I finally got round to finishing the final edits of Broken Glass, the final novel in the Minding Tomorrow trilogy.

You can read it here, though it’s worth reading Minding Tomorrow and Combat first, or else it will make no sense. All my fiction is released for free under creative commons, so download the ebooks and enjoy!

I’ve no idea why I always put off completing a project like this, but it had been sitting almost-finished since April. All I had to do was make a book cover and do a few rounds of editing, and it would be ready. In total these last steps only took about 10 hours.

So I’ve been 10 hours of easy work away from completing a three novel series of stories that I first attempted writing back in 2003. I started writing the current version of Minding Tomorrow in November of 2008, so the three novels could be said to have taken four years to complete. I planned to get Broken Glass finished in the spring of 2012, but I wrote “Get That Rat Off My Face!” instead, which admittedly takes place in the same universe as Minding Tomorrow. In a way, it could be read as a four book series.

What I’m trying to ask is “Why would anyone not want to have finished a trilogy of novels, especially if it only requires a tiny bit more work?” Well, I’m not sure. I know I’ve been busy with other projects… but not THAT busy!

Personally I think Broken Glass is the best science fiction I’ve written. Unfortunately you have to read two other novels before it, just to set the groundwork and introduce all the characters, and logically those two novels can’t also be the best I’ve written.

All said and done, it’s been a fun journey.

And it’s not over. I’m currently writing another novel set in the same universe, but hundreds of years after the events of Broken Glass. So long, in fact, that it works as a stand alone story, though those who’ve read the Minding Tomorrow trilogy will enjoy it on an extra level.

Emotions.

My definition of art is something created by human agency with the intention of eliciting an emotional response from the viewer/reader/listener/participant/etc. This isn’t an unassailable definition, but as an artist and professional performer it’s a pretty handy guide. It also lets me enjoy art that comes my way.

What is important to understand is that the emotional response doesn’t have to be a single kind, or even a positive kind. Joy and laughter is what most comedies aim for, but if all you get is laughs, there’s not much about it that will stick with you in the long term. That’s why comedies try to bring out other emotional responses. Romantic comedies want you to feel warm and fuzzy, others want you to feel uncomfortable in gross-out scenes. One of the strongest emotional responses I’ve had from a comedy recently was watching Bridesmaids, and one scene in which two of the bridesmaids are trying to outdo each other with speeches about the bride had me cringing. I literally had to stop the movie for a few minutes to let myself calm down. It was awesome!

Other comedies, like Groundhog Day, bring the laughs, but also brings about a sense of pathos, and even a sense dread, and makes you think about the futility of life. That, by the end, you are full of compassion and hope for the future is the genius of the movie, and why it is considered a classic.

This all seems pretty obvious, and knowing what is going to happen in advance in most comedies isn’t going to spoil much of your enjoyment. However, there are a few emotions that fiction is no longer able to instill if you know what is coming.

Surprise.

The most obvious is surprise. This is the easiest too, and done well, the least susceptible to spoilers. The movie Final Destination had trailers with scenes not from the movie itself, but featuring audience members jumping out their seats while watching the movie for the first time. I knew it was a movie about people living longer than they should, and death catching up with them one by one. Also, before seeing the movie, I’d heard conversations where people said “Holy shit! The scene with the bus is amazing!”

Great, I thought. Now I won’t be surprised. All I have to do is watch out for a bus, and then I can get ready for…

And if you’ve seen Final Destination, you’ll know how just unprepared I was for the death involving the bus. Even me telling you a bus is involved in one of the deaths isn’t going to spoil it for you, because it is so surprising. That is the genius of that movie, and why there are now a whole slew of sequels (none of which I’ve felt any urge to watch).

The only way to spoil that individual scene is to have seen the movie before. Or, in this case, to have seen that scene before. Which is why the trailer for the movie never showed that scene at all!

Unfortunately, many movie distributers aren’t this kind, and include all kinds of otherwise surprising things in their movie trailers. Which is why I avoid trailers. If I hear the movie is good, I’ll probably get round to watching it eventually. I take long flights all the time, and can fit in four movies while traveling to America or back. On cruise ships there are always recent releases playing, and at home I catch up with anything I’ve missed on DVD.

Shock.

I love to be shocked by fiction. Characters are going about their lives, or on an adventure, and suddenly something happens or is revealed, and everything changes. This could be for good, but it works far better if it is for the worst.

Unfortunately, unlike a good surprise, a shock can be spoiled if you know what is going to be revealed. Or more to the point, if you understand what is going to be revealed. The difference is subtle.

My name is Luke, so throughout life I’ve put up with people telling me they were my father, normally with a deep voice and heavy breathing. Even before I ever saw The Empire Strikes Back, people would tell me that they were my father. I understood it was a Star Wars reference, but didn’t understand what they really meant. I’d grown up with Star Wars: A New Hope, but Empire Strikes Back wasn’t shown on TV in the UK until the mid eighties, and then only at Christmas, so it was a while until I caught up with it. Then, aged about six or seven, I watched Empire Strike Back for the first time and holy shit!

Of course, I hadn’t understood the shocking reveal because I was just a stupid kid. The shock of it was no less meaningful though!

Now I’m not so much of a stupid kid. If I hear something about any story, be it a movie or TV show, I can usually work out, even before beginning to watch it, what the shocking reveal will probably be. Which is why, if possible, I try to avoid reading or hearing those spoilers.

Years ago I watched the first few seasons of Dexter, up to the end of season 3. Everyone said “Season 4 is the best, and the ending is such a shock!” But they were always sensitive not to spoil it, and I’m thankful for it. I avoided learning anything about it, and any news or discussion about anything beyond season 3.

Over the course of a few months I rewatched the first three seasons along with my girlfriend. I enjoyed them again, but in a different way, and found it fun to experience the surprising and shocking events vicariously through the person sitting next to me. We struck out into season 4, and everything was new.

Then we reached the last scene of the last episode of season 4. I knew a shock was coming, but I didn’t know what. As it turned out, it was way more shocking than anything I had thought up, and way more shocking than anything my girlfriend and I had wished for to shake things up for the characters involved. It was literally so shocking that we had to put on the first episode of season 5 immediately, just to make sure it wasn’t a dream sequence or a trick by the show producers.

And the shock stayed with me! I even had trouble sleeping that and the next few nights as I imagined something similar happening in my life.

It felt glorious. I love the fact that a TV show could make me feel something so visceral. It is one of those peak experience I crave in life. This happens so rarely with TV and movies, but I cherish it when it does, and I avoid spoilers because I want to have these experiences again in the future.

Stupidity.

The final reason I like to avoid spoilers, and try not to spoil things for other people, is that I like to be made to feel stupid. And on the other hand, I like to be made to feel intelligent.

Great works of TV and film stand up to repeat viewing, even if there is a twist ending. A twist can be shocking or surprising, but it also works on an intellectual level. Aiming to effect someone intellectually can be part of a work of art, but if that is the sole reason, for me it falls more into the category of lesson, teaching material, political propaganda, etc. However, clever artists use the intellect of the viewer/listener to move their emotions.

So the twist is different to the shock. It relies on the viewer having come to one conclusion, and then the narrative exposing that conclusion as false, and revealing one that fits all the presented facts, and then explains so many more.

An effective twist can elicit two distinct responses. The first is “Oh, how stupid I am! I should have seen all that, but I was totally blind!”

From the buzz about The Sixth Sense, it seemed that 95% of people had this same response. And everyone loved being made to feel stupid. Being tricked, when you knowingly participate in the tricker, feels really good. This is why people enjoy magic shows. They know magic is bullshit, and that the performer is using tricks and mirrors and magnets, but they love the feeling of being fooled.

My experience with The Sixth Sense was different. Two girls had a very loud conversation right next to me, and blatantly explained the twist ending, covering many of the relevant points along the way, before I understood what they were talking about. Then I cottoned on, and groaned.

When I went to see the movie at the cinema, I enjoyed the movie well enough, and jumped at some of the shocks, but the twist had very little effect on me. Some of tricks had passed me by, but I’d caught many of the others.

I was robbed of the feeling that I was stupid. Knowing the twist spoiled that element that I could have otherwise enjoyed.

Thankfully there are plenty more twists that make me feel stupid. The Prestige worked great for me in that case, and on so many levels, because all the way through the movie they are telling you that you are being tricked, and explaining the trick right in front of your eyes, and you still miss it.

Or at least I did. And if you worked out the twist without knowing it in advance? Well, that’s the last reason I like to avoid spoilers.

Intelligence.

I like to work things out for myself. Making people feel intelligent is opposite reaction to a good twist, and by intelligent I mean the combination of mental ability and relevant knowledge or expereince. If everyone guesses the twist ending, it’s not really a twist. If nobody guesses the twist ending, it’s probably comes too much out of nowhere, isn’t set up properly, and falls more into the shock category.

However, if between 80% and 90% of people are surprised, and 10% to 20% of people say “Oh, I worked it out from this, this, and this” you’ve probably done a good job.

And the 20% of people who worked it out feel clever. Knowing that they’ve used their intellect as the artist hoped, and are rewarded by the artist by the feeling of superiority over the other 80%, even if that superiority is only knowing just that little bit more about specific trivial things.

As much as I like being in the 80% of people who get the satisfaction of being tricked by the twist, I just as much enjoy working out the twist before it arrives. Who knows if I’d have had this kind of enjoyment with The Sixth Sense? Maybe. I do know that when I watched Unbreakable, I did work out the twist, although I fell asleep before the end, and then had to wind back to see if I was right or not. And I guessed the twist in The Village too, though enjoyed that all the way through to the end.

I like to be tricked by movies, but if I was tricked every time, it might get tiresome. I understand why some people don’t like being made to feel stupid by a movie, so if it is spoiled for them they don’t have to worry about it any more. I also suspect that many people who already know a twist like to tell themselves that if they didn’t already know it, they would have worked it out themselves. To be honest, many of the twists I know in advance seem trivial to work out. But then how can I be the judge of that? The only way to really test my intelligence is to go in not knowing, and seeing how the chips fall.

So there you have it. That is why I avoid spoilers. I like to be surprised, to be shocked, to be made to feel stupid, and to be made to feel intelligent. As an artist, these emotional responses are just some of the wide range I like to elicit, and as a reviewer they are experiences I like to leave open as options for my listeners to enjoy.

I recently read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and I noticed that so many of these fantastical stories from the 19th Century are frame stories. I love the idea that the author didn’t make up these stories, but received a manuscript and was just passing it along (Connecticut Yankee), or it happened to their uncle (A Princess of Mars (admittedly not 19th Century)), or they are a reporter just passing on the story of another person (The Time Machine).

Each one of them has some telling detail that convinced the author that the “person” they received the “true story” from was not lying. It could be a bit of technology, or something they noticed, or a fact that they otherwise couldn’t have known.

Any, my simple observation is that any story could, in theory, be given the movie tag line “Based on a True Story” or even “A True Story”.

It works like this:
1. Begin each story with someone sitting down to write or read a story.
2. Then tell the story that they wrote or read.
3. End with a scene showing the person finishing the story.

That’s it! The “Based on a true story” claim is only about the frame story of someone sitting down to either read or write the story within the story. As long as that frame character makes no claims to the verifiable truth of the framed story, you’re good to go.

Of course, they can claim they believe the framed story, but that just means that at some point the reader/writer must claim that, and so it is true, and you’re still good to go.

I might write a script that adds a scene of someone sitting down to read an ebook to the beginning of every novel in public domain, and then publish them all here on my blog.

“”The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells” by Luke Burrage – A True Story!”

Again, maybe this idea should just stay in my head.

I love to read comments and feedback about my blog posts. Please email me, I reply to every message: luke@juggler.net

You can find it here: Get that rat off my face! It’s totally free, released under a creative commons license.

Blurb about the story:

thought experiment: noun
an experiment carried out only in the imagination.

But what if you wake up one day and find yourself inside a thought experiment? Watch out, because the stuff of imagination is now your reality.

Physics, love, politics, music, the mind, the nature of reality, telepathic monkeys… Get that rat off my face! is an irreverent look at the most important things in the life of an obsessed science fiction reader.

You can find all the stories I currently have published, for free, on my fiction page.

Many people get a lot of attention on the internet for saying or writing things like “Atheist and skeptics are just the same as religious people!”

They go on to say things like “Skeptics like to take down the beliefs of others, but they never question their own beliefs.”

Near the end of the rant, you’ll probably find accusations of elitism and arrogance.

Personally I think there is a confusion between the labels of “elite skeptics” and “elitist skeptics”. There is some overlap between the groups, but from my own anecdotal evidence, not very much.

I have no problem with people who are not skeptical about every one of their beliefs. My problem is with those people who aren’t skeptical of the reasons they THINK they are skeptical.

It’s a tricky concept, but maybe I can explain.

Not everyone can be skeptical of everything. There are loads of areas where I don’t think skeptically at all. This is the only way to get through my day, otherwise I’d never get anything done. I’d spend all the time investigating every tiny detail of every tiny truth claim, and never be able to have an awesome, albeit slightly random, life.

Who can really be that skeptical? Not us everyday people. And yet “skeptics” come under fire for NOT examining every single thing. And because we believe some things without question, and challenge a certain set of beliefs of others, we are called arrogant and elitist.

For that attention to detail we rely on elite skeptics. These can be professional scientists, or they can be trusted journalists or public figures who communicate the current state of scientific thought.

When Ben Goldacre says “Homeopathy is bullshit” I don’t rush out to do my own tests on diluted water. I just take his word on it. There is a virtuous circle of trust among scientists and science writers that allows them to reach a consensus on certain topics.

Yay for the elite skeptics!

My problem is with elitist skeptics, and I have a good working definition of the term.

First, let me state that I have no problems with any single belief or stance on any issue an elitist skeptic might talk about, or browbeat others about. The chances are they are 100% correct on the matter when held against the standards of modern science.

My only problem is the reason that they THINK they are skeptics, and are therefore scientifically right. The reason they believe they skeptics is their own intelligence.

Which leads to them believing everyone who believes something scientifically incorrect is stupid, or at least less intelligence than they are.

THIS is elitist skepticism, in my opinion.

I experienced it many, many times at the TAM London conferences in 2009 and 2010. More so in 2010. There would be a statement from the stage about how stupid religious people are, or how people are stupid for not knowing this scientific fact, and the audience would erupt in applause and cheering. It made me feel very uncomfortable. Same with my brother and sister-in-law, who attended one and two of the events respectfully.

The truth of the matter, as I see it, is that fact that you are a skeptic has nothing to do with your own intelligence. Instead it has everything to do with circumstances of your birth, your upbringing, and the society in which you live.

If this wasn’t the case, we could look at the most incredible minds throughout history, and they’d all be atheists and skeptics.

How about Isaac Newton? Oops. Was totally into alchemy and all kinds of batshit crazy stuff, as well as being a Christian. Same with every other intelligent person up until the Enlightenment.

Also, atheists have no problem saying “If you were born in Saudi Arabia, you’d probably believe in Allah, if you were born in Texas you’d probably believe in Jesus.” Which is totally true. This isn’t a statement about the mental capacity of any religious person, just the admission that people are shaped by their surroundings.

So why do skeptics think they are any different?

I was brought up in a hardcore Christian home, and I’m now an atheist and a skeptic. Is it my intelligence that took me down that path? I’d say no, just a great many incidences and coincidences along the way. My Christian upbringing probably contributed more to me being a skeptic now than other people’s secular upbringing, to the point where they’ve thought as much about the existence of god as the efficacy of Homeopathy. As in, not at all.

I have an identical twin brother who also attended TAM London in 2009 and 2010. He was also brought up in a Christian home, of course, and is now probably more hardcore atheist than I am. Did we reach the same beliefs because we are both as intelligent as each other? Well, no. It could be said that I’m objectively more intelligent than he is, as measured by grades at school. But even our grades at school had more to do with our only very slightly different life experiences up until age 16.

We took different paths to our skeptical mindset, at different paces, but in each case it took a repeated exposure to the skeptical mindset of others, each time totally outside of our control. After a time, by applying skeptical tools we’d picked up to our own beliefs, we came to the same kinds of conclusions. This had nothing to do with our intelligence levels, and way more to do with the fact that skepticism itself works. We didn’t invent it, we only slowly, and by accident, learnt it.

So what next?

Thinking other people are stupid because they are religious or not skeptical is totally misguided. It becomes worrying when these elitist skeptics think they should also be elite skeptics, or worse yet, elite members of society in general.

You may be CORRECT about the topics of which you are skeptical, but that doesn’t mean the “stupid” people should be sneered at and then ignored. They should, instead or at least, be educated.

As a final argument, I’d like to bring up the parallels between elitist skeptics and Randian thinkers on economics.

“I got to where I am today, financially, due to my own skills, intelligence, and hard work! I am the 53%! Pull yourself up by your boot straps!”

The common rebuttal is something on the lines of “Really? You didn’t rely on your parents? Your schooling? The circumstances of your birth? Your parents’ economic standing? Your gender? The colour of your skin? Your reliance on the wider society to provide the safe environment in which you can flourish?”

Soon the claims that someone, anyone, got to their current financial position due to their own abilities falls flat. It involves long chains of coincidence, circumstances outside of the person’s control, and the actions of other people. All these things combine to bring any single person to any point in their life. There is no fate, there is no destiny, there is no god in the machine. If you are a hardcore skeptic, you won’t believe in true free will, only in the illusion of free will. You are only the culmination of matter and energy playing itself out in the universe.

Really.

“I’m a skeptic, and have all the right answers, due to my own skills, intelligence, and hard work! I have the same religious beliefs as all these Nobel Prize winning scientists! If you weren’t so stupid, you’d be just like me!”

My rebuttal is exactly the same as before. “Really? You didn’t rely on your parents? Your schooling? The circumstances of your birth? Your parents’ economic standing? Your gender? The colour of your skin? Your reliance on the wider society to provide the safe environment in which you can flourish?”

Yes, even skin gender and colour. How many black women at TAM London in 2010? Maybe there was one, but she was hidden among the sea of caucasian men. Then again, only middle-to-upper-class people could afford the money and time to attend TAM, and we all know that white men, aged 25-40, only reach that position through their own intelligence and hard work. Ho hum.

To conclude: Some people DO rely solely on their outstanding mental capacity to independently formulate the principles of science and skeptical thought. Good on them. But these people are few and far between. I’m not asking you to defend the ancient philosophers’ intelligence compared to the general population. It’s obvious they had the chops to rise above the rest, and have influenced world history since their times.

No, I’m asking you to defend your OWN intelligence compared to the general population. Is knowing the truth about some subjects, and knowing a method of thought to reach true conclusions on other subjects, reason enough to sneer at everyone else?

I think not.

In 2009 I listened to every bit of music in my iTunes library as sorted by track name, and in 2010 I did listened to the entire thing as sorted by by track length, and again in 2010 sorted by play number.

It’s a fun little project, and makes me take notice of the music I have in new ways. Over the past month I’ve listened to every track as sorted by date added.

What did I find out this time?

Of the four ways I’ve listened to all my music in order, it was the one that had the greatest effect. Listening as sorted by track length told me a lot about the kind of music I own, but by date added it told me a lot about me. Changing tastes of music is only the smallest part of it.

Mostly it’s about the triggered memories. This is a great way to relive your life through your memories, in order, as triggered by “Oh shit, I remember buying this!” or “I know where I was the first time I heard this track, and ripped it from that CD!”

If I looked through a diary, that would work, but most people don’t keep diaries. But everyone has a collection of music. Listening by track name is just a whimsical thing that only someone like me would do, someone who has almost unlimited free time, gives in to random impulses, and bloody-minded enough to stick with long term projects.

I think everyone should listen to all their music as sorted by date. Then again, maybe most people aren’t like me, and might not get anything from it at all. Who knows.

Some more notes:

• When you sort all the tracks by date added, if an album has the same time and date (to the nearest minute) it then lists the tracks alphabetically by name, not by track number. I’m not sure why, but it meant that I listened to albums in an unusual order. Unless, of course, the track names were “Track 1, track 2, track 3, etc.”
• The first track, for the second time, was “5 seconds of almost silence”, a track I use to separate music track on CDs for my show. It’s also the shortest track in my library, as well as the most played.
• Next is a whole load of music that I copied direct from my old PC onto my macbook when I bought it back in February of 2008. This includes 311 songs, 20.2 hours, or 1.5 GB of music. A lot of this is from my collection of CDs from the previous decade, but from CDs I didn’t still have with me physically.
  What did this mean? This batch included a LOT of memories. Stuff I’d downloaded for specific shows, CDs I’d borrowed from friends at university and ripped, some music from Pola’s computer, and lots more.
• The next main batch of music is from a few weeks later, when I wanted to have the titles of every track listed, rather than just “Track 1, track 2, track 3, etc.” Instead of doing anything manually, I just ripped all the CDs I had, let iTunes grab the track titles from the internet automagically, and deleted the previous files.
  This included a lot more music that Pola and I had bought together, or that we both liked so that we’d carry the music with us on road trips in a CD carrying case. Good times!
• Once I had an iTunes account, much of the music I bought was through that, and not CD. A lot of these were impulse buys, or buying new albums from favourite artists. Also there are many EPs and albums that I bought after hearing the music on a YouTube video, and iTunes is usually the easiest way to grab it.
• At the EJC in 2008 I organized the EJC Open Stages, and put in lots of CDs to rip for the artists appearing on stage. Also someone gave me a USB thumb drive with a big collection of ska music and other stuff, and it somehow got imported into my iTunes library. I liked most of it, so kept most of it.
• Some CDs that someone gave to me. Those were ripped.
• Some music from musicians I work with on cruise ships. Well, to be honest the style of music normally isn’t to my taste, so I don’t keep the music in rotation, except for a very few artists.
• Oh look, all of Jonathan Coulton’s Thing A Week music. Mixed memories of my own attempt to make a song a week for a just six weeks, rather than for an entire year.
• And then quite a few albums bought at the suggestion of various girlfriends and friends who are girls over the last two years. Lots of memories there too!
• Albums and EPs by musicians I met on my vacation in New York in September 2010. Those guys were all super talented! I still buy their new music as and when it comes out.
• Various nostalgia trip! Downloading albums I owned on CD, cassette tape or (I’m not kidding here) minidisc when I was 20, but since lost. Groove Armada are still cool, right? Basement Jax? Air’s Moon Safari? Jamiroqui? Love it! That reminds me, I should find some Orbital and Leftfield again some time. This way I can get double memories, of when I first listened to that music, and also when I buy it again 10 (or more) years later.

Whew! A lot of memories. That will do for now.

But what next? Listen to the whole iTunes library as sorted by… release date? That might work, but only three quarters of my library has the year of release. Beats per minute? Only a few dozen tracks have that info attached. Genre? Album? Artist? Those are a bit boring. No matter, I’ll think of something.

I’ll tell the story of my bear encounter at the end of this post, but for now I’ll share some photos.

It’s photos like this one that made me want to visit Yosemite. Here I am trying to imitate Ansel Adams’s famous photo of Brideveil Falls, El Capitan, Sentinel Rock and the Half Dome. Unfortunately the Half Dome was hidden by the clouds.

A photo of me not taken by me. Rare on this blog!

Unexpected blue sky.

More colour than Ansel Adams.

Tourist view of Yosemite Falls.

Oh Dear.

Trees and cliffs.

Ahwahnee hotel lounge.

Half Dome peeks through the clouds and trees. This was my first glimpse of the rock.

Mirror Lake, not so impressive when mostly empty.

Clouds at the Half Dome.

The dining room at the Ahwahnee Hotel, where I ate on of the most expensive single meals of my life. I think I paid more for the building I was in rather than the food or wine.

On Thursday morning it was raining. All morning. Until 2pm. I decided to chance a hike up the Four Mile Trail to Glacier point. If the clouds and rain held, I’d see nothing, but if I stayed in the valley I’d see nothing for sure.

As it happen, as I climbed higher, the clouds lifted higher and higher. It turned the single most magical hike of my life. At every turn the views became more impressive, and the light more and more interesting.

The non-tourist view of the Yosemite Falls.

Tree details.

The Yosemite Falls again.

Amazing clouds.

Hiking up into the snow and clouds.

And out into the clear again!

For some reason, I think Ansel Adams is to blame, I always picture Yosemite in black and white in my mind. I think it works well in photos like this too!

A park ranger had marked the path through the snow to the very top of the trail. I’m glad he had done so, as I’d never have followed the path without it. Only three other people hiked to the top of the trail that day, but that was enough so the 6-10 inch thick snow didn’t trouble me too much.

The view from Glacier Point. The Half Dome wouldn’t show itself! I was above most of the clouds, but not those around the other high points in of the valley.

The Half Dome makes an appearance!

And then the sun began to set. And it was just beautiful! These photos really don’t do it justice. You had to be there!

But as it happened, I was the last person on the trail. Everyone else was had passed me on the way down hours before, and would have already been on the valley floor.

That I was the only one to see these views first hand made the whole experience extra special.

I turned a corner, and saw the Half Dome catching the last of the evening light.

After the sun dropped below the horizon, mist began to fill the bottom of the valley.

The stars came out, and I had to use my iphone as a torch to see the path under the trees, but then I turned and saw the moon rise over Sentinel Rock. I thought the sunset and starlit valley had been amazing, but this just added an extra layer of magic on the entire hike.

I reached the valley floor, and the moon lit up the mist through the trees.

A view of the Yosemite Falls from the Swinging Bridge, as lit by star and moonlight.

Another moonlit view of the valley walls.

The view from my cabin/tent on Friday morning. The day started with fine weather which was good for my planned walk up to Vernal Falls. But bad for having the the entire path to myself for the third day in a row.

Vernal Falls.

Test shot for an “international juggler video” clip. I tried to get the rainbow on video, but I’ve not checked to see how well that worked.

Vernal Falls one more time.

Another shot of Yosemite Falls from the Swinging Bridge, this time in the sunlight.

Postcard shot of the Half Dome.

Squirrels everywhere, including on my camera bag!

El Capitan from below.

A climber on El Capitan.

So what about my encounter with a bear? It happened like this.

On Wednesday night I got to my cabin/tent thing (see above), and put out my blankets. I was pretty tired, but wanted to go through the photos of the day. My laptop gets hot while doing photo editing, so I made a little tent under my blankets and used it as a heater. That worked well!

After a while I got too tired, so turned off the light and fell asleep.

And then I woke to noises outside my cabin. First I thought it might be a raccoon, but soon the noises told me it was a bear!

I thought if I just kept quiet it would leave. But instead it came inside my cabin/tent! I was shitting myself, as it was utterly dark! I couldn’t see anything, so just curled up as small as possible on my bed and kept quite.

The info signs say that if you see a bear, you should make noise to scare it away. I would have done this right away, if I’d been fully awake, but before I thought about it, the bear was within a meter of my bed, I couldn’t see it, and it was between me and the exit. That LAST thing I wanted to do was make noises to scare a bear so close that I could have reached out and touched it. Or, more to the point, so close it could have reached out and touched me.

It turns out I had my Ritter Sport chocolate bars stashed away in my camera bag, and had forgotten all about them. I’m an idiot! So the bear dragged my camera bag outside, and routed through the open compartments (I’d taken much of my gear out, and left it totally open to let it dry, thankfully). It took the chocolate and left.

I called the camp front office, and some kind of ranger came over, and we stored my bag again properly in the locker.

And then I tried to get back to sleep. That was harder than it sounds! I’d had a close encounter with a bear. And I didn’t see it. It was exactly like a horror movie. You hear it, you know it’s close, but seeing nothing is what made it extra scary!

It had dragged my bag out from beside the very bed I slept in. It was my fault for not paying full attention to the storage of food, and I have no excuses as there are signs EVERYWHERE about leaving food outside of lockers. You can get fined and thrown out of the camp for that kind of thing.

In the morning I checked my camera bag. That was a very dirty bear! It left muddy marks all over the inside of my bag.

So concludes my Yosemite trip reporting.

]]> http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/1421/feed 2 http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/1409 http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/1409#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:31:12 +0000 admin http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/?p=1409 I just listened to the most recent Triangulation podcast episode, where Leo and Tom talked to Dave Allen, the guy who developed the productivity system called Getting Things Done. I’ve not read Dave’s books on the matter, but the general idea is this:

- Your brain is a terrible place to keep notes and lists.
- Write down what you need to accomplish.
- Break the goals into various tasks (called “actionable items” in this system).
- If you can do a task in under 2 minutes, do it right away.
- If you can’t do a task now, forget about it.
- If you have open work time, check the list for the next actionable item you have time to complete. Do it.
- Review your list every day.
- Do a more in depth review every week.

I think that’s about it. If you have the system in place, and you can trust it, you no longer have to think and stress about what to do next.

And that’s the key thing I want to touch on here; if you put something in a list, you don’t need to think about it while you get on with other tasks.

Sounds good!

Except. Except if the task is a creative one.

In Bram’s episode of Luke’s Creative Podcast, we talked about writing down show ideas. He writes down everything. I used to write down everything.

The reason I stopped writing down all my juggling show ideas is that once I did so, the idea would be “completed” and I’d no longer think about it. Just as the Getting Things Done system suggests.

But if I DIDN’T write it down, I’d keep thinking about it. And I’d think about it while doing other things, other jobs, even while working on other juggling acts. The idea would grow organically in my head, and gain inspirations from other events and jobs, and get stronger and stronger.

Of course, there are some ideas I didn’t write down, and promptly forgot. This might be a bad thing, or it might not. Maybe I forgot those ideas because they weren’t worth remembering or considering further. Maybe.

I’ve found the same thing happening in my other creative pursuits too. When I have a story idea, I sometimes write it down. When I go back to it, I’ve not been mulling it over, and it seems a bit empty. But if I don’t write the story down, and it’s a good one, I run it over and over in my head, and it can’t help but become more elaborate and complex, and more interesting, and so I think about it more.

Unfortunately this means I have, at any one time, four novels bouncing around in my head, as well as numerous short story ideas.

Thankfully I’m pretty good at getting things done, partly because I’ve developed a way to systemize my goals and tasks myself, and partly because I have waaaaay more free time than most people. Even if I waste hours and hours a day, I still have plenty of time to write blog posts like this.

Apart from my list of Plan and Goals for 2011 (which I didn’t post here on my blog this year, but here’s my list for 2010), I have a running to do list.

At the top are links to blog posts and videos that I find while disconnected from the internet (which is most of the time while working on a cruise ship) and that I’ll check out when I get home.

Next are books I want to add to my to-read list on GoodReads.com.

Below that are “creative” things. For example, here are the blog posts I want to write:

“Blog post about photo shoot.”

I must have added this about 10 months ago, as I did the photo shoot for a front cover of a juggling magazine with my old DSLR camera.

“Post 5 ball routine.”

I have a 10 minute video of a comedy routine I do with 5 balls and an audience volunteer. One day I’ll upload it to YouTube and write a blog post about it here on the blog.

“Blog post about new camera”

Right. A review of the Canon 60D. Which I’ve now had for 10 months or so.

“Kotor”

I visited Kotor, in Montenegro, and have a series of photos already uploaded. But I want to present the photos in an interesting way, which I’ve yet to think about fully. When did I visit Kotor? April 28th. April 28th in 2010.

“Controlling the Frame of Reference
- Modern Christians and their knowledge of the Bible
- The Bible as History”

Two more essays I thought about writing to go along with my Spiritual Experiences and Atheism blog post. You know, the one I wrote a year and a half ago.

And so the list continues.

Are any of these tasks important to me? Yes! I’d love to write all of them.

Yet because I wrote them down in my to do list, I no longer pondered them. I didn’t work out what I wanted to say in each one. Then, when I have some time, I look at my to do list, and these tasks stare back at me. Instead of being able to complete them right away, I’d have to think about them quite a bit first.

But I have my laptop open in front of me. And I have lots of ideas rolling around in my head. Like some photos I want to develop in LightRoom. Or a video I want to edit. Or some song lyric ideas I want to jot down. Or a website I want to read.

Or a blog post about not being able to think about stuff once I’ve written it down.

So the “already thought about task I didn’t write in my to do list” gets done right away, and the “in my to do list task” is put off for almost two years. Maybe I need to make a list of “things to think about next time you don’t know what to think about” but I don’t have that much control over what my brain thinks about.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I kept a diary for a year. All of it is in text files, sitting in a folder on my hard drive, backed up on various hard drives and in the cloud.

So now what do I do with it?

Well, it’s been handy to look up names of people I’ve met, or places I’ve been, but as time passes that will be less useful.

In 10 years time I could read through the whole thing, and see how much of a dick I was, but there’s no way I’m going to read through the whole thing now.

But I want to see how much I can learn about my life when I was aged 30 years old. So here goes!

First step: combine all text files into one. I’ve done that already, using Automator on OSX. It’s handy for stuff like this.

Step two: write a python script that filters out all punctuation, line breaks, tab breaks and spaces.

This leaves me with a huge list of over 200,000 words.

Step three: modify script so it counts up how many times I’ve used each word.

Easy!

Total number of unique words in the diary: 9,608. Is that a lot? I guess it’s a pretty varied vocabulary.

The top 10 most common words:

10449	 i
9310	 the
7244	 and
7115	 to
5633	 a
2871	 it
2705	 in
2573	 of
2327	 my
2280	 but

Boring!

Step four: import into a spreadsheet where I can scroll through the words and tag each one as either a Name, a Place, a kind of Food, an Action or an Object. The vast majority of words are none of these, of course.

This is more time consuming, of course. I decided to ignore all words I only used once or twice each, as they make up about two thirds of the 9,608 words. And I’m just not clever enough at python scripting to do anything like this automagically (and certainly not while unconnected from the internet) so I tagged each word by hand.

The results?

Let’s start with food-related words. I’ll share the top 24.

267	 food
227	 breakfast
126	 dinner
97	 pizza
47	 burger
47	 eat
44	 drinks
42	 lunch
34	 eating
31	 tea
30	 drinking
25	 shots
21	 pasta
21	 tasty
18	 cake
17	 mustafas
16	 cheese
16	 chocolate
16	 hungry
16	 milk
16	 yummy
13	 coffee
11	 crepe
10	 parliamento

I think this is quite educational. I mention “pizza” more times than I mention “lunch”. This doesn’t mean I ate pizza more times than I ate lunch, but I guess pizza is more important for me to record in my diary than one meal of the day.

Burger probably ranks so high because of the 8 Bacon Cheeseburgers in 8 Days project I undertook last September. Since then I’ve eat more burgers than I normally would do in a year, mainly to see if I can find a tastier burger. And, of course, with such a project in mind I’ll write about it in my diary more often.

Mustafa’s Hänchen Gemuse Kebab? The best kebab place in Berlin which happens to be right on my street? 17 visits in the last year, I’m guessing. And 10 trips to Pizza Parliamento, my favorite pizza restaurant near my apartment.

“Tasty” and “yummy” pop up more than I would have thought. I guess “yummy” is a word I’d use more in a diary than normal conversation.

Next set of results:

Places!

139	 berlin
127	 park
122	 bar
71	 apartment
71	 hotel
65	 ejc
61	 hot-tub
52	 airport
47	 gym
41	 prinsendam
40	 london
39	 bookshop
37	 cabin
32	 hill
27	 cafe
26	 boat
25	 theatre
24	 bank
24	 ubahn
21	 port

Berlin wins, of course. But there’s a lot to learn about me here. “Park” means Victoria Park in Berlin, where I go to juggle every day when the weather is good.

“Bar” is self explanatory, right?

“Hot-tub”? When the weather is good in Berlin I go hang out in the park. When the weather is good while I’m on a cruise ship, and even when it isn’t, I usually spend an hour per day in the hot-tup and pool. On a sea day I hang out while the sun sets, otherwise I hang out while we sail out of the port.

“EJC” isn’t just a place, but an event, which I mention throughout the year as I was part of the organizing team.

“Gym” in NO WAY means a place where I get fit. Instead it means the gymnasiums at juggling conventions.

The “Prinsendam” is a ship that I perform on six or seven times a year. And other words like “airport”, “cabin, “boat”, “hotel”, “ubahn”, and “port” just show how much travel is a big part of my life.

Next results?

Activities/Verbs. A top 20:

772	 went
568	 show
565	 think
441	 work
427	 juggling
385	 going
265	 chatted
265	 said
259	 sleep
244	 make
239	 played
193	 guess
160	 chatting
157	 met
152	 tried
146	 ate
146	 feel
146	 remember
141	 play
139	 found

This seems pretty standard, I guess. And saying “I guess” might explain why I do so much guessing.

Looking further down the list, I notice “116 sex”. I know for a fact I didn’t have sex 116 times!

And then “97 shower”. I know for a fact I had a shower more than 97 times!

“Combat” is mentioned 90 times. And “juggle” (as opposed to “juggling”) another 83 times, and “juggle” 80 times.

Way down the list is “uploaded” at 47 mentions, but that’s high above “downloaded” at 23 mentions. I guess this shows that uploading new content like podcasts and photography is more important. Or something.

Strangely “photography” only gets 68 mentions. I thought this would be higher, but it’s just down to word choice, I guess. That brings me on to the next set of results…

Things, objects, nouns, etc. The top 20:

375	 bed
298	 photos
267	 food
222	 room
214	 video
205	 ship
197	 music
183	 internet
183	 song
168	 club
152	 book
143	 podcast
139	 stage
130	 head
129	 shows
110	 camera
109	 game
109	 songs
100	 guitar
99	 facebook

See? Photography is very important to me. So is music and performing, and reading, and my online life.

I’m not sure what else I need to mention about this list of words.

And on to the final set…

People!

This time, to be a bit more inclusive, I’ll list the top 30.

279	 Julianne
242	 kim-nga
104	 luke
69	 kissha
68	 pola
62	 daniel
54	 declan
49	 olga
48	 eva
44	 karo
43	 alex
39	 doreen
37	 flo
35	 jeff
33	 dj
33	 nathan
33	 scott
31	 rym
29	 john
28	 billy
28	 kyle
26	 christine
26	 jesse
26	 tim
25	 jochen
24	 david
23	 nat
22	 corinna
22	 jessica
22	 jj
22	 lee

And let’s just start at the top. “Juliane” is, of course, my current girlfriend. I met her for the first time at the start of June, so she wins by quite a number of mentions in under three months worth of diary.

Second place is “Kim-Nga” who was my girlfriend last year. We were together from October to early January, so about three months again. Though “together” is funny word for a long distance relationship.

Third place is “Luke” which is me. This is because I addressed many diary entries to my future self, saying “Hey Future Luke, reading back over this diary, here’s what you did today. This is reflected in the song I wrote last September called Future Luke.

Kissha is friend in Berlin who I kinda dated in the spring. Pola is my ex-ex-girlfriend who still pops up in my life quite often. But in a good way, as we are still friends.

And then as I look down I see friends I hang out with in Berlin, people I’ve spent time with on cruise ships, people who have stayed at my place, people I’ve been to juggling conventions with, and people I met last year in New York.

Some people don’t feature much in my diary though, even though they feature quite large in my life. I’m not sure why I didn’t mention them more.

This includes:

1. Girls I met in Berlin, with whom I hoped to begin some kind of relationship, but for some reason it didn’t work out. So I’d think about them quite a bit, and mention them every now and then in my diary, but wouldn’t make it in every time I thought about them, only when I met them, or planned to meet them.

2. People I spent just a few days with on a single trip, and might have changed the direction of my life in a big way, but following that I didn’t meet them again.

3. People whom I chat with on an almost daily basis online, who are just part of my every day life but I don’t “do” anything with them worth writing about in my diary.

And then some people on this list are there for negative reasons. “Lee” was a very annoying guest entertainer I had the displeasure of spending three weeks with on a cruise in the spring. In fact, I didn’t spend much time with him, I actively avoided him, but the other entertainers kept getting annoyed with him, and all I heard from them were complaints.

Actually, I think Lee is the only negative placement in the above list.

Finally, in the 365 days I was aged 30, I had sex with 5 girls. I’ll not say who they were, but I’m glad they all made the top 30 above.

That’s it! This is such a weirdly abstract way to analyze ones life, I’m not sure if it is helpful or unhelpful. I don’t think there’s anything else I need to share about my life for a while.

Last note:

The longest “word” in the diary came out as “long-distance-non-dating-friend-with-no-benefits”. This is a specially invented term for Robyn!

“I was listening to a podcast featuring Richard Herring. In it he did a book reading, from his latest book, called How Not To Grow Up. The subject matter really resonated with me. Oh Fuck I’m Forty, and all that.

I’m not forty, but today I turned thirty.

In How Not To Grow Up, Richard talks about maturity and many other subjects. There was one part where he mentioned eating chicken, and pitying another overweight 30-something in the queue. Thankfully I don’t find myself that pitiful. Or do I?

No, I don’t.

…

The other thing Richard talked about was keeping a diary, alongside his more public blog. He can’t write about relationships online, as people might read it. The wrong people.

But when he came to write his book, the blog was only half the story. The diary was also very important.

So I thought “I should write a diary too!” Who knows, maybe in a decade I can look back at this part of my life and write a book based on my diary, and my blog, and the photos from the time. That probably won’t happen, but this could be fun. Maybe I’ll only keep it up for a week. Maybe a month. A year would be awesome. Or maybe until another random life event.”

That was on August 26th, 2010. It’s now August 27th 2011.

And it turned out that keeping a diary for a whole year was a fun experience. I wrote in varying detail about what I’d done each day, who I’d met, and the various bits of media I consumed.

More importantly I ended each day with “Thoughts:” and tried to set out what and how I felt about my current life, work, play, relationships, health, etc.

I learned a HUGE amount about myself. It’s like having an ultra-personal conversation with someone every day, and it made me think through many aspects of my life that previously would go unexplored.

Simply put, I think keeping a diary made me a better person.

And now I have 365 text files, each named for the date in a 20110826 format. So what next?

I’m going to stop writing my diary. The reasons are pretty simple, I think.

1. I’ve become way better at thinking things through. At the end of the day I’ve developed the habit of considering what I’m doing in life, and the actual writing it down is secondary to the mental exercise.

2. I think doing something like this for more than a year makes into a chore rather than a fun activity. I’ve set my self year-long goals before. For example, in 2002 I spent the entire year sleeping on the floor. The only time I slept in a bed was when invited in by a girl, and I thought it would be a stupid move to ask her to join me on the floor for the sake of a pointless challenge. And in 2003 I didn’t drink alcohol for an entire year.

So yeah, a year of doing something rather than not doing something is fun, and it lets me prove to myself how well I can stick at something.

3. My life has settled down a bit more. When I started writing the diary I had no girlfriend, and wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted out of life. Now I’m in a very enjoyable relationship and I’ve found some kind of direction again. Or re-affirmed my previous ideas.

4. TIME and ENERGY!

This is a big one. I’ll write up another blog post about just how much I wrote. But it took time out of every day, and if I fell behind it would take more time as I had to remember back.

In total I wrote, in the combined text from 365 days of diary entries, 210,019 words. That works out at 453 printed A4 pages.

If that was a novel, it would be a really chunky novel!

And as I also like to write novels, all my writing time, and all my writing head space in the evenings, was all going into my diary rather than into fiction writing. And even then I wrote about 50,000 to 70,000 words of fiction in the last year.

And not only fiction writing, but blog posts too. I used to get my thoughts down in writing when I had something to share here on the blog, but for the last year all my thoughts have gone down in my blog first… and then I’ve not written them up for a public audience.

So, for all those reasons, I’m going to stop writing my diary. Look out for way more content on my blog, and please don’t mind if some of it is slightly personal in nature. (Though not TOO personal, don’t worry!)