Smoking and stuff.

Unfortunately, blogging doesn’t have RT , so take Michalis’ 2 cents on the topic ( in greek ) , with which I couldn’t agree more.

 

http://plagal.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/kagkoures-kagkoures-kagkoures-pantou/

Revisiting

It’s been so long now , I won’t even try to explain or promise anything. Blogging is just a need for me , or at least it used to be. Absence, and thus introversion,  indicates emotional stability. In plain words , I’m doing fine As Manos correctly noticed after not having spoken to eachother for a couple of months : “I knew you were ok, because you stopped posting“  .

What has changed since April ? A hell lot of things. First things first, ignore the grandiose statements of my last post. Unfortunately, I’m still smoking, some times more , some times less , but I’m still bound to my addictions. Lots of new places visited, new place to call my home , new objects, new goals, new fears and new challenges. Isn’t that what life is about after all ?

Fortunately, some things still remain the same , and as great as they used to be (Did I hear a raf ? ) .

It remains to be seen if I can grow the need into a habit, but knowing me, I wouldn’t count on it.

See you soon(er or later).

I’m a quitter

It’s been so long now. It feels irritatingly inconvenient for me to write. It’s not like bicycle after all .

At least today I don’t have to force myself to come up with a witty subject. I got it this afternoon, on a very insignificant , common part of my everyday routine, climbing down the stairs from Kista Galleria to the bus terminal . I will quit smoking , I said. And it was decided* even before I climbed on the packed with immigrants (me included) 179.

No big statements here, I’ll do my best. I’m just going public so I would feel worse if I start smoking again. Until that happens, I’m Yiannis, I haven’t smoked for 10 hours, and I’m OK.

*Since I am fully aware of my imperfect self , cigarettes while being drunk are accepted. Sorry, I just decided to quit smoking, not to become a saint. No offence, they are really cool guys with their divinity and stuff, I just find them rather boring.

I DID* it.

I’ve known that for a long time now. I’m one person but the manifestations of myself are uniquely identified and too differentiated to coexist in the same space.

So , from now on , my formal and serious self will be communicating through http://diveintoinfosec.wordpress.com .

Two major reasons dictated the moving:

1) I want to have a web place that has to do more with what I do , and less with who I am . And what I do now, is to be a full-time postgraduate student studying Information and Communication Systems Security.

2) Documenting the things I study, books and papers I read, projects I’m occupied with will (hopefully) help me organize my thoughts and knowledge and serve as a reference list.

Dive into infosec is not in the context of diveintopython i.e. it’s not about me helping you dive into it. It’s about me diving into it, my attempts to hold my breath enough, and the struggle of learning how to swim .

*Dissociative Identity Disorder

Self referencing

It’s kind of obvious that breaking the habit didn’t work out as expected . A month later , I haven’t found myself in the mood of sharing anything. Interestingly, that says a lot about me as a person . Oh, well , now I have to elaborate , don’t I ?

Here we go then :

1. My need to communicate my thoughts is NOT spontaneous. It’s an (occasion/circumstances) - driven value , I sometimes attribute to myself. I do it mostly when I feel the urge to bitch about how life sucks ( for me ) and find comfort in the illusion of publicity. Other possible reasons include the need to selectively externalize aspects of my personality to targeted groups of people who are unreachable through ordinary channels , the need to brag about achievements that I selfishly assume other people give a damn about and so on.
2. Like most things in life, I find it really hard to do one thing for a prolonged period of time. Tons of examples are available to those of you interested , I could go on for ever. It’s a profound disability to keep my focus on something for more time than needed for it to serve my instant needs. That’s why I seem to have ended up being pretty good in some stuff, good enough in other , but not really good in anything. Amateur.And immature.
3. Funny as it may seem, one of the most significant reasons for me not blogging for the past month, is that WordPress somehow found its way out of my bookmarks and start page. I guess it was the transition from Firefox to Chrome that did the trick . That illustrates how narrow my perspective is . For things to work with me, they must be part of a really organised mind-plan. since I am usually too lazy to organize my life ( although I constantly think about doing it) things, matters, habits find their way in my everyday life, become part of me , and then find their way out as easily and as painlessly as they came.

For the past month I’ve been really satisfied with life and all the people i needed to communicate were in reach through standard channels in one way or another [ 1 ] . There are properties of ones personality that are hard to change [2] ( τζάμπα σωστός με το στανιό, as Σωκράτης in his pure wisdom states), but that doesn’t mean that I won’t try to change them. I have a feeling that trying will offer more than succeeding it anyway. Oh, and yes, I’ve added WordPress to my bookmarks and start page [3] once again.

That’s about as much frankness and self-awareness as I can handle on a Monday night.

Breaking the habit

Yes Stockholm , I like you . I like you because you offer colors, animals and music.

Colors : Well, it’s a state of mind . Described in the previous post , wonderful game. I’ve been playing for some days now. Nothing fancy, nothing extraordinary, yet still really helpful . Everyone needs a way to be balanced , to translate the things from the subconscious that cannot be felt or understood into feelings, thoughts, words . For me materialization and visualization does the trick. For now, at least. Later I might have to work something else out , but I ‘ ll deal with it when that time comes. The geek inside me woke up too , and he thought it would be nice to aid in the materialization process . The result was a screenlet ( Desktop widget for the screenlet engine available for Linux ) available at gtk-apps.org and also featured in the emotional cities website (tack så mycket Erik ) . Work is in process for porting to JavaScript for Google Desktop Gadgets and Yahoo widgets . Anyway, it has been fun working with a non security oriented software pet project . And not having to be graded for it too

Animals : The irresistible sad puppy has been my favorite so far , but occasional appearances of tigers, deers and other wild-life animals only make the experience better. Bring them on.

Music : Kent , Lasse , Rasmus (Kellerman , not the rasmus band.)  . Yeap, I like the Swedish music scene, and I haven’t even discovered but a really small part.

habit (n).

1.

a. A recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition.

b. An established disposition of the mind or character.

2. Customary manner or practice: a person of ascetic habits.

3. An addiction, especially to a narcotic drug.

4. Physical constitution.

5. Characteristic appearance, form, or manner of growth, especially of a plant or crystal.

For me 1a. has been bitching about everything . And blogging only when I felt like bitching.

Paint my buildings red

Well if you ask me it should be green, or light blue . But since it’s already decided I ll play along. I ‘ve had my share of purple and blue. And I don’t mean to sound ignorant, I ‘ve had some green and red too . November was mostly purple , December and January in Greece had a shade of dark red ( the kind of color you get when you mix whiskey with cola) and the new year started green so far with random touches of yellow and red . Yellow hair and red faces from cold.

Start to feel colors. It’s a wonderful mind game . Think of life as a palette , choose the right colors and start painting. Ask for help, if you can’t do it on your own. Mix colors , play with shades. Paint. Feel. Be alive. You don’t have to fill your canvas with red. Start with purple, blue or even black. This way the red dots will strike out and look even better. Connect them with green lines. See how that goes.

As for me , I found room to be geeky in even such a psychological aspect. Well that’s me , take it or leave it . Who wants to be normal , after all ?

Minimal

It’s nice not to need words.

Catching up

Been away for a while . It wasn’t boredom , nor lack of free time . I guess I had a writing-orgasm the past month and I needed to cool it off.

If I must summarize holidays in a few words , I would choose 2 : Alcohol and food. As the blood analysis I had on Thursday proved, I overdid both. And yes, I had a great time. And yes , I got bored eventually. Greece is slowly turning into a great place to visit.

Back in Stockholm since yesterday , had this strange feeling of returning home . I didn’t get that going to Greece last month . Creepy yet intriguing . The trip was as adventurous as it can get. Had the unique opportunity of showing off my clothes, underwear, books, stuff to the whole queue waiting to check-in for the flight as I had to repack twice to get my 37 kg of luggage in an acceptable arrangement. Had a splendid flight surrounded by 3 children crying their hearts out all the way over Europe. And then, I even got to carry my broken suitcase from Arlanda to Spanga ! Hurrayyyy!

My Spanga-palace is still cold but I’ ve set my mind on leaving it anyway. Regular praying to the Nordic God of bostadsjakten might help too. The only problem is that I hate moving . Fortunately I have so few stuff nowadays that packing-moving-unpacking-settling shouldn’t take much.

And at some point I have to change “Study because I have to”  to “Study because I like to” . The first approach is getting too boring.Supposedly , I have chosen to continue studying because I liked the subject , after all. Which is true by all means. I just need to realize it.

Confessions

Ha ! I got you once again! I need to go back. No useless sophisticated sentences today*. No more nonsense about happiness and self-awareness.No more fooling you around about how I’ve thought it all over. I know nothing. I think about much, but nothing makes sense. I’m just trapped under numerous layers of egoism and need of social acceptability. I mostly write not to speak but to be heard. I’m constantly trying to seem conscious and aware but I’m not. I’m just waiting in a lake of doubt, fighting my own selfish yet selfless idol, waiting for a hand to grab me and  pull me out. I am as fucked up as I need to be to be great. Yeah, thats me.

This is not for you to read, this is for me to write.

*Couldn’t help myself, I did it once again.

ps. I just counted the “I” ‘s in the post . I am an egoistic bastard, aren’t I ?