Archive for August, 2003

Insecure

Saturday, August 30th, 2003

Sometimes it seems like I live in a very oppressive society. I am wary of any form of public self-expression, either in speech or in writing, because I fear ridicule. Could this be a common occurence? Is it why the most succesful Irish writers have to go abroad to realise their full potential?

I have great ideas, and then as soon as I have a pen in my hand I start to worry. How will this be percieved? By friends, family, strangers on the street. The only time I let myself go is when I write something that I have no intention of ever sharing. Even then, I am somewhat inhibited.

I thought that a blog might help me somewhat. Writing in a public forum composed primarily of non-Irish people that I don’t know seemed like just what I needed. But still, when I find the time to blog (and I never make it my first priority), all I can think about are the insignificant details of my relatively boring life. It’s very strange considering only a few “real world” people know about this site, and I don’t think any of them are judgemental. I should be able to reach the same standard of content and style that I achieve in my paper journal, maybe with a bit more entertainment value, but there’s still something holding me back.

I guess I’m just insecure.

Nobody likes change…

Wednesday, August 27th, 2003

I think it’s time I spruced this site up a bit. Y’know, colours, photos, animations, flash, javascripts, music, cookies blinking text, that sort of thing…

No, I’ll post a few photos from Metallica whenever my sister gets them developed, and I’ll change the colours and layout and add links when I learn about html and css, which hopefully will be soon enough.

Soup

Wednesday, August 27th, 2003

I’ve been souping up my 7300 over the last couple of days. I took ram from my sisters computer, mounted a 4gb hard drive inside the case that had been external, and bought a new ethernet card because the built in was only 10mbps. I’m going to use it as a firewall/mp3 server/backup when I go to Cork in a few weeks.

Wow, my first server. I feel so proud. It’s a real hassle getting hardware for a mac though. I’m definitely going PC next time I get a computer. I’ll still use Linux of course.

Burning

Thursday, August 14th, 2003

I had to burn a CD full of photos for Brendans friend Kristine the other day, and since I wasn’t 100% sure I could do it hassle free in linux, I decided to do it in MacOS. Big mistake. It took over an hour. Never again.

No time.

Thursday, August 14th, 2003

I’ve been rushed off my feet with work and partying. My friend Brendan from America and his girlfriend and their friend were up for a couple of days. We went out one night and to Inis Mor the next. It was pretty fun, and great to see him again, but I haven’t had a decent nights sleep in weeks, and when I can’t sleep I can’t do anything. I feel drained, and depressed, and the depression is just stupid.

So because I’ve been so damn busy I haven’t had time to write, either here or elsewhere, to rip my cd’s, to fix GDAM or FreeWRL, or write to people that I haven’t written to in a long time. Working is such a waste of time. I mean, all it does is wear me down, for no substantial reward. Sure, I’ll probably appreciate the money at some point, but I never really buy much anyway. I think I’ll switch back to just doing nights and enjoy the rest of my summer.

VRML

Saturday, August 9th, 2003

FreeWrl wouldn’t compile. All my hopes and dreams have been dashed… I think I might just have a go at some 3D modelling instead, since I probably wouldn’t even have an audience for my worlds. Haven’t tried to get GDAM (mixing software) working again yet. Last time I did, I tried a million and one things in the config file, but got the same result EVERY TIME! One fix was even specifically for the computer I’m using, and even that didn’t work. I’m not sure I’ll even be able to do that much with it if I do get it working, because I only have one soundcard, and only the shitty internal microphone on my laptop. I suppose I could get a synthesizer program or something, or just mix the songs I have. Or, I could buy a cheap PC and an extra soundcard for it to act as the server. But probably not for a while.

I’ve been thinking recently about PCs. I think maybe they are a better option than macs, just because of the widespread availability of cheap hardware. I don’t know if I could even get a second soundcard for my desktop mac. It was always windows that kept me away from them, but now that linux has fixed that problem, what’s to stop me? I wouldn’t get a PC laptop though, because they’re ugly and noisy and heavy. I mean, fucking floppy drives like!

zzzzzz

Thursday, August 7th, 2003

Well, that was a hard week. Don’t have much to say about it though.Basically, I worked, and I slept. And went to parties. I can’t believe I survived…

Anyway, I’m back on my computer now, and latest interests include vrml and multi-user environments, and electronic mixing. Neither was going too well before, but now a new version (1.00) of freewrl is available for me to try out, so it might stop crashing on me…