I finished this today:
As usual, the style is undefinable. You’ll certainly recognize the “tracker” influence (if you’re familiar with what that means), since that’s almost impossible to hide. (Nor is it always desirable to hide, though.) Pretty flawed, but I wanted to get something finished. The more things I make, the better new ones will get with time.
Is this done? I’m not sure. I can continue filling in the white space with more patterns. The original was too big to fit in my scanner, so I had to scan in two pieces.
Remind me not to try and fill a complete 9″ x 12″ piece of paper like this again. Usually when people ask me how long it took to draw something, I’ll say I don’t know, because I really don’t. I used to draw in class, so in multitasking like that, I did something extra with time I would have been mostly idle in (how much attention does one have to pay to a lecture anyway??). This time I can tell you that this sort of drawing, when you don’t have something else to occupy the other 3/4 of your mind, is tedious and slow. Maybe that’s one reason I miss lecture courses. I’m drawing (something else) and listening to music now, but would rather be out with friends. It’s late on a Monday night now though, with work awaiting tomorrow.
This is a quote from somebody’s profile somewhere or other:
I’m athletic, intellegant, good natured, talented, outgoing, and self confident.
“Intellegant”? I rather like that. It’s intelligent and elegant rolled together into one. I’d spell it with just one “l”, though. Intelegant. If I start a company, that’s what I’ll call it. Hmm, I wonder if that domain name has been taken. Let’s check. “intelegant.com” is taken, but “inteligant.com” is not. Intelephant? Intelephone? Eh, enough for now, but contact me if you need a new name for your company.
See, I give people the benefit of the doubt.
Everything I write doesn’t have to devolve (de-evolve?) into silliness, but I wanted to go to bed and that was a quick out. Today I will teach my roommate how to drive a stick-shift, as well as how to pick up girls.
Imagine The Animatrix chapter 4 or 5 (I forget which), where the kid is typing at his computer. That’s the image I have in mind as I write this.
Today is Sunday. The time is 12:51 AM. Am I here? Well of course, I’m right here, sitting in front of the computer. It’s my dreams that are weird. They seem so real, like they are the same thing as waking life. But why would that be? Everyone has seen The Matrix, and we’re familiar with the concept. My conception of reality doesn’t change if my body really exists in a cool computerized climate controlled casket where all information I obtain from the world is being simulated and fed in through my brain’s sensory inputs. I still sleep, and my sleep should be no different from that of someone in the real world, who has taken a blue pill (or a red pill, I forget which is which) and seen how far the rabbit hole really goes. Perhaps this person has also met the Red Queen, played croquet with flamingos as mallets, and been late for a very important date. But, I digress, and about all this I say, eat me. That was just something I dreamed about, anyway. That red and blue pill stuff.
Now, I’m still sitting here. My computer isn’t typing back to me, or rather, no hackers from the outside are typing back. Here, if you’re reading this, I’ll give you a space to type, all you hackers. Okay, start typing after the angle bracket.
>
No response. I figured. I guess nobody’s there, or nobody cares. Back to my ordinary life, back to taking vitamins, back to shuffling papers, back to fighting crime in a sleek latex suit with externally worn underwear with superpower abilities. Amazing underwear, that. Sounds like something you can order at a Chinese restaurant. Beef with brocolli, chicken with mushrooms, underwear with superpower abilities. Now put that in your fortune cookie and smoke it.
I had a bookmark to the Unabomber’s Manifesto (remember that guy)? At some point I had intended to read the whole thing, but today I just randomly clicked on the bookmark, and randomly clicked on an item in the table of contents. I then randomly read the following paragraph:
122. Even if medical progress could be maintained without the rest of the technological system, it would by itself bring certain evils. Suppose for example that a cure for diabetes is discovered. People with a genetic tendency to diabetes will then be able to survive and reproduce as well as anyone else. Natural selection against genes for diabetes will cease and such genes will spread throughout the population. (This may be occurring to some extent already, since diabetes, while not curable, can be controlled through the use of insulin.) The same thing will happen with many other diseases susceptibility to which is affected by genetic degradation of the population. The only solution will be some sort of eugenics program or extensive genetic engineering of human beings, so that man in the future will no longer be a creation of nature, or of chance, or of God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions), but a manufactured product.
This is silly, and a half-formed thought. People often have half-formed thoughts, and it amazes me. The continuation of this thought is that yes, any sort of medical treatment reduces the effect of natural selection as it would be done by nature itself. But as long as that treatment continues to be available, and it is a treatment such that the treated individual is just as healthy as those who don’t have a condition, why does it matter?
For example, some large majority of the population is nearsighted, and if you want, you can blame glasses and contact lenses because then “people with a genetic tendency to bad vision” were “able to survive and reproduce as well as anyone else”. Yes, it means that we now depend on glasses and contacts, but those are readily available. So now we’re not genetically adapted as well to live in environments where optometrists and vision correction products don’t exist (i.e., we have bad vision), but wouldn’t any sane person see this as being irrelevant?
I haven’t read any more yet, but it seems what he’s doing here is going down a slippery slope that ends in something worse than us all living in caves. Therefore, he must argue, we should all slide back into caves. (Where we will hunt wooly mammoths for fun and profit and have superior genes.)
Sorry for dredging up this old bit of drudgery, but really, no, I’m not sorry. Just your little bit of mental amusement (or lack thereof) for Friday evening.
I have AIM and Trillian (which among other things connects to the AIM network, besides slicing and dicing and always remembering to put the seat up). AIM itself gets booted off the network every 5 minutes, but Trillian stays connected with no problem. This is ironic (don’tchya think) considering the war AOL was having with Trillian a while back, where they kept changing the protocol so Trillian couldn’t connect reliably, and Trillian’s team kept releasing patches to catch up, each time. Now the situation is a bit reversed, because I wanted to use AIM, but Trillian is the rock solid client now. Interesting. Although, I know reinstalling AIM will solve my problems. Laziness persists.