Thoughts Time Machine

There were about 25 old posts, including the oldest post on this blog, that I wrote but never published, or published but then hid. They are now resurrected. Some of it's a bit weird. (This is my favourite, which Dick would understand, and I like this one.)

Some thoughts & ruminations

Letter by me to friend re. my decision to quit my job and move to the lake district.

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Hello xxxxxx! I have been thinking about your question. I can report that I am very happy with my decision, and I feel it has been a good move. I haven't regretted it once, although I still look back to my time with fondness!

I have never been fitter for one. I go out mountain biking, running, kayaking or walking at least two or three times a week and always on the best weather days. Plus lugging backs of laundry up the stairs at the hostel and so on. :) Mountain biking is my new passion really. But just being up here where it is quiet and beautiful is an end in itself. I have had plenty of visits from friends from back home (but not too many visits!) which is lovely.

I think there were two types of reasons for my decision; reasons to leave the old job, and reason to do this particular new one. Reasons to leave were: starting to feel like i would become a lifer and potentially feeling trapped, long commute, didn't like northampton/MK that much, RSI symptoms getting worse, fed up of the office every day, sedentary lifestyle...
I suppose the career question is a big one; I like to think that I could still resume a career in engineering/software if I so wished. Also I'm still working on my OU maths degree which hopefully opens things up a bit. But also having had this breathing space and dropping off the treadmill, so to speak, has opened up opportunities (in my head at least) as I now feel that I'm coming at things from a bit more of a blank canvas of sorts.

I'm still figuring out where things will lead though. As steve jobs said in a speech; in whatever you do, you can only 'join the dots' looking backwards. Not everything can be planned to lead to a precise outcome; you can do seemingly random stuff which turns out later on to have been crucual to where you are now. But at the time you did it you could never have known.

But i'm not making any plans to change from YHA in the lakes just yet.

Hmm I have gone on a bit!

At the end of the day I what I have learned from this is that it has reinforced is my belief that a change every now and then is a good thing. Be it a change of department, a new job, or something more extreme like i did.

Also my decision was motivated in part by reading the book 'How To Be Idle' by Tom Hodgkinson. Make me think about what is important to me and what isn't etc.. gave me courage. It took about 2-3 years ruminating to actually decide to to this though! Making a decision to do something is often harder than actually doing it! But in the end I knew the time was right.

Also it's worth talking things with people, to see if your ideas stand up (and also make them more real, in a way), but not necessarily be too influenced with what they say or put off by negative responses. Especially parents, mine were not really very keen on my idea and tended to focus on the negatives, but now I think they are convinced.

As a wise friend (who'd had a happy an successful life) once said to me: when you have a hard decision to make then by definition there must be pros and cons to each outcome; so whatever you decide, it will turn out to be the right decision because you get positives either way (sort of a paradox but liberating:)!

Regards :)

Nick

Saying goodnight

One person says: good night

Then the other person says: good night

follow in your footsteps

because i just found out where you live
while i was on holiday
and i wondered
how to get there
normally

manifesto

i refuse to dwell in a cobwebby corner
on a statue of a roman emperor in
the crack between the ear and the head
as his eyes gazes out across his
empire and his lips curl up at their corners

i refuse to glance always to one side
avoiding bright gazes as if a cloud
in the sun in the warm air becomes
drizzle outside crumbling walls
outside floorboards cracks dark dust

i will slip scent-like with gold and
plenty of swirls and descend like a
dandelion and ascend like a particle
and my arcs will be parabolic
and hyperbolic and they will
always disappear completely

delete life

dreaming of coding in legend of zelda
greens, brown; the voice is Madeleine
Peyroux, the hand dissolves to
yellow, brown, leather, warm.

you used to be alright
what happened?
cat get your tongue?

quotes

she buzzes like a

i fell

it's really not that you can't see / the forest for the trees / you've never been out in the woods alone

it’s not jazz at all, it’s rock and roll

In the words of my friend William Shakespeare, when the shit hits the fan, get a tent.

..nothing..

Data: Sorry, sir. I seem to be commenting on everything. Riker: Good. Don't stop, my friend.

To get a really good answer you must sacrifice your ability to predict the answer, albeit not your ability to say what is the question.

Man's life is full of mystery, and everyone tries to compare it to something simple and esier to grasp. I know a carpenter, and he used to say: "A man he is like a carpenter. Look at the carpenter; the carpenter lives, lives then dies. And so does a man."

ah ah ah ah

ahh ah ah ah ah

ahh ahh ahhh ahhhh ahh ahh ahhhhh ahhh hhhhh

rain down rain down

come on rain down on me

from a great height

from a great height

rain down rain downcome on rain down oh rain

from a great height from a great height

the more i try to erase you
the more that you appear

Make not your thoughts your prisons

Beginner's mind is a concept in Zen Buddhism, often referred to by its Japanese name shoshin (初心) or (much less commonly) nyuanshin. As the name suggests, it refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would.

Eric Gill: "If you look after truth and goodness, beauty looks after herself."

"Down here is our time. Our time. That's all over the moment we ride up Troy's bucket."

Two anniversaries

It is exactly five years ago today (3rd) that I started work in my present employment, a fresh faced youngster with a very short haircut.

And, now that mignight has passed, it is exactly two years today (4th) since I started this blog.

Well I never!

Good radiohead at ease thread: Changes in Style for LP7!, discuss

Listening to Street Spirit while watching people on public transport is a headfuck though. It really makes you feel seperate from everyone.

On friday I was accused by mr. bielby of having been "a bit reclusive online recently". Ha! That's a turning point that is, a crossing of a threshold, an inversion, a transposition, a collapse, a small moment in the history of civilisation. Put that last word in quotes.

Here is an interesting article.

The mind projection fallacy

a deep, confusing, and extraordinarily common mistake which E. T. Jaynes named the mind projection fallacy. [...] Jaynes, a theorist of Bayesian probability, coined "mind projection fallacy" to refer to the error of confusing states of knowledge with properties of objects. For example, the phrase mysterious phenomenon implies that mysteriousness is a property of the phenomenon itself. If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, then this is a fact about my state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon

From Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk by Eliezer Yudkowsky, which is long and very good.

Some of my faults

1. I sometimes expect other people to read my mind for me

2.

So this afternoon I sat my M208 exam. Something that occured to me afterwards was how all sorts of images and memories had popped up to accompany the process of doing the paper, corresponding with where and when I studied that particular topic (in the garden, on the train, in a pub garden, in the car by a canal, in rich and lisa's kitchen). So overall like a little tour of the last 8 months compressed into 3 hours, with maths. It went pretty well, I think.

Then we went to a pub which sold strawberry beer but had sold out so we had strawberry juice instead.

Anthony and Cleopatra - what's that all about then?

Beginner's mind

Beginner's mind is a concept in Zen Buddhism, often referred to by its Japanese name shoshin (初心) or (much less commonly) nyuanshin. As the name suggests, it refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would.

no shit

Covent garden busker
with your guitar on your lap
You played the music inside my head
It was the most beautiful music I ever heard

#29

hello!

beguine