The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Hi everyone,

How are you all ? I know I promised video blogs and things but currently I haven’t had lighting on my side, despite having the technology for a feasible implementation. Something about the darkness I find more comfortable then any light anyways.

My music is old, slowly growing and changing like most things, but it gives me inspiration to reflect, and support to deal with the emotions and illogic I encounter in the jumping , hopping and bouncing of everyday life or life everyday.

I have read all but one of the books great Aunt Jackie gave me for birthday / Christmas. Interesting what see classifies as regular / normal reading, given she is unaware of my reading habits.

Is it weird that tragedy seems normal ? Disasters seem to all ways make more news than happy things, and crisisses (I think it should be crisisi but dictionary disagrees with me, it must reserve the -i plural for -us suffix, so us becomes i) seem  to force people to action , instigating the choice of survival or death.

This choice of survival or death is just as easy of the choice of a cake or death, maybe that is because it a Boolean choice, with only two options (yes I am aware I am repeating myself / being superfluous, but an amazing number of people don’t seem to know what a Boolean / binary choice is) or maybe because one of the choices is death, and mortal beings as a rule generally like self preservation.

When you start adding other options into the question, it becomes more difficult for people to answer. For example Cake, Comfort, Liberty, Improvement, Death ? I recently watched a TED talk video on different the mathematics of the decision making and the speaker pointed out several interesting things.

The first being that when given a difficult Boolean decision with a default specified, because of the difficulty most people go with the default. (The example case was organ donation in different countries, the difference was largely because of the form for driver’s licenses being inclusive or exclusive)

The second was that given a Boolean / Binary decision, and then given a Ternary decision with the third option being similar but less than than one of the other two options, having the weaker option in the decision, made the stronger option more likely to be chosen then its alternative in the binary decision / choice.

For example, given the choice of a free trip to London, a free trip to Paris , and a free trip to Paris except you have to pay for your breakfast, the free trip to Paris would become more popular when the second option was included in the decision choices.

This leads me to think what result a survey that had the default option as death, would have in terms of its responses to the decision making process, would everyone be through in their filling out of the survey if they realised that their ignorance could cost them their lives.

Imagine for a second that every decision could that you make could cost you your life, would your choices be influenced by this addition ? Why ? Why not ? Suddenly the question of the what topping to have on your toast in the morning isn’t so trivial ? And what about the decision of whether to say Hello to someone or to not say Hello ?

We train ourselves to make decisions from an early age, but the basis and reasoning for our decisions isn’t always a rigorous as we believe or perceive it to be.

I am volunteering at the Lifeline Book Festival until next Sunday, and today I had the opportunity to work at the Helium tanks inflating the balloons, it was very interesting to contemplate and listen to the answers to the following questions

1. Would you like a balloon ?

2. If you would like a balloon, What colour would you like ?

Listening to the answers and asking the question soon lead me to the mental line of inquiry ?

1. Would you like to keep living ?

2. If you would like to keep living, What type of life would you like to lead ?

I would love to have the opportunity to ask various people these 4 questions and contemplate their answers and the motivation behind why they gave the answers they do / did.

I return to University for one more semester (hopefully)  in late February. Additionally I have various other side projects which I want to gradually chip away at.

This blog entry has already asked enough questions, and I don’t even know if my reader base still exceeds 1 (me), but you are welcome to comment / answer the questions asked if you wish.

Thanks for your time,

Best wishes,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

Perhaps now I will recall what exactly I wanted to type about. I have been working quite hard on my advanced data visualisation project and have come to the abrupt realisation that spectographs/ spectograms are not effective visualisation methods for audio analysis, as they look cluttered and are visually difficult to measure or discretise. This means that I am going to be investigating various transformations / discretisations I can use on spectograph visualised audio data or alternate methods of visualising audio data.

Currently the software I have been looking into includes Sonic Visualiser, Wavesurfer (which I will probably eventually get working with TCL / TK 8.5 after lots of sed magic to remove the GUI effects that have been made invalid / redudant due to the graphic tile updates), sndPeek (which I haven’t found a use for , other than it being a realtime audio visualiser, still working out whether it takes files as input or only audio devices)  Marsyas ,bpM and Echonest on the analysis front. I am also looking at hooking into libvisual just to provide an aethestic visualisation option.

On the subject of spectral analysis and pretty pictures, on the way into the city, I saw a double rainbow in the sky. What was interesting about the second rainbow has the colour spectrum back to front due to the angle of refraction, another interesting thing is whilst people claim to see triple rainbows and quadruple rainbows the rainbows they see are actually double rainbows that both have a supernumerary rainbow each.

rebecca(my laptop) seems to be update package wise, and I now have scim autostarting along with KDE 4.3, my gentoo overlay seems to be slowly growing to. I really need to spend sometime on the cluster, not to mention my Partial Differential Equations study. Recently I discovered animedb.net, the fact that it has a random function, is something that I find quite impressive. Apparently I am /was/ still am insane for having the debug and doc USE flags enabled globally.

In terms of philosphy I tumbled across the Münchhausen Trilemma, which fits together nicely with various thoughts and gedakens I have been investigating. Another intriguing thought is that is not thinking that causes us to exist but rather believing that we exist or believing that we think we exist to is more likely to implicate existence. This has to do with the philosophical zombie and sentient thought gedanken.

My Japanese is improving to the anime exposure and my French from the movies on SBS, I still have to work on my Mandarin,Russian,Italian, German, Dutch, Swedish, etc. I also have to get comfortable with the style of coding that the programming competitions like ANZAC and ACM expect, particular given that chances are Visual Studio ends up getting used as IDE… (Visual Studio makes me ARGHHH…). I also need to revise my knowledge of dynamic programming and various other programming algorithms for ACM.

IOU seems to running ok, all things considered, and it is possible that the Kali-Ma campaign may be ressurected, so their is plenty of GURPs fun for me to find. I also have to get around to either writing or typing down some poetry/ lyrics or starting to formalise scripts, skits and storyboarding and dialogue for the various manga / anime in my head. I recently reheard the poem the arrival of the Bee Box, I like that poem, the absolute depth and varation of the imagery, meaning and metaphor align to the level of immersion that I have become accustomed to. (Having said this my brain is now think what it would like to be in MMRLEICE (Massively Multiplayer Real Life Emerged in Custard Experience or Extravaganza… take your pick …))

My question for this week, is what makes something taboo ? If something that was taboo from your phenomenological experience was considered a consensus reality or common place in another place you were experiencing what your beliefs and connatations of it change ? Why or Why not ?

Best of luck and best wishes,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

All my assessment for this semester is completed and now I just await my results. Now my eyes / mind / various other squishy appendages turn to all the objectives and things that piled up on my floor or been pushed aside. (Actually my floor is clean, suprise I actually managed to clean my room whilst studying). Meanwhile I have been organising what needs to be achevied during both this gap from study and in the following semester.

Spent a large amount of time looking at networking equipment (switchs, routers, smart switchs,etc), (hacking NG GS608s via eeprom to enable the BCM5398 smart managed switch features, if NG has them turned off), as I have several LANs coming up and various purchasing decisions to contempt and iron out. Ironing makes me feel like eating waffles. I also have to organise some visual / video stuff inorder to work out a movie night I am having with a grandparent.

Was part of an interesting discussion the other day regarding the value of life ,whether the creation of life was just as immoral as the destruction of life and whether creating life, just lead to the newly born experiencing pointless suffering. ##philsophy on freenode isn’t what it used to be, in fact I don’t think it ever was what it used to be. As the semester ends, I have recently been answering various questions about my future and the possibilities. The more I think about it, the more I realise that the answer isn’t something static that is easier to vocalise into comprehensible means.

The steps we have control over are the steps we take, and we can only take one or two or three or possibly seven steps without falling over in an heap / queue / stack / <insert data structure here>. Incandescent featureless footprints taken in the fabric of time, make me wonder whether such blemishs have an impact in the grand scheme of things.

Best wishes and have fun

Benjamin Southall

Hi everyone,

Today has been interesting. Friday also was a good day, in which the QUT Tabletop Gaming Club, had our first games night in the new room allocated to us. Games of Magic, Stratego, Chess and Monopoly were played and fun was had by most, if not all.

I also managed to have the online discussion with my INB302 group members the other night, which was quite hectic, but productive.

I have been thinking more and more about recursion as a measure of proof of complexity and a partial proof for reality. We can currently create using our minds or computer , worlds other than the one we appear to exist in.

Phenomenologically these worlds exist to us, however unless communicated we can’t share or clarify there existence with others. In these worlds that we create however, we can make characters, and it perceivable that if those characters had minds, they could create worlds and characters with minds, and so on and thus forth.

You could also use this recursion to create a circular logic structure / paradox, in which your existence is phenomenological creation or observation of the character’s mind , which is the other character’s mind which is in your own.

Currently the hard AI to attempt to simulate reality with free will at an accurate level hasn’t been estabilished, we don’t even have the hard AI to have an inanimate object interface with our reality as though it was sapient and sentient, let alone the hard AI required to implement free thought, imagnation and creativity.

In between the lines of reality, hyperreality, subreality and cyberreality, does recursion of this form benefit us ? Are sophism or solipsism valid mechanisms for thought and approach. Different people interact with the same shared perception / consensus of reality in different ways generating their unique (phenomological) experiences.

Paradoxes are useful when dealing with recursion because they give it a pattern and ocassionally a breakpoint, in which it can revert to a different frame of reference.

Communication of thoughts,ideas and emotions is simple but difficult, because we make it so, in non-dimensionalising and parameterising our dialogue is such that it doesn’t isomorphically from person

A says blah, blah maps to blah2 in common for person A, blah2 in common for person B maps to qwerty. Person A says blah, blah means blah2, blah2 then gets converted back to qwerty so that Person B, understands what Person A is saying.

Person A says blah, Person B hears blah, Person B asks which blah or what do you mean by that ? Blah in what context ?

We need a language that is connationless, emotionless and is such that meaning of the message is shared between two or more unique (phenomological) people.

Ideally if we our brains all work the same way / structure, except with different associations and memories,we could have a thought based language that mapped what were thinking about to a global language value and then attempted to map that value into equivalent or  component parts of another person’s thoughts or memories.

It would work like the Babelfish from HGTG, except it would be based on brainwaves and signals. Something like this is much easier than the current system that allows the analogueness of our vocal chords,body language and an ambigious spoken / written language.

The latter attempts to emulate the isomorphic mapping but isn’t able to due to  both parties mapping their respective phenemological values to the same word and then getting upset when their communication doesn’t ensure that the message is communicated and understood.

Avoding or ignoring something doesn’t make it go away or not exist. (Mildly better strategies include blowing it up (which should reduce most objects to smaller pieces) or setting it on fire (which either makes it on fire, or turns it in smaller piecies which have been burnt)).

Avoidance doesn’t resolve a problem.  Some problems can be resolved by fire and explosions, however this does bring about certain results, intentional or otherwise due to causality.

Can we draw lines ? Are Lines real ? Is Sand real ? Is Sand anymore real that Lines ? If we avoid Lines, we draw only using dots, if we avoid sand , how do we know if it is real ? If we set sand on fire or explode sand and do a decent job of it, we should get glass , but can we set lines on fire or explode lines ?

Best wishes and have fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

Ivanhoe (My NAS) is finally getting its USB ports repaired and Ulrica (my laptop) has had its power circuity repaired and is getting the fan replaced (hopefully). It isn’t raining here, but I almost wish it would. I have been watching communitychannel for a while now, and I dare attribute my desire to video blog to seeing her work and having so many potential readers make up excuses based on their laziness and my post’s longevity.

Anyhow, she asked an interesting question about whether I would let anyone stand under my umbrella, which really made me think. Because most of the large umbrellas I get my hands on , end up breaking or being ruined by the weather or other people. Despite this I am quite sure that I would most likely give them the umbrella to stand under alone and get wet instead of them, until it was time to get my umbrella back.

I don’t mind the rain at all, and have the strategy of wearing multiple layers when there is any chance of rain, so that the outer layer absorbs or deflects all the water and the inner layers stay dry. The only problem with this strategy is if you spend prolonged amounts of time in the rain, your shoes and socks get drenched, particularly if you don’t watch out for puddles.

In the case of spending over an hour in the rain, your best bet seems to be to just were minimal clothing and thongs or barefeet and just get wet.

My left ankle is strangely sore, like it is sprained or streched or something, I am not exactly sure what causes the pain, but it makes walking hurt significantly more than normal. I have tried various methods to alleviate the pain, but to no avail, at least for now.

The umbrella question for me becomes a metaphor for a morality gedanken (thought experiment see Trolley problem on the vilionist in a coma), for both how different people cope with stress and life circumstances and for the amount of moral self sacrifice / ability to be loved and give love.

People like to take the easy path, despite the consequenecs for doing so. In the subsquent rush to adopt apathy, indifference and ignorance as the easy methods out, they don’t seem to realise the sacrifice / consequences they cause themselves and others.

To quote Red Gum, “If you don’t fight you lose”. Huxley and Orwell clearly demonstrated the means that humanity could be socially conditioned in order not to care, think and question. When there is nothing left to fight for, will we have lost ?

Or are we losing already … ?

(Apologies to those who lost Pachisi or any other game, it wasn’t intentional)

Thanks for listening / reading,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi,

Its study week , the week dedicated to the cohesive repetition of techniques and methodologies that allow the recollection and presentation of fluid information or application of knowledge to take form in items of assessment.

The weather is wonderful. The cold keeps me cool, the rain keeps me wet, but not wet enough. The code keeps me focused, Gradually habits get influenced or broken, solutions to problems arise and more challenges face us as we live.

Several interesting discussions have occurred lately including the discussion about humanity’s stupidity being infinite (lets just say I disagree with Einstein and have a logical basis for doing so), the discussion about the game and double or n-think. Ignorance, discovery and recognition make for an interesting meme let alone amusement. Imagine if an IT lecturer got hold of this and hid carefully a subliminal reference to that which we lose by knowing and face palm without questioning.

Subconscious subliminal triggers could be the key to brainwashing or habbit forming the entire world, and yet my own snares lay decadent, covered in dust and spiderwebs, so sublime that they seem camoflauged in auspicious reality and never sprung even when the bait is tasty pizza or hamburgers.

Pruning is important in the maintaince of fast growing climbing species and humans are no exception, focus and willpower is required to avoid being left too long in the shade to stagnate until fermented.

But now my mind turns to the peach and to the folk song and piano solo I know so well, for with each person comes their own mental triggers caused by emotion or illogical mental association if these were harnessed for uses more beneficial to the society, success would be eminent, however at the same time we would lose a piece of ourselves in the process, doomed to remain a broken jigsaw piece for eternity.

Why do the JW’s expect me to drop what I am doing to engage in a discussion about my beliefs, and then leave 10 minutes later, when they can’t make me an easy convert ? People are so similar, unless you act like they expect you to act, you say what they expect you to say and you fulfill their limit processes on your character instead of being free to paint outside the lines and dance in infinity, why must reality be a consensus of oppressionistic judgements rather than a fondue of perceptions with some chunks of personalisation and attitude added for flavour.

Now I am hungry, is non toxic really non toxic ? Could I eat a crayon ?, apparently they test chemicals for safety individually and not in chemical combinations because the permutations are far too numerous, and yet we will soon have quantum computing and can model all most anything approximately, but don’t as the funding hasn’t be allocated yet.

Eventually people will realise that rates of change matter to our reality and society, the total differential of human morality,  it matters, the rate of change of the environment and ecological support systems, it matters, the jacobian of the influence of the internet on capitalistic society and people’s approach to social interaction, it matters.

The world will come crashing down, if steps are not taken, but currently that doesn’t matter, baby steps are taken, stumbling blocks are made, and yet people are not prepared to sacrifice the now for the future (and yet they unwillingly do so already) or sacrifice their freedom for reason, people value freedom more than the ability to itself live.

Thousands of people have died, so others could live free, if the rates of change and the reality calculus are ignored,we will be dying for freedoms, that the future will never get because at this rate the future will be lost or forsaken.

We could force a rollback or reversion to a previous circumstance and society, and avoid problems now, we could use what we have in multitudes to develop and implement solutions to scarcity in the context of reality, or we could sit comfortably in our lives, unaware of the dangers that lurk under the bed or in the closet, the children see it, but the parents don’t believe, choosing to forget when they were children themselves, and instead focus on their important part of existence.

Did you see their smile, did you see them cry, did you see them laughing as in their souls they died ?
If you manage to see my bubbles (they aren’t pointy), let me know ….

Hope your thinking hard and staying focused,
Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

How are we all ? Silent and uninterested as usual.

This update like the last one should have been written and posted earlier, my apologies to anyone who suffered as a result of the delay in writing this.

Java Blues (You can get blue coffee ?)

I begin to realise know that most of the problems with my code not working aren’t due to typographical errors or silly mistakes but rather due to my unfamiliarity with the Eclipse Plugin Architecture and the Eclipse View Architecture and to a lesser extent Java itself.

I also realise that if I had been in contact with someone familiar with either of those architectures it would have made my time coding this plugin so far significantly easier. Currently my buttons and everything else isn’t showing up, and I am not sure why, but at least my view isn’t crashing, my application worked best as a standalone SWT/ Jface app, but meh.

Into The Wild

I recently saw Into the Wild and throughly enjoyed it. I recommend it to anyone who wants to see a good movie. The movie also reiterates the ironic conundrum of an individual finding the secrets of true happiness and wisdom, only to die the death of a martyr and not get to live them. It was quite painful to view the reality of human nature where simple carelessness and stubbornness lead to such tragedy.

Philosophy isn’t Dead

Today I got unintentionally caught in a discussion in ##philosophy in Freenode in response to the statement “Philosophy is Dead”, it was an interesting incursion into death of abstract concepts as anthropomorphism, analogy, metaphor, literal lack of existence or otherwise, I enjoy dialogue on such oddities and was quite happy to discuss the subject with one or two other channel members.

Learning the Hard Way Why good help is so hard to find.

Everyone has heard of the adage “Good help is hard to find”, but few people think about why. It seems to me from my experience of being ridiculed, rejected, scorned, ignored, criticised, mocked and generally disconcerted that people don’t want help regardless of whether they need it or not. The quality of the help doesn’t matter,Pat Rafter could offer your child free tennis coaching , but if you child doesn’t want to play tennis, then fat chance they will attend one session playing or coaching with Pat Rafter.

When people need or want help they usually ask for it. But these days pride, importance and independence mean that people are reluctant to ask for help, let alone accept help as they see it is a sign of weakness, because they no longer get the satisfaction of doing it all by themselves. This is the kind of satisfaction that a young child has like the protagonist in Andrew Daddo’s “I Do It”, and yet as old we grow, we don’t seem to get over this sense of self importance and pride.

I can understand now, why classmates and fellow students hated me for allowing them to extend and broaden their knowledge and learning, I can understand why people flat out rejected my attempts to care about their well being and their quality of life. Being helpful and nice seems to come hand in hand with being used and treated like a doormat, or being rejected.

These are the days in which if you tried to help an old lady across the street, you would get all eyes on you with suspicious glares wondering when you are going to snatch her handbag, you go anywhere near a playground or children that it doesn’t appear you are family to, and people think pervert or pedophile.

This is quite sad and I don’t see why virtues are admonished as the vices that people engage in everyday are ignored or disregarded. Human Morality and Human Nature needs hope know more than ever, if we are even going to bother to turn off the TV, wake up and actually start caring about the state of our surroundings.

More notes and updates are scheduled for later.

I wish everyone the best with their new year and their celebrations.

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

This post is long overdue I know but given all that I am upto, those who actually bother will understand if not tolerate.
Invites are sent out.

Currently

I am sitting in an empty house, with no way to get down the range to the train station to get to the city. But I figure I know when the last train leaves & I have the phone number of the local taxi service, so I will properly get packed up & down there in time. My mood is frustrated but pensive with bouts of indecision, intensive loneliness & isolation and the occasional sprinkle of hope. I am listening to Hey Leonardo & Fidelity, and some Taty and James Blunt’s new album.

My feet sting from insect bites so I am soaking them a tub of water in a primitive effort to eliminate the ethereal sensation of pain on my ankles. I haven’t been eating anything other than dim sims, for the moment, though I did take sausages out of the freezer.

I need to go shopping for groceries and not for new clothes as Dallas suggested on the ride up. I also need to go yohoing (diablo) or rollerblading to increase my level of physical fitness.

I don’t like living on hills, but given my Dad experienced the 1974 floods, I have been living on hills for a long time, for one it means I don’t rollerblade as much, as the terrain isn’t suitable. I have so much to get through. See more information in the busyness section.

My mobile current has no battery charge but has free texts left.

I had a sushi buffet with Mum earlier and it was pure awesome. SUSHI Buffet FTW , *happy dances*

Pat’s Birthday

Attending Pat’s 19th yesterday, watched almost everything, party was ok I guess, I got to see Pat and Matt, and have another few debates and conversations with Matt. I also got play texas holdem poker which I was winning (I was chip lead), until the other players couldn’t be stuffed playing. I didn’t sleep the entire night but got about 5 to 6 hours upon getting home.

Way too many got pushed in the pool and had their phones damaged. It is interesting to attend a party, even when that type of party and those attending are not your crowd or your scene. Every geek or intellectual quip or joke, either got one laugh or ignorance or social criticism to euphemise it. What was funny is how many times I was asked what I was upto, I feel like it would have been better to wear a placard with what I had been doing on it.

The number of people caught in a groove or a oscillating pattern amazed me, but that is the social economic area and its effects on the population. Being incorrectly labeled as being a hippie was tedious, but then as aforementioned they didn’t properly acknowledge the geek stereotype anyways. Why does long hair & intelligence mean hippie ?

Social stereotypes are rather limiting and pathetic. One chooses ones friends and the people around them carefully because those around them influence them. Their was also way too much smoking and smoke for my liking and the only one that was actually careful to ensure I wasn’t downwind from them was Matt. Another funny thing was the $30 dollars Pat’s little brother got as tips from people, it seems people have less need for money when off their faces.

Work

Workwise I got a new ID card and have to get my password for it, I also have to summarise a list of my accomplishments so far as Michael won’t be in tommorow and Kerry will be instead. I spend most of Thursday relearning the nuances of specific types of inheritance, generics and return type structure in Java, all the code I ended up writing didn’t do what was required, but then again neither did the snippet Michael quickly coded up once I had finished it.

I have a feeling I will have to write a custom Graph Content Provider for our needs to use with Zest, I will probably check the Zest mailing list or email Ian Bull (Zest’s creator) regarding it. Java coding is fun in Eclipse, but I so need more RAM.

Chris is still working on porting several ATL examples into Tefkat, but comes across many gaps in his knowledge that hopefully Thomas or Michael can fill.

Busyness

Yesterday afternoon I had an impromptu meeting regarding some employment writing a VBA macro calculator for a jobsheet for a neighbour. This means I currently have the following projects to keep me busy

• Vacation Research Scholarship in MTL Visualisation in Eclipse
• Gentoo Development Quiz and Application
• Game Development Project with a few colleagues from University (I probably should go into more detail on it, but I am not going to as it would just be bitter, considering I had deja vu & didn’t realise it to halfway through ,and by then it is always to late. It went ok I guess)
• Wesnoth Maps Uploading and Balancing
• Wesnoth Indonesian translation
• Web stuff for ICTBS
• A PHP project from Nikolai
• VBA Macro project from neighbour

Other non project things that I also need to get down is catching up with as many people as possible, enjoying my holidays (what holidays ), possibly more Neopets stuff (whether studying ludology & gameplay in the flash games or keeping my XHTML & CSS skills non rusty) (Sabrina got me playing it and has been offline for at least 2 weeks, you have no idea how painful that is) , and of course the skit writing, blog theming, possible tutoring and teaching and lots of other stuff.
Awards Night for my little sister

This was ok, best moment was when my sister’s friend stood on the local MP’s shoe / foot, or possibly when my sister recording the Joseph & Technicolour dream coat medley (I saw Joseph & Technicolour dream coat at the theatre) onto her phone. She is moving schools for next year and will have my little brother helping her out as they will share the same school.

I got to catch with Roland which was good, also got to meet my little sister’s science teacher who had heard so much about me. Shame I didn’t get to see Andrew but maybe I will later in the break.

Catchup

I also got to catch up briefly with Lisa and her sisters, but only for 3 hours and it wasn’t as enjoyable as it could have been. Doctor Who conversation would have been the highlights.

I also got catch up with my granddad (mum’s dad) , we took him out to Redcliffe for a drive and then shopping, we took the haphazard way of getting there (Mum’s is almost known for it, but always gets us there in the end), but it was good as granddad (whose old occupation was a real estate valuer) got to see all the property development that happen seen he had last been there (when he was little, (primary school)). We then went shopping, Grandad is awesome to shop with .

I also got to catch up with my grandmother (dad’s mum), who I will see again over Christmas and who is very much enjoying all the books on CD she has been listening too.

Skits

I know I should have completed skits up here and instead I have an incomplete list with one or two partials.

Little Johhny Maligent (The cute evil 3 old, whose moral compass points to a static south ,warning reading this may warp your mind indefinitely)

Harry Potter & The Daleks (Started improvising this for Claire)

Access Denied Skit

The Runners (original improvised this for Sabrina)

King of Macroni & Cheese

The Worthiness of the Fish Skit (In Indonesian)

The Blueberry Cheesecake Story (extension of what actually happened, warning will contain strong geek jokes and references)

The Chasers War on themselves

Morons Anonymous

The Infested Restaurant

The post’s question is Which skit do you want to read first or want completed first?

Best of luck, have fun,

Look forward to hearing / seeing from all.

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

My apologies for the delay, not like anyone will notice it. I have been very busy with Uni stuff (almost over, only Computer Architecture assignment due Monday and Exams to study for). Thanks to my ITB712 Team for keeping me sane.

This was supposed be an audio blog, but then I realised that I had too much to say and that some of it wouldn’t be easy to record.

Events of the late (what happened since last time).

Successfully finished ITB712 group project complete with Virus Fiasco. The machine the release was built on had a virus . Naturally the tutor accused me of writing a virus to infect his machine. (of which I did no such thing.)

Got my modeling results back, not happy with them, but will have to live with them. Like everything else I suppose.

Tried to escape into a Freelancer reality and haven’t succeeded. The problem with escapism is that unless it is immersive then it doesn’t work. The reality or place of escape has to be isomorphic with the real reality, otherwise you get bored and return to the real reality, in which you suffer the pain you were trying to avoid.

At least I have two class 10 weapons now, fat lot of good they do in this reality, in resolving my mood, mental issues, people issues, etc. Guns are no use as violence was never the answer, let alone magic guns on a spacheship in a computer game.

Mum has a new job in the city and she seems to be enjoying it. She comes home happier it seems. I applied for a research trial scholarship over the break in Model Driven Architecture. I have a meeting on Tuesday about it. Hopefully I will have some fun porting diff and make and other GNU tools to MDA and possibly making a visual / GUI diff program to compare different models.

Didn’t hear back from the Lego people, so not sure if they are still interested in hiring me. I wish everyone else that is working on assessment or exam study, the best of luck. I also saw the Rotary Display of donated brasserie on the Goodwill Bridge, which made the hand rails unusable, why they went to all the effort for only 3 hours of breast cancer promotion I don’t know.

It is a shame that the majority of cancers have easy cures which the doctors and pharmaceutical companies hide. I guess human greed outweighs human compassion. It reminds of the saying it’s nothing personal, its strictly good business.Good business and Moral business two very different things.

I also went shopping for the first time in ages. It was boring and irritating. I miss the Indonesian tawar-menawar and pasar-pasar. Today society is too much harga pas. If only retribution and redemption were bargained so our consciences did suffer the ridiculously over priced fixed price of guilt , sorrow and pain.

I have also get my Gentoo development quiz finished (Yes I am lazy / careful) , two games to help design, plan and develop (with two different groups) and catch up with at least 17 people over the break, when it arrives. I haven’t decided if I am going to LCA or Woodford this year.

My pockets of specialist knowledge are growing from forms of asexual reproduction to neurology, and numerous others in between. Given I am a generalist by nature, I find this ironic.

I thought I was getting a ride home with Dallas, but he went to the Valley to have Pizza. So I caught a ride with Mum and Jacob. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I did, and had to suffer interjections, misunderstandings and ignorance. I really need to process things / issues out and resolve some flaws in the distribution of my willpower, and the nature of some things in my mind and soul.

Sometimes one doesn’t seek solutions, one just wants to talk, to discuss , to have a heart to heart, soul to soul, and yet any male on the planet assumes solutions are wanted. That trip wasn’t pleasant, and the harsh relevance of the music from All the Lost Souls (great James Blunt music on his new album), hurted more than it helped all through last night.

I came back here as a favour, but now plans are changing, and I wonder why I came. I wonder if the silence would have been better than the words said. I thought I would get some respite and time to resolve my issues, but it seems circumstances have dictated otherwise.

I seem to hide in the cryptic metaphors and references , I do this for my good and the good of others, though they don’t realise or accept it. I feel like most of the James Blunt songs I have been listening to and a few Avril Lavinge songs too.

I am sorry for shitting you off Chrystle, though I don’t know what shits off about me. If you want a straight honest answer you just have to ask for it. Alternatively it may be better if I just disappear, whatever suits you better. I live to serve … (Heck I sound like a Genie)

Relationship / Friendship development is much harder than Software Development, that is for sure. But I seem to have Gentoo packages broken (not compiling), parts of my mind and soul broken (that can be simply fixed, when I get the chance), and relationships bent and broken by circumstance.

I am currently fascinated with ambiogenesis, or the creation of something alive from something dead / non living, not really in the Frankenstein way. More in the way of the phoenix.

Honestly I am confused when one thing is said and another is written. I also like riddles again.

This post’s question is

Those who seek it , will not find it.
They question those who can not speak.
They beg the wisdom that can’t be heard.
Their prize can not be given in words.
But instead is found unintentionally by those who do not want it.
Those who have it often ignore it or complain of its burden.
It is more valuable than gold but more worthless then ash.

Who are they and what is it ?

Best of luck and hopefully I will cheerup

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

My Gentoo world update is taking its sweet time, with the two main culprits listed in the title. I have been playing way too much Freelancer (sighs, and blames Ruben and crew…., then shrugs,). I finally found the music on the CD I was looking for.

The lyrics are so soothing and wonderful they caused me to sleep in and miss my lecture. But at least the assignment and my revision study (to make up for missing the lecture) is done. But it made me remember some old dreams and memories that I thought I had also lost. Interesting how memory triggers work.

Another day, another sacrifice, another distraction, and the same old songs in my mind. My dreams toss and float like plasma amidst a sea of thought cryptically revealing themselves like mermaids in bikinis, showing all that isn’t crucial and hiding the truth, secrets and beauty away.

There was the gambling, the fountain of … ?, the running, and the faces flashing, everything was topsy turvy except not, and all the blood ran cold. What subtitles beesech me to speak in such a bizarre tongue, saying but not comprehending, trusting in the flow of the words, that the message though primitive and garbled, may be heard by someone else as a plea of requiem for those neither gone nor lost, those with silent shapes and loud minds, those which make my dreams what they are …. ? Rules only led to discrepancies and betrayal but are still necessary despite their consequences…

The bitter drink which life appears to be is rather a mask for something sweeter, something purer then ever anticipated, something that will slap you in the face, like a fish out of water. The sting remains though the wound was long ago, the memory remains while all records of conscious recollection have faded and rotted away, the dream its own requiem, a taunting teasing tune, that would send all others that listen mad, except me. For I have heard the screams, and smiles that the dream recalls and I have been to places others fear to believe in.

And yet the missing fragments haunt me so, even given my circumstance of supposed to be focusing on more important things like assessment.

What can’t you remember ?

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234