So guess who's got a new website up, yeah? Check it out, yeah?</nathan_barley>

www.sonsofloki.co.uk

So it's back to the old LJ until I get the blog up, so here's a big old entry:

Been following this Air France missing plane and spending long hours reading up on various air crashes over the years. It's slightly frightening yet strangely reassuring. The more problems are found, the safer air travel gets, of course. Also, I learned it's safer to sit at the back.

Also, not unrelatedly, I've been playing a lot of FSX. Oh, good old Flight Sim. I still remember getting a copy of FS98 for my birthday many years ago, but it's taken me until now to get even half-way proficient at it. Light aircraft are fine, but the jets are scarily complicated things which tend to drop out of the sky for no reason if you forget to switch something on or off. Flew a simulated 737 across Europe in the first leg of my flight to Korea in 20 days (argh) and actually landed it, though, which is a first.

Yeah. I'm sad. So in real life, we all had our Japan Inside-Out essay on Friday. I don't think anyone was confident, and I hadn't really done any revision, but I think I may well have done alright by stringing out the stuff I'd picked up. After that we headed down to Little Tokyo for the giant end-of-exam celebration meal, though there was only like a dozen of us. Still, it was fun. It was what uni is all about.

Then Summer Ball (rained out, expensive, kind of a waste of time but fun in a weird persevering way) and today I managed to organise a successful trip to Settle and a hike in the Dales where no one died. Awesome!

Well, I'm waiting on Shaun to restore the backup to sonsofloki, so I'm posting here for a bit.

Today was just one of those really lovely days, you know? Went in to Parkinson Court at 11 to meet up with Rob/Miles/Katy, who are going to ICU, and Fran, who's with me in TUFS, to look at Tokyo guesthouses together. We're thinking about "Big Hills 21" (warning: insane web design) which works out at about 46,000 yen/month (about £300): more than TUFS's on-site accomodation, but damn cheap for Tokyo (and quite a lot less than I'm paying at the moment).

That done, the ICUers went down to drop off their application forms at the temporary East Asian Department office, we got some lunch, I bought tickets for Grease Fruity this Friday (which will either be awesome or godawful), Rob and Miles and I wound up in Parkinson Court, ate our lunch, and taught our Japanese friend filthy English expressions. (Though to be fair, she knew a few already.)

Then off down to EC Stoner (which I was disappointed to hear no longer has the longest corridor in Europe) and to a dimly-lit office to get some insurance for Korea. (It fascinates me to think of all the random offices and all the various staff working for all the tiny little departments like Insurance and Cleaning Facilities and Plumbing and whatever else, hidden in sub-basements and at the end of long, twisty corridors.)

There is a small but distinct possibility that I may be flying into a warzone this time in a month. I'm sure nothing will come of it.

Yeah, posted this around a bit, but if you didn't see it first time: have started new blog, Sons of Loki. Will one day be part of vast media empire, possibly.

A weird thing happened today. After I was coming back from lunch - gammon and mustard semi-circle of sandwich - I spotted Hugo and Emily, said hi, and was about to just walk past them when I realised you're supposed to stop and talk to people you know. But I had already walked past, so I did an ungainly halt and spun around and said hi. I was just off to do some kanji practice, and they were just off to find somewhere indoors with coffee, so I thought I'd go with them. Hugo's doing intermediate Japanese so though I know him pretty well and I've spoken to him a bunch of times I wouldn't really say we were best buds, and Emily I only properly met a week ago (although I kept seeing her in English lectures and at the Japan society socials, though she's not doing Japanese (but she's still annoyingly fluent, I think she might have lived there or be half-Japanese or summat)).

Anyway, we went to the Baines Wing cafe, sat down, chatted, drank cappuchino, I tried to do some kanji revision. Then Hugo left so it was just me and Emily, who I don't really know but we kept chatting, and then Emily's Japanese friend Manami appeared, and I did my traditional halting introduction in Japanese (I always feel really self-conscious about speaking Japanese. It feels uncomfortably patronising/show-offy). Then Emily had to go so it was just Manami, and me trying to converse in bad Japanese. Then Manami's friend Teppei appeared, and to cut a long story short, an hour later I found myself sitting at a table with a Latvian, Spaniard, Korean, and two Japanese, all of whom I had known for precisely one hour. It occurred to me:

a) it's weird how many people you can meet in the space of an hour without any intention
b) it's weird being a native English speaker and listening in on a conversation between non-native speakers, when it's used as a lingua franca. It's like a tree falling in the woods, somehow: does a English conversation exist if no one conversing speaks it as a mother tongue? It highlights a bizarre bit of thinking in native English speakers. We assume foreigners (to use the term very loosely) learn English to speak to native English speakers in Britain and the US and Australia, and that a conversation in English necessarily requires a native speaker to exist. But, of course, that's the Anglo-centric view of things. A huge proportion of conversations in English are between non-native speakers, used as a general lingua franca, whether it's a Russian business phoning a company in China, or a Spanish tourist asking for directions in Poland. Which is something we will have to come to terms with. You can blather about the decline of English or people splitting infinitives or how American English is all wrong, but ultimately it counts for naught. Future of English isn't in Britain or the US or Canada or Australia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananias_and_Sapphira
Acts chapter 4 closes by stating that the Christian believers in the early Church did not consider their possessions to be their own, but they had all things in common, and that a church member, Barnabas, sold a plot of land and donated the profit to the apostles. Ananias and Sapphira also sold their land, but withheld a portion of the sales, having decided that they did not wish to give it all to the common purse.

In chapter 5, Ananias presented his donation to Peter, who replied, "Why is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit?" Peter pointed out that Ananias was in control of the money, but that he had withheld it from Peter, and stated that Ananias had not only lied to Peter, but also to God. Ananias died on the spot, and as a result, everyone who heard the tale became afraid. Three hours later, his wife told the same lie and suffered the same fate.

So ... God is a Communist? This certainly puts all the right-wing Bible bashers complaining about the government taking all their money/evading tax on difficult ground. It is always surprising: the people who will happily dig out obscure bits of Bible text to support homophobia, but conveniently forget all that stuff about, ooh, giving away all your property and helping the needy and being, you know, nice.

First there was cyberpunk in the 1980s, when William Gibson asked "What happens if technology takes over the world for bad?" Back then, in the cold dark days of the ZX Spectrum and clunky IBM PCs it seemed inconceivable that computers would ever become as ubiqutious as TVs or cars. Then in the 90s, people like Neal Stephenson said "What if technology took over the world and made it awesome?" It became more obvious with the advent of the internet that computers would spill over from our education and work lives into affecting the way we actually live, but no one knew exactly how. Would we have computers in our heads? Would you use the internet for video calling your friends? Would people pay for access to websites? And now we're at ... post-post-cyberpunk(?). Where computers have taken over our lives, and social networking is pretty much a given. (Who's not on Facebook these days? Weird people, that's who.) You have cool little programs like f.lux which tie in directly with the natural world outside, millions of people who update every second of their waking lives on Twitter and Facebook, stuff like last.fm which connects people by shared musical taste, and Google can automatically show you the top news stories and trends of the day without any human input. It's rather a fascinating time to be alive, and that's basically what my book is about.

Available in stores like whenever.

Had my South Korea meeting today. There are actually eight of us going, and everyone seems pretty cool from the minute or two of chat we got. As we were going, I said "Should we swap details or something? Facebook?" and everyone said "yeah, sure." Think back to, ooh, January 2007 even. A scant two years ago, and we'd have been swapping email addresses. How the world changeth.

Blehhh. Just been to Japan Society's social at the Cuthbert Broderick. Not too many people this week - I guess everyone's in revision lockdown - but there was Rob and James and Hugo, who I had a mardle and a pint with. And I'm so jealous of them. Rob's practically fluent. James is even more impressive: I don't know if he's as good as Rob, but he started with literally no knowledge back in October, and now he's phenomenal.

And so that leaves me. I have no talent for Japanese, it seems. Or, more accurately, no motivation...? For three months now I've been sitting in lessons blank-faced, barely keeping up with anything, and I don't feel like I know anything. I feel like I've gone backwards. It is frustrating, to try and answer the teacher and barely managing simple -masu and desu. I've learnt stuff, but it feels like the only Japanese I can come out with at any given moment is the simple stuff I knew right at the beginning. It feels like I don't know why I'm even doing this any more.

But sitting in the pub tonight, turning green with envy, I caught a faint glimmer of something, the reason I signed up for this. It's about being in an exclusive club; a club of people who can speak Japanese, and thereby bonding through that. Or... something. At it's most basic level, it's about sitting around a table chatting in Japanese. Communicating. Yes, this is what I came here to do, and I should probably get on with it.

It's quite fascinating watching Twitterfall - the latest twitter posts about the top trends of the day, as they happen. Right now, there's a lot of business about Earth Day, and some fellow is running for Governor of California, and there's a lot of discussion about Miss California's views on gay marriage ... Okay, most of it is shallow crap from San Fransisco-based nerds, but it's weirdly like some cyberpunk future where the news doesn't come out daily, or even hourly, but by the second. Maybe I will finally give in and get a Twitter account or something.

Back in Leeds, yup. Not getting anything done, but am nearing 30,000 word mark on Unexpectedly Fast-Growing Spring 2009 Novel (tentative title: The World Turned Upside Down). Hopefully going to cinema tomorrow. Continually fascinated by the awe and wonder of the Facebook Friend Wheel, which proves the old maxim about everybody being connected (mostly) by throwing up weird random links between the three major groupings of people I have on Facebook (Norwich, Japanese, and flat). Hazel knows John who knows Hannah who knows Shaun who knows Steve who is going out with Sarah who was childhood friends with Miles who studies Japanese with Toby who knows Yuga who does Radiology with Fiona who lives with Laura who knows Daisy who knows Sarah who knows Steve who knows Shaun ... etc.

Had weird dream last night. Catching flight to Japan via Berlin, for some reason, and I missed a flight or something, and I didn't even know which airport I was at. Went to the local Asda. Met my old boss in his car, had a chat.

So this summer I have a total of £1,000 and 43 hours to spend on various flights. Ouch. But there is, of course, the option of flying to Japan at the end of July and holding out two months until uni starts. But then that would cost me £600 in rent alone, plus lost earnings, so I guess there's not much point except a certain neatness and leg up on living in Japan. Bloody hell, going to Korea. Awesome.

One chapter of Transmetropolitan deals with an incident in which the police cover up a CCTV video which shows two cops standing by while a man is brutally murdered. Thought that was just fiction, part of the dystopian future totalitarian state of Transmetropolitan. Thought it could never happen in real life. I thought wrong.

So a man, Ian Tomlinson, collapsed and died during the G20 protests.

There is a possibility that Tomlinson's death would remain unexplained, were it not for a New York man having filmed the incident and given the footage to the Guardian, showing a police officer during the G20 protests attacking him for no apparent reason and knocking him to the ground. He got up, staggered away, and died shortly afterwards. (Incidentally, this footage is a fine example of sousvellience, citizens watching the state rather than the other way around.)

This is bad enough, that a man was assaulted for no reason. But the worst thing is how very, very easily this could have been forgotten. No one would have known that Tomlinson had been knocked down. Except for a few eyewitnesses there would be no proof. It was all down to that video.

Recently it has become illegal to photograph or film police officers, and they can confiscate cameras. You can see where this is going. It is very, very bad news.

I've never gone in for conspiracies or privacy hysteria, but this is worrying. I don't doubt that there are a great number of decent, honest police out there, but then there is clearly something very rotten with at least some of them.

I confess that many times I have actually worried - if I went back in time, how would I invent all the important inventions to make the world a better place?

Thankfully someone else had that same worry.

Two envelopes, one from the uni, one unmarked. Opened the unmarked one - it was from the Student Finance people regarding the extra loan money I'll get for the year abroad (about £900, which isn't bad).

Second envelope, and the first thing I saw was a handwritten note which I assumed was from Nicola Craine. "Oh, crap, I forgot to fill something in for Japan and she's sent me the forms." The next piece of paper said "Chung Ang," and I instantly knew. "Huh. Cool," I thought.

"I'm going to fucking Korea," I then exclaimed.

Yup. It was worth it. All expenses paid, £800 bursary (flights are a healthy £450, so the rest is free to spend), Korean culture studies on everything from architecture to calligraphy to cooking, excursions, Seoul, the de-militarised zone, language study ... This is quite literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

So, I guess it just goes to show - if something comes up, go for it.

"In a similar study published last year, 40% of 150 UK participants claimed to remember seeing closed circuit television footage of the moment of the explosion on the bus in Tavistock Square on July 7th 2005. No such footage exists." (from Bad Science)

Basically, don't trust the public on anything.

This week, I have been mostly doing work experience in the EDP's offices. It has mostly considered of sitting at a desk reading newspapers, the stuff for English I should have done last month, and sitting in on the two daily conferences, but even so it's been interesting. Watching the development of a story, for example, from a vague idea in the conference or a one-line article in the PA news feed into a fully-filled-out article or story. Reading through the Guardian or Times and thinking about why they write certain stories and where they put them, for example. I've also been out with reporters today on two stories to see how a story gets put together, which has been great.

I saw one PA piece about a father shocked to find a bag of ecstasy pills inside a second-hand copy of GTA4 from Gamestation ... while quietly ignoring the fact that he was buying it for his 11 year-old son. Not that I really have a problem with that (I'm all for parents deciding what their kids should watch and play, not the state), but still.

And seeing the photos of Obama in his surprise Iraq visit was strangely heartening. We are truly living in interesting times. I've said before how we never realise how we're living through history, but Iraq has easily been as historic as Vietnam, and as the occupation there winds up it's beginning to be more obvious. I have no idea if Iraq is better or worse now - one piece I read today said about how British troops feel Iraq is way safer than it was a few years ago, which is encouraging, but yesterday saw another spate of bombings. But the general trend seems to be that things actually are improving, and the Iraqi army is learning to fight for itself, and if we get anything out of this mess it might as well be a decently-functioning state.

But regarding Obama: the day he became President, it was slightly hard to believe. He's been on TV, I hear he's been signing lots of things, but it hasn't quite sunk in that Obama is in charge now. But seeing as he's visited two Muslim countries in the last few days, and seems to genuinely want to reach out to the Islamic world; and reading some of the views of Iraqi citizens - some of whom are understandably cautious, but some who are really pleased by Obama's outreach - it's becoming obvious that something has changed.

So my PC is persisting in some ridiculous Schrodinger state of being simultaneously working and not working and appears to switch between the two just when you think you've got it nailed down. I thought it was the PSU, I thought it was the memory, maybe it's the keyboard for all I know. At any moment it might just die on me again for no logical reason. It's infurianting.

Having said that, I'm glad I've got the new PSU. It's scarily quiet, so much so that when I switched it on just now in the silence of my room I thought it wasn't working.

In 1991, actress Jeri Ryan married investment banker Jack Ryan. Fast forward to 1997, when she won the role of Seven of Nine in Star Trek Voyager, filmed in Los Angeles, while her husband worked in Chicago. The frequent separations took their toll on their marriage, and they divorced in 1999. Now fast forward to 2004, when who do we have running for Illinois senator as the Republican candidate? None other than Jack Ryan, well-placed until a decision by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider has the Ryans' confidential divorce files opened to the public! The resulting scandal forces Ryan out of the race, replacing him with little-known activist Alan Keyes. Keyes loses by a landslide to none other than rising Chicagoan star, Barack Obama! Fast forward to 2008, when Obama defeats rival McCain to become President of the United States.

The questions we have to ask now are: What do Voyager producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga have to gain from having their man Obama in the White House? Wikipedia says "Berman has been vague on his current activities, although he has indicated he is ... involved in ... "[projects] not connected to the television business". And Braga? Since Obama's election, he's been granted a cushy position as Executive Producer on drama series 24; ironically, with the current series dealing with government conspiracies!

What was the real truth behind Jeri Ryan being cast as Seven of Nine in Voyager? We may never know.

Rather cool reality subversion of the week: someone in the background at a G20 protest on the news holding aloft a sign reading "WHO IS JOHN GALT?", an oblique reference to a plot point in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

I don't understand, however, why a person in a anti-capitalist demo would be promoting a book with a fiercely right-wing ideology which wholeheartedly supports the kind of unregulated economic greed which led us into this global crisis in the first place.

So after reading a little bit on PSUs and what all those numbers mean, I'm a little shocked that my PC is still running. But it all makes sense now. A few months ago, when I started getting unexpected crashes, I tried unplugging my DVD drive - and lo and behold, somehow it fixed it. After an hour of dragging my PC over bumps in Leeds and getting my PC back home it started freezing again, but it was doing that thing that PCs on a ropey PSU do - dying completely for half an hour, then starting up like nothing had happened. Thinking it might be power-related I unplugged all non-essential USB peripherals and two case fans, and suddenly it worked again.
Today I needed to do some printing and iPod-synching, so I plugged in my printer and iPod - and bang, it's off crashing again. The BSOD said it was the USB ports, but I was beginning to cotton on to the true suspect. Did something I should have done months ago, but was to afraid to look at; the voltages. Way, way, way off. The 12V rail is a little iffy if it drops to 11V - mine's at 1.86V. Argh. I have no idea what that actually means, but I have a feeling it's not good. I was kind of asking for trouble, what with three case fans and two hard drives and my GPU's two PCI-E power connectors wired up with a kludge job to three Molex connectors on a single 12V rail rated at a pissy 20 amps. (Incidentally, that may be the geekiest sentence I have ever written.)

The thing is, Wikipedia tells me, my PSU is from the old generation where the 5V rail was more important than the 12V rail, so most of the power supplied is on the 5V rail. Which was fine back then. But now with our big old graphics cards and dozen fans and twenty-six ten thousand RPM hard drives all drawing power from 12V, a PSU needs most of its power on the 12V rail. (Incidentally, that's why a gaming PC needed 750W back then but can get away with 500W now - more of the wattage is going actually where it's needed.)

Pfft. So, hopefully, my PC won't halt and catch fire before my new PSU gets here, a shiny 500W OCZ job with two 12V rails of 18A each. Got to pay that off. Good thing I'm in work again. It never ends, does it.