Imagine you're driving a car.. you stop at a red light and another car pulls up alongside you. Now you're drag racing, both drivers are impatiently waiting for that green light. Now, of course drag racing makes no sense unless the cars are comparable in performance, otherwise it would be a blowout. So there you have it, two different cars, but similar in performance, waiting to start the race. Finally comes the green light, both cars speed out burning rubber. It's neck a neck in the race, both drivers shifting gears to reach that top speed.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is where we extricate ourselves from this very dangerous and very illegal practice of drag racing. Now let x go from zero to infinity as we imagine a straight road of infinite length. The two cars are both going at top speed and their speed is the same. Now imagine that we tie a piece of string, attached to the mirror of one car, going toward the other and fastened there around the mirror once again. These two cars are now bound by a thin piece of string, they are tied together.

If you've seen the title, you've no doubt guessed that the human relationship is represented by the piece of string. The two persons involved are both quite solid, consistent individuals who are set in their ways and appreciate that a systematic approach to a relationship is what will earn you success. But that also mirrors their attitude in other aspects of life, people are mostly static, they don't change much over time, even if they do change sometimes, those changes are then carried over for long periods of time. Thus the potential which exists in trying to match up two people who share enough common ground to make a relationship meaningful is quite significant. But once this relationship is established, it will go on to suffer from a plethora of unforeseen problems which prove extensively difficult to get around.

Let's head back to the drag race. If you can imagine two cars racing, their only incentive being who will cross the finish line first, as they are in fact racing along an infinitely long track, you can imagine that their respective paths will be identical. There is a piece of string holding them together but if either car was to make the slightest turn outwards, that string would snap immediately. So if people grow apart, find out that they no longer share enough common ground for a meaningful relationship, it will be in jeopardy. But that's rather the unlikely scenario. Much more likely it is that the two cars are in fact not identical, one may accelerate faster than the other. Perhaps one is aerodynamic and subject to little air resistance, while the other is bulky in shape, causing the mirror holding the string to shake feverishly. Perhaps one has exceptional suspension while the other jumps at every bump in the road. It is the sum of all these specifics that makes the string dance in the wind with a very great risk of snapping.

It is the sum of all these specifics that makes a relationship a highly volatile compound. While the persons involved are stable, static entities, the bond between them is not unlike the flame in your fireplace, it has no defined state because the sum of all possible states is infinite. And because no two people are equal, it will never be stable. It will always be affected by 3 factors listed in order of likelyhood: (1) the people don't match at the required level of precision, (2) the environment in which the relationship exists is highly dynamic and prone to affect it negatively and (3) the people grow apart/change.

Is it then logically correct to conclude that the human relationship is an atrificial construct, an ill coneived conception at best, a fata morgana? Do we not all strive for highly robust and functional relationships? Who is content with 25%? Ah, but herein lies the obstacle. We may all strive for perfection, but we will never have it. No matter how much one person may want to achieve these lofty goals, the result is entirely dependent on both individuals, both of whom have different philosophies, different values, different approaches, different minds.

Is it then inevitable that in the course of this race toward infinity one of the drivers will fall asleep and end up in a ditch, perhaps crashing the other car in the process? If not, what is the likelyhood of both making it? 1%? 1.5%? Are we kidding ourselves to begin with?

Here's the essence of it.. even if you think you have a strong relationship, you will never know that until it is truly tested. Here's the pitfall.. at times it seems as if the string had been replaced by a thick, solid steel beam welded right into the chassis of both cars. But the steel beam is not real. It is there because we want to imagine that it is. But taking a closer look, there is nothing more than a string in its place. And even though the beam doesn't undergo the shocks that the string would, it does instead accumulate that energy over time, to the point when it has to be released. So if we rely on a beam holding the cars together instead of a string, it is only pushing back the inevitable, sooner or later there will be a release of energy strong enough to snap the beam in half just like the string could snap at any time.

You've seen those headlines in the papers more times than you can keep track of. And it's always the same nonsense. "Real crisis in Madrid", how many times have you seen the word "real" used ambiguously in a sentence about Real Madrid? Doesn't it make you sick? Sick to see such abominable journalism? Such inexplicable lack of creativity? Such appaling use of language recycling? I'll tell you the first time I saw it I thought that's not too bad, very obvious but fair enough. But I later discovered that I would be fortunate enough to see it every goddam week!

I mean who would even want to read that bs in the first place? Why can't they compose normal meaningful headlines, it must be some itch to require that to appear every chance they get. I wonder what those offices look like, do they have a pool going for who finds the next one? Do they throw an office party when they print the next bad pun? I'm starting to think there's a whole subculture pushing this terrible language to feature in the press. It is unfortunate that players and clubs have these names that can be taken advantage of but perhaps they should hire lawyers to end this abuse once and for all..

Seen bad puns lately? Post them here..
"Arsenal stranded in Norway" referring to Rosenborg's Roar Strand scoring the equalizer in their CL match

"Low countries flying high" referring to the Netherlands and Belgium being successful

"A dutch of brilliance"

On a sidenote, do you know the saying "you can never have too many friends"? Well I always found it confusing because there is no reason given, it's a claim with no argument to support it. Well if you've also been annoyed by this fact, you don't have to ponder the issue anymore, because I've found the argument. The full version is: "you can never have too many friends because you never know when you'll lose the ones you have". Even your closest friends, those you always thought would be around forever (or at least indefinitely to use a less absolute term) can split on you at any moment, you just don't know.

Do you recognize a genius when you see one? You're looking at one right now. Hans Zimmer has composed and co-authored more movie soundtracks than most of us can keep track of here, here's an exhaustive list: show me all of em Not surprisingly, he's done it again. With Harry Gregson-Williams, he turned out yet another magnificent soundtrack for King Arthur. I haven't seen the movie and I don't plan to, it's supposed to be terrible. But the score is another masterpiece. If there was a way to keep a human being alive forever and there was one spot open for all of humanity, I'm hard pressed to find anyone who would be more fitting for it.

Unlike what one enthusiastic soul wrote on cdnow.com, I hardly consider this Hans' best work. There isn't enough substance nor consistency in it to really rank in the top group. But that doesn't mean I haven't been listening to it for 3 straight days and that's how you really identify a genius, a craftsman whose average work is a masterpiece...

All hail the king!!! :star:

During an hour long visit to my least favorite hangout last week, the dental chair, it occured to me that the visit seemed interminable. I felt what I always feel at the dentist, an almost constant fear of pain. The situation is pretty unique, being in that position there is little to be done for relief, I can't really move much, I can jerk my head a little but that's pretty much it. It should be said that dentail pain is probably my least favorite kind of pain altogether. Headaches can be really bad on occasion and they're exhausting but rarely do they hit me with such a force and unpredictability as dental pain does. And the reason why dental pain is worse is that it's so unpredictable. With most kinds of pain, I can tell in advance what situation will cause what magnitude (and in most cases what kind) of pain. If someone were to hit me with a baseball bat, I know in advance what to expect. With dental pain it's completely different, I never know what's coming and there are times when I get struck out of the clear blue sky.

So reflecting on this issue, little by little it dawned on me that it's not so much the pain that is the subject of the fear felt so clearly. It's the fear of being surprised by pain that stirs the pot really well. I really hate sitting in that dental chair and not because I'm in much pain (little or none most likely) but I do feel the constant threat of pain to surface at any time at all. It's not knowing what might happen that is to be accounted for the significant mental strain of this situation, not actually feeling pain. And let's face it, most times in life pain isn't so bad, very rarely do (I think) most people feel much pain for long periods of time. Once the pain comes, you know what it's like, often we can cope with it. But fearing pain is a big problem, not knowing what to expect, that causes serious stress. So it's the fear of surprise that is the real issue here..

It occured to me today that going from the Windows world to the Linux one is quite a leap in mentality for most people. Much has been said about this but I write this now to emphasize the differences I have seen myself.

Generally speaking, Windows is a playground. I used to install all kinds of software I didn't need, just to try it and see if I could use it. Sometimes I would find a use for it, sometimes I would use it no more than ~twice a year. That was a pastime at some point, accumulating software (mostly shareware) was some kind of a hobby. Of course, that wore down and I started just getting stuff I needed. But that initial need to explore software I think had much to do with the lack of opportunity given by Windows to mess around with the system. Of course you have specialized software that tweaks system settings and the registry but what fun is that when you don't know what really happens anyway? And often there's no way to tell either, you see the difference or you don't.

Stepping into linux with that attitude, there were a number of pitfalls I encountered. First of all, reading docs/manuals in linux is *not* time wasted. Reading install documents is actually preempting trouble, I learnt this only after I had tried installing the same software several times not knowing what I was doing or why. I wasn't keen to find out what exactly was going on, I just expected it would work fairly quickly so that I could mess around with it once it was running. Not so with linux, gaining a basic understanding of the install process goes a long way towards solving the problems that come up (well duh). Being a new user (still), I still find it unnatural to dive right into docs and logs but it grows on you. As it turns out, system logs are incredibly useful (who would have thought?). Often dismissed for their obscurity and lack of obvious messages understandable to dumb users, I now begin to realize their value. It is much like learning to speak a foreign language, at first it's all a blur, then you start identifying basic words and phrases. Exactly like reading logs or documentation!

Getting around the system is a big problem, at first I had no idea where to look for what. I suppose I could have read all about the philosophy behind the unix file structure but instead it just became familiar with use (slowly by steadily). Most intuitive is the problem of installing software, where do the files go? Stuff like qpkg really help a lot to track those files. Apart from location, it's also about access control. As a Windows user, I never had to think about gaining access to a file because by default I could access all files. The only exceptions where those really annoying system/driver/trojan dlls that were currently in use and locked on disk. Well linux doesn't operate on file locks, instead you surrender your access rights to the root user. And running as root I think is a very useful learning experience, cause I *really* hated getting those access denied messages all the time as a newbie. Hopefully you won't wipe your / with windows partitions mounted in the process, I have yet to do that myself.

Another thing forced on you is being a lot more intimate with your hardware. This is something I could do without because I've never been a hardware buff. But I've gotten used to it, the first order of business is identifying the hardware and googling for drivers. Sometimes getting those working can be a challenge but most of the time it's worth the effort. In the long run, better auto detection could really help make this problem go away to the casual user.

So those are 3 things learnt from linux:

1. reading docs and logs

2. file structure and permissions

3. hardware awareness