Friday 7 November 2014
Blizzcon Starting Today
I will mark it with funnies and the opening 80 seconds summing up what I feel is the ideal explanation about the gaming community and how we'll accept anybody with open arms. Even if recent events might have skewed that perception...
An Argument For More Personal Profiling on the Internet
Well, on YouTube at least.
I watch a lot of videos - there's nothing on TV during the daytime for an Englishman in France who also doesn't have a TV - typically things like catching up on Let's Plays like a previously missed Yogscast series, hijinx Jesse Cox has gotten into or how people are not "getting" the point of Jim F-ing Sterling, son!
These past two days, I'm getting one particular advert an overwhelming amount of the time (with no exaggeration, no less than 8 out of 10 times) which is a commercial for car safety and not checking your phone. It ends with a small boy being killed in a car accident due to his father looking at the phone message. It's in muted tones, the child holding up his colouring book to try and urge his father to turn around to look even seems flat, blah blah, man looks at phone ding, ends with wreckage and man crying about the torn up picture his kid had drawn.
Cheerful stuff and not something that you want to see when in the middle of the first waves of depression.
Anyway, my point is that a deeper profile of us would have the potential to skip past any unnecessary stuff, things which would not be for us, things we don't want or have any need for and make things much more efficient. Even with the Google AdSence personalisation set up, I'll get perfume adverts once in a while. A more comprehensive understanding would show I don't have or want a car, housewares are not my thing, I don't need beauty creams and I should not be subjected to distressing imagery. You would have your own list of dos and don'ts as well as things you've already had and wished you did not.
Give me the ones for games, music, food, movies. You can keep your perfumes, fashion and car crashes. I'll keep the strange animated shorts about safety with social networking and identity/data protection though, those are fairly entertaining and I'm hopeful it's informative to people.
So I cheered myself up with some delicious comedy. Now you can too!:
and a bonus:
I watch a lot of videos - there's nothing on TV during the daytime for an Englishman in France who also doesn't have a TV - typically things like catching up on Let's Plays like a previously missed Yogscast series, hijinx Jesse Cox has gotten into or how people are not "getting" the point of Jim F-ing Sterling, son!
These past two days, I'm getting one particular advert an overwhelming amount of the time (with no exaggeration, no less than 8 out of 10 times) which is a commercial for car safety and not checking your phone. It ends with a small boy being killed in a car accident due to his father looking at the phone message. It's in muted tones, the child holding up his colouring book to try and urge his father to turn around to look even seems flat, blah blah, man looks at phone ding, ends with wreckage and man crying about the torn up picture his kid had drawn.
Cheerful stuff and not something that you want to see when in the middle of the first waves of depression.
Anyway, my point is that a deeper profile of us would have the potential to skip past any unnecessary stuff, things which would not be for us, things we don't want or have any need for and make things much more efficient. Even with the Google AdSence personalisation set up, I'll get perfume adverts once in a while. A more comprehensive understanding would show I don't have or want a car, housewares are not my thing, I don't need beauty creams and I should not be subjected to distressing imagery. You would have your own list of dos and don'ts as well as things you've already had and wished you did not.
Give me the ones for games, music, food, movies. You can keep your perfumes, fashion and car crashes. I'll keep the strange animated shorts about safety with social networking and identity/data protection though, those are fairly entertaining and I'm hopeful it's informative to people.
So I cheered myself up with some delicious comedy. Now you can too!:
and a bonus:
Friday 24 October 2014
A Long Time Coming
Super serious face for a minute.
And you know how little I like serious. Those that know me do anyway, many of you might be unacquainted with me (I won't say you are strangers, it's not how I like to see the world) and a few that do know me will be lightly acquainted with the little eccentricities that come about in the later portion of the year. There are a few quirks that I have and of course so does everybody, it's what makes life a little more interesting - indeed, in a spin on the view of Penn Jillette and his stance on liking it when people have stories, if you don't have some quirk, flaw, twist or kink then I can't really see wanting to talk to you - but there is one which I'm specifically alluring to when mentioning the time of year. This is my pretty severe Seasonal Affective Disorder.
It wasn't really something that became a thing until the last 6 or 7 years - there were times beforehand but mild and manageable - and for the last 4 or so it's been painful. It's not the most severe disorder somebody can have (things like schizophrenia or bipolar ranking up there) yet I have been encouraged by people to actually regard it as a pretty heavy one to have, one which is dangerous to people, that is not a sing of me being weak, and that has consequences. I would have said a couple years ago that is also comes with responsibilities but that's perhaps not the exact frame of mind or turn of phrase which describes what my view of it was. It's also less relevant as others have assured me I should feel no burden. My tendency towards having a kind of guilt complex about things has meant it difficult to "let go" of that notion but to my credit I've achieved great progress there.
I don't really like to call it a "disorder" yet it is the best classification available for it and certainly not as degrading as I first thought it sounded. I refuse to refer to it as a disease though, that's reserved for communicable infections in my mind. Same reason when hearing bad news about something that has happened to somebody else I cannot say "I'm sorry" unless it was me that caused it. Whenever I hear something like "my pet was hit by a car yesterday" and the person replies back "Aww, I'm sorry..." I expect the first to lunge at them yelling "You mean it was you?!".
Wait, yes, serious face...
I've got the lamp for simulating sunlight, bottle of vitamin D pills which are 1250% the daily values, bright colours, happy music playlists, yet still I will be floored. Literally on the floor sometimes, struggling to breathe, dry heaving, very occasional and unprovoked sobbing, hallucinations, disorientation, insomnia, waking nightmares (oh, the stories that I have about those...), confusion, short attention span, unable to think or even understand. My mood takes drastic swings usually towards the impatient and aggressive before returning to a quiet and sombre void. To some limited degree I become bipolar and schizophrenic. I cook food which pretty much comes in packages that just need to be put in the oven then eaten, so that I don't have to use knives, even goes as far as to hide them behind a pile of other stuff. Not that I'm any kind of risk to myself but think of it as more somebody who was quitting smoking or are on a diet; they're fine so far with sticking to the plan but you wouldn't light up a cigarette around them or start eating a piece of cake as, while they may still hold true, it still gives them that unwanted thought they they'd prefer not to have.
My "happy place" would be escape into Minecraft, yet some server instability left me adrift more than a few times. I also took a great joy in being part of a sadly short-lived series. For a short time though, while pushing through over a month on pure willpower, I had a small reprieve with medication when after a varied sampling we found Xanax evened me out to a functional level. I was not better, I was not good, but I would operate.
And after the 8 days supply was exhausted, I was not given a refill. The doctor was spouting cases where some people would get addicted and how hypnotherapy would be a better option; coincidentally his specialisation. Also my insurance would not cover it so I'd have to pay him, up front, about 100 euros a session. For multiple sessions. It may even take many and there was no guarantee of any kind of result.
You can imagine my response to that, then soon came the descent as the last of the Xanax left my system, dropping me back down into the pit. I'm still not sure if that made it all the more worse, to come up for air, only to be drug back under again.
And you know how little I like serious. Those that know me do anyway, many of you might be unacquainted with me (I won't say you are strangers, it's not how I like to see the world) and a few that do know me will be lightly acquainted with the little eccentricities that come about in the later portion of the year. There are a few quirks that I have and of course so does everybody, it's what makes life a little more interesting - indeed, in a spin on the view of Penn Jillette and his stance on liking it when people have stories, if you don't have some quirk, flaw, twist or kink then I can't really see wanting to talk to you - but there is one which I'm specifically alluring to when mentioning the time of year. This is my pretty severe Seasonal Affective Disorder.
It wasn't really something that became a thing until the last 6 or 7 years - there were times beforehand but mild and manageable - and for the last 4 or so it's been painful. It's not the most severe disorder somebody can have (things like schizophrenia or bipolar ranking up there) yet I have been encouraged by people to actually regard it as a pretty heavy one to have, one which is dangerous to people, that is not a sing of me being weak, and that has consequences. I would have said a couple years ago that is also comes with responsibilities but that's perhaps not the exact frame of mind or turn of phrase which describes what my view of it was. It's also less relevant as others have assured me I should feel no burden. My tendency towards having a kind of guilt complex about things has meant it difficult to "let go" of that notion but to my credit I've achieved great progress there.
I don't really like to call it a "disorder" yet it is the best classification available for it and certainly not as degrading as I first thought it sounded. I refuse to refer to it as a disease though, that's reserved for communicable infections in my mind. Same reason when hearing bad news about something that has happened to somebody else I cannot say "I'm sorry" unless it was me that caused it. Whenever I hear something like "my pet was hit by a car yesterday" and the person replies back "Aww, I'm sorry..." I expect the first to lunge at them yelling "You mean it was you?!".
Wait, yes, serious face...
I've got the lamp for simulating sunlight, bottle of vitamin D pills which are 1250% the daily values, bright colours, happy music playlists, yet still I will be floored. Literally on the floor sometimes, struggling to breathe, dry heaving, very occasional and unprovoked sobbing, hallucinations, disorientation, insomnia, waking nightmares (oh, the stories that I have about those...), confusion, short attention span, unable to think or even understand. My mood takes drastic swings usually towards the impatient and aggressive before returning to a quiet and sombre void. To some limited degree I become bipolar and schizophrenic. I cook food which pretty much comes in packages that just need to be put in the oven then eaten, so that I don't have to use knives, even goes as far as to hide them behind a pile of other stuff. Not that I'm any kind of risk to myself but think of it as more somebody who was quitting smoking or are on a diet; they're fine so far with sticking to the plan but you wouldn't light up a cigarette around them or start eating a piece of cake as, while they may still hold true, it still gives them that unwanted thought they they'd prefer not to have.
My "happy place" would be escape into Minecraft, yet some server instability left me adrift more than a few times. I also took a great joy in being part of a sadly short-lived series. For a short time though, while pushing through over a month on pure willpower, I had a small reprieve with medication when after a varied sampling we found Xanax evened me out to a functional level. I was not better, I was not good, but I would operate.
And after the 8 days supply was exhausted, I was not given a refill. The doctor was spouting cases where some people would get addicted and how hypnotherapy would be a better option; coincidentally his specialisation. Also my insurance would not cover it so I'd have to pay him, up front, about 100 euros a session. For multiple sessions. It may even take many and there was no guarantee of any kind of result.
You can imagine my response to that, then soon came the descent as the last of the Xanax left my system, dropping me back down into the pit. I'm still not sure if that made it all the more worse, to come up for air, only to be drug back under again.
To say I don't want sympathy is not a complete lie, yet any people give is certainly welcome as a selfish comfort, but it's more wanting it understood that I'm going to be a bit of a grumpybottom for a while and if I'm unpleasant to you or somebody else it is not anything personal and all that jazz. Others have arguably more heavier circumstances, be it dealing with other depression or illness or life circumstances, and I never like to think of myself as a special snowflake but I have carved out this little corner of my existence as my own that I have come to accept as going to be with me and part of what I am. Even plant a little flag on it.
Sunday 9 February 2014
Truism vs Nerdism
I'm going to make an assumption that if reading this, you didn't have a stellar time in school. Not that you had a bad time, per se, just that some parts were maybe lacking. I reach this conclusion based on probability; odds are that most people didn't. This can be from actual evidence where somebody didn't have the best time, purely that they only felt they had a hard time based on their own perspective, or maybe a mix of both as is what can happen.
I was that quiet kid, eccentric, smarter than for me own good (even if I do say so myself).
Anyway, point is that for all peoples assumptions I hadn't been one to watch Star Trek The Next Generation. Other people had and would talk about it, but I never got the time to catch it. Then along Netflix came - my one luxury at the moment and after a while it came up as a recommendation in my list. Seven seasons long, that's something to take up the time. It's been interesting on how self-knowing it is about what it's doing, a wink to the audience here and there. It was mostly background viewing to begin with while I was doing other things, but then a little into the first season that they were down on a planet with somebody was trying to get information from them and they asked what ship it was.
"Enterprise?"
"...No...it's the Lollipop"
"The Lollipop?"
"Yes. It's a good ship..."
Okay, Star Trek. You got me. I like you now. Just another 6 and a half seasons of it to go.
Question is what to do next. I mean House of Cards seems a bit serious, much more feeling like the more lighthearted, self-aware wink from Supernatural but the new season's not listed yet. There's always the lighthearted, self-aware wink from Leverage. Or the lighthearted, self-aware wink fro---wait, I'm starting to sense a pattern here...
I was that quiet kid, eccentric, smarter than for me own good (even if I do say so myself).
Anyway, point is that for all peoples assumptions I hadn't been one to watch Star Trek The Next Generation. Other people had and would talk about it, but I never got the time to catch it. Then along Netflix came - my one luxury at the moment and after a while it came up as a recommendation in my list. Seven seasons long, that's something to take up the time. It's been interesting on how self-knowing it is about what it's doing, a wink to the audience here and there. It was mostly background viewing to begin with while I was doing other things, but then a little into the first season that they were down on a planet with somebody was trying to get information from them and they asked what ship it was.
"Enterprise?"
"...No...it's the Lollipop"
"The Lollipop?"
"Yes. It's a good ship..."
Okay, Star Trek. You got me. I like you now. Just another 6 and a half seasons of it to go.
Question is what to do next. I mean House of Cards seems a bit serious, much more feeling like the more lighthearted, self-aware wink from Supernatural but the new season's not listed yet. There's always the lighthearted, self-aware wink from Leverage. Or the lighthearted, self-aware wink fro---wait, I'm starting to sense a pattern here...
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