BREAKING ATMO – Gotta Have Records Of Everything
Pictures of the Serenity and Firefly DVDs in zero gravity aboard the International Space Station. This is so many kinds of awesome.
So I’m trying to install Ubuntu, because heck, it’s time I tried it. So I head to the Ubuntu site, read some fairly encouraging spiel about how Ubuntu is easy to install, will be full of fun & joy, be packed full of helpful apps to get me going, and all will be well and good when I’m dancing in hippie-land with all those people who have thrown off the shackles of the evil empire.
One download and burn to CD later and I pop the thing in my CD drive, restart my computer, and boot from the CD. I go to the installation option, it starts to load and… bang, it drops to a text shell and starts spewing errors.
Fantastic. Tells me that I can type “help” to look at the availiable commands. Apart from the ones named the same as DOS commands I have no idea what they do. Am I being required to prove my worth before I am allowed to install the damn thing? No, it’s just shit. Either that or my computer’s hardware is somehow completely buggered in some way that only affects free software.
To cut a long story short, Ubuntu blows chunks. At least Windows fucking well installs. At this point I’m fairly happy to have paid a premium for a product that ACTUALLY DOES SOMETHING.
Fuck. This. Shit.
The other day I was told that events a while ago were not really how I had perceived them at the time. The details are inconsequential – it was a long time ago. It did make me think, however. I might just be a bit naïve, but I implicitly trust a lot of what I’m told, and that forms the basis of my own perceived reality.
It’s then incredibly jarring when that reality is replaced with one closer to what objectively happened - if such an objective reality can exist at all! It’s the same kind of thing which freaks out anyone who learns about Quantum Physics; objective reality seems to go away. Reality becomes dependent on some hazy ill-defined concept of observation. It’s… disconcerting. Like someone’s shifting the scenery about while you’re trying to act.
And everyone has their own story, their own viewpoints. A reality shaped by a hundred thousand or more moments seen through their eyes with their biases and their feelings. People you thought you know might not be who you thought they were. Like everyone I know had a 6th birthday. I have absolutely no idea what any of them were like. What they got, how they felt. Heck, I can’t really remember my own. I can hardly believe where the last year has gone, let alone the 18 that preceded it.
You’ll never know all those little things that explain who the people we share this life with really are, and never really know what their truth is. Makes me feel a tad like I’m adrift, nothing quite solid.
The real question is, I suppose: Do you really need to know?
Anyways, I read an article on Uncyclopedia about the London Underground:
London Underground is an addictive live role-playing game played by millions of Londoners every day beneath the streets of London. For the price of a single-journey ticket, “commuters” (as game participants are called) are armed with a laser gun and a truncheon. The aim of the game is to battle your way through the crowds of commuters to get to Mornington Crescent.
Made me wonder if there wasn’t some kind of game in there. And I mean some kinda computer game, I’ve heard of the game they play on radio. Right now I’ve got some vague concepts floating around, but nothing I’m convinced would be fun. Anyone have any ideas?
I’m at a party at Josh’s and he asked why I haven’t written anything since my post about the ball, and that was on Sunday, I think. So I’m sitting at his laptop typing this out whilst watching South Park.
I’ve pretty much been busy is my excuse. Had a couple of friends down and that kept me kinda busy; well, a friend and an acquaintance, at any rate. Tom and Meg, as it happened. Although Tom had to disappear back to Lancaster because he had an exam in the middle of his visit so me and Meg watched a stupid amount of Buffy, Spaced, and Shaun of the Dead.
Anyways, that’s why I haven’t been writing all of the much. But right now I’m at Josh’s, which is (sorta…) near Spalding. Much as I can tell it’s a good 50 minutes by car from Peterborough, which is about 50 minutes by train from King’s Cross, so it’s a bit of a way away. There was a BBQ, and we went to the pub where we were accosted by a kinda drunk woman (or at least it seemed) called Donna, who challenged us to a game of pool and then kinda failed miserably at playing it. Anyways, back at Josh’s there was a fairly abortive attempt to play Drink Monopoly instead of Ring of Fire, I still can’t quite fathom why.
Anyways, it’s a party at which there’s exclusively guys, so going to sleep is a hazardous experience. Once guy already has permanent marker on his face, nearly got his eyebrow shaved off, and got shocked in the face with a joke electric pen. I was actually feeling kinda sleepy, and Nightmare on Elm Street was on; the parallels were kinda frightening.
In other news, I hope to actually be interesting again in a week or so, when I have time to read newspapers and philosophy and novels and stuff like that.
Oh, I was reading Scoble the other day and he was rating social networking services and amongst other things wondering why Facebook was so popular, almost like he thought Facebook had appeared overnight and become insanely popular because of some feature it had. Social networking sites are useful because they have all your friends on them. Facebook is big because everyone at your university has it. All your friends from back home have it. It’s an exponential phenomenon! MySpace isn’t big because it’s good. Anyone with half a brain can tell that.
Ah well. Time to post this now and do something else!
P.S. Most people agree that Sally Sparrow is hawt.
The Ball
The Imperial College Centenary Ball. Wow, that was an event and a half. First there was the dinner, then the fun fair, dodgems, drinking at the union, wandering about wondering why nobody was playing good music, eventually ended up in the marquee where Alex Zane was, at last, playing something halfway decent, got some dancing in, then rolled up for the Survivors photo at 4 am. Then we hung around at the union for a few more hours.
It’s 8:20 am and I just got back into halls. I’m completely knackered.
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