Boredom again.

So, here I am. After a month of neglect, I'm back at this blogging business. By which I mean I finally ran out of things to do for long enough that I had to resort to posting random thoughts on the internet. And guess what? It's not even midnight yet! Something must be terribly terribly wrong with the world for this to happen.

Normally if I run out of things to do, I'd be going to sleep. And considering I've got an algebra test tomorrow, that's probably what I should do. But considering I'm being paid $70 to sit and look after the UNSW Sunsprint track from 3am-7am, that's not likely to happen. So instead here I am, trying to waste the time between now and then (some four hours, which could probably be spent productively somehow). So, yeah. No sleep for me tonight!

I really don't have much else to say. I guess the election is on on Saturday. So there's that. I heard a couple of friends were going to play an election drinking game - for every five seats that Labor loses, they take a shot. Meaning that if the ALP wins, then that's a minimum of 15 shots. I think they figure that if Tony Abbott wins, then the world isn't worth living in anyway. I tend to agree with them on that, since Tony Abbott is an idiot.

Okay, I'm really out of things to say now. I'mma just go make myself a cup of tea and find some other way to distract myself from the relentless march of time.

Contiki Chronicles, Day 13: When in Rome...

Well, it's official. The Contiki Chronicles are now officially more than a year out of date.

Also, I'm totally out of Rome-related names for posts, so tomorrow might be a bit unimaginative.

So, first thing: The Vatican City.

Well, I didn't actually go into the Vatican. I'd already been before so I figured I'd save myself the thirty euro and get myself some lunch instead. I wandered down some random street near the Vatican, looked at about six or seven different restaurant/cafe places, and finally settled on the second or third place I found, because they did lasagne and lasagne is God's gift to humanity. So I went in, seated myself, ordered the lasagne, and was served with a lump of almost pure carbs. It was glorious. There wasn't any meat however, since the lasagne I ordered was not alla bolognaise, meaning it was more or less just pasta sheets and cheese layered on top of each other so densely I was convinced it had its own gravity. Like I said, glorious.

After that incredibly satisfying meal, I wandered back up to the Vatican to wait for the rest of the tour. Just across the road from St. Peter's Square, I spied this sign outside a souvenir shop:

Apparently Papal Blessings are for sale. Who knew.

Anyway, I bought a shot glass of some description, and then promptly needed to go to the toilet. After about fifteen minutes of searching for a map, I found one, which then told me the toilets were on the complete other side of the square. And did I mention that it was incredibly hot and sunny? And that there is almost NO shade in the entirety of the square (which is more of an ellipse, to be honest)? Well, there's that. 

That's the view of the square from where the only map was. Yeah, it's pretty fucking big.

So I went to the toilet, and when that was over and done with, I figured I'd take a look at the square itself. Or, more accurately, the only thing of interest in the entire square. Which is the big ass obelisk in the centre of it.

Yup, that's the one. That thing is over four thousand years old, and was taken from Egypt by the Ancient Romans who just chucked it up in a bunch of places at different times until it was finally moved to this Square. It's been there ever since, and I think the Vatican likes it because the Catholic Church seems to have some kind of addiction to obelisks. Seriously, those things are fucking everywhere. 

Anyway, have some facts about the Vatican which I couldn't throw smoothly in anywhere else in this post:

The Vatican city itself is a separate country located entirely within the city of Rome. At 0.44 square kilometres, it's the smallest country in the world, although it somehow manages to narrowly miss out on being the least populated with around 800 residents. It's just beat out by the Keeling Islands, and the Pitcairn Islands, with populations of 550 and 66, respectively.

More importantly though, the Vatican City is the world centre of Catholicism. It's where the Pope lives, and where a number of other high ranking clergymen reside. It also happens to be protected by a very famous mercenary force: The Swiss Guard. The Pontifical Swiss Guard, as the ones who serve the Vatican are officially called, are directly responsible for the safety of the Pope, and serve as the Vatican's de facto military force.

And that's enough facts since I honestly can't remember anything else that's useful, and I'm getting bored of trudging through Wikipedia articles on this.

After catching up with the rest of the tour, we all hopped back on the bus and were taken on a short driving tour of the city. Here are some photos, if you want some descriptions then you'll probably have to wait because they'll be coming at some unspecified later point.

And then we got off the bus. Like I said, it was a fairly short tour, and to be fair, a lot of the things in Rome are pretty close together. Also, that was when we started our walking tour, which was a bit longer.

So there we were, just outside the Coliseum, where the Ancient Romans would make gladiators and other things fight each other for their own amusement. We headed off down the street, past the old Roman forum, and a bunch of other ruins which I can't really remember what they were, and down that long street/boulevard/avenue/thoroughfare that led to the Coliseum, we arrived at Il Vittoriano, which is a big ass fucking huge monument to the guy who united Italy.

We walked past the big white monument building, down some street, down some other street, and possibly down three or four more streets until we arrived at the Trevi Fountain, which is really famous for some reason:

Apparently the water of this fountain is enchanted or some shit, and according to some legends, drinking it allows you to regrow your virginity or something. I'm not prepared to testify to the truth of that claim, but I know that the water is, in fact, drinkable. All of the public fountains and taps in Rome are, which is pretty cool. Also, apparently the pizza from the shops around the fountain are meant to be really good or something. I didn't try any so I don't really know.

After some more walking, there was this:

I honestly can't remember what this was, and I don't actually care all that much either.

Then there were these:

It's just a bunch of stairs, but the Spanish Steps are really famous, again, for reasons I can't quite explain. However, they're meant to be romantic for some reason and as such are a really popular destination for couples, and hawkers looking to sell stuff to couples.

Finally, we reached out penultimate destination on the walking tour, and also one of the few places which is actually pretty cool: The Pantheon.

This photo gets to be in large because that's how cool this place is.

The Pantheon is a temple. Except this temple isn't dedicated to any one God, instead it is consecrated to every God. Or at least every God of Ancient Rome. Inside is a bunch of murals dedicated to the various Gods, and also a bunch of tombs of some really cool people. Furthermore, there's no electric lighting in the entire building (or at least the public areas). Instead, all the light is provided by this:

What's that, you ask? Why, it's a hole in the roof. It's surprisingly effective at keeping the entire inside of the building well lit for admittedly brief periods of time. And I imagine it must be kind of annoying when it rains, but I still think it's pretty cool.

A block or two past the Pantheon, there's another square, which contains a fountain. A fountain which I only have a somewhat unsatisfying picture of, but a fountain nonetheless.

Of you're a fan of the works of Dan Brown, then you might recognise this fountain when I tell you its name: The Fountain of the Four Rivers. This is the fountain in which Robert Langdon engages in an epic underwater struggle against the bad guy whose name I can't remember. As awesome as that is, I can tell you now that such a battle would have looked kind of ridiculous in real life, since the water is barely waist deep.

It was in that square that we had dinner and then boarded the bus back to the campsite. It was a long day with a lot of walking, although tomorrow was actually even longer. And I think I also figured out what I'm going to call the next chapter, so there's that.

Contiki Chronicles, Day 12: On the road again...

Two things:

1. It's now been so long since this trip happened that I'm relying rather heavily on my stock of photos to remind me what exactly happened.

2. After looking over said photos, I realise day 12 was not a particularly interesting day. I think. It was a travel day, but I don't think Florence and Rome are too far apart, so this might have also been the day we went to the Vatican. Well, the day that everybody else went to the Vatican. I had lasagne instead.


Either way, I'm going to use this opportunity to just get a couple of things straight.

This was Day 12. We started on Day 1, July 10th. The day in which we travelled from Florence to Rome was July 21st.

Here are the Day sheets from Florence and Rome, just in case there was any confusion at all.

Florence:

Rome:

Rome was kind of a blur anyway, so I'm probably just gonna fit all the stuff that happened in those three days into the next two posts anyway.

Insomnia

It turns out I haven't named any of my posts "Insomnia" yet. Which is weird, considering it seems to be the motivating factor for about 70% of all my posts. Kind of like this one.

So here I am, at 3am, having just failed to get to sleep for the last two hours, writing a blog post. I'm honestly struggling to come up with things to talk about past "what I've been doing for the last <insert time since last blog post>". I'm not really sure many people appreciate getting nothing more than brief snapshots into the train wreck that is my life. Especially since I can't really say much had changed. Exams are almost over, I guess. My last one - for Comp - is on Wednesday, and I'm feeling pretty good about it, which is more than I could have said for Physics and Maths. After that, well, I'll be off trying to find stuff to do for almost four weeks again. It will probably involve copious amounts of drinking.

But enough of that. My life really isn't that interesting. Makes me wonder why I have a blog in the first place, to be honest. The answer is because I was convinced my brain held hidden gems that were just waiting to be thrust out onto the interwebs for the viewing pleasure of at least like, a dozen people. Maybe a dozen and a half. The reality is that if those gems do exist, my brain filtering system decides to keep me from thinking about those instead of the flood of crap that it's actually meant to keep out. And so I end up with all sorts of useless junk going through my mind at 3am in the morning, thus resulting in this blog post.

Hmm... Two paragraphs so far, I must be on a roll today. Maybe I can keep it going if I just keep typing and not think about the fact that nobody in their right mind would want to read the garbage that spews forth from my brain like some kind of limitless trash fountain into the small confined area that is my blog. But meh, screw those people. I never enjoyed talking to right-minded people anyway. I only like crazy people. They're much more entertaining, so long as you can keep them from delivering severe bodily harm to people. People who aren't you, that is. Or people who you care about. Or anybody who isn't a person you have a severe hatred for. But in every other case, that shit is hilarious.

Let's see... what else has been going on? I may have mentioned this already, but I've been playing some crazy amount of Borderlands 2 recently. I've kind of already finished the game though. Twice. I'm planning on getting the DLC for it as soon as the bank gets its shit together and sends me my debit card. Which might not be for a while, since they apparently managed to send it to a totally different branch to the one that they were supposed to. Hopefully I can get it by Friday though, since dropping by the bank on campus might be a bit of a hassle once I'm back home in Orange. Not that I'm opposed to a three and a half hour drive, mind you. It just doesn't seem practical from my viewpoint is all.

Also, I've now watched all of both existing seasons of Sherlock, and I can now see what all the fuss is about. It's a good show. I'm currently two episodes into Breaking Bad, but I seem to be taking my time with this show, not entirely sure why. Maybe it's the awkwardly-lengthed episodes or the fact that despite my outward appearance, I'm just not that into crystal meth. Or more likely, it's the fact that I only watch it when it's past midnight and then I need to go to sleep shortly after. Probably that last one.

I should probably stop typing now. I get the impression the quality of my writing has dropped somewhat dramatically over the last three paragraphs. Although I'm still not tired enough to sleep, which is kind of bullshit. And I still have almost nothing to write about. Maybe if I just completely abstained from computers for three weeks I'd have more interesting tales to tell. As it is, most of my time which could otherwise be spent experiencing adventures and other tales of derring-do is instead consumed by my apparently voracious appetite for banality. Whoo.

And with that charming end note, I'm off to try my luck at being tired elsewhere on the Internet. Farewell, all ye who venture here!

I don't know what this post is supposed to be.

But I've already committed to writing it, so I might as well keep going.





...Or not. I've been here for about fifteen minutes and I still haven't written anything.

Oh well.

The Kind of Okay Gatsby

I just got back from watching The Great Gatsby. Y'know, the story is really profound in a number of ways. Essentially, it's the story of a man who refuses to let go of the future which he's constructed for himself, and how his staunch refusal to allow anything to deviate from his own preconceived destiny eventually tears his life apart. The story actually resonates with me a little bit, and watching the film, it made me think that perhaps I should be taking some kind of lesson from Gatsby, whose relentless pursuit of a perfect love blinds him to the world around him. Gatsby creates a fantasy for himself which  includes only himself and the object of his desire, and when that starts to drift away, so too does his entire life.

...But, on the other hand, I don't really care that much.



Oh, and the movie was pretty good, too.

Life Update

So it suddenly occurred to me how long it's been since I made a blog post. Not that that's ever really been much of a reason to make one in the past, but I'm kind of bored and in a procrastinating mood, so why not update my one or two regular readers as two what the hell has been going on in my life since the last blog post.... Wait.

It's only been three weeks? WHAT MADNESS IS THIS. Hrm. I don't know if it's a good thing or not that three weeks is starting to look like a long time from where I'm standing. Either way, I've already started this post, so I might as well finish it.

So a lot has happened, I guess. I think I've finally managed to get my Uni work under control (and it's now the end of week 8. Eek!), and it seems to be going well so far. I still don't like Maths and Physics, but I'm pretty sure that's more because of when the lectures are than anything else. Comp and Engineering are going pretty well - we just got our project for Computing, which is to represent a game (similar to Settlers of Catan) in code as a tutorial group, and then in pairs to create an AI to play that game (and hopefully win).  It looks like a lot of fun.

Exams are on next month, and I'm kind of quietly freaking out about them, but I figure I can get most of my work up to date well before then and in time to cram furiously for the harder ones. After that is the end of semester, yay!

Let's see... what else is going on? I've recently been playing Injustice for iOS, because Superheroes beating each other up - who wouldn't like that? I'm not playing the much more advanced console version because I a) have no console on which to play and b) have no TV to connect the console up to. So I'm stuck on my iPad. Which I guess isn't too bad, really. I started reading the Dark Tower series by Stephen King back in O-Week and I still haven't touched the first book since then, but I'll get around to it. Eventually. I've also been sucked in to League of Legends and re-sucked in to Minecraft, which is slightly worrying, but I kind of don't really care for the moment.

I still don't have a girlfriend, although I can't exactly say that I've been trying very hard (or at all). It also occurred to me just the other day in the club, exactly how socially broken I am. Which is kind of depressing and something I really don't actually have any idea what to do about. Did I ever mention I was made a Social Assistant for College? Well then... that happened. And I've also, for various reasons had to cut out a large part of my personal life, but that's something I plan to eventually return to.

And so there you have it. My social life is a mess, my private life is also a mess, but at least my academic life isn't completely a mess. I still pretend like my conscious mind has control over my actions when in reality I continually knowingly make stupid decisions because I apparently have no impulse control, and I think I may also have a slight alcohol problem. Namely that I have none except for cheap boxed wine.

BALANCE!

That's hardly anything new, is it? Well, not if you know me at all, that is.

Anyway, I'm still conflicted as to whether or not me being drunk is a good thing or not. In general, it's a terribly bad thing, but that also means I'm having fun which is about three quarters of what I care about life, right?

Well, wrong. I think. If I was trying to maximise my profits on enjoyment on life, such that I would have to enjoy all of my later life and therefore have no life whatsoever during my university years, then I would totally be on the wrong track right at this moment. Because I would be enjoying myself when all of my reasonable state of mind says I shouldn't be.

So today's lesson is about BALANCE.

This is, arguably, the single most important lesson there is to learn. Balance is EVERYTHING.

And EVERYTHING mean almost everything. This is the point where I go in to feng shui and all that, but the central idea you need to keep in mind is that everything you do has consequences. And all of those consequences are balanced in some way by the universe. In general, you can sum a lot of this up through Newton's third law: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

This means, if you do something which benefits you in the short term, then it will ultimately hinder you in the long run. Furthermore, something which might not seem at the time to be a wise choice might ultimately result in a greater position for yourself later on.

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that Newton's Laws were meant for physical applications rather than moral ones. But the point still stands that everything that comes around, goes around. In a very much more verbose fashion, but still.

So yeah. Balance. Balance in everything you do, say and think. That's what it all comes down to. If you have no balance then <insert weird crazy zen talk here> and you will never find true happiness.


Trufax.

Post

Posty post post post. Post.

I need to sleep.

50th Post, Whoo!

...And of course there's no better time to make it than when I really really should be studying for a Calculus test tomorrow.

But you know, fuck Calculus and all that whatnot.

I'd like to point out that this blog has actually been going since October 2011, meaning that I've had it for just under a year and a half. In those 36 months I've managed to rack up an average of just over one and a third posts per month, which means one post every 23 days or so. Of course, that's just an average and is totally ignoring that time I did like three in one day because I was bored as fuck, or when I actually managed to post one every day for a week and a bit. Or even for the last two months when I've just posted a bunch because I actually bookmarked Blogger so I don't go forgetting about the fact that I even have a blog in the first place.

That said, for all my many many posts, there's surprisingly little actual content. I'm convinced a good third or more of all my posts are all just made when I was bored and figured I should just make posts because it might alleviate the boredom for a bit.... kind of like right now! How about that.

...Okay I actually don't have anything to say. I feel like I should make a big deal over the fact that after all this time, I've finally managed to hit a half century in posts, but in light of the fact that a decent majority of those are kind of content- and/or meaning-free, it doesn't feel like all that much of an achievement. It's honestly more impressive that I've kept at it for this long.


Well, that's it, I guess. Not much to say really. Maybe I'll do something more celebratory-like later on.

Contiki Chronicles, Day 11: Machine Optional

Day 11 was a good day, if I may say so myself. I bought a belt.


Anyway, this was the day we got to explore Florence! We started outside some cathedral and/or church dedicated to some saint or something, and from there we walked down an alleyway (of which there are many in Florence) to this place:

Leonardo Leather Works. If the name doesn't give it away, they make leather and leather products. While inside, we got a brief talk on all things leather, before they sent us into the shop to buy some of their many many leather products.

Leather is pretty cool stuff, by the way. I mean, what is there to NOT like about dead cow skin, treated in chemicals until it's suitable to be worn as a jacket or belt?

...I might sound like I'm bitter or something, but in reality I don't actually care that much. But I did get some good tips on how to tell fake leather for real leather. Or at least, in Florence, anyway. Y'see, Florence is kind of famous for its leather, and where you get really good quality stuff of anything, you can also get really crappy knock-off stuff of the same thing. Hence the streets of Florence are filled with hawkers trying to sell fake leather goods to Tourists by claiming they're real leather. This is actually illegal (or at least I'm pretty sure it is), so it's kind of funny watching them all scatter when a cop shows up.

Anyway, the city of Florence has a number of laws in place to help deal with these people. For example, every leather product in the city has to be labelled (read: burnt into the leather itself) as such, and to label something as leather when it is, in fact, NOT leather is as crime. The hawkers get around this by getting strips of real leather, branding them, and slipping them inside the pockets of fake leather garments. Since the strip is technically a separate object, they can claim that it's real leather without (technically) breaking any laws.

Another thing the hawkers do in their pursuit of forcing fake leather goods upon hapless tourists is that they move around the city every single day, so that they're never in the same spot when your new leather jacket falls apart at the seams and you try to go back for a refund. In the same way, you can tell that if the shop you're buying stuff from has wheels, it's probably selling you fake merchandise. The only way to be sure you're getting real proper leather is if the store is, say, AN ACTUAL BUILDING, and preferably if the brand has some guarantee that they've been making leather for seventeen generations or something, so you can probably assume that they know their shit.

Two more things about fake leather: Suede (the underside of leather) is actually impossible to replicate, so if you can find any of that on your product, then it's most likely real. That's not as easy as it sounds, though, because most products have the Suede on the inside to protect it, and because the outside is the better part anyway. So if you cut open a leather jacket to find it and you find that it actually is real leather... well, you've just made a massive hole in a perfectly good leather jacket.

The other thing that they'll try to do when trying to get you to buy fake leather goods is they'll claim that real leather doesn't burn, pull out a lighter, and then demonstrate by trying to burn their apparently "real" jacket. Just so you know: THIS IS A MYTH. LEATHER IS MADE OUT OF DEAD COWS AND DEAD COWS ARE HIGHLY FLAMMABLE. Furthermore, fake leather burns as well. What they're doing when they pull out the lighter is that they never hold it over one spot on the leather for long enough that it will catch fire. If they ever try to scam you this way, ask if you can give it a try. Chances are they'll say no. Plus, if they say yes, then you can have fun burning fake leather.


Anyway, that's enough about leather. I left that shop with my brand new leather belt in tow, and then we headed over into one of the main-ish squares in Florence: Piazza della Signoria (thank you, Google maps). This is where we started our city walking tour of Florence (or Firenze, as it is called in Italian - although I'm pretty sure that's also the name of a centaur from Harry Potter). Anyway, he was telling us the history of the city, and I've mostly forgotten it by now. I do remember that the entire city, back in the day, was one of the more powerful city-states in Italy, because the people here kind of invented banking and were therefore really rich. That let them bring in a lot of artisans and whatnot from all over the place and the entire city prospered. There were also a bunch of really famous Florentines, and there's a square lined with statues of a whole heap of them, such as this guy:

Yeah, that's right. GALILEO GALILEI. YOU KNOW, THE FAMOUS GUY? YEAH, HIM.

Oh, and the only other one I got a photo of was Machiavelli, because I freakin' love the look of pure evil on his face in that statue:

Other famous Florentines include Dante (of Inferno fame), Da Vinci (you know, the guy with the code) and Michelangelo (Otherwise known as the dude with the really sore back from painting ceilings all day).

Anyway, I actually can't remember a lot of the history of Florence. Maybe it just wasn't interesting enough for me to remember. Well, whatever. We saw a bunch of really cool stuff, such as this one area which had been bombed in WW1, and was now almost completely rebuilt. And this one bridge which is completely covered with shops and pickpockets and tourists. And finally the Duomo of Florence, which is basically this one ridiculously massive (and I mean MASSIVE) cathedral in the middle of this huge square which as nothing but the Cathedral in it. 

Seriously, this thing is huge. Like, it takes ten minutes to walk from one end to the other. I'm not even sure of the reason why it's so ridiculously massive. It just is. This is the FRONT side:

So, after the very enlightening and exciting walking tour of the city in which I learnt an immeasurable amount about the city and its history, we were given the rest of the day to explore. This one other guy and I made it our mission to hunt down the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum. Which we did, after much searching. It was down an alley at the ass end of the Duomo, and it was marked by a single sign that we missed the first time we saw it. Inside though, was pretty cool. We paid like €5 to get in, and then spent the next hour or two looking at wooden productions of a bunch of Da Vinci's sketches.

Here are some pictures:

...Okay, that's a lot of pictures. But, in order, they are (or at least, I'm pretty sure they are): Horse drawn plow/harvesting mechanism, Some kind of crank-powered boat, A FREAKIN TANK, attempt at a flying machine, some kind of wood-cutting thing, a ball-bearing thing (like the sorts they put in roller blade wheels, except bigger and made of wood), something I'm pretty sure was a crane of some description, A GODDAMN CANNON, Another attempt at a flying machine, wind powered boat (which may have also flown, who the fuck knows?), a frame for another flying machine (with bonus wooden man), and the coolest damn clock I've ever seen. Seriously, pictures don't do that clock justice. I'll see if I can dig out the video I took of it at some point.

So yeah, Da Vinci designed a lot of stuff. Like, a hell of a lot of stuff. And some of it actually worked.

After that productive hour or two, we headed back to the square where we started the walking tour - Piazza della Signoria. Why? Because there were a bunch of statues in that square, and I didn't get any photos of them. I still didn't actually, except for one. One of a very, VERY famous statue:

Michelangelo's David (WARNING: NUDITY BELOW).

So yeah. It's a statue by Michelangelo, and it is called David. Hence, Michelangelo's David.  As one would assume, it is in fact a statue of David, from the Bible.

Although... this isn't actually the real statue. The ACTUAL statue of David is in a museum with a ridiculous line that you have to pay to get in to and you're not allowed to take photos. So that's why I'm not complaining that this is in fact a fake statue.

Oh, and you know when I said I only took one photo?

I lied.

Because I'm secretly 12 years old like that.

(I actually really, REALLY want to just end this post there, like that. But alas, more things happened that day. It's almost over though. I swear.)

So after our day in Florence, there were three things: A photo shoot from a lookout point above the city, dinner, and then a trip to Space Electronic Discothèque, the biggest Nightclub in Florence. Dinner was alright, but the Nightclub was pretty crazy. I drank some unholy number of Long Island Ice Tea's, and also introduced myself to the B-52 shot - equal parts Bailey's, Kahlua and Grand Mariner. Goooood stuff. Also works well as a cocktail.

I got a bunch of photos from the night, but a rather disconcertingly large number of them are of one of my friends hooking up with this one chick (who he actually met the night before, and spent the night at her place). I think the one which sums up the night the most is this one here:

I don't know, but there's something about that photo which perfectly encapsulates everything there is about going to a nightclub.

I think I'll leave it there for tonight. I got home safely and slept fairly well. Day 12 should come along eventually.

Contiki Chronicles, Day 10: ITALY!

At long last, I finally decided to get off my ass and start writing these things again. Although by this point it's been almost 9 months since all the stuff happened, so my recollection may be a little... rusty.

Anyway.

Day 10 started with us leaving Antibes and heading south. After some amount of driving, we exited France, and crossed over into Italy. Our destination? Just a little city in the more northerly part of Italy, by the name of Florence.

But first, a stopover to gaze in amazement and awe at one specific tower.

A little note about Pisa: The place is famous for its Leaning Tower. But something that isn't as well known about the place is that there is LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE TO DO THERE. Seriously. You go in, check out the tower, take the obligatory photos with you in weird poses and then get the hell out because that place is hot as fuck.

Speaking of photos:

I don't know what you're talking about. Clearly that tower isn't leaning at all. It's just everything else is.

Okay seriously though, there's the tower. Now you don't need to go all the way over to Pisa to see it. When they built it, the city was basically doing it to show off their wealth. But what I gather happened is that they just so happened to build it on the worst possible place, and with improper foundations. Meaning that when they were three quarters of the way through building it, it started to lean. They kept building it though, and you can see that the upper floors are sort of angled in regards to the floors below them.

There's also this big ass lawn out the front that you're not allowed to step on, meaning that the road becomes clogged with tourists, and every twenty minutes a Police Officer and/or Security Guard has to come and yell at people for being on the lawn and doing stupid shit like this:

Yeah, that's a human pyramid in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, because why the fuck not? I think making stupid poses in front of the tower is sort of like the unofficial pastime of the entire City, and all tourists are required by law to pick it up whilst in the city. Which is why I discovered a hobby of taking photos of people in stupid stances from a totally different angle, without the tower in the background. Kind of like this:

Because it cracks me up the amount of stupid shit people will do if they can get a photo of it.

Oh, and here's another photo of the tower, because why not.

It's seriously not leaning at all. I don't get this country.

After lunch, we cleared that hell hole of a city, and got back on the bus and after much more driving, arrived at our destination.

Now, Florence is a pretty cool city. But we'll get to that tomorrow, because that's when all the stuff we actually did in Florence happened. That night, we went to a karaoke bar, I drank a 2 litre jug of Long Island Ice Tea almost entirely by myself, and ended up not being as drunk as I'd expect, but still pretty drunk. That was a good night.

I'll try to update some time between now and three months from now with day 11. 

Duck Junk: A haiku

I saw a duck's junk.
What the everliving fuck?
That shit is messed up.

Stimulate me!

Totally not changing that post title.

Anyway, I'm making a post. On my blog.

Madness.

I often find myself struggling for things to put on this blog. I kind of know why, as well - I use writing as a means of organising my thoughts - putting them down somewhere so that they're on the page instead of running around inside my head. On top of that, the act of writing, of creating meaning through words, is what helps me to understand a lot of things. My brain is a messy and confused place, so it's not really the ideal workspace to try and sort through the various conundrums that constitute my life. The problem is that whenever I have something I want to say, I generally have other avenues to pursue in order to thrust those words out of my mind.

The other thing is that I think I may have left the purpose of this blog a bit too intentionally vague. Well, vague and/or non-existent. I don't really have any good reason for making a blog; anything that I want to say desperately enough, I have other places to put them. You'll notice I usually begin my posts with either "This has been on my mind for a while..." or "I guess I should probably write something, but I have no idea what." Or words to those effects. The thing is that I fail at spontaneously coming up with things. I need some sort of stimulus for me to get the ball rolling, and then only after that does the whole writing process happen. My thought processes are reactive, not proactive. And I'm not too sure if that's a problem or not.

So, I've decided that I need some sort of stimulus for my posts. I suppose I could pick a random word every day and write a post based off of it, like a certain other blog I know, but that just doesn't seem right to me. Instead, I'm turning to you guys - all 20 of my followers (although I'm fairly sure most of that 20 probably haven't checked the blog in months, if not longer). What I want you to do, is comment on this post with a sentence, or a word, or some other kind of stimulus, and if I feel up to it, I'll choose one and write something using that stimulus. It may be some kind of short story, or a bunch of random musings, or a haiku... basically whatever I feel like doing at the time. Please, though, don't ask for anything like "You should write about..." or "What are your thoughts on...". Nothing like that. The stimulus has to be able to stand by itself as an entirely separate entity to the fact that I'm going to write about it. That's the only condition I have, so get commenting!

An update or some shit, I guess

This is the post where I let everybody who cares know about what's happening.

The short answer is not much, really.

The not-as-short answer is that the short answer is more or less bullshit and that last week I started university. I also have a new laptop, and with any luck I WON'T spill coke all over this one. I've moved into college, met a bunch of cool people, and also done a fairly solid amount of drinking. Which, to be honest, is probably something I should tone back on. But... meh.

Oh, and since I now have an actual computer and decent (-ish) internet, I can once again start writing up the Contiki Chronicles! I might actually get it done before a year after I started...

So that's about everything I can think of at the moment. I'm kind of tired, so I might just go to bed.

Magic science: If I ever wrote a book...

I think that if you looked at the timestamps on the vast majority of my posts, pretty much all of them would have been posted well past midnight from wherever I was when I posted. So I've made the effort to post this one at the very least before 10pm.

So uh, yeah. Oh, laptop update: turns out the insurance company doesn't want to pay for the repairs, and the quote came back, saying that the entirety of the repairs would consist of getting a brand new laptop. Or at least that way would be cheaper than fixing it. So now I'm working for Dad to get enough money to buy a new one. I mean, while I have enough money for it as it is, it's only barely enough, and I'm not really that stoked to put a $1648 hole in my drinking money for when I start Uni in two weeks.

Anyway, that's not why I'm writing this. I was bored, so I thought I'd share this idea for an epic book or three that I've had kicking around in my head for like the last... couple of years.

So the idea is that generally, when one decides to write a sci-fi/fantasy novel, the choice is just that: Sci-Fi or Fantasy? I realise that that's more or less a massive generalisation, but the way I see it, is that in order to invoke the temporary suspension of disbelief, you need to start with something to disbelieve. Of course, the easiest ways to do that lie at the core of Sci-Fi and Fantasy: Science and Magic. My question is: why not have both? When I had that idea all those years ago, I thought it kind of strange that nobody had ever clued on to this before.

The story would go something like this then:

...

...

Okay, it just occurred to me that I have only the barest ideas of how this would work. Naturally there would be some kind of vast, sweeping war across the mighty Galactic Empire/Federation, and at the heart of the opposing sides would be the High Council of Magic on one side, and the Advanced Research Laboratory or whatever on the other side. The lines aren't that clear-cut though, as there is misuse of both powerful forces on either side of the conflict. Into this galactic battlefield enters our hero (or possibly heroes, and whose name(s) and occupation(s) I haven't decided yet). He/she/they are involved in the whole affair in some minor way, and are eventually led to discover the inevitable variety of grand conspiracy reaching all over the Federation/Empire, plotting to use the war for their own nefarious gains, as it must because this is a work of fiction, therefore most major plot devices have to be predictable. So it falls to our hero(es) to reveal the faces of the conspiracy and so bring peace to the Empire/Federation. But as his/her/their search uncovers more and more, he/she/they realise that the tendrils of corruption reach higher than they could ever imagine...

Yeah. So, it's a work in progress, but I think it has some real potential. Also, with careful use of detail, I'm pretty sure this can be spread out over at least a trilogy.

But the part that puzzled me most about this was: why have I never seen anybody attempt to do something like this before? Could it be that nobody had ever thought of putting Science and Magic together (not very likely)? Maybe they have, and it just never became popular enough for me to have heard of it (that's actually fairly likely). But then it occurred to me that I HAD seen it before.

For example, the Harry Potter novels are set in modern times, and magic still exists. But even then, magic is given pretty much all the spotlight, and technology takes a backseat. Also, it's more or less stated that magic beats technology any day (hence why no electronics work around Hogwarts). On top of that, there is a dearth of any noticeable amount of detail of the inner workings of magic in the Harry Potter universe. It's more or less, 'anything is possible, except making food appear out of thin air, because that's cheating'.

In the Wars of Light and Shadow series by Janny Wurts (which I'm reading right now), there are a couple of bits that hint at the possibility that magic and technology can exist within the same universe, and it seems to be implied that they existed at the same time as well at some point in the past, and yet in the actual novels, technology is almost non-existent, set back to the roughly the same level as any other bunch of Fantasy novels, whilst magic is allowed free rein. Another example of this is the Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist, where Nakor attempts to explain magic in terms that sound suspiciously like trying to explain high school physics to a bunch of children, but still there is no evidence of advanced technology in any of the books.

In fact, the only novels I can think of in which magic and advanced technology actually exist together would be the Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer, where the fairy people wield both magic and advanced tech. But even here, we see the opposite effect in place: where the technology is practically boundless, the magic is extremely limited, restricted to only hypnosis, invisibility and healing for the most part. Even still, the plot is driven forwards by technology and magic in roughly equal parts.

So what is it about magic and technology that they can't seem to exist in the same universe? Perhaps it's that establishing two sets of rules governing how things work is too confusing, or complicated, or otherwise obstructive to enjoying the story. Or perhaps if we extrapolate the history of some of these novels, we discover that when one is allowed to grow, the necessity of the other lessens? We can see this in the novels I mentioned earlier: in each case, the expansion of one of these powers is only seen in the presence of the absence (or limit) of the other.

Either way, I don't see these as obstacles. Should I ever get around to writing this novel (which honestly isn't all that likely to happen, although I'm still staking my claim on the premise), these shouldn't pose too much of a problem. It seems like all you need to do is avoid going too in depth (after all, this is thousands of years in the future, when both schools have had time to grow and achieve the impossible, albeit in very different ways), and come up with some plausible back story as to how the two came to coexist. Kind of like the Harry Potter universe, except three thousand years in the future, where all the wizarding folk decided to move to a separate planet to escape the muggles or something. I dunno.

Laptop troubles

Did I mention that I spilled coke all over my laptop? I don't think I did.

Wait, did I even mention that I HAD a new laptop? No? Maybe? I can't remember, and I'm too lazy to go back and check. Well, anyway, Mum and Dad got me a new laptop for my birthday, I finally opened it on the 20th of January, and then I promptly spilled coke all over it the night before Australia Day and quite simply, it's fucked.

So I thought I'd make a post, and then use that post to explain exactly how fucked the laptop is/was. It worked fine just after the spill, and I'd cleaned up all the stuff off the keyboard. Being the idiot that I am, I didn't turn it straight off and leave it upside down and hope none of the coke got into the circuitry. As a result, well... Coke got into the circuitry. And promptly dried there. Also, it turns out coke is acidic, so there's a very good chance it has also partially corroded away part of the circuit board, meaning that it will need to be completely replaced. Anyway, the next day I wanted to use it, so I turned it on again, because we've already established that I'm not the most responsible and/or intelligent laptop owner, and now here's a list of everything that I could immediately see was wrong with it:

- The power button is jammed, or sticky, or so,etching. Either way, you need to press it several times before it turns on.
- The caps lock key is broken. It just doesn't do anything. But that's okay, because you can do the same thing by tapping the left and the down key at the same time, or the left and the right key, and the down and the tab key, or the tab and the function key or probably a bunch of other key combinations that I didn't waste my time trying to figure out.
- The return key doesn't work. Instead of doubling as the enter key and thus accepting my password at the login screen, it instead puts some kind of character into the password box. Unfortunately, I can't tell which character it is exactly because:
- The shift key seems to be permanently held down. Even if the actual key isn't pressed, it still acts as though it is, meaning I can't get past the login screen because every letter I put in is on capitals.

And that's about all I could see, given that I couldn't get past the login screen, still, those are all keyboard based issues, and there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the actual performance of the machine. So nothing major, right? Well, we'll see...

After that, I turned it off, decided to clean the keyboard, and that was when I realised that the problem was actually underneath the keyboard layer so I couldn't do anything without tearing the laptop apart. Because there was barely any coke underneath any of the keys, and the keys are sort of protected by the backlight of them, so I couldn't take that out. The coke must have gone down and around the edges of the machine.

So I then flipped it over, and decided that I'd have to take the laptop apart, bit by bit, and clean each individual part inside. Unfortunately, it turns out that none of the screwdrivers we have here at home are good enough to undo the screws that keep the bottom of the laptop in place. My plans thwarted, I then left the laptop upside down and hoped for the best.

But the story doesn't end there. You see, it occurred to me that I could get it fixed professionally, so I went to the one and only authorised Mac Service Providers in town. This was on Wednesday. So, about five days after the coke was spilled in the first place. At the store, I learned a couple of things:

1. The store technician was out of town so any repairs couldn't be done for two weeks.
2. Spill damages voids the warranty on the mac.
3. Due to the acidic nature of the liquid spilled, repairs would cost more than a new computer.
4. This basically meant my only option was, if we had home insurance, we could MAYBE claim it under accidental damages. They offered a quote, but I couldn't afford it at that moment, so I declined.

So, now that professional repairs were more or less out of the question, I went back to the home repair route. I went out and purchased a new set of screwdrivers, and then came home and got to work on the computer. I carefully took out each part and, using cotton swabs and a (carefully placed) cup of water, I painstakingly went over each part and cleaned any suspicious stains. I immediately encountered a problem. The battery was screwed in by two screws which were totally different than any of the other screws in the machine. In fact, I needed a totally different, specialised screwdriver for it, which I just didn't have. It was possible to open it using a flathead screwdriver (and in fact I did manage to remove one of he screws like that) but I had worn down the other screw so much that I couldn't do it. And without removing the battery, I couldn't access the top board of the laptop, where most of the spillage occurred. As such, I was left no recourse but to put every piece back where I'd found it. I lost a screw somewhere in the process, but I'm 99% sure it's not a majorly important screw. So, each piece back in it's rightful place, I flipped it over again, pressed the power button and...

Nothing. I pressed it a few more times to be sure.

Still nothing. I pressed it about fifty times, again, just to be sure.

Absolutely nothing happened.

Well, shit. Maybe the batteries just ran out. That's feasible. I haven't actually tested that idea yet, though.

Anyway, that brings us to more or less the present. It turns out that we don't have accidental damages cover, but we lodged a claim for special consideration. So I need to go back to the store and get a quote on repairing the laptop. And I'm pretty sure the quote was fairly expensive. In the meantime, we're also going to see about getting that specialised screwdriver so I can take the battery out. And tomorrow I'm going to ignore all of my problems and go and watch Django Unchained.

The other day, when I said my life was just one huge clusterfuck after another? This was exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.

It's 4am...

And sleep is eluding me like the little bitch that it is. So clearly there is no better thing for me to do than to update that blog thing that I apparently have.

Anyway, I'm now back in Australia. Have been for weeks now. Well, two weeks. It's been good catching up with friends I haven't seen for a year, but I think I managed to make an absolute royal ass of myself at the pub last night. That's Australia Day for you. I had a litre of Absolut, and there was a disturbingly small amount left in the bottle this morning. And then I paid for it for the rest of the day.

Sometimes it feels like my life is just one big clusterfuck after another, but I think I'll let it stay that way. Keeps thing interesting.



Oh, also, I got a new laptop... And then spilled coke all over it. And now it is completely fucked. Luckily it comes with a year of hardware repair warranty. I just need to hope the one Apple Retailer in town can actually do the repairs, and accepts the warranty. Because fuck that if I can't get it repaired any time soon.


What else was there? Not a lot, really. Just chillaxing at home until Uni starts up in February. Nothing really new is happening, except that I'm finally back in the country where I belong, and have no plans to be elsewhere in the foreseeable future. That's pretty much the only difference. I still need to get a girlfriend. I'm still going to ignore this blog as much as possible. I'm still not sure anyone actually cares about any of this. And I still struggle to find ways to end blog posts neatly.

Why I don't post more.

Do you ever get those days where you just have nothing to do? Or the very little you do have to do isn't really all that interesting, so you just keep doing it out of sheer force of will because it's that much marginally better than not doing anything? Well, I'm having one of those days today. Oh, and yesterday. And the day before!

So, long story short I've been kind of bored out of my mind recently. I guess that's kind of an effect of being in a foreign country for two weeks with literally only one thing to do, and I'm really not all that into skiing anyway.

So, I've managed to make it so that for today and tomorrow, at least, I'm not really going to have to leave the warm house to go and engage in a sport which effectively consists of standing up in the snow for several hours. Because goddamnit if I'm going to go and do the same thing for four hours plus a lunch break, I demand that at the very least it's productive, enjoyable or warm. So far, sliding down a mountain and then going back up it, rinse and repeat, hasn't proven to be any of those three. And hasn't for a good while out of the last 9 years since we started coming here.

Either way, I'm now lying in bed, warm, at quarter past noon, but ridiculously bored (still preferable to being out on the mountain, though). And the blogger app has been taunting me every time I go to the home screen, demanding that OMG I SHOULD UPDATE MY BLOG. Fucker. I just updated it just a couple of days ago! Still, that is the reason for this post. And because I am stuck on mobile Internet for the foreseeable future, this post is not a Contiki Chronicles post, because pictures work weirdly on this app. Also, you'll notice that this has pretty much zero formatting, because this part of the app appears to be little more than three text boxes with some picture options down the bottom. So you're stuck with words. Plain old words, with no specialness to them to make them all pretty or whatnot. Words that I appear to be running out of, because I have no idea where that last sentence came from.

But, I will persevere! Or at least type meaningless jumbles of words until I take the time to actually look at what I'm typing. Either way.





...you ever have one of those moments where someone tells you to stop talking, and you tell them you won't stop talking, at more or less the exact same time that you run out of things to say? Well, I almost had a very similar moment just now, but thankfully I managed to avoid it by talking about my lack of things to say. I think I may have talked myself into a dead end or something here. Conversationally-wise, at least. Although it's hard to call it a conversation if it's just me rambling on a keyboard to a bunch of people with frankly questionable attention spans and who I'm not even sure will even read this. Still.