h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Skydiving might be a bit too energetic/enthusiastic for you."

At the moment . One day, though.... (But I probably wouldn't do it into someone's ear.)

Did you see the guy on TV who floated up to the topmost reaches of the earth's atmosphere in a special balloon, then skydived down? How cool is that! Now, that's the experience of a lifetime .

I never quite get the hang of lucid dreaming, even when I'm daydreaming. I dream with intense vividness, and tend to remember most of them--but controlling them is bloomin' hard. I've got as far as realising I'm dreaming, and I can sometimes sort of guide events, but can't make radical changes. What about you?

I'm not sure whether I saw your skydiver or not. Again, it sounds familiar but my memory is hopeless and I don't watch much news or sports type things.

I do lucid dreaming quite a bit. I don't seem to have normal dreams much - or even at all, though I did as a child before I started lucid dreaming more. But then I'm not asleep for that long at a time anyway. So my sleep cycle is already somewhat different from "normal" (like everything else!).

Speaking of dreaming, I should really go to bed.

I'm intrigued to know how you do your lucid dreaming, though, and what you dream about. If it's not too personal, perhaps you could tell me in your next post, for me to read next time I log on -?

All the best,

Snailrind

How is probably much the same as anyone else - realise I'm not really awake and take control of the dream. It probably started with the fact that I do a lot of visualisation anyway - eg I was forever walking on the ceiling as a child. Then I think I had a couple of scary dreams and decided I wasn't putting up with that and would make my own endings. But like I said I really don't do very much dreaming at all.

Possibly the strangest one was dream-writing a computer program. When I woke up I was too nervous for a whole day to type it in. When I finally did it worked first time and was the second-fastest executing one ever written for the project and the smallest bar none! NB the only one which was faster had been written by my tutor and gradually refined over the years and was much much bigger - using extra data space to gain the speed, whereas mine fit in one segment. Fitting in one segment was a slight factor in why mine was fast too though.

You probably found that boring rather than personal given your slight aversion to computers. I've heard of other people doing sky-diving type stuff as lucid dreaming but its not really my thing. Perhaps going into space is something we might agree on but of course it is all sci-fi rather than very realistic. I do still like walking on the ceiling though and outside the spring beech leaves make a lovely sky blanket.

Visualisation--well, I'm great at that. It helps, though, if I've actually done the thing I'm visualising, or it's just a rehash of something I've read or seen on TV.

"I had a couple of scary dreams and decided I wasn't putting up with that and would
make my own endings."

A useful skill!

I don't find your dream anecdote boring in the least, and in fact can identify with it, since I've written poems that way. Congratulations on writing such a programme--I hope your tutor got to see it and was duly impressed. (Isn't the mind a fascinating thing?)

You know, it's not that I *want* to switch off the moment people start talking about technical stuff: it's just that I don't understand what's being said. I've reached the stage of wanting to understand--so geek away, and I'll try to follow. Next time, I won't get my partner to do my talking for me .

"Perhaps going into
space is something we might agree on"

Space sounds amazing, but I know enough about cabin fever to prefer the idea of flying or falling free of a spaceship. Mind you, the parts of space I'd want to visit will have to stay within the realms of fantasy forever . --Unlike skydiving, which I fully intend to do at least once before I die .

"I do still like
walking on the ceiling though and outside the spring beech leaves make a lovely sky blanket."

Very poetically put . Perhaps in a previous life you were a woodlouse (hence their affinity with your ear). Or maybe you're a spiritual cross between Mary Poppins and John Lennon....

"the moment people start talking about technical stuff"

Well I did manage to tell the anecdote without going into too much detail about machine code, algorithms and buffers. I couldn't quite avoid mentioning segments but you don't have to know exactly what that meant at the time in order to understand why size might matter.

"the parts of space I'd want to visit"

Most of it *is* rather out of reach, isn't it. The celestial speed limit has a lot to answer for. If we *could* break it what would the penalty be?

"a spiritual cross between Mary Poppins and John Lennon"

Well I've been likened to the former before but never the latter as far as I know.

Are you telling me you wrote the thing in machine code? Now I'm really impressed!

I'm not actually sure about that one. I wrote many things in machine code (ie the actual hex numbers) but that particular one could well have been in assembler (the named opcodes for the hex numbers). It definitely wasn't in any sort of high-level language though.

Oh, assembler! What a cop-out. Any idiot can do that.

You must have been in the industry for quite a while, then. It's all HTML and Java at our local uni.

I haven't been in the industry for that long all together but my computer experience spans 4 decades now. Before that it was just simple electrical things and the beginnings of electronics when valves were real valves and not just a door in the virtual world of a computer game.

Has it mostly been a hobby for you, then?

I don't know. I've never added up the hours spent employed as opposed to the hours spent on my own time. I don't officially do the W word now at all. Of course I do still *do* stuff but not for money and, even when it isn't just for my own amusement, not for the sort of people who would normally pay or even be able to pay someone.