2011-09-17 - A Place to Call my Own

So it appears I have an apartment now. That is what the universe seems to be telling me at least, I’m not sure I believe it. I seem to be here and there is no one throwing me out or demanding the keys back. It probably wasn’t the best way to get an apartment though. Someone I knew offered to help me find an apartment and ended up helping me get their old apartment while they got a slightly bigger one down the road. One the one hand it made things easier because I wasn’t competing with anyone but on the other hand the more people you involve with something the more complicated it becomes. People misrepresent what they’re going to do which makes it hard to tell what you have to do and then you spend a weekend without power. There was also something about a certain telecommunications company being really weird and not paying attention to my requests for a change of installation appointment when they said they did (hence why I haven't been updating this in a while). But I’ve got phone, and power and TV and internet now and it all seems to be going alright. There are still problems like being poor and jobless and couch-less to figure out but I am confident.

It’s quite nice to have a nice new bed and all (most) of my stuff in one spot. It’s also nice to being able to enter and leave without having to say a thing to anyone. If I feel like going for a walk I can just go for a walk. Now yes I am using most of my new found freedom to sit at home alone with the cat but at least I have it. I am also quite enjoying learning to cook on my own. The one thing about cooking your own food is that because you made it you can’t really complain about it. Yes the pancakes might be raw on the inside but that’s okay because it’s my fault. It also makes for a good diet as you put off eating cause you know it just means you’ll have to spend money to replace whatever you eat so you can have it again later. That’s okay, I don’t need food.

My last term of school also seems to be going well. There don’t seem to be any really hard classes. Some classes that require me to maybe actually study and learn things but nothing I can’t handle. I only have 4 classes so even if they were really hard that’s still 2/3s of my normal course load.

2011-07-23 - I Have a Cold

That is all.

2011-07-17 - Minecraftian Plans

As you may be able to guess I play a fair bit of minecraft. Now it is said that minecraft is a game of plans and I agree with that. It is a wide open sandbox that allows you tons of freedom which means you need to provide your own directions and goals. If you don’t have a plan you will get bored really fast. I would like to share with you some of my current minecraft plans.

Plan 1 – Mine: Mining is always plan 1 because you need to mine in order to get resources to make things. I usually make my mines by digging out a long corridor and then digging side corridors off of that with two block spacing. The two block spacing means that you can see the majority of blocks in a section without having to mine all of them. Though sometimes I get bored and try to make squares and things.

Plan 2 – Giant sign: I decided that I needed to put my name on my land. I figured the best way to do with would be to make a giant lightstone sign so that my name glows. I currently have part of the framework built but I need more lightstone before I can start making the actual sign.

Plan 3 - Giant underground room: I am thinking of building a large lavish underground room full of bookshelves and fireplaces. I imagine it to have a very Illuminati meeting place feel deep below the surface. The kind of place a secret organization could meet and feel hidden but at the same time comfortable.

Plan 4 – Globe and hand: To mark the entrance to the underground cavern I plan to make a small tower. Out of this tower would be a good sized open palmed hand with a large sphere resting in it. The hand holding the globe fits with the secret organization feel of the room itself. I also want to figure out how to make something approaching a sphere out of blocks.

Plan 5 – Giant sphere: Working on the possible success of the last plan my far reaching goal is to build a huge sphere. Inside of this sphere will be a lake with a good sized island in the middle. This plan will likely not be finished for a while but it’s good to have long term goals. My main problem will be light, I want it to be enclosed but at the same time I don’t want it to be dark. I may end up either using lots of torches or having parts of the roof be made out of glass.

2011-07-14 - Random Quotes

So the other day I decided I’d try and post at least one new post every week. That should give me 8 posts every two months which is good enough to archive. This decision seems to be problematic as I had a hard time actually getting myself to write this week. . So instead of trying to come up with something interesting I am going to find random quotes on Wikiquote and make comments about them.

“The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use.” Arthur Koestler

I find this to be a very interesting quote. It’s funny on a simple level because “ha ha people are dumb” but it also seems to have a deeper meaning. The weird thing is that people don’t really know how to use their brains. Think about it and then tell me how you made yourself think about it. The brain is a collection of neurons controlled by a series of chemical interactions. That part of the brain is fairly well understood but the mind itself created out of this is a mystery. The main issue with understanding the mind is that you have to use the mind in the process of understanding something. Now I’m not sure if that’s what he meant but it’s an interesting idea none the less.

“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.” Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia is a great place to learn about things and to spend hours looking up random things but it is not the ultimate repository of knowledge. For starters the vast majority of human knowledge is lost to time. One simply has to sit in on a debate about historical events to realize that we have forgotten a great many things. Some of them weren’t recorded, others were lost and still others were destroyed. You can’t have the sum of human knowledge because you don’t have access to all of it to record it. Secondly people have always had access to the knowledge that was there. It might have required a bit more work to go to a library or a museum to learn about things but there is nothing on Wikipedia that one could not learn from some other means. If it were the case that Wikipedia had knowledge that didn’t exist somewhere else then the writer couldn’t have learned it to record it.

“Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one. “ Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield

I like this quote. Wear your learning and keep it with you but don’t show it off just for the sake of it. There’s a time and a place for everything including a time and a place to share what you have learned. You may even want to share what you have learned on Wikipedia since that’s where the sum of all human knowledge is shared. Of course if you learned your knowledge on Wikipedia you may want to double check it before you go using it in public. It’s probably right but maybe you read that article on the one day someone put a silly update on it. It is also not advisable to hide what you have learned. If you know something and a situation could benefit from your sharing that knowledge then you should. Knowing what time it is can be helpful; knowing that you have a nice watch isn’t really.