The Madness of Photography

"No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness." -Aristotle

I have to admit I am not a creative person when it comes to words. I am not a particularly eloquent writer when it comes to words. Nor am I particularly witty when it comes to speaking. I tend to stumble a lot over my words when speaking to other people. I tend to repeat myself and get nervous easily. Even typing something longer form like this blog posting takes a lot of effort for me to think of what I would like to put down in words. I suppose this is why I ended up taking a more visual approach to creative hobbies. Why I use photography as my outlet for my imagination and find it somewhat simpler than trying to convey those same emotions using text. It is easier for me to create using photographs than it is for me to type about something hence why I have Thesarus.com open in another browser window to help me put into words my feelings here.

Independence Referendums, Politics and the Great Unifying Theory of Internet Hysteria and Paranoia.

For a while, I have decided not to mention the Scottish Independence Referendum, from here on referred to in this blog post as the "indyref", much even though I normally like to rant and rave about politics. Now, before I go any further, I will admit I am not the best person to talk about this. I didn't formally study politics at any point in my life. And I don't claim to be an expert either. What I am about to say here is my opinion and mine only. If you don't like to read my misinformed, cynical and possibly angry rantings, I suggest you stop here and find something else to read. Or do what I do to clam myself down and watch videos of cats on the world wide web. Or just sell your computer and smartphones and never use the internet again, ever, because the internet is full of misinformed, cynical and possibly angry rantings that are much more offensive than what I say. Mostly... :-P

With that out of the way, are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin...

Google Plus. Friend or Foe?

So, I have spent a while using Google Plus. Along side my uses of Facebook and Twitter.

Ultimately, I didn't like it.

There wasn't anything in particular it did wrong. But it didn't do enough to keep me engaged either.

I have to admit all I used it for was to crosspost stuff from Facebook and Twitter onto it instead. Some of the technology podcasts I listen to liked to talk about who it was somehow better or at least where more of their types of people hang out on the internet.

Land of my Forefathers

A few weeks ago, from the time of me starting this blog post, I finally set off on a holiday I had set my eyes on for some time. For two weeks from mid-April I set off for Hong Kong. A place where a large number of my relatives still reside and a place I have not been back to since 2011. I went there expecting to get some relaxation and have some fun. What I did not expect to do was to come back with a renewed sense of my ethnic background, a moment of self-discovery and a better understanding of the kind of sacrifices my grandparents and parents generation made to give me and possibly countless many others of the diaspora I'm part of, the opportunities my grandparents and parents never had.

In the Shadow of Ayacon...

About two weekends ago from the time I started writing this entry, I went to my first Kitacon, a relatively small convention that has been running for some time in the spring of every year for a while, from what I could gather. Although it was nice to be away on a holiday for once, I will have to admit something right here, right now, while everyone else lavishes praise on Kitacon 2014.

Meh.

Literally that is all I have to say on the convention.

OK I will elaborate. It was fun but not spectacular. As much as I enjoy being at these sorts of events, this Kitacon turned out to be a bit of a damp squib for me. There are various reasons for this. Some directly related to the convention. Some not. Some personal. I will go into a long and possibly rambling posting here on some of those reasons.

Laughter through (Web Video) Cruelty

About a month ago, I started watching videos of people from various places around the world traumatising themselves via a horror video game called "Amnesia", developed by Frictional Games. It is a, now possibly infamous title that revolves around some poor sod stumbling around various rooms and corridors of a castle trying to avoid getting torn to shreds by monsters and his own nerves. The amusement for me comes from these people panicking over said monsters when they are being chased by them (And occasionally by their own friends trying to trick them into thinking a monster is chasing them). That and the fact that when faced with something extremely scary in said video game, even the toughest of males is reduced to screaming and blubbing like a 10 year old girl...

Possible Employment Crisis

OK. I admit that the next few weeks will be pretty testing for my job as I heard on the news that a client of the company may be in some trouble. This may result in less work for us. Which is worrying me a little, as I already a little short on work. I'm hoping that the situation resolves itself soon, otherwise I may be looking for a new job soon...

You Know You've Entered a Timewarp When...

For strange reasons possibly related to a previous job, I have a version of VMWare Player installed on this PC. There is no real point to it at the moment. Previously, when I was working in Technical Support for a large Mobile Network Operator, there may have been some point. But now, since I no longer work there, it is more of a plaything. Something to allow me to mess around with other OS's, some older, some newer. I still have, for unfathomable reasons, a Windows 2000 installation disc from my university days. As a result, a basic Win2K virtual machine resides inside my PC. There is no real point to it. I just thought it would be funny to run an older OS. I suspect, as I have aforementioned, it would've had some use for me to research older machines in case some customer called up and mentioned they were still running Win2K. But now it is mostly irrelevant.