Jobs, Jobs and...well, not many jobs

The joys of job hunting - I am now about £400 into my overdraft (I know, I know, you're all £1,500+ into yours, but I was a careful spender) with little hope of employment on the horizon.

Having said that, I have applied for a job today as a PC Engineer in Solihull - £20-25k + Car & Benfits. Fingers crossed for that one.

Spad.

It all sucks

Well, perhaps not sucks, but at the very least it's a little crappy.

I don't have a job (or a girlfriend, althought that's besides the point) and my parents are nagging me like crap about it. I'm up in Brum for Sunday and Monday for my graduation and then up for good on the 30th of July. It was going to be the 31st, but Ashborn are playing a gig in Brimingham and I said I'd try and make it if I could. If you haven't already, check out their website(s) at www.ashborn.net and www.ashborn.co.uk - the former has music and the latter is new.

Whilst you're at it, check out www.machinaesupremacy.com, because they rock in general - seriously, unsigned music at its second best after Ashborn ;)

Anyway, life sucks, remember that next time you're doing anything. Go on, let me ruin your life for you.

Spad.

History Blindness

I've noticed that a lot of people have something of a blindspot for anything that happened more than 5 years ago. The original discussion threads that highlighted this were in some in which people were asked what they thought the best game ever was or the best game soundtrack and soforth.

With very few exceptions, every game listed was from the last 5 years - most within the last 2 years.

Equally, with a recent greatest film of all time poll on a board I frequent, there were very few films from before the 90's - I made it 4 of the ten. So 60% of the films were from ~17.5% of the time (Assuming 80 years of film). I know that most people aren't 80+, but that doesn't stop them from having seen older films. 3 of those same ten films are from the last 5 years.

It seems that whenever a similar question comes up, people think of the most recent thing they did/watched/played that was good and claim that it was the best 'ever'.

Most of my favouite films are from the 80's and 90's, so that's probably not the best example - although it's certainly better than 5 years - but my favourite games are 11 and 10 years old now and I certainly wouldn't consider including things like Vice City or Unreal Tournament 2004 in any such list.

Well? Am I utterly mad or is there some logic to my reasoning?

Something of a mishmash

In response to http://yudkowsky.net/singularity.html

One of the more curious results of science fiction is that it provides the opportunity to "practice" dealing with future events.

In this context, people always bring up the Terminator movies, but the problem has already been solved. Asimov was way ahead of everyone with his laws of robotics - three simple instructions that would completely prevent AI creations from attempting to superceed their creators.

Problem is that this theory doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny - an exponential increase isn't possible. Firstly, it obviously will never reach an infinite rate of advancement, but that's just a mathematical issue. More importantly, it is based on the premise that if you double the computing power of AI in question that you halve the time required for it to reach the next doulbing advance. With every advance that is currently made, you could argue that those involved in its relaisation also become more advanced (intelligent, knowledgable - however you want to classify it) although perhaps not to the same degree as with an AI. It also fails to account for changes in methodology - for example, at the moment, moving from a .13 micron process to a .09 micron process is a fairly simple task, however, once you reach a certain point, you get uncorrectable leakage across paths and you have to find a totally new way to achieve your goal, something which may take orders of magnitude longer to achieve than simply redesigning and modifying an existing concept.

Additionally, is it just me, or does the way that the author refers to the Singularity seem eerily similar to the style of writing used by everyone's favourite nutjob, Gene Ray [http://www.timecube.com/]. The internet is indeed a wonderful place, but with every free and open medium comes a huge range of people with decidedly strange points of view.

Because it is important:

http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,14296,00.html

The Olsen twins are now road legal. Technically they have been for 2 years over here, but that hasn't stopped me from failing to score with them.

You may all begin rejoicing.

And finally, because it annoyed me at the time:

Following my involvement in a discussion thread regarding the future sale of the Lotus Elise in the US, it dawned on me just own ignorant a lot of Americans seem to be about their cars (Disclaimer: I'm only picking on Americans because of the specific discussion I was involved in).

The car in question, the Lotus Elise:



Has a 1.8 litre engine producing 190bhp. It will do 0-60 in 4.9 seconds with a top speed of 150mph. It also weighs less than 2000lbs - considerably less, in fact.

Engine size is not the only factor in car performance. Your Mustang may have a 5.0 litre engine and produce 390bhp, but it weighs over 3,500lbs and handles like a brick. A Challenger tank produces 1,200 bhp, but you don't see many of them dragging it out with all the suped up Hondas.

The worlds fastest production car is the Koenigsegg CCR and it only has a 4.7 litre engine, albeit one which develops an impressive 806bhp, which for a 2,600lb car is a lot.

So, to summarize - having a 6 litre engine in your 2 ton car does not make it good.



That is all