~Verbal Diarrhea~

Driving

2009-11-04T17:55:18Z

Just had a driving lesson.... quite shocked at how much I remember. Although I wasn't 'great', I felt that I could be decent as soon as I got my confidence and 'auto-pilot' back. My clutch control is good (true of fork-lift driving too, incidentally, I am so in-control of my clutch!) less good is my tendency to steer wildly when changing gears. But that is not as bad as it was when I first started.

And given that it was dark, and we were on quite narrow windy country roads (to stay away from rush-hour traffic) I thought I did pretty damn good.

I have another lesson tomorrow o.o straight after work.

Permaculture

2009-08-22T21:19:44Z

A couple of years ago, I went to a Big Green Gathering. Whilst there, I got to do many fun but silly things, like sit in a stone circle under the stars, learn how to ‘use’ a diving rod, and the true meaning of 2012. I also got to sit in on a lecture about Permaculture.

I am a bit of a green at heart. Like most people, though, I plead lack of time and money as an excuse. Truth is, if I followed permaculture principles, I’d be going hand in hand with frugality.

Anyway. My move next week is hopefully going to give me a starting point to start practising what I preach.

I have lots and lots of ideas (I want to grow food in big pots, I want to learn to can and jar fresh produce, I want to build my own solar oven). My dream, eventually, is to get to a completely self-sustaining state, where I am actually giving energy/food back to the system, rather than just being a consumer. That is a long long way off, however.

So. What am I going to do?

1. Reduce/Conserve

There’s no shower, only a bath. I want to conserve water as much as possible. I will wash with the mixer tap and not take two hour baths where I re-fill with hot water halfway through. I will get a rain-butt to water my garden with. I will re-use grey water for cleaning the toilet and anything else I can think of.

I will not get a dryer, I will dry my clothes outside or on a horse. I will use the slow cooker more, and get this solar oven built. I will get re-usable sanitary towels again. I will cut down on air-miles, and buy local wherever possible. I will try Basil’s ‘English-only’ diet for 30 days, in which I consume nothing that I can’t get from a local farm (no bananas, or out-of-season strawberries. Worse, no non-herbal tea.)

2. Stacking Functions

I will find alternative uses for everything I can. I will re-use packaging as plant-pots. I will not buy single-use devices (Juicer, I’m looking at you). I will ride a bike as opposed to drive. (Exercise + transport). I will use my PS3 as my music player, game console, DVD player, and general media centre.

I need more ideas in this area.

3. Repeating Functions

I will grow lots of different food, so that if one lot fails (as it surely will) the others might come through. I will have alternate methods of heating food (solar oven, slow cooker, regular oven). I’m out of ideas! I need to research this.

4. Reciprocity

I will compost my kitchen waste. I will water plants with the soaked water from my re-usable sanitary towels (whatever P. says…) I will use grey-water to flush the toilet. Ummm. Will use cardboard packaging to grow plants in. This is actually pretty hard (we’re such a specialised based culture)

5. Appropriate Scale

I’m pretty up on this. I work close to where I live, and since I’m not in charge of building dams and what not, I don’t get to pick the scale of industrial action.

6. Diversity

Lots of different plants. Also, using lots of different ingredients in food for a varied diet. Doing different things every day, and avoiding staring at the TV every evening. Playing games. Getting a water element into the garden. Diversifying my income stream, so I’m not reliant on one wage packet. (i.e. write the damn novel)

7. Give away the surplus

I donated 2 bags of clothes and a bunch of books to charity today, but that’s not quite it since I didn’t make those clothes and books. I guess I can give away food, but I can’t think of much else people would want!

Outsourcing

2009-08-02T10:29:26Z

I'm looking for anyone with some free time and the inclination to earn a few bucks - with access to a copy of Photoshop and some half-way decent design skills, OR some decent web-coding skills (i.e. you comply to web-standards, you don't use tables or frames, and you can code a site that works in 99% of web browsers), OR you have experience with modifying Wordpress and/or X-Cart.

The only stipulation is that you must be able to turn things around pretty quickly.

I will pay, so pass this on to anybody looking for some extra cash.

Thanks!

I'm on a complete nostalgia trip

2009-08-01T18:22:40Z

I'm reading through old Turkboard stuff on the Internet Way Back Machine.

Good times, good times.

Decided I don't need to kill myself over work. Was reading old blog posts too, and it's depressing how much bitching about work I did/still do.

Then...

2009-07-31T21:37:40Z

... I re-read Red Sky. Lol. I am pretty awesome.

Shame it never got finished. It would have been 10x better than LoaE.

Alone

2009-07-31T15:01:39Z

It is cold in the depot; the air conditioning is on all the time and it blows freezing gusts down on you from above. It was a cool but bright morning, when the sun seems peculiarly distant.

The depot itself is huge, a curling open-plan space wrapped around inner offices and a canteen. Last week, half the office moved to new offices, built at a cost of £4 million. They left a once communal area quiet and empty. Today, staff fell sick and vehicles broke down. Everyone had left the building by 8am, leaving me sitting in this giant space, with cold air and a distant sun, by myself.

And in that quiet space, I saw myself, felt my soul coagulate into something firm and fixed, around which the rest of my body hummed quietly. As I looked around the empty space, I thought here and now, this is all mine. This time, this place, this body, these thoughts - all definitively mine.

And this person that I am is not a daughter, a wife, an employee, a colleague, an entrepreneur, an atheist. It is not a brunette, a geek, a woman, a wolf, a loner, a friend, a teacher. It is not even Suzie. All of these things are constructs, built out of the pieces other people have given me. All of these things hum quietly around a centre point, a fixed point.

And nobody, not my best friend, not my husband, not my parents, not a fortune teller or an aura reader, would ever know or see that fixed point. It is mine, and mine alone.

Life Goals

2009-07-26T10:28:01Z

Health and Fitness
14 goals
1. Start and stick to an exercise regime that I do 4 days a week.
~~2. Eat only home-prepared food for one month~~
3. Eat vegan for one month
4. Learn to dance
5. Go on a spa/health retreat
6. Hike across country
7. Hike the Appalachian Trail
8. Learn to meditate
9. Do a weekend Juice Fast
10. Go swimming once a week
11. Go for a peaceful walk once a week
12. Stop my weight fluctating - get it to stay level
13. Successfully come off herbal medicine whilst retaining high energy levels
14. Successfully get up at 6am every day for a month

Financial
10 goals
1. Pay off student loan early
2. Save 3 months of expenses (£3600)
3. Save £2000 every year for travel
4. Increase passive income to £500 a month
5. ~~Start pension~~ (July 2009)
6. Help P. find higher paying job
7. Donate 10% of income to charity
8. Get home-insurance
9. Get health-insurance
10. Create a will

Home and Garden
5 goals
~~1. Acquire beautiful, quality, functional furniture that helps my home feel like a sanctuary~~
2. Maintain cleaning routine for one month
~~3. Start potted vegetable garden~~
4. Organise and plan library of really good books
5. Save £10,000 towards deposit on a house

Personal
11 goals
1. ~~Organise closet wardrobe~~
2. Get a massage
3. Eliminate mood swings
4. Connect with important friends once a week
5. Sell all needless clutter and crap
6. Read good fiction once a week
7. Read non-fiction once a week
8. Read a newspaper once a week
9. Have one 'computer/TV free' night every week.
~~10. Cook something new every fortnight~~
11. Go on a self-defence class

Self-Improvement
2 goals
1. Join Toastmasters
2. Do one adult-ed class every year

Adventure
4 goals
1. Go somewhere new every year - even if it's in the UK
2. Do something new every month
3. Spend some-time in a non-tourist country doing volunteer work
4. Hire a canal boat for a weekend

Entertainment
3 goals
1. Play a video game to completition
2. Spend a couple of hours each month just listening to music
3. Go to the theatre more often!

Photography
3 goals
1. Take photographs every week
2. Actually upload and share the best of these photographs
3. Try and get some photographs accepted by iStock

Love Life
2 goals
1. Go on one 'date' every week
2. Do one nice thing for P. every day

Work
15 goals
1. Stay at current job until reach top pay grade
2. Maintain 2 posts a week at WTG
3. Increase prices at MR, take ONE project a month no more.
4. Make one template to sell per month
5. Shift Rockshools to Wordpress
6. Revamp personal site
7. Sell some photographs
8. Write a book

Another reason not to get a kindle:

2009-07-19T15:00:48Z

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/some-e-books-are-more-equal-than-others/

You go Amazon. You are rapidly turning into my least favourite retailer of all time.

Good mroning, internet

2009-07-05T09:34:21Z

The sun is shining (again!) and the french doors are open, I'm drinking strawberry smoothie and tea, in a clean living room. Awesome.

Life doesn't get any better :)

You know how Coca-Cola got its name?

2009-07-02T19:44:34Z

Coca-cola used to have cocaine in it.

Well, Red Bull still does, apparently. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900849,00.html

Dear God

2009-06-27T15:43:27Z

I am doing the wardrobe thing - just yanked everything out of drawers and wardrobe and put it in a pile in the living room. All I can say is HOLY SHIT.

I could bury myself in this pile. No kidding.

Looked up 'capsule wardrobe' items, and one listed velvet pants. Velvet pants are not coming anywhere near me, thank you.

How is it even possible to acquire so many clothes when I never go clothes shopping????

Testing

2009-06-20T22:27:13Z

This is a new dreamwidth journal. It's supposed to x-post to lj, so I'm testing it out.

Cheers to Jake!

Here come the facists

2009-06-08T13:56:20Z

"The U.K. Independence Party, which seeks withdrawal from the EU, took second place with about 17%. For the first time, the far-right, anti-immigration British National Party picked up two seats in the European Parliament." - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124444700376593655.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I don't tend to think of countries as having borders, but rather humanity shifting and changing like the landscape. Trees do not abruptly turn to desert, and one nationality does not abruptly switch to another. Sure, we are an island, but we are an island with a long history of both invasion and colonism. At some point, somewhere, we were all immigrants.

We seize hold of land and proclaim it to be ours, we refuse hospitality and welcome to those who would come here after us. Any person who would claim entry will be reduced to less than a person, will become a suspect, an enemy, a draining parasite. We forget that we thrive on trade, change, exchange, barter. We forget that every person who comes here brings more than just a mouth to feed - they bring stories, ideas, skills, talents, histories.

When my now-husband was detained at Gatwick, I felt that massive, powerful, anonymous apparatus that sits in our airports and ports and tracks everything that enters. The only positive thing that you can bring is a tourists money, and the promise of making it quick.

When I entered the USA, and had my bags searched, my computer ransacked, when the gifts my friends had given to me were questioned and mocked, when I was 'given a second chance' despite having done no wrong in the first place I felt the immense power that authority has, how irrational and impervious it is to normal human empathy and care.

The hate people have right now is rooted in fear. Maybe the far-right can turn this economy around, by controlling and counting everything, by cutting all support for those at the bottom of the rung, by laying aside the costly emotions like sympathy and love and tolerance. But the price of that is not counted in money, and is a loss of everything that matters.

Fear and ignorance and a need for a them and us. Forget the silences for all those who died in the war against fascism, forget the piles of starved and gassed bodies of a right wing adminsitration that did nothing except carry its ideology to the logical end. Let anyone who is not a strong, whole, white man be used and abused for the furtherance of the strong, whole, white man. Because, in the end, all that ever seems to matter is how much power you can clutch for yourself, and how much higher you seem to rise when you grind everyone else down into the dirt.

They say they're all the same...

2009-06-05T15:21:05Z

I'm watching the elections map, and noting a definite pre-dominance of blue.

Suzie's Collage

2009-05-18T17:35:44Z

Directions:
- Go to Google image search.
- Type in your answer to each question.
- Choose a picture from the first page.
- Use this website to make your collage.
- Save the image for use in this note.

Questions:
1. What is your name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What is your hometown?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. What is your favorite movie?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What is one word to describe yourself?
10. How are you feeling right now?
11. What do you love most in the world?
12. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Labels....

2009-05-07T17:26:32Z

.... change the way we think.

Humf

2009-04-22T19:52:29Z

GOALS

1. Have £2600 Emergency Fund saved by December.
2. Complete the Exercise Ladder EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT SEVENTY FIVE YEARS GODDAMN IT SUZIE.

LESSER GOALS

1. Learn how to bake bread and do it every Sunday.
2. Grow a tomato plant in a hanging basket.
3. Get some templates designed and start selling them.
4. Visit a far-away friend every two months.

THE END

interfaceleader @ 2009-04-18T22:00:00

2009-04-18T21:01:05Z

I just read the Conservapedia entry on Obama.

Walking

2009-04-03T18:17:06Z

There is a wood about 5 miles away from Towcester where we used to go for walks when I was younger. I was trying to figure out a way to get there without a car.

Five miles is not far to walk. But it appears that you need to cross the A43 dual carriageway to get there.

Someone needs to make a Google Maps that is actually useful for walkers.

On e-books...

2009-04-03T17:04:40Z

I wouldn't get along with e-books because:

I treat them really badly. I drop them in the bath, I spill tea on them, I break the spines, I leave them half-finished in dusty, damp places for days on end because I started another book in the meantime. Books are forgiving. Crinkled pages and brown stains do not render them inoperable. Do this to an e-book reader, and you are looking at a substantial chunk of change that you just lost. I also forget aout them and leave them in public places. People tend to ignore a tatty copy of The Stranger. They don't tend to ignore a Kindle.

I can get paperbacks from a charity shop for around 50p - £2, and return them when I'm done. In this way, I support various charities, and get a cheap read.

I always wanted a library - a cozy room dedicated entirely to books and reading. The smell, texture, and the physical act of walking between the shelves matters to me. E-books reduce clutter, but - considering I am mainly an anti-clutter minimalist - I don't think of books as clutter. Rather, I think of them as a physical representation of many places I have been - if only in my head.

Digital media is rife with copyright protection, proprietary formats, and inevitably becomes obsolete. Books will last for my entire lifetime, and possibly several more lifetimes. I do not have to worry about Sony going out of business, or reformatting .kindle files to .microsoft files.

Hard-drive failure means the loss of all e-books, more or less instantly. Bye bye 'thousands of books in my pocket'. Meanwhile, physical books will survive anything except fire or flood. I've experienced two hard-drive failures in the 9 years I've owned a computer. I've never experienced a fire or flood.

Having said all that, I can see the place for e-books for some people. I think they would be wonderful for non-linear texts that need to be frequently revised and updated (e.g. non-fiction) - being able to carry around wikipedia with me would rock. However, with wireless internet becoming more common, and most electronic devices able to access the internet, we pretty much already can carry around wikipedia with us.

here we are again; drinking tea at the end of the world

2009-03-17T21:03:25Z

For around the past 3 months I have been educating myself on money.

It started slowly, with a couple of Finance blogs here and there, mainly US based, and a return to Cha-Ching, my money accounting tool to track where all my money goes.

These past few weeks, however, it's been something I've lived and breathed. Personal finance, mainly, by a wide variety of authors and viewpoints.

Personal finance is simple, really. Spend less than you earn. Track where your money goes. Have a budget. Have savings goals. Have an emergency fund. Know what you want from your financial situation in the short, medium, and long term.

Like healthy eating, doing your homework on time, or not playing WoW for 12 hours a day is simple.

Understanding the abstract concept is not the same as being internally motivated. Buying stuff is way too easy, and what can it hurt to buy this or that or grab lunch from a coffee shop or move into an apartment that's only a few pounds above what we can comfortably afford?

I don't regret any of the monetary decisions I've made; not the overly expensive flat, nor the plane tickets and visa fees. Without them, I wouldn't have learned some important financial lessons that you cannot learn from a book.

Namely, that the line of credit can run out.

If Nationwide had allowed me to increase my overdraft limit, I would have done it, because there was a point where I had no money, an upcoming rent bill, and no source of income equal to my outgoings. Luckily, I got a job and for about a month I worked 7 days a week at both my old and new job, whilst simultaneously working on my business. I was able to recoup some ground and some breathing room.

In order to take control of my finances, I have had to take control of my life. It is not possible to run out of food mid-week and have to make an impulse trip to the supermarket, or worse, the chinese. It is not possible to 'forget' to pack a lunch, and instead buy a sandwich for £3 from the van. It is not possible to rent movies from blockbuster when the question of how to spend the evening arises.

So; meal-plans and home cooking. Prep-work. Packed lunches. Free hobbies, like walking by the river, or working-out to a free internet video. Re-reading old books. Sex. Home baking. Repairing torn clothes.

And now, I do have a clearer idea of what money is, for me, of what it means. Of how much time is really worth, and of how little value the Stuff around us is.

Bite me.

2009-03-04T18:45:19Z

Uuuuh, yeah. This is what I do for fun.

I coloured it by the way - don't actually know who did the line-art, but I like it.

Umm, lurid purple backgrounds for the win.

German Tuition in Milton Keynes

2009-02-17T18:16:52Z

Matterhorn Languages are a service provider for German and English language tuition, translation services and also cultural training.

The owner is fantastic, I really like her.

I didn't do the layout, I just transferred her old layout into Wordpress and jigged it up a bit.

Today

2009-01-31T10:47:25Z

I Saturday, my play-day. So I'm going to go have a long bath and eat some toast, then pack up my camer and go for a walk.

See ya later, aligator.

interfaceleader @ 2009-01-25T16:04:00

2009-01-25T16:05:58Z

This is Sarah. It's sooo grainy x.x I was playing with manual settings, and this is the best shot I got.

This is the cake we made. I really should've brought my lamp down, because the lighting in my lounge is really dim and yellow. It tasted AWESOME.

So yup. All these were shot on full manual, so I kind of suck - hah. I couldn't actually see how grainy they were on the little screen though, so I'm going to use that as my excuse ;P