What differentiates, distinguishes a friend from everyone else?
What is it that matters that makes a friend different from everyone else?

Before these questions can even begin to be answered, something that I would hope would be obvious should be pointed out: there are either, or both, degrees of friendship, or kinds of friendship, such that, there must be some variation accordingly in the answers to questions like the above. [I don't actually expect to come to conclusions on these questions.]

I should also specify that it seems to me that I attribute friendship less liberally than most others. It takes quite a bit for me to consider someone a friend. I don't presume that whatever it takes for me to finally consider someone a friend is somehow what it universally takes to be a friend at all. It's just that, for me, you're either in, or out.

Well, almost.

Damn near close enough. Because there is still usually quite a distinct barrier between those who circumstantially end up falling in between and those who are in. There is still quite a distance between the former and me.

But I speak honestly when I ask the essential question - What makes a friendship? - because so often I feel utterly blank on the answer, even though I would like to think that I know that one or two people are friends, that they are genuinely set apart from the rest of people. My whole life, the notion of friendship in others has been a mystery to me, an unsolvable puzzle between persons I can't seem to understand. And yet, being the kind of creature I am, I find myself driven to seek it, find myself feeling it to be desirable. For what? A connection. But it is precisely that, that is always lacking.

Sometimes, wandering through memories is like walking along a fence, myself on one side, the world of people on the other, a permanent barrier, a permanent division. The question is, is the fence too high to be climbed? Or do we simply find that we don't want to step over to the other side? Or perhaps, the lock on the only gate, for which the key has been lost, has long since rusted shut?
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Yes, thought not so much "on the spot" as in "turned away, wrote a resignation letter, handed it in, walked out." Being asked to spy on people isn't any fun, and he really didn't understand who his allies were in his business. Not really, though I'm a little uncertain. I quit right when the going was starting to get good. On one hand, the points I quit over were structural: if they didn't get me to leave then they stood a good chance to get me to leave later, or even get me fired. On the other hand, I often feel as though I make many of the same mistakes, over and over again. I'm old enough that some are now habitual, while with others I find that age reduces opportunity for correcting. It stands to reason that some are contrary to this, so there's some balancing to the whole affair. So I don't regret leaving, but I'm inordinately curious as to how things would have turned out for me as a person if I'd stayed.

Tags: writer's block

IO SATURNALIA!

Jung's refrain was to discover what myth you were living.

Unfortunately, neither Jung nor Campbell covered whether an appropriate response to the answering of that question could be "Duuuude, that is so fucked up," but I'd like to think that it's included in there, somewhere.

• 14:44 gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=457106 - poll on whether game maker 8 should use the softwrap drm -- and "yes" is winning D:

- went through searching for all time-sensitive instances of width/2 and height/2 and replaced them with the precalculated halfwidth and halfheight variables, likewise with x+width/2 and y+height/2 with the precalculated cx and cy. this won't make too much difference, but might make a tiny difference, particularly for map objects when there are hundreds of them on screen at once and each is doing those extra calculations that they don't need to.
- made the unicorn's (seena's) trail vary based on delta time rather than absolute frame rate
- optimized the phoenix draw routines a bit
- optimization in the triangle intersection formula (used for determining if you can break bushes and crystals and rocks with the weapon)
- noticed a bug that, when you press escape after previously pressing and cancelling escape, for a single frame it shows the full text, before scrolling the text in again
- tried and failed to use surfaces for drawing textboxes -- the mechanics don't quite work out, there's no simple way to accurately add one letter at a time to a surface and have them all placed correctly without recoding a bunch of stuff; i may do this later but right now it's a bad idea
- similarly tried and failed to use surfaces to display round rectangles (one of the slower drawing primitives), it doesn't quite work scaling-wise out because the roundness of the corner varies so much depending on the height and width of the round rectangle. it could work if i have a unique surface for every different size of the round rectangle, but
- made textboxes grow larger rather than appear instance, it's nice to have things morph in or transition in rather than suddenly appear, it makes things feel more polished. i want to do a lot more of that kind of thing eventually.
- changed a few instances of 'fps' in the code to the timer dll's more accurate measure of fps (updated every step rather than every second)
- went through all particle creations and adjusted it to the fps (so that at slower frame rates fewer particles are created to ease the slowdown a bit). eventually i also want to change their speed and lifetime/duration based on delta time.

Tags: saturated dreamers

There are some wild deer near where I live. When I first moved up I remember first seeing this really large dark looking stag. Very muscular looking with distinctive antlers standing in the middle of a stark barren bog field. It looked fantastic, there was just one old dead tree in sight in such an open space of bog land. It looked magnificent standing right in the middle of it. Surrounded by a floating mist, it was like a painting. To think it is able to survive in such a bleak landscape on grasses and weeds.

I used to go protesting and sabbing hunts for many years, a long time ago. But to see a stag living and breathing. It's hard to believe people have a license to hunt down and murder them all in the name of sport. It's now on the current political agenda here. I hope they stop it.
Ban stag hunting
http://www.huntsabsireland.org
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/95134

Grex iuvenum infestus circum desertum obsidebat. Filii erant optimatum : operae opulentae. latrones cum parentum pecunia, quam mero meretricibusque consumere solebant. Equos suos duceant aliorum subducebant qui in circum currerent. Nonnumquam curru vehebantur, quos plerumque celeritate aut vi effusa deperderent. Saxa catenis post curricula trahebant ut alios in currus frangeretur. Nemo, aiebant, vereri se ostendet, ne verberibus exuletur.

Etsi adulescentuli improbuli erant profligatique, dux eorum verumtamen erat malignus : saevus iuvenis et violentus et malus. Dicebatur omnino scelus esse pessimum, et dei ipsi eum foeditate designaverant ; quoniam ei corpus virile lacertosumque dederunt, cum facie autem monstri. Vultum sub persona cummis celebat, sed laetissime detegebat ut amicis inimicisque terrorem iniceret. Vere nemo vidit quin horresceret. Cutis ruber et oleosus in ossibus musculisque intendebatur ut caput videretur calvariam cruentum. Nasus vix erat ; parvae carnis rugae cum spiritu vibrabantur. Oculi enormes e medio vultu acerbe nitebant, sine iridibus, duo glaebae pingues. Labra atra vix nigros dentes tegebant, inter quas lingua tumida movebatur sicut bufo putidus cum verba venenata obscaenaque spueret. Atque, inhumanissime, in medio fronte erant ii acies dentium, velut os secunda nascente mortuum est, rictus immundus qui omne bonum fugaret.



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Νυκτὸς ἐν τοῖς σήμασι περιπατοῦντες ἐτύχομεν τάφῳ τινὶ οὗ τὸ μέτωπον δωρικῷ νάῳ ὡμοιεῖτο. ἀκλῃστῶν οὐσῶν τῶν θυρῶν, εἰσήλθομεν · οὐ μὲν ὡς τυμβώρυχοι μᾶλλον δ' ὡς ὁδοιπόροι. ἀναβαθμὸν ἐντὸς λίθινον κατεβάνομεν.

Ὑπονόμους παλαιῶν νεκρῶν πλήρεις διήλθομεν. τέλος δ' εἰς ψάλιδα ἐν τῷ τοῦ λαβυρίνθου μέσῳ. ἐν ψάλιδι ἦν θρόνος, καὶ ἐν θρόνῳ ἦν ὁ βασιλεύς · ἔτι χρύσεον στέφανον ἐφορεῖ καίπερ μόνον τὰ τοῦ σώματος ὀστᾶ μάνοντα. σιωπῇ τὸν βασιλέα ἐθαυμάζομεν.

Λίποντες τὸν τάφον γέτας τρια εἴδομεν, κόρας μόλις ἡμῖν γνωτάς. δυὸ κόμψας ἐφαίνοντο καὶ καριέσσας · μέλαιναι στολαὶ καλαὶ, κόμαι περιέργως ἀνασεσυρμέναι, καὶ ψυμμύθιόν τε καὶ στίμμι ἀκριβῶς κοσμηθέντα. ἀλλ' ἡ αὐτῶν φίλη ἠτακτεῖτο · μεθύουσα στολὴν καὶ ἀρβύλας ἀπεβεβήκειν ὡς διαφανὲς ἐρυθρὸν χιτώνοιν εἶχεν. ἐτετμήκει τὸ ἄνω χεῖλος · πρόσωπον διασπάρακτον μέντοι καλόν.

Αἱ γέται ἐκαλήσασαν ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ συμπόσιον ἐν οἴκῳ ἐγγὺς τῶν σημάτων. τὴν τάλαιναν βαδίζειν ἀδύνατον εἰς τὸ συμπόσιον ἤνεγκον. ἕως αὐτὴν βραδέως ἐφερον, γλυκύθυμως ἐλαλεῖ.

Tags: liber somniorum

So, I just watched the Second half of SciFi's "Alice"--I know it's "Syfy" but I refuse to endorse that--and I have to say, i'm amazed at how SciFi's miniseries are just good enough.  Seriously.   The special effects aren't mindblowing.  They're a bit lame at times, but it's utterly watchable.   The plot is full of cliches.  (Is she gonna choose the king-to-be or the scrappy do-gooder?  That whole time was only an hour?) But it keeps you guessing just enough to second guess yourself.   The adaptation is interesting, just tied close enough to the original to contain some coherence.  Okay, the Queen of hearts' consort's final dialogue, which leaves the viewer with the impression that the queen of hearts is what happens when a man doesn't keep a woman in check is a bit disturbing.   But then again, alice is a chick who kicks ass in her own right, and she's the hero(ine).  It's not full of wow, it's full of "yeah, okay, that'll do." and I have to say, it was 4 hours of fairly pleasant, enjoyable "yeah, okay, that'll do." and maybe that's all they were hoping for.

• 00:10 people have two parts when dying: www.picturesforsadchildren.com/comics/00000298.png
• 15:06 eo is up again (previously it had been down for a few weeks): eocommunity.co.uk/index.php