Like Soldiers Believe They're in Control of the War

Part Three of Three.

My flag proposal for Theta Battalion, January 2007

I could have published this final part of my series looking back at the history of CyberNations at any time, however last Sunday was the sixth anniversary of the end of the Third Great War. Two months after the conclusion of GWIII I ceased being a student spending time playing a game rather than studying and exited a sixth month stint of unemployment. After that I never really knew what was going on in the Cyberverse or Digiterra or whatever you want to call it. Unable to stay up into the night when the largely American dominated game was most active I consequently fell out of the loop on events and the reason for the latest war. Last year, after I became the oldest and longest continuous member of the NPO, a fellow member working on the CNwiki entry asked me why, given my in-game age, I didn't have all the ribbons for all the wars the alliance had fought in. This is why, and a lot of time unless I'm attacked I don't really know there's a war on. Undoubtedly one of the reasons the age of players is so young is because such massively multiplayer online games require a lot of free time to invest. Until I read about the war that ended last month I'll remain completely oblivious as to the reasons my warchest was depleted by €100 million. Lately given the move toward squad based combat, the demands for greater activity, and adherence to alliance-wide development plans I've felt far more estranged from the game. Last week I thought about quitting - something I've never even considered in seven long years. Even what I think of as recent CN history is a distant collective memory now. Let's recall it...

Promised You A Miracle

Islamic interlace patterns, public domain

Elsa: What've you got there?
Jeremy: The Gutenberg Bible... it was in the Rare Books Room.
Elsa: Think God's gonna' save you?
Jeremy: No... I don't believe in God.
Elsa: You're holding on to that Bible pretty tight.
Jeremy: I'm protecting it.
-The Day After Tomorrow, 2004

I don't recall a time when I ever believed the stories from The Bible or what I was told in Sunday School - which is not to say I had somehow transcended it at the age of ten or earlier. The only bits of the Bible that ever really interested me were the maps as I had a fascination with atlases at the time, and even then I couldn't tell what I was looking at. I can remember being in Primary 5 and having to read Genesis (likely part of Religious Education). The cover of whatever children's edition we were using particularly annoyed me with its colourful depiction of Noah's Ark and a vivid rainbow. This was at least six months before the Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis was published, but as a keen Horizon viewer I'd probably been exposed to discussions about the historicity of the flood myths and spending class time on that would have been far more interesting and at least factual. From Horizon and other science programming I was well versed in several theories. In the same year I recall advocating the impact hypothesis in a debate about the extinction of the dinosaurs, and in second year RE I was called on to try to explain the big bang and the Tunguska blast (interdimensional cross-rip?). So it would probably seem odd to the outside observer that I've long treasured, or at least not buried in a box in the basement, a children's illustrated book about the story of Easter.

Slow This Bird Down

Blogging, hgjohn, 2012

In 2010 I managed to drag this blog from the verge of antipathetical annihilation. It's strange that while I had heaps of spare time in 2009, as work had never been easier that year, I managed to produce not even 3,500 words. While 2011 was nowhere near as bad, it was a slump and the quality of the posts was patchy in my opinion. That's the challenge - I could be a perfectionist and turn next to nothing out, or I could pump out posts to meet quotas. 2012 was more of the former at the start of the year, though it was a case of maintaining a work rate. Blindly burning through my long-standing buffer of about twenty drafts would leave me at the mercy of current events to provide material. Luckily my trip to London provided impetus and I got awfully chatty about Gran Turismo 5 at the end of the year. From September through to February I was writing around 4,000 words a month, except in December when I wrote double that and January when I wrote a colossal 11,250 words - that's 55% of the word count of the entirety of 2011. You could say I was burnt out by the end of February.

We Broke Free

Still going strong, Jez Page, 2010

Jack: Well, we're here. We're sitting on the most perfect beach in the world, and all we can think about is-...
Angela: "Where I can hook up my modem?"
-The Net, 1995

I hate phones. I've long disliked taking phone calls, particularly from relatives in the US because of that slight audio delay stepping on everyone's cues. Around the turn of the millennium everyone in school started getting mobile phones. Call me a contrarian and, paradoxically, I'll agree. Amongst those age-groups and in that time, the phones were status symbols and displays of affluence. I've always eschewed those things - for example, I don't wear any type of jewellery. Just before I finished school I went out with friends for an entire day and didn't come home till 1am. My parents threatened to buy me a phone which I vehemently refused. There is nothing I find more annoying than having to drop what I'm doing to answer the home landline, except maybe people paying more attention to an incoming message on their phone than my half of the conversation. I like remaining un-contactable. Here comes the however. However, when I was down in London last year I was away from my desktop computer for four and a half days. I had to rely on that other thing I hate, television, to remain informed about events and it never asked 'Would you like to know more?'.