I'm posting from inside Ubuntu, today. I booted my dad's computer into it, though, because my mom's computer can't handle it well... I've downloaded TinyFugue a grand total of like twenty times now. G++ too, among other things. (Flash comes to mind)

I really like it so far, although TF seems to be losing output somehow. I need a thumb drive so I can save settings and programs and the like.


As I have told you, my two or three (tops) readers, I have in the past, and again more recently, received many shining compliments about my acting, singing, and piano playing abilities. They have all suggested I pursue a career in one or all of these, (if I'm interested (I am)) and take lessons to further my understanding if not of the mechanics, then of the theory.

But there is a problem with such compliments when it comes to me: I tend to start worrying that my success was a fluke, and I won't be able to live up to whatever standard has now been set for me. I start to judge myself a tad too critically. We are all our worst critics, I have heard, and I suppose that's true. We shall see.


I've been thinking a lot recently. Not about a specific subject, but I mean just thinking. Philosophy and death seem to come up a lot when I'm just thinking. They sort of go hand in hand, but I'll list them both anyway.

For example, I was wondering recently about neurological diseases and the like. Taking a blow to the head, or suffering a stroke or catching a neurological disease et al, sometimes changes the personality. And that, I suspect, is the next worst thing to death. I would hate to wake up one day and be a different person, and not even realize it. I could lose all of my friends, alienate my family, and they might not even know I had changed either.

I suspect it seems almost as dreadful as death because of my reason for fearing the latter: If there is no heaven, I will not exist... I can't stand the thought of simply not being. If my personality changed somehow, my old personality might not exist anymore... He would be gone.


I had a strange dream recently, but I forgot almost all of it... I was hanging on to something above the ground, deliberately having grabbed it and swung off a ledge or something of the sort. I know I was there on purpose, whatever the reason.

As my perch was swinging back toward the ledge, which wasn't too much closer to the ground, I was looking down at the tops of the trees and wondering what it would be like to fall... I was afraid I was going to fall, actually, regretting having clung to this thing in the first place. But I was also wondering. And that's about all I remember...

So... Tomorrow, and the next day, and the next we have rehearsals/crew work etc. And then on the 13th, and the 15th. And then on the 16th and 17th we have performances... I'm fairly certain the stress will be tangible tomorrow evening. I am fairly certain, actually, that we'll pull it off, with or without the entirety of our blocking. (Blocking for a vocal concert? Pfft (Not really how I feel))

I was looking at this schedule today, and I thought, "Gee, I sure am busy for the next week or so." And then I realized that not only am I not really that busy, but I'll be even less busy next week.

I need a job, just to keep my sanity. I thrive on being busy, whether I like to admit it to myself or not, and when I'm not busy I just sit around letting my mind atrophy. I need something to do constantly. I used to have a 'worry stone', and then a little stress ball, that I carried around with me to distract hands. It actually helped me to pay attention a lot, I need to start doing that again. Especially for chess games.


I'm starting sort of to question just how much difference thinking of mathematical notation as its own language (possibly a programming language) actually makes. I wonder how everyone else views maths.

This is my problem all the time... I am told, in many cases, that I am a natural; acting and music, for example. But I never know that until someone tells me... I tend to assume that I'm no better at anything than anyone else. (Certainly not at maths) Ironically, it's always a shock when I'm wrong about that...

I'm too tired to go into reasons for assuming that I'm average when it comes to my skill in just about anything. If I started to type out theories, I'd be here for another hour, and then I'd delete it all and start over because it sounded stupid 'on paper', so to speak. I've already done that once, in fact.

I need to be less afraid of looking stupid. Maybe I'll go into a long list of stuff tomorrow. Probably not, though, 'cause of the rehearsal...

But I digress. The point of it is, I'm always wondering how everyone else sees stuff. If it's different from the way I see things, or if they think of it in the same way... Maths is a prime example. It's possible that a ton of people think about it the same way I do, but they just associate it with something else. Or they associate it with maths itself. Maybe someone looks at programming the way they look at maths...


I like this new theme, you may have noticed it. The thing I don't like is that tag cloud. The reason I don't like it is I haven't really paid attention to my tags, so they're all over the place. Oh well...

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)

On the subject of WORA only briefly. It seems like, upon further observation, only part of the population blows off steam. Part of them have legitimate concerns, although still choose to express them in insulting ways.


Now moving on. I may or may not actually record my voice and post it, within the next year at some point. There is a problem.

It seems I am much less sure of myself when I'm not reading a script written by somebody else. When it's me, I get nervous quick like. I had an interesting conversation the other day involving the reasons behind this, but I forgot most of it sadly. What's the point of having a conversation if I can't remember?

The gist of it was, though, that I'm desperate for the people who like me to keep liking me, and that's the same reason I'm so freaking nice. I had said - and I was at least partially correct - that I prefer typing to speech when I don't know or can't see a person, because I have more time to think about what I'm saying.

So they theorized about the reason I might want to have more time to think. If I have more time to think, I'm less likely to alienate someone who is my friend, or someone who is a potential friend. They suggested that if I had a smaller social circle than most teenagers my age, I would put more energy in keeping the friends I have than finding new ones.

I think they are wrong... If you over-examine any behavior, you will somehow be able to see narcissism behind it all, albeit very minor. I don't know if it would technically be classed as narcissism, considering in my case they were claiming it had to do with self-preservation.

The thing I find wrong with this is that I am nice to people who would never be my friends in a million years. I don't let people walk on me quite the way people seem to perceive online, but I am nice none the less.

He had suggested that I reminded him of the kid who does homework for the cool kids, just to get them to talk to me. (He knows I'm home schooled, though) The example I used was 'If those cool kids ignored me every day, I'd ignore them. If they asked for help after ignoring me for years, I'd help them without hesitation if I thought I could without doing all the work for them, and I'd expect nothing in return. I'd in fact expect them to start ignoring me again...'

This sort of altruistic behavior, people don't understand, so they try to explain it, with what they know about me. I don't even understand it, honestly. People do not expect altruism from other people. They expect to owe other people something when they receive help... Even emergency workers, with the exception of some volunteers, take compensation. I don't know if I'm truly altruistic, but I never consciously make a choice to help someone, based on what I'll get in return. Flaw or merit, I don't know.

It seems like a flaw in that, if I'm constantly helping other people who ask for it, when will I find time to help myself?


Really, there could be any number of reasons I'm actually afraid of recording my own train of thought, in my own voice. But I can't think of any that weren't already addressed by this guy's theory, right now. I still hold that he's wrong :(

The thing I want to talk about today, for lack of a better topic, is WORA. That's a slightly offensive forum. It stands for 'When Online Roleplaying games Attack'...

Now the thing about WORA is, it is primarily used for bashing MUSHes around. (Not 8bit, 'cause 8bit isn't an RP MUSH..) It could be used constructively, but isn't really. People express their opinions in less-than-civil ways, and usually I think they are just venting steam immediately after causing, witnessing or otherwise being part to problems on some MUSH... It is to the point that in the agreement when you register, it says to expect people to be assholes. Not in so few words, but that was basically it.. I'll quote it later, maybe, to be sure.

Also, I thought it was funny that at the top of the forums it says 'If you are here, you are assumed to be an adult, or at least act like one.' Their definition of adult differs from mine, I think they just mean don't look to the forum staff to stop someone from insulting you. My definition of adult, in this situation, would be 'able to get your point across without insulting other people.' Unfortunately this is seldom the case in real life either, it seems.

Anyway. I don't quite see why people get so worked up about what is posted on these forums. It can't really be taken in seriousness... I talked to a player after she posted on the forum, and she said that she did not actually mean anything she wrote down anyway. It was just a way to let out steam. I believed her, but I wasn't about to take any of it seriously anyway. The whole thing is just a pile of bad reviews, no one ever posts good reviews unless I've been overlooking them entirely. I'm hardly an old member.

If someone insults my favorite staff member, on my favorite game, (King Luigi@8bitMUSH, of course :0) I'm not about to let them change my opinion. On the off chance they are telling the truth, and are completely informed, I can forgive and forget. And in some cases, I might actually agree with what they claim the staff member said.

That is one of my main flaws, I think. I forgive too readily, and I almost always afford other people the benefit of the doubt. In real life too. For example, just today we were stuck behind a slow driver, on a curve, and my mom made a comment about it that I forgot... It was sort of assuming, though. I would have guessed that the slow driver had some legitimate reason for going slow. The car was an old Ford Festiva, and anyway I don't know if his tires would have held out going faster... If he hadn't slowed, he might have gone off the road.

Back to the topic, though. I think it's odd that people would get so ticked off at the opinions of other people. If you don't respect someone, and you don't respect their opinion... Then just ignore it! I was wondering why people care, and thinking of various ways to tell them off, like 'Are you so insecure in your own opinion that you need to make fun of someone else's opinion in order to validate your own?' Then, it occurred to me that it might be just that.

Maybe people are often insecure in their opinions, or if they are secure, afraid in the face of a convincing argument that they are wrong. People do not like to be wrong. If someone offers a different opinion, instinct is to react and argue with it.

The response to an opinion will of course depend on the individuals. But I am currently at a loss when it comes to predicting how someone will react.

I can see in my mind cases where the more violently an opinion is expressed, the more violently an argument is posed.

But I can also see the opposite, where the more intelligent the opinion sounds, the more violently someone's argument will be made. It could be more threatening to have your opinion challenged by someone who sounds intelligent, because you are afraid they might be right.

Then of course there's the boring ones where both make intelligent points and counterpoints. Pfft.


I'm going to read this post into my MacGuyverPhones* later. Just for something to do. Later later, I mean. Tonight, I play chess. And win.

EDIT: I'm going to read a different post. Maybe compose one by audio, but maybe not... This one's too long, and I realized that I speak much differently than I write anyway.

Mac-Guy-ver-fones (n): Headphones plugged into the microphone jack