Author Archives: Dan

Really Simple Syndication: Is it really that simple?

I thought today I would do a post explaining RSS (Really Simple Syndication). In really simple terms, RSS is used to serve a user stuff from a website. If this is your first time here why not read some of my previous entries, hopefuly that will convince you that the site is worth ‘being served’ and you can come back here for an explanation of how. If you are a regular here then read on to find out how to get the entries hot off the virtual press!

RSS is, by nature, really, really simple. It has only two components; the feed and the reader. The feed is whatever you are accessing through RSS (i.e. this blog) and is maintained by the site. The reader is the method you use to access your feeds. In this post I’m going to focus on iGoogle as this is my favourite reader but there are hundreds out there to try so don’t just take my word for it.

To start, you will need a Google account (if you don’t already have one). If you already use iGoogle you can skip this step. Click here to get one. Once you click the create account button at the bottom after filling in just a few basic details (email and country of residence) you will be taken to a fresh iGoogle page. You can play around with the options or not, but either way, click the “See your page” button.

The default comes with some good gadgets already, but if there is something you don’t like just click the X to remove it. From here you can click the “Add stuff” link to add some more gadgets or proceed to add your first feed.

When you’re ready, you can add the Seeing Green RSS feed to your page. Click this link to access the feed already in Google (if you want to use another reader use this link). To complete the Really Simple final Step just click the “Add to Google homepage” button. The feed will then be added as a gadget to your Google page and you’re done! From now on whenever a post is added to the site it will appear on your Google page. If you stay logged into Google, your iGoogle page will appear every time you access the site.

If you run Mozillia Firefox it’s incredibly simple to add feeds to your Google page. When you see the orange RSS icon in the address bar of a site click on it and you will be taken to the feed page. Just select Google from the drop down list and click subscribe now. You will then be taken to the same page as the above link and given the option to add the feed to your Google page. What’s more, if you pick Google as your default the number of steps gets even less.

Unfortunately Internet Explorer doesn’t suport external readers so to use iGoogle you must click this link (while logged into iGoogle), then click “Add feed or gadget” on the left side of the screen. You should then paste the link to the feed you want to add. This can be obtained by clicking the RSS logo on the toolbar and copying the address of the page it takes you to. It’s much simpler in Firefox but it isn’t too hard in Internet Explorer either.

I hope this post helped anyone who didn’t know about RSS before, and I hope you now want to subscribe to my feed to see the new posts first!

Batman may wear black, but he’d look far better in green…

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I’ve just returned from seeing the Dark Knight. I’m not going to bore you, with a review of it you probably don’t want, but I would urge anyone who hasn’t seen it to go do so, even if, like I did, you think it’s not your thing. Unsurprisingly enough, I’m now going to talk about Heath Ledger’s acting. I don’t want to dwell on it too much though, as it isn’t necessarily what I want to focus on. As you are no doubt aware, the world has gone crazy about the acting of the late Heath Ledger. So, when I went to see the film, I was expecting amazing things.

I thought all the acting was fantastic, but with Ledger’s performance, I was always expecting more. I was always expecting there to come a definitive moment, when he showed why the world has gone nuts about him. That moment never came. Despite the fact that his acting was outstanding throughout, I was never quite satisfied, because I was always expecting more. I was therefore somewhat disappointed with the one thing I didn’t expect to be disappointed by. The reason for this is obvious; when something is hyped beyond all proportion, we can never be satisfied by the original. The hyperbole that has surrounded Ledger’s acting, the exaggeration of, what was, an already pretty flawless performance, meant that the original could not compare to the descriptions of itself.

It follows that when we expect something to be perfect, we are always let down. Nothing in life is perfect, we can only hope to find things so close, that we cannot see the gap.

The problem is, what follows that. By the logic that shows us optimism doesn’t work, we can argue that when you expect everything to go wrong, you will be pleasantly surprised. If you expect the worse, what you receive will be better than what you expected.

Now in this logical mindset, there is no problem at all, we get better than what we expect therefore we are always pleased with the results. However, it is not as simple as what it appears to be. If we live life pessimisticly, always expecting the worst, our lives will not be happy ones.

I don’t believe in karma. I don’t think that there is some supernatural force that punishes our wrongdoings, and rewards our good deeds, but I do believe that the ideas behind karma are vital to a good life.

First off, by thinking something bad will punish you for your bad actions, one, somewhat selfishly, is far more reluctant to do these things. By the same token, you are more likely to help others and do good things with your life. This is great, but unless you actually believe in a supernatural force then it would seem this method of living doesn’t work as the motivation to do so isn’t there.

However, a supernatural force is not required to affect your life in ways you cannot consciously perceive. If you live your life expecting the best, you will be disappointed, but your will subconsciously do things that will lead yourself in a positive direction. If you live your life expecting the worst you won’t get disappointed, but your life will spiral downwards, until the pleasing result you get from what you do, will be so close to worst case scenario you won’t even notice the difference.

The message here is that optimism works, but expecting perfection will lead to disappointment. By aiming for 99% rather than 100, you will be far more likely to achieve your goal. Oh, and most important of all, avoid hype like the plague, and see all movies the hour they come out!

For an entry on another Heath Ledger film ‘Brokeback Mountain’ , check out this post.

A Short Blog Entry

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Today’s entry will be a short one (in case you hadn’t gleaned that from the title). I often end up writing far longer blog entries than I intend to, which probably put people off reading to the end, so I will make sure I keep this entry short and sweet.

I have been doing some behind the scenes work on the site, the home page now redirects to the blog and I will leave it that way until I think of something useful to put there. I’ve also added some rudimentary error messages (404 etc.) which all redirect back here as well.

I hope to find some time, maybe over the summer, to really get the site off the ground and to add a home page and perhaps add some content outside of the blog. Suggestions for what I could do will be greatly appreciated as always. These can be left as comments on the blog.

Thanks for reading, and if it’s your first time here why not check out the other entries.

{insert minority here}

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I was looking in the Radio Times earlier, and I noticed that Brokeback Mountain is being shown on Channel 4. This is film that annoys me. In fact, it isn’t the film that annoys me, it is the way it has been received. It is labelled as a “gay cowboy film” when is it nothing of the sort. Just to clarify, I really liked the film, I thought it dealt with some really important issues, however, these issues had very little to do with homosexuality. The film, for those who haven’t seen it, is about two cowboys who work on an isolated mountain looking after the sheep during the winter. Set in the 1960s, it is a story of how the two fall in love. Now on the surface it is about a “gay” relationship, but when one thinks about it, the fact that they are two men is inconsequential. The story is about forbidden love, about how love knows no boundaries. The “boundary” the story chooses to explore is one of gender. However, the characters in the film were not gay (although Jake Gyllenhaal’s character may have been). They were just two men who fell in love.

The reason the reactions to this film annoy me is because this film is one of the few films of our time that actually deal with a minority well. What could have been a story about love, has been labelled a story about homosexuality, meaning it is treated as a “gay film”. Film and television are terrible at handling minority populations. There are only really two ways they have minority characters.

The first method is the use of “token” characters. They place a character in a film/show in order to demonstrate how tolerant and politicly correct they are. These characters are often extremely stereotyped and serve only to reinforce these stereotypes in people’s minds while contributing little to the story.

The second method is to have a character who does belong to a minority, and then focus on this fact whenever they appear on screen. Again, these characters are almost always stiffly stereotyped meaning these characters are often false and impossible to identify with. This is often taken a step further when the whole film or series is based on a minority group. These shows/films will often only show the worst parts of a community or focus on the differences between that community and the audience’s rather than the similarities.

What we need, and what perhaps Brokeback Mountain did, are minority characters who appear with no fanfare, or special mention, but merely as people. We need to see black people, Muslim people, gay people, without the label attached. We need to see them as people. What I want to see, is a film that has minorities in, but does not dwell on this fact, and does not place minority characters in just for the sake of it.

For an entry on another the latest (and last) Heath Ledger movie ‘The Dark Knight’, check out this post.

I’ll come up with a title later…

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Procrastination is an awkward thing. I could go into why this is now, or I could put it off till later. As with most things, I will probably end up putting it off, and this will probably end up with me failing to do it at all. The large gap between this entry and my last, is testament to my aptitude at this skill. That isn’t to say I’m unreliable, it is just to say that I often end up putting things off, and focusing on other, seemingly more important things. Now sometimes this is a good thing, neglecting my blog to focus on work and upcoming exams is certainly a good example of this. However, it is all too easy to put seemingly trivial things off, and then come to regret this, realising that the trivial things in life are often much more important than we think.

Hindsight, is another awkward thing. The idea of hindsight is one often used badly. People do not realise that if we all thought about our actions beforehand, if we really did use metaphorical telescopes to look before we leapt into the metaphorical abyss, then the notion of hindsight would be a moot one. Advising people to think before they act, warning them of what they may come to realise after the event, by quoting the importance of hindsight, is a concept dripping in irony. If we are so focused on the future, looking straight ahead, trying not to slip up, we will be unable to look behind ourselves, loosing all concept of hindsight.

I therefore have no desire to tell people that, if we always think before we act, look before we leap, spell check before we hit the print button, that we will not make mistakes, because I know that is not something which holds true. We learn from our mistakes. Clichéd as it may be, it is true. The only mistake we can ever truly make that is wholly negative, is to slip up, and then not take note of why we did so.

Hindsight should not be used as a scaremongering tool, to try and avoid mistakes at all costs. It should be used to highlight the mistakes we are making, the mistakes we have made, and with a little thinking on our parts, the mistakes we will make. We must use it to help us to prevent the same mistakes occurring again, and to ensure that we learn from each mistake we inevitably will make.

It is worth mentioning here that I am, of course, imperfect. Other than to admit to my own imperfection, I say this because you would be perfectly justified to ask what right I have to tell others what to do. The answer to that particular question is: I don’t. I have no right to preach to others, because I do not hold all the answers and to pretend I do would be extremely wrong. However, I do not wish to be tell people what to do. I merely wish to share some of my thoughts on subjects which trouble me, because in sharing my own ideas, I may help someone troubled by the same things as myself. It is very easy to judge and very easy to think a situation is easy to deal with when you are not in it, but to judge yourself, or to change the way you think is much, much harder. It is therefore very easy for me to write down ways to look at life, and philosophies for better, happier lives, but, of course, to follow my own advice is infinitely harder.

I deviate. I felt it important to remind people of what I am aiming for here before I conclude. The point that I do want to make, my musing for the day, is that we do not need to think in terms of never making mistakes, if we made no mistakes our lives would be boring and unchanging. What we do need to consider is what we are putting off in our lives that we would regret not doing if the chance faded away.

We must ensure that what we put off, what we push aside for other issues, are not things that we will regret not doing. If there are things you can think of that you should do, not the real trivial things, but the really important things in life which you, for whatever reason, are procrastinating about, you should do them, before it really is too late. Remember though, what may seam trivial now, could very soon become very meaningful. However, by the time this occurs, it may be too late to do what it was you put off.

The time has come, the blogger said, to name this other things

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Yes, it’s true, I am no longer going to be naming my blogs by their number. Partly because I want to be able to talk about other things but also because constantly coming up with number puns gets on my nerves.

I know it’s harsh of me not to let my blog get into double figures. It never got to drink, drive or even vote and worst of all it never got to have sex, but I think it will be happy being named other things, as it isn’t, let’s face it, that hard to please a personified blog.

In fact I would go as far to say it’s very easy to please something that doesn’t really have emotions, other than the emotions you give it. I think it would quite nice if life was like that. If we could wake up in the morning and decide to feel X, Y and Z, and not have to worry about the emotions such as L or S (points for guessing what they stand for). Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. We can’t switch our emotions on and off, and those who claim to be able to are just kidding themselves (or lying).

Then again, there is the theory that without sadness there is no happiness, without hate there is no love. I definitely buy into this school of thought. That isn’t to say you have to hate someone before you can love someone else, but it is true that those who have never been truly sad, can never be truly happy.

There is no way to measure emotion, we can’t express it in it’s pure form. We can attempt it with words, or music or art, but really, the emotion perceived through that is the emotion of the reader/listener/viewer, and not the emotion of the artist. In my opinion it is impossible to have two people to feel the same way about one thing. No matter how close we may think we are to feeling the same as someone else, we are unable to truly do so. This is, in my opinion, due to us constructing our interpretations of life, and therefore the emotions we feel about certain subjects, on our previous experiences. For example, if someone has never experienced death (as in bereavement rather than actually dying) then they aren’t affected by it, most children don’t think about death because they have never had any exposure to it. On the other hand, someone who has had a lot of experience of death will think about it a lot, and is likely to attach powerful emotions to subjects, that some people would consider to be very neutral.

This is the problem with emotions, we cannot control them. People try, and often fail, to do so, and often this leads to further problems. What is often the best thing to do, although somewhat counter-intuitive, is to allow the emotions to affect us in any way they want to (yes I am treating emotions like they have thoughts, as it is often the case that they appear to) and then, once we have allowed them to do this, we can move on with our lives.

I will finish by mentioning one of my favourite words; cathartic. I like it, not just because it’s one of those essay buzzwords that makes you feel smart, but because cathartic processes are very useful. It refers to the process of cleansing or purging ones emotions, and was originally used by Aristotle in his definition of Tragedy. The best way to describe it, is the feeling you get after crying, the process of crying is a cathartic one, that releases the emotions you have been harbouring. It is often the case that we bottle up our emotions and need something to spark them off, we then overflow with emotion, and normally end up crying, or shouting, or even laughing, but, no matter how bad it may seam that we have done those things, it is good that we have released the emotions we have been keeping locked away.

I know I have spoken (well typed) for quite a while, on, what some of you probably consider, a frivolous subject. However, I would ask you to just have a think about the way you handle your own emotions, and whether you could benefit from handling them differently. I made a promise to someone today that I would stop talking about nothing in my blog, and talk about ‘stuff’, and I am happy that this blog entry definitely counts as ‘stuff’. Thank you for reading what was quite a long blog entry, and, as always, comments are very, very welcome.

Seven Days of Seeing Green… No Wonder My Eyes Hurt

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So today marks the seventh day of Seeing Green being up and active. In the first two days I got nearly 300 hits on this blog which was fantastic! However since then the number of hits has almost stopped (which isn’t so fantastic). So I now have the important task of getting those hits up again.

For those of you who use Digg or Stumple Upon, or any other ratings site, please digg/stumble/whatever you want to call it, this site, it will be greatly appreciated.

One more plea before I continue on with this post, please comment the blog! Even if you want to tell me it’s rubbish it’s still better than nothing, that way I know what people like, and what people think should be struck off the face of the planet!

So now onto the main content of the blog, which is, as ever, me randomly talking about nothing in particular. Admittedly, by now, I probably should be posting some well thought out, well written articles, but, to be honest, I would much rather whiter on about absolutely nothing.

Problem with that is that nothing doesn’t really fill out a blog entry, so, in addition to talking about nothing, I am forced to talk about talking about nothing, which again doesn’t really progress us very far. Which leads us to the question; why doesn’t he just shut up?

This is a very interesting question that has been posed to me many times before. It is a question so complex that it leads us to many other questions, some of which I started to deal with in previous entries, but of course, never finished. Which actually leads us back to the original question regarding my inability to shut up.

Ironically now, I feel that I have talked for long enough and so I shall leave you pondering that question, which I may discuss further in some future entry, although, probably I will just leave you to come to your own conclusion. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to comment!

I’m Seeing Six Shades of Green!

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It started as a weird entry on MSN spaces, it graduated to the world of the MySpace blog, and now, my weird, nonsensical ramblings have finally made it to the big time, they now occupy their own tiny section of the world wide interweb. Admittedly there are probably better uses for websites, but hey, there are also a lot worse things I could put on here.

So first things first, why “seeinggreen”? Well if I’m honest, it sounded good and it was available, but if I gave such a concise answer to every question, I wouldn’t have much of a blog, so I will strive to answer every question in the most long winded way possible while hopefully entertaining you at the same time (if you don’t believe me check out some of the other entries I took from my MySpace blog).

If you want to get all deep about it… “seeing red” means getting angry, aggressive and rude. So I guess seeing green would mean being calm and friendly (and, of course, very random!). So I guess what I’m trying to say is… the name was available and I took it.

So, you may be wondering why I bothered making a website to facilitate something that I can do on MySpace. Well, firstly, not everyone has MySpace and I’d hate for anyone to miss out on what is a pretty weird blog. Also, it doesn’t quite have the same feel when your blogging on someone else’s website. Finally, MySpace is just for friends, and I’ll never become rich and famous if only my friends see this.

I’m hoping to update this at least once a week maybe more. This wasn’t the best of entries but I’m only just getting started. All comments are welcome and I hope to have a more interesting entry for you soon!

A break from the norm.

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I feel like doing a serious blog today. I’m not going to count this in my normal way as that would only tempt me to be funny (or try) and I don’t want everyone thinking that’s all I can do.

The reason for this seriousness is probably a conversation I had with Mr Kirton (the teacher at my school who organises the SCUBA diving). I am taking the rescue diver course very soon and we were just chatting about various things. I was asking him about the depths we are allowed to dive to; 30m recreationally, 40m for rescues. When he told me this, I suddenly had a thought; what if someone goes down deeper than 40?

The horrible truth is, that if this were to happen, you would have to leave them.

Just think about it for a second (horrifying stuff). You are diving with a buddy (you have to) who is most likely a friend, or a relative. In fact, considering that you are presumably on holiday with this person, you are most likely to be very close.

So your underwater, and at these depths it’s likely just to be the two of you, it’s dark, it’s cold and suddenly something goes wrong. It might not be sudden, but for whatever reason, your buddy falls unconscious and sinks to below 40m, or worse, they remain concious but are trapped below this depth. You, a trained rescue diver, have been told never to go below this depth for your own safety. What are you supposed to do?

You can’t help the person, they are below the depth your allowed to go. So in essence what you must do is watch your friend or relative while they either panic, or lie unconscious beneath you, until you have to return to the surface, leaving them to die. What’s worse, if they had been a few metres closer to the surface they would have probably survived with no permanent harm.

Now this is a very rare case, I hope I will never come even close to this, but it does throw up another issue. Could you really put your safety above others? I for one don’t think I could let someone die without trying to help. Honestly? I don’t know what I would do in that situation, but something tells me that instinct would take over and I would be powerless to stop myself from diving deeper.

I hope that most people will see this and have to think long and hard before deciding what they would do. To me, if you would put your own life first, without a second thought, it’s not the sort of life that’s worth keeping on this planet…

Five is a cool number…

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Well I’m back, I know you have missed me terribly. I can say that without a shadow of a doubt, what with me being the only person who reads this, and I do sometimes miss my incoherent ramblings about absolutely nothing in particular.

I was just thinking I could call this entry, “Five Months since the last” but it’s more like 4, and that would just confuse my fan base, so I stuck with a boring statement about the coolness of the number five, which, as you have already discovered is “cool”. The question we must now ask ourselves is “what does that tell us?”. An interesting question, but really a useless one in the grand scheme of things. The main purpose of this pertinent question is to, once again, entice you into reading what is a very shoddy, blog entry.

While pretending to investigate this seemingly important question I have posed, I am in fact waffling on about nothing what so ever. Which leads us to another, more important question; “when will I get a life?”. Of course the irony of this question is that, in answering it, I am only serving to back up the fact that I have no life at all, thus providing a reason to answer the question (confused yet?). However, in answering it I end up in an endless loop of monotony which seems to be in keeping with the rest of this blog. So I will be forced to abandon this question which isn’t such a bad thing seeing as I have already got you to read this far (unless of course you skipped ahead, in which case you will burn in hell).

It would now seam that I have succeeded in wasting a significant amount of your time and therefore it seams only fair to release you with that unsatisfied feeling you get from every one of these blog entries. That only leaves me with the task of wishing to one day form a decent blog entry, and then try to think of something to trail off on…