Took a little while i know.. But I’m back.

Life

Okay so here’s the situation, things have changed a little; they cut the hours back at work again, but this time its more of a boon than a curse. I can still maintain the 30ish hours of work per week whilst getting my full quota of university through due to a fluke with the class timetable. On that topic, Uni is going in a new direction, I’ve moved on from the riffraff of Arts-English, and have a more focused elective in storyboarding; the perfect combination of fine art, literature and job opportunities. Talking of opportunities, my Brother and I are now in the market for rentals, meaning that a dual income and a bit of determination will mean that we both have copious amounts of space and freedom packaged into one little ball, Hopefully we should see something soon. Another major development comes in the form of my newfound likening of actual exercise. As weird as that may seem I’ve been motivated by the fact that from here on I no longer get any younger or can rely on my youth to keep me functioning. I need to take care of myself.

Tech

The last three months have been quite productive in terms of tech for me. I purchased both a HTC Shift and a HTC Touch Pro 2. Both devices share a similar form factor, the slide out keyboard with a 65 degree tilting screen which serves completely different purposes for each device. Most of the reviews that I’ve read on the Shift complain about the oh so small keyboard that it packs. I can hardly complain  as I’ve been typing this whole post on it for the past 20 minutes and find that while to begin with the keyboard can be a little small, overall its not difficult to get used to. Specs wise, the Shift packs quite a punch for such a little device of such a vintage with one gig of onboard ram and an 800mhz processor powering its “computer” side. On the flipside, the Shift really shows its true potential. Winmo, although crippled to 56 mb of ram total, is still highly usable. For instance, when coupled with the winmo client for Evernote the Shift becomes a portrait notepad for university or whilst on the run. Also with the use of Mobipocket, it becomes an instant on high brightness Ereader that doesnt need to be charged for several days. My only gripes with the shift so far have been 1 the lack of portrait in windows, and 2 the fact that I bought the CDMA version of the shift which is totally incompatible with the australian networks (it doesnt accept a sim card) and so in my complete ignorance, I now tolerate a not so awesome smartbook.

The Touch Pro 2 on the other hand is a beautiful little beast of a winmo phone if i’ve ever seen one. The large bright screen with beautiful touch sensitivity, the clear loud call quality, and the efficiently programmed interface all lend to a very nice little piece of hardware heaven, no complaints at all.

After that chunk of stuff that has been my life over the past few months, I’m sure that whoever’s reading this will be either quite confused or quite amused. Either way, things get interesting in the best of ways from here on.

I guess its time to start preparing my survival gear, provided I even survive the coming apocalypse.

I guess you could say: it has begun

we live in a beautiful world.

She was beside me, comforting me, keeping me from the clutch of the internal cold. I looked into her beautiful strong brown eyes and all I could see was sorrow; if only I had passed on she would be set free of this torment.

A call came in, my brother, he told me that my mother had passed on, given into the cold. Immediately I flew into a rage, it was me that old bones wanted, not her. Tears gushed from my eyes as I destroyed all the room around my love, leaving her there, with me in this empty white space. The pain was so great that I finally succumbed t fatigue, the last thoughts of this avatar of my self, the book is evil.

I awoke from this nightmare, fatigued both emotionally and physically. It seems though, that the thought prevails. The book is evil. I shuffled out to the dining room, greeting both my grandfather and brother accordingly, and there it was. The book I purchased yesterday, the little leather bound diary.

seriously, I need a life.

I’ve got no idea….

Technologically I’m getting more and more set into something a little more tangible than what I had originally envisioned. I can now safely say that my three prime devices, the HP TX2500 (penabled laptop), Fujitsu Stylistic (slate based Tablet) and Imate Ultimate 9502 (awesomely chunky winmo smartphone) are in a fair harmony. My Personal Information management is conducted primarily through Microsoft’s windows live framework, only using Google’s services as a cloud base for interaction with my smartphone. Data storage is just under what i really need at just under 750Gb between my three devices and a portable HDD. My point and shoot camera functions well enough, wireless Internet works as it always has (strongly as long as I’m in 3g networks) and the addition of 3g Internet on my phone allows me to be hooked in at all times.  (even to post this very blog you [ whoever you are ] are reading now) Overall I’m pretty satisfied with my tech space.

Socially, life couldn’t be better. Between my fantastic Girlfriend, uni friends, old-school friends and work, I have a perfect sense of ambiguity and enough anonymity to allow me to be friendly but a curiosity at the same time. An oddity of sorts. Other than these points, I feel that I should be pursuing a more active social life, only I just cant find the time i need to do this which in turn forces me towards a life of slight mediocrity. I’m finally beginning to understand the choices made by some of those people who have negatively affected my life, due to the never ending juggling act that is fast becoming my life.

Internally.
… Internally I’m a mess. I have almost everything I want and yet.. its not enough. Its disgusting, I know. it burns down to a soreness that perversely travels down my spine, Tells me that I’m wrong, not good enough, don’t deserve the pleasure that I get from life. All of this negativity can be washed away with nothing but a mere thought of my partners laugh, yet there is a part of my that wishes for everything to burn and crumble, just so I can start again, build up from nothing. The intrigue here is that I find myself enjoying the hard work of building one’s life back up from ashes. That fear of loss, that need to burn; it tears me into two.

I guess that’s more than enough for me now..

Here we go again, another rush hour approaches.

Well that was a fast semester, (its not quite over yet, I understand that) Things have happened at lightening pace over the past few months. It seems like only yesterday that I last published a blog entry, but lo an behold it’s actually been the better part of a month……

With my next adventure upcoming I’d like to discuss the idea of adventure, the way in which it affects the mind, the body and if you like, the soul.

Although I am by no means a well seasoned veteran of the adventuring class, I’ve had my share of travels, and I don’t plan on leaving it there. The lure? its the ability to be in one place at one time and then suddenly up and move off to a new place, a new culture, a new experience. I quickly learned the value of experience with my last trip, the necessity behind enjoying the experience of a place before enjoying anything else (touristy guides and so forth.) To feel closer to a true experience of a given place is a rarity indeed, but when felt, there is that rush of enjoyment that is in my opinion, better than most other experiences. The transitory nature of travel is also a significant part of travel. To be in multiple places in a short time (even if one is travelling for a year, or a decade, it is still a short time) is a godsend to being trapped in a single unbearably repetitive and dull existence of boredom. The daily grind as it is put, has nothing for the rush and adventure of travel.

Travel, at least travel for me, has never left a negative impact on the body, it has on both occasions left me more fit than before. Unfortunately the lack of exercise when I get home usually undoes all my good work. As food is usually rationed out to a bare minimum to save on expenditure, I usually lose fat and as I am usually doing strenuous work, I gain in fitness, if not some (albeit very small amount) of muscle. Travel isn’t easy and I would never want it to be.

Miraculously everything was back to the way it ‘should be’. Grandfather making lunches, brother calmly walking around doing something or other two minutes before he had to leave. I sighed to myself and joined the fray.

I miss the old days of running my own show completely. The feeling of waking up in the morning, pouring half a cup of my instant coffee into my coffee mug, using my kettle to boil water I paid for. Then proceeding to take a shower in the bathroom I’m renting using communal soap and my shampoo. All the time listening to some heavy metal grind band playing from the stereo in my room. Self centred, yes absolutely.

There is something very distinct about running your own show, knowing that you have bills to pay, garbage to take out, clothes to wash. That survivalist in me wants this back, needs it back soon, otherwise I’ll end up another 30 odd year old stuck in his mothers house, waiting for someone to look after him.

I really don’t want nor do I need to become that person. I need to get out of this place but I also need to stay local, for my social life is here. To make things all the better, I don’t want to hurt my grandparents. They’ve always been so kind to me, helping me out whenever they can, but I cannot live here much longer, I need more space, more independence, more life than this. I need housemates.

It is the year 2009, may 18th. Yesterday it dawned upon me that soon, very soon, another voyage of my life will commence. New Zealand. Last time I were there, I found myself at the docks with little experience in life and travel, unsure of exactly what was ahead of me. I knew that my trip would not be long or arduous but rather, exciting and at times, dangerous. This time however, I find myself at a bit of a quandary. I have been to the other side of the globe, seen things that I never believed I would see. Now I return to this first event of adventure, hoping to capture a sense of what I had before.

Indeed I have no such doubt of this, It will include adventure as I will be doing things I have yet to have done. And yet I feel that there is something still missing in this plot, this adventure, something fresh or new. I must find an activity that will make my mind sublime, reduce it to a primal state and renew my sense of adventure. I need to plan my trek, my hike.

Yes… It will happen.

What does open source software have to do with students? well for starters, its free. Absolutely unadulterated free software is just right for students. Not pirated, not cracked not hacked or in any other way illegal, it isn’t based on corporate software licenses, it is absolutely free to use. So why is it not mainstream with the public yet? The lack of income has to effect these companies somewhere. Google does just fine because its software is all “in the cloud” right where advertising is most prominent, so rather than outwardly advertising its work, it advertises others work to bring in the moolah. On the other hand Sun Microsystems has no such income it relies on server sales and database control for its income. Therefore the main course of people never bother to hear about this amazingly free software.

So for those few readers of this blog, go out there, check out the open source software (Google it for heaven’s sake) and see if you cant find the next free revolution!

- N.B. This is an unadulterated carefree advertisement for open source technology, I am fully aware of that. Gotta pay them back somehow.