Holizz versus the Web

In this post I will be entirely self-indulgant and tell you all about what I’ve been up to in the past few months. Sorry if it’s all over the place, but I have a lot to say, and I’ll start trying to write coherently after this post.

Well, not much happened until the middle of August, when I was invited camping in Eskdale with Sammy, Adam, Jenny, Katie, and Laura. It was good fun, and I enjoyed it very much. Climbing up a mountain (some contest that it was a hill, but those people didn’t walk up it) almost made up for the fact that I didn’t swim for five consecutive days.

That brings me onto the next, or possibly the previous item: I now swim every day. Bar that trip, the last time I missed swimming was the 26th of June.

A week and a half after the camping trip, I went to Cockermouth with Davina for three nights. Yes, nearing university time everything started to get busy. It was annoying that all the fun stuff was so clustered at the end of the holidays.

Then on the 3rd of September, Niall moved in. Soon after we had Internet. It took a lot of getting used to again. After two months of visiting the labs for Internet, it was so nice.

On the 10th Will turned up. It was good to see him again.

My housemates all turned up around that time. It took getting used to having other people in the house, but it is a good thing to have company.

The day after Will arrived, Scott Sigler released the first episode of Ancestor, his latest podio book. It didn’t grab me like EarthCore did.

On the 20th I went to my first Japanese lesson at Bradford College. I like the language, as I’d established when I started reading Japanese for Busy People. As it turns out, this is the course text. So I ordered the Kana version from Amazon, because I’m ambitious (I can already read and write most of Hiragana - and I’m quite far through the book so I need to keep myself occupied, lest I become complacant).

On the 22nd, it was the Sports and Societies fair down in the basement. I sat and stood at the Cult TV stand for most of it. I talked to people, got them to sign up to the mailing list, discussed anime with them. More on my socialisation later.

The sports and societies I attend at the moment are:

• Cult TV
• Archery
• Katana Ju-Jitsu (Ju-Jitsu with Kobudo)

I’m not officially a member of any yet. But I plan on joining them all. It’s gonna be spendy. Athletics Association membership, World Ju-Jitsu Federation membership and insurance, gi. That’s another thing: my loan hasn’t come through yet. I’m living on my overdraft at the moment. I say living, but most of my money goes on books.

Cult TV is as fun as ever.

Archery is surprisingly fun considering that it’s shooting pointy things with twangy things into big unbreakable things.

Ju-Jitsu is very fun. It was good on Wednesday, but today it was even better. We learnt to break-fall and then we got straight into throwing each other. I really like it. I did kind of have my heart set on Aikido, but Ju-Jitsu seems to be just as good and it’s closer. Self-defense was also something I wanted out of a martial art (before I found out how fun it is); I think Ju-Jitsu is very good for that. Of course I doubt I’ll get a chance to use it any time soon (not that that’s a problem) but it seems like it would be effective. One of the first things we learnt was how to get out of a strangle hold from the front and then from the back. In fact my favourite skit we’ve learnt so far starts with a strangle hold and ends with the attacker on the floor with the victim’s knee on the attacker’s neck and their arm in an easy but painful lock.

We started uni last week. It should be fun, and challenging. I already have an issue I want to bring up at the SSLC on Monday.

That’s about the sum of my holiday from blogging.

Now on to today: I woke up at 8:40am, went swimming at 9, did archery from 10 till 12, did Ju-Jitsu from 12 till 2. And that may well become a weekly occurrance.

I think I’ve developed. Last year I barely did any exercise. The year before last I was very shy. Now look at me: I’m barely recognisable. I swim every day, and do Archery and Ju-Jitsu twice a week. I speak to strangers.

Yesterday I upgraded from Firefox 1.0.6-5 in Debian to 1.5 Beta 1. It has many nice features including many nice UE enhansements and support for some new technology like <canvas> and SVG. Of all my old extensions only Hit-a-Hint had to be manually upgraded and only Adblock is slightly broken.

I’ve been listening to lots of podcasts lately. I thought I’d share with you the main ones that I listen to regularly:

• Daily Source Code - Adam Curry (yes, the famous one) talks about podcasting, mainly. It’s quite autobiographical.
• The Dawn and Drew Show - Dawn Miceli and Drew Domkus, professional podcasters, talk about all sorts from the difference between Jesus and zombies, to how being born is like going down on your mum. It’s very amusing.
• Addicted to Race - Jen Chau and Carmen Van Kerckhove talk about anything relevant to mixed-race identity. I know plenty about other cultures thanks to Davina, but I must admit I’m very naïve about mixed-race issues.

For completeness, I’d like to tell you what I’m reading at the moment:

• AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis
• Usability Engineering
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools
• The Design of Everyday Things
• And I’ve just recently finished Pure Trance

Whoa. That was very long and very all-over-the-place but it could have happened no other way. I promise I’ll try not to be as terrible next time.