...I wish I will manage to post more than 10 entries = 2010!
In case you were wondering (I can not be hold accountable for you losing your sleep) I have not forgotten about my 2007 new year's resolution. It was just put on hold.. for 6 months, as I did not find the time to post. Is there really a better time to resume or a better way to resuming, but making a new new year's resolution? After all people do that all the time.
Anyway.. enough with the introductions, just let me say: that I hope you all enjoyed the first week of 2010 and that the rest of it is 2010 better!
Showing posts with label miscellaneous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miscellaneous. Show all posts
Friday, 8 January 2010
Saturday, 24 January 2009
Happy new year!
Well it's almost February, but better late than never so... Happy New Year! Oh, and happy birthday to this blog too which still goes on after two years! It's not just that holidays and work have taken priority the last few weeks and I did not get to post something. You may recall that I had put a few things on Ebay for sale so I had to wait for the listings to expire and see if there was any interest. And there was not.. so now I have to go with plan B or even try something else. I will literally keep you posted!
In anyway, I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and look forward to a great 2009!
In anyway, I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and look forward to a great 2009!
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Thing #78: Hold a jumble sale
Jumble sales are so yesterday, so I will be trying to sell a few things I have not used for ages on eBay. Well, it's mostly computer components that came out from PCs that gave up on me (it's not my fault they can't work as much as I can). I don't expect to get much for them, but at least I will doing my bit for the environment. After all, I'd rather see them come back to life and serve a purpose to sitting in a box accumulating dust. Even better, this whole thing of looking for items to sell made me ask myself what I really need to keep and what I don't. Guess what? I started getting rid of things. After all, this is a good time to do so and start 2009 clean - literally and metaphorically. In fact, as I am in the process of clearing the corners this very moment. I will conclude this post right here and get back to it.
Sunday, 27 January 2008
Thing #16: Done
For two weeks I have counted the number of bad words and I am happy to report that paying yourself the princely amount of 10p per bad words does help towards reducing your swear footprint on this planet. On average I used half of my available quota and with an average of 6.4 bad words a day I should award myself £19.2 pounds for the whole month. It seems I shot myself on the foot as this is £14.2 less than the average pocket money. So I propose (and I am sure you agree) that for Thing #51 I should give myself a bonus and double the difference, i.e. spend in one go 14.2x2+19.2=£47.6. I now need to decide what I will be getting for myself!
Saturday, 19 January 2008
The brain: a powerful thing
The brain is a powerful thing - that can make you or break you. You get to learn to think in a certain way and that may often may be very different to how others think. Your experiences, the environment you live in, the people around you or away from you, will affect you, either contradicting or more often re-enforcing how you think. It's all in the process and bias. Bias gives you the building blocks: assumptions and 'rationale'; process puts them together, like the scaffolding that creates the structure for the bricks to follow or like puzzles pieces that come together to create a picture. Why all this totally unscientific and fascinating simplistic approach to neuro-science?
Well, it's been a long week of counting swear words. I estimated 11 a day and to my surprise I found that on average I use(d?) fewer words than that. This is good news, as I have to put 10p in my swear box for each one of them, but still... it got me thinking. Is it really the absolute number of words that matter. Is really my set target of 11 words a day that difficult to achieve? 'Yes and no' is my answer.
For example: assume you sleep 8 hours on average that leaves you with 16 hours with a quota of 1.45 words each. That's sounds difficult, especially if you take into consideration that when we use bad words they are more than one in a phrase!
What about the % that bad words represent of our total spoken words a day. I found a page that concludes that males use about 6000 words per day and females use 8800 per day. I am sure you were not surprised! There are other estimates that show the same trend, albeit with a larger gap. In anyway lets assume females use more words than men. With 300 words per page, that's 20 pages for a male and 29.3 for a female. With an average of 4-6 characters a word and 70 years of average talking life-span one can easily calculate the amount of storage space required to transcribe everything one said in a lifetime and save it on a PC, which I roughly calculated to be less than a gigabyte of data. Sad - my phone has enough memory to keep everything I've said so far and will say in my remaining days. Anyway returning to my previous argument 11 words a day is only about 0.2% of what males say and even lower for females. That makes you feel better eh? Perhaps, but this should not be an excuse to start using more bad words. In fact, that reminds me of a song that says "those who swear do so, because they have not learnt to talk".
Returning to the actual Thing in hand I've tried to count as accurately as possible and I found that counting was a good obstacles to using bad words. Often I found that I started replacing them with something less 'offensive'. You could perhaps use something totally irrelevant, like apples or oranges. That can even be a good ideas as saying oranges so many times a day may create the desire to eat one. Vitamins are good after all.
I will keep counting for another week - more counting will increase the validity of my experiment and perhaps will help me rewire the hardware in my brain and prevent me from using bad words in the future.
Well, it's been a long week of counting swear words. I estimated 11 a day and to my surprise I found that on average I use(d?) fewer words than that. This is good news, as I have to put 10p in my swear box for each one of them, but still... it got me thinking. Is it really the absolute number of words that matter. Is really my set target of 11 words a day that difficult to achieve? 'Yes and no' is my answer.
For example: assume you sleep 8 hours on average that leaves you with 16 hours with a quota of 1.45 words each. That's sounds difficult, especially if you take into consideration that when we use bad words they are more than one in a phrase!
What about the % that bad words represent of our total spoken words a day. I found a page that concludes that males use about 6000 words per day and females use 8800 per day. I am sure you were not surprised! There are other estimates that show the same trend, albeit with a larger gap. In anyway lets assume females use more words than men. With 300 words per page, that's 20 pages for a male and 29.3 for a female. With an average of 4-6 characters a word and 70 years of average talking life-span one can easily calculate the amount of storage space required to transcribe everything one said in a lifetime and save it on a PC, which I roughly calculated to be less than a gigabyte of data. Sad - my phone has enough memory to keep everything I've said so far and will say in my remaining days. Anyway returning to my previous argument 11 words a day is only about 0.2% of what males say and even lower for females. That makes you feel better eh? Perhaps, but this should not be an excuse to start using more bad words. In fact, that reminds me of a song that says "those who swear do so, because they have not learnt to talk".
Returning to the actual Thing in hand I've tried to count as accurately as possible and I found that counting was a good obstacles to using bad words. Often I found that I started replacing them with something less 'offensive'. You could perhaps use something totally irrelevant, like apples or oranges. That can even be a good ideas as saying oranges so many times a day may create the desire to eat one. Vitamins are good after all.
I will keep counting for another week - more counting will increase the validity of my experiment and perhaps will help me rewire the hardware in my brain and prevent me from using bad words in the future.
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Happy new year!
It's 2008 and I have another 78 things to! No hurry; in 2 years time I will be there.
So, let's get started. My first Thing to do (16) will be to make a swear box and fine myself, if I say a bad word. Hmmm, that's semi difficult to keep track of, but I will try to put 10p as suggested in a box for every single word. Then, I will spend it all as Thing 51 suggests.
It actually suggests saving pocket money, but as I don't get any from myself, my swear-box will do. Interestingly, the average pocket money given in the UK is 8.35 pounds, i.e. 33.4 pounds in a month. By starting today, I will finish on the 13th of Febrary. I guess, the question here is whether I will swear more than 334 times until then to collect more money than the average pocket money. That's a bit more than 11 words a day! Easy!
So, let's get started. My first Thing to do (16) will be to make a swear box and fine myself, if I say a bad word. Hmmm, that's semi difficult to keep track of, but I will try to put 10p as suggested in a box for every single word. Then, I will spend it all as Thing 51 suggests.
It actually suggests saving pocket money, but as I don't get any from myself, my swear-box will do. Interestingly, the average pocket money given in the UK is 8.35 pounds, i.e. 33.4 pounds in a month. By starting today, I will finish on the 13th of Febrary. I guess, the question here is whether I will swear more than 334 times until then to collect more money than the average pocket money. That's a bit more than 11 words a day! Easy!
Friday, 14 December 2007
Thing #39: Be a genius
How appropriate is this Thing for me! Most of my friends think I am a genius and (of course) they think right. They will also testify of my modesty any day! That's me: a modest genius. I am sure you have figured that out anyway by following this blog. You choice of web sites to visit indicates readers of higher intelligence, so well done to you too.
Anyway, to complete the test I decided to take an online IQ Test. Not the best thing to do when you have a headache, but it's a good way to treat insomnia, as IQ test put me to sleep in exactly 26.8 seconds.
So I entered 'IQ test' in Google and selected the first test in the list. After all, I needed an unbiased test (i.e. I did not pick one based on personal preference). Despite the fact that I hate IQ tests, I decided to see this test through. So, I completed it (without falling asleep) and it seems I have an IQ of 126. This ranks me at the top of the above average scale, just 3 points below gifted (2.3% of test takers). Click here for the scales.
Try it if your self and post a comment with your results: http://www.iqtest.com
Anyway, to complete the test I decided to take an online IQ Test. Not the best thing to do when you have a headache, but it's a good way to treat insomnia, as IQ test put me to sleep in exactly 26.8 seconds.
So I entered 'IQ test' in Google and selected the first test in the list. After all, I needed an unbiased test (i.e. I did not pick one based on personal preference). Despite the fact that I hate IQ tests, I decided to see this test through. So, I completed it (without falling asleep) and it seems I have an IQ of 126. This ranks me at the top of the above average scale, just 3 points below gifted (2.3% of test takers). Click here for the scales.
Try it if your self and post a comment with your results: http://www.iqtest.com
Thursday, 10 May 2007
Thing #32: Visit...
"There are thousands of amazing sites to visit around the world..." and it's good to see that I have already visited those required for this Thing to be completed:
- safari park (the nearest safari park is a few thousand km aways, so a zoo will do for this)
- carnival (got the t-shirt)
- castle (no knights there, but still...)
- theme park (A long, long time ago in a galaxy far away...)
- a farm (mooouOOOOO)
- an aquarium (ohh... there's a fish, and another one, and another one... etc)
- the countryside (I almost live there)
- another country (done)
- your capital city (done)
So I guess I can claim this Thing is now completed!
It would have been soooo much better, if I had to show you a video clip like the one below:
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