Journal Entries
Intensity, extensity and protensity.
Posted Sep 20, 2004
Well I really thought I was going to be posting this journal a lot earlier in the day, but not only has this computer been slow and unresponsive today, but also the hootoo server seems to be bosy today too... maybe 'coz it's still the weekend for most of the world. Also doesn't help that I've been feeling kinda fuzzy-brained all day, and I've sortof been waiting to wake up a bit so that I don't dribble on too much... oh bugger too late.
However in an effort to stay awake during this morning's lecture, (can you blame me? It included phrases like: "The transitive closure provides reachability information about a digraph." 
) I started writing down the stuff that I'd been meaning to add to a journal entry and either I keep forgetting whenever I'm online, or I only thought of it during the weekend. So, because my brain is set to simmer, I'm just going to go through that stuff and see what spills out onto the page, rather than use this opportunity to say something interesting.
"I am driven not by desire, nor by the interpreted will of an unseen diety. I am driven neither by hunger nor passion nor instinct. My only calling is to a sense of loss, beckoned by the desire to fill my hollow and fragile spiritual shell with the trappings and artifacts of a materialistic age.
Siddhartha weeps."
I'm sure there was a point to this passage, but what seemed real at 3am this morning is, of course, completely fogbound twelve hours later. Some kind of analysis of my deeper desires in life, or something.
Is it healthy to be seeking emotional, sexual, and social fulfilment in three separate and distinct forums? Am I losing the capacity to successfully assimilate these three dimensions into one? What other choice do I have, at this time? Some advice would be nice. A RL hug would probably be better. It may be all I need, in fact. I don't know.
I recently came across a particularly lucid description of the physical properties of our universe, in a book on consciousness (written by a guy named Professor Edwin Boring! 
You know it's a bad day when...) The description involved the terms: 'intensity, extensity, and protensity,' thus the subject name of this journal. The basic idea is that each of these three relate to the measurement of the three basic dimensions of physical properties, using the cgs standard (centimeters, grams, seconds). They relate to the measurement of mass, volume, and duration, respectively. I figure it's worth noting here not just because it seems a particularly apt summation to me, and I get the impression I'm going to need to refer to it later somehow, but also because I figure I can use this concept for the responsive music generation software.
If I can somehow link representational objects to attributes in these three dimensions, I may also be able to use those attributes in the musical representation. Two points: obviously those dimensions have sub-dimensions themselves, for example the three volumatic dimensions of our perceived universe (x y and z), and also several dimensions for time - acceleration is measured in the comparison of two of them: acceleration is delta v over delta t, and velocity (v) is delta d (distance) over delta t (time), thus acceleration is distance over time over time; or distance over time squared.
Anyway. Um. Point two: these attributes make no mention of qualitative values, what we think of as adjectives in language must by their nature have a different representation both in music and in an object-based coded-value system. It's pointless to think of them as stochastic, indescrete entities. ("What a crumbly yellow voice you have...")
At this point I'd really like to try extreme synesthesia for a while. It might help me come up with a solution to this. Or it might drive me completely mad, but hey I'm willing to take that risk; there's no proof that I haven't already done so. At least traffic would look pretty. Probably.
As promised, a quick mention of my current name-quip: I realised last night that I'm spending a disproportionate amount of time mentally checking off song lyrics or other similar quotes for suitability as a name-quip. I realised that all of these phrases in the past have been either lyric shards, hoping to express my artistic being, stolen quotes, hoping to find a mutually relatable topic, or simple facts about myself, hoping to find a friend who can relate to me in turn.
It seems to me that this is, on the whole, an act of futility, and ultimately an act of one who is simply desperately seeking companionship and understanding.
So, in a blatant attempt to to quit my addiction to this self-eroding behaviour, I changed my name to Jerms... Cellar door.
This quip reveals nothing about myself. I hope. In fact it's a reference made in a movie about a quote that someone else had made previously, which I happen to like. I thought about simply reverting to the name Jerms, but I guess I'm not a cold-turkey kind of a guy. Obviously I need /some/ kind of security blanket, even if it's just a metaphor about a metaphor.
I was rather close to having another mental breakdown over the weekend. Luckily I was interrupted in a timely manner by my friend Reg... um. Yeh, Reg, I think I called him. And then R3 came over, too, but only 'coz she was annoyed at her boyfriend. Again. I haven't really been home since, which partially explains my mental fuzziness, but at least I haven't had the breakdown yet.
This probably won't be the last you hear about it, because I can still feel it in the back of my mind, crouching like a snake unblinking and waiting to strike. Also, it's vaguely worrying me that I had a mental breakdown around about this time last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before /that/. Which I hadn't realised before but it strongly suggests there's something wrong with septembers. It doesn't seem to be Seasonal Affective Disorder; I've already bought that t-shirt and it doesn't fit.
I would like to be full of gorm. I don't know what gorm actually /is/, but I figure it's probably better to be gormful than gormless.
Does anybody know what a pandanus is? The word keeps popping into my mind at the moment, and I've only ever heard it once, during my first-year linguistics paper, four years ago. I wrote a comment in the margin of my notes at the time, saying: "What the heck is a pandanus?", but the lecturor never mentioned it again and I forgot to ask. Why I'm thinking about it so much now, I don't know.
Yeah I think that's all. Unless something else rears its head in the next five minutes, like has happened every other time I've posted a journal in the last fortnight or so. Let's see... *posts*
Actully no I didn't post yet; I previewed the journal first. Lucky. I was also going to mention this: I did an online psychological test an hour or so ago, hoping that it would give me an insight to my current mental health, but no. It just gave me a personality type instead. Ah well, here it is anyway:
Your Personality Type:
Lover
Your kindness, altruism, and sincere enjoyment of people make you the Lover. You are the kind of person who genuinely enjoys and admires others and isn't afraid to show it. You value your friends and loved ones above all, and would drop any project to be at a friend's side. Your interactions with others are characterized by warmth, openness, and caring, and your empathy and altruism do not go unnoticed. Your emotional stability and ability to give to others are gifts.
Pretty flattering, but I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that the test also showed my depressive tendencies. Perhaps they try to word the conclusions nicely for people who seem too fragile to hear the blatant truth. Interesting concept, at least.
Screw it, I'm not going to preview this extra bit. Bite me. *posts properly this time*
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Sep 20, 2004
Third time in a row...
Posted Sep 17, 2004
...Yep. I posted a journal, and then found something else to add. Again.
Check this out: a friend just e-mailed it to me and I love it. The original has pictures, too, but they're not important...
When you are sad:
I will get you drunk and help you plot revenge against the sorry bastard who made you sad.
When you are worried:
I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be and to quit whining.
When you smile:
I'll know you finally got laid.
When you are blue:
I'll try to dislodge whatever is choking you.
When you are confused:
I will use little words to explain it to your dumb ass.
When you are sick:
Stay away from me until you're well again.
I don't want whatever you have.
When you fall:
I will point and laugh at your clumsy ass.
This is my oath; I pledge 'til the end.
Why you may ask? Because you're my friend!
Send this poem to ten of your closest friends
and get depressed because you realise you only have two friends,
and one of them is not speaking to you right now anyway.
PS A friend will help you move.
A real friend will help you move a body.
Discuss this Journal entry [48]
Latest reply: Sep 17, 2004
Apocalyptic dreams see the ordinary madness.
Posted Sep 17, 2004
Sorry I'm late, Arisztid... I got accosted by a card-carrying christian during lunch. 
I don't think he's christian any more...
The only thing worth mentioning in today's journal is a conversation I had yesterday, with a friend named Grr. Yes that is his name. Not the name on his birth certificate, but it what he's known as. 
Somehow we got onto the topic of the nature of society, and its current rapid decay. We talked about what the future might hold if that decay continues (which seems likely) and what we would do when. Basically, we talked about our plans for the apocalypse.
We agreed the first thing to do would be to steal a van or small truck, and then fill it with the lootings of a handful of very specific stores. In order:
A pharmacy. If society fell apart, medicine would no longer be made, and would soon be in great demand. Specifically: antibiotics, antihystimines, antiinflammitorys, and painkillers. Probably more, but I have more thinking to do before I can finish that list.
A sporting goods store. Not only for hunting equipment such as crossbows, bolts and knives, but also for lightweight, heavyduty clothing.
A food wholesale warehouse. A supermarket would do, but a wholesale warehouse would be more convenient; everything's already in boxes. The shopping list here would include: Disinfectant, food packets (soups etc), dried food, seeds, lighters, erasers, milk powder and soap.
Finally, an army surplus store. Only a few items would be needed: cooking utensils (metal), water containers, and similar items; more clothes, boots, and probably material.
Possibly a hardware store would be on that list too. As I say, I haven't finished thinking about this yet.
The next step would be to get the hel out of the cities.
I now know where and when I would meet Grr, and I intend to organise similar arrangements with other certain people.
Any suggestions, anyone?
Discuss this Journal entry [42]
Latest reply: Sep 17, 2004
Why is it that just after I post a journal...
Posted Sep 15, 2004
...I find something else to add?
From http://www.crunchable.net/04/0301.shtml :
Polls late last year show that between 20% and 25% of Germans — that's one-in-five to one-in-four — think the US was behind the terrorist attacks.
Conspiracy books are hitting the German bestseller list, the most prominent being Andreas von Bulow's The CIA and September 11th.
9/11, Bulow argues, was obviously a ploy to get the US into Iraq and to ultimately take over the world.
Bestseller list.
25%.
Germany. Game over, man. Game over. When Germany is accusing us of being power-hungry and fascist, it's time to pack up our toys and go home.
Have a nice sandwich, maybe. Take a warm bath. Stop blowing up things.
Wait for everything to quiet down before inviting the rest of the world over for tea and cookies and apologize for, well, being such amazing assholes.
That'd be nice.
In the meantime, vote. And remember, Americans: When traveling abroad, you're from Toronto.
Discuss this Journal entry [126]
Latest reply: Sep 15, 2004
A few interesting things...
Posted Sep 15, 2004
Random stuff to talk about which I've thought 'Hm, maybe I should mention that on hootoo', but not much of a pattern to it...
CDs explode! One of the guys in my classes was working on a computer just a couple of seats down from me in the lab, and I heard a loud bang from his computer... I thought he'd closed the CD drawer with his CD sticking out a bit, snapping it in two, but no apparantly it was in fine, and he was reading MP3s from it... it just randomly exploded in the drive! Must have overheated or something; it was a cheap warehouse peice of trash, but even so I didn't know they would do that!
It took him ages to get the drawer to open again, and a whole lot of shards fell out; tech support is going to have to clean out the inside of the computer.
I had a couple of strange dreams last night; the first was similar to the recurring 'night terror' involving alien abduction, but at least it was only a nightmare this time... much less terrifying. Still left me wide awake at 4am, again, wondering if I should give up trying to sleep and get up instead.
The other dream was much cooler; I was walking around the lounge of the house I want, and looking closely at the waterfall coming out of the wall (this isn't a new feature; I've wanted that for ages). I now know exactly how I want it to look... while I remember it I'm going to say it here. If you don't like it, bite me. 
It's taller and wider than I'd previously imagined; perhaps a full ten feet high and six feet wide. The top part is fake rock, on an angle for the water to run over... about eight feet above floor level it becomes an underhang, so the water just runs off in a sheet, down to the rocks underneath, up to about a foot above floor level. These rocks form a stepping-stone form of walkway. If you walk from the floor itself onto these rocks you can follow them under the waterfall, but a hidden trigger will stop the waterfall before you get there, revealing an entrance to the next room (the swimming pool room - thus walking on the rocks to get there is essentially the same as dipping your feet in those little basins to clean them so you don't get grass or whatever into the pool...)
Also, the pond at the base of the waterfall, before it runs off in a stream across the lounge (under perspex, at floor level, and with a small bridge over it. ) is large enough for a person to fit... there's even an underwater tunnel leading off under the wall somewhere... can't quite remember where it went in my dream, but probably into a pond in the garden courtyard formed by the walls of the pool room, the lounge, the ballroom, and... some other room...
Some thoughts on this tunnel (again while I remember them I might as well write them down...) -It has to be safe, meaning that as soon as possible the top of it rises so people can breathe the air above the water. -If the pond in the garden courtyard is in the closest corner, which makes sense, that would be about eight feet maximum to swim. Also that's far enough that if the bottom of the tunnel is relatively reflective, then the sunlight outside would come up from underneath the waterfall, which would look cool and magical. -How would I stop birds or other nuisances from swimming into the lounge from outside, without hindering my own access? -Underwater lights would be necessary. 'Coz they're cool.
Interesting social experiment: Pretend you're in love while walking down the street. It's relatively easy to fake if you know what to look for, and most people you see will smile just 'coz you are. Some will look twice 'coz they can tell you're faking it... these are the people I want to meet.
Discuss this Journal entry [140]
Latest reply: Sep 15, 2004
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Jerms - a Brief flicker and then gone again.
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