Alphabet blogging, continued
Jun. 17th, 2008 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirDurant Avenue, on the Feast of St. Albert Chmielowski
Given the choice between yet another navel-gazing post and the next letters in the alphabet blogging meme, which would you prefer? I ask it as a purely rhetorical question, since I'm not in the mood to lay my constant self-examining out in the open at the moment. (For once.)
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
twelve asked about dreams. I used to get all sorts of anxiety dreams during high school and college. I still do, on occasion, but I don't dream as often nowadays, or perhaps I just don't remember my dreams. Sometimes my anxiety dreams were depressingly realistic: I would live through several days of classes (with, of course, many consecutive exams) and wake up thinking that I had finished the school week only to realize it was a Monday. Sometimes my anxiety dreams were much more exciting: I had a whole series of dreams about getting lost on the subway, which usually morphed into gondolas or roller coasters and took nonexistent routes across Manhattan. I'd wake up from my subway dreams feeling vaguely frustrated (I would usually be trying to get to a place by a certain time, while traversing all the transportation-related obstacles) but pleased at the adventure. These dreams are the main inspiration for Via Misadventure. (Speaking of which, issues 1 and 2 of India and the Conundrum are out! Belated announcement on my part, but better late than never.)
The last dream I had was also an anxiety dream. I had to write three papers and hand in two final projects by the end of the weekend, and I couldn't understand one of the assignments, which was to...demonstrate the "modularity" of a flowerbed?! -_- I managed to make sense of it in the dream, but as soon as I woke up, I realized it was utter nonsense. Anyway, I was relieved to realize when I woke up that I need not write a paper ever again.
I tend to like the dreams where I don't have a fixed perspective: either I'm a third-party observer or I hop from dream character to dream character like a well-written multi-POV narrative. One of my favorite dreams, which I had a few years ago in college, was about a group of five superheroes who all "flew" by different mechanisms: electrostatic repulsion, gliding on air currents, short-distance teleportation...and I forget what the other two were. I also had a zombie dream two weeks ago, which I babbled about to almost everyone in real life, which featured a friend of mine as an awesome female protagonist in a grand old Victorian house that got attacked by zombies. At first, the humans could hold them at bay but as the zombies increased in number one by one (for every human victim they successfully preyed upon), the main character became isolated from her friends and had to go "undercover" as a zombie. The zombies were indeed rotting undead beings who ate human brains but they were still intelligent. Not only could they articulate actual sentences but had a complex social structure, including one "king" zombie who was gigantic (kind of like a rotting version of Xerxes from 300, except with more festering wounds and fewer piercings). Many dramatic moments where the main character is torn between fear/disgust and a growing understanding of the zombie condition! Zombies make stirring speeches about the pathos of being a zombie! (At least, they were stirring in the dream.) Protagonist at one point must partake of human brain in order to keep her disguise! In the meanwhile, the humans discovered some sort of chemical or virus that was poisonous to the zombies (thanks to the female protagonist's efforts in getting to know the zombie) and started to fling poison-laced brain-like gobs at the zombies in the climactic final battle, in which our main character threw off her disguise and fought for the humans. Many awesome action scenes! Zombies, once exposed to the poison, began to disintegrate and dissolve into an ashy red soil. As it became clear that the humans were winning, a thunderstorm started to drench the courtyard outside the house with rain. The last scene was of the main character somberly watching the remains of the last zombies whirlpool down the drain. There was no triumph on her face because although zombies and humans could never coexist, she had developed a grudging respect for them in her short time masquerading as one. Cue ponderous thoughts on how in coming to understand the alien perspective, we become alien ourselves, blah blah blah. And then I woke up, with a feeling of tremendous satisfaction because the dream had a happy ending. How often does that happen? ^_^
I've had terrible nightmares as well, but I don't like to think about those and have managed to forget all but the worst.
pyrefly wanted my thoughts on Google: What I think of Google and its potential to take over the world: I, for one, welcome our new overlords. I depend on Google for much of my Internet experience, and I believe that the areas of my digital life that are not yet dependent on Google would become much more streamlined and efficient if they were run by Google.
I know that people are afraid of privacy issues and having their personal information sold to advertisers, but that doesn't bother me so much since my profile will be one blip in a sea of data, which will probably parsed by algorithms anyhow, lending me a sort of anonymity through numbers. I would be much more disturbed by having my personal information divulged specifically and individually to people I personally knew, but I doubt that I am important enough for Google to target. ^_^ Google's stated ambition is to collect enough personal data on all its users that you will be able to type into the Google search box, "What should I do today?" and it will spit out personalized answers tailored to your interests. Big Brother or the perfect personal assistant? I recognize why some people might find it frightening, but so much of my life is already out there on the Internet in some form or the other that it doesn't bother me. (Perhaps it also doesn't bother me because I feel that I still have some control over or at least awareness of the information that leaks from my computer?)
I think I also trust Google because I like their company image and overall aesthetic. They are minimalist and efficient but also creative and aesthetically pleasing. Apple is also creative and aesthetically pleasing, but the company gives off the impression of being a control freak and megalomaniac. I mean, Microsoft is also a megalomaniac in a stolid, bureaucratic way, but Apple genuinely believes that its way is superior to everyone else's (hence, the software and hardware all-in-one packages), and eventually, anyone with a brain will eventually convert to the cult. Google, however, has more of a populist feel, e.g. their commitment to open-source, for one, as well as their commune-style offices. Also, Apple is dominated by its CEO's larger-than-life personality, while I can never remember the names of Google's CEOs.
Basically, I trust Google to be a benevolent dictator. And yes, I know what happened in China...my trust is instinctual and probably should be tempered with more skepticism given that Google is still a company out to make money.
Had green tea frozen yogurt with mochi topping today. The tartness of the yogurt overpowered the green tea flavor, which makes me feel vaguely cheated since I paid extra for flavored yogurt. -_- It was still delicious though.
I also had my first pottery class yesterday. (Our lab tech does pottery as a hobby--she supplied the lab kitchen with most of its dishes--and convinced Christi and me to sign up for summer classes.) Pottery on a wheel takes more effort than I expected! The instructor warned us that our forearms would feel sore the next day, and indeed, my wrists and hands are rather stiff. But I rather enjoyed getting my hands in clay and spattering myself with slip. There's something quite satisfying about slowly molding the clay into different shapes. It's even satisfying when it collapses and becomes unusable. Actually, the whole process made me want to attempt learning vector-based 3D graphics again. Hahaha.
Thanks toathousandwinds, I started watching Murdoch Mysteries, a Canadian TV show about a police detective in Victorian Toronto. The main character is William Murdoch, a gifted amateur scientist who uses "modern" forensic techniques to solve murders. Also, Murdoch's ostensible love interest, Dr. Ogden, works at the city morgue and cheerfully hacks away at corpses to the accompaniment of the gramophone. So far, the show has featured Nikola Tesla (who obligingly designs a wireless microphone for recording conversations) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This show makes me want to write steampunk! ^_^
I'm kind of stumped by my![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fifthmus prompts. The second one is the one I would be most likely to write based on my previous fics, but I don't actually have anything left to say about that particular character. And the first is a pairing that I can't visualize, period. -_- Would it be violating the terms of the request if I just focused on those two characters interacting? Oh, maybe I'll figure out how to write the second prompt. I have two Hikago fic ideas that I've been turning over in my head for a while, and while one of them can't be adapted to these prompts at all, maybe the other one can.
Speaking of which, I still haven't caught up on reading fics. -_- I also contemplated doing the Hikago meme, but at this point, there is nothing I can say that hasn't been said already either here or elsewhere.
Yours &c.
Given the choice between yet another navel-gazing post and the next letters in the alphabet blogging meme, which would you prefer? I ask it as a purely rhetorical question, since I'm not in the mood to lay my constant self-examining out in the open at the moment. (For once.)
twelve asked about dreams. I used to get all sorts of anxiety dreams during high school and college. I still do, on occasion, but I don't dream as often nowadays, or perhaps I just don't remember my dreams. Sometimes my anxiety dreams were depressingly realistic: I would live through several days of classes (with, of course, many consecutive exams) and wake up thinking that I had finished the school week only to realize it was a Monday. Sometimes my anxiety dreams were much more exciting: I had a whole series of dreams about getting lost on the subway, which usually morphed into gondolas or roller coasters and took nonexistent routes across Manhattan. I'd wake up from my subway dreams feeling vaguely frustrated (I would usually be trying to get to a place by a certain time, while traversing all the transportation-related obstacles) but pleased at the adventure. These dreams are the main inspiration for Via Misadventure. (Speaking of which, issues 1 and 2 of India and the Conundrum are out! Belated announcement on my part, but better late than never.)The last dream I had was also an anxiety dream. I had to write three papers and hand in two final projects by the end of the weekend, and I couldn't understand one of the assignments, which was to...demonstrate the "modularity" of a flowerbed?! -_- I managed to make sense of it in the dream, but as soon as I woke up, I realized it was utter nonsense. Anyway, I was relieved to realize when I woke up that I need not write a paper ever again.
I tend to like the dreams where I don't have a fixed perspective: either I'm a third-party observer or I hop from dream character to dream character like a well-written multi-POV narrative. One of my favorite dreams, which I had a few years ago in college, was about a group of five superheroes who all "flew" by different mechanisms: electrostatic repulsion, gliding on air currents, short-distance teleportation...and I forget what the other two were. I also had a zombie dream two weeks ago, which I babbled about to almost everyone in real life, which featured a friend of mine as an awesome female protagonist in a grand old Victorian house that got attacked by zombies. At first, the humans could hold them at bay but as the zombies increased in number one by one (for every human victim they successfully preyed upon), the main character became isolated from her friends and had to go "undercover" as a zombie. The zombies were indeed rotting undead beings who ate human brains but they were still intelligent. Not only could they articulate actual sentences but had a complex social structure, including one "king" zombie who was gigantic (kind of like a rotting version of Xerxes from 300, except with more festering wounds and fewer piercings). Many dramatic moments where the main character is torn between fear/disgust and a growing understanding of the zombie condition! Zombies make stirring speeches about the pathos of being a zombie! (At least, they were stirring in the dream.) Protagonist at one point must partake of human brain in order to keep her disguise! In the meanwhile, the humans discovered some sort of chemical or virus that was poisonous to the zombies (thanks to the female protagonist's efforts in getting to know the zombie) and started to fling poison-laced brain-like gobs at the zombies in the climactic final battle, in which our main character threw off her disguise and fought for the humans. Many awesome action scenes! Zombies, once exposed to the poison, began to disintegrate and dissolve into an ashy red soil. As it became clear that the humans were winning, a thunderstorm started to drench the courtyard outside the house with rain. The last scene was of the main character somberly watching the remains of the last zombies whirlpool down the drain. There was no triumph on her face because although zombies and humans could never coexist, she had developed a grudging respect for them in her short time masquerading as one. Cue ponderous thoughts on how in coming to understand the alien perspective, we become alien ourselves, blah blah blah. And then I woke up, with a feeling of tremendous satisfaction because the dream had a happy ending. How often does that happen? ^_^
I've had terrible nightmares as well, but I don't like to think about those and have managed to forget all but the worst.
pyrefly wanted my thoughts on Google: What I think of Google and its potential to take over the world: I, for one, welcome our new overlords. I depend on Google for much of my Internet experience, and I believe that the areas of my digital life that are not yet dependent on Google would become much more streamlined and efficient if they were run by Google.I know that people are afraid of privacy issues and having their personal information sold to advertisers, but that doesn't bother me so much since my profile will be one blip in a sea of data, which will probably parsed by algorithms anyhow, lending me a sort of anonymity through numbers. I would be much more disturbed by having my personal information divulged specifically and individually to people I personally knew, but I doubt that I am important enough for Google to target. ^_^ Google's stated ambition is to collect enough personal data on all its users that you will be able to type into the Google search box, "What should I do today?" and it will spit out personalized answers tailored to your interests. Big Brother or the perfect personal assistant? I recognize why some people might find it frightening, but so much of my life is already out there on the Internet in some form or the other that it doesn't bother me. (Perhaps it also doesn't bother me because I feel that I still have some control over or at least awareness of the information that leaks from my computer?)
I think I also trust Google because I like their company image and overall aesthetic. They are minimalist and efficient but also creative and aesthetically pleasing. Apple is also creative and aesthetically pleasing, but the company gives off the impression of being a control freak and megalomaniac. I mean, Microsoft is also a megalomaniac in a stolid, bureaucratic way, but Apple genuinely believes that its way is superior to everyone else's (hence, the software and hardware all-in-one packages), and eventually, anyone with a brain will eventually convert to the cult. Google, however, has more of a populist feel, e.g. their commitment to open-source, for one, as well as their commune-style offices. Also, Apple is dominated by its CEO's larger-than-life personality, while I can never remember the names of Google's CEOs.
Basically, I trust Google to be a benevolent dictator. And yes, I know what happened in China...my trust is instinctual and probably should be tempered with more skepticism given that Google is still a company out to make money.
Had green tea frozen yogurt with mochi topping today. The tartness of the yogurt overpowered the green tea flavor, which makes me feel vaguely cheated since I paid extra for flavored yogurt. -_- It was still delicious though.
I also had my first pottery class yesterday. (Our lab tech does pottery as a hobby--she supplied the lab kitchen with most of its dishes--and convinced Christi and me to sign up for summer classes.) Pottery on a wheel takes more effort than I expected! The instructor warned us that our forearms would feel sore the next day, and indeed, my wrists and hands are rather stiff. But I rather enjoyed getting my hands in clay and spattering myself with slip. There's something quite satisfying about slowly molding the clay into different shapes. It's even satisfying when it collapses and becomes unusable. Actually, the whole process made me want to attempt learning vector-based 3D graphics again. Hahaha.
Thanks to
athousandwinds, I started watching Murdoch Mysteries, a Canadian TV show about a police detective in Victorian Toronto. The main character is William Murdoch, a gifted amateur scientist who uses "modern" forensic techniques to solve murders. Also, Murdoch's ostensible love interest, Dr. Ogden, works at the city morgue and cheerfully hacks away at corpses to the accompaniment of the gramophone. So far, the show has featured Nikola Tesla (who obligingly designs a wireless microphone for recording conversations) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This show makes me want to write steampunk! ^_^I'm kind of stumped by my
fifthmus prompts. The second one is the one I would be most likely to write based on my previous fics, but I don't actually have anything left to say about that particular character. And the first is a pairing that I can't visualize, period. -_- Would it be violating the terms of the request if I just focused on those two characters interacting? Oh, maybe I'll figure out how to write the second prompt. I have two Hikago fic ideas that I've been turning over in my head for a while, and while one of them can't be adapted to these prompts at all, maybe the other one can.Speaking of which, I still haven't caught up on reading fics. -_- I also contemplated doing the Hikago meme, but at this point, there is nothing I can say that hasn't been said already either here or elsewhere.
Yours &c.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-18 05:57 am (UTC)I like Google too, but any time there is the possibility of a monopoly mental sirens start blaring. Especially when the monopoly is _that_ powerful.
If you want someone to talk to re:
I also contemplated doing the Hikago meme, but at this point, there is nothing I can say that hasn't been said already either here or elsewhere.
No, do it anyway. We want to know. *hearts*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-18 07:22 am (UTC)When I have anxiety dreams I'm usually chased by some unseen monster and I run and run but get stuck on the train or something. It's pretty funny once I wake up.
mean, Microsoft is also a megalomaniac in a stolid, bureaucratic way, but Apple genuinely believes that its way is superior to everyone else's (hence, the software and hardware all-in-one packages), and eventually, anyone with a brain will eventually convert to the cult.
Yes, I agree with this. That's why I'm leery of Apple and would rather go with Microsoft, despite its faults.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-18 08:43 am (UTC)Ehhhh, I've never felt like Apple was particularly cult-like? But it was my first OS and I grew up with it, and I've always been surrounded by people who were all: Pffft, you use a Mac? PCs are SO MUCH BETTER, back before it became popular with the iMac and iPod so I can kind of see what you mean. It's like fandom backlash where a niche group bands together because they're getting picked on by the rest of fandom until they become big enough to have an actual voice and in the process may come off as kind of . . . higher-than-thou, I guess? I dunno, that's just IMO. (And yes, Steve Jobs is pretty larger-than-life. ^^;;;)
Haha, on the other hand I do really like Google, but when you point out that we don't really know anything about the people running it, it actually makes me a little nervous that they really are plotting to TAKE OVER THE WORLD? It's always the quiet ones! LOL.
Oooh, pottery sounds fun. Are you taking the ASUC class?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-18 08:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-18 02:22 pm (UTC)Exactly!! As a Design major, I'm considered weird and unusual because I haven't switched all my computers and gadgets and pledged allegiance to Apple yet, but I just can't stand how little control they give you and the way they try to dictate how everyone should be living their lives in terms of technology. Google doesn't force anything upon anyone, which is probably why I like it and have bought into the trend when I usually try to avoid any kind of hype or trend (although Google Desktop still makes me wary).
Green tea frozen yoghurt?! Sounds delicious, eeee~
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-18 07:34 pm (UTC)I actually don't like that Google's CEOs are so out of the spotlight? It kind of makes me nervous--I'd rather be able to point to someone and say 'that guy is in charge'. Or something ^^;;
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-18 08:28 pm (UTC)I'm so glad you liked Murdoch! I just finished re-watching the Conan Doyle episodes and I really hope Mycroft Grimesby shows up again. And now I'm writing
zombie apocalypsefic for it.(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 03:58 am (UTC)Then again, lately I've been having a lot of dreams about going back to a HCHS-Kenyon hybrid (that frequently is nothing like either place, but has many of the same people). Yesterday morning when I went back to sleep after my alarm, I was going to such a place for a reunion and made friends with a giant baby seal.