sinéad's lifestream

Epic landscapes have always captured my imagination, emphasis on the imagination. American movies often feature grand scenery, and having grown up on a diet of science fiction and fantasy movies I had always associated these incredible places as unnatural and purely cinematic. The documentary series Fry in America reprogrammed me, in more ways than one. Not only did it give me a broader understanding of the diversity that exisits in America culture, it also showcased the grand natural landscape of the American states, without the Hollywood lense distorting and overemphasising.

Lake Powell and Monument Valley, and the entire state of Utah is a fixation of mine since I watched the documentary series (and I’m already planning my visit in 2010). Scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Back to the Future were filmed here, and of course, many many westerns. The ethereal beauty of these spots, especially Lake Powell, remind me so much of a Martian landscape, the addition of the unnatural water (Lake Powell is a man made lake) bring to mind the science fiction concept of teraforming – taking an inhospitable planet and changing it’s atmosphere to make it more Earth like.

Putting a standard film crew, an English gentlemen and his taxicab into these scenes gave me perspective, and I can now understand why everything in America is so… big. The roads, the buildings, the personalities. Being surrounded by these incredibly huge, monstrous natural creations, it’s only human to attempt to fit into that landscape. I imagine the early European settlers felt quite small and insignificant here. I imagine, I will too.

I’ve written before about how I like to de-clutter every once in awhile, and yesterday I was forced to  confront years of past hoarding. A massive collection of memories from my old childhood bedroom awaited me when I got home from work. Despite once being incredibly sentimental (the reason I had kept it all) these days I associate anything that holds no use as 100% expendable. This might seem callous, but I’ve learned that I can reduce my own stress when the space I occupy is kept tidy and I’m more efficient because of it. Also, sleep comes easier in a room that doesn’t need constant maintenance (i.e. tidying up crap I don’t use, all the time).

As I mentioned, I do have a sentimental streak. So, instead of being ruthless and throwing it all out without a second thought, I went through it all and took photos to retain some evidence. In doing so I took a journey backwards many many years, to the person I used to be and the person I hope I can be again.

I am a Creative Person

The biggest part of this haul was a collection of sketches and paintings from school. I had once been very passionate about art, taking honours art for the Junior Certificate. I honestly can’t believe how many hours all of these pieces must have taken me. I don’t know what changed inside me and stopped me from continuing. Lack of confidence? A mature realisation that I wasn’t really an artist? I instead perused History, Biology and Business Studies. Choosing these subjects out of desire to have a well rounded education, and to keep my options open for whatever college subject I would choose. I wonder what would have happened if I had have kept doing art? After I dropped art I would channel some of my artistic creativity into Photoshop projects, having always been equally interested in computers in my youth, but then I didn’t take that path either. I’m certainly no graphic designer. These days I try to photograph the beautiful things I see, and yet, this frustrates me because what I really see, never seems to translate onto picture.

I am a Writer

English had always been my favourite subject and I had considered, quite seriously, studying this in college. “To Sinéad, an Editor, Author and Poet – and all before you left school.” this is part of a goodbye message written by a teacher, written inside the cover of the school magazine. This is something I worked long and hard on. I edited the magazine when I was in 6th year and from the age of 14 up until I left school at 18 I would write and write and write. Short stories, random articles for the school magazine and (as embarrassed as I am to admit it now) mountains of poetry. The school magazine was a serious creative outlet for me. I can’t imagine being that brave today, putting myself out there like that, creating something of my own and sharing it with strangers. This is why I’m writing this now, in an effort to be more courageous with my writing. I don’t know why I stopped being myself and starting holding my real self back. “Excellent short story, you’re a talented writer Sinead!” I found pages, upon pages of handwritten short stories, many which gained me A’s and A+’s from my English teacher.  I don’t gloat, I am simply shocked. Reading them now, I can’t believe these are mine.

“Most people take their time for granted. Most do not take into consideration that many things can happen in a few short seconds. A heart can discontinue beating, discoveries can be made, the human mind can process and file thoughts and memories into single cells.”

Most of my short stories are incredibly long, with many “Keep your essays brief!” “Wonderful, but not exam material.” notes left by teachers in the margins. “Excellent detail, very well expressed. Time Limit?” At 16 and 17 years of age I had no restraints, I was as creative as I wanted to be with my words. I didn’t care about fitting the exam mould and never reigned in my creative self. Poetry was something very dear to me at that time too. I had so much of it published in the school magazine. I personally think this took guts. Or maybe I was just naive? But, how is it that I was stronger and more confident with myself then, than I am now?

No more.

I blog. Yes. But I don’t utilise it the same way that others do. At the moment as part of my college research I am studying why people blog, and it sounds more wonderful the way it is described there. Millions of people blog to express themselves, as an outlet, in an cathartic effort. There are writers like Darragh Doyle that take my breath away with his openness, his honesty and it is courageous, and beautiful. I’ve spoken to my girlfriend, Jen, on many occasions about how I wish I could be just like Darragh. But I blog too seriously. I would rather been seen as an academic, because the reality is I’m terribly insecure about being seen as anything else, because I’m stuck in a job that I dislike, that has no connection to who I am or what I’m passionate about today and I am desperate to be taken seriously. But why? It’s not making ME feel more serious. It’s not helping me with the goals I thought it would help me succeed in.

This blog post is my attempt at connecting with my past self and this, new blog project, is an attempt to be creative, a writer and ME again. And I’m terrified.

Let’s be terrified together? Who did YOU used to be? What parts of yourself do you wish you could connect with again? Write that post. Take that photo. Create that art.

It’s not about whether you are creative enough, but whether you will free yourself to express it.

I posted my initial thoughts about blog navigation here and from it came a survey that asked some simple questions such as “On a scale of 1 to 5 how easy do you think navigating a blog is?”. In total there were 47 respondents, directed to the survey via my blog, Twitter and Facebook (the sample could be considered an experienced group of Internet users).

Obviously from the results above none of the survey respondents indicated that navigating a blog was very difficult. However I would consider the most interesting statistic from the survey that 30% think it’s neither difficult OR easy, and 9% think it’s difficult. It would have been quite easy to assume that a majority would consider navigating a blog to be very easy, which isn’t the case. It’s surprising considering the high possibility that the survey respondants were experienced users.

The other 4 question results, and comments from bloggers/readers are discussed below. Continue Reading

1. When my dog Ben nudges my hand with his head, looking for rubs and attention.
2. Making scrambled egg on Sundays for Jen.
3. Music that makes me feel.
4. Words that make me think.
5. Reading the entire Sunday Times out in the backgarden.
6. Dinner conversations with my family.
7. Writing something I’m proud of.
8. Seeing how in love my parents still are with each other.
9. Taking photos and feeling connected to them.
10. Solving a problem for someone.

Inspired by Peter

I’d never known anyone to keep chickens out their back garden, until a good friend of mine did just that. She’s now the proud owner of 6 gorgeous little characters who don’t seem to want to lay any eggs. I had suggested to her that she should blog her experience, a challenge that she quickly undertook.

The first few blog posts came faster than I expected and even included photos of the girls. Though she has always been slightly more technical than most, she did manage to bork the blog as soon as I took my eye of it. For some reason she went and turned all of her blog posts into pages, in the process breaking the theme she was using, as it could only handle 3 short page names/links in the navigation.

The next time I visited I offered to show her how to fix the blog (let’s just say she’s still in the process of fixing it). I asked her about changing the posts to pages and she explained “My blog posts we’re appearing in the menu” and when I explained to her about the linear nature of blogging she asked “How would anyone know that my other blog posts were there?” It was then my task to explain how categories and tagging worked, but this surprised me because I knew that she was an avid blog reader and internet user.

It was then that I began truly questioning the usability of blog navigation. We assume that readers are using tags and categories as navigational tools, but what if they’re really stumbling through the content, using the awkward archives and calendar tools? Or simply reading from finish to start? If a user enters a blog via a google search can they successfully navigate back to the home page? If every blog has its own list of different categories, how do users know where to look? Is your blog taxonomy even understood?

I recently read, on the iQcontent blog, about how visually impaired users must listen to every piece of navigation on a webpage with their screen-readers. This immediately made me wonder about the persistent nature of blogrolls, how they feature on the majority of blogs and on every single page. Are they successful at getting hits for other members of your blogosphere? Or are they just social badges, worn to show off your affiliations?

Blogs make it easier for everyone to publish to the net, but does this, in turn, make navigating the web harder for everyone else? This is something that requires further investigation, especially considering that there is a shift occurring online where entire websites are being replaced by blogs. But are they in fact borking the entire web?

There are two reasons why my blog has been very quiet as of late, firstly my BT broadband and phone line have been broken since the 24th of August and I was in Orlando for couple of weeks.

I’m too annoyed to talk about BT, but I do have a few observations that I’d like to share about my holiday destination.

Observations on Orlando

The tipping system really works. It was a joy going out to restaurants in Orlando. All of the waiting staff knew that their service would determine how much they got payed for that night, so they all went out of their way for us. It was okay to ask for something strange like “No tomatoes on a burger” and not feel like a freak, so unlike Dublin. It was really good value for money to eat out, again so unilike Dublin.

Dolphins are like hairless sea dogs. They have these wonderfully funny personalities, all of them unique, sweet and affectionate. I’m comparing them to dogs because my own border collie Ben is the only other animal I’ve ever witnessed reacting to people so… humanly, with what can only be described as facial expressions and body language. I never imagined it possible to really swim with dolphins, but you can in Orlando and it was worth going just for that one experience. My happy place, when I close my eyes, is lying on the man made beach at Discovery Cove looking out at the dozens of dolphins happily frolicking in their elaborate ocean enclosure. Part of me has always had difficulty dealing with the idea of wild animals in captivity, but with so many species reaching almost extinction within my own lifetime I’ve begun to realise how important breeding programs and education are, and a learning experience it truly was.

Milk is never a good choice. Dairy tastes very strange in America, from cheese to butter. American style sandwiches made in Ireland taste better. Thankfully Starbucks coffee was still damm good though.

Cans of soft drinks/soda are hard to come by. I’m a big fan of cans of coke but I only ever saw them in one shop, even the vending machines were filled with plastic bottles instead. They did have these nifty beer bottles made from tin though, I hope they bring them out here, it would stop beer bottles turning into weapons.

Toilets that automatically flush are amazing and so hygienic too. Many of the public toilets there featured automatic toilets, soap dispensers, taps and paper towels dispensers. It saddens me to have to do it all by hand now.

Clothes are dirt cheap but electronics are expensive. I was very surprised and disappointed at this, I had budgeted for gadget goodies but ended up buying a lovely little Fuji Z100 fd when I got home.

September is the perfect time to go to Orlando theme parks. We very rarely had to queue for anything. It was blissful. The weather was amazing, despite tropical storms and hurricanes nearby, these only made it rain for an hour or so and usually at night, we literally had only one overcast day the whole time we were there.

Americans are obsessed with weather. Weather bulletins every 15 minutes and dedicated weather channels, hurricane tracking is big business there and Orlando TV has many meteorologists and none of them are optimists.

3D really works (on me). Despite knowing full well that the stuff flying in-front of my face wasn’t real I still managed to scream and flail my arms around wildly whilst at Terminator 3D at Universal Studios. How embarrassing.

Drivers don’t indicate. I’m pretty sure we were almost knocked down about 10 times. *shakes fist*

Cheese and Onion is not a crisp/chip flavour. How I craved thee Hunky Dory’s.

Chocolate is twice as expensive as fast food. 99c burgers, blergh!

This Metro advertisement caught my eye a few weeks ago.

From the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin:

We wish to recruit members of the general public age 18-90 to our volunteer research panel. We study various aspects of human behaviour such as memory, attention and thinking. Our research aims to increase our understanding of how the mind and brain work, with a view to trying, in the longer term, to develop methods for assessing and treating conditions such as age-related memory problems and attention deficit disorder.

Volunteers who can easily reach central Dublin may be invited to take part in one or more studies, and if they do, a nominal honorarium will be offered.

Please leave your name and number at 01 89628684 before 3rd August.

I’ve called them up and left my name and number on the answering machine and I’m very much looking forward to volunteering my time to Science. 

It’s a pity that Irish research projects don’t reach out online, the same way that the Irish Blood Transfusion Service don’t, as pointed out by Damien. They are really missing out on the abundance of altruistic internet users and the numerous socially persuasive situations online (blogging, twitter, messageboards, etc.,) that would enable researchers and organizations to recruit many more volunteers. These kinds of blog posts are the first step though.

Whilst doing a late Spring clean this evening I decided to finally organise my overflowing bookshelf – which earlier today consisted of 3 squashed and disheveled shelves of books, 1 shelf of music/games and 1 shelf of DVDS. So, I put all my music/games in storage, which has given me a 4th shelf for my books to finally breath. During this reorganisation, I made a pile out of the books that I’ve not had the chance to read yet (or started reading and put aside).

Since the start of the year I’ve been reading nothing but journal articles and books for college, and since college ended term I’ve been indulging in a lot of fiction (Jeff Lindsay and Kathy Reichs in particular – don’t read into that too much!) but every single time I’ve looked at these books on my shelf individually, I’ve wanted (very much!) to start reading them, I just lack that extra motivation.

To motivate myself to read them all – I’ve set them aside on one half of my new 4th shelf (which just happens to be at eye level), and I plan on making sure that I get through all of them by the end of the Summer. They won’t be joining their comrades until they are read, so it’ll be like a Book Inbox, currently 11 unread books, and since there is nothing worse than a full inbox, I’m hoping these will be read quite soon.

What’s in your Book Inbox?

This morning I went to the local newsagent (local to the office, so that would be a Centra on Amien’s Street) and searched the magazine stand for the new issue of The Phoenix. I did eventually find one partially hidden behind the RTE Guide only to discover it was an older edition, this is when I heard a rather gruff voice from behind me inquire…

“You’re not into that kind of thing are you?”

It was at this moment that I felt like I was reaching for the top shelf.

I did eventually get my hands on one at lunch time and there in the lower right hand corner of the cover is my older brother Dave. Yey Dave!

Dad got me to listen to the Right Hook last night as there was a really interesting piece on the so-called “Atom Smasher” the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is scheduled to begin operation in May of this year and will be the largest (27km long) and highest-energy particle accelerator in the world (until completion of an even bigger accelerator proposed – the International Linear Collider (ILC) which will be 40km long). Building bigger and more powerful accelerators seems to be considered the next major step for physics and there are some interesting reasons why.

Particle accelerators literally smash subatomic particles together (hence the name “Atom Smasher”). They do this by taking a particle, such as an electron, speeding it up close to the speed of light and colliding it with an atom, thus allowing for the investigation of the atom’s internal parts. This produces an explosion, which itself mimics the conditions in the moments after the Big Bang, though in a much smaller scale. The more powerful the particle accelerator, the further back in time it can effectively peer (albiet simulated), and the higher the chances are of discovering something new.

Russian mathematical physicists (video, article) are claiming that the secrets of time travel will be revealed by the LHC. Their central hypothesis is that the massive energies created by the subatomic collisions within the LHC could be powerful enough to rip space-time itself, thus creating wormholes. It has been theorised that wormholes not only create shortcuts between two positions in space, but also between two positions in time. This leads us to the secondary hypothesis that the LHC could be the first ever time machine. It is being theorised that 2008 could be “Year Zero”, for time travelers. Einstein suggested that it would only be possible to travel back as far as the first doorway in time. Thus allowing travelers from the future to have access to the past.

Less of this science was actually explained during the Right Hook, but some interesting commentary was made throughout, which brought my Dad and I to a conclusion of our own:

The moment the LHC is turned on someone from the future will go back in time and destroy it.

Time Travel would allow wars to be fought across time, rather than space. It would be too much of a temptation to go back in time and eliminate your opponent. This would be, of course, too chaotic for any society to flourish in. Ultimately the decision would be made to prevent time travel becoming a possibility all together, thus the destruction of the LHC.
Personally, I will only be convinced that time travel is at all possible if the LHC (or the even bigger ILC) explode in a grandiose fashion.

Another possibility is that microscopic black holes will be created within the LHC. Which, unlike time travel, would be NO fun whatsoever.