zZZzzz...whadda? who>h

Having been awake ffor around 22hrs now I'm begging to get very tired, especially as for most of time I have been inside reading or writing. I shall soon go on a quest to the garage to purches Relentless.


And you can tall mysdhhhc xh


Yeah, I fell asleep at this point and proceeded to type several hundred lines of "h" then c, a space, x and h again. Hmm. What could that mean?


Bugger all.


I reckon I was out for about 45 mins, then I woke up, proceeded over to the aforementioned garage and purchased two cans of 50:50 Relentless, a Boost (food of the gods/junkie) and a KitKat chunky Caramel.

Sooooo 320mg of caffeine, various other dubiously effective stimulants and SUGAR LOTS AND LOTS OF SWEET SWEET SUGAR, and 3 hours later I feel slightly less bushwhackered. I'm aiming to make it to 2100 before sleep, but I expect I'll crash before then, so more relentless might be required. If anything I'd be mildly interested in the effect of 2/3rds of a gram of caffeine in a day. I got the shakes once, which was horrendously disturbing at the time (that there is probably an indicator I shouldn't do this again, funny how nostalgic hindsight is, the sly trickster). I still can't write that fricking blog post though. Or the other massively more important report I should be cracking on with.

When I was working nights I was regularly pulling 24hr and even 36hr days (I think the record was close to 40? Nearly fell asleep on the canal towpath in Guildford that time, and had to pace back and forth on the train home) without the assistance (if such mind fucking tomfoolery can be called assistance, rather than self-inflicted torture) of chemicals. This must be easier if you ease yourself into it, rather than going from a good 9hrs sleep a night (admittedly mostly done during the day) and low-intensity uptime, to a 30hr day. It seems to be especially hard when you don't have anything especially important or urgent that needs to be done. Pressure motivates me, which pisses me off, because I wait until really close to deadlines to do anything, so the quality of my work suffers and I get stressed. I hope to remedy this at uni by working incredibly hard, and, of course, playing just as hard.

Anyway, enough of this bullshit, maybe I'll plug away at the other blog for a while, erm....nah, I'm not gonna start the other project today, watch some videos, continue listening to loud music (currently I'm trying to see how high I can get my average plays per day on Last.fm, it's 67 atm, my only friend on there has hers up to 123), play shitty online games, maybe play some slightly less shitty xbox games, same old crap really. Fun fun.

A comparison of th....SQUIRREL!!!!!

I cannot focus today. I am trying to have a reasonably productive day, as I only woke up at 1350 (fuck, that's actually after most of the east coast of America). So to compensate I determined I was going to start finishing some of the dozens of jobs I have to do. Also my sleep schedule is so fucked I decided I'm staying up until 2100 tomorrow so I can get up at a sensible time on Saturday, sod what my body says, I'll power through with dangerous amounts of relentless (my energy drink of choice, what of it? Red Bull tastes like a marinated rat died in a can)

But, mother trucking curses, I was trying to write a post I thought up the other day, whereupon I cleverly wrote the notes down on a piece of paper which yesterday I PROMPTLY FUCKING LOST!! So the words upon the paper (don't be pedantic, yes I'm typing it, I'm allowed to use a literary device in a dubious manner, I'm frazzled right now, leave me alone) are making even less sense than they normally do. EVEN TO ME. You can probably tell can't you? You can can't you?! CAN'T YOU?!?!? DON'T DENY IT YOU BASTARDS!!

Another issue that's pissing me off is that at the moment, caps lock is on. See the problem there, caps lock is on, but it's lower cases. Shitty keyboard. I can't be arsed to figure that one out right now.

So, why the fuck am I stupid enough to be clever and right the notes down, then loose the crap I put them on, causing more stress that there would have been had I not written any notes? Son of a bitch.

Also, even if I've gone to sleep far too late and am only four hours in, why do TWO alarm clocks fail to rouse me? HUH? I could probably be brutally sodomised in my sleep and I wouldn't even notice. Seriously, that shit freaks me out every time, it's like I've temporarily died, the alarm clocks are seriously loud, and not a peep out of me.

Fucking arse. I become so demotivated when everything goes wrong on me like this. Anyway, move along, nothing to see here. Seriously, fuck off.

Voices in my head, shut the fuck up

I was lying awake in bed last night (see I was trying to sleep so I could get up at a time that wouldn't be considered by normal people to be late afternoon, but couldn't because the previous two nights I'd been awake till 0600 playing Assassins Creed 2, if I ever get into MMORPGs I'm finished) and amongst the multiple things (see below) rattling and chasing each other round my brain like foxes screwing on top of the dustbins I realised I am currently reading Halting State by Charles Stross, whilst listening to audio books of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow and 1984. How the fuck can I follow all that?

Maybe the propensity (is that even a word?) to flit between websites, articles, media sources and constantly having music playing in the background has given me so much practice I have now elevated my ability to do parallel thought processes to some super power level. Frustratingly, with physical tasks I am still typically blokeish and if someone asks me to do two things at once I'm fucked. Texting whilst walking makes the probability of my face being rudely introduced to a lamppost better than even, and the chances of me tripping over a PERFECTLY FLAT SURFACE almost certain.

I reckon I can switch between sources of consumption types easily, but if I have to actually do anything my brain throws up. If I'm writing anything important, or doing anything which requires a reasonable amount of attention I need to concentrate on it for the output to be anything other than a pile of dung. I don't have to sit down and think about it for hours, I can keep it running in the background so to speak for days and ugly, half formed ideas and theories drag themselves out of the slime for inspection and are either poked, prodded and tortured into a reasonable, sensible plan or are beaten back down with the mental equivalent of a baseball bat. I tested to see if I was understanding all the stories I am consuming and I could explain where the plots had come from and were going, so obviously this 'give-this-thought-process-attention-or-it-will-aggressively-rape-whatever-it-is-being-applied-to, leaving-you-confused-and-frustrated-and-with-more-work-than-you-had-in-the-first-place' rule doesn't apply to consumption.

Anyway this was all going on in one of those 3am oh god, oh god why can't I sleep slightly neurotic moments. Another part of my head was compiling a long list of all the stuff I had to do the next day. Another was getting stressed about not being able to sleep and the increasingly long list and IMPORTANT LIFE CHOICES THAT DEMAND ATTENTION AND HAVE TO BE MADE NAO and money (money's always in there somewhere). Another part was playing the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme tune. Yet another was analysing all this in a slightly amused, smug yet intrigued manner. And the final part was telling all the rest to please be quiet(not in those words you understand).

So yeah, that was my head space. Not a mood conducive to sleeping. I had to write the list down and put on some instrumental cello music and wait another 45 mins before I could drift off. I got about half the list done today; but have just realised I've now lost it, which is really going to frustrate me, and it's 2am. Bastards.

Foibles (maybe) of generation Y

Well, I suppose I could be classed as Generation Z, depending on where you draw the line. I was born in 1991, do I qualify? Anyway, on with the words...

So I just discovered Tumblr (I thought it was just a photo sharing site, fool) via a competition Gawker is running. The competition was brought to my attention via foursquare (one of the entrants) who posted a link on Twitter (also one of the entrants). I read all this using Tweetdeck.

The competition asks you to vote for the 'Most likely to Succeed'. I voted for foursquare. 

Not because I enjoy or like using the service, actually I've never used foursquare. But because I think it is the best idea. This perhaps is one of the aspects that sets me apart from my peers, my use and acceptance of social internet tools is much greater than theirs, and I tend to think of the implications and business potential (in so far as I understand or assume it, I am 18 and a student, this hardly qualifies me as a business guru - actually that point is rather irrelevant) rather than how the item can benefit me personally. This, of course, may just mean I devote far too much time to the internet, and that my life is much more boring than theirs; but no matter, I shall continue. 

Location based information is, in my opinion, the next thing we need. Much discussion is, perhaps incorrectly, bandied about referring to Web 2.0 (and now 3.0), the semantic web, metadata and contextual information. Avoiding discussions about the validity of this idea, we have started to take tentative, baby steps in this direction. As I write this there is a box asking me to enter 'Tags' with which to mark this post with metadata (I dislike that term, and may indeed be using it incorrectly myself). The user generated web 2.0 has existed for quite some time now. I spend more of my time at social media sites or sites containing user created content, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Dailybooth, Yahoo answers, Formspring and Wikipedia than I do at the other sites I visit like Wired.com, Popular Science, the BBC, Mashable and others. 

Location related data is the next way of encouraging user participation in the web. If I am in Hyde Park, for example, and there is a critical mass even passing through and someone tweets about it. I want to know, I want to have that information made available to me instantly and in a way which insists I pay it attention. I don't really care if there is a flash mob in Glasgow at the same time. Equally I may want to receive tweets from people whom I don't follow, but who have information relevant to my interests and are nearby. This way I will never miss an opportunity to see something great because I was paying attention to something on the other side of the world. Unfortunately this has happened to me already, it was most disappointing. 

Maybe lacking an internet-capable mobile device makes me see their potential more, I intend to purchase one before I go to uni in October, and the figures speak for themselves when one realises there are over 4 billion mobile phones, and only about 1.3 billion (estimated) computers. It has been said that most web browsing will be done on mobile phones soon, data consumption recently overtook minutes in the US, and location based information will be an exciting development. I think peoples interest and enthusiasm for this, and the effectiveness, is demonstrated by how Foursquare has already made steps to monetising its services, whereas Twitter is still languishing in some sort of weird massive continuing loss area. 

Maybe whilst I am at uni some developments can or will be made in this direction, as a closed campus environment with lots of technologically savvy adults is prime for location based informatics. And I will have a new phone, I am interested in possibly importing an HTC Evo 4G, but I am unsure if any UK networks work using CDMA. But nevertheless, if you're going to Warwick, you'll have to fight me to be the Mayor. 

Incidentally, as I wrote this a long time ago, in the middle of the night (which I shouldn't do), Foursquare won the poll. Told you, sort of.