Such Lovely Weather

Well, for any of you not in the immediate Sheffield area, the weather the past few days has been pretty abysmal. Rain, rain, rain; it's all we've had. Though, despite all the complaining that the good ol' British public do about the rain, I quite like it. More specifically, I like being out in it when it's warm. I'm not quite sure what it is about it, but there's something about walking around in the pouring rain that makes me feel better. I dunno if, perhaps, it's something I could express in a slightly abstract way - say, for instance, that the rain kinda washes my problems away, if only temporarily. But, as I did a little while back when it was gloriously warm and it rained, I took some time to wander around aimlessly in the rain and for that time I didn't really care about much.

That said, the weather does somewhat reflect my mood at the moment. I think, currently, I'm not feeling that down about much but I'm not exactly the most cheery person going. There's a few things still bugging me, that are making me feel a bit sad, but they aren't things I'm going to go into here and they're ones I'll have to try and sort out myself. I have, however, made a few realisations about myself though. For instance, I rediscovered the joy of 2-tone ska thanks to Last.fm suggesting that people who like Madness might also like Bad Manners and The Specials. I think that's kinda always been one of my favourite sorts of music, though I lost sight of that a bit by trying to fit in with the metal crowd. Don't get me wrong, I still like metal, but I just reminded myself that I also really like ska. Also quite fond of ska-influenced bands, like Less Than Jake or Rancid. Awesome.

As hesitant as I am to say it, I think I might be coming to terms somewhat with a few of the things that have been haunting me of late. Sure, the skeleton's haven't been completely removed from the proverbial closet and given a proper burial yet, but I think we've got at least to the point of opening the door. Might be a while before I notice any marked improvement, but it's something to work for. Something I hope I can achieve, really. Going back to music, I've noticed that I have actually since downloading iTunes been living up to my statement of "eclectic" musical taste. It's gotten to the point where I'm acquiring larger amounts of tunes that most people wouldn't have associated with me at all, but it comes back somewhat to the fact that at heart I'll listen to anything I think is worth listening to. That still doesn't include jazz, I'm afraid. I definitely think that, at some point, I put a bit too much emphasis on liking what others liked and not running with my own opinion. Hopefully that's something I can reverse.

Sitting here now, and thinking with a somewhat upbeat dance backing track, I'm beginning to see what I never thought I'd see. Myself, at least partially. I'm slowly but surely making an effort to shake off the shadow of all that's bothered me, and try and concentrate more on what makes me happy rather than what I think others *should* like. With hindsight, there's a few things that I would actually change about my life if I could, but alas such an event is never going to happen so I don't see any point in harbouring regrets over things. I think, from here on in, I should make more effort to ignore the well established voices in my head and instead listen to the voices of the people I'm friends with - the ones who, so far as I can tell, are actually speaking the truth.

A Productive Endeavour

Ah, the familiar feel of "blogging" is back. Mmm. Y'know, this is the third blog I've ever owned; my first being on MSN Spaces, way back when they first launched it. I even went as far as making a few friends through that thing, and I still have a few of them. My second was one that came with the joy of a MySpace account, after I bowed to pressure from friends and actually got one of the darn things. I never really thought MySpace was that fantastic, but then I never really got into the whole friend whoring emo thing. I don't really care how many people you want to claim to be friends with, I'll stick with people I actually know.

Hence, what with my other half going and getting one of these last night and thus reminding me of the fact I still have access to both an MSN Spaces account as well as a MySpace I went dredging through the annals of history and turned up my MySpace blog. I didn't remember, at the time, why I'd left it dormant rather than deleting it all together until I actually read the blog entries on it. Man, I was a fool back in 2006. Reading some of the things I wrote, some of the things I clearly felt strongly on, it just serves to prove how far I've come as a human being in the past few years. I'm not quite the same angry, socially inept teenager I was when I first ventured forth to university - I've grown up a lot, I think, and I think that I've bettered myself in a few ways. I'm still nowhere near perfect, but I don't think I'm quite as flawed as I was.

Anyway, that's a very brief history lesson for those of you who've stumbled upon this glorious example of why the Internet is fantastic. Yes, there's a lot of rubbish on the interweb, and a lot of it is put there by your average joe just like me, but perhaps one or two of you might find something interesting to read here or perhaps learn something. I doubt the latter will occur, at least not frequently, but we'll see.

So, why am I making a blog with the "Gods" of Google via Blogger? Well, that's a good question. Part of it is that I actually quite like blogging, I do rather enjoy the challenge of trying to order what's in my head. Most of the time, I don't think I manage it very well when I try and achieve this verbally. I don't think I'm particularly well suited to conversation, since it requires the ability to think through what you're saying as you say it and not make any hideous gaffes that alienate you from your peers. With the written word, however, you have more time and less pressure on you - time to sort out what you want to say at your own pace, in whichever manner you deem most appropriate. That said, conversation is also two-way and relies on you understanding - at least partially - the person you're talking to. As well as the fact that I do enjoy writing things down, I chose Blogger since I already have a Google Mail account. Saves me some time, no? Oh, and if you're wondering why or offended by the fact that I've referred to Google as "gods" - it's quite simply because Google satisfies a few of the requirements us mortals place upon our deities. They must be all-knowing, and omnipresent. Google knows far more than I do, and it's in a hell of a lot more places at once than I am, so I'll settle for accepting it as meeting those two requirments. All hail the Church of Google! Could be worse, I suppose... *cough* Scientology *cough*

I don't think I aimed to put anything useful into this entry at the start, so I've not really deviated from my objective - which was simply to allow a brief respite from revision of notes on solid state physics. I have an exam on it tomorrow, y'see, and I don't think it's going to go well. Admittedly, I do now know the equations for Debye temperature and Fermi energies, but there's a lot more in the course that I don't know. I'm looking forward to Saturday's exam, though, which is on optics. It's just simple geometry coupled with electromagnetic theory on diffraction and interference. Sure, I've never had to derive the equations for these things from first principles before, but I'm perfectly capable of drawing some diagrams and doing simple algebra to determine angles and lengths. Easy.

That's all for now, as I've spent the best part of twenty minutes procrastinating on here now. I'll drop by again soon, no doubt, with more equally pointless ramblings from my head. Perhaps now you realise why I chose the name I did, partially because these things are somewhat chaotic and I quite liked the fact that early physics theories for electromagnetism were concerned with the existance (or, eventually, lack of) an aether. Huzzah!