Life

[gdf]

That's awesome, I want to go down it in a shopping trolley.

[elmuerte]

I like how the gate is closed from the outside. Keeping those weird forest paving american's locked inside.

[Nachimir]

Incredible. Are they skaters?

[MrHoatzin]

There is no real way to stop gaining momentum. Maybe one is supposed to try to aim for that weird grass rectangle.

[Nachimir]

Today, I completely forgot I'd agreed to give a two hour lecture on game development at a local college. Luckily, the tutor reminded me early this morning, so I threw slides together from some old talks about game culture and it went really, really well. Speaking on something I care about a lot makes it much easier, and they asked me to talk about indie games, so showing VVVVVV, Time Fcuk and so on was a pleasure.

I forgot about the lecture because I was blindsided by an offer I received this week. I can't talk about it in public yet, but it could either make me very happy and a bit better off... or completely fuck up my life. It's a pretty big decision

[Lu]

Whatever it is, I hope it works out for the best. Big, possibly life changing decisions are a bit scary. O_O

[Nachimir]

Thanks. I've talked it over with a bunch of people and it's getting less scary... not sure yet though.

I spent the weekend paintballing and practicing martial arts with my girlfriend and realised what a lucky man I am

[Patters]

Thanks. I've talked it over with a bunch of people and it's getting less scary... not sure yet though.

I spent the weekend paintballing and practicing martial arts with my girlfriend and realised what a lucky man I am

Sweet, I expect you'll make the right choice.

Semester 2 of year 2 has finally started for me, done 2 of my 3 lectures today, Classical Mechanics and Propositional Logic. Logic seems really interesting for now, it wasn't at all something which I was expecting however, it covers stuff including deriving the meaning of a few statements and coming to a conclusion based upon them. I have Random Models in a bit, which is a probability course, though apparently less mind numbing than those I have previously undertaken. This is the first time I have had complete choice over what modules I do, ever, it's a lot nicer choosing something which appeals to me than something else.

[miffy495]

Logic was great fun. I don't know how it's divided up over there, but here we have Logic I, Logic II, and Logic III at the undergrad level, with more available later. Logic I is all about teaching you the foundations of predicate logic, which is fun but bewilderingly simple. It really gets awesome later, when they introduce the crazy shit. Logic II spends a lot of time constructing methods for counting different kinds of infinity and then moves on to a historical thing on the Hilbert program and the Church-Turing thesis, with lots and lots of examples thereof. Logic III walks you through a reconstruction of Goedel and then takes you up to present day. Ridiculously fun, although my friends always give me weird looks when I say that. Be forewarned though, although I love Logic, that doesn't make it easy. Predicate logic, sure, so the intro course shouldn't be too bad. The bitch is when they tell you at the start of the second course "Hey, remember all that stuff you learned last year? Here's why it's complete crap." And then they do it again the next year. I'd be doing a lot more logic now if I wasn't doing honours and having to worry about my GPA. As it is, I'm enjoying a course based on the work of Rudolph Carnap which, while not technically a logic course, may as well be.

That said, my life is kind of burning me out right now. I'm working four days a week, at school 5, not getting a day off anywhere in there, and still finding time to spend with the girl. I'm just kind of not sleeping. Mass Effect coming out last week has lead to me spending way too much time at the laptop not working as well. Blugh.

[Ben X]

Thanks. I've talked it over with a bunch of people and it's getting less scary... not sure yet though.

I spent the weekend paintballing and practicing martial arts with my girlfriend and realised what a lucky man I am

Can you tell us what it is once you've decided either way?

PS - bagsy my girlfriend and I get to hole up with you two come the zombie apocalypse. You two do the shooting and fighting, we'll cook.

[Nachimir]

Deal!

I bought a pistol crossbow recently to practice shooting in the garden. Her response: "Cool. Can I join you?". My dad got me a (completely unexpected) unicycle for Christmas: "I'm so jealous". She's a keeper.

It may be a few months before it's official, but I'll definitely let you know what the decision is when it's made.

[MrHoatzin]

My computer got badly virused (hacked?) yesterday in spite of the firewall and AVG. The virus opened a shitton of Internet Explorer windows, turned off the firewall and installed an icon that pretended to be an anti-virus program... When I noticed the crazy shit going on, I tried ctrl+alt+delete but it told me the administrator had not given me the right to mess with the task manager. At this point AVG had flared up, but clicking DELETE INFECTED FILES didn't seem to do anything. So I panicked, turned the computer off and unplugged it from the internet. Whereupon it wouldn't turn back on. I failed to take note of which files were infected or what kind of virus it was.

Plan: pull out drives, put them in this portable shell thing I have, save certain important files to the Ubuntu laptop. Format.

Moral: if Chrome tells you that the site contains scary stuff that may compromise your computer, trust it. Even if the site in question is the relatively innocuous Pirate Bay.

[Thyroid]

Moral: if Chrome tells you that the site contains scary stuff that may compromise your computer, trust it. Even if the site in question is the relatively innocuous Pirate Bay.

Haha, yeah, that'll happen. I once managed to accidentally get onto a website that Trojan'd the shit out of my laptop. Every website I visited had their ads replaced by porn. It was amusing for a couple of hours, but I had to kill it.

Edited October 19, 2011 by Kroms

[toblix]

I'm not a writer, but... have you tried replacing "Charlie Burkowitz" with "Balthazar"?

[Thyroid]

Nooo?

Idon'tgeddit.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Nooo?

Idon'tgeddit.

hinty

[toblix]

hinty

old.idlethumbs.net? What's that all about?

[Thyroid]

I can't tell if that's a good or bad thing, but at least you read it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm aware it ain't exactly The Big Sleep, but I've just started writing after long bouts of failure. I'd get up at four, still at the paper for hours and write nothing. For that alone, I'd say it's not bad. At least, I think (hope?) it's not entirely cringe-worthy.

[toblix]

Now I regret the whole thing. It wasn't meant as a criticism. I don't know anything about writing. For God's sake, I once liked the first half of a Dean Koontz book!

[Thyroid]

Now I regret the whole thing. It wasn't meant as a criticism. I don't know anything about writing. For God's sake, I once liked the first half of a Dean Koontz book!

What? No, come on. I only meant that I don't know if Balthazar is a compliment, a dig, or neither - I appreciate it, whatever it is. :tup: I just wanted to show you guys the first thing I managed to write in forever (apart from the Mixnmojo stuff, which doesn't count).

[MrHoatzin]

Why such an extremely Jewish name?

[SignorSuperdouche]

Anti-semite

[ThunderPeel2001]

I'll just paste the first two paragraphs here. Keep in mind that it's the first thing I've written in years, and thus not very good. I have a lonnng way to go if I want to catch-up with Charles Willeford/Tim Schafer/Raymond Chandler/Erik Wolpaw...

Haha, I really enjoyed that! Please post some more

[eljay]

Enjoyably noirish

A couple of comments :-

1) The switch from "She" to "You" felt a little odd, it felt like she was telling someone all this, or someone was surmising how she felt and telling her, but it was coming from the perspective of the impersonal narrator.

2) I think I'd have said "He'd probably have been a goner anyways" suggesting he would soon have become dead rather than seemingly speculating on him already being dead.

[MrHoatzin]

Anti-semite

Hey, some of my best friends are semites!

I'm just wondering. Kroms, don't you live somewhere in the Middle East? I want to guess Lebanon, but I am very much not sure.

What the question is supposed to lead to, tho, is why set the scene in a usual Noir setting with a sortof familiar Brooklyn Jewish flavor? The name does a lot of tone-setting in that passage. Maybe I am completely off-base here and jumping to conclusions regarding the time period and location, but why not set it in wherever you are/are from? Someplace you may be more familiar with, a place that will not seem as expected as a big US city in the 30s.