big bad blog

I did sod all these two days, other than spend stupid amounts of time in front of a computer screen organising things. I stayed in the hostel for a couple of nights, as Gianni’s girlfriend was staying over so there was no room for me and I couldn’t find another CS host. That said, I’m still hugely appreciative of how much help Gianni had been, without him, life would have been a lot more difficult. At the Hostel I did manage to find a Larry Niven book in english which kept me occupied for a while, especially since I haven’t read any good sci fi in ages.

On saturday Gianni took me to a grotto in the hills for lunch, a proper old school italian restaurant. It was cheap and cheerful, but dammit the food was good. I had Polenta with beef and aside from trying proper polenta for the first time, the beef was probably the best beef I have ever tasted, it was amazing. The polenta went incredibly well with the gravy and it costing only £7 made it taste all the better.

I’ve put up a guide to running a small to medium sized LAN Party on the termisoc wiki

http://wiki.termisoc.org/index.php/Lan_party_guide

Currently its quite Termisoc specific, with details on locations in the Plymouth university campus, so eventually I’ll be writing a general version for the rest of the world…

ps. If you’re a student at Plymouth University and fancy a LAN party, Termisoc , the computing society, runs LAN parties every term, with smaller unofficial events in babbage every so often.

Conspiracy nuts have the NWO to explain everything, the converatives blame…pretty much everyone that isn’t middle/upper class and white.

We apparently live in constant threat of terrorists. Airport security is just silly these days. New laws are passed to “protect” our freedoms. We even invade random countries to “protect” ourselves.

except…the thing is….with the exception of 9/11 and 7/7, theres been bugger all terrorist acts in the last 5 years. By no means do I think 9/11, 7/7 and madrid etc. should be forgotten, but if a group was really determined to cause terror, they could do worse things and more often easier than we could possibly imagine…

The IRA showed how much havock a terrorist organisation can cause and that was before the days of the internet and ebay and a group that at least vaguely tried to go for legitimate targets (they killed a lot of innocent people too, but the current “threat” is solely aiming at civilians).

Iraq is utter meyhem at the moment with car bombs a daily occurence and yet…Britain and the US rarely see anything.

bombs can be made from household materials using GCSE chemistry in an afternoon, and yet…they don’t.

one person could easily leave dozens of home made bombs around london in a day and yet…they don’t.

the exeter, glasgow and liquid bombers have all been so completely and utterly incompetent that they were unable to even use google to check if their chosen methods were even remotely sensible…

for bonus points: Whats with all the fuss over blowing up aeroplanes? Theres so many things to blow up in this world, many of them easier and more effective to creating terror than planes and yet airport security barely stops short of anal probing, but you can wander into a shopping centre or a nightclub unchecked…

I’ve had an idea for a blog/zine/thingy that I could do with some feedback from people on…

The idea is to show the sides of issues and systems that people normally don’t see.

For example, with the emergence of blogs and the anonymity, its become far easier for people on the inside of systems such as the police, NHS, education system, restaurants, bartenders, anarchists, strippers to tell the true story of their worlds without the spin of the PR and the bias of the media. I’d like to highlight these blogs and collate some of the best posts to show the best and worst of the worlds.

On many issues there are quite vocal people on both sides, but they’re rarely put together. For example, to do a piece on the Iraq war with articles from the soldiers on both sides, the civilians caught in the crossfire, maybe even some people who understand the struggle in Ireland to give some perspective. I doubt many westeners really understand what its like on the ground in Iraq, living with the bombs and the troops. I for one don’t.

Examples for issues are pirates vs content creators, students vs faculty vs management vs the world in universities, various sections of the government vs everyone that has to deal with that section.

one of the issues I need to solve is that frankly, most people don’t care. (Genocide in Africa? Terrible! Shocking! Oh look, Big Brother is on the other channel). Those that care are so polarized they don’t want to listen to the other side in case they find themselves sympathising with their enemies.

This becomes even more of a problem when discussions start. Discussions=good. Mindless flame wars=bad.

What I want is suggestions for what to do with the idea, issues that you think would make interesting and informative reading, if you think you could write about your job, hobby, world that most people never see I’d love to put your post up.

Again, inspired by the legions of crazy, I feel the need to rant about the basic rules of reality.

When we have differences and argue with people, we have a tendancy to become polarized. Once we take up a position, our egos really don’t like the idea of being wrong, so we tend to end up believing that “we” are “right” and “they” are “wrong”.

One of the most useful lessons I take from taoism is the concept of balance, which is similar to the buddhist Middle Path. Its like believing “never say never” in the same way christians believe in “love your neighbour”. its not just a good idea, its pretty much compulsory if you want to live a happy life.

A real world example I’ve recently hit is anarchists vs the police. I know people on both sides. Some of them are good people, some of them are tossers.

The anarchists believe “all police are bastards”. They’ve had run ins in the past and they haven’t exactly been polite.

The police know the anarchists are all drugged up violent punks. They know this because they’ve seen the drugs and have the scars from the “peaceful protests” to prove it.

And yet…I know both sides and they’re both good people, so what gives? I know people on both sides who would risk their lives in a riot/ex-peaceful protest to save me from the other side without a second thought

The problem is that neither side understands the other, they only see what they want to see so they can keep justifying their actions. Try and explain to an anarchist that a fight is the last thing a copper wants at 2am on a friday night and they’ll look at you like you just licked their mother. Tell a constable that those squatters are fighting for his freedom and he’ll tell you stories of the trail of destruction they can leave.

So go find your enemies and understand them. Work out why they do what they do what they do. Victory comes so much easier when you realise you never have to fight them in the first place.

This post goes out to religion bashing scientists and people who think conspiracy theorists are nuts, because people on both sides of those issues have been giving me all kind of crazy lately…

The point I want to make is that even if something is completely wrong and completely flawed, it can still be just as important as whats right.

Take for example, the concept of a centre of gravity. You can measure and predict the centre of gravity of an object, you can change where it is and how it affects things, but you can rip apart the world and never find one. The centre of gravity doesn’t exist, but it’s there nevertheless.

We hit this same thing in the taoist concept of Chi. You can do all kinds of scientific studies to prove chi doesn’t exist, but when a tai chi instructer focuses his chi and pushes you so hard you bounce off the opposite wall, that won’t be much consolation. One of the great things about taoism is that even if you don’t believe it literally, as a metaphor it still works. Chi is a great way of getting your mind to understand how to move muscles better. Its damn near impossible to conciously control your muscles, but as a metaphor, chi helps you feel the kinetic forces in your muscles, the blood in your veins and the spinning wheels in your mind to help you deliver a more powerful punch, a stronger stance and a better grip on reality.

But what does all this mean in the real world?

It means that sometimes you have to give up on trying to be right on principles all the time and learn to relax and accept, allow and use what you disagree with to make your world a better place, solve your problems faster and easier.

Even if God doesn’t exist, religion can provide meaning to life that science has yet to do, conspiracy theorists rant about the new world order that rules our life without us knowing and even if they are just crazy, we need to crazies making noise and asking awkward to keep the government on their toes so the conspiracies don’t come true.

look at the crazies, the ones you oppose and ask if either of you are really getting doing what you claim to be doing or getting too distracted by being “right”.

Sometimes you need your enemies more than you realise…

reply with comments (especially if I completely failed to make sense) and arguaments!

If you’re ever in plymouth late at night and feel like really creeping yourself out, head to the bombed out church next to the shopping centre late at night.

Its really well lit, which just adds to the creepyness, screwing with your night vision enough to give anything that might want to eat your soul (or your wallet) plenty of shadows to hide in. Its in the middle of a roundabout and with all the windows long since blown out during the war, you can just hear random snatches of voices from people over the sound of the cars, giving a ghostly haunted voice effect.
The whole place was bombed out during world war two, taking the windows, roof and furniture to a better and temporarily airborne afterlife. Open plan is not the word to describe it. Exposed would be more accurate. As in the military definition of exposed. As in the kind of exposed where your animal sith sense is constantly checking ever corner and expecting something to sneak up behind you.

also, there was a complete set of womans clothes strewn about in there…I can easily imaging why they came off, it seems like a good place for some late night hanky panky, but the question is why didn’t they put them back on afterwards?

I’m heading to barcamp at the end of may, anyone got any suggestions on what to talk about? I’m interested in/vaguely good at

• electronics and circuitry stuff
• robots
• game design and development
• some businessy and social engineeringy type stuff

last year I did a talk on basic 2d game design, which kind of sucked due to me not really rehearsing or putting nay effort in…

Rice, it costs about 5p for a huge bowl, it provides oodles of carbohydrates and is idiot proof to make.

step 1-buy a big bag of rice, the cheapest stuff you can get, the expensive stuff won’t make a difference. You have the choice of long grain, which will make a fluffier chinese style rice, or basamati, which will make a firmer indian style. theres also funky rice like the kind you get in sushi, but we’ll just pretend they don’t exist for now…

step 2-You can go look up the way to make “perfect” rice later. for now, just stick roughly one cups worth of rice in a pot with enough boiling water to cover it, plus a little extra. Boil it for a couple of minutes and then turn the heat down a bit and then cook it for another few minutes. take some out with a fork and try it every so often to see if its done. if its still crunchy, its not done yet. If it starts to go too dry, add a bit more water.

step 3-when its edible, drain it with a seive, stick on a plate and eat it.

Microwave rice?

You can microwave rice pretty well by the way. Just stick a bowl with rice and water in the microwave on high for about 5 minutes (leave enough room in the bowl so the water doesn’t boil over too much), stir it around a bit, then put it on for another 5 minutes on low power until its absorbed all the water.

Bonus steps-rice on its own is pretty dull, but you can

• cover plain rice with a bit of sweet chilli sauce (buy from your local ethnic foodshop. about£1.50 for a bottle that’ll last for ages) or a bit of soy sauce. Any sauce you like will do really (although putting ketchup on rice might make baby jesus cry)
• stick a stock cube (or half of one if you’re not making much) in there when you’re cooking it

• drop in a tin of chopped tomatos and cut down on the amount of water. boil until for a bit until the tomato cooks a bit and then rop in the rice like normal and then cook until the rice has absorbed most of it

• keep a bag of frozen peas, sweetcorn or whatever in the freezer and whack in a handful while the rice is cooking to add some good old fashioned vitamins.

Yes, I know churches and organized religion are evil, but that doesn’t mean you have to go and throw away the real message.

I get people telling me they don’t do lent, or confession or whatever because they aren’t christian, in the same tone of voice a muslim would respond if you handed them a hot dog.

You don’t go to confession because the pope says so, you go because you’ve sinned (yes, yes you have. and so have I before you get sarky) and it gives you someone you can admit it to. Lent focuses the mind on other peoples suffering and strengthens your will power.

Jesus said love your neighbour. Just because the (probably catholic) church pissed you off, doesn’t make what he said a bad idea. Same goes for other religions. Heck, once you take out the bits about God, most religions are all telling you the same message…