Empty Cage

I blame the busy semester, but keeping websites up to date seems to be difficult to keep sort of promises.

I am so freaking lazy when it comes to design. It’s actually pretty shameful.

I am building for this website a single column very basic design since it serves as a home for all my little crappy/nostalgic/strange pet projects. Since this place is going to be stripped down I’ve been looking at the option of turning the whole ‘kit-and-kaboodle’ as my mother would sort of oddly say into a Wordpress MU smorgasbord so that absolutely everything can be updated in the most reduced way possible. I just need to decide if this is too heavy… I don’t think it is? I don’t know, there are all these little websites I’ve had since about 16 my pack rat self cannot bring herself to junk.

Any ways, I am looking into options that will bring updating everything to a central location and therefore give me no excuse for not updating things. Also, despite pretending I’m done with fanlistings applied to snake the Umbreon one since Nayru told me she might be adopting it out. Shame on me, shame on me.

Christ on a cracker.

I just wrote a little ‘web to-do list’ — turned into a page long adventure, since the new policy ’round these parts is clean it or kill it.

Well, there’s no rush, and think of all the design practise I’m going to be getting. (Because I’m trying not to).

So, wonderful internet, I bet you’re a bit confused now given that I now have two domains: EMPTY-CAGE.NET and MADHATTERY.NET as my Godaddy CP loudly states. And you must be thinking: ‘Gee Kae, you really needed two domains to ignore that badly did you?’ I will of course then scoff at you, and probably very secretly hate you forever. No, not really, but as usual there is method in my madness.

For the past, say, six or seven months I’ve been at a bit of a web crossroads. I’ve been fairly self concious about my websites, my blogging style and all that. All the little projects I throw together and then ignore, fanlistings coming to mind, and basically all the experimental little things that clog Empty Cage. I’m an ideas person and when a good one comes along I jump on top of it and have been known to find the follow through difficult.

Any ways, recently I agreed to do some contract work with my friend’s website company since we being fellow philosophers like to complain about things like real jobs when he asked if there was any of my stuff that he could see, and I realized I was a bit bashful to show him anything since it’s all pitched together in thirty minutes for shits and giggles. It’s kind of gone down hill since Europe, hee hee. And so that’s when I decided it was time to divorce these two parts of my brain.

What will the split entail? Well, MadHattery is going to be taking my blog insofar as I am not talking about updating websites or learning strange new things about Enth3. It’ll have more ‘polished’ writing than EC ever suffered. I’m using polished here in a loose sense, it is still going to be my usual tongue-in-cheek self. It’ll also look really nice and be sort of a ‘resume type thing’ Basically Hattery is taking all my eloquence.

In return EC gets all of my fun, it’ll be what it’s always been. A bunch of hack-job websites that I update sporadically but love to pieces when I do. All old blogs will stay here and I plan on keeping this place pretty frequently updated with all the strangeness that grows on my brain. I’m actually looking forward to this split.

Basically, if you’ve never read one of my updates in the “internet” category and you actually have me bookmarked for that rare yet comical interlude I’m going to urge you to change your bookmarks to MadHattery. If you’re really here to see me build a character fansite that flops a few hours later stick around, more of that to come.

So this is not goodbye or anything like that, in fact, if anything I suspect this place is going to pick up.

Okay, I’m up to episode six, and damnit, I am trying to study so hard, but this series is something bloody else. It is what Anime should be — fewer people screaming at each other and more people contemplating the god of the internet Wired.

How have I missed this before? It’s just my cup of tea. And thanks to it being my cup of tea I am going to fail three exams.

Woo!

I have blogger’s guilt.

Hardcore ‘I should use my powers over this small span of web wisely’ sort of blogger’s guilt. And I just got a job doing web related stuff is not helping since this place is shabby, derelict and really not my own design at all. I’m sort of sitting around for inspiration to percolate and its not really hitting like I had planned. To be sure there are things I want to write not the least of which involves verbally burning the school newspaper to the ground. Oh, Fulcrum, complaints about you make me happy.

Not the least of which it is two in the bloody morning again and I am trying to be coherent. I’m just going to make gurgling sounds for twenty minutes and hope that counts for a blog post.

Actually, what I’m going to do is set up Evolution to kick my ass every few days about this thing. Durrr-hurrr.

Well, I’ve been on one hell of a website hiatus, yes, I am sorry internet.

I’ve also been ignoring my nerdy roots so I’m downloading Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost in the Shell for some good old Anime Funtimes. I also plan on reviewing them when I get a chance so I’m not paying ten bucks a months simply to look pretty.

Also, Felicity Worthington was on the troubles list because no one has joined in over two months. Damn.

Just not websiteing much.

I’m going to confess, in elementary school and high school I was never really a mathy kid. Quite the contrary in fact, I think it was the fourth grade where my computational skills were markedly slower than all the other little kids… and I knew it. I seem to recall reasoning along the lines of ‘this is why we have calculators’. But in elementary school calculators are the infinitely dirty word of the school system. Computation is key, and if you’re behind in math, well maybe it’s just not your thing.

I have since learned that Math probably was my thing.

After all, I was a lifelong lover of science (and wisdom haha). I loved logic and reasoning puzzles. I liked when things worked out logically, solving problems and was always in awe of the world I was a part of. It was sort of my thing, the nerd. I think this was how I eventually ended up in Philosophy. Math was definitely not my thing, and you can’t go into science or technology without math, and so I found myself in Philosophy arguably the most scientific of the arts.

I remember so clearly in high school, you are either in the science stream or the arts one. Period. You’re either an impractical hippie or a humourless drone. Job, or soul. Like its some kind of either or thing. And for me the rock in the road was always the mathematics. I could build a computer program in grade 10, but I was completely an artsie. Obviously. I took history and stuff, and always had my ass handed to me in math.

When you want to understand the all encompassing everything though these lines make things difficult. And this all started when I couldn’t multiply as fast as the others in the fifth grade.

It started to occur to me over the past few years that math is something interesting. I took Pre-Calculus last year under the pretence of needing it for a Computer Science Minor (technically true, but I could have minored in any number of things that wouldn’t have needed math). I’d been under some sort of personal conviction that mathematics was something that I should be good at.

I still had my ass handed to me.

The difference was I wasn’t left hopeless and convinced I wasn’t a math kid. I actually came out curious, yeah, okay, marks did not reflect but my memories of the class were a barrage of equations, minimal explanations, hellfire, all at eight thirty in the morning. Not the prof (actually a grad student)’s fault, tons of material, no time etc. But I think what I won there was a springboard and the confidence to keep going, despite my GPA begging I stop being so cruel to it.

And so I think, Philosophy of Math, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Technology. These things all exist. The thought of Physics and Philosophy makes me giddy, string theories, movement. Unfortunately this is all stuff I have to go backwards to learn so that I can apply ideas to what I think. Because back in High School I was an artsie kid, and taking science or math would only serve to drop my average and then no university would ever take me. And besides– a structured major at any University is not open to this idea, they want you to learn Science or Philosophy. One or the other, take your pick.

This is the part that gets me. I’m going to school to learn. Obviously. This is what school is for. But I am not allowed to learn what I want to learn. Instead I have to hedge around what I have an aptitude for to keep my GPA in check, or my average high. So I was told I wasn’t good at math, yeah, I still would probably take a few minutes to recall 7×8 but math and science aren’t even close to being about that. I understand why they have to do this, not every student — hell — most students don’t want to learn. They want the paper, the degree or the diploma and I can accept that. But I think as far as those of us who want to learn we have been put in the most hostile environment of all time.

My 100th post.

Yay.