Thread: Abandonware

Had difficulty recalling dreams since my last entry, so I'm working on that. Most of them seem just beyond me - I can recall a vague emotion and maybe a couple of almost-images, but they slide from my grasp, to be replaced by images and feelings from more the more vivid dreams I've had some time ago but remembered. Perhaps journalling helps with that, if you feel you have your vivid and interesting dreams recorded somewhere outside your skull and you don't have to cling to them so tightly...


* Lying down talking with people at work, including NAG, whose leaving soon. Now I have to look after the WF/QBZ code, "and you know how bad that is" (I like it actually but it is rather a mess - I must be a secret sadist). ZNGG was drunk.



* Vaguely recalled sense of being on a mission to defeat some threat from something like an evil amusement park.



* Short / low-level DILD. I think I was being confronted in some way, and became lucid. As I did so I started fading, so I tried rubbing my hands together, which I think worked, and turning (half-hearted spinning :-). Then I flew off, trying to go as fast as I could, through an indoor complex over the heads of crowds. I felt the wind on my face, just like in my WILD, but soon there was only blackness, and there wasn't much of that either.


I'm gonna carry on working on dream recall and just let lucidity happen when it will for now. Though I am curious about the blackness - it seems to be a common thing. I always wonder though, with things like this how much is it genuinely a common experience and to what extent I'm just generating/remembering what I expect from, what I've read. I expect I'll try WILD'ing again when I can spare some more sleep time though.

Must try to DJ a bit more regularly :-).

Had an interesting dream a couple of days ago about participating in a ritual to ingratiate myself with a tribe of T-shirt wearing monkey-like aliens. This involved working my way through some sort of training circuit alongside everyone else.

Today I set an alarm for 5:00am.

==Opera==
Saw some sort of musical on a university campus, then went round looking for someone.

==A book==
Something about a dark hardback book, a fantasy novel.

::Woke 4:00am, in time to hear the hour chimed on my digital watch. The Now Show has finally arrived in podcast form, so listening to that helped with the W part of today's WBTB.

== Fairground roundabout (LD)==
This looks like a fairground, but all the "rides" seem to be fairly small and for children. They're all brightly coloured and I spend a while looking around, but the only one I'm interested in is a roundabout. I jump on, grab a bar, lean out, and jump off again. I have another go, swinging from bar to bar around the rim of the roundabout while its still spinning. At this point I start congratulating myself on my ability to keep the roundabout spinning, and start thinking too hard about the mechanics of this; the roundabout is now much smaller and simpler and this dream comes to an end.

==The failure of inanimate objects to explode (LD - I think)==
A helicopter flies across the sky. No matter how hard I concentrate, it doesn't explode. I try a more indirect approach, trying to create a visible beam of power to blow it up, but that doesn't work either.

==Dig for victory - No vegetable plot required==
I enter the bedroom of my dream, where most of floor & wall taken up by trays growing edible plants. I become distressed as I realise I've no idea how I should look after these plants. I get up onto my bed, which is likethe top of a bunkbed but with nothing beneath it, and stare at an adjustable mirror in the corner, fiddling with it until I can see as much of the room as possible.

==LTOTM attempt (merging with tree) (LD)==
I'm travelling in woods, try to find a suitable tree, and merge with it. I can't see anything, and I can still feel my normal body, but I did feel myself stretching - while somehow curled up at the same time.

Hmm. I've remembered a fair amount, managed to stay lucid, attempted stabilisation (when I was looking round the fairground), and the LTOTOM. Not bad, though I'm still as unsatisfied and impatient as ever :-). WBTB with 60mins wakefullness seems to be pretty effective, even if I don't manage to complete a WILD. I've got quite good at relaxation over the past week, and not staying up thinking, which is a habit of mine.

Time spent journalling: 45 minutes ??. Gah, no wonder I don't do this during the week :-).

Focussed on recall and asked self to wake up after each dream, and I did manage to wake up but I went back to sleep again before I remembered anything. I did remember more than usual though, and they were definitely interesting enough to write down.

== Mysterious box ==
I'm staying in a big old house with lots of other people, and I find a box in my dormitory. I can't make up my mind what's in it. Its got chemicals... maybe something to do with photography? I tell my companions to sort it into junk and useful stuff and go off to find the house's owner - maybe he'll know. When I come back he points out the important thing in it - a chess set. I don't think the set is complete, but I deliberately avoid trying to see what's missing. He tells me that the original set was burnt, so he carved his own. I notice that the pieces are large, and though well carved lack any fine detail. I figure the knights must be missing because those must have been too fiddly for him to do.

== Computer games ==
My friend Ora has the latest in video game technology but is he satisfied? "They can't render. And they're not fast enough". Maybe that's why he's singled out for attack in my next dream...

== Techno blackguard invasion ==
A series of black spheres burst through my bedroom window, bigger than footballs. As the first robot comes through I take the time to notice that the window is still intact, but the second breaks through to leave a jagged hole and glass on the floor. They fly out of the small room into the rest of the house, ignoring Ora and I sitting on top the bunk bed.

They are followed by a trooper in a black combat suit of similar technology. She turns out to be controlled by the suit, so we start to remove it. But once free of the suit and the two two long mind control needles they use them to stab Ora! I can't look but I can still imagine the needles sticking out of his eyes and embedded in his brain. "He's not going to have any more children", they say, and I wonder if I was wrong about where she stuck those needles.

== River walk ==
Our small band is walking away, beside the wide river. I look for ways to cross, but the river keeps getting wider. We pass rusty bridges overshadowed by trees, but they are impassable; no floor and the upper structures are protected like the pipes that cross canals. Finally we find one where the floor has not succumbed to decay and begin to cross.

Yay, LD. Complete surprise as I wasn't really trying anymore. Meaning I didn't have any idea what to do :-).

I would post on last months Task, because though I lost lucidity my subconscious had a go at the tasks as I'd been thinking about them for a while :-).

==In search of the Lav==
I'm dreaming I'm going to the toilet, but I become worried, wake up, and find I've wet myself (False Awakening!). I still need the toilet though, so I get up. Unfortunately the bathroom is already full; several family members are crammed into the room including Grandad who's sitting next to the toilet. So I decide to find somewhere else to go. I did try the downstairs toilet, but there was something wrong with it, so I set off to the nearest public toilet I can find. After consulting the map I set off for Scotland.

==Lucidity==
Walking back towards the house, something clicks, don't ask me why. Maybe after accomplishing my quest I'm no longer focussed singlemindedly on the goal of going for a pee. Anyway, I do a nose RC and I realise I'm dreaming. That's only the second time I've done it, and the first was an FA where I couldn't move and woke up soon after. It's really weird feeling your mouth and nose clamped shut and breathing at the same time.

I marvel at how real everything is, carry on moving towards the house & make sure I'm looking round so I don't fade out. It's nice and sunny, and I let my hands trail on the wall as I walk around the the house. Note to self: try feeling sun, wind. I see the top of a milk bottle broken on the ground, but it doesn't become clear so I ignore it (to avoid getting obsessed & waking up) and move on, entering the house.

I find Dad and exchange some words with him. Being a DC, his words are of course complete nonsense. I decide to have something to eat; I find my stash of Christmas (!) sweets in the kitchen and start drooling. At this point my brother comes along and asks me what they are; I tell him they're "Nuffins", and having focussed on them for too long without actually doing anything I pretty much lose lucidity.

==Fire!==
Somewhere in my subconscious these Lucid Tasks have been mouldering away. My brother starts using the gas cooker, but a ball of flame rises from it and engulfs the ceiling. Of course I can't exactly walk on it and I've forgotten the task, but the subconscious thought is there! Guess I should thank my subconscious for the effort :-).

I yell and fetch a bucket of water, but Dad stops me because that would be too dangerous - the steam could react with the fire. Instead he gets a bathtowel soaked in water and holds it up to the ceiling to damp the flames.

==Cat==
Moving back into the dining room again, I see my cat, George. Again, my subconscious is working on the Lucid Tasks, and he starts talking. Again, I fail to actually ask him the question for the task. However I am so engrossed in what he says that I forget everything else. I just listen to the words of this cat, who at some point stops being my Tabby male George and starts being a ginger, female cat. I begin to regain self-awareness but as I'm just listening to words (by now there's nothing else left, no scenery) there's not much I feel I can do. I stay in a similar state for some time.

I wake for real soon before 6am, find my bed blessedly dry, and attend to my needs before the situation changes. Unfortunately this involves getting out of bed, and I don't manage to get back into a proper dream, though I do get some imagery and approach SP/WILD.

==Computer==
At some point, probably after I've woken up though it could have been after the monologue by the cat, I have imagery of a computer. I connect to the internet, hear the modem dialling, open a browser, accidentally turn the monitor off, turn it back on again, and try to visit a website but it fades. I'm lucid throughout.

Recall still variable. I thought I had more. I need to remember to count them anyway, because that [[records]] what order I [[recall]] them in. On the plus side I [[recorded]] a [[dream-language]] fragment (see last sentence), which I don't do very often.

Ornamental tanks: used as sculpture or shopfront

The inflatable climbing frame: OK for Weber kids, but I'm too heavy. [[Lucky]] no-one falls off; it's quite high above the ground.

Grandad?

The bible has no place in fruit lessons: Someone asked Miss why we don't read the Bible. Then - in response to perfectly reasonable questions about our apples and oranges - she would swap fruit belonging to two different people. I decided this [[book]] wasn't very realistic: I wouldn't expect a teacher to take this level of back-talk, and the children's challenges look like their... written by someone who doesn't know how they'd really talk, like Heinlein on a bad day. [[book]]'s last line: Miss is heaty.

Oh, and I had something about a desktop pager for windows as well. (It's something that I'd like to have. However teh Internets says desktop pages suck on Windows because it doesn't support them, so I'd abandoned the idea).

Sorry, can't be bothered to link. They're a popular device, so google it if you want a picture. It's a small laptop. If you haven't seen one, you won't quite believe how small it is. And cheap. And to a certain degree, viable as a desktop replacement. (Personally I'm a geek, so I have different standards and coping abilities when it comes to using it as a desktop replacement, but I've heard other, less geeky people, agree with me here).

If you can only afford £220 for a computer it's a strong contender - though you need to check your use cases with an eye to potentially unpleasant surprises. 100% MS compatibility is out (you're using linux, OpenOffice, Firefox...), CD burning is out (it's too small to fit a CD drive).

Anyway, I've posted here again because I'm thinking about using it for
journalling. What prompted this was the discovery that it can be persuaded to work as an alarm clock (geek tricks [url=here). I don't think you can get much more geeky than waking up to an alarm from your laptop and blogging a dream journal!

I'll have to wait and see how it works in practice though. Up until now I've preferred to take a few minutes to simply gather my dreams in my head; this is a very different approach - sit up, pull the laptop over and start typing.

Motivational Target For Tonight: LD, basic TOTM - "eat something un-eatable, report what it tastes like". Yum, I wonder what my laptop tastes of.