TomRed's blog & stuff

School’s out. Yep, for five weeks or so (less than half of last year’s summer) I am out of that institution that blocks my site every now and then because it prioritises blocking out swear words (does the title count?) over allowing teachers to capitalise on my A-level stuff section (which has actually happened once or twice). Sports week was not something I despised but the fact that it was the reason why my school was among the few to keep us in this late angers me, especially when I made up about a thirtieth of the sixth form (or all of the sixth form in the first ten minutes from when I arrived).

Apart from complaining about the mildly flawed leaving system, this post has some sort of purpose, as I have not made a record of targets for this summer. This summer is somewhat important – it bridges the two years of A-level, it is needed for me to decide on what to do at uni (besides heavily subsidise the alcohol industry), I want to learn how to drive (except not GTA style), and I want to do other productive things, like stuff from my 100 things list. To formalise this, I’ve put a list so I will know what to do and will lash myself if I fail to achieve it. You can stick around for the below if you’re a stalker, knock your brains out:
1. Decide on a course for university (at least get somewhere, please).
2. Have an idea of where to study.
3. Have a few driving lessons.
4. Either start learning an instrument or at least progress on the piano/keyboard.
5. Substantially increase my iTunes library.
6. Learn how to cook something other than toast.
7. Learn C++ (programming).
8. Learn some Japanese or give up any English-Japanese bilingual dreams.
9. Make comics to prepare for September (then realise that they’re terrible and burn them).
10. Complete at least three things off the 100 things list.
11. Read some books.
12. Read some revision guides (i.e. get ahead).
13. Draw more.
14. Become more knowledgeable in general.

That’s all from my head, if I think of more I’ll add them. I’ll also make ’em bold if I complete them. I believe I made some sort of list like this last year, hah, like I did a single thing.

I had one lesson today, of which seven people turned up for. In post-exam sixth form that is actually pretty good. I barely remember any chemistry lessons, I was either a quarter of the physics pupils or half the physics teachers, and maths and economics were slightly more disciplined. I was unmotivated to work, and suspiciously didn’t turn up some of the time (I got a letter and a fancy pen rewarding me for 100% attendance today, as ironically I wasn’t in on the day they announced it).

Next week is Sports Week, my first in two years. I don’t like it as (contrary to my attendance record) I am terribly unhealthy, and in monopolising last place I’m thankful that there’s not really natural selection in modern humans. The good thing is that the days are shorter and there’s little thinking involved. On Friday I am free as a bird, having about half the summer holidays I did last year, but hopefully they will be twice as fulfilled.

By the way, I’ve finally started further maths, but additionally and self-taught. Place your bets, I reckon I’ll last a week.

Well, I’ve sold out. I look at my convenient view graph and as today looks bleak in terms of keeping my views above 100 visitors a day, I think it’s time to make a much needed post and spam anyone who has a computer.

For those of you who don’t know, my music taste is unusual for a person of my age. In other words, it’s actually good (the subjectivity alarm has been pressed). It’s predominantly 1960s and decreases in the neighbouring decades. It’s not to be rebellious (or to be rebellious by not being rebellious like every other teenager, that probably doesn’t make sense) as I genuinely like (most) of my songs, mainly because a certain radio station played many of the hits in my youth. The Beatles is obviously a liked band of mine, my favourite even. As you may have guessed, my favourite song is a Beatle song. Now, what might this be? Ringo, drum roll please…

Real Love, that’s the one. As you may have noticed, it was featured in a weekly video in the form of a fake live concert, here. It’s an excellent song by an excellent band, but it might not have made the cut without the background to the song.

It’s a mid ’90s song, which is around thirty years ahead of The Beatles’ writing period. John was shot and killed back in 1980, leaving Paul, Ringo, and George several years before he got cancer. Yoko Ono gave them a couple of John’s old demos that were not released, being Free as a Bird and Real Love, clearly the latter I prefer. Both were evidently put into hits by the remaining three. A shit load of editing for the many takes of Real Love and Real Life were combined to produce a good quality version of the song, and the others put in their vocal and instrumental contributions.

Watching the mock concert, it felt like I was on one of the drugs they took in the later part of their band career, like there was a unity even though John was dead, and it was due to the song itself. Finally, there is a connection to my Get a life… post (you don’t need to read that shit), as the song was the end of the line of Beatles songs and was in my lifeline.

Oh, by the way, this song was not played by BBC Radio 1 as they did not think it was a modern song despite being a new release. Although I can see their point, it was a futile defence as the average buyer of the song was a teenager and the average age of a Radio 1 listener is 33 (when they aim for viewers to be much younger). Consequently, when I come into power, Radio 1 will be replaced by Party propaganda.

I was out one time and passed my primary school, a lot of it is guarded by a massive wall taller than my >6ft self. Whenever I pass it I make a brief jump to see it as it sometimes gives me a rush of previously locked memories. I like having memories of experiences of me from the 1990s, because they were experiences of me in the previous millennium. That time I discovered something blatantly obvious, the distinction between this and the last millennium is an arbitrary line from the Gregorian calendar. I already knew this, but acted in a way that the two millennia were distinct and separate from each other as I never registered it being arbitrary.

There are more examples of me thinking like this, for example, there are only two (verified) males alive from the nineteenth century. I get frustrated at my peers for not swallowing the significance of this, but again, it’s arbitrary. Finally, for some odd reason I find 80 and above a good age to live to and 79 and below a bad age to live to (funnily enough I probably won’t even live to 80).

One other age/time/life thing I am weirdly interested in is something that’s not arbitrary. Take someone I admire, like Carl Sagan. He died in 1996 and I was born in 1993. I was three when he died, and for me I would be disappointed if he died in, say, 1992. The fact that we crossed paths, the fact that I was alive at a point he was alive (even though any influence I had on his life was negligible), I just like. The same goes for one of my great-grandfathers (my mother’s mother’s father). He died when I was about 7 months old, but when I found out that when I was born he was still alive, many years ago, I was pleased.

Where am I going? Not far, it’s just some (creepy) way of thinking, but if you’re into the potentially mildly interesting, I can put these thoughts graphically, into what I’m gonna call lifeline graphs.

Let’s take a hypothetical person, this person was born in the start of 1920 and died in the start of 2005, aged 85. This person, as us all, grew in cognition from the beginning of his existence for some years in the growing up phase and in his old age developed dementia where his cognition depleted until his death. For the sake of simplicity, let’s take the beginning of existence at birth (even though there’s some limited cognitive development in the fetal stage (I think), but a birthday is a lot easier to trace) and a gradual change of cognition from birth to 10 years old, even though it would actually be more fluid than this. For this hypothetical man (not James Doohan), dementia was developed at the beginning of 2000. From this, one can represent his existence graphically:

So you can easily see how his existence was at any point on the time axis, even though there is a fine line between life and death, though it is useful to see their cognitive ability (my point is that a vegetable is quite different from a person in their prime, but if you have cancer you’re still the same in mind).

But to summarise the ideas I brought above, and more, let’s throw in several of some real people (including myself) into one lifeline graph:

The time axis clearly shows when people lived, but just looking at the lifelines themselves brings certain points:
1. You can see when people were alive together, The Beatles were all alive together, in their prime. I was alive with my great-granddad and Carl Sagan in my babyhood.
2. Consequently, you can see when people were dead together. This doesn’t just mean any time after two or more people have died, like in 2005 for John, George and Ronald Reagan, but also in 1985 when John and I were dead (in other words, we were ‘on the same level’), even though some get angry at me for thinking of ‘death’ as simply not being alive, meaning any children of mine would get squandered out of this definition (as they are not alive, but not dead by the definitions of most). Nevertheless, if my children were put in the graph, you could see that at the time of writing both my children and my great-granddad were dead.
3. You can see where one’s life has been encompassed in another’s. John Lennon’s life has been encompassed by Carl Sagan’s, who in turn has been encompassed by Ronald Reagan’s, who’s been encompassed by Walter Breuning’s.
4. If many peoples’ lifelines were listed, you could see chains that never break, i.e. a no points where no one in the chain is alive.

Anyway, the point of this really, really long post was just a few thoughts and a somewhat useful invention of mine (unless some fucker made it first).

Finally, if you didn’t recognise the names of any of the notable people, here you go:
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) – American astronomer, died from a difficult battle with myelodysplasia.
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) – 40th president of the USA, suffered with Alzheimer’s disease for the last ten years of his life (hence the fading lifeline).
John Lennon (1940–1980) – member of The Beatles, shot and killed.
Paul McCartney (1942–) – member of The Beatles.
George Harrison (1943–2001)– member of The Beatles, died from cancer.
Ringo Starr (1940–) – member of The Beatles.
Walter Breuning (1896–) – world’s oldest living man.

Football and me go together like cutlery and nappies, i.e. we don’t go together. Sure, I’m a male, I’m allegedly programmed to like it, but that’s not the point. I suppose I can understand the competition and all, but to watch men kick a ball around for ninety minutes, with a couple of short ecstasies and angers, bores me. The World Cup interests me mildly, as it’s nations as opposed to clubs, macro as opposed to the micro. As Ireland rarely gets in due to unfortunate circumstances like the genesis of the French, I would half-support a team overall but would focus on supporting a team in individual matches, but I’m unlikely to watch the whole thing.

This one, however, is different. It’s got me a job. If England can sustain itself (and hopefully execute its defence flaws) then I may keep this job for a couple of weeks and earn a few bob picking up glasses (more money to add to the useless pile).

I have high hopes for the DPRK tonight, and one day, just one day, would like to see Vatican City qualify.

My exams have finished, I am a free man. Of course, it is only a temporary blip in the work demands of sixth form and it’s a mere 7 months to my next batch.

First of all, I’ve realised what I had predicted had come true, i.e. the fact that my site visitors have peaked this month (and the last) with several hundred a day being the norm. As there are not as many in my year utilising my A-level stuff to explaining the magnitude of the increase, I actually thought that maybe, just maybe, people are actually reading this shit I type. Alas, I was informed that neighbouring schools have heard of my stash of past papers and mark schemes and pupils downloaded until the rum was gone without giving this poor, malnourished blog a glimpse. How do I know this? Because as the exams are done my views are contracting back to their humble state. Though to be fair, I have had a bit of feedback, so I’ll leave it at that.

In regards to my blog, as I have no pressure on revision or any of that nonsense, I can actually post about stuff not academically related in any way or form. For a little preview of future events, I intend to make comics.

…

Laughter over? Yes, that’s right. Beethoven became deaf, so maybe I can make comics from September. I’m talking about generic Monday-Wednesday-Friday comics with a few bits of gold clattered around rubbish. I say September as I am in the process of drawing drafts, and I would like to make a sufficient amount of them before I start uploading.

Oh, the exams. Erm… I’m not sure how I did, especially with my predictions generally being wrong, all could have been worse (I hesitate to say that for mechanics and economics) and all could have been better, but August will tell.