interrobang

shall we bring it back‽
yes. though we may need to improve the icon for it as it currently looks like a mess or perhaps a stain upon the screen.

i have started this here and now. this time next year, it will become a standard on keyboards on computers and smartphones across the globe!

one random thing i've recently learnt:
the power of questions when giving talks. i guess it's because it engages the listeners to think as well as listen?

sketchy

i don't remember if i've posted this before, but even if i have, watch it again. it's still possibly the best 25 minutes episode of sketch show ever made.
each sketch gets better and better. the last one with the dinner party and pub is my favourite. and stephen mangan is in it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sVaj_3IgYAk

i tried to find stephen mangan's "i'm a porrrrrrtaaaaaah" scene in green wing but it doesn't seem to be online, other than on 4od, so if you're in the uk, watch it. if anyone knows how to copy video of tinternet let me know and i'll make a clip and put it on the youtube or something.

i think when i get a job i will celebrate by buying green wing dvd's.

pen knives

i don't know how they got their names. they're not pens. they're just many knives and things that aren't knives.

i got to use one this morning. they're fun. i always found them fun. i had one when i was younger and stabbed myself in the little finger. accidentally of course. this led to copious amounts of bleeding, but my primary concern was not to leave a blood trail so that my parents wouldn't find out and thus would avoid landing myself in trouble.

of course, parents are usually more concerned that you're ok rather than that you're an idiot/still learning. this then reminded my of a kid who crashed his car on my street one day. he swerved to avoid a cat (his story) and ended up flipping the car and landing on a hedge. the first things he said when he got out the car (he was fine!) was "my dad's gonna kill me"

smile like a similie

i wonder if there's a word for a simile that makes no sense? perhaps a 'fielding' would be apt.

it's friday and my cop out day for writing a blog post which can go to rounding up blogs that aren't on my list of blogs you should already be reading. once again best content was found on yakshi's blog. All you other bloggers need to up your game.

I read a betfair blog recently which was reminiscent of their new fangled twitter account. Betfair poker's twitter account consists of (4 writers writing) hilarious nonsense. worth a follow if you partake in the twitter. two accounts i found have copied their style successfully are waterstones oxford street, and arena flowers.

today was uneventful. i realised c++ bored me. there is no goal to aim for. so i'm gonna go straight to objective c from next week and try to build stuff on my iphone.

also, did 30 minutes of the poker today. i'm beginning to enjoy it again. winning helps obviously. winning slowly at the moment, but aiming to increase the hours a bit and i'll be happy with a few hundred dollars a month. i seem to have run out of money in real life. the job i applied for today was a job i applied for on wednesday but i had to rewrite my cv for it so it counts.

anyway, i dont think i'll be around this weekend, so will be back to daily blogging from monday/tuesday.
hopefully it'll give me time to come up with more things i'm afraid of that i'll actually do.

in the mean time i will leave you with a link to a comedy you probably haven't seen. it's part 1 of 3.

i almost forgot to blog

i didn't. the problem was i went outside for a walk, i wore a hat, but i was afraid to doff it to lady's whilst saying m'lady. so i was ashamed to blog.

i also went into a shop where a gorgeous lady works. i didn't want anything from the shop, but by that point felt compelled to buy something. it's a food place, so i waited for her till to be free so we could share a moment. i was obviously too scared to say anything to her. though i wouldn't even know what to say! "what time do you finish" seems too cliché. so instead i just stared as discreetly as possible. sometimes i hate myself.

a slow road back to poker

so for the second time in three days, and the second time in three months i played the poker. again, probably just under an hour. and only 3 tabling. still a healthy profit in terms of bb's. an unhealthy profit in $$'s. i quite enjoy playing fewer tables, and it's very stress free at lower levels. i also like the retards and their chat. i did one 4 bet bluff today and got shoved on. probably pretty stupid to 4bet bluff but meh, it felt okish at the time. anyway, someone who was half involved in the hand made some lmfaoroffle4betbluffidiotlol comment. i laughed. moreso cos he was that player. you know the mouthy one, who tells everyone else what they should be doing and it's almost like they can read you. till you realise they just sit there playing weak passive. he was the only one at the table limp calling and check folding flops.
i like the predictable nature of these players.
also helps that i'm playing on betfair where the standard of player is somewhere between terrible gambler and terribly addicted gambler.

managed to encourage myself to get out of bed today. 3 days in a row getting up in 10mins or less following alarm. i may have to keep this streak going. also completed all my goals again except writing. also was slack in c++'ing as i only did a bit of reading and not much coding. but i do find it boring. i should remind myself of why i do it.

one more thing i think i will add to the list to remind myself is to always talk like i'm giving a speech. i will do this for a week or two to see how it goes. so that means eye contact, good posture, speaking slowly, loudly and clearly. no umming or ahrring. all things i hate but should get used to.

did nothing that scared me today. well, i went to a mechanic. maybe that should count.

day 2

writing seems to be the thing slacking. and poker. but poker's only going to be a few times a week anyway.

did everything else about from c++ so will do a bit now. almost started earlier but got sidetracked by work.

today also included a visit to a toastmasters club. everyone who spoke was pretty good. the one's with prepared speeches were obviously very good in content and performance. the ones with improvised topics were hit and miss with content, but still very good with performance. in fact, the whole thing seemed like it was played out by actors. i think this is because i tend towards introvert and they all tend to extrovert on the introvert-extrovert scale. for me, it's not just a little practice for nerves or one or two other little things, for me, the most basic things are painful. it is very awkward for me to hold eye contact with anyone. even people i know. if i'm thinking of that in a room full of strangers, i'm going to have difficulty to think of speaking. let alone posture, pace of voice, enthusiasm, arm movements, and timing.

lots of people there had familiar faces. but the first guy that got up to speak had a french accent. everyone with a french accent sounds exactly the same when speaking english. and they all remind me of inspector clouseau.
here's clouseau trying to learn english:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLuc6rtWkrM&

there was also lots of evaluation. someone afterwards joked that we should evaluate every conversation. they laughed, i thought it was a good idea to imagine that all my conversations were going to be evaluated.

it also made me realise that every time henceforth that i wish to speak in public i will essentially be acting.

i was mildly perplexed that they laughed at the above comment, which i thought made sense, yet when one of them said "all dance instructions seem to do their best showing how good they are" i replied with, "yeah i had the same problem sparring with karate instructors" but no one laughed, or even smiled. it was worth at least a smile.

anyway, in general they were all very nice and friendly and i have taken lots of details which i'll practice in my head to improve my speaking.

so the whole idea of this doing things i'm afraid of was supposed to make me less afraid, but i'm still as fearful of public speaking. i may go again and ask to speak in front of everyone and see if that helps. i can't help but think i should just learn to not be afraid since it's probably only as scary as i imagine it to be. it's not like i'm surrounded by spiders or in other forms of danger.

day 1

nearing the end of day 1. today was good so far.
i have successfully got up with my alarm (before the first snooze alarm went, which is the bizarre 9 minute interval of the iPhone alarm. WHY NOT 10?!), read my mission statement, did exercise to the point of failure for 20 minutes, and have been doing a little c++, although mostly reading rather than writing.

i didn't apply for jobs but i got calls from 2 recruiters and sent my cv to a third so that'll count for today. tomorrow my plan for that is to go to town to find the office of a job i applied for a couple of weeks ago and speak to them to get them to give me the job.


sitcom writing will be done later today, as will playing some poker. actually, i might try that now for 30-60 minutes. i have free money in partypoker which i'm gonna try to spin up whilst playing a few tables of low steaks on betfairy.

hopefully after a massive break i'll be able to enjoy concentrating on playing well, and especially not making mistakes which i know are mistakes but i don't bother to stop myself from making them.

it was also sunny today - a great success! (though i won't take credit for that)

things to do every day

habits to get into. im gonna try to do all at once because i am a mental and fly in the face of accepted theory. that's right, i fly. i have also rated the probability of achieving these in the coming week.

get up when alarm goes off (1%)
read my life's mission statement when my alarm goes off, and before i go to sleep. (95%)
exercise (weights) for 20-30 minutes, to the point of failure. (95%)

do some c++ programming (30 minutes minimum) (tending to objective c asap) (85%)

write at least 200 words for sitcom. (50%)


i will complete all of these every day before i go to bed, NO MATTER WHAT. repeat ad nauseum.

also should aim to fit 1 hour of poker in each and every day. i need money till i get a job. which reminds me:
apply for one job a day till i get a job. (20%)

and for all of this when i say every day, i mean 6/7 days per week. i'll take one day a week off for each of these things (may be a different day for each goal)

i posted last Friday about a weekly 'my favourite blogpost' instead of a blog round up, i tried to find a few new blogs, but really, this competition was over just a few hours later when i read this

http://notnecessarilysomething.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/search-terms-in-google-images.html

i failed in my attempt to get up a tall building yesterday. what with 2 friends both cancelling i didn't really want to go and spend £13 to drink alone in a bar when what i really want is to be outside the tall building to scare myself. i thought about standing on the railings of a bridge but figured i was quite likely to fall off so that's not a good idea. maybe i'll just climb out the window of my house onto the roof.

not my words

I saw you walking past me just the other day
Another heartbeat, with thoughts of yesterday
You looked the same, years are only time
I still wonder why our hearts could never rhyme

You stood beside me, you didn't recognize me
Funny how some things never change

When you walked on by old memories surprised me
smoking cigarettes, your girlfriends by the pool
Your smell I could not forget
That's as close as i could get. you were so fucking cool

I'm no good, you're no better
Wouldn't we be perfect together?

All I wanted was a piece of your heart, you left me torn apart
Fuck the rest before me and their crimes
For your love I'll serve their time

I'm no good, you're no better
Wouldn't we be perfect together?

I'm no good, you're no better

movies make you feel stuff. on the inside.

sometimes i watch a film and come out the cinema with that feeling that you can take on the world. that no matter what, if you keep trying, you'll achieve what you truly want.

sometimes i watch a film and i don't know what to do with myself. my brain is in a state of shock that a film as terrible as that would ever get made. sometimes i accept it's not for me, but can see why others (read: women) would like it. but sometimes i feel ashamed to be a part of the human race that could make such a travesty. films that wouldn't even be appropriate in the tate modern, which is one of the worst art galleries i have ever graced.

sometimes, i just can't even find a single redeeming feature in a movie. the proposal is one such film. how it achieved a 7.1 rating from the now defunct as an authority imdb is a flagrant violation of the human rights act. not to mention the MPAA rating includes 'nudity'. I don't think a forearm, a leg or a non human object (especially if it is not even a representation of any part of a human) should count as nudity.

the people that wrote that film should be ashamed of themselves. they even missed the most obvious of jokes on more than one occasion, instead replacing it with nothing. i'd like to give it a 0/20 rating but feel that would be inappropriately high.

the irony is lead man ryan reynolds (who was great on top gear) is canadian and should be sent back there for at least a year as punishment.

today's fear was a bit of an anticlimax. i think thats a good thing.

i had two people to call to try to sell them an idea that they already sell themselves. that makes no sense. i will expand.

i made an iphone app that helps you help yourself. i found some people who run workshops for this very idea. i sent them emails with my app a few weeks ago but they didn't respond. so today i called them.
the first guy didn't answer. it went to voicemail and i was completely unprepared. my speech was for people who would talk and listen and respond and converse. i briefly panicked before the beep. i left a message. i'm still not sure what i said. he hasn't called back yet and it's almost bedtime. i guess i'll call him tomorrow.

the next lady i rang was a very happy sounding lady on the phone. this made it easier. i decided not to go for a hard sell of making her promote me, but just started by getting her to check it out and see if she likes it and can give feedback since this is her area of expertise. i hope she does like it and then tells everyone she knows.

i say it's my app but that's not strictly true. nonetheless, if you want to motivate yourself to do stuff, and find that to-do lists are a bit shit for reasons you can't work out, let me know in the comments and i'll try to send you a copy (i only have limited free ones to give out); obviously, you'll need an iphone!

i have arranged a public speaking exercise for next week.

i think i'm gonna do a poker online tomorrow. i've been a bit fearful of it recently but am gonna use this as a way to try to get back into it as i could do with a bit of money.

on thursday i think im gonna try to go and get a drink in a bar on top the top floor of a building in london town.

todays fear

i played 5 a side football today. usually i play in goal. not because i am terrible at kicking the ball, but because im good in goal. and because im terrible at kicking the ball.

but today i forced my self to play not in goal. alas, i had eaten too close to kick off so every time i ran i felt like i was about to throw up out my face or arse. i also scratched the shit out of my knees since i was wearing shorts and not long trousers like i usually do.

fear factor rating: 3/10
happiness at completing this task: 8/10

i also enjoyed the fitness aspect. i used to be naturally fit. now i am old and can still barely breathe, a mere 3 hours after finishing playing.

tomorrow, i plan to do a salesman act. impending fear factor, 8/10.

that's gold jerrry!

GOLD!

i like to check my referrals page on google analytics. almost always i head straight to the search engine section to see what terms people used to find me. forget seo, i'm only interested in comedy.
it's been a while since anything as good as "eclipse moon cloak coins" but just last week i noticed someone somehow found me via "faces of spiders"
i don't think of spider faces anymore. in fact, david thorne ruined spider faces for me with this picture/diatribe.

i'd like to work spiders into one of my 18 events to undertake this month but can't quite work out how. a vet friend once let me touch a snake (appropriately), but i don't think he has access to spiders.

i found a toastmaster club where i can go talk at strangers for a few minutes. i'm struggling for other things though.

so far i would have:
public speaking
talk to a hot women i like the look of
go to the top of a tall building (outside. being inside isn't really scary. it's the fear of dropping things over the edge that worries me)

i will have to think on my feet. but tomorrow it will be call someone i don't know to try to sell something over the phone. talking on the phone to a stranger in the guise of a salesman should count as three, but meh, it's at least one every day. plus that's only one event.

i may have to resort to including waking up early, playing the poker and posting to this blog on days i can't be bothered, as 'events' if i really struggle to think of things - cue comments with outlandish ideas of things to do. maybe one day i will become a yes man and yes to all questions asked of me! (it was a good book)
in general, i will try to make more outside doing things events as that is more entertaining.

Friday!

and i can see the sunshine! a perfect day for a stroll to the letter box.

as for a blog roundup, well, i have added one to the right hand side. a poker blog. i almost sat down to play poker last night but couldn't be bothered.

i looked for a post of the week but fear that this competition would be heavily weighted towards yakshi's definitelysomething blog, with that link an example. in the spirit of head to head competitions i then wondered what would happen if that blog went up against pics from alex's. I am afraid to think what i would choose as award winner; maybe if she was finnish, eh?

a month of scary thoughts

i wonder if it's possible to do one thing each day that scares me?
it'll be like a goal setting thing, but every single one will push me out of my comfort zone.
the first thing stopping me is the fear of doing it. sadly, that can't be one of the things, as it is only corrected by doing something else.

they don't need to be big things. lots of little things scare me too.
a brief list includes:
heights
dead spiders
women (more specifically talking to attractive ones)
public speaking
sometimes private speaking, eg someone i know but not that well
talking on the telly phone. i'm not a fan.
going outside (not that scary, but i try to avoid it)

thats a good list to start with. if i could come up with a few more things, then this would definitely help me blog each day, as each blog would begin with how long between alarm going and getting up (1 hour this morning! lazy shit), and then continue with my tale of how my fears are ridiculous and nothing to be afraid of. and perhaps a funny story on the way.


"Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway" - John Wayne.

wednesday

definitely wednesday now

following on from 'yesterday's' post, i sent an email to a lady i've been avoiding sending for weeks. i don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing but it as at least something and not nothing. that's a good thing.

feelings aren't something i like thinking about, let alone discussing in words written down. so i shan't be doing that here. (i like the word shan't.)

having said that..
the one thing i like doing is not feeling sorry for myself or getting annoyed. i've been doing better at the not getting annoyed. one of the things i'm most happy about learning from poker, was how to deal with real life things. poker is an interesting microcosm in that it's all in your head. your reactions, your decisions, but i would get unduly affected by things that are nothing more than chance. i've always been competitive and as with all competitions it means more when there's money on it, even if it's just a little. 1c/2c plays completely differently to play money!

anyway, some of the things i've learned from poker to transfer into real life are relaxation and lack of anger. i am told give off an aura of relaxation but i know that i am less relaxed on the inside. i became more aware of this from playing poker and notice it especially when driving! the other thing that i have learnt i need to improve is to lack anger. anger is literally never good. feigning anger is sometimes necessary, but actually being angry is pointless. all it does is cloud your mind, something you don't want happening, especially when playing poker. of course, all this is easier said than done. my only recommendation is to buy the mental game of poker. it'll teach you techniques to resolve anger issues, which are easily transferable to real life.

easily transferable but still hard work and will take time and effort to achieve resolution!

it's still Tuesday!

honest.
so i'm still blogging 6 times a week. today was a dull day. not much happened. getting up went better than usual. not as good as last week when the fire alarm went off. that was very alarming though.

tomorrow i get to send an s-mail to the council. they decided to take me off the voting register for the mayoral election. they did this to a few of my neighbours too. all of us were going to be voting for Boris as Ken is a despicable human being. i think all this was also part of Ken's plan to get back into office. thankfully it didn't work.

i'd like to prove it but am still working on my captcha theory.

while pretending to job hunt i have decided to watch more films. change up wasn't highly rated on imdb but is rather funny. and has 13 from house, and the hot girl from knocked up in (not the main lady, her sister. (knocked up lady sister gets her tits out too which are great!)

i've also had time to reevaluate my favourite tv shows and can condense to it 5.
curb
arrested development
house
green wing
anything with karl pilkington

of course there are many very close to the top like Seinfeld, early entourage, dexter, the wire and extras. but those are my choices. deal with it.

i also think i'm going to be more brave and get a volunteer job that interests me. and contact the first lady i ever loved to get my heart broken again. what could go wrong?

more mental physics

the other cool thing that makes no sense to me whatsoever is so called 'action at a distance' which sort of combines relativity with quantum ideas in an experiment. nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (more accurately nothing will have a speed greater than the speed of light in a vacuum). this limits how quickly you can pass information around. ie if something is 1 light year away (the distance light travels in a year) it will take one year to send or receive a message from them. the key concept is things don't happen instantly.

what some clever people did, is they created two particles (electrons or photons), a particle where one of the properties can only have one of two forms. so a photon would be polarised either one way or another, or electrons would be created with either spin 'up' or 'down'. when they created these particles, the property is taken completely at random. conservation laws means that one particle takes one form, the second particle takes the other (eg one is spin up, t'other is spin down.)
when you create them though, you don't know them straight away which is which until you measure it, which you don't do straight away. you send the first in one direction, and the other in the opposite direction. you set up measurement equipment very far away, and arrange to measure one first, and shortly after, the second. the second will always be opposite to the first. you measure them so close together in time, that there is no way for information to be passed from the first to the second. so how does the second know which property it's supposed to have?

it takes time for the news of the other measurement to reach you, but how did the particles already know?

some clever people thought that perhaps they have another 'hidden' property when they're made, so that they both know which to take? that was disproven by an Englishman called Bell, googleable by searching Bell Theorem.

this is all quite weird. more weird stuff about light can be found in a 4 part series of lectures by feynman given in new zea land. there's a great bit in the first lecture where he tells people that "don't understand" what he's about to say, not confuse not understanding what he says, with not wanting to believe what he says. lots of things are difficult to believe but are explained perfectly by theory, such as the probabilistic nature in reflection of light. eg if you fire 100 photons at a surface, how does the surface know what % to reflect back?!

this is probably why no one will hire me

Online application question (usual describe a situation where you did the following):

"You will be able to influence and challenge policy colleagues constructively while maintaining good relations with them"

My answer:

I dislike the way it has been phrased here (although that may be my understanding of the sentence). Rather than try to influence others to agree with me, I feel that understanding what their goals are, and then seeing which ones I have in common with them will lead to genuine constructive cooperation in the areas that I can control.

friday blogs i like

well, it's not just on friday i like them, but other times they update too

my previous attempt at returning dead blogs to the land of the living went 0/2 after an initial 100% success rate, so i'll be boring this week and just mention some blogs i like.

alexwentpro. and not just because she's hot (ok, mostly because she's hot, and posts the pics too).

rubbish (as above, but replace he for she)

i've just realised it's a bit of a weird thing to do (since the list on the right hand side is for that very function) so will in future either mention blogs i don't already have listed down the right hands side, mention specific posts that were magnificent or highlight new additions to the bogroll.

todays post is under a cloud of discontent as my attempts to get up as my alarm rings was thwarted by waiting close to an hour before getting up. in my defence i did go out last night and play the pokers. it was pretty dull and i almost fell asleep at the table. luckily the air conditioning was on in full force so that kept me awake. it also made me shiver so that every time i played a hand my hands would shake and i think they thought i had the nuts. needless to say that didnt stop them calling me with shit!

good morning/afternoon/evening

not that i don't know the time of day but i only know it for me, not you (either now or when you'll read this).

"the time of day" is a funny phrase. i associate it with the derogatory comments "i wouldn't give him the time of day" and "i have no time for you"

two old school insults. the middle east has some great ones. I think my favourite is (i think) an egyptian one which is along the lines of "i hope all your teeth fall for except for one, and that one gives you toothache"
i might try that at the poker tables one day.

looking back down memory lane at my favourite posts, i found that i was quite terrible at responding to comments. i think i was a bit unsure what to say, or something. i thought of it similar to heckling in comedy clubs, something i reckon that i would have been quite bad at dealing with, unlike real comedians who are usually quite good. the best i saw was when jimmy carr made an unscheduled appearance at a comedy club i was at. two people right at the front right were talking the whole time, and after a couple of minutes he turns to them and says "you know, it's not like when you watch it on telly, i can hear you when you talk"

everyone laughed at their expense but amazingly even that didn't shame them enough into being silent for the remaining minutes of his brief interlude!

edit: yesterday, 25 minutes znoozing
today: -15 minutes (woke up early due to smoke alarm going off). bizarrely, feel less tired this morning.

fillum

i like how northeners pronounce the word film.

i've had more time of late to watch films. i never used to like old films. anything before the 80s i mostly just dismissed. and then a few months back i saw one flew over the cuckoos nest (19/20). sadly, it was after seeing the house version (episode 1+2 of season 6 iirc), but that didn't detract from it at all. with hindsight, i think house did a great job of copying but not copying it.

even having seen the house one first, it didn't detract at all from the movie. a movie which is fantastic. it even had the c word in it! i didn't know they did that in the 70s. since then i've watched a bunch of older films. the good, the bad and the ugly (the film, not my description of them in general) was one of the best (18/20). some of the alfred hithcock films were great too. the first one i saw of his a few years ago was birds (or 'the birds'?) and it was terrible. i watched the maltese falcon (17/20) and north by northwest (16/20) but my favourite so far was vertigo (17/20). ive seen a few other 'classics' such as casablanca (14/20). I also made sure to seem some which i had amazingly never before seen were star wars. so i watched all 3. in fact, watching them all in under a week was probably bad since i didn't think much of them. for example, if he's a jedi who can essentially fly and control things through telekinesis, why doesn't he do those things all the time!! ridiculous. i think they're above average films, but only worth a generous 14/20.

two films that were really great were alien and aliens. solid 19/20s. atmosphere, story, twists and great characters.

James Stewart, who is in a bunch of hitchcock movies, including rear window (17/20) reminds me very much of that annoying useless president in 24, charles logan, played by Gregory Itzin. He seems to have copied all the mannerisms and speech of President logan, 50 years before logan appeared on screen!

as for my rating system, 10/20 is, by definition, average, and should be the mean score. 10/20 is not a bad score in my system, no matter what imdb tells you about films rated 5/10! why i use 20 and not 10, is because ratings out of 20 are perfect. /10 is not enough, as you find yourself sometimes wanting to use halves. and obviously 100 is too much, i can't tell the difference between 64% and 63%.
if you are still in any doubt over this rating system, may i just remind you that championship manager (now renamed football manager), the greatest simulation game of all time, has been using ratings out of 20 since it's inception. i assume it still does? the last one i saw was 2009.

two corrections i need to make

my last but one post was seemingly 80% bullshit. check the comments in it for confirmation. Thanks to the commentors for pointing it out!

the other correction i need to make is a two part one.

a while back i committed to working out every day for 30 days (actually only 6 days a week, i take one morning on the weekend off). it went remarkably well and i've kept it going. i've tweaked my work out to ensure i am exercising as properly as possible, but i like that it's almost a habit now.

there were two other things i tried and didn't quite manage. one was waking early, the second was blogging everyday, although i was less committed to the second at the outset. however, the great yak said he likes to read a blogs which post each and every day, and knowing that at least one person will read these musings, it has encouraged me to blog every day. luckily it's the first of the month so i won't forget when i started.
i have made a schoolboy mistake by posting twice today (in future, as the yakshi said, extra posts in one day can and will be saved for another), but am quite excited by the prospect. i think it means i'll also need to go out more often since otherwise i'll run out of material in my tiny mind. a mind preoccupied recently by the fact that photons travel at the speed of light and therefore do not experience time. yet relativity tells us that they see other photons travelling at the speed of light too. it all becomes a bit mad when you start to think of how things happen at the same time in their frame of reference. (ie everything happens at the same time, just in different places since they don't travel through time, yet other photons still overtake them to get to places before them?! no more physics talk this month of things i don't understand, unless by request)

the other target was getting up when my alarm went off. i have regressed back to 30+ minute snoozes. i will perhaps post each day an inclusion of length of time in bed before getting up, hopefully into shaming me to becoming more prompt.

all other exciting work and going out plans will now be saved for another post, and not because i haven't yet come up with any.

the mind of a child

i think the best thing about kids is that their minds are open. keeping an open mind is a really tough thing for me to do as get older.

kids constantly question everything, and sadly adults think this is a bad thing! The amazing Richard Feynman said he used to question everything as a kid, encouraged by his dad who would always try to answer.

something i used to do as a kid, was when someone asked me if i could do something, was i would often reply, yes i can. and not do anything about it. sometimes i would expand to reply "i can, but will i?"

this used to annoy other people which made me do this for far longer than i should.

i've been doing a lot of reading recently, (while pretending to job hunt) and one of my favourite concepts i've come across is the idea not too dissimilar to the annoying phrase i used to say. it's a simple concept, and it's the idea that when you do things, you should not think that you're doing them because you have to, but because you want to.

i like it, because it's simple, you don't need to do anything different, you just need to think slightly differently. so, for example, instead of thinking, i have to go to the shops for someone else, think I want to (and then question why I want to do that!).
instead of thinking, i have to go to work, start thinking, i choose to go to work (even, i want to go to work!) and think about the reasons why you want to. and if the reasons aren't good enough for you, do something else.

soon, you start to realise that you're happy with what you're doing because they are choices you are making, and you are aware of this!
so, if you aren't happy with what you're doing, do something else!

something i want to do more of is take pictures. so here's another pic of mine (i don't think i've posted it before) which failed to win any prizes (so far). it's one of the busiest people crossing intersections in the world (probably) and is in japan. oxford circus in london was redesigned to be based on this. i didn't notice when i took it but the contrast between light and dark is quite something.