Hate: My Personal Origins

A continuation of my essays on hate, this time focusing on how I learned to hate with every iota of my being when I was young. As I’ve grown older, it has become apparent that nurture overwhelms nature to a great degree and looking back at how being bullied changed me I can see that now. Why? Because one can change back after being changed…

I was a cheerful, happy kid who got criticized for talking too much in my early years. The world was so fascinating and a source of constant wonder, so I wanted to share that with others. Born into a family where my siblings were half-brothers sixteen and twenty years older respectively, that meant I was dealing with adults full time and they don’t like to hear from kids. They were also more concerned with extending their adolescence or reliving it, so that had something to do with it.

To be clear, I was never beaten, abused, or mistreated. Instead I was pretty much left to do whatever I wanted -- which could have been disastrous. Fortunately for my parents, I was a relentlessly good kid enamored of heroes and acts of valor. Sadly, I never had the kind of health or physical strength to do much with those impulses.

Interesting Weirdness

As much as I despise writing about my terrible health, I have to say sometimes my experiences with it can be very interesting – if I can notice them past the misery. The infection I’m suffering from right now has given me two experiences involving perception that fascinate me.

The first was awakening and getting up after forgetting to take the contacts out. Everything was foggy inside the house, so I removed them and put my glasses on. There was still a mist throughout, so I took the glasses off. Still foggy. Then I noticed that all light sources had rainbow hues halos around them. Even more strange was that I could look at a naked light bulb without experiencing discomfort or pain, which is extraordinary given I’m very light sensitive.

It eventually faded out after an hour or two, but it was something I’d never experienced before. Today I’m back to light hurting the eyes, so at least that is normal again. What mechanism was responsible for this I do not know and am very curious to discover.

The second experience was time distortion last night. Normally if I suffer it from being ill, it tends to be lost time. By this I mean time goes by in large chunks and I don’t realize it until I see a clock. But last night I suffered time distortion that was the exact opposite. I was dead sure many hours had gone by, but only an hour or so had. Even more extreme was a couple of instances where I thought several hours had passed and it had only been fifteen minutes! It got to the point I didn’t trust the clocks.

Bizarre and disturbing are the two words I’d use to describe that particular side effect of the infection. I hope to never again experience it.

I suppose I should document where things stand with the infection. After two doses of Ampligen, my fever (or more accurately what passes for one with me) broke around 4:15 AM (which I was sure was 6 or 7 AM). Delirium ended after that, but breathing is still difficult.

My blood pressure at the clinic was sky high for me. Initial reading was 150/100 and the one taken after I'd had time to rest was 142/90. I’m usually in the ballpark of 120/80 and even when fighting an illness like bronchitis only hit 134/85 for a maximum. All I can surmise is that my entire system is under attack. Meditation techniques had little effect as can be evidenced by the change in readings.

A Strange Lump

Awakened yesterday with a silver dollar sized lump having formed inside of one of my thighs. It got very painful, but I decided to tough it out. Not so good an idea. It has become the size of a fist and I was very ill last night. Time for an emergency trip to the doctor.

Packing things in a backpack, just in case.

UPDATED:

That’s a relief. Instead of possibly being a blood clot of some kind like I suspected due to location, it is instead a very bad infection. Antibiotics have been procured and a procedure scheduled for when it becomes an abscess.

This one is a doozy, I feel worse than when I had the flu and bronchitis. Once again I am sidelined.

Changes to the Blog and One Thing Not Changing

While I really liked the minimalist theme in place since the beginning of the year, the free template was not very flexible and easily broken. So now I’m trying out this Blogger provided one since it is the closest in feel to it though even more minimalist in appearance. Also, I’ve enabled the Mobile option to see if it displays a little better on smartphones and tablets. Any feedback on that particular feature would be appreciated.

After doing some digging, I found I was not alone in seeing my traffic decline starting in December. Google has made some changes that have demoted a lot of sites in their search engine and it doesn’t look like they’ll be undoing them. That means I’ll never see the traffic I once had

One massive change by Google that is actually destroying livelihoods is a revamp of the image search that now shows the full size images on a website rather than preview images. So sites that would get traffic to sell images and photos now do not because they aren’t linked to as prominently. The theory going around is that this is a result of pressure from Pinterest and Facebook in the arena of searching for pictures.

Weird Movie Origin involving He-Man, Spider-Man, and Van Damme

Movie Legends Revealed: He-Man & Spider-Man Films Became Cyborg ?

Only in Hollywood could something like this happen: a combined shoot of Masters of the Universe 2 and a Spider-Man film in the 1980s instead gave us a science fiction movie B-movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.  This little piece of trivia completely boggled my mind for I knew Cannon Films had the rights to Spider-Man for a long time, but to find out it was linked to another He-Man movie is bizarre.

Would this have resulted in cameos in each other's movie for Spidey and He-Man? The world will never know. I do know somebody needs to write a parody script ASAP!

The Folland Gnat: A Lightweight Champion

While my infatuation with very lightweight fighters began with the failed F-20 Tigershark, another stole my affection once I found out about it. The Brits built a plane during the Cold War that couldn't get any smaller and actually succeed. That little bird was the Folland Gnat which served as the RAF's trainer and Red Arrows acrobatic team mount for many years. But it was the obscure Gnat F.1 fighter version that peaked my interest after finding out it saw combat with the Indian Air Force.

Tiny by jet fighter standards and even WWII prop fighter dimensions, the Gnat was a potent adversary in gun based air to air combat thanks to its high maneuverability and hard hitting 30mm cannons. It racked up a good number of kills against Pakistani F-86F Sabres which were not exactly large fighters themselves. This video shows both variants and you'll even see Gnats next to Sabres for an excellent size comparison.

Americans will probably remember the Gnat from the movie Hot Shots, a spoof of Top Gun starring Charlie Sheen. Since it is little known here in the States, I figured I'd link to the video. Folland's little fighter is a good looking plane deserving of some love, in my opinion.

One of these days I'll build the Aeroclub 1/48 vacuform kit of the fighter in my collection. If I only had a nickle for how many times I've said that about a kit...

Fractale Episode 11: Paradise

The ambitious series ends in blood, death, and an extremely emotional ending that upset more than a few viewers online. With the future of humanity on the line, will Clain be forced to watch the love of his life die? Fractale: Reiterated concludes with HD screen captures and revised text.

With too much of a story to fit in twelve episodes, Fractale ends up with only eleven, consequently making this powerful finale densely packed with exposition and action. It is frustrating that this series was rejected by otakus in Japan and one has to wonder what could have been if it they had embraced it. As it is, we are left with this rushed, but conclusive ending to Clain’s journey toward adulthood and the final fate of the Fractale system.

The final episode picks up right where the previous one left off, with a shocked Clain and Nessa being confronted by Barrot. In an effort to protect the feisty doppel, Phryne sends her through the barrier to Clain. However, the Temple’s resident scientist and lecher alters the barrier with a wave of a hand so they can hear everything. If there was ever any doubt he was a sadist at heart, that is erased by his “free lesson” to Clain about the secrets of Phryne and Fractale’s God. Amazingly, the character becomes even more despicable than before.

Health 1-28-2013

Urg.
I’m tempted to leave it at that, but this was not a good weekend and I’m still feeling little better than one of the walking dead. It would be more accurate to call me the “sleeping dead” because I’m what the Brits call completely knackered and spent most of yesterday in bed. At least, I think I’m using that word correctly.
Crossword puzzles and video games have shown me to be very out of it, so the head full of cotton is not making things easy and the results show it. Three tries to spell “results,” sigh.
This is a consequence of doing too much and going out too many times while feeling very iffy this past week. And the brain just turned to mush and I can’t think of anymore to write.

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) Review

In 2004, Miyazaki’s loose adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’ novel hit Japanese theaters and quickly became the third highest grossing film in Japanese history.  Filled with lessons about life and love, the film’s main story takes place against the backdrop of massive war with treachery and danger around every corner. Magic meets steampunk, but the movie is really all about heart. UPDATED with new screen captures and revised text.

There is magic to be found in Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films and Howl’s Moving Castle is no exception. If a film comes out of Studio Ghibli you are guaranteed an incredible experience filled with beauty and emotion. Well, anything other than Pom Poko, but the less said about that movie the better. Yes, I am recommending buying this even before starting the review. So what makes it an automatic buy? Read on to find out.

The film begins with the title structure; a steam belching monstrosity on mechanical legs lurching through the mist of an European countryside.  It is a beautiful view of an ugly thing, something that only Miyazaki could pull off. Shortly after seeing the castle ambulate into the mist to escape pursuers, the heroine of the movie is introduced.

An Odd Bit of Spam

2013 continues to be an interesting year for blog referral spam here at From the Sidelines. The latest one intrigued me a great deal due to how ridiculously long the link was:

applehut . info / 2011 / 08 / 05/ woot – deal – 16gb – hp – touchpad - %e2%80%93 – 379 – 99 – 5 – shipping . php

I’ve added a lot of spaces to disable the link from working, but did check it out in a Linux virtual machine. The site is another fake meant to lure traffic in and poses as an aggregator of smart/cellphone news. It even has an “About” page! That particular post is very out of date which was a tip off that they hadn’t really linked me. Also, I’ve never written about the HP Touchpad! Something very amusing to me is that the post itself may have been spammed in the comments.

If you are going to sucker people in for a deal, it would be smart to at least have the date on the post be within the current month and year, don’t you think? Not to mention using a product that isn’t out of production and replaced by cheaper alternatives that are vastly superior.

As far as how safe the link is to check out, I cannot say since I used Linux to visit it. There might be some Windows (or other OS) based malware there in the ads, but I wouldn’t be able to tell. I highly recommend not clicking on this or any other link from there in your referrals.

Also recommended is adding Google Analytics, Statcounter, or some other tracking service rather than relying on Blogger’s own stats. They filter this spam out a lot more effectively, though they aren’t bullet proof. In the end, your own judgment is your best defense against spam.

Neither registered this referral.

Saw Two Sundogs Today

So of course, I did not have a camera along. My hands are too shaky too take pictures using a cellphone, so you will have to accept my word on this happening. They were equidistant from the sun on either side and fairly bright. It was if a rainbow had tried to form and forgot the arch only leaving the supporting pillars on both sides. The arcs visible in photos at the Wikipedia entry on sundogs were not visible at all, which made them even more surreal looking.

It was an interesting day that was capped off by seeing this coming home from running errands and getting groceries. Due to hitting a hardware store that actually has plastic model kits and supplies for that hobby, I’ll be getting back into that pronto. Funny, I dreamed last night that I needed to put shelves up in the weight/hobby room for built models. This was an unusual occurrence, so it should help me keep to that promise.

Health 1-21-2013

Last week was not a good one with chest congestion, coughing, and sinusitis flaring up. I didn’t get half of what I wanted to achieve done, but that half that got done was worth hurting my health a bit. More driving than I’d done in a long time was part of it due to church related tasks, so I really can’t complain too much.

Suppressing coughing and sounding like death warmed over was the main problem once I got anywhere. Since the effort involved forced a lot of down time on me, I did play a lot of video games – poorly. It was time killing at its most grinding, involving dying repeatedly in order to advance along storylines.

Today is going to be a very tired one, that I can already tell. Monday’s usually are but I put out a lot more activity this weekend than I probably should have. It will be nice when the flu and other bugs going around finally fade out in this area.

Dry in the Breadbasket

Forget about the fluctuating temperatures this winter because there is something more problematic going on with the weather. There is a serious lack of precipitation to alleviate the drought that has been going on since last year. Take a look at the map and you’ll see the heartland which produces most of the wheat, corn, and soy beans is not doing well.

Not a pretty picture, is it?

Locally, things aren’t great, but could be worse. The fields near creeks and rivers fared well, but those farther out varied considerably this past growing season. Even though we are near two creeks, quite a bit of the corn was underdeveloped. Farther west things were a lot worse in Minnesota.

The map tells me food prices will be going up with even more pain at the grocery store than just the inflation we have been experiencing. Lucky for me I’m attempting to downsize my body so less food isn’t a problem. But to families raising children this is a real concern.

Hopefully the weather will get more unpredictable and do something to relieve the situation. If you are interested in following the drought, check out the National Drought Mitigation Center page for it. It is regularly updated, hence the screen capture above to catch the moment.

India's Bantam Weight Fighter: The LCA Tejas Displays

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for light weight fighter jets and so has the Indian Air Force. They are more committed to the concept than any other country with a sizable air force, but their aging MiG-21s are true antiques in the 21st Century.  For some years they have been developing an indigenous fighter to replace the Russian plane in a protracted development that makes the F-35 program look speedy by comparison.

The LCA Tejas is a small delta winged single engine multirole fighter. While still not ready for prime time and not really in service yet despite official pronouncements, it is an interesting little plane. Much propaganda about it has been put out, but it is no match even for the now elderly F-16 (40 year old design now). Talking about any fighter project tends to devolve into mindless nationalism, so my writing that may offend some -- but it is the truth.

Still it is not a bad idea for the needs for India, since the likely opponents are China and Pakistan if conflict arises. It could make for an excellent little point interceptor especially if the Mk 2 ever gets built with a more powerful engine and AESA radar. To me, it is a modern Folland Gnat F. 1 which was a dandy little fighter proven in combat by India.

The big question is will it ever go into full production? Only time will tell.

Until then, enjoy this flight display by one of the repainted prototypes. You can tell it is one by the peeling away paint on the underside showing the original gloss white scheme.