the fountain of youth

i'm a young looking guy. i've been mistaken for looking 5-6 years younger than i actually am.
i know a lot of women would find this a blessing. quite a few guys would as well.
in the future i will join them in this opinion but for now it's a little annoying.

i fear that i'm getting closer and closer to the day that i will be refused entry to a licensed establishment because the bouncer thinks i'm using a fake id even though i am providing my own.

this is going to be especially problematic in a couple of weeks because i'm going to america.

for those of you who don't know, the legal drinking age in australia is 18. in america it's 21.
if i'm still getting asked for id in australia, i'm definitely going to be asked for id in the states. i don't know what the bouncers over there are like but i doubt that they see many australian driver's licences...
let's hope that i have a trustworthy face.

it has made me think a little about how there would be advantages and disadvantages of living forever...

maybe another time...

I haven't forgotten you're here

i'm sorry i haven't posted for a while.

exams



ARGH!!!!

Shoes

i am lucky enough to be heading to america for a holiday in a couple of weeks

what does this have to do with shoes?

i've had these shoes for ages

they've been overseas with me before

but they are about to fall apart

the problem is, i have needed new shoes for quite a while but i can't justify buying new ones now when they will be SOOOO much cheaper when i get to america

i can make it another couple of weeks

Photos

a couple of days ago i received a delivery that i was incredibly excited about.

it came in a small package from hong kong

it was an adaptor that allows me to use my parent's magnificent supply of old, olympus, manual focus lenses.

this is the result:

i have to admit there has been some retouching for contrast and saturation etc.

i'm really happy with the results though.

by the way, they probably look a little better if you click on the pictures and see them full size...

the "chernobyls" of the internet

in the side bar on some people's blogs they have links to their friends blogs. it also says how long ago the blog was updated. there were some there that haven't been updated for over a year and it got me to thinking.

these things we write are going to be here for a long time. they will be here until blogger goes under or they have to cull old blogs (if they ever do).
i'm guessing that people will continue to look at them. one blog will still link to another and on and on until you can find any of the blogs on blogger. i think it would be really cool to be the writer of one of these blogs and have a look back at it. to be reminded of what you thought, what was important, how you wrote, etc.
it's not just blogs either. myspace pages, twitter accounts, youtube accounts, anything that gives an indication of your personality would be amazing to look back on.


maybe it's a bad thing i deleted my myspace....




...



nah

why #twitter scares me

ok so that title is a bit over-dramatic for what i'm gonna say in this blog but i'm just taking a leaf out of the mainstream media's book and using misleading titles to grab people's attention.

i'd like to think that i'm fairly up to date with most of the stuff on the net. i have facebook, i have twitter, i blog and next week i'll hopefully start uploading to youtube as well. i also feel quite safe when using these incredibly accessible "web 2.0" sites.
i keep seeing things in the media, both offline and online, about how we need to be mindful about our internet security. in no way am i saying this is not true. i am definitely not going to be telling people my passwords or bank details! what i'm saying is that i like to have an optimistic view of the world.
i like to think that i am not interesting enough to be targeted by stalkers and not wealthy enough to be targeted by nigerian princes.
...
does that make me average enough to be targeted by identity thieves?
maybe i should think a little more about my security.

I'M GETTING DISTRACTED THOUGH!

i did put twitter in the title of my post for a reason.
i just find it quite funny that facebook has all of these privacy issues and people want to hide all their information whereas the entire basis of twitter's existence is to be able to get your opinion as far and wide as possible. this leads me to the reason that i am "scared" of twitter or more accurately: confused by my involvement with twitter.
i really don't think that anyone wants to hear my thoughts.
i definitely don't do enough interesting things to be followed either.
i'm not particularly funny or witty.
yet people who i don't know want to follow me.

this makes me a little intimidated but that is outweighed by the disproportionate amount of self-worth it provides me.

i get the same feeling when looking at the 'stats' of my blog.
yes, most of my pageviews are from completely unabashed self-promotion, but some of them are from poor, bored people from russia, slovenia or latvia who have stumbled upon my thoughts. i'm sure that as soon as they see that there are no pretty pictures and instead way too many words they disappear but that's not the point! my thoughts are projected all the way around the world to people i will never know and i can't help but feel amazed and humbled to be living in the time and place that i do now.



where in the world was this blog going?

where did it get lost?

i have no idea. i'm sorry that it is such a stream of consciousness, i could probably go back and condense it but i think in exchange for its additional impact, it may lose some of its character.


thank you to the people who read this. you're clearly as bored as i am.

DAM YOU INTERNETS!!! - shake harder boy

why does twitter redirect me to some stupid skootle thing?

it annoys me a lot.

zzzzz (who snores like that?)

you could say that i am a night person.

i would probably say i'm a night person.

with that being said i want to be one of those people who wakes up with the sun and is immediately out of bed.

at the moment i'm not.

i procrastinate from sleeping. i know that sounds ridiculous, why would i procrastinate from doing nothing. i thought it sounded ridiculous as well but i just recently stumbled upon an hypothesis that i quite like.

before i tell you what it is, i'll give you a little bit more background. it is almost every night that i will think "i'm tired, i should go to bed" only to stay up for hours more. most of that time is used browsing the net. i'm a big youtube junkie. i also follow a couple of blogs. if not those then it's generally tv shows or movies that i use to pass the time. through these methods i can do nothing productive for hours on end.

i'm not proud of this, even though it may seem that way. i want to be doing productive things with all of my time but instead i waste it. i really wish that i didn't. i'd much prefer to be able to accept that it was time to sleep and follow through with it. i'd get so much more done.

the realisation i came to was that i procrastinate from sleeping, not because i don't want to sleep, but because i want to extend the period between now and tomorrow. of course i can't actually do this but in my reality i can.

it's all about relativity.

i don't remember my dreams all that often and if i do then they usually disappear from my memory fairly quickly. no matter how much i dream or how much of that dream i remember, the time between me going to sleep and my waking up passes without any passage of time from my perspective.

this is why i procrastinate from sleeping. i don't want to have to face tomorrow because it's a job i don't enjoy or study that i can't be bothered doing.

this will change soon. not only will i be finishing exams in a matter of weeks but i will also hopefully be changing my perspective just ever so slightly.

a more positive outlook

more short term goals

all that other stuff that i keep on telling myself will happen.

i'll get there.

News

For a long time I'd never had much of an interest in the news. I don't know why but I just didn't care enough.

That changed just recently for unknown reasons.

Now that I am slightly more interested in the goings on of the world, I have been able to reach a startling(ly naive?) conclusion.

I think that the news should not have a set time slot. Yes, it should start at the same time every day and things like the weather should have a definite time slot but I think that on slow news days they should finish the show when they have nothing else interesting to say.

It's not just network news either. In fact I find that it's more unpalatable when an entertainment news show (7PM Project in Australia or even my much beloved Colbert Report and The Daily Show for the US) will try to fill their half an hour when there really is nothing news-worthy to talk about.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is great but i really didn't need to see ten minutes worth of penis jokes because all that had happened that weekend was the tweeting of Weiner's weiner.

I had never watched the 7PM Project before tonight but decided to turn it on to aid in my procrastination. I turned it off after 10 minutes because it seemed just a little thrown together and wasn't really taking aim at anything in particular which frustrated me for some reason. I wouldn't have minded if they had some sort of theme flowing through their stories but it really did seem as if they would introduce a topic, throw a handful of comments at it and then move on and that was it. It has been a fairly slow news day though and so I don't blame them for their lack of interesting content, I just think that they should have cut it short and made a punchier, more engaging product.

Unfortunately, I realise that it is just not that easy. TV doesn't work that way. The news doesn't work that way.

To tell you the truth it's probably mostly my fault. I get most of my entertainment from the internet and so I'm used to being entertained 24/7 which is a terrible burden to the entertainment business and especially the advertising companies that fund them.

Nick! You are offering only problems and no solutions! Who do you think you are to stand on your soap box and tear down everyone else's hard work!? Could you produce consistently entertaining content 5 days a week!?

No.

Clearly.

Well I guess I have given something resembling a solution. It's really not great though.

Maybe I can think about it for a bit and get back to you.

I apologise so much for making this post so long. If you read this far I am AMAZED and I would love to give you a present. Let me know if you did and I will try to make it happen :-P

I buy a lot of things online

Today I received a delivery.

I've never owned a bible before. Well actually that's a lie, we were handed out mini New Testaments at school but this is the first time I've ever owned a full bible.

I must say that I am not religious in any way. I don't even have a preference for Christianity over any other religion monotheistic religion. To be honest I don't have a preference for monotheistic religions over any others.

So why do I now own a bible?

I will start off by saying that it's not just any bible.

It's THIS bible:

THIS bible is a 400th anniversary edition of the King James bible. It has the original "olde English" text (including spelling errors).

This still hasn't answered the question as to why an atheist decided to buy a (fairly expensive) bible. This special version of the bible was brought to my attention by my mother. She is just as religious as I am (i.e. not at all) but saw it in the newspaper and so we discussed just how important the King James version of the bible is and was. Not only did it assist in taking Christianity to millions of people and change the face of the world, but it also did a huge amount to the English language. This is the major reason for my decision to buy one (well actually it's a Christmas present, how appropriate). I'd love to read it for the language it contains because there really is some beautiful verse in it.

There are some really interesting stories in it as well which I think might be quite fun to read and it will give me a much better understanding of religion.

I guess my next step is to get my hands on a Koran.

Sorry that I keep writing quite long posts these days...

i wish it didn't say untitled if i don't put a title in

finding new things to do every day is difficult.

especially when one works or is studying.

i think i need a go-to list of extra things to do to keep myself amused on long boring days where i'm lacking motivation and just require a pick-me-up

i can't wait until i have finished these exams so i can get into this full swing.

i want to put pictures in here but i haven't asked any of my friends who appear in them whether it's cool to throw them round the net.

therefore i'm using ones of me and my friend dave whose opinion i don't care about :-P

i'm really looking forward to my new camera because i believe that will facilitate the "new things" project i have bestowed upon myself.

P.S. next week, once i have my camera, does anyone want to muck around and take fun pictures?

it will be fun!

i hope...

I may lie once or twice in this blog...

So this whole doing-new-things thing is kinda tough at the moment. I'm struggling a little bit to think of new things to do to be honest.

I have a couple of ideas but they require a bit more time than I have at the moment, what with study and all...

(but nick you have time to blog....?)

So instead I decided to start small.

I've never taken a camera out with me when going drinking.

Up until I got a big fancy camera to play with, I was never the person with a million photos on facebook.

Now I have lots of photos from friends parties and such but none of just my everyday life.

This is what I will change.

Unfortunately I have just been disconnected from the big fancy camera that I was using but did not own and am waiting patiently for one of my own to be delivered.

I have also realised that big fancy cameras are not the best thing to take out with you to a licensed venue because you look like a bit of a twat. Last night when I went out for a friend's going away drinks I decided that I would take a small point and shoot camera instead.

I still felt kinda odd waving a camera around within a licensed venue so instead restricted my usage to outside.

This was on the ground:

I didn't know what it was when I took the photo.

This was burning in the gutter on Chapel Street:

I don't know why.

Up until last night I had never pretended to be gay to get out of being hit on by a girl.

Ideally the conversation would have gone like this:

Girl: "Hi do either of you have a cigarette?"

Us: "No"

Girl starts small talk, obviously interested

Charlie brings up the "fact" that we are gay very smartly

Girl: "oh"

Exit Girl

It doesn't work as cleanly as that. I think that once she had found out that she wasn't going to get anywhere (though not for the reasons that we provided her) she didn't want to just up and leave because she would have felt that it was rude and that we would have thought of her as homophobic. This meant she stayed chatting to us for at least 45 minutes about how hard it must be to be gay in this society and how it still hasn't become completely accepted, etc.

Charlie and I didn't break character once.

She never suspected a thing

We'd like to thank our parents, friends and the academy.

Sorry Clare Barnes but I'm not going to find you on facebook like I promised.

P.P.P.S. Just ordered one of these. So some of my upcoming "new-ness" may be camera-related...

Blogcrastination to Blogductivity

This may need some explanation...

Last night up I caught up with my sister (Mel) and her boyfriend (Jarrah). We chatted about a lot of things, what they are up to, what I'm up to, what our plans are for the next short while, life aspirations, etc.

After a while I came across the realisation that I had been getting bored recently and how I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. Jarrah came up with a brilliant proposal. He suggested that i should just try and do something new every day. Not necessarily something huge, just something different to the day before. It could even be something as small as taking a route to work or uni that I've never taken before.

Hopefully this will lead to increasing levels of innovation in my search for "new" tasks...

In short I'm going to try and trick myself into exploring more, something that I've wanted to do for a while.

I liked this idea. I liked it a lot...

...so i started slow.

I've been struggling to do my study for uni at the moment.

I'm behind in assignments and general study and I really need to get back on track. Studying at home is sucking a little bit of life out of me and I'm finding it difficult to be productive in such a familiar setting so I decided to try something different.

Not very exciting, I just went down to my local library and studied there instead but I got stuff done.

This is a good feeling for me. I feel like I have found a way to manage my problems with procrastination. I want to keep doing new things and finding out if it leads me in new and interesting directions.

I don't know how often I will be updating this (knowing me it will not be everyday) but I'm going to see if I can keep this cognitive expansion trucking...

P.S. How many times have I restarted this blog?

P.P.S. If anyone actually reads this, feel free to offer suggestions of things for me to try that may be a little more exciting than going to a library.....