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Day Twenty: Four Hours Later

Selkcip — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:40:48 +0000

I went to bed at four and was woken up at eight on the dot by screaming children outside my room. The dining room is the next door over. After giving up on going back to sleep. I got up and went to breakfast. I made the mistake of saying I wanted tea. I don’t like tea. Then I noticed the orange juice. My mom said she’d be back later and we’d go to the camera obscura that overlooks the Avon Gorge, but that didn’t happen. I played TFTwo until Trung went to sleep. Then sat around for a while before looking for a towel so that I cold take a shower. I got in the shower and tried to close the door, but it decided to fall off its rail so I tried to put it back on, but it didn’t work. I ended up closing it and hoping it would fall on me. Then I sat around some more. Eventually, I went looking for my mom, who decided to come looking for me as well. We went to lunch at a cafe. I got a tuna melt and a ginger beer. Again, ginger ale is nothing like ginger beer. I came back to the hotel and started working on a model that I’ll likely never finish. Around six my mom came back we set out to meet my dad somewhere for dinner. That’s what I thought. Turns out we were meeting him at a reception after his conference. This put me in a foul mood because I didn’t want to stand around and wait for him; I had been working. We eventually got dinner at a posh restaurant called The Shed. The burger was meh, but the chips were good. Still pissed, we walked along the harbor to find some ships my mom wanted to see. We eventually found them. They weren’t all that exciting. Though the replica sailing ship was tooling around the harbor with people on it. On the way to catch the bus back a group of teenagers passed us. One of them attempted to engage me by saying he liked my glasses. Maybe that’s some English insult, maybe they were just stupid. I ignored them. I found out that Fringe is back, but to watch it on Huku I had to install an automatic proxy finder cause it’s only available in the US and the proxies I tried didn’t work. That’s something to look forward to.

Day Eighteen and Nineteen: Fending Off Failure with Pistols in Bristol

Selkcip — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:42:56 +0000

I forgot to write something last night because I had to get up early to catch a coach to Bristol. No big loss, I didn’t do anything noteworthy. Today I woke up feeling shitty from not enough sleep. Got ready to go. Took the tube to Victoria Station (every time reminds me of the Tommy song). Walked to the coach station. Got some ice cream and waited for the coach. Sat on a cramped coach for two hours with my ass asleep and a twenty-something talking audibly on the phone the entire way (got some pointers for my accent). Caught a cab to the Bed and Breakfast where we are staying. Got my own room, but the wireless doesn’t work. Had to get a power line adapter. Went out for walk. We went to a cafe. Got lip and a shitty muffin. Then went to look at a suspension bridge from the eighteen hundreds. We passed where a funicular had been, but was now bricked up. I scraped myself trying to throw money into a donations bucket. The fifty pence went too far. It was a bridge alright. On the way back on the other side we saw some people on a metal overlook sticking out of the side of one of the gorge walls. Turned out to be the exit to a somewhat disappointing cave which one had to pay to enter. I’ve seen better and I did not trust the balcony. Got some more ice cream when we came back up. On the walk home we discussed how one goes about finding hedgehogs. I saw a squirrel. Walked back into town to find a place to eat. Smelled something good. Weren’t sure, but figured it must have been the Indian restaurant we passed. Either way it was good. Continued to walk along the high street. My mom kept stopping. Got back and found a cute girl and her parents waiting for the proprietress. Was worried I’d have to try and play TFTwo on my lap. Realized I could move the set of drawers. Played for a while till Trung and Sofa left. Watched Farscape until three in the morning.

Day Sixteen: Five to Five

Selkcip — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:00:57 +0000

Stayed up till five. Woke up at two. Sat up at two thirty. Messed around with my tablet for a couple hours. Got out of bed at five. Went to a pub for dinner. Heard “I Kissed a Girl” playing there. Reminded of Emma’s ringtone. Stayed up till five again despite my mom telling me I have to get up before two PM. Oh well.

Day Twelve: Mission Successful

Selkcip — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:14:37 +0000

I woke up at eight or something and figure I should get up. My mom wanted to take me to the larger super market she found. Guess what, I didn’t. When I finally got up and finished my shower. My dad’s colleague had come over and they decided to try the food at a pub around the corner. I got a Chicken BLT…without the LT. It was ok, the potato wedges were better. The fudge cake was so so. Next we walked over to Waitrose which reminded me of the Tesco back in Lewis with it’s little cafe on the side, but wasn’t quite as big. I found a cheap bottle of sparkling water and a five pack of Cadbury’s Curly Wirly’s. I later ate them all on one sitting. When we got back my dad told us that he had found a guy at Spitalfields flea market selling fur hats with Soviet insignia. I had wanted to change into my shorts and cool down after the walk back lugging heavy bags, but I wanted that hat. In short, it was exactly what I wanted: sturdy construction that will let me wear it when it gets cold and a red and gold star insignia. Twenty pounds, maybe a bit expensive, but it’s a sweet hat (Trung pointed out that Fran has the same one, oh well). Then my parents left to go see a play and I suggested to Trung (who was up surprisingly early) that we the Half-Life Two mod Synergy. Unfortunately his computer’s IP keeps changing which means he has to forward the port each time. I tried to fix this, but forgot about the DNS server the first time so he logged off due to loss of internet, goo thing he has a laptop. We eventually got it working and finished the map we had been playing. It had a rather unimpressive ending. We didn’t know what other maps we could play so we gave up and went to TFTwo. At first it was a bit slow. Then it picked up and I got seventeen points in one life as a spy; a new record. We didn’t do too bad, but out team lost that game. The next game was very different. Trung recently stopped caring about team stacking (known good players banding together on the same team and dominating) seeing as people have started to follow us onto teams. We were happily slaughtering the other team when one of them decided to complain. He said that a number of us (including the “SED fags”) always teamstacked. Now, this obviously is a little offensive. So we asked him why he thought that. He didn’t make a very compelling argument as we told him that, in fact, we don’t always stack, sometimes Trung likes to play on the weaker team for a challenge, so we kept dominating them. He told us to grow some balls and play on a weaker team for once (it was clear he wasn’t listening). When the next game started, I randomly chose a team. Two of the leaders from the last game were on the other team and we had me and Trung. The complainer didn’t join a team and left after a short while. Later on while playing someone tried to votekick the clan (at this point out fourth member had joined the game), when I asked why he didn’t respond immediately, but apparently he said he didn’t know this server was for clan practice, which as Trung told me is meaningless because we aren’t a scrimmage team and additionally it was one of the Lotus Clan servers. Either way, he didn’t get any support in kicking us. It’s nice to be hated, it means they fear you. I can’t wait until Emma starts playing and we have four member of Silent Earth Dirigible playing at the same time.

In Soviet Russia, hat wears you!

Day Ten: Ping High Noon

Selkcip — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:16:00 +0000

Slept four an a half hours. Got up and found the internet had slowed to a crawl. Pining google.co.uk took one hundred and sixty-seven ish milliseconds. I thought that it was a problem with the router again so I tried switching back to the old one, but that refused to work entirely. In short I couldn’t fix it meaning no TFTwo. Trung said he was getting tired of it anyway. That the lack of teamwork was making him lose faith in humanity. If that’s all then he’s lucky. We tried to come up with another coop game we could play. The only one we both could easily get was Synergy. At this point the internet started picking up and I was able to install Synergy in a few seconds. I then had to walk Trung though the steps necessary to get the server working so I could connect. When I finally connected my ping was over nine hundred. It wasn’t long before we turned on cheats because I couldn’t really walk let alone shoot anything without dying. We played for a couple hours until he decided the sun coming up was a sign he should go to bed. Then I took a shower. Then I floated lifelessly for a while until I got the idea I would Photoshop a TFTwo dispenser into a picture from the living room window. I needed to use Garry’s Mod to get a good picture of the dispenser and I thought that I could get an addon thatwould make the dispenser have a display. I ended up getting some other addons which I was then distracted by for a number of hours. I spent twenty minutes trying to back stab a manhack (an enemy from Half-Life Two) with the spy’s knife from TFTwo (I eventually got it). I never got around to the shooping. Finally, Trung and I played some TFTwo. There were some good parts, but it ended of meh.

Like the depth.

NEED A DISPENSA HERE!

Knife fight.

Playing with the AI.

Day Two: Sunshine

Selkcip — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:38:10 +0000

It was hot and sunny today. This fact disappointed me. We had lunch with my dad’s cousins, their children, and their parents. They belong to one of those country clubs. My parents got somewhat dressed up, but told me that jeans and a t-shirt were fine. Turns out it wasn’t the kind where they turn you away or give you dirty looks if you don’t look the part. My second cousin is sixteen, but is now taller than me. For dessert I had a Mars Bar ice cream bar, this requires further examination. After lunch we went for a walk around the club. In the process I realized I had lost my day pass for the train. When we got back the the clubhouse I found it where it had fallen out of my pocket when I had taken my tablet out. I promptly lost it again in the same manner, only realizing half-way back to the tube station. Next we visited my Father’s colleague whose family we are friends with. On the way we found a grounded adapter for my laptop (using it now). That was rather uneventful. By this point I was over the heat/sunny weather. On the way home we went through Brick Lane and had dinner at a Bangladeshi restaurant. Just about every restaurant was Bangladeshi and just about every one was completely empty. After we got home I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out how to fix the wireless. I thought that I needed to turn the modem/router into a gateway so that the wireless router would give out IP’s. I took a break while my mom checked her email (this was on my dad’s netbook) and plugged in my laptop and hooked it up to the HDTV. I tested Farscape and Batman:TAS. Despite the fact they are very low resolution they both looked just fine which is sweet. I then spent another few hours trying to get the wireless to work only to realize there was nothing I could do and that, in fact, it did work, but it was very flaky/finicky. Then I played some TFTwo. My laptop can play it at ten-eighty on full settings, but sitting on the couch, I can’t actually see anything. The lag wasn’t too bad, but because of the flaky internet, it looks like I might have to deal with frequent random disconnects. Seeing as it’s three thirty in the morning, I should probably go to bed.

Six Months

Selkcip — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:45:16 +0000

I haven’t posted in a while. I got bored and didn’t have much to say. This summer has been pretty dull to boot, but I am at a new point in my li-oh, who the fuck an I kidding? It’s going to be the same shit I’ve been doing for the past four or five years, but in a different location.

I didn’t apply to college. Yeah, probably a mistake as I also didn’t find anything productive to do in my year off. Instead, I’m moving with my parents to England for seven months. In retrospect this is possibly the worst thing I could do without trying very hard (I could probably fuck up more if I actually put some effort into it). Seven months, in a small flat, in London. Oh sure, it’s London, the once center of the verse, but I’m also spending with my parents and I haven’t changed at all. I generally don’t make friends unless they’re people that I see every day for something like school. I can’t go up to someone and say “hey, you want to go mock people because they’re stupid?” Other people can do that, but unless I know the person, I’m generally shy. I guess I have very low confidence.

I know I have very low drive. I have no purpose, no idea what I want to do in life. I’ve grown so cynical that I have trouble enjoying life. If I’m not distracted by something I become depressed, because I feel like I’m wasting time. I blame that on school; there’s always something that you have to do. Vacation? Sweet right? Fuck no, you get reports projects, all at the same time as if every teacher assumes that you’ll have nothing to do over a break. I don’t but that doesn’t mean I want to spend it doing school work. The problem with this cynicism is that the only purpose to life I can see is further the human race and seeing as I’ve had zero luck in that area, what else is left for me. I know it’s mean to my friends, but sometimes I feel like I have nothing, that I need something more. I keep hoping that something will come along and change my life, give me direction something to live for.

My little projects help, but they only last so long. I eventually run up against a wall that I can’t overcome either because I just lose interest or I have so many things that I want to implement I end up bogging it down and it becomes unusable or I’m just not capable of doing what I want, I don’t have the skill or the knowledge necessary. When my ideas work I’m overjoyed; I actually get giddy, but just the opposite when they fail. That project was all I had at the time and now that it’s done or failed I have nothing. I try to come up with something else to work on, but nothing seems plausible or it just doesn’t interest me. What do I do then?

I wholeheartedly believe that ignorance is bliss, maybe that’s not true and of course this is me believing I know something others don’t. The religious believe in an afterlife, I don’t. By some huge cosmic coincidence you live (maybe there’s something out there, but all sources point to no) and then you die. You cease to exist. You are nothing. Most people who practice religion must know in the back of their minds that this really is it. Why else would they be afraid of death? Why are we afraid of death at all? Am I? I don’t think so, only a painful death, but not the aftermath. As I see it there is nothing and that’s what scares people because it’s impossible to wrap your mind around the idea of not existing. How can you imagine non-existence. Try and think about it, when I do I have those “who the fuck am I?” moments. Similar to “what the fuck do these sounds have to do with their meaning” moments.

So what do I do? I don’t want to go to college. I can’t get a girl. My ideas are transient. Oh and to top it off, I’m paranoid. Not aliens and the government and tinfoil hats, but I can’t shake the feeling that my friends have problems with me, but choose not to tell me and instead talk about it when I’m not there…oh wait. Not all of them. Some of them I know honestly love me even if it would be “gay” for them to say it. And then there are those who I know are my friends, but i can’t tell if they’re telling the truth or are trying to not hurt my feelings. I can’t tell if it really is them or if it’s me. It eats at me. When I get nervous I pick my nails. Or if I think too much.

That’s another problem I have. Sometimes I just can’t stop. All kinds of stuff going through my head. Math, people, quotes, “that would be a cool picture”, “what if I tried using that equation?” Maybe I have mild aspergers. Sometimes I talk too much, but I don’t think that it. I just have trouble condensing stories, because I feel that every detail is important. Isn’t that how you’re supposed to tell them? It just ends up boring people (xkcd). This wasn’t even going to be this long, but then I started writing what came to mind.

I haven’t done anything amazing. I’m not really good at anything. I’m just good at a lot of things, most of which are useless. I played Ultimate for four years I stopped getting better after three I was ok and knew what I was doing, but I wasn’t a star. Not that I tried that hard.

I guess I haven’t tried very hard at a lot of things. I didn’t try to get interested in college. I don’t try to read books. I haven’t tried hard to meet someone.

As I said, I’m not the kind of person that can just go up and start talking to someone. The idea of trying to hook up with someone that you don’t know at all, but that you are physically attracted to seems wrong to me. Which I figure is my problem. I always try to become friends with girls that I’m interested in before trying to make a move. And who am I kidding, I don’t make moves. I just sit there, pining, forever. And then when I do move, it’s just weird. I don’t know if it’s the way I go about it or if it’s that I’m just not attractive mentally of physically. The last girl that said she liked me was someone that I had never met in person. It wasn’t a completely random creepy meeting on some forum thing, her sister is my friend. When we finally met, she decided that there wasn’t a place in her life for me. She claimed that school had suddenly picked up and that what with school, family, horseback riding, friends, lacrosse she just didn’t have the time I deserved. Somehow, I never fully accepted that. Then there was the girl that I like on an off for two and a half years. Yeah, I fucked that up too. Three times. Not so much fuck ups, just nothing.

I haven’t had a regular sleep cycle in five or six years, maybe longer. Pictures that my mom dug up show me around twelve with dark circles. They became a permanent facial feature. I don’t think that they’re leaving any time soon if at all. I think I have insomnia, maybe mild. First I don’t want to sleep, back to that needing to do something with my time or else it’s wasted. And then, there’s the knowing that once I get in bed, I won’t be able to fall asleep for at least an hour unless I’m utterly and completely exhausted. Sometimes not even then. I can easily fall asleep working on homework, my body uses it as a form of self defense, but once I actually get in bed, I’m wide awake. My mind fills with thoughts that I can’t make go away. Sometimes trying to daydream works, but it’s become harder and harder to do so on commands. These days I wake up dehydrated with a headache and bloodshot eyes. Doesn’t really help attract the opposite sex.

Not that I even meet girls. I spend all my time in my room. I would have friends if it weren’t for school. The only other place that I know people from is JRTechie and I stopped going there a long time ago. It doesn’t even exist anymore. I started this blog back when I was working there the first time. And now everyone is leaving. We’ll keep in contact over Facebook, but it won’t be the same and we’ll slowly drift apart until we don’t talk to each other.

So what do I do? I go to England. What do I do there? I don’t know. Tourist activities? I hate tourists and I hate the idea of being one. I want to go back to Lewes, I want to go to Ireland, I want to try and find my friends from seventh year. The girl that I had a mutual crush on, but nothing ever happened, because I was in sixth grade, what the fuck can you do. I got a laptop so that I can keep playing TF2 with Trung and Ravic. I’m not sure what else…

From the first day there to sometime in March I’ll be writing.

Are you happy now? I know I’m not.

Coporate Whore

Selkcip — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:23:26 +0000

So I sold out today and got a Facebook account. I feel so ashamed…oh well.

Lost Season 4 Finale Spoilers

Selkcip — Fri, 30 May 2008 20:38:10 +0000

Holy crap! That was awesome. Ok actually, I don’t really feel like talking about it all that much, but I totally called the Island anchor, Keemi obviously wasn’t dead because th boat would have gone up, and Jin went boom. Also, in the last scene, I first said that it was going to be Ben, and that ha might be all “hello Jack” (which he was incidentally), then I thought it might be empty, but then after what Ben says to Jack I realised that it was Lock. Harlan and I went over to Alex’s house to watch it, so we were discussing it the whole way through, bouncing ideas during the show is more fun than the next day at school.

Plus, I have no schoo, today because finals started and I have no finals 1st or 2nd period…SCEE-ORE!

Facebook

Selkcip — Wed, 28 May 2008 01:41:09 +0000

To me, Facebook seems just as bad as Myspace, but slowly, all my friends have been sucked in by it. Today I found out that Souvey got a Facebook account. Well shit, it looks like I might have to break down and join the herd.