Day 02 – Where you’d like to be in 10 years

This one's a tricky one. I don't know where I want to be in a single year, let alone ten. Honestly, there is just way too much in flux in my life right now to give a definite answer as to where I would like to be. That said, there are a few things I would like to see in my future self. I would hope that I would be married by that point, maybe with little spawnlings running around. Maybe not. Whatever I'm doing for work (no specific aspirations for that that at the moment) I hope that I am involved in some way working with kids; if its as a part of my actual career then that would be cool, but so would be just having volunteer opportunities that I could capitalize on.

More important to me is being where God wants me to be in that time period. We may not have the best of relationships at times, but I'm sticking to Him and seeing where He is going to lead me. Hopefully I follow. In the mean time, I just have to try to live my life to the best of my ability and to the fullest. Whatever the Future has for me is in the future, and there's not much I can do about it right this moment. All I can really do is trust God to show me the ways that will bring me in line with His plan, and try to do so by getting as many different experiences as I can. Hopefully, ten-years-older me will be able to look back on this and say "yeah dude, plan worked" and not just "man, did I ever cop out on this topic."

Day 01 - Your Highs and Lows of this Past Year

Not a bad time to tackle this topic, having just left a year behind. Its uncanny that this would show up just in the same time that people traditionally get reflective, like someone planned it or something... :D

Lets start with the lows of the year, since they tend to be more painful. Probably my biggest low for the year was my academic performance my second year at Trent. Failing two courses isn't an easy pill to swallow, and neither is suddenly realizing that a) you have a lot of bad habits to deal with and b) that you may Be a bit out of your depth trying to tackle things like a "normal" student instead of suiting your education to your needs. Its an ongoing learning process. Continuing on the not-so-great side of the year, and something which may or may not be related to the previous point (I tend to believe it is), I also realized how unplugged I had become from life. Sure, I got to hang out with my awesome girlfriend and other friends, but compared to highschool I wasn't doing much. No extra-curriculars for me, no church groups or ministry work (if I even got to church), no volunteering. It bummed me out a lot. Again, something that is an ongoing battle, though I have been going to a church fairly consistently now and I'm even involved in a group there. *Shock, horror* its a miracle!


On the cool side of the coin for last year, I did manage to make some new friends at school. I also finally got to go to Jamaica and see first-hand some of our family history there. It was a wicked 11 days spent, again, with my awesome family, for whom I am so thankful.

Jumping On The Band-Wagon

I enjoy writing, really I do. That is part of the reason why I started blogging in the first place: to have a place for me to put my thoughts down and to have a (somewhat) creative outlet. Well, that plus it was something that none of my other friends were really doing at the time - and, now that I think about it, still aren't. But looking at my progress on this, my chance at a fresh start in the blogosphere, I can't help but be reminded of the same troubles I have had previously trying to have a blog: I'm just not very good at the whole upkeep thing.

However, this being a shiny new year full of opportunity and new chances, I intend to overcome that blockage in the hopes that maybe if I start writing here on a regular basis I might start writing again in general. And so, partially inspired by my friend Hansen, I am taking up a 30 day blogging challenge; I am committing to updating this blog every day till the end of January. Now to make sure that I actually do this and don't beg off a day because I can't think of anything to write about, I will be laying out the topics I'm going to tackle in advance. And because I completely lack in the imagination department imitation is the highest form of flattery, I'm also going to be more or less stealing Hansen's topics, with a few modifications.

The List:

• Day 01 – Your highs and lows of this past year.
• Day 02 – Where you’d like to be in 10 years.
• Day 03 – Your views on drugs and alcohol.
• Day 04 – Your views on religion.
• Day 05 – A problem that you have had.
• Day 06 – Write 30 interesting facts about yourself.
• Day 07 – Your Myers Briggs Personality Type and if you think it fits your personality.
• Day 08 – Your views on mainstream music.
• Day 09 – How you hope your future will be like.
• Day 10 – Discuss your first love.
• Day 11 – Put your ipod zune on shuffle and write 10 songs that pop up.
• Day 12 – Bullet your whole day.
• Day 13 – Give pictures of 5 girls who are famous who you find attractive.
• Day 14 – Your earliest memory.
• Day 15 – Your favourite blogs.
• Day 16 – Someone who fascinates you and why.
• Day 17 – Your beliefs.
• Day 18 – Disrespecting your parents.
• Day 19 – Something that you miss.
• Day 20 – One of your favourite shows.
• Day 21 – How have you changed in the past 2 years?
• Day 22 – How important you think education is.
• Day 23 – Your favourite movie and what it’s about.
• Day 24 – A moment you felt the most satisfied with your life.
• Day 25 – Somewhere you’d like to move or visit.
• Day 26 – You're favourite books.
• Day 27 – What kind of person attracts you.
• Day 28 – Your current relationship, if single discuss how single life is.
• Day 29 – Your highs and lows of this month.
• Day 30 – Goals for the next 30 days.

I'll try not to pull any punches, but this should be an interesting month

Resolve To Do Less

Welcome to a brand new year ladies and gentlemen! I hope that your holidays were filled with much merriment and joy and all the other things that come with the death of the old year and the dawning of a new one. Usually around this time, people stop for a little introspection to analyse the things in their lives which could use some improvement and make resolutions to address those personal shortcomings. A perennial item on my list is time management, my lack of which being a general detractor to things such as school achievement and side-projects (the Jiyu-Shin website is still coming, I promise!).

I know that I am not alone in making a resolution to manage my time better, nor am I the only one who has this on their list year after year. Well this year I say forget it! And in honour of my incredibly misguided rebellion I would like to unveil my list of Top Five Time Wasters!

Wikipedia

via xkcd

Like many students these days, the first place I reach to when trying to get a rough idea of what anything is about is Wikipedia. I really like to learn and there is just so much there. Regular, old-school encyclopaedias usually were pretty big and came in 20-ish volumes. Wikipedia? Printed, it would probably be 2100+ volumes (based on a little math and some statistics) just for the English version. So yeah, you can waste some time there; though not as much time as at...

Tv Tropes:

via xkcd

For those not in the know, Tv Tropes is a wiki which documents and details tropes in our culture. From music and film to webcomics and animé, Tv Tropes covers just about everything a fiction lover needs to know to never look at media the same way ever again. Tv Tropes is a must-have resource for any media student. Given that it is a wiki, it suffers from the same problem as Wikipedia: finding yourself with a tonne of tabs open and two hours gone. Heck, Tv Tropes even has a trope to describe the phenomena. It is, however, worse than Wikipedia for wiki-walking because the each trope is defined by the way it interacts with other tropes, often leaving you with 7+ tabs open after visiting a single page. Represent that exponentially as you explore each tab you have just opened... well lets just say that it took me over two hours just to write this section.

Know Your Meme



There is a lot of crazy stuff out there on the internetz. And sometimes you miss a lot of it. KYM has a nice index of memes (basically inside jokes online or viral video. Encyclopedia Dramatica has a pretty good definition, but be warned - here there be monsters) and often have videos to go with them and give a nice summary or further detail.

Webcomics:

They're like what you find in the paper, only online. And instead of having just a few strips to work with each day, you have MASSIVE ARCHIVES to deal with instead! I love webcomics. They are a fascinating take on the old comic format and provide a really neat platform to tell stories and have some rather complex narratives. Or, if you prefer something a little less involved, there are strips for that too. In fact, there are webcomics that touch on just about every topic imaginable, so there should be something out there that appeals to everyone. If you're looking to start into a comic with a little (or a lot) of history, the devil Tv Tropes has a round-up of webcomics with a minimum of 1000 posts in their archives. Schlock Mercenary ftw.

Books:

Last but certainly not least, reading is a great way to lose some time. Whether it be curling up with your favourite novel, working your way through your TBR list, or grabbing an anthology of short stories and picking a quick read at random, books provide a great escape from the daily grind.

A Deliciously Dreadful Christmas

So I realized today that I had somehow neglected to put anything up yet for Christmas anything not Doctor Who related and missed my usual Christmas celebrating. Jeeze, I even forgot to decorate the place! So tonight, on the eve of Christmas Eve, I present a deliciously dark version of Neil Gaiman's poem Nicholas Was.


39 Degrees North: Christmas Card 2010 from 39 Degrees North on Vimeo.

Maybe not quite the Christmas-y cheer that one would expect being this close to the Big Day, but hey, I like Neil Gaiman.

10 Days Till Squee!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Doctor Who fan - *huge* - which is why the long-ish waits between seasons is pretty intolerable. Luckily it is a Christmas tradition for the beeb to have a special Christmas episode each year...



... and I'm super stoked for this year's outing. Probably more stoked than I have been for previous outings. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Tennant specials, just this is going to be the first time that we have had the same Doctor with the same companion, and in all honesty the interplay between Matt Smith and Karen Gillian is probably the best we've had in the new series. And besides, they're getting all Dickensian on us so yay!

As an extra present I dug up this British Kit-Kat commercial which is absolutely hilarious. Mostly just the beginning and the end, but still, hilarity!

Now For Something Different

In the last little while NASA has really been ramping up its search for habitable planets outside of our solar system and, by extension, for extraterrestrial life. Today NASA held a panel which has had some serious buzz around it. Lets be honest here; you bring together some astrobiologist, an organic chemist and to talk about a major discovery that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life and people are going to get really excited. So what was it all the buzz about? A new way to view life.

Or rather, an exception to our rules regarding what makes up life. What they have discovered is a microbe which can substitute arsenic for phosphorus in its basic, molecular make-up. That may not sound like such a big deal, but when you consider that all life we know of so far uses carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur as its basic building blocks, and that phosphorus is essential in forming DNA and RNA, you can see the kind of paradigm shift which biologists are facing and the potential opportunities for the discovery of life on planets and moons which we may not have considered before.

It is still the very early days for this kind of study and there are a lot of questions which still need to be asked, but the implications of this discovery are huge.
via NASA

Also, io9 has a really nice summary of the findings and the whole event today