A Post About Saturday
Feb. 6th, 2011 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiat_knoxFor much of today, the folks' lay in darkness. Same for my flat in town, too. No computer access; only a limited access to Facebook through my mobile phone.
I read Zero History by William Gibson in the flat, then went into town and read Watchmen. I found myself thinking about Odd John, Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias from Watchmen) and the character I created for my Traveller fiction, Captain Roshon "Ro" Focale. In fiction, these supergeniuses have so much control over their bodies' shapes as to have physically perfect bodies, toned and defined abs and not an ounce of fat on them.
It got me to wondering whether or not I could achieve a modicum of physical health and shave off the pounds around my own middle. Not out of vanity, but out of curiosity - to see if I could control my body weight. So I began a regime of primarily lean proteins as much as possible, restricting the carbohydrate and polycarb starch content as much as possible.
So no chips. No white spuds. Hells, I could even do without roasters. Substitute beans for the spuds, white rice and white bread, and minimise my intake of pastry. Black coffee in public - no milk, no sugar.
And I lay off brown sauce, out of a suspicion that I may actually have an allergy to the HP sauce.
I do believe the regime has begun to work. I have begun shifting the surplus weight again.
I'll keep you apprised of progress, of course, but I wanted to speak of the many accomplishments I did today, not just this one.
I may redesign my cv to a form that may well shift the vote in favour of at least granting me an interview. At this stage, I think that only a radical idea might do the trick - at least, before others get the same idea and it becomes the standard design for cv.
As of 2011/02/04, I got to around 1300 words in a Traveller article I wanted to write up: I got that up to 1600 words or thereabouts today, but I still need to write a further 2400 words tomorrow before final editing and emailing on Monday.
Additionally, I outlined a couple of other Traveller projects. I want to get them written up and emailed before the end of the month - reserves. I can then write about one or two more articles a month from then on in, maintaining a reserve of spare items to publish here and there.
I advanced the documentation I need to prepare for the second half of Freelancer Academy. I located some nice OpenOffice presentation templates, and I can use them to outline my case when they start doing the presentations on the week 02/14 - 02/18. If necessary, I'll convert them to PDF - at least the fonts travel with the documents and can be read on a computer that doesn't have OpenOffice.
And in other news, I managed to give my flat a little onceover, before heading off into town. I need to give it a proper shakedown some time, maybe get clean bedding in, replace these tatty old curtains. All in good time.
To go back to that whole "super smart" issue. I told Mum about how I felt about attaining to genius of the levels of Odd John and Ozymandias. I love being smart; I love it when smart people do smart things - one more compelling reason why I like hanging around Glyndwr University, by the way - and I always want to be smarter tomorrow than I am today. Hence the Tony Buzan exercises I keep trying, the mind maps and other techniques. I told Mum that I can't help if, when I exercise my mind, it will get so much smarter - to the point where I won't be able to hide my intelligence any more, nor shall I feel the need to.
I told her about my super smart heroes, and how I could not do the things they could do - in the hands of the authors, the only way such super smart beings could be super smart was through auctorial fiat, allowing the characters to know the entire plot based on three points of data and a couple of outliers. However, I told Mum that being smart did not necessarily mean knowing all the answers, or even getting to the right answer the first time around. It meant keeping an open mind, staying curious, staying aware, and above all never losing your grip on your sense of humour.
Then I told her that even if I could not be the smartest man on the planet, let lone the smartest man on the continent, or even the smartest man in the Uk or the smartest man in Wales, at least I could be the smartest man in the room.
Only if I happened to be alone at the time.
Sweet dreams, smart people. Love you all. See you in the daytime.
I read Zero History by William Gibson in the flat, then went into town and read Watchmen. I found myself thinking about Odd John, Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias from Watchmen) and the character I created for my Traveller fiction, Captain Roshon "Ro" Focale. In fiction, these supergeniuses have so much control over their bodies' shapes as to have physically perfect bodies, toned and defined abs and not an ounce of fat on them.
It got me to wondering whether or not I could achieve a modicum of physical health and shave off the pounds around my own middle. Not out of vanity, but out of curiosity - to see if I could control my body weight. So I began a regime of primarily lean proteins as much as possible, restricting the carbohydrate and polycarb starch content as much as possible.
So no chips. No white spuds. Hells, I could even do without roasters. Substitute beans for the spuds, white rice and white bread, and minimise my intake of pastry. Black coffee in public - no milk, no sugar.
And I lay off brown sauce, out of a suspicion that I may actually have an allergy to the HP sauce.
I do believe the regime has begun to work. I have begun shifting the surplus weight again.
I'll keep you apprised of progress, of course, but I wanted to speak of the many accomplishments I did today, not just this one.
I may redesign my cv to a form that may well shift the vote in favour of at least granting me an interview. At this stage, I think that only a radical idea might do the trick - at least, before others get the same idea and it becomes the standard design for cv.
As of 2011/02/04, I got to around 1300 words in a Traveller article I wanted to write up: I got that up to 1600 words or thereabouts today, but I still need to write a further 2400 words tomorrow before final editing and emailing on Monday.
Additionally, I outlined a couple of other Traveller projects. I want to get them written up and emailed before the end of the month - reserves. I can then write about one or two more articles a month from then on in, maintaining a reserve of spare items to publish here and there.
I advanced the documentation I need to prepare for the second half of Freelancer Academy. I located some nice OpenOffice presentation templates, and I can use them to outline my case when they start doing the presentations on the week 02/14 - 02/18. If necessary, I'll convert them to PDF - at least the fonts travel with the documents and can be read on a computer that doesn't have OpenOffice.
And in other news, I managed to give my flat a little onceover, before heading off into town. I need to give it a proper shakedown some time, maybe get clean bedding in, replace these tatty old curtains. All in good time.
To go back to that whole "super smart" issue. I told Mum about how I felt about attaining to genius of the levels of Odd John and Ozymandias. I love being smart; I love it when smart people do smart things - one more compelling reason why I like hanging around Glyndwr University, by the way - and I always want to be smarter tomorrow than I am today. Hence the Tony Buzan exercises I keep trying, the mind maps and other techniques. I told Mum that I can't help if, when I exercise my mind, it will get so much smarter - to the point where I won't be able to hide my intelligence any more, nor shall I feel the need to.
I told her about my super smart heroes, and how I could not do the things they could do - in the hands of the authors, the only way such super smart beings could be super smart was through auctorial fiat, allowing the characters to know the entire plot based on three points of data and a couple of outliers. However, I told Mum that being smart did not necessarily mean knowing all the answers, or even getting to the right answer the first time around. It meant keeping an open mind, staying curious, staying aware, and above all never losing your grip on your sense of humour.
Then I told her that even if I could not be the smartest man on the planet, let lone the smartest man on the continent, or even the smartest man in the Uk or the smartest man in Wales, at least I could be the smartest man in the room.
Only if I happened to be alone at the time.
Sweet dreams, smart people. Love you all. See you in the daytime.
