The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Hey everyone,

So much is happening that it either flies straight by me or a I get blown to the ground trying to process it. I guess it is that time of year. My patience and resolve seem to be tested by every circumstance. Updates on things my NAS and laptop are both still getting fixed. My powercable for the external usb drive also got accidentally sent to Taiwan with Invahoe. My foot is sore due to 3.2 by 2.1 by 1cm lump that is beside a nerve and in between a tendon and bone, so my foot is constantly in pain.

Uni wise, I have various formulative assessment due by the 17th of October including a differential equations assignment which is just over half finished , group projects for numerical analysis (computational mathematics) 2 , it core project management and advanced network management.

The advanced network management project is currently ontrack having just finalised the asterisk voip over IP setup and the additional Openldap directory services. I have spent significant time debugging my CSC choleksy solving algorithrm but the more time I spend, the more frustated I get at Matlab and having to use their sparse CSC implementation and wrapper functions rather then writing my own.

The project design stuff has the hazardous due to the contents of the 2nd project plan being mainly reflected and stored in my head rather than dancing down onto paper or digital media. My mind it wanders , filled with currents of endless pain from the nerve it my foot, the conversations and thoughts around me, the reflection on my negative circumstances and other ideas ranging from deep sea power generation to influence on the world based on actions of individuals / groups and causality.

This is probably still incomplete but rather than force people to wait and read something quite lengthy (lengthy enough to be nominated for a Pulitizer Prize), I may as well just end here and type up an additional post or 7 for everything else that is happening later.

The question for now is If you only got one chance to make your life mean something ? What would it be ?

Thanks and Best wishes to all

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 everyone,

I have been quite busy, but not as productive as I would have liked to have been. I got to watch most of The Alzheimer Case last night and I recommend it highly.  It made me reflect on morality and how setienence and genetic moral instincts fit into human development, as all that can actually evolve is the social conditiioning passed from parent to child or from society to individual and then from individual to society.

I had a nice discussion with Tim on how addictions can cause underlying genetic changes to a society, and the question of whether human conceptualisation and to a greater extent human morality is merely an addiction we have to cope or adjust to life.

I have also been further studying copying mechanisms that people use deal with emotion stress and circumstances in life along with other social motivations , dynamics and interactions. I am enjoying both my maths subjects and most of the project work for the other subjects , despite its longevity and depth and pressure.

Not having my laptop (it is being repaired (hopefully)), is quite the inconvience, although having the 6 Gentoo Xen images running for ITN771 is nice, especially as we have VOIP working now. After significant testing I have discovered the real strawberries are much tastier and sweeter than the strawberries and cream Allens lollies.

I found a really good list of skills required to be a Game Developer and was plesantly surprised to see that I had most of them. I have also been trying to deduce Blizzard’s path finding algorithrm from comparing creep path finding in various mazing TDs, the resistance and movement probably indicate a D* or A* algorithrm but I can’t work out the coeffecients from deduction alone and I have a bat’s chance in spaghetti of actually seeing the source code, so I guess I will just never be sure.

In other news I can make full pan sized pancakes without burning them , after the amount of practice I have had. Ivanhoe still has broken USB ports and both my knowledge and recall continue to surprise me when I am able to help and assist people with work from subjects I haven’t done but have some knowledge in.

I would really like to start roleplaying again but GURPS seems to ebbed in to the abyss for the moment and forum rpging is to incohesive for me. I finally got my ext3 drive working with the silly machines from uni using ext2fsd.

I also was reminded by Hui Min about Padan cake and Kek Lupis Sarawak and am now craving Indonesian deserts, however Bondi Bali reminds of exactly why I promised never to go back to Bali, so I will probably end up returning to Java instead.

What type of food haven’t you had in a long time and would really like to have ?

Best wishes and have fun,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

I just discovered that the Queen St Mall Sizzler doesn’t exist. And that is such a shame. I remember when the Queen St Mall used to have a rollercoster at the top of it and used to have a LEGO playground. Such fund childhood memories.

As you probably know the words succubus and incubbus are names of demons that sleep with their victims and torment them. These words come from the Latin root cubare (“To lie”), and the prefixes in and sub, which mean on top and below respectively. Getting bored with just these demons, I began elaborating on less gender specific demons below using other Latin prefixes.

List of Demons

jugccubi I lie chained
juxtaccubi I lie beside
intracubbi I lie within
retrocubbi I lie behind
velocubbi I lie quickly
uncubbi I lie hooked
transcubbi I lie across
strepcubbi I lie twisted
fellacubbi I lie sucking
paccubbi I lie peacefully
regcubbi I lie straight
pravcubbi I lie crooked
phalacubbi I lie shining
percubbi I lie through
oedcubbi I lie swollen
odorcubbi I lie fragant
nudcubbi I lie naked
lenicubbi I lie gently
lacrimcubbi I lie crying
ignicubbi I lie on fire
contracubbi I lie against
concubbi I lie with
cirrcubbi I lie curled (tentacle)
aurcubbi I lie golden
augcubbi I lie growing
audicubbi I lie listening
ambicubbi I lie on both sides
amorcubbi I lie loving
abscubbi I lie away

I just finished fiddling around with indices referencing stuff, it is an a -1 , rather than a, just to spite you…

Saturday was spent with Aunt and Uncle from WA and was quite nice if not a very long day, I got up at 6am (went to bed a 1:30am) and then went to the Rocklea Markets…..

Hope you are having as much fun with assessment and other odds and ends as I am or am not,

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey,

Darkness falls , surprising success progress, rhymes hit the blackness of the river as I pass strangers and comtemplate hidden metaphors, meanings and realities of illogic and life in song. Clarity comes to me , understanding clearly what was blurry long ago, realising little pieces that had be out of focus like a reflected, refracted fractal rippling towards a nonlinear chaotic realm of convergence back to rationality.

Icecream is cold and good, especially for sad people. Their is no age restriction on Wii Tennis .

Have fun and best of luck

Benjamin Southall aKa Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

How are we all ? Sick ? Tired ? Exhausted ? Flat out like a lizard pulverised on asphalt from a road train of commitment ?

So much has been happening, ulrica (my laptop) seems to have gone a bit crazy and requires some serious slanting  (between 45% and 85%)to get around BIOS freezing, I think it is related to grounding the USB ports, as the BIOS used to have a bug of freeze when a USB device was plugged in, but I downgraded the BIOS to fix that and now the BIOS freezes when it thinks that the usb isn’t grounded, I think.

I have various assessment due including two group projects that were due this Friday and are now due Monday and a Differential equations test next Thursday.

I have been busy setting up services on a custom Gentoo Linux Harden Xen guest image that I made for the ITN771 group assignment, in the process I found a bug in OSSIM related to nessus scanning that will be hopefully patched in the next release.

I have also been helping various colleagues with debugging in Python and C and this was quite enjoyable given the amount of stress I have had to deal with lately….

I remember so much of what happens from my dreams / premonitions, it is quite unnerving and things and encounters that normally would be unusual or strange seem so familar.

I had an interesting discussion with an atheist again about logic systems face to face in the room of Green, it was a refreshing change from the misunderstanding and cynical debate and mockery that I have come to expect.

I have also had a chance to reflect on the morality of death and human life via the media references I have the delight of being overexposed to like a spectator being inflicting with an entire naturalist colony streaking at a public or sporting event. These movies were The Swamp (Korean, mystery thriller, vengenence flick about wife catching best friend having affair with her husband), Unleashed (Starring Morgan Freeman as the awesome blind piano tuner that liberated the main character from slavery and killing ) and Godforsaken which featured a good kid in the wrong crowd with good intentions but the wrong loyalties which eventually cost him his life.

People are so oblivious to the effects of their actions on other people and the consequences…

It hurts, and caring hurts, apathy is safety but it has its cost as well.

I would write more but I am so stressed and I don’t want to vent any more than I have already.

Did you ever take a chance on a moonbeam ….

Stay well

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone.

This has been a long time coming, but here it is, it will probably be disappointing as I don’t really feel like talking but meh. Lol I rambled on a whole bunch of interesting , funny and random stuff as usual.

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Enjoy

Hi everyone,

Wow I am actually updating, But don’t get too excited, it isn’t about the awesomeness of Ruben’s LAN or the medieval festival or even the secrets of human relationships and love, instead I present to you …

Today on my way to my only early differential equations lecture, I was carrying the port which I was going to give to Madmockhaven, I got to Z block and it spontaneously exploded ,probably due to a crack and pressure. I managed to get it all to a bin and keep my brand new DE textbook clean, I then managed to mop the spilt port with newspapers and bin that all. I got to my DEs lecture with a bleeding thumb and a minute to spare before 8am…

Z block still smells like port, and my thumb bleed through most of the DEs lecture which was taught by the awesome Cameron. So it looks like I will need to get another bottle of port to Madmockhaven and apologise to my dad for the spontaneous expolosion / expansion of one. I also got to talk with Tim, who is in my DEs class about memory, artificial intelligence and other stuff it was good.

Now back to study and helping people

Have fun

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

Back at uni now, now studying IT project management, numerical linear algebra, advanced network management and differential equations.  The break from uni was good, key features included the Abbey Medieval Festival,  Ruben’s LAN, the journey to Toowoomba and the visiting of my Great Uncle Rod.

On the way to Toowoomba I had the opportunity to think and discuss some of my ideas with respect to the definition of love, and human social dynamics and relationship modelling, it was quite nice, I may publish my thoughts here later on, but I haven’t decided yet.

Immersed in reality as the first week of uni flies into my world, I have so much to do and so much to say but not enough time to document it here.

What do you learn from listening to silence ?

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey,

Got my results back earlier than expected. Got deja vu as well, degree is going to be delayed by at least year. Got lost in the darkness of suburbian, well not lost, just took the largest figure of eight of my life to date, but that kind of makes sense considering the circumstances.

I would say I don’t know anymore, but that would imply that I knew anymore to begin with …., and that would be more than a misnomer. Why my past haunts me like an apparition I don’t know.

All the movies I see, I can’t recall whether I have seen them before in past or in my dreams, it seems academic isn’t about knowledge and understanding rather what one can demonstrate on a form of assessment, and it seems that my conditioned response to this is the mathematically stutter like skat, except out of tune.

The apathy is almost returning from the fits of boredom and escapism never worked but I don’t stop trying. I wonder why everything that is set, is set in jelly. Custard creams may taste nice, but looking at one’s waste in hindsight is nothing short of paralysis.

Freedom taken, dreams taken, memories taken, innocence taken, but what is given ?

I am not sure, and am really questioning things at the moment. Any momentum I once had seems to be a memory, 3 steps forward, 1 step back. Where have the dead butterflies landed ? Where has the fun gone ? Where is the passion ? What am I seeking ? And the sound I hear is the sound of the wind, as it runs through the town, twist and spin , twist and spin.

Resistance maybe measured in ohms, but repetition leads to boredom, boredom leads to apathy and apathy brings back its own significant challenges. Mechanic diagnostics lead to the ddos of the machine, I seem to adopted as my child. As much as I want to play games or even talk, I am not allowed to. I give some empathy to those who feel this helpless with real loved ones rathered than an antropomorphised network attached storage device.

Both potential and happiness elude at present and metaprogression might be the way forward.

Why aren’t systems optimal ? Why isn’t life optimal ?

I seek, but shall I find …

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234