Another One For The Album

I wanted to bring up another very talented artist from one of my many homes, Deviant Art.

His name is Lychi. And he does speedpainting. He hasn't got a very big gallery, but some of his work is truly stunning.
All I can do is just smile when I look at these, they are just SO REAL >..<




Let's focus in on a couple:

Luca Macis wrote: Wow - these are pretty fantastic. I can only dream of doing these kind of drawings. Nov. 1 | Delete

"Why I Don't Drink"

If you know me personally, you will know that I do not drink alcohol. If you know me even more personally, you will know what I hate the idea of it.

That is the exact reason why I think the guy who wrote this blog, Tynan, is an absolutely awesome guy. I am just really, really pleased I found this blog on the internet, to know that there are people out there like me who just completely abstain from alcohol.

http://www.betterthanyourboyfriend.com/206.htm

Here are some of the best quotes -

"I was so proud to be the group of people who were too cool to drink. We were happy and had more fun than anyone, and we didn’t need alcohol."

"People drink, and it’s usually for a reason : lonliness, depression, insecurity, stress, or the worst of all : boredom."

"As my friends began to drink and I saw them, I saw them act like idiots. They were transformed from the people I knew and loved into boring idiots. They would laugh at things that weren’t funny, stumble around, and generally make fools of themselves. Some of them would say things that they’d surely regret. Often times they’d get too close to people’s faces and talk about things that person didn’t care about. I was that person sometimes."

"All of my worries were immediately banished - this stuff was disgusting. I was shocked, actually. I really thought that I would like it and would have to then force myself not to drink. But it tasted like rotten fruit and gasoline all mixed together." LOL!!!

"Think about this : is there anyone who you have ever respected MORE because they drank? Is there anyone who you’ve respected more because they DIDN’T drink?"

"Personally, I’ll never drink or do drugs. There’s just too much liability for too few benefits. I also like being one of the few who was strong enough to never give in and try it. Cheers!"

To me, I just have to say that I completely agree with everything this guy says, apart from the part where he does actually try it out.

I just feel so happy I'm not alone!!! YAY FOR ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, there are also some other things which have helped me support my decision, which deserve a mention:

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4232703.stm - "Alcohol 'as harmful as smoking'"
• http://www.punkwalrus.com/cybertusk/alcohol.html - very good blog
• http://www.pbones.com/writings/drink.php - another good blog
• http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=480508 - and another.
• http://www.keep-it-real.us/factoids.php - just some obvious facts
• http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/wellbeing/story/0,,1970093,00.html - stories from the Guardian
• http://toestubber.com/archives/92 - about someone in a music band and drugs/alcohol ruining their lives

The Truth Is Out There...

I was glancing over the new diaries for King Harold, and um, found this little gem at the back...

Whether this was actually said by Mr Gates himself, we might never know (how did anyone get their hands on this?), but whoever did write this is a true inspiration to all of us. Although some of this might seem very obvious to old people like me (hahaha), there are many children out there who don't. I just wanna spread the word, because I think this "speech" sums up a lot of facts about life quite well. ;D Have a great life, everybody!

Bill Gates’ Speech to Mt. Whitney High School

Rule 1: Life is not fair - - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.

Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You're welcome.

Source: http://www.etrdirect.com/bill-gates-speech.html

4oD... For Free

If you've been watching Channel 4, you'll be aware of their internet downloader 4oD - 4 on Demand.

For people who haven't downloaded it yet, basically, it is an online catalogue of nearly everything ever shown on Channel 4.

Everything from the last 30 days on TV is now downloadable for free on the 4oD service. You can still download stuff after 30 days, but, the catch is, you have to pay 99p for the DRM code that lets you watch it.

But recently 4oD have opened up a massive archive of hundreds of shows - all of them totally free - but only for 6 weeks.

Just to name a few - IT Crowd, Father Ted, Peep Show, Shameless, Teachers, The F Word, Fonejacker, Derren Brown, Bo Selecta, Green Wing, Skins, Spaced, Star Stories, Sugar Rush, Trigger Happy TV...

Another catch is that as soon as you start downloading, it is only available for 1 month for free. After that, the downloaded file will remain on your PC, but you will need to buy the DRM to allow it to play. And as far as I know, there is no way to crack the DRM.

Except... with a little trick called TuneBite. Basically this is screen recording software that will record the show/episode you've downloaded to make a new, unprotected one.

So now instead of waiting for slow downloads on P2P software like BitComet, BitTorrent and LimeWire, you can use this, if you like. Just wanted everyone to know about this offer that 4oD are giving out!!!! =]

Angie wrote: Tunebite is great I have been using it with great success for such purposes as recording files without their protection. It easier and taotally faster than using BitComet or Utorrent or anything else. Go for it! Oct. 26 | Delete

Jaw-Dropping Artwork

http://hideyoshi.deviantart.com/

This guy is just amazing at the artwork he does. Here are my favourite ones on DeviantArt from Hideyoshi's gallery.




I think all of this guy's artwork is just truly stunning and I want everyone to take a good look at it!!! HE IS AWESOME.

Some awesome self-help articles

Now that the "Qube" is up (God, I'm just getting fed up of hearing that word!!!) on the internet, I just wanted to remind everyone that there is actually some useful stuff on it.

If you go to "Student Services" there are some really, really helpful information guides about emotional wellbeing, bullying, smoking, crime and drugs. I really suggest that you check it out, especially if you just want some advice.

Here are the articles that really got me thinking:

http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/How+to/How+to+improve+your+mental+wellbeing.htm
http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Understanding/Understanding+depression.htm

Especially the quote from the second page from a student - "I felt detached from the world around me. All emotions – love, affection, anger – were gone. Actually, I can't say I had no emotions, I did, but they all seemed desperately negative. Most involved fear. Fear that I would never escape the condition." (strangely, this reflects my recent post about feeling detached/rejecting the world... lol

I'm not saying I still have these problems - I just wanted to check them out - and thought they were pretty true to the way I solved my own depression and shit, so I wanted to tell everyone that help is out there if you need it.

Keep on rockin', dudes!

Real-Life Heroes

Just read this article (http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2007/09/heroes.html)

Just imagine this - It's America. An old woman is driving up to a train crossroads. By utter mistake, she turns into the path of the railway instead of going straight up through the road. The barriers come down. This woman is now stuck on the tracks, with two trains now speeding towards her car.

It's like something out of the movies, isn't it?!

Then all of a sudden, a HEROIC, BRAVE guy runs up to the car, grabs the woman from her car, missing the trains BY SECONDS, and saves her life.

I think this guy is an absolute inspiration to all of us. And if he doesn't get into heaven fro that good deed, I'm sure that old woman he saved will make this world as close to heaven as possible for him!!!

How I Changed From An Agnostic to an Atheist

OK. Lots to talk about.

First, to get started, I heard the lyrics to the song Knights of Cydonia (Wiki) on an advert, and remembered it was by Muse.
Most importantly I remebered the lyrics "Don't waste your time or time will waste you."

I was reading the Wikipedia page about Matthew Bellamy, the lead singer of MUSE, the rock band - who totally rock!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Bellamy
(or go to http://www.musewiki.org/Matthew_Bellamy for more fan-related info)
And down the bottom it says "Bellamy is an atheist: "Being an atheist means you have to realise that when you die, that really is it. You've got to make the most of what you've got here and spread as much influence as you can. I believe that you only live through the influence that you spread, whether that means having a kid or making music"."

And if you think about it, the lyrics from that song reflect that. They make me feel like getting out there and making a difference.

If you have read my profile on MySpace recently, you'll notice I changed it from Protestant (Christian) to Agnostic.

To me, agnostic basically means that you are unsure if god exists. You have doubts. And maybe you believe that it is not even possible for us to prove that God exists. And I was, up 'til now, very supporting of this position. In the past, I said I was Christian basically because everyone else does. I do Christmas, Easter, etc. I have strong imaginations and feelings towards the events in the Bible and belive that some of them could have happened, but believe it was more likely to be Robin Hood ("Robert Hode"). LOL just joking with you...

But when I read about Agnostism on Wikipedia, it was certainly ringing true with me. (Go to Wiki) So I changed.

Okay, keep going with me here...

So then I started watching Skins (WOOOOOH SKINS ROCKS!!!) and in the first episode, Tony said "I say, this world extends way beyond this little field of dreams we're dancing in, and I wanna see that world!" Plus, if you notice, Tony is reading a book called Nausea, which is about a guy who discovers Existentialism.

So I went and looked up Existentialism on Wiki (God, I just love that site, don't I ?!) and I really agreed with some of the ideas it was bringing up. Feelings like... rejecting the world. Søren Kierkegaard puts it very simply "How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?"

And that is exactly how I feel sometimes!!! I just don't always have the guts to say it out loud to anyone.

(and I just wanted to mention that the author of Nausea is Jean-Paul Sartre - who, after I was reading about him, had a question about him come up on Millionaire a couple of days after I learned about who he was!!! Spooky! anyway.)

Okay, so then I thought, "Wow, this is getting to be really cool stuff now. Certainly I'm finished thinking about everything?"

BUT NO!!

I decided to go and read the Wiki article about Atheism (link here) and I am absolutely flabbergasted about how true it is to me!!

Some notable points which dragged me into it:
- Weak atheism is like Agnosticism
- "Philosophers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud argued that God and other religious beliefs are human inventions, created to fulfill various psychological and emotional wants or needs." - That definitely rings true with me - all religion is actually codswallop, if you think about it, just like Astrology, Horoscopes and Eskimos (that's a Simpsons joke)
- "Theodicean atheists believe that the world as they experience it cannot be reconciled with the qualities commonly ascribed to God and gods by theologians. They argue that an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God is not compatible with a world where there is evil and suffering, and where divine love is hidden from many people. A similar argument is attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism."

And to me, that rings true so much. Do you remember my old blog about Religion? Do you remember that I said "How can a god translate all that stuff into what is good and what is bad?" Yeah? Yeah?

So I just wanted to share all this with you guys. I respect all religions, hence my position on Agnosticism (because I just can't say that there is absolutely no way we can prove that God does not exist, so we can't prove He does... plus, I need to blame all my co-incidences on someone, and as I said in an old blog, We Are God. God Is Everywhere. God Is Us.).

I really wanted to say this, guys, because, whenever I was reading people's profile's, if they said "Atheist", I was thinking, how can they be Atheist? No God? What the...? So I wanted to tell you exactly what Atheism is, so that you can make up your own mind as well.

Well - good luck to everyone and all the best to you! Just remember to make the most of your time that you have!

Luca Macis wrote: You went pretty deep there mate but i can help but agree. I am in a similar boat to you. I don't believe but i am not, as of yet anyways, ready to give up the idea that it may be true. We'll find out for sure when our time is up i guess. Sept. 11 | Delete

A real technology prodigy

If you think I'm a geek, you should check this guy out. It's amazing. Just... amazing.

He is a Development Associate and IT Associate at RM.

He is the host and producer of his own blog, "Apple Universe".

His mum works at Oracle. His dad works alongside him.

He writes HTML for SharePoint/Wiki, fixes computers and sets them up for new hires.

He's 14 years old.

And he hates MySpace!

His name is Daniel Brusilovsky. Check out his interview with Robert Scoble here:
http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1589/inspirational-teenager

It just amazes me how a kid so young knows so much! Kids, today...
It makes me feel like going out there and getting a job and making some money. A true inspiration.

You only need to see the first couple of minutes of the video, 'cos then they start talking about real serious and "boring" stuff...

Facing The Facts (updated) (updated again!)

Back to my blog about this whole "Climate Change" crap...
I just wanted to sort of post a reply to my own post, which sounds weird, but I feel needs justification (sounds like a court room in here, don't it?)

I realise that just telling people that Climate Change isn't real won't do me any good.

But what's more important is that I realise, on my own, I can't do anything about it! I'm just gonna have to live with it. Just think - all those jobs made, all those government members flying all over the world to discuss climate change, all those computing studies trying to prove climate change - it makes me think that Climate Change has become a self-fulfilling prophecy because all the work being done to stop it is actually causing more CO2 to be emitted!!!

Anyway. Something I want to highlight on is Atmospheric Composition. You remember that from Science, don't you?
Of all the air in the world, 79% is Nitrogen, 21% is oxygen... and 0.035% is Carbon Dioxide. I just think that some people, like me, have completely forgotten about this thing and what is shows us. As long as the % of CO2 stays the same, we're not in trouble.

There is no point in trying to stop it anyway - so why don't we give up?

And another realisation that everyone needs to make is that we cannot stop carbon dioxide emissions. People depend too much on technology as part of their lives now. Unless we just completely stop people from having computers, televisions etc., then it will not stop. So I find this quite simple - there's no point in worrying. If you can find a way to reduce your CO2, go on right ahead, but just realise that it won't do a lot of good in the end. Unless you move into a deep forest in South America... and don't breathe. Oh wait. Well that would mean... Ahhhh! *GASP*

So what do I want out of this? What drives me to writing this?
What I want is for people to stop talking about it and working towards reducing CO2. I don't wanna hear the words "climate change" every bloody day on the BBC News, on my packet of Walkers crisps, or on my newspaper... but I have to realise that this isn't the "general opinion". That's why special cars and things are being designed that are "green" - because the companies know that people (in general) believe in climate change and will feel happy about having a car that's "better". The companies know that. And it's their responsibility to respond to it. Even if climate change is just a rumour! So I'm stuck! I suppose I just have to live with it!!

Example - Heathrow airport protest

There was a news report today about the new planned Heathrow airport, and the protesters trying to stop it because of "climate change". (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6953518.stm)

There were about 1,400 protesters in Sipson (not Simpsons!) village, all of them campaigning against "climate change", and one of the interviewees on ITV news said that Heathrow needs a new airport because they have been increasing their demand. WRONG! I believe that Heathrow needs a new airport because they need to provide for their customers (like I mentioned above). As the population increases, all public services will become more and more jammed and busy, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Unless we act together.

But the thing is, they were protesting because they believe setting up the airport would increase the effects of "climate change". And you know what I have to say to that, don't you? Poppycock! (not often I say that actually)

If you put it into perspective, there are hundreds of businesses being built all the time. The effect of one tiny little airport will make little difference to the existing CO2 emissions from the rest of the globe.

Those protesters just need to wake up and realise that they can't stop all the new airports in the world from being built. Or any other large businesses.

And of course, they also need to realise that climate change is not real.

Example - congestion charge

Transport for London are linking car emissions to the congestion charge! (link) Evil, evil b******s!!

If you have a high emission car, you could pay more of the congestion charge! GRRR!!!

Just think about this for a sec - the congestion charge was only created because the roads are busy.
Why are the roads busy? Because of the increasing population. Because more people are living. Because the government is allowing more people to emigrate here. Because of the internal pressure on local services.

Here's what I wrote on the questionnaire thingy they have:

"I think that climate change should only be linked to car emissions if clear and precise statistics can be generated which prove that climate change is happening. I have heard about climate change far too often and have never seen any real, actual statistics that prove that humans and the CO2 emissions that humans produce are actually a contributor to climate change. I strongly feel that some concrete evidence should be published which Transport for London, or any other organisation, should use in order to make such claims that their own CO2 emissions are contributing to it. Unless the evidence is clear, there is absolutely no reason why we should start worrying about climate change, and there is nothing we should change in our own lives to justify it."

I just want to know: what does everyone else think? Have you actually seen the statistics?
Or are you just "believing" the hype? Do you actually trust the government on what they say?