EPTMost of you probably already know about the story of the mighty Odysseus. This is not a blog about Odysseus, but I would like to remind you something that Odysseus did, if you don't mind. At some time in the story, Odysseus and his crew have to sail by 3 sirens, known to sing so beautifully that they would charm all people who hear them, then kill them all. Odysseus, being smart, ordered his crew to stuck their ears with wax or something. However, being curious, he asked his crew to attach him to the boat, and to never, ever untie him. He wanted to hear the sirens so much that he was willing to take the risk of losing his mind, for the sake of knowledge. I admire that. I want to be like Odysseus. This is a blog about my life in the last 6 months, and all the stupid experiments I did, the lucky encounters I've made and how it affected me.
Being stupid, I try to find happiness by doing stupid stuff. I do not want a lot of money, neither do I want love, sex, drugs, or peace. All I want to be happy is to experiment. I seek knowledge, efficiency and truth. I have absolutely no goal in life other than that. However, seeking truth is already some very hard task, because it means searching for a theory of everything for the rest of my life. I probably will never find it, because I'm far from being smart enough for that, but I just can't let a puzzle like that go away. I have to try and solve it.
That being said, I would like to tell you all the stupid experiments I've tried, starting with last January. Someday, as I was whining about sleep with a friend, he told me that I should try something called polyphasic sleep. I had no idea at that time what it was, so I read a lot about it, and, because it seemed stupid enough for me, I just had to try! And that's what I did. The idea was to sleep 20 minutes every 4 hours, and that alone should be enough. It seemed possible and I still believe, from what I read, that it probably is. So, for a full month, I tried this, failing and starting all over again all the time. I would wake up, shut up my alarm clock and go back to bed without even remembering it. I tried adding like 5 clocks. I tried sleeping on the floor. I tried sleeping lights on. I tried waking up with some very loud music. Nothing did it. I never gave up. It was amazing how I actually tried for a full month. I would have no proper sleep for 40 hours then crash for 12 hours. And I would never know when I would actually crash, even though sometimes I had a feeling I would not be able to wake up 20 minutes after that. It was at the same time the toughest and funniest part of my life. Eventually I had to give up, but it wasn't over with my stupid experiments.
Just after that, I decided that I had some time to lose, and that it could be fun (and stupid) to learn Japanese. Just like that. I then proceeded to spend 5-10 hours a day for 3 weeks on a software and some other stuff resources. I was literally addicted to the software. If I stopped and I would do something like surfing on TL, I would go back to the software really fast. Eventually, I completed it and I had nothing else to do. I'm still far from being functional in Japanese, but I'm learning a lot from animes and I believe that I'll get better everyday. I also don't care about speaking it, or reading it, which is even more stupid. There is really no reason why I would learn such a thing except for it being fun.
Something fun happened while I was learning Japanese with that software that completely stopped me from learning it. There was a post from Ret saying that someone should teach him how to play Civ4. I volunteered, and I was able to play with him hardcore for like 5 days. I was a bad teacher, but it was a great experience to meet such a person. He also agreed to play the ace of my CSL team in a bo5 even though he hadn't played BW in like 1 month at that time. It was a great time. I guess his priorities changed because he stop harrassing me to play some more Civ4, but would he ask me again I would accept right away.
As I said before, I am stupid. I can play around with some random stuff with no reasons. When the editor for SC2 came out, I remade a turret defense map and a Zone Control map. Even though they are complete, and, imo, good, I haven't published them yet and probably won't. Why would I do that then? Because it was fun. And also because Morrow thought it would be great to have a remake of Zone control. So I created it. But then I gave it to someone who was linked to the creator of the original Zone control. He is free to add whatever he wants there.
I've always typed fast on my keyboard, probably like all of you. However, typing on the qwerty keyboards we have now is far from being efficient. Indeed, those keyboards were made to slow you down. I don't like that. That's why I switched to Dvorak-fr. Why would I do that if I type fast enough already? Because I'm stupid, I think you got the idea. And I'm still not typing as fast as I was typing before. And I can't type in qwerty anymore, which is really funny. However, it does feel easier for my fingers. I think.
I have made a lot more of stupid projects. I've programmed a 3D MMORPG where you can move freely and talk to everyone in a chat channel (and chat channels weren't hard to program at all Blizzard) but there was like no 3D models in it because I had no modellers. I read some calculus books before taking the class, knowing that I had to take the class anyway. Same for linear algebra. I would try again and again and again to beat Battletoads, becoming good at it, but I would eventually give up. Why would I invest like 30 hours in that game without completing it? I would hack some video games to add me some cash when I had the cheatcode to do it, just because it was funnier that way.
I've also done a lot of stupid stuff that I didn't want to do. Like sleeping through a calculus test or a chemistry final. Or forgetting to give some homework. Hopefully, I managed to get away in all these situations, because I'm a lucky bastard.
There are also some stuff that I do just because I'm addicted to it. I would listen to the same song for hours in a row (I must have listened to it for like 100 hours now, which is huuuuuge) without changing it. All my friends told me they would get tired of that song long before that. I don't.
I guess I should probably bring this to a conclusion. I am sure everyone does stupid stuff just because they want to do it. If you are like me, and you want to be like Odysseus, please tell me what you did! I want to know!
