What the purpose of this floppy disk? No, it’s not a camera.
Here’s a video of some kids trying to guess the use of technology which is around 30 years old.
Even more with the realization that kids born when I was playing the original X-Wing game, are now adults.
Oh man.
Very interesting.I have finally bought myself an android and I see that there is even an app for wordpress.Awesome stuff. As you might expect this is a post coming directly from it using the very handy swype typing interface.
Unfortunately the android wordpress interface is only useful for small posts like this one so it’s more likely I’ll be using this for twitter rather than my blog.
Still I am completely exited with my new gadget, and off a diaspora app comes out soon I believe I’ll be complete.
Also, photos directly to my blog.fun
You multitask like a mothafucka.
I’ve known I have ADHD since i was around 24. I found out by myself by searching online for solutions for my very short attention span, learning about ADD and then going to a specialist on these issues for an actual test. The discovery explained a lot of things about who I am and why I act as I do, and most importantly, knowing what I have allowed me to take the right steps to combat it.
Still, sometimes I keep surprising myself with just how much I need to trivially multitask in order to keep myself focused on my primary task. Trivially multitasking means doing small things with my hands, and feet and whatnot, in order to keep my splitting concentration from doing something even more disrupting. So I chew my fingernails, tap my feet, scratch and pick my nose, squeeze a rubber ball, chew the inside of my cheeks and lips, grind my teeth and so on. I usually do at least 3 of these things at the same time as my main task and I do them subconsciously, meaning that I only realize I’m doing them after I’ve done it for a bit.
However some times, I surprise even myself on the amount of things I need to be doing all the time, like today for example, where I was talking to my wife on the phone. Normally, I really don’t like talking on the phone. I find it boring and a few minutes is enough for me, at which point I just want to hang up and continue doing whatever I was doing before. This time however, I seemed to be more tolerant of the act and while talking on the phone my mind started working on why this might be and then it struck me on how many things I was doing at the same time at that point. I was talking on the phone with one ear. On the other ear I was listening to music via a ear-set. On my left hand, I was playing with a coin. On my second monitor, I was watching my electric sheep screen-saver (which, if you’ve seen it, is quite enthralling by itself). And finally, I was tapping my feet.
When I mentioned this to my wife (who knows a lot about ADD from her profession), she explained that there’s no way she would be able to do all these at the same time.
I’ve now formed another half-arsed theory on why I especially hate talking on the phone. You see, most people, even without ADD, do something more than simply talk on the phone. Doodling on a notepad is a common occurrence for long talks, and I’d seen both my mother and various other people do that. It occurs to me then that a phone-call is by default a not very enthralling activity. It just doesn’t contain the concentration of most people enough, which makes them want to do something extra while on the phone. Something like doodling is enough for most. However when you combine this with ADD, being on the phone becomes almost intolerable since doodling is nowhere near enough to fill up your attention.
What do you think? Anyone else with ADHD who has similar experiences?
And no, before you ask, I don’t feel any different 😉
Yep, as strange as it may be, I am now a husband. I wasn’t really planning to as I’m not a fan of the marriage tradition and the pratriarchical things it stands for, but I am only mildly opposed to to the idea so when my girlfriend insisted upon it, I didn’t care enough to oppose it so much.
We were planning for the marriage to happen in summer but due to various circumstances, this didn’t manifest. Thus we decided to just have a civil wedding this year and do the ceremony stuff next year, where we’d have more time for planning. The civil wedding was going to be kept very short and sweet, with only a few people invited.
And then came the subject of the clothes. My soon-to-be-wife categorically objected in me going to the civil service on anything casual and I stedfastly refused to use a suit & tie setup. As we were thinking of a compromise, an idea came to me and I was delighted that she found it exciting as well: A Steampunk theme. This way, I would both be wearing something that wasn’t casual or conforming.
So we set about trying to create an outfit for this day. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a lot for the actual steampunk stuff other than the victorian-era clothes and the goggles, but even so, I think the end result was good.
So without further ado, here’s some pics that I found very good. You can see the whole album here (If you get 500 errors, use the slideshow option from the drop-down menu on the top right. Should be more stable)
Here we are in front of the Romer city hall. This is the place where the German kings were crowned. As you can see, we’re a…diverse bunch 🙂
Here’s the two of us close up. I think the attire was a success.
This is in the “ceremony” and the actual signing of papers and stuff. In the first pic, you can see me giving this decision some thought.
This is after the wedding, outside of the building. Given the amount of marriages that happen there daily (about one per 30 mins) throwing rice to the couple is forbidden, or else by the end of the day, the entrance would be covered in it. So as an alternative, our crazy Russian friend, throw intra-cook rice bags at us as we were coming out. In the last pic, you can see a bunch of children which were completely surprised by the way we looked. One asked us “Why do you look so bad?”.
We were quite the attraction that day in fact. The Japanese tourists probably thought we were part of the setting.
These are from the breakfast and lunch times. We went for both one after the other so there wasn’t enough time to digest. However we did leave out some space for the cake, which as you can see, we tried to build to the theme as well. There was so much left of it, that I brought practically half of it to work for the people there to eat 🙂
So there you have it. Next year, we’ll have one more 🙂
I have finally found the most appropriate T-Shirt for me evar
A while ago I noticed that this T-Shirt had become available and I just knew I had to have one (for reasons that I expect are immediately obvious). Unfortunately they wouldn’t ship outside of the USA so it was impossible to order one myself.
I thus decided to shout it out and see if anyone in the US is willing to order it for me and fortunately I managed to tickle the mutual aid of Joseph, a fellow anarchist who volunteered to get it for me and send it, via post. Little did I know that he is more forgetful than I am 🙂
So, 6 months later, he remembered that he still hadn’t sent the package, or rather, according to him, his girlfriend reminded him which in turn led to him sending the package over. Unfortunately, I seem to have forgotten to provide him with my IRL name which led to the hilarious event of giving them my alias (as they wouldn’t ship without a name) and telling them that I was some kind of radio personality.
This in turn meant that the package came here without a proper name (The package had no name on it, not even my “radio” alias), and the nice German delivery person, not knowing how to deal with this, dumped the package on top of the mailboxes. It was only by sheer luck that my eyes passed over the package and the name of the sender clicked in my head and made me realize this is for me.
But in the end, things turned out alright, and finally I have the most fitting T-Shirt evar. W00t!
Mad props to Joseph!
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Who would have thunk it?
To my surprise, I find that I have a New Year’s resolution. I resolve to spend one hour per day doing something creative (blogging, designing etc) as opposed to spending all my time mostly gaming. Or it may be the insomnia speaking. We shall see.
Regular blogging will commence soon as well.
OMFG! A Divided by Zero T-Shrit! I must have it!
I just found out about this T -Shirt. Needless to say, I must have it.
Unfortunately, I tried to buy it and they only ship to the US at this point so I have no choice. I must ask for the help of my US readers.
Can one of you buy this today (it’s only for available for today apparently) and then ship it to me? I will gladly pay your shipping and purchase costs for it (or you can get it for me as a gift 😉 ). Send me an email and I’ll provide you with my address if you’re open.
Anyone who does this for me can then of course ask for any favour in return 🙂
This T-Shirt was build for me. I neeeeeds it!
EDIT: A friend from Facebook agreed to do this for me so there’s no need to volunteer anymore. That was close though as there was only a 2-hour window left when I posted this. Cheers all. Pics will be forthcoming 🙂
I put down the process through which I ended up calling myself an Anarchist.
Broadsnark recently posted an interesting piece into how she became an Anarchist which is the kind of thing that I always find interesting to read, both from a political perspective but also from a religious (i.e. I like to read interesting deconversions). So since I found this interesting, I’ve decided to write my own story.
As far back as I remember myself, I have always been reactionary. People used to call me “the voice of opposition” just because I used to argue the opposing case, whether I espoused it or not, just so that my opponent would be forced to argue his position solidly instead of relying on the agreement of the “choir”. I was also inherently anti-authoritarian. I refused to recognize and respect authority just in order to achieve peace. Needless to say this brought me in a lot of friction with my peers (other students mostly) who wished the “alpha-male” position and demanded appropriate respect.
As a result I ended up getting into various fist-fights every few weeks or so, although I never initiated aggression. This didn’t make me a lot of friends as one would expect which further fed my introverted and apolitical personality.
As weird as it is, I never had big problems with institutional authority like my school teachers or my army officials (while in national service) for while I didn’t like it, I also knew I couldn’t change it or fight it and thus simply put my head down and went along with it for its limited time. I don’t know why this is so. I simply always considered myself to be very adaptable. Sure I had the occasional shouting matches with school teachers (one time getting expelled for it and getting the whole school taking one day of absistence from class in my defense) but all-in-all, I was on generally good terms with officials. I mostly had issues with peer authority.
My political views in those teen and post-teen years were non-existent. I didn’t care about any political party or affiliation. Even though much of my family was mostly on the communist side (Marxist-Leninist generally) and even though my mother was a generally a socialist, I never much cared for such stuff as long as I could get my gaming fix. This continued in my early adulthood at the time where most people start solidifying their views. Much like the current youth, I couldn’t care less.
When time came to vote, I generally voted white or black (i.e. canceled vote) because I considered all political parties the same corrupt shit. At 23 I started becoming much more social and much more interested in social issues. This was incidentally the time I started getting interested in GNU/Linux and the Free Software movement and when I discovered that Epicurism was the philosophy that most closely resembled my mindframe. Still, my political views remained agnostic as I simply supported measures that would increase freedom.
My political views started forming soon after I left Greece and ended up outside of my comfort zone of gaming friends and usual company. This and my increasing interest in blogging made me cut back on games and start reading more and more about social and economical issues. For some reason this in turn led me around that time to throw my support behind the a new Greek libertarian party, mainly because of its manifesto promoting various measures I supported such as drug legalization and anti-copyright measures. Back then I had a very limited understanding of economics so all their free market policies just went over my head. I saw someone supporting “Freedom” and I stood with them. Eventually of course, once I realized what kind of “libertarians” they are, I withdrew my support.
As lame as it may sound, I first started describing myself as LibSoc after taking the political compass test and then somehow ending in the Libertarian Socialism article of Wikipedia. I simply took on the name that described my current social views. I wasn’t however yet an anti-statist nor a revolutionary explicitly. I still believed in some of the common nonsense about human nature and how communism was not yet possible because of it and so on. So I was still as I was a few years ago, mostly apolitical but simply with a new label and a interest in learning more. And I did.
Believe it or not, what ended up radicalizing me more was when I started participating in Reddit. I first went to it as part of my interaction in the Atheosphere and as an experiment in increasing my readership. While there, I discovered the possibility of subreddits and on an impulse, I joined /r/Socialism. You see, I never really bought into any propaganda, anti-socialist or not. I always considered that Communism was like a perfect society, simply impossible, but I had never really bothered to learn about it and always wanted to, in order to know what I’m talking about. /r/Socialism gave me that chance. Due to the constant arguments in the comments there, I ended up being linked to various articles on the subject of which I can safely say that the two most inspiring where The Origins of the Family by Engels and The Two Souls of Socialism by Draper. These two texts served to both dispel much of the preconceptions of human history that school propaganda had forced into my head and also to clarify for me that Socialism does not have to equal Stalinism or Social Democracies. I had now become a revolutionary.
Unfortunately eventually I got turned off by some of the authoritarian bullies in there. Fortunately by this time I had already discovered /r/Anarchism and realized that this was about Socialism as well! It’s funny to think of this really but I still remember when I first got linked to /r/Anarchism that I felt kind of scared. I had the kind of mentality of “What am I doing here with these elements?”. If I remember, I had to will myself to subscribe to /r/Anarchism the first time.
Fortunately, as I started interacting with the crowd there, all such feeling dispelled very quickly. And this was in fact quite a strong event. I knew before that, that Anarchists were not necessarily violent but I still considered them immature based on personal experience with some Greek ones (as well as the persistent Greek anti-anarchist propaganda of course). This subreddit totally changed my impression of what Anarchism is, which in turn made it easier and in fact imperative for me to delve into Anarchist texts for a change.
And that was it. It didn’t take longer than an Anarchist FAQ and some Kropotkin to make me realize that this is where I belong. This is in fact where I’ve always belonged without knowing it. Once this dawned on me, the rest of the pieces fell in place. All my philosophical base, my distaste for authority, my materialism and my rationalism made finally sense as a complete whole rather than disconnected parts of my personality. I knew I was an Anarchist.
tl;dr: I was always an Anarchist but it took reddit to help me realize it and finally willingly call myself as one.
And now I’m done. I’m actually quite curious to hear how others ended up under the same label so I’m going to make this a meme just to get others to write about it. So the rules are simple. Write how you became an Anarchist and optionally link/notify 5 other Anarchist bloggers to do the same.
Back after 1 hard weekend of moving.
Those more attentive of you might have noticed that in the last few days I haven’t been very active online. Not many posts, twits and whatnot. The reason is that I’ve been preparing to move to a new flat down to the road and finally this long weekend we went through the hellish task of renovating and moving.
I’m still hurting.
I don’t have internet anymore.
My previous landlord has dissapeared from the face of the earth with 1k of my deposit.
I don’t have a place to put my PC anymore.
I’m still hurting.
All in all, some good fun. I just don’t want to be moving for the next 10 years.
On the bright side, I finally got a room in the colour I always wanted. It looks something like this 😉
Pics will follow.
My first audience query to find what you like about the Division by Zer0, what you want to read more about and what you want me to get rid of.
Old time readers of the Division by Zer0 (heh, riiight…) might have noticed that the site as of late has been more and more exploring subjects related to Socialism and Capitalism from various perspectives. This isn’t really a surprise as this blog has always been quite personal and the subject matter tends to follow whatever draws my interest at any point in time.
This being a personal blog (or at least that’s what I keep saying to myself) I’ve been quite surprised that I’ve managed to exceed a hundred subscribers. I assume that this is mostly because I’ve stopped writing about “boring” real life stuff so much and have a taken a more philosophical blogging style.
I can’t say that I’m not glad that at least a hundred people consider me interesting enough to follow and this is why I’ve been wondering what exactly it is that keeps you coming back. I think its impossible that there are so many of you with exactly the same interests as me so it’s certain that I often write about things you do not care about. Thus I think there’s no better way to discover what’s going on, than to ask you directly.
At the moment I have quite a few subjects I’m (fairly) often blogging about but I think that the ones I’m most often visit are Socialism and Criticisms of Capitalism, Free Software, Blogging, Philosophy (mostly from my own (I hope) unique perspective but some social subjects thrown in as well), Project work and finally the occasional personal stuff.
Out of these, are you returning for anything specific or do you enjoy that I switch between them often? Is there any in particular topic you don’t care to read about? Any that you prefer? Why? I like to delude myself that some people find me interesting because I’m fresh and unique compared to the rest of the atheosphere so feel free to rain on my parade.
But what about other things? Is there anything non-topic related that you (dis)like? My writing style? My dull wit? My Greek Geek perspective? My luxurious long hair? The speed of the site (Hah!)?
So yeah, I’m curious and I hope you will take a bit to let me know. I’d mostly appreciate comments if you can spare the time but in case your busy schedule prohibits it, I’ve setup a poll to allow you to give a hint quickly (note that you can select up to two choices)
[poll id=”5″]
But I’d really much rather hear what you have to say instead.
Oh, and happy new year as well 😉
