Motivation
8:00 pm - 04 March, 2007
Maybe if I write down the things I hate about my life, maybe it will help me to change them. You know... giving them thought-space will motivate me. Yeah, right.
Probably I won't get to the really important stuff because I probably don't actually want to. Which brings me to my first issue: lack of motivation. I don't seem to care enough about stuff to do... pretty much anything. I wanted to get a USB MIDI adapter this weekend, but I never got up early enough. Part of the reason was that I was demotivated by the fact that the transformer for my keyboard has (apparently) packed in. However, though I'll be able to get a new transformer this week (I can viably hit Maplin before, or maybe even after, work say tomorrow) I still won't have a MIDI adapter.
I also wanted to tidy up my room and stuff today, but I've not done that. I also need to clean the rest of the house a little. I wanted to get a bookshelf thingy from Argos or something, because I really don't have much of that sort of thing. My desk and every available space (including the floor) is piled high with my rubbish. Okay, I'll tidy up a bit while I'm watching this episode of CSI (probably not going to happen, since I'm barely even writing this while I'm watching it, and just in the adverts).
Wow. I actually did it... or some of it at least. I've cleared off a couple of my surfaces, stacked up my CDs and DVDs and some parts of the room are looking habitable. The floor is still a heaving mass, and the bed is too now. Such is the price of progress.
I could say I feel better for this, and it might even be true. As long as I don't look round. Think I still feel a little glum though. Not quite life-hating glum though, which is good.
So what are the things that I hate about my life? OK. This is probably the big one, and I've not really talked about it before (for various self-reinforcing reasons): I regret that I've never been in love. Well, I'm not quite sure if that's accurate — what I mean is that I've never been in a proper romantic relationship. The closest might have been Stephanie, but I don't think that was a very good relationship in many ways, and I'm not going to talk about it. And I suppose there may have been something between infatuation and courtly love at some point. So what's my point? What do I want? I hardly know. But I do know that I won't get there without some effort (otherwise I'd be there several times over by now, with all the lack of effort I've put in). But effort often needs motivation, and there are a couple of things I can think of that motivate me, and both of them are external. The first, and perhaps most effective (in the right circumstances) is guilt: if I've done something wrong, I'll do all I can to make it better — similarly, I'll try to avoid becoming guilty in the first place. The other is the desire to please people.
So that's about it. I can't think what to add right now. And I'm hungry (it's 23:35 now).
Self-descriptive
11:54 pm - 01 March, 2007
Is it hard to write about myself? Well, not really, or I wouldn't keep a diary. Arguably, I scarcely do that anyway, though, but I digress. I do find it difficult to describe myself, especially in a flattering manner. Maybe it's because I don't really care. More likely, I care too much.
One of the things I contemplated the longest about the talk I gave today was how I would introduce myself. I'd like to have been witty, but it would probably have backfired. Something like, "My hobbies are sword swallowing and lying." No, I don't think so, either.
Anyway, it wasn't exactly a memorable presentation. I took care to avoid extraneous colour in my slides. Half way through, the laptop's battery gave out and it went into hibernation. Easily fixed, though a minor annoyance, I felt compelled to balance the stick on my finger and do a little dance with it for a moment, which got a little laughter. Ach, who cares, anyway?
(At this point, the author went and did a bunch of other stuff, including making and eating dinner (spaghetti bolognaise, since you ask).)
So yesterday I signed up for a 'match service' (that's probably not a euphemism...) called OKCupid. Why? Maybe I'll tell you another time. But it does require one to submit a self-summary, so once again I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to describe myself. Not sure what I'll put, but I might do it now. Waffling is probably easier when you're a bit tired. Or perhaps a bit drunk. Which I'm not.
By the way, the Marktoberdorf application thing's going to be fine. I got an e-mail this morning from the organizer.
On this random train of thought, I maybe should update my CV some time. But that doesn't sound particularly appealing, and I don't have much use for it right now. I think Dad complained about it a while ago. It's the first thing that comes up when you Google for my name.
Bounce
1:21 am - 01 March, 2007
Great. It's already the 1st of March. That means it's not long left until Alice's birthday (mine too, but at least I'm not expecting me to get myself anything) and I don't know what I'm going to get her. Maybe I'll think of something at the weekend.
Today, I wrote one of the most pointless programs that I have ever written. More pointless than that QBasic program that draws Santa and his reindeer flying over a row of houses to "Jingle Bells" from the PC speaker. More pointless even than (at this point, the author spent fifteen minutes looking through his projects folder for particularly futile examples)... a program to control the mouse pointer with a joystick? a quasi-functional POP3 client? do you remember when I wrote that web server -- I think it was called MOLD? No, more pointless and inept. I wrote a program to let you throw windows about your desktop and have them keep moving after you let go. It doesn't always work as you'd like, because of the way it does work. Which isn't the way that you'd like. Anyway, if you really want to see, it's here. I mostly wrote it in semi-idle periods between productivity. I did churn out some pages of proof today, though it's probably no cooler to look at than the bouncing windows. Iain suggested that I add General Relativity to the physics model. Watch this space.
Another success of the day was that Gareth and I got recommendation letters for the Marktoberdorf Summer School out of Philippa and sent 'em off via courier. They'll probably arrive on Friday. The deadline was technically Wednesday, so we'll see. I personally don't have great hope (though not stemming from tardiness), though it'd definitely be an awesome thing to go to.
French class was today. For some reason, I generally dread French class, though I shouldn't. I don't enjoy them that much, but I suspect they're probably quite good for me. Besides, I want to learn French, and even if the classes don't always help (and I think they do help, so that's a hypothetical even) they help to motivate me. I listened to les journeaux en Française facile on rfi before the lesson, but didn't make much of it. Wasn't really paying attention, which might account for some of it.
Well, I'll bounce this window around a little more and then go to bed. I've got to give a talk on a paper about web page categorization tomorrow, so I need to get up at a decent time and fix my slides. Especially as I have various meetings to boot.
