Realization

I write with my right hand, I prefer AMD over Intel (like any sane person should!), and I have an affinity for what most would otherwise call old crap (assuming my fascination with K cars, Beetles, and some Geos are anything to go on), but there's something in there, and I'm not fully sure what it is, though I'm sure that it's something. Still, I, myself, am curious about what vampires, anthros (or furries, if you so desire), crimes against humanity (only when it comes to being insufferable, of course), technology, smarts, aliens, science fiction, and a whole slew of other things have in common... other than the fact that I'm interested in those topics. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if it was only because they're some of my interests, but I'd like to go at it a bit deeper. Yes, I still want you, reader, to reflect on how your interests might tie together, as well. This is just a subset of mine to give you a guide to go by, should you take the thought experiment for yourself and run with it.

Starting off with AMD (and I find this somewhat odd, considering that most computers I've owned have been Intel), I remember a lot of the time I played on a computer as a kid, it was on an eMachines PC owned by my grandparents. Sure, that may not sound like a connection, but the thing is that every eMachines PC I played on as a child did have an AMD Athlon (I believe it was the Athlon 64 processor, but I was just a kid then), as well as when my mother got a laptop during her two-year-stint as the nurse for our county's high school, the laptop is (she still has it, it's just collecting dust) an Acer Aspire 5000 Series with, I believe, and AMD Sempron. Originally, the computers I played on were running Windows 98 and Windows Me (I believe a few ran Windows 2000, and there was a fair subset of computers at my elementary school that were still running Windows 95 in 2008, let that sink in, those were my favorites), with, occasionally, a Windows XP box thrown in there. The tech isn't important, but the dates are.

Anthropomorphic characters, the one that I think I'll touch on next, have always just been interesting to me, and not just because of some "Oh, I'm a galloping, Soviet steed with genes from a Mongolian bat that explains my wings" mentality, no. While I think it's neat that you can play around with genetics in fiction, I also like to keep in mind that there's so much more that can be done when you introduce anthropomorphic animal characters (I'm not a big fan of the term furry, but it's less of a mouthful, should I inevitably use it later). A sillouette of a familiar person, shroud in black and donning a pair of fox ears or bat wings, no visible detail at all, it could mean anything. Impending danger, mystery, adventure, anything, he reiterates. What about a family of Siberian Huskies owning a pet cat? Sheer comedy. Link (as seen to the left) is about the closest thing you'll get to a picture of me. Still, when it comes to anthropomorphic characters, obviously they started out with some piece of Japanese media for me (what weird thing didn't), but, as a writer, I ultimately have a level of control over the universe that I decide to write while having outside influence seep in. I haven't decided what I want to do with Link yet, but the big thing I'll probably end up doing is just using him as an excuse to put more stuff on my Fur Affinity page. In a way, Link represents what Aleks used to: a portrayal of myself, even if he briefly ended up in an AU of a My Little Pony fanfiction that played off of an interesting take on vampires and some form of science fiction that I'm a complete and total sucker for, let's please move on. The interesting thing about fursonas (as they're elegantly called) is that it adds another dimension to the character. Sure, Aleks could just be an insufferable Soviet-Mongol genius, but having him be a Vyatka with batwings gives him another layer of personality. Why has he never flown? Questions.

I'm gonna finish this off with Aliens, partially because I want to bring Azathoth into this article and it's starting to feel like something you wouldn't read in just one sitting. To start with, I was a fan of Steven Universe when it came out, and I still enjoy watching the show. Sure, it's not what animated shows used to be, but the storylines are pretty captivating... Plus it has aliens! (or "Illegal Martian Hippies", as I remember one character saying). Azathoth started out as a gemsona that I never had any good ideas for (or even really finished developing, but it just proves that scraps can be a good thing). Still, the idea that maybe, just maybe, we're not the only life in the universe is an interesting thought to ponder. Sure, the thought of writing about aliens is probably as crazy sounding as looking up into the night sky for "Little Green Men", but take into account the size of the universe, the number of stars and planets. There has to be some other lifeforms out there. We've already shot two plaques and two golden records into space in an attempt to say "Hello from Earth! We're here, and we'd like for you to stop by for a visit!" As crazy as it sounds for me to even suggest the idea of extraterrestrial life, I'd quite publicly say that I'm arrogant enough to belive that we're not a fluke in the cosmos. Honestly, it would answer a lot of questions, even if everyone does think I'm some form of crazy for believing that. Still, though, to counter it... What proof do we have that aliens don't exist? Everyone questions their existence, but nobody questions their lack of existence, and that's a thing that I've always liked to do, question all sides of a topic. Aliens are just the easiest (and admittedly coolest) example to use. Still, I don't think they'd be anything like Marvin the Martian, the Little Green Men from old movies and books, or the Xenomorphs that seem to be what Google believes aliens would look like, no. I believe that, should they be out there, they'd be much more humanlike... at least on the surface, although, if you wanted to take the Rick Sanchez approach... watch any episode of Rick & Morty that involves aliens. Rick uses First Principles Thinking, so he accepts that, supposedly, life can exist in any form, which is ultimately true, but my assumption was based on likeliness with rather-Earthlike conditions.

Link To My Books On Kobo

What Does «Written In Stone» Mean?

What does «Written in stone» mean? Does it mean that data can be retrieved as long as it exists? Does information stored always have the possibility of retrieval? No. Case in point? Linear-A. Language, like anything, changes over time. If you try to read Old English (not necessarily written in Futhorc) and compare it to Modern English, you’ll no doubt see differences and, for the most part, speaking it would be analogous to speaking a different language, entirely. Obviously, Old English and Linear-A aren’t connected beyond the fact that they were used, linguistically, in the past, and are no longer used today. While we still have clay tablets that were written in Linear-A, nobody can interpret them; the language is still being deciphered. That leads us to the bigger topic at hand.

Everyone can make copies, backups of their phone, laptop, tablet, books, music, anything, but the thing about that is we can only access that data for as long as we have the methods to read the data. Sure, I still have some (several) 5¼” floppies, but without a 5¼” drive, I can’t access the data. That’s nothing to say of the fact that, unless they’re read from a compatible system, I’d simply get an «Unformatted Disk» error, or possibly the raw data, though it would certainly be scrambled and, likely, unreadable to humans. Sure, the data is there, but we can’t unlock it. The notion we have of preservation, I believe, is a somewhat inaccurate one, based entirely on the assumption that whatever we archive can always be retrieved, but that's not always the case. Linear-A, Hurrian Hymn №6, even the supposed VGA copy of the Windows 3.0 PC World Test Drive… so far, they’re lost to history. We don’t know how to read Linear-A, we don’t know the notation that Hurrian Hymn № 6 was written in or the frequency the notes and instruments were tuned to, and I have yet to see a copy of that software (believe me, I go down many a rabbit hole in my search for old software). Data retrieval and archival is much more complex than, say, making an extra copy of a piece of sheet music. Yes, it’s archived for the short-term, but things change over time. We do have the internet, nowadays, which helps with preservation (though modern technology is also a double-edged sword, primarily when DRM and copy protection become involved), but that’s only been existent since… if you wanna stretch it, ARPANET in the ‘60s.

True preservation, I believe, not only encompasses preserving the source, but making copies to adapt and be readable as time progresses as well, including making the data publicly available. For instance, if I were to make a language for a character to speak in (assume the character is an alien), and something happens to me, well… good luck getting any of the passwords to my computers, and I don’t generally put very much into the stories about such projects (with few exception), so that would likely become lost to time. On the other hand, if it were publicly available and had copies made continually over time that adapted to society and technology, we’d always have that data, as well as providing a gateway to learn or recreate the source materials, technology, or languages that would, otherwise, be lost.

Links - opens in new tab

• The Oldest (Known) Song of All Time - YouTube
• Linear A - English Wikipedia 
• Hurrian Songs - English Wikipedia
• Anglo-Saxon Runes - English Wikipedia
• Old English Latin Alphabet - English Wikipedia 
• Old English - English Wikipedia 
  

The Craziest Idea That I Feel Like I’ve EVER Had.

Yup… the title says it all. This screenshot should explain the rest (I know that it’s in German, but the important part is close enough to English, plus we have Google Übersetzer now, hier für Ihre Bequemlichkeit. If you want to go to the English version of the site, link’s in the screenshot). Anyway, due to a rather “fun-filled” Saturday, I’ve been rather out of it, but I won’t say anything else. Still, I was online last night and saw this screenshot, which gave me the idea for trying to build (and possibly run) a Windows 3.1 server! Yeah, I know it’s technically Windows for Workgroups and version 3.11, but it’s close enough. The biggest difference is that WfW 3.11 requires a /386 or better for some of the networking functionality and it also supports TCP/IP (first version that does from within Windows and I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole!)

It’s not really something that would be open-facing to the internet, just something here on my home network that I can screw around with from time to time, although if it ever does get open to the rest of the World Wide Web, then I may decide to post a link here. Again, don’t know when (or even if) it’ll happen, but fingers crossed. As for my ability to go for thirty seconds without mentally checking out right now? Eh, the jury’s still out on that issue. Right now, I’m giving myself a bit of a break from anything that I really have to think about… probably another reason for me to be glad that most of what these blog posts are is just me letting my thoughts ramble away into the computer. Seriously, though, I’ve gotten over the hump of The Golden Record, and the section that I’m at right now is a few “Slice-of-Life” chapters, something that’s hard for me to write on a good day, but it's still coming along. I also haven’t forgotten about Aleks meets Inga, but, while I’m quite a bit jumbled, I do, thankfully, have some downtime and some quiet where I can start do get some cleaning here done, so it’s possible that I could just have words flying onto the page when I get back to it.

Sorry about the shorter post, but like I said, last Saturday, I had so much happen that I was literally drained for a couple of days in a very short span of time. I should be back up to full capacity by next week, though. Until then, I’ll see you around!

What If?

Some people believe in the concept of a multiverse, some people know they exist, others claim that they don’t exist in any capacity. I’d like to stop for a minute and pose the question «How do you know?». If there are any furries, animé fans, movie/TV critics… anyone, really. I’d like to know how you know. The universe is, according to Wiktionary (yet another reason for me to bother cleaning up some), «The sum of all things in the cosmos.». The definition that I like to use is «A collection of all things in existence that can be directly interacted with, without the need for mediation.». I feel like I’m getting into a little bit of a philosophical area here, but bear with me, because I feel like this could be a very open-ended topic with, really, no one right answer on its own. Sure, you can add more context, but that’s not what we’re doing here.

Do Roy, Moss, and Jen exist? Yes, but only within a painfully-funny British comedy. Does the insufferable duo exist? Yes, but only within the writing pieces I have on my computer and DoK. Do Steve & Alex exist? Yes, but only within the game of Minecraft. I could go on, but I believe this illustrates my point.

The next step is to ask «What if?».

I wanna cut to the chase now, and explain what prompted this particular «What If?», and that’s a story that I started writing, thanks to Writer’s Block on The Golden Record (more specifically, a scene where there’s very little going on in it, leading my thoughts to be jumbled like crazy), and the premise of it is that my other Aleksey (Penelope Turner, aka Tan Pingning, still not released to the public yet!!) not only doesn’t get enough of my attention, I feel, but also because I wanted to see how she’d do in a violent vampire story. Basically, what happens is that another universe’s version of Penelope, after being turned into a vampire, is sent into Penelope’s universe, and her original goal, after finding out that both universes have similar versions of the same people, is to kill and replace Penelope, though that changes with the death of a nurse in the hospital later on when the doppelganger realizes just how similar they are, so she adopts the pseudonym Si Syueguei and lives as Penelope’s sister (making for a dangerous duo, in all honesty).

Cliché? Yeah.

Deranged? Probably.

The point is that, by definition, the act of creating fiction is at least analogous to proving that different universes exist. I’m not gonna lie, I spend so much time pondering what might be going on in a parallel universe that it might’ve caused some of the scatterbrain issues I have, but that’s a good thing, because it can open up a debate for, if nothing else, a model of how such a principle might somehow exist. Being completely honest here, I’ll admit that, actually, it’s pretty neat to know that, in a reality that’s parallel to our own, aliens might have visited Earth in 1995 or that humans and beastmen might coexist together, or even in some far-off reality, a loner falls for a cute vampire girl, marries her, gets turned, defeat an evil vampire king, and rule over that land as king and queen together for eons.

Limitless possibilities means without limit, and if it’s true from a scientific standpoint how we can interact with it, that can also bring about the question «If every possibility exists, each within its own realm of reality, does that mean our fiction is… nonfiction?» As I sit here, typing this and wondering if I’m coming off as deranged, it never leaves me, the idea that it’s good to ask these questions, to go down these rabbit holes, to explore these trains of thought. Of course, they’re not the most logical… you’ll never see a horse person with bat wings come about naturally (and some experiment in a lab doesn’t count! No cheating!) in what we know, but what if what we know is just a limited scope? What if it’s all proven wrong at some point and we do see a bat girl with ice-blue hair speaking Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean while hacking from a computer the same age as both of the vehicles I own (‘97 and ‘96… the first was given to me by my late grandfather and the second is a cheap worktruck that I tinker with on good days.)? Does that mean that we’ll have to start from the ground up and throw everything away? Not likely, but it is something to keep in mind as a thought experiment, if nothing else.

With that, I wish you all a good day.