3_2_1_letsdance

Two of my favourite men of the moment

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:48:31 GMT

I love Gordon Ramsay because he can be quiet and polite and so very gracious and then suddenly MASSIVE SCREAMING RAGE!!

I love David Walliams because he's a great big tit XD

Epic game for a paragon party!

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:02:06 GMT

Prophecies of Salushen

The characters are moving to a new and exciting location.
They have goals and plans.
They're starting to care for the world in which they exist.

I have plans laid for these two new and exciting locations.
I have maps and information written down ahead of time.
I have a wiki being made and an adventure log.
I have new music, posters, and ideas.

"It's time to take this to the next level!"

Sweetafton on YouTube

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:11:08 GMT

Because everyone needs to know about this chick :D

Question

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:35:51 GMT

If someone has a blog and two other people start having a full on conversation between each other using the comments in a particular entry... is that bad? Insulting? Both?

Inflamed Uvula

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:19:19 GMT

My uvula is inflamed and swollen and as such is resting on the back of my tongue and making me swallow reflexively and it feels like I'm swallowing my uvula!! I hate it. I hate it so much. Cut it out of me because I don't need a trembling singing voice and English doesn't use the sounds it can make!!

Oh dear, I'm the Carrier!

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:14:07 GMT

When I woke up this morning, I was sick.
The night before when I was surrounded by friends and talking right at them, thus breathing on them, I just had a slightly tickly throat which I shrugged off as being my usual cough-that-never-goes-away.

So, um, I think you guys may have to chock up on vitamins and stuff!

/sorry

Heavenly artichokes

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:29:04 GMT

Prepare for the main meal:

Take 4 - 5 artichokes and snip off the tips of each leaf and cut a cross into the base, 1cm deep.
Put them in a pot and fill it with water halfway up the artichokes.
Simmer the artichokes for 15 minutes.

Remove from the pot, and tear the artichokes into quarters.

Remove each leaf and take out the fleshy bottom part of the leaves. This is the only edible part of each leaf.
Remove the central hairy core and the stem from the fleshy heart of the artichoke. This is the only edible part of the middle.

After that you'll have perhaps 1 - 1.5 handfuls of edible artichoke pieces.
Chop them up, put them to one side, and wonder why you bothered in the first place.

Main meal:

Take a table spoon of butter and two tablespoons of olive oil and combine them in a warm pan.
Take half a chopped onion and the artichoke pieces and fry them in the oil and melted butter. Do this until the onion is soft (5 - 7 minutes worked for me)

At this point start boiling some water in another pot. You're going to be boiling enough water to cook spaghetti for two.

Add one can of diced tomatoes (I used the Signature Range "Diced Italian tomatoes with Basil and mixed herbs" but I'm sure any will do)
Allow to simmer until there're lots of bubbles everywhere.
Add around 150 - 250 mls of fresh cream (depending on how much you can poor in before you feel guilty ;)

Add angelhair spaghetti to the boiling water. Cook for 2 - 3 minutes [until it's soft, basically, and it goes soft fast! (ha)]
Drain spaghetti

Add the spaghetti to the artichoke concoction and let it simmer for a few minutes, stirring it around and folding the vegies and sauce into the spaghetti while you're doing so.

Turn off the heat, and serve while it's still bubbling away!

New icons, and a new mood theme!

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:36:42 GMT

...and that is the highlight of my day.

Tonight!: Gonna make an artichoke heart and diced tomato pasta dish for Errol!

Wow, I was in top form here!

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:57:40 GMT

Source: me, on the pagan forums.

This forum is for no particular person. The fact that you can log on without the approval or permission of another means that it's yours, for whatever reason made you think up a username to begin with.

If you want to talk about how you think the universe runs, go right ahead. If you want to ask questions and share ideas, then that's your right. It's not for one person to say "this is how it is" and leave you feeling stupid. Remember, feeling stupid is also your choice because who is someone to say that your views are wrong? If you have doubt, then they are wrong. If you have conviction, then they're right.

Because none of us knows for certain.

If someone says that "ur doin it wrong" or "this isn't what this place is for" then MAKE it that way. The brilliant thing about online space is that there can exist one place within another place. Both places can occupy the same space because what makes it different is the observer. Magic, divinity, and spiritual guidance within the internet is powerful because it really is just information and static energy. But how it's laid out affects you, the person who sees it.

"Both cyberspace and magical space are purely manifest in the imagination, both spaces are entirely constructed by your thoughts and beliefs." - Mark Pesce (one of the first technopagans)

And so this forum is a different beast for each of us. And thus it is a different thing for you. So make it whatever you want.

You have that right, and that power.

titan_insitute has moved!

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:41:30 GMT

to: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/chronicles-of-salushen

This new site will be a lot better than LJ because IT HAS A WIKI!!
I'll also be putting in a weekly adventure log.

...only a few people probably are interested in this, I know :D

My week goes well. How about yours?

Horned God

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:28:43 GMT

I simply had to share this with the pagans on my LJ list.
I present to you the Horned God that presided over the bonfire night!

October 21st 2015

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:55:36 GMT

The newspaper in the second Back To The Future has a headline "Washington Prepares For Queen Diana's Visit".

...it's bizarre to think I'm now looking at a fictional parallel universe!

This is my cool YouTube thing for this week

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:55:33 GMT

Time is part of the holistic system.

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:06:04 GMT

See, I think that Time is a fantastic thing and I really like it but a lot of the time (heh) I'm oblivious to it. I understand that everything can only work because we have it but it's much the same thing as understanding that I need air to live but not counting every breath that I take (and every move I make, incidentally... someday I'll realise I'm not anywhere near as good as Ursula Vernon and I should just stop.)

Anyway, I'm not always focused on the passage of time. I think that we have all these mental and biological cues that tell us how much time as passed between point A and point B, from the beating of our hearts to the swelling of our lungs. I understand that some people have the amazing ability to keep a perfect stopwatch in their mind, being able to start it, be completely focused on something else, and then say with perfect accuracy that they've been counting for 15 minutes and 43 seconds. I know I don't have that ability because I have at times started playing a computer game not two minutes later realise it's 8am the next day.

And that's my point. There are biological and mental cues that constantly remind us that a fundamental dimension to our universe is working and passing exactly as it should and usually I do not notice it because I'm focusing too much on myself. I suppose you could expand on that and say that if I didn't spend so much time on myself then I could gain a greater understanding of the world around me because let me tell you something: the world is holistic. It's like when people say that The Secret can't possibly be true because it's been shown by Science that what you think doesn't affect the material world. And of course the argument that positive thinking still doesn't stop cancer, another person harming you, a meteorite falling on your head, etc. But the Secret doesn't have to be a pseudoscience. There's nothing mystical about the fact that in the world it is nigh impossible to have a completely encapsulated and cut-off system. There is no such thing as a free agent when it comes to the world's connectivity. Everything that we do has consequences and a sort of ripple effect throughout the world. They may be tiny, unseen, inconsequential things but I truly believe that if the world is holistic and a system within systems then every action has an impact somehow on other people and systems within the world. And so if you're thinking positively you will do things differently and have a positive influence in the world compared to if you think negatively.

But that's all beside the point. As I was saying, the cues that inform me of the passage of time I can easily ignore. I get so focused in myself that I forget them but at other times they become painfully clear. If I'm playing a fun game I'll be so enmeshed that time passes very quickly. All of my brain power is diverted to the various systems that keep me enmeshed. There is no spare voltage lying around. But if I'm in a boring lecture then my attention is lacklustre and my imagination is quiet. Suddenly I have way more voltage for my brain to divert to other more mundane things. Suddenly I can pay more attention to the passage of the Sun, the ticking of the clock, how fast I'm breathing. Subconsciously I image that the brain has a department devoted to counting my heartbeat and making sure it keeps the correct rhythm (and writing about it has made me very aware that my heart is beating right now and less aware that I have a little toe on my right foot. Body awareness is so much fun!)

The biological, mental, cultural, and environmental cues that tell me how fast time is moving are way more noticeable and so I recognise every single one. Time flies when we're having fun not because of some weird ability of ours to distort space/time but because when we're diverting voltage to Fun Times we're subconsciously going "There's a Time Cue... ... ... ... ...and there's another Time Cue." and when we're bored or just more aware of how slowly time is dragging we're going "There's a Time Cue. Cue. Cue. Cue. CueCueCueCueCue!"

It's like when you see a picture of a car next to some rocks and then suddenly a hand reaches down and you realise the rocks are very away and the car is a tiny toy. You get a sudden perspective and appreciation for depth. Or you see a plane plodding along and then you see a cloud go by and suddenly you realise the plane is doing over a thousand miles per hour. Seeing cues provides us with our definitions in life. With our body constantly seeking out patterns and signals we understand the world around us. It changes what we're feeling and what we experience. And so one cue of time every 5 minutes or one cue of time every second... time is flowing at the same speed but our experience of it is either very slow or very fast because we're either not aware that it's passing or we're painfully experiencing every blasted second of it.

And all of that is my explanation of why, when I walk out of the house to somewhere and stop halfway because I've realised I've forgotten something... that is why it always seems to take twice as long to walk home that it did to walk away. Walking away I have plans of what I'm doing once I've arrived at my desitnation, I'm looking around, and I'm off in my imaginary world (seriously, I do have a world. I've been exploring it for quite a few years now) and all that energy is diverted from basic cues. When I'm walking back home all I'm focused on is getting there and so there's plenty of brain juice to spare!

In conclusion: time passes faster or slower depending on how aware of it passing I am.

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:36:42 GMT

Stargate Atlantis is pretty damn good.
It's not really like SG1, because the Atlantis essentially are starting from scratch. I really REALLY like how there're many small moments where they press a button and go "Oh, that's a teleporter." or "Oh, that unlocks the roof!"

And I hated McCay in SG1. But I love him in Atlantis.

Edited: they're recycling actors. I've seen Tolan as Dr Weir's boyfriend, and I'm sure I've seen the elder from "Childhood's End" before.
AND I know I've seen some of those Stargate worlds before.

Psychal

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 13:51:39 GMT

Oh thanks, brain! Thanks for bringing me to the bottom of my mood cycle on games day! And soooo quickly too!

I really enjoyed being a petulant and emotional child just because I couldn't answer a trivial pursuit question or two.

OBVIOUS REASON (IS OBVIOUS) FOR GETTING A DRIVER LICENSE #501: I can go home when I feel I need to rather than when others want to.

By all that is Holy

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:25:47 GMT

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-495538/Eighth-wonder-world-The-stunning-temples-secretly-carved-ground-paranormal-eccentric.html

That's frakking amazing!!

Less than two weeks

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:20:53 GMT

Until my birthday party.

This is just to ensure that as many people as possible have remembered. In the past I've been guilty og neglecting to tell some people until the night before. So...

IT'S MAH BIRTHDAY!!

Date: August 8th
Time: 5pm onwards
Where 24 Queens Avenue

What to bring: any alcoholic stuff you want, and bring a plate with food on it so that it's not another mad dash to the fish and chip shop to feed everyone.

Presents: You know how everyone is always all "Your presence is my present"?
Well, I like presents. The idea I had was that I wanted to save up for a new ipod. So if you can contribute towards this noble goal then awesome. If you can't, there's no harm done and enjoy the party :D

The theme is Science Fiction!

Hope to see you there :)

Spiritual Suit

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:34:45 GMT

It has occurred to me occasionally that not many people know my spiritual beliefs, and I'm not sure anyone knows the full extent of them. I'm not going to do a full essay about it now because I'm still on the incline and my spirituality is strongest at the top of the sine curve, but I'll do it eventually.

What if one of the things that sends me down is because I feel too embarrassed to do the parts of my SHAMANISM around friends and family that I do when I'm alone. For example, I do a small blessing of food. And when I'm (lol... I was typing something here but deleted it coz it sounded hokey :-/ )

But yeah... shamanism.

That is all for now.

I AM GUILTY

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:59:39 GMT

Of being too awesome for mere words to adequately express.

Sine on the up and cosine on the down

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 05:25:48 GMT

It's always a bit sad to know that while I can predict many things about my own life and body, it's still hard to control them. I say this merely to set up a theme and context for what I'm about to say. It's not a request for advice or anything. It's one of those things that I've become aware of and my mind will work in the background to solve. Keep this in mind: I am Background, not Direct.

And I've yet to decide if I will ignore replies that tell me what I should do or not. Only one person can really get past that and he knows who he is.

But anyway... back to the reason for this post.

It's true that our moods fluctuate, and that it's hard for us to define what our normal mood is when we're so involved in ourselves, each and every one of us fully into what we're feeling all the time that whatever we're feeling at that time is usually the status quo. We may not be aware of the how we're feeling or why we're feeling, but behaviour, action, and overall mood are almost always defined by the emotions we're experiencing. And when we're happy we think that we're a normally happy person, but when we're sad we think that we're always so sad and always getting the worst that life has to offer. We're always optimistic, yet the worst always happens to us. See what I mean? "Normal" depends on how we're feeling at the time. And what we're feeling changes. Ohhh how it changes.

When I'm happy, I'm a different person to when I'm sad. Sure, memories and overall thought processes and body and stuff are the same, but the control and definition they have over me is in differing amounts based on my emotion. How can I make this clearer... ah! When I'm happy my extrovert factor is more in play, I'm freer with my movements, and I focus on the positive things around me. I look more outward, taking time to notice the hot air balloon far in the distance, and the fact that one cloud over there looks like a Moebius Strip. But when I'm pensive, I'm more likely to only look at the world as how it affects me and I it. I'm more likely to be projecting on a micro and meso level than the exo and macro. Instead of joyous memories I'm likely going back over old points in my life that I think shaped what I am today, and I'm much more given to using longer words and writing them down. With happiness I use my voice and with pensiveness I use the written (typen?) word. Overall, I think that each different feeling doesn't create a different me. I take back what I said at the beginning of this paragraph. But I do think that each different feeling brings with it a different set of tools and perspectives, filters and actions.

I'm seeing a counsellor right now primarily to discover why I have a fear of working with male clients my age and older. We're also exploring the fact that I will, upon seeing a group of guys when I'm walking somewhere, almost instantly pull down a list of options in my mind for escaping the situation. Seriously, it fills me with that much fear. But that's a story for another day. I only wanted to talk about it to give this stuff an origin point. Because when we were talking about the list of options, I stumbled upon the analogy of the powersuits.

Each different feeling brings with it a different set of tools and perspectives, filters and actions. In effect, with each different mood I'm donning a different powersuit. Each powersuit has it's own tools, vid screens, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Each suit has it's own specific purpose, functions, and triggers. And each is powered by a very specific feeling. Take away that feeling and that suit falls away, but of course it's instantly replaced by another suit because there's really no such thing as a power vaccuum, especially if you concede that feeling nothing is really just another type of feeling in itself. But I'm going off track.

So that's the first thing that I discovered, and it lead to the idea that I have an emergency suit whose primary function is to quickly give me a list of escape options. And wow does it work. It can be less than a second between seeing the threat and taking evasive action. Sometimes I'm walking down a side street before I even realise there was a group walking towards me. And everything goes icy cold in my mind, and suddenly I'm very logical. You'd be amazed, people who know me. I suddenly rely entirely on common sense and logic.

Now hold off on the suits here. Just keep it in the back of your mind that I have a system in place for every emotion, as near as I can tell. It'll be important later on ASSUMING I can stay on track. For now, though, we'll be talking about the ^-sin / v-cos wave. (I just made that up now to add a bit of mystery... but I kinda like it.)

It amazes me that a lot of our processing power in our brains is given to identifying, cataloguing, and recognising patterns. The objects we identify as human have similar properties to each other and we're using pattern recognition to link one to another. But we're also aware that they don't have to look the same to be grouped as thus. But a mannequin looks human-shaped but we know it's not human. And a picture of a human is not human in itself, and an alien in the movies may look almost human but a distinguishing trait shows us it is an alien but a human with a distinguishing trait such as hare-lip is still human. It's really quite incredible at times to know that I have all that in my head so quickly that it doesn't really count as knowledge. And that's only one thing. I'm going off track again, let's just agree that we have developed the superpower of recognising patterns.

And yet something so simple as a pattern of emotion was beyond me until a few years ago. Story to illustrate this!

When I was at full-time university I'd always do great in A semester, but then get really depressed in B semester. I'd end up failing almost very paper at the end of every year. I kept getting diagnosed with depressing and I'd go on Aropax and by the end of summer I was feeling fantastic again. And this would keep happening. But because I was so totally involved in myself, I couldn't see the macro. It's easy to talk about it now that I'm aware of it, but at that stage it wasn't "something that keeps happening" but rather "something that is happening now".
And then one year I saw a new counsellor who sat down with my yearly results and noticed that my decline always started a few weeks into winter. And that's how I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder. It was sunlight: I wasn't getting enough of it. And after 20 minutes a day with a halogen lamp I started getting a whole lot better. It still works to this day.

It hadn't ever occurred to me to find a pattern of behaviour when there was very clearly one there. And this led me to wonder if there were unseen patterns elsewhere. And so a couple of years ago I started noting down how I felt every day over a couple of months. And that's when I discovered my second insight today.

I have an emotional cycle.

I climb upwards into the realms of a very good mood and stay there for about a week, and then I dip downwards gradually, and then suddenly very quickly and soon reach a low. I stay there for one or two days and then quickly ascend, then slowly curve up into my highest of highs again.

From the "median" feeling (insomuch as you can HAVE a median when we're talking about feelings) it's like a sine wave, and below the median it's like a cosine wave. Above, Sine Wave. Below, Cosine Wave. ^-sin / v-cos

Over the last couple of years I've gotten very VERY good at predicting where I'll be up to a few days ahead. For example, and I can say that within a few days I'll be at rock bottom and languish there for a day or so. At other times I can tell when I'm right at the highest and I can usually predict when I'll start dipping again. At times I have planned things around when I'm happiest, and other times I have said no to dinner invites and movies and the like because I know I'll be in a low.

High and lows don't just denote mood, by the way. They also denote self-involvement and energy. When I'm at my absolute highest it's all about other people, the greater world in which I live, and my energy levels are supreme. I'm involved in myself, sure, but I'm also wondering how I affect the world around me. I take it as a personal pleasure when I'm right about how another person is feeling, and I like to discover how my interactions help or hinder others. In my highs, I'm all about the exploration.
In my lows I almost become the opposite. I wonder how people are affecting me, and I'm much more likely to be...well... meh. I hate the word but it's true. Meh. Energy levels are down and while I still care about others, I'm very much dreading when they start talking about their problems. It's not that I don't care and love others... just that I don't have the energy to ACTIVELY care and love them.

This may anger people, and that's why I hesitated to write this. But the current suit demands it.

The good news though is that I'm aware enough of when my lows are gonna hit that I try and avoid people, and they last perhaps a day or two at the most before I'm in the incline. But yeah (oh dear, I only say "but yeah" when I'm running out of steam) ...highs and lows.

The suits tie into this in that some or more readily available when I'm high or low.

But the suits started tying into it more a few weeks ago. I started to realise that my suits weren't just something that covered me. They also covered the world. The world around me is out there but it's recreated in here and it's the in here world which is most important. And since it's the in here world... the world which has filtered into my mind.... since it's that world which I'm paying attention to, then the suits have covered the entire universe.
And that's when my brain came over and said something along the lines of this.

Hi Iain, Hub here. The world is an holistic machine where every system within systems affects the entirety of the world. And you're no different. You are a complexity of systems that all work together to create the you that you are, and environment plays a part in that creation and recreation process. Your cycle plays as much part to your powersuits as the powersuits do to your perspective. The lower you are, the more some powersuits have control over your life and the higher you are the same thing with others. And if you're an holistic system, then there are factors which you haven't even discovered that shape your cycle, and can potentially change it.

Which leads me back to the beginning of this whole thing. It's sad to know that while I have an good idea of what processes control me, I don't yet know how to change them.

Aaand that's it. I'm out of energy to continue this, and I'm really surprised that I went on for this long. But I wanted you to know that there is a second part to this that I shall write up on the incline, after my first few classes at Wintec. I predict the incline will begin on Monday, and the sin will be around Thursday. The good news is that I'm pretty sure I'll be on the sine wave for my birthday party.

In the sequel I'll get around to mentioning controlling the powersuits, how the highs and lows can help and hinder, where I'd like to end up, and the difference between a direct mind and a background mind... and hopefully by then a test you can take to figure out which one you are.

Update to sickness

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:21:58 GMT

I'm feeling much better, though I still have a bit of a sore throat and the occasional coughing.
I know I'm still heinously contagious as long as I cough, so I'm staying indoors.

Thank the Gods this hit during my holiday, though saying that I feel sorry for my friends who're sick during their work time and hard-earned holidays.

UPDATED: HOGGER IS GOING TO BE A RAID BOSS?! Maybe I'm still wayyy sick and this is an hallucination

On the subject of Man Flu

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:17:03 GMT

I dislike being right (about being sick)

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:48:58 GMT

Yep. I am sick.
Lethargy, fatigue, high fever all last night, and my joints were achy and I kept thinking my shoulder was about to dislocate because every movement aggravated it so. And now I'm just starting to cough lots.

Hmmm... I may have to see a doctor. Isn't there some sort of fuss over flu symptoms or something?

Uh Oh...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:48:22 GMT

I think I might be getting sick.
I have that thing where every movement feels cold...

I will update tomorrow when I wake up.