Gifted Slacker

From xkcd:

Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors.  And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they’re doing. Do things without always knowing how they’ll turn out.

You’re curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off.  There are so many adventures because you’re waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go along.

I’m was reading through a chunk of the xkcd archives the other day when this bit smacked me upside the head.

We have a co-op near our accommodation. It’s in this really neat looking building. However the inside is just a basic grocery store. I finally got around to looking into what else has gone on there.

This website has a lot of information about the co-operative building and a lot of other Newcastle landmarks and history.

I’m pretty addicted to its mixture of past and present day images and commentary.

If I ever have kids I’m taking them to do stuff like this:

Yesterday tillyjane, the_child and I went missile silo hunting. I’d pulled some map references to the old silo complexes at the long-abandoned Larson Air Force Base in Adams County, WA, near the town of Moses Lake. These are Titan I silos from the early days of ballistic deterrence, long since decommisioned, and now on private land.

There are a bunch of old WWII bunkers scattered around the English countryside. Some of them are accessible, some aren’t. It’s the excitement of exploring non-tourist history that entices me.I can’t wait to finish school (again) and settle into a life where I can go do some of the odd things that fascinate me.

From Bill Lawrence’s “Why I Write” essay:

Why do I write? As an acknowledged bullshitter, I thought I’d start with some of the lies writers tell. I don’t write because I couldn’t do anything else. I’m a bright guy, I could hold down a number of jobs. I could run a hat shop. I don’t love writing. Nobody does - it’s worse than fishing. Anyone that tells you that he loves to write has either never written anything, or, is in fact, an alien. Throw water in his face, if he is human he’ll get embarrassed and admit he’s never written. If he’s an alien, the water will burn his skin and kill him like in the Mel Gibson movie SIGNS.

Way back when, in the days I got creative writing assignments in school, I loved to write. Howver, I’ve never written anything of substance. I’ve always wanted to try, but I always get caught up in putting each word down in its perfect place.

I recently gave up trying. But Iris Yamashita’s “Why I Write” essay has just about convinced me to give it a go again:

By the time I got to college, however, my Asian practicality and no-nonsense parents brought me back to my childhood philosophy that choosing a life of a writer was choosing the life of a pauper. To make a long story short, I took a long, circuitous route of a career in engineering and web programming and tortuous beginnings of novels that were never completed before I ventured into the medium of the screenplay.

So, I’ll give it a go again. Maybe not right now, but someday. Someday.

And now a quote of a quote (from here):

Our greatest effect on crows is on their survivorship, not on their reproduction…if an adult crow lives near people it is likely to survive, but if it lives more than three miles from people, it will likely die. Mortality over a two-year period was 2.3 percent near people and 38.9 percent far from people…Populations in remote wildlands are not likely to be self-sustaining…

If urban crow populations are simply self-sustaining, why are so many exploding in size? Immigration is the answer, we suggest…young crows are moving to the cities to exploit their riches.

That is from In the Company of Crows and Ravens, a fascinating book. Most of all this volume stresses how much crows have co-evolved with humankind.

Crow populations tend to thrive near cities. Young crows are moving to cities. Now, just how mind blowing is that?

It sounds like the stories that were popular one or two-hundred years ago. The stuff about how people were leaving farms for the cities in great numbers. Reality is strange enough I don’t need fiction, sometimes.

Robin and I are going to take a jaunt around central Europe over holiday break. We’re going to spend four days at the Boathouse Hostel in Prague. That’s where I stayed when I went there for a visit around New Years 05/06. Then we’re going to spend Christmas in Vienna, where we’ll see the Lipizzaner Stallions. We head to Brussels after that, with a potential one-night stop-off somewhere in Germany. We’ll celebrate New Years in Brussels and then head on home.

Since I’m under 26 I can ride the Eurostar back England for about £60 pounds. Robin would have to pay something like £250. So I’m not real sure if that will be our mode of return.

I’m really excited. Hopefully I can finish most of my work for the term before we head off. It’d be nice to relax for the entire trip.

This entry sponsored by Jennifer Feagans.

True, I’ve been here since Tuesday, but this is the first time I’ve had energy enough to login here.

I really have nothing to say at the moment; I’m at least slightly overwhelmed.

I’m just about to walk out the door to run errands and head to the airport. See you all later.

The rest of the YIR posts are going to have to wait. I’m still too close to the things that have happened from May through August to actually write about them. If I were willing to dig around for hours and hours I might be able to come up with the posts, but it’s not worth it. Let’s just say that life has been quite interesting lately.

Stay tuned, they rest are coming. I promise.

At least you can look forward to posts from across the pond, starting sometime after Monday.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I would do if I had a near-infinite supply of money.

Three of the most important things in my life are travel, interesting ideas and thinking about those ideas, and doing what I can to make the people around me happy. If I had endless stores of money: I would live in a simple home in an area where I wouldn’t have to drive. I would go to school and I would travel. I would do humanitarian and world-bettering work.

The thing is, people ask you this type of thing to help you try and determine what kind of profession you should have. It doesn’t work for me. I’ve never had an answer that would even begin to guide me to a line of work.

I’ve been a student, an entrepreneur, a computer programmer, and a few other things. I don’t want to program full time, and I’m going to start a Business/Computer Science MSc. soon. That seems to point me into starting a tech startup at some point.

After I finish the MSc. I’m thinking of taking a PhD in Economics or, perhaps, Educational Psychology (a mentor of mine followed this path, I admire Dr. Bryant quite a bit). If I do that, I’m really not sure where that leaves me. I guess I’ll just take things as they come and do my best to get where I want to be. (Where is that? I don’t have a complete image, but I do have a general outline. And, no, I’m not going to tell you about it. Yet.)