it's cold out there in the internet ...

... so it's warming to find people that think like you don't you reckon? I've just come from the angriest's post about 1980's cartoons - and while I'm sure there are lots of people out there who watched the same ABC cartoons as I did, what with them being the national broadcaster and all, it's just, well - a bit friendly to meet up with one of them :)

Of course after that I contracted an earworm. "It's me Nono, small robot you know, friend of Ulysses" which was annoying enough in itself - except the only reason I know what an earworm is, is because of a comment on the above mentioned blog post, which led me to Wikipedia, which led me to the Maim That Tune site which guarantees to remove earworms by replacing them with hideous midis of even more appallingly earwormy tunes.

... which in turn led me to decide it was worth blogging about (after all, what's the point of a blog?!) and that led me to the Red Dwarf theme tune because even though they were talking about space (which is really big) I think the first verse kind of does for the internet too.


It's cold outside, no kind of atmosphere,
I'm all alone, more or less ...
Let me fly far away from here
Fun, fun, fun, in the sun, sun, sun ....

Learning to learn

It's an interesting thing, to think about how you learn something. I'd go so far as to say, the way that you learn influences how you deal with unfamiliar situations. If you're a person who learns best by reading or by listening to someone else talking to you, it's possible that you handle new situations differently from someone who learns by doing. Even more than that, I bet it influences career choices too. If you learn by reading/listening you may be more likely to feel comfortable learning in an academic environment, i.e. university, than a vocational environment, so you're more likely to end up with a desk job than a trade. Maybe?

Anyway Lifehacker posed the question: find out how you learn. So I did the survey and discovered I'm a visual learner, but balanced verbal and non-verbal - I learn best from visual materials whether it's text or images, compared to learning by doing or by listening. Well, I knew that already! Anyone who's tried to give me directions will know that. I basically can't find my way there again if someone else has driven me there, or if they tell me the directions over the phone. If, however, they write them down (or I do) then I'm fine with it - ditto for map reading. That's what they're for after all!!

Since I'm not currently pursuing any academic learning, what does it matter what my learning style is, I hear you ask. Well, it's a funny thing but I think surveys that tell me about myself are more useful for telling me how to deal with other people than anything else. So, if I'm a visual learner and I write someone some instructions, I get frustrated when they don't seem to get it. After all, if it's written down that should be enough shouldn't it? But for many people, I guess it isn't really. So instead, maybe I need to figure out what *their* style is, and present the information accordingly. Or, to be brutally honest, the person receiving the information should know what their style is, and request the information accordingly. As in, I know I learn best by reading, so I ask for written information. Simple, eh?

... on rereading I realise there's some pent up bitterness in that last few sentences, you can tell that I may have had trouble training people in the past. Maybe I'm not such a good teacher as I am a learner :)

To start, press here


I love Ikea instructions. There are no words, so they translate to any language with the same amount of ease. They always start with the things you need, and sometimes the ikea man has a helper - does that mean "You need a friend"? - I wonder if it's a comment on the sort of people who furnish their houses with ikea .... oh wait, that would be us.

So anyway you know how I was ranting about little boxes, well it seems Ikea has taken this to the next logical conclusion: flat-pack housing. It's not new (treehugger talked about it in 2005) but I've only just become aware of it. I wonder how many allen keys you need to assemble them? Arre they bigger than normal size? Do you need a friend too? Do you then have to assemble all the furniture (and is it fixed in place with tippskyd) and what happens if you put in a floor part upside down - does the furniture attach to the roof????

Side note: while researching links for this silly, silly post I've found out why Ikea instructions aren't in words: their word for an allen key is insexnyckel. Tell me that you'd take it seriously.

Rip Van Winkled

So you know how Rip Van Winkle slept for 20 years only to return to his village all confuddled and messed about - well after watching the best movie in the world on average 2x per year since it was released, I empathise with ol' Rip after seeing this page (also linked from Cynical-C).

errr, thanks Jarv. This was a bad bad way to wake up ... :/

time sucker

...

I'm not working at the moment.

I don't realise how little I've done each day until about noon - at which point I have some lunch, and then ponder going out, during another couple of games of solitaire, so sometimes it's about 3pm before I manage to even go outside.

I used to be such an organised, busy person. This time wasting thing is really weird and yet strangely comforting. There's just nothing that needs doing more than sitting here on the lounge with my feet up. Time enough to have things to worry about later.

... and it's back to the game.

A refined approach


As we get better at the refinement we will be able to remove virgin rape from the process.

....errrr ?

Either McDonalds has finally admitted there is something sinister behind the slightly evil-looking clown motif, or the comment above was taken out of context. You can figure it out for yourself, but meanwhile it seems the big D is going to use their own waste cooking oil to drive their trucks. Yep that's right, it's a new take on an old joke.
Q: What has 4 wheels and fries?
A: A Macca's truck driving on biodiesel.
Thankyou, thankyou. I'm here all week - try the veal.

morning cuppa

The other day, listening to parent radio, they played a snippet of a song that had the lyric "pour myself a cup of ambition" and I thought, what a great blog post title (and I don't think I'm the only one). But then realising that I was on my way home from my last day of paid employment for a while I figured that I probably wasn't in the best place to be writing about ambitions.

But hey, after a few days bumming around I figure maybe I should use the time constructively and instead actually put some words down about my ambitions. I mean, just coz I'm not being paid right now doesn't mean that I don't have any ambitions, right?

So thinking about it, what kind of thing makes up an "ambition" instead of just a "I wanna do that thing" concept? Is it just that you want to have no regrets? No, because that falls under "I wanna do that" and in my book includes things like bungy jumping and skiing in the Northern Hemisphere. So maybe it's stuff like "I will feel more fulfilled as a person if I do that" .... but then that implies that I'm not satisfied with who I am, and that's not really true either.

Back to the start then, and google for ambition. You get career consultants. articles from TIME, other stuff all pointing to ambition being involved with your paid for employment. Does that mean that those of us who are bumming around at home have no ambition? Is that a bad thing? It seems like it should be a bad thing, seems vaguely negative in connotation.

Merriam-Webster says


1 a : an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power
b : desire to achieve a particular end

Hmm. So maybe it's usually all tied up with corporate or commercial achievements, but doesn't have to be. And it is all tied up with "I wanna do that" after all.

Well, I guess I will keep pondering it for a while.

I"ve visited my blog this many times:

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