Frustration

This is going to be all over the place; but at least it will be a fair representation of what is going on at the moment my end. I seem to have hit a barrier. I have never been in this positition before. It is something that has been missing from my self, and now it is here I don’t know what to do with it. Is it possible to feel worse through feeling better. I find myself inadequate and disfunctional, and instead of being comforting it only brings these ego-centric emotions to the fore. I really don’t understand myself, it is irrational and childish. I am berrating myself, this has to change… There is so much I want to do, I am even positive about doing it, so why can I not? Spain awaits, to clear the air, have some time away – this isnt just going to happen – I got myself in this mess and only I can get myself out.

How strange that this coincides with the blissful weather … Maybe I was an inuit in another life. Or maybe nocturnal?

Change

It has been the trend every University term, and there seems no reason as to why it won’t be the vibe of this one too. I say this now to give myself a little hard ground to stand on. So that I can accept it with open arms, the way one would want to, and benifit from in the most efficient manner.

Everyday is a new one. There is little in the way of categorising of how each is going to pan out. But to be equipt to embrace this, one needs a process that controls how one acts. Climbing and outdoor persuits have made me excessivly wary of any sort of authority, overbearing control, or flippancy of actions. That sort of thing ends up in epics on the hills, and deaths. I have been reading Philosophy of science, Popper’s theory of logic of scientific discovery. And another more generic one.  Some basics are beggining to crystalise a little more.

I am very glad for my choices. Taking a science instead of a vocational course: Medicine or Engineering would have killed me. Learning, just so that one can pass an exam is sole destroying, even if it will be useful to know where the pulomonery artery is when conducting open heart surgery. It is the questioning that makes learning enjoyable – I can’t deal with a barrage of ‘facts’ – which is turning out to be revealed as more of a contracdition in terms with every day that passes. There is no one way of thinking about a problem. This is why, with what I want to do, it is so important to take everything (or as much as one is able) back to the first principles and reason out the problem for oneself. I believe the process is more than simply a process of assimilating facts (even if in a logically ordered sequence) – something deep inside your mind changes when you see how a problem was worked. Something intangible, that you won’t appriciate for hours or maybe days afterwards. But then it is with you. And you are walking down the backstreets of Clifton at 3 in the morning. Gently humming Beethovens 9th to yourself, the end sequence culminates in aweinspiring drama of stirring proportions. Something may turn over … or something may not. But then you keep searching, maybe you could do it this way? And your heart races a little, supressing the smile – its not Eureka, but it still feels like bliss! A book never sounded so appealing.

(A couple of weeks churning over)

Value

I’ve been thinking about this alot recently. So this post is an attempt to clear it out of my mind more than anything! I have been pondering over what ‘value’ means, and what our (humans) perseptions of value are.  Well publisised on the television (I’m told!) are the so-called ‘rich and famous’ who value cars and holidays and fake tan and other ephemeral things such as that. I talk of the people who are emblazened across the ‘30p papers’ … not meaning to stereotype, I think it is clear of whom I refer. My question is, can they really value what they are doing, and a little more seriously, what they represent – in my eyes flagrant abuse of the great chance at life that all (or the majority) of ‘us westerners’ have been gifted. I think it is hard to value something when one is not thinking into the future, and what ambitions or hopes you have for it. No matter how, pissed off you are that someone pushed in front of you in a que, or that one of you ‘friends’ said something about you behind your back (neither of these to things apply to be I am just spondiferating!), I have come to the view that, on the global scale of matters great and small … we get it really very easy. This is not to sya I think we shouldn’t care about what we do on the everyday, by no means – I of all people have no right to comment here, I personally am trying to indoctrinate myself in the ways of thinking like a scientist which is more of a current way of life. But again I think a holistic view of life allows one the freedom to detach self from matters which, in the near or distant future, will appear trifling.
There is my little lunch time bitch of rowdy chavs over then!

A new perspective on learning?

The inspiration for wanting to write this came from the shower, of all places, blisteringly hot to compensate for the sub-zero temeperatures in my room at the moment. My body clock is, more or less, back in GMT order, and I am able to wake up to see the full day. Despite this I have still yet to see the daylight due to my incarseration in my 3by2 cell, learning away! Non central but helpful in instructing where I am comming from – I woke up at 3am this morning, after a couple of hours reading feeling perky and awake.

This holidays I would estimate at having read a bibles worth of words and written perhaps 1/4 that in notes, essays, short scribbles and posts. As a result I think it would be fair to say I have never done so much learning in one period before. Call me a geek, but I have absolutly loved it, and have become pretty attached to the ideals of ‘learning for a job’ in the looses definition of the word job! Studying away by myself has changed my perspectives of learning quite catestropically. First I feel there is no-one better to teach concepts and knowledge to myself … than myself! Academic texts such as one would find in a paleontology paper are, at the best of times quite tricky, and worst of times a bit of a nightmare of complex terminology, concepts and interwoven ideas which build off each other in esher-like directions. I suppose the first thing I have really come to grips with is the real clear need for attension when reading. It almost serves to completly shead your mind of whatever has happened or has bugged you previous to reading. It serves to not give a shit if someone pushes in front of you in a cue in a supermarket, for example, and be able to put such trifling matters in their dimutive state (clearly I don’t do the shopping for countless screaming infants, so I am probably justifyably more laid back on these issues than others!) Second, and probably the crux of what I wish to say here, is you have to be prepared to change your mind or perception of interpretation of what is being said. Reading a textbook is perhaps the diametric opposite if that helps frame what I mean – use of Bolds a italics and underlining to emphasise certain passages or words, grabs the reader attension towards certain stimuli. In academic texts no one passage is more important than the next – each is a layer of atoms, or foundation in constructing a skyscaper, if you remove a bot from the bottom of the Eiffel tower chances are you are going to destabilise the whole structure – an academic text is like the eiffel tower, but made of of marmallow, remove even the slightest section and the whole gelatinous mass will come ‘flumping down’!

I had downloaded a program called ‘Brain workshop’ a while back, and have being playing around on it. The games all involve a 3 by 3 grid and, depeding upon your settings, a quare will appear in one of the spaces every 2 or so seconds, along with an audible playout of a letter. ‘T’ in combination with a sqaure flashing in the top left corner for example. The games revolve around remembering what was said, where the sqaure appeared and in a more difficult setting the colour of said sqaure, and comparing this with future appearances of sqares. The number of sqaures between these comparisions increases as you get better (over 80% correct in one challenge) or decreases if you foul up (less thanm 50% in one challenge. This is termed n-back, where n refers to the number of squares you have to recall to make the connection, done by pressing a key on the keyboard. At the moment my best is 4-back (i cannot hold the game in this position) for the standard duel mode (just position and sound must be remembered) and 3-back for the triple mode (sound, position and colour).
It is a very interesting challenge and one I now do daily and I will include the link below for those interested. I include it here becuase, in a puzzle type format, it represents the challenge that reading scientific papers is currently posing me. No one stimuli should be regarded over the others, if you focus all you might on remembering one of the aspects, say position, you will end up with perhaps getting every position correct, but you will fail on all other aspects and this will bring your average severly down – prohibiting passing onto a higher n-back level.

At university there is no-one who can tell you how to learn, and indeed I haven’t even regarded questioning what is presented or concluded which provides a further step to development, but this is what I have noticed is important thuis far. With a little rather unimportant game such as ‘Brain workshop’ it is easy to brush aside not doing well, but with academia it is all important that one makes the correct decisions. Claiming real ownership over what one does certainly helps me alot, and viewing the whole process as one big lifelong challenge sits in nicely in perspective. Even if not in academia, learning is one of the most interesting (for real want of a better term here!) use of time I could think of.

no.2

All nighter no.2. And this time I need to do it. I’m not sure how I am going to arrange recovering tommorow, but I think that is just going to have to wait. I am so behind, and the whole concept of a revision schedule has evaporated into thin air. As I am reading text books it is remarkably hard to stop and say, no, don’t go follow that little interesting bit – just stick to the point.
Is it possible to piss yourself off? Get sick of that little critical voice in your head … or is that just me. I certainly don;t think the grief I give myself can be that constructive. Anyhow, this is all very introspective and rather pointless, I gues I am just taking 5 from work. Alas the time has come – knuckle down time.

Humbug.

Oh yes any happy xmas and new year.

I did bugger all for either and I hope you were the same. Bar humbug.
(I hope you realise how difficult it is to portray irony over the internet, admittadly alot of authers have managed it just nicely thank you very much (sorry there I go again) but within 2 lines will you give me the benifit of the doubt?)

Sleep … for want of a better title.

I’m going to pull an ‘all-nighter’. It has been lookin imenant all week, but tonight it is going to happen. Throughout the holidays I have been going to bed increasingly late, getting rediculously absorbed in my work and looking up at the time – ‘Oh waddaya know its ‘X’am’. It just so happens X started off at around 1 early in the week and marched one through 2, 4 and promptly fallen off the conventional scale and now sits someone in the bowels of ‘rediculous’. As a result the time I wake up has been steadily been increasing, but remaining steadily about 10hours after sleep. It is strange, at university I often only get 6hours kip and don’t seem to feel the side affects, I don’t even go out that much anymore – clubs are shite in my opinion, but that is a whole other train of thought. So waking up today at 5pm as my parents came home from shopping, tennis matches, etc, felt a little weird, and I have been told there is something called ’sunlight …’ or something to that affect, perhaps they confused it with that affect you get when there is an especially large moon out , can’t think what else they were talking about.

I’m not going to pull one because I have to, although I could do little to convey the amount of work I feel I should do I feel discrete identities such as planets or universa don’t quite fit the bill. So I’ll allow your cosmological imagination to conjour up something between the last mentioned item and infinity to give you a ball park figure (if one measure of ‘the work’ as I see fit takes about 10minutes and represents about the size of a grain of sand in diameter, thence yet said sand and put it inside your chosen spatial medium). It is not even becasue I am enjoying the course, by which I misslead you because my enjoyment of what I am doing exceeds even the quantity I have to do, if quantiy and enjoyment are proportional. I enjoy it that much, that I don’t see the need to stay up all night doing it and can reserve it for the day .. but that clearly makes no sence because I am not up in the day! I have tied myself in knots. Rewind. Lets frame it in the positive. I am going to pull an allnighter to put my body clock back in correct working order. I have just consumed 1 cup of tea, of which I have an interesting story about the density of ice cold, as opposed to normal fidge cold, milk and the mixing properties (which I will reserve for later postings) which should provide the impetus for my awakeness – no coffee for me!
And hopefully tommorow I will be able to last until some reasonable hour in the evening, say 7pm at a push – so I can sleep and wake up at another fairly reasonable time in the morning, say 7am (well common I’ll have been awake for over 36hours!)

Side comment, or bottom comment, who knows … Mona lisa, is it me or is she wearing a remarkably Jesus like gown / toga / shawl thing? Her head seems almost placed on top of the body … One of many questions I have about that painting.

R.Smullyan

Upon searching for logical puzzles to do during a lunch break one day, I stumbled across Raymond Smullyan. Amougst his many talents (including playing piano, furthering physics etc) it seems he is an avid fan of logical debate. Being a man of his dispositioin I managed to find this rather long winded but interesting text. The ‘man’ charactor gets a little frustrating, simply taking devils advocate along the way from where he realises he is first wrong (perhaps this is a comment of how humans seem to bumble through life quite blinded by the way they see the world). And the ‘God’ charactor seems to play along and slowly reveal some interesting insights. See what you think:

http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTaoist.html

Rhumbustical rantings ravings and raport … Rrr!

Okay. I feel under no duress to write on this blog, although by the looks from the graphical images (images of graphs, not gorey open heart surgery etc) people are still sporadically looking at my posts, presumably thinking little of them, or steaming inside from immense anger  – who can tell. This is a pleasant sign, if only for the strange sort of feeling that somebody is reading what I am thinking, or is it my deep down ambition to be an author. Who can tell.

Despite the meandering, and rather disjointed introduction, this post does have a guinuine purpose and is not just an exploration of grammatical construction.
I have been at home for a the longest period of time since I first started University approximatly 1 1/3 years ago. A sum of 5 days. Does it feel a long time? It certainly feels no longer than a week at university. Less buzzing around, tooing and froing between various lectures, practicals, meetings for this and that. In this regard it feels more concentrated. Indeed, at time I think alot of University can be much of a waste of time. Don’t get me wrong, for me personally it was the best decision I ever made. Being a fairly naive 18 year old, fresh out of college I had absolutly, and I possibly can’t stress this enough, NO CLUE about the world. As far as I could see, the earth was flat and its edges were 50miles around Odiham, with various other settlements in far flung rural France – possible floating out there in the comsos – accesible by a Skoda Octavia of course. University hasn’t just aged me (I’m not suggesting the need for Oil of Olay) it has advanced me beyond what I even thought possible. Thought .. hmm, I am not so sure I even did before university. But something categorical and catestrophic and just generally involving felines has happened. (I will get back to the negative aspect in a second – hold that thought). I now feel there is no end to the amount of work I could do … I guess I don’t even consider it work in the true sence of the word, or rather the 21st century sence of something that is malodourous and boring or repetitive. I absolutly love it. I can quite easily work 12hour days, revising, and indeed I am writing this after an almost unbroken stint since 12 this morining. Okay, I may not be the most efficient worker, I pray that will come with my perserverance, but I do really enjoy it alot. I have taken an altogther new tactic to revising this break. It is hard to say whether it will be more effective than previous revision attempts because, in truth, I have never really done anything that I would call revision. Let me reframe this before you think I am an arrogant whatsit (I got 3 as at a level – which incidentally was a bit of a waste of time) Whenever I have worked pre-exams it has been more of an oppertunity to rethink about what the teacher, lecturer, general person in the front row has attempted to teach me. I sit down with proably between 1 and 2 rainforests worth of scribbled notes in assorted colours, crossings, highlightings etc, and the first thing i think is – OH HOLY FUCKING SHIT BUGGERS. A breif minute of composure brings my pulse rate back down to that of a hummingbird and I start to formulate some sort of plan. It usually goes somthing a bit like this (and for the record when thing appear contractictory, its because they probably are – I have 2 people who live in my head during intense working times – and no I havent given them names.)

Right I need to do some work other wise I aint going to pas this exam, but exams a rubbish and boring and a waste of time, alright then lets call it something new – HAPPY TIMES 2008.
And so to happy times. Okay I did paleontology, there were alot of words and pictures and more words, in fact was he even speaking english. I remember sarcopterigians, some sort of boney fish, ugly looking. Okay, so I need to do lots of paleo work. Right there was geochemistry too, with dave sherman (banjo man – may do a project about vanadium with him – cool kind of american guy, kind of geeky and enthusiastic like me) and environmental geochem. Then flows and then minerals. Okay I did flows and minerals and env geochem most recently, so they have got to be done last. And paleo will involve alot of litery understanding, which will get my brain in gear for the later units, the start of geochem was easy concepts leading up to env geochem.

Along those lines until I have some sort of working order. And before too long> BANG I put up a swanky new revision timetable of my google calendar. But wait. There is one thing I have learned from google calendar and that is it is a complete wanker for changing when you do things – 1 there is no drag and drop option 2.You cant see the whole damn week(it is allergic to early mornings or somthing) 3It keeps switching to 1 day mode, which is bloddy annoying as, lets ask – who the hell needs to know what they are doing on one day to that amount of detail (I’m not Barrack Obama so I should probably hold that hasty judgement).
However the most important thing I have learned about google calendar, or any calendar / organisation of work. THEY NEVER WORK FOR MY STYLE OF WORK.
It may be that i am a dreamer, or horrendeously inquisitive or just gets taken with the moment. But I love to delve in deeper and deeper into my subject, to the point that for one bullet point on lecture one involved the rpinting out of 2 papers and 3hours critical analysis. I am a slow worker too, so these two factors lead to me constatly dissapointing my self in terms of sticking to my hard worked regimine of work. I am currently sitting on about 9/75 lectrures revised after 1 of 3 weeks worked (the first week was spent in scotland (another story)). And I gues the bigger problem really is, I am not that bothered. I have this satisfaction that what I am doing at the  moment IS the right thing to do. I am fairly convinced. Lets put it this way, I cant work on the surface, I am shocking at remebering small facts like: how many fins does a Acanthodian fish have on its pectoral girdle. Well that one is probably one per girlde but isnt exactly specific to the acanthodians. The thing is I just really want / have a burning desire to be in academia and live my subject. I love looking at fossils / rocks / anything from this earth and being able to tell what this feature is, or question someones opinion on this feature etc ad infinatum. The way I am working feels natural and feel scientific, of course I am willing to change if it propells me further into academia, however, as I see it reading what is current really cannot be bettered.

So to the negative points of uni which follows nicely on from what I was listing above. I think education, and uni to a lesser extent to be fair, has a tendancy to try to mould or constrain people thinking. ‘To pass your Gcses you should do x hours work a day and sit down with your shiny revision guides and tick the sylabus and do past exam papers and … BOLLOCKS. What good is passing an exam if, in truth you wont remember a goddam bit of it when you put your pen down. What is the point in a revision guide which is going to provide one perspective on your subject, possibly the exact same perspective as ever teacher and examinor in the land. What is the point in even working if you are not enjoying it? Okay that wasa little anarchic, and admittadly work is necessary (I am currently living in what is know as the student bubble) to pay bills and drive cars and feed kids etc. However would people not be a damn sight more productive if they really enjoyed their work. It brings me back to something that has been bothering me alot recently, why do people watch the television? Do people really enjoy having load pointless drivel rammed down their throats. If you were to talk to someone as if they were a TV, you would probably end up punching their face inwards – for lack of respect. Education should involve more of a gradual revealing of the world and how it works – from every perspective. What you study affects massivly how you see the world. I am a scientist my nature, i see the world in adsorbed light and quantum numbers, equations and experiments. A philsopher would no doubt see the world in a slightly different way (Betrand Russels History of Western Philosphy will hopefully give me an insight!) as would a musician. So if your study involves staring a television screan, then your world will be dictated to you by what someone, or more to the point, some machine provides to you on a plate. IS THAT LIVING?

I guess that is what is know as letting of steam. But tommorow it will begin again and who knows where in time I’m going to go!

Moving on?

I am really annoyed. I got back from university today after a fairly long day working, reading up and around mineralogy, and rang up home. I have been doing this a fair amount recently. I’m not sure why. It isn’t as if I feel the need for some sort of connection with home. I feel very happy here in Bristol, and feel an ever increasing independace.

I got through to my dad and after a very brief chat about the weather or what is going on back in Odiham, or something equally inconsequential, he mentioned how my finances are going. For the next 5 minutes I proceeded to get very defensive and annoyed and even raised my voice a little. Sure I didn’t start a slanging match; but I am really dissappointed with the way I acted. So child-like, and without reason. I think now and wonder if it was the way he phrased it; but why should that matter? Surely I should look past a simple emphasis of words and wait for the actual point of what is being said.
I was thing of keeping this one private, but now I have started I feel I need to get somthing off my chest.
It is fair to say I didn’t really get on with my parents all throughout teenage years. The whole hormones thing, or whatever causes teenages to have more elevated feelings / thoughts, hit me badly. Pretty much every day, after school we would get in some sort of row – and over the most pathetically petty issues. I mean very petty. Somehow living as we did, a family who mostly kept ourselves to ourselves, this somehow seemed okay, or even was allowed to go on. I think if you were to take us (during my teenage years) and place us in a crowded inner city, with a thriving community, things would be very different, even better in many respects. Looking back now I am a bit ashamed of the way I acted back then. Sure parents can be unreasonable, but so can people. Fighting unreasonableness with bitterness and defensivness is a good way of constructing barriers to communication. I have changed so much since those days, and would like to now say am far more reasonable. Being an aspiring scientist, I really wish to develop my inquisitiveness, a trait I have had since childhood; but as important, being reasonable and patient. A problem I have seen with myself is how I can, at times, when conversing – leap to say something without really listening to what is being said. Sometimes you can pull this off, or even push it under the proverbial carpet. But in terms of ability to listen, this trait is very damaging.
I see it everyday. The few times I am at home, or out in town etc. People seem to love to interrupt and put their opinion forth, or come up with a smart off the cuff remark. All these traits have their place, a comedy night would be nothing without gags and quick wit. But when to listen, when to stop and think and work things out, when to really try to comprehend the depth of what others are saying? Everyone has a different way of seing things, thinking about events, some may even bypass this cognitive process – but how many of us really stop and listen to what others are saying.

Going back to the conversation with my dad. I realised how unreasonable I was being half way through – and must admit to being a little stuned into silence. I apologised profusly, but my dad as he is swept this aside and told me not to worry. Maybe this is a leap forward. Previously I may not have stopped, and got into a downward spiral of ranting and raving. I still feel empty and annoyed though. Not so much for my dads feelings – he has put up with me for 18 years, he sure as can handle 2 minutes (maybe I should be sorry for those years instead!) … but for my reaction and how managed my emotions. When talking that red mist seemed to emerge, from my teenage years.

I can’t deny the past, or what has been done. Maybe even what happened then is what is giving me my total drive to suceed now.  I work long and hard and try to really push myself to be as good as I can be. It isn’t hard when I love the subject and learning as much as I do. I do worry if I have what it takes, but maybe I more need to loose my negative traits than gain positive ones?

Somewhere along that long and convoluted entry is a moral. Try if you can to decipher it. Critisim welcomed!