Out for a bit

Well the big trip is practically upon me, so things will be a bit quiet around here for the next 10 days or so. I’ll be updating soon, hopefully with lots of engaging tales about the great open road and drunken bravado and other such outgoing things.

Things kick off tomorrow with the ferry to England, then a Jools Holland concert on Saturday (thanks Debs) followed by the the big trip, bright and early Monday morning.

See y’all soon.

Well here’s something to do

I got tagged. It’s true. I’m actually secretly flattered, because it’s my first run out in being tagged. But thanks to Sasha for being curious.

But of course that means I now have to go ahead and post a bunch of stuff for the whole world to see. Geez. Especially as you stole a bunch of ones I would use. So as I see it, I need to think of 8 things.

So… my Ideal Guy is… wait, hang on a sec. Something’s not right. Start again.

My ideal woman is:

Looks:

This is easy, and covers the first 3. The only things that are requirements on the aesthetics front are:

• Good tummy : a flat tummy, I’m not sure why, but there’s just something very sexy about it. Very stroke-able.
• Good hair : I’m not making a distinction between long and short (though I admit the longer, the better) – if it’s clean, shiny and taken care of then it’ll do for me. I love to play with hair!
• Nice hands with good fingernails : I don’t like full on talons, but nicely manicured fingernails say many things about their owner. And they’re very useful for massages. And holding.

Everything else:

• She’s genuine : I hate fake people. I can see through fake people. If she’s herself, whomever that is, that’s much better than someone pretending to be someone they’re not. She loves what she does and she’s passionate about it. If she doesn’t know about something, she says so, and wants to be told about it.
• She’s not stupid : I’m not saying she needs to be a member of Mensa, but I’m inflicted with some intelligence, so I need someone who’s able to at least keep me on my toes
• She’s independent : But she’s needs some protection now and then. Simple enough!
• She’s not a girlie-girl : She pays attention to herself, but she doesn’t scream “Oh my God!!!” and hug everyone just because she has a cup of tea. She’s outgoing and isn’t afraid of getting wet. If she surfs then perfect. But if she doesn’t but she’s up for trying it, then even better. And she isn’t scared of the back of a motorcycle. She’d rather sleep in a tent in the middle of the Lakes than an expensive hotel with room-service.
• She needs to put up with me : Purely selfish this, but I’m a moody and stubborn old git and she needs to take me as I am and forgive me when I’m having a bad day. I’m incredibly independent, but also unnecessarily jealous. Deal with that and we’re made.

Dammit, now I need to tag some peeps. This is embarassing, because I know so few people in the blogosphere. I tend to live in the real world a lot.

But anyway, here you go, get on it:

Aaron, Sam, Donna, Debs. I’m sure I know a bunch more people who actually maintain websites, but that’ll do for now.

Confidence is a wonderful thing

Never underestimate the power of confidence in your ability to do something. It sounds like a bloody obvious thing to say, it really does, but it’s true. Confidence affects everything and is a key factor, regardless of any actual skill or ability in the particular task. Case in point, I play cricket. When I was a lot younger I had some talent, and heaps of confidence and I played well. I was selected for a county side, I scored runs like there was no tomorrow, and there was nothing I couldn’t do. A couple of seasons passed where I didn’t play, and then I started again. I’d lost a little form, but there was no doubt, that being older, wiser and definitely a lot stronger and more powerful, that I was actually a better player than I was when I was younger. But having not played in a while, I was low on confidence. And needless to say, it’s been a real struggle. I keep playing, but even now, I’m not playing anything like my best. I’m better than I was, but I’m not getting the results. I have no confidence.

And confidence is a tricky thing to analyse. Again, it’s obvious, but with confidence, confidence continues to grow. Without confidence, confidence dissipates. In this example, when I was younger and had confidence, I’d play well, and my confidence grew, so I played better, so my confidence grew, and so on. Nowadays, with no confidence, I’m playing badly, so I never gain any confidence, so I continue to play badly.

I believe confidence works on a kind of greyscale, that has a lower bounds, but no upper bounds. That is, there gets a point when you are simply not confident. If cannot get any worse – you are at the bottom. However, you can never be totally confident – that is, you can grow in confidence indefinitely. At some point, though, you might become overconfident, which is really a different topic. But it leads to arrogance and complacency, at which point your fortunes can change, which ultimately might lead to a drop in confidence.

But how do you get confidence? It’s difficult, because it’s another circular argument. One way, is to force your own hand, by taking some risks. If you’re already not confident, then it can’t get any worse if you fail again by taking risks. If it succeeds, you might gain some confidence.

However, this theory essentially contradicts the argument of this article – that is that you need confidence to perform. If you’re able to do something to get confidence when you don’t have confidence, then surely it holds true that you don’t need confidence at all? That, I suppose depends on the type of person you are.

Crikey, that’s long.

Emergency situations require emergency actions. I had to get up and running to continue writing. After recovering some data, I still needed a way to actually read and write to the DOC files of my thesis. (Yes, I know about LaTeX, but I didn’t find it until 2 years into my PhD, by which time, there was no way I was going back to rewrite all my work in the format. With hindsight, I probably should have done. But hindsight can kiss my face.)

Nope – the easiest solution was to desecrate my Mac with the version of Microsoft Office for Mac – Mac:Office. I’ve used various other Office clients for Mac, such as NeoOffice, but my experience is they don’t render my existing doc files correctly. So after acquiring a copy, it was time to install. For those not in the know, installing and uninstalling software on a Mac is a beautiful process. There is no registry, there are no ugly configuration setups. After mounting the software image (which you do by double-clicking the item), there is only one step. You copy the software to your applications directory. And that’s it. To uninstall it, simply delete it from the applications folder. Lovely jubbly.

And whilst I’m not in the habit of bashing Macs, I was little surprised to get this window, whilst expanding the install file to get at the software image to do the copy:

Needless to say, it didn’t take 230,000 years to install the software (though considering it is essentially Microsoft, I wouldn’t have been surprised) and we’re now back up and running, surveying the damage caused by the disc failure in my laptop.

Windows Update ate my computer

The latest round of Microsoft patches have destroyed my computer. It’s a Window XP computer that is used for one and only one purpose – writing my PhD thesis. So naturally, when you see a bright blue screen with these 4 letters – STOP, your bowels begin to move in uncomfortable directions. The helpful blue page gives you some friendly tips on what to do – well, that if you’ve recently added some new hardware to remove it – which I haven’t, so that’s fucking useless. On rebooting, another blue screen with a different error message. Even better. And after Googling that and trying the various bits of advice…. the computer is still dead. Windows boots, but now just hangs at totally random moments, which is sub-ideal if you’re in the middle of writing technical documents such as PhD theses.

Resigned to the worst (I have some backups after all), I decide to use the handy-dandy-all-in-one Sony VAIO recover discs – a set of 4 discs that just restore your computer to the factory presets. (The fact that I’ve paid for a copy of Windows XP, but they don’t actually give you a disc is a farce, in my opinion). Pop Disc 1 in, gives me a blurb about losing data, yahda yahda yahda, _ERROR_. “Your computer might not work now”. Excuse me?!

So I’m really up shit creek. No computer, let alone any fucking paddles.

And how am I writing this post? On my stable-no-worries-gets-on-with-it Mac. It just works, and I love it.

Mutant Kangaroos and Demon Ducks

Linky

“Palaeontologists digging in northern Australia have found fossil evidence of several new species – including a “killer kangaroo”.

“Very big birds… More like ducks, earned the name demon ducks of doom, some at least may have been carnivorous,” she said.

Strewth mate! Stone the flaming crows!

Surf’s Up

How mad is this?