SOMA Quote on the Ship of Theseus

Did you know that the human body consists of up to 75 trillion individual cells? They typically don't stay with us till we die - some live a few days while others live a few years. We're not affected by their short lifespans, as they're replaced by new cells, which helps sustain our bodies. I don't think anyone would argue that we ever lose our persona due to this process, yet we are clearly in a constant state of transformation. Then how do we remain the same? A continuous flow of thought and perception keeps an unbroken chain of continuity that we know as our self. Our conscious mind is not the pattern of our brain, but a continuous emergent entity based on that pattern.

When Dr Chun populates the ARK, she is capturing a moment of our existence, and placing it inside the digital world. So you and your digital you will grow apart due to diverting experiences, but for a tiny window you are the very same. With unbroken continuity it will live on, a fulfilling life no doubt, no less than the one from which it was plucked. Now remember, you are not your body, you are the emergent entity; that entity just happens to occupy two places at once for a while. If you took away your body, you would simply be the only one you can be, the you inside the ARK. Let your body die and continue on in the digital paradise among the stars.

-- Mark Sarang, video tape recording, Site Theta, Pathos-II, SOMA, Frictional Games

Meaning of life

I used to think the meaning of life was:

• To survive
• What you make it / your oyster

These may still stand as true, but I can distinguish the meaning of living:

It's what you do in life that defines you. It's what you do for people that makes you worth something.

Be it looking after a family and helping your friends, to inspiring millions as an actor in a movie. It's about loving people. Life is about spreading your influence and helping others - to as many people as possible. It's about kindness, compassion and heart. How many people have you helped? Have you made the world a better place?

Life isn't about being individually happy - no man is an island. It's about making other people happy.

Features of the next IDE

• Insert example "for" blocks into code, like templates. Do for everything. Make code readable like a natural language
• Offer alternatives to what you are writing e.g. from an open source compendium of written code e.g. from stackoverflow, integrated right into the IDE.
• Save different versions of the same function and integrate seamlessly with version control system to see history of the code and functions
• Automatically tell you when functions are getting too long
• Help you to stick to conventions e.g. pep 8 etc
• Automatically checks for usings and reduces them to the minimal amounts - suggests them if they aren't already listed

Toilet paper vs. tissues vs. kitchen roll

I think kitchen roll is better nearly every time, so I've stopped buying toilet roll and tissues, and just use kitchen roll instead now.

Aspect	Kitchen roll	Tissues	Toilet paper
Cheaper	No 1.3 pence per sheet (Tesco Standard 4 roll)	No 1.3 pence per sheet (ignoring triple ply) (Tesco regular 72 sheets)	Yes 0.7 pence per sheet (ignoring double ply and counting 2 rolls to make the same size) (Tesco luxury 4 roll) (standard not available, and not comparing with Everyday Value)
Stays together when blowing nose?	Yes	No - tissue gets stuck in stubble	No - tissue gets stuck in stubble and usually makes a hole in the tissue
Good at soaking up spillages?	Yes	No	Yes, but drips easily
Soft?	No	Yes	Medium
Perforates easily?	Yes	Yes, but sometimes you get more tissues than you want	No - usually end up tearing more sheets in half
Collects dust (lint) when cleaning/wiping glasses?	No	Yes	Yes
Environmentally friendly?	Wiki: Virgin or recycled paper pulp with bleach and resin	Tesco: Wood pulp of forests	Knowledge: usually recycled from normal paper
Can be flushed down the toilet?	No (unless torn)	Yes	Yes
Can be used to dry hands?	Yes	No - doesn't pick up water	No - falls apart at simple tears
Easy to roll back up?	Easy to get back if going slowly	Easy to stack	Can never get back to normal
Good surface area for blowing nose/picking up spillages?	Yes	Medium	No
Falls apart in the washing machine?	No	Yes	Yes
Easy to carry around?	Medium - need a small pouch or food bag to keep clean	Yes - folded pocket tissues available	Medium-Low - as with kitchen roll, but more difficult to unroll

KS3 / KS4 / GCSE Mandatory Subjects

I believe the curriculum and mandatory-ness should be split up like the following.
The current replacement for GCSE, the English Baccalaureate, is still missing some key parts.

Mandatory

• Essentials: Maths, English (Literature, Language), Science (Chemistry, Physics, Biology)
• IT (not ICT - less focus on Office apps and more on Operating Systems, Programming)
• "Food Technology" also known as Cooking!
• P.E. (need to keep our kids healthy) - should be more optional about what types can be chosen, rather than force kids into them
• Mandatory: Athletics and gymnasium sport (fitness)
• Optional: Football, rugby, hockey, basketball, tennis, rounders (aka cricket), badminton, table tennis, archery, netball, trampolining
• Sexual health
• Life skills aka common sense. Respecting others, passive/assertive/aggressiveness, government bodies - see more
• "Citizenship" also known as "Key Skills" - replace with focus on business-oriented requirements e.g. CV building, interviews, work experience, volunteering, vocational study etc.

Optional

• Creative art: Art, Dance, Drama, Music, Technology (Electronics, Design, CAD, Sewing)
• Social studies: Geography, History, Philosophy, Psychology, Politics, Business Studies, Religious studies (should not be focused on Christianity - should cover all the philosophical points only)
• Language: French, Spanish, German etc.

'I have Windows 7. Why do I need to update?'

• Windows 7 mainstream support has already ended, so you'll no longer get free support from Microsoft
• This also means that you won't get any more security updates either, so your computer will become more vulnerable to attack
• You will not get any new functionality introduced in newer operating systems
• As time goes on, some programs will lose support for Windows 7
• Windows 10 is more user-friendly, more efficient, more stable, more reliable, more secure, and has the best device support

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Dealing with the haters of Google Chrome

Example 1

Here is a good example of an angry, stupid internet user who didn't like it when Chrome apparently started crashing for him on a regular basis, so he decided to go on a convoluted and uninformed quest to prevent it from doing updates, and it turns out it no longer crashes now since he updated to the latest version.

Here's what I think:

This guy is complaining about a null issue. The whole point Chrome force updates is to protect stupid users from far more serious vulnerabilities than it's worth not being updated for. And there is a way to prevent it updating, you just have to block Google's update server using your firewall or hosts file.
The correct way to respond to crashes, ever, is to enable crash reports to be sent to the developer, or do some self diagnosis by debugging it yourself, or speak to the developer as the issue was clearly isolated.

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Simulacra that are not longer applicable

Technology has replaced a lot of the ways we do things. Icons are a common representation of things in the real world, which no longer apply to modern technology, yet we don't yet have better ideas for what they represent, so we've kept them.

• A floppy disk icon for saving something - most prevalent in Office applications
• A symbol of a telephone for the dialler app on mobiles
• Encyclopedias - Wikipedia is now a digital encyclopedia rather than tens of volumes

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"Is it OCD to create a spreadsheet of your fridge?"

I don't think it's OCD per se, nearly everyone, including myself, stares inside the fridge or their cupboards to know how much they have. I've done it with the freezer once because it gets so full.

I guess therefore that a spreadsheet is just a portable version of the same information (a simulacrum, i.e. a digital shopping list for when you're out) & helps to remember what items you're missing entirely.

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Internet Replacing

Inspiration: http://www.theallium.com/engineering/computer-programming-to-be-officially-renamed-googling-stackoverflow/

The internet has replaced many forms of information source.

• Computer programming = Stack Overflow
• Writing an essay = Wikipedia
• Going to the doctor = WebMD & eBay
• Renting from Blockbuster = Netflix, Torrents
• Phone call = Skype call / VOIP
• Listening to the radio = iTunes & Spotify

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