theorbtwo's blog

I'm coming to a revalation.  When I'm depressed, it's not all about depressed lonely bored like I've been thinking.  I think a decent bit of it is afraid.  I spent all day yesterday awake, but got almost nothing done because I was so horribly afraid I'd mess it up... even though the small logical part of my brain knew that there was almost no downside to messing it up -- oh no, my code doesn't work, I loose some of the music I've been testing with (which is backed up anyway), or more likely, it doesn't work obviously, or at worst, I loose the tags.  You know, the wrong ones I'm attmepting to correct.
No, though, I'm not afraid of the actual consequences of failure.  I'm afraid of having to admit to myself that I'm not so good at coding.  Not that anybody else consistantly produces code that works the first time either, because I know that isn't true (and now my brain is telling me that yeah, all sorts of people do, but I know that's not true either.)
Oh, haven't brushed yet today; this started running into my head as soon as I opened my eyes, almost, and has been running out of my fingers ever since I opened the page almost as fast as I could physically type it; and that's rather fast.
So, yeah, horribly afirad of failure, even when the consequnces of failure are horribly low.  I can't even begin to talk about the things I've lately failed to do because the consequnces of failure seem slightly higher, because of the consequnces of failing to do the telling right.  OTOH, I might be right about that.
(I think, BTW, I'll go back to my original plan and only blog about brushing my teeth when I fail to.  I'm boring all of you horribly, I'm sure.)

(Possibly not in that order.)
This is only day 4 because, as you might have noticed, I have failed to blog the last two days. (On the other hand, I only faied to brush one of those two days.)  I think the sanest thing to do here is to realize that I simply don't always have all that much to say, but also to recognize that I do better blogging the first thing in the morning, except when I wake up for something which is itself timed -- that is, when I wake up in order to get to London roughly on time (as on Saturday), I should not blog until I get some more or less empty time in my chair (or in bed) in front of my computer.  On the other hand, somtimes I simply decide I have nothing to say.  Then it's OK to not blog, so long as I don't forget to brush, in which case, I won't peanalize myself days, I'll just declare the blog post to cover multiple days.  On the other hand, these pauses were before that decision, and thus the days shall be declared lost.
Anyway, Jess is up, and thus I shall declare myself done for now; will write more later.

Brushed.  Slept on and off last actual-night, some bits between 4AM and 9AM, and I think that's more or less it. Jess got home early yesterday, which was a nice change of pace, and we had a reasonably good, fairly lazy, evening.  We finished the second part of the two-hour (but really only one part) pilot of Brisco County, Jr.  I originally described it to Jess as a sci-fi western, but nothing like Firefly.  While that's somewhat accurate, it's not terribly so.  (Hey, I haven't seen it in around 14 years!)  It's certainly a western, being set in the 1880s, and it certainly has sciencey elements, with a professional scientist, an amateur rocketeer, and a mysterious professor having speaking roles in the first three hours.  It has a wonderful sense of progress too, as befits it's general theme, but also it's time -- a time when the world, or at least the western united states, was just starting an inward migration, toward cities, and becoming less of a frontier-justice sort of place.
Cutting this short now, as it's time to get going to London, as discussed on Day 2: In which I think it's friday.  See you tommorow.

On another site (we don't like to advertise), I came across a http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviationspace/a3bfe2e6fb5c6110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html , in which scramjets are discussed.  It's been making the rounds again, so you've quite likely seen it elsewhere.  I thought I'd do a little looking into their claims, and here's what I came up with.  Anybody care to fault my physics; I wouldn't be surprised if I mucked up somewhere:

I think it'll be a long time before we start seeing scramjets for consumer travel, and here's why -- it's just too fast. "In 2004, NASA's unmanned X-43A ... reached Mach 9.6, setting the world speed record for a jet-powered aircraft. It took only 10 seconds of scramjet power to get it up to that speed."

That's a hair over 32 gee, people. That *will* kill you, see http://www.thespacereview.com/article/410/1. OK, you say, that's not the sort of acceleration profile you'd use for a consumer flight. The great circle distance from JFK to Melbourne [Tullamarine Intl] is 10374 mi. If we assume uniform acceleration to the halfway point, then uniform deceleration from there, the case with the lowest required acceleration, then we need to cover 5,187 mi in 1 hour.

That's 7.6 gravity. It won't kill you, but it's certianly not comfortable. That's the lowest possible accleration to get from New York to Melbourne in two hours, and it assumes a pretty amazing engine -- one that can run continously for two hours, and one that can instantly cut from full thrust forward to full thrust reverse.

It's not going to be possible to get humans from NYC to Australia in two hours without some sort of major change in the way we think physics works -- inertial dampers or teleporters.

[ this is good ] for making me think.

Sleep cycle check: 14:20-19ish (declared not morning, didn't brush), 9-15:50 (brushed).  Guess that's not all better yet, but I'm getting closer, which is good, as we have a day out in London prepared for tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to, and it would be Not Good if I slept through it.
Started on Briscoe Country, Jr. yesterday.  Jess seemed to mildly enjoy it, and it's been long enough (apparently, it was on originally in 1993, so 14 years) that I can be surprised by the surprises again.  It's a bit overcompressed, but still quite watchable.
I went to bed feeling like I messed things up with a friend again, but she seems fairly recovered from the chatting she did elsewhere.  It's probably somewhat egotistical to think I had much to do with her bad mood in the first place, for that matter.
Looking forward to spending the weekend with Jess and with friends; it seems like a long time since I've had much time with either.
Not much more to say, so see you tomorrow.  Some of you (if you're reading) in person.

Hi, all (for a very small value of all).
I just woke up and make some resolutions.  One of them is to write a blog entry every day (approximately) when I wake up, so here it is.  These will likely be short and boring, for the most part.
The other is that I shall brush my teath every morning, and report on my success in following that, so I don't muck it up.  Today: Brushed.
I've been awake seriously odd times lately, ever since shortly after getting back from the US on, er, Fri Nov 30, so almost a fortnight now.  Hopefully, that's resolving itself; last sleep-wake cycle was awake 5PM very appx yesterday, asleep appx 11PM last night, to awake appx 5 AM this morning.  When I put it like that, I see less hope, but there you have it... at least 5AM is a vaugely normal time to get up.
Let's see.  I'm a bit worried about Jess spending more and more time at work, but she doesn't seem to think that's actually the case, and she's probably right.  There's just been a few times lately when she's made up lost time that I wasn't aware of, and spending time semi-at-work.  For example, she took a long lunch break to drive up to Oxford and buy her eeepc, and forgot her Secret Santa gift, and had to drive all the way back her and back to Abingdon again to get it -- and that right there is almost 100 minutes off, from a 60 minute lunch break, and that didn't include any eating of lunch.
Plus, when I'm time-shifted, that means I don't get to spend as much time "with" jess, even if I'm awake all the time she's awake and at home, because I can't IRC with her while she's at work.  Also, most of the people I know are also alseep, for a doubleplusboring time.  Nobody at area 51 to be able to walk over there and hang either...
Yeah, that's it for now.  Kind of wish I could write different paragraphs in different securities; I don't want to make little short posts for little short bits of information I don't want to share widely.