Tough Day

Today I went to say goodbye to my brother. I has been one of the toughest days of my life.

I had not cried at all since I was told he was dead, but the second I saw him, tears were flowing out of me, and have been for 5 hours now.

Seeing him like that was more than I could handle. Silent, statuesque, morbid.

How can life continue without him?

My brother died today.

Today I received a call around noon. "Are you sitting down?" the voice asked. This could not be good. It wasn't.

He was 33, four years younger than me. Apparently he was doing drugs, and they killed him.

After the news I went for a walk. A long one. It was sunny, to sunny for someone to die terribly. I was trying to remember his face, he demeanor, his laughter, his cheeriness. I was having a hard time of it.

He was the kind of person who was always in a good mood. If he was not doing drugs, you would think he was, cause his mood was always "high". I don't think I have ever seen him sad. I will miss that. Perhaps I can be inspired by that single memory and use it to improve my own mood when I'm gloomy. I know that I have to honour him in some way.

Tomorrow I have to go to the Chapel where he has been placed. My mother and sister are joining me there. It will be a chance to say goodbye.

It's not a good day, this one. Not at all.

Haskell

After reading feed://feeds.feedburner.com/nubgames I decided to take a look at Haskell and "functional programming". I expect it to be same same, only new syntax, as always.

But the Nub Games guy seems ranty enough for me to look at it. I guess.

Vanguard Saga of Heroes

I'm drinking Newcastle Brownale, waiting for the VSoH servers to come online. A new game, a new beginning. I wonder if it will bring me the relaxation I need.

Lately I've been experiencing spells of itching of the fingers and hands. Most likely due to stressrelated hypertension. I kinda makes me nervous for the future, and I expect I will need VSoH or some other form of escape in order to deal with it.

What does it matter?

I'm looking out the window. The wind is blowing. Everthing is unaffected, pristine. I'm pondering the megalomania of thinking that we are more than the leaf on the tree im watching. The insignificance of our thoughts and interactions.

Why would it matter if we are happy or gloomy?

Star Trek Bonanza

Like any good nerd, I like Star Trek, but like anything in my life, previous to my weightloss, it was never a real dedication.

So I decided to systematically watch all Star Trek episodes and movies known to man.

I knew most of the scenarios from my sporadic viewing of aired episodes, apart from Deep Space 9, of which I still know nothing.

I started my mission by watching all the movies in order, that didn't take to long.

Because of my age, for me, Picard IS Star Trek, so the obvious next step was The Next Generation. There are 7 seasons - 178 episodes in all. A few months ago, when I quit Everquest 2, I popped in season 1 and started my quest.

I finished a few weeks ago, and went on to Voyager season 1, and just pressed stop after episode 15 of season 3.

All this is made possible by my KiSS DP-558 which I now love.

The quest continues. DS9 after Voyager, then The Original Series, Enterprise and the Animated Series. After that I will pick up Anne Rice, and finish that project aswell.

Thats more or less whats going on at the moment. Still lots of excercise. I might have become addicted by now. I feel bad if I miss a session for some reason. To bad I picked up some nasty eating habits. Only conselation is my sexual apathy which works as a "who cares anyway" filter.

Paul Graham

I recently came across Paul Grahams page for the first time ever. I was doing some reading up on Bayesian Filters and came across his essay on it. I read a bit, and thought to myself that while the style of writing was interesting, it seemed a bit odd that he wasn't allready using Bayesian analysis of his spam, since the technology was so well known.

It wasn't until I finished the essay that a colleague of mine told me that Paul was in fact the first person to apply Bayesian analyses to the spam problem, and the essay I had been reading was in fact the original story of how the method was invented.

So now I was naturally intrigued, and wanted to learn more about this obiously genius individual. Turns out the guy is not only a brilliant writer, but is also a nerd like myself.

Great stuff.