GenesisDreams

Oh No!

Friends - Metaposts My housemates have discovered this blog. The end is near!

How To Travel With A Salmon

Books - General - Metaposts - Music I have been really slack in updating lately. Sorry about that everyone. I have had to time to update, I've just been doing so much recently that I haven't had the energy to sit down and write all about it. I will catch up soon. I will be moving into my new place in a week, so if I don't post a big Fringe Festival and after review before then, it will likely be a couple more weeks before I get the net hooked up and everything organised for me to post properly again. I will get around to replying to all the emails I have been sent too... Sometime ^_^ Oh yeah, I'm reading some Umberto Eco and listening to lots of Faithless.

A Revolution Around The Sun

Metaposts Exactly one year ago today GenesisDreams went live. I made my first post, and the rest is history. Today also marks the end of my first semester on exchange at Nottingham University. We have to be out of our rooms by 10am. I'm going travelling for most of the summer. So I thought to celebrate this anniversary I would look back over the past year and use my GenesisDreams entries as focal points around which I'll summarise the events in my life. So here it is, the world according to my blog. June 12, 2003 Motivations - "this blog will become one of the most important links I will have to all the family and friends I will leave". La raison d'être of GenesisDreams. I think it was served it's purpose well. Tomorrow's just an excuse away... - Posting well past midnight, that would become the norm. Tech Stuff - The start of comments! How I love comments. Listening to Radiohead's Hail to the Thief June 13, 2003 And then there were five. - Wulfen joins the Japan Trip adventure! What a great addition he made... Cabbage! June 14, 2003 Toot! Toot! - Two weeks before we depart we organise our JR Rail Passes. They certainly came in handy. June 15, 2003 Art of Noise - Listening to The Seduction of Claude Debussy by Art of Noise. I still love that album. June 17, 2003 Lantastic - Work, friends, university, travel. I haven't Lanned in ages. June 21, 2003 Wasted Day - I spent the whole day reading a book, and now I can't for the life of me remember which book. June 27, 2003 One sleep to go! - The day before I left for Japan, the day I finished my last exam for the semester, the beginning of my first fantastic adventure. July 04, 2003 Big in Japan! - First post from another country! Japan blew my mind, and still does, I want to go back. July 08, 2003 Tired in Japan. - The plan to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum and Studio Gainax! Only one of those worked out, but it was fun all the same. July 15, 2003 Missing?? - The first of many outages for GenesisDreams. I'm not exactly sure what caused this one. July 16, 2003 Got Item!! - Able to post again, it's the Gion Festival! Kyoto is perhaps my favourite Japanese city. July 21, 2003 Back in Tokyo - My last post from Japan, I had hoped to write more while I was over there, but we were just so busy I didn't get the chance. I've also still not finished my "Japan Trip" webpage. July 29, 2003 Home at last - Back in Australia, where I didn't want to be. I already missed Japan by this point, and was heading towards some serious post-trip blues. July 31, 2003 Australia is boring - The start of my six month sojourn back "home". I love my family and friends, and I miss them terribly, but Australia really is boring. August 03, 2003 Moving, just keep moving... - Driving with Fragma, those were great times. Just hanging with Fragma and the guys was great. It's probably one of the things I miss the most. August 04, 2003 Thirty days - The outline of the Japan trip. Where we went and when. We saw so much in so little time, but there is still so much more to be seen, and I also don't think you can truly experience the place without living there. I want to live there. August 05, 2003 A 65-litre life - My backpack, containing all that I own. It's here with me now in the UK, and it's served me well over this past year. August 12, 2003 With or without you... - One of my biggest entries, describing one of the most event filled couple of days that happened last year. Fragma broke up with Lisa, we all got together and drank, and hung out, and messed around. I came to realise just how much I valued my friends and got a hint then how much I would miss then now. This was also pretty much the beginning of the Fragma/Littlewing relationship. August 14, 2003 We're all going to die! - An asteroid is going to his the earth in 800 years time. Better watch out! ... Ok I got this far, but now I've got to go. Always leaving things to the last minute I am. I'll be updating Genesisdreams a lot less frequently over the next couple of months. I'll do my best to get to net access while I'm on the road, but it might be quite a while between updates. When I return I'll fill everyone in on what I've been up too. Written while listening to Halycon & On & On by Oribtal. If there ever was a song to accompany a "clip show" of my life, I would want it to be this one.

Century

Japan - Metaposts - Music - Personal This is my 100th GenesisDreams entry. It doesn't feel like that many at all. Sometimes I feel like I'm slipping away over here into a completely different world. It's hard to explain, and I'm not sure if I like it. My life here now is very different to how it was back home. I don't think I've illustrated that very well in the GenesisDreams entries I've made since coming here. I've accepted it, take it as the norm, and so on the surface, when I write about things occurring in my life, all of the superficial things probably seem very similar to how it is back home. I don't have a very objective perspective, so I can't say for sure, but that's the impression I get reading over what I've written. I don't think it appears like much has changed at all. Would anyone out there like to comment on this one way or another (Brendan, you're probably the most objective person who reads this blog, I'd appreciate hearing what you think). I feel like I've lived a century's worth of years these past couple of months. I have been challenged in ways I never imagined, I have seen things I previously only dreamed about and I have participated in “stuff” beyond my comprehension. I have communicated, interacted, drank, lost, kissed, fondled, jumped, watched, hid, hit, missed, wallowed, yelled, run, listened, played, bled, shuffled, kicked, washed, fucked, talked, driven, fallen, tickled, tripped, worried, screamed, nodded, waited, learnt, enjoyed, shrugged, slept, dealt, spewed, ate, laughed, thought, hugged, tasted, read, dreamt, wished and longed with a frequency and ferocity far outstripping anything before, and in more ways than I can describe. I am still very much myself, but I feel like a completely different person. I feel like nobody knows me now, least of all myself. In the past I would have hated that, I need to know; now I’m just not sure. I really don’t know whether I like it or not. the sun is casting shadows an afternoon is fading I ask, but no one knows the answer to the question my life is like an island where does this ocean go? From Where Does This Ocean Go? by Ilaria Graziano off the Ghost In the Shell - Stand Alone Complex OST.

Categories

Metaposts Well I've just finished going back through all of the posts I made while on Blogger putting them in different categories. Every post now had one or more categories which broadly define what it is about. You can get a list of all the posts of a certain category by either clicking on any of the category types listed in the menu bar on the side, or on any of category names dispalyed at the top of a post. This post for instance is a member of the "Metaposts" category, meaning it is a post about posting. Clicking on the Metapost link above will take you to a page containing a list of all the metaposts on my blog.

Comments

Metaposts I like receiving comments. Particularly when they are supportive, or interesting, or just plain funny. So I’m now in the process of manually exporting all the BackBlog comments over into this system. It shouldn't take too long, the only main problem being that the timestamps for all of the comments will be today, tonight, rather than when they were actually made. This isn't a big deal though. I've also cleaned up the overall layout a little, changed the style a bit, put my favourite banner back up the top, and overall everything is almost done.

MoveableType

Metaposts Thanks to my good friend Nash, GenesisDreams has been remodled using the MoveableType publishing system. Now it's bigger and better than ever before. I've ported all my old blogger posts over to it, and I'm looking into duplicating the comments too (unlike blogger, MT has embedded comment features). The actual site design will also get a going over, amd I'll finalise that in the next couple of days. Once I get all that done I'll try to get back to posting every couple of days. Sorry for being silent for the past week.

Anonymous

Friends - Metaposts When I started writing this blog I told all my friends about it. Its raison d'etre was, originally, to provide everyone with a constant stream of updates on my life when I'm half a world away. All my friends and family could just check GenesisDreams, see what I've been up to, add some comments, and be on their way. Then the blog went down for a number of months, and becuase I wasn't updating anymore, nobody was checking the site. I've been back for a little more than a week now, but still nobody I know is reading my blog. The thing that is interesting is that I'm beginning to like it. I find that I am censoring myself less, knowing that my friends and family aren't reading this. But now they are; and that's probably a good thing. I never intended for this blog to be a journey of self-discovery or any of that pretentious crap. I'm not trying to produce great writing to influence people, I don't comment on world events or politics to any great extent, this is simply a blog about me, for people who know me to read. There are some things I wont talk about here because I don't want the world to know about it, there are some things I wont talk about here because I don't want specific people to know about it. That's just the way it is. As always I'll write what I feel like talking about, I'll write what I think other people would be interested to read, and baring any unforseen events like my FTP going down and not being able to update, I'll continue writing for some time yet.

Memento

Friends - Metaposts - Personal I've been trying to decide how I should go about filling in everything that happened during the past three months. I don't want to focus solely on the past, as a lot of rather important stuff has happened recently. So what I've decided is that I'll do it in stages, talk about what happening right now in my life, but interspace that (during the slow times) with tales of my recent history. For the last couple of days I've been feeling pretty shit. I had a really big fight with my good friend Littlewing while we were out in the valley Saturday night. I was drunk, I was tired, I hadn't slept properly since Thursday (having my last exam at 8am on Saturday morning) and overall I was really on edge. I had had a great day, it was good to finally get everything finished, but the night was a real downer. I feel bad too becuase we were supposed to be celebrating Calvin's 21st birthday, but the whole night was subverted by our disagreement. I'm not going to go into the specifics, but I left feeling very hurt and angry and somehow managed to get home very very late. Things are getting better now, but for a while I felt as bad as I've ever felt. I'm listening to the Gabriel Knight - Anthem Mix by Bart Klepka at the moment, it fits my mood perfectly.

I'm back!

Metaposts Thanks to my good friend Scuzzy, I'm back. My original host changed its settings, meaning that I could no longer FTP into it in passive mode, I have to use active mode. Meanwhile Blogger only FTPs in passive mode. So basically it meant that I couldn't use the two together anymore. Scuzzy has provided me with some webspace though, and it works fine with Blogger, so now I'm back! A whole lot has happened in the two and a half months I've been out of touch. I've finished my thesis! My last exam was yesterday! There are less than two months before I head off to the UK! And overall everything has just been really hectic. I'll start filling in the gaps of what I've been doing while the genesisdreams has been down over the next couple of entries. I actually have some free time now (Wow!) so I'm going to endeavour to post as often as I can.

Ride On Shooting Star

Japan - Metaposts - Music Ok for those who aren't familiar with Addict, I'm still listening to the FLCL OST, and the blog title is a reference to one of the tracks (and the ending theme to the anime). Recently I've been having trouble working up the enthusiasm to write blog entries. I still can't publish, so nobody can actually read this, or at least won't be able to read it until I fix the problem and start publishing again. If I wanted just to keep a journal then I wouldn't bother publishing anything online. Part of the reason I like this blog is becuase I can let all my friends know what's going on in my life (and occasionally get some feedback from them). So without this "online" aspect I'm finding it hard to write regular entries. I'll do my best to keep going during this offline period.

Right Now

Japan - Metaposts I can't publish my blog. I haven't been able to publish my blog for almost two weeks. I've written a couple of entires, but I've been too busy lately to actually sit down and work out what the problem is. I'll fix it soon, and then you will have a sudden hit of blog goodness. I've been spending way too much money playing Initial D - Project D recently. I bought a new card Friday, a new car, an AE86 this time, and started from scratch building up the upgrades. I'm about 10000 points away from getting the Group A Engine for it, which is really when it comes into its own (I can't drift like Takumi, I need the speed). So I pumped in close to $40 and played for about two hours. I've been practicing Akina downhill, but I don't come anywhere close to Fragma's best time on that track, which is around 3:07. I really need to start writing my thesis ^_^ Right now I'm listening to Van Halen's "Right Now".

Missing??

Metaposts - Travel Ok for some reason I can't actually access GenesisDreams from where I am at the moment (which is J-Hoppers in Kyoto for those who are interested). I'll update more when I get the chance, just wanted to check in, let everyone know I'm alive and well. Anyway some of Adante's pictures have been uploaded and you can check them out here: http://gallery.rocketfish.net/ under Trips. Those are all Ads' photos and they cover the first couple of days in Tokyo. I'm not even going to begin to try and explain them now. We have started burning CDs of our photos now becuase we are taking so many. They will all be up sometime in the future. Anyway I've got to run, I hope this appears, even if I can't see it myself.

Tech stuff

Metaposts - Music I'm procrastinating becuase I don't want to study, so instead I'm messing around with the blog some more. I've added comment functions now using BackBlog, so you can all give me feedback on what I write. I've also fixed up a few formatting things and played around with the "look" of the blog. It's very simplistic, partly becuase I'm not a visually creative person, but mostly becuase I believe this is a place for me to write, and for others to read my writing. It doesn't need to be flashy or have lots of bells and whistles. Meanwhile I'm listening to Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief", which I am really enjoying.

Tomorrow's just an excuse away...

Metaposts This blog itself is probably temporary, I've only spent a little time getting it up and running. Hopefully in the months to come I'll be running the beta of of system my friend nash is writing, which will give me a lot more features to play with. In the meantime, sleep calls.

Motivations

General - Metaposts - Travel In 15 days I leave for Japan to spend four weeks backpacking around with my friends, squandering all my money on sake, and generally trying to forget that I am half way through writing an engineering honours thesis that I don't know will ever be finished. In six months I am heading to England, to the University of Nottingham, to finish my fifth and final year of tertiary study as an exchange student. Eventually this blog will become one of the most important links I will have to all the family and friends I will leave over here. At the moment though I'm simply aiming on getting used to posting entries often, I've never kept a journal before, so my first few posts will likely be quite erratic. Hopefully I'll get the hang of it, so when I do go away you guys can keep up to date with what's going on, any maybe not miss me quite so much (that's you especially mum).