scottmorrison

scottmorrison @ 2006-12-31T20:29:00

2006-12-31T19:29:36Z

‘lo.

I’ve been offline for a while, disconnected from a lot of things, not just LJ. Looking back at my last post it’s been a hell of a lot longer since I did anything here than I thought it had been! Which is a shame ‘cause I used to really enjoy hanging around here and I do miss it.

Some shitty things have happened at work while I’ve been gone and some good things too (we’ve moved offices, I’ve been put up for a training qualification, couple of other things. Best not to mention the bad stuff online). My sister-in-law’s situation has been back and forth so my niece has been back and forth as well. Things have been up in the air a lot.

I can’t remember what I said here before and I can’t be bothered looking back but I tried to write a novel length story a wee while back and got stuck in it part way through. I didn’t like where it had gone, wasn’t exactly sure where it was going anymore and I didn’t like my protagonist the way I was writing him. In short the story in my head and the story on my page were worlds apart. I got bogged down, flustered – shit happens. Writers block. I gave it a couple of days and went back to try it again and I’ve only produced shite in everything I’ve written since. I’m not one who believes you wait for inspiration to strike or the right story to come along before you write. You just start writing, you produce some shit and eventually you get back on track. I’ve just been producing rubbish though. Part of that is not having enough time to write, to get a head of steam up to plough through the writers block. It sounds like a crap excuse – if you don’t have time to write then you’re not a writer, you make the time for it and you commit to doing it – but it’s true. I don’t know. I haven’t produced a half decent story in a long while though. When I do though I’ll definitely start posting them here again. I really haven’t felt like I’ve had anything to say of late but maybe I’ll just start talking shit and see how it goes.

Oh, by the way I haven’t been ignoring comments on posts, though I haven’t replied to any. I wasn’t I lost a lot of e-mails a while back so I may have lost some then but a wee while back my brother got me on some crappy American company spam list – so I can’t unsubscribe – from a wedding registered gift list and I’ve been getting a lot of (fairly pathetic) spam, LJ e-mail notifications seem to have been getting swept up along with the spam (that should be fixed now).

Speak to you soon (promise)…

Off out for Hogmanay now, have a good one everybody!

scottmorrison @ 2006-12-25T22:44:00

2006-12-25T21:44:09Z

Merry Christmas a'body.

I'll make a more substantive post sometime in the next few days.

Why is it that whenever I go for a walk in the sunshine clouds cover the sun?

2006-03-29T19:47:26Z

I haven’t posted anything lately ‘cause I haven’t felt like I’ve had much to say.

Crappy things are going on at work, things that affect my position quite extensively and so far appear detrimental for me at every turn. My department’s leave year also runs April to April so everybody else is on holiday at the moment; I’m covering everything, doing plenty of overtime on a daily basis and dealing with all the issues everybody else stuck in drawers to forget about (locked drawers, in a portacabin, for a fortnight...mumble grumble...)

I haven’t had much time for most of the things I enjoy of late. Naturally I am miles back on my Friend’s Page.

I haven’t written anything worth much of anything in the past couple of weeks. Writers block is annoying the hell out of me. I could really use the release and satisfaction of getting a good story onto the page, or even just a good story in my head.

Sigh. It feels like the start of Spring outside now; the clocks have moved back, the better weather is on the way. It still feels like Winter though. I really want to put interesting things here again. To be interesting and to be interested and invest in things again.

scottmorrison @ 2006-03-21T21:05:00

2006-03-21T21:22:01Z

My sister in law got out of hospital today. My niece has gone home. My brother left about thirty minutes ago with half of her stuff. I miss her already. I have already gone through the house to check on her when I heard a baby crying on the TV. Do'h

I may stop catching a new bug or virus every other day now though. Whatever she got, I got times ten. I'm unlucky that way. She has a temperature and a cough, I lose my voice and develop all the flu symptoms in the book. I was hardly ever sick when I was a kid, I miss that.

scottmorrison @ 2006-03-21T19:36:00

2006-03-21T19:43:44Z

That bloody flock of birds is stalking me. They followed me over a pharmacy and a book shop on my way home tonight just to drop shit at me from a great height (much like my day at work funnily enough). My lightening fast ninja like reflexes saved me though - and a cowardly sprint across the road. Tomorrow I walk home by a different route, possibly with a shotgun cracked over one arm and hunting dogs at heel.

scottmorrison @ 2006-03-20T19:31:00

2006-03-20T19:58:41Z

I went back to work today after a week on holiday. It was not a particularly fun holiday because I was ill for quite a bit of it, yesterday and today included. I'm picking up all muy nieces little bugs and magnifying them out of all proportion, she's just a cute little infection vector. Also, just in the nick of time, it has started to snow again. I have had to take eleven days off this month because my holidays run along the financial year, April to April, and I left off taking them earlier to complete (hah!) projects for work (a fools errand, they kept putting off the projects) – yet it always snows when I’ve got to get to work in the morning. A bloke from Azerbaijan arrived for six weeks training this morning, two weeks of which will be with me - naturally starting with today. No notice. Half of the jobs to be completed in my absence haven't even been started yet. It's so predictable, so boring.

Just to sum up the day; on my way home I stopped beneath a flock of around a hundred little birds doing aerial gymnastics on the thermals coming up from under a railway bridge, thinking how much Lailah would love to see it. I heard a pitter-patter like falling rain and looked up. Nope, not rain. Yes, an entire flock of birds shit on me on my way home. Sigh, only another three days until I'm on holiday again.

Still not having much luck writing anything half decent. When I get inspiration skill deserts me, when I sit down and persevere at just typing out words inspiration is nowhere to be found :( Must write something good soon...

scottmorrison @ 2006-03-13T18:27:00

2006-03-13T18:32:35Z

cool, check it out: Google Mars

Weird potty training post. No, not my potty training.

2006-03-12T16:46:10Z

I have just guided my niece into the wonderful world of those who use toilets. She’s been sitting on her potty for a while now but about fifteen minutes ago she came up to me and tugged at her trousers the way she does when she wants to sit on it and, without going into any detail, she used the toilet for the first time.

It was weird, and this must seem a really strange post to most people, but I’m really proud of this; not just that she used it but that she came to me to help her do it.

Yes, it’s weird.

It seems to have taken a lot out of her though (that would be a really terrible pun if I had intended it that way now wouldn’t it) because she fell asleep about two minutes after I finished cleaning her up.

My neice, Lailah Morrison, used the toilet for the first time at 1615 on Sunday 12 March 2006. This is a date her (clearly undeserving) future boyfriends will almost certainly be hearing all about for decades to come!

Lailah and me

2006-03-09T18:58:53Z

We just howled at the moon, we two. Silly thing, hiding from my niece behind the rain clouds.

Can't say that hurt my day either.

She's currently on the run with a dirty nappy. As you can clearly see, I am in hot pursuit.

scottmorrison @ 2006-03-09T18:24:00

2006-03-09T18:26:51Z

I've just got home from a relatively crummy day at work. When I came in the door my niece stopped crying and said "I love you too Scott!"

Made my day that did.

Alien Radio

2006-03-07T22:13:18Z

Alien Radio
Originally uploaded by scottmorrison.

NANOFICTION: Special Circumstances

2006-03-07T22:12:37Z

My name is Warren Kennedy, special agent of Contact, Special Circumstances and Solutions division. We deal with the situations that can’t be dealt with. Quarantined species, memetic biohazards, destructive social systems and world killing entities, these are our purview. That and much, much more.

It was Contact SCS that first solved the Fermi Paradox, back in the earliest days when the Society was just being founded. Put simply, the Fermi paradox asks that if life is as abundant in the Universe as it is on the Earth – a view supported by the sheer number of stars in the sky and the diversity of life to evolve therein – why could we detect no trace of alien civilisations in our Galaxy? Many potential answers were put forth:

Perhaps all other civilisations communicate in a manner more advanced than that currently available to – or detectable by – humanity, after all humanity itself only beamed out about three decades worth of detectable radio traffic before switching to more advanced forms of communication that used less power over a shorter range. Though of course, there would be no reason to assume that any other species active in the Galaxy would be more advanced than the Homo Sapiens looking for them; it could well be that all current civilisations were less advanced than man and the communiqué of more advanced species passed by during our own dark ages of lesser development - or even that of the dinosaurs. Perhaps we are alone. Or perhaps there was something spreading through the Galaxy like a plague, killing off emergent civilisations as they rose, before they advanced far enough to be noticeable or become a threat to that force, sterilising their worlds against any hope of developing competing life forms again.

It was Contact that first encountered the Unmaker, the great devourer of intelligence, before Contact even truly existed, back when it was a simple subsection within the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Of course, those agents of Contact and their radio telescope array had to be sterilised with fuel air bombs to protect the sanctity of the world. In accordance with the customs of the time, terrorists were blamed. It was an unfortunate but necessary precaution, the first of many undertaken by Contact for the benefit of humanity.

It took several decades to intelligibly – and safely – decode that first encounter with the scourge of the Galaxy, long enough for Contact to become the true agency it is today and compartmentalise everything within the secure boundaries of the Special Circumstances and Solutions division.

The answer to the Fermi Paradox was this: there is only one other intelligence in the Galaxy. It is a viral and invasive intelligence which subsumes or consumes every other intelligence it encounters as those civilisations reach a sufficient level of sophistication to detect it.

It is a species not of flesh and blood or metal or even electrical impulse, it is an idea. A species so sophisticated – or perhaps so perfectly, elegantly simple – as to consist solely of an idea. The field of memetics, the theory that ideas perpetuate themselves like the genetic material of a society, was in its infancy when the Unmaker was first encountered. Ideas as genes, thoughts as DNA. This was the Unmaker, the solution to the Fermi Paradox. It was a highly infectious memeplex, a cluster of interlinked concepts, that made all known religions - combined - seem like a sniffle in the back of the brain. When the idea of something killing off intelligences throughout the Universe was first proposed, people thought it would most likely be out of control Von Neumann machines spreading throughout the Galaxy disassembling everything in their path to propagate replicas of themselves throughout creation. These people were not far wrong actually, except instead of some viral mechanism this Von Neumann machine was a self replicating and eternally propagating idea, just as dangerous and destructive as any out of control weapon. Perhaps more so.

The Unmaker was the weaponised Ebola Zaire of ideas, transmitted through the air on any transmission medium available – by radio wave, laser beam, sound wave or even flashcards, whatever worked – and infecting any intelligence it encountered. A species transmitted by radio waves. The signal reprogrammed the mind of any intelligence it encountered at the most fundamental level to reflect the idea of this species and perpetuate itself. Like being told not to think of a pink elephant, once exposed to this Unmaker idea it was impossible not to think it, the very electrons in your brain resonated with the need to think its thoughts. The Unmaker ideas could ground an airborne species or bring deep sea organisms to the surface. It transformed individuals into a swarming intelligence, a flock, each brain a single cell in the vast distributed intelligence of this echoing transmission of a single idea, a species with a single drive: to perpetuate. As they say: you can’t stop the signal, the signal stops you - and you become just another component of the transmission.

It was Special Circumstances and Solutions, over countless years of research and no less than fifty near apocalyptic outbreaks, that finally broke down that ultimate memplex into its constituent parts and built it back up again. Pattern recognition; it’s the gift of Human evolution, the ultimate purpose of the human brain and our edge through out the ages. SCS dissected the signal like an autopsied corpse (grainy black and white footage of Roswell greys flickering through their minds), extracting it line by line of code and putting together the map of consciousness it drew like a jigsaw puzzle. They broke the signal down into parts small enough that they could be safely held in a human mind and analysed to get the shape of the idea - the great idea – like a thousand blind men feeling their way around that pink elephant and describing what they each found. Individually the research seemed meaningless – just like the blind man feeling the legs of the elephant thought it was like a tree trunk but the blind man with the elephant’s trunk at his fingertips thought it was sinuous like a snake, neither wrong from their own perspective but neither anywhere near the truth of the creature either - but in the end the idea was diluted down far enough to be understood.

Eventually, with excruciating slowness, they began reprogramming the memeplex with their own painstakingly built model of Human consciousness. Yes, ‘they’, ‘them’, the shadows within the shadows, the men in black. Contact Special Circumstances and Solutions. We began to broadcast their new signal out into the Universe with every transmitter available. Slowly at first, but with every new advancement the signal grew stronger and spread further. In time even the sun was transformed into a great transmitter in the night when IBM cracked the secret to encoding photons. Contact kept their work secret from the rest of society, they had no need to know, but the benefits wrought by their discoveries were bountiful: lasting peace and harmonious existence, equity among all peoples and all races.

Gone are the days of the Unmaker destroying thought throughout the sky - and the Universe could not be a better place for it. After all, just look at me. I live on a volcanic moon orbiting a gas giant in Orion’s Belt and I’m as Human as the next fungoid sponge monster. Just another good ol’ Texan boy, Republican red, white and blue through and through - yeehaw! Even though the original Earth was consumed by its star a million years ago (still transmitting the signal even today, a testament to the genius of Human innovation and design). Mankind never did travel to another star under their own power, rampant climate change killed off the originators of the signal in the end, yet here we all are. A galaxy of Humans spread from star-shining coast to star-shining coast across the Milky Way. Someday soon freedom, democracy and the American way will reach the Andromeda Galaxy.

God bless Humanity, Contact SCS and these United Planets of America!

[Copyright Scott Morrison 2006]

snow

2006-03-03T22:05:20Z

snow
Originally uploaded by scottmorrison.

Blizzards and heavy snow in the north of Scotland have closed airports, rail lines and 300 schools.

It’s been snowing like this since Monday night, disrupting everything. I’m off on holiday today and Monday thankfully (I’ve 11 days to take this month because I kept putting my holidays off to finish projects last year) but it’s been hell the past few days. I spent three quarters of an hour in traffic on Tuesday morning to get to work and it's only about six kilometres from my home, maybe a little further.

I went outside earlier to put one of my niece’s nappies in the wheelie bin and dropped a ruler into the virgin snow. 11 inches and still more of the cold stuff falling.

it’s a winter wonderland, honest

scottmorrison @ 2006-03-03T21:20:00

2006-03-03T21:37:10Z

I’ve got zombies on the brain. I think they might have been snacking.

scottmorrison @ 2006-02-28T22:39:00

2006-02-28T22:40:02Z

Researchers in North Dakota say they have been working for four years on a process that converts soybean or canola oil into aviation turbine fuel. The biofuel, which is now almost ready for an Air Force test, runs colder and cheaper than conventional jet fuel and is more environmentally friendly

scottmorrison @ 2006-02-17T12:56:00

2006-02-17T12:56:41Z

I am indeed sick and have lost my voice again. I was coping with it earlier in the week but it got worse on Wednesday night and I had to go to the doctor yesterday. He's instructed me to take a week off work to recover. Timing's a bit shite, but when wouldn't it be? There's a sinking feling of familiarity to this. The sore throat and loss of voice feel nothing like the fuctional aphonia of the larynx I lost my voice to for a year and a half, but I can't help but compare this to that.

I've been offline for most of the week, haven't much felt like spending time with the wider world.

Bad memories, bad times, bad voice.

scottmorrison @ 2006-02-13T22:36:00

2006-02-13T22:36:54Z

My Mum went ice skating with my brother and sister-in-law yesterday. Naturally, there was slippage and falling. She spent today in Accident and Emergency under observation for a concussion and whiplash. It was a little worrying but she's okay.

Things are going on at my work I'm not wholly comfortable with but I can't really discuss them.

Everything else is as it was. Keep moving, nothing to see here for the moment.

Content will come back soon though, I do promise.

scottmorrison @ 2006-02-09T19:59:00

2006-02-09T20:01:07Z

My lungs are currently trying to leave my body using an advaced form of propulsion indistinguishable from a hacking cough to the outside observer. There appears to be some species of foam living there, I suspect Yuggoth cultures but have yet to be compelled to conquer the world for the return of the old ones. I wait patiently for direction from our foamy overlords.

I will probably lose my voice any day now, it's already breaking up like a badly tuned radio show. Damn cough. I sound like a lounge singer who only drinks whisky and inhales 20mg of nicotine in every lung full of oxygen.

Ain't it sexy?

scottmorrison @ 2006-02-08T22:53:00

2006-02-08T22:53:46Z

I thought there were microscopic death machines coming after me from space but no, it’s just snow. Snow that’s trying to KILL ME! Every time I step outside today, damn it!

I had a regular six monthly appointment at the hospital today. I don't need to go back. The doctor is satisfied that there is nothing more the clinic can do for my medical condition. Which isn't a great surprise to me as I've really just been cooling my heels there for the past couple of years, I had considered asking them on the past few trips whether it was worth my coming back if there was nothing new they could do for me but I’d held off before because I was still quite reliant on my medication, but I’ve barely taken any this year (only twice and in small doses). But still, it brings it home how much the condition has improved when you think that about seven or eight years ago I was referred to the clinic because I was missing an entire year of school due to it and now there's nothing more they can do for me there. I still suffer from the condition every day, and it's hard - but damn, it's a lot better than it was when I couldn't even make it to school. No, I'm not going to tell you what the condition is, If I'd wanted to do that I would have just named it. It's a lot better but I'm still not comfortable discussing it in public. No, it's probably not that.

The snow is clearly trying to get me though. These crystalline snowflakes are almost certainly fourth dimensional constructs projected into our three dimensional world, extra-reality weapons of assassination lurking inside a cloud of frozen precipitation. Hunting me. I must discover why! They lie in wait for me outside even as I type this, covering all my potential escape routes. I can see marks in the snow where other people have been taken unawares, swallowed without a trace by these nanoscopic landmines. They look just like footprints but I know better. Beware the SNOW!

scottmorrison @ 2006-02-06T18:54:00

2006-02-06T19:15:29Z

I haven't replied to any of the comments to my last post. Saturday was a better night. Modesty (and my mile wide gentlemanly streak) prevent me from saying more. ~_^

Sunday was hectic. Today was stressful and irritating. Tomorrow is the future, and we all know what science fiction teaches us about the future!

If you look at my journal without all the Friend's Only posts I made recently it looks really empty. I shall have to do something to rectify that, but not tonight. Tonight I have plans. SECRET PLANS. Evil plans to conquer the world! Bwaahaha! Ahem - Nurse! Pills please.

New fiction will hopefully come soon. I haven't had much chance to write short stories lately so I want to wait until I have something decent and complete in hand again before I post.

Nurse! I said pills, damn it! Don't make me get out of this straight jacket again...

scottmorrison @ 2006-02-04T00:54:00

2006-02-04T00:54:33Z

I needed that.

Danced with the prettiest girl in the club, drank more than I normally would and got passed over for a mate.

You don’t realise how wound up you are until you start to unwind.

scottmorrison @ 2006-02-01T22:47:00

2006-02-01T22:47:39Z

The biggest warship to be built at Glasgow's Scotstoun shipyard is set to be launched on the Clyde.

HMS Daring is the first of the Royal Navy's new Type 45 destroyers and thousands of people are expected to turn up to see her down the slipway.

The Type 45 will come into service in 2009 and the Navy claim it will be the most advanced warship in the world.

Daring is one of six being built by BAE Systems in Glasgow. Wednesday's launch is due to take place at about 1425 GMT.

Each D-class destroyer will have more firepower than the combined fleet of Type 42s.

Public Service Announcement

2006-02-01T21:02:21Z

PC users have been urged to scan their computers before 3 February to avoid falling victim to a destructive virus.

On that date the Nyxem virus is set to delete Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Acrobat files on infected machines.

Nyxem is thought to have caught out many people by promising porn to those who open the attachments on e-mail messages carrying the virus.

Anti-virus companies have stopped lots of copies, suggesting it had infected a large number of computers.
The Nyxem-E Windows virus first emerged on 16 January and has been steadily racking up victims ever since. Nyxem-E is also known as the Blackmal, MyWife, Kama Sutra, Grew and CME-24 virus

I doubt any of you are opening porn attachments, but there are other ways to contract it. Make sure you update your anti-virus software and scan your computer before Friday then back up any crucial files you have on your computer, just in case.

It looks like we're coming back around to the early days of computer viruses, pure malicious spite.

scottmorrison @ 2006-01-25T23:09:00

2006-01-25T23:09:48Z

My sister in law was released from hospital again today. She still looks shaky but she seems okay.

My niece has gone home. She isn’t feeling too well today either though. The nursery didn’t change her nappy yesterday so she had an awfully sore bum, she’s still sore today (despite being lathered with enough cream to mortar a reasonably sized wall with) and she was sick this evening after my brother and sister in law got her home. Not so good.

I am fine.

scottmorrison @ 2006-01-25T22:49:00

2006-01-25T22:53:30Z

January 27th is the Second Annual

LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day!

Your normal life will be waiting for you when you get back. If you decide to come back.

It’s the second annual LJ Rabbit Hole day on Friday. I don’t think I’ll be able to participate this year, though I will try. It was great fun last year and I really look forward to seeing what you all do with it this time. Have a great day down the rabbit hole!