Robert Small, The blog thereof.

My hypothesis is such: the ‘bad’ side of human nature is in place purely to limit and counteract the natural aspiring nature of man and the upwards curve of social evolution. Included in this is the theory that the natural curve of social evolution will always be upwards or progressive; also included is that `man’s` natural or normal nature is to move forward in a progressive way and create new things.

My hypothesis will always be almost completely unprovable, I can and do accept this and I’m not trying to prove it.

My hypothesis is ‘agnostic’, it doesn’t rely on God, evolution, or aliens; any combination of these could be involved, this is for your personal beliefs to decide, not me.

I don’t completely believe this myself, nor am I sure if I should or even if it is correct. This theory or hypothetical concept has arisen from a few conversations and some recent reading.

It would be hard to deny that the actions of some humans, and other human groups, often slows down the advancement of a peaceful society. For this theory to hold it would seem that you must also believe that a truly peaceful society is the aim or attempted future, maybe even utopia. Returning to the point one can see that the manufacturers of war disturb this peaceful advancement.

For the ease of this theory, let us presume that there is a deity, and that it can be referred to as he.

Now, if we consider the general scope of humanities abilities, when organised we can move forward and change things in a ‘better’ and ‘more advanced’ way. However, it would seem that certain persons and entities hold things back due to their attitude towards peer advance. Thus human greed and other ‘bad’ emotions and tenancies hold the advance back. Now, these tendencies could well have been injected by the presumed deity to control our advance.

The reasoning for this injection could be extremely complex, it might be so simple that I cannot see or understand it. One of the concepts which we see as ‘the future’ is immortality and complete knowledge, maybe these social aspects prevent us ever reaching this for reasons we do not understand. Maybe it’s simply like the rabbit/fox population graphs which we all do at school, and so prevents us becoming more populated than the earth can handle.

I’d love to hear some of other people’s views, I think this has been a little disjointed but I’m sure someone else will have some views all the same.

PS: I wrote this a few days and now I’m posting, so my views may have changed.

Kind regards, Robert

‘Doesn’t have a point of view,
Knows not where he’s going to,
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere Man, please listen,
You don’t know what you’re missing,
Nowhere Man, the world is at your command.’

People interest me, quite a lot in fact. I often hear people give a vague allegiance to a political party, but when I try to find out how many of the core values they share it’s often surprisingly fewer than one might hope. All too often it seems that people have one view and a different political support, believing in freedom and positive action against environmental crime. It’s true that we create not only our own future but the future of our children and their children. Surely then we should think more before we idly act or fail to act.

I believe that it’s the duty of every world citizen - and you are a citizen of the world, like it or not - to strongly consider and debate world issues. Our thoughts may well pave the future of our own lives and those of billions of others.

I challenge you to never vote for a political party because your parents did or because your friends do, I challenge you to be your own person and make your own choices. It’ll surprise you how something you do can change things so far from you. A Kabbalist described it to me like a stone thrown into a pool of water, although the stone may be small the ripples still reach a surprising distance. In the same way your hurried attempt to cut queues at a set of lights might spoil someone’s day in another country. Think, if such a small thing can do something so big, what can a big thing like a vote do?

Even your choice of car could change many people’s lives. A small energy efficient car will produce less pollution; and if you believe in global climate change or not, this is a good thing. A larger car may protect you better in an accident but heavily increases the chance of you injuring or killing someone else.

I think the moral I’d take from this is to think before you act, always. Don’t be a nowhere man.

Kind regards, Robert.

Morals are weird things. I believe most people’s morals are entirely taken from which angle they’re viewing a situation from. For example, a lot of people will tell you that they are totally against abortion; when you tackle them about it they will either clam up or show that there are ’some’ circumstances under which they will change their mind.

A young mother with four children and one on the way develops leukaemia. The leukaemia treatment will kill or severely maim the child, by aborting the child she would save herself. To save the child she must refuse treatment and sacrifice her own life, there is no way she can be treated after the birth, that is if she makes it that far.

So, as that young mother do you chose to live and be able to bring up your children or do you let the child live with the knowledge that you could never bring it up nor could you guarantee that it’d live if you die before it’s fully developed.

I believe the only solution is to truly take every single case as it comes, never to judge from the other side of the gate and never to presume that you know everything about a situation.

Kind regards, Robert.

I’m currently sitting on the plane back home. This has been a so far uneventful journey with the exclusion of leaving a considerable time after we should have. There’s minor turbulence because we have a tailwind, however this does somewhat speed the journey up. The boys (and girls) in blue didn’t bother me at all at the gate which is nice considering the horror stories people keep telling me.

However, not everything is good, although I’m pleased to be returning home with the view of working on some new projects, seeing my parents again and enjoying some - hopefully more productive* - fishing; I’m not pleased to be leaving my girlfriend and she’s not pleased to have me leave. Luckily for her I left some chocolate and most of a pack of digestive biscuits, luckily for myself my mum sent me a text saying she was making cake. My mum’s cake is good. I predict the next few weeks being taken up solely with comfort eating and work as I did far too little while I was on holiday.

A friend of mine has told me that while going through regular separation I’ll love every little thing that reminds me that we’re together when we are. then when we’re permanently together they’ll start to annoy me. The example she gave me was snoring, my girlfriend doesn’t snore so I’m sure I’m safe from this problem.

(A break of a few hours.)

The plane continues to be involved in quite some turbulence, I don’t mind turbulence unless I’m trying to drink at the same time, then it’s just annoying. One of the things I really enjoy about KLM is the service, I actually get a decent meal with real knives and forks. The dinner was a nice Italian pasta served with cold chicken and rice salad and a nice chocolate cake.

‘Oh the weather outside is frightful,
but the fire inside is quite delightful,
and since we’ve no place to go,
let it snow, let it snow’

This song will definitely bring memories for the next few months, it seems a popular one on US radio and with those creating Christmas CD’s; fortunately I like it. It has a lot of good times from the last month attached to it and I will find it a pleasant trigger to remind me what fun I’ve had.

It’s always sad to leave somewhere you’ve really enjoyed being, I never knew how bad it was to know that you’re leaving someone behind. The last time wasn’t quite so bad, I’d spent a lot less time with her, this time it was every minute possibly. The lesson I’ve learnt is that it’s very important to scope your view on life. You can waste your life looking forward to something which lasts for a few minutes or you can enjoy every moment as it comes. There’s always a silver lining.

Watch The Shawshank Redemption, he crawls through a long pipe of sewage and other undesirable muck and as he exits he raises his palms to heaven basking in the rain and the storm. He is free. If he’d not had that to look forward to he’d never have done that fete of human persistence and perseverance.

What I’m attempting to show is that all the time there’s something to comfort yourself with and drive yourself forward with. Whatever your lot is you have to extract the good bits out of it and live them up. If you don’t scope your life to the good bits and be very careful to always check the bigger picture then you will waste days sitting staring at the wall. I know, I’ve been there. Life is always worse when you don’t have perspective on it, Looking in the short term today I was leaving the arms of my closest and best friend, but put into perspective it’s a brighter day than it may seem. When I return I can contact the American embassy and start applying for a Visa, I can start working harder and get some of the big projects I’m working on up and running. So by going through the tunnel to the light I’m giving myself the ability to stay for more than 90 days and to earn the money to make my stay more enjoyable than it might have been otherwise.

If you ever have anything you want to talk to me about or you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps then please contact me. A lot of people have found it very helpful, but don’t expect to hear what you want because I have no problem with telling you what you need to hear instead of what you want to hear.

I’ll be announcing a few new projects and possibly even some milestones soon, I’m sorry that I’ve neglected nearly everything over the last month. At least I can return to my work totally refuelled and ready to create some great things. I expect the Linux GPS site to be off the ground soon, get your content ready!

Those of you who know about openhardwaredatabase, John has done some incredible work on it. Kudos and a very big thank you to John for this. I’ll be publishing some more about this soon and showing you how it (hopefully) will transform the way you decide which hardware to buy for whatever machines you have. Again John; thanks, great work so far!

One thing I’m loving is having a laptop sitting here running at 600MHz with no fan activity, very little disk activity and averaging just over 7W power usage! Having 1GB RAM does help this, having a system I’ve tuned finely to do this also helps, but I think that my choice of hardware has really helped too.

I’m flying just below the eastern tip of Iceland at the moment, It’s dark, It’s been dark over most of the journey because I’ve been quite northern and it’s winter. Although my ticket says that it’s a windows seat there was someone already in my space so I’m sitting by the aisle, I’m not objecting as my cabin luggage probably weighs about three times the prescribed amount.

People will always ask me - unless their name is James** - what the differences are between England/Europe and America. There are a lot of small ones, all of which seem to boil down to a very close score if someone were to be keeping count. One big difference I’ve noted is that Americans seem to generally be far more patriotic and of the opinion that there’s nothing too interesting out there, Europeans and the English seems to be generally more metropolitan; we realise that there are other currencies and that the world is not completely contained within our country. Please remember that these are generalisations and not stereotypes.

Another difference seems to be the environmental orientation, it could be due to the greater price of fuel or the greater media coverage. This seems to cover cars, lights, heat, and flying.

In England we have pretty boring coffee, it could use some cheering up, some excitement. In fact, the best coffee I’ve had in England would be one I’ve made at home using a percolator or maybe one Lloyd gave me a while ago - Lloyd being rather a coffee nut. American coffee is far more interesting and enjoyable, you can have far more than coffee, weak coffee and milky coffee. I’ve never really bought coffee in Europe, nor have I discussed the practise, it may be different in other countries. Still, I like American coffee.

Clothes are in general somewhat cheaper, however, they don’t come with free medical insurance and all the rest that we get from our heavier taxes. They’re generally the same quality and a reasonably compatible style.

The way that we pay for our medical care is another big difference, I think the standard of care is probably pretty similar, the only difference is the method of payment. In England most people pay for their care from their taxes, in America their insurance. I do like the concept of public health care, I believe that it should be a common human right to receive reasonable medical care, whatever your health or income. One area I can see that this might not be entirely applicable to is cases where people are smoking or drinking and it’s making their condition worse while they’re refusing to be involved in any plan to remove them from their addiction.

I arrived safely at Norwich airport around 9:30AM GMT0 DEC3, this was as far as I’d got writing so I left it as is.

Kind regards, Robert.

* Two fishing trips got nothing.
** James recently asked me if they had eggs in England.

What cannot be avoided must be welcomed. African Proverb?

I’m told this is an African proverb, in fact an old African proverb. We all go through bad times, in the Bible Job had more than his fair share but rarely seems to have sat around moping about it. Walt Disney is reputed to have said to ‘keep moving on’. The city of Chicago was burned badly but instead of the dwellers being depressed and moving to Canada they rebuilt. The Scots were defeated and oppressed many many times but never gave up in relentlessly trying to keep their freedom. What cannot be avoided must be welcomed, if you hate every little setback and everything you don’t want to do then you’ll become very bitter and self centered. If instead of disliking things which you must do it’s my opinion that if you welcome them and try to look on the good side then you’ll find life far more enjoyable.

I’ll leave it at that, the proverb itself is enough to make you think.

Kind regards, Robert.