Colin On....

I'm an 20 year old guy. I live in Surrey, near London. This is a blog where I put things that interest me. It can be about anything, really.   Colinology - my other blog My Twitter

[colinon]

Whatever the future holds, I'm certain he'll be there in it

Whatever the future holds, I’m certain he’ll be there in it

There was a time when Mark and I counted the months we’ve been together. We used to sneak a little peck on the cheek every 16th of every month. Then we stopped doing that, and started to count the years. It’s difficult to believe that we’ve been together for five years now, and married for three. We met in 2011 when Stephen introduced us. Then in 2013 we married. Now it’s 2016 and the 16th of…

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Real men and their not so exhausting habits

Real men and their not so exhausting habits

I try to run a few miles at least once a week. This is outside my weekly bout with floor ball down at the hall. All this is meant to keep me young, handsome, and lean. Hah. It’s not working, is it? I have a runner’s body, not a hunk’s. And that’s made me decide to sign up to a gym and do some body building. Yesterday I tried this, and my body is not stronger and more chiseled. It’s a wreck. I…

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[colinon]

Facebook once again proves that computers are too dumb to be dangerous

Facebook once again proves that computers are too dumb to be dangerous

An apocryphal joke that can’t be corroborated say that when translating “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” from Russian to English, a computer spat out “The vodka is strong, but the meat is rotten”. We don’t know if this really happened, but the story is funny, and it does point to a true fact. Humans are very good at saying one thing, but meaning something completely different. Humans…

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Reversal of smug fortunes in Casa Marko et Colin

Reversal of smug fortunes in Casa Marko et Colin

Mark is the calm and sensible one in our relationship, whereas I am the choleric and hysterical person who needs to be calmed down. This is true in sorrow, anger, love, and computer gaming. I joke that Mark is my Mood Control Device, Mark I. He bulldozes my peaks, and fills my valleys. I also like to tell myself that I make his emotional life a bit more like a sine-curve than a flat-line. When…

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And now it's soon time to start to panic about that dissertation

And now it’s soon time to start to panic about that dissertation

It is only two weeks and a day until classes begin again. In the first week I’ll have to meet my supervisor to tell her how I plan to write my dissertation. I’m expected to condense everything I plan to write about down to five hundred words. So, yeah, even in academia I must write a synopsis. A synopsis is, I find, the most difficult sort of writing. It’s where you take a whole novel and…

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Mark wants to be a father, but I'm not sure I'd be a good one

Mark wants to be a father, but I’m not sure I’d be a good one

My father grew up a revolutionary socialist by the time he was seventeen. He wanted to end capitalism, and storm the Bastille of finance. Then he grew a Mohawk, and started university. He ended up in the heart of capitalism of the 1980s, London, and at the vanguard of it – the London School of Economics. That’s where he met my mother, who attended another university, but who moved in overlapping…

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We may have another furniture fight on our hands

We may have another furniture fight on our hands

Our kitchen is quite small. Three people fit into it nicely, but if there are more people, then we start to bump into each other. When we have five or six people, we need to start decking covers in the living room and have a few eat there. Most of our furniture comes from Mark’s parents. When they moved to Wiltshire, and gave us the keys to the house to live in it, they left quite a few items.…

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No man's sky - Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour

No man’s sky – Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour

This isn’t a review of No Man’s Sky because to this point, I’ve only been able to play the game for about six hours in total. I bought the game when it was released, and have battled the game since then. That has coloured my view of the game, and a reviewer’s verdict would be coloured by my attempts to get it to run, rather than about what the game is. For the first time in years, I angrily…

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Bearded gays, nice lesbians, and a singalong or two

Bearded gays, nice lesbians, and a singalong or two

There were lesbians in the cottage yesterday. A delightful collection of them. Eight or nine in all. I lost count. There were also gay men there. Five, if you don’t count yours truly and my so-called husband. These were the bearded, Taliban-like gay people who seem to have left the set of a revival 1970s porn film. Think Ron Jeremy appreciating a wild growth of hair, rather than the smooth…

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Notes from a pre-Sussex weekend

Notes from a pre-Sussex weekend

When my parents disagree about something, they have an unfortunate habit of dragging me into the middle of it. Case in point, over the last couple of days, Mum and Dad have rung me to vent about each other. They have been divorced for five years now, and at some point, one would assume that they would start to ignore each other. They don’t. Actually, that’s a bit unfair. They get along, most of…

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This infinite army of me isn't my fault

This infinite army of me isn’t my fault

If the universe is infinite, as some scientists believe, there is a probability of one that there are infinite copies of me somewhere out there. Matter can only arrange itself in certain ways dictated to by the laws of physics. Organic matter have even fewer ways to function. Life? Life depends on an infinitely smaller number of…

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The impossible potentials of a far-away strange star

The impossible potentials of a far-away strange star

The best way to give Mark a pained expression, and to have him change subject, is two say two words. “Tabby’s Star”. Or, to be more specific, KIC 8462852. For a non-scientist like me, those two words are the most exciting thing to happen in astronomy for a hundred years. Tabby’s Star is the oddest thing in the whole universe. Dozens, hundreds, of speculative theories about aliens, alien…

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This has been the quietest summer I can remember.

This has been the quietest summer I can remember.

When we fetched Stephen from Heathrow two days ago, I realised that we had done absolutely nothing for nearly a week. No little trips to some remote corner of this county. No meetings with friends and foes. No wild parties that shake the foundations of some guy’s parents’ house. Stephen has been our social engine for so long, but he has been away for most of the summer. His parents arranged a…

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Things change, things stay the same

Things change, things stay the same

As you can see, I have changed things a little bit around here. It’s only the second time I’ve changed the theme for this blog in all the years I’ve been here. There must sit a very conservative gnome at the root of my heart. One grows older, I think, and perspectives and intentions and interests change. I was growing rather tired of my old theme, and with all this free time I have I thought it…

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The exuberance of the welcome when we finally come home overwhelms us with its intensity

[colinon]

It is still summer, and it's been too warm to function

It is still summer, and it’s been too warm to function

The heat has made us seek shelter, both in the form of shade and in the form of open bodies of water. Of course, observing Mark half-naked with nothing on but his speedos is not a thing that will bring peace of mind. Mostly that means that I sit and glower in all directions and growl to anyone that casts a glance in his direction…

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[colinon]

Occam's Razor repurposed to 'Trump's Razor' and, additionally, "Boris' Razor"

Occam’s Razor repurposed to ‘Trump’s Razor’ and, additionally, “Boris’ Razor”

There’s a quote by Thomas of Aquinas that I like to dust off every time I meet a religious person who wants me to “understand” their point of view, and “respect the difference of opinion”. The quote goes like this: “The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary…

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