Farsong Blog-o-Matic - January 25th, 2008

( This is all a long-winded way of saying that my mind keeps me up at night ) Like last night, as I was getting to sleep, my mind started thinking about how I was merely attending EWU, and not a part of it. I was a part of PLU. There was a sense of community there. EWU is much larger. Yes, it's been three weeks, and I am still meeting people, but the communities of people are more made by students, whereas, at PLU they were spontaneous and just happened. In many ways, I defined myself by my communities at PLU. Frankly, I still [define myself by the groups I am a part of, for good or for ill; that's just the way that human society works].

At the beginning of the quarter, I made a point of not saying anything about PLU, but I'm beginning to speak about the differences--mostly saying "Oh, well, we did such-and-such," and since people are rather educated enough, they understand that I'm not saying "We should be doing it like such-and-such, because that way is better, and this way is different and therefore not good." Nope, that's just senseless. It's the same as noting the differences in culture between the US and Germany--the first time, you see everything as new and different, and the second time, you see analogues of everything and realise the reason for why these certain things are different. They're different in form, but the same in function--lightswitches and power outlets are a prime example).

I'm struggling to articulate the difference between being a part of a school and its respective community, and merely taking classes there. It's more than just taking classes there, but my who life no longer centres on the University and the community in the direct vicinity. It makes me feel like an interloper--coming to attend classes for part of the day, utilising the on-campus resources, and leaving before the day is through for most people.

Then again, I need to recognise that it's still early in the quarter, and I'm still meeting people. It took me several months to originally meet my best friends at PLU, and that was when I was living on-campus. Then again, I was still figuring everything out, being a freshman and all--and you're only ever a freshman once.

Got the little program running again that uploads my webcam to my FTP server as a JPG.

It updates about once every half-hour, if the app's running. I think it's cool, and it's a step towards the idea of discrete wearable computing (though, from the opposite point of view--with the wearable computing, one would see what I'm seeing instead of seeing me directly).

( Gross oversimplification: wearable computing=cyborg )