The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

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

Hey everyone,

First of all, the sections in brackets are extra details that can be skipped and the message should still be comprehensible but the brackets represent side notes, footnotes, thoughts, extensions and other such fundanglery that makes life worth living or at least my blog worth reading or laughing at …
As for my over use of brackets that probably comes from the fact that my brain thinks 3 times faster then most people, hence I have more sub processes, hence faster and more indirectly linking between thoughts, it is either that or the fact I enjoy Scheme / LISP programming which also uses lots of brackets.

Second of all, this post has been at least 8 days (over one week in the making) so it probably will be long. Sorry it isn’t an audio blog, I will see what I can do with respect to them, but I haven’t gotten much feedback. As for name quotes, other then direct speech quotes, names are first names only for the moment.

This feels odd, quite odd, as I have put a significant amount of thought into this entry (probably as much as most of my prior entries, and I just think I have put more effort, brainpower and time into this one). It also feels odd because for once I am not writing this entry directly into my blog (which is WordPress powered for those who haven’t noticed…) via my web browser (Firefox unless I am downloading PDFs in which case it is Konqueror because KPDF Kpart > Adobe Acrobat Reader Plugin in terms of speed and ease of use), but instead into my text editor. (which is currently kwrite for plain text and kate when I am hacking something up or coding, not vi or emacs or even joe…)

Lets see, where should I start, considering I haven’t blogged in 8 days, only 8 days and yet I have the urge to blog.., which is strange because all signs lead me to believe that I am one of the few people that actually bothers to look at my blog, let only read it, let only attempt to comprehend it or relate to it.

These signs include me (indirectly) or my blog being labelled as a ‘Useless Random Crap Dispenser’ (notice the leading letters are an anagram for CRUD, I like anagrams….), thanks Chris Savini for that comment, but to be fair Chris also said upon further clarification, “Don’t stop, its good and its addictive..”, the fact that people on my MSN list don’t get my hints about being proactive…, the fact that people tell me both face to face and via instant messaging that the can’t be frogged (Yes it used to be the other f word and I don’t mean frolic or fruit, but Sabrina noticed I swore, so I am censoring it (even though other people said it), and also I think frogged sounds much better) to read my blog, or that the read it and fall asleep a paragraph through it or they read it and they don’t get it.

Anyhow, where was I, that is right, I was at Uni watching Invader Zim (ZIM!!!!) with Ruben and Arania with unstable Internet access, oh wait, wait, I mean meant where was I in the process of the topics for this post / entry. Ok, Ok, the world isn’t ending and I found my thought process.., After getting that comment from Chris (although I did bump into Chris and Megan at V block / Library earlier) and talking further to him about the uses of Differential Equations in the workforce, (He is doing MAB413 Differential Equations, and was looking for how they would be used in IT..), Bacon Numbers (oraceofbacon.org, I think or just Google oracle of bacon, to steal a homerism “mmm, bacon”), how I meet all these people (the people I know, talk about , mention etc.) and radioactive bins or bin segregation (/bin/queue). Julian rushed passed us and I said Hi to him. A bit later on Danny / Rastilin ran by us (I said Run Danny Run and got whacked in the back of the head for it).Slightly after that I said goodbye to Chris and headed to Central Station, and just as I had gotten past V Lab I ran into Chadders, who was also going to Central Station (Currently that is 6 people that I bumped / ran into).

We started talking about the Computational Mathematics (MAB220) Mid semester exam, Bacon numbers, Linux and the fact that Chadders was heading to where he was staying (his uncle’s) to prepare for a QPAC performance. We made it as far as the traffic lights before we bumped into Matthew and Kyle who where also on the way to Central Station. The conversation shifted slightly but not by much, to what Maths subjects we were doing, how I kept up with all the people I knew and how we were going and then I started to tell the casino story (see previous entry) to them (which never really got finished), upon reaching half way down Queen St Mall, I bumped into Rita (who I knew via Birgit, having meet at a meeting about a month prior), I said Hi and let her know when I will next see her and the continued walking as we had trains to catch.

Outside the sweet shop, Chadders bumped in a friend from Uni and said Hi and we waited for a while, then Matthew bought some sweets and we continued on. On the way up the escalators their was a really argo rushing man that was angry and yelling for no reason other than his bad day. He was also making some pretty nasty threats. I remarked to Chadders, that if I were looking for trouble, I may have whacked the angry man with my umbrella, Chadders replied that his head would probably be too thick to whack anyway.

I then got a ticket and got $16 in coins (Same feeling as you get at the casinos without the risk and euphoria), said goodbye to Chadders, went to my Platform bumped into my little brother (who I was meeting) and Andrew’s little brother (both which are taller than me) (that is 12 total, that I ran into bumped into in the one afternoon sequentially), we then bordered the train, which was 6 cars, but had a previous train cancelled so we were packed like sardines into the train.

Eventually, we got seats and then Matthew had reached his destination. My little brother had already embarrassed me at this stage. We then played cards (Gin) for almost the remainder of the journey, which was good fun. Unfortunately for us all the wonderful rain we are getting that is breaking the drought and causing flooding and wind damage, caused a fault in the train’s braking / electrical system and the train got stuck at Glasshouse one stop before home and two stops before Kyle’s connecting bus.

We got out after offering Kyle a lift, and my little brother called Mum and let her know what had happened. She drove to Glasshouse to pick us up, it was then that they identified that the train wasn’t going anywhere, and I reoffered the lift to Kyle and he accepted, we also found out that Dana (Daughter of a coworker of Mum’s, that attends QUT) was on the train and went looking for her but couldn’t find her.

We drove or got driven to Landsborough and met Dana there and gave both Dana and Kyle a lift back home, which was embarrassing (don’t you just love siblings) and interesting simultaneously. When we finally got home, I noticed that my little sister’s friend Breanna was staying over. (Grand total of 14, not bad for one afternoon + evening)

Ok that is that story out of the way, in other news, I played a game of Europe in Ruins (europeinruins.com) (a persistent army mod for COH) that I didn’t suck at, I attended and did quite good at a MAB281 (Mathematics for Computer Graphics, not to self next time get more study and sleep and right fast from the beginning, even if it hurts your wrist, which is what the extra time is supposed avoid, but doesn’t seem to), I also managed to submit my Maths Modelling Assignment (MAB422) in on time, albeit as complete as I could get it with Maple not returning the differential equations with dsolve.

I spent way too much of the Weekend on that assignment, and getting stuck on both the phase plane section and the analytical solution of the DE didn’t help things, on the bright side I did get to read Harry Potter 7, as told to by Gatl, and found it boring, more funny than sad and disappointing. DEs or Differential equations seem to cause tiredness in me.

One that note, its 1am and I need sleep, continue this when I can, since I have 2 assessment items for a group project due by 5pm today.
Continuing as I now have time to do so about a day later. I also managed to do well enough, but not as well as I would have liked on my Mathematics for Computer Graphics Midsemester exam. (MAB281) After this I managed to play a game of Europe in Ruins (persistent army mod for Company of Heroes) and not suck. Hazzar to quote Chrystle or myself.

I then went home and slept to make up for lost sleep, the went into to uni to work on my ITB712 Group Assessment items which were due today, (and we managed to complete and submit them both successfully Hazzar!!), and ended up not getting much work done, observing Ruben recompiling AMP (Apache Mysql and PHP) on Olympus, and then watching him play WOG (World of Greenroom, the Greenroom’s private WoW server, which is slightly broken and using Ascent, nothing a few database hacks won’t fix).

After watching WOG for a while, I along with Arania were both boring almost to the point of mindlessness with WoW and began to wonder what its appeal was ?
I also wondered what Gatl was doing on WoW, that was so important she couldn’t even have time to say Hi.., meh *sigh*

As it got later the program changed to watching Doctor Who (The Shakespeare Code Episode) and Invader Zim, this was all made possible thanks to the generosity of Ruben and his fancy lots of gigabytes NAS (network attached storage). I am still wondering if it was worth sacrificing Numb3rs and NCIS for that but I will just have to wait and see or wait and be blind.

Before the night ended, Ruben showed me an interesting short story called the Last Question by Isaac Asimov, which several topics including whether or not you could reverse entropy, whether reality is subjective, the nature of base logic (which I walked all the way to Adelaide St, in attempt to explain it to Ruben only to walk all the way back unsuccessfully.) and other such wonderful topics.

On my way back I bumped into Arania and talked a little while longer before heading home. I came to the realisation that just like the rule of 3 for IRC,
Of the people on IRC they can be Single, Intelligent, Mentally Stable , Pick 2.

I will let my readers determine whether I match all 3 or which 2 (as I am on IRC, 17 channels at last count), of course it depends on your definition of Intelligence and Mental Stability. Hey my hand is almost going numb. But anyway I came to the realisation that using Goedel’s laws of certainty and uncertainty and the limits of knowledge theorems…

The rule of 3 for logic systems or base logic is
Complete, Consistent, Valid Pick 2

The majority of people believe that base logic or normal logic is all 3, but by Goedel’s laws it cannot be. So either base logic is incomplete (hence my mention of using illogic or another external logic system to complete it) or invalid, which can mean we don’t exist . (this can also be solved by using another external logic system such as illogic to validate it).

The two logic systems don’t just merge into to one, otherwise you would still have to pick 2, which demonstrates the importance of the belief in multiple logic systems, which as a sidenote strengthens the case for not ignoring faith which is a basis for illogic, just as truth is a basis for base logic, instead they are separate systems linked by a circular logic structure whether it be a circular argument, a paradox or something else (an giant elastic band )

On a side note, I said something quite cool in the Maths Workroom the other day that they asked me to write on the board.
It was “Your approximation of reality is inaccurate. More iterations required”
in this same round I also got told not to steal the tea (when I don’t even drink tea…, wow the Maths Society is paranoid about their tea and I thought Mathematicians were supposed turn coffee into theorems), but Cake Day is tomorrow , shame I am not a member, oh well their is always next year.

On a final weird note, after being asked two questions about how I meet the people I know or make friends and about how I keep in contact with them, I figure that I should probably say that at the moment I don’t know how it works yet or even if it works…

I would also like to compare my existing relationships to my QUT Wireless connection, in the sense that most of them are established connections, even connections that support data transmission and application stacks, but for some weird reason my packets get dropped when I ping people ….
Maybe they are a busy server or maybe my route to them is misplaced, or maybe I am impatient in expecting a fast response time, or maybe my signal is out of range.

But the next time I ping you (I greet you or contact you or say Hi…, etc) in would be nice to get a Reply From so & so along with a few packets of data maybe storing emoticons like and words like Hi, How are you ? , I am fine, I am great … etc (no pressure, after all I normally have to wait along time for QUT Wireless to work or stay working)

I am going to try and attempt to organise a get together sometime to play Mafia and Mao again, and will probably seen an email with a long CC list eventually. For the sake of clarity today is yesterday for the today mentioned in the entry, and today is Cake Day. (This today being the day this is uploaded and not written.)

The question for this post is Did you go down to the woods today ? Did you believe your eyes ? What did you see ? What saw you ?

Best wishes and good luck with your commitments and other life featuring items

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

Feeling a little better now, although, how one feels is quite relative. Best thing that has happened so far (besides having a Mathematical Modelling Assignment and C assignment todo) was returning home late at night, normally I would have been driven, but the other night wasn’t the case.

On my way up the hill, I met an old Greece / Italian lady with a broom, staring up at a possum and whacking the tree, to try and knock it down. Inside I chuckled to my self (beware IT Joke / pun coming), as I had already a photo of a possum on a bin at Uni (/bin/possum) and now I was seeing a possum on a tree (/possum).

She stopped me, and a pointed towards the possum and asked Good or Bad ? It was evident that she hadn’t seen a possum before, I replied Good, and then I went on to tell her in my best basic English (those who know me understand), “Possum, Possum is Good, I don’t think that possum will try to come into your house.

That possum is young. Other older possums have been known to scavenge from bins, but this possum it is young, Child possum, it won’t come it to your house and it won’t bother you.”

I also explained how there were lots of possums that lived in to Botanic Gardens, after talking to me, she put the broom down, said, “Good night” to the possum and then to me and went back into to her house to bed, and I continued walking up the hill.

This encounter made me realise a few things, I made me realise that despite Birgit being sick (seems to be this flu / influenza, Chrystle has it too, I think, I hope they both get well soon), I was supposed to attend the weekly meeting without her, else how would I have been able to participate in not only seeing a possum in a tree, but also saving the possum from any accidental harm it may have gotten if I hadn’t come along.

I also realised that people fear what they don’t know , which is why I am so scary….. .

Another realisation was that simple misunderstandings caused larger actions which can have larger consequences …

This makes communication more vital then the majority of us , give it credit for. We are meant to live, our lives have a purpose even if we are aware of it yet.

I will probably have to find sometime off (1.5 weeks or more) either to do a Gentoo reinstall or to possibly change distributions. Much more likely the first option. Matlab is finally playing nice with me, I had to edit the .matlab7rc.sh scripts in both my $MATLAB_ROOT and home directories, so that for the architecture I am using (glnx86, as I don’t have the 64 bit verison of Matlab) it exports the correct LD_LIBRARYPATH to find the libraries responsible for 32 bit OpenGL.

Simulink is still having issues (its libc.so doesn’t find a suitable libXft.so to link to…), hopefully I shall be able to get it working eventually as well as get used to the Matlab programming language, which seems so much more restrictive and broken to me in comparsion with Scheme and C or even Maple.

Hope everyone enjoyed attending or not attending the Ekka as much as I did, The fear of flu seems to scare lots of people from it. Thinking about the Ekka made me think about the children of the carnies or carnival people, it made me wonder whether the new technology and broadband avaliable would make it easier for them to get a better education.

By the way, my phone know has a recharged battery, so you can text or call me and I will be able to respond. (it was lifeless for about 3 days …)

The question / s today is

Why am I short of attention
Where’s my wife and family
What if I die here
Who’ll be my role model
If you’ll be my ….
I can be your long lost …

Bonus points if you can figure
Where the questions are from …
What the blanks are ?
Your answer contains a reference to the item or theme in question
etc

Anyhow, have fun and get well for those ill,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

PS: And my Dad takes offense to me saying that our strongest link is through music, Amazing…

It suits me and it is just one word

Esoterism

Amazing

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Salutations in moonlight

Truth …

Lies ….

Secrets …

Surprises …

Honesty & Chivalry war in my mind’s eye

Seeking Compassion & Redemption

For Crimes Not Committed

For Glass Shards that bleed my barefeet

And yet don’t exist, or perhaps my feet aren’t there

I couldn’t be certain, and yet I couldn’t be wrong

The damage done and only realised post mortem

If only consumption was enough

One day you will all get the keys

To play in the ball pit and do as you please

Hopefully by then my half-life will have decreased

But perhaps we seek the pain and damage

To prove we are real, as having faith in something

In order to just feel, Depravity becomes Humanity

As we stop caring, and just continue to exist

Legal obligations require moral sacrifice

And a pound of flesh and a pound of soul

Should both weigh the same

Persecution, Criticism creep along the foundations of Tolerance and Acceptance

A riddle and a rhyme interlocked in time , its all between the lines

Of a polygon that doesn’t exist, don’t bother with the compass

It will only lead you to the labyrinth, and why go there when you could have had icecream instead

Fight the Minotaur, Wage your holy war, only to realise you are just killing yourself

So much self assisted suicide, it is as though we think we are born to die

Use by dates stamped on our heads, ensuring innocence is lost

Things loved and people discarded, in hopes that we can accept ourselves

Balls of string and dainty things, provide the perfect disguise for cyanide tea

Kippers gone know, along with the dolphins and whales

Have you seen Alice she owes me a prose, the White Rabbit owes me my pocketwatch

And when I will next see either, noone knows

Eat this, Drink that, Size doesn’t matter, does it ?

Too late now the order is past, off with your head!

Oh wait, you’re already headless blast

The caged bird it sings of the blue skies and the sunshine

Never realising that the door is open wide,

Brrr, so that is why my neck is cold, despite its mantle

Rhapsody or Empathy , what was that which was said to me ?

If I had a penny for each time, then I would be penniless

Everything has its price, and everything good doesn’t feel right

Hide and go seek, 1… 2… 3…, Try as you might you won’t find me

Before you know I will have climbed the FarAway Tree

Or hidden from myself, whether I fancy

If you were lucky, then a skeleton you would find, with ring on my finger

And Wardrobe behind, Narnia or Dorian Gray as too my fate, either would say

Nothing and no-one, abundance and glee, shrouded in hollow comptemt and facidious misery

Would I sup with Saint George, only if I could save him the trouble of committing genocide ?

Or perhaps the Jackerwocky is a better dinner guest , behind his appearance and behaviour, is less of a mess

Giant wooden bunnies and rude castle intentions, false bravery and a luck break

False illusions of grandeur and stones and dead birds

Are shallowly laughed at without saying a word

Recurring dreams, nightmares and doom, I’d rather be betrayed by Jack Sparrow, then conclude

That eight pieces of eight isn’t sixty four and that isn’t Thumbelina making out with Little Jack Horner

On the hearth rug, and what of the Calico cat and Gingham Dog, bickering over colour swatches and then doing each others laundry over coffee

It is so much easier to love a dream, as a dream doesn’t carry poison knifes, wielded with deadly aims,

Instead prefer to haunt the mind, scourging the soul, for whatever they find.

And the Doctor says I should go camping, but I have no intention of going to Gor, as fun as it would be to meet the Priest Kings or live and die by the homestone, and sword…

And those Ninja rats can watch and wait, the Oracle of Ishadna doesn’t know my fate

As for Sebastin’s composure and the love of the CareBears, well I guess they are over…

The Hill, sat a cross, an innocent life, surrounded by naughts, and yet that is somehow more fair then global thermonuclear war.

Why fight for peace, when you can play chess, beware the path of the knight at its best

Too many wagers, too little time, play not to win, not to lose, but to escape with my life

Torch of Illuminace + 3 doesn’t make the cavern any less dingy

Oh look I killed a Newt, now to roll a 6, Please pass the fruit

Peas catapulted, potato flying, along with Spaghetti, such a monstrosity unlike the cafeteria has ever seen

It will take a 1000 cleaners, a year and half just to get this clean

Ajax from chemical to web success, marketing buzzwords portray standards as second best.

Pictures mosaicing a path, Smiles breaking an already brittle heart, but at least the filling is sweet

And the flesh is good, quite nice to eat,

The Lion and the Mouse, The Rabbit and Tortoise ,

They try to teach you wisdom but you discard such childish pursuits.

To go play your Wii or see what is on cable TV ? Where was your class supposed to go ? The Museum ? The Opera ?

Or was it to witness Jimminy Cricket, the conscience of Pinnoccho

Culture these days is more like bacteria then humanity, growing in our yoghurt while we fail to care

Behind the mask, under the trapdoor, what lurks there now, that wasn’t before

You wish it was those two plumber brothers, collecting coins and spitting fireballs

In the above is hidden many meanings and some wisdom, there is still gems in plain sight but the coal is buried much deeper, and the pocketwatch deeper still, and if you get deep enough you might realise why I write this.

There is no question, the spontaneous prose / poem is cryptic enough, if you find it easy, think again slightly different, it should be more tough…,

How do I feel today ? I feel broken, but not damaged broken, just normal broken, so really nothing is wrong with me, I am just having troubles with emotions, self expression and fortitude

Not sure if it is because I am bored or because I am nice, but here are some clues, more cryptic advice:

The message above mentions or intertexutalates with

Sorrow
Jim Henson’s the StoryTeller
Wisdom
My Mind
The Layout of My Mind
Radioactivity
Shakespeare
Geometry /Mathematics for Computer Graphics
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Japanese Whaling Crisis
Alice in Wonderland
Bohemia
Enid Blyton / The Faraway Tree
Oscar Wilde (The Portrait of Dorian Gray)
CS Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia)
Saint George and the Dragon
Jabberwocky
Monty Python
Pirates of Caribbean
Fairytales and Mother Goose
Calico Cat and Gingham Dog
Doctor Who
Gor
Wizards and Warriors
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Little Mermaid
Carebears
Worldhopping
Wargames
Jesus
Chivalry
Dungeons and Dragons
Humilation
Food fight
Flying Spaghetti Monster
Ajax
Spain
Mosaic
Jewel
Valentine’s Day
Cannibalism
Crabmeat
Aesop & his fables
Popular culture
Simcity 3000
Pinocchio
Disney
Acidolphius
The Mask
The Phantom
Secret Seven / Famous Five
The Mario Brothers
And several more that I haven’t realised yet…

Have fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

The last few days have been very very busy but lots of things have been happening. Uni is great, although it is only the end of the first Week, so maybe the diagnosis is a little early. Life isn’t bad, and isn’t exactly good (in the wonderful sense) but it seems to be tolerable.

It is amazing how lack or excess amounts of time can borify (coined word, meaning to make boring, I could have used dullify but it didn’t convey my mood or colloquialism as articulately) or stimulate a basic activity, like washing the dishes or cooking food, or doing study, or walking from place to place. The same could probably be said of mindset and enthusiasm for a particular task.

[Positive odds and ends, that will terrify & alienate most logical people or coldblooded bastards]

(This section is similar in form to a poem I read ages ago, but the content is different)

You should love what you do, because only once you love it, will you enjoy it and excel at it.

: You should accept what you do, because despite the fact you can do something else, or do something better or worse, it is what you do (did) not do, not what you could have done that matters , that causes reactions and opens doors and creating opportunities.

You should love who you are, because it is unique despite the social stereotypes and generalization of society, because you are special, beautiful, wonderful, terrible, if you don’t love yourself, you can never love others properly, you can never feel right, because there is always that self love missing.

You should accept who you are, because no amount of physical or mental manipulation is going to change your acceptance or lack of acceptance of yourself.

You should live , try , feel despite the results, because ultimately it is better to try , live , feel and fail / have a bad experience then it is to fail by apathy / lack of trying.

You should smile, laugh, cry, anger because emotions are normal and natural.

You should treat others as you would have them treat you.

You should accept others because while they may be different from you, they are still people too.

You should love others because it is a cold dark lonely life to be alone with nobody and nothing.

You should believe , Have faith and trust

You should learn and grow and think and question

(this part is an interesting and simple route to happiness or success or contentment or enlightenment, however it does involve going against human nature)

In order to be content

1. Have something (easy part) or have lots (still easy part)

2. Be content with what you have. (hard part)

[End Positive odds and ends]

Anyhow, enough positive glitters of what people should do in order to not lose sight of the life they are living.

I have been enjoying my life, engaged in

• Funny, interesting, detailed, mathematical, logical lectures at Uni.
• Purchasing the most awesome textbook ever. To elaborate it was bought at the second hand bookstore and it was further discounted as a new edition was out, upon brief inspection before I purchased it, I noticed it was natural bound (not rebound) back to front and upside down, so to read it properly the cover appears upside down and back to front , the clerk at the register tried to sell (salesperson sell) it to me, but she was preaching to an old timer, that knew the faith better than her, I bought it immediately and bounced down the stairs with sheer glee spray painted all over my face.
• The second maths modeling lecture wasn’t as funny as the first, but it did have the lecturer mentioning infectious diseases as we are doing population growth models (SIS, SIR for those who are interested), each time he said the words infected, infection, either myself (who just had a runny nose from not eating enough icecream and having too much salt) or something else sniffled, sneezed, coughed or wheezed, it was the the yawn effect (one person yawns, three people yawn, etc) gone orchestral
• First Computer Architecture Lecture was great, despite the quoting of a stupid article published by APC, about Con (ck-sources guy) quiting kernel development, the article style and title were scandal style (Linux Kernel exposed, Con reveals all), the title was misquoted on Slashdot, and APC isn’t a decent Linux magazine, Linux Format could be if it didn’t cost $25 to most people outside the UK. During the lecture I learnt we were using DJGPP on Dos, and was sad I couldn’t just use native tools, but I got DJGPP working with Dosbox quite easily, so I can do assignments and such on my laptop.
• My Mathematics for Computer Graphics Tutor is really funny and seems like an awesome guy, so I am also enjoying that subject
• I spent Friday night and most of Saturday at Darren’s 21 first part organised by Elise (a good friend of mine), and met some wonderful people, and had an interesting series of discussion about society, Tesla’s lack of fame, Doctor Who, Religion, Magic, Heritages, Electronics and a series of other topics. From observation (as I didn’t participate, as I don’t drink) I conclude that turn based drinking games suck (as the rate of alcohol consumption is to fast, the fun of the game is to small, and the hangover hurts like hell) , I did suggest round based drinking games but got ignored.
• After leaving the party goers lying in the sun (at a nearby park) after we had eaten breakfast at Chermside Shopping Centre, I was determined to walk to my Grandfather’s place at Kedron, whilst being dehydrated and hot. The walk was fun, despite all the heat, hills and the surprise on my Grandfather’s face was worth it. It was wonderful to catch up with him and talk about politics, the past, how things were in his day (some of them sound so good, I wonder why they were changed) , the dust, the races (His family’s tradition), Americans, Australian story and other bits and pieces. My grandfather is so generous, he gave me Anzac biscuits to take with me , I then caught the bus into the city and got home and slept
• After that I woke up at 9pm , did some things involved movies on TV and other stuff, till 2am, and then slept again. (hence the weird sleeping patterns)

I have also been invited to lots of different things, this seasons to be the season for birthdays, events and invitations, at least my purple suit will go to good use.

I am slowly getting world up to date with Gentoo, but haven’t got the 2.6.22 kernel compiling clean yet.

If you could play hide and seek with reality, would you and where would you hide and why ?

If you got given $100 from a stranger, what would you think of that stranger ? and what are the chances of you giving that $ 100 to another stranger ?

Best wishes, keep having fun

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Between lighting the fire and my current pastime of cooking Chiko rolls (pan fry as apparently baking them is treason to their iconic Australianism), the closed windows because it is winter there is little piece between then shrill howl of the two smoke-alarms that do their jobs oh so well (setting off at least 8 times consecutively for lighting a fire in fireplace and 3 (make that 5) for pan frying Chiko rolls)

I prefer open fires to fireplaces as there is so much more freedom, as your not limited to a small cubic box and my Chiko rolls are much more black / charred then their advertisement claims. (My guess is their instructions don’t cover a gas stove and cast iron frying pan)

Anyways back to fry pan I go to make sure the kitchen isn’t on fire .

UPDATE: Their distributor has a money back satisfaction guarantee, so If I don’t enjoy my black Chiko rolls, I can get money back.

Hey everyone,

This was going to be an audio post, but I don’t feel like talking /recording at the moment.

Anyhow I have lots to cover.

First Things First (Because they can be first, second or last and it wouldn’t matter) and keeping them brief so people can’t use excuse it is too much read. *sighes*

Over the holidays so far (since after the Trolltech BBQ), I have attended a 75th birthday that was so much fun. It is really fun to be able to catch up with family friends and their family. Funny or interesting sub-events at this event included:

• The cute children and the newborn baby (terribly cute).
• Siblings and Mother arriving late after half listening / misinterpreting directions
• My reluctance to eat until the Kabana & Liquorice arrived (on the platter of nibbles we weren’t supposed to bring but did anyways)
• The early accidental unveiling of the birthday cake.
• The hide and seek / cover myself with hat and hood game, played with 2 to 3 little youngsters trying to dehood / dehat me.
• The impromptu request (as I am studying mathematics & IT) to fix someone’s palm pilot.
• The piece of cake that fell on the ground, that I bet my little brother would walk / step in, and he did.

After this (a few days) we had two of the people (close family friends, Lisa and Alice) come for a weekend sleepover. Interesting things that occured include but are not limited to

• The poker game based on the success of my little brother’s (should I call him bother, for now he has the benefit of the doubt) flamboyant attire (suit and cane, etc, etc) in the previous game, which I was winning until Lisa asked to win some, sure enough she won the game . (see previous post for why I find poker boring..)
• The watching of Robin Hood Season One on my laptop (Thanks Dallas so much for that….) , after the first few episodes, there were two more Jonas Armstrong fans in the house.
• The attendance of the Abbey Medieval Fair (sub-events are shown below)
  • The drive in Lisa’s car (her driving has improved, and I still don’t drive)
  • The broken CD player that would only play the first 5 or 6 songs of a CD.
  • The more comic than skilled Jester that was been very modern in handing out a business card with his Myspace
  • Getting to see two pigs and a lamb on spits
  • Asking an expert in regards to weapons used by the clergy (as originally discussed in #wesnoth @ Freenode)
  • Watching almost everyone but me get more excited over the presence of Shelley Craft than the fact they were at the medieval festival
  • Walking Lisa through a medieval market and have her not purchase any non food items
  • Looking at Germanic early cannons
  • Getting irritated at trivial and major inconsistencies made by those with the best intentions in reenacting medieval life
  • Avoiding bumping to people (Including someone from Lisa’s uni, Celeste, Chrystle ( ) and at least 7 other people)
  • Seeing how chainmail is made, after misinterpreting the location of the event (That was my fault, but we were only 10 minutes late and it wasn’t crowded)
  • Missing the oppurtunity to get better seats for the jousting, because I choose to wait for Lisa and Alice to get Snow Cones (Did they exist in medieval times ?)
  • Not dressing up and pretending to be Ivanhoe (I so wanted to…)
• Watching the wonderful French Movie “The Singer” (so sad, so romantic, so French)
• Having a wonderful brunch with more family friends (Paul, Birgit and Jessica from the Gold Coast)
  • Their story about the letter about their journey through Africa was amazing and awe inspiring
  • Oh and the food for the brunch was very very good. (not to die for)
• Having Dallas come over (Lisa and Alice left soon after.) (Dallas has a chicken and we have scraps for it to eat, it is a good arrangement, Dallas you should mention your chicken on your blog and upload a photo or something)
• Watching Jessica and Dallas play air hockey (first there was rules and order, then cheating and chaos)

After all the fun was over I got online and checked my QUT Virtual and allo and behold, my results were posted and I didn’t fail anything . So the second Round or Third Round of Space Invaders is cleared, although without the shield bonus and gun bonus (see previous post for the in joke).

I really should be doing more with my holidays, I have lots planned and lots of planning to do and will get around to it before Uni is back. I have been playing Wesnoth, slowly translating bits and pieces of Wesnoth into Indonesian in Kate, I tried Kbabel didn’t like its obfuscating and specific interface, I have installed poEdit and am yet to try it.

I have also been chatting on IRC and MSN, one of my recent conversations was with Mircea / Danny / Rastilin (not sure exactly what his name is, he is a friend of Nick Stallman), started out a question about Debian, and became a beliefs / philosophies argument (at kept me up till 3am).

My analysis of his approach is shown below (The full log will be shown on request only, until I am ready to a major philosophy post, this post will only have the analysis and some highlights)

(02:17:27 AM) Appleman1234: it is interesting
(02:17:50 AM) Appleman1234: whenever you deem yourself as not being victorious, you change the subject or the angle
(02:18:23 AM) Appleman1234: or when your logic doesn’t result in the conclusion you expect from me you instead resort to taunting and cheap insults
(02:20:34 AM) Appleman1234: however the method of conversation you are using isn’t exactly that of critical thinking, or that of scientific reasoning , or even that of scientific or philosophical skepticism
(02:21:23 AM) Appleman1234: it is merely I believe your belief is wrong because of Reason A and because it doesn’t match mine,
(02:21:48 AM) Appleman1234: when asked to clarify you either do so reluctantly or vaguely
(02:22:28 AM) Appleman1234: and when posed with questions, you either claim incomprehensibility or retort with an unjustified insult
(02:23:29 AM) Appleman1234: I also forgot the stereotyped
(02:24:10 AM) Appleman1234: So logically you haven’t invalidated or changed any of my beliefs
(02:29:27 AM) Appleman1234: however your style does remind me of doublethink

It makes me wonder as such (referring back to the protester and the candle, (if you know what I am talking about , you are a diligent reader of my blog and I admire you)) why people try to discredit others beliefs, to replace them with their own all in the name of criticism and critical thinking ?

Beliefs are rather important and special to a person, if you remove their belief system, what do they have to live for ? What are they to believe ?, before you attempt anything as to brash as basically brainwashing someone with their consent, at least be able to answer the question “Why should I believe what you believe”, with a better answer than “Because I said so”.

Highlights from the chatlog are shown below:

01:47:59 AM) rastilin: You want me to debunk your beliefs with illogic?
(01:48:08 AM) rastilin: Purple flying elephants!
(01:48:08 AM) rastilin: There
(01:48:12 AM) rastilin: Debunked with illogic.
(01:48:14 AM) Appleman1234: sigh
(01:48:25 AM) Appleman1234: that is surrealism not illogic
(01:49:32 AM) rastilin: Is there something wrong with my logic?
(01:51:49 AM) Appleman1234: no just your interpretation / definition of debunk, illogic and your understanding Gödel’s incompleteness theorems

(01:26:09 AM) rastilin: The hardest lesson I learned was that I was not a special snowflake or holder of unthought wisdom.
(01:26:50 AM) Appleman1234: why limit yourself through lessons, why not expand yourself instead ?
(01:27:05 AM) rastilin: Because the expansion is an illusion.
(01:27:07 AM) Appleman1234: if you have nothing to gain from a lesson , why learn it ?
(01:27:17 AM) Appleman1234: Reality is an illusion
(01:27:22 AM) Appleman1234: it is all perception
(01:27:22 AM) rastilin: Because there is something to gain, I just can’t see it from where I’m standing.
(01:27:32 AM) rastilin: That’s silly.
(01:27:52 AM) Appleman1234: faith in incorrect perception is your reasoning and yet you label me silly
(01:28:25 AM) Appleman1234: I would rather believe that I can be right, then that I am always going to be wrong from a different viewpoint

There could be more but this post is long enough already. On the bright side I visualised more of my philosophies and certain constructs and I discovered ##philosophy on Freenode, on the dark side I got 6 hours sleep this morning and I got kicked from my Wesnoth Game.

Final Note: I got phpMyID working and now I can log into LJ and post on Chrystle’s and Stephen Thorne’s LJs . (I only took me 6 hours due to a typo…)

This blogs question is Do you belief in acceptance of others and if so or if not , then why ?

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hi everyone,

Just upgraded WordPress to 2.2.1, almost went to a BBQ with Chrystle, was quite nice and meet some wonderful people. I also had the luxury of engaging in an intellectual discussion about the state of the world (overpopulation, shallowness of people, levels of intellectualism, perception of reality, asian philosophy, the purpose of religion, etc), was both informative and interesting , all the while getting to see some pretty sketchs / pictures of Anime characters (especially Kingdom Hearts 2, see machina-maw.deviantart.com) .

Chrystle was very tired, so I hope she is sleeping well now , earlier and as per her LJ we played a derivate of 20 questions over MSN, I was reformatting her entry to add some of my own questions (no, I won’t post the raw log) and spent 1.5 hours doing so in Openoffice.org only to lose it all when trying to export to XHTML, (fuzzle, wuzzle, fuzzle, learning to behave Java.)

I may upload the information later along with other stuff I need to get round to doing and uploading (fixing up 002 resume site and uploading, coding some nifty stuff in PHP / Ruby, etc, doing more Gimping and playing around with Inkscape, not to mention song lyrics, poetry, stories and my mental skits.)

I currently am doing my final study for my Programming Abstraction & Linear Algebra exams, so I am in the mood for Graph Theory, Data Structures, Design Paterns, Matrix Algebra & Proofs, Eigenvalues & Diagonalisation and Linear Operators. I like the usage of Linear Operators in 3D graphics engines, and am conceptualising (thinking, planning, modelling) a new way of Wesnoth Damage calculation using Linear Algebra as a opposed to the current matrix method, so that units with ridiculous health (Survival Extreme / DOTG etc) don’t take up excessive RAM.

I am also unsure if my entry for the Greenphone competition will be ready in time, *sigh* maybe next time, at least I’ll see them at the Trolltech BBQ at QUT after my exams are over.

I have also been attempting to get the Wireless Reception to work on my bed in our RAMMED earth house and(packet loss >85% ) . Today on the way home from BBQ, there were some troublemakers on the train that got off at my stop (and probably would have attempted to bash me, if not that I had a ride waiting).

These people were locals to my region (I am ashamed, it wasn’t like this in the Beginning (when I was 3), stupid population and education system creating low social economic circumstances and bored youth) and idiots (in Grade 9 to 11) looking for a fight on the train calling people faggots and trying to wake up the people that were asleep. Their ring leader was drinking Bundy Rum on the train (underage drinking and drinking on a train is $150 fine) and was calling a guy near me a faggot, after they had walked on I talked to him and realised just how lucky they were that they hadn’t attacked him. (He knew his rights and the law)

The bothered me when I got of the train, probably because I am weird and more intelligent them, with the usual faggot taunting, I said Grow Up and then got asked to supposedly repeat it to his face, but I just remained silent and kept walking. (I don’t want no trouble or wasted time)

My little brother doesn’t like living in the city, but with the low socioeconomic suburban sprawl of uneducated, immoral and bored youths surrounding the place I call home and others call home the noise, pollution and hustle bustle of the city is looking more enticing by the minute.

Thanks

Stay Safe (I like I barely did)

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234