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. March 2008 .
01/03/08 03:28 [Saturday]
The interest on our West Bromwich Building Society bonds is still not all being credited to our recently opened Abbey account; in fact it’s worse than last month in that the interest on only one bond (out of five) has successfully credited, whereas last month it was two bonds. This problem started in December when we closed our NatWest account and opened the Abbey account. We took a letter into the West Bromwich
01/03/08 03:44
What I did then - about 03:30 - was try to find reference in my December 2007 diary to the date we took the letter into the West Bromwich instructing them to start paying the interest to the new account. However I was taken off that - although in fact the relevant diary portion seems to have been deleted (presumably as my protest against being drugged in December: I deleted several portions on that basis) - by developing palpitations, still continuing now although lessening after I have been lying on the bed for perhaps five minutes (prior to which I tried the tack of lying on the floor for two or three minutes). This almost certainly is a ‘rebound effect’ as the ASM yesterday - in quite a high dosage, certainly compared to recent weeks - wears off. Another rebound effect I would presume is my feeling of anger, initially focusing on the non-payment of our bond interest and now focusing on the effects I suffer - including palpitations - from being given drugs surreptitiously in such unusual ways (I suffered similarly when the drugs were given in a more ordinary approximation to conventional psychiatric treatment, but in both cases - surreptitious administration or more usual administration originating out of compulsion - the difficulty I face is that it is virtually impossible by my own decision to evade the drugs even though the motivation is there due to the adverse effects I suffer). (I mention that although I have made myself a cup of coffee using tapwater drawn yesterday - in the afternoon I think - I have not yet started on it. I have as yet since getting up about 03:20 taken nothing by mouth. In other words the effects I am suffering are caused by drugs taken in yesterday - presumably as I say in a form of rebound - and not today.) What the anger is generating - although even the anger is now, quite quickly, abating, and probably this is assisted by the notion that writing here my evidence it may be attended to when it eventually gets onto my website (also the actual electrochemical fluctuations comprising the rebound may be abating, as the palpitations are abating) - are ideas for combating the drug administration, including possibly writing again to my MP Ian Pearson, complaining to police, writing an explanation to M + S management to try to get them to see sense (given that the drugs most recently causing me to suffer were contained in foods bought at M + S), and I have to say possibly deleting recent diary entries. All of these I have tried before, except writing directly to the management of the stores with complicity in the drugging. The difficulty there is to know where to address the letter or other communication - bearing in mind also that our mail is interfered with and for example the letter I sent to Microsoft in 2005 didn’t get through - so that it can have a hope of having the desired result.
I mention in regard to the electrochemistry of the drug effects (or after-effects) - trusting that giving such information is not going to encourage further administration of drugs, as indeed I can’t believe it will if what I report of the adverse effects is believed - when I went to bed last night (around 9 pm I think) I was sleepy but at the same time there was a stimulant effect to my heart, so that I felt ill to put it bluntly. Having heard something of the way risperidone works - that is that in some ways it acts as a stimulant especially at a close-to-physical level that is in its action on the body (and my understanding is that it was developed in an attempt to negate the sedative or stilling effects of most antischizophrenic drugs) - I guess the antischizophrenic drug I suffered yesterday was either risperidone or another modern drug developed with the same view of negating the stilling effect conventionally found with antischizophrenic drugs. Of course a correct understanding would know that the stilling effect of ASM has more to do with demotivation at a higher level than the physical, that is the sufferer is unable to - that is he does not so much as ordinarily he would - develop ideas for things to do, that is his interest in life is reduced. Stimulating his body (or close-to-physical processes) might make him more active in the observable physical sense but unless his activities are directed from outside - which he may resent, as I myself do when for example hypnotic suggestion is offered - they will be empty and not further what he really wants to be doing (indeed as I say under the influence there will not be much he really wants to be doing).
I mention that I have (01/03/08 04:17) almost finished the cup of coffee, and I think it would be entirely in order to continue my tipping of the canned foods bought at M + S.
01/03/08 04:31
The only remaining can or jar of stuff bought at M + S now as far as I can see is the minced beef. I am having a break before tackling that because as I said yesterday it is something of a tiresome effort to get all that food down the toilet; in fact I am asking myself if there is a more efficient way should the need arise again. The essential requirements are that the food should be perfectly irrecoverable - in other words cans have to be opened and the contents tipped somewhere unpleasant - and I should be completely free from intervention in prosecution of the task (this I achieve by locking myself in the bathroom, and the reason for it must be related to my fear that my distractibility - including my inability to argue my case as it were should someone intervening query what I am doing, although in this case the only likely such person is Dawn and she is fairly easy-going, except that this depends on what drugs are affecting her at the time and given stimulant drugs she becomes less laissez-faire - may be increased by drugs affecting me).
I point out that having recovered - presumably fully - from the effects of yesterday’s ASM on my mind (although not on my body), when I have some thought which perhaps I express in written-down form - such as that Dawn is easy-going - there arise immediately possible counter-arguments or exceptions (eg that given stimulant drugs she becomes less easy-going). This as I have said before is related to the phenomenon of negativism (ideas - possibly resulting in behaviours - arising in the mind contrary to triggering ideas) and does increase the processing requirement (in that one seeks to decide between the competing alternatives, or resolve them in some way) but on the other hand (lol) if one’s mental organisation can cope it does allow a very full picture of things to be seen, and (I suggest) allows a very well-founded decision to be come to in that many many mutually alternative ways to go are compared and contrasted. This schizo (I’m tempted to say schizoid: I rather like the word schizoid as it reminds me of the happy days of my teenage years when I told myself I was schizoid) phenomenon following in a way easy to understand from a high degree of dopamine-propagation is also related - in cases where the processing to try to decide goes on and on and does not terminate by some schizophrenic symptom (created from external pressure, I suggest) such as actions construed as negativism - to indecision or ‘sitting on the fence’, which if the schizoid person doesn’t have the sense to avoid other people may make him easily manipulable. Having put it in those terms I can well see that a schizo person compelled to be with other people and hear their advice (or directives including manipulations of the captive body by doctors amused by flexibilitas cerea) might settle for doing the opposite of what is advised (or directed) as the easy option (presumably with half a mind to teach the perpetrators the folly of their ways, although - on the other hand except this joke is wearing thin - I have found doctors in particular but ordinary people in general are constitutionally incapable of learning anything sensible).
Stepping back a pace, I feel fairly sure that free expression of my views - including through actions such as chucking furniture over the fence and tipping food down the toilet - will be found more useful to The Experimenters than my following to half a degree hypnotising advice which I guess in the past has moderated such free expression. For example I recall hypnotic voices asking me whether it was entirely necessary to chuck expensive stuff in the River Idle, the implication - which certainly affected me, by whatever means (possibly means including the fear I would be hospitalised if I persisted, a fear which indeed was well-founded) - being that I should not do so. (When I say I recall hypnotic voices what I mean is the tenor of their remarks becomes available to my retrospective understanding some weeks or months after the event.) Hence I conclude I have not hypnotic mis-advice to fear so much as continuing surreptitious drugging, except of course the former may be used to perpetrate the latter (eg by persuading Dawn with myself in tow to shop at Marks and Spencers).
My conclusion what the reason was I was so easily towed is that I took in via our tapwater a just sufficient dosage of ASM to disable my own self-determination. Unfortunately (quite possibly acting still under the effects of nighttime advice, given presumably some time back) I have just drunk a cup of coffee made with our tapwater. On the other hand the possibilities I have to fear are much worse if we end up sleeping away from home (these recent unpleasures - yesterday’s disablement of my mind and this morning’s palpitations - are consequent on our trip to Nottinghamshire last weekend: Nottinghamshire is Sheol).
... I must hope the dictionary is mistaken in including necessarily in the meaning of Sheol that return from it is impossible. I am using the word in the more modern joc. & colloq. sense.
01/03/08 05:27
What I will do now is try to find the most recent version which worked of the VB prog Visual field analysis I was getting bogged down with yesterday [which I find is the one from the day preceding I have named Visual field analysis (2008-02-28 1110, doing well at finding character separations)].
01/03/08 06:44
Since the tapwater collected yesterday seems sound I am now allowing myself the enjoyment of another cup of coffee (not yet prepared: the water now on to boil). Previously I have mistakenly supposed I do better to shop at big and busy stores. But now thinking more clearly (and possibly benefiting from the absence of nighttime mis-advice) I see that M + S for example could better afford to resist my complaints than say Mr Sukhwindera locally (spelling uncertain). Furthermore if Mr Sukhwindera turned out a rogue like Marks and Spencer, I have the option of many small shops in competition even counting only those reachable on foot locally. As I have said, big organisations like M + S (and the Virgin empire and the rest) think they provide a good service and seem supported in this belief by their success (making them ‘big’) but on the other hand - no doubt like Socialist governments having the best intentions - they can make mistakes which because of their power and influence can be big mistakes. Also of course they can be more easily influenced by the State as the top managers move in the same circles as government functionaries in the upper echelons. Hence not only do I conclude I should not shop at M + S (and if Dawn insists - which she must have received influence in because of her natural preference for ‘corner shops’ like her Dad’s - I must make sure not to use goods purchased at M + S and certainly not foods) but further that I should as a general principle give preference to small local businesses. The essence of my former attitude was that smaller businesses were easier for the Authorities to corrupt, but even if The Experiment was not originally so ‘big’ it has now got to a stage where it must involve government functionaries in the upper echelons.
It will be seen that what I have claimed is true, and my efforts in connection with The Experiment are directed entirely towards evading surreptitious (or other unwanted) administration of drugs. I have no interest for the sake of it troubling the police or getting newspaper coverage or vandalising the Rosetta Stone. I do have an interest in getting those who make medical mistakes and particularly in the field of psychiatry hanged, but only by due process and I think I am unlikely to succeed in it.
I suppose it might be worth putting all this (the past two or three days) up as a website update. However I am deriving pleasure from the success I am now having with the character recognition programming.
01/03/08 07:13
The minced beef - the final can of stuff from M + S I think - has gone the way of all flesh (but quicker than most flesh as is suitable to its nature as a convenience food). One idea for spoiling foods if something similar is required in future is to open the can and then contaminate the contents, preferably with something which smells and tastes off-putting. I find liquid soap has a dispersing effect on canned meat and helped the minced beef make its exit more readily.
I mustn’t make myself laugh too much as I am still troubled by excitement to my heart.
01/03/08 08:46
Various thoughts have been passing through my mind as I have been in the bath, including an explanation for Dawn’s sleepiness yesterday (was it a sedative drug, say in the meringues or something else particularly suspect as being sweet? or was it that she has insufficient internal generation of ideas for things to do, this possibly related to relatively low serotonin levels?).
However before we go out I would like to set down my theory how doctors have in the recent past decided I should be treated, and the basic reason for the mistakes. The theory is that if the patient is known to become agitated (as I have in the past, certainly since in the early 1990s stimulant drugs have been admixed to my primary treatment with antischizophrenic drugs), then the answer is to give him sedative drugs. This has led to my being treated with a ridiculous cocktail of major tranquillisers, stimulants and minor (or mid-range such as I think of opium as) sedating agents. But what if the reason the patient is agitated is because he is given sedative drugs which he finds objectionable? In that case his agitation will reappear at redoubled strength when the sedating agents wear off.
The reason for doctors’ prescriptions in my past can only be their lack of assiduity, that is their comfortable acceptance of a simple-minded view of things (to the extent of not even adequately enquiring the reason for symptoms such as agitation, or not enquiring in any realistic way and taking on board the reply). The underlying reason they may say is lack of resources (as Health Service workers always say) but it is not that doctors aren’t paid enough: it is that the benefit they get (including their salary) is not related to the degree to which they get things right as opposed to wrong. I imagine the situation is different in other countries, particularly the United States, but there the problem for mental patients is there is no money in treating patients with a genuine mental illness (as opposed to taking on rich Hollywood stars and the like who can divert mental doctors from the True Way).
11:54. I suspect the Red Bull I had at the café in Kingswinford - after leaving the WBBS hopefully having sorted matters out by opening a new account with them - may have contained unnatural stimulant drugs, because of my loud manner on the train from Stourbridge Town and what I thought I detected as sore throat which caused me some concern. However the unfortunate effects do not seem to have got any worse.
Dawn seems wide awake whereas yesterday she was sleepy - or actually sleeping - much of the day. This has given me to hope she may be drug-free today, even though she has taken a supposed risperidone tablet. But she says she has a headache, and she had one at home (before taking the tablet and of course before drinking her drink of OJ at the café) which led her (at home) to take a Paracetamol. I’m wondering if these headaches are a carry-over from yesterday. Otherwise they may have their origin in tapwater she drank this morning at home.
12:28. In Birmingham (the above was written on the train) Dawn says her neck is paining her. Yesterday she had pain in her knee as she used to some months back, and I put it down then to the M + S soup but now the tapwater is again suspect (at as yet unpredictable times).
01/03/08 20:03
On the way back walking up from the bus from Stourbridge (having spent much of the day in Birmingham) I noticed that I was free of antischizophrenic drugs (and I believe I still am, although the evidence on that walk home from the bus was striking and unmistakable). The evidence consisted of pleasure arising from what one would have to call ‘pattern recognition’, pleasure related I do not doubt to the achievement emotion I have known since my young adulthood at least but not this time directly depending on explicit striving plus success after the striving. Briefly, what happened was I saw from a distance the upper part of a vehicle which was a van, coming towards us from the far end of the avenue we were walking along, the lower parts of the van concealed behind parked cars. I assessed it - instantly, if I am to set aside modesty - as a horse box, and when it came closer into more open view I saw that I was right; in this confirmation of the ‘success’ of the pattern recognition the pleasure - I feel certainly associated with a surge in serotonin - arose.
I think I may have deleted the diary entry in which I originally exposed the following, but in any case it bears repetition. Two or three months back I was helping Dawn’s granddaughter with her mathematics homework, and I pointed out that for any number (meaning in her case integer) multiplying it by two gives the same result as adding it to itself. This is almost like magic, especially when you have not become blasé about it, and gives rise to pleasure (more for a certain type of person) which is wholly independent of anything interpersonal; the pleasure - like that explained above - derives from observing a pattern which was initially not quite certain but in which one’s understanding (not genuinely a guess if one derives the prediction of the pattern from evidence coolly and accurately taken into account) is confirmed by events. This is a species of pleasure interfered with by dopamine-blocking drugs (which one may conclude have a secondary effect on the level of serotonin, or rather on fluctuations in the level of serotonin).
01/03/08 20:29
Further to what I was saying earlier in notes on the handheld device (which I cannot remember in entirety and don’t have immediately to hand as I haven’t yet downloaded them), Dawn is suffering on and off pains like a stitch under her ribs on the left side and I can’t make out if these are due to her prescribed tablets or to drugs in the tapwater which she is not as suspicious of as I am and draws from the tap as required (whereas I am still using what’s left of the 10l drawn yesterday afternoon when I am using tapwater at all: I bought some bottled water in Birmingham).
I am wondering whether to bother myself to prepare versions of the documents to do with my summons to Solihull Magistrates’ Court for my website.
01/03/08 20:55
Since drinking a cup of coffee made with the bottled water bought on New Street station this afternoon my eyes have become tired and I have sort of lost enthusiasm in concert with losing the clarity of my internal envisagement of the way forward (that is, almost, my interest in getting things done). Specifically, I have lost much clarity of the forevision I had developing of prosecution of matters connected with Solihull Magistrates, including preparing the documents from the case for presentation on my website. Before losing this forevision allowing enthusiastic prosecution through trying out ideas in mind first, I had written a letter to the magistrates as thinking through what I should do, given that Dawn finds the idea of going to Court stressful, this was the best idea occurring to me.
Dawn has written a letter to her daughter and it runs to nine pages (the paper about A5 in size I should think): this seems to me incontrovertibly to indicate that she is in the same condition as she was in when I met her (but happier now, which on occasion recently I have suspected may be because she is taking in antidepressant somehow but thinking about it more clearly my guess would be the almost exaggerated happiness is a result of ASM she has suffered over the weeks wearing off), that is with lots of ideas occurring to her which she can turn to creative use. I have wondered also whether her physical symptoms - like the stitch in her rib area - are due to stimulant drugs, but again my best guess is that like my palpitations this morning they result as an after-effect of ASM.
01/03/08 21:18
The effects I thought were due to the water bought on New Street station have abated considerably (but my tiredness and the fading of my capacity for inward envisagement are varying noticeably according to the absence or otherwise of stimulation from without, mainly that is what Dawn has to say). My best guess has to be that that water contains a very very small concentration of ASM. The only other theory I can attach any credence to is that natural tiredness after having been awake since soon after 3 am is an explanation but because the tiredness has come on seemingly quite suddenly since I drank the coffee (made with that bottled water) and after all it’s only eighteen hours since 3.20 am I don’t think this alternative theory holds up very well.
02/03/08 01:58 [Sunday]
Because plugging in a second ‘Vimicro USB PC camera’ ZC030x webcam has cocked up the relevant software so that it doesn’t work even after uninstalling at and then reinstalling it, I was getting round to trying out System Restore (instead of my more usual method of reinstalling the system, which I was also preparing to do from a copy of the folder I386 made from an XP Pro install CD I have noted I used - presumably more or less successfully - on 2007-12-23) and prior to that had made a copy of My Documents, I was thinking about writing a VB prog to create such a backup automatically (and also to compute for each file one or more checksums so that any corruption of files - eg on the commission of the Authorities - would be readily detectable). I had got as far as considering the Shortcut My Sharing Folders and thought I’d have a look to see what it consisted of in its 583 bytes. Trying to get at it using a VB prog I wrote to dump the contents of a file in hexadecimal, I find opening it from within VB all that happens is a redirection to the target of the Shortcut: in other words the folder My Sharing Folders is opening when the CommonDialog command ShowOpen is answered, instead of the bytes comprising the Shortcut on the disc becoming available. So my present situation is wondering how to get round that. It would be amazingly useful if I could find out the indexing method for files on the hard disc, in other words how to get from the entry for a file in (I suppose) the MFT to its actual location on the hard disc. To do that I first need to be able programmatically (ie without manually using software like DskProbe) to display or dump actual sectors referenced by head-cylinder-sector on the hard disc. Not only DskProbe but software like Nero and Paragon HDM are able to do that, so the way to go perhaps is to look at Nero or Paragon HDM (as indeed I have got so far in doing in the past).
02/03/08 03:52
It is evident that raw disc accesses are performed by calling INT 13. The basic function to be performed (by analogy with other INTs I have looked at) - eg READ or WRITE - will be specified by the contents of AH when calling INT 13. When reading or writing from or to a disc, what are needed are a buffer in RAM and a specification of the drive (by number or logical reference letter) and (for magnetic drives and in particular here I am concerned with hard drives) a specification of the sector either by number relative to the start or by cylinder-head-sector.
The register BP contains a pointer and most likely it is intended to be used as a Buffer Pointer. Nero seems to use a presumed buffer pointed to by BP for disc accesses, the start of the buffer containing information relating to the drive number and the sector number (this is my guess).
02/03/08 08:45
As far as I can make it out, when INT 13 is called (INT 13 performs disc accesses, or certainly magnetic disc accesses, presumably including both floppies and hard drives) on the stack below the return address (and it seems when double-bytes - called words - are pushed onto the stack the stack-pointer increments, unlike as far as I recall in the Z80 days) there is supplied the function code (eg 2 means TRY TO READ SECTOR SPECIFIED AS CYLINDER-HEAD-SECTOR) and then a two-byte pointer to a buffer which is of length 256 bytes plus (at its start) fourteen bytes comprising eight referencing the start sector (in this case the start sector for reading, in some version of C H S) plus two bytes for an integer representing outcome of the call (in other words zero means no error but 1 means there was an error) and four bytes addressing the buffer for the full read (of several or many sectors, and hence four bytes are needed to hold a Long-integer for the pointer) making 270 bytes length in total.
If I am going to
test out my understanding by writing code, I need to specify the drive. I think
what happens is the system at any time takes a certain drive as the default and
almost certainly it will take C: without my having trouble. The other thing is
I need to display the results - say as a first simple trial, the contents of
sector 0 of track 0 - in some form. Either I need to find out how to display
stuff on the screen (using DOS, which I suppose what I’m doing counts as) or I
need to write the results to a file I can get at by the usual file-based method
(ie by giving a pathname). 02/03/08 10:43 Along lines I
have been along before, but this time with greater resolution and hence
quickness in my understanding due mainly to absence of ASM and only partly to
having thought about these questions before, using Nero one can make a bootable
CD-ROM (and indeed a bootable DVD-ROM); it is based on emulation of a bootable
floppy and an image of such a floppy is supplied in the Nero folder (with
specifiable locale so one can have it produce messages in a language one
understands, and prepare the right codepage for the keyboard layout and so
forth) called DosBootimage.IMA and of size 1,440 KB (ie the
usual 1.44 MB for a floppy). 02/03/08 20:41 I have suffered
effects from drugs - presumably antischizophrenic drugs although either in a
much lower dosage than two days ago (if that’s when it was) or a much less
potent drug (I often suspect Sparine) - and presumably due to their wearing off
I was reflecting bitterly on The Experiment about the time we were returning on
the bus from the local farm shop we have discovered. On Saturday I believe I
had a brief fit of anger which fits in with the notion that the
antischizophrenic drugs I suffered Friday had a more intense effect, this
motivating me to try at the time to combat the drugging. This recent drugging -
today for example - is having a less strong but longer drawn-out effect, and I
am going to longer lengths - that is I am exhibiting more patience, this itself
confirming that the drug today is less of a hindrance but a sufficient
hindrance to distract me from the computer work into (I have yet to mention)
more security work. I am probably mistaken to think of these motivations I find
in anger arising only as a rebound. In fact I suppose they arise when the
effects I suffer are bad enough for me to find something to complain about but
have worn off enough that I am not totally stilled or debilitated by being
unable to plan or have much intention based on hope of achievement. It seems
natural to suppose that a sharper effect will have a sharper reaction not
precisely in rebound but during the wearing-off (a briefer wearing-off in the
sharper case as on Friday). The security
work I have done since returning from our outing about 2 pm consisted of
fitting up the external mains power-supply socket I bought yesterday to power
two security lights one of which has been out of action for a number of days
since I fiddled with the original light which has a motion detector; and
getting the more recent camera I fixed covering our side passage to work
through the relay which has caused so much difficulty. I have to say - thinking
of longer drawn-out but less terrible effects from drugs possibly Sparine - the
reason I had so much difficulty with this relay was that instead of making a
definite decision either in advance or as trouble developed on the best way to
proceed - possibly involving taking time out for some ‘capital investment’ in
the form of pre-preparation and possibly even requiring backtracking what had
already been achieved (like a sacrifice in chess) - I ploughed on under the
difficult circumstances of trying to solder to a relay which could not be
raised much from the ground as it was tethered by the connecting wires through
apertures in the mounting box already screwed to the skirting board in a
hallway not well-lighted (in the winter-time): back-breaking demoralising work
unlikely to succeed certainly not quickly. This time I severed the connecting
wires at the outset, and ended up making them attachable (and detachable)
through (mainly) bullet connectors used in auto electrics. Also instead of
trying to obtain the pleasure of achievement emotion flat out (in speed) I had
patience - this probably helped by having better inward envisagement which
meant that ‘inward achievement emotion’ - from merely working out pleasing
plans, before or without actually effectivising them - became available as a
motivator without having to get stuff done quickly in the real world (and
certainly not requiring praise or similar from other people). As part of the
slowness as it could be regarded (this slowness in the physical world
corresponding to relatively a great deal of processing in the world of inward
envisagement - and I have mentioned before the folly of measuring activity
level only by external observation of actual movement - which you could regard
as saving resources in the long-run - if the mechanism favoured in me at least
by evolution works as evolution expects - by checking things out fully so that
fewer errors are made needing backtracking in the physically real world: which
is a bit of a paradox as also entailed is willingness - under precisely judged
circumstances - to do such backtracking with alacrity) I have in fact only got
the one camera yet working through the relay, although the point of the relay
at all is to allow switching from camera to camera. Still, I am very happy with
the success I have had; and to spell out the point even more, a lot of the
happiness consists in the certainty attaching to the inward understanding
allowing me to know that real-world success is assured when I get round to it:
for example to fitting up the alternative camera connecting it to the relay. 03/03/08 05:40 [Monday] I woke up about
two hours ago, and to start with was a bit bleary and had tummy problems
involving a feeling of fullness as though I were constipated. These physical or
close-to-physical difficulties I must blame on drugs affecting me over the
weekend, which I take to have consisted mainly of a drug mid-way between being
a minor sedative stilling the body (and encouraging drowsiness) and an
antipsychotic stilling mental activity (and my subjective impression was that
the stilling of mental activity was almost the same as being half-asleep from a
natural cause, or from alcohol say). About an hour ago or slightly more I had a
fit of waking up and getting quite a lot done in a short time (to do mainly
with letters to be posted today). I would think the principal cause of this
must have been the drugs getting out of my metabolism, with a contribution from
naturally waking up more at the start of the day (although daybreak is a way
off yet). Latterly - say the past half-hour - I have felt physically restless,
and in fact given complete freedom - say if Dawn could come with me, or would
not mind being left on her own; and especially if it were a more reasonable
time, or even simply summer-time and hence light - what I would do is go for a
brisk walk. I must take this also to be an after-effect of the drugging over
the weekend, not exactly a rebound but rather a consequence of having been so
still physically - relatively so, and even when out and about I have much of
the time felt physically lethargic and have not felt benefit from the exercise
or the fresh air - for a number of days. What it comes
down to is the after-effects of whatever drug it was are not so confined to the
mental as in the case of more directly antipsychotic drugs (working mainly on
the mind), but contain a major component of physical restlessness. When I was
young - before I was ever drugged, I think - sometimes (in holiday-time I
suppose) I had too much sleep, and afterwards I felt somewhat as I do now: a
kind of boredom but more a boredom of the body, involving the body wanting to
be more active. I have to say it
is difficult - but easier since I have had so much opportunity to work things
out over the years - to unravel effects correctly. A consequence of my now
feeling physically restless is difficulty concentrating on mental tasks -
including preparing a website update - which involve any degree of detail. But
the reason this morning I’m sure is not direct debilitation (from drugs) of the
resolution of my thought processes but as I say distraction due to an imbalance
(if you like) from the recent bodily stillness and unnecessary sleepiness. 03/03/08 06:05 Preparing a
shopping list for today and my mind turning to the security arrangements I
started thinking up perhaps in December or early January: the idea of securing
a clock in a safe so that if there is a break of some kind - either a power
failure (if the mains gets cut off) or some break in contacts of a switch (say
from a door opening, but easily adaptable to anything which can operate a
relay, such as a detector of sound or physical movement) - the clock stops,
this is a good robust way of detecting interferences. It doesn’t prove
anything, because the clock might stop for erroneous reasons such as a natural
failure of power or some sort of violent jolt such as an earth tremor, but if
the clock has stopped it is good reason for me to be suspicious and (perhaps)
throw out all food in the house, and it does include some information in the
time on the clock when it stopped. Of course such mechanisms might go wrong if
the clock could be got at - which is the reason for putting it in a safe - but
having many independent such mechanism with some degree of possibility of
checking them against each other, anybody wishing to circumvent the security
without detection is going to have a very hard time. Indeed, if the safe
enclosing the clock were sealed with a banknote the clock could not be got at
without it becoming apparent. In such a case some outwardly observable
signifier that the clock had stopped would be requisite so unnecessarily
rupturing the banknote was precluded: perhaps a second clock in parallel
outside the safe (which could be got at but this would be detectable when the
safe eventually was opened) or some means which it was not easy for
infiltrators to guess even if literally they could get at it (say a wireless
signal or a coded pattern in a display of lights, or indeed some coded means of
displaying the time - coded so that they would not know how to re-set it to appear
as it should). Of course if a transparent box as secure as a safe could be
found, the clock inside could be seen and still not got at. A light within the
safe which one could see through the fixing holes in the safe might work, but
in this case one would have to consider the fact that lights take power to
light them, and consider whether the light should come on or (on the other
hand) go off, to signify interference, whether a battery backup would be
needed, and so forth. Possibly the answer would be to have a means of
connecting power from outside the safe to test whether the light (in effect)
was on or off. I did on a past
occasion mention causing something unfortunate to happen within the safe should
there be any interference - say a conflagration - but a more ordinary mildly
unfortunate effect would be the sounding of a loud alarm. Again, making a noise
costs energy, and batteries in particular eventually run down. I invite
consideration of the demonstration to be found in the level of abstraction at
which I am thinking - for example comparing conflagrations within safes to
alarms going off - that I am not under the influence of ASM. I will also
mention that in the past demoralised - demotivated - under the influence, I
might have argued that developing non-standard security measures of my own
would be a waste of time as it would give even greater excuse to the police I
might present evidence to, to decline to investigate. However, determining that
it would be to my advantage to chuck out all foods in the house should there be
evidence of interference, and I can do this myself without help from the police
or anyone, I now know it is worthwhile to develop detection mechanisms I myself
know full well will work, even if other people do not understand or pretend not
to understand. Another
counterargument which might have swayed me in the past - and I can see here and
I guess some readers can, that I am doing a lot of processing for possibly
arising problems which processing in the past debilitation from drugs would
have caused me, and did cause me, to give up with as just insuperable - was
that even throwing out foods was no good if somehow They could ensure I bought
only or almost only foods drugged at the time of purchase. This might be
relatively easy (for example) if I am so sensitive that foods can be openly on
sale which other purchasers would find no difficulty from, however much they
ate or drank of them. Understanding (for example understanding the degree to
which I am sensitive, and in particular to different drugs, by which I mean
even if I am absurdly sensitive to ASM any opium foisted is going to affect
some other people as much as me) brings comfort and confidence. 03/03/08 07:48 I have over the
past two hours eaten beetroot sandwiches, comprising four slices of bread in
all. I feel the effects of drugs in tiredness of my eyes - come on only in the
past ten minutes - and my guess is these drugs are like opium, and that they
are not ASM. I must guess that the reason for giving [originally given] sedative drugs of this type
- and Dawn, less cautious than myself in what she takes by mouth, is sleeping a
lot recently and is asleep now - is in the hope of continuing to perpetrate
nighttime hypnosis (perhaps through encouraging us to be away from home and
taking advantage then). The reason I suspect mainly the bread is that it was
bought at Somerfield yesterday - Sunday - and I had suspicions based on these
facts from the outset, that is from the time of purchase. 03/03/08 08:26 Opium is an odd
drug when considered from the point of view of stimulants versus sedatives (so
it strikes me, and I am trying to unravel the components of my understanding).
In the book The Moonstone opium encourages - to state it succinctly -
sleepwalking. What it does - as a first approximation in trying to understand
it, without a lot of rigour - is stimulate or maintain the activity level of
the body, and lower mental processes on which activity of the body depends, but
sedate the ‘higher mind’. This is the way it [originally is] causes loss of inhibition, and may
exaggerate the tendency which I believe there is anyway in amphetamine -
although I have never read an explicit statement to this effect in books on
drugs - to elevate the libido. By reducing the transmissions from the frontal
brain which moderate dopamine activity lower down - furthermore - it can
encourage such phenomena as hallucination, in people who (like myself) are
ordinarily short of schizophrenic by virtue of precisely that, the moderating
influence of the frontal brain on excessive activity lower down. As I have
mentioned before, opium can on this basis be used as kind of an aid to creative
thinking. Dawn is very
sleepy lately, and I’m wondering if it is mainly opium causing it even though
the other day I was blaming her sleepiness mainly on ASM. Certainly lately she
seems to have been in high spirits, and I have pondered possibilities including
stimulant drugs and antidepressants getting into her. It may well be though
that what in effect she displays as playful high spirits results from opium freeing
up her expressiveness of happiness she feels for natural and not drug-related
reasons. I have in the past argued that given stimulant drugs she will in the
aftermath be in more need of sleep than in an average after-reaction, because
of her high level of dopamine turnover, meaning under the influence of
stimulants she is taking in a lot more bits of information. There may be
something in this, but also opium (perhaps paradoxically, but that as I say in
some ways opium has a stimulant effect) may produce the same effect: in the
aftermath of a period when she is acting more in the real world (including
being more talkative) and in which as part and parcel of it her frontal brain
is not doing effective processing as she goes about (in real-time, as it were),
she needs sleep (including dreaming sleep) in the aftermath to do the
processing (and sorting-away) post hoc. 04/03/08 01:26 [Tuesday] Where I had got
to yesterday (on the computer) was in preparing a website update I had
discovered a flaw in my own VB prog for ‘verifying HTML’ - that is,
fundamentally, checking the HTML of a webpage for hrefs and img srces
containing slashes (this originally necessary because the facilities I was
paying for at Easily.co.uk did not allow the setting up of sub-folders within
the host folder holding my website files so that HTML produced by MS Word
needed checking and adapting) and allowing the re-specification of names of
files containing imges - and had by bedtime last night fixed it and used
the corrected version on the files associated with The Lincoln Hotel
booking_page2_on_2008-02-22.cgi.htm in doing which I had discovered the flaw.
It strikes me now that to be able to use this prog not only on .html
files but also on .mach.txt files would allow rectification of img filenames
in a .mach.txt version of a webpage without having to first compile it
to .html and then unravel the rectified version of the HTML. 04/03/08 04:52 The file colinbroughheader.txt
consists of these macros: <macro
name="oldcolinbroughheader"> <macro
name="colinbroughheaderwithzeromargintop"> <macro
name="colinbroughheader"> <macro
name="colinbroughheaderexcludingtitle"> <macro
name="colinbroughheaderwithscript"> which differ
among themselves only in the segment /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal,
li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNorm {margin-top:6.0pt; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:normal; font-size:14.0pt; font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif";} which in the
‘zeromargintop’ case for example is like this: /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal,
li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNorm {margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:normal; font-size:14.0pt; font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif";} So my idea now
is to generate these files containing the macros from originating files by
substituting for text which varies when there is only little such text among a
mass which is always the same. This will be useful for example in the case of a
new month starting, when the new header-table macro (contained in the file b-b_Tables.txt)
will differ from the old only by the table being extended by the extra month,
and the only other thing which changes will be the month pointed to by the
current year link in the header table (eg 2008 currently points
to March 2008.html but a few days ago pointed to February 2008.html).
The prog I am proposing will be helpful in other ways though: for example in
converting the files of my former website colinbrough.co.uk to a form suitable
for inclusion in the present barrass-brough.org.uk (and the basis of the idea
now - although it occurred to me previously but I was then more vague in my
thoughts - is my attempting to convert these files: 2006 is almost done). 04/03/08 06:46 I am getting on
OK with the new macro prog, but on the other hand it is as usual taking a
certain time to get what I do debugged as I do it bit by bit, so abstracting
myself from that I ask myself whether I can yet - as an interim measure - put
up a website update without going to the entire lengths I had been planning
(the hope was to include a reconstituted version of my 2006 website diary). My
mind has also wandered back to security: to survey what was going on at home if
we were away there are all sorts of complicated schemes one could devise
involving the internet or phone connections, but of course the more complex
something is the more there is to go wrong and the more to be interfered with
by people who know more about it than me (should I buy pre-made complex
components, such as security camera systems as Dawn originally desired). A
fairly simple mechanism - along the lines of timers which would prevent access
to safes after entry to the house, for say an hour - would be a timer, or
alternatively a radio signal (or a telephone signal but that we have no
landline), needed to set the timer. The idea is that if we ourselves need to
re-enter within (say) ten minutes of leaving (or before the signal has been
sent - say via a cheap walkie-talkie with a range of a few kilometres - to set
the timer) we could without denying ourselves access to the safes and (perhaps)
without the need to re-set the indicator that the front door has been opened. 04/03/08 10:11 When I got up -
in fact right up to around the time the above 06:46 entry was written - I had
enthusiasm for what I was doing on the computer, and there were a number of
other possible progs in my mind to adapt. Since around 06:46 though - and the
cause is drugs and most probably they derive from half a packet of crisps I ate
(bought at Sainsbury’s Wolverhampton yesterday evening) although the milk
(bought at the same place) is also slightly suspect - I have lost my ability to
be interested (which is a little strange because I wish I still did have the
former enthusiasm) and as part and parcel my clear internal envisagement of not
only what I was doing on the computer (which was getting round to preparing a
website update) but also things I might potentially do (on the computer and
later in the day in the other parts of my life: hence at present I have no
clear idea - and nor really does Dawn - what it might be enjoyable or
profitable or advantageous to get done today). In the past I have been confused
as to what class of drugs produces this lack of interesting activity in my mind
and hence in my life (giving rise to a flatness which I suppose is not
literally depression but is certainly a species of unhappiness) but what I
presume this morning is that it is not ASM but something along the lines of
opium. From hints of queries I think I detected two months ago possibly (that
is queries from nighttime speakers or otherwise queries I was not properly
aware of in my conscious mind) it seems possible that the people deciding to
foist these drugs do not understand the debilitation I - and Dawn I think to an
extent - am caused by this drug which I must presume is like opium. I would
have to theorise something like this: that people given this drug on a test
basis - or under whatever circumstances (because if it is opium it has been
used over the centuries) - do not report this type of debilitation, that is
this loss of clarity of internal envisagement and also loss of enthusiasm for
doing anything much. On the other hand, opium does as I understand it - and
heroin - cause users to sit still more and (as it were) wallow, so it must be
understood that it reduces enthusiasm for doing stuff. Also if it is related to
the drug nighttime voicers in 2004 told me interferes with ‘formation of
intention’ then it is understood that it causes a loss of enthusiasm for
looking ahead and deciding on stuff to do - activity - for the future. What
baffles me is I am foisted drugs which have stilling properties like this yet I
am not paid or compensated in any way, and indeed trying to evade them is a
cost to me. Again, people it seems willingly take opium (and certainly heroin)
so I conclude many people find opium (as well as heroin) to have pleasant
effects. Yet surely I have made clear that I myself do not like the effects. In 2004 I got
the impression that when I was in Bristol visiting Caroline I was given drugs
(although I didn’t work out in detail whence) which were supposed to help me
relax and (I presume) increase my sociability as alcohol might, by reducing the
worry of being on one’s guard and self-censoring all the time. All I can say is
it baffles me if it is the case that the perpetrators still do not understand
such drugs are not a help to me in that way. I do not know what they believe
about the effects of such drugs: I am completely baffled. 04/03/08 10:50 On each 25g
pack of crisps from within the multipack it reads, ‘If dissatisfied, tell us
why, where purchased and send the packet(s) and contents together with the
multipack wrapper to: CONSUMER SERVICES DEPARTMENT, WALKERS SNACK FOODS LTD PO BOX 23, LEICESTER LE4 8ZU, UK.’ As it is very
little cost to me to do so (even using Recorded Delivery), nonetheless even
though I feel very unsure of achieving any useful effect (on the basis that
phoning Nestlé in the past about Nescafé all they said was the effects must be
due to the caffeine, and anyway I can’t be absolutely sure the effects I am
suffering this morning are down to the crisps rather than something else), I
shall send them back and thereby alert the manufacturers in case there is any
doubt (presuming the crisps are at fault) that I do not want to be drugged with
such drugs. 04/03/08 11:05 Clarity must be
returning after the effects of the drugs, because it strikes me that the drugs
may have been introduced into foods recently to invite me (as it were) to
follow the ‘correct’ procedure of complaining, which I have only ever done in
the past (then my clarity of understanding debilitated over a long period, by
ASM) when I phoned Nestlé about Nescafé, and then I don’t think I reported what
I had done to any possibly independent people (such as the readers of my
website). Saying that, of course the policy of complaining in the ordinary way
is unlikely to work as ordinarily it would. Dawn - and possibly others who
might eat the crisps (I can’t tell how sensitive to the drugs other people
might be) - finds nothing to complain about. She has felt extra sleepy, but
puts it down to natural causes. If it were the case that Walkers crisps contain
some ingredient that affects me adversely, then why not simply stop eating
Walkers crisps? The answer to that is that not every packet of Walkers crisps
contains the ‘adverse’ ingredient, and if I eat ordinary Walkers crisps I quite
enjoy them. Also, stopping eating Walkers crisps would not at all protect me
from the adverse effects, as the ingredients causing them are not put in by
Walkers’ choice, but at the behest of a larger more powerful body which can
also influence other manufacturers of crisps (and other foods). I am beginning
to learn what foods (and drinks) it is well to avoid, but still the ordinary
policy of avoiding foods which upset me doesn’t apply: to reiterate, the
unpleasant ingredients might be put in almost any food at the behest of the
larger more powerful body. However, because
at present I am not made too lethargic, and also I can judge the possible cost
better - that is paying postage to return the crisps will not turn out to be a
never-ending drain on our funds - therefore I am willing to return the crisps,
not particularly in the expectation that Walkers will do much (and as I say it
is even possible the drugs are not in the crisps but in something else I have
eaten or drunk) but in the confidence that - especially as I can report what I
am doing on my website and I believe now (whatever used to be the case) it is
freely accessible on the internet - my feelings about being drugged will be
conveyed to a wide audience including people who are able to intervene in the
drugging even if the actual druggists (or prescribers) have hard hearts
(vivisectionists’ hearts, I used to think). 04/03/08 13:56 I have got back
onto trying to complete the reconstitution of my 2006 website diary for
inclusion as part of my next website update-cum-amendment (having prepared the
recent diary up to Sunday 2 March 2008) and I have had difficulty similar to
that I had last Thursday or Friday. ... I have been
looking back at last week’s diary, and on Thursday 28 February 2008 I became
confused as to what drugs had been affecting me, whereas earlier I had felt
confident in my understanding (whether or not it was accurate is a different
matter). This is similar to how I felt yesterday - I think it was yesterday,
but my memory is unclear and becomes less clear (because more confused) if
instead of thinking, without troubling too much, I know what happened I try to
retrieve specific details from memory - but last week I was more confused. That
Thursday - 28 February - I was very ready to feel taken advantage of (although
much less ready than in past years) and was speaking of complaining to the
police (actually, adding to the confusion is the fact that for the website last
week I interpolated diary entries written on Friday 29 February into earlier
days). I think the
explanation for the confusion (and confusion cannot easily be explained to
oneself at the time because implicit in what I mean by confusion is
confused or absent introspective capability) is not simply the presence of
opium in my metabolism or the presence of ASM (both of which reduce effective
resolution of thinking) - which actually was the question puzzling over which
was the main source of confusion - but rather a mixture of them giving rise to
the puzzlement and, as well, the inability to sort out the puzzlement. Today
things as I say are not so bad, and my guess what the explanation is - which I
feel confidence in (while at the same time accepting I may be mistaken) - is
that on Wednesday and Friday of last week (or certain days around then, and
Wednesday and Friday are the best estimate from the record in my diary) I took
in ASM as well as opium (and be it remembered when I say opium I have in
mind constantly that I may be mistaken in calling it literally opium). There
are various pieces of evidence of ASM affecting me, including the fact I
mention that I tried our tapwater (straight from the tap) which might have been
a source for the ASM and the fact that I mention in the 28/02/08 04:26 entry
that even though introspecting my judgment was that I ought to have felt
enthusiastic or even excited at the way the character recognition programming
was going, in fact I felt fairly flat or even depressed. I think there must be
a distinction between merely surveying one’s own condition by introspection and
(on the other hand) putting together pieces of evidence from introspection into
(ultimately) a theory of the way one’s own (and by extension others’ especially
if the others have a similar way of thinking) mind works. It strikes me opium
has more of an effect on output - that is, for one thing, on organising outputs
downwards from the frontal brain, as well as activity at a closer-to-bodily
level - whereas ASM causes all-round loss of fine definition (input, output,
and inward envisagement that is internal processing). This corresponds with the
stupefying effect of opium (and heroin) in which the body sits and the mind
takes in some of what is happening (except for a tendency to fall asleep) but
that with some similar drugs (truth drugs more literally) mumbled speech and
eye movements are feasible outputs. This in the main is what I have been
suffering today: stupefaction as we may call it. Thus a very
small dosage of ASM does not correspond to a dose of opium (or other sedative)
because despite the problem of antischizophrenic drugs reducing activity level
they do not primarily act on the output side: they reduce - much more than
opium, in proportion - the resolution of perception (hence reduce the details
in which the drug-taker might find interest motivating him to do something
outwardly) and the quantity of thinking going on (and it is in this latter that
properly prescribed I am willing to believe they might be found a benefit to
genuine schizophrenics). So prescribed to the right people, ASM will have a
less sedating effect than something like opium and incidentally will affect
memory less, because the effect of opium (and other sedative drugs) on memory
must surely be related to the inadequate sorting of things to be remembered:
that is active sorting where the frontal brain in particular puts out outputs
directing the sorting (or something equivalent during dreaming sleep), for
example constructing hypotheses how structures in the mind might be combined
into summaries or relationships which have the effect (the summaries or
relationships) of reducing the load on memory. (In myself however because of
the imbalance by which my mental functioning depends essentially on the very
large numbers of ‘control lines’ from the frontal brain ASM has a more sedating
effect - or a more deactivating effect, I should say, because it doesn’t
necessarily involve sleepiness - than on most people. This explains also the
difficulty I find distinguishing between opium affecting me and ASM in
combination with stimulants, and because of my history I have always been very
ready to hypothesise the latter rather than the former.) The way I can
hope to distinguish is to note that given ASM in a mild dosage (or combined
with a stimulant) I retain my desire to sort stuff out and it is the inability
to do the sorting-out I want to do which is a major contributor to the anger I
feel with ASM. With something like opium I feel less desire to sort stuff out -
which in the past I have expressed by saying if the drug reducing my ability to
think sends me to sleep, it isn’t so bad because I can sleep - or doze -
instead of trying to sort stuff out. On higher dosages again it is the extra
effect of opium on the output side which is a help, in that I can sit stupefied
(if not asleep) and watch what goes on - as good as watching TV, watching what
goes on around me when it is at all busy (this in fact was the condition I was
in in Birmingham yesterday, that is close to depressed on the train out due to
nothing happening and inability internally to generate anything happening but
quite happily stimulated in Birmingham city centre) - whereas on ASM I am not
so near sleep yet the resolution of my perception being debilitated I have very
little interest in anything going on and subjectively it seems nothing -
certainly nothing significant or worth attending to - is going on. Thus opium has
its worst effect on me when I am nowhere near sleep - say in the morning after
a night’s sleep - but am in an inactive environment (this corresponding exactly
with my experience in the dark early mornings at the park home in the weeks
before Christmas 2006). On the train to Birmingham yesterday I could not come
very close to sleep - unable to relax in the open away from home - yet there
was nothing much going on in the more or less empty carriage. I think it may
be the case that the headaches I develop sometimes are due neither to opium nor
ASM on their own, but to the two in combination. If - when not inclined to sleep
or come close to sleep, say in the morning when I have had enough sleep, or in
the open away from home - I try to maintain a level of self-stimulation, the
presence of ASM as well as opium creates difficulty due to not having
processing resources enough and not finding any way of self-motivation
sufficient, although striving for it. (A good example is when I am striving to
get something done on the computer - say to finish something I have started, so
as not to have to do it all again - but effects from opium, and especially if
ASM is admixed, intrude.) Whether the fact
that I felt mild anger this morning implies this week also there is a trace of
ASM combined with the opium, I can’t be sure. The reason (theorised above)
would be that the ASM present altered the balance between the degree of
sedation from the opium, and the processing capacity left me to deal with the
processing requirement when I was not suffering sedation to the point of sleep
or certainly of being past caring. I conclude from
a fresh attack now of tiredness of the eyes (and sedation more generally) that
there is opium (or whatever it is like opium) in the bread we have been eating. 05/03/08 10:10 [Wednesday] I have brought
my website up-to-date (up to yesterday’s date at least) and have been able to
upload a version of my diary for 2006 (originally part of colinbrough.co.uk)
accessible from the present website. I have kind of lost interest in the
low-level programming to do with reading and writing sectors of magnetic discs,
but I will set down a brief description of where I am at with it, for possible
resumption at a later date. In the folder I
was preparing Knowledge of DOS gleaned from examining Nero software
there are subroutines (in assembly code) for reading and writing sectors. Where
I had got to was thinking about preparing a bootable CD using Nero, which would
load the code I wanted to test - to read or write sectors - and execute it. The
same folder contains a listing of the file DosBootimage.IMA provided
within Nero, and this I was starting to try to unravel (see Start of code in
DosBootimage.txt). As I said in a previous diary entry, it would be
necessary to find a way of displaying or storing the results of the read (a
read of a sector, as a thing I could check out first) in such a way that they
could be examined for correctness (or indeed to see if anything had been read
at all). We are off to
Birmingham today even though Dawn has been turned down a second time for DLA
and it seems I am not entitled (by the DWP who according to the Royal Mail
reply to letters before they have signed for receipt of the letters) to an
addition to my benefit for Dawn even though she is not entitled to benefit in
her own right (not having accumulated stamp in the past few years), although
the contributions towards her eventual pension are being paid for her as she is
deemed to be ill. 06/03/08 03:23 [Thursday] The physical
universe while at first sight seeming a complex structure is - it seems
incontrovertible - underlain by a few fundamental principles, that is Laws of
Physics. The seeming complexity arises from large numbers, that is the large
number of ways the few Laws can combine due to not only the mathematical fact
of combinatorics but also the large number of separate components making up the
physical universe (that is, photons and quarks as far as we know). Likewise the
human ‘mind’ seems a complex thing and its activity almost impossible to
predict, but the mind is underlain by the brain which is composed of neurons
and synapses with very few ways of interacting with each other. The complexity
(allowing close-to-isomorphic - to use a strictly speaking meaningless phrase,
as there is really no degree to isomorphism just as purists say there is no
degree to perfection but it’s an either/or - modelling of physical reality at
the grainsize relevant to the human frame) arises from large numbers, that is
of neurons and even more so of synapses. The more basic
way in which the system of neural structures (the ‘nervous system’) models the
physical world is an analogue way, implemented as intensity of transmissions
across synapses. There is some differentiation between synapses - or rather
synaptic transmissions (I do not know myself whether the same synapse ever
carries transmissions by two or more different neurotransmitters) - in (as I
say) the specialisation by type of neurotransmitter (ie dopamine,
serotonin, noradrenaline and others), but apart from that at the analogue stage
of evolution (earlier than insects even, as insects have rudimentary digital
implementations for example in their eyes: I know enough to know the eyes of
insects comprise several - although nowhere near as many as in mammals - light
sensitive cells) complexity arises from variation in the intensity of
neurotransmissions more than multipleness of components of the same type (in
other words while there is differentiation of function - light detectors are
different from detectors of noxious chemicals - within one function there is
little multiplication in number of identical components, such as retinal
cells). The sense of smell remains thus even in mammals: while some mammals can
more finely differentiate between smells nonetheless basically it is simply
intensity which is measured by the sensory apparatus and there are no
relationships between different smells: one smell is not ‘less than’ another -
except in intensity - or ‘to the right of’ another - except in location of the
source which is not of the essence of the smell. More recently in
evolution there has been multiplication in the number of identical components
comprising sensory apparatus, eg retinal cells (although there is some
differentiation between types of retinal cell - rods versus cones - there are
very many identical rods and very many identical cones). I would imagine the
original reason evolution favoured such a development was redundancy - if one stop
light failed there was another to fall back on - but once the development had
started other advantages became significant. There are in fact a number of
advantages in having a multitude of identical components in addition to
redundancy. Because the components cannot physically be identical in location
(in the brain or more generally the nervous system), the spatial relationships
between components automatically model spatial relationships in the things
‘out there’ which are detected. It is very advantageous for the visual system
to be able to distinguish location - or rather, relative location: relative to
the sensor and to each other - of structures detected visually. I suppose even
an amoeba can tell the direction from which light is coming so that it knows
whether to advance or retreat, but more sophistication than that has advantages
for creatures which have more sophisticated ways of preserving themselves. Once the visual
system becomes capable of detecting spatial arrangements it is almost at the
stage of being able to detect ‘patterns’, and ‘pattern recognition’ is
extremely useful as permitting experience to be brought to bear on patterns
which have been met with before. From an early stage when transmissions across
synapses became variable in intensity the phenomenon of memory must have been
in development, that is when synapses came into evolution there must have been
inherent in them the property of altering with repeated transmission, this
being the basis of memory. The property of altering with repeated
transmission I would say always consists of increased readiness to transmit
- that is quicker more intense response from the target to the same release
from the source (or possibly quicker more intense release from the source given
the same originating electrical impulse) - with repetition of transmission. I
decline to believe there are any synapses which become less transmissive after
repetition of transmission. So this is
another advantage in having multiple identical components: initially versatile
in applicability, structures (of neural components) can ‘congeal’ according to
what as the organism progresses through life is found to be most frequently
required, and ‘set’ into componentry specific to particular purposes useful
within the life of the individual. This allows more rapid adaptation than on
the timescale of evolution. On the other hand (to conclude quickly now and get
on with some programming) the phenomenon of memory means that as the organism
becomes older its brain is being used up as a greater and greater proportion
gets set in its ways. Alternatively to this (or rather, additionally) in man
the phenomenon of modelling of causal chains (and networks) has come to
implementation, so that using the frontal brain change itself in its essence
can be modelled and (the advantage depends on the success with which this
occurs) predicted. Human beings can with greater or less accuracy and
resolution (the two interdepend) based on what has happened in the past (with
weighting on recency) foresee what is going to happen in the future (and part
of it involves necessarily - to cope with the possibility of ‘error’ or rather
entropy or Sod’s Law - modelling several different possibilities in parallel). 06/03/08 05:41 Back on the kick
of visual field analysis: the visual field may have low contrast (assuming
preliminary fixing for brightness) in which case things are made more difficult
for the percipient in trying to extract information. Maximum information is
available from regions within the visual field where contrast is high (because
visual information is conveyed through variation of light and dark, or
certainly ignoring colour it is). The way to go - it is becoming apparent - is
to limit the uptake of visual information to those regions with useful
contrast, to enhance contrast locally as may be appropriate and to set aside
(white out, as it were) regions of very low contrast as simply misleading
(‘very low’ contrast being judged by comparing against the background contrast,
that is against the random fluctuation between light and dark in the field once
it has got through the close-to-the-physical sensory apparatus - physical as
opposed to abstracted into concepts, one might almost say, that is abstracted
through the intermedium of patterns). Having derived numerous separate regions
containing reliable information, higher processes are then required to
interpolate based on what has been found in the past. Specifically what I am
persisting with is finding out very dark regions - which seem naturally to
contain more potential information than very light regions (this related to the
light from the sky in nature from the point of view of animals which are not
nocturnal) - and enhancing the contrast in them. 07/03/08 02:21 [Friday] Logging-on to
the Abbey online service a page comes up automatically even more insistently
than the one ordinarily coming up inviting me to use (indeed this time to
download from Microsoft) Internet Explorer (or Netscape) and rather sidelining
the fact that Firefox works perfectly well. If using IE would enable me to
benefit from fixing of the odds at Ladbrokes in my favour (or at 888.com which
I see advertised in many Gents toilets) it would be OK and on the suspicion it
may (I presume when I access ladbrokescasino.com my default internet browser
gets used) I might even try it (after making sure to back my system up as it
stands because even though it is not perfect it could be much worse of the Authorities
have no better technical expertise than they had formerly, or alternatively are
as intent as formerly on causing me computer trouble). 07/03/08 02:28 Items sent
Recorded Delivery in the past year or so: 19-Feb-07 Debt
Centre Dearne Valley Debt Management DH875987496GB 28-Feb-07
Debt Management (DV) DH951137515 09-Mar-07
Jobcentre Plus (Wolverhampton) DL039188063GB 29-Jun-07
Central Ticket Office DL319670969GB 18-Jul-07
Central Ticket Office DL669754072GB 17-Dec-07
BT PLC DW082041106GB 12-Feb-08
Criminal Justice Unit (Dawn trying to pay fixed penalty) DW461955974GB 12-Feb-08
Wolverhampton BDC DW461955965GB 16-Feb-08
Central Finance Unit (Dawn trying to pay fixed penalty) DW922859246GB 03-Mar-08
Solihull Magistrates DL789692159GB 03-Mar-08
Central Finance Unit returning cheque Dawn keeps trying to submit to pay the
fixed penalty DL789692145GB 04-Mar-08
Consumer Services at Walkers Snackfoods Ltd DW221538691GB There was also
the item I sent Special Delivery 16-Jan-08 Mr Ian
Pearson MP House of Commons ZV308957918GB ‘guaranteed’ to
be delivered by 1 pm on 17-Jan-08 (the day after posting) but not in fact
delivered till 18-Jan-08 and for which the Royal Mail when I phoned to enquire
what had happened to it did not offer a refund (it not having been delivered on
time) which on enquiry (wanting a refund) at the local Post Office I was told
they should have. In connection with this letter I tried to fill in the online
form for obtaining a signature of the recipient but the Royal Mail website was
faulty and would not allow the completion of the form and I was told on
phoning-in an enquiry that filling in the form was unnecessary: what one had to
do was phone-in a request five days after the due date of delivery (the
signature has since become available online). Another thing I have learnt about
this facility from Royal Mail is that an item sent Recorded or Special Delivery
is classed as lost if not delivered within fifteen days of posting (which
applied in the case of the letter despatched 17-Dec-07 to BT PLC). We have not yet
got to the bottom of why BT cut off the phoneline at the park home (seemingly
on 24-Dec-07) as our letter instructing them to do so was lost in the post. A
representative said BT received an instruction to terminate the phoneline from
someone who was not the account holder but he was not allowed to say who it
was. The letter
despatched 12-Feb-08 to Wolverhampton BDC (a section - seemingly the
disabilities section - of Wolverhampton Social Security although having an
address in Birmingham) received a reply (received by us on Friday 22 February
2008) yet according to the Royal Mail website was ‘delivered from our ASTON
delivery office’ on 25/02/08. 07/03/08 05:33 Having after the
above got into scanning the documents pertaining to my court case at Solihull
Magistrates’ I also scanned the Walkers crisps packet from which recently I
derived the address for returning unsatisfactory Walkers crisps. This gives an
excuse to show off the improved appearance which can easily be achieved using
the prog I wrote to alter all colours in an image ‘close to’ any selected
colour (closeness here measured in colour terms not spatial terms). In this
case the glary white produced by scanning the shiny crisp packet has been
moderated to the general background blue: A
further improvement could be hoped for in the printed text, by adapting
procedures from my character recognition programming. An extension of that
might allow improvement of line drawings. Mentioning background moreover brings
to mind (a mind as yet this morning unharrowed by antischizophrenic drugs) that
as I have said there must be two distinct visual systems (in man): one for
close-up manipulative hand-eye stuff, and the other for geographic positioning
of one’s own body. The latter makes more use of long-sightings and moreover
must be slanted towards processing for regions such as the background more than
for lines and vertices (or edges) close-to. The background I reckon is to be
determined by the largest overall area of regions added up which have more or
less the same colour (blue in the most frequent case of the sky). 07/03/08 08:10 I am still
working on fixing contrast locally - that is neighbourhood by neighbourhood -
for a lineage of text. Out of the nitty-gritty (in which I have suspected from
time to time the past two or three days I have got submerged more than I might
have been because of drugs getting into me) I now find questions arising in my
mind to do with the general principles underlying the programming I am doing.
Here is lineage 1 on entry to the procedure to fix contrast, shown as fragments
(a little obscured by artificial tramlines) determined by the initial
computation of the threshold dividing black from white, this computation based
on analysis of the distribution of greyscale values according to ‘popularity’
that is the frequency of their occurrence (each 1 .. 255) through the lineage: What I ask myself
is why would a pattern-recogniser in nature need to do anything further with
this visual scene? The answer is (again a trifle obscured by the tramlines) the
tops and bottoms of what are in fact letters (but I am considering more
generally visual impressions in nature) are mistakenly whitened (and conversely
in the midst of the tramlines there is ‘over-inking’ and letters are running
together: the “o” and the “u”). Detection of lines is without argument
advantageous to visual pattern-recognisers in nature, and the reason for the
distortion in the scene pre-processed as far as the above is that (for
‘artificial’ reasons to do with human language) the fragments are arrayed in a
horizontal line (a lineage in fact). However, any pattern-recogniser worth his
salt must be able to cope with arrangements of fragments which happen to be
horizontal. [Note added 09/03/08
04:48: I insert here the comment that the usefulness of lines and edges
relates to exactly the considerations leading an OCR prog to want to separate
chara
