firstly i would like to thank anyone and everyone who donated to me recently, especially one person who i won't name for privacy reasons. thankyou. i now have funds enough to acquire the nodes and equipment i need to complete my array of 8, and i should also be able to get some anaesthetic provided i can find somewhere selling it (topical, there is little chance of my acquiring any injectable lidocaine - that said, if you know someone that sells it and ships to the UK, or you would be alright with me sending you money so you could buy some on my behalf and post it to me, i'd be much obliged.) i will let you lot know what goes down with buying it, using it etc: i've got to source certain things - i'm not sure where exactly sells the gauge of needle i need or what G size the 5mm width ones are, i need a new box of latex gloves and some other crap, and i need to buy nodes - i'm gonna go with Amaal's ready-made ones instead of making them this time round, since that's just easier and they have a nice gold coating for an extra layer of bioproofing that i wouldn't be able to add myself. this will all get filmed too so you'll be able to see whatever i do directly.
more importantly: documentary stuff. it's still in production (in case anyone thought it had died or whatever) - 20min long, looking at my stuff and the biohacking world in general, produced entirely by my friend Paul Turrell (a film Master's candidate at the University of Birmingham, you can find some of his work on YouTube. Voxis Productions is his one-man production company.) the teaser for the documentary is here. Paul has asked me to put out a call for any biohackers, grinders, transhumanists etc in the UK - he is looking for secondary contributors to the documentary. anyone with implants, or who has done any surgical work on themselves as part of experiments, or who is really interested in the philosophy of transhumanism - written blog articles or books, spoken in public about it, that sort of thing. for that last one you don't even need to have any modifications yourself, just if you can speak well about the philosophy and get the idea of it across well for laypeople you would be perfect. he would like to include short little interviews with this kind of person in the documentary. he says he is not sure whether he wants to travel to the contributors to film them, or bring them to him in Birmingham, or do Skype or whatever yet, but he'll think about it and i'll let you know when he's decided what would be best. i am guessing it will probably depend on how far away you are - he prefers to film things in person because the quality of webcam footage is apparently usually too shitty to use for film work and will look really bad. (but if you come to Birmingham, i will buy you a pint and you will get to hear a big pile of transhumanist ramblings.) anyone that contributes will get their name in the credits (and i think also when the viewer first sees you in the film), you won't be an anonymous soundbite unless you'd prefer to be.
if you're up for this sort of contribution, you can email me - lepht trioptimum.com or Paul - voxisproductions gmail.com. i'm just going to forward messages to him about this, so it's probably easier to send them to him directly, especially if you have questions about the film, contributing to it, etc etc. please don't be shy, the more of these little interviews the better. the only other contributor is me and i'm not exactly a fuckin movie star.
cc
L
i'm completely broke, sadly. this month my partner is no longer employed so much much more of my income needs to go on food and bills and rent, which leaves a lot less than i usually have for unneeded things like experiment materials, the subscription fee for the MMO i play when i have the money, treat food and alcohol, meeting friends etc etc. so unfortunately that means i can't afford to complete my node array this month, although there ought to be enough scrimped up by the end of the month so i can get some good video / photos of a multiple node install for the documentary (they'll also go up here prior). i had hoped to be able to do it this month, but underclass gonna underclass.
i'm also gonna be seeing a psychiatrist tomorrow to see if they think any more talk therapy would help with my depression. as previously mentioned (i think) they don't think i have an autism spectrum disorder anymore, nor BPD - currently i just have "major depressive disorder" and "chronic back pain from spinal lordosis" as the things the government is paying me for while i try and get some qualifications together. i am really hoping it helps but trying not to get too hyped up for it because they might say no, or it might not do anything, you get the idea. more as it happens
L
i need to use this blog more. i kind of stopped because it felt like a biohacking-only blog and while i've been ill there's been fuck all to say about that, but it is actually my personal blog so i might as well update it for my own sake. there was a comment on youtube that said something along the lines of "this used to be a good biohacker now it just whines on its blog" and that also had a lot to do with not feeling like i could update this unless it was to say something really ~*good and positive*~ that could in no way be interpreted as whining or off topic. of course there is fucking nothing that i can say that fits these criteria so whatever, i should never have broken my "don't read youtube comments" rule (i ended up doing it as part of a "people do too say nice things about you!" conversation a good friend was trying to have with me a couple of years back, and lo and behold i was right.)
anyway this blog doesn't have any followers so i can write what i want. i'm not going to stop writing about biohacking stuff, but right now all i'm doing on that front is gathering money for components (i made a savings account for it! like an ADULT!)
i'm aiming to finish my array of nodes first, since i've been mostly screwing with chip stuff since last i did anything. i'm thinking i might break the rule of not putting them in your index fingers, although the thumbs are definitely still out, but these will go last if i do install any there since it's gonna be hardest to heal those. including the indices i'll need five nodes (i know, i know, that's shameful) but one particular site is filled with keloid, encapsulated debris from a prior experiment & this will require its own extensive operation to remove that shit. i'm not looking forward to that particular procedure but it's necessary for a complete array and besides it probably should come out anyway. my mess, my problem. this operation will require a nerve block at any rate since otherwise it will be too painful and i won't be able to do any decent excavation work on it, i'll just end up shakey and probably won't be able to take it for very long. hopefully not too much of the tissue is compromised, i'll be annoyed if it doesn't leave me with enough to work with for nodes later (especially since i'll have to come up with some sort of compromise where i maybe install the node at the same time as i remove the mass, which of course will require some additional pain and lengthen the procedure).
i also need to consider potential other projects, whether that's things i stopped doing in the past because of ill health or new ideas i couldn't pursue during that time. i'm well aware that i have utterly fucked myself over by not being available for years on end, but i am still trying to climb out of the hole, after all this time failing and falling back down to the bottom again.
lastly, if you tried to contact me in the last while and never got a response, please feel free to try again now, and please accept my apology for leaving you hanging. i am trying hard now to not do this to people anymore.
L
it will probably be christmas day by the time most of you read this, or later. i hope you have or had a good day wherever you were or whatever you were doing. may 2017 be less shit than 2016 was.
if you sent me email in the last year, i'm really sorry for not replying to you. i do read most of what arrives but there's a high volume of spam plus a similarly high volume of legit emails, so it's hard to reply to them all when you have no motivation to do ordinary day to day tasks and even less to interact with people.
my partner is looking after me - he's doing a good job. i have not been very well this last year, and it didn't help that i spent about six months trying to do a networking qualification that was too advanced for me and not actually relevant to my eventual CEH qualification since i already know basic networking (it turns out that the one i was trying to do, the CompTIA Network+, is actually quite high level and involves a LOT of background reading for someone who has been on the programming or security side of things rather than the network engineering side. it's probably a fantastic exam to take if you want to be able to understand the logistics of every network everywhere and be able to engineer the perfect network for the situation your clients are in, every time, but it is way too in depth for a hacker to learn from scratch.) i've contacted the training provider about this & luckily they were really understanding - they apologised for having suggested the Network+ to me on the phone, and reset the time i had paid for so that i didn't pay for six months of wasted training and stress that got me nowhere. i'm currently working on the CompTIA Security+ & should be going back to that after christmas. i haven't done lots and lots of it but it seems like it's a lot closer to what i've been teaching myself for all this time than the Network+ was.
i am trying to be more accessible this coming year. my immediate plans are to attempt to restart my haptic compass project, and to complete my magnetic implant array. this will eventually also involve removing the failed experimental debris left in my right small finger (this debris is what you could see in the short BBC3 documentary, for those that asked - it is the encapsulated remains of a node whose experimental covering i was testing. it no longer works and will have to be removed before i can use the space to install a new node but this would be a long and involved surgery with a lot of pain and for this reason i have been avoiding it.)
merry christmas to you all, and many happy winters to come
cc
L
okay, several questions have been floated at me regarding wot i fink about gender issues, etc. and i figured well i do have the word "genderless" on my sidebar so i ought to at least explain what i mean by that rather than spit a tumblresque EDUCATE YOURSELF SHITLORD at you and be done with it. by the way when i was first learning the ins and outs back in like 2004 that really was the recommended way to deal with strangers, friends and family asking you questions. It's not my problem to educate you about this, it's yours, fuck off and google it!
first up just so we can get the basics out of the way: i'm not talking about biological sex here. i have XX sex chromosomes, normal female secondary sex characteristics, no chest hair here. i'm not denying that this here meatshell is a female-type one rather than any theoretical "neutral" type (i dunno, like a genetically modified construct shell or something.) i'm on about gender, as in, the social roles expected of men and women respectively. this is what people mean when they throw around "gender is a social construct" - they mean there's no brain difference between men and women that makes us behave in "masculine" or "feminine" ways, just differences in our upbringings and culture. (some people are using it wrong because they confuse gender with sex, but w/ev.) i'm of this opinion too, which makes me very unpopular with some people who are invested in the concept of having been born with a "male brain" or a "female brain" for whatever reason. [there's some cool recent neurological research relevant here also.]
having got that out of the way, i have no problem whatsoever with people who are fine with their gender or the concept in general. if you wanna behave in line with the social role you're prescribed and the ways you're expected to behave, you do dah. same if you wanna take on the other role cause you identify deeply with that gender. i don't think doing these things makes you "wrong" or "a bad person" or "oppressive" or whatever. i'm just one of the people that doesn't like either one. for this reason, i'm not a transman, as some people assumed (which is pretty strange honestly because i have tig ol' bitties that i don't try to hide and i wear bungloads of makeup and stuff, i'm not sure where you'd get the idea i was uncomfortable with a female body / considered myself a man unless it was "you do man things like coding and biohacking, you must really be a man" which is... er, a faulty conclusion with flawed premises, let's say.) sometimes expressing this set of opinions and preferences over and over is a bitch so i just go with the associated labels, which would largely be "agender" or "genderless". it's the same reason i refer to myself with "it" pronouns.
speaking of these, i really honestly will not get my arse in a tangle if you don't use them. some people don't like neutral pronouns. some people find "it" to be dehumanising and would rather say "they". some people think the whole thing is stupid and will refer to me with female language cause of my obvious physical sex, and so will strangers who have no idea about what kind of thing i prefer. this is fine! it's just something i do to make myself feel better. i massively appreciate the people who do use the same language i do, but this is pretty much going (very far) out of your way to alter your normal writing methods as a kindness to me, so i'm not asking you all to. you don't have to worry if you see a text that talks about me "misgendering" me (that is, using different language than i prefer). it's not going to upset me or set anything bad going in my head. in fact, i don't google myself and will likely never see it.
hopefully that more or less straightens people's questions/concerns out? hit the comments if not.
L
it's up on the BBC3 iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/item/8ca601f1-2d4f-412a-8c94-ad0b3497ac4e
this is a BBC3 professionally filmed documentary rather than the semi-amateur one Paul is working on (that one will be done by the end of the next academic year, since it'll be his graduate thesis). this one is also free to watch for anyone and should work fine for anyone outside the country (i think, i never tried.) it's also on youtube, on BBC3's channel. Paul's documentary will be a lot longer and more in depth than this one, which isn't all that long, about five minutes i reckon. it won't take you long to get through. i did a lot of interview-type talking for this one in various different places, and upgraded my RFID chip on camera for them. the film crew were great and really decent people to work with, and have been all the way up to its release.
also some of you have been asking me about various gender and pronoun related things on twitter, which i can't explain in tiny little tweets, so i'll try to do that in another blog post. enjoy watching me forget how to talk properly whilst being filmed
L
recent experiments seem to suggest the possibility of using acetone to dissolve various RFID and contactless devices to gain useful components. i also found the local Rag Market selling 100% acetone for cheapsies, which is always good. by "useful" i do of course mean "useful for installing beneath one's sliced open and surgically retracted flesh in order to further one's admittedly bizarre experimentation". biggest problem right now is making coiled-copper antennae, which are very delicate, suitable for implantation (i.e. bioproof) whilst still retaining functionality. it seems that a square shape, not filled in in the middle, with the chip connected to the coil on the outside (and the whole thing coated in whatever) is the best proto-dealio to be manufacturing, as it seems like that's the most stable construct that maintains the original shape of the device somewhat but also has the smallest surface area. as everyone probably figured out by now, items with a small surface area are far more likely to take beneath the skin than larger ones, and for related reasons, stuff with holes in is better than stuff without, so long as the holes don't compromise the bioproofing (whatever it is you've used for that). but i've had a few failures (conceptual and otherwise) & now need further supplies to fuck with. i'm going to be messing around with a contactless, refillable bus pass they sell around this area of Birmingham this time (sort of like an Oyster card if you're familiar with those). more as it happens / doesn't happen / gets horrifically infected and results in loss of limbs.
in other recent escapades i went with Paul (the documentary bloke!) to the Circus of Horrors a while ago. it was pretty amusing, although the posters led me to expect less than the quantity i actually witnessed of midget cock, balls and/or arsehole (how does he lift that weight, even with what are proportionally rather large tools?!) we accidentally bought VIP tickets and thus Paul calmly appreciated the artistry while i drank both of the little bottles of red wine we were given, plus a complimentary vodka lemonade, and spent most of the evening thinking a mixture of "HAHAHA WOW YAAY" and "I LIEK FISHNETS, I LIEK CORSETS" which i'm pretty sure is exactly what you're supposed to do anyway. it was immensely fun, they gave us free snacks and a tiny box of delicious truffles, and we even got to talk to the ringleader/owner afterwards (i did not say anything retarded, surprisingly.)
while that has exhausted my "fun stuff" budget for a while, i have got some cash left saved for experiments, so worry not. i'm not spending scalpel money on drink like some sort of *crazy person*.
cc
L
