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| 2008-07-20 04:44 |
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I am in love with Tony Stark.
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| 2008-07-18 21:57 |
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K, my internet is acting up like a maniacal toddler, but I'm going to ignore it because strangling it with a plastic bag isn't fashionable, apparently.
Just watched the final of Project Runway season 4 - very disappointing, actually. I loved the looks last season, they seemed a lot more elegant. But Christian Siriano is adorable anyway, so I'm happy for him. Any man who spends that much time on his hair deserves love.
I've always wanted to be a fashionista, but the whole $100 t-shirt thing is putting me off. Maybe I should learn to sew? I've sewed cushions before and was remarkably inept at sewing a straight line, even with a sewing machine. Possibly a sign fashion is not my destined career. But still, it's not like I've got anything better to do.
Oh wait - that's right. Millions of projects to work on. Slipped my mind for a moment. Pretty clothes, so distracting.
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| 2008-07-17 20:59 |
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I have library books. The world is a good place.
If you need me, I'll be pretending to do work. I have a lot of work I will be not doing *grins*
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| 2008-07-16 22:20 |
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Do you ever have too many thoughts in your head?
I'm trying to get my head straight around the relation between vibration and growth. It's really quite fascinating, the way a cat's purr helps old ladies increase their bone density, the way loud music makes plants grow faster. It reminds me of the way touch helps a baby grow stronger, makes healing faster. It works on chickens too - they've invented a little chicken vest that vibrates like touch that makes them grow bigger and stronger. Not commonly in use, I imagine, but still existing.
I wonder if it works in the labs? If you can take a skin graft sample for instance and make it grow faster under music. It'd be fascinating to find out how it works.
Dying for a coffee. Mmm, coffee.
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| 2008-07-15 06:36 |
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I had a big long chat with my friend Katie the other day which lead to a very sensible conclusion about something I could do to make me really happy - find intelligent people to talk to. To which end she sent me to a marvellous website TED, which alas my computer is keeping up with like a slug trying to eat its way through a giant cactus.
The other way to find intelligent people is to wander off down to the uni and meet them, and it is this part that's stumping me. I have a negative amount of desire to enroll in university, but would be 100% in favour of going to classes for the heck of it. But even just going there and talking to random people would be good, and it's the issue of getting there that's on my mind. I can't work out how to pick mark up from work at times ranging from 2am-8am over various days of the week and still be able to hang out with uni people during daylight hours. At least not if I intend to be able to see Mark any time other than when he's sleeping.
It's a problem anyone in a relationship with a shift worker has to deal with, but I've managed to avoid dealing with it til now. Dealing with problems is something that happens to other people. My life is meant to be hassle-free, dammit!
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| 2008-07-14 05:12 |
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One of the nasty and poorly thought out parts of my new competition is that it means I have to actually post every day. Accountability, it's a terrible thing.
Today I woke up at 6pm, which says about all that needs to be said.
I also cut a deal with my new muse to put her in my story. She will be a poker dealer on a Mexican cruise ship, about to fall in love with a drunken business man who makes all his best deals in international waters, and finds competition in the form of a high class call-girl, her new long legged nemesis.
You can read it July 31st. Theoretically.
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| 2008-07-13 08:29 |
| Shallow Characters |
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I've been reading Nora Robert's In Death series lately, and as they're progressing the character of Roarke is pissing me off more and more. It's not just that he has no last name (or no first name), or even that he owns most of the known worlds and yet never has troubles being home for dinner or taking weeks off work - what's pissing me off is how he doesn't seem to have a personality.
He can't be offended. He can't butt in when Our Heroine, Eve Dallas is having a rant. There doesn't seem to be any baggage that *he's* brought into the relationship, it's just working through all her issues while he is strong and supportive (and rich).
It just doesn't do it for me. I think in romance novels, the hero is equally as important as the heroine, and seeing him so shortchanged into being a shorthand of rich, gorgeous and convenient bugs the hell out of me. I don't think it's fair to say that the man is incredibly intelligent and then have him lacking in his own thoughts and opinions. Roarke has, in fact, become a deus ex machina. Need to hack a computer? Need to fly somewhere? Need to pick locks or find five hundred thousand dollars to give away on the spot? He's your man. I just wish he acted more like a man rather than a plot device.
Does something like this ever come along and bug you? Where characters you like suddenly become Mary Sues? Ugh. Just ugh.
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| 2008-07-12 06:51 |
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I haven't been busy lately, but I have been contemplative. I have a lot of hours in my life to contemplate, what with having to stay up til 8 this morning to pick Mark up from work. Since that's another hour or so off, I thought I'd make a blog post.
What does it take to make it from beginnings to endings?
See, I'm a pro at beginnings. A beginning is just a matter of having a brilliant thought. It's being in the moment. Endings, though, seeing things through to the finish - that's about staying in that moment for however long it takes to finish your project. My achilles heel.
Staying in that one, steady frame of mind is hard for me. I don't feel like the same steady person each day when I wake up. During the day my moods could swing so dramatically that a single thought can have me changing my whole life plan. I don't know if this happens to everyone, but I don't think it's as rare as the absense of media time would suggest. Not rare, just not talked about.
People like consistent, confident people. In fact, people would rather hang out with an asshole who was at least consistent than to have a needy friend who needed constant reassurance that she's ok, that there's nothing wrong with her, that every decision she makes is fine. An asshole may be annoying, but they're not emotionally draining like that.
So because we like consistency, we don't talk much about our own inconsistencies. Other people's maybe - we can point out a hypocrite easily enough - but our own times when we flit about are harder to pin down without feeling like it's a weakness.
Hard facts though; it is a weakness. Not just in the level of trust people can have that you will stay the same if they leave you alone and come back a month later, but also a weakness to yourself. You want to be able to make a promise to yourself and know that you will keep it.
So how can you go about doing that?
One way I'm working on is focussing myself first thing in the morning, getting up and meditating. It's a short half hour or so to get me settled and single minded to start the day. When you come out of it, it makes it easier to sort out what you want to get done today and plan the order of attack.
My first order of attack for today is minimizing distractions. In my case that means rearranging my favourites bar to put Intellectual Ventures at the top and Jezebel at the bottom. It also means having a to-do list, and working in a different room so it's easier not to sink into an old routine - did you know that most junkies overdose because they've moved to a new location? For real. What happens is when you're in a new place, your body wakes up and pays more attention. It's more sensitive to smaller stimulus. So when the junkie injects the same amount of herion he did yesterday in his old haunt, he overdoses because his body responds more strongly. True fax.
Also you may scroll down the page and find out, there's a little competition going on. You're encouraged to join in! I plan on kicking all of your asses anyway, but you may as well give it a try *grins*
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| 2008-07-12 01:53 |
| Creativity Competition |
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COMPETITION **Running from 12 July - 31 December 2008** Are you creatively talented? Are you poverty stricken? Do you ever think that you could make something of yourself if someone gave you a kick up the ass to do it? This competition is aimed at you! Competition Rules: Each competitor must keep a daily blog, related to their work. A good option for photographers is BlipPhoto, for writers just use your normal blog from any provider and make your posts public. Your posts can be related to your craft, to the piece you’re working on at the moment, to themes that interest you in the business - as long as they’re related to working and thinking, anything goes. The blog posts won’t make up the body of your work to be judged, but it is a requirement to make sure you’re being active every day and to help you keep on track. You want to be famous someday, right? Having a work oriented website is a good place for people to find you. From July to December there will be six themes, and your creative output should be based around them. They are as follows:
July - Finish Shit. For what is left of July, tidy up the loose ends in your life. Finish knitting the scarf, writing the story, painting your miniature army. Whatever thing you started and drifted off on. You have a month to do it, and be finished by 31 July. This is so you don’t have any threads hanging over you for the rest of the year.
August - Water
September - Tactile
October - Summer
November - Colour
December - Steampunk Within these categories you can make any damn thing you want to. Bonus points for creativity. Multiple entries are permitted - you want to do a whole smorgasbord of water pictures, all good. You think you can get multiple projects finished in July, go for it. There is a secondary aspect to this competition - MONEY. Not our money, yours. I want you to get your work published. Right then. Water is the theme for August. In some way or form, it must be shown or alluded to or the basis of your photo for August, which you then need to sell.
So you can take a picture of an algae filled pond and sell it to a newspaper, take a portait of a family sitting by the lake and offer it to them, print out a picture and get it framed and give it to a gallery. Write a newspaper article, a short story for a magazine, make a sculpture. Get your products and your name out there in the public eye - even if it doesn’t sell, make an effort at it.
Put up a post that you’re doing this competition and copy out the rules - make sure you put a link back to your original competition post in every future blog post you have.
PRIZES: $500 to the overall winner, with smaller prizes awarded after December to the Independent Judge’s decision for the best piece of each month.
Judging criteria -
1) How much money you made
2) Visitor votes, ranking what they like best
3) How far your work spreads - if you can talk others into putting up your photos on their pages, if you can graffiti your work and show it's out in public. Number of hits for how many times your name is spotted
4) Outrageousness.
Further prizes to be added as sponsors are confirmed.
Any questions in the comments. Good luck!
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| 2008-06-04 02:29 |
| A Bit of Advice |
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Advice.
Advice is today's subject, folks. I'm soliciting. Now as most of you will know, I started this blog with a list of 100 Things I Want To Do Before I Die. And I must say, my progress has been slow and minimal - mostly because being proactive isn't something that comes easy to me. I'm a watcher, not a doer.
Item number 4 on my 100 Things list is to write a Machiavellian Self-Help Book. Not in the root-of-all-evil sense, although that does have it's kicking appeal, but in the practical, ruthlessly realistic sense.
In order to write this book, I've been doing a bit of research. The fascinating thing, though, is that I've felt no urge to put any of the things I've learned into practice. It's like I've got a big, veritable block about going forward with this stuff and seeing what I get out of it. Scared of failure, who me?
So I have a huge list of theories I need to test out, and I could borrow some of your own half-assed theories too. What I'm requesting is for you to offer two pieces of advice: 1 has to be something you've tried personally. The other 1 has to be something you're sure will work but you've never tried.
They can be about anything ("If you have a scratchy, uncomfortable bra, throw it out" is a good one.) But the current phase I'm working on is creating a job from scratch. I want to convince a science company to hire me to be their PR person, a non-existant role at the moment. Any advice you guys have on that will be tested and reported back on (getting the job is a bonus, not a requirement, so if your advice is "wear a monkey suit" I'll be willing to give it a shot. I may even take pictures.)
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| 2008-06-03 23:10 |
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I *almost* wish these things didn't tell you how long it's been since you last posted. Because I had completely good intentions of posting every day, and that whole "you've buggered off and been useless for 2 weeks since last post" just makes me want to poke my tongue out at it.
You'll all be pleased to know that nothing interesting has happened in those two weeks, I've just been bumming around reading a lot of books.
Thus I can say:
Ceremony In Death, JD Robb - feels like a book in the middle of a series. Happy to keep reading. Happy to not really remember the plot. Just got the good feelings of reading a long-series, low thought requirement book. Like Janet Evanovich, you know the characters, and sure, they don't do much and you don't worry about them dying in the 'tension' scenes because they totally won't, but it's fun fluff.
Blood Noir, Laurell K Hamilton - I know I should have stopped reading these books when they stopped being books and turned into werewolf porn, but as per Penny Arcade, you can't walk away. I have fond dreams of Edward coming back one day and massacring Anita and all of her friends. The desire to see all major and minor characters in this book massacred in no way stops me from reading these books. They are like crack. Spoiler: Nothing actually happens in this book.
Tangentally in the middle of my book reviews, since I can't remember what else I read these two weeks offhand, a new book is coming out end of '08 that you should all have been totally waiting for with me: The sequel to The Eight by Katherine Neville.
I have wanted to have sex on a yacht with a green eyed Russian chess grandmaster since I first read this book a decade ago. There are no words for how excited I am to see a sequel. Bouncing and excessive hand gestures will have to do.
The Fire Rose, Mercedes Lackey - LibraryThing recommended this to me. I throw it back in its teeth. This is a terrible, brainless book. The pity cards were stacked so heavily on the heroine's side that I really wanted the bad guy to win just to throw her for a loop.
Little Brother, Cory Doctorow - Fucking fantastic book. Kids using hacking and independent thought for a good cause. I'm inflicting this on every nerdy person I see, and everyone who works with teenagers. Geekdom: A Viable Alternative to Emo.
Currently reading Lords of the Bow, Conn Iggulden. Genghis Khan is so hot.
Anyway, my computer is tired and unhappy with me, so I will save any attempt at offering you intelligent insights I have recently stumbled across for another time.
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| 2008-05-15 04:33 |
| The Problem With The Internet |
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Now, I've just had something stupid and unfortunate happen. I think of this as the Wikipedia effect.
I now have SEVERAL THOUSAND pages open on my desk and no way to close any of them. They're all big, bulky have-to-think-about things.
I can handle thinkage. The problem was this:
Through no fault of my own, whilst I was happily clicking away at various links of various intelligent people, I came across a sudden impasse: Two of my newfound friends hate each other.
This is problematic. Not in the sense of having two real-life friends who hate each other, where you keep them apart and pray they never meet. No, this one is much worse - because they're both expressing opinions as facts, and I have *no idea* which set of facts is right.
Let me unravel the story for you. It all started with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mrs_cake This is why you should never play with the Internet. Stick to the LOLcats.
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| 2008-05-03 02:08 |
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Ever looked at your list of things to do and had an overwhelming desire to take a nap?
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| 2008-04-30 05:58 |
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Ayn Rand is a controversial subject. In terms of literary pretension, her books represent a median point - they're very accessible and easy to read, even if you hate the content. So a lot of people have read them, and they seem to come down 50/50 - a lot of people love these books. Love love love. They will hold up copies of Atlas Shrugged to each other and announce that they have found The Truth and now that they have found The Truth they will live completely different lives! etc. It's passionate stuff.
The reason Atlas Shrugged stirs up so much shit is because it's a message tailor made to fit the pretentious and elitist class. "You and you alone are holding up the world. Walk away and see how they do without you, tiny peasants!" But the catch is, it's accessible reading. So lots of dipshits have read it and fallen in love and walk around saying "What a great book. Man, someday I'm going to stop pulling my weight and show them all". This is infuriating to the elitist class. I mean, you could hardly like a book if *everyone* was reading it, now could you?
So it's a matter of general literary pretension to judge someone by whether or not they like Ayn Rand. It's shorthand. If you put her on your fave's list, people know you think you're better than everyone else. And they despise you accordingly for being common. Counterwise, the easiest way to say "I'm an elistist" is to let everyone know how much scorn you have for the Ayn Rand fans.
I bring this up, obviously, because I've just tried to read The Fountainhead and got bored with it. I liked Atlas Shrugged, actually. And to an extent I sympathise with the literary snobs, because it's a book that has ideas that are worth talking about, but you can't bring it up in discussion because *too many people have read it*. This is a critical point, because when a book is safely out of the mainstream, you can discuss it with someone and point out the bits you did like, and waive over the bits that were irrelevant or political.
But when everyone has read a book, some of them because it's been thrust into their hands by some fanatic saying "Read this! It's fantastic" , you can't bring it up in idle discussion and say that there were some cool points, waive the idiocy. Because people get worked up about these books, and they want to tell you about how very very annoyed they were by them. No sane conversation shall ever ensue.
So, I liked Atlas Shrugged, but I'm not here telling you I liked it. Because there were huge whacking great parts of it that were tedious and completely irrational - nature hates a vacuum. You take all the smart people away, the other people step up to fill their place. It's like in a classroom, people achieve what you expect them to. If you set kids high expectations, they'll rise to achieve them. Treat them like they're dumb, they'll act like they're dumb. It's a stupid point for her to try to make - but there are other qualities that spin off that initial concept of doing something to the best of your ability, and taking joy in achievement and really excellent work that *are* important, and I'd like to talk about that.
Somewhere along the lines it got not cool to do hard work. If you're smart, you shouldn't have to work at it to get good grades, right? Because if you have to work, that means you're not actually smart. And that's just the peer pressure, the teacher pressure says 'I have a set curriculum to get through in 13 weeks. Sit the hell down and stop asking questions'. I pity the teachers, actually. But at some stage we all grow up and get to set our own goals, and realise that hard work is necessary sometimes. At the point when this happens, we're usually not in a headspace to be able to do anything about it. We're used to putting in bare minimum. Changing that is bloody hard.
At the moment I'm sitting at home at 6:30am trying to do work. About to go to sleep for the night. And instead of doing work, I was distracting myself reading The Fountainhead. Crappy book, couldn't get into it at all. Obnoxious, pitifully one-sided characters and the author's hands on the puppet strings are painfully heavy.
I'm trying hard to keep my mind focussed on work, but it's not very successful.
It's not that I'd rather slack off - I'd rather be working. More fun. Just more difficult. And that difficulty is because it's so unusual, and so very culturally wrong.
So for a day, reassure me - tell me stories of hard work and effort, and the payoffs you got from it emotionally. Pretty please?
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| 2008-04-28 20:19 |
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Right now in the immediate family of my fiance, we have: Two broken legs, three cases of flu, a two year old with diarrhoea, and 'inexplicable pain' which led to my boy spending last night in the a&e getting blood tests and ecg's and x-rays.
Today I am tired. Partly from lack of sleep and partly from adjusting to my new diet - ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) maydetoxstarts in two days, but I've been off chocolate for four days now, and I'm really starting to get that good old detox feeling now.
I assume I'm losing weight because I need a belt on my pants now, but I haven't dragged out the scales to find out what number I actually started on. All check in's at the end of May. I'm not looking forward to May, since it involves exercise, which I haven't been doing so far. It makes 'compete in a marathon' a pretty incongruous goal, but I'm allowed to be mentally inconsistent.
Losing weight is a funny thing - it's been a long time since I remember being hungry. It's a strange, persistent feeling, which isn't painful at all - it's like an *awareness* of my stomach that I don't usually have. No doubt it'll all go downhill from here, but for now we're doing fine.
Also, help me out - I've taken up with a group who are into investing and other business-y type stuff, which I've never been into really, so I have no idea what they're talking about. Anyone know some good books or have any advice on how to learn investing?
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| 2008-04-26 00:02 |
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maydetox everyone. For the month of May we're off the booze, drugs, and in my case - coffee & chocolate, and we're on the exercise. Half hour exercise each day.
If you're up for some good health, come along *grins*
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| 2008-04-25 01:31 |
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I have new hair. It's a really, really dark red that looks black until it goes under light when it goes Voom, Sparkly red. 's cool.
Anzac Day tomorrow - today given my hours. Dawn parade starts in four hours. I've learned a lot more about the WWs lately, since my boy's grandfather died. Got to meet some RSA men and hear them talk about the war - I think lots of men who fought in the war didn't talk about it, didn't want to talk about it. It's really emotional to hear them speak and see the photographs and maps and get some sort of perspective on it all.
I have my poppy. Sometimes it helps to remember the past.
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| 2008-04-22 23:14 |
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Long week, anyone?
Right. I've updated the Things To Do List -
1. Manage the dust allergy - Managed. Found out along the way that I'm allergic to both Alanase and Flixonase, and unaffected by Telfast, Zyrtec, Razene, Polaramine, Loretadine, and Azep the 'take it if you're already having an attack and it'll stop it' drug - HA. Also immune to Phenergan, which is what they give to people going into anaphylactic shock to open the airways and knock them unconcious. Thought I was on to a good one there. But the winner is - APO-IPRAVENT, drug of champions. I'm pretty sure it's what's responsible for giving me constant headaches, but I can live with that.
Also managed to cover 18. Survive a bar fight. As most of you know my boy is an ex-scrapper, now reformed and no longer looking for a good time in a six man pile up. I put this in as a joke, since it was on one of my friend's lists. Turns out that while my boy has reformed, his younger cousin has now graduated to take his place in the idiocy stakes. So two fights broke out concurrently, one between the cousin and Tall EmoGothBoy and the other between The Best Man and The Misbehaved Wedding Guest which had been simmering since the misbehaviour that afternoon.
In summary, all men are dickheads.
Adding 52. Weigh 55kg. This is pretty extreme for me, so I'm justifying it - remember my pretty pretty Machiavelli project? Turns out skinny bitches are rich bitches, and the research so far shows that you can measure someone's socio-economic status by how thin they are.
What else sucks is how much evidence there is that how people treat you is directly related to how pretty you are. And since thin is in, you've gotta be skinny to be pretty. But the good news is that it's temporary, and you won't be seeing my bones forever. However, if anyone out there is interested in going on a diet and wants to know what works and what doesn't, there's a good chance I'll be able to tell you over the next year and a half.
I've recruited a gym instructor and an insider trader to the world of skinny, which will be better than going it alone. I have a question though - one of the self-help books I read said that a technique that works for some people regarding weight loss is telling everyone they know that they're trying to lose weight, and what weight they're aiming for.
My question: If someone said to you, "Hey, I'm going on a diet, watch my back for me", would you actually tell them off if you saw them eating chocolate cake?
And has anyone actually tried this and had it work?
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| 2008-04-15 02:47 |
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For Katie with love: our pet iguana
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| 2008-04-12 01:16 |
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Morning all.
It's 1am, and we're pulling the late shift - up til 6 this time.
All I've done for the last few days is read books. Sometimes I wonder how the hell I manage to be so busy without actually doing anything.
Anyone else a fan of Po Bronson?
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