Self Publishing and Bruce...

Soon I will be gripping a throttle and motoring through town on my very own motorcycle. Over the last few weeks I took a basic handling course ( required in NZ but also very helpful to build my confidence handling a bike ), studied the road code, nailed the written test to acquire a learners license then bought a bike!

I'm a fan of the classic looking bikes and found a fun Yamaha SRV 250 that was in need of a home! I'm hoping to pick it up from the shop tomorrow and will post photos asap.

I've also picked up my investigations into Self Publishing and it seems likw Lulu is a good option for a first timer such as myself. Now I just have to finish my manuscript!

Too accepting?

I've been thinking about many things lately, one of them has been about acceptance. More often than not I feel that there are situations where you might say to yourself "well, that's the way it is" and go about your business accepting what's happened while deep down inside there is a primal voice screaming at you to stop being so damn complacent!

Various discussions with others reveals that this is not uncommon and part of the problem is that there is no other option than to accept what has happened when, in fact, digging deeper there are! Social red tape is what prevents us from acting on our initial instinct.

We, socially, must agree to accept the grey area as standard and our views must inevitably reflect those of our social surrounding. We learn to follow law, religion, house rules and now the social implication of possibly, maybe, offending someone for a split moment leads to more time being wasted 'pussy footing' around the delicacies of our culture.

We have become a culture of 'push overs'.

What if, for once, you decided to head down the other road and question something that doesn't seem right? This doesn't mean you need to know the answer, or even force a new solution on the social body, it only means that you get to exercise your freedom to dig deep and respond to those primal pangs. It's instinct, and learning to listen to it.

Being aware and allowing yourself to be comfortable with an outcome leads to increased productivity and personally ( selfishly? ) feels self fulfilling.

Try it.

That Slippery Slope

I'm standing at the top of a precipice staring down a slippery slope. Much of my day is spent dealing with 'cutting edge' visual effects which in layman's terms means very non-realtime computer graphics. Granted, the size of the data sets we are dealing with would bring hundreds of PS3's to their knees ( one would think, this hasn't been tested - yet... ) but having spent a few years toying within the realm of highly optimized game code ( and the extremely intelligent developers ) my mind wanders.

I miss the chance of being able to rapidly prototype a dynamic simulation of some sort without having to wrap it up inside an archaic plugin architecture and bound by a badly designed API. This is how many of the tools and solutions are produced at work, duct taped to a 3rd party application where most time is spent in glue code. At home though I have no excuse ( except that nagging feeling that, if I spend all day at work on a computer why should I bother doing the same thing at home? we'll come to this later ) and am now slowly constructing what I would consider a slightly soft design for a small framework that I'd like to implement that would allow me to investigate some 'hunches' I've had for a while.

Though not a game engine, for now, my focus is more towards that as a guideline vs. an interactive application such as Maya or Houdini. It's not a project that should consume my time, rather a solution to help me quickly prototype ideas that may lead to further investigation. I'd like it to be scalable, threaded, possibly parallel and have the ability to harness the latest hardware acceleration. If possible I'm hoping to carve off afternoons here and there, as if it was my own self inflicted google project, rather than cutting into my evenings. More than just an experiment I'd rather it be seen as educational as I'm sure there will be elements I've never encountered before, which is all a part of my master plan ( a post for later ).

Understanding Nutrition

It sounds like something someone would say if you met them on the streets of LA, "I've just been to see my nutritionist..." and I never imagined visiting one myself. I watch what I eat - low fat this and not much salt that, though I only glance at the articles I'm aware their are various diets and although I don't adhere to just one I understand the principles.

Fat in = fat. Gotcha.

Well, maybe not. You see, a good friend was raving about this fellow he was seeing for his back. "I spent 6 months traveling the world and found someone who helped and he's here, in Wellington!" I sounded like a good recommendation and a few other acquaintances had been to see the very same person and were still standing upright. Maybe this lone ranger might help!

For what reason do you need to see this person, you might be asking? Two things, first - Arthritis, I've had it for some time, picked it up when I was young ( probably from playing with the girls on the swings ) and it's hung around. Generally it's quiet but every now and then it rears its ugly head - usually after a good down poor or when I decide it might be a good idea to kick a ball around, possibly karma. Second - I sit inside all day, in front of a computer, with a daily exercise routine of getting up to go to the toilet or an impromptu game of foosball when the timing is right. After 12 years of this my system seems to have a skewed impression of gravity and my posture could be compared to a hundred year old yak. My previous year off traveling opened my eyes to a whole new world of walking, being outside, and the way you feel after gleefully exhausting yourself while traipsing around monuments and not staring at screens.

I missed it.

I booked myself in and dragged this slightly mushy bag of human into the fellows office the next day.

What I learned, besides the fact that Scooters are indeed safer than Motorbikes ( but I'm still going to get a bike ) is that what I thought I knew about what I was eating was in fact, wrong. And what others were telling me about what I should be eating was even worse - a LIE!

As it turns out ( and what I had suspected ) is being inside, immobile and with no sun is bad. Compounded by the fact Arthritis usually leads to depleted Vitamin D I was in a sorry state. Step 1, more Vitamin D ( or, leave work and head to the country which would be an ideal step 1 ). Apparently it's not that simple, I could chuck all the Vitamin D down my gob as much as I'd like but my current diet would just help it shoot straight through my system and out the front door, so to speak. Without batting an eyelid and looking at me square in the face my new friend now instructed me to eat more fat. I'm not too sure how it looked to him, but I imagine if there were a soundtrack to my life ( I'll leave that for another post ) you would have heard the record scratch.

After he picked me off the floor and I kissed him ( real butter, on my vegetables! and whole milk! ) he explained. Vitamin D is a fat soluble Vitamin, it needs fat in your system to help the body with absorption ( and not just D! ) - if your body is missing the right level of fat the Vitamin's effect is limited. Interesting. And after spending a few minutes discussing my diet it became very apparent that as I've been swayed by numerous sources into thinking that limiting my fat intake is a good thing, it's rare that the fat levels in my body are high enough to be effective. Interestingly enough, this is a by product of our society and what we perceive is correct along with unscrupulous practices by the dairy industry.

Within the discussion that evolved from this new insight a new rule as to how to pick and choose food to eat has surfaced,

"If your grandmother hasn't heard of it, don't eat it."

ie. If it's been scientifically manufactured within the last 20 years it's probably not as good for you as what your grandparents would have eaten.

It seems so logical, and straight forward but like a guru my nutritionist has led me down a path of understanding and enlightenment. I was sold!

I've begun taking progress photos and will try and post some more findings as the weeks progress. I'm sure these changes take time, but I'm going for long term investment at this point.