A (somewhat) relevant update

It’s been a while since my last post, but don’t take this as an indication that I haven’t been making progress! Okay, admittedly I’ve been questioning whether I really am making any decent progress recently, but I usually come to the conclusion that I’m heading in the right direction. I’ve been working my way through the Python course on Codecademy which can only be beneficial to the project, but doesn’t give any immediate feedback which makes me feel that I’m gonna get this finished in time.

At the moment, I have about a week left to finish it (realistically – I could work on it over fresher’s week but I can’t see that happening.) The reason I reverted back to relearning Python on Codecademy was because I started working on creating my app’s menu with using Tkinter but decided I wasn’t comfortable with the concept of OOP (Object Oriented Programming) in Python. In the process of updating my self I decided I’d just do the complete Python course since the first part of my course will be centred around the language.

Now that I’ve excused my absence, I’ll just say a few words about Codecademy. It’s a website which is focused on teaching programming to people who are completely new to the subject. This also includes a course on how to make your own website using HTML and CSS, which can be used in conjunction with some of the programming languages to develop a well-polished site of your own. I highly encourage anyone reading this blog to give the site a go, it gradually introduces you to programming concepts without being intimidating, unlike so many other resources that can be found elsewhere online. It is by no means perfect; a fair few of the exercises on the Python course were badly worded which made it difficult to understand what was being asked of you, but the included Q&A forum was always there to solve any issues I might have had. In a world where technology is becoming more and more important, I feel we should make more of an effort to actually understand the underlying systems that make that technology work. Anyway, I encourage you to give it a go, even if after a few sections you find it’s not for you. You never know, you might just enjoy it, and it’s an incredibly beneficial skill to have!

Now onto Tkinter! Tkinter is a python toolkit which can be used to make a GUI, which stands for Graphical User Interface. Essentially, I’ll be using it to create a window on the screen which will be used to select any options before starting the sensory process. The window will contain widgets (a term you may have heard if you use a smart phone, it stands for window gadget) such as buttons and tick-boxes. In the code for the program these will be represented as software objects, which was why I needed to recap on OOP in Python, as I mentioned earlier. Depending on what tick boxes are selected, the Tkinter menu will refer to other blocks of code which use other toolboxes to play music and display colours. At least, that’s how I’m imagining it in my head, I hope it is as simple as that. We’ll see how it goes!

That’s all for this post, but I’ll probably update again once I’ve got the menu sorted.

Update and “Shopping List”

Hey everyone! As usual I’ve allowed my self to neglect this blog, but at least this time it wasn’t out of a lack of interest. I’ve simply been having too much fun recently partying and giving my liver so many more reasons to hate me. I’m just gonna say it’s practice for freshers week!

Anyway at one of said parties I sat down and it suddenly hit me how overwhelming the premise of building this device is. I have very little direction at the moment, and have no idea how I’m going to put it all together so it’s definitely going to be a learning experience! While I figure all this out I’m going to be just posting little updates to let you all know how it’s going.

Right now I don’t have a massive amount to say, however I got my raspberry pi in the post today from York. It’s an updated version from the one I already had which is handy, and it also came with a case and 4GB sd card pre-loaded with Raspbian (the linux distribution designed specifically for raspberry pi.) The university has a learning environment which has some tips for what to do, with links to Python and raspberry pi tutorials. I already have some experience with Python which will come in handy when I move on to the battleships challenge and will hopefully allow me to develop my sensory device as well. I’ll be maintaining a presence on the forums York have set up for the challenges as well in the hope that some of my fellow students will have advice and/or inspiring ideas to drive me on to compete with them.

Just thought I’d include a quick “shopping list” for the project, to give an idea of what I’ll need to complete it. Now that I have access to two pi’s however I might see if I can use them together for a different purpose, but I haven’t given it enough thought for any solid decisions. For now I’ll just run with the idea I’ve already got and see where it takes me.

The list is as follows:

• A raspberry pi (OMG NO WAY)
• A case preferably, as to prevent any harm to the user and damage to the pi
• A pair of (comfortable) headphones
• A small screen, possibly touch-sensitive although this could cause confusion
• Some fabrics/objects that feel nice to the touch
• A capacitive touch sensor
• Input devices such as a mouse + keyboard
• Possibly a ribbon cable (I’m not sure yet, still need to look into this)

Gonna tidy my room now because it’s a mess and I need some desk-space to get my pi set up and running so I can start some real work on the project! I’ll keep you all updated.

Device Description and Plan Outline

Hey guys, how’s things? I’m just gonna start this post saying thanks to everyone who has liked any of my posts and also followed my blog, I appreciate it! I’ll try and maintain this steady flow of articles that I’ve been managing for you all, although obviously posts will slow down once I’ve got past the “explanation” stage and moved into the actual “development” stage.

This post will be outlining the process I plan to follow in the development of the device, describing the general idea of the device, the user interface and the senses that it will be stimulating and how. I’ll start off with a recap with what the device will be and how I’m planning for it to work. The idea is to make a sensory device that uses colours, sounds and touch to attempt to invoke happiness in the user. The plan is to have each “sense” toggle-able, so that there is no potential sensory overload from all three combined. The device I will be making will be tailored to one specific person, who for the sake of confidentiality will be referred to as ‘Mary’, but the general concept would be that the device would be modular and easy to modify depending on the needs of the individual i.e. different sound files, textures and colours.

The user interface will be as simple as possible, for reasons described in the previous post. If possible, the raspberry pi would boot directly into the program, otherwise it could be started using an input device such as a mouse or a touch-screen. The senses could be mixed and matched through button selections, and depending on the combinations different inputs would be required. If the “touch” sense is to be used then this would automatically activate any other senses selected, otherwise they would have to be manually activated. If the computer boots directly into the program then the desktop could be accessed through a keyboard command or key combination so that files for the software can be modified or the computer can be used for other purposes (battleships anyone?).

The sight sense would be stimulated using a small screen that would display a predetermined selection of colours at different brightnesses, shades and intensities. This could either be in reaction to the touch sense or it could be set to activate alone or with sounds.

With sound, the software will hopefully access a folder that contains pleasant pre-recorded sound clips and would play through them randomly, again either in response to the touch sense or on it’s own/with colour. The sound clips would be played through headphones so as not to disturb others.

Touch would be achieved through sensor’s attached to objects that the user finds pleasant to touch. The actual sensation of touch would be satisfied through actually touching the object (obviously) but the plan is for the touch to be an input device to activate the other senses. I’ll give an explanation of how this will work in a later post during the development process.

Hopefully now you all have a more in-depth idea of what it is I’m trying to produce. An important thing to keep in mind is that this is all speculative planning – I don’t know how much of this is actually possible and how much of it I will be capable of creating, but hopefully none of these ideas are too far-fetched. We’ll see in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future.

Dementia, PCC and its Involvement in my Project

Well this is a first, two blog posts in a row! Today’s article will give a somewhat detailed discussion about Dementia, how my device will interlink with different aspects of it and how it will attempt to soothe those who suffer from it. I apologise in advance for the lack of images – I’m sure you’ll agree it’s not really the easiest topic to relate images with.

I’ll just start out by giving a bit of an explanation of just what dementia is. You’ll have to forgive me for not giving the most detailed description as I’m not a fully trained nurse, just a carer who has been working in a dementia care home environment for the lesser part of a year. Dementia usually develops in the elderly, either as a result of injury or long-term decline in cognitive ability. There’s no one-size-fits-all symptom that all sufferers of dementia exhibit; of all the people I’ve worked with, I’ve met those who are perfectly capable and you wouldn’t suspect they had any form of dementia, to those who pick at invisible pieces on tables and chairs to those who can barely comprehend what’s going on around them. This fact will raise a few issues in the development that I will mention in the next post – how is it possible to develop a one-size-fits-all device for a syndrome that is so varied? Dementia can effect anything from memory to language capabilities, and this will undoubtedly have an impact on my project.

As part of my training for the job, we did something called “Person Centred Care” (PCC). The idea of PCC is that because every resident’s case of Dementia is different, so their care should be centered around them. If a “system” is applied to all resident’s regardless of their personal needs then their quality of care is lowered as is their quality of life. This of course runs in parallel with what I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

PCC has four key elements that relate fairly well with my project plan: Identity, Autonomy, Occupation + Inclusion and Communication + Interaction. Identity focuses on maintaining a person’s sense of self, Autonomy is about maintaining independence and decision-making abilities, Occupation + Inclusion is about maintaining the ability to feel occupied and part of a community, while Communication + Interaction is to do with maintaining the ability to convey thoughts and feelings. An important thing to remember is that any form of behaviour can be communication, with every action there is a chance that the person is trying to communicate.

So how is my device going to cater to all of these key elements? I’ll go into the specifics in my next post but for now I will give a general outline for each aspect. With regards to Identity, the device will hopefully be customizable to each person using it. The creation of “profiles” will mean that using the device will be suited to the user. This will result in a feeling that it is them in specific that the device is catering towards. The feedback from the device will also be tailored to the user’s personal preferences as well, hopefully evoking memories and feelings within them to elicit a sense of self.

Autonomy can be obtained by designing a user interface that is simple enough to be used regardless of cognitive ability. The ultimate goal is to not have an obvious user interface at all, instead ending up with a device that simply provides feedback naturally. I’ll explain this idea in more detail in the following post. Occupation + Inclusion will hopefully be provided by the fact that it is a device that can be shared. Others can experience the sensory experience that makes the primary user relaxed and comfortable. This does not necessarily have to be a pleasant experience for everyone, going back to personal preference, but it includes others in the device idea.

Finally, I plan to assist with Communication + Interaction by using the device as a “middle-man”. By using the device to promote happy emotions, the user will hopefully be more inclined to cooperate and express their needs. On the other hand, by observing the reactions of the user, one can attempt to decide what they do and do not like. For users that might not understand language well enough to express their preferences, by using other sensory feedback it might be possible.

Although a lot of this is speculative, it is all part of an ongoing process, and I hope to develop it further into a device which is influenced as much by PCC as I was while working at the care home. The next post will discuss in more depth the plans for the device itself and how it will all work in tandem to provide an overall sensory experience for the user.

I hope that this article has been an interesting read, keep an eye out for the following one within a few days!

Computer Science Project: An Introduction

Hello everyone, I’m back!! Why do I always start my blog posts apologising for the long bouts of silence? I guess I’ll never be a major player in the world of blogging. BUT GOOD NEWS! I have a completely new topic to be discussing: No Japan! No video games! No rants about society inspired by TV programmes! Today I am going to be starting a new series of posts on the fantastically interesting topic of Computer Science! What’s that I hear you say? “Please Flinn tell me more about this brilliant subject that we all hold a special place for in our hearts just like you!” Well good people of the internet, tell you more I shall!

Computer Science WOOO! amiright?

As many of my friends and family will know all too well since I’ve been reminding them every few minutes, I’ll be heading off to the University of York in less than two months to start my 5-year course in Computer Systems and Software Engineering. About a month or so ago I received an email from the the department of computer science about a competition being held in the first week of term. There are two parts to the competition: the first is to develop something out of a raspberry pi (anything you can think of), and the second is to program a raspberry pi to play battleships to be entered into a tournament against other entrants. (For anyone confused right now, a raspberry pi is a small credit-card sized computer than can be programmed to do anything its hardware will allow.)

I’m going to be focusing on the former in the following blog posts. I might move onto the battleships afterwards but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, eh people! So after receiving this email I started to play with a few ideas. I’d been planning on making a remote control robotic arm out of a raspberry pi I bought a few months ago but, as usual, my plans never came to fruition as I got distracted by something probably far less productive. This little fact led me to the idea of a small device on wheels that could follow sounds and find the source of the noise, thus activating a distress beacon that would notify local emergency services. The idea was to make a device that could (in theory) be used in search-and-rescue situations to find survivors in wrecks.

My very own Raspberry Pi

WHAT A BAD IDEA! How was a novice like me going to make something like that with little to no prior experience in practical programming or hardware development? So along came my second idea. I’ve been working in a care home for dementia for around 7 months now, and I thought it would be interesting to base my project around that. The result is the idea of a sensory device which caters to the senses of touch, sight and hearing. I’m going to be walking you through the development of this device step by step as I tackle any difficulties I come across. I’ll be starting off with an introduction and brief discussion about dementia itself before detailing the general structural plans for the project. Following this I’ll move on to the development of the device itself and everything this entails. I hope the posts will be interesting, informative and enjoyable, and I hope that I learn as much from it as you as readers will.

Wish me luck!

My Discovery of the action-RTS genre made me LoL

Before I begin I feel the need to apologise for two things: Firstly, my frankly appalling pun in the title and also, yet again, the huge gap since releasing my last post. I don’t have much of an excuse really apart from a few exams and other interests taking priority, which is a shame considering how much I get lost in writing these. Anyway, on with the show! This post is going to be an actual review rather than my usual rant about life or the video games industry, I hope you enjoy!

I recently, while tidying up the contents of my 1TB HDD which is slowly filling up with games, stumbled across one which I installed a significant while ago which subsequently fell off the virtual “shelf” that is my desktop into some dusty corner of my program files folder (don’t you just love metaphors?) If you, like me and many others, take an interest in keeping up to date in the world of PC games then you will have undoubtedly guessed which game I’m talking about from the title. For those of you who don’t have a clue what I’m droning on about, the game in question is League of Legends by Riot Games, the original creators of the action-RTS genre through the game DOTA, or Defence of the Ancients, a mod initially created for Warcraft III. So, using a completely alien post format to me, I’m going to attempt at a fair review of this game.

The general idea behind the game is that each player is a ‘summoner’ who can control one of a very large list of champions in a match of either 5v5 or 3v3. Each map has three lanes which in turn each have six turrets, three for each team. Minions (or creeps) are dispensed from each team’s base at regular intervals as fodder for the turrets and enemy champions. Every player starts every match at level one and killing enemy minions and champions net you experience points and gold, which can be used to buy items from your team’s base to make you stronger. The aim of the game is to gradually fight your way through each lane into the enemy base and destroy their inhibitors which allow you to spawn super-minions. The match is finished by destroying the enemy nexus, a large building in the middle of their base. The game is significantly more in-depth than this as you will learn if you give it a go, but these are the basics of it. On with the review!

The Good

It’s Free to Play

The entire game of League of Legends can be played for free without feeling like you’re missing out on anything. Paying for things is completely optional, with things such as extra IP/level and champions being purchasable with real money. On top of this however you have things called Influence Points (the IP I just mentioned) which are a type of in-game currency that can be used to buy champions. These are gained through playing more matches, although after each match you are reminded by a greyed-out portion of the IP bar that you could be earning more if you paid some of your hard-earned cash. You may be thinking right now “well why do I need to buy the champions, you just told me it was completely free”, well that’s true but the list of free-to-play champions changes every week which means you effectively get to try-before-you-buy. It’s a good system and allows you to stockpile your IP until you find a champion you find fun to play.

Art Style

The art in League of Legends is quite honestly mind-blowing. I’m probably just easy to please or something but browsing the roster of champions is almost as entertaining as playing the game itself. Each character is illustrated perfectly in their own unique style, and the sheer variety of characters is mind-boggling, from an armour-clad polar bear to a small girl whose teddy transforms into a live fireball-slinging bear. Each character has their own backstory as well as a list of tips on how to play them. Clicking their portrait expands the images of multiple skins (more on them in a minute) which can be scrolled through. Stats can be found on the left which are split into four separate bars: Attack damage, Health, Magic Damage and how difficult they are to play.

Some skins take their cues from popular movies

The Community

On the whole the community is a friendly one. My main problem is that there are very few British people in the European servers (as far as I know there aren’t any UK ones) although the majority of German players seem to speak good enough English to have a conversation. After good matches you might even find yourself getting friend requests from people who thought you played well. On top of this, there are several online forums and websites which are dedicated to the game for people who enjoy talking about it outside of playing and also for people to write guides on playing certain champions. I regularly use these guides when I rapidly begin to suck at playing a new champion for the first time.

The Not-So-Good

It’s an E-Sport

There’s something about the fact that this game is an e-sport which really makes me cringe a bit. I’ve never quite understood e-sports really; I mean, playing a game for fun is perfectly acceptable but playing it as a sport? Surely playing a real sport would be more beneficial? (apart from the really expensive prizes the winners get)

Skins

I wasn’t sure whether to put this in the good or not-so-good category, because these are the main fuel of the art-direction I mentioned earlier. They effectively quadruple the amount of pretty pictures to look at, and top of that they change your look in-game which can be an important thing when you’re watching your little champion running around match after match. On the other hand however, they aren’t purchasable through IP. This means when you see someone prancing about with their awesome flaming wolf skin which you really really want you actually feel the urge to get it. If only I were rich…

The diversity of each champion and their abilities keep the game interesting, and new ones are being released all the time

Accessibility

It’s all well and good making your game free-to-play, but the new barrier for League of Legends is it’s hostility towards new players. Not deliberately of course, but the reason I forgot about it for so long was because I gave it a try and got completely thrashed repeatedly, which in turn made it a pretty boring game for me. It’s unlike any other genre I’ve played. You can’t just run in and win the game in a matter of minutes like many new players think you can, it’s largely influenced by strategy. Of course, once you’re used to this concept the game opens up into an incredibly enjoyable experience, but resisting that urge to dive head-on into a turret without being surrounded by your minions is nearly impossible at first.

The Bad

It can get Repetitive

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to play match after match without getting a bit bored. Being able to test out different champions each week is refreshing but still I can only manage a match or two a day in fear of losing interest. Sometimes you get very exciting matches where you think your winning and then the team suddenly push back in a surprise-win but it doesn’t happen often.

Trolls

I had an unbelievably bad day where I just seemed to get bad player after bad player on my team. The worst thing is that it’s difficult to differentiate between a completely new player to the game and a troll. The main way of telling is if they openly reveal themselves by hurling abuse at you as they ruin the game. They do this through one of two ways: a process called “feeding” in which they run straight towards enemy champions and let themselves die thus giving the enemy team ample gold to buy whatever they need to thrash the opposite team. Or they can just go idle and stand in the base doing nothing. A big flaw in the game is that people can’t drop in mid-game, so if someone is away from the computer or leave the game then you’re stuck at a massive disadvantage from having fewer champions than the enemy team. Saying this however, I’ll never forget the match me and two complete strangers were the only ones left against a full team of five. They had pushed us back to our base and we managed to hold out a further half an hour, nearly breaking into their base before one of our guys lost connection and in the time it took to reconnect we had effectively lost the game.

Feeder, feeder, wherefore art thou feeder

I guess this goes to show that incredibly fun moments can branch from the more annoying aspects of the game. All in all it’s a very fun game once you’re used to it, despite how long that actually takes to achieve. You might not want to take my word for it, but the 11.4 million other players are proof of its success. If you want something you can just play every now and again then I would say go for it. On the other hand if you want something you can play all day and not get bored of I wouldn’t be so enthusiastic. If you liked my review then sign up to my blog and leave a comment, I’d much appreciate it! I’m hopefully planning on the next blog entry being on the modding community, so look out for it.

Black Mirror and Our World Today

Before I begin I should probably point out that this post describes the plot of the second Black Mirror short film, although I’ve tried to miss out anything which is a major spoiler. However if you’re sensitive to spoilers it would probably be best to watch it first on 4oD. Please note that these are my own views and aren’t necessarily definitely what Charlie Brooker was trying to get across, so if you got anything else out of it feel free to leave a comment. People who’ve already watched it might as well skip the next three paragraphs.

So I watched Black Mirror again last night, a trilogy of short films by Charlie Brooker which, in the words of 4oD, “tap into the collective unease about our modern world.” And I can see exactly where they’re coming from. Last week’s episode saw the prime minister (not Cameron, unfortunately) committing embarrassing and horrific sexual acts on a pig after receiving a threat from a terrorist that he would kill a kidnapped member of royalty if he did not comply. Part of the demand was that it would have to be aired on national live TV, while millions of people watched on regardless of how disgusting it was. Although it made a few good points, such as how things like YouTube (where the video of the hostage was uploaded) and Twitter can cause widespread publicity about anything, and that people feel no shame for pressurising someone in the public eye to do something as degrading as that, I found it almost too ridiculous and couldn’t really take it seriously. However, I felt that the second film made many excellent points about our world.

The first episode showed what a blood-thirsty and dangerous weapon this little bird can be

The film was set in an exaggerated future where humans, once they had reached twenty-one began their working life peddling on a bike every day which earned them ‘merits’, the currency of their new existence. Wherever they went, adverts followed them on the screens that made up the virtual life they seemed to be living. If they closed their eyes, the screens would flash red and order them to open their eyes again and money would be taken from them if they decided to skip the adverts. In front of the bikes were screens which displayed an avatar of the person riding it, and a choice of different TV shows and games that were accessed by hand gestures. One of the shows was basically fat people getting food shoved in their faces and being laughed at. Although there was no explicit explanation to this, I think it hinted at the discrimination of fat people, but I’ll get onto that later.

The story of the short film saw the main protagonist (Bing) falling in love with a girl he spots one day (Abi), and after hearing her singing in the toilets offers to pay the 12 million merits out of his 15 million he has saved up to pay for an entrance ticket onto ‘Hotshots’, a futuristic parody of X-Factor which included the cliché two-guys-and-a-girl judge panel, one of which was your typical horrible judge who always puts it blunt. After finding out that the price has gone up to 15 million but going ahead with it anyway, the two head down to the studio and instantly get picked from the incredibly packed room to go onto to the stage immediately. You’ll have to watch the rest of the episode yourself to find out what happens, because I’m droning on and don’t want to spoil too much. Suffice to say that in the end he saves up another 15 million merits and returns to the show to get his revenge on something bad that happens the first time around and ends up giving a speech about the world they live in only to be manipulated instantly by the judges.

The Simon Cowell of Black Mirror

I think that the film made several excellent points about society, one of the main ones being about advertisement. We live in an age where advertisement is everywhere, it’s almost impossible to escape. I’ve never lived in a city, so I haven’t experienced the full force of advertisement but even in a small town like Aberystwyth you see it on the sides of buses, constantly on TV and on signs scattered about the town itself. We’re constantly told to buy, buy, buy, and a massive point made in the film was that we’re not buying anything of any worth – we just buy things. The example in the film was that people could spend their merits on getting new clothes for their virtual selves. It sounds ridiculous and pointless if you think about it, because what difference does it make if a picture on a screen which merely represents you is wearing a hat? A had made of pixels, a hat which isn’t going to keep you warm or have any practical use at all. Like I said, it sounds ridiculous but it’s happening in this very day and age. The main thing that springs to mind is Xbox Live, where people have their own avatar for which there are thousands and thousands of pieces of clothing and accessories you can buy. Another example is a recent Steam sale I was inevitably drawn into, where a game was being sold for an incredibly low price, although I could pay a few pounds extra so that I had more character models to pick from. I eventually came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t change how much I enjoyed the game seeing as it was first-person so I couldn’t see my guy anyway but I never ended up buying the game at all. The point is that people will actually buy those extra characters without thinking about it and realising that it makes no difference whatsoever.

This stuff will seriously change your life.... Really. And it's definitely worth your money

This constant need that we all feel to buy things we want completely dominates our society and completely messes up our priorities. And I can’t say that I don’t include myself in this because I know that I definitely do. Take for instance my passion for videogames. Throughout my lifetime I have probably spent thousands of pounds on them, but what for? I enjoy them while I’m playing them, but they distract me from the things that really matter, which was something I learnt from going to Japan. There’s a whole world out there full of amazing things but we’re all too obsessed with work and materialistic things to notice or care. One thing I’ve noticed since watching it though is that advertisements are starting to use these “things that matter” to sell more products. For instance, the Christmas Nintendo Wii advert sees a father writing to Santa asking for a Wii so that he can have some good bonding time with his son. Am I right in thinking that this isn’t how a father should bond with his son or am I due in for a reality check?? It’s sad in that we’re merging the things that don’t matter with the things that do. Despite saying this, I doubt I’ll instantly change into a better person overnight, if at all.

Work was another thing the film addressed. When people reached the age of twenty-one they started their working life, peddling on the bike to generate more energy for our power-hungry world. One of the biggest and most challenging questions asked in philosophy is ‘what is the meaning of life?’, and it seems almost obvious that it’s all about the preservation of your species. Okay, it’s not an in-depth and philosophical answer, but it’s true. We might try to thinly veil it but everything we do is to keep mankind alive and kicking. We work from a young age until an old age to keep our society going, and then we have the rest of our lives off to do what we want. Think about it: we go through primary school learning the fundamentals of life, then it’s straight on to secondary school to learn how to learn then we’re split into two groups. There are the people who leave school after stage two to go and find work and there are the people who stay on at sixth form to learn to be more independent with their learning. For the people in the first group, that’s where their working life begins. They might jump from job to job but it’s generally work, work, work from there on. The people from the second group still have a good few years of “freedom” left, eventually going to university and becoming individual adults (something group one have probably already achieved) and tailoring themselves to cater for a specific choice of career. Then they leave and eventually find a job and they’re set for life – emphasis on ‘for life.’ We work until we’re old and then we’re rewarded for our work through pensions, or “free” money. But by then we’ve not got a massive amount time left to actually do much, and we’re too old to do a lot of it anyway. It makes you wonder what’s actually wrong with the ‘live fast – die young’ attitudes some people have towards life, because they probably get just as much out of it as anyone else.

I want one of these so I can have a meaningful and bonding experience with my father... No? Oh well, it was worth a shot

However it’s not like that right now, what with the economic crisis and everything. Nobody can find jobs anymore, so we don’t have any money. And even if we could find jobs and did have money we’d be too busy to spend it on things that mattered. And this bring me onto my final point about reality TV (X-Factor specifically) and the points about it that were made in the film. People are turning to desperate solutions with the hope of one day getting famous, and these shows are one of those solutions. Reality TV is incredibly manipulative and abusive. Okay, maybe a bit of a dramatic way of putting it, but look up the contract that contestants sign when they sign up for a reality TV show and you’ll probably be shocked. It’s becoming commonplace to put someone on a stage so that they can be manipulated and embarrassed in front of millions of people watching across whole nations, and we don’t even notice how wrong this is. For instance, on this year’s X-Factor, one contestant (a female) was receiving abusive hate-mail calling her fat among other things. Now she definitely wasn’t fat, but we’re living in a world where if you’re in the public eye and aren’t super-skinny then you’re automatically clinically obese. Another boy on the show got through and was instantly put on a diet to make him lose weight. It’s sad that to be famous you have to fit a mould otherwise you’ll get nowhere. And why do the judges bother to do all this? Is it because they’re really nice people and simply want you to end up a better person, or is it simply because they make wheelbarrows of money from you, both through the show and afterwards?

I know I’m being incredibly cynical about everything but the reason for this is that it was a cynical film; I know there are loads of good things about our world and I’m a happy and positive person really, don’t get me wrong haha! Anyway, well done for making it this far, I only wish I could write this much in a few hours for my multiple courseworks… If you haven’t watched any of the Black Mirror films yet then I implore you to do so, because they’re very thought-provoking as you can probably see!

Thanks for reading, and if you enjoyed this post and any of my others, please click the follow button on the right and the share buttons below and I’ll try my hardest to keep updating the blog just for you 😛

Japan Exchange Day 9-10

I’ve decided to put the last two (or three in a way) days of the exchange into one entry because I’m not finding many chances to write in the blog due to all of my exam preparations.

The ninth morning of our trip was a very sad one as it would be, for most of us, the last time we would see our host families. To make matters worse it was a bloody freezing morning, probably the coldest of the entire week. We all felt pretty miserable as we waited for the bus to arrive (Japanese buses are on average less than two minutes late!!) and I was holding in the tears as Teiji gave one last moving speech to everyone. Regrettably, I sat on the wrong side of the bus to wave as we left the stop, but I’m fortunate enough to know that Emi will be visiting soon – the 1^st of January to be exact. A lot of the day was spent travelling by coach, train and the famous bullet train, which was an impressive piece of machinery. The acceleration was amazing, and I literally didn’t notice it start moving as I was lifting my suitcase into the storage unit and by the time I looked out of the window the world was speeding by. It was a rather posh way of travelling however, as we noticed the price on the ticket totalling to over a thousand pounds worth of yen.

A sad moment for all of us, despite the smiles

Our destination was Hiroshima, and after dropping off our bags at the hotel we would be staying at that night we went to a more Western-style restaurant to have lunch before catching a tram to the location of the dropping of the A-bomb. Money had been invested in the preservation of a building which was not quite wiped out by the bomb thanks to its position pretty much directly below the detonation of the bomb. There were many plaques scattered about the area explaining exactly what happened and the amount of tourists was staggering. We slowly made our way towards the museum, experiencing everything as we went. One particularly moving monument was one dedicated to a young girl who died from leukaemia from the radiation. She believed that if she could make a certain amount of paper cranes in time she would get better and survive, however she died very close to her target and this sad story has inspired everyone who comes to the place to leave a paper crane. Thousands and thousands have been left there, and the company who set it up weave them all together to make things like mosaics and coats. It was really an impressive sight. The museum dedicated to the dropping of the A-bomb was incredibly moving and really quite disturbing. Reading about all of the side-effects of the radiation and the aftermath of the bomb-dropping really made me quite angry. It’s hard to imagine how they could have even been stupid enough to drop one nuclear weapon, let alone another one when they knew what it could do.

Asse, Mipple... I see a pattern developing here

After that thoroughly sobering experience, we were given a change to raise our spirits by going into the city to look at all of the shops. After being abandoned almost instantly by Jamie and Michelle, Harri and I soon found ourselves losing the rest of the girls as well, deciding eventually to just walk up and down the main street. For some reason Harri was obsessing over finding a rubber duck for one of his friends but we never found one. After walking up and down about three times we bumped into Michelle and Jamie and made our way back to a crazy clothes shop we had visited earlier so that we could try some on. I quickly got bored and rather grumpy as the other two guys blew all of their money on some incredibly over-priced and pretty ugly looking trousers and a neck warmer for Jamie. I was completely fed up by the time half of us had met at the rendezvous point and had to wait in the freezing cold for the girls to come out of a shop which we have loads of here in Britain (Boots or something). After such an emotionally draining day I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel and spent most of my night on the computers in the lobby speaking to my girlfriend on facebook as it was my first chance to do so throughout the whole week. Eventually we were told by Donna to go to bed so we did, but not before all gathering together in one of the rooms to all chat some more. I was the first to decide to go to sleep and made my way back to our room (mine and Harri’s) and dropped off to sleep.

The truly bizarre fashion of Japan

In the morning we set off on the bullet train back to Osaka, where we spent the day before boarding the plane back home. We spent a lot of the day at Osaka castle, which was also a museum dedicated to its history (unfortunately I can’t remember any of it.) The architecture of it was fascinating, with several tiers of big curving stone walls surrounded by a moat and the castle sitting at the very top. At the top we stopped to get a few photos and eat some food (most interestingly, some balls of batter which had octopus in the middle) before heading into the castle itself. We caught a lift directly the top to get a huge view of the entire city which was stunning. Learning-coach pointed out his primary school to us and we made our way through the castle looking at the different displays detailing the legacy of the castle and the process of it being rebuilt. Most memorably was a chance to wear some samurai-style armour and wield a sword, which was a good laugh.

Eventually we reached the bottom and made our way back to the city via train. It was much more different compared to where we had been living the whole week, crowded with people walking through the streets and high-rise buildings surrounding us. We eventually ended up in a building that literally had a Ferris wheel going straight through the middle of it. As you’ve probably guessed we got on it and got our second view of the city. It wasn’t quite as impressive as the view from the castle but it was nevertheless great fun and I got to witness a flock of birds flying around in what seemed to be almost a perfect sphere before landing on a roof and nose-diving off in perfect unison. After getting off the wheel it was almost dark and we went to what I think was the fourth restaurant of the day. Needless to say I was stuffed and unfortunately didn’t manage to finish my food. We made our way to the bus stop for the bus which would eventually take us to the airport. It was undeniably the saddest goodbye of the trip as Nobu and Taka had been with us almost the whole time we had been there. Kayleigh burst into tears as we waved goodbye out of the window of the coach and as we tried to console her, as if in a moment of hilarious fate one of us spotted a MASSIVE inflatable rubber duck in the middle of a courtyard. We didn’t even manage to get a decent photo of it because of the reflections on the window of the bus, but the irony of it had us in tears most of the journey to the airport.

One of my favourite photos from the trip

The flight back wasn’t really anything special, so I won’t bother boring you any further. All I can say is that that week was one of the best in my life and I really would love to go back to Japan at some point in my life. I would advise anyone reading to as well if they’re looking for somewhere to go and have a sizeable chunk of money. It wouldn’t be anything like a normal holiday, but it would definitely be worth it.

Japan Exchange Trip – Day 8

I realised that I haven’t really explained the cause of the Aberystwyth-Yosano Friendship Association in any of my entries so I guess now is as good a time as any. The association was started by a man named Frank Evans, who served in the Second World War. After being sent to China to help fight for the allied forces, the soldiers were overthrown in a matter of two weeks, most of them becoming POWs. The men were left idle for a year in China with nothing to do, and eventually Japan decided that they would import some of them to do manual labour. Frank Evans was one of the men picked for the job and was taken to Oeyama POW camp to work in the nearby nickel mine and smelting factories. After the dropping of the atomic bombs the prisoners were released immediately as the Japanese surrendered. As you can imagine, Frank Evans had reasons to be angry at the Japanese, however after returning home this hatred began to lessen and after meeting a Japanese tourist who worked incredibly hard to help him locate the area the camp was located with her husband, he decided that he would set up a peace promoting scheme between Aberystwyth and Yosano. This is obviously a very brief summary of Frank Evans’ story, and it is possible to find more information online.

Unfortunately every entry from day 8 onwards has to be done in hindsight (hence why this is being posted a bit late), mainly because every day was so packed that I was too tired by then to stay up for an extra hour or two to type up the events of the day. Hopefully I should be able to remember most of the things we did in enough detail to write about them. There was quite a heavy mood over most of our heads, mainly because of a mix between the dreary weather and some small tensions in the group. Unfortunately, it was probably the worst day to have bad weather, for reasons I’ll explain later in the post. We started off the day by visiting a silk-making factory(?) as we were ahead of schedule. The man inside demonstrated a silk-making machine which was impressively complex and noisy. It was pretty cool being able to see how it was made and I felt quite posh being surrounded by so many silk products. At the back of the factory/shop/thing was a small museum dedicated to the Silk Road, which gave information about all of the main different cities along the road, including lots of different ancient bits-and-bobs. We had the opportunity to buy some silk gifts at a 50% discount before we set off for the nickel smelting factory.

The view into the smelter... It was quite frightening!

The factory was another impressive location, and after a cup of green tea and a short video which gave the fundamental information about the factory we hopped in a small van and were given a small tour of the whole facility. The amount of money spent on transporting and smelting the ore was ridiculous, costing millions every day. I had the guts to ask roughly how much profit was made but the man just said some long winded response which was somehow compressed by the translator into ‘It’s a secret.’ The inside of the factory was really hot and stuffy and consisted of a massive warehouse type building with several long cylindrical rotational devises running along the length of it. The basic process was that the ore is run through the rotating tubes which are tilted at a really small angle. After reaching the end of the cylinders (which are obviously really, really hot) it comes out into a stream of water and cooled down. This is obviously a very simple explanation but I don’t know it in much more detail (sorry!) We got to all of this in action, as well as being able to look inside the main smelting thing, although we had to look through a darkened pane of glass otherwise the intense light could have damaged our eyes.

After finishing our tour around the factory we set off for Amanohashidate, which is apparently one of the three most beautiful places in Japan, but unfortunately as I said earlier the weather wasn’t great for it, which was a shame. Basically, it’s a thin strip of land that crosses the water across a large alcove-type body of water. People go up on a mountain opposite the strip and the idea is to look at it upside-down from the top of the mountain, making it look like a staircase to heaven. It was undeniably very beautiful, although I couldn’t quite see the staircase effect. We stopped for a drink in the café before having a quick browse in through the shop and a few games of air hockey before making our way back down off the mountain of some ski-lift type chairs, which were great fun!

Shame you can't see it from my point of view...

 

Oh wait, you can!

The last activity of the day was a visit to the local Iaido club. Iaido is the Japanese art of drawing the sword. I was really excited to get learning on how to cut things up, which unfortunately we never got to do. However, we did get to watch the members of the group cut stuff up, including some really thick bamboo shoots and thick rolls of this material stuff. The head of the club also showed off some of his karate skills and we were also honoured to witness the very personal activity of maintaining the sword (the sword is believed to be the spirit in Iaido so we’re not strictly speaking supposed to see it being maintained.) We all got to hold one of the men’s Katanas which, not to blow my own horn or anything, made me look really badass. We also got to give shuriken throwing a go, although it was pretty difficult to get it to stick in the target and Michelle managed to completely miss the target altogether and get it stuck in the wall which is admittedly better than anything I managed.

Born a badass..

That night was pretty emotional as it was the last night we would be spending with our host families. We went to a sushi restaurant (which was an interesting experience as I’ve never eaten sushi before) and I paid for pudding as a final ‘thank you’ present. As I was packing my bags, Emi’s mother came in holding some pretty big presents. There were loads of different gifts and I felt terrible that I hadn’t bought them anything in return other than pudding, although I had brought them all presents with me at the beginning of the trip. I was surprised to find that they had bought me a summer kimono and it sent me over the edge as I (rather embarrassingly) started crying a bit and giving them hugs. Emi and I stayed up until about two in the morning watching TV and doing work again until I finally decided I was tired enough to go to sleep.

Japan Exchange Trip – Day 7

I had another really great day today! Again, we received loads of presents – they seem to be getting more and more every day. We visited the Yosano town hall to meet with the mayor of Yosano – Ms Atsumi Ota, who was really nice although quite shy. It’s amazing how many things they have scattered about Yosano which are from Wales, from paintings to silver plates; it genuinely feels like there’s a piece of our country over here. Before meeting the mayor we all individually gave a speech to the people working at the town hall, with Teiji translating. The mayor gave us lots of presents including a map of the area and a small silk pocket-like thing which is used to hold packets of tissue. We also had a cup of green tea (the first of what I’m considering to be technically five different portions of tea today) and took some group photos with the mayor. I find myself compelled to also mention that we are now famous in the town of Yosano! It’s official! That’s right, we all got a spot in the town’s newspaper, there was a picture of us all walking down the street in our kimonos holding our umbrellas, I was pretty happy about that!

Hanging out with the Mayor because we're royalty in Japan

The next step of the trip was Migochi Elementary School where we bore witness to some of the smallest human beings I have ever seen. But that wasn’t until after spending some time in the head’s office receiving another gift (this time a post card and a small jingly trinket type thing) as well as drinking another cup of green tea (that’s two of five). The first event of our visit to the school was to have a go at some calligraphy, writing the number one in Kanji. I’ll admit it wasn’t massively exciting but it was fun nonetheless and it was pretty fun watching Jamie struggle at even the most basic brush technique. In the next class we visited we got to learn about making some simple Japanese games, one being a paper sumo game and the other being a bun bun goma, which is hard to explain – it’s basically a spinning cardboard circle on a piece of string that you have to pull. Two of the kids on my table were really confident and energetic and it was really funny trying to speak English with them. Next we went into another classroom to have some dinner and we were met by one of the cutest/funniest things I have ever seen. Half of the class were in little costumes, with masks aprons and hats and were dishing out food from a mini canteen like thing at the front of the room. Needless to say I was in tears, it was amazing! The food was better than it was in the last school, however maybe we had just adapted more to Japanese food by then? I dunno, but after finishing we had to wave goodbye to the children and head off to our next destination – Kayadani High School (which I’d already visited twice with Emi earlier in the week).

Ahahahahahaha!

Our first lesson was PE, and we basically just played badminton for about 15 minutes. Harri and I decided to teach the two guys we were playing against the running game and by the end I can safely say I was completely out of breath (I really need to get some exercise). Next we went to an English class where there were various different activities to do on each table. The first table I visited had a Japanese chess set sitting on it and I tried my hardest to something worthwhile but unsurprisingly I sucked and ended up getting destroyed. The next table was entirely girls surrounded by loads of colourful pieces of origami paper. They taught me how to make a boat which could magically change its shape without having to unfold the whole thing and refold as well as a paper balloon which you literally blow up with your mouth. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to visit every table and as we were leaving the girls decided to dump most of their excess origami structures in my arms, so my bag is literally swamped with them at the moment. Next we returned to the Head’s office for another mini tea ceremony (three of five) in which I got perhaps a bit too angry at Coral for not finishing her little cake thing because apparently it’s very disrespectful to do so.

The last event of the day was visiting the different after-school clubs available to the pupils. The first stop was the gym where we got to witness the third strongest weight-lifter in Japan lift 150kg before Jamie gave lifting 50kg a shot. He managed it but was swiftly beaten by a nearby girl who was also apparently a medal-winner. Club two of three was advanced calligraphy – and it was definitely advanced in comparison to the lesson earlier. I chose to do the ‘thank you’ sign with the intention of giving it to my host family that night for their generosity and I think I did pretty well, despite the fact that I took much longer than anyone else and by the end they were all just sitting there watching me in silence which was pretty unpleasant. The last club we visited was the school chorus, which again was one of the best in Japan. And they definitely deserved it, it was absolutely astounding! The teacher said that they were still practising so it wouldn’t be that great and I’m pretty sure all of our minds were blown, it was that good.

LAD!

After school I went back to Ayako’s for dinner which I think Jamie was pleased about. The starter for the night was raw crab, which we got to pull apart ourselves to get out all the meat. I also took the opportunity to try out crab brains which, despite Ayako’s protests, I found tastier than the crab meat itself. Jamie even had the guts to eat some of the crab’s lung but I wasn’t quite sure so I left it. The night was great fun although I felt a bit antisocial seeing as me and Jamie spent most of the night talking to each other instead of trying to make conversation with the hosts. Emi and her mother arrived shortly after her after-school club ended and we had the main course which was fried veg and meat and a final course where the remains were stirred into some of the most delicious soup I have ever tasted. Ayako’s brother Genta showed us his clapping which he is attempting to break the world record of. It was pretty crazy how fast he could clap but he showed us a video of the worlds fastest which was pretty discouraging but hilarious at the same time. He also showed us his juggling which I couldn’t resist joining in and I tried to encourage Jamie and Ayako to have a go too but Jamie wouldn’t even try and Ayako ended up throwing them all over the place which was fun. Unfortunately it all eventually came to an end and we returned home which is where I am right now. I need some rest now because I’m getting progressively more and more tired.

Oyasumi!

Ayako and her pet crab..... Which we ate