Fancy a dip?

It's probably my sense of humour, but I found the following story hillarious. Basically the CEO of opera said that he would swim from Norway to America if more then 1 million copies of the new version of Opera were downloaded within a certain timelimit. Ofcourse the smart techies at Opera immediately slashdotted the story and unsurprisingly the CEO was shortly getting ready for a swim. See this link for the story. Damn funny.

Wishlist

Well for all those people that struggle to think of presents for me, I jumped on the growing bandwagon and made a wishlist! Its linked from the top of this page or alternatively you can click here.

Travelling along ...

....to the sound of music. Not to the horrid movie of the same name but once again to classical music. As most of my friends know my music tastes tend to fall into one of two area's, new techno style trance or classical music. For a long time I got carried away with the beat and immediate satisfaction of working to something high powered, but the more I thought about it the more I realised what was happening was that I couldn't really work that effectively as I kept getting distracted by the music I was listening to. That lead me to the stage where I just didn't listen to music at all when I was trying to learn something and while I still believe that is the case for the most absorbing of tasks, I have found the joy of listening to classical music in the background while doing anything less then serious thinking. I find that with classical music it doesn't impose on what I am concentrating on, and keeps me in a pleasant focussed mood. On the note of focussed, there has been a few articles making the normal news rounds claiming that email is bad for your intelligence. Actually the study that they are basing this off doesn't claim that as far as I can tell, but rather it makes the interesting conclusion that they way some people deal with email and other communication channels is that they drop everything that they are currently doing and refocus on the new piece of communication. This in turns causes problems with long term ability to focus and severely impacts whatever it is you were doing before the new communice came along. I found the article interesting simply because at various times I have been guilty of this, though not to a serious level. It also rang a couple of bells as I have heard other people whom I respect, namely Umberto Eco and Donald Knuth who said something very similar (read it here). So given that I currently don't have the ability I had to focus, most notably back when I was studying chess, I am going to make a concious effort to NOT context switch and try to give something I start doing my attention for a reasonable period of time. I have been unconciously trying to do this for a while, but clearly stating will help me achieve this I believe.

On a different note my other tasks are coming along nicely. I have been put forward as a gentoo developer finally, as you can see from this link. It's about time really, I have been loitering around doing dev work and generally being interested and active for a while, but being loath to commit time to something I have always held off. Now, thanks to my two mentors things look good for me to get CVS access shortly and to become accepted as a full developer.

My business idea's are coming along nicely, and my bet with Aaron progresses nicely, since we started Aaron has put on 0.3 of a kg and I have lost 2.5kg. I am going to the gym a minimum of four times a week now and I hope to really start sloughing off some of this fat shortly. My fuji is almost here, and for those that regularly read this blog you might be interested to know that I eventually decided on another Aeron chair rather then the mirra. The mirra is a nice chair, but its definitely not in the same category as the aeron, which I firmly believe is the best computer chair on the market. Both should be arriving in the next couple of weeks, which I have to admit, has me a bit excited :)
Ofcourse as usual to see my latest geek style posts check out my blog on Disciplina Networks.

Motivated

Well I am in fire up mode. Gone is the gaming hang over, the relaxing period and all my other usual procrastinations. I am really fired up and keen to get a lot of things done. The main list looks something like:
* Lose some weight
* Master Python
* Sort out tax / visa /certification
* sort out some business idea's I have
There are a heap of others but these are the main ones right now. Since I stopped training to be a professional table tennis player I basically gave up on my body and concentrated fully on my mind. I am now not happy about the state of my body and have decided to rectify this imbalance and start treating my body with some respect again. To that end I have a bet with a friend as to who can lose 10kg the fastest and keep it off for a period of time. It will be curious to see whose approach will work out best, he is trying all kind of weird diets, whereas I am just going for the burn more calories then I eat and restrict my overall calorie intake from what my current "usual" is at. The rest of the things on the list basically constitute my mental tasks that need to get accomplished.

On a different note I have ordered my new gadget, a fujitsu lifebook 7010D. I am really looking forward to getting this (its currently en route from the states) and playing around with it, hopefully it will solve my mobile data requirements and enable me to start reading ebooks on the train and the like. I highly encourage anyone earning pounds right now to at least consider buying their next item from the states, the exchange rate is SO good right now its hard to imagine that it will not be more worthwhile going via there. The other thing that I am about to buy is a new desk chair. I am currently deciding between the aeron and the mirra although I think I will go with the aeron.

Holidays

Well I am back from my trip to Australia. I had a great time and was really able to just switch off and relax, which all things considered, is not a bad thing to do now and again. I was a little frustrated by not catching up with all of my friends, but taking my girlfriend with me left me with a lot less time then I had initially anticipated. Still I did get to catch up with most of my friends and just relax into the Sydney holiday lifestyle for a couple of weeks. One thing that is clearer now then ever before is how easy it is for the average person in Australia to have a really high standard of living.
On an odd note, since I have got back to the UK I can't help but notice how heavily salted everything is, I mean so heavily salted that I am almost unable to eat anything right now, be it food from a restaurant or from the canteen at work. Weird how I never noticed it before.