Two songs I have not heard in a long time

I like them very much.

Fields and Glen by Strange Folk

Upland Goose by Strange Folk

Both off the album Unhand Me You Bearded Loon. My dad just recorded them off the vinyl. I looked for digitised versions for YEARS.

A summary of my life so far…

I am not stupid. I know that. I want to get that out of the way first.

I am very inexperienced, at everything, this is because I have spent my life flitting from thing to thing, never committing to anything, never having the drive and focus of the people who succeed. Some people always knew what they wanted, some people spent their whole lives driving for that one thing, that one thing that they always knew they were destined for.

Energy Saving Lightbulbs

Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, I see yet another one of these energy saving bulbs has black marks around the entrances to the tubes. This is not the first time. I think some kind of arcing is happening between the circuit and the tube, I don’t know whether this happens to all brands and is a design flaw in the concept of these bulbs or if its just a specific brand and implementation (the ones my dad happens to buy).

Either way though I am not particularly impressed.

In other news, my brother is jealous of my recent bout of nerdiness. He says that “You won’t even be interested in this next year and you’re ruining it for people who actually want to make something of themselves”. I asked, “Ruining it? How am I ruining it?” and he said “it shouldn’t be easy!” and “when I do things people will say ‘Oh your sister did that ages ago’” – further talking revealed that “people” is our mother…

…I really dunno what to do for the boy. He still craves his mother’s approval, that’s adorable, but futile. Apart from that… I can’t help what interests me…

Adventures in Fedora

So a few days ago I downloaded the DVD iso of Fedora 13, after having tested various LiveUSB’s of Linux distro’s I settled on Fedora because it seemed to function most smoothly on my computer (Linux Mint 8 had advantages, but all in all I liked Fedora better). I am currently running Fedora 13 from an external HDD. My internal (and tiny in comparison) HDD is retaining windows a) incase Fedora breaks sometime (and thus to give me the freedom to experiment with updates without worrying about it breaking) and b) because I also just got Oblivion, a game I have wanted for a while and Planescape Torment a game I wanted for over a decade. If I can get all the computer gaming out of my system in this summer I can finally declare myself an adult or something :p.

Anyway, I am impressed with Linux. It seems to get a lot of flack from a lot of people, and I can understand some of the issues, although some of them are a bit outdated (it’s really not hard to set it up nowadays unless you deliberately choose some 1337 distro like Gentoo or something) some of them are fair enough (dedicated teams of paid developers are generally speaking going to be more focused on producing software for customers according to their needs rather than just what they the developers would like). But still, I am impressed for the most part. I am impressed with the stability of GNOME, the appearance of KDE (I installed both just to get a feel for them) – indeed I find going into windows after only a few days of using Linux hurts my eyes with its hideousness. I like the way there are so many open source programs available now. I like the fact that open office seems to be working far better than way back when I tried it before. Most of all though, I am falling in love with the command line.

I don’t know how much you can do in cmd in windows. All I ever use it for is a) formatting stuff b) ipconfig and …no that’s about it these days (I mean, its not even msdos, it’s just an emulator…). So I can’t say “the Linux commandline is far more powerful” because truthfully I don’t know. What I can say is that even in a few short days of experimentation from a zero state knowledge base I have found so many cool things I can do with it. Simple things, but things I definately do not know how to do in MSDOS (or windows DOS emulator).

For instance I have learned how to use m4 to turn things like NAME into either a specific name, or the results of some other sequence of commands. I have learned how to use tr to replace characters with other characters (all this is in terms of output, the original file is unchanged). It’s so cool, there’s tonnes of other fun stuff. I did some of the vim tutorial. There is a perl tutorial I might try soon. It’s also just fun to type commands prefixed with sudo, sure its my computer, they’re my files, I can do what I like with them, but I still feel somewhat of a powertrip everytime I type sudo and my password. Haha.

I’m not a computer person. I’m basically an experienced windows user but only insofar as doing the basic tasks that I generally do, and some minor troubleshooting (or if connected to the internet I would say my troubleshooting skills are actually very good in terms of outcomes, but that basically comes down to my searching skills not my problem solving skills). I say that to make clear that I understand that really this is basic stuff, but its basic stuff that is really getting me into it. I am just so delighted when I try out a command and woooooo it works! So all in all I am really enjoying linux. Fedora is not hard. To set it up was very easy, older versions were apparently not, but 12 and 13 (I started this experiment in linux just before 13 was released as stable so I tried both) were both very easy to get set-up. 13 has so far been a smooth ride. I am looking forward to continuing my learning experience and my experiments in Linux. Once I am all grown up and weaned off computergames, maybe I’ll switch over completely

My dad has been teasing me no end about Linux, when I was trying different distros on LiveUSB and half of them didn’t boot he was all “what do you expect” and generally coming from the “free as in crap” school of thought. But he has never used it. He’s quite wrong. It’s really fun. Even when I broke something major, and it took me two days to fix it (on a LiveUSB with permanence) – it was exhilarating. I had the time, it was a fun challenge. I want more!

Seriously, this rocks. It’s not geeky to think so. It’s true, anyone with any sense of adventure would agree. :p

Lonely

I don’t get lonely that often really. Or, not lonely in a way where I don’t want to be lonely. Today, tonight, this morning, I do not wish to be lonely, but lonely I am.

I keep listening to this video, and when it gets to the shouts of  “Христос воскресе” I join in with the response, or I was doing for a while. And it just… it makes me feel so alone here in Aberystwyth. Here I am, and there from my speakers is the illusion of solidarity, of all these people, all these people gathered together to share in Paschal joy (and Saturday night for me passed so fast), but it is an illusion, I am here in my room all alone. My family do not believe. My best friend does not believe. My Russian teacher is the closest person I could share this sentement with, and …well I don’t really know her well enough to call her up in the wee hours of the morning (or even during the day).

I’m stuck alone. And, I don’t like it. I think, I want to be in a crowd, somewhere loud, and bustling and full of life. This is something I never ever ever want, but it is what I want today, what I wanted yesterday.

I feel bad too that, is God not enough? Should I feel so alone? Does it mean something that I am lonely? Something about my disconnection from these events, not just in terms of physical proximity, but in terms of spirit? If I were closer to God, would I be immune to this, would I rejoice with the angels and forsake the need for men? Would the saints not be crowd enough for me?

I am lolling so hard

I found out if I play songs I sang into a microphone after putting the title, artist etc tags in the mp3 – when I play it it comes up on last.fm. There is now a last.fm page with my actual name, and just for lulz I uploaded my (terrible) songs onto it.

I wonder how many people have done that? I never come across anyone who was as shameless as me so far to do that.

Hahahahaha. I played them to my mum, but she heard them through a mothers ears poor dear.

For today: http://www.last.fm/music/Sophia+Marsden/_/Christos+Anesti?autostart