A Typical Day in the Valley
It’s Tuesday afternoon and as I write this, full on ready for a nap and can’t keep my eyes open. Do you know that feeling when you’re gouching and you literally start nodding off, you could go to sleep at any moment? I love that feeling and, as for being awake in the afternoon, could really use the kip
Building this network gives me something to pour my focus and some sort of what might be regarded as a creative flair into. I come from the valley, the highest [altitude] market town in the UK. We used to also boast the shortest street in the world [Elgin St.] but I think that record’s been taken over by some other place in the country. Other remarkable things about the valley include the tragedy of Sophie Lancaster, that brought hate crime into the public mainstream
I’m trying to think about good things. They shot little britain in the valley, and they were filming something else up the Grane Road quarry more recently, so I’ve been told. Here’s a good thing, if I can’t come up with any: it’s one of the most lucrative places to pick psilocybe semilanceata [the liberty cap] in the world during mushroom season. Also, I was told. These are just things that I’ve been told. I haven’t actually gone and found out, but I know there is a long deep history beneath the ground of such a beautiful place. Churchill fled Africa a prisoner of war, and in all the places to lay low for a bit he came to stay here, at a beautiful hotel with a blue plaque bang in the centre of town
Although it doesn’t feel like such a beautiful place all the time, it really is. I’ve been to some absolutely stunning natural landscapes in the UK and in all fairness I can’t fault Rossendale for all it’s charms, obscured / hidden, or otherwise. Famous people come from here, and to this day still live here. When I used to work for a supermarket, I got to serve a few people whose faces could be seen from time to time; I don’t think it’s ever made me star stricken. If that were so, I think that I would at least remember their names. Plus there’s the fact that I don’t watch television. In my opinion television numbs the mind
What’s this all for, then?
This is all actually for a hobby, mostly. I like the universal compatibility of websites, since they can be practically used along all platforms, even becoming platforms themselves. I love computers and have lots of patience for them, also there’s the integrated master’s degree programme I signed up to when I decided one day that this interest was worth taking to a further extent. Now I’ve got qualifications, where at the same time I studied communications systems as a minor subject, and enjoyed that very much
When I was thirteen, I launched my first denial of service attack. At the time I would build and compile trojans, learning about client-server protocols. I took over the entire network at the place I went to school. People were coming to me for more printer credits and file space on their user account. Although my unauthorised access was frowned upon, the IT staff were very encouraging as they discovered that this was how I learned about things so they let me get on with it. I’m thankful in a way, because I know that they could have bummed the fuck out of me if they wanted to, but they didn’t
During these teenage years, I learned more about computers and about the internet- where I went on the [digital] front line into the [online predator’s] channels on irc.msn.com – crashing computers and waging my own war against the legions of them that plagued the internet – this was when IRC came bundled with your copy of Windows. It was called “Microsoft Chat” (or comic chat). More so than most other things, I managed to band together with some decent people who taught me much about computers, with a side order of communications systems. The sheer amount of these horrible people led to the MSN IRC network being closed down in 2001. A pity, really; because the legit people who were on there were good characters always had a nice chat or pearls of wisdom- from their own experiences living in all corners of the globe
I always wanted to be an operator. There was always this headset-and-multiple-monitors image that I wanted to work towards getting myself some of before I am done on this planet. Remember though, this was right after the Matrix had just come out. When I moved to mIRC, my macros turned into scripts. My scripts became very complicated and basically run my whole computer from an IRC client because that’s how easy it was to start writing my own software. I built my first computer in 2005
Communications Systems
There is a dark side to my life that has emerged in more recent years. I did some things that I’m not proud of, and began to realise that I was compromised and these quirky little random bits of shit that I did was an internal conflict to over-compensate for the amount of bullying that I have been subject to the whole time. All of it was just me coming to terms with the fact that I am an addict. Many compulsive things I did – just regarded as bad habits and silly behaviour – brought about the true nature of this character that I had been denying was within my grasp for a very long time
Technology has moved on since 2001, and so has the rest of the world. IRC still exists, but all my life I’ve brought people together. Either as a common enemy against whom everyone would unite, which is how most of my friendships with others have ultimately turned out, or as a 1 friend. I am more a one-on-one person because I find it difficult to keep up with groups of people all talking and all having their own take on life at the same time- which I don’t think were all as saccharin as others turned out to be. A lot of people have told me I always was a bit strange, but I didn’t know the extent of it because I was an only child for the first 21 years of existence, I had no older siblings to take advice from or relate to. So when I had one friend at times throughout my life, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t keep up with everything that was going on with everyone, so I’m grateful for these people who befriended me. I still have a lot of love for them, and I always will. If you’re one of these people you don’t need me to tell you that I love you, because you know who you are and I hope you know that you will always mean so much to me
Connect That to This
From the birth of social media up until the end of 2010 a few years before I went to university, I noticed things beginning to take a turn for the worst. There was a big oil slick on the gulf of Mexico, and from my experiences of being there as a teenager, took it as a sort-of omen of things to come
Oh yeah, I don’t have an opinion on whether or not I’m agnostic, but I do believe in omens. I have had premonitions but – as with the existence of god / gods / heaven & hell, &c. – there is no possible way that I can or ever will be able to prove it, so I would understand if you didn’t want to take my word for that
As time went by, and addiction started to interfere with my life… [really, all it did was interfere with the people who took it upon themselves to interfere with my development]… I began to learn quick the down side of being completely honest with people, as I had done in the beginning. The same people who pretend they are there to help, actually tried to drive a wedge in between me and my family, other people. After one or two let’s say completely devastating life-changing events, I realised that all the honesty I came out with was actually being used against me. Everyone’s got an opinion and often I bump into people who have been warned about me
It’s not so much the horrible things I was called and treated like, rather it was the lies people told about me. You would have to be some kind of sadistic cunt to make up the things that people I’ve never even met have come out with, in some kind of desperate attempt to [actual motives unknown] in the hearts and minds of other people who I would otherwise have got on with without any problems whatsoever. In fact, such full-on lies were the only obstacle between me and many people. Hypocrisy wasn’t far behind
All this time, people were slagging me off on a group chat, twiddling their tiny little world’s privacy settings so that I wouldn’t see the other side of their two-faces. A shout out to those people: you know who you fucking are as well, and thankfully so do I. Trying to blag their way into my house so that they can steal some more of my things…
This was about the time when I just wanted to break away and make my own platform up. Perhaps people will use it, perhaps not. I just like working on it. People were on the news pronounced dead, and what began to bleed through the front page of the tabloid red-top ragsheets were things like the person who died was young and full of life. No outward signs of their imminent demise were visible, until their loved ones got the chance to see the history of their social media accounts. Don’t get me wrong- a lot of positive things happened on social media… but I don’t give all the credit for that to social media, because they were all set up as ways of demographically targeted advertising revenue. What was at the heart of all said positive things? It was the people. Anywhere you may find the people in any concentration, you can see community. You can see diversity. You can see hope. That’s what started my journey into wanting to make a platform of my own. Not trying to stick it into the man; only a simple case of hope
I want people to come and join this thing I’m building in my free time. I don’t want to sell people false promises. I just wanted to nourish their hope, without creating another means of making a side-by-side comparison chart between how good your life is, and how good / shit someone else’s life is
In all likelihood, nobody will use Incorrigo Chat, or any of the other services that we have to offer as it stands currently. However, in the remote chance that they do- I want to give them the freedom of expression that I was denied. Maybe I could only help 1 person through some complicated issues that are still acceptible to be prejudiced against on social media. Maybe that would be more than enough of the satisfaction to go around for each of us and not just me
I hope that sheds some light on what my online project is, why I’m doing it, and why I would like the people such as yourself to join us if you can. If I could be a source of support for people who are addicts, mental health problems that are cramming our prison population full to the brim, for things I know from experience that they did not even do; well, happy days
Sincere
– westid
