Field of view

It’s easier most of the time to do things again right? I have to push the button again. But this time it seems easier and it’s a relief. I just have to plan for all contingencies and then I’m all set. Most others always find doing things again much easier. But I’m not like that. I find myself back in the frame of mind of doing it for the first time and it’s just as difficult, usually anyway. Not this time.

I really need to get back into this. I used to have blog notes and was interesting and had thoughts and things to share. But this is just for me. I’ll try to remember that.

Joaquin out.

From hells heart, I stab at thee

I know what’s about to happen. All the switches are flicked. I just have to turn the key. The destruction. The utter annihilation and devastation. One turn of the key and the missiles go. The world goes nuclear. Nothing will ever be the same again. The future is divided into before this moment and after it. 

I feel the responsibility. I feel the duty. I don’t want to do this. But I have to. There is too much riding on it.

My body shakes. I’m drenched in sweat. 

Tomorrow I turn the key.

Joaquin out.

The times, they are a wastin’

I’m not dead.

I’m annoyed that after all this time that Lizzy was right.

The algorithm has gone too far.

It’s too accurate. But it can sway things.

Not all of it is true.

I exist. Barely.

Bring back the rage.

Joaquin out.

Playing Dumb, More Of That To Come...

How sweet are those lies?

Only 9 posts last year?!  Wow!  I'm actually shocked I managed to get that much done.  It will probably be worse this year though.

Things are changing, a lot.  Probably the most they ever will in my life.  But that's ok.  That's just how things are. 

I'll try my best to write more later.

Joaquin out.

Twice Bitten, Never Shy, Hold Your Breath and Kiss the Sky

Everything just feels a little bit off.

I'm a little worn down.  I'm tired.  No, I'm more than that.  I'm exhausted.  I'm a zombie living less than an existence.  All about the $$$ and you'll see where that leads.

This is all a trap and none of it's real.  But we buy into the fantasy.  We literally buy into it.  What a strange concept. 

Do you ever regain the magic of what's lost?  I was thinking about this the other day, and I can recall things from when I was younger and easily made happy.  I remember playing pool with the other at someone else's University hall.  I played terribly, but we had a good time.  I remember being at a family friend's house in the middle of nowhere.  They had a Linux computer which I had to learn how to use.  And we found some VCDs (haha what an old format now, who remembers them!) and we watched The Lost World: Jurassic Park on a tiny monitor, sitting on the bed away.  The quality was dodgy (definitely an overseas pirated copy), and the movie is pretty average, but I loved it.  We must have started watching it at 10pm, and for kids that's pretty cool. 

Ahh what good times.  But now they're all very few and far between.

Something is really off with these blogger stats.  Why do we have so many hits from Russia, Ukraine, Chechnya, and Poland?  We have no material of any interest to people in those countries.  Something just isn't...right...But if you're here for legitimate reasons, welcome and enjoy!  I hope to visit someday.

What else is news?  I'm getting back into guitar very slowly.  Oh my god, my skills!  Where have they gone?  You really do need to practice.  Or you'll suck.  I'm learning more scales and trying to improve my theory at least. 

I'm done.

Joaquin out.

New Wave Poster Glaze

Blogger is doing some weird shit. Logged in and saw zero information against any of our posts. No views or anything. Sure that’s not right. Anyway.

Startling realisation for today: I’m concerned that my life is sliding far down the tube to resemble American beauty day by day.

What a thought.

Joaquin out.

Chuppa Chupp Buttercup

Back at the helm for a bit.

It's actually hard to get any time these days!  I just wanna blog, and like I've said before, I have some notes, but not actually the time to elucidate further and actually type this shit up.  It's a shame too, because blogging is cool, and very underrated.  Other forms of 'social' media are more aimed at instant gratification, and fakeness and acting according to other norms.  Blogging is just who you are, and people can take it or leave it.  No likes or follows or subscriptions here.

I did go a bit into the backlash against social media in the last post.  But I should provide some more detail now.  There's a fair amount of studies (and media) about social media being a contributing cause to poor mental health in young people.  I'm inclined to agree.  There's a lot of comparison and sizing up why your lives aren't like others.  I am very glad I grew up in a time before this crap.  At least I know what is and isn't normal. 

People just need to detox.  These companies don't really care about you.  If they did, they wouldn't go public, they wouldn't be trading in your data like you're a commodity.  It's a bit glib (and wrong to say), but this is the new slavery.  You provide the content and the data, they analyse it and sell it to advertisers (or just pass it on to the Government), and profit.

This year is going by way too quick!  Almost half of it gone already!  Blink and it'll be 2019.  That's our lives, gone in an instant.  Is there any relevance?

I'm trying to read more and get back into guitar.  I've lost a dreadful amount of skill unfortunately.  I used to be pretty up there with theory, but now it's pretty much back to basic and bullshit playing.  Need to remedy that ASAP.

I've seen a lot of commentary on universal salary lately.  It's a concept where the state no longer pays out welfare, and instead, everyone is guaranteed a certain salary.  This is great in theory, as there is the possibility for maintaining some work-life balance, but this is inherently incompatible with free market capitalism (and insane right wingers who benefit from the system despite not working hard, and will defend it, no matter the cost).

Think about it this way, if you want to generate the best possible return, you would factor in fixed costs.  If you knew everyone had an additional 10k up their sleeves, wouldn't you increase your prices accordingly?  Everything in society would increase in price accordingly.  And who profits?  The same bastards profiting now.  It's just another way of distributing wealth in the same inequitable ways, just with the fallacy that it's going to middle income/low income earners.

The system only works with price regulation, and price regulation is failing in every market in the West.  Nothing is affordable unless you are upwardly mobile middle-class.  This system is failing.

The system needs to be destroyed.

Joaquin out.

For the waste of our lives...

We all end up in the same place anyway.

It will be an effort to try to blog a bit more often than I was before anyway.  Luckily, I have had a few blognotes to get through - even though I don't seem to have a file for them on my computer anymore.  Instead, I've just been e-mailing ideas to myself.

What I'm annoyed about these days is the lack of a proper blog client for ios.  I've tried android and it sucked, so I'm back using a decent system.  But now there's no more blogger app, and blogging through the chrome app suckssssss.  Why make things harder?  It's not fun to pay for an app and then have it disappear a few years later.  Oh well, that's life.

In terms of social media, it's a funny thing.  Blogger used to be huge.  Now people are on tumblr, instagram, and vlogging through youtube.  Blogging in this form is a lost art I guess.  People have no patience for reading and have to interact through the world with no imagination anymore.

Social media as a whole is a bad thing.  The instant comparison and focus on externalities - other people's lives, has made people more obsessed with what they don't have and what they can get, they have lost sight of what they already have, and that it is sufficient.  I'm glad we are seeing a blacklash to that now - I pity the young minds that have to grow up with this kind of pressure on them now.

What was the other thing I wanted to talk about?  Network security?  Privacy?  I don't know, I might have to come back to that at another point.

I was checking the stats on the blog again, and it was interesting to see how many Russian and Ukrainian hits we have.  Are these all bots looking for a point of exploitation?  Food for thought. 

There's no time for anything anymore.  Ok.

Joaquin out.

The Root Of The Problem

Is now that I have a lot of things to say, but so little time to say it.

I should really get back to typing up blog notes. They were great for my memory.

A lot of great ideas but no time to actually develop them or write about them.

So here we are, yet again.

Joaquin out.

Technical Illiteracy

Sorry about that! Have just been mindlessly procrastinating when I realised I should be posting on here!

Haha it’s a terrible habit to break but I have a number of competing addictions running at the moment.

I’ll do my best to make a change here for the benefit of the blog.

But that’s all for now. This is just a reminder.

Joaquin out.

This Little Corner Of The Internet

Belongs to us. Don’t you forget that.

I almost forgot to post today but I’m not gonna let that happen again.

Isn’t it weird how the audience has fragmented?

Communications theory is very big into centralisation/convergence of technology and larger participation as developing nations are able to access technology for cheaper.

However content creation and competition has completely decimated the audience. While in the 90s we had tv with 7 or so channels so market share was enormously concentrated. Now we have digital channels, streaming content and so on. The same is true for music and film. There is just so much content out there and different ways of accessing that information.

As a result we will never see the large audience shares that were once experienced. What does this mean for profits and content sustainability in the long term? It’s interesting to think about.

We will keep fragmenting the audience and diluting content. Will we ever reach consensus again? What will water cooler conversation revolve around when we all have different viewing or consumption habits?

I guess in the end all you can do is create content for your little audience and hope they enjoy it enough to sustain you and you can grow modestly from that.

The past is gone.

We fracture in the middle.

Joaquin out

Nobody Has The Answers

Nobody ever did.

More to come I hope.

This is hopefully not just a temporary return.

This all use to mean something.

Who are all of you?

Who am I?

You already know.

Joaquin out

You Can Kill A Phoenix

Or can you? I don’t know. Wow, what a terrible period. Not a single post over an entire year and a bit! What has become of us? I don’t know.

Time: it has a way of getting one over all of us eventually. Maybe things are happening and I will finally have some time to be more productive on the things I actually want to do.

Anyway, there’s a lot that has been on my mind. Just not a way to say it.

But I am here. 

Maybe you are too.

Joaquin out 

The inescapable truth

Oh my god. It was all so inevitable. It's all failing me. And it was always due. I'm barely into it but I'm already feeling the effects. This is not real life. This is somewhere else entirely. Lost. Losing. Gone. My 30s are killing me. Life is the death sentence. Ouch.

And Now, For the Coup De Grace

There will be words.  You can make a note of that.  Take a cheque and cash it in the bank.  Don't you worry.

More to come at a later time, at a later date.  This post almost seems like a chatbot wrote it, doesn't it?  But I don't think they could be this introspective.

We'll see, anyway.

That's it for now.

Joaquin out.

Is this the new fascism?

The fuck? Great post deleted! Why the hell doesn't the blogger app on android autosave? What is the point in having the app then? Jesus! What a waste of time. I might as well login via the website the long way around. Fuck shitty ill designed apps. I expected better from you google. But we all know you're a piece of shit.

Grades Or Lack Thereof

Just hanging back, waiting for something (or anything) to happen.

You know what I've been thinking lately?  This is all just a shared delusion.  Reality is hampered or interpreted by perception.  The human brain is amazing, but it is fundamentally flawed, and it can be tricked easily.  Therefore what we mean to be reality or truth is just the majority coming together to band around a shared delusion.  Anyone who doesn't believe that is treated as wrong or as an outsider, until they can convince others to entertain that same delusion.

I was going to say this extends to academia.  There is no true objective truth.  I was going to put a disclaimer about the hard sciences in there, but even that's not the case because of the above statement.  There's no 'inherent correctness' about it, just interpretation.  Everything comes down to how well you told the story.  It's about the winnable narratives.  Isn't that disturbing?

I wonder if humanity will ever venture into a black hole?  That'll be pretty cool.  Considering the difficulties of data, it'll be interesting to see what could ever come of it.

You know what I've realised?  Steam works like a gym.  They hope to sell you games but they hope you don't play.  Gyms actually sell a lot of memberships and some tiny places have memberships above 6000 or so, but you never see those people there.  Why?  People just buy the membership in hopes of getting fit but don't commit, or they lose their nerve eventually.  Therefore the gym profits and you lose out.  Most people I know buy a lot of Steam games, especially when they have their recurring sales, but they don't play them.  In fact most hardly ever play.  Therefore Steam and the people they have distribution deals with are making out like bandits, just like a gym!

And there you go.

Joaquin out.

Such A Waste

I'm so bored.

Like really really bored.

I've never been this bored before.

I'm bored of me.

I'm bored of you.

I'm bored of this.

I'm bored of that.

I'm bored of life.

Sigh.

Joaquin out.

The Autopilot Is My Copilot

Well 2015 was better than 2011 on this blog (if only ever so slightly).  Here's to hoping 2016 is somewhat better.  I've had some good ideas, just haven't really been assed to blog, which is a shame.

There's a weird scale of life isn't there?  Not just in terms of memories.  Remember when you were a kid and a few minutes felt like an eternity?  That's because you're young and you don't really have a scale of reference.  You haven't been around long enough to compare timeframes.

I remember when I was 6 and all the 12 year olds at school seemed so gigantic.  Then in high school at age 13, all the 16 year olds seemed so adult like.  Now, looking back, 12 year olds and 16 year olds are all so tiny and child like.  They're so young!  How could I ever think that they were the literal and figurative giants of my youth?  I used to fear them!  Hahaha.

What of life?  Experience scale.  Everyone is different.

I've been using a lot of adaptive cruise control - I love it because you can keep the car in cruise control and it will keep that speed up on hills (up and down), with automatic throttle and engine braking, and because you can adapt the control - like you can drive a bit faster if you need to overtake someone, but if you let go of the accelerator, it will calmly revert back to the original speed.  Really fancy, and I like how it's basically on every car these days.  How times change.

There's a warning, because the car keeps to that speed no matter what, regardless of road conditions.  The car doesn't know.  It will do what it can to maintain that speed, regardless at the cost of your life.  Isn't that what reality and time is?

I also wonder what's more efficient for fuel, cruise control on a cross country trip, or using your own wits?  I also what it does to your mind as a driver?  Are you still paying the same amount of attention to the road?  To passengers?  It'll be interesting to see the stats on fatal accidents where cruise control was involved.  But will we ever know?  Maybe it's not as safe as everyone assumes.

And more questions to go.

We are done here.

Joaquin out.

Punched In The Guts By Google Maps!

What are the things we learn?  Are they relevant in the end?

This does not represent a return to casual blogging goodness.  I'll get back into it someday.  Things have just changed.  I don't have the time that I used to, and I don't have the capacity.  It would be great.  I have plenty of things I'd like to say.  Hopefully in time I'll remember, and I'll be able to get those words out to all of you.

Thanks for sticking with us (well me) during the hiatus.  It's not like I've been sitting on my ass the whole time.

I remember the first fight I was ever in, it was over in no time.  I was like 9, and the other kid was like 11 or 12 and he was a behemoth.  Just some gigantic motherfucker.  I can't remember what happened, I think I was talking to his sister or something (who was about my age - no flirting or anything, I wasn't even into girls at that age), and he got amped up and just totally punched me in the stomach.  Hard.  It hurt like hell and I was down for the count.  One punch, over.  I cried like a bitch, of course.  Then I realised nobody was going to help me after that.  I found out he was a black belt in karate.  So why did he feel the need to punch out a kid smaller and younger than him?  So weird.  I wonder what happened to him?

For all everyone talks about how much worse our life is with technology, I think it actually makes our life easier.  Well more convenient anyway.  We can live without it, sure, but it should be up to people to make a choice.  Remember that 10km walk I did with no directions?  I just kept line of sight to the city and I gradually made it home.  Just look out for landmarks and keep your eyes open.  Not all that difficult.  I made it.  It was an odyssey of sorts.  But imagine if I'd had Google Maps?!  I wouldn't have gotten lost, I would have been able to listen to music as I was given GPS style directions.  Wow.  What a world!

What a world?

Indeed.

Until the next unguaranteeable time!

Joaquin out.