The Return of CFS...

Well, the title says it all really. My CFS has just returned almost full throttle and I have no idea why...

At approximately 22:30hrs on Tuesday 22nd February, after a gap of at least a month and a half, possibly a little over two months, my CFS symptoms returned to a level I haven't had for a few months. Moderate Joint and Muscle Pains, Leeching tiredness and general collapse-ification.... 

Fun times really...

Not all that interesting though.

 

In other news, today I completed my first French Prelim at Int 2 (Intermediate 2= Slightly higher than Standard Grade, the Int2 course was originally created for people to take as a bridging course from SG to Higher if they only achieved a General Grade). It went pretty well I think, or at least I hope. Although there was one question that I thought was very badly worded and I was confused a bit by it, but I completed the piece with 20 minutes + the entire 40% extra time to spare so I was quite happy :-)

In case any of you are wondering, I'm taking all of my prelims, NABs and other such things at home supervised either by my Tutors or someone from Learning Support.

 

On Thursday I'm supposed to be going down to another Film Event. I've been invited to go to Glasgow and see the Dewar Arts Awards Film Recipients Showreel, of which some of my older work will be displayed. It's going to be very embarrassing as anyone who's followed my work will know, the newer ones are a thousand times better than the older ones... but hey ho... It'll be a nice event and I might get to see some friends down there.

I also finished off my Manifesto and Profile for SYP sent that off on Sunday (2 days late but oh well)

 

Finally the most exciting news of the week is... *drum roll*... we had our first Production meeting for the codenamed "Seer" Project. Basically it consisted of five teenagers, sitting round a table in my half built kitchen, having lunch, drinking tea and randomly throwing ideas at each-other. It was actually very productive and within four weeks you will all see the first sneak preview of what is to come. Our Script-Writer Hannah Doughty has already been hard at work filling out my very rough ideas. Devon Barnett the amazingly talented composer who actually co-created the music for my latest short, is also now working on some general melodies and Josephine Sillars the equally talented Lyricist has tonight begun work on the first Solo/Duet and group piece. It's all starting to come together. Oh and I almost forgot, Andrew Berry decided to gatecrash for some free food but actually much to his surprise came up with some very good ideas.

Which reminds me... Andrew and I are starting (before the end of the month hopefully) a project for my YouTube channel where we put out weekly videos with VFX etc... So give us a subscribe in anticipation :-)

 

Please subscribe to this blog and the Cerberus Film's one, or my Twitter account @cerberusfilms as theses (most likely my twitter) will be the first places I announce any updates on the film. In fact I think I might go and do one right now since I can't sleep... damn CFS....

 

Much Love My Friends

 

Oliver V. Smith

Karma...

Hello my lovely lovely readers...

 

I only just realised that I've been pretty good with updating my blog recently, I've had some positive feedback from my readers and I'm generally proud of it :-) . (I must be doing something right when a picture of a coffee and cookie gets 78 views in 24 hours)

 

Good stuff and bad stuff has happened recently, and as a lot of you probably know, my religious beliefs are a bit complicated. For those of you who don't know, I do not believe in God, I do not believe in heaven or hell, I do believe that there is a more intelligent, more powerful race of beings out there in the galaxy but they are not gods... kinda sounds very odd when I write it like that but hey ho, I am odd. Anywho, I've come to start thinking that there really is such a thing as Karma.

For those of you who don't know what Karma is-

Karma (Sanskrit: कर्म IPA: [ˈkərmə]  ( listen);^[1] Pali: kamma) in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect (i.e., the cycle called saṃsāra) originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh philosophies.^[2]

Thank you Wikepedia. Basically it boils down to, good things and bad things balance out. Hindu's believe that if you are good in one life, you will be reborn in the next in a better situation, for instance if you are from a low level Caste in this life but live your life well and do good things, you will be born into a higher Caste in the next. The reverse is also true, with the worst being, turned into and animal and then a plant.

I digress though. I don't believe that interpretation, I think that all things live in a Balance, kinda like the Deferi in Star Trek Online, for instance, no matter how good you are, bad shit is gonna happen to you eventually. I've been told it's quite pessimistic, but I don't think it is.

 

For instance, take yesterday (or rather Tuesday which is no-longer yesterday), I was in Glasgow having a wonderful time with a couple of old friends, basically killing time waiting for 16:00 to go to a film event as part of the GYFF (Glasgow Young Film-makers Festival). I won the award for best individual film and therfor the amazing prize of an Alienware M15x Laptop :-D It's gorgeous and I love it just as much as my MacBook Pro. I've always wanted an Alienware computer and I really wasn't disappointed. I'll take some pictures of all the merchandise it came with at some point and post them here. Anywho, yeah, I was carrying back this massive box from The Arches all the way along Argyle and to the top of Buchanan Street to get to Queens Street Station, when a girl, probably about 16 or so spots me with my arms full of box and swerves towards me saying "alrigh' mate, how are ya", brushes past me and then disappears... I didn't think anything was wrong as I was just concerned about walking around Glasgow at 18:30 with a £900+ Laptop. It wasn't until I got to the station and tried to find my phone that I realised it had been stolen. I was not happy. After emptying the contents of my bag and pockets in the middle of the station, I decided to put the laptop in stoarge (£6) and run back down to the Arches on the off chance I had left it there.

No such luck. So I trudged my lazy, unfit arse backup to the station and resigned myself to the fact that my phone had been stolen.

I am I the only one seeing the balance thing here? I win a wonderful thing but lose my phone.

Other things like this have happened in the past aswell though, for instance the whole police thing happened at a time when I was finally starting to get back on my feet and almost ready to return to school, getting nominated and accepted for awards and then my dog getting diagnosed with Cancer. That sort of stuff.

It happens all the time, whenever something good is happening, something bad is inevitably around the corner. But it seems to balance out usually and so the Bad has the same or similar weight to the Good.

 

I think that's probably enough ranting from me for one day.

I had an amazing time in Glasgow Olivia and Emma-Jane. Thanks :-)

 

I should be back down that neck of the woods in the next week or so for another film event.

Oh and I'll also hopefully be visiting people in Blairgowrie and possibly even Dundee in the next couple of weeks :-) (all thanks to my new 16-25 rail-card, a 3rd off really makes a hell of a lot of difference you know)

 

Anywho,

Much love my friends

 

Oliver V. Smith

Essentials of life

Well its 11:32 am and I'm currently eating a Choc Chunk Cookie and drinking a delicious Caramel Macchiato in Starbucks after a very long morning travelling to Glasgow...

Valentines...

Well I thought I'd write a small blog to commemorate Valentines Singles Awareness Day.

 

I never liked the idea of Valentines day... It's too commercial, too phoney... why do people need a single day to be romantic?

If you love someone, or have someone special, then everyday should have some special-ness to it. Instead of being romantic once a year, why not try once a week....

The whole idea of people sending secret love letters to the person they adore is silly. At least in my view.

 

A lot of my lovely readers may be saying to the screen that I'm only saying this because I'm single... Well... No, I'm not.

I'm hopeless romantic really. I love the ideas of romance and falling in love but never Valentines. Whenever I'm in relationships, I make and effort to do something nice or romantic as often as possible for my significant other... Usually my plans backfire like the poor misunderstood Coyote from Loony Toons but I still try lol.

 

It's just another commercialised holiday.

 

Having said that though, I do some people who are hopelessly in love and yet still make Valentines extra special by spending the entire day with their significant other or taking them out to their favourite restaurant, or even travelling 400 miles to curl up next to their boyfriend and watch movies...

Most of this post hasn't made any sense but I don't care really

 

I'm in love with life and certain people in it.

 

I suppose the random moral, *gasp* I know I don't use them very often if at all, is When shit hit's the fan, make sure you're the monkey flinging it :-)

 

I love you all 

 

Much love my Friends

 

Oliver V. Smith

Avatars and Online Games

Well I've been debating about posting this but I don't see anything wrong with doing so.

What you're about to read is my Discursive essay for my Intermediate 2 English folio. I wouldn't recommend trying to copy it.

It talks about the subject of Avatars and what is the distinction between murder of a person and murder of an avatar.

Just do you know, I do not think that deleting an Avatar is murder, at least not yet, quite simply, the Avatar is not aware and therefor it is not alive and cannot be murdered.

(btw, it's not finished yet, still got to find a title, suggestions welcome, and I've also gotta write a bit more in places)

 

An Avatar is the computer representation of a real person in a Virtual World. In some of the more technologically advanced countries such as South Korea and Japan, it is against the law and punishable by prison sentences to delete another persons avatar. Some even call this 'Murder'. But is it really murder?

 

Murder in the real world is defined as the unlawful killing of a person. To be a person, it has to be flesh and blood, tangible and alive. Therefore if it's not alive it cannot, by conventional standards, be killed.

 

In a case from Japan, a woman permanently deleted both the avatar and account of her ex-husband. Many people may think at this point, “So what? What’s the big deal…just create a new avatar and get back to the game.” Such a cavalier attitude shows a lack of understanding for the psychology of virtual worlds and the people who inhabit them. Those that inhabit these spaces often do so for long periods of time. They put in hundreds of hours, over many years into these virtual world environments carefully moulding and crafting their character avatars. They have fought quests and battles and have earned vast amounts of loot and virtual goods– all of which in the mind of the servers are tied to the owner’s account.

If the user’s account goes away, so to does all of the personalization of the avatar as well as the associated virtual goods. Hundreds of hours of work gone in an instant, not to mention the devastating loss to the creator of said avatar, which in turn makes them the victim of the crime as the Avatar is not aware or sentient.

 

Anthropomorphizing of an avatar is nothing new. In fact the word avatar comes from ancient Hinduism and is meant to be a manifestation or incarnation of a god on earth. In modern times, avatars have come to mean representation of people on earth. To a human being who chooses to represent himself via an avatar, as tens of millions are doing all over the world, the line separating the two is often blurred. To some very avidly involved in virtual worlds in fact there is no difference at all.

 

Thus from a psychological perspective, one could certainly understand how the destruction of an avatar– a carefully crafted and highly evolved representation of the player– could feel like an attack… perhaps even the killing of a part of one’s 'soul'. However it could be argued that it is vastly different from the murder or unlawful killing of the human being the avatar was meant to represent.

 

How would most law enforcement agencies respond to this case? If it were a murder in the real world the investigators would seal off and be forensically examining the area for DNA and a murder weapon. In the Virtual world however you couldn't search for DNA but you could search for what is the equivalent to computer fingerprints. Every computer has it's own unique fingerprint, despite all attempts to cover ones tracks, there will always be a record that is traceable to the perpetrators computer, whether it be their IP address or just a few stray lines of hexadecimal code at the bottom of an email. The only way of destroying this evidence is to demagnetise the hard-drive and therefor completely erasing all traces, but only on that computer. If something is transmitted across the internet, it's out there, theoretically forever.

 

Of course when this case occurred, the link between human and avatar was still rather tenuous. As time progresses and technology improves, people and avatars will grow closer and closer. Eventually, they may even become indistinguishable from one another. Through electronic implants, an avatar could become fully integrated with the human being it represents. If so, what will be the future meaning of “avatar murder” as time marches on?

 

That said, it seems that the police in Japan made the right decision in this case not to charge the woman with murder but instead with unauthorized access to a computer system.

Normal service will resume in my next blog, I promise.

Much Love My Friends

Oliver V. Smith

Time and Opportunity

Ah it's good to be back here, sitting in bed at 1:40am, MacBook Pro on my lap, writing down my thoughts and musings... Then deleting them and rewriting them all over again :-)

I'm sorry to my faithful followers, who there are many now, I've had in excess of 5,000+ hits for my past 4 posts so I'm overjoyed, I've been spending far too much time on the podcast over on www.cerberusradio.posterous.com, which has also been racking up hits. Since the release of the podcast at 10:00am on tuesday, we've had at least 140 people listen to our 1hr 42minute podcast... so thanks to them. Apparently people enjoy our podcasts, I do them with two friends who I go way back with. One Mr Daniel Hird (or HirdyGirdy) and one Mr Andrew Berry (sometimes known as Panda or thelittlehobo). They're both extremely awesome people...

 

Anywho, enough of that. I assume you're here for my life I suppose, and what I've been up to. Well on Friday the 4th of February I won the Animation Category at the Kingussie Food on FIlm Awards which was great in itself, but the real highlight of the night was being told by two professionals (one of whom is a BAFTA winner) in front of everyone there that I was a Film-Maker. It was the second proudest moment of my life, the being Nominated for a BAFTA of course. The thing is that I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with my life. I want to be a film-maker but I can't ever quite see it working, except at moments like that. Also in attendance were two people who I am now working with on different projects but both for films. The first is Hannah Doughty, who has accepted the role of script-writer for my feature film to be filmed this summer, and is already well on her way to finishing the first draft. The second was Andrew Berry, as well as podcasting with him, we have decided to work together to produce regular YouTube videos.

So here it is, I am officially announcing that starting by the end of February, Andrew Berry and myself will be making a video every two weeks for YouTube, on the other week I will be putting out a tutorial usually relating to the last weeks video. So please encourage us in this daunting task and commitment by subscribing to Cerberus Films.

 

My time is becoming a very precious commodity these days with tutoring on every single day of the week, including weekends, as well as Showstopperz, podcasting and soon the YouTube commitments... I'm going to be a very busy boy.

I don't know whether I like that or not. I enjoy podcasting and working for showstopperz and on films but I also enjoy just relaxing and playing on the Xbox or STO, even just watching the TV. Unfortunately, all of these things are relegated to the very late evenings of a couple of days a week. At the moment I sleep just enough to not fall asleep until the next evening usually, but I don't ever get to enjoy a lie in really, because I know I'm only prolonging a massive list of things I should be doing that day.

 

Onto other news, my love life is officially confused... I wish social networking sites had an option for confused, not just it's complicated... but I won't bore you all with the intricacies of that.

We're pretty sure that one of our dogs has cancer... and a hell of a lot of it... he's covered in lumps but we've been putting off taking him to the vets as we really don't want our suspicions confirmed but my mum's going to take him this week. Oh you silly Bob dog... Well at least it isn't Pip again :-/  For those of you who don't know, we have three dogs, One is mine, Pip a golden lab retriever, 7-8 years old, my Mums dog is Ruby a Great Dane, 2-3 years old, and my Dads is a Red and White Irish Setter called Bob, 5-6 years old. We also have 6 horses (1 Stallion, 2 Geldings and 3 mares) and a Donkey called Flora. Oh and a Cat, very imaginatively called Blackie. 

 

Had a crazy few days recently, all the pipes around the Bathroom Burst so we had to fix it all before turning the water back on. My dad decided to come home from Abu Dhabi to fix it but the day after he goes back (ie Wednesday) the hot water pipe burst again and the drain dropped through the ceiling... so that's what my mum and I spent the morning fixing.

 

I have had an interesting idea about my future education though. Moray Firth School are hopefully starting a 'twilight' school (and no not of the vampire variety) for people in similar situations to me. It's a private education thing where they will use their tutors (most extremely well qualified teachers) to teach small classes (no more than 10 people per subject) various subjects at Higher. They're offering all of the Subjects I was to take, save for one, Physics, Maths, Biology, Chemistry and English. If I can take those with Moray in the evenings for 2hrs per subject per week and then take Higher Music with Technology at Fortrose, I think it will be the best option for all parties (mainly me :-P )

 

I'm sure I came on to write something else aswell but seeing as it's 02:24am I should probably try and get some sleep, especially as I have English Tuition (the subject that takes it out of me the most) and I have to send off a film before Noon.

 

Take a look at the pocast

 

Much Love my friends

 

Oliver V. Smith