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. December 2006 .
01/12/06 00:52 [Friday]
I have woken up after almost exactly four hours of sleep with very few odd effects. The only slightly ‘odd’ effect really has been slight restlessness - mainly involving tense legs - over about five minutes in a quick waking-up period, as they go. I am drinking a Red Bull to get the day going, although in fact I have woken up fairly completely as I say over a short interval with no detectable lagging of the seriatim process.
Needless to say thanks to my precautions I can be certain there have been no illicit entrants tonight.
Logging on to my website I have found the past few times it has downloaded consistently at a slow rate, the implication possibly being that the easily.co.uk host computer only releases so many Kbits every few seconds so that even broadband users would have to wait a minute or two for the download. I’m wondering if this is the way the Authorities contrive to discourage independent readers of my stuff. If so, the implication is they wish to conceal the things that are done to me and us and presumably the reason - as may have been the case in keeping me off the internet while I was in hospital and possibly why I was thrown off AOL when I sent a number of emails publicising my case - is so that I get no help which might interfere with The Experiment. And the implication to me of this draconian interference in free publication - as with the interference with the posts when I tried to write to Microsoft in the States - is that The Experiment is for military purposes. But presumably it has not been so from the start in the 1970s, yet in the 1980s I was forcibly detained in hospital surely a draconian measure. I would have to conjecture that the change came about when Caroline became involved in The Experiment and that what she said - that I was too clued-up (I forget the actual word she used) to be discharged from The Experiment - was the truth, however difficult to accept that is. I was clever at school, it’s true, but still I cannot see in what way my detailed thoughts on matters are of use to anyone. They seem to me to be entirely theoretical in nature.
01/12/06 03:39
On Wednesday 24 March 2004 many or all of
my computer files were re-saved as one can tell from the timestamp on them.
From the available evidence I conjecture the information was stolen from my
laptop left in
Caroline was drafted in from the start I conjecture to give me experience of an unhappy ‘love affair’ and thus provide additional motivation to me to return to the care of Barbara. This was from the outset designed with a view to inducing or simulating a schizophrenia in me. When my computer information was read in March 2004 I conjecture the Authorities decided I had some interesting ideas on psychology, and they would have consisted of personnel - naturally - with an interest in psychology and psychiatry. Their conclusion I suppose was that I was schizophrenic and needed medication but if kept on the strait and narrow might contribute some useful ideas to the ‘science’ of psychology. They perhaps felt that as a general principle people should be usefully employed and in my case psychology could be my field.
With their conventional views on psychiatric illness they might well have thought that after being sent loony by circumstances and drugs through the summer of 2004 I could be treated without any hurt to anyone in a psychiatric ward - much equivalent they thought to an ordinary hospital ward despite the fact of compulsion, which they may have believed was always accepted later by the recovered patient.
It was in 2005 I think that my website developed into an exposition of my views on all these matters, and I presume my views came as a surprise and may well have been thought a trifle loony in themselves. Also of course matters were complicated by my marriage to Dawn, which again I suppose conventionally trained psychiatric carers might have had grave doubts about. In the summer of 2005 the implication of some of the things put into Dawn’s mouth (if I read the situation right) was that the Authorities wished to be sure to keep tabs on me, hoping for example that I could be made dependent on Dawn in a simply understood manner and that she - or her family - could be recruited into their scheme. In fact something very similar to this scenario seems actually to have come about in respect of Dawn’s family.
The theory then is that the Authorities reading my stuff from March 2004 came to the view that I had some interesting thoughts, and since then they have in fact learnt a good deal - for example about detention in a psychiatric ward and about the effects of psychiatric drugs. I suppose they cannot tell exactly what might be learnt in the future but on the basis of the past they think it worthwhile to continue.
Well does it matter to me and am I hurt in any way by a continuation of The Experiment? I repeat what I have said many times, the major hurt I suffer is from the effects of drugs. For example lately - and specifically yesterday - I strongly suspect my sleep disturbance - yesterday causing me to be sleepy at unfortunate times - has been due to drugs. Furthermore I still fear compulsion - or strong urging - for example away from Kingswinford (where in fact I would like to retain the bungalow as a holiday refuge). The distraction of voices in the night - distracting me for example from thinking about character recognition - isn’t too bad if it is only occasional and of short duration in number of consecutive nights.
01/12/06 05:50
I have to say lately I have been feeling defensive verging on paranoid. The reason - apart from any slight effect of minuscule dosages of ASM I may have been given - has been fear that I am being manoeuvred into selling the bungalow in Kingswinford. It may well be that I am overreacting to what is really only a suggestion or a request originating from the Authorities. Because my ego is so weak - I fall into line so readily with others’ plans and ways of looking at things, at least until I am freed from their influence or rather from any communication with them - I know myself that I may well end up doing something I don’t genuinely want to do. Luckily Dawn’s ego is also weak and her suggestion that she would prefer the bungalow to be sold - whether originating from the Authorities via nighttime advice or not - has receded.
The trouble with selling the bungalow would be I would have nowhere to flee should the Authorities revert to their former objectionable behaviour. I daresay the correct interpretation of their insistence on medicating me - and of detaining me I suppose - is that they could not see that antischizophrenic treatment would, might or should increase my unpleasure and in association with that my resentment and indeed paranoia, as it has. Even if that is the correct interpretation, it still means I may suffer further in future from their incompetence - even in matters such as psychiatry they are supposedly versed in - unless I try to make sure protective measures for myself. And some of the things they have done - such as giving me stimulant drugs in 2004 - have led to losses - financial losses - which even if they were not foreseen surely should be compensated. And there is no sign of compensation. Therefore I distrust the Authorities’ good faith as well as their competence.
However, it is possible for us to afford to retain the bungalow, and I see no reason we should be urged to part with it (except that is to make the Authorities’ job easier for themselves). If it turns out that we enter a settled period of having the two homes, and I am not drugged at all to speak of, I am quite happy. So is Dawn most of the time. Two days ago when we were discussing the bungalow and costs she became upset, but I have a feeling that was founded in nighttime advice and she will now have shrugged it off. Her fundamental fear was that the money from selling her house in Worksop - which she didn’t really want to regard as specifically her money although that’s how she was regarding it - would be frittered away. In fact half the proceeds - after paying off the guttering loan on that house - have been spent on this park home including the new windows for it, that is on a capital asset. The desire to retain funds - in Dawn and myself, but in my case more so in my younger days - is a desire for future security. It is a form of wishing to process now to avoid processing in the future - that is to avoid being required to do things in the future such as go out to work or even simply apply to the Social which we may find ourselves incapable of.
11:48. I have been under the influence today of a drug - and possibly the same drug yesterday - which produces the effect of tiredness of the seriatim process such as one would get naturally after concentration for some hours on one detailed topic. This has driven me to bed twice - once about 6.30 am after having been up for a number of hours working on the computer (arguably natural therefore that I might be tired) but again about an hour ago after doing little (and therefore not naturally tired). I do not like this drug because it stops me remembering and organising as I would wish to. It makes it more difficult to concentrate eg in the presence of Dawn who likes us to be together practically all the time (I therefore hanker after periods on my own, for all that marriage to Dawn is a considerable benefit and pleasure to me as well as to her). It creates disturbance of my sleeping pattern, as the tiredness of the seriatim process does not necessarily lead to sleep, but the tiredness of the lower processes gets out of sync with the seriatim.
Natural tiredness of the seriatim process would lead to change of activity - eg from mental activity concentrating on one topic to relaxed activity such as outdoor pursuits or simply listening to music or watching TV. In my case difficulty arises because I cannot at the drop of a hat say go out for a walk: I have to consider Dawn’s plans and wishes and agree matters with her (which can tire the seriatim even more).
If Dawn has taken in this same drug - in the coffee one presumes - it is doing her good not ill as she seems very efficient in organising her work and activity in general this morning and besides is in a very good temper. If the drug is in the coffee I feel it must have been switched since purchase and I expect my new security measures to protect me from a recurrence. (On the other hand as I say it is a possibility that out of this phase of The Experiment something has been found to enhance Dawn’s pleasure in life.)
12:10. I don’t know that this drug is an antischizophrenic agent, although in reducing or blocking seriatim-brain activity it could be regarded as such (a chemical lobotomy) and I might be willing to believe it produces leg effects. A very atypical antipsychotic, we can call it.
16:36. Since eating a bacon sandwich about an hour ago I have become very sleepy and it is not the same problem I had this morning. The suspect coffee of this morning has been used up and we are now using coffee bought recently at the One Stop Shop and kept since purchase in the safe. The bread - which is what I suspect of causing the sleepiness (more pronounced I must say than when I ate the same bread at lunch with soup or at breakfast with bacon and eggs and beans) - was bought yesterday at the One Stop Shop but as I imply might have been switched while we were out this afternoon, my security not yet in its final form for when we leave the home unattended although I am confident of detecting illicit entry at night while we sleep within. In fact it may be that following my comments on the website last night about my security measures it is desired to render me sound asleep tonight possibly so that nighttime advice can be given with some vigour.
02/12/06 04:23 [Saturday]
I woke up about 4.15 am having had almost seven hours’ sleep. When I woke up, without looking at the clock - not easy to get at in the bedroom - I felt that I had had plenty of sleep, and this was confirmed when I got as far as the kitchen to see the wall clock. On recent mornings when I have been getting up say 1 am or before but feeling that I haven’t had enough sleep, why have I been getting up so early? The answer I suppose must be either unnatural wakefulness due to stimulant drugs - or some ASM perhaps risperidone with a sort of stimulant action - or nighttime voices advising me to get up. There is evidence it was the latter in my becoming sleepy again after having been up a number of hours, and recently in fact going back to bed around say 5 am or 6 am. Either that or stimulant taken in my supper having worn off by 5 am or 6 am. I think that’s more likely than that the drinks I took after waking up say 1 am contained sedating agents.
I have the past day or two been suspecting the coffee we were drinking - coffee bought actually at the local filling station last Sunday I think after we went out, myself made slightly angry by a combination of stimulant and ASM - contained some ASM possibly an atypical modern ASM. If it did then very likely it was switched by illicit entrants and did not contain drugs when bought. And with my security now it may not have been possible to switch the coffee we are presently drinking. This may explain my lack of sleep disturbance overnight. All I can say is it isn’t right to drug me in such a way that I suffer sleep disturbance and other effects such as unclarity of thinking, and benefit nothing, without paying me in money for my trouble.
02/12/06 05:22
I logged on to the internet a few minutes ago to check our NatWest account. I notice that the past day or two - unlike prior to that when much of the time if I was just reading a static webpage there was no RX or TX - all the time I am logged on (to the internet) RX is about 3 Kbits/second (but varying between say 2 Kbits/second and 4 Kbits/second with more if stuff is downloading in the ordinary way) and TX is 0.2 Kbits/second pretty constantly (except when stuff is uploading in the ordinary way when it goes higher). Examining Windows Tasks, I find msmsgs.exe seems to keep stopping and starting as it hops up and down the list. I suspect the RX and TX activity is related to msmsgs.exe, but whether this is an improper exe I don’t know. For example, it may be related to Windows Live Messenger which I installed recently.
02/12/06 07:12
I am continuing with Scan for lines for OCR. My mind now is clear and hence I conclude unaffected by ASM. I have written a procedure to extract from the line of text under consideration blocks of black cells separately from the left, and to display the result by printing them to a file one after the other. Thus viewing the textfile output the blocks appear staggered from top left to bottom right. As I say my mind is clear and I am performing efficiently. The essence of this is a clearly distinct view of the subparts of what I am doing - the subparts within my plan - so that each can be thought about without interference. Having got thus far in my programming, for example, I am now taking time out to consider what next to do with the separated-out black blocks - in other words I am evolving the plan. (What’s next in fact is to increase whiteness of each black block considered separately and extract sub-blocks of reasonable aspect ratio, very similarly to the former method but then I was treating the whole line of text as one.)
I have to say my clarity of thought now - compared to sometimes when I have tried to write programs while affected by ASM - is expressed visibly in the logical definition of the program code I am writing, that is the way it consists of subprocedures each doing just the right tasks - not too much and not too little - and not overlapping or jumbled in any way.
02/12/06 15:41
We have just been to visit Dawn’s daughter, and Dawn’s niece’s daughter and nine-month-old son were there. I was reminded that when I was about eleven years of age a man and woman lived next door for a year or two and the woman had a baby whom I spent a fair bit of time with. I had no brothers or sisters or other close family (young or old, apart from my parents) but I got on well with the baby and his parents. Later on - specifically, after university when I was at work, I conjecture at the time when I was first being drugged (apart from test doses at Cambridge) - I found it more difficult to get on with young children, feeling hampered by the presence of their parents but also I believe lacking imagination (because of the drugs) in interacting with kids especially.
My new prog for separating out characters from a line of text based on their aspect ratio works even better than the earlier version. Apart from the improvement due to treating each block of black cells in the line as a separate object from the outset, there is also an improvement due to calculating the number of ‘risers’ in a character - that is vertical columns extending beyond the tramlines - and determining thereby if the character is a capital letter. If it is, it is allowed to have a wider aspect ratio in comparison to the tramline separation. I shall perhaps run the prog and publish some results on my website.
02/12/06 19:34
This is an extract from the output of my prog. Points to note:
The “A” starting the second line was extracted in two parts, the first one the leftmost portion (bottom left of the letter). This first part came out to have a reasonable aspect ratio - that is not too wide - and being extracted played no further part. The easiest way of coping with such a situation seems to me to be to re-combine seeming portions of characters which overlap horizontally by, say, more than half the width of either of the parts (think of the “Z” I was on about the other day). The way I tried to cope in my original character recognition prog was to join up small fragments to the nearest character or part-character. However, the first part of the “A” referred to is not really a small fragment - although it’s true it is only a fraction of the tramlinesize in height - and of course using that method punctuation markings could seem small fragments to be combined in with nearby characters.
The above output is part of ten lines read from a document. Here is ScanLog for the read:
Load document starts at 69215.56
Document display ends at 69228.56
Starting to read document at 69228.56
Skipping line because of font size (too small or too big)
Skipping line because count of black cells too few, blackcount = 2
Skipping line because count of black cells too few, blackcount = 1
Skipping line because count of black cells too few, blackcount = 3
Closing document at 69274
Total elapsed time: 45.4375 secs
Characters read: 0
Lines read: 10
02/12/06 21:03
Trying to learn - almost introspectively - by analysing what my prog does. The first thing is the scale or grainsize is determined. For horizontal lines of blackness, which is how English text appears, we find tramlines as top and bottom bounds (in the case of each line) of the blackest portion of the line. Using the so useful idea of clustering, if each row of black pixels in a particular block of seeming text were examined for blackness, the rows would cluster, the blackest rows being concentrated towards the centre of each line of text - that is between the tramlines. This can be expected to be common in nature, that the lightest portion of something light will be to the centre and likewise the darkest portion of something dark.
Having determined the grainsize from the distribution of blackness, parameters available to be varied are varied - in the case of my prog simply the whiteness or brightness - until an interesting - that is informationally beautiful - distribution results. No doubt it is a simplification, but my prog measures interestingness as the aspect ratio of black blocks emerging - it must be within certain bounds (close to the Golden Ratio). Because of the nature of English text - more likely to run together horizontally than vertically - we start with a low value for whiteness and expect as it increases that the black blocks emerging will become ever less wide in aspect ratio. Because of the nature of the perceptual apparatus (the printer-scanner) the ideal whiteness varies from point to point along the line of text. My prog copes with this.
That about summarises my prog, except that at the end we sometimes find small black blocks and I have used various ad hoc methods to try to re-combine these with the significant blocks. It would be unusual for an array of smaller grainsize to co-exist with one of larger. We can expect that small fragments will either be mistakenly separated parts of significant portions, or - if the small fragments are reliably repeated - will form a textured background - known in the case of text as punctuation.
03/12/06 02:17 [Sunday]
From the facts that I woke up just on two o’clock after only four hours’ sleep and feel rather grumpy about it I conclude nighttime advisers have advised me to wake up. My legs are aching around the knees but otherwise there is little effect I could blame on drugs. From the fact that I greatly regret there is no Red Bull when I believed in the waking-up period there was some to enjoy, I conjecture the advisory voices advised that I should or might drink Red Bull.
In natural languages which are written horizontally, markings which alter letters but really form part of the letter - for example accents, as é and ü as well as i - are I believe always written above the letter. As I said, separate portions which (say) more than half overlap horizontally are actually part of the same letter, and some portions - such as accents - are always written separately but overlapping, as well as sometimes portions erroneously turning out separate in the printed version. In specialised symbolic languages - eg in mathematics or grammar and possibly other formalisms, where there are only a limited number of specialist symbols - it is true markings which are adaptations really forming part of the same symbol are sometimes written adjacent, for example subscripts (a2) and the markings in grammar for length of vowel.
03/12/06 02:50
In natural language although there are some rules of composition - especially syntactic rules for sentence formation - to a large degree one is constrained to follow convention, which for one thing means that users of language take many years to learn the conventions. In symbolic formalisms other than natural languages - eg mathematics - there is more variability in the way symbols can be juxtaposed, but on the other hand there are rigid rules governing the juxtaposition or at least the meaning of the juxtaposition. These rules can be learnt sooner which is why there are very young genius mathematicians but not very young genius writers.
The rules of composition of numbers are particularly easy, and thus to learn the rules for writing words representing numbers in a foreign language is relatively quick and easy. A number is written - in the modern Arabic format anyway - simply by writing any string of any of the digits (0 - 9) one after the other. The rules for interpreting a number though are very rigid and homonyms do not occur in numerology (although writing in the old-style Roman numerals it is sometimes possible to express the same number in more than one way, eg IV = IIII).
Mathematicians who try to use words sometimes become known for applying a mathematically simple generative syntax to generate novel ‘nonsense’. The mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson wrote ’Twas brillig and the slithy toves, which is quite convincing as a piece generated by rules of English word and sentence formation.
03/12/06 03:05
I am wondering about the fact that I drank a cup of coffee something like half an hour ago, and now my flow of ideas is abating. I am wondering (of course) if the coffee contains ASM. I have a feeling that when we went out yesterday afternoon to see Dawn’s daughter I left this coffee on view although I had intended always to keep it in the safe. It would be possible I think by looking through the kitchen window or one of the lounge windows here in the park home to ascertain the likelihood of detection or prevention equipment secured to our main entrance door (and there is as yet no such equipment in working order).
If such trouble is taken, it seems a remarkably costly way - in effort and organisation if not necessarily in money - of tricking me into taking drugs. What I have to say about the drugs - as well as other matters - must be thought worth listening to. I find it all very strange. Anyway, I can be pretty sure any effects I am suffering - on the assumption it is not merely random fluctuation in neurotransmitter levels or something similar - are not due to my injection, as the effects have grown - the underactivational effects - since I woke up and got up. I refuse to believe the stuff I was thinking above after waking up was prompted - certainly not in specific terms - and enthusiasm raised by the nighttime advisers. (This is basically because the ideas were founded in what I was doing yesterday - horizontally overlapping portions of characters - which the nighttime advisers would not yet know I had been doing. All they could advise would be, ‘Write an essay (or part of an essay) in continuation of what you were doing yesterday.’)
What I’m saying in simple terms is that I find it suspicious I am becoming more ‘tired’ at this time of the morning after having woken up seemingly fully. If I had been woken by noises, say, I might become sleepy again but not I would have thought after my seriatim process had got going as it had above.
03/12/06 03:27
I’m just thinking what I ought to do is go and buy some more coffee or other hopefully safe drink - we have little in, perhaps deliberately contrived through suggestion yesterday (assisted perhaps by the deactivating effect later yesterday of this coffee). The trouble is (and it’s obvious no stimulant is acting) it is a wild and windy night and I am reluctant to wake Dawn or go out without her (because she wouldn’t like it).
I note it is Sunday.
05:07. The ASM seems to be turning from affecting my imaginative capability more to making me sleepy or to have a tendency - slight compared to sometimes - to blank out. The way my imagination is returning is in thinking about security methods for our entrance doors. I am thinking of arrangements depending on mouse clicks or keyboard switch operation to set a computer off, electrical connections along the lines of electromagnetic relays set off by infra-red motion detectors and how to use my expensive digital camera which can be set off by an electrical connection being made. Further possibilities are a Bluetooth device or an infra-red remote (eg starting up the halogen heater and as I said before burning banknotes).
05:17. However I am drugged by mouth - in whatever surreptitious way, be it by people illicitly entering our home, by drugging the water supply or by selling drugged foods in shops - it is quite extraordinary. The only way it would not be extraordinary and not indicate that some elaborate scheme is in progress would be if all the drugging is by the licit means - in my case my injections - and at the prescribed dosage. This cannot be so. The dosage of my injections has certainly reduced since last winter and may now be zero. There have been incontrovertible signs of drugs which must have been taken in orally, such as stimulants and polycarbophil: signs in Dawn as well as myself (and the reason she doesn’t believe they are drug effects is she is not all that knowledgeable about drugs; moreover Dawn does not have the motivation I do to make sure, as the drugs have never affected her unbearably severely).
03/12/06 05:36
My mind is turning again to my website. To introduce the new month of December I shall have to re-upload all the preceding months of 2006, so I think that can wait till we get back to Kingswinford and broadband on Wednesday. Before then I may finalise November and update the website for recent days.
03/12/06 07:04
The situation with my character recognition programming as that having revamped the procedures for extracting putative lines of text from a document, I have two separate VB code Modules, viz one which takes a document scan and extracts the lines of putative text and one which seeks to recognise characters. In between these I need to revamp - in a third Module - the procedures for extracting putative characters from the lines supposedly containing characters.
04/12/06 01:06 [Monday]
I woke up all of a sudden at 1am and even more surely than yesterday morning there is no sign there are drugs acting on me, so I conclude the nighttime advisers have requested or advised me to wake up. In the way that people can train themselves - or be trained - to need less sleep I think I could probably get used to managing on four hours a night. I expect I am aided in my wakefulness now by a rebound effect from a small dosage of ASM taken yesterday, in the early morning coffee (I have since obtained other coffee, although at present I am drinking Red Bull).
Because of the ASM yesterday I was less clearly envisaging stuff in my mind’s eye - that is the workings of the prog I was concerned with - but eventually after a struggle I got it doing what it was supposed to, which was print for each line of text the characters it could recognise with near certainty in the shape they were in in the original document but that shape made up of the character the shape was supposedly recognised as.
This is how “Kingswinford” appears. My idea next was something along the lines of taking out of the original scan of the line the portion recognised then decreasing whiteness to firm up the remaining characters and hope they emerged as recognisable objects. I read somewhere - in some text on psychology, I think - that the way humans solve problems is first do the parts they can, then work on the rest. (However, it would be better if I extracted initially only those characters recognised with certainty - ie similaritymeasure > 0.95 - as in the above for example the “s” and the “o” being mis-recognised could cause difficulty later.)
04/12/06 08:08
I slept for a further three and a half
hours to about 7.45 am. I have just activated Windows on partition2 of this PB,
and am wondering about backing up that partition or possibly the system folders
on it. Really there should be no reason it might fail, and if it does I could
hopefully use my recently bought XP install disc - or a
04/12/06 08:34
On C: currently there are numbered files (up to number 007) - all small (1 KB) and hidden - whose names begin sqm. These seem to be associated with Windows Live Messenger.
Looking at Task Manager now - I haven’t been on the internet this time since startup - msmsgs.exe is still there, but is lower down the list and is not hopping up and down. There are 42 processes running (or loaded) the top two of which are _TextEdit.exe (this Rich Text Editor I am typing into) and PKey_Pro.exe (which is my screen-printing prog, only installed this time a day or two back).
04/12/06 10:12
Here is what my prog does now:
10:42.
Living not in the
saccadic here-and-now but more spread out in time, and - specifically -
modelling the future, is an aid in life. Thus free today of drugs I envisage
that I shall need cash and furnish myself with it. Also passing by and noting
my shoes I take time out - which I can efficiently, using time which under ASM
in me at least would be standing time - to put them on before the last minute.
We are going to
12:55. I was not as efficient in my use of time
as the plan required - taking into account Dawn’s activities too - so we
arrived at Worksop railway station to see the
04/12/06 16:50
There is a diuretic effect since eating Sea Salt crisps supplied yesterday by Dawn’s sister. Possibly I would find different packets of crisps (of different flavours thus I can say which) have different effects.
04/12/06 20:42
I have developed nasal congestion, quite rapidly over say the past half hour or forty minutes, and have become very sleepy over the same period, but sleepy in such a way that when stimulated (activated) by something - eg thinking out this to write - I wake up. My legs are very slightly uncomfortable. All in all I feel I was right to suspect those crisps. (However Dawn ate more of them than I and she is showing no effects at all.)
05/12/06 00:46 [Tuesday]
I got up at 12.15 am after little more than three hours in bed, mainly because I needed to empty my bowels - I conjecture because of polycarbophil taken in at a different time of day from the usual, likely in the crisps yesterday afternoon - but having got up I felt reluctant to go back to bed because of - I conjecture - stimulant drugs taken also in the crisps. Dawn has now also got up - about 12.30 am - and seems quite wakeful, which is unusual for her particularly given the time of night. It is evident to me that later on yesterday - and I think it must have been from her eating those crisps - she was much more talkative than usual, indicating that a stimulant drug was acting. Her greater sensitivity than I to such drugs would also explain the less effect on her of the ASM I conjecture was in the crisps too - whose effects I myself noticed last night but which now may substantially have worn off or certainly been countered by the stimulant. (However as we know the two do not cancel out in every respect and if the two are still acting in opposition on me I would expect my mind’s eye to be dimmed.)
I conjecture the reason we are encouraged to drink Red Bull - and even Dawn drank some last night, not explaining why she felt she wanted to - is to confuse us about the origin of the stimulant effects. Further stimulant effects on Dawn have been sore throat and vomit in her throat.
We realised just as we went to bed last night that I had forgotten to go for my injection yesterday. It seems certain it will be placebo these days anyway, so that the drugs in the foods have their effect without confusion from real drugs in the injections.
In 2005 I recall I was ‘blanking out’ quite severely from time to time (in particular between late April 2005 and the end of May 2005) - for example I remember the occasion I was trying to sort out problems with my digital camera and with the Properties of picture files deriving from it (Sunday 26 June 2005). Also in libraries when I was uploading my website pages I found it difficult to keep track of where I was in the uploading, resulting in danger of missing some files or doing the same file two or three times. I had believed this latter effect was due to a ‘truth drug’ or similar drug, but now I believe the effect was mainly due to failure of seriatim organising power because of ASM I was affected by (and the ‘blanking’ would also have been due to ASM). Because sedative drugs in general - ASM and barbiturate-related drugs used specifically to increase suggestibility, for example - interfere with the seriatim process, it’s no wonder under those conditions - my seriatim process interfered with - I found it so difficult to unravel the effects. I have a suspicion though that those drugging me interpreted matters in a more naïve way, and thought that using drugs increasing suggestibility what they were basically doing was suggest to me specific symptoms of schizophrenia to entertain myself with (and also using truth drugs they thought they were causing me to speak truth whereas in fact what I was speaking would have been a gross simplification of my true way of looking at things). I don’t imagine they understood the mechanism by which drugs interfering with my seriatim process - including antischizophrenic drugs - make me more schizophrenic.
One stands back in amazement that with such flawed understanding they were allowed to do to me what they did. However, really it’s just the ordinary - that is non-schizo - way of plunging in with insufficient forethought and in particular trying without questioning one’s own presumptions to normalise unusual behaviour. The witch-finders were abetted by the Courts in the destruction of witches on much the same basis. The Law nowadays authorises psychiatrists to forcibly treat people behaving strangely even where the strangeness does not involve any sort of hurt to others, and presumes that if two trained psychiatrists agree then they must be right. All the requirement for two to agree does is discourage malicious detention of people. If the basic understanding by psychiatrists as a body is flawed - which it is - that requirement is no help to detainees or potential detainees. And I have previously criticised the Tribunal system as being too dependent on the opinions of medical members trained along the same lines as the detaining psychiatrists.
I understand that it is the fact of my own weak ego which makes me so laissez faire, but what I would say is that if you are going to compel people you ought to understand why you are doing it - eg to protect other people - and also need to measure accurately the hurt you are doing to those compelled. Your war aims need to be clear and your assessment of war damage accurate.
05/12/06 04:38
The basic idea behind my current character recognition work is to reduce each line of text to black blocks of reasonable aspect ratio, then identify all those blocks as characters which we can with fair certainty identify (I find that making the prog too finicky in its requirement of closeness of similarity is counterproductive, just as the schizo brain in making too great a demand of completeness or certainty achieves counterproductivity). Having found characters the prog can be pretty sure of it beefs them up by darkening the scan again (having originally lightened it) and marking the black pixels surrounding the known characters as parts of those characters. Here is a visual exposition:
The “s” has been made bolder and also the unrecognised “r” (mistakenly guessed as a possible “t”). The prog then goes on to try to identify the “M” and the “r” but in fact succeeds with neither given the store of character exemplars it presently has. However other lines have shown more success. The latest version of the prog makes tentative guesses as it iteratively blackens the line of text (a tentative guess being one with a similaritymeasure > 0.3). The idea was having a range of guesses might be useful at a later stage when trying to put together letters into a sensible sounding word, but so far I have found that in cases where there is a final tentative guess - as the recognition gets to the ultimate it can, having accounted for all black pixels and no further darkening of the scan being allowed - that final guess is the most nearly correct. (Sometimes earlier tentative guesses become nullified as the aspect ratio of characters joining up with the blackening becomes unreasonable.)
The final line shows the final version reached of characters identified with fair certainty. The last of the sequence of tentatives (two only shown) is the final - that is as I say the best - tentative guess for the remaining characters.
As regards timing, having experimented with three lines of an address I find the prog takes about 50 seconds per line, and as each line consists of more than ten characters the comparison with the prog I formerly wrote is very advantageous (as well as this prog having better and clearer logic).
05/12/06 06:52
Because we are planning to go to
Moreover I have responsibilities to Dawn - so it would be difficult for me even to do a distance-learning course - and she wants to live here on this park home site and live the life we are settling into - with her family close by, for example.
I must say the character recognition hobby - made possible since say May of this year, by the reduction in my medication - gives me a great deal of pleasure - pleasure I was deprived of for so many years by the folly of psychiatrists. I also like having Dawn’s family as my family: I like visiting and I am pleased we have practical help at hand.
05/12/06 07:31
The plan now is - not necessarily today, but possibly to make a start today - to adapt the procedures I wrote which try to analyse the characters out of a block of mistakenly conjoined text, and then re-write Read DocumentChars and Read CharfileChars to use the new Modules instead of being a mass of code all lumped into one sequence (each prog).
05/12/06 07:46
One can see that the method I am adopting for pattern recognition is really a basic parallel method which models what many animals are capable of. I daresay one could teach any animal with sufficiently resolved vision - say a bird - to read simple printed patterns and respond accordingly. Certainly many animals - dogs included - recognise words uttered by a human voice. I was getting a bit ahead of myself when I was talking about the combinatorics of missing out certain subpatterns (features) in doing pattern recognition. This is equivalent to doing a crossword puzzle where the answers do not always immediately leap out at the merely parallel processor. Sometimes one has to try an “A”, then a “B”, then a “C”, etc. This involves serialising and the seriatim process is brought into play to a greater or less degree. The seriatim process maintains order and through its control links to the lower processes makes sure “A”, then “B”, then “C”, etc, are tried, and not for example “A” then “B” then “B” again then “E”, etc. It seems obvious to me that some degree of introspection is implicit in this control by a higher process of a lower process within the brain. Also some degree of internal envisagement involving plan formation.
05/12/06 10:56
Dawn phoned up and made an appointment for me to have my injection this afternoon. We have been to Harworth post office and shops in Harworth and Bircotes, and on our return I find I feel queasy in the stomach and have a hint of urinary urgency. I feel pretty sure these problems are down to the polycarbophil in the crisps (presumably) yesterday. Polycarbophil absorbs water and thereby I conjecture disturbs the urinary system, as well as the digestive system.
We have done most of our Christmas cards: certainly the ones which were to go by post. Later this morning (soon in fact) we are going back to Mr Tyre in Worksop for a new tyre to be fitted on the ’van as the AA man yesterday said the spare he had put on was barely legal. More news: we have paid our ground rent for the park home up to the end of February 2007. Dawn likes the security of paying her bills and in this case the result is we have this home till February at least.
05/12/06 14:40
I have just had an hour’s sleep - in bed - following tiredness or almost exhaustion in fact as a sort of rebound - based of course on lack of sleep overnight - to yesterday’s stimulant component of the drug mixture (presumably in the crisps). On waking up I briefly experienced low mood, but - and this shows that low mood is to do with lack of activity in the brain - as soon as I have thought of stuff I might do - for example type up more of my 1972 diary which I have started to type up - I was considerably cheered.
They couldn’t fit our new tyre as our vehicle wouldn’t go under their doorway and they said they couldn’t do the work on the frontage, so having had a bacon sandwich in the railway station café and paid Mr Tyre for the work done yesterday we came back to the park home.
06/12/06 01:56 [Wednesday]
I got up at 1.50 am having had I suppose my five hours sleep. I had to get up two or three times in the night to pass water copiously, from which I conclude the coffee I drank before going to bed contained a diuretic and probably polycarbophil as well, having been by mistake left out of the safe when we went round to Dawn’s aunt’s and uncle’s last night. I detect no effect of stimulant or ASM - although I think Dawn’s aunt’s coffee contained a physical stimulant as I developed palpitations after two cups of it. In fact it is possible drug effects I am suffering - such as diuresis - are all blameable on that coffee. In fact that may be more likely as illicit entry surely would be discontinued in case I put security measures in place (which I intend to do when I conveniently can). Probably the least unbelievable way of drugging us would be in foods and drinks supplied by family as it is not at all unheard of for the families of schizophrenics to drug them in their food.
06/12/06 04:35
The latest on the character recognition front: the prog now treats capital letters as special cases, on the basis that darkening the scan after extracting the characters it can is not going to be of assistance with capital letters, which in the nature of things are already densely black. So it identifies what it thinks are capital letters (out of the characters not immediately recognised with fair certainty) then lightens them, at each stage in the iterative lightening finding the best match, and at the end it picks the best of these best matches as the guess for the character. As a result of this method I have had one additional success in the three lines I have been testing (from an address), viz the “M” in “Mrs”:
If I now go back to the original version of the line of text extracted from the document - the one based simply on aspect ratios - and take out first the characters identified with certainty and then the tentative guesses, what I will be left with are blocks of joined-up characters which have become joined up with the darkening of the scan, but which in the first instance were broken down mistakenly into seeming characters - ie some blocks consisted of parts of two characters instead of each block corresponding to one distinct character. I shall try a version of the procedures I wrote for blocks of mistakenly conjoined characters.
06/12/06 08:53
My understanding of the situation as expressed above was slightly flawed, based on misconceptions about tentative guesses arising and changing as the scan is darkened. In fact after the prog has got as far as it can, it will have come up with tentative guesses accounting for almost all pixels in the line. Combining ‘certain’ guesses with tentative guesses therefore leaves little processing to be done, at least without going on to the more abstract question of whether the strings supposedly recognised make sense (eg as English words).
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On the left I show an example of a case where an arrangement of black pixels gave rise to no guess for a character (the pixels marked as simple points). The reason evidently was because the blocks of black separated out in an incorrect manner leading to the first “s” (the characters are “rass”) being misrecognised and the second “s” not being recognised. To cope with this situation I think I shall in fact need my procedures for blocks of mistakenly conjoined characters (the scan part shown will be darkened and the two “s” and possibly the preceding “a” will join up) but further thought is needed.
Further: by recognising the “a” and then extending the stored version to include the parts of “r” which at one stage in the processing mistakenly became joined on, the prog can learn from in effect normalisation or rectification (about which I have written words before).
To further expose my programming, we go back to “Kingswinford”:
Problems arise for the reason I gave a few days ago, that the bottom portions of the “s” and the “o” (see parts underlined) have been cut off as a result of the way Windows scales pictures. The “o” is simply misrecognised, in an understandable way. The “s” gets mixed up with the following “w” and again I feel the procedures for blocks of mistakenly conjoined characters will be useable.
Three lines of the address are now taking 160 seconds to be read (the prog is not yet working out seconds/character because it is not always certain as things stand how many characters there are).
06/12/06 09:22
I catch a hint from the Authorities that it is selfish, almost, to keep these ideas I have - eg on character recognition, if not on schizophrenia - to myself. It’s as if they are intent mainly on helping me in life (their idea has been by medicating me) and feel if I performed some useful ‘job’ I might benefit. All I can say is their way of looking at things is different from mine, and they have been mistaken in many things medication included, so just let me get on with it. Anyone is welcome to read my website, but of course it might well be my attempts to promulgate it on AOL were interpreted as spamming and led to the problems I had. It’s difficult to know how to convey my ideas to those who might be interested (short of signing up at a university, which Dawn would not cope with, or relying on the Authorities to spread the word - and I don’t know exactly what their role is or what they see their role as). I suppose I could try to get on the books of search engines.
06/12/06 10:13
I am working with the theory that the Authorities are basically out to help me, and were in the 1980s when they thought presumably that amphetamine would give me some pleasure for a while and that treatment in a psychiatric ward would be a help to me. I must say it still amazes me that psychiatrists honestly believe compulsory treatment can be a good thing for the one compelled, but it evidently is so and I must presume in the 1980s it was thought not capable of doubt that I am schizophrenic in the ordinary way and would benefit as schizophrenics are supposed to (supposed by the powers-that-be anyway).
There is some question in my mind about events of 2004 and 2005. I don’t think I was given actually amphetamine - certainly I did not have the euphoria of the drugged interludes of the early 1980s. It may be that the euphoria was spoilt by concurrently administered ASM, but again whether it was known what the effect of the one on the other would be I cannot say.
If I had not got caught up in The Experiment I imagine I would have thought my thoughts - on hold for many years as things have panned out - and when the internet came along put them up much as I am now doing. But of course over the years my thinking would have got further and given me pleasure, missing in the actual fact till recently. The theory behind The Experiment has been fundamentally Socialist, that a big organisation (properly controlled, by the State if it is not the State itself) can help people by measures of intervention. This is a fundamental mistake: it is much better for almost all individuals and also for the aggregate of individuals if there is personal independence and freedom with little intervention by big organisations. Because I know this quasi-big organisation (‘the Authorities’) is closely interested in my doings I am hampered to some extent, fearful that under certain circumstances they might intervene in a similar way to past intervention (compulsory treatment including possibly unreasonable detention). And speaking of treatment, I don’t really want a needle stuck in me every fortnight which is unpleasant in itself and risks me being given genuine medication and makes me anxious on the basis that I might be given genuine medication. The main reason I go along with it is fear of intervention: that if I don’t matters will be taken out of my hands.
07/12/06 03:15 [Thursday] Back in Kingswinford
I have been up since about 1 am, for one thing looking at the RCPsych website and following links to government documents about the Mental Health Bill presented on I think Friday 17 November 2006. I have downloaded a fair amount and sorting it out into folders on the two computers has taken a little while. I need also to balance our NatWest account, that is agree the figures in my records with NatWest’s computer’s figures.
When I was young I did not cope well with change and things which were new. Like Emily Brontë I got homesick away from home and my parents. I should think all kids are like this to a greater or less degree - relying on the framework to their lives supplied by their parents - and it must be very difficult if one’s parents split up or if one is orphaned and fostered on strange people, especially if one is moved from one foster home to another. After adolescence though one more readily gets used to new circumstances. What I am on about is that having been in fairly settled conditions at the park home for a few weeks I am becoming habituated and it is almost like home already. I think as a matter of fact that the landmark of the pit tower providing a frequently seen and unmistakable background has assisted this habituation process. Also (and related) the relative uncomplexity of the village layout in Harworth and Bircotes - the fact that it is a village in the country without too much bustle (which is change) and with an easily understood geography. Come to think of it these facts are also related to the attractiveness to Dawn and to some extent to myself of a small uncomplicated home like our park home. If structures are simple clearly it is easier and quicker to habituate to them. Naturally some people do better on more demanding complexity in their living arrangements and more stress of one sort or another.
So this time coming to Kingswinford there is less of an effect of returning to a district totally familiar - because Harworth and Bircotes are now quite familiar and bear comparison. (Naturally also not being drugged to any great degree with combinations of drugs which (ASM) make learning difficult and (stimulant) make one do too much and bring in too much information is a help.) Dawn and I have discussed various possible arrangements to deal with the stuff we own and what to do about this bungalow in Kingswinford.
07/12/06 04:40
I have been working on my website - for example introducing the new page for December - and I am getting tired of concentrating, in a way related to yawnative but not - I’m pretty sure - involving drugs and specifically, without any stimulant keeping me restless. Thus I am going back to bed.
07/12/06 08:27
I woke up again just after eight and got up in something of a rush leaving me breathless and a little shook up. The new representative of the firm quoting to install new guttering and rooftrim here at the bungalow is due at 10.30 am, after we received a call from their head office a number of weeks ago apologising for the first representative and saying they would do their utmost to give a quote we would be happy to accept. I suppose if we were selling the bungalow maintenance-free rooftrim would be an encouragement to prospective purchasers. Whether we got our money back in having the work done at the house in Worksop is debatable though.
07/12/06 10:24
The representative hasn’t phoned in advance so we think he may not come. He made a mistake two or three weeks back thinking he had to come then and phoning us up about it. If he doesn’t come we are thinking we will have just the guttering replaced and not all the soffits, barge-boards, etc. We have occupied the time this morning productively (we both feel we have achieved a lot) chiselling pieces of parquet to fit the triangular gaps left heretofore in the bay of our bedroom.
07/12/06 19:57
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Here are two interesting receipts I received recently (forgive the excessive alliteration). Regular readers will know about inverted commas and about Spanish (AOL called Optimizado) in my life so far.
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08/12/06 03:41 [Friday]
Yesterday Dawn phoned a local tradesman advertising in the local paper as a roofer and he is coming ‘early’ this morning - about 7.30 am - to see what he can do with our guttering. This has set me thinking - since getting up about ten minutes ago - about the fact that people generally get up of their natural selves anytime from 7 am onwards. And I have been recollecting in some detail - but detail not taking much time to retrieve and consisting more of the general state of mind I was in at the time: sort of recollecting the whole or almost the whole of the contents of my mind at these times - the period when, being at school, my parents were always up before me and would wake me up about 7.30 am, sometimes from quite a deep sleep (such that in the school holidays I might sleep on till 9 am or even 10 am). What strikes me is the detail in these memories - very pleasurable that the detail is there, and making for a sort of nostalgia - which I would put down to absence now of interference from ASM in the memory retrieval process. This may mean that up to now for many years I have always been under the influence of ASM and am not now. The injections heretofore may despite my hopes have contained ASM albeit latterly at a very low dosage. (The explanation clearly is that ASM blocks the pathways linking memories, so that not all the memories linked to the central memory are available under ASM.)
I can’t remember exactly this effect in late 2003 when I had run away but certainly something of this effect - it would be before they started putting ASM in my foods and I had not been injected for a number of weeks, represented in my diary of late 2003 by thoughts I had used to have returning (see for example Sunday 7 December 2003). I believe to have deprived me of these full memories for so many years is criminal, and am more convinced than ever that psychiatry as currently practised is evil in its negligence. I wonder also if this effect - and the related effect that last night I was able to relax with Dawn in front of the television (although doing some work on the computer at the same time) - is due to being away from Harworth, that is that in Harworth a lot of the foods and drinks we take are laced with ASM.
Part of this greater detail in my memories that I am reporting is a feeling that linked memories are ‘freely’ available, that ‘at will’ I could bring forward more into the open and expand on any one of the memories linked to - prompted by - the central memory. Given leisure - if I were not writing this - I might well indulge in the ‘thought training’ I used to in my pre-Cambridge days, which really is daydreaming consisting of following a sequence of linked memories. To do so the seriatim process would become less active: I would be less concerned with achieving anything, more at leisure as I say. On the other hand ASM in ‘relaxing’ the seriatim also makes unavailable the links by which the sequence of memories would carry themselves forward in the daydream. Thus the effect of ASM is not precisely to revert the mind to a pre-adolescent condition of less seriatim activity but a sufficiently high level of brain activity more generally. (It is possible barbiturate agents can do this, relaxing the mind into a dreamy state - more sleepy though than the daydreaming I recall indulging in at the age of say 14 or 15.)
On Wednesday morning 1 November 2006 I reported a similar sense that my mind was free to retrieve thoughts and memories. Then also we were in Kingswinford but then it was just over a week since I had had the injection. It is not unreasonable to suppose these pleasant effects are related to being in Kingswinford. On Wednesday 1 November I thought the explanation might be absence of nighttime advisory voices, although this morning absence of ASM drug effects has seemed more likely the explanation.
To summarise: I am more relaxed and can think more freely.
13:12.
I have been
thinking - without really trying or intending to - about psychology and
introspection. Your average man-manager - and I recall speaking of military
officers a week or two back - I think bases his actions (in respect of his
charges) on trial and error experience. He cannot necessarily explain why he
does what he does and why it produces the effects it does. Your psychological
writer on the other hand - for example Charlotte Brontë - understands people by
thinking about how they think, and based to the degree the writer is
introspective on thinking about how she herself thinks. This is rather different
from man-management and while the natural psychologist may understand the
theory of why and how, she cannot in general execute management in practice -
because she has to be passive and accepting in order to understand.
Myself
I have always - and infinitely so since adolescence (apart from the drugged
years) - had such inputs from my own processes of mentation - as if they were
something external to myself - that I have for as long as I have known,
interpreted mental or psychological processes as mechanisms. Very early in life
I used to observe myself bringing remembrances forth and that with repetition
the ones repeated came forth more readily. This is but an example.
14:55. Prior to making the above remarks on the
train approaching
On the
bus in
09/12/06 06:04 [Saturday]
I got up at 4.45 am having gone to bed
soon after eleven. I had over five hours’ sleep and woke up with a headache
which despite taking Paracetamol persists slightly. My conclusion must be that
the Red Bull we drank on the train to
I don’t imagine I am given stimulant drugs to see what comments I make about them - the effects and so on - although that may be part of it. I imagine I am given stimulant drugs in the hope of changing my behaviour. The Authorities find that my behaviour is in need of change, but myself I find it very strange that people can decide such a thing and furthermore be authorised to act on the decision. Myself I cannot see - except in cases where people behave in such a way as to unduly interfere with other people eg by criminal acts - that it is right to seek to alter people’s behaviour - eg by compulsorily treating the mentally ill, or by drugging me.
09/12/06 06:43
The actions of the Authorities have been inconsistent over the years, I suppose explainable in terms of them fluctuating in their policy - especially given that their personnel must change from time to time - as new theories or interpretations come and go. Similarly the State being fundamentally a Socialist enterprise will if not rigorously controlled - eg by a Thatcher - waste resources by constantly redesigning itself. In the Notts County Council newspaper the other day there was a lot made of the new structure of departments in the Council. State employees can perpetuate their employment and extend their empires by constantly revamping their organisational structure, really wasting resources to no good end (can you waste to a good end?).
What I mean is had I been left alone in my life I would doubtless have ended up in an academic post involving research and teaching. (I applied to Edinburgh University in 1978 or 1979 to do research but became demoralised and otherwise incompetent as I was drugged.) Giving me ASM over the years wasted my opportunities, and now at this stage in my life - especially given the suffering I have endured - I just want to be retired. Also Dawn’s views now obviously play a big part.
One could think about it thus. The individuals within the Authorities are not closely entwined in my way of thinking, my memories and my emotions - not compared to myself anyway. They are as it were employed to do this work - some with more interest and involvement than others who perhaps have other motivations including possibly money - and like State employees they may do their best - some of them anyway - but they follow rules laid down based as I say on theoretical structures which come and go and fluctuate, and - as I have said before - they cannot have my interests at heart as I do myself and cannot have all the information I have to pursue my own interests. Intervention in people’s lives is - except in cases of criminality - inappropriate at best and a disaster at worst (the latter in my case over the past few decades).
09/12/06 07:07
Allow me to say I get the impression the AA act beyond the call of duty to be of assistance to me, and this seems to be the only way - by influencing the AA - the Authorities have ever managed to benefit me.