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Lately my mornings have started out with sitting on my front porch with a cup of coffee and a smoke for about 15 or 20 minutes scrolling through devrant.
Probably why ive been in a better mood these days
31 -
TL;DR; windows XP + bat scripts + fascination about being able to make things yourself.
I was born and raised in a village. And the thing about living in a village is that you are free :) Among all the other freedoms you are also free to build your own solutions to various domestic problems, i.e. to build stuff. This is one of the things that fascinates me about living outside the city.
When I finally was old enough (and had the means to, i.e. a computer) to understand that programming is something that allows you to build your own solutions to computer problems, it got to me.
With win 3.1 I was still too fresh and too young. With win 95 I was more interested in playing with neighbours outdoors. With win 98 I was a bit too busy at school. But with win XP the time had come. I started writing automation solutions for windows administration using .bat scripts (.vbs was and still is somewhat repelling to me). I no longer needed to browse Russian forums and torrent sites to find a solution to a problem I had! That was amazing!!! [esp. when my Russian was very weak].
That was the time when I built my first sort-of-malware - a bat script downloading and installing Radmin server, uploading computer's IP and admin credentials to my FTP.
I loved it!
However, I'd stumbled upon may obstacles when writing with batch. I googled a lot and most of the solutions I found were in bash (something related to Linux, which was a spooky mystery to me back then). Eventually, I got my courage together and installed ubuntu. Boy was I sorry... Nothing was working. I was unable to even boot the thing! Not to mention the GUI...
Years later I tried again with ubuntu [7.10 I think.. or 7.04] on my Pavilion. Took me a looooot of attempts but I got there. I could finally boot it. A couple of weeks later I managed to even start the GUI! I could finally learn bash and enjoy the spectacular Compiz effects (that cube was amazing).
I got into bash and Linux for the next several years. And then I thought to myself - wait, I'm writing scripts that automate other programs. Wouldn't it be cool I I could write my own programs that did exactly what I wanted and did not need automation? It definitely would! I could write a program that would make sound work (meaning no more ALSA/PA headaches!), make graphics work on my hardware, make my USB audio card to be set to primary once connected and all the other amazing things! No more automation -- just a single program or all of that!
little did the naive me knew :)
I started with python. I didn't like that syntax from the beginning :/ those indentations...
Then I tried java. Bucky (thenewboston), who likes tuna sandwiches, on my phone all the free time I had. I didn't learn anything :/ Even tried some java 101 e-book. Nothing helped until I decided to write some simple project (nothing fancy - just some calculations for a friend who was studying architecture).
I loved it! It sounds weird, but I found Swing amazing too. With that layout manager where you have to manually position all the components :)
and then things happened and I quit my med studies and switched to programming. Passed my school exams I was missing to enter the IT college and started inhaling every bit of info about IT I could get my hands on (incl outside the college ofc).
A few more stepping stones, a few more irrelevant jobs to pay my bills in the city, and I got to where I am now.5 -
I don't know whether it's the cabin fever due to been locked indoors or just a really shitty phase.
But lately I am having dooms day feeling and it's just growing stronger.
I feel I am losing everything. Like everything has changed or is changing and life will never be the same good old happy one.
It'll just get darker, is a feeling that haunts me. Maybe I need to get outdoors in the sun.
I am no longer able to enjoy things as much as I did in the past. I lack some passion (maybe I am just surrounded my super negative people irl).
I need more sun. I need an uplifting vibe. I need hope.14 -
Me, inside: "I want to go hiking! Enjoy the great outdoors!"
Me, outside: "I should start a new programming project! [mind wanders...]" -
!dev
Through life, I've heard some people say horror movies are bad, that they promote violence (usually religious people).
Of course I think that's pure bs, but I think I could provide one argument that is hard to deny, so here it goes, although I might go off rails at the end.
I'll preface with this: life itself is violent. Violence, the word, is mostly used to describe immoral inflictions of harm on other beings.
But you can also say that some deaths are violent by themselves too, event those that weren't caused by humans, like a disease or a natural disaster.
This would be the "visual" meaning of the word, "the way it looks", the shock of humans when observing something gruesome/violent.
That described, it's not hard to also think that technological advancements in modern western life has made such observations of violence very unfrequent for people.
And naturally, modern people get accustomed to the lack of these observations. So accustomed that when they happen they become traumatic.
Because of this, people react weirdly to death. One reaction is censoring the topic. Another reaction is trivializing it, as if it doesn't really matter.
Sometimes they can't even accept old people dying at 90, an awfully stupid reaction in my opinion.
Another interesting reaction is personifying diseases as if they were villains ruining lives intentionally.
Or at least that's what it feels until you look at them through a microscope and realize that diseases aren't more evil than bread changing flavour after toasting.
All of these irrationality and cowardice comes from low exposure to violence, and that's where horror movies balance things out.
Some diseases in the real life can put some of the worst horror movies to shame.
The human body itself is pending violence. Why? Because when you die all sort of worms eat your fucking flesh. And sometimes that happens even before you die.
We bury humans because of the diseases corpses transmit, but also because we don't like the spectacle and the aesthetics of the rotting process.
Just picture for a second bad things happening to your body, and if you feel that is making you too uncomfortable, then maybe you got too used to this too.
I think horror movies help us to remember the reality of our inminent and intrinsic violence.
In ancient times, you would live outdoors, stepping on dirt, and be very used to "bad" things happening to humans.
Nowadays, most homes are sterile clean, and it's unlikely to observe violence.
Oh, some family member is pucking blood and dying from something? Send em to a hospital, or an elderly care center. Don't need to witness that!
I understand and accept grief. What I don't understand or accept is the vilification of death, describing it as something wrong that shouldn't happen.
it almost feels like a burden, like you shouldn't die when you're young, that it's an unforgivable thing to happen.
Well thanks, society, you can't even fucking die in peace.
I would love to die (no suicide) in a mildly celebratory way, watching people around me smile. I think that would be a good ending for me.
But no. Most of my relatives would be fucking crying like the chickenshits they are, ruining it for me.
And that scares the shit out me: people usually say the scary part of dying is that they die alone.
Well that's what dying alone would mean to me: watching people cry instead of smiling at me.
When my grandma died at 80, with all the achievements she made, I considered her death a success, also considering how quick it was. And because of that I didn't mourn for too long.
In fact, I don't even consider her dead, and not because of some religious mumbo jumbo. I guess the memories are still alive in me, I don't know.
Some famous chunk of coal said once that he felt people don't believe they're gonna die. And I agree with him.
Another upside of horror movies is that they hurt nobody, which is why you can enjoy it and not get ptsd, unlink watching a snuff film.
I will also be fair and add that this might a be a cultural thing, but deep down desire for survival is a genetic thing could play a big part in this too.4 -
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