slim-fast

dinner last night was a quarter of this ancient tub of ice cream i found in my drawer of the freezer and i think it's fucked me up. i dunno what the hell else it could be since i haven't eaten anything else in the last 48hrs or so - tried to make a Slim-Fast shake thing i borrowed off my roommate but it smelt so fucking bad i couldn't stomach it even starving - but i can't even keep pills or drink down now and my stomach is killing me. think i'm gonna have to call the doctor.

fuck yeah cause you all come here for bodily fluid news. in other depressing meatspace happenings, today was the last feasible day for the student loans to come through and nothing has. i'm gonna call them again; i fucking hate sitting on hold with their self-interrupting autoresponder system. turns out i also can't apply for the "student hardship fund" until this document comes through, which is why i need to apply in the first place.

...okay, it's getting pretty bad now. i was going to post account data since people offered enough times but i've gotta go get an emergency appt. or something. more later. cc

L

data loss

hdd totally fucked, power's on the fritz as well now. random outs. fans don't work all the time so i have a desk fan belonging to my roommate sitting behind the machine while i try to answer emails.

i've also lost the HOWTO files i was working on, and the list of people that wanted them, and all the operation documents/photos/videos i had before. fuck.

i'll start the skeletons off again tonight and when i finally do write the docs, i will just post them here and on some filesharing services. sorry if you emailed me and were told you'd be sent a copy - you won't, i had all your addresses in a text file and it's gone.

also i do know how to use PhotoRec etc. but the HDD was too far gone - recovery tools turned up fuck all on initial scan and i didn't have another disk to recover to anyway so i just zerofilled and reinstalled everything (plain reinstall failed and fucked GRUB up). now for the moment it works, but idk how long it will last. i wish i was better at repair work.

in meat news, i missed the last two days of this week but have gotten to more than average classes still. the Xanax isn't really suitable for listening intently to lectures though and one day i ended up just composing replies to people instead of taking notes, like a fucking slacker. well, i am a fucking slacker, but you know.

myself and Muad-Dib are down to £1.40 between us or so, now, apart from the change pot. my roommate uses so much TP that i think said change is gonna have to go on that instead of something a bit more useful (MD thinks she eats it.) Student Loans still haven't paid me or sent any letters, but it could just be slow post - still freaking me out. we're gonna go scouting Marks'n'Spanks for 10p discount food tonight on a tip from Daz, our homeless friend who lives in front of the alleyway to the flat.

here's hoping for 10p belgian truffles and 20p pork roasting joints, motherfuckers. otherwise we're gonna be the ones eating TP.

L

UPDATE: the bastard rich people in their Jimmy Choos and pashminas fucking beat us to it, and by the time we got there they'd already filled literally cartloads of the reduced stuff and were trailing the staff waiting for them to reduce more. we got basically nothing - a sausage roll and some lemonade. assholes. they don't even need all that, they could at least leave some for other people - just a few bits. we saw one lady in gold jewellery and a fur coat cleaning out an entire shelf of reduced meat - so there was literally none left for us - then paying for it with her debit card and saying "See you tomorrow" to the cashier. i hate people with no concept of sharing. we didn't want ALL the food, we just wanted SOME, you fucking dicks. we need to fucking eat.

shit. sorry. i'm just worried.

obstacle

laptop's hdd is screwed. unmountable from any kind of bootable media nor from the OS itself, which isn't even getting to GRUB before it freezes. looked at it from a miraculously functional Ubuntu 10 live disc that had been loose in Muad-Dib's pocket - fucked. can't mount the encrypted volume that contains the Fedora distrib i've been living off for years, upgrading it again and again, waiting for the memory, or the hdd, or something else i can't fix without money, to break. looks like it has. the touchpad, DVD drive button, volume controls and keyboard all went long ago.

conducting memtest anyway. maybe it's actually a RAM problem somehow plx and i can just scavenge someone else's spare gig for it or see if i have some around here i might have stolen from somewhere... can't really remember what's in the box of gomi. i'm pretty sure it's fucked though. i'm gonna try to reinstall F14 (only disc i have and the DVD writer is on the fucked machine) then download another image and upgrade to... what is it now, 17? 17 beta? i'll lose all my bookmarks (pissed) but the fiction and all that shit is backed up or posted on the blog. if the box is completely boned i'll gut it and see if i can use the hdd as an external, scab the memory for something.

you know what caused this, the loss of my main frankenmachine and my current reliance upon a tiny, dying XP notebook my mum gave me for taking notes in lectures with?

fucking auto kernel updates. all i did was run the auto yum update and click the happy little YOU NEED TO REBOOT ME! icon on the taskbar. fuck.

L


PS. Xanax better than Valium. supply limited, but feeling less dead for the moment. pray to nothing it lasts; sometimes wish i believed in that shit for sheer placebo effect. the Suboxone stopped working completely this week and now i remember why i started taking morphine. working on finding an alternative, outlook piss poor though.


edit: memtest finds no problems. reinstall commencing. cock.

sell your integrity for fun and profit

several people have contacted me regarding advertising on SA. i have refused them all. i don't care if it would make money, i don't care what i could use that money for. i'd rather work at KFC (which refused my last job application on the grounds of "not adequately qualified for this position").

as i said to the last advertiser, i don't want to associate myself with the kind of untrustworthy information that adverts represent. you could not trust the ads; you'd know they were only there because someone paid SA money. you'd know that i don't believe in the ad copy or use whatever product they're shilling. you'd know i'm not in any way qualified to tell you what you should and shouldn't buy, in this case, subscriptions to a job news site. it would be pointless at best.

at worst, the customers they want to attract would see the company's name and logo on the blog of a self-harming mentally ill drug-addicted fringe-science biohacker, and would form an impression of that company which is not quite the one the executives intended. i explained this, but i don't think anyone listened.

lastly, i fucking hate advertising. i hate the way it tries to manipulate people's use of their resources without their consent or knowledge. i hate the way advertising firms try to get into people's subconscious minds to make them buy, buy, buy. it is degrading and dehumanising. you can evaluate how to use your budget by yourselves.

so, no, there are not going to be and never will be any adverts on SA. not Google ads, not banners, not Lijit ads, not anything. fuck ads.

L

reinitialising

i got enrolled in University again for fourth year, which started Monday. i was actually pretty proud of myself for getting to the advising appointment and doing the whole registration thing without any fuckups other than being an hour late. it turns out being fucked up is considered a legit excuse for that, somehow. they said they'd make the bureacracy go away since i was "one of their best students", although i think i'm actually just one of their most easily recognised charity case students. i got to the classes then, but that night i took my pills too late and ended up playing RIFT on MD's account until half three. so today i slept through all three classes and so did he. i guess it could be worse.

i also don't have student loans sorted out yet. my mail keeps going MIA after people send it, never arriving at my place because of its unorthodox address - slightly fucking worrying as the loans people have/had my fucking passport. no word on if or how much money will be paid. October rent due date approaching rapidly, kinda shitting bricks here.

head has been a little better. intrusive thoughts have ceased for the time being. plus i actually have people i know in this year, so maybe i can have more than one friend, a housemate and a partner as my meatspace social circle now. doesn't really matter since you guys are better support than any "friend" i ever had irl, to be honest. apart from Feoa, who is beyond good to me, but she needs space and help just like i do - we can't constantly be relying on each other since that would make both of us worse.

i did get some decent Valium from some of my street friends, though, so i should be able to sleep better tonight. only ten of them but they're real this time and this time i'm not gonna pop all of them, get anteretrograde amnesia and spend four hours telling Muad-Dib how x shitty romance book hero i read about when i was thirteen is totally hotter than him.

yeah, i was fucked. i was trying to block out pain from removing an embedded test prototype in my wrist and man, that tissue doesn't like letting go of embedded shit once it gets a hold of it.

gonna go take a bath, go to bed at midnight like an old lady and see if i can sleep through Quiz Night. (0900 lecture tomorrow.) fucking pub. cc.

L

PS. went to wedding of MD's sister Saturday, was recognised by guy i'd never seen before who had found Berlin lecture and shown it to fifty of his repulsed employees. lulz.

pulled from the scrapheap

i have been trying for a considerably long time and find myself unable to explain what precisely i have been doing since February, when you last saw me. physically, the answer is simple: sleeping; cooperating with medication regimes one after another as they are proposed, adjusted and readjusted; eating convenience food; staring lifelessly at whatever useless shit was in front of me, uselessly trying to pick up my work and my life. i lost myself.

i also spent a considerable portion of the time acquiring the means to build an Exit bag. this device is the quickest, most painless way to terminate one's own life. it induces anoxia in seconds via a maskful of nitrogen. there is no pain, only a deep breath in and a gentle sleep. you can't be revived. i had the components prepared and to be honest, my plan for much of that missing time was to kill myself, as it has been before. this time i was far better informed and equipped. i had all the necessary equipment to give my emptied mind a final, irrevocable state of peace.

i desperately wanted that peace. Suboxone does not give the kind of solace morphine does, and it had long since stopped doing fuck all for either kind of pain in my system. my University work was circling the drain, depression and procrastination hovering over it like vultures ready to finish the job. my financial situation was as dire as always, and this summer i could find no research jobs, not to mention the fact that i was still meant to be working on Thistledown full time. that led to Muad-Dib working 8-6 at a shitty phone unlocking shop, for employers who "borrowed" most of his salary, just to pay my rent and get me food to eat. he is living with me unofficially, but he has another place to go to, and he sacrificed his entire summer and all of its earnings for me. you can imagine this did not help the guilt.

i feel like i should explain that more: i carry a lot of guilt around. you saw what i did to my parents, as carelessly as i do everything else; i might be good at H+ but i am also pretty damn good at fucking people over without thinking. i've done it before, i don't even know i'm doing it half the time. coupled with the worst depressive episode i've ever experienced, i had set a date and my life was tabled to end on the third of July, 2011. from around April i'd been experiencing what they call an "intrusive thought" - it's time it's time it's time, strings and strings of the same little fucking messages everywhere. in dreams and in daydreams, scribbled in doodles on my planner, i'd even notice it spelling itself out in paraeidolic patterns on my ceiling or in the patterns of clouds and leaves. it's time it's time it's time it's time it's time. it would insert itself into the little "subtitles" i see in my mind's eye when people talk to me, into lines of my novel when i tried to reread it. i knew the messages were right, was the worst thing.

i realise i am making myself sound even more insane. my consultant psychiatrist says i am sane, but damaged; potayto, potahto. the third of July came around and my mum called, planning a visit for me to go down to England on my birthday. i realised they would fly her up here tomorrow when someone had to identify my body, or they would make Muad-Dib do it. i put the phone down and cried for hours until he got home. he told me in detail how he thought he would react to my suicide. that made me bawl more. we talked and talked until i promised him i would not do it.

the intrusive thoughts are common in extreme depressive episodes, according to Dr. D. they're almost gone. but i'm trying really hard not to sound like an emo kid while still telling the truth: my mind broke. i had the instrument of a calm quiet death up in my attic, i had my will and cadaver donation there, i had instructions to sell all my things to cover my bank overdraft. my roommate was gone for the summer and would never see my corpse. i convinced myself i was going to a blissful oblivious abyss of nothing where i couldn't hurt or disappoint or betray anyone ever again. i wasn't capable of anything for a fuck of a long time after i realised i couldn't give myself even that.

to boot, mental illnesses bring on physical ones. in one way or another i haven't been well for a very long time. that impacted everything to an irritating degree, but luckily is documented by enough doctors and psychiatrists that the University Registry will be satisfied of what happened.

so, consider me that shell pulled barely living from the cybernetic junkyard, half a torso, no limbs and a lolling bald head. my real name is fitting for that picture, after all. the core of me is alive, but the rest is damaged, and it has taken me so long just to be able to communicate with anyone without lying about how fine i am or just shitting bricks for no reason.

i am on the bench, fixing myself bit by bit with gomi. i'll need help before i am a working person again. but i will get there, and i will keep talking about it for a while as i do; should you not want to read this, as i would expect (recovery stories are not often very exciting save for the author) - check back in a few months. i will heal. it might not be fast. you have likely outstripped me tenfold.

thankyou all for your supportive comments, in the meantime. i saw them but was too fucked up to respond. i hope you understand, but equally, i'll get it if you don't. i will try to answer some emails tomorrow.

carpe corporem.

L


edited for stupid typos.

oh look, it hasn't accomplished anything since we last looked

yep. the honours project is still coming along incredibly slowly and consuming all my time. plus now i get to want to kill myself again for being such a fuckup. i'm not saying it for attention or advice, either, it's just a half-assed explanation of what the fuck i've been doing with my time.

in the mean time, here's an essay i wrote, the one i promised to upload a while ago. the marks haven't come back to me yet, i doubt they'll be good; the thing's pretty rambly, and it has screwy titling, but it might prove interesting if you or anyone you know wants a quick introduction to grinding as distinct from transhumanism proper.

feedback welcome, but i won't have time to do a second draft. oh, and i censored my RL full name, matriculation number and academic email, on accounta separation of facets.

L

alright for fighting

okay, so it's Saturday again. what have i been doing this week? answering emails with copypasta, throwing up a lot, coding a new peer matching protocol for my advanced* peer-to-peer system Thistledown because the old one was made of wood, trying and failing to stay up all night to reset my fucked-up sleep cycle (i'm nocturnal. i'm starting to think there isn't anything i can do that will change that, including a fortnight of going to bed at 10pm with hot fucking milk drinks, and the worst thing is my psychiatrist pretty much said the same thing Wednesday.) the all-nighters are also a failed bulwark against the deluges of psychotic images i get when MD isn't here and i'm nearly asleep, and the nightmares i get once i am. worrying about bills. trying to get exempted for council tax. attempting to persuade the student loans people to refinance me next year.

i'll let you know when i do something of value.

mr. searchy man: no. it doesn't matter that you are not the same guy as before. i am just as unavailable as if i were a married Christian hetero with a nice gold ring on my finger, you get me? there is absolutely no difference in the type of commitment we are talking about here. get your arse to plentyoffish.

L




* "It's not broken - it's advaaanced."

your emails

i can't answer all of those, either. there's way too many from way too long ago. this is what's going down if you've emailed me:

- if you were asking for step-by-step instructions for the experiments i've already done, those are being completed little by little. i have a list of those who have asked for them and will send them out to you when they're done.

- if you were asking common questions and i didn't answer you, it is very likely because those questions were already on the FAQ. i would happily respond to each and every person who asks where to get neodymiums, who i am, whether i'm gay, etc. with the answers or a direction to the FAQ, but i just don't have time any more. there are literally hundreds of you asking the same questions. go to the FAQ by the green link, from my profile, in the left sidebar there.

- if the answer to your question is not there and it pertains to implant hardware or control software, or you have ideas for the Southpaw development effort, go to Biohack.me and ask questions in the relevant thread there, or start a thread with your idea. this is also the place to go if you just wanted an update on the progress of the Southpaw or other experiments.

- if your question is a personal one, ask it here in a relevant post, or email me again with [Non-FAQ] in the subject line.

- if you are attempting to romance me, please don't. i'm sure you're great but i get a lot of this and i love Muad-Dib in permanence. believe me, you all will know if ever this ceases to be the case.

- if you wanted the video or photos of my latest experiments, a link to a reupload will be forthcoming.

the rest i will be dealing with personally. emails which cover any of those things above, i'm just not able to respond to and they will have been deleted. (if i had extra time you will receive a lovely copypasta that tells you pretty much what i've said here.) carpe corporem

L

your comments

okay, there's so many i can't actually respond to them all. some salient points:

melladh, Thomas, Phryk, Kuro, Crow, everyone else who responded with support: i was kinda expecting you all to be angry. i really appreciate the patience, yeah? i don't want to get rid of any of you. (apart from marriage proposal man, he sounded really fucking serious and i ended up feeling like a total wanker for having to firmly reiterate multiple times that i am not interested.)

i will add a twitter icon to the blog. i've been meaning to do it for fucking ages. thankyou for your two cents. i'll also link to the PayPal, since two or three people have asked, but i fucking hate begging.

Imran: i will email you about this post-haste. if i can afford it i am happy to speak wherever i'm wanted.

"Muad-Dib" is my top search this month. people have emailed again wanting information about him; he doesn't really have any kind of Net presence apart from a disused Facebook and Bebo, so i can't link you anywhere without revealing his real name and all of his friends' to everyone. his family is on those pages, you get the idea. a brief primer then: he is physically very beautiful, with a swimmer's body, thin handsome face, soft golden-brown hair and massive stormy grey-blue eyes; he is smart, though he doesn't get the same grades i do (it's because he hates University courses); he doesn't think either of the previous two statements are true at all; he's one of the best Heroes of Newerth support players and generally an excellent gamer; he has absolutely no self esteem; he is the sole source of humour in my bleak brain most of the time; he is ridiculously strong, physically and otherwise; he is gentle and kind and eternally patient with me and not with most people. Muad-Dib is the one of the two of us who has friends and a social life.

i do not have a Facebook. i never will.

i will make "I get email" posts if you all want them; ordinarily i just throw said mail out, but it could be publicly displayed for entertainment purposes.

Ultra Tempum: "buped" means that my venous system is filled to the brim with buprenorphine, the opiate drug that keeps me sane. i think i made it up. it's not a word you'd be using in your daily life unless you too are a functional addict.

i will upload the essay and re-upload the video of my last Nd insertion to some file stash somewhere tonight. keep you posted once it's all up with download links and the like. peace, all. carpe corporem.

L

prodding the corpse

hey, i think its eyes have rott - FUCK IT'S STILL ALIVE.

um, hi. you've probably forgotten about my sorry ass by now. have the fans all gone? is that guy who kept asking me to marry him still here?

i owe you all an apology for being away so long. lots of things happened; first there was the move, which was so fucking stressful i kept throwing up, and then trying to catch up with my honours year project, trying to get my application to repeat last semester approved and get repeat tuition fee support for it, trying to catch up with everything else i missed. there was a lot of serious head problems just after the move as well, plus fallout head-wise from the shit i did at Christmas. it still eats at me. then my finances crashed while we were moving, i got a phone call from the bank about how they needed £800 that day, and i had to use up every single penny i and my ma had, anywhere, just to stop them closing down my account. i'm still so broke i can't afford fuck all except rent. Muad-Dib is helping me get food. it's pretty much just potatoes, noodles and those frozen bags of discount meat you get at Farmfoods. i still owe my friend Feoa and Muad-Dib's dad for Berlin, my flatmate B for the massive electricity bill that came in when the boiler broke and my ma for helping me pay the deposit on the new place.

headspace got pretty corrupted this time around, as you can probably guess. i didn't try to end it this time; it makes me feel too guilty, on account of the life partner and family i'd have to leave behind, and the bupe sorta cushions the blow of a lot of those thoughts. i did completely shut down for everything but the Honours project, so i haven't even been answering my phone or checking my email, much less working on the experiments. i thank the gods of sedation that i had this shit in my veins that keeps me from going completely insane when my brain just falters and fails for months on end like that. i think i'd have succeeded at death a while ago if i didn't.

it's time to start again, again.

in my absence two places have been set up to document and plan the experiments: they are Biohack.me and SelfModifier. they were set up by people who read the blog, and i will be establishing myself on them tomorrow. it's going to be the day when i finally check emails, answer messages, make introductory posts, etc. and i promise no matter what kind of progress i do or don't make, every Saturday i will check in here and on those sites.

i tried on various people's advice to set up a Flattr. i'm still trying. my paypal broke when a payment from my bank got refused, and i think that might have broken the flattr as well.

also i had an invitation in January to go speak about H+ in Ireland; i may or may not actually do this, since i don't know if it's too late to accept or about travel funds and whatnot.

in the main, though, sorry. sorry for leaving you all for this long. sorry for not replying to your messages and emails and SMS. sorry for not being better with my finances so i have any money at all to do anything. mostly, sorry for fucking up.

i have an essay i'll post for you tomorrow about underground H+. it's a long-ass bastard (4K) but it's a fairly decent piece, i think, since i wrote it for a University course. it's 0354 now and i ought to go find something to make me sleep. i'm okay, but i'll be better when i get back into talking to people. g'night, sibs. carpe corporem.

L

where the fuck is that ugly little bastard

okay, okay. i was moving house. my cunt of a landlord decided that the repair bills required to satisfy regulations for student housing were greater than the profits from the students, and instead of installing functional windows, sold the apartment i live in. he is a money-grubbing coke-snorting underdeveloped shit of a pathetic little man, and i should dearly love to see him floss his ass with razor wire. he has caused us a fuckton of stress, not to mention necessitated my spending over a month disconnected from the Wired, calling agents and companies, viewing a hundred dingy nasty flats occupied by flies and leftover Playboy posters, having to have discussions about who's actually compatible with who before two people who would very much not get on move in together by accident, trying to sort out the ~£400 heating bill caused by the abovementioned cunt making us keep electric heaters on 24-7 when the boiler broke down for two months (he didn't want to pay for repairs to burst pipes), trying not to let my final undergrad project crash and burn, etc.

i'm not dead. i am buped up to the eyeballs, allowing me a modicum of clarity to understand and accept the situation. we have now found a new apartment where i will stay with one housemate until i graduate, upon which i will get my own place. all of this is still being funded by undergraduate loans and grants.

Southpaw news in a little while, sapes. i've got 216 mails to reply to. cc

L


PS i'm not single, handful of Googlers. i spent Valentine's Day with my Muad-Dib, who does not give a shit about gender or orientation, we got fried chicken and had a picnic. i have been with him for close to two years, i love him irrevocably, i'm not interested. you also have got to stop referring to me as a "lady" when i am genderless.

new year's resolutions

i. never to read threads about myself on other websites
ii. to talk more with my family
iii. to try and set up some sort of Southpaw development space rather than keeping it here, since a blog isn't ideal anymore for the volume of people coming in

any ideas on the latter are welcome.

L

google before you post

i am seeing lots of reactions, mostly on io9 where they reprinted the article about me on Wired, that have misconceptions. i would very much like it if the uneducated masses who like to call me an idiot would disavail themselves of the following precepts:

1. that i cost the NHS money without contributing to it.
no, i pay taxes just like you do, and fund the NHS just like you. some of my experiments have led to hospital, one to an overnight stay; i've never been in ICU, and the service is meant to help all people, not just people with tragic accident-related injuries.

2. that i sacrificed all or some of my sense of touch. i did not. next.

3. that you are just as much a "cyborg" as i am because you use an iPhone and wear glasses. fuck off if you are going to tell me that what i do is pointless, and i do not want to debate the definition of 'cyborg' with any normal.

4. that i don't do this voluntarily, and it's some sort of compulsion; also that because you can buy topical anaesthetic creams for stings and burns, that must mean those would work fine for surgery and would definitely go deep enough, so i must just "like the pain". do your goddamn research.

L

correction

i am an idiot and an asshole.

my parents informed me with less than enough harshness that actually they don't mean their comments on TV literally. it turns out that in actuality it is i who doesn't think things through, so not only did i misunderstand what they meant and vent about it without asking for a clarification of whether i was actually correct, i insulted and upset them both in the process. i am lucky my ma still fucking speaks to me.

i removed the post not at my parents' request but at my own embarrassment. should you have said anything important in the comments please do repost here, and accept my apology for publicly venting frustration about people before checking to see if they really were deserving of it: they aren't, and i was totally in the wrong.

other news:

i will be writing up a full account of the 27c3 talk and answering your mails and comments as soon as i can, and will let you know if i find the stream anywhere important. there are several articles about it, or me, which i'll also link to.

someone got into my Blogger account earlier today and i am installing analytics to allow better tracking of who did it if it happens again. i'm not a proper hacker, so i can't stop you, but you fucked me over for a good few hours and made me cry because i thought you had locked me out permanently. good going, asshole, you upset a stressed civilian.

in short: my mother is a good person to whom i owe more than i ought to, including a lot of my finances for Berlin; i know nothing like as much as i like to think i do about normal people and their reactions to simple entertainment; i am not a good person myself; and you shall have your 27c3 article later.

carpe corporem

L

winter feast

a rare moment of fightless calm in my ma's house finds me sitting in front of a real log fire, working on my slides for the congress, eating bulk-buy pick'n'mix strawberry sweets. deciding what colour eyes to wear tomorrow out of a beautiful new palette and feeding leftover beef to the never-sad dog while it tries to steal my share of the meat, heat and liqueur. fuck all this Jesus and Eid and Kwanzaa and Pagan Solstice crap. i celebrate in winter what my farthest ancestors, all of them, did: there are people i care about, reachable and not, and most of us are still alive to see the words when i say them.

merry winter feast, sapes and friends. i toast your continued existence.

L

email bomb

okay, something has gone seriously wrong with my gmail account. all those mails? they were everything i'd deleted since three years ago. missing from the inbox was everything from this fucking year.

if you've emailed me, please email me again - it's all gone.

L

return of the wanderer

greets, all. i apologise again for my absence; i have been juggling various awful arrangements, fun with Christmas in a twisted definition of the word 'fun', a brand-new psychiatric diagnosis (looks like i have borderline personality disorder rather than autism), my decade-divorced parents getting back together and the fact that i have a hell of a lot less money than i thought i did to get to the 27c3 with. ugh. also coldsores, withdrawal, repeat scrip woes with gum-chewing receptionists, trying to buy presents for people with zero budget and repeating the year because i spent six weeks in a state of mind wherein it was an achievement not to try and kill myself every day.

regardless, i am alive. just.

Berlin is hopefully still on, pending the airports actually being open. to be honest i don't know what the fuck i'll do if they're not; if anyone knows a way to get to Berlin from England short-notice (i.e. within a night, no cross-continental bus rides) do tell. i still need to write the slides, to my embarrassment, and they're now crowing for a video of me while i'm scrabbling for the money. i'm pretty fucking stressed.

i shit you not there are 4459 unread emails in my goddamn inbox, none of which are spam, and this is just my personal mail. i don't dare look at my academic address. i will reply to your mails and comments, but it will take me a while. i apologise to anyone who has been waiting a while, although really i don't think i'm important enough to anyone that that's necessary. i have not been ignoring any of you on purpose, i promise.

i'm writing slides tonight, as well as looking at flights. the topic is incredibly general, so is there anything you people particularly want to see?

L

lepht vs. world

my fantastic week of attempting to wrestle my life under control was topped off, like a layer of fetid cream atop a trifle of failures and overdraft, by waking up at 4pm today to find the house boiler had eroded into total uselessness. oh, hello, spongebath! i missed you.

looks like i'll be scrubbing my white ass with a washcloth for about a week. sometimes i think i pissed off some god by being born.

L

HOLY SHIT YOU GUIZE

i'm going to be giving a lecture at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress! the topic is "cybernetics for the Masses", of course. i originally only applied for a 5min lightning talk slot, but the coordinator who emailed back with the acceptance offered me thirty minutes to speak properly, since it sounds interesting (apparently.)

i am actually fucking shaking. i can't believe i'm gonna get to speak properly about all this, in front of an actual audience of real hackers. i've gotta get slides and stuff together, and find a logo and a photo of myself from somewhere... man, this is going to be fucking awesome.

the only problem is, of course, that after this you will all know what i look like, what my biological gender is, and who i am in meatspace every day. i'm a little afraid this will compromise my credibility as a biohacker. of course, i am also flat shit broke, and i honestly have no idea where the funding for this trip is gonna come from. i think it might be family-begging time.

holy shit, though. i never expected this would happen.