"Nothing Profound"

(image credit: W.J.Pories)

Introduction
What's this site all about?

Hello! My name is Kyle D.P. Ross; I am an eccentric traveller and the inventor of the hummus-&-Marmite sandwich. This is my Web site; it is now called ‘Nothing Profound’. I started this whole thing because it seems like I answer the same questions over and over again, so why not just put it on the internet and then just give people the URL? Pretty damned clever, if I may say so myself.

Who Am I?
So, I get some e-mails about FAQ and so forth and people seem to wonder what I'm like and whatnot ... but, rather than say things about myself, I thought I'd say what other people think of me.

Anonymous Ex-Girlfriends
‘I really started off good being your friend, but sometimes hormones can't be helped ... You're selfish and mean, but I really like you and you're cute.’

‘I hope that you will die ... slowly and painfully.’

‘You are sensitive and hot.’

‘Kyle, you really annoy me.’

Friends
‘You and the rest of the cru are awesome.’–B.Matthew

‘You are a really bad person.’–M.zalewski

‘You have forgotten all my obvious faults ... I guess that's why I call you 'Sweetness'’–C.Bello

‘Kyle is great. He's completely irrational, but makes the most sense out of just about any human being i know ... Kyle is a super-hero of a friend, if you can manage to put up with his madness.’–S.Fallier

‘You're a huge nerd who is totally inept socially, but sometimes you say the most brilliant, funny, insightful things and it makes me forget how much an asshole you are.’–shawn

‘Kyle is starting to look like the living dead!’–G.Hamon

‘You are a motherfucking well-dressed sweetheart!’–H.Hammarström

‘The brain is on holiday, but the mouth is working overtime.’–Utter

‘I tip my hat to you, sir.’–W.J.Ross, my father

‘You're the Fred Astaire of computer science.’–M.Fjeld

‘You're priceless.’–S.Dean

Okay, Maybe One or Two from Me
‘I'm not wise, I'm not rich, and I sure as hell ain't pretty, but I'm the luckiest sonofabitch ever to walk the face of the earth and you can quote me on that one.’

‘I am the last ray of the setting sun.’

‘My life is like a joke without a punchline.’

‘Invent your own truth.’

‘It's time to shine.’

Featured Image
I have a rather large collection of images—people, machines, nature, art, etc.—and I thought it might be nice to share some sort of interesting picture from my archives.

cheGuevara

Che Guevara, M.D.: Complicated radical leftist revolutionary. This photograph, titled ‘Guerrillero Heróico’ by its author, Alberto Korda, has been cropped and reproduced countless times, worn on t-shirts by those who fancy themselves members of assorted countercultural movements, a brand-name icon worn in lieu of genuine individuality. What would Che think?

Praise for this Site
I periodically receive e-mails from people who have liked the site; I thought I'd post a few of them ... I haven't received any ‘I hate your site’ e-mails, but, if I ever do I'll consider a ‘Bad Crap People Say About This Site’— section.

‘Interesting site—lots of content. I really like the bits on new technology.’–Sev

‘Your web site is ... wonderfully and oddly entertaining.’–S.Falier

‘I'm a complete stranger who came across your web page because it's part of my job to sneak around the internet looking for talent. Needless to say I got sucked in.’–M.Spencer

‘Your webpage is very popular with some of my friends ... I sent it to a couple and they were all pretty impressed so a couple send them to other friends and so on.’–S.Mehrabi

‘I must say, your web-site is pretty cool.’–S.d'Souza

‘I love it.’–N.Rao

‘Great site my good man.’–guy who e-mailed me but didn't leave his name

‘I enjoyed your website. Great stuff.’–C.R.Swift

Over eighty per cent of unicorns surveyed visit this site compulsively. This is a fact.

Words of Wisdom
Here are some quotes from assorted sources—news sources, friends, me, etc.—that I thought people might enjoy or think funny or learn something from.

‘Time is all we have.’–R.Pausch, during his fight against cancer

‘The good times travelling always reach an end, but we live with the hope that they'll some day return.’–K.D.P.Ross

‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’–Juvenal

‘Over billions of years, on a unique sphere, chance has painted a thin covering of life—complex, improbable, wonderful and fragile. Suddenly we humans ... have grown in population, technology, and intelligence to a position of terrible power: We now wield the paintbrush.’–P.MacCready

‘I'm wearing sunscreen on a cloudy day ... If that's not optimism, I don't know what is’–K.D.P.Ross

‘When we are no longer able to change the situation ... we are challenged to change ourselves.’–V.Frankl

‘Freedom is a myth.’–P.McGoohan

‘Volunteerism [in climate change] doesn't work. It's about as effective as voluntary speed limits. No cops, no judges: Road carnage. No rules, no fines: Greenhouse gasses ... I don't believe [carbon] offsets are just a distraction. But we'll have failed if that's all we do.’–S.Schneider, climatologist

‘Better a goat that can give milk than a cow that cannot.’–Estonian proverb

‘Esse est percipi.’–G.Berkeley

‘Society is a foolish juror.’–M.B.Eddy

‘Logic is the cement of our civilization, with which we ascend from chaos, using reason as our guide.’–Mr Spock, _Star Trek_

‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’–H.D.Thoreau

‘Being willing is not enough; we must do.’–L.da Vinci

‘To be is to be the value of a bound variable.’–W.V.Quine

‘No one really belongs anywhere; that is why we have legs.’–E.Hernandez

‘Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.’–quoted in e-mail from N.Rao

Films I've Watched Recently
Many people seem to think that there aren't any films worth watching; I disagree. Here are a few of the films that I've watched or rewatched recently ... with ‘yay / meh / boo’ analysis.

Brüno (L.Charles) notSure
Ghost (J.Zucker) notSure
The Invention of Lying ( R.Gervais and M.Robinson) yay
Julie and Julia (N.Ephron) yay
The King of Kong (S.Gordon) yay
9 (S.Acker) yay
Paranormal Activity (O.Peli) boo
Rocket Science (J.Blitz) boo
Run Silent, Run Deep (R.Wise) yay
Where the Wild Things Are (S.Jonze) yay

News
Some notes about what's going on with my life, my travels, and my less-geeky hobbies.

What Am I Doing? (live from Twitter):

Follow me on Twitter. Do it. Do it!

Status on Facebook:
K.D.P.Ross

Trying to Make Sense of Things (01 August 2009):
I am now back in the States over a month, but I've still much to understand about the experiences in which I was party and participant during my tenure in Central America. What was intended to be a temporary change of occupation and environment has, indeed, been something quite different, something greater. The person who arrived in Costa Rica in mid-January no longer exists: I am the object of a profound transformation, what I have heard called a ‘quantum change’—a massive reörganisation of values and a fundamental and pervasive alteration of perspective. I am not prepared just now to articulate the nature or scope of this shift, but I suspect that it will redefine the course that I shall follow during my remaining days on Earth.

I appreciate the support, interest, patience, and encouragement from everyone whose life I touch, and I regret that the journey on which I have embarked will likely leave many disappointed and confused. However, I have but one life to explore, to ponder, and—most importantly—to act in order to mould the small part of my surroundings that I am capable of influencing into something better than it was on my arrival, in keeping with a somewhat more self-accountable version of the Athenian Oath. As Frankl, one of the thinkers who has influenced most markedly my understanding of what existence means, advised: ‘Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now.’. We must take enormous risk in order to act in accord with our most-deeply-held convictions, even when this means stepping away from both the common path and the ‘one less travelled’ to make one's own way. As Keller said: ‘Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.’.

Naturally, I am a product of influences above both my control and my understanding, but I aspire to reach beyond the limiting frames of reference in which I have been conditioned to operate, to find new terms in which to define my self and my narrative. Mine promise to be either quiet successes or thundering failures; I am at peace with this fact, and I look forward to becoming (to misquote Butler) that for which there is only a marginal place in the given regimes of truth. If this seems an impossibly-vague proclamation of sorts, my apologies. You will—as, frankly, I, too, will—simply have to wait to see how things unfold, how the ‘becoming’ that we each represent defies our expectations and demonstrates that we have, yet, the capacity to be surprised—pleasantly so, let us hope!

Advanced Open-Water Diver (16 April 2009):
In a completely unexpected turn of events, I've ended up spending a month in Bocas del Toro, Panamá. With a rather sizable lot of free time and the sea everywhere, I had no choice but to unpack my scuba kit to blow bubbles. It worked out to be less expensive, in the end, to sign up for the AOW course—and, of course, I received another certification at the end. Although a bit hesitant about the deep dive (30m / 100ft) it turned out to be great ... except that I heard mermaids singing (look up nitrogen narcosis). Underwater navigation was also much easier than I'd anticipated, and the rest of the dives (fish identification, night, and underwater photography) were wonderful. If you're ever in Bocas and you're a diver, you absolutely must make a dive (or two!) at Sashen: The current is a bit strong at times, but it's full of gorgeous coral formations and is home to some lovely creatures (pufferfish, angelfish, damselfish, lobsters, and—if you're very lucky—nurse sharks).
(Image: Photo of me underwater. Credit: N.L.Murdoch)

Goodbye, BlackBerry (06 January 2009):
In preparation for my departure, I've cancelled my mobile account, so don't expect to find me by telephone any more! After forgetting that it might help to keep some of the data on my BlackBerry, I did a service reformat, removed my SIM, and powered it down. I certainly don't much miss receiving calls, but it's a bit strange to not have a little friend in my pocket, punctuating the day with vibrations announcing the arrival of tweets, mails, and RSS updates—small reminders that the world exists and that, for better or worse, I'm connected to it. Most humbling, though, is that I am now returned to having a mere human brain: I no longer have Wikipedia, Google, and OED (quite literally) at hand at all times. Now, I must navigate the world on my own, rely on paper notes, and mind my time with a wristwatch. I feel delightfully alone ... and slightly ludditely smug.

Contact Info
If you want to contact me (and you know that you do).

e-mail: kylerossgmxnet (not checked frequently), kdprossgmailcom (work-related mails only, please) [1]
- GPG / PGP public key is available here; feel encouraged to encrypt things that you send me
Twitter: XcentricXplorer
Facebook: Kdp Ross [2]
mobile phone: +1 206 326 8795 [3]

[1] - If I've given you one of my other GMail addresses, please use that.
[2] - If I know you, please send me a friend request!
[3] - Please don't ring me up if I don't know you; that's creepy! (–and– I won't answer.)

Everything on this site is copylefted. Use it, mock it, whatever. I'd ask that you link to this site if you decide to take any major portion of the content. A ‘citation’ for this site could be something like:
<a href=‘http://osl.iu.edu/~kyross/’>"Nothing Profound"</a>

Please also feel free to use this logo for the link:
linkImage

Image Disclaimer
Any and all of the images on this page or anywhere else on this web-site may (or may not) have been tweaked, cropped, adjusted, edited, etc. to my liking (so long as the general meaning is preserved) and are intended to represent the surrealism of the world that I perceive rather then any kind of objective reality.

Privacy Disclaimer
Anonymous visitor statistics are collected by Woopra so that I can see which bits of the site are viewed, etc. No personal information (to the best of my knowledge) is collected.

Towelie says ‘Don't forget to bring a towel.’.

This page was generated by WebGen on KarmicPhoenix on Sun Nov 15 21:03:40 EST 2009. (W-Links mode.)