Music

Teh My Room Adventure Foar

2009-12-22T23:22:14Z

It's done! So hurry up, because Christmas is just around the corner!

http://tmra4.cerapter.net

I've put lots of hints into it this time. Tell me if you think there should be some more. You get them easily by talking to the fox on the rock on the wall.

The real challenge is getting a good score. There's 12 pieces of treasure hidden around the room, some obvious, others concealed. Even if you finish the game in say, three minutes (it's possible), then you'd still gain much by using two more minutes to gather all the treasure. If you know where it is, of course.

In fact, the time score is based on a composite graph with two linear sections and one exponential one. Makes sure you don't get too low scores when you use lots of time, but not too high when you're doing really good. I had fun fitting the curves. 8)

COP15

2009-12-09T17:04:54Z

I'm going to Copenhagen for the weekend. I'll be staying with a Danish guy named Mikael, who I haven't met yet. Me and four friends, almost all of which are travelling in different ways because we're hugely disorganized like that, are going to hang out with polar explorers and other insane people.

The boat leaves five hours after my oral exam, which is tomorrow, and this provides me with a few hours during which I can take the final photos for TMRA4. I have the whole plot down now. If I bring my laptop to Copenhagen (dunno, I'm packing light), I'll be editing the photos there, and then I'll do the programming when I return next week. I need my desktop computer and its Flash version for that, because I'm a scurvy pirate and Macromedia was cunning when they designed it, so I cannot open the source code in newer versions.

Last week I had a job interview. It was in a kindergarten. I really hope I get the job, because I haven't applied for any other yet. If all goes well, I'll be getting my Bachelor's in Physics for Christmas, and next year I'll stay right here but work in the kindergarten instead of studying. Which I have been utterly sick of the past two years anyway. For my 2010 life, I've bought a book named "Family life", that tells about all those things you did when you were a kid and how to do them. I'm also going to learn childrens' songs on the guitar, and I will learn to tell stories.

I also write stories, now. Really short, fast ones, in a book on my cupboard. I write one story every day, for training. Today, I came up with a metaphysical creation mythology that I think I'll put in it. =D Most of the other stories are kind of grim and melancholy, which I suppose reflects my true face during such dark days.

It's funny, I feel like I'm telling a long tale, as if I've been away for as long. I write most of my thoughts with pen and paper nowadays, unlike when I actively used this journal. Some of my stories have been about such change; of having done something you no longer do, and forgetting what you used to be. Growing up often leaves you so busy, you forget where you left yourself. And that 'where', for good or for bad, is wherever you used to be.

Even if you defied being busy and brought it with you, that is only a copy, slightly different, and your leaving concludes your own past. Which is a good thing, sometimes. If we never end anything, there won't be a past, and without a past, we are flat, not existing back then in any other way than the way we exist in the present.

Well, well, I haven't changed all that much, I suppose. I like that. Now for that exam...

Teh My Room Adventure 4

2009-12-07T20:53:55Z

39 photos have been taken. I expect to finish the game next week.

Skrivesperre: Name that tune

2009-11-30T18:07:52Z

Is there any song you would never grow tired of hearing? If so, what is it, how long have you loved it, and why?

Sendt inn av connxx

Vis svar

Warder - Tyhjän Pirtin Valssi (Silent Croft Waltz)
http://ost.cerapter.net/ostplayer.php?id=cerapt&track=2

It's a serene and mellow, but also dreamy and mystic tune. It's the closest representation of my own dreams of peace that I've ever come across. I think I found it in 2005. It was during one of my earliest scourings of the site Mod Archive, and yes: much like a MIDI file, the tune is an automated composition, and not a recorded performance. That said, it's a good composition. I've found one other recording of this folk tune, but I must say I prefer this one, because it has a more warm feeling and a dreamy flow of the music.

Countless nights since I found it, this has been my lullaby. With nothing else to occupy my attention, I phase into the music and let it guide my imagination. I am always in flight when I see it: vast, green fields, peaceful and unspoiled. I can fly across them and find new lands with endless forests and emerald lakes. Or I can shoot up among the clouds and find entirely new lands when I come back down. There might be vast rocky cliffs and pointy mountains with elaborate, sculpted castles. Or perhaps a secret valley in the highlands, encircled by ranges. Sometimes I fly as a dragon, sometimes as a human with wings. Once, I had two flying foxes as companions. I put many of these things into a notebook for later use.

Ahem

2009-11-12T00:52:32Z

http://nazguruloki.livejournal.com/112516.html

When thinking back and analyzing my choice of words, the term I ended up using to denote certain female protrusions, implies that said body parts are not decently covered, doesn't it? >.> Such an implication was never my intention.

And my current, very different mindset than was voiced back then, actually drives me to rectify this possible misinterpretation.

In fact, I very much think there are no pair of tits, or even momentary displays of those, that I alone have been given the grace to gaze upon! Not that I should be admitting that combined inexperience and habit out loud. I just wanted to say the funny sentence.

*Resumes listening to audio book of Robin Hood*

PS. I'm using my wordpress blog lots again: http://p2.cerapter.net

Minnesota: August 10th

2009-08-11T06:09:14Z

[I've just imported one of my journals from my stay in Minnesota. I'll be continuing this journal here on LJ.]

Argh, today was the longest day ever. It was also the first day we gave the organizers something back, instead of them sending us off on lectures all around the place. We all had presentations. Mine was about communication. I put big words in it.

"The climate scientist won't get anywhere with anger. To be heard, we need to be good examples, good leaders. That's what people follow, whatever their ethical abilities. So let's not preach how the world will end, but instead speak about how we're going to make the best of what we have. How we're going to save the world. Right?"

That's what they've taught us to do, anyway: saving the world. This group of 12 different people is going to keep in touch and keep influencing the surrounding world into becoming greener and greener. Right now, we're heading into a warm future that promises to bring about changes that will threaten our way of life on this planet. Through reducing climate gases, we can manage to stabilize the world into falling back to its own, natural rhythms, with changes we can more comfortably adapt to. No one solution is going to make this happen: knowledge and attitude is the key, then things will fall in place by themselves. We need to understand that whatever we emit, is going somewhere. For a hundred years we're simply been throwing most our waste out of sight. Now, with six billion contributors, that pile is starting to stack up high. We have some cleaning up to do, and at the same time, we need to think waste processing on a huge scale. Nature does that with its own materials, and so we need to do it with ours, if the cycle is going to work, and we need such a cycle if we intend to stay on this planet for a while.

Tornado

2009-08-09T07:23:28Z

Also, there was a Tornado Watch in this county of Minnesota yesterday. Tornadoes were seen some thirty miles northwest of the city. Here, it was so hot and humid that my posters wrinkled and fell down and my towels were damp.

Why I dislike the internet

2009-08-03T05:53:21Z

(it's not a real skeleton, it's a sculpture)

Several of my friends tell me how great Facebook is because you can "keep in touch" with peripheral friends without actually having to contact them: you just have to log on and read their latest updates, and presto, you're living in the moment again! But I ask: what ideal does this feed? You turn your life into a TV channel, and you distance yourself from the spectators. We all know how much bad TV there is out there. Shall our lives undergo the same scrutiny, by those friends that are not close enough for us to make out their faces?

The practicality of spectating others' lives like this, feeds our thirst for social networking, without actually having a practical application. Thus it isn't keeping in touch, but merely a selfish action, and a self-deception at that, as we feel a false sense of accomplishment.

And still I keep coming back to the internet in my free time. Because back in the day, I used to successfully sate my thirst for social input on the internet. I can no longer do that, but neither can I sate it in other ways as easily as I'd like to. So when my day is incomplete, I turn to the internet. But what do I find there, today?

I find message boards, and I find Facebook and Twitter. Cold walls of self-deception, and I know there is no real interaction in it. Even so, while there is something new, I am satisfied, and I keep eating. But as soon as I realize that the new things are gone and that I did nothing more than write new letters on the cold walls, I find I am hungrier than ever. I become lonely, and I search harder. My mood falters, and I start just mindlessly flicking through all bookmarked sources of deception, looking for signs of life to devour fruitlessly. deviantART can keep me going for a while, but after a while even that is old, but then it's too late, and I am caught in the same old oblivion. Stopping would signalize giving up, and comes with a disappointment, so I always postpone it.

The only good thing I can spend my time doing, during the long stretches where no mentionworthy IM conversations can be had, is to put together some sort of text, like this entry, or upload a photo on deviantART. However, that is also a source of disappointment, because most of the things I write are never read, and the creator alone can never give anything meaning.

All in all, whatever I do, the internet drains more attention and energy from me than it gives me back. It is an investment that doesn't pay off, a superfluous expense, but in today's society, one it is hard to rid oneself of.

Boundary Waters

2009-08-02T06:35:07Z

In other news, I just came back from a five-day camping trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. Guiding us through the mosquito-infested lakes and forests was the founder of the Wilderness Classrooom, Dave Freeman.

I started out as inexperienced, retreating in defense against the inconveniences of the wild. After just a day, my left hand and both ears were swollen and itching really bad due to reactions to insect bites, and I just wanted to go home. We had interspersed rain every day, I never mastered the art of steering a canoe, I wasn't much of a help and didn't aid much in raising the spirits. We kept a fast pace, carrying heavy packs and canoes over long portages between lakes, and left little time for idling about; all quite opposite of what I'd prefer doing. Yet, I tagged along and didn't complain. I like nature, but this is the first time I've really had to struggle against it. There were short moments of bliss and beauty, though, and we saw some Bald Eagles and other wild animals.

I was much more relieved than sorry at coming back and getting a shower and a comfy bed, but... I came back stronger somehow. I hadn't had the time to repose, to meditate, to feel as one with the nature or anything like that, but still, I had gained something from it all, some form of confidence and peace. Before the journey and even during it, I had a loneliness within me, an impatience towards rewards I wanted to reap from life. Returning from the woods, I have felt much more content with just being -- being myself, and being by myself. I think it's going to last for a while, but if it doesn't, then that just means I need to head out into the wild again, eh?

Another attempt at redirection

2009-05-29T20:17:45Z

My writings have been somewhat spread out all over the internet since I stopped trying to use LJ. I'm going to try and reunite them. Here:

http://p2.cerapter.net/

Whatever I find of use that I want to share with anyone interested in reading it, will be found there. :)

Stepping Forward

2009-05-20T14:10:43Z

I have just been accepted into a Summer Institute across the Atlantic.

From July 5th to August 15th, I'll be staying in Minnesota!

:D There'll be lots of interesting science symposiums, and also tours and cultural events. I'm going to see the Mississippi, Lake Superior, and I'm going to watch (or play) actual baseball! Haha. It's all fantastic, especially compared to the University of Oslo, who barely gives a *cough* about us students.

Know Your Disappointments

2009-01-12T23:01:25Z

I took all of my heart's strongest desires (for a mate), as I wrote them in my previous entry, and turned them all around. The result was unexpected.

anti-Companion: "She doesn't really know me. Inside, we're strangers to one another."
anti-Lover: "She never lets me touch her. She's cold towards me."
anti-Playmate: "She sets high standards for me, it's all so serious now."
anti-Reciever: "She does not deserve me. I dislike her."
anti-Muse: "She is boring and no special at all."
anti-Partner: "She holds me back, doesn't want me to change."
anti-Guardian: "One moment she feels this way and the next she feels that way. I'm caught in the maelstrom, helpless."
anti-Spouse: "I do everything in this house, and in the relationship, and she just SITS there, looking discontent."

Aren't these typical relationship problems? All of a sudden, they're connected to the failure of having established important roles... And I mean, if I hadn't these desires, the lack of the roles wouldn't bother me. For each set of desires, is there a respective set of failures?

Know Your Desires

2009-01-05T16:00:44Z

I was going to post this in mah blag, but it didn't really fit in with the theme. Besides, I don't know if it would've been any use there. So I'll put it here, in hope that it's useful!

The other day, I was pondering how two people in a relationship can seek entirely different things. Also, how a relationship can feel lacking, but you just don't know why or how. It can breed bad communication, shape poor understanding and finally break hearts.

Then I tested some of the philosophies which I know and trust. That people are in fact communities of spirits, or sides, or archetypes, and not a singular identity. And that relationships are more numerous than we expect.

In my society, we strive to obtain one single life-long mate. It's confusing to ponder how we want this mate to be, because it's likely full of contradictions. It doesn't fit if we are merely one person desiring another one person. However, if we try to see our own sides, and see that it is each of these that desires a different thing, like a small jigsaw puzzle, it starts to make more sense.

So of course, if you only listen to one of the sides' desire, even if it is the one you trust the most, fulfilling it will not make you happy, since all the other sides will still long for their desires. This might even destroy you, or lead to a breakup or to unfaithfulness. Am I saying that we need all our desires fulfilled? Some might, but for others, a majority might suffice.

I proceeded to figure out the different things that I desire. This is what I came up with:

A Companion, to understand me, and with whom I can fearlessly share my strangest feelings.
A Lover, to fulfill my emotional and physical needs.
A Playmate, to accompany my inner child in times of fun and laughter.
A Reciever, to give my strongest emotions, and whom I will adore and live for.
A Muse, to expand my world and bring me life.
A Partner, to respect and encourage me and let me evolve and grow.
A Guardian, to fall back on, to take care of me and sustain security.
A Spouse, to show responsibility and cooperation in the days we'll share.

These are the strongest sides of my desires. I have put them here in full detail only to make the point clear. There are my personal desires, I make no claim that they will be others' as well. Now, after chiseling out the details, I proceed to analyse how they can and how they cannot combine. Which combinations of these roles, in one partner, will lead to what? For example:

A Reciever who isn't a Lover, will make me unhappy.
A Lover who isn't a Reciever, will render me hollow, at least early in the relationship.
A Lover who isn't a Companion, means I just want someone.
A Lover and Companion who isn't a Guardian, can't be a Spouse.
A Spouse who isn't a Partner, means trouble.
A Companion, Partner and Guardian who isn't a Reciever, is a close friend.

A rightful Spouse would be a Companion, a Lover, a Partner and Guardian, in that priority.

Family and friends can be Companions, Partners, Guardians and Muses, and saturate those needs. I'm not intending this to be a way to find out "what your heart desires", but rather to realize what's going on and who is what to you.

Even if you're alone and friendless, there is still one relationship left. The one you have to yourself. Are you your own Companion? You better be. What about Partner and Guardian? You can be those, too.

And when you're in a relationship with someone else, whoever it is, there are in fact four relationships:

1. Your relationship to yourself
2. Your relationship to the other one
3. The other's relationship to you
4. The other's relationship to themselves

Given in the order in which, I believe, you most easily percieve them. The most important point is the middle two: they're seperate! In other thoughts, you might play a different role than the other plays for you. This might work and it might not, but the least you should do is be aware of it.

Most of all, you must never expect the other to assume roles you do not master yourself. Having these desires met is no right. Finish your own vegetables before you tell on others, or if you can't, then show some gratitude.

Time to Move On

2009-01-01T22:14:33Z

The pass is blocked, a new valley lies before me. What will I seek there, and how?

In the year that was, I succeeded in getting better acquainted with my soul. I shall uphold that bond, but this year, I will try to access my heart, too. Too long have I hidden it, shrouded it and unsuccessfully tried to shield it from the outside world. This year, I shall muster up courage and faith and face my fears and anxieties. Somehow I believe those come from the heart, whom I have so mistreated.

It is also time for me to shake off some more apathy. These past years by myself have faced me with many challenges and new situations, many of whom I have avoided altogether. Now I am more experienced, and I can apply my abilities of problem solving to set things right. I'll build, I'll fix, and I'll create my own life. I will take responsibility for myself. I'd be a joke for a man if I could never muster the wits to see this necessity.

And in the midst of all this, I want to do creative works. I have already begun to brainstorm, with snippets of music, writings and photography. The idiocy of my neglecting side would have me sit and whine while these abilities rust.

In short, I will recover all the lost and more.

I have one emotion that I hold in high regard as the one I bring with me into this new year. It is an emotion I have not felt in a long time, which I now feel in a rather peculiar and, you might say, imaginary fashion. It is a feeling of being in love, but it stems from music and from a most fictitious story. I am merely observing this emotion.

So. A track for the newborn year: Rebecca Kneubuhl - Guide You Home

Time to Reflect

2008-12-31T02:01:33Z

Another year is coming to an end. A new year is waiting to be born. Standing at the edge of the cliff, a new valley lies shrouded in mist beneath. The wise will shed a tear for the events that have led us here, and let new wings grow. Tomorrow, it is time to take flight.

So now, I take the time to reflect upon a year-long walk.

The year 2008 has been a year of learning. A year of change. A year of humility, of compassion, of slumber, rest and harmony. It has also been a year of neglect, of panic and exhaustion and of intense self-searching. I have cried more this year than I have all previous years combined.

Well. Let me break it down chronologically.

January, I was a mess. I was spinning round in the treadmill, spending all my energy but not getting anywhere. Several times I changed back and forth between hopeless love and just pure hopelessness. However, though I can be an idiot and even a jackass, I am not a fool, so I had my recovery planned. All the time until Spring, I spent preparing myself, mentally, for a change to the better.

Like a blessing came April. Inspired by newly added wisdom and spiritual ideas I related to, I sought and found all-new experiences in nature. I heard birdsong like I had never heard it before. I saw deer several times. Half of the photos I took this month were of birds. The other half were of clouds. Spring was showing to be exactly that rescuing angel I had hoped it would be.

The weather this summer was glorious, and thus, so was my mood. I walked in the nearby forests time upon time, paying close attention to the developing life and taking hundreds of photos. I did good in the external life, finishing exams and getting a summer job. I also went interrailing through Europe (with kaldtblod!). The amount of new experiences was astounding, and I kept them all in a detailed log.

Eventually, I could see and feel nature starting to wane, to lean towards a new slumber. But with all that'd been this warm season, I welcomed Autumn with open hands. Summer had become plain, and it was time to rustle up other parts of myself and enter a new phase. All Summer had been spent looking outside, and now came the time to look inside, and digest all the new stuff.

I now found a renewed liking for New Age music. In my preparation for Spring I had taught myself meditation, and now I could combine these two to explore deeper part of myself. I make no claims and I hold no belief, but I react rather positively to this stuff. Meditation has proven to be a very effective way for me to clear my mind of stress and reactivate my creativity. This has been a goal of mine since. I even bought a guitar and managed to learn its ways and its theories pretty well.

Since Winter crept over the lands, I have longed back to the green of Spring, but I have tried to discipline myself and be glad for what is now. That's something I've had to do, because this year has been lacking compared to earlier years. It's my energy that has lessened. I've become economical and I make do with what I have.

I am steadily becoming a better human. But I am not forsaking my other sides.

A track for the year that's been: Wim - Serenity Falls.

New Blog

2008-09-27T17:25:49Z

This is where I post now:

http://blog.cerapter.net

I'd be very happy if those of you interested would leave comments now and then. :) And please tell me if I've made the blog hard to read or navigate. I tend to do that.