Nerves, Nostalgia and Neat Stuff

The word of the week is beneficence. 

November 26 - Ears and birthdays

Today was a milestone… a little early. As my sister was leaving for Calgary tomorrow, my family went out today to celebrate my father's 65th birthday. It's been a long road getting to this point, to where both my parents have reached retirement age and their pensions have kicked in… which means I no longer really have to worry about them and can fully focus on my own life, such as it is.

So it was a happy day; we went out to John's Place for lunch and had a great time sitting in one of the rear booths, chatting happily about the past and looking forward to the future. Even though it's very uncertain as to what my sister and I will be doing job-wise right now, we both feel very blessed to still have our two wonderful parents around and to have them both now come fully into their retirement years.

But I almost missed the lunch: for the first time in my life, I managed to get water stuck in both of my ears during my shower this morning. How weird is that? I managed to clear my left ear, but my right remained stubbornly plugged… and it was bad enough that I spent most of my morning sitting at the walk-in clinic down the street. Fortunately the doctor there was able to clear it up easily( if noisily )and said that I was right to come in, as I'd never have been able to unplug it on my own.

I was all ears after that.

November 27 - The Hobbit Production Videos

Only a little over two weeks until December 14th, when the first part of the Hobbit Trilogy( wow! )premieres!

I've started re-reading The Hobbit this week; it's been years since I last sat down with the book and the feeling of wonder I had when I first read it as a child is still fresh as I let the words run past on the page.

The movie looks to be utterly fantastic, as it should: Peter Jackson has applied all he learned on the LOTR movies to The Hobbit and I expect to sit in blissful enchantment throughout each of the films. I've been following along on the production videos since they first appeared and what's on the screen looks truly incredible:

November 28 - Illusionary cough?

Somehow this week, I've developed a nervous cough. I've never had one before.

My dad did as well, on and off, a few years ago. I firmly believe it's due to stress, which is unsurprising given the lack of success I've had in landing a job for the last half of this year. 

My research so far has told me that it's psychosomatic more than anything else; if I don't think about the cough, I generally don’t. The tightness in my chest only appears when I'm thinking about things like jobs or money or suchlike that causes my breathing to constrict. 

It's frustrating and embarrassing as it makes talking to people a halting process as I try not to wheeze and cough in their faces… just ordering a tea at Moka House today, I sounded like I was asthmatic. I've been concentrating on breathing exercises, staying calm and trying hard to maintain a positive perspective as I plug away at getting an employer to notice me. Just one will do, at this point and I hope that when I do get a call for an interview that this blasted wheeze will be a distant memory of yet another fading source of stress.

To distract myself, I found this neat video of illusory anamorphic drawings - the very same type as those used in forced-perspective chalk sidewalk drawings. Watch the video and be amazed as your eyes are fooled by the simple interplay of colour and light:

November 29 - Giant Robots, for sale?

Robotech was my undoing; ever since I first saw a Veritech fighter transform into a giant mecha, I've wanted a giant robot of my very own. Heck, I'd have settled for one of the destroids, the non-transformable Macross battle units - stomping around in something that big would have been just fine in my adolescent books. But Robotech was fiction, trapped on the screen and in people's imaginations.

But the dreams inspired more than a few people to think about making giant robots a reality. Some of them actually came through with it, albeit twenty-five years after the fact and on a much smaller scale. Kogoro Kurata, Japanese maker of strange machines, is selling ride-in mechanical monsters starting at $1.3 million USD, but you'll need to pay extra for the weapons and cup holder:

Also pretty neat: you can even custom-design a unit in 3D using their website too! If it could get up to a decent top speed with legs and do a few cool diving moves like it was dodging missiles, I'd find a way to come up with the $1.3 million as fast as I could. One can just imagine what an airsoft or paintball tourney with a few of these things would be like!

November 30 - Joy in my life?

While I was ruminating on a lot of things this week, a thought struck me that I'd not had before:

What about joy? Do I have any in my life?

It's not as easy an answer as you think. Happiness is not joy, nor is it anywhere near contentment. When I think about the things I like to do and that make me happy… there's not an abundance of them. Writing, obviously, is up there, as is spending time with my family and friends. But beyond that, things get a little murky… I don't get all sparkly walking on a beach, or admiring artwork, or even watching the sun come out from behind the clouds. It's astonishing to think about it, because the nearest thing I can come up with, feelings-wise, is contentment or amusement.

Not joy, though.

I believe it's because I do a lot of thinking, all the time, and tend to analyze things without regard for their innate nature. Sun on the water, the dance of flowers in the wind… it's a rare thing that makes me break out in a smile and to be honest, I haven't really tried to catalogue them; that seems petty, somehow. All the same, it's a blind spot of mine that bears watching, if only because I'd like to be blindsided by joy one of these days and delight in the unexpected feeling as it happens. 

Soon, I hope.

December 1 - Treehouses

If I could just find the perfect piece of land around here with a solid tree on it, I'd build a treehouse in a heartbeat. A nice, solid place to live with insulation, windows and hopefully a good view.

It's not too much to ask, really. Conventional homes aren't nearly as fun as a treehouse, right?

But it's more than nailing a few boards in a tree and putting a tarp over them; that looks like crap and is dangerous in so many ways. Not to mention illegal. Where does one start, though?

Why not check out How To Build A Treehouse?

It's a tidy little site and reminds me a lot of the books I found on treehouses when I was a kid, decades ago: simple and straightforward. Perhaps it won't let you build a 1,000 sq-ft condo in the nearest Redwood tree, but it's as good a place as I've seen to nail down some of the facts about treehouses - pun intended. Oh, to dream…

 

December 2 - Adios, Amiga?

After years of hauling it around and barely using it, I decided today to put my Amiga 2000 up for sale… and boy, there's a LOT of stuff that goes along with it! Hundreds of diskettes, dozens of boxed games, manuals… I hope that someone out there will appreciate what a bargain the lot really is.

You can't hear the floppy drives click in this picture...

 

As painful as it is for me to admit, there's no point in keeping the Amiga any longer. Technology has moved on in leaps and bounds since the early 1990's and the games no longer appeal to me in any way save the faintest tinge of nostalgia. In point of fact, I know that I can install an emulator on my PC or even my Android tablet and run any one of hundreds of Amiga games, if I wished. Emulators like Amiga Forever can give me my fix if I so desire, for a nominal fee. But right now, I simply desire to clear some space, hopefully make a little cash and let someone else bask in the ceaseless click of the floppy drives as the beige beast of the Amiga spins up its 200mb hard drive and Workbench kicks into operation. The feeling of nostalgia was strong as I fiddled around with the system today and got it ready for auction… knowing that the days when it was my primary computer were far less complicated than the life I am living now, in many ways. Still, change is inevitable and twenty years ago, my Amiga was in its glory.

We'll see by this time next week if anyone out there wants to get a little of that back again.

Last week of November: not one to remember. First days of December: more memorable, I hope. Less waiting for a call and more being proactive, hunting down companies I'd like to work for and presenting myself to them in person, instead of on paper. Will Santa bring me the one thing I wish for this year: a job? We shall see!