a gem

I'm glad I dealt with drama before coming here to post. I could have accidentally turn this into a live journal by mistake!

Update: I've been reading webcomics, books, playing go, steeling myself for uni (which starts in under a month).

I played in the Go NSW state championship handicap division. I entered as a 2k, which is close to my actual rank, and played against opponents at 7k, 10k and 16k level. They all were given handicap stones so it was a difficult competition. Eventually I WON! bragging rights :D I even made a cool $100 out of it. Did I mention how much I love go? Well I love it even more now. Those games were incredibly tough and I had to reinvent my style to win. Since then it's been a rocky development period but I'm much stronger than I was before. It's like potential has been uncapped (not only in my playing ability but in my appreciation and understanding of the game).

Yeah, there was some drama at my dad's house recently (and with my brother less recently, but since my last post). I think it's all over now. I still have some stuff to take care of regarding my father but that's private.

Thanks to a particular webcomic and some thoughtful recommendations from the guy at JB Hi-Fi I'm listening to a whole different kind of music now and loving it. Stuff like Wolf Parade, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Battles, Dan Deacon, Marnie Stern etc. I played some for Judith last night and she showed me some old-style jazz. I liked the Kansas City stuff with bass and piano.

Now the only thing I wish for is some social confidence. I have been thinking about it a lot. I am so uneasy around other people and it shows. I have to get through this and stop fighting with my self-analytical voices or I'll never be happy.

Shinra's parts

It's time for some night time ramblings. Most of my posts are at night, that's the best time for writing! When you are on the edge of REM sleep. The chilly bite of winter has come (it's been here since last Wednesday, after an ash cloud enveloped sydney lol. It was more like an ash haze, just a little bit of controlled backburning from the ridge south west of sydney. I have been reading 4chan threads (oh no, there goes the remnants of innocence) and found a really interesting one on /b/ which outlined a bunch of cool stuff. Things such as particle physics, how to make a hobo stove, hotwire a car, reprogram a traffic signal, etc. One of the image tutorials had on it instructions for correct sleeping. Of course everyone is different in this aspect but some common things exist. For example most people sleep during the night duh. Well the point is that mammals tend to nap in the middle of the day. I appreciate knowing these kinds of things in order to get in touch with my more primal self, who knows how to climb trees and exactly why fear exists. I have been sleeping very well the past few days on this regime of a siesta before the main sleep. I have been waking up more alert, staying in a sort of optimal mood for longer into the night etc.

Of course sleep deprivation can work wonders on your creative ability but it occasionally comes with a price if you are living a standard working life (which I am not! However I do keep myself busy so mentally they are similar, minus some chemistry from the benefits of exercise). I need all the stability I can get right now to experience a feeling that shall have to pass as my anchor into old age. I always think about this type of thing, I am prematurely old without the wisdom (tautology?).

I am now a 4k on KGS and I absolutely destroyed a 3k the other day. Lucky me that that happened or else I would have gone on thinking that such high kyus are indestructible.

I am playing FFVII again. The storyline came back to me in full force and I even started thinking about earth energy and the effects of the lifestream on Cloud. Then I drifted into the realms of amnesia, mostly because the story is so difficult to follow in the first place. Cloud's flashbacks are so patchy and some scenes are mixed together to the point where he doubts his own childhood. It's a curious character trait and I wish to be able to emulate the idea behind it in my own characters (even though for now I have detracted from the story involving such a similar form of life force and extrapolated to something considerably different and from my perspective original, which I'm not going to spew out onto the interwebs today THANKYOU!). I want to be able to use it in a more realistic context. The visuals are attractive all on their own.

more w/o priority tired now

It's a process

Recently I've been reading Solar, drawn away from my other book "The Illearth War" by it's easy flow. Each scene is like a bunch of reflection and introspection. New information slides in randomly to tie together a portrait of Michael Beard at each stage of his life. It doesn't give you the whole story, just the need to know bits. The next turn has been strange, but I'll explain where the book was heading around half way.

This book is one of the most courageous I've read. Michael Beard is bordering on a rational, socially acceptable psychopath. He treats most people like tools and shamelessly puts up fronts to the public, seemingly unaware or dismissive of his own flaws. The book is written in a way that takes his past into account on all occasions. Each thought is an amalgamation of himself, and yet he still makes decisions so localized in time. He bases every action on the immediate circumstance and then does his awkward way of regretting it later. His 'regrets' don't affect him on an emotional level. They are just there, he's unable to change it but enough of his life is working that he doesn't have to.
The courageous part is that he totally acknowledges that he's cold and inhuman in his uncommon careless attitude to his wife or lover (he chews through many). That's not something that I've ever considered writing about (mainly because I'm not a cold person) but it's easy to think in those terms the only barrier is how socially unacceptable the content is. If anyone like Beard exists, then they keep it a closely guarded secret or else they would probably find people like his most recent wife, Melissa, reaching out to them.

That's the next stage of the book, where it turns. He truly does appear to be changing, learning what it's like to be a father and being considerate of other people. I still have a long way to go to finish the book but it feels like a requiem nevertheless. I'm interested to know how it finishes. That's the weird part. I'm not excited to read it, but have to because of the nature of the book. It must flow from page to page and so I must not leave a significant gap in-between sessions. This book has a soul, no wonder so many people are reading it.

My Kick-Ass day

Couple of nights ago I had one of those semi-break-down moments after a weird day where I started raging about nothing (a lost game of go) early, and then had to live through the aftershocks. Strangely enough during that time I was able to effortlessly speed read. I need to keep that in mind next time I have a stack of books waiting (oh wait, I always have that).

I went and saw Kick-Ass at the movies on Thursday. It was fucking awesome! The casual violence is so drastically different from most movies and tv shows. It's definitely on the forefront of that shift in values. The storyline itself was imbued with moralistic considerations and emotional motivations, even so it was dumbed down for a movie-going audience. I'd love to get my hands on the comics! I was amazed at how well the story flowed, all the elements linking quite naturally together (with a little bit of assumption in the use of media broadcast as an effective messenger to the other main players in the story, along with the weird role his gf plays).

Anyway, I had an awesome day hanging out with Albert at the mall. We had so much to talk about, neither of us have very strong opinions so we just flowed from one topic to the next. It was very free-flowing and relieving. I wish I had more friends like him. :)

Screnzy

Look! I have Frenzy juice xD Now I have all the bubbles I need to write amazing script.

Mariana and Impressionism

I like making up words. I need to be in the zone for it to work though. And even then I have a limit of about 6 - 8 good new words before all the creative energy fueling the process runs a different channel. One of the best things about Script Frenzy is that I get to make up words all the time. The place that I've set my script is around 2000 m deep, under the ocean, so it a lot of speculative thinking is involved in the world building and new words help explain much that is difficult. That's right I've chosen the most memorable place the Mariana Trench. I'll have to change them to something else later for the sake of popularization but for now just leave them and hopefully come up with a few more. For example I dislike most of the standard names that I have chosen for my characters. They shouldn't have common names imo. I need to invent some new ones, especially for the really scary deep sea creatures. But mostly my new names encompass all those scientific processes that don't read well on screen. I still like bioluminescent so I'm keeping that one but there are a lot of different things such as the bacteria the chemosynthesis coral and the weird creatures.
Actually I had to make most of these names up because I hadn't yet done my research. I spent a lot of last night reading about the Mariana Trench ecology and it was a blast. It's so much fun to learn about something that crazy. All is factored into my ever expanding useless information catalog but this time I'm going to use it for the purposes of good and not simply curing boredom.

Yesterday we went to Canberra. They are showing an exhibition of art from Musee D'Orsay in Paris, a lot of impressionists. The artworks were stunning and inspiring. I couldn't help but pay so much attention to detail that I may have lost sight of the real benefits of viewing. Nevertheless I intend to download decently large images of the paintings and display them on my desktop (or possibly get them printed etc.).
Many of the paintings were very psychological. They played coherent tricks with the mind to create the effect. I appreciate that.

Wah this coffee is strong!

Tchaikovsky's Pathetique

Today I was treated to a concert. My dad bought tickets for Stef and her parents visiting from Germany, but they went home early. So I snatched at the chance and am now enlightened by Tchaikovsky. This was the first time that I've been able to judge a piece as not to my liking and have an idea why I didn't like it.

I caught the train with Stef. The performance was at the Opera House, beautiful shining thing on a day like today. I was more drawn to the impressive Harbour Bridge, metal giant. Things took on an intensity today, like everything was a snapshot. We waited for dad and Dennis on the steps to the Opera House. The woman serving at the cafe said "I hope you enjoy the performance." as I took my coffee. It was an intuitive step to get coffee. I didn't want to ruin my attention during the music, but it may have been a good move. The pieces themselves were all fragmented into short stages. I think I spent the entire time concentrating on individual sounds and could scarcely make out a structure to the pieces. They scarcely had any.
The first was Beethoven's Creatures of Prometheus. It's a short piece, only 5 minutes long. Following that was Schumann, which I didn't like. And the main performance was Tchaikovsky's Pathetique. Somewhat disturbing at times, I liked some of the little tricks for individual instruments and occasionally when the trumpets would purposefully clash with the violins while the bass cellos danced to their own tunes. They were like forceful messages that had nothing to do with melody.
I hope I can find some classical music that I love, because that was an experience not to be partaken of often lest I go insane.