Cav's Place

I had a plan to take advantage of the break in World Cup matches and write a political post today. It made perfect sense, as certain unpleasant measures come into effect today over here, some of them much worse than the original plan the government had, as a part of that plan was blocked by the Constitutional Court, the judges looking for a way to cover that they were just looking out for their own interests. But I don’t feel like it, so I’ll let that slide, at least for now. Argued enough about it lately I guess, and perhaps I don’t really feel that I have enough additional things to say to justify the post…

So you won’t get much of anything from me today. Just that I like the rains we keep getting, though they make it a bit hard to settle on the day of the week to go out on. But it’s so pretty when it rains calmly at night and now and then I’ll just sit in the dark and listen to it. Wish I’d have someone to cuddle with when that happens though, because doing this alone is just painful. But then again what hasn’t been painful for the past nearly five years?
Did end up thinking of something these days, however. Hatching a plan, if you will. There may be some visible results the week after the next, but I don’t think anyone could fault me if I’ll crawl into a hole and forget all about it that week, which means there may be something only starting the week after that. I’ll shut up about it until then, but let’s just say a few people may get an opportunity to pester me if I won’t stick to it. Or even if I will, though hopefully in different ways and for different reasons.

Otherwise, I think I need a new game to play. Or, most likely, an old game I haven’t played yet. That’s because I really haven’t been able to get any further in Gothic II Gold in quite some time, and think I may have already messed things up by trying to skip steps too. I fear that if I’ll give up for now it’ll become even more impossible, if there is such a thing, if I’m to try to get back to it later, but it’s either that or not playing anything at all anymore. Saying again that games with such a great atmosphere really shouldn’t be hard to beat!
Thing is that if I’ll start a new game I’ll probably dive into it and have one more excuse not to do any of the other things I may be planning to do in the near future. Then again, if I don’t I’ll just get more and more frustrated, or actually have one more reason for frustration, which certainly won’t help in any way. I’ll see what I’ll do, because I really want to finish this game before starting Gothic 3, so that’s not an option for the next game either…

This was simply amazing. For anyone who doesn’t already know, a historic match has just ended at Wimbledon. It started on Tuesday, was suspended as the evening fell, continued yesterday, was once again suspended as the evening fell, and finally finished today. John Isner defeated Nicolas Mahut 6-4 3-6 6-7 (7-9) 7-6 (7-3) 70-68, after a total of eleven hours and five minutes of play, spread over three days. The last set alone lasted for eight hours and eleven minutes.

To put things into perspective, let’s go through all the records that this match has smashed:
The longest duration for a match used to be six hours and 33 minutes. Now it’s eleven hours and five minutes. As I said, the last set of this match alone lasted for eight hours and eleven minutes. And keep in mind that this match took place on grass, which is the fastest surface, while the previous record was set on clay.
The highest number of games played in a match used to be 122. Now it’s 183, or exactly 50% more.
The most aces served by a player in a match used to be 78. Now it’s 112, served by John Isner. Nicolas Mahut closely follows him, as he served 103.
The most aces served in total in a match used to be 96. Now it’s 215.

This was a titanic struggle, with both players struggling to even stay on their feet by the time play was suspended yesterday. John Isner seemed to be more tired then and he also looked to be more tired when the match continued today. That tiredness was only getting worse and he didn’t seem to be able to do more than hold his serve, without putting up much of a fight when Mahut was serving, but apparently at some point he realized he had to give everything and push for the win, because otherwise Mahut was going to just wear him down until he’d be unable to move, and his push was enough to secure victory.
Still, you have to keep in mind that Mahut came from qualifying, so he played three more matches before this one. And two of them were really long as well. He won 6-3 6-0 in the first qualifying round, but then it was a staggering 3-6 6-3 24-22 in the second round and 6-7 (8-10) 6-3 3-6 6-4 6-4 in the final qualifying round, as the best of three sets rule is only used during the first two qualifying rounds.

Now let’s see if Isner will be able to play the next match, as he’s facing Thiemo De Bakker in the second round. Interestingly, Thiemo de Bakker also went through a very long first round match, winning 6-7 (4-7) 6-4 6-3 5-7 16-14 in four hours and six minutes, and is probably the first person in the history of tennis to start a match with a clear physical advantage over his opponent despite playing 30 games in the fifth set of his previous encounter.
But, whatever will happen, both Isner and Mahut are winners and they will be the ones everyone will remember after this tournament. At this point, who will win the final has become far less important than what happened in this one match, taking place on Court 18, in the first round.

Now it’s highly unlikely that these records will ever be matched, but I only hope that this match won’t make those in charge decide to remove even the theoretical chance of that happening, by making the final sets end in tie-breaks in all grand slam tournaments from now on. I mean, I keep hoping to see tie-breaks eliminated once again from the last set of US Open matches as well, not have the other three major tournaments go that same path! Because the chance of something like this happening is just what makes these tournaments so special…

This isn’t working… I’m working on breath alone most likely, because I’m certainly not eating or drinking more than usual but hardly sleep. And it’s not even hot anymore, to say that’s the reason why. I just wake up in the morning after only one or two hours of sleep and have a very hard time getting back to sleep, and if I can do it at all then I wake up again very soon. And now I can’t seem to even get a good nap in the evening anymore either, hardly napped for 30 minutes today.
A part of the reason why that happens probably has to do with the fact that I always keep the window open these days, so there’s noise coming from outside and waking me up, likely mainly the constant chirping of birds, which chirping is nice otherwise but a real problem when I want to sleep. But I’m sure the fact that I’m worried about so many things has a significant influence on that as well, plus the health issues I’m noticing, which are a good part of why I worry in the first place.

On top of the usual things and my heart apparently acting up more than usual, something is obviously wrong with the left side of my head, especially with the front part. A weird sensation, some pain, a feeling of pressure, things that I couldn’t even define spasming… Now there may be other explanations, such as the pain being caused by my eyes being tired, especially since my left eye is the better one and also the one that has to put up with sunlight whenever I’m at the computer during the day, the pressure potentially caused by some sort of infection or inflammation, possibly also pointed out by the fact that I’m getting a lot of zits on and around my forehead lately, possibly from my sinuses or perhaps more likely from a tooth that otherwise doesn’t act up but sent something damaging straight up, and the spasms can be easily explained by stress… Speaking of that, I don’t even know what it is that’s spasming. There are some hard strips I can feel under the skin, like tendons or something, and those in the left side produce a dull pain if I press on them, or even if I don’t, and sometimes decide to start spasming. I know they’re not blood vessels, but I didn’t exactly look into what they are…
Either way, you can imagine I’m fearing the worst and assuming that something wrong with my head implies something physically wrong with my brain, which is a thought I really can’t handle, especially considering my “the mind is exactly as it should be” policy. Of course, the brain is more than the mind, but it’s quite impossible to do anything to it while offering an 100% guarantee that no mental processes or memories will be affected in any way, which means that such a problem would under no circumstances have any tolerable solution, even if I’d somehow end up looking for one. And since I’ve been having growing reasons for concern regarding something like this for several months now… All I can do is panic.

And then, of course, there are the usual constant worries and fears about Andra and the fact that I’m so utterly alone and nobody would even hear me scream. Nobody I’d want to be heard by anway… Even worse that now college students are having their final exams, so I end up even more lonely than usual, as I know a few and none of them has time to talk at all these days. Ain’t that ironic… School destroyed me until I managed to stop going, but it didn’t stop there and now insists on taking away friends as well… Then again, it’s not just school, but that damned so-called “real life” that people keep allowing themselves to be drawn into.
So I’ll sit here and grow more tired, more worried, more terrified and more isolated by the moment, waiting for the inevitable terrible outcome, as there’s always something much worse that can happen, but apparently never anything noticeably better, not to me, not anymore… And I’ll keep choking on tears but never be able to cry whenever I go into the kitchen at night to eat and am once again reminded that I’m alone and notice a lot of little things that create mental links back to the time when I had a life and, more importantly, a reason to want to live it.
Not that I want to stop living now. Said it before, there was a point in dying for about a year after she left, but since then it became pointless at best, and more likely just another defeat. Suffered long enough and I don’t see how dying is going to make up for it, so I keep wishing and hoping for the impossible, wishing and hoping that something will happen in life, in this life, that will make up for all the suffering and make me say, at this point most likely after at least several years of very good things happening, that it was indeed all worth it in the end. But I don’t believe that to be possible, and everything that happened since she left only confirms that. As that quote went, “and when I’m lying in my bed, I think about life and I think about death and neither one particularly appeals to me”.

But at least I found out who the author of a few images that caught my eye during the past months is: Jason Engle. If you’re interested, his deviantART profile contains some additional images, which aren’t on the site. I seriously think this guy is almost too good, especially considering that he says he has absolutely no training and basically just learned as he went along. And he’s only 31, so there hasn’t been all that much time for learning by doing, not when you compare him to the famous fantasy artists, who tend to have been at it for at least a few decades.

I found myself wondering how many fans can someone have before becoming unable to have meaningful interaction with them. Started by thinking about musicians, remembering a bit of the interview the members of Nightwish gave before one of their concerts here, where they were saying that, even though it’s not a nice thing to do, they have to pretty much ignore all e-mails they receive, as otherwise they’d be spending ten hours per day reading and replying to them and wouldn’t get anything else done. (This was before Nightmail.) But it applies to anyone else just as well, be it actors, athletes, writers, painters, activists and so on.
I’m not talking about the public figures who simply choose not to have such a meaningful interaction with their fans. If they do what they do for personal reasons, or simply for the results, and don’t even claim that they work for the enjoyment or request the support of their fans, I think they have every right to ask to be left alone. I’m also not talking about using staff members to sort through messages and only pass on a select few or even reply to some of them themselves. That’s no longer direct interaction with the public figures themselves and the existence of these intermediaries makes even the answers supposedly given to the fans be questionable. No, I’m talking simply about the direct interaction between the public figure and their public, such as meetings, replying to messages, getting involved in discussions on official forums and participating in events organized by fan clubs.

Meaningful interaction usually requires direct contact with individual fans, not simply throwing some greetings or platitudes towards a group, so it takes up a lot of time. Due to there being many more things you can do in person, it may take less time to meaningfully interact with a fan in such a situation and you could sometimes also achieve similar results with small groups instead of just individuals, but getting into such a position requires much more effort, both on your part and on part of your fans, plenty of whom won’t be able to reach you at all if you require meeting in person in order to interact. So that leaves the Internet, and specifically replying to messages, as the generic method of meaningful interaction with the largest potential number of fans.
So we need to change the question and ask about messages. How many messages could such a public figure read and reply to before this would take a noticeable toll on their personal and, more importantly in this particular situation, professional life? Not that answering even this question would be easy. The amount of time available varies greatly depending on what exactly it is you do, different messages require different amounts of time and effort to read and reply to, but there are also messages that require no reply, though some of them, such as the generic praises and critiques, do require at least browsing through in order to get a general idea regarding the way in which people perceive your work, which is useful information even if your motivations don’t include fame or public approval.
Still, the more clearly defined the question, the more likely it is to get a suitable answer. And, in fact, asking about this particular method of interaction can get an answer that’s less influenced by other factors, as reading and replying to messages doesn’t exactly require scheduling or setting aside a significant amount of time, as would be the case for actual meetings or even on-line conferences, because it can be split and squeezed into any moment of the day or night. Actually, at times it would even be relaxing, inspiring or otherwise beneficial for the public figure in question to take a break from their work and go through some messages, so this certainly seems to be the best method to meaningfully interact with the largest number of fans in the vast majority of cases. But even this has a limit, and that limit is the answer to the question.

I couldn’t tell you what that answer is, however. I only know that there very obviously is such a limit, so I have to move on to the even greater question: What should such a public figure do once they end up having too many fans to be able to meaningfully interact with them? Of course at that point it becomes quite mandatory to get some help, have some staff members go through the messages, release press statements, answer frequently asked questions and so on, but that actually only widens the gap between the public figure and their public even further, as the chance of direct contact is greatly reduced. So what should they do in order to make up for this, assuming they care, or at least pretend to care, about their public? How should their demeanor and their work change once they cross that line?
Trying to answer this question normally leads to a lot of speculation, with each person saying what they’d like their favorites to do, but I think most would agree that such public figures should do the opposite of what they usually do when it comes to details about themselves and their personal lives, making a fair bit of information public, becoming open books, and therefore allowing their public to feel as if there is a connection even when meaningful direct interaction is no longer possible. This could also have the added benefit of getting some of the paparazzi off their backs, as there’d be little point in trying to find out information that would be made public anyway, not to mention that the one who first makes information public gets to present it their way, thus also preventing the scandals generated by tabloids spinning tales. Of course, some public figures thrive on just such scandals, but I’m not talking about them here…
The second thing I believe such public figures should do is focus more on their work and perhaps, if we’re talking about creative work, put more of themselves and of their lives into it, make it more personal. This latter point goes well with what I said in the previous paragraph, while the former should result in an improvement in the quality and/or an increase in the quantity of their work, therefore being sort of a compensation for the fans, a way to show they still care despite no longer being able to meaningfully interact in any direct way with enough of them.

This year’s first heat wave is just ending and I’m taking the opportunity to bunch together several updates. All of them will be personal, but there frankly seems to be very little chance of me writing anything else during the World Cup, or at least during the group phase, seeing as I’m watching all matches and there are three of them per day.

The heat wave properly started on Friday, with highs between 34°C and 37°C until yesterday despite earlier forecasts saying we won’t get more than 32°C during the first half of the month. It ended last evening in a pretty impressive manner, with a thunderstorm. The rain was heavy, I’m quite sure there was hail as well, there was a fair bit of wind… And I’ll fill you in on the lightning later. Either way, today it’s better and the forecast for the coming days mentions highs below 30°C and a lot of storms.
I assume we’ll get far worse than this in the coming months, so it was only an opportunity to “train” and make sure I’m still able to handle high temperatures as well as I usually can. And that went well enough, with the exception of mornings, when I can’t quite manage to keep myself from waking up, nor can I get back to sleep after I do wake up. Sweaty and itchy balls are a good part of the reason for that, but I was never quite able to properly manage my body temperature in the morning, so I wake up feeling hot and thirsty, but it goes away after a while. Seems to be better now that I took to sleeping naked, but I’m still sleeping too little, even with an added nap between the second and third matches of the day.
The computer seems to be struggling a little with the temperatures though, as I’m seeing the CPU core temperatures go up to 68°C and the GPU temperature go up to 58°C without me being in a game. But I’m sure the coolers can do more than that, and in fact there were moments when I heard them speed up for a while and then slow back down, so I assume it has everything under control. A little worried about the UPS though, as this model doesn’t monitor its temperature and I think it gets quite hot under these circumstances.

Lightning struck the building during yesterday’s storm. I was just looking out, everything turned electric blue for a moment and I could just make out that “electric” sound among a deafening peal of tunder. Next I looked, it was saying network cable unplugged and my switch had the port going to my computer turned off. The network guys replaced whatever fried on their end today, but the port I used for the “in” cable on my switch was fried as well. Sacrificed itself to stop it from going further to the computers I guess. Luckily there are two desktops, one laptop and the line going in, and there are five ports, so had one free to move the “in” cable to and the rest seem unaffected. But one more of these and I’ll need a new switch. Still, much better a new switch than a new computer!
It was quite an impressive moment, but the results weren’t exactly pleasing. Just goes to show that there is a weak link and I should take some precautions, as I rely on the UPS to take care of any power surges potentially caused by storms and tend to forget that the Internet cable can become a potential threat at such times as well.

Some may consider this to be too much information, but I’m just writing it for myself. A while back I was going to take a shower, got undressed and then decided to brush my teeth as well. So I ended up unintentionally taking a good look at my naked self in the bathroom mirror, which then became intentional as I was surprised to realize that I wasn’t exactly bothered by what I saw, from the neck down at least. I’m still thin as ever, but I seem to have put a little muscle on as well, so now it no longer strikes me as a crappy look. I guess that, even though I don’t do much, sticking to this little schedule of working out for so many years did produce some results.
It wasn’t something that I particularly cared or even thought about, but I took it as a given that I really didn’t like how I looked, so this was surprising. That still applies to my face and, more than anything, to the lack of hair on my head, plus that of course I’d still like to magically replace all of my skin with one that has no problems and also looks better, but even the problems I know seem less obvious lately, which is a bit surprising since normally they’d flare up in the heat. But, speaking of skin, the angle also helped, seeing as I’m so terribly bothered by obviously raised moles of any size and also by dark flat ones of significant size, say starting from about five millimeters, and I unfortunately do have two of the latter, but they’re not visible from that angle.

The book fair was last week, so I went on the first day, which was Wednesday, as there would have been fewer people and lower temperatures than on the following days. Unfortunately, nothing caught my eye, which isn’t exactly surprising since I actually found myself looking solely for books in English that I’d want to read, not even having a good look through the few other things that I usually spent a little time browsing, and that bookstore I found there two years ago, which focuses on mainly fantasy and science fiction books in English, was once again not present. Yet there were two more places where I could have found something interesting, but all I found was disappointment caused by not finding anything interesting.
It was even worse when I actually stopped by that bookstore after leaving the fair, as they’re relatively nearby and they announced discounts for the duration of the fair, just like last year. I fully expected to find at least a few interesting things there, the question being only whether or not I could get myself to make a purchase. Yet there was nothing I wanted. I sat there long enough to have a good look through just about everything, despite the feeling of “I’m in someone’s home and am bothering” generated by the fact that I was the only customer in there and they were apparently checking their inventory, yet I simply couldn’t find anything I wanted.
That sucks. According to the original plan, I should be reading at least four more books this year, none of them being translations. (According to what I’d do if I’d have access to a practically endless supply, I should be reading at least a book every two weeks, and preferably one per week, but that will never again happen.) So I was certainly counting on getting at least two, if not actually four, during this fair. Yet I didn’t get anything and I didn’t even see anything I wanted, so I was left with a really bad feeling afterwards…