Movember - mid point

Well, it's the 15th - halfway through Movember and the old 'stache is nice and fuzzy:



Okay, maybe it isn't as luxurious as it might be, but I'm still happy with it.

In other news, I am sad. We sold off four of the kittens that we had. We kept one, not sure what will happen to the mum. She's a bit wild and kind of an alley cat. There's still hope for the little one though...

New Article, New Goal

Well, here's another little article on my site. This one is about religion (I know, I'm a sucker for punishment).

There is an old adage - "an unwritten goal is a wish" which I assumes means "if you don't write it down, it won't happen".

So here I am, writing down a goal - I will be writing an essay to update my site at least once a week.

There, I said it, it's written, I can't take it back. (Mind you I said something pretty similar about exercising regularly - I should really get onto that.) The goal is fairly simple. At the moment I have a fair amount of free time on Sundays. So if I spend Sunday afternoons writing something, I ought to be able to update each Sunday night.

At least, that's the goal...

Movember!

Well, being November, I've also decided to go for another theme month - Movember - basically, growing a moustache during this month.

Here is the first days' growth:



Not a whole lot of lip action going down there, but there is a definite gray patch over the old upper lip. I'll have a marvellous soup strainer soon!

In unrelated news, this is pretty much the only pic I took on my camera the day we went skydiving:



Pretty sad that it's the only photo I got. The other two guys were more focused and got a lot of pictures. I'll need to grab some off them at some stage.

Australia to get own "Great Firewall"?

I've just recently come into a bit of information about something that has not been discussed almost anywhere - Senator Stephen Conroy is pushing a so-called "Clean Feed" which will block "illegal content" at the ISP level for all internet users in Australia.

I have several problems with this. First, it won't work. You can either let people use their online banking facilities with proper security or you can have a filter that works - you can't have both! Because in order to properly block all illegal content, you have to scrutinize every single bit of data - especially anything that has been encrypted.

Second, it won't work. Australia is already way, waaayy behind almost every other country in terms of internet speed and bandwidth. Don't believe me? In Tokyo you can download 4Gb in about twelve minutes. In Australia? You can do it in about three hours if you live in a capital city and if you have a high-speed connection. Live in a rural town on dail-up? Forget it. You're lucky if you can get your email to work reliably. Any additional ISP-level work will slow the system down. The proposed Clean Feed will slow it down to unusable levels.

Thirdly, it will NOT work! There are several key issues that have been ignored in the preparation of this program. One of the most glaringly obvious is that people who traffic illegal material don't do it via legal means! The filter won't stop the very thing it is supposed to be stopping whilst simultaneously stopping people from seeing what they legally want to see.

It's lose -lose -lose. Does not stop the bad guys, does stop the good guys and drops the effectiveness for everybody. It's classic stupid behaviour! A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

This is exactly the behaviour that Senator Stephen Conroy is displaying - everybody loses.

Still alive!

Wow, skydiving was a blast! Terrifying, exhilarating - it's a massive sensory overload! I had to lie down on the ground afterwards.

I can't really describe what it's like, or what I felt. It was a big mish-mash of emotions all flooding in at once. The instructor I was strapped to suggested that we do "something exciting" and I said "yeah, lets!" and we did all sorts of flips and turns and whatnot on the way down. I'm still on a bit of a rush from it, and it happened about five hours ago.

It ended up being about $450 for approximately six minutes (one minutes of free-fall then five minutes of floating down) but I say it was money well spent. The trip in the plane was pretty cool, even if it was rather crowded.

I can still feel the wind in my face. What I wasn't expecting was that even if we were travelling at about 200km/h I had no trouble breathing. I could scream and not hear myself, but breathing wasn't a problem.

Wow. Just ... wow.

All Hallows Eve

Well, it's the 31st of October and there are several exciting things happening in the coming month.

First, NaNoWriMo is on again and I've foolishly decided to throw my hat in the ring again. I have no idea how I will go, but I've met up with several other people here in Perth who are also doing it which ought to make it more exciting. I've got the full month (rather than the crazy half-month I had last year) which means I ought to be able to finish more easily (or write more).

The second, much less exciting thing is that I'm also growing a moustache for Movember - any excuse to have a hairy lip caterpillar asleep under your nose is good enough for me.

Thirdly, on the first of November I am going Skydiving! Yay me. I'm kinda crook though, so I don't know if I'll be allowed to jump or not. I'm in the mindset that they won't let me so I'm not overly excited about it, though I'm sure the nerves will kick in once the plane takes off and I'm in it.

Also, though probably not in this month, I'm looking to upgrade our home viewing experience by installing a home theatre - though not anything fancy. Basically, I'd just be adding surround sound speakers to our existing telly. Not massively fancy, but better than what we have now.

And since the telly will only go as high as S-Video, I figure I might connect a basic HTPC to it, though it'd just be a box with all our movies and music on it - no tv cards. I don't watch a lot of tv anyway.

So looks like it'll either be a lot of fun or a lot of pain and convalescence if I land badly (or too fast). I've never broken a bone in my life, but there's a pretty good chance that something might happen tomorrow.

We'll see...

Gearing up for NaNo again

Well, it's the end of October and I'm gearing up for NaNoWriMo again. I had good fun last year and it'll be good to get back into writing again.

I didn't get as much work as I wanted up on Loneverse as I wanted to, mostly due to my laziness, travel and general apathy (which is bad).

I'll let you all in on a little secret - I'm not going to go for the proposed 50,000 words that is the recommended goal for NaNo - I'm going for 100,000. Which is just insane, but that's the way I roll. I met up with a bunch of other like-minded nutters (which I mean in the nicest possible way) here in Perth who are also doing the NaNo this year. We are having a Word War (who can write the most) with a little town in the heart of USofA.

Also, last year I went for a very worthwile, structured, "proper" 50K novel. This year I intend to simply write 'til my wrists collapse. So it'll be more stream-of-conciousness than a proper story with those silly little things like plot or reason that editors seem to get hung up on.

Other than that, not a whole lot to report. It's been a quiet week. Mum is sick, the cats are sick and John is sick but I've managed to dodge the bullet thus far (knock on wood).

The last bit of news to report today (Sunday night) is that I want to start my exercise regime again. I stopped altogether after returning from Sydney, which I'm not overly happy about. I'm starting to get a little soft in the middle, which I don't like.

Plus, I'll be going skydiving next Saturday. If I don't post on Sunday, you'll know why...