a pan, about 150g per person. I usually use the quick cook type because I'm lazy, and that way everything's ready at the same time. Add some salt -- freshly ground sea salt is good -- and a little oil, preferably olive oil. When the kettle's boiled, pour the hot water into the pan with the spaghetti and turn the heat up high. At the same time, you're going to want to start cooking some minced/ground beef, ideally with as little fat as possible, in a large frying pan or wok, with a little oil. 250g of meat per person is about right.

Brown the meat, and periodically stir the spaghetti with a fork so it doesn't all clump together. Once the meat's browned -- shouldn't take more than a few minutes -- turn the heat down low on the spaghetti (or completely off if you're using convection rather than gas) and drain the fat from the meat. Turn the heat down (or off, as above) on the pan with the meat; now is time to add the spices.

First of all, add some hot pepper sauce (I like Encona, but you can use anything good -- depends on your taste and how hot you want it), about 1 1/2 tsp is the amount I usually use. Next, ground cayenne pepper -- about 3/4 of a teaspoon. Then ground turmeric -- 1 tsp or a bit more here. Finally, add some brown sauce (I like HP Fruity, but generic brown sauce is fine -- I don't know if this is at all common outside the UK). Measurements for that are inexact but assume 2-3tsp.

Mix everything together and let it warm through for a few seconds. To finish it off, mix in some passata or pomodoro (sieved tomatoes) -- if you don't have this, you can either put a can of tomatoes in the blender or use a commercial pasta sauce; I've found that kinds without strong flavours work best, as you're already flavouring the meal with spices. Red lasagne sauce is ideal, and probably more readily available than passata. Again it's an inexact measurement but assume about 2 tablespoons; enough to cover the meat but not so much that it makes the sauce runny.

Turn off the heat on both your pans now, then drain and serve the spaghetti. Depending on what you used, the sauce may need another minute or so to thicken; in any case, top the pasta with the sauce as soon as it's ready. As a drink to go with it, I can heartily recommend BrewDog beer.

electrify my life

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:51:00 GMT

So, I was browsing GameSpot looking for something completely different, and I came across the review for Legendary on the 360. By all accounts it's a pretty terrible game, but in the section on the good and bad points, there was something I'd been telling people for years:

I feel oddly validated. Also, I will make a real post with actual content soon.

tweets for today

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 04:07:12 GMT

10:11 Been awake for an hour orso which feels crazy early for a Saturday. Vaguely hoping books will arrive but suspect they were lost in the post #
10:20 Also? Looks like loudtwitter's autoposts to my LJ are working again, suddenly. Thanks, @loudtweeter #
10:27 Retweeting @loudtweeter: mouser.livejournal.com/379686.html is a useful guide to getting your tweets shipped to your LJ #
11:33 Post arrived and no books again; if they're still a no show on Monday, I'll email for replacements. Hopefully that'll all be okay #
15:33 Mercs 2 may be buggy but it's a lot of fun. Plus, naming all the Achievements after metal tracks is a cute touch #
19:39 Coil is good brooding music. Not feeling so great this evening; maybe if I eat I'll feel better, but I'm apathetic at best #
22:55 Talked to my folks and made dinner; feel a lot better. Also perfected my spaghetti recipe, will blog at some point #
23:15 Dying my hair purple for a change, messy business as always. Watching Buffy while it works, then shower time #
01:45 Hair enpurkled, but could do with another cut. Am also all clean and shiny. Bed soon, then roleplaying tomorrow with the usual suspects #
02:04 Slight mistweet.Twitter grade is 69 (hur hur) / 100: see twitter.grader.com/electricdog . Went down after I nuked some spammers. #

tweets for today

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:11:51 GMT

00:04 Conclusions: Uni project unfinished, wish I'd seen Kyu, phone tweets aren't all going through -- but RP was awesome and now I <3 Exalted #
00:05 Also? I need to unfollow some people on Twitter. Y'know, mostly the ones I don't know who added me randomly #
11:50 @hendryx Just pure txt, my phone doesn't really run apps. It's fine most of the time, just occasionally I lose a tweet or two #
11:59 Waiting for post again & trying to finish uni project. Only 200 words to write but I'm drawing a blank. I just want to get it out of the way #
12:38 Getting somewhere with uni work. Post just arrived, no books again; emailing them now. Scored a couple of old adventure games off a friend. #
12:55 This CD ('Insight' by Deeper In Zen) was only £3 but it's great. I <3 psytrance... need to get to Zogg again sometime soon #
13:23 Uni project submitted, though the written part was 90% bullshit. Hopefully I'll get an OK mark -- time now for lunch, Buffy, and videogames #
20:06 Infinite Undiscovery starts out bad, but after a while actually gets reasonably good. Still glad I didn't spend a lot of money on it though #
22:52 According to Wisdom Books, I should have had my order by now; I'm to email them for replacements if it's still no show after the weekend #

I pull the black from the gray

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:44:45 GMT

It's my first public post in a little over a week -- twitter nonwithstanding, and autoposting that still isn't working -- and I wanted to talk about the weekend just gone, which was particularly good, especially the Sunday.

Saturday wasn't bad either, but not much happened. I did get to talk to my mother though, for the first time since she and my stepdad got back from their trip to Amsterdam, and it was good to hear from her and talk about various things; I'd not slept so well on the Friday night due to some nightmares, and talking helped dispel some of the residual ill-feeling. I called my father after that, and he seems fine too; this will be the first year in a hell of a long time that I won't be seeing him over Xmas.

I'd planned to make a few online orders once some financial stuff had been sorted out, and so I got Mark Rowlands’ The Philosopher and the Wolf (article here, which I think is an excerpt), two volumes of .hack manga, and the film Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion (I have a CD of music from the film already). I also got Naruto: The Broken Bond (as it was £10 cheaper online than in shops), an mp3 album of rare tracks by Idlewild, and a selection of Buddhist books from Wisdom, primarily from their sale.

I was originally going to get Beautiful Katamari as well, but the price had gone up by nearly 50% since I first looked; similarly, some discounted music software that looked interesting would have been considerably more expensive due to a postage charge that wasn't mentioned until checkout, and I seem to recall the demo versions not working properly anyway; this meant I could afford a couple more books from Wisdom instead, so it all worked out okay.

Sunday was a much more interesting day; I woke early, but went back to sleep with the heater turned on until around noon when I got a call from kitsunefury. We met here, and went to the shop to get some food, before heading over to kolat_ray and fubuki_'s place, for the Vampire: Dark Ages game. I also got back a couple of roleplaying books I'd left there ages ago.

salith was there as well, and I was very pleased to learn (sorry if I missed it on your lj, I've been a bit lax about checking) that his leg is much better and he can now use stairs and such. I suggested that he might like to go to the Buddhist centre with me to see what he thought, so that's a possibility for the future; he also mentioned that Lulu can print books reasonably cheaply from PDF's (such as roleplaying stuff), and had some ideas about my plan for getting a new PC after Xmas. (In fairness, I talked to snowfields about this latter too, and he recommended I try Yes Infotech Ltd; I'll look into it more closely nearer the time.)

Later in the day, Miquel turned up (I'm not sure if he's on lj) and joined the game. Not long after that, we decided to get chinese food for dinner; it was very good, and although chinese is a bit hit and miss with me it didn't cause me to feel ill or headachey or anything; unfortunately there was just too much for me to eat it all. Anyway, it turns out that Miquel now lives with benore and some other guy whose name I forget (Mark, possibly), and so kitsunefury, kolat_ray and myself went over there after the game and stayed a while, though I was the last to leave.

They have an incredibly cute little cat called Mal, and he was very affectionate towards me after only a short while. Apparently there's going to be a Dark Heresy (Warhammer 40,000 roleplay) game tomorrow night, and I came up with a character for it. However one of the people who may be in attendance is possibly someone who lived with Phil, my long-ago ex, and if it is him, it's likely he's heard all the crap Phil has said about me, which could be a problem; of course, it could (and probably will) be someone else entirely and I'm worrying about nothing.

Afterwards, we played games for a while, mainly Guitar Hero World Tour; the high point of that had to be playing 3 Tool songs in a row with trippy visuals inspired by the album art. By that point we could physically not play any more Guitar Hero (well, at least not without requiring extensive neurosurgery afterwards) so we were going to play some Gears 2 in co-op, but realised it was 2am, so I came home and slept after doing a couple of quick things on the computer. In total, I'd spent about 14 hours out with friends, and felt pretty damn good for it.

In the next few days, I need to work on the final project for my photography course; I've selected the 10 images I want to use, but I still have three questions to answer at ~200 words each, and it needs to be in before next Monday. I've also some work to do on my arts course before Monday evening, but that's less pressing. Ideally before I go out tomorrow, the books from Wisdom will be delivered, and I'll have time to burn a DVD for lord_kook, as he's going to do some mixing and possibly other work on my album CityZen when he has time.

tweets for today

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:27:09 GMT

10:28 Slept well, sunny morning, nothing that needs doing for a couple of days. Plus I'm mostly over being ill so I can enjoy it. Hooray #
11:24 Toasted cheese sandwiches and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think this is a good start to the day's activities #
13:14 Tomb Raider Underworld is, by turns, completely breathtaking and utterly frustrating. Same formula as ever, then #
16:45 Retweet from @StephenFry: watching www.everytweet.com/ is oddly relaxing. With that and @twittervision, one could waste a lot of time #
18:55 Had time to play it at last, and Gears of War 2 is amazing - so much so that it elevates the original in retrospect #
20:39 Just beat Dead Space and got 180 gamerscore in the last half hour of play. Trading it in tomorrow and will review soon #
21:19 Just had a phone tutorial for my arts course, got 20 pages to do for that and 10 images/600 words for photo course, all due in two weeks #
22:25 Weird synchronicity: @warrenellis wants human bacon, @wilw wants vegetarian bacon that doesn't suck. Maybe they should team up #
23:44 Updating userpics on LJ &c. with images of XBL avatar and a quick gradient fill - works surprisingly well #
23:57 Setting up torrents and going to bed. Or at least to play games for a bit first. Goodnight, internet #

suspended animation in blue

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 12:10:34 GMT

The last couple of days have been quite busy, but I think on the whole good. I've been spending time with friends, and going out more than I usually do, though perhaps I could have done more. I feel really grateful to the people I spent time with, too, and with a bit of luck I'll see them again soon.

The details: On Thursday, I met with kitsunefury in town after he finished work, and we went for a drink (pint of snakebite and black and a shot of Jagermeister for me), then headed back to his place, stopping off to get a couple of things en route. Once there, we got takeout pizza for dinner, which was pretty good. We spent some time playing games and chatting, and although I'd brought my uni work with me, I didn't get around to doing any of it. Apparently the game he was running has finished, but now kolat_ray is going to be running Vampire: The Dark Ages, starting probably today. Although I came up with an interesting character for the game, I doubt I'll be able to make it over to Ray's, as I'm still not feeling so great, and I have my uni work to do.

I hadn't been sleeping all that well, and kitsunefury had to be up early for work; while I hadn't brought my meds with me, I didn't particularly want to go home, so I ended up staying the night. I didn't get a lot of rest, as I had a lot of weird dreams. The alarm went off at 6am, which is a crazy time for anyone to be awake, and about an hour later we caught a bus that took him to work and also stopped very close to my apartment block. I was due to meet gothicwhitewolf in the evening, though after sorting a few things out on the computer, I went to sleep. Because I was worried (largely unduly) about meeting him and the possibility of going to Manchester on Saturday, my sleep was again disturbed and interrupted by feelings of anxiety.

Once I was awake again, it took me a while to get ready, pack my stuff, and get something to eat. It turned out that gothicwhitewolf was going to be late, due to some trains being cancelled; however, he was less than 20 minutes late, so I met him at the station around 10pm. After going the wrong way a couple of times, we found the hotel where we were staying the night, which was pretty classy -- not that I have much experience of hotels. Once we'd left our bags in the room, we came down to the bar (which had a piano that played itself) and had a couple of drinks; I tried a Cosmopolitan for the first time (hi, scruff) and it was really nice, though we decided not to spend too long in the bar. I'd brought a book by the Dalai Lama to give him, and he seemed to be happy with that; we talked a little about different beliefs and such.

The rest of the night was fairly quiet though again I did not sleep well, partially due to the room being really warm and partially due to yet more unsettling dreams. I didn't feel very well at all in the morning, though a nice breakfast (cranberry juice, croissants, and really teeny pain au chocolat -- wasn't feeling up to having anything cooked) helped a little bit. There had been a bit of a mixup in communications, and so gothicwhitewolf had thought I'd intended to come back home on the Saturday night, rather than stay with him for the night as I had thought; for that reason, along with having work to do and most significantly not feeling well, led me to decide to skip going to Manchester and go home instead.

I saw him off to the station, giving him easy directions to get there, then spent a while taking some photos in the Peace Gardens; this was the first time I'd used my new filters, and I attached both the UV filter and the circular polariser. I've not yet looked at the results, though hopefully some will be good enough to post on DeviantArt or whatever. I looked around some shops for a bit then came home, and after a while I went back to sleep again.

In general it's been quite a contrast between feeling grateful and enjoying time with friends, and feeling very tired/unwell. I'm still not at my best today, but I need to do as much of my uni work as I can manage; I have to do the first half of chapter 2 in the textbook, which is on contemporary Western poetry. I'm behind with the photography course as well, but that's just stuff I have to read online -- I don't think we have the instructions for the final project (worth 90% of the mark, the test I mentioned previously was worth the other 10%) yet, and that's not due in until early December anyway. Hopefully I can manage it; I feel quite stressed about it, though I'm sure it's not going to be the end of the world if I'm a little bit behind -- I've just not found the time since my last tutorial when I've been both feeling okay and not otherwise occupied.