Alone in the Dark

I am alone in dark. I am not lonely, though. My girlfriend is in the room next to me. However, she is not in this room. There is no other in the dark with me except the Internet. Through the Internet there are so many with me now, in this room alone, in the dark. The Internet is with me in most places now. It is with me more than it used to be. It promises to always be with me. It will always be there. The illusory world of interconnectedness promises persistence, and I want it. Not because I am lonely, though. I am not lonely, because my girlfriend is here, though she is not in this room. The interconnection of the Internet is illusory.

Facebook promises a parade of all the world, smiling behind a login page. Everything there is with me now. They are all with me in this small, dark room. But no one is really there at all. It is a fragile facade of wood and stitches. Not even brick and mortar. It is losely linked by primitive constructs of HTML and various coding languages. A fundamental mass of illusory logic. Many bright minds come together to build a decadent, tragic house of cards, collectible friend cards. Here you all are; I can find you from your name alone. You don't even need to know.

I keep getting distracted from my dream. The dream to join dreams. To network the human consciousness. What distracts me from this dream? Survival? Joy? The Internet? Despite a rather liberal time frame, at my current rate, I will never even start. But I do not think that is true. I am still in the prologue. I am still preparing for the beginning. The push is yet to come. Is this a lie? Another distraction? I do not think so.

The Internet is connecting you with me now. It connects me with you. I can find you from your name, and you do not even need to know. It is not weird, it is normal. It is the Internet. How long can you remain off-line? Let's all catch a dream together.

I am now done sitting in the dark alone. Good night Internet. I go to be with my girlfriend to live a dream.

When I list what I have done recently, it makes me feel like I've accomplished a lot more than I would have thought. I frequently feel like I'm not making progress. (No work puns, please.) However, here I have evidence that indicates that I am wrong. I wish I could feel it, though.

Punching through the time barrier

I feel like I never have time for a proper post. I feel as though I might post more frequently if I didn't have to go to blogger to do it. (Like, if anyone accepted the patches for GNOME Blog to support atom posting...) Regardless, I have recently done a few of these things:

• Celebrated a vegetarian Thanksgiving. Sour stew, stupendous stuffing, and a plump pumpkin pie were the order of the day.
• Celebrated a birthday party. Played StepMania (think DDR) whose contestants included a pleasant mother of 3 grown children. Shared stories. Ate food. Left after transit stopped.
• Constructed a chocolate on chocolate trifle for the above.
• Created a working, GUI-based version of GenderGuesser.
• Started learning GIT for the above to work.
• Learning Hiragana (largely for the purpose of exercising GenderGuesser.)
• Watch the anime Akira Kurasawa's Samurai 7. It's very good. Received good Rogers service from Calvin. He's really impressed my girlfriend.
• Resumed Kendo. It's quite different the second time around.
• Started reading 1984. I don't enjoy reading it very much.
• Got stomach sick for just under a week. (This started with the resumption of Kendo and then ended with Thanksgiving.)
• Have gotten a regular head cold. I credit my girlfriend for the acquisition :D
• Rented Paprika (which I haven't watched yet) from the best video store I have found in Vancouver so far: Dunbar Video PlusNightwatch Video. I like them more than videomatica. Their selection didn't seem populist, and the proprietor even ordered the Return to Oz for me :)
• Discovered that Tim Tams have reached Critical Mass out in Vancouver. They're Everywhere.
• Played tennis three times in the last three (?) weeks.
• Received the best restaurant service yet in Vancouver from the Old Spaghetti Factory in Gastown. A pleasant fellow, perhaps named Kevin(?) served in the converted street car we had been seated in by an intelligent hostess. Kevin(?) was always prompt and helpful and considerate and HAPPY. Nice work -> nice tip ^_^
• Paid off private credit; now onto public! (That is, student loans versus credit cards and bank lines of credit.)
• In a failed attempt to associate with coworkers, we ended up in a book store where I found a Very Good Thing: 1066 And All That. It is to be gifted to someone who has not yet enjoyed it. Tee-hee. My girlfriend managed to digest during a slow work day. I'm jealous :D

There, that seems a fairly comprehensive itinerary of the more recent things. Too bad it's a list shallow on insight, but if you're reading this, maybe it's worth something.

I think most OSes lack something essential in not coming with their own journalling applications. They could sync with people's blogs, structuring information by topic and date. I think the OLPC has one. That's great. I think the system creates automatic entries in it based around activities you do. I don't really know. That reminds me of the Wii, which sort of has a log.

I think one of the benefits might be more reflection by computer users. A lot of people own blogs, but those are almost always targeted at some audience, so the nature of what gets written would be different than if it were an initially private (and only secondarily published) format.

I am somewhat pleased by the increased growth of spell checkers embedded into text entry forms. Firefox has enjoyed it for a while now, providing red underlines under unfamiliar terms. I hope other browsers do as well. I wonder whether there has been a decrease in the relative incidence of typos as a result. I suppose I also hope that having an existing facility for users to write in might help encourage development of complete thoughts and their structuring in text. More so than instant messaging and many modern e-mail messages do. I enjoy how much writing the Internet forces people to do, but it's often very brief.

I'm not very concerned about the quality of people, their thoughts, their writing, etc. I don't think text messaging on cellphones is causing society to collapse. However, I do want to read the thoughts of more people, and I think this might encourage it. :) Blogs give me much joy. For instance, the following excerpt with limited context:

"AUDREY!!! THERE'S A SNAKE IN MY TENT! PLEASE COME HERE!" I shouted from my perch.
"Oooo!" she yelled back. "Is it tiny and green?"
"NO YOU FOOL, IT'S BIG AND BLACK, IT'S THE %@$#*!& COBRA!!!"
"Oh. Coming!"

Snakes on a Plain