Cav's Place

There is a bit in The Wise Man’s Fear where Denna tells Kvothe it’s nice to be able to take a vacation from herself every once in a while… And it sure would be, from all of it, and books and games should offer that, but with how little I’m reading and playing for so many years now, and how much I have to push even to do that much instead of it being something I throw myself at every chance I get… For example even now, regardless of how much I enjoyed The Name of the Wind, I’m starting to need to push myself to even continue reading this one, and not because of the book itself, though it is somewhat less awesome, if I may use such a term.
The thing is that such a break would also mean a break from these little trappings I created for myself, such as the two posts per week here, the bit added to my story every night, the protests… But serious non-personal posts have been few and far between for years, and even fewer if you remove those about protests and any reviews, the additions to the story went down from a minimum of 300 words a night to barely 100, or not even that at times, and rarely taking the story anywhere or even making sense, and despite appearing more involved in the protests, seeing as I attend those meetings and am active on the main group, which didn’t happen before the end of last year, there’s less of me in any of it and I’m even more of an observer instead of an active participant when an actual event is taking place. However, it’s still these things, and a few others like them, that tend to be why I can still crawl out of bed for something other than to simply go to the toilet and return, and staying in bed would trap me even more with myself… And very noticeably without her, or even a best friend that’d fit my definition of the term, though by now I’m not sure how much good even that could still do.
So here I am, throwing this on here after starting the rant in a message I sent someone last night, just to say I have a second post this week, if nothing else is coming. And there I was last night, after that message, throwing another pointless and meaningless paragraph in my story. And there I’ll be tomorrow, trying to attend another protest even though recent events make the topic likely to switch from the environment in general and forests in particular to demanding the Prime Minister’s resignation over certain charges brought against him, which is something I already expressed my firm opposition to, as we should stick to causes, not forget them and focus on merely changing one person with another yet again while things in fact remain largely the same. And there I’ll be doing a few other things besides those, though I couldn’t even say why anymore, except that, even if it brings me down even more, even a pointless routine is at least not frightening, while any change is, as the computer situation proved, and there’s no way to make things better anyway, at least not without miracles that have nothing, or all too little to matter, to do with me.
Then again, speaking of staying in bed and only getting up to go to the toilet, it’d help if I’d get more than five or six hours of sleep, and even those split in several parts, and not needing to pee so often would help with not splitting at least, if not with the total duration. Used to need to get up once, even only two or three hours after going to bed at times, considering when I eat and drink and the salads as well, and possibly twice if I have watermelon to eat or put more tomatoes in the salad or it’s particularly cold, but lately there are times when I barely get one hour of sleep before needing to go again. And there’s actually quite a lot to release most of the time, to the point that it starts to hurt from the strain of holding it in if I manage to stay asleep somewhat longer, which I have a rather hard time explaining, since I’m not putting more fluids in and the hotter temperatures should mean more of them are used for sweating.
Probably eating more, and more of what my body’d need at this time, if I could figure that out more exactly, would help as well, especially considering the running, and the fact that even without that I seem to be going out slightly more than I did in the past, excepting the autumn of 2013 of course. And doing it during the day would be even better, of course, and I actually managed it a few times lately, when nobody was around, but that’s not the case most of the time, and annoyingly often the kitchen isn’t clear except for a quite brief time in the morning and then again at night, or maybe for some brief periods in the evening. Which is another reason why I get little sleep, as I take the opportunity to grab my yogurt and cereals and some fruit if I wake up when nobody seems around, and then can’t get back to sleep.
But this was supposed to be just a brief post and it ended up what you see here… So I guess I’ll stop now and try to get back to reading, since I doubt I’ll manage to do much of that tomorrow, when that protest may even cause me to miss the race, or at least to get back during or, at best, likely if I’ll get fed up and leave early, just before it. And then maybe I’ll manage to play through another year or two of my new King of Dragon Pass tribe as well, as I finally managed to get myself to restart that. Just hope I won’t do as poorly as last time yet again.

Another week, another run, but again 28:22 for the 12 and a half laps. Even the two seconds are easily explained by using the first lane for both that first half a lap and the entire last lap instead of switching during them, like I did last week, so it can be said that my body found a time it’s particularly comfortable with over this distance, at least with the current temperatures and amount of sunlight. Not entirely sure about my time for the last lap, however, as I’m tempted to say about 1:45 but that’d likely require the lap before it to have taken me about 2:25, which I’m not sure it did, as the times for the last three laps are quite unclear in my mind.

Otherwise, yesterday evening I finally gathered up the pile of computer stuff strewn around my room since I bought this one, sorted everything as well as I could and put it all back under the bookcase, arranging what goes in the large box I have there better than before and taking all the various boxes in and out several times to find a good fit. Now there’s still the matter of my room being full of dust, as I haven’t cleaned since April, and I’m not even sure it was towards the end of April, but that will need to wait a while longer.
However, while I was trying to see how everything should fit in there, I also decided to look in an old portfolio I probably didn’t open since shortly after being thrown back here, as I obviously couldn’t recall what, if anything, was in it. Well, I found what seems to be a bookmark and a bracelet made by Andra and a number of pages torn from a small notebook, full of her handwriting, if nothing more than various things she was writing down for herself. Sure was a bittersweet moment, as I couldn’t recall having anything like that anymore.

But this is about it for now, as that post about the whole initial mess with the new computer doesn’t seem to magically write itself and I’m starting to doubt more and more than I’ll get around to it at all. Plus, I didn’t waste time, starting to read The Wise Man’s Fear the day after I finished The Name of the Wind, but barely touched it today, so I’m getting back to that now.

Another review would make no difference among the thousands and I could never do this book justice no matter how hard I’d try. Sure, I could praise it at length or, at the same time, find a few things to nitpick, but the former can be accomplished in few words as well and I simply don’t want to even attempt the latter. Which should in fact be all the praise it needs, coming from me.
This is the story of a man, but not of some average person destined to save the world, who somehow manages it with the help of friends, a ludicrous amount of luck and perhaps divine intervention, as it’s so often the case. No; this is the story of a truly extraordinary man, who knows it and shows it, and who has himself to thank and to blame for his successes and failures, at least most of the time. It is the story of a man the rest of us can’t hope to become, and that is oddly reassuring, for reasons I won’t detail.
Yes, it’s the first book in a series. Yes, it’s not some sprawling epic, but takes place in few locations, with few additional characters and, so far, no events that have that much impact in the grand scheme of things. However, the atmosphere truly pulls you in and never lets go, the weight of emotions and the connection created, albeit with only a couple of characters, is at times overpowering, and the wisdom that every so often springs to life from the pages can be startling and soothing at the same time. It left me speechless, breathless, stunned and in awe, and nearly made me cry multiple times, including now as I’m writing this. Which, again, is saying a lot.

Rating: 5/5

A long post about the new computer should be coming, but whether I’ll manage to make it into a Sunday update this week or not I have no idea. May even end up not writing it at all, since there’s already too much to say and I ranted about it to the few people who talk to me, but we’ll see. What’s clear is I won’t be writing it now, but really should throw something here quickly, if only to avoid needing to do so Saturday and Sunday and end up without any sort of buffer whatsoever this week.
So what I’ll say now is that I reinstalled Windows yesterday and hope I won’t have to do it again. After all, the first time it was clearly meant as a test, or a period during which to test things, so after a month of that I should now know what works and how and be more at ease. Only, of course, I’m not, because I was too afraid to test much of anything and I hardly knew much more than I did the first time around, so I avoided a few issues but found myself stumbling right into others, which actually make me even more concerned than I was before.

As for the old computer, put the faster HDD, with the Windows that used to be there, back on it and started it again, meaning to let it run for probably slightly over a day and a half and get itself over three million SETI@home credits, as that was nagging me ever since I saw I had switched to this one when it was less than 2000 under that threshold. However, for some reason it seems that once I reinstalled BOINC on this one as well, it considered it to be the old one, redownloading the same work units, considering them abandoned the first time around, and replacing the computer information, despite the obviously different hardware. So I just turned it off, using this one to get the old one over three million credits, but I want a solution and tomorrow I hope to find it, because I want the old computer’s details back where they belong and then to give it a proper “retirement”, this one going back to its own entry.

Otherwise, still reading The Name of the Wind and hope to finish it Sunday. Which, of course, also gives me an excuse to delay that long post even longer, if I’ll manage to finish it early enough to post a quick review for it as the week’s second post. It’s worth far more than that, as it’s an absolutely outstanding book, the fact that I’m reading it so slowly not being its fault in the least, but my excuse will be that I’ll just throw a couple of paragraphs there for my own use, the thousands upon thousands of reviews otherwise available making yet another one otherwise completely pointless.

And to also add this here while it’s still before midnight, ran another 12 and a half laps this week. This time did it normally, on the second lane except for the last lap, and even then I could only switch to the first around the middle of the first turn, as I had to pass someone who was on it and not much slower than me. As such, I actually ran more than last week, when I mostly stuck to the first lane, and the fact that I was a mere two seconds slower under these circumstances means I was in fact faster in terms of actual speed. Hardly had anything more in me, however, the last lap being covered in almost exactly two minutes, so slower than the 1:50 managed last time, but leaving me just about completely drained. The other laps were at an even pace, around 2:20, dropping to around 2:15 a few times and only once going to about 2:25. The 200 meters at the start were covered in just under one minute.

Overall, it was a pretty good edition, with few poor or poorly performed entries. None truly stood out, however, and I can’t say which deserved to win more, or even which I’d have actually wanted to win, due to reasons I’ll explain a little more below, when I’ll go through my top picks. There were a few entries which should have been in the final and didn’t make it, however.
Rather like last year, I once again didn’t bother at all with this before March, and even after that point I didn’t follow news or reports and didn’t watch any images from the rehearsals. Unlike last year, however, I did listen to all entries carefully before the competition, most of them more than once and some quite a number of times. You can even say that a few more or less made it into my regular playlist over these past two months and a half, as I even got rather stuck on them for a while.

Sweden’s victory was clearly in good part thanks to the show value, as the song, while nice, was not quite one of the best. Still, I don’t exactly disagree with the result, as the overall package was definitely one worthy of fighting for victory. In fact, if they’d have added some more people on stage I may have been inclined to add another point to the show rating, which would have boosted the entry to the top of my classification as well, but with only one person visible I couldn’t do that.
Russia had a good song and, while the performance was static, they did enough for a decent show value as well. Good message as well, but you’ll excuse me if I have a certain unpleasant reaction when I see something like that from Russia at the moment, and I definitely feared the consequences of a Russian victory while this entry was leading.
Italy had one of the best songs in the competition and it may have ended up at the top of my classification in a number of ways, the most obvious being if it’d have had some actual show value on stage as well. However, there were also some slips which I had to take into account at least to some extent, even though it was obvious that they had sound problems and may have been unable to hear themselves while they were singing. And there’s also the fact that they didn’t sing in English, though I’m not sure that would have made me do more than add a positive modifier to their marks, which wouldn’t have changed their rank.
I have absolutely no idea what Belgium is doing in fourth place, as I placed them last in the final and next to last in their semifinal. Disliked the song itself, didn’t see particular qualities being proven by the performance overall and other than filling the stage with dancers there was no notable show value, not even making any real use of the screens and lights.
And couldn’t exactly say what Australia is doing in fifth either, though the fact that they can finally enter the competition definitely counted for something. Still, unlike Belgium, there was some show value, albeit not necessarily in a good way in my view, and the song was all right, if still nothing I’d care about.

My ranking system is still the same, giving one mark for song and another for show value, plus a positive, neutral or negative modifier, and ranking first according to the overall mark that is the result of averaging the song and show ones, then according to the song mark and then, if both marks are equal, according to the modifier. In case all three are equal, the ranking is the result of me trying to quickly compare the performances in question at the end.
Once again, still largely for my own use, I’ll list all the information here, with the first number being the position in my classification, the one between parentheses that follows it being the actual position, the first number that follows the country name being the overall mark, the second being the song mark and the modifier, if not neutral, being listed at the end. All links are from the official channel, so they shouldn’t vanish.

1. (14.) Slovenia (7, 7.5, plus)
2. (21.) Spain (7, 7)
3. (3.) Italy (6.75, 7.5)
4. (2.) Russia (6.75, 7)
5. (1.) Sweden (6.75, 6.5, plus)
6. (10.) Serbia (6.75, 6.5)
7. (27.) Austria (6.75, 6.5)
8. (19.) Greece (6.5, 7.5, plus)
9. (8.) Norway (6.5, 7)
10. (25.) France (6.5, 7, minus)
11. (7.) Estonia (6.5, 6.5, plus)
12. (20.) Hungary (6.5, 6.5, plus)
13. (23.) Poland (6.5, 6.5, plus)
14. (16.) Armenia (6.5, 6.5, plus)
15. (12.) Azerbaijan (6.5, 6.5)
16. (15.) Romania (6.5, 6.5, minus)
17. (18.) Lithuania (6.5, 6, plus)
18. (5.) Australia (6.5, 6)
19. (24.) United Kingdom (6.5, 5.5)
20. (11.) Georgia (6.25, 6.5, plus)
21. (13.) Montenegro (6.25, 6.5, plus)
22. (26.) Germany (6.25, 6, plus)
23. (22.) Cyprus (6, 6.5, plus)
24. (17.) Albania (6, 6, plus)
25. (6.) Latvia (6, 6)
26. (9.) Israel (6, 5.5, minus)
27. (4.) Belgium (5.75, 5.5, plus)

My ranking matched the actual results in case of Italy, was one place off for Cyprus, Lithuania, Norway and Romania, two places off for Armenia and Russia and three places off for Azerbaijan. On the other hand, I was at least ten places off for Australia, France, Greece, Israel, Latvia, Poland, Slovenia and Spain and even 20 or more places off for Austria and Belgium.
As for the semifinals, I must say they were rather different. The first was clear and easy for me, as I wanted exactly ten songs to get through, with a clear separation between them and the other six, and the only difference, albeit an upsetting one, was to see Belgium take the place of Netherlands. From the second, on the other hand, I’d have really wanted to see no less than 12 again in the final and wouldn’t have minded three or even four others, leaving just one that I clearly didn’t want. To compare just the top ten, I’d have picked Czech Republic, Ireland and San Marino instead of Cyprus, Israel and Latvia, though with Cyprus being dropped down the order due to the complete lack of show value I didn’t mind it taking the place of San Marino, which could have been performed much better. Czech Republic seemed to have one of the best songs in the competition, on the other hand, and Ireland was definitely in the upper part as well, so it was annoying to say the least to see them replaced by that crap from Israel and a Latvian entry which, while admittedly valuable and well performed, simply didn’t suit my tastes at all.

And now, as usual, let me briefly explain my top ten picks.
Slovenia simply got stuck in my mind as soon as I first heard it. Not a genre I’d listen to otherwise, but her voice was definitely different. I was quite sure it won’t actually be fighting for one of the top places and being first in the final didn’t help either, but it simply stuck in my mind, I listened to it a lot of times and had this idea that if she’ll perform it properly they’ll probably only have Italy to fear as far as I’m concerned. And since it was performed well, at least in the final, and I was saying that no entry truly stood out, I went with it.
I was uncertain about Spain as I listened to it before the competition, being a quite simple song relying on a few bits showing off her voice, but she sure did show it off in the final and the show value was higher than what many others could come up with despite having only two people on stage and one trying to stay mostly hidden away. Again, with nothing truly standing out, this seemed to me to have good enough elements to fight for a top position.
Mentioned Italy above already, so not sure what else to add. Again, any actual show value on stage would have likely taken them to the top spot for me, and a flawless performance may, possibly, have done the same. It is possible that the sound issues they obviously had decided the winner in the actual competition as well, and I’m quite sure they decided second place.
Already said what I had to say about Russia as well, so won’t repeat. Like last year, did my best to rate the song and performance while ignoring my reaction to the country and I believe I managed it well enough, but have to say I’m quite relieved they didn’t win.
Same issue of having already said what I had to say for Sweden as well. Was it a deserved winner? Possibly, and definitely is one I don’t mind at all as far as the overall package goes, but there were quite a few better songs and I’d have liked more people on stage… Which makes me wonder whether those I saw at the end, when he was singing the song again, were simply some members of the crew or the actual backing singers who had been hidden away for some reason during the actual performance. Though I’m far from certain, if I’d have seen them on stage during the competition as well, I may have picked Sweden as the winner too.
Serbia had a quite good song, again with a good message, and it definitely was performed well as well. Was quite bothered by that change of pace for the last part, however, and that dropped it a few places in my classification.
Austria… I’m not sure anymore, especially after seeing them finish last, with zero points. It was an all right song, far from one of the best but definitely better than at least a few, and likely several, others in my view, and the burning piano definitely offered some show value. I may have taken that into account a little too much, however.
Greece I am sure about, on the other hand, and I wished I could have ranked it even higher. It was one of the better songs of the competition, being a well performed typical but proper ballad, the issue being the lack of show value.
Norway had another good song, and probably the best duet left since the great Czech entry for some reason didn’t make it out of the semifinal and Estonia didn’t quite seem at the level I initially thought it may be at after listening to the studio version. There were a few better songs, however, and there wasn’t much notable interaction between the two, so the performance didn’t have much real show value either.
As for France, good song, but I would have dropped it lower down the order if not for those drummers showing up at least at the end. Too little and too late, however, and if you add the fact that it was in French, otherwise entirely static and, if I’m to think about it again now, in the end quite unremarkable, I have to say I’m not surprised it ended up so low.