I'm not sure what I want to talk about today. I had a topic all picked out, but now I forgot most of what I wanted to say about it, I'm afraid... That seems to happen a lot.

This last chess game, I lost. Every game I lost was because of a blunder, but so was the one I won. Not every chess game is decided by a blunder, although you wouldn't know it from watching me. It makes me question how sure I am about being half-decent at chess. It's the same way I wonder about my voice when people say I did well, singing. I never know if they're telling the truth or trying to protect my feelings for some reason... My feelings are jaded already. :-(

I had a dream a few days ago, mostly forgotten by now, where I was acting in a sort of sketch comedy TV series, although it seemed more like a movie... I forgot most of it except that it was similar to a series of five minute sketches on the Disney channel, though only by the set style. (All white, with some colour to depict certain objects) The only part other than that which I remember is the end, where I was pretending to smoke and another actor accidentally swore when she was saying her line, and everyone burst into laughter...



I've been thinking recently about my mind, and how it works. This came up when I was thinking about the mind of a character I have created, and how it works, and then thinking about how my own mind would influence the mind of the character. I developed a hypothesis, that my mind works better when I'm not just dealing with theory. The suggestion explained a lot for me, and seems to apply well to my interests.

When I say theory here, I mean things that don't actively present a challenge, and which don't yield any results that I can immediately perceive and manipulate. I need to be -doing- something. It could be that I find maths boring, for example, because it is mostly dealing with the theory of numbers.

The hypothesis doesn't apply so well to formulas, (c = (f - 32) / 1.8, to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius) although not in all cases. But this leads to a sort of anomalous side-point. I've been curious why I can so readily understand the flow of a program, if I try at it, easily (it seems) navigate logical labyrinths, (nested ifs and cases) etc. but I can't do a freakin' algebra problem without staring at it for ten minutes before I can think of the answer. It seems like the two should be closely related, programming and maths... c = (f - 32) / 1.8 looks SO MUCH like a line from a program. Perhaps that's why I can follow formulas easily. But you'd think algebra too... bah.

Back on the original point. So I have an easier time understanding things when I actually do something, than I do when I'm just listening to the theory behind it. More examples of this are music, chess, acting I guess, and probably at times programming and psychology. Psychology remains another anomaly for the hypothesis, you'd think it would be mostly theory. But I'll ignore that for a bit. I would find myself incredibly bored to look at the theories behind music, and I probably would find myself bored in short notice with chess, acting, and programming. Chess I can vaguely tolerate, and I have, because I can actively sort a database of chess games, and play them myself if I want using the theories as a guide.

Psychology breaks the hypothesis, like I said, although I haven't been as interested in it recently. (Says the guy who just wrote all of that about his own mind) It could also easily be that none of this is the case, and that I thought of it and clung to it simply because it is an idea that I can live with... I couldn't live with the idea that it is simply because I'm lazy, or don't try hard enough, spend too much time on the computer / watching TV, etc. (I don't think I do, those are just examples)

Good night

(edited because I got confused because it is four in the morning)

I was volunteering at the library the other day, for a 'Family Game Day'. I'm sure I've spoken of these before, but this time I was in the kitchen the whole time, mixing lemonade and making popcorn and pouring pretzels and handing them all out to little kids and big kids alike. (Have you no shame, other volunteers?? (Just kidding, I ate some too)) Now if only someone would give me a job doing this, (You make mixing lemonade AN ARTFORM!) I'd have it made.

But that's enough about that. My attentions are still being drawn primarily by chess, (I discovered my weakness: I undervalue pawns) but now there's a side-distraction in PHP and XHTML and Java and anything else used as a standard in web design... It all started with wanting a PGN parser/viewer in PHP, so that I could share my chess games without the help of chess.com. But now it's evolved to the point where I'm re-learning PHP.

I know I've done it before, no need to tell me. I recently have been wanting a domain name instead of just a subdomain, but I don't really need one... Everything I could possibly want to do is provided by freehostia for free. And while they're the best free host I've found, it looks like their actual hosting services are... Expensive. I'd have to compare it with more than I did, though.

This has all sort of come to a climax with me considering building a resource for chess... A mirror for the University of Pittsburgh's FTP site, plus links and, if I end up creating on, an open source PGN viewer in PHP... Not that anyone will look at or use it.

I've also been wondering at the point of combining a blog with a social site... Although, to me Livejournal has never seemed as much like a blog as a live journal. I tend to use it as a way to keep in touch with people I'd like to keep in touch with. But, as my journal isn't friends only, it's also a place for random strangers to gather bits of information and put it in little notebooks, and then come visit me... Not that this has happened.

A blog, to my mind, tends more to be for news and such. So if I had a blog on my site, it would be about the site itself, or about the subject of the site.