Monday 31 July 2006



    Mercury pounded down the waffle iron steps. The arch of the gantry spiralled down about the MADAM, the first computer alive with the humming of capacitors and pulsing copper connectors. Her eyes and ears all linked to the labyrinth of the world, the madness of mathematics and lost ideas and dreams.
    Another half screw of the shaft and Mercury was at one of the primary inteface stations. A hub of bumblebee monitors all displaying files, videos and raw code trickling up the screen. Windows and portals opened and closed as the MADAM sorted and resorted the data. Her Web Spinners dancing over the keyboards, shrill clicks and wails eminating from the tonka toy familiars as the bumped and worked together. Some sat at USB ports soaking in the raw figures. Viridian eyes irised as they drew in the succulent statistics.
    Outstretched and twisted up into the intestinal cables of the hub, set back into the black corroded steel, was Sigma-Pi-Off. He was a muscled and toned man, his Caribbean skin slick with oil and cream blue coolant. His grey vest was stained in a similar manner from his communions with the MADAM. He didn't even move to see Mercury when he spoke.
    "Adu mon?" His voice muffled by propylene. His black country accent reverberating in the web of ethernet lines. "An' before ye opens ye cakehole me nuh know whats up with de Gaffer." Mercury just stood ther and watched. Sigma, as he was know for short, slid out from under the bank of computers.
    "Ye gorra feace lark a bulldawg chewin' a wasp." He flashed his whimsical smile. Mercury smiled and let out a small chuckle. "So mon ye gonna speaks with da missus?" He clambered to his feet and replaced his tools back into the webbing of his cargo trousers. Filings of silver. Peppered dust.
    "Yep 'da missus'. Need her heads up on events to come and how the information is talking in the Web. Need her views on some other things too."
    "Oh ya mon?" The ripped bulk of Sigma sat down on a torn leather desk chair. Cracked leather boots, pensioner skin, crossed and propped on the back of keyboards. "Whats missus gonna be getting ye inta?" A bushy eyebrow raised. A benzen flick of the lighter and a ciggarette was into his pale pink lips.
    "Just need to confirm some concerns, lay them to rest."
    "Speaks to da wires." Ash cloud exhaled and reinhaled.
    "Yeah. Speak to the wires."

    Down a further 2 screws of the spire was one of the CoMed labs. Communication. Communion. Mediation. Speaking to the wires. Listening to the flow of data on the skin of thought. The edge of Pandemonia. The cusp of the internet.
    The chamber was built like a jail cell. Fortress had once said a member of the original Zero Coder Hyperion cabal, Dr P0l4gOn, had ensured that the chamber was electromagtic negative. However others felt it was also to ensure no Zerks could escape if the 'mancers Soul Barriers failed. The last thing you wanted was a technodemon loose in the facility.
    Beyond the 6 inch thick walls was a fine ion barrier. The smell of a summer thunder. The spherical chamber roughly 16 yards across and no visible panels or seating.
    Mercury had already discarded his coat and was now sat cross-legged in the base of the sphere. Simplexes patterned the walls, plates of aged chrome. Speckeled greens and filthy vermillions and their edges. He exhaled.
    To a silent pulse beyond the Veil. Inhale. The wash of icy numbers. Exhale. All out. Empty. Just flesh and blood. Body and soul and thought. Tool and command and purpose. Inhale. Deep this time. The pulse dying and with it his own, a slow subdermal tick. Be one with the ether of ideas. His body floated. Up on the eddies of the Web, that Platonic reality. his feet inches from the surface.
    All dark. The lights dying and giving way to the edge of the Abyss and allow this jaunt over to the spectral hell of Pandemonia. But not too far. Just enough so that both world could be felt. Fallen and High reality in communion at the point of transmission. The critical point, the saddle point of worlds.
    The traingles of iron floated back and flipped. Knife edge angainst knife edge. Slicing the Veil. The new surface was vast, reflective. Showing the inside. Showing the beyond. Show everything and then nothing.
    Brighter than the Morning Star the sphere illuminated. Epilepsy of data. A thousand dying stars. A thousand more new born. Straight from the womb of the black primal waters. A pounding subsonic bass of lights. Mercury was dead. His eyes burnt to hollow ciders.
    Another jolt, a scream from Thor, his hammer of energy surging through Mercury's body.
    A whiplash and there before him a lattice, a megaopolis of connections. Hydrogen red etchings of data expanding through his consciousness. A further layer of colour overlaid. Cobalt and gold. Teal and navy. Racing in their framework of concepts.
    Mercury almost cried. So close once more to the High worlds but so far from that correspondance point.
    "Speak dear." A omnipotent song coursed through him. Soothing. "Come child what is it you wish?"
    "Madam." His naked body dressed in the plasma of algorithms encasing his body in luminosity. "I seek your information."
    "Submit aquistion. Present topic and arguments. Define limiting variables. Submit Upload."
    "Present God. Query all. Limit to Manchester. Pre Roman. Submit Upload Dream. Recent."
    He waited. The firefly dance continued about him. The slices of information bleeding a fractal path.
    "Pause search!" Mercury blurted. He floated in contemplation, though his arms were outstretched. Crucified. He couldn't understand. Something was missing.
    "Resume."
    "Sumitting new search. Directory Manchester. Time present. Input all available arguments. Search for Butterfly."
    "Prognostication in process."
    An age crept by and Mercury hung there thinking.


    Fortress stood behind Sigma and looked at the main moniter. before them was the CoMed chamber and suspended in the centre was Mercury, fully clothed and held by 3 dozen fine cables, all injected into nerve endings and along his spinal cord.
    "Whats he looking for" Fortress stood arms crossed. Concern filling his face. "Whats he searching for?"
    "Dunno mon? 2 hours straight. Da Butterfly trace is a dun deal. Mons diggin' deep code."

http://www.youtube.com/v/hRVkk6-8-PY
   

If only you could get it from Ikea



Friday 28 July 2006

MIB..... hunting aliens is such fun.

Here we have a great example of the freak shows we keep under lock and key in MIB... my new research building that we have moved to.



Vile little creatures.

This how the experimental labs deal with them.

http://www.youtube.com/v/MlStYdA8qqE

Yeah it can be a bit boring at times when all you do is simulated alien attacks and work out how best to destroy them (a favourite is using a Binsraad model Burgrionic Temporal Mincer).

The guys in R&D love those burgers.


ps. Yes i am in a building called MIB now... its not that cool but this is what it looks like inside.

Thursday 27 July 2006







kris_ether --
[adjective]:

Benevolent to a fault

'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Saturday 22 July 2006

London Calling

Ok.... London. First off some what better wheather. Huzzah... but it was still abking in London when we got there. :(


So me and my sis went to Camden.... trooped past many goth shops that were all clones of one another... past loads of good art stalls, foreign/orient type goodies, and of course the compulsory visit to Cyberdog.


Sulk.


The new stuff just aint as good as the older designs they had. Oh well..... it was fun watching my sisters eyes light up (she's a 27 yr old indie type at heart). Saw a few things there that I will get via 'net though.


Had some of the best chinese ever for lunch form one of the takeaways that line the edges of Gilgamesh there. I mean those girls who work there are the happiest people ever, pulling in the punters with their smiles and chance of a free taste.


 


So now filled up on noodles and thai green curry it was off back to shop that sold the tops I had spotted. (skill number 24 of Kris: Ability to be a picky bastard when shopping but with eyes of a hawk.... hmmm..... how Bravestar). So its some really new lable called Plazma.... www.plazamlab.com


Ok with shopping over, some coffee and some more water taken on for the ride.... we headed to the subway..... hell on earth of heat..... bit of reminder of New York when I was there during an August a few years back. We headed south to the Tate Modern.


We were knackered so we went round one of the floors in specific. Shedloads of cubism, futurist, communism magazine art and so forth. To be honest modern art isn't too hard to understadn when your half dead from the heat.... all your perceptions break down to the most simplistic of answers. Hell cubism is really (too me) an exploration of space and dimensions... and a bit of Go for good measure.


Then we headed down the road of hell called Oxford Street.... spotted Stringfellows.... saw the BT tower and the Gerkin (I rreally wasn't bothered by some of the typical sites... the Tate Modern building is pretty monolithic though).


So now it my penultimate night in Cambridge before heading back on Monday and prepping for a meeting at 10 and my viva at 2.... oh this just gets better.


But at least I have the Venice trip in my head for a plan for my actual holiday.


Compulsary photo of choice.


 




And no I wasn't bitten by Gramsci on Hampsted Heath.

Friday 21 July 2006

Cambridge....



So yeah... spent thursday on the train coming down to Cambridge to visit my sister and then have spent today in the town walking around.

Great architecture... really amazing amounts of local history and nice local books shops (one which is apparently haunted), plus lots of market stalls. It was fucking boiling though.

Now for the gripes with the place. Yes I had to have a good old frappachino calm down plus constant mp3 player blaring to cut my frustation.

BIKES!

Now I have no problem with the idea of bikes everywhere but whenthey seem to think they have right of way everywhere it fucks me off.

Oh and punting.... what the fuck??? Sorry not my idea of fun. Well maybe if I had alchohol but really its just an excuse for snobs and americans to think its rather fun. Go figure.

Oh well picked up some fun books. One by Michael Moorcock about a future victorian styled society, another by Neil Gaiman called Neverwhere, the same setting as his comic, and also a Will Gibson one called Pattern Recognition, very contemporary since it was written in 2003.

Oh and to finish, you know that series where the guy goes round on a bike hunting down for cowboy plumbrs etc at their homes. Well looks like their filming just down the road.

Ha.

Wednesday 19 July 2006

today is posting hot

http://www.youtube.com/v/8X64lYcPqgohttp://www.youtube.com/v/tL6E7R4IbCM

Errrmmmm Yeah????

http://www.youtube.com/v/tL6E7R4IbCM

Oh yes.... evil wins again

Bored... gonna post



First some fun facts...


Hot


Fevers are not to be confused with heat stroke. In fever the person can feel cold at high body temperatures since the body is fooled into thinking it is cold by the infectant microbe affecting the point that the body thermostat is set at. It is literally set higher than usual.



  • 37°C (98.6°F) - Normal body temperature (which varies between about 36-37.5°C (96.8-99.5°F)

  • 38°C (100.4°F) - Sweating, feeling very uncomfortable, slightly hungry.

  • 39°C (102.2°F) (Pyrexia) - Severe sweating, flushed and very red. Fast heart rate and breathlessness. There may be exhaustion accompanying this. Children and epileptics may be very likely to get convulsions at this point.

  • 40°C (104°F) - Fainting, dehydration, weakness, vomiting, headache and dizziness may occour as well as profuse sweating.

  • 41°C (105.8°F) - (Medical emergency) - Fainting, vomiting, severe headache, dizziness, confusion, hallucinations, delirium and drowsiness can occur. There may also be palpitations and breathlessness.

  • 42°C (107.6°F) - Subject may turn pale or remain flushed and red. They may become comatose, be in severe delirium, vomiting, and convulsions can occur. Blood pressure may be high or low and heart rate will be very fast.

  • 43°C (109.4°F) - Normally death, or there may be serious brain damage, continuous convulsions and shock. Cardio-respiratory collapse will occur.

  • 44°C (111.2°F) or more - Almost certainly death will occur; however, patients have been know to survive up to 46°C (114.8°F).



Ok now I've got my evil streak out the way you may ask why no more short story entry.... well its in the works..... trying to get the dialect for a character right takes a bit of time.

In other news.... work is boring but easy enough..... back to my normal work plus mucking about with ways of making the random number generator on the computer more random.

Also working on my Etherscope one shot as a way of getting into D20 gaming.... oh well.

Binhead pictures to come later this evening at the Binhead community.

Wendyhouse with trashykitty, stacey, chrisptofu, phuturatica was good fun and made a change.

Is there anything else to say?? I dunno.... of to Cambridge tomorrow back on Monday.... going shopping in Camden on the Saturday. I need the break. The last week has been a bit much (handing in final report, women, gin drinking, the damned heat!).

So for the week ahead? Other than my weekend away? Well I guess it'll be more work as normal. I have no clue for the next weekend though? Ideas?

Thursday 13 July 2006

The doubledoors opened with a resonating slam, swinging out onto a form of reception. A grim looking man stood up from the leather sofa, the yellow foam spilling from untended tears.

' Took your goddam time Mercury.' Exclaimed the man in a gruff tone. It was Fortress, and he eyed Mercury with steel blue irises, searching for some sort of reaction. 'Well?'

Mercury stood there for a second and tossed his bag on to the glass coffee table next to the sofa, knocking of a collection of next weeks papers. He sighed. 'I'm here arn't I? Lets just cut to the chase, my day has been fun already.'

The older man stretched and rubbed his neck, showing the extent of the tears in his woolen top, the t-shirt underneath showing through. He reached into his khakis and pulled out a pack of twenty and lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply, infusing his body with the plethora of fumes. 'Right. Well we've got work for you.'

Mercury was lead to the other side of the reception toward a large rusting steel door, a door more at home in a submarine than in a block of offices, or at least a demense of that design. The cigarettte was stomped out and pounded into the concrete floor and the grey flecked man wrenched the seal open, the round door handle straining against the rust and grime. Nearby on a lone laminate desk, peeling at the edges, a plump cream coloured PC humming away on top. Mercury followed in through the bulk head door.

 Mercury's boots clunked satisfyingly on the gantry on the otherside of the bulk head. With a dull clunk the Fortress closed the door and turned the wheel, locking inch thick metal pins into place. He turned about and strode forward past Mercury, the heat of the coolant systems generated a low breeze that floated up from the depths. Mercruy followed and leaned against the railings and stared forward.

Before the pair spearing up from the deep black was the MADAM, one of the most powerful computers on Earth. The central core housed block upon block of servers and dual core processors. But as the levels descended so did the technology. Blade servers made way for RM desktop PCs. PCs were wired and fixedin place next to Macs. In amongst these even more motherboards protruded like leaves on a silicon tree. Further down more PCs, their cases yellowed with time, and next to those AMIGAs and further down ATARIs and BBCs. The further you went the more backwards the devices plugged in, the simplest way to upgrade the machine being to build straight on top. Further down again more early computers, CRAYs and soon enough some of the first devices designed by Alan Turing.

All about the tower of silicon and capacitors ran a criss cross of chains and cords, pulleya nd gurney allowing users to interface at different heights, to analyse the variety of data pouring out of the arcane machine. The stench of polymer hung in the upper belfry as CDs were copied, while lower the insect buzz of dot matirx printers spewed reams of data.

In amongst the network of cables and chains skittered the Web Spiders, the children of the MADAM. The MADAM, being a device that was possesed of a spirit, had been able to reproduce, and here offspring were the Web Spiders. Their hand sized bodies a collection of cutting edge devices and brass, clock work, mechanisms. Each had a studded head of optic lenses, each of a variety sizes and fashions, twinkling a faint green as they worked at the damaged chips and burnout wires, tending to their mother the MADAM.

Mercury turn about and locked eyes with Fortress. 'So whats the problem that has the MADAM pumping out next weeks lottery results?'

Fortress didn't shake his gaze on the tower of difference engines. 'It's a spike in the qubits. Someones waking up soon and nearby. Your on recon.'

Thursday 6 July 2006

End Game

So finally the work is over... for now.

The 17000 word transfer report is finished. A pretty comprehensive review of water potentials and also the overview of my work so far on this subject plus my collaboration work on a protein force field. The expected size of the report is meant to be 8000 words.... I hit that with just my lit rev.

So last friday was Implant, which was a good blast with e_laini, phuturatica, chrisptofu, trashykitty,megashrike, and others. A long evening that ended up at Tofu Towers talking madness with Polyp.

Sunday was sushi with most of those I was with at Implant. £70 bill for 8 people?? When it was really some where in the region of double that? Ok sure we'll pay for that and go get more drinks. Idiots at New Samsi. I can just picture ninjas hunting down the foolish waiter.

Ok tuesday night... guts aching and I spew. Fun!!!

Only just recovered from it properly.

Oh and on Wednesday... check my emails.... yep my literature presentation is on Thursday not Friday. FUCK!

Up until 3 am reading about one of the latest water models for the presentation. Really I should have been spending that time writing my report.

This morning the presentation was easy. I have these down to a T now. Though I think I came across to the new guy as very cynical about the field of research. Oh well it was good practice explaining how the paper and my work fit together.

And then at 00:30 am I get back from work having printed out 3 copies of my 87 page report. Tomorrow I hand that in, bank my grant cheque, and get in contact with my old landlord to get my deposit back.

So the weekend ahead??

Read some rpg books. Read some of Paradise Lost, plus go out tomorrow night on the piss to Cock (Rock) World, and from then on just catch up on my writing.

Finally

Sigh.