WillWybrow.com

As many of you will be aware, it’s “two thousand and nine,” now. And whilst I expect that a lot of you see the futility in making “new year’s resolutions,” what you don’t understand is you are guilty of a similar mistake, one which is far more common and far less often noted as fallacious.

Somehow, despite getting out of the habit of deliberately creating new goals and targets that begin on the First of January, we are all still in the mindset that the new year is somehow a “fresh start.” We say things like “here’s to 2009,” or “I hope this year is better than 2008.”

Newsflash: the parts of your life that were shitty at 11:59pm on December 31st, 2008 will be just as shitty at 12:00am on January 1st, 2009. Nothing is magically changed in the ticking of that transitional second. Hoping or expecting 2009 to be a “better year” than 2008 is just as bad as setting resolutions. These are just arbitrarily chosen days; they do not mark that any of your problems are coming to an end, and they do not give you any reason to hope that something in your life is going to change.

All the end of the year does is give you regular markers against which you can evaluate and record your happiness. But why wait until the end of the year to do all that? If you want to see how well you’re doing, always be looking back over what’s happened. Surely a month-by-month reflection is going to help steer you away from your mistakes sooner?

And what if you’ve had a really terrible “year,” up until, say, mid-October? Then even if things start to go really well, most of your year has been spent having a terrible time, and you say it was a “bad year,” – that’s just not accurate enough. It focuses too much on things which you might have dealt with and left in your past, and it just drags you back down like an emotional deadweight.

Nothing stops. And nothing starts. Not without you making the same effort you’d have to at any other time, so why wait to do it? Let every day feel like January the First if you have to, just quit pinning all your hopes on just one of three hundred and sixty-five opportunities.

“So, Will,” I hear you ask. “What are you doing at home now you don’t have your dual-monitor arrangement for computing? How are you surviving without the convenience of dividing your activities into high- and low-priority screen time?”

The answer, of course, is that I don’t have to survive without that. You remember that old laptop I was telling you about? Well, I’ve got instant messaging on that one, using Pidgin, and I’ve got browsing at hand behind it. Then, because this old laptop doesn’t have USB 2.0, Umberto’s iPod is plugged into my other laptop (my “main” one), and I can watch the movies and TV shows that I copied to its hard drive on the other screen. It’s a really good set-up, I have the video screen tilted forward so that when I recline in my chair, I see it properly.

Just a quick update for you, I know you’re all interested in what’s going on.

Give it up, bitch.

You might have read about Laura Williams recently, the eighteen-year-old who got pregnant with conjoined twins, and against all advice, decided not to end the pregnancy, but to give little Faith and Hope a shot at life.

Ok, fair enough, you’re just a little girl who has filled her head with fancies and dreams about the inner strength of your babies, but come on. Not only is it completely irresponsible, but it’s completely inhumane. Why bother letting the children live out a terrible and short existence when you can easily and painlessly abort them?

Well, go ahead with it then. Let your babies get beyond the abortion limit. Then it becomes murder.

Ok, all the moral and ethical piss aside, let’s have a look at the delicious poetic justice at work here: the doctors advise to abort the children, the defiant mother keeps the babies. She names them Faith and Hope to show off how much she believes (without evidence) that her babies can survive in the face of all the experts that predict otherwise. One dies at the start of December in the operation to seperate them, and the other dies on Christmas Day from being too fucking weak. So you’d think the mother would have no more hope or faith like this. Gracefully accept that you make a stupid decision and back down. But no, “if I had to do it all again, I would,” she says. What?! You would kill two more babies? WHAT?! Hello? Did you miss the part where you fucking just lost two babies named Faith and Hope?! Hello?!?!

You can read the story on BBC News, but they put a horrible spin on it where it makes that stupid bitch look admirable for being so stubborn and foolish, but anyone with an independent thought in their brain, especially if they’ve followed the story, can see that all Laura Williams’ steps were the wrong steps, and her defiance to the end of this fisaco is unworthy of admiration in the same way that blind faith in an imaginary god should be criticised and ridiculed.

I’m pretty angry at the BBC for being so biased.

I have realised something. For all my complaints about Linux actually being difficult to use and deliberately so, it is still usable to do home computer things that get done by regular people on regular Windows machines.

But here’s the thing - if a user finds it hard to do things that those growing up with Windows find second nature; things like browsing files, copying files, resizing images, playing music - if someone isn’t already bound in the Windows way of doing things, what’s become the default state of things, then they’re free to use whichever operating system is available to them, right?

What I’m saying is, if someone hasn’t grasped Windows-specific concepts or is just getting into computers, there’s no reason for them not to be introduced to a more open-source way of doing things.

There are also problems with silly browsing. Trojans and other viruses and adware and spyware all target Windows systems. My brother and father get an incredible amount of shit all in their computer. That wouldn’t happen with Linux. They’d be safe from their own idiocy.

Also, I recently threw Fedora 8 on an old P3 laptop I had lying around. It runs much faster than XP did. It also natively supported hardware I knew I’d have to find a driver for in XP.

The Plan

I’ll buy a new hard drive, slap Linux on my dad’s old computer and just see - just see - if my idiot brother or my old dad can get the hang of it to the same extent they have the limited grasp of Windows.

Dog owners always claim that their animals aren’t stupid.

I look at the behaviours of people’s dogs and fail to see how they could possibly be personified or considered anything other than dully running around and satisfying basic needs.

For example, take a look at this quick contradiction: the intelligence of pet dogs is “exhibited” by a dog’s ability to learn how to do ‘tricks’ – that’s the ability to recognise an event and respond accordingly. The ability to learn that certain effects follow certain causes is pretty much a vital natural trait. The dog is commanded to sit. It sits. It gets praised.

Then how about this one: the dog fetches a ball, it brings the ball back, it loses its catch, only to have to chase it again.

If a wild dog brought its kill and dropped it at the feet of anyone, it’d starve to death. A friend’s dog keeps a ball and hoards it, growling if anyone approaches. I think this is more intelligent behaviour than if it dropped it into an outstretched hand. But that’s what owners will strive to train a dog to do.

In that respect, a dog’s “intelligence” is measured in its ability and willingness to defy common sense. In light of this, I’d reconsider the use of the word “intelligent” to describe a well-trained dog…

Try “faithful” instead?

I love the fact that there are some bits of my internet presence that only some people read. It lets me put different viewpoints or facts out to different people, and not worry about them going to the wrong places.

But lately, those things have been converging. My Tweet feed is on the site, my site is on Facebook, and it’s all united under my name.

That’s because, the trouble with having so many places to put my thoughts is that other people don’t always respect the distinction. They will put references to one medium into a message on another, and then it prompts those who don’t regularly access all areas to do some background reading, which then defeats the point. So I decided to embrace it. There are not many information streams that I output that do not cross over. I keep one isolated - that one’s for me to make my own personal notes in a place where being cryptic doesn’t matter. But other than that, if I want to say something to some people but not to others, it has become almost impossible.

I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with it this way. But then, I’d no rather go back to complete internet anonymity. It will take some thinking to figure out a way to do both.

Ideas welcome.

I’ve just swept £1.57 of coins into a pile. There are five 20p coins, four 10p, one 5p, one 2p and ten 1p coins, and they were laid out in a shape in front of me on my desk, which is giving off a horrible squeaking noise that’s making me feel sick. I don’t know why it’s doing it. Maybe two 19-inch CRT monitors is pushing the desk’s strain limit. Maybe it will break in half and collide the two monitors together, breaking them. The wreck will crash down on the computer case beneath them and crush the inside of my computer. I think that this is unlikely, though.

I think I will spend the money on some eggs. I have some bread left, and I think I’ve become a little addicted to “egg in the basket” since I plucked up the courage to attempt such a concoction. I always hear its name in the voice of Stephen Fry saying “eggy in the basket” in the film V for Vendetta. I would need some butter as well, though, since I used that all up recently making these delicious egg bread slices. I will probably need more money than this for both eggs and butter, though ASDA do some fantastic deals.

I could also spend the money on some Relentless Inferno. It has been a while since I bought and consumed any, and I quite miss it.

Something came up this weekend that was very annoying and considerably stressful. It didn’t do any lasting damage, it just made me worry for a bit. I guess I’m pretty thankful that nothing went wrong, but I’m a little pissed off that unexpected events akin to those that happened yesterday can ruin my otherwise carefully laid out plans. Even with a little leeway for unaccounted-for happenings, sometimes unusual things really can throw unwanted spanners in your otherwise manageable works. If you were worrying, thank you. It means a lot. If you are still worrying, relax, the worst is over with.

I’ve just discovered the source of the squeaking of my desk. There is a loose screw underneath the front left-hand corner. I am going to get my screwdriver and tighten it up.

You identify the problem, you tackle its source, you reap your rewards at the end. That’s how it works. When I’ve fixed this screw, I’m going to tackle some other problems. I am going to fix some more things. Most importantly, though; I’m going to finish the washing up.

Much love.

Oh man, Bob Catley is a fucking rockstar. He’s basically a superhero. I met him, and shook his hand, and was all “yo AHS, check out Bob Catley,” and they were all “woah, his music is awesome!!”

We went to Tamworth for Jenna’s generic-winter-festival party and saw her dad and sister and town. We had a great party.

Then I went back to Leeds (again) to share Liz’s birthday party with Chris and Norman at their four-fifths atheist domicile…

Then I came home. I got back to Leamington and almost kissed the ground with happiness. But not because I’d been away, but because of what happened while I was away. Basically, I was glad to be home without regretting being gone. Let’s leave it at that.

That’s the summary of all the decent things that happened this weekend. Not at much detail as last time, I guess I’m just not in the mood.

Oxford

So began the first of my holiday outings last Wednesday, when I went to visit the wonderful Jenna at her Oxford University college: Linacre.

We decided to try and cram as many awesome things into the day as possible, which is why we set off to Modern Art Oxford and the Natural History Museum (which were great) and also swung past the “castle,” or the mound-where-a-castle-once-used-to-be (which was not so great - not only was it a lame attraction, but Jenna confessed that she hated me so much that she was skipping the country to avoid spending new year’s eve at my house).

Modern Art Oxford was a very pleasant experience. They had a few exhibitions on (including one which was disappointingly closed), ranging from boring to plain weird. It was all loosely connected by sharing common binaural techniques to create the sense of sounds coming from positions they weren’t, which was interesting and entertaining. We stopped by the gift shop and I was bought a 25mm badge.

The Museum of Natural History, where I had previously had the pleasurable experience of watching Richard Dawkins face off the imposing John Lennox in debate, was another fascinating experience, made even more so in the light of the remnants of the memories of my last visit; atheism and evolution tend to go hand-in-hand these days.

I got to spend some time in Linacre college, which my friend Tom Etheridge tells me is “not a real college, [because it's] full of grads.” But what if I’m visiting a “grad”, Tom? The college was nice and modern (but still with that Oxford University class pretension about it). The student rooms were cosy and nice and the dining area was homely.

The most important thing that I can say about Linacre, however, was that when I got a shot at using one of their computer rooms, I got a nice surprise. Some of the new motherfuckingly huge iMacs were there, but what did their screens have plastered all over them? It wasn’t Leopard… it was XP! That was quite an unexpected highlight that appealed to my technological nature.

In the evening, we stayed in the college’s common room, and I met some people. We had fun playing darts and Pictionary and watching some Channel 4.

Leeds

The first thing to note about Leeds is how fucking far away it is! Regardless, hitching the train up there was alright; I do like getting trains. While I was there to see and hang out with all of Leeds’ remaining A-Soc, strictly speaking I was Liz’s guest.

When I arrived at the station, I moved into the shopping centres, passing through all sorts of different bits, including “Victoria Quarter,” which had an interior made of gold and had shops whose very names were too expensive to pronounce. Liz and her housemate Michelle intercepted me (despite the terrible description I gave them of my location) and we wandered around the city centre for a little while. I spotted four Caffé Nero coffee shops, and visited two of them (Stuart, have pride). After some guilty confessions from Liz that she didn’t actually know her way around Leeds’ centre, we decided to try and find the restaurant that we were meeting A-Soc at later. We did find it, and spent the waiting time in Wetherspoon’s (where else?).

The restaurant served fairly standard food but I’d say it was overpriced as well. Nice atmosphere, though, and the glass panel in the middle of the landing of the first floor was just terrifying. Afterwards, we didn’t return to Spoons, as was my initial inclination, but headed off to somewhere a little quieter, which was a better idea now that I think about it. I heard about the London antics of Leeds Atheist Society and met and spoke to some cool people.

i think a-soc is a pretty cool guy. eh debates god and doesn’t afraid of anything

After things wound down (meaning: they closed at 11pm and didn’t give me the required time to finish my bottle of wine), Chris gave me a lift back to his house, stopping at Tesco to pick up the classic Southern Comfort and Pepsi Max party drink. Back at “Atheist House” (which is not as good as the name “Fort Atheist”), we stayed up most of the night watching various animated shows (American Dad prominent amongst them).

In the morning, I got up and sped off to Leeds station to catch a ride back home, but not before having my half-can of Relentless thrown off the First travel bus. They got their comeuppance, however, because I scrawled “FGW Are[sic] cunts” on the First Great Western train that was my final connection to Basingstoke (and last public transportation vessel for the day). That will teach them not to allow cans of drink on their Leeds buses.

What always bugged me, even when I was young, was when people comment on the unlikelihood of events happening in films. You know, when Jason Bourne makes an impossible jump, or John McClane runs through a storm of bullets without being hit.

Of course, saying “it’s just fiction, it doesn’t matter,” isn’t really a satisfying dismissal of those people. They nag and complain that the film is unrealistic and that makes it unenjoyable for them and unenjoyable for you.

But I had this idea when I was little that maybe all those unlikely things had to happen. That any story where they didn’t happen wouldn’t be very worth telling. There would somewhere be a version of the ‘Die Hard’ storyline where Alan Rickman kills Bruce Willis in the first ten minutes. But nobody wants to see a film like that. In a theoretical universe where every possible story is told, ones with hugely unlikely possibilities will eventually come into existence and they are the ones we read about in books and watch about in films.

Of course, these days I don’t care very much about all of that. Every now and then I’ll be aware that I’m watching something that others might be thinking is unrealistic. In which case I might wait until something relatively probable (but still a bit unlikely) happens and remark on how “this film is so unrealistic,” in a sort of terrible humour attempt.

But also nowadays, years from my initial feelings of ire at the bothersome critical appraisal of my immature peers, I realise that I’d basically applied the anthropic principle to storytelling. Woo! Young me was secretly clever!