Overflow of thoughts from my brainpan.
As today is national ‘Burn A Catholic Day‘ brought about by a failed plot to blow up parliament, might I suggest that in the spirit of inclusion we also have a ‘Burn a Christian‘ day and ‘Burn a Muslim day‘?
Only seems fair in this more tolerant time of equal opportunities…
Not bad, I enjoyed it. However it’s only good because other superhero films are almost always brain-dead mulch. Throwing in a reference to modern surveillance society and calling the Joker a terrorist does not make it particularly insightful.
Heath Ledger did play a god joker though.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, or even what site I should post this on – perhaps I’ll just cross-post it to everything.
Once upon a time I was a clever bastard. I used to devour computer languages, I used to write 6502 machine code, in Hex for burning straight onto EPROMs. I used to learn things every day, I devoured books. I used to build computers and fix them. I used to solder little electronic gizmos together – 555 chips and LEDs, all in bare feet so I could hold the board still with my toes.
But last night I was trying to understand ‘regular expressions‘, something that I should have found really easy. But I sat there and scrolled backwards and forwards and it just didn’t sink into my brain.
It’s not the first time I’ve noticed this, I sit and read and reread a bit of text a couple of times before it sinks in. I try to remember something and it just doesn’t work. I try and write a blogpost and the words stop flowing.
I’ve a sneaking feeling it’s to do with my lifestyle at the moment. I’ve heard it said that learning computer programming will alter the way that you think but I think that my earlier life has slipped away from me.
It might be a result of rotating shiftwork slowly eating away at my brain, it might just be my age – but I’m hating it.
The other thing that it might be is that in my day to day work I don’t need to use my brain anymore. I turn up to a patient and can tell what is wrong with them within a minute, the lack of any ’serious’ cases has meant that I go from job to job picking up people with very little wrong with them (or the usual suspect illnesses like angina, or COPD), doing some vital signs and then writing the same paperwork. I drop them off at the hospital and repeat it all over again – the only thinking that I have to do is in trying to work out how to get some food inside me.
When I started the job every call was a problem to be solved, but now I think I’ve reached the stage where I don’t need to think about how to get the trapped woman with a broken leg out from under her bed, I don’t need to consider how I break bad news to someone, it all just comes subconsciously to me.
I guess I’m just not stretched by my work anymore, even though I don’t know what patient I’m going to go to next it’s all just become a bit ’samey’.
Because I’m not thinking in work, my brain isn’t getting any exercise. Because I work rotating shifts I can’t go to night school to start learning again, because I work twelve hour shifts it is incredibly hard to motivate myself to learn on my own.
I need a kick up the arse. I need something that will stretch me, motivate me and force me to do some learning.
I need to get out of shiftwork – but I can’t do a fixed rota in the ambulance service because I just couldn’t live on the cut in wages that I’d have to take.
I’m not sure what else to do, and this is part of the reason for this post – I love to hear what other people think. This is a request for advice, a request for things that I can do to get my brain working again because I hate this slow slide from how my brain used to work into a dullness.
I need to get motivated again.
I have some books on programming in modern languages – maybe I should hit the Python one, try and force myself into thinking again.
C9
Given that normally the internet is a thing where locational boundaries tend not to matter, is there perhaps a place where a more location based service is desirable.
Consider, in the UK at least, a national system of Wikis and Forums based around the UK Postcode system. If I’m interested in something near to a location (for example, I want to find cheap parking in Cambridge) then I could log on to the Cambridge Postcode Forum and ask the locals.
Obviously there would be questions about the granularity of such forums and the like, i.e. ‘London’, ‘East London’ or ‘E14′ as well as who would be trusted to moderate the forums, but perhaps it’s a way to encourage community.
Add in tagging and data-scraping and it could be an interesting source of voluntarily submitted information.
It might also be very useful when tied in with FixMyStreet or TheyWorkForYou.
Technorati Tags: Postcode, forums, social, socialmedia, community
“But if iPhones become cheap and every country gets it (and 3G really was the reason it didn’t sell that well in Europe), then I won’t be special any more… Sob”.
Does anyone find the archiving of my twitters here useful? I’m thinking of turning them off and doing more original writing here.
I wish that I had the know-how to make things. I’m not a creator – not of real physical things.
But there is something I desire, and it lives only in the imagination.
I need a Weighted Companion Cube. One that is physical, and preferably heavy.
Any ideas?
I am not mad, although if you don’t know what I am talking about then it’d be an easy conclusion to draw.
I’m sitting around my Mum’s house watching the English Women’s football team playing against Japan in the World cup. While I can’t stand football at the best of time, women’s football interests me – but not for the reason you might think.
Why I like it is that the women have more aggression than the ‘normal’ man’s game. They spend less time rolling around on the floor, they don’t cry when the national anthem is played and they aren’t horribly overpaid*.
But even if they do really well, they won’t be allowed to play in the Olympic games. For which I blame the Welsh and Scots.
The (female) commentator said something that you wouldn’t hear during a men’s game.
“She’s really missing her children”.
Because, of course, the men don’t think of their children when they are away from home. That or women just worry more.
…And why do they keep calling them ‘girls’?
Anyway – the reason why I am sitting at my mum’s house is because it is my brothers birthday today – for which I made this email birthday card that has a special resonance for those of us who indulge in a bit of World of Warcraft.
*Of course, as I write this Aluko missed an open goal, resulting in a cavalcade of shouting, swearing and abuse from my mum.
Technorati Tags: Football, Genderpolitics, birthday, worldofwarcraft
Hmmm.
I’m almost certainly in LA during next month – I think that this place might be worth a visit.
More photographs of it here.
(Discovered on the inspirational Brass Goggles).
Technorati Tags: Steampunk, Edison, Clubs, LA, placesI’mHopelesslyOutclassedIn
Didn’t something similar happen in America where it was put down to ‘hysteria’?
Technorati Tags: Hysteria, badsmell, evacuation