Z-lot

Changes of Two Kinds: Domain and Logo

2009-05-02T00:40:00.001+02:00

It's May and this blog is still pretty much desolated. I couldn't say that I put blogging on hold, it's the format that changed: I tweet pretty regularly. In fact, thinking about tweeting led me into believing that each tweet I make could easily be expanded into a blog post of its own, adding a cluster of content around a focal point.

That is even the purpose of some tweets - making short notes to further expand my thoughts on a specific subject later on, though turning 140 characters or less into 140 or 1400 words every time would not be the most wise idea.

Even though other issues I tweet about would certainly deserve more attention than the two I am about to mention here, I believe that they deserve mentioning simply because of their direct relation to this blog.

The first thing that I am extremely glad to announce is that I have finally taken hold of Z-lot.com domain and finally became its proud official owner!
It appears that the domain squatters who have been holding it suddenly lost interest in keeping it for another year. Perhaps the unfavorable economic climate caused them to somewhat tighten their belts. It was my fault to start with since I made a fatal mistake and created a second-level domain blog before attempting to register my own.

I still intend to keep the current Z-lot.net domain for various services, especially my mail address and services such as Calendar, Docs, Mail and Sites etc.

The second thing on this post's agenda is the redesign of my logo. The previous one was all about balance and stability in addition to reflecting the contrast of myself as a person. While all that still applies and the old logo continues to represent me in a nutshell, including the kinky endings of the Z, I have decided to design a logo from a different viewpoint.

This time the focus is not on an all-encompassing personal philosophy of life but what specific characteristics Z-lot actually binds together, attempting to offer a satisfying answer to the question "what does Z-lot actually mean and what does it represent"?

A simultaneous creative process of first thinking and then drawing led me to my new logo. A logo that is out of balance yet still retaining its posture, that annihilates symmetry but remains proportional, a logo that is sharp and decisive, strong and still kinky, puzzling the observant viewer's mind why one part of it is hidden from plain sight - is it hiding or is it meant to be unable to grasp as a whole?

One thing about giving impressions is clear, the (3D) perspective that the logo subtly implies to be observed from is meant as a look from the ground below onto the massive kinky shape, piercing the sky above somewhere in the distance.

The logo is no longer in a square shaped frame but rather in golden ratio proportions which can be either a blessing or a curse. For me it is certainly the former since the logo was envisioned as heavily dynamic, contrary to its predecessor. An additional key benefit is the ease of its manipulability: it can be stretched, skewed and deformed in any number of ways, objects of various shapes and sizes can be added to it and finally, the clean, minimalistic shapes make recoloring process a delight.

I've spent quite some time playing with all sorts of variables, especially adding convenient square shapes to bind the logo to them. My favorite one is the combination of a red square with a black Z logo. It's made of clean lines, simplistic shapes and a radiant,colorful element that attempts to counter-balance the kinky shape and ground its swirling black tentacle.

A more square friendly yet compromising variant is the logo with a colored strip on its side. These can come in handy when it's time to express a certain mood or state of being and don't offer an appealing substitute for a square logo - I'd much rather see it stretched, oversized and cropped to fit or moved to the left side as I did with the favicon of this blog.

Overall, the move to create a new, clean logo felt like the right thing to do and it still does, especially since I managed to put own reflecting thoughts and feelings into a coherent form, calling those same reflections into memory each time I look at the sharp yet massive outline.

It is interesting to note a detail on creative process that led me to choosing such design. At first I was under the influence of old logo, constrained exclusively to straight symmetric lines. As I moved forward, nothing truly new happened until I turned the page, painted it black and made a simple white outline that completely defied the previous logo, putting it a vibrant green rectangular shape which immediately framed its perspective.

It's just the kind of feeling that I get when looking at my own logo, this time on an even more vocal level... mission successful.

MacBook Pro and the Winter Cold

2009-02-19T16:54:00.001+01:00

Lately I've gotten used to the idea of taking my laptop outside, simply because of the ambient effect. It is far more enjoyable to sit outside in the sun with eyes resting on the green grass below, the surrounding vegetation or whatever scenery is offered in the sky above.

The feeling of being on the Internet while simultaneously rolling around in the grass brings along a somewhat perverse pleasure of comforting thought that for that one moment everything seems to be at hand's reach and yet still remaining completely relaxed.

The only obstacle is laptop's battery life... and in the winter - low temperatures. These make my usually sweaty Toppy dangerously cold and though it may seem that freezing air is beneficial for my silver companion, the truth is quite the opposite.

As I already wrote before about a faulty nVidia GPU when talking about my Toppy, the GPU temperature as seen on the picture seems much too high to be viewed as regular in these freezing conditions, especially when you compare it to the CPU temperature.

In addition, if it does actually have a faulty GPU, then exposing Toppy to extreme temperature shifts during its operation will significantly reduce its GPU's lifespan.

The same goes for its hard disk drive whose temperature of around 20ºC is almost pushing the limit of safe operating temperature. As Google's research on this subject has shown, lower temperatures in hard disks are associated with higher failure rates.

The reason for that most likely lies in devastating contraction of materials that hardware components are made of during temperature shifts and their physical properties that favor warmer environments.

Of course, in the end it's still up to me to decide whether I prefer a healthier laptop or some fresh winter air on a peaceful sunny day. For now I'll stick to the latter.

My Special Hairy MacBook Pro

2009-02-12T04:48:00.000+01:00

I have very seldom written about technology-related subjects, the last remotely tech-colored post was about a view on blogging vs microblogging - though I feel that I should add another perspective or two to that topic - but even that one was strictly Internet oriented. Since I consider myself to be a tech-addicted geek at the core, technology is clearly being underrepresented here with so few words dedicated to it.

That led me to a conclusion that it is about time for me to stop neglecting it, starting by telling a word or two about technology that is dearest and closest to me - I am speaking, of course, of my laptop.

This slick all-silver faithful companion of mine, the very last of its breed, has already endured a number of hardships despite being with me for mere six months, since the end of July.
To get to me in the first place, it had to travel all the way from U.S. west coast, making a pit stop in the UK and has since then spent quite some time abroad in England and Denmark.
When on the road, it spent most of the time safely tucked inside my Tim Bihn Buzz bag, experiencing a hefty amount of walking, running and jumping around in all sorts of unfavorable weather conditions and surviving even a nasty fall to the ground, all that without a scratch.

The reason for this durability lies somewhere between its Incase neoprene sleeve, the minimalistic waterproof sling bag and Apple's combination of design and material choices. Sure, it grumbles sometimes, and occasionally delves into theatrical waters by feigning death or demands a break from over exhaustion - but that is what all laptops do from time to time.

However, beside being a trustworthy companion, Toppy - as it's called - has some unique features that you won't find in a usual laptop. The most prominent one is a hair about a nail's length that is growing out of the screen with its follow-up being the letter F that looks engraved into it.

That hair is the most curious thing, I've first spotted it one day in Denmark when it suddenly appeared in the middle of the screen when I opened Toppy's lid.
My initial thought was that the screen got cracked and the thought of crack's likely widening each time I walk or run around with Toppy sent shivers down my spine.

However, after a few days of not paying any attention to the issue I suddenly realized that the crack had moved from its initial position. A close inspection revealed that the "crack" not only resembled a hair, it indeed was one.

It made me think how it coild have possibly gotten there: only two persons had Toppy in their lap long enough to leave a hair and one of them is me.
The entry point was most likely the right side of display, with gravity doing all the rest due to shaking in my sling bag.

I googled around to see how common the issue was and it turned out that while still uncommon, it became evident that I was far from being the only person with a hairy Apple laptop.

The problem seems to lie in Apple's glossy displays and has been around at least since PowerBook times. The glossy panel covering the LCD display is supposed to be sealed - which means that any objects finding their way inside the screen are covered under Apple's warranty policy, granting you a free repair in case a hairy laptop is to much for the user to handle.

I found quite interesting stories about various dust particles and hair appearing under the displays, even live bugs crawling beneath glossy displays.
I also spotted a graphic designer who one day found his cat's hair inside his MacBook Pro display. What a bad kitty! Pet hair seems to be a regular occurence in these not-so-tightly-sealed glossy displays while encountering human hair is not all that frequent.

Since the time of its first appearance the hair has moved around quite a bit and is now in an almost vertical position... but just how and when it decides to move is still a mystery to me.

This MacBook's second notable feature is its engraved letter F at the very bottom of the screen (below the MS Word sign on the picture). I am clueless as to when exactly it appeared but the bright mark resembles the letter F so closely that I don't have a valid explanation how it got there in the first place - unless you consider supersecret marking by Secret Service to be a valid one.
I do suspect that in this case he real reason might actually be a crack in the display, but once again I remain puzzled: how can a crack suddenly appear in the form of letter F? Unusual indeed.

However, the next issue is of more serious nature for a change. I am fairly certain that Toppy has a bad nVidia GeForce 8600M GT graphic chip, a major industry-wide problem that has also been noted by Apple.
Since the failing GPU affects MacBooks Pro and all other laptops with this particular graphic card (meaning all MBPs up to the autumn 2008 revision), mine is also a very likely victim of this sudden defect.

What raises my suspicion even further are high idle temperatures (displayed on the picture) that Toppy has - the graphic chip with its 60º C idle temperature is nothing less than alarming.
All that means that I should get it fixed before a spontaneous self-combustion happens - or before my warranty expires (there's three years left to fix that GPU issue). That would mean an unknown amount of days without Toppy, a solution I'm far from willing to accept... but that's another topic.

Playing With AdSense And Against It

2009-02-11T04:40:00.008+01:00

I've been tinkering with AdWords lately and after two years once again playing with AdSense adverts, deciding to pollute my blog with Google ads in the most non-intrusive way possible.
I colored them in accordance with this blog's design to meld them with the text and placed them in a way that I consider to be optimal for for balance between noticeable and intrusive or irritating. I used a combination of link ads on top of the posting area, a couple of boxes in the sidebar and a classic banner at the bottom of posting area.

Since I thought it would be nice to be able to track AdSense clicks via Google Analytics I googled up and installed this nifty little script that helps Analytics track ad clicks via its Goals feature.

I don't actually expect to get any ad revenue from a personal blog such as this one in the foreseeable future but I have set my one-year goal at skyrocketing 10$. All in all, it is a thing I enjoy doing and that's all that counts.

The irony is that I don't see the ads myself, neither do my website visits get detected by Google Analytics. In fact, I don't see advertisements anywhere on the Web, nor I get detected by various tracking software.
The thanks for that goes to two essential Firefox addons that I would recommend for use to anyone not wanting to see ads or annoying scripts:

The first one is Adblock Plus, an add-on that efficiently does exactly what its name suggests.
The second one is NoScript, a great security addon that prevents execution of scripts and other active content, among other things making you invisible to javascript-based tracking software such as Google Analytics

On Obama: Democracy Check VS Democracy Challenge

2008-11-07T19:45:00.001+01:00

Yesterday's internets were abuzz and still are resonating with Obama's swift victory in U.S. Presidential election. It could be debated if and how historic and groundbreaking the event was, its symbolism and meaning, causes and contributors to it. While I do agree that those questions deserve their rightful attention, another not often enough mentioned assortment of thoughts comes to my mind - ironically, a view that I deem to be the most important one if we are to learn any lesson from human history in order to avoid repeating them...

Shaking off all the hype about continuity, hope and change, and shifting focus from the two main presidential candidates onto the grander voting plane which includes libertarians and other walkers on the edges of U.S. political landscape, what we bore witness to and almost one hundred and fifty million individuals participated in by casting their votes was in essence a simple and effective democracy check.

The election itself proved that the voters - even though I would not go so far as to claim that all groups of voters fall into this category (and this could be a heavily debated issue) - still believe in the electoral process and recognize its significance, believe in their own role in it and most importantly, their decisions are also founded on inclusive democratic principles.

Therefore it could be labeled as a minor thing, its only function being performing a check that on the most important of mechanisms of democracy, voting, and making sure that it is still working.

Up to this point there hasn't been any major deflection from the mainstream focus: the democracy check that I have briefly described here has been highlighted periodically since the election and got its spotlight in the media. However, what has failed to appear on the importance radar was the democracy challenge, wherein challenge does not mean the dire economic prospects that Obama is facing, neither the difficulties he will encounter should he attempt to enforce whatever change-promising policy of his.
In fact, talking about the hard tasks awaiting Obama when compared to the stakes of the real Challenge is being naive if not downright irresponsible neglection of far more important, even crucial facts and might be challenging in its own limited way but really is a faux challenge.

Democracy challenge is simply put a part which chronologically follows the check and is far more difficult to overcome (imagine an iceberg where its tip is check and what lies beneath in the ice-cold water is the challenge). In fact, it is here where democracy fails most of the time, at the very breaking point of benefits of such a rule, a point where the slope becomes too steep for democracy to continue climbing and each attempt to push the limit can only cause a fall far below.

Take a look at any number of regimes that climbed to power with promises that turned out to be empty and hence a disappointment for the voting populace which translated to a failure of democracy to them, causing a downturn in political culture, passive attitude and eventual rise of support for non-democratic rule.

This outcome applies to established democracies with a long democratic tradition while transitional and newborn democracies have much more abrupt and dire consequences to face, although the outcome is essentially the same in both cases - fall of democratic rule.
Autocrats and tyrants, extreme ideologies and personality cults thriving under their reign, their tightly clenched fist basking in gloomy effects of repression as evaporation of freedoms and pillaging of domestic finances bring the country to war and eventually down its knees.
This pattern has been observed continuously throughout history, and while the tyrants still rule in such a cyclical fashion, one after another, a properly functioning democracy at least puts an end to this vicious cycle.

To conclude my thoughts before wandering even further astray, electing Obama was only a minor step for democracy compared to the one that is waiting ahead.

And that is especially because power corrupts, as my anarchist view goes.... and absolute power corrupts absolutely, which is yet another two-edge sword for Obama and Democratic majority Congress.
My thoughts may seem grim but my hopes remain high, hopes of meeting the real Challenge face to face and taking a stand against it. Even if it fails, the indestructible seed of human hope will survive, ready to take root when the old memories are washed away.

*playing Bob Dylan's Hurricane*

The Neural Paradox

2008-09-05T20:10:00.001+02:00

When reading my gReader the other day I stumbled upon a quite interesting article via 3QuarksDaily that immediately pushed me into another state of mind in which I was able to dive into one of my favorite subjects, rationality. What follows is a condensed version of my thoughts on relation of reason and non-reason...

On one hand, proponents of human rationality as the ultimate achievement of our brain's development are praising our this complex entanglement of neurons as the origin of our success but are at the same time extremely reluctant to acknowledge the rise and sophistication of yet another equally complex system inhabiting those very quarters, a system that is consequently just as unique and powerful, the wonderful cluster of human emotions. Why is that, due to unintelligibility of the latter?

In order to advance any further in the debate on rationality, its purpose, role and overall importance, this issue must be resolved beforehand.

In addition, this reconsideration would indubitably debunk the myth of our brain's nominal uniqueness or at least play a decisive role in bringing those who have faith in humanity but not much else to the other side of the river.

Return of the Blogger: Blogging vs Microblogging

2008-07-02T23:45:00.002+02:00

This blog has been a shameful posting desolace for the past few months (all the way from March) and although I could instantly come up with a plethora of explanations for my lack of posting, only two of them have the validity to deserve being mentioned here.

The first one is my decision to successfully complete the academic year at the faculty in order to be able to go study abroad - for which purpose a considerable amount of free time had to be sacrificed and blogging was one for many activities that were thrown into the basket of temporary irrelevance.

The second one is partially related to the first reason, at least as far as the perceived lack of time for blogging is concerned, though in all other aspects it really tends to question the purpose of blogging and forces one to reexamine this once well respected activity that has turned into yet another Internet fad via a process of "mainstreaming".

To call out the culprit by name, I am naturally talking about Twitter - or better yet - twittering. Though this will inevitably turn into an Internet fad as well (according to El Mano it already has), I strongly doubt that Twitter or any similar service such as FriendFeed and Jaiku would lose their appeal to me due to a more convenient way of expressing myself like it happened with blogging for a while.

Round one

My main issue between tweeting and blogging was that the former became not complementary to the latter but a supplement for it instead.
The newly formed relation between the two certainly seemed quite convenient for a certain period of time, especially when I was focused on passing all eleven exams I had left, though as time passed I gradually began realizing how limiting this short form of communication can be and decided to do an above-mentioned evaluation in the form of a long anticipated blog post...

I admit that I'm predominantly twittering these days, and there are several other-than-time-based reasons why I take it to my liking: it shifts my focus from a coherent, delayed type of writing to an instantaneous one where the mood bursts have an opportunity to stand out (which undoubtedly leaves a lot of room for sociological analysis and experiments).

Beside the possibility to express your mood, a network of users sending short instant text messages offers an excellent information flow without any obstacles or regulation, which is an absolute blessing for cell-based group communication with great potential to use the (mobile or any other device) distributed information to your own liking, for example creating ad hoc meetings.

Communication Trends

If I had to find a suitable parallel, the most accurate one would probably be comparing YouTube vlogging and Stickam with a pinch of Seesmic. The interesting thing to point out here is the nonlinear development that both text and video communication of his type had - on the Internet, video messaging didn't evolve from text-based services but instead had a side by side evolution and only recently merged with it. On the other hand, they both had a similar pattern of development: from focusing on larger chunks of information towards satisfying more and more instantaneous communication needs, finally leading to the smallest acceptable information amounts.
Another related trend that I've noticed is the constant need for services that encompass all other existing services and aggregate their information. What becomes of this development is a horizontal order in which the sources of information are seemingly dictated by the new emerging aggregators who in fact act predominantly upon demand.

Round two

Since the discussed minimization trend has all but gone unnoticed, various fancy terms and definitions that reflect understanding of this development have been coined for such services during the last two years. Probably the most suitable (though a tad pretentious) is microblogging - as Anand Rajaraman defines it, "microblogging is semi-synchronous publish-subscribe messaging", according to which services like the Indian SMS GupShup dwarf Twitter with their enormous user base.
The inevitable debate about blogging and microblogging that sprang up as a result of dilemmas similar to my own is a pretty ancient (measured in Internet time) one and I doubt there is much that hasn't been said about it yet, which leaves me to elaborate my own standpoint in order to avoid any repetitions.

To continue with comparison of the two, a brief reflection on my past blogging posts is required.
Things that I would be blogging about a year ago, for example running, are now included in my twitter updates. This means that microblogging can successfully supplement the diary function of a blog - be it the pure facts-stating part or more private observations as well.

Twittering is perhaps less thoughtful and reflective though the limited 140-character message size that causes it at the same time pushes one towards increasingly compressed messaging which in return successfully counters the lack of above mentioned thoughtfulness and reflectiveness. The micro version of blogging therefore remains far less time-consuming and straight to the point while staying just as personal as real blogging.

Ding Ding Ding!

Even though this seemed to be a strong rational argument in favor of microblogging at first, I later began realizing that the worshiped micro platform of communication is only able to realize one array of needs someone like me might have. Forcing thoughts to be expressed in only one way brings development in terms of creativeness of expression in that particular format but neglects all the others. It is as if only one branch of a tree would be given a chance to grow and blossom while all others would eventually dry up - the problem of this is that the single branch only has a limited direction, reach and capacity of growth, no matter how big and beautifully complex it gets, thus wasting tree's resources that would be more beneficial elsewhere.

Though that may seem self-evident, I never gave it much thought before I started writing this blog post - another reason in favor of blogging. In general, I've come to a conclusion that services should adapt to forms of expression and not vice versa. Their users are then given the possibility to do the opposite and bing these service to their creative limits.

An interesting idea for the latter that I had when looking at the silly amount of fictional Star Wars characters as users on Twitter was to start a highly entertaining series in its microblogging narrative form, a step above the fake Richard Dawkins (who unfortunately got deleted after several complaints) or Fake Steve Jobs in the blogging sphere, though the most suitable thing to compare it to comes from videoblogging: the LonelyGirl15 series. While we have yet to see any such use of microblogging in practice, it surely gives some much needed backing to arguments for sustainable micropublishing.

The Loser and the Winner

After all conclusions that I have already drawn, the real winner of this clash is anyone who realizes that there actually is no feud between blogs and microblogs since they represent two different approaches to communication with the possibility of blending through old-fashioned service mutations or the horizontal order approach.

I was a loser in this respect for quite some time, turning into a twitter evangelist, completely substituting blogging for it and attempting to convert everyone to join my ranks along the way. Though I did think of my blog, I only wanted to use it as a service that binds together together and periodically posts them in a blog every now and then, essentially trying to reverse the way horizontal all-encompassing services are created. Blogging services unfortunately weren't created with that in mind, nor should they be.

What I'll try to do from now on, however, is use both of them, each for their own purpose and undoubtedly far beyond that - after all, the services are there for us to test their limits.

Insolitology - One of Web's Hidden Jewels

2008-03-17T15:14:00.001+01:00

There are few sites on the web that fascinate me more than Insolitology with its retro 90s look, a marvelous collection of deviations and oddities that the Internet has to offer.

Basically, if you are fond and appreciative of, even looking with admiration at all kinds of unusual, strange, completely ridiculous, brilliantly insane and sometimes madly chaotic things like me - or just want to have a good laugh for hours and hours, Insolitology.com is a priceless resource for that purpose.

A wide collection of all sorts of websites that human mind can fathom (some of them unfortunately already deceased) from crazy people and organizations, including the classics like Ted Jesus Christ God (my personal favorite). The authors of the site are creating an even more amusing atmosphere with their quirky writing style, spicing up the already insanely funny creations - these two guys really know how to have fun!

The best thing about these insane geniuses is that they are mostly quite tech-savvy and use the latest technologies to spread their messages (Ted has been using YouTube for quite a while now), letting us know that they're not a remnant of the past, lost somewhere in the early nineties, and also making it possible for us to communicate with them in real time.

And who's your favorite crazy person?

On European Appeasement and Tolerance

2008-03-17T09:49:00.008+01:00

It is often heard from all corners that bitter lessons of European past should never be forgotten, especially those of 20th century, with fingers pointed at various totalitarian regimes. Certainly, some fingers are directed specifically at their rise, citing everything from hatred and past wars to inherent destructive potential of those ideologies. All kinds of antifascist movements and efforts, educating people about the holocaust, frequent reminders of Nazi and Soviet terror... in the end it all culminates into a zero-tolerance policy towards supporting these atrocities - predominantly on the left side of political spectrum, which is far less sensitive to such restrictions of freedom.

Trying not to repeat one's own history this way is in itself a worthwhile cause... but are those accusing fingers really pointed in the right direction?

Personally, I have to distance myself from this approach, stating once and for all that I strongly disagree with it. Since the purpose of this post is not to discuss curbing of liberty and its implications - which could also serve as an indicator of flawed logic and consequentially failure of current approach - I will instead address something I deem to be crucial in understanding the real problem, using but a simple metaphor.

You see, what is being done at present time about preventing the grim past events from ever reoccurring is analogous to pointing at the upper side of the coin, a coin that quite obviously has two sides. It is only this side of the coin that receives wide attention, carrying the burden of responsibility and guilt in the eyes of those who keep a close eye on it while the equally important lower side remains hidden, unrecognized, even forgotten.

If the coin were to disappear altogether, being successfully pushed out of sight, and then reappear at a later point in time, the dangers brought along with it would only be recognized and acted upon if its previously visible upper side has remained in top position - but since it is as likely that previously unseen side will now be the one on top (due to an innocent flip somewhere along the way), the tainted coin will just as likely sneak past without raising suspicion or being recognized for what it really is, putting into motion the same atrocious sequence of events that more than once before plagued our planet after being so naively inserted into the societal slot machine.
However, unlike in the past, the chance of saving ourselves this time might be far more bleak...

The sides of the coin that I am mentioning are of course dangers of "-isms" (particularly the famous 20th century totalitarian ideologies) on one hand and the danger of appeasement on the other. The former is widely recognized and fought against, the latter neglected and buried in a quiet remote corner of Cemetery of Reality, right next to other disturbing parts of ourselves we would rather not talk about.

For example, the aggressive advancement of Nazi regime in Europe was just one side of the story... European appeasement and caving in to its threats was the other - it's important to point out that what is now perceived as threats were once entirely acceptable and legitimate demands. Looking straight in the eyes of this sad history of European appeasement is avoided at all costs, most likely due to the conviction that doing just that would either serve no purpose or is seen as a hog on resources that are already being funneled into a variety of (for example) antifascist efforts.

Even though the saying about good men and triumph of evil sums up these efforts quite nicely, giving them a solid moral backing, it is still very saddening to know of their certain failure in the long term.

While this one-sided prevention is getting more and more extreme in its measures, the one thing we should never ever let occur again is actually appeasement itself.

It is most discomforting to observe how inflexible and outdated the watchers of the upper coin side really are: only tracking the historic "-isms" and from this perspective failing to properly address any destructive system that isn't a product of European origin, even lacking interest in doing so or being undecided. But the worst of all is the inevitable unnoticeable slide towards appeasement of whoever managed not to qualify for the totalitarian/fascist label.

This applies to everything from modern genocides to harsh authoritarian rule. There is, however, one important additional application - it is actually the main reason why I started writing this post... the above examples are almost all of external nature, from beyond the sea, meaning a greater ease of distancing oneself from them (due to a seemingly far less direct influence), so what is required now in order to complete the picture are internal examples. As Pat Condell would undoubtedly agree, the best example of that would be European appeasement of numerous Islamic groups with political agendas, forcing them into mainstream society, all at the expense of constantly eroding freedom of our own. What is even more disturbing is the similar meaning between appeasement and submission...

Giving such an ideology more and more room to accommodate itself in the midst of unsuspecting future victims is not at all an innocent doing, the most suitable adjective would be suicidal. It's particularly alarming that not only we seem to be on the verge of appeasement's reign but also that the old fascism detector is malfunctioning because of it, which is most clearly visible in the rise of unsanctioned, tolerated anti-semitism.

And since I've already mentioned such an interesting, paradoxical expression, let me add a much-needed word or two on tolerance as well. Tolerance in my opinion paves the road to appeasement and serves only as an excuse to justify it.
In itself, tolerance does not mean acceptance and understanding, it does not represent symbiosis or even compromise, tolerance is nothing but the process of enduring someone's pressure, even infliction of pain while trying to compensate for it with appeasement towards that same person.

Tolerance does not contain the rational component that would cover a sympathetic attitude toward someone you seem to be in disagreement or conflict with - it is at best a temporary solution for avoiding conflict without having any intention to at least attempt to gain sufficient knowledge for understanding the tolerated individual. Even the notion of tolerance presupposing patience as its core element is false since patience is actually a calculative approach, based on rational filtering of specific relevant information.

On the whole, tolerance is a completely inappropriate word to use for elaborating conflictual interpersonal relations - but it does go along well with appeasement.

In conclusion, I would once more like to state my concern over the gap between the ones who fail to see appeasement for what it is, perhaps even giving lectures of tolerance along the way, and those few who recognize its innate destructive potential, waiting to catch us off guard once again.
Learning from own mistakes in this case does not mean only preventing the past ideologies from ever regaining power by restricting them, it is equally (if not more) important that emerging ones (yet unknown to us) are being anticipated, recognized and dealt with accordingly while the resources for that are still at our disposal... in other words, before it's too late.

I suspect that this very issue will heavily influence a related debate of negative vs. positive freedom, but that's a topic for another blog post...

Save the Last Snow For Me

2008-03-05T11:47:00.007+01:00

Today we finally received the first and probably the last real package of snow for the season. I have to say it - I'm downright disappointed with such a snow-deprived winter, it makes shorter days and the cold much harder to bear and justify. In recent years the snowfall has been in steady decline and has pretty much hit a new low in this winter.

That is why I've decided to document the snow a bit before it vanishes for good... who knows, next year might be even worse. The pictures posted here therefore have a predominantly archival role.
The photos went through some minor adjustments in Photoshop but are otherwise fresh from the morning photo session around the house.

A Koyaanisqatsi inspired photo... If you haven't watched or even heard about this film, I highly recommend it - it has a cult status and really is worth watching. *Koyaanisqatsi music playing in the background*

It's not that there wouldn't be enough snow available at higher altitudes (there was plenty of it in the mountains), the thing is that there is something incredibly calming and satisfying about the white coating covering our civilization's greatest achievements, softening the edges of natural and unnatural surroundings alike and causing everything to come to a standstill, incapacitating and silencing it at least for a short while.

Of course, I better just come out and say it: I love snow... the more snow the better. I sometimes wonder why and usually come to a conclusion that it has roots in either genetics, my childhood experience or both. Whatever the case may be, watching snowflakes fall from an overcast sky always was one of my favorite hobbies... secretly wishing that a sudden blizzard would conjure up insane amounts of snow, burying the ground under meters and meters of it.
Aaaaahhhhhh....

Expergefaciphobia - The Fear of Waking Up

2008-03-05T08:52:00.002+01:00

Let's start off with the most obvious - etymology of this clumsy tongue-twisting word that dwells in the title above: When I was sifting through various dictionaries and Internet resources in search of a term that would best describe the supposed mental condition of mine, the most convenient word I was able to find seemed to be expergefacio (itself put together from ex-pergo-facio), a Latin verb meaning to awaken. Since there was no phobia related to waking up, no description even remotely close to my conscious understanding of this condition, I found my last resort in making an elegant descriptive neologism, hence the word that you see in this blog's title. Now, it would definitely be an overstatement to claim that it is the ideal word to represent the ideas this phobia is built on, the truth of the matter is that it neither looks nor sounds pleasantly - thus its prospects of becoming the next hip buzzword in pop culture are very dim.

The key to fully understanding the expression requires a thorough explanation of its English translation, the fear of waking up. The phrase itself is almost always used in a metaphorical way, predominantly in a political context, but to be able to comprehend its meaning in a true phobic sense, a slight deterrance from the prosaic usage is required - for in this case, its meaning is quite literary.

The next arising question is naturally why is the act of waking up, the moment in which one starts fully regaining conscience after a period of hibernation so crucial, so important to cause an irrational fear in an individual, namely myself.

It is precisely at this point that a distinction from other related words can be made, thus narrowing the definiton further or at least giving it a desired direction. In addition, gaining understanding of expergefaciphobia through questioning its right to exist seems like a suitable approach.

If waking up is what one is afraid of, the logical conclusion is that the fear of sleep (hypnophobia, somniphobia) would be more entitled to receiving all the attention. However, this way of thinking is false - it's true that sleeping itself or even falling asleep eventually leads to the point of waking up, but an essential part of somniphobia among various feelings of insecurity and vulnerability is a fear of not waking up. In this case, it does not matter what had been occuring during the hibernation, it is not a matter of expergefaciphobia to deal with a nightmare or the negative events of the previous day. Even though it could be argued that the process of sleeping after all causes the awakening, it isn't the causes that we're after when it comes to defining the phobia - effects are the dreaded reason for showering this point zero, the moment of waking up with so much attention.

If it is the the effects that we're after, the wrong assumption to make would be that we're having a certain fear of the future, trembling before the mischiefs that start preying upon us the very moment we open our eyes after spending several hours in a blissful state of careless slumber. This would only lead to dismissing the issue as teen angst, which is clearly not the case, and even though I kinda like to feel young, angsty behavior isn't exactly a positive trait that would fall into this phobic context. If you see someone screaming in despair over the uncertain future of their 15 year-old life, the chances that you've stumbled upon a case of expergefaciphobia are very slim (still, such a possibility does exist).

At this point I would like to assure my readers that we still haven't run out of options for a credible exposition, even though we've eliminated both the past and the future from the pool of possible explanations by introducing several different phobias. What was still not addressed so far due to my hidden posting agenda is the present, these loathed undesired events and processes occuring as one is waking up - or rather, it is becoming aware of their occurence and inevitable effects that truly is the root of expergefaciphobia.

If I rephrase this revelation: the cause of my fear of awakening is the effect of waking up, plain and simple. However, there are some prerequisites for getting to this point in the first place...

You see, it takes a very particular and informed view of the world combined with a great deal of self-observation (as a result of having too much time on your hands) to even start thinking in such a way, to start seeing things (especially sleep) a bit differently. Let me try to describe for you what a bit differently actually means.

As I explained it to B to some extent, waking up horrifies me in two different ways: the first one is the feeling of dying every day and resurrecting as a different person. It is a "somewhat" exaggerated version of reality - which is precisely what makes it a phobia - but nonetheless true.

The reasoning behind it is that our minds are a subject to constant change. Despite the fact that the mainstream is treating personality (of a healthy full-grown human specimen) as a stable, permanent, fixed phenomenon (or a set of phenomena as I like to claim), it is in fact all but that: constant incremental changes are occuring within each fluctuating mind on a daily basis, too small pieces of a giant puzzle for anyone to take notice, slowly but surely reshaping your mental landscape. Naturally, sticking to the same cognitive operations undoubtedly can restrict your speed, course and extent of changes, but I'm guessing that in principle it still remains chaotic and unpredictable, its long-term effects impossible for our minds to grasp. As several researches have been discovering in recent time, the most substantial portion of changes is coming about during our sleep, meaning that it is not just (for example) the level of hormones that changes (which can by itself heavily influence our behavior and performance) but potentially also our individual selves.

The phobic component here is obvious: going to sleep will inevitably mean critical changes in thinking, moods and attitudes, which will lead to conflict with previous night's mental state and its plans for the future, almost certainly meaning a triumph over poor defenseless yesterday self. It is not necessarily always so but according to my own experience, waking up remains quite an unfavorable lottery.

That is why I more and more fear of waking up, prolonging my departure to bed until I've done all I could possibly think of for that day - simply because there is a good chance for your near future self to write it off for good. So once again, it is not the sleep that I fear (except perhaps a lack of it) but the predominantly (un)controllable consequences that it brings when waking up.

Speaking from my own experience, it is extremely hard for a chaotic mind to control such a situation - the main problem is of course the lack of focus or direction, a set of personal rules or principles that would need to be created to compensate for constant mental variability. Until you are capable of constructing something like that to hold on to as you journey from one day to another, there really isn't much you can do except shiver at the thought of waking up next day...

The second way in which waking up horrifies me is the physical zombie mode I start most of the mornings in. It significantly contributes to my early set of decisions (the first one usually being the binary to get up or not to get up), but can be manipulated relatively easily - getting enough sleep, changing the environment or waking up at just the right moment. The latter is of course easier said than done (and also another lottery) but things like aXbo alarm clock or the upcoming SleepSmart certainly do look promising... too bad that it costs 200€ just to try it out.

I truly hope that you have by now realized that waking up is not the easiest thing to do, in fact, for some of us it actually is the hardest thing imaginable - the endless flock of people complaining about being drowsy in the morning certainly doesn't fall into this category.
Of course, I am not trying to be apologetic, it's merely the fact that expergefaciphobia is a serious enough condition to deserve wider attention, at least for the underlying ideas if not anything else. The least this post could do (beside offering excellent therapy for myself) is to help make some sense of related issues to any desperate passers-by.

I travel light.

2008-02-26T05:06:00.005+01:00

I do, I really do! Ever since I remember, I've been having a zeal, an obsession with traveling around in a minimalistic fashion, as little encumbered by luggage of any sort or redundant apparel as possible, regardless of where or for how long I went. Even back in the early days of primary school, I remember feeling overjoyed whenever I could come to school without a square-shaped bag on my back, using extremely flexible and light materials like small plastic bags or simply stuffing things into my pockets. The same goes for any trips that we've made... at first I just kept shortening the list of things I needed to carry in my backpack but soon ended up eliminating the backpack altogether. It was a clumsy self-limiting burden, and going around without its over-encumbering weight always gave me the feeling of being infinitely more free than having this bloated abomination in any shape of form somewhere nearby.

As the years went on, I started taking great pride in reducing the essential things I had to carry around to the lowest possible amount - it became almost as painting an abstraction of an abstraction, a journey along the path of realization that most things indeed serve no other purpose than providing some inner comfort, a mental patch for their bearer.
This minimalistic, almost ascetic attitude didn't just apply to my travels, it extended far beyond that and in many ways became an integral part of my life, in my own opinion heavily contributing to who I am today as a person.

In addition to being more free (or at least having such a feeling), roaming around in a light fashion does have at least two more advantages that I've come to notice - firstly, it makes you blend into the local atmosphere much faster, which is something I certainly love to do when I travel around, and secondly, it undoubtedly makes the trip a whole lot more exciting and adventurous (which could be further enhanced by taking along much less than you require for survival in a cold night).

So when I seriously started considering purchasing a decent laptop, most likely an ornery MacBook, I was faced with a serious dilemma. Since I would indubitably carry it with me everywhere I went (due to my high level of geekines), the laptop would then require a bag of its own. But what kind of a bag exactly? I just couldn't settle for one of those horrid big square conventional backpacks or a pretentious impractical briefcase, what I needed was something tiny, flat and with an imaginative well thought-out use of space, a bag that you can put over your shoulder without anyone noticing it's even there and also without anyone even suspecting that a laptop is hiding inside it (some of us would rather keep it a surprise). On the other hand, it has to provide sufficient protection for the things it holds - I want to be able to jump around and run for miles when I feel like it without its contents suffering any scratches or signs of wearing, not to mention the durability of the bag itself or the shoulder and back of its wearer.

I sailed across the interwebs for days, googling furiously and trying to find anything remotely close to my wishes. The closest thing I could come up with was the Incase Sling Pack. I do admit, it has quite a few features I wanted... but it's also too big, square and has a "Laptop Inside" sign written all over it.

So, I kept cruising around, finally stumbling upon an interesting link in one of the many blogs I came across. It contained two short words: "The Buzz", leading me to a site unheard of before. Tom Bihn bags, the old-fashioned red airplane-accompanied sign at the top read. The plainness immediately caught my attention, so I kept reading onward and it became clear that the bag presented on this was made to be worn on my back.
As its heart-warming about and FAQ sections of the page say, the company making it bears the name of its bag designing mastermind Tom Bihn. It's a company type that is particularly hard to find nowadays - a small factory in Seattle in which all bags are sewn together from high quality materials by a team of just 18 employees in what I imagine is a very friendly working environment.

Of course, making the bags at home (and not in China for example), using only the best materials and taking care of the workers means a lot higher final bag cost. But if you take into account what you actually get for your money, the price suddenly seems awfully low - a perfect high-quality bag with a lifetime guarantee, incredible customer support and a firm philosophy behind the process of its making.

But there was even more to The Buzz than that. Its compactness and curves immediately made me fall in love with it. Of course, as someone who has a secret desire to design and sew his own clothes and wallet I couldn't resist imagining a few improvements of my own, but even in its present form, the bag is pretty impressive, especially when taking into account its cheaper alternatives.

I feel like this is the sling bag I simply need to carry my (currently inexistent) laptop in - in part because it's made of awesomeness and in part because of what it represents. My next course of action after getting a laptop will therefore be ordering the Buzz and writing a review of it, hopefully finding out that it fits not only my body but more importantly my light travel spirit.

There is no doubt that a cult status of Tom Bihn bags is already established among their users and spreading around the world (through word of mouth), and being a part of it would indeed add an interesting dimension to owning a bag, turning me into a missionary with the holy task of saving the souls of all cheap bag wearing heretics... in a way, that is what I am already doing.

I believe that the company has immense potential if it remains on its current path: of course, I have doubts about how long can this growth be sustained without sacrificing some accessibility and attention that it coats its customers with - but in either case, the aura surrounding its brand name is simply too valuable to be thrown away. Or, if I rephrase what El Mano said when I enthusiastically babbled about whole Tom Bihn concept to him: it's too valuable not to invest in. Though I doubt that will happen any time soon (if ever), we'll certainly have to be on the lookout for such opportunities.

Now that I've brought this bag issue up, I also need a new minimalistic wallet - and I haven't been able to find one that suits me for over six months now, I've thought of designing my own over and over again. I wonder if Tom Bihn is up for designing another product, something along the lines of his organizer pouches...

A Ton of Blogging Drafts

2008-01-28T12:39:00.000+01:00

Since the late summer of 2007, I have created, deleted and in other ways played around with an increasing number of blogging drafts, ranging from a few paragraphs to whole incoherent unpublished posts, slowly accumulating to over twenty in number.

My efforts in systematizing them for later orderly posting, perhaps by assigning some new labels or making series of themed posts like I did with WoW, would kinda lose that chaotic black box charm that blogs like this one generally have (I can't really say if my blog actually fits into this category).

But still, I feel obliged to tell that something is in the works beside (ir)regular posting, and make the "hidden agenda" of this blog - in other words, writing about things I'm interested in - more transparent. So here's a short list of (some of) the drafts that are bound to become real posts some day.

I have various personal drafts on Repetitions and loops and why I dislike them with a passion, speculating How my mind functions, that it is Nothing but a prison, my take on Search for normality, some ramblings about what kind of Food I like and of course expergefaciophobia.
I take a swim in the sea of thoughts about Chaos-rationality, Insolitology, The two extremes of acceptance, on Anonymous and on Anonymity, a scary maze of thoughts on Pure wish, something about a Global-to-planetary shift, my viewpoint on Tradition, the importance of Identity, on Bipolar political divisions, on Counter-religions, some criticism concerning self-proclaimed Pickup artists...

This should be enough for now, I already feel like I have given all three regular visitors of this blog false hope of getting some long-anticipated interesting reading.

Will Things Never Change?

2008-01-26T01:55:00.000+01:00

So, I went to take a peek at what's going on in our town last Thursday...

...and got reminded why I rarely go out randomly in this place, especially without company that would usually serve as a counterweight. It awakened the grimmest and most negative views I held of population of this place, the nearly forgotten discontent. It may sound whiny but I was shocked to see how the general state of mind around here made no noticeable progress whatsoever in the last years - not that it was any better before that.
In any case, next to nearly pushing me into a momentary depression, meeting all these people after a long time, including the new ones who had successful internalized the patterns copied onto them by their contemporaries, reminded me that I really gotta get out of this place. Fast.

These Walks of Mine...

2008-01-25T23:33:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday night, after about yet another twelve hours of sleep (in two six-hour parts), I decided to do what I haven't done for a very long time - but should have ages ago, considering my current state of mind. Walking in the dark, as I like to call it, is one of my favorite things to do, and it's been high up on the "best in life" list for as long as I can remember. There aren't many things it can be compared with, mostly because it's a unique experience in itself, and also since its impact can be incredibly far-reaching.
In contrast with more common daytime walks, these nocturnal expeditions aim to be a wholly anonymous event, eliminating every possible human interference from outside, erasing the barrier between the surroundings and yourself, and that way temporarily forming something close to the hypothetical "state of nature", a concept that would in all its ridiculousness be much more suitable for describing the likely state of mind of this night-time stroller.
The unparalleled combination of factors was nearly perfect for its purpose - I intended to go out to think through a number of things currently on my mind... and hopefully condense them somewhere along the way, perhaps even find a fil rouge beneath that shroud of disorder.

Not mistaking it for a solitary activity of a sociopath, the act of night walking predominantly serves as a refreshment, a welcome and exciting change in whatever one is doing - let's face it, there's few things like it.
In accordance with the latter and to reveal my visible disappointment that has surmounted over all these years, being able to find occasional peace like that is and has always been the single positive thing this place I live in has to offer, so I can be thankful for at least this one thing (though it can in the best case only provide a pale shadow of its equally desired vibrant opposite, such deviation from the original topic would prove to be more confusing than anything else).

While the topic of night walking isn't something I would until recently share with anyone in such a manner, I do have to say that I sometimes wonder how many people actually practice a similar thing - I have a hunch there are only a handful. Not just because I haven't met any on my own outings, the main reason is that it must seem pretty out of the ordinary to the average person.
That is one of the reasons why I haven't tried "sharing" the walks yet... on one hand, there are no such people around to like it, and it would undoubtedly alter the experience in yet unknown ways on the other. Although, I have to admit, this is exactly what would probably make it that all the more interesting.

The Walk in The Dark

The timing I set out in that cold windy night was ideal for a walk: crystal clear skies and shiny moon without a single living soul anywhere in sight. A gust of chilly northern wind blew directly into my face as I stepped out of the safe shelter of village and headed up towards the pastures, contemplating my next course of action.

The first thing on my mind was doubt. As with everything else, it was a necessity for me to doubt the purpose of walking itself. Everyone battles their own demons, and this obsession with questioning "all there is" certainly represents one of mine.
I tried to figure out if and why is this inner dialogue (not monologue) that I was about to get into more effective than the usual, outer one - conversing with another human being. I always found dialogues to be more productive and inspiring than a continuous, linear flow of information. That is why I came to imagine ad hoc entities, existing only as long as they are required and then silently disintegrating back into dark corners of my mind. They can be shaped to perfectly suit your requirements - it is their greatest advantage and also their biggest flaw. In contrast with converser from flesh and blood, the internal dialogue is exclusively dependent and therefore limited to information stored in various ways in one's own mind, which has limited ways of relaying and interpreting it, thus greatly influencing one's conclusions.
Exposing yourself to external influences is therefore the key to finding better solutions and generally a better investment for draining your brain's resources. Unfortunately, live conversations are uncontrollable situations, prone to impending doom of quickly rising entropy, ultimately leading to chaos.
This is where an inner dialogue comes in handy - it's the ability to have peace and quiet - and still get to meaningful conclusions at the same time. Furthermore, the nocturnal natural ambient contributes to just the right mood as well, it is actually an essential piece of the puzzle to make this special state of mind flourish, particularly with its emotional component.
Needless to say, this last heavily influential element, an interplay of memories and notions, stretching all the way to my early childhood, is quite likely the determining factor behind my decisions to go out in the first place. What exactly is so appealing from that point of view?

In a way, walking in the quiet darkness feeds my imagination's appetite for post-apocalyptic scenarios, the so-called Armageddon effect in which you are allowed to think to be (one of) the last surviving member(s) of humanity after a disaster of cataclysmic proportions. Cataclysmophilia itself, as I would call my obsession with this idea, is a worthwhile reason for going out.

It also gives you a feeling of playing a role-playing game, it particularly reminds me of the enchanting Diablo night scenes with its serene music, and of course the original Gothic. You, an anonymous individual, all alone in the desolate wild, are left to pit your wits and will against nature's fury (if I rephrase 300), thus getting a clear existential purpose.

As I crossed a meadow, stepping over mice hole-ridden terrain among patches of frozen grass, occasional looks at the sky reminded me how I used to undergo "you are nothing" moments, especially in early high school, a palette of universal magnitude-related realizations that brought me on edge of despair with tears in my eyes when I grasped in all its extent (or so I thought) how endlessly small fraction of this cosmos I represent, which actually pushed me a bit closer to insanity and robbed me of any serious attempts to make my life meaningful, luckily only for a while.
This time a somewhat different kind of thoughts swept through my mind: even if you are virtually nothing when compared to the great beyond, you in here and now (if only for a moment) are everything, what your eyes perceive only exists because of You, the sole purpose and legitimizer of its existence, the beholder of encircling still nature, the snowy mountains in the distance, the moon and stars up above... oh what a blissful, naive thing to think! An egocentric trance and nothing more - yet in that moment, it seemed perfectly fitting.

I moved to a wooden outpost, formerly a hunting observation point, weighing various thoughts and arranging them, having occasional flashes of my recent readings. When I rambled onward after about ten minutes, streaking into the forest, my conscious embrace of night walking reached its peak and neither a suspicious car in the forest nor the mesmerizing echoing of owl's screech could throw me off balance, out of my nightly groove. Truly, it was an exhilarating feeling, one that in the short term gives you a climactic feeling and in the long term helps you anchor back in the real world.

Now I dared to answer the question from the beginning: where exactly do you want to go?
My responsive was lucid, if somewhat Pythian. No matter what happens, I want to venture along the path that will lead me precisely where I will be able to return right here, right now at any time... this moonlit land of serenity, wherever it may truly lie.
I have always envisioned such a place... high wavy grass, silent warm silent night with only crickets playing their tune, a single dusty winding road cutting through the plains...

Such was my nighttime walk, with some details and thoughts left omitted. But its essence is here, more or less successfully captured in the form of this blog post. Looking back makes me realize how I failed to address the overall value and impact of strolling around in the dark... nonetheless, you should get a pretty good picture with a little help of imagination.

Early spring kicks in?

2008-01-23T13:04:00.000+01:00

Last Tuesday was the day I felt it for the first time this year... a strange and isolated feeling since I had been slowly sliding down what I think is called "winter depression" slope for quite a while by that time. I was walking back to the railway station from a pretty much failed exam when suddenly something not easily describable happened - as I walked through a tree-lined avenue a frothing wave of warmth started flowing through my body, waking up my senses. It was as temporarily having a heightened sense of things - my sight, sense of smell... it felt as if I were able to grasp even the slightest details of my surroundings and marvel at their crystal-clear reality, their awakening from winter sleep... it was in that moment of freshness and warmth that I realized - spring is in the air!

Suddenly, old memories started to surface from the depths of Long forgotten gulf. It was like that proverbial movie that rolls in front of your eyes just before you give out your last breath, except that this was a random avalanche of positive, feel-good memories. In either case, it was an incredible feeling, making me feel lighter as I merrily walked on. I wasn't paying much attention to it back then but the whole thing only lasted about a quarter of an hour - that is, until I got on the train.

And then on cold, rainy Thursday evening, as I was waiting for a bus to take me to my chorus practice, everything seemed completely reversed - the world rotting in front of my eyes, all matter around me decomposing, its stench invading through my nostrils like an unwelcome guest. My observations were a clear sign that if there was an early spring looming in, it had evidently come too early.

In reality, I had no idea what could really be behind my recent "going low" mood. It would be too cheap to try to attribute it to a single factor, for example blame it on the moon, which was growing full and offered a pretty spectacular sight when I looked through the window on Friday night: a glaring silver circle was right before setting behind the hills in the west, its argent beams reaching down to earth like a silent whisper, a celestial carpet cutting its way through the tattered fog, ochre from light pollution on the ground.

However, the potential of this stellar object certainly shouldn't be dismissed so lightly... is it an executed set of events (read: coincidence) that I started feeling (slightly) better when I woke up on Tuesday afternoon, after previous night's full moon shone in all its glory and then started receding again?

Whatever the case may be, I didn't feel the presence of "spring" any longer.. in fact, my mind was once again set to good old winter - which was, ironically, a refreshing change.

World of Warcraft Memoirs: Part III - The Migration

2008-01-19T03:25:00.000+01:00

In the year after Daggerspine disillusionment my playtime slowly started receding, I was even taking occasional breaks that lasted from a week up to a month or more. But what gave me new hope was that things in the game finally started moving in the right direction... or so it seemed.

Year 2006 was the year when Blizzard began rolling out new features to compensate for rising WoW population (which by now counts almost ten million people worldwide), among them so called migrations, which was basically offering a population of one or more servers a free chance to move (transfer their characters) to another (new or at least low-populated) uncrowded, lagless server - in theory unburdening the old server.

At that time migrations were a two-edged sword: crude, irreversible, very time-limited and a good showcase of how far Blizzard still was from providing satisfactory customer support. Migrations brought panic and chaos more often than relief, they had the power to shatter server communities and cause endless headaches over technical difficulties that sometimes occured during the transfer process. On the other hand, they offered an escape route for all those who could not stand long queues and lag any longer or who simply wanted to start anew.

The same inevitable thing happened with Daggerspine, our notorious laggy and overcrowded server. At first Blizzard made the most perfect plan imaginable: servers Daggerspine and Bladefist were offered a player migration to a new powerful server called Outland. There was much rejoicing when we learned of this news - and we indeed had plenty of reasons for celebration: both servers were reputable, with English-speaking population, vibrant communities and very successful guilds as far as game progress is concerned. In other words, merging the two would create the most powerful European server, a dream come true for many players, including myself. Quickly new friendships were made, guilds from both servers started making mutual plans, recruiting players from the other server and getting to know each other better in general. Bladefist players even made an Outland migration blog to track events related to the migration.

The only problem was that everyone wanted to migrate because of it, there obviously wasn't enough room for everyone on Outland... and so this common enthusiasm turned into migration's downfall. You see, Blizzard, who was closely paying attention to the events, just couldn't allow for such a migration to occur - particularly because they were responsible for the upciming train wreck. So what they did was a pretty dirty trick: on the night of supposed migration they disabled it, thus carelessly leaving players who tried to migrate the whole night without sleep, blamed the whole thing on technical difficulties, postponed migration until further notice and in a few days declared that only Bladefist players will be migrating to Outland and Daggerspine will be assigned its very own server called Kazzak.

The decision caused a massive uproar from both sides of the community - but eventually we all had to accept the fact that ajoined migration just wasn't going to happen, regardless of how low opinions we had of Blizzard's recent actions. We weren't going to give up without a fight though - well, at least I didn't.

This time my outbursts went far beyond those of almost a year ago... fed up with Blizzard's attitude and knowing that the migration has the potential to turn out to have a disastrous effect on Daggerspine comunity I started a new topic on the official forums and unleashed my rage-imbued thoughtful considerations about the migration that was offered to us, being as optimistic - I dare not say idealistic - as ever about people's response, for the very last time believing in something as elusive and slippery as the power of "community".

Posted: 26.4.2006, 10:32AM

[Read] What happens after Black Friday:

Disclaimer: This is not a drama post. And it's long just as the suffering of Daggerspine from all the perils, so please take time to read it. It is meant to encourage community actions after the Outland scandal is over and that server's door get shut in front of our noses, which will most likely happen.

INTRO

We all know that those sneaky Blizzard employees want to 'fix' their mistake of choosing Bladefist and Daggerspine to migrate together.
Their way of 'fixing' it is outrageous! Do not let Them outplay us all once more! Just think about this:

- You are paying a high monthly fee that gives you access to a fair, competent customer support!
- When the support fails at serving you, You still tolerate it because of the game itself and You believe things will get bettter.
- And what did You get in the end? More than a year of forgiving European Blizzard their mistakes: the lag, downtimes, restarts, malfunctions, false hope, ignorance - You got one final stab in the back!
- A backstab with a Dagger directly in the spine, ripping apart the the last thing that made all the players forgive Blizzard their mistakes - the community, foundation of all MMORPGs!
- So here we stand, on a hardware-outdated server. Tired, angry and humiliated for any number of reasons. And about to be tricked again.

THE REALITY

These are the reasonable facts:
Face it - Blizzard will never ever allow a Bladefist+Daggerspine crowded überserver because it would attract more and more new players and that is the opposite of what they're trying to do - disperse population!
Therefore Blizzard turned this 'two servers to one' deal into wildcard 'each mega-migration to its own server'. This is bad because:
A) Bladefist and Daggerspine have already planned their common future (remember how bonds were made, cross-server recruitment, the effort put in planning!)
B) Daggerspine itself will be split into at least two or even three parts. This will cause friendship breakups, partial guild deformations and would make both old and new server a pale shadow of old Daggerspine.
C) Daggerspine players can't preview who will they get as their new neighbor and decide if it suits them.
D) There is no way to tell who will join Daggerspine migraters on the new servers and in what A:H ratio will they come.
E) Also note that the later migrating players could be from a non-English speaking server. Daggerspiners have always been proud of being on an international server and using international language for communication.
F) And finally - the name 'Kazzak' itself is one of the worst name selections anyone could have made (my personal observation).

Now, let's clear our heads and think for a moment. Satisfaction with Blizzard services has reached yet another record low. You now either want to migrate as fast as possible to get over with the suffering Blizzard has caused or You are seriously considering to end your subscription because you won't take this mockery any longer.
But is the fast solution really what You and I want? No! All we ever wanted from the birth of Daggerspine was a top-performing server, hardware and community-wise. Now is our chance to get it!!

THE FUTURE - ONE BIG MOVE

As many wise heads here have already suggested, the best solution for Daggerspine is for everyone to migrate! Think of it as taking a boat from Azeroth to Kalimdor with all your characters at once.
But everyone migrating at once will not be an easy task and will require a lot of effort from us all. We need an advertising campaign, mobilizing everyone to spread the word and most of all - get certain guarantees from Thundgot and team. Make no mistake - even Thundgot himself acknowledged that this is no ordinary migration but something exceptional.
1. After almost two weeks of delays we deserve at least a minor compensation. This will be to open migration to the new server on Monday May 1st for Daggerspine only and leave it open for at least one week. If we fear that not everyone will be able to migrate in time then extend it to two weeks which means ending it in the middle May. Seems a fair deal.
2. Because a huge amount of players will migrate, Blizzard will most likely not open migration onto this server to any other existing server which means the following: we remain as we were, with a lot of new capacity to invite your friends from elsewhere! Sounds pretty good.
3. A good reason for them to let us do this is because almost empty Daggerspine will eventually fill to its optimal population, which is what Blizzard team probably dreams of. No performance problems means less work for them. Same goes for new realm which will eventually get a bit larger population but the new hardware will handle it easily.
4. Another step ahead would be to offer migration to Daggerspine's new realm to those from Bladefist who already made arrangements to join DS guilds. Also seems fair, doesn't it?
5. We can also request a different name of the new realm if the majority of players is bothered by it - even if this seems radical, I am certain it could be done. After all, they changed our migration's destination as well!

Summary:
So what are the good/bad sides of a total migration?
Good: Everyone can stay together!; a stronger, faster server situated in Germany; chance for your friends to join you here without causing a longer queue; A:H ratio stays the same, we all still communicate in English; Blizzard keeps many happy subscribers..
Bad: There are none!

BRAVE ONES, STEP AHEAD!

This is the last chance for everyone to do something for Daggerspine. I am unfortunately too busy with matters in real life right now to start this rolling, but it seems to me that at least some leaders of our most respected guilds could put their heads together and contact Thundgot to present whatever proposal you or the community may come up with. Just sharing thoughts will make the difference! If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know and I'll try. And for support from players - from what I've seen everyone so far are in favor of this massive server migration, the only thing left is to convince Blizzard to approve (and not prevent) it. Remember - together we're stronger!
If they decide to ignore us again, I'll simply cancel my subscription. I'm fed up with losing my nerves and paying good money for it. It's time for the customer to be right at least once!

The topic actually got some decent responses and people started taking actions, mostly independent of my own topic. What I did not understand at that point was that people generally don't even have the will (or precious game time) to read through my post, much less to actually give it some credit, especially because it was coming from an unknown, unguilded person. My words simply did not resonate.

But the situation was urgent and something had to be done... so I laid out a systematic survival plan for our server's community. There was no doubt in my mind that my analysis was correct and failing to take its recommendations into account would mean nothing short our own doom.

(A side note: Thundgot was Blizzard's community manager, responsible for well-being of players)

Posted: 29.04.2006, 12.00AM

The Black Friday is over with no surprises at all. It went exactly as predicted, Blizzard's tactics was simply too obvious not to get noticed. The only thing that remained was to think what to do next and start acting in that direction - and I'm extremely glad you did - especially Thunderhawke and his migration topics! However, I wasn't just idling around either - I was collecting information about migration plans from various community players themselves and came to some conclusions that could help make migration more successful.
If you're a woman/man of action, skip the first part of this post and start reading the Action segment.

THE THEORY

First important thing that I'd like to mention is how the community itself is made up:
We have raiding guilds with long-time players, who want to migrate due to unstable server. Then we have less progresssive (and younger) guilds who are hesitant to leave the server since the pluses and minuses are mostly equal to them. And finally, there are also quite some 'minor' guilds and players who are just starting the raiding, don't want to leave and think either that they will become more powerful server-wise (after big guilds leave) or that Daggerspine will by some miracle (and this is no joke) become lag-free.
These are just three general player types - and almost every single one of them has friends in other two groups. Now, to leave out either of the parts would do quite some damage to the lively community we intend to have on our new server.

Next important and I think obvious observation is that this forum is being viewed by mostly the first type of players - dedicated raiding guilds. This means that others, especially the pre-60 and non-raiding guilds don't know what we're talking about here! To solve this, a kind of an advertising campaign should be enforced at least on ingame City channels.
Another thing that worries me is the faith that players that want to stay have in performance capabilities of this server. It reminds me of the Neptulon migration time, when everyone thought we would get hardware upgrades or some other fix. Well, as we all know, it never happened and if you're reading blue posts who claim that 'there will be no server upgrades' you also know that they just won't happen in the future. But our newer community members, playing mostly in these newer 'we're not moving' guilds, don't know that because they weren't there. Also, they have probably never (or very rarely) experienced instance raiding lag.
This is where strong arguments for migration come in and help them realize that staying would be a mistake.

As last important thing I'd add that small portions of community want to get away from others, whether it's because they dont want to live in shadow of big guilds or because they like more empty space for themselves. This kind of players (guilds) wants to stay on Daggerspine and simply cannot be persuaded to join the migration. Losint time convincing them with arguments would be a waste of time - but, as always, a slim chance for them to join the big wave remains, it's just that the wave has to be really big.

3, 2, 1 ACTION!

3. How to advertise for migration?
Make a macro for general chat! Hit it once in a while in every zone you travel across!
Let the macro be reasonably short and clear! Make a reference to this realm forum (Thunderhawke's topic) or Kazzak blog!
Contact guild leaders of smaller guilds and tell them about new guild migration option! Tell them to visit this forum and join our effort!
Contact your friends whose guilds have not yet decided to migrate! Let them realize that they will only gain and not lose with migration!

2. How to explain the migration (illustrations)?
If talking to a Tolkien fan - We're like the Elves, leaving shores of Midgard for the western lands because there's no more room for us!
The server is an old man that is getting sicker with each additional luggage we put on him - even if he has very little luggage, he'll still be old and will have problems with health!
The spiritual persons: Daggerspine migration to the new server is nothing but the reincarnation of entire community in a higher being than the original!

1. What arguments to use for migration?
Performance:
In the past, Daggerspine was laggy and suffering even at times of medium population! It won't be any better now!
The new server's datacenter is NOT in France but (presumably) in Germany, which means no air condition and power supply failures!
Daggerspine WON'T get new hardware! Ever! Every blue post on that topic states that fact! The new server has this newer hardware!
Downtimes and resets will NOT go away after at least half or two thirds of the server migrates! Proof: Daggerspine has been having major problems even at times with no queue!
Daggerspine can only take low-medium population before things go bad! New server outperforms it big time!
It is inevitable that DS will get filled again - and that will mean exact same pains we're in right now!
Community:
Solid balanced communities like ours are very rare in WoW! Move with us and make shure it stays as good as it is!
If you care at all about other players of this server you should move with us! Staying won't make anyone happy!
Daggerspine has an equal Alliance:Horde ratio. By not going you're jeopardizing this balance and risking a very imbalanced server!
Both Horde and Alliance are moving together, and this joint effort shows the strength of our community!
There will be same people on the new server, only this time they won't be frustrated by the lag!

The migration will last for the entire week, so you will see me advertising with my macros all over Azeroth! I hope that players of both factions (Horde in particular!) will join it and that it will be accepted as a good thing. And to my fellow community dwellers, who are doing their best urging everyone to join the migration effort (sounds like the AQ War Effort, doesn't it) by opening new topics - it's not gonna work. If you've read the post above you know why :)

And the conclusion? Largely unsurprisingly, things did turn out just as I expected, though not as badly as I feared. The majority successfully migrated from Daggerspine to Kazzak, but there were also those who decided to stay, not knowing what was in store for them... it soon became evident that the once honorable Daggerspine became a desert, a barren waste with the number of players so scarce that playing itself became unbearable - except, of course, if you were a hermit. There were so few players to play with, so few enemies to fight against - and the situation didn't improve with time despite several migrations that Blizzard ironically directed towards it. Situation did not improve even when individual migrations became available - quite the opposite, players rather fled the empty server... in fact, the grim situation persists to this day and there is little indication of it getting better in the future, partially thanks to gaining the reputation of a dead server and in part thanks to keeping its Laggerspine reputation. You see, its technical problems never really went away.

Despite all those nuisances, the old migrants to Kazzak still talk of the days on Daggerspine with a nostalgic tone - after all the quits and influx of newcomers, anyone who played there is considered to be a veteran, a member of the old brigade. And for me personally, the migration first brought a greater attachment to the game that eventually reverted its course and turned into a detachment, causing me to start frequently questioning "what am I still doing in this game?"

**UPDATE** Ironically, Blizzard is now offering a free migration from Kazzak to Daggerspine... it's funny how things turn around.

World of Warcraft Memoirs: Part II - Caring for Daggerspine, a.k.a Laggerspine

2007-12-29T09:47:00.001+01:00

We finally got official realm forums in WoW by September 2005. They were supposed to have a function of integrating each realm community even further but that never actually happened since most players didn't care about forums and the core of forum participants (also known as trolls) didn't exactly take it seriously.
At this time I was pretty much at point of no return. I discovered the wonders of trading at the auction house, started leveling an alternate character and that way spent whole days inside the game. It was then, at the time of my highest activity, when increasing problems with our server became unbearable.

Daggerspine, our server, was quite a popular and desirable destination from the bare beginning (unlike many other servers): we had a healthy 50:50 ratio of the two enemy factions, English-speaking and well-mannered players, who were mostly from Scandinavian countries, Netherlands, England and Slovenia (with smaller Italian and Czech communities), and of course a set of quite successful guilds. All these factors contributed to constant influx of new players who came to this almost perfect server to have a more enjoyable game experience - but soon this enjoyment became hampered due to their very own arrival: the server, full of disconnects and lag from its birth, started crumbling under the weight of players and eventually turned into a cesspool of high latencies and server queues (all servers have a limit of maximum players-logged-in-at-a-time), hence getting its notorious nickname Laggerspine, also known in a more severe version as Laggerspike.
At first we blamed it on the lazy French, since the server itself was located in France. Eventually, the server became so slow that we even started blaming hamsters for not spinning the wheel fast enough. The next thing, which was in a way even worse, was customer support. Blizzard gave us an occasional pat on the back by offering a free day or two of game-play but when things got really bad, it was time to act... so I posted my own appeal for action on the official forums, as always full of enthusiasm and ideas, truly hoping that we will be able to change things together - and it wasn't that bad of a plan, really:

Initiative for official Laggerspine protest
[Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2005 1:11 AM]

Dear fellow Daggerspine players!

From the bare beginning of playing on Daggerspine realm more than six months ago we have been facing constant and occasionally severe server issues like server lag, frequent lagspikes, server downtime etc.
We looked upon those troubles with patience and indulgence, believing that problems will be solved sooner or later.
But instead of things getting fixed, the situation after six months is outrageous to say the least! Not only that our realm's problems haven't been fixed, they have gone from bad to worse!
And in the last days, no matter what the Blizzard EU team says, we find our server in worse condition each time we log in! Or should I say each time we get disconnected?
It is true that other servers have their problems sometimes as well, but it simply can't compare to the Laggerspine situation!

Since nobody can hear or take our complaints seriously, we must find another way of getting more attention and understanding from Blizzard EU team. Otherwise this lagging can continue forever.
The only way to get some deserved attention for solving our realm's current bad shape is to organize a peaceful protest.

Here is a simple proposal on how to it could be done:

1 . Posting an initiative message for the protest on both unofficial and official realm forum. [already done]

2. Getting approval and support from all Daggerspine players, both Horde and Alliance! The more players participate, the more likely our voice will be heard and taken into serious consideration!

3. Posting a detailed protest message in WoW EU forums - Technical, General and PvP sections, just to make sure it doesn't get overlooked. It should as well get a /bump from as many players as possible. (There is a possibility that players from other realms would join us for their own cause as well.)

4. Arranging the exact time and place of the protest. - Since it would be hard to arrange a peaceful protest of any kind on our own server, I would propose making (for example) gnome lvl1 character on some other server and protesting in Ironforge of that server (or trolls in Orgrimmar).

5. Executing the peaceful protest! And if we fail to get attention (which I doubt very much), we can easily repeat it!

So, I am asking you all to put aside your differences for a moment and work together to make our realm playable again! Even though I wish that problems would disappear over night and we wouldn't be forced to set the plan in motion, they probably won't. And this protest will become inevitable.

Important NOTE: World of Warcraft Terms of Use enEU 20041203, paragraph 2.D, contains the following text: "You may not institute an attack upon a World of Warcraft server or otherwise deliberately attempt to disrupt World of Warcraft servers. You may not institute any such attack which results in the disruption of any other player’s client. ANY ATTEMPT BY YOU OR ANY OTHER PLAYER ON AN ACCOUNT TRACEABLE TO YOU TO DELIBERATELY DAMAGE WORLD OF WARCRAFT OR UNDERMINE THE LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF WORLD OF WARCRAFT IS A VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LAWS AND, SHOULD SUCH AN ATTEMPT BE MADE OR ASSISTANCE FOR SUCH AN ATTACK BE PROVIDED, BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO SEEK DAMAGES FROM ANY SUCH USER TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW" The peaceful protest has no intention of harming or disrupting WoW in any way. It merely wishes to address the problems that are mentioned in text higher above.

And what actually happened afterwards? As it turned out, I was overly optimistic in my hopes of mobilizing the community. My ideas weren't too radical or too blunt yet still no direct action of any kind was taken, only a few people expressed their disgruntled opinions in general section of the forums.
It was at that point that I started sobering up, realizing how passive WoW's community really was ...and still is. They aren't aware of their rights as consumers or individuals, they don't really want to get informed about them and even if they were - they are quietly prepared to go along with anything a corporation called Blizzard comes up with, no matter how badly it treats them.

Why is it so, I keep asking myself? They probably aren't too young (most WoW players are 20-30 years old) or too addicted to the game to notice the problems and take some action... the most common answer I got was "don't wanna bother with it". As it appears, the thing they're spending 15€ a month for and investing additional time in just isn't worth bothering with. This is an all too familiar picture from real life as well, and while one of the reasons I escaped to the virtual world was exactly that passiveness, it followed me to the other side, haunting me in the virtual realm as well.

I think that the most valuable lesson I can extract from this is that the real battles should be fought in the world of Real, for it is there that the passive attitude originates from in the first place. virtual one is merely its reflection.
This realization was one of the main reasons why I decided to leave WoW and open a different, far more important front so that both real and virtual could be... saved.

World of Warcraft Memoirs: Part I - The Circling Fervor

2007-12-27T01:59:00.000+01:00

I vividly remember the day when I first played the final release of WoW (I played open beta version before that). It was a cloudy day on February 11th, 2005 and it took me several hours from the moment when our postman handed me the cardboard-wrapped package to the point where it was installed and ready to play - and even then there was a problem of picking the right server - which as Slovenian community mutually agreed - became Daggerspine. But as soon as I was in, I succumbed to the frenzy of building up my character and exploring all the exciting new places, meeting some people who became good friends along the way.

I played the game with a great passion, treating every matter as a real problem, putting a lot of effort into resolving them in my own quirky ways, each time adding my own absolute-freedom -for-all viewpoint. And since World of Warcratf was much like Wild West in those early days (compared to what it is now), I had a lot of work to do and plenty of open prairies to ride across. I think I even considered myself to be a self-appointed sheriff sometimes...

In this particular case I took it upon myself to bring forth an issue of "circling" - which is essentially in-game running in a circle. The post was published in two parts on daggerspine-eu.com forum, our unofficial realm forum created by player Nithos because there were no realm forums back then (like they are now). As I said, wild wild West.
What follows is a copy of the actual post which will hopefully give any reader a better notion of my mental state at that time:

Circlers of the world, unite!
[Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 8:45 AM]

Just as I predicted that the issue of circling will sooner or later have to be resolved one way or the other. As you've probably seen my humble self circle in just about every corner of Azeroth (the IF bridge in the morning for example) and made your own conclusion about my actions (probably not in my favor) and moved forward, nobody really figured out the reason. Well, it supposed to be a passive protest against the view of most people and a demonstration of the circling issue.

As most of you still have no clue what I'm talking about, go to our newly acquired realm Haumarush and observe the most intriguing phenomenon - circling! Yes, it is true! Circling has now become a major issue, just as I hoped but had no means for warning available. Now, people on the server are occupying bandwidth, server response time, and most of all - preventing players from joining the game. Sounds familiar? Yes, it is just like AV. No third party software, no hacks - just pure game.

Now, to the real questions about circling: what can be done about it and should we do anything at all? Will this kind of behavior change your attitude towards loop-making? My eyes hurt so I'll stop at this point and continue in the afternoon.. :F

(and btw Drazzel and your other alts /main - your actions are pathetic, hypocritical, misleading, describable only as egoistic and from my point of view you are superfluous to this game)

At this point it was 9 in the morning and I went to bed, clearly upset about a Forte player named Drazzel - I always had disputes with these large guilds, seeing them mostly as oppressive arrogant cheaters, the cancer of realm's community which needed to be supervised since they always got some special treatment. It was all a part of my zealous sheriff mentality - I was sent to this wretched place to enforce law and order, tirelessly reporting all suspicious behavior to Game Masters. I was even prepared to report my own friends if I had a suspicion that they were cheating in some way, such was my mindless fundamentalist zeal.

Now comes part two after waking up and reading some initial responses to my first post (which also explains this post's ending, too bad it all vanished into the Internet abyss):

[Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 5:23 PM]

Oh dear, I was really wasted this morning
[You can skip to the short summary in the end]

Now, what I wanted to say (as you high IQ persons already figured) was that "circling" or better said in-game continuous moving in circles, caused by holding at least two movement keys continuously opens some "new issues".

At this point I'd like to point out that a person can hold the keys (if fanatical enough; or while reading a book for example) or have those specific movement keys weighted. The point is that there is just no way of telling which method is used.

That's why the only way to resolve this issue when people start using "circling" massively - which brings consequences like server queues - is (for Blizzard and their lazy GMs) to decide whether circling should be allowed at all.

And if the decision would be that it's not legal, they would be walking on thin ice when defining what exactly this circling is. It could -imo- lead to measures that would limit "the freedom of movement" in the game or at least spoil a part of its fun. How severe this limitation would be cannot be predicted since Blizzard hasn't even discussed the topic yet. It could for example lead even to silly clicking of some [cancel] button every 30min - like it's done now when being inactive for half an hour.

But there is another path choose - if it stays legal, circling people will eventually reach a critical limit that will cause half of IF to circle and the other half to walk among them, wondering what the hell happened to this game. Solutions here are numerous - like setting a higher cap for server player limit.

But eventually, since we are dealing with executing real hardware commands here and whether it is legal or not , there will be more and more ways to escape the circling or to better it, perhaps even do something else instead of simply going in circles. See where I'm going? To the point where some intelligence will be playing WoW when you're off and it wont be a Chinese person that you hire for 25 cents per hour. No, it will be the rise of machines! Or robots if you like - it's like Real botting :> But that's many years ahead - perhaps a debate for WoW4: The Elven Supremacy And until then our main goal is to resolve the circling.

OK, you impatient reader... the short summary:

1.moving in circles while holding movement keys (call it keyboard jam, weighting keys with a rock or 2h mace, it's all same) can in time have devastating effect on WoW gameplay.

2. to prevent it, the solution must be made:
a) it's legal and will be taken care of with some new "game features" like popping of dialogue buttons periodically.
b) it's illegal and a way to nail you will be found, but also new methods of escaping the nailing will evolve, (c) in distant future employing mechanical creatures.

3. the AI will rule the world and human vs machine war in 22nd century will be our doom Watch all those silly sf movies if you don't believe me.

4. If you're reading this to get some serious info, forget points 2.c and 3, as they are irrelevant for us.

And a big LOL to masturbating - perhaps we should start a petition for a new /masturbate emote?

*Zealoth masturbates furiously

On Decentralizing YouTube: iTube and gTube

2007-12-25T23:54:00.000+01:00

As everyone in YouTube's community is pointing out lately, the site just isn't what it used to be, particularly community-wise. Banning some prolific video creators from the site, highly questionable censorship practices, selective top lists (which basically means gaming their own system) and on a personal note disastrous picks of featured videos has been accompanying the site from the start but has only recently become a center of attention, mostly because technical issues have been resolved, turning all eyeballs to the second of most annoying problems on the list and furthermore robbing YouTube of an excuse, an alibi for its undesired practices.

As always, a lot of opinions, ideas and suggestions on how to bridge this corporate vs. commnity gap (and where - if anywhere - it's leading) have been circling around, though the latter has been in short supply this time... That's why I decided to throw in one of my own related suggestions and make the pile just a bit bigger.

I think what we really need is the following: YouTube should level the playing field by introducing gTube and iTube (which is already a registered trademark). What these two (un)registered trademarks stand for is this: I envision gTube (also known as GroupTube) as a hierarchically subordinated YT where a group of associates can have their own Internet video portal with all the features and editorial powers at their disposal, including their own subdomain, for example z-group.youtube.com - a customizable self-managing system within YouTube, suitable for either corporations or groups of individuals with enough time on their hands.
If gTube is meant for collectives of individuals, iTube would essentially be meant for personal use: your usual YT channel turned into a limited GroupTube, accommodated for personal use. This doesn't mean only getting your own subdomain like z-lot.youtube.com but also extending the control over current features, such as Favorites, and incorporating other Google services in the page (think Blogger).

The majority of users will most likely stick to their current profiles while a portion of video creators might be interested in iTube's advantages. The gTube is meant for a small number of users (groups), mostly established companies and aspiring collectives of individuals who want to take advantage of YouTube's provided tools and Google's video repository... or would simply like to have their own web TV station for free.

So what exactly would this dispersed, decentralized system bring to its creator? It would keep existing big fishes in YT's pond, attract new ones due to an already existent set of tools and of course a fair share of advertising revenue from ads and commercials on the new sites.

Overall, I think that I think the idea itself is worth at least a thoughtful consideration, if not complete devotion to its aims... the least we could get from it are those lovely subdomains...

Craving for World of Warcraft

2007-12-25T03:37:00.000+01:00

Ever since December started I've been having these strange cravings for World of Warcraft. I don't know what is the actual cause of it - there might be a biological explanation, such as lack of exposure to sunlight or receded physical activity in winter which causes increased production of who-knows-what hormone. Perhaps it's the other way around, which seems a more plausible explanation due to my current physical state, a hormone overload causing various impulses, among them a desire for WoW. Whatever the reasons, I am seriously considering about starting to play in very limited amounts - flying over the lush plains of Nagrand on my green drake, gazing at the wonderful sky of violet mists, role-playing as a softly-purring kitten and ganking the lowbies in Stranglethorn Vale (I heard it got a brand new flight path!) - this is what I seem to be yearning for.

Naturally, my first priority is to get rid of about 50.000 in-game gold for about 1000€ to finance the purchase of my laptop. But beyond that... selling the whole account which I invested two years in for a measly 100 Euros? That would be, as I've been thinking lately, a kick in the dark.

WoW was my passion and and addiction for a long time, and the latter is what scares me the most. Would I be able to control myself sufficiently this time? I keep repeating "yes I would" to myself but I don't feel that I have a strong enough counterweight in real life to keep me from slipping into the magical world of Azeroth for yet another year, I've lost enough time as it is.

It is of course hard for someone who isn't a player to understand what the fuss is all about, how important in-game friendships that you make and the various aspects of community - especially on the realm (server) where you're playing - really are.
That is why I've decided to present some of my own forum posts in chronological order that I've made a long time ago and beautifully show how much I've actually cared for the game in the past, alongside it explaining the context they were written in and thus briefly outlining my entire WoW history.
Some of the posts that I intend to publish here are pretty extensive (read: long) but I still find them a worthwhile read, particularly because they make me wonder what drugs I was on at that time...

Part I - The Circling Fervor
Part II - Caring for Daggerspine
Part III - The Kazzak Migration

The Rest of 2007 and a Monologue

2007-12-24T23:07:00.000+01:00

Making a summary of five months in a single blog post is never easy, especially if there was a lot of things going on in that time frame. But try I shall nonetheless...

August was a pretty dynamic month, I kept track of "relevant" events for some time until finally giving up with it altogether. What I did was mostly reading art theory, learning new things in Photoshop, Illustrator and playing around with Reason, which was introduced to me by OrkAA after his thorough electronic music lecture (this actually had a number of consequences later on). On one hand I kept going out with 207 crew, which gave me numerous opportunities to challenge and rethink some social norms and practices, such as intolerance of slow eating (I'm a slow eater), purposefulness of going out for a coffee as the main form of keeping in touch with friends and associates (it just seems flawed to me), trying to understand why we allow barkeepers to get away with such high margins in drink prices (more accurately, what influences the Demand and how to change it), why do some men have such a dominant predatory attitude towards women (this one in particular encountered some strong reactions). As usual I wanted to dedicate a few blog posts to it but I just didn't take enough time to do it.

On the other hand, a substantial part of my August life gravitated around Reason and consequentially OrkAA. Instead of writing blog posts, I was making beats and studying the software manual. There were a couple of notable parties at OrkAA's and elsewhere - the one where everyone (especially the sneaky Sumo!) was trying to force me, the handicapped person with my right hand incapacitated beneath a thick layer of plaster, into using drugs, and another, make-a-pizza party. Meanwhile Trnfest was going on (it was actually the only thing going on), which made KUD a frequent destination of my travels in the evenings and also during the day, since OrkAA and I at one point decided to attend a music production and DJ-ing workshop (this two-day trip could be turned into a really long post of its own).

Of course, August didn't last forever. September brought a more balanced rhythm of life - or so it seemed at first. My right hand was finally healed, I continued playing with Reason and other apps, started running again and still had at least as much fun as before. But the peak of the month was certainly International Autumn Feminist School, internally known as "femi-yu camp". Participating in this week-long camp (don't let the word camp deceive you, we were actually situated in a neat hostel) in a quiet karstic village near the Italian border was actually a continuation of those series of events leading from July to one of the Trnfest nights when I bumped into B. It was certainly a very positive experience, not just because of the refreshing sunny karstic days but also since it fit me so well... it's amusing to look back and see the various roles I played... from being a tourist guide for the Serbs to the hostel janitor and even being in charge of it (for a short period of time) at some point. Though it got pretty intense with all the lectures and workshops, it was also fun - especially when the Dutch group joined us (two small notes to self: 1. carced kitchens do not exist; 2. being a pasture ninja in the middle of a moonlit night does not assure one's balance).

October brought along a new studying year, this time with a different policy analysis and public administration program and new classmates. I haven't decided if the change was for better or worse, but I'm inclined towards the "better" version, despite the fact that most of the subjects are brand new (and professors themselves have difficulties explaining the requirements) and the only classmates worth talking with are mostly outlaws from the majority's point of view (what is it about this cold "professional" attitude that everyone has, it's as formal as in a strict workplace) - but in a way, this is what I like the most, a bit chaotic and being on the edge, far way from mainstream.
I spent the first October weekend in Belgrade at the Queer festival, where our Serbian friends from Autumn feminist school were having their annual event. The festival wasn't all that special, but meeting familiar Serb and Croat faces from the camp (along with some new ones) was worth the trip, which was in itself an urban adventure - starting with the train ride there in a compartment with elderly people hitting to one another, continuing with experiencing the city vibe and finally having fun in the evenings.
After coming home I got involved in activities of AT, going here and there, partying every once in a while, doing some regular work for school, practicing singing and mostly running out of time to do everything I'd want to - my blog's to-do list kept getting longer and longer. And so November went by, December came and with it assignments for school, which took way too much time, though I still managed to attend classes regularly, thanks to my bicycle-train-walking transport combo. I've got pretty used to riding the bike in the cold - which is something I'd never believe if a year ago someone would tell me I'd be regularly bicycling in below-zero temperatures.
Talking about the cold - I bought a kaffiyeh yisraelit, also known as shemag, not because it's warm and looks cool but mainly because I really disliked all the "freedom scarves" with black diamond pattern that people wore around me, knowing (or not - I don't know which is worse) what it actually represents. It's a bit ironic since kaffiyehs became popular in Israel long before they started appearing in the West, but even though it's passe in most of the hipster circles and kinda expensive, I still was extremely happy when getting this Orthodox Anarchist's overpriced creation.

As I am finally finishing this brief summary of five months in only a few sentences, you might be asking yourself - as I was - why I've left out so much. The answer is not all that complicated: I concluded that writing a diary for anyone really doesn't suit me any longer, at least not in current form. When writing about myself I am usually writing for myself and anyone else who might stumble upon the readings, hopefully finding them useful in some way. This means that some details get rephrased, obscured, censored, all for dear reader's convenience - basically, it becomes a dialogue. But a diary really should be a monologue - rich in detail and meant for me and myself only, a sensational juicy monument of now to my future self.

Even anonymity would probably not make much of a difference... or would it? I sincerely doubt it, my viewpoint is that presumption about potential multiple receivers causes too big of a change in the output of communication to be ignored. Of course, I have some second thoughts about this. Since I'm not too big of a believer in privacy, meaning that privacy is an escape and only hampers social liberty, this monologue hypothesis might be wrong.

However, it still leaves me a great deal of things to be said in the form of a dialogue, and even those meant only for a true diary will eventually be published in one way or another. But until then, I am splitting this blog into two parts - one for me and one for everyone.

Thermidor 2007, Part 4

2007-12-20T11:11:00.000+01:00

I knew that trip with OrkAA would be fun but I didn't feel any particular need to come along for company at first. But then a day passed, I went for some lake swimming again with the "207 gang" in between and after deciding to join after all I intended to go to town the next morning to pay some bills and borrow some new books. I put on some brake-less roadskates without bothering to find hand protection gear and headed west, completely unaware of what was to follow... I wasn't on skates for more than 10 minutes when a delivery van coming from the opposite direction blocked my way and forced me to do some heavy thinking in about 0.1 seconds.. I could chose between being hit by the traffic, the van itself or trying to stop and land safely - of course I decided for the latter but only the first half of the plan worked. I did stop, but my skin and limbs suffered some casualties - vast areas on my legs looked as if I'd just went through a successful skin removal operation, I had scratches in many places and most importantly - my right hand was hurting badly. It was also rapidly increasing in size. There was no doubt in mind: it was broken. Unlike at the first time when I broke my left hand and avoided visiting the doctor for over a month, I decided to get some professional medical help from my doctor asap. The next few hours consisted of rollerskating there, frowning upon our dumb as hell health care system in all its misery and finally getting the you-have-a-broken-arm diagnosis, after which I went to a hospital and literally got plastered.

That evening I didn't quite see the point in going to the sea with a swollen freshly broken hand the but OrkAA managed to convince me with his arguments, especially one in which he promised to take good care of my hair.
About twelve hours later we were on our way south, listening to the music I put together especially for this occasion - which means a lot of chaabi, Christmas songs, soul and psychedelic rock. This was the seed of my musical renaissance that was coming in the following weeks.
We were preparing ourselves to get strip-searched on the border due to some unpleasant past experience but somehow we managed to get across without raising suspicion. Since my right plastered hand was technically still in pretty bad shape and hurting like hell, I had to have it wrapped in ice all the time (to make sure it received proper cooling).

To use fast forward, we got to the camp in one piece, I met the people we were staying with - OrkAA's lassie and her three girlfriends. In contrast with my starting expectations the next week was a lot of fun with an abundance of things one would expect in a vacation: swimming with my plastered hand a lot, heavily losing at Monopoly, having fun with collective showers and various activities around the camp at night (particularly memorable for my own recollection encoded events were the water pistol fights I didn't take part in, abusing the swing along with "ve ar from ze internetz" agenda and Jesus style night swimming).
Of course, none of these things were actually worth writing about in a dedicated blog post. What really made such an impact on my (un)foreseeable future was something entirely different. You see, all of these girls just finished high school for modeling and photography and most of them were really passionate about art as such, particularly interested in one or another area, worshiping certain painters or graphic designers. Since this was an area of my interest as well, I couldn't help but feel blessed to have met them coincidentally - what I lacked in my diving into art so far was a systematic approach and thanks to their advices I was able get one. I also borrowed an art theory textbook on our way back - it was a real joy to read and learn new things from it, especially because they provided a broad range of knowledge from musical composition to semantics.

The second, a bit less important but nonetheless often a subject of my fantasies was the storm that happened on our last day in the camp...
Storms by the sea are a wonderful sight to observe. I've only had the chance to experience it twice in my life so far, and that summer day was one of them. There is something about the silvery gray sky, strong winds descending from it in powerful raging waves, turning the shore into temporary chaos, enveloping the sea itself into a thick wall of dreadful white tentacles reaching up above - all the way to the swiftly moving texture of clouds. The cold raindrops shooting all around, gripping your skin and clothes like steel bullets onto a magnet - but you don't feel pain or cold, embracing the chaos instead. In this gloriuos temporary victory, nature's fury has roared the fragile voices of humanity down, driving them back into their petty little shelters, the only sanctuary of order they remain in control of. The true altar is now empty, without a living soul to challenge its might.
In these conditions, tightly wrapped in a cape to shield me from the dust and rain, I ventured to the beach, enjoying the strong winds with blows that occasionally challenged gravity. For a brief moment in time the illusion of being the only person in existence became real. The sight was amazing... but I still wanted more. More chaos! Winds strong enough to root out trees, taking them up in the air and then swinging with them at the ground, smashing across the rocks until the Earth crumbles and falls! But in reality, this was a rare truly peaceful moment for me, a time to enjoy silence and distant lightning - what a shame that so few admire the beauty of such moments, so few understand what they really represent.

This was all I wanted to tell about my seaside escapade in July. Of course there were a few other things I'll rather keep silent about for the time being, but to conclude just as linear as I started: the day after the storm we all cleaned up the mess that was either created during the night or accumulated over the week, packed up our things and drove back north, safely returning home in the early evening.

Thermidor 2007, Part 3

2007-11-23T23:07:00.000+01:00

NEST

So, I got back after one awesome week, didn't like the atmosphere at home at all and decided that I need to get far away, preferably as soon as possible. The first such opportunity was the following weekend: NEST, slo-tech's traditional LAN party at the seaside, this year in a school not far from where I've just spent a week. Though I was a regular visitor, I haven't been to the past two NESTs - primarily because of World of Warcraft. It 's almost surreal remembering that I ever felt this way but I actually ruled out going there because it was senseless and time consuming to me. Of course, why bother with anything else when you have WoW? - it really was almost the same as taking the blue pill in Matrix.

That's why I was seriously determined to go this year. Luckily, OrkAA and volkec were going as well and even more luckily, they had a car for transporting our not exactly light metal-and-plastic-based computers. Pretty soon a plan was made, it turned out that we were actually going with two cars, along with Frenk and OmegaBlue, all being slo-tech veterans. We played a little Friday afternoon car race on the road, used GPS to dodge radar control points, mixed up the supposed meeting point, used GPS some more to locate the school where the event was taking place and then finally arrived at our destination.

During unpacking and registration I saw many familiar faces who quite surprisingly still remembered me from past years. As customary for myself, I didn't take any additional clothes or a sleeping bag along, despite the fact that the event lasted for three days... but a towel I did take, because the first thing when arriving just before the sunset was going to the beach for a swim by myself, which turned out to be a splendid choice.

Swimming after the sunset wasn't just an experience of pure serenity, floating on the calm surface in almost complete silence, the colorful light show added a special touch to the moment... sky's colors gradually changing from dark violet in the east to blue and orange, glowing red in the west with radiant ocher clouds stretching across like stripes of a tiger laying to rest. But the best part was seeing its reflection on calm water surface, breaking the image into a million pieces and covering the sea with a smooth layer of molten lava...

After this seance I hastened back to catch my dinner (we had regular meals in the school cafeteria), rushing through the dark back alleys where open back kitchen doors and windows of restaurants filled the air with scent of seafood and old fries, trying to let out the immense heat inside them. I most unfortunately lost my way back and wandered through narrow streets for a silly amount of time, but I did manage to finally get back after a well-thought U-turn. Fortunately I didn't miss much... and before I knew it, a small group of us geeks was formed for a dose of night swimming - only that this time the water wasn't all that wonderful... in fact, it smelled pretty bad, probably due to the multiple cooking oil stains around us. The whole thing was fun but I don't have to mention that we never went to that greasy location again.

After getting back I started of tinkering around my computer and leeching long into the night before the remaining few geeks standing decided to call it a day and went on a pilgrimage around the school to find a cozy floor to sleep. All available places were occupied by about 150 other participants so we crashed in the quiet air-conditioned main lecture room, which actually proved to be an oasis in the hell of noisy overheated circuit-scented air.

The first thing to do next morning (beside eating breakfast) was of course going for a refreshing swim with FlyMaChInE, a very positive modest guy whom I've acquainted with on previous day's night swimming with Looney and PCMark. As he gradually explained to me over talks in about three times we went swimming together that day, this LAN party was his only vacation for this year and a way to get a short relieve from his summer job at a sawmill with which he intended to earn enough money to pay for his driver's license lectures among other things. Therefore enjoying the sea for three days with delicious meals and a place to sleep to the fullest (while it lasts) was his main concern and a goal of us both, each having his own reasons. I thought to myself... how do my reasons for being here differ from his? Am I here enjoying the sea and sun (along with filling my hard drive with leeched files) because being at so-called home lacks the sun or water? I could swim and jump around in the sun there as well, even recreate the atmosphere to some extent, excluding the smell of salty air... so true reasons had to lay somewhere else.

It was a deliberate attempt to get away as possible from a place I don't even like, to try to vanish from everyone's sight and hopefully reappear somewhere far away where nobody would recognize me, where I wouldn't recognize any features of the environment I got away from. The second reason was giving myself up to the thrilling order of chaos and watching it develop, just like the first few Core2Duo cubes I put on my table in the LAN party hall, forming a small tower. It wasn't long before the stack started to grow completely spontaneously on its own, amassing to a joint venture to build a huge tower. I wasn't even there when it happened - I merely initiated the whole thing (after the tower fell I used the cubes to make a château out of my desk).

To sum the rest of NEST up, it was a mix of swimming, various tech lectures and spending time around my computer or talking to fellow computer geeks, with Saturday night being the most action-oriented if you can call it that - we first had a late evening swimming with massive attendance, then volkec, OrkAA and I stayed up all night, being witnesses to a pretty lame incident involving the police and a local saber-rattler on our parking lot. To go fast forward, I didn't go to sleep until about noon the next day (if you overlook about an hour of sleeping on my keyboard).
Sunday afternoon was time for giving awards to winners of various contests from previous days. To my surprise FlyMaChInE was among the winners, getting about three nifty awards, the most prestigious one being an expensive Core Quad processor) - I never realized that he found the time do other things beside sunbathing and splish-splashing in the sea with me - to be more precise, I think he never mentioned it due to his modesty.

Late Sunday afternoon was time to pack our things and slowly head back home, this time with only one car and Frenk the seriously disturbing joke-teller on board. But of course we couldn't just leave our seaside without taking a final swim, so we headed northward, seeking a suitable beach. We drove towards a health resort of some kind - the sea there looked repulsively dirty and we concluded that it was best to sneak into the nearby pool, which was probably only meant for children and recovering asthma patients. Moral issues and suspicious warmth of its water aside, it was one of those relaxing life-is-good moments. There was absolutely no rush to do anything so Frenk and I prolonged the inevitable reunion with the real world for as long as we could, floating in that pool for so long that it started to become absurd. At some point we finally did decide to move out and from there on it was just a few simple steps towards heading back to inland, effectively ending our well-spent weekend.

A notable thing to mention about NEST is also OrkAA's proposition for me to join him on an trip to visit his girlfriend vacationing somewhere at the seaside across the southern border...

Thermidor 2007, Part 2

2007-11-23T21:07:00.000+01:00

...well, they made it memorable at least for me. But I can't simply look at those days and weeks as single events, nor can I describe them merely as being memorable. It goes far beyond that. It is as if a series of completely unanticipated but necessary events would have unfolded just the way it was supposed to in order to get me to this exact point in space-time continuum, to be able to look back and connect the scattered dots of events, shape them into a straight line and make them easier to digest for my linearity-demanding brain.

So, it all started with a small stone fragment rolling downhill, when a friend of mine briefly mentioned that there was a certain summer camp coming up in July...

The Summer Camp

This particular summer camp, annually organized by Polituss, could be translated to "The Left Somewhat Differently", quite an interesting subject for someone who's studying political science - _The_Man_ thought the same and sent me a mail with the event's website link, thus giving me the idea of going.
Since I was thinking about joining Polituss anyway (which I did at the end of the camp) and doing something with my life after the horrid World of Warcraft period, perhaps trying to contribute something of my own to the world, checking out the camp wasn't a bad idea.
_The_Man_ and I first exchanged some half-serious jokes about going, figuring out how left-leaning the average participant of such a camp would be (my estimate was very). A few days later I finally said "oh fuck it" and decided to join in while El_Mano sadly couldn't make it, already having scheduled another camp instead.

So there I was on hot 9th of July afternoon, in the middle of Ljubljana, wearing my summer outfit with obligatory sunglasses and a light backpack which contained a few necessities that I required to survive the next seven days with, slowly walking towards the arranged meeting point at our faculty.
I had almost no idea where I will wind up in the end, the only reliable information I had was that I have a guaranteed bus ride to a hostel for students in Portorose, on the slope of a small hill overlooking the Slovenian coast.
What I saw upon getting to the meeting point looked very heart-warming: about a dozen laid back strangers sitting around coffee tables with enormous amounts of luggage piled in the middle. The next encouraging thing was that they accepted my introduction as Z-lot without strange looks!

When I look back at that moment in time now I realize how I actually love the Unknown... not knowing where you're going, not knowing what will happen or where you might end up, the only thing you do know is that you simply can't stop, you have to see it for yourself, know how things will turn out, always stay to the very last moment, admiring how a series of events unfolded and created an astonishing painting, a glimpse of the past that is destined to hang on a wall in the gallery of life, visible only to those who took part in its making. Marvelous.
This quest for pure uncertainty in all aspects of life, watching something appear out of nothing, experiencing the order of chaos has lately become more than just a hobby, it is a passion, even an obsession... almost like a drug.
It's also getting off-topic and it certainly is worthy of its own post so let me get back to sitting at those coffee tables...

Eventually our mini expedition grew to something over twenty members, at which point we loaded the bus and headed for a 120km-long journey towards the coast. I already began realizing that being a non-social former World of Warcraft addict shouldn't have that big of an impact on communication with others, mostly students of social sciences, on average a few (solar) years older than myself.
After a minor Austin Powers style bus-turning incident in which our driver decided to turn the bus around right between a stone wall and a cliff we unpacked and checked in. I got to share a room with two quite fascinating people, Aleš and Špela, the first one being a social flow master and an incredible set of social skills and the second a blunt thought-provoking critic, who like myself didn't particularly care who to share rooms with. Even now when I think of it, I really do consider myself lucky to wind up sharing a room with such positive, influential individuals.

In fact, what made the whole camp so memorable was a vast of number of people that defied the sickly gray norms in one way or another, a palette of captivating characters whose appearance and actions were a refreshing breeze to me, something I haven't experienced almost since.. primary school... a relaxed, supportive environment which doesn't reject or shun its deviators, where everyone is let intact, as they are, simply because it would be such a regrettable waste to squander the diversity.

It wasn't long before I started getting to know other individuals like that, to name just a few for my own record-keeping: Sandi, whose VIP concert tickets, childhood vandalism stories and proclaiming our hostel receptionist "Tiger" made him a living legend. Aljaž, whose exchange of delirium and tacit periods introduced me to Lacanian psychoanalysis and a more modern approach to philosophy. Urška & Maša, a contrasting tandem who made afternoons at the beach a whole lot more fun and also gave me some real cues for self-reflecting thoughts. Samo and his thorough Marxist stance with steadfast belief in human-driven global warming, which caused us to debate the issue one evening - which turned into parading up and down the coast countless times. Zorro, whose philosophical testimonies definitely were among more influential things I've heard at the camp. Members of AT, funky people with more or less anarchist beliefs (it felt so good to meet some actual anarchists) and also about the only people who were able to party to the last minute. Rok and Tjaša, members of our "sacred musical triangle" which was formed after we spent a whole night singing every cheesy Slovenian pop song from the 90s we could think of - we stopped when the sun was way above the horizon. And of course Barbara, the only person with true anon spirit - who in this aspect reminded me of myself - though I don't know how well she understands the whole concept.

To get back on chronological track, which I'm writing simply because I want it to be written somewhere despite its immense boredom, our first evening was supposed to be introductory, but it kinda failed at that because I didn't get to know much more than half of the thirty people who ate the same barbecued food and drank the same orange juice. The number of camp participants actually fluctuated somewhere between thirty and fifty due to constant arrivals and departures, but the "core" mostly remained intact. But overall, it was a fun experience.
And so the next morning it somehow occured that I missed the breakfast. In fact, I missed every single breakfast at the camp. I usually got on my feet around 10 o'clock, just in time to rush to the morning lecture. After that was through we took a stroll down the hill to the beach, where we spent entire afternoon and then headed back around five o'clock to shower and catch the afternoon lecture. Around seven or eight in the evening the entire camp walked to the nearby naval school cafeteria for a decent dinner (we also cooked/barbecued it ourselves a few times). After that it was up to each person to decide what to do with the evening, most of us headed down to the beach to enjoy the warm summer air (well, at least I know I did).

This scenario repeated pretty much every day, but it was far from monotonous - we also had a day off, a morning lecture was canceled here and there, we even had a few drops of rain one morning. The lectures and guests giving them were quite interesting - presenting topics like censorship, Althusser, why to read Marx, leftist activism and squatting, situation in Latin America, a round table discussion with leftist party representatives... the lecture I really had high hopes for was the one about anarchism - sadly it got canceled because the lecturer, himself an anarchist, messed something up and missed the whole thing.
Afternoons on the beach were a very interesting activity as well - we switched the beaches regularly and occasionally went for walk to find a more suitable spot to lay down or swim around, read a book, have a snack or discuss any number of issues that have arisen either spontaneously or during the lectures.
The same thing happened in the evenings. You could always count on a meaningful discussion, not just trivial talk that I despise so much, and it all ran in parallel with "happy hours". This was another one of the key features that made the camp so worthwhile - there was always someone equally or more knowledgeable or interested in any topic as I was and it was really astounding to see how many people share common interests, especially after being cut off from the outside world for the past three years. There is still hope for this forsaken country, I thought to myself... but even though not all hope is lost, I still think that it's far from a suitable environment for me to live in because you obviously cannot spend the rest of your life in a camp or a room for the remaining years of your life.

Overall, the camp was a mosaic of countless little events that made me laugh to tears multiple times, sometimes gave me hope, motivated me, reassured me that my course of action (moving out of my room for a change) was a step in right direction. Everything from Dominik to Bulgarian folk group, cozy candles on the beach to incredibly shitty music in the disco, individual conversations with people that made an impact on me - it really was a colorful mosaic.
It was an opportunity to practice my stunted, nonexistent social skills too - I noticed that I had quite some difficulties forming coherent sentences when talking, which was the complete opposite of my fluent typing. - In the mean time I have gotten somewhat better at it, the summer camp definitely was one huge therapy, but the years-long lack of talking remains very visible to me, especially if I compare it to that teenage rhetorically skilled kid I once was... before the internets came along.

One important thing thatI have to mention is my drastic change of views regarding Slovenian sea... I've always had some prejudice against it - thinking how it's crowded, dirty and overall an undesirable environment for a vacation. What I realized during the camp was that it actually isn't that bad, in fact, it's pretty good (minus the concrete beaches).. but it is also so small! Croatian shores on one side and Italian on the other, both so close it's almost creepy, giving you a feeling that you're swimming in a salty lake rather than in genuine sea.

If I continue the praise of chaos from the beginning of this post, I must say that as the end drew near, the whole seven days of camp started looking like a complete success in that aspect - there were no obligations, no force that would keep anyone in place, nobody to order anyone what to do - and yet I dare say a spontaneous order emerged and made things "work", causing the majority to attend lectures and cooperate in various activities.
Undoubtedly, this was another reason why the camp was so memorable and why it was hard to leave it all behind, knowing that you probably won't see most of the cool people you've hung out with very often - if ever again.
In this respect I can say that I am very fortunate to have seen and talked to many familiar faces from the summer camp numerous times now - and I still hope to see more of them in the future... if spontaneous order wills.