The thing is, there’s something about music.  It can exacerbate a mood or it can transcend it.  The deciding factor is you, and that’s what I love (and hate) about music.

As an eminent example – the “Queen of the Damned” soundtrack.  Don’t talk to me about the movie – Anne Rice should be ashamed of herself for that atrocity, but the music? Wow, we’ve had a journey.

I bought the album the moment I could and listened to it ad nausem (for reasons known to only a few it became known as “Queen of Empire Records” for a while there).  I loved it and it helped my depression in oh so many ways – not all of them good.

I downloaded the album again tonight because I missed the music.  I found something quite surprising.  I still loved the music beyond question and unbelievably I found it elating. I am still listening to it and I’m so overwhelmingly happy.  I miss this music.  Heavy bass lines, beautiful complex guitars – it soothes the crazy soul.

I miss only one person from that old wild, sad era of my life.  I miss him every day and almost everything I enjoy reminds me of him.  Its so sad to lose such a close friend for such silly reasons. But most of all I miss the music. Finally, after all this time, this music makes me happy again and I will try not to associate it with him. Instead, tonight I’ve revealed in it.  I love it.  Not because I’m necessarily goth (although I always will be – to my very core), but because it is amazing, the musicians are so talented and it speaks to me in a whole new way now.

Vive la Révolution!

Does music change your perspective?  I know it does mine.

We are not seeing each other anymore. We haven’t been together for a while. So please stop tempting me with iPhone apps.

You know, its funny, but I asked you for iPhone apps (if you recall, I was particularly obsessed with Farmville for a while there) the whole time we were together. I begged you, but you weren’t interested. Now that I’ve wised up, dumped your ass and started seeing other gaming companies, all of a sudden you’re willing to do what I would have killed for you to do when we were together?

Well, guess what? Its too little, too late. Your privacy policies suck and you have no morals. Oh, and don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing there – trying to suck my friends into this and getting them to take sides. No matter how many gifts you beg them to send me, it won’t change your fundamental lack of a soul. I’m not taking you back, so stop asking!

And another thing, jumping about and waving your arms in front of other games when I’m with other gaming companies that actually don’t ask for information that’s none of their business; do what I want; and publish their games as iPhone apps at my whim? Yeh, not cool. It demeans us all.

Just stop it.

Love Always,
Carla

PS You left your Spiderman underwear and your PS3 remote (umm…why did you even bring that over??) at my house. You’ll find your Spiderman underwear in the garbage if you drop by before next Wednesday. After that, check the local waste recycling centre.  The PS3 remote I consider to be spoils of war – requesting its return may result in an international incident.  No one wants that.

I loved the daylights out of this theme when I first saw it.  To some extent i still love looking at it.  However, at some point, functionality has got to triumph over beauty.  That time is now.

This theme has served me well as an interrum theme, but now I actually want to do things.  I want to be able to let people know that this site is me.  All of my very opinionated opinions, my biases, my loves – this is it.  And I want it to be clean.

This is not clean.

So, its about to get very, very messy.  Hopefully the mess will be over soon and I can get on with things.  Until then, welcome to yet another extremely messy phase of my life.  As usual, the mess is publically accessable!  I really should work on that….

Oh no.  A blog about blogging.  I can’t help it.  When Scribefire caused my Firefox to crash 5 times in a row, frustration got the better of me.  I mean seriously, I had to actually try to remember my password to log in to the actual admin panel to post.  So 2007.

Now, to be fair, my beloved Gmail add-on is messed up beyond all belief also.  I probably shouldn’t go blaming Scribefire.  But dammit, its just so annoying.  Just when I get to relying on something I didn’t particularly trust to begin with, it breaks.  I’m such a sook.

In further blogging irritations, this theme just isn’t working for me.  Its absolutely beautiful, but its starting to make my eyes twitch.  Categorizing anything removes it from the main page now I’ve got the mini-blog thing set up, and I’m just far to lazy to modify it further.  Now, the next problem is, installing a new theme that does everything this one does (and everything it doesn’t) with maximum laziness preserved.  Oh, and I have to like it too.

This could be tricky….

Its funny how some of the most random people can become very good friends.  For example, the love of my life is someone I met because years earlier I read a newspaper supplement.  No, really.

In 1993 I was sitting at my brother’s house wondering what I’d do with my life when I got out of school the following year.  I probably wasn’t going to get into my preferred career of rocket science with my marks, I figured (although ironically, 6 years later I did).  Naturally, the best thing to do with a quandary like that was to read the dodgy colour supplement that came with the Sunday paper.  And that’s when I saw it – LamdaMoo.  A text based virtual world that allowed communication with people from all over the world.  My love affair with the intertubes had begun.  The fact that it would take 3 more years for me to actually get access to the internet is a moot point.  I was already in love with the concept.  This love would take me on a long and strange journey.

When I finally did get on the internet, I found I was pretty disappointed with LambaMoo.  It wasn’t at all what I’d hoped.  However, by that point I’d had an epiphany – I wasn’t really after a Moo, I wanted a MUD.  A text based game world where people from all over the world could play a character entirely of their choosing.  Now, what kind of world would translate well into a virtual interactive one?  Discworld, of course!

Now if you ask Terry Pratchett about the Discworld MUD, he will look at you blankly and feign ignorance.  I know this because I did ask about it when I met him in 1999.  Funny though, for a man who has never heard of such a thing, he had an awful lot of sly comments on the subject.  Almost made one think he not only knew about it, but might have even had a go or two at playing it.  Many of my friends of the time were actually part of the Creator and Lord echelon on the MUD – essentially the people who created the game out of the ether.  I never rose to such heights on the Discworld MUD, however I did code for a number of other MUDs before discovering Divided Sky.

Divided Sky has pretty much been home ever since then for me.  Eventually, that MUD resulted in my finding the love of my life.  Would I have found him without reading that dodgy newspaper supplement in 1993?  Probably not.  It’s interesting how the smallest decision can have such a major impact.  Chaos theory at work.

Similarly, I took a job that I don’t particularly enjoy.  However, from that job I’ve made some excellent friends with people I directly work with.  That’s to be expected.  I’ve also made friends with people I have never once met through that job.  For example, the author of the next big thing, Poets of the Apocalypse.  Seriously, if you hear anything about this – go find out about it!  The point is though, I’ve never met the author face to face, or even outside of a work environment.  However I think about him and how he’s going with his screenplay a lot.  If its been a while since I last spoke to him, I wonder if he’s finally off to focus on his true calling and if I’ll next hear about him because of his talents.

Its often a strange journey, the path you take to meet the people that you know.  Sometimes, I wonder if its worth the effort.  But then, I look back at what has been, and it definitely renews my faith in chaos.

I love new toys.  I’m a toy-aholic.  If something looks interesting or adds new bells and whistles to something I already use, I want it.  And so we come to Scribefire.

Scribefire is a Firefox add-on that allows you to blog from wherever you may be, without having to go about the tricky business of actually having your blog open.  Instead, you give Scribefire information about where your blogs are, and when you feel the urge to blog, you merely have to click the icon on the Firefox Status bar.  This is particularly handy for blogaholics, as you can add all your blogs to Scribefire then just choose the one you feel like updating.

I confess, I did expect that it would just be another toy for the collection, but having taken a brief look at it, I think I’m going to like Scribefire.  It simplifies an already simple process.  Its hard to argue with that.  Now if only it would help me work out why I can only get Uncategorised posts to show up on the index page.

I believe I mentioned that this would be another unfinished project.  True to my word, I’ve done absolutely nothing with this site for months.  In fact, the only reason I’m here now is because I don’t want to do my databases assignment.  Getting this site up and running has a clear place in the scheme of things.  It falls well below seeing my partner (just as well, really), playing wow, playing with my pets, watching sub-standard TV, aimlessly surfing the net, washing my hair, colouring my hair, and doing other people’s assignments for them.  However, it is definitely more important than assuring my future career.  I am clearly the master of procrastination.

My procrastination is ranked by laziness.  Its a comparative thing.  Is it easier to play WoW or finish working on the CSS for FIC?  Is it easier to finish the CSS or do my assignment?  I think you can see a clear winner in both cases.  So this is how I come to be blogging when I have an assignment due on Sunday.  Let’s not mention the two tests on Friday.  Minor consideration.  At some point though, the procrastination has to stop even if the item does lose out on the comparison test.  That point is when the feeling of panic over the item not chosen overrides the sheer joy of not doing said item.  That point is rapidly coming for this assignment.

However, the problem with FIC, is that there is no feeling of panic.  Nothing bad is going to happen to me if I don’t get off my lazy behind and get it done.  The only consequence is that it will reinforce what I already know about myself – full of excellent ideas; none of which are ever finished.  And perhaps that alone should cause me to panic.

It doesn’t.

There is some pressure now though, to get this done.  How lame is it for someone doing a Bachelor of Technology to use someone else’s CSS?  I suspect around this time next year as I’m approaching the end of my degree (assuming I get to the point of panic and actually complete my assignments as they fall due), FIC will begin to make me panic.  That will be a good thing.

In the mean time,  I need to get over my perfectionism.  Yes, the CSS isn’t finished and the site is messy.  Yes, nothing fits in well at the moment.  It shouldn’t be an excuse not to actually use the site, because technically, it does work.   Its just not working as intended.  I can handle the procrastination, as long as I use FIC as intended – to get thoughts out of my head.  Being the master of procrastination though, I’m sure I’ll find a way to cope with my inactivity.

Strange thing.  Hello World has been the basic unit of programming since…well…since ever.  It seems sort of unholy somehow to delete a default “Hello World” post.  I can’t do it.

So, here it is.  Hello world, how are you?  Because I’m just fine, thanks for asking.