I love my Youtube to mp3 converter . I really do .

All is well here in London, which partially contributes to the quietness of this blog. Also, I notice that I end up using Facebook a lot.

Tonight I have been wondering a bit about composing, making music and playing music. In a life here in London that is otherwise quite well settled, that seems to be the one remaining gap in the things I like to do here. Finding a new but very flexible band is not easy, but also practising and composing by myself without the perspective of actually playing frequently feels more like doing a chore than a hobby.

Thing is, I do enjoy making and practising music. It’s just that the way I organized it currently is not working very well for me. I don’t make a lot of music and I don’t overly enjoy it in this way either. Lessons are not really an option at the moment, but perhaps I could enforce some regularity in my practise, or perhaps I should aim to record some songs at certain times. Or perhaps there’s a different way I can make it more enjoyable and rewarding. I’ll have to think about it…

I had a great time with my friends and all the people I met there . Also, I learned a lot about leading roleplay sessions, and roleplaying cool characters. All in all it was very inspiring and rewarding . However, I also have slept far too little, so first I’ll need to recover a little bit .

I did notice, however, that D&D 3.5 is really a bit too heavyweight for most convention roleplays though …

Just when you think this place is dead again, I post an update. No Articles songs are now available online for 0 euros .
See: http://www.notaboutme.nl/blog/?page_id=401

It took me a while to recover some passwords, but I’ll try to better my life now and update more regularly again .

Noticed this on the Guardian website just a bit ago:

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-us-embassy-cables-live-updates

5.30pm: With perfect timing an email arrives from Philip Crowley at the state department:

*gathers the scraps of his meter…*

The whole matter with WikiLeaks has gotten me thinking for quite a bit. I’ve read about Berlusconi’s bacterial infections, prins Andrew’s misbehaviour abroad, the Ukranian nurse who accompanies Gaddhafi, and Maxime Verhagen’s willingness to grovel at the feet of the American’s. Surely there is juice among the wikileaked cables, and it provide a colorful insight into the global political latrine.

What intrigues me more though is the underlying discussion about governmental secrecy, which appears to be at least reopened to some extent. For decades people all over the globe have been fearful of having their privacy invaded and their deeds and thoughts straightjacketed by an oppressive government. Yet in the new century legislation after legislation has been passed to allow the arm of the law to reach ever deeper into our intimacies. Not only can our communications be tapped and our freedom of movement be constrained for sometimes arbitrary reasons, but there is also a large unconscious leakage of privacy through a poorly protected internet, a poorly protected mobile network and a structural lack of education and protective equipment for its users. Whereas the privacy loss in the book 1984 by Orwell was focused and centrally organized, our current privacy loss is almost anarchistic in nature, with random spambots possibly even harvesting more and more sensitive information than any scrupulous government out there.

Yet most people do not really seem to care about this. As a result, can we now safely say that the fear of privacy loss that has dominated our society for such a long time has now largely dissipated? If that is the case, I guess we surely have been “Orwelled” to some extent.

Now, what I find truly interesting is the way people do react. Nearly none of them staunchly defend their privacy, but as soon as something leaks out from the other side the globe jumps on it and humps the leakage like there’s no tomorrow! Television stations and newspapers milk the leakings like a industrial cow, sprinkling the news in daily dosages lasting over a week now. For once it is the scrutinizer who gets scrutinized, and the world surely is enjoying that!

I wonder how George Orwell would have looked at this, if he were alive today. Our privacy is gone, but instead of clinging to that which is left we gloat and greedily enjoy the stripping of privacy of the U.S. government. Apparently being scrutinized does not so much appeal to the feeling of apathy, but more to the aggressive feeling of vengeance.

And that truly makes me wonder. Do we really want to go down that road of close-quarter shooting at each other’s privacy?

…that I’m having a great time listening to the new Machinae Supremacy album! For those into the genre, be sure to check it out!

-nt-

I got out a revised version of one of my papers, had double good news in the financial department, and I (finally) am getting some inspiration for NaMuWriMo. The exhaustion of last week has largely disappeared, though I do still have to find my social place a little bit here. Nevertheless I met a variety of cool people in the last few days.

Actually, I met a couple of nice guys last Saturday, whom I thought just walked out on me without saying anything. Later on I found out they were actually ordering beers for themselves and me and *I* walked out on them without saying anything . On a final note, I am drifting towards organizing something like a PhD/housewarming party at the end of next week here. It may be a fun way to hang around with some fun people .

Oh, and then there’s Civilization 5…. damn, that game is unbelievably addictive!

But nevertheless a dip. Now that I am in the Uk for a serious amount of time the feeling to find a good social place here becomes more urgent. This is not solved overnight, and therefore I’m having a period of relative social isolation. This should be considered as bad, but not totally dramatic. I do have a dignity to a reasonable extent these days, which provides relativation and patience. I will need both of them for a while… though I think things will turn for the better at some point

Still, this is not an easy period.