11 days since the celebration of my birth, and it has pretty much passed me by quietly enough for once. 26 years old and approximately $15 grand in collective debt. I need to work on this. I might buy a house.

After a brief absence from training, I'm back again, ready and eager to continue, except for tonight where I was too tired. I woke up tired. Never a good sign. I'm tired enough that I've been pretty much just sitting here staring at the screen all night. But I digress. Monday and Thursday, Jishukan Ryu Jujitsu (or just "Jishukan"), which I've been doing for about a month. Tuesday is Iaido and Jodo, which I've only tried once, but I liked it enough that I want to try it some more. Training is at the Budokan Academy, with Sensei Ramon Lawrence.

Michele is just about to complete an 8 week Yoga course, which she found was quite good. Instead of moving on to the next, more advanced class, she is redoing the course when it starts in July, and I'll be joining her. From what I understand, in addition to increasing flexibility, it's also a very good cardio workout - something that I really need to work on. I think this course will nicely complement my other training. Sure, that means 4 nights a week at training, but even though it sounds a little daunting, I don't think it's a bad thing. I still want to try and be active outside those training sessions though, and continue riding, etc.

Once I get all that sorted out, there's only my diet left to sort out :P

Since Friday, I've rediscovered the joys of coffee. For 2 years, the only coffee readily available was the cheap nasty coffee available at the fine establishment of MYO. Continued exposure to that weaned me off the coffee, and I have since been coffee deprived. But no longer! Or am I? I ran out of coffee today, so I went to purchase some more. I do not like my purchase. It does not smell like fresh coffee, rather is smells like not-so-fresh coffee. Its smell is not pleasing to me. Neither is its taste.

I am a broken man. Coffee has broken me again.

Birthdays suck. Not because they're like wrong or boring or dull or something, but because people want to get you presents. Not that the presents aren't unwelcome or anything - in fact, I demand lots of expensive cool gifts and stuff. Therein lies the problem - out of lack of inspiration or whatever on their part, people ask me what I would like. The problem with this is that either I don't know, or I can only think about the few things that I do want or need.

These wants and needs can be broken down into four categories: Things that I need; Things that I want but wouldn't ask other people to buy for me; Really expensive stuff that noone, possibly including me, is actually going to buy unless they win lotto or are feeling extremely generous (like a new couch); Everything else. These categories are usually filled with pretty boring crap, like new jeans or shoes, a couple of dvd's that aren't released yet, some games, and maybe some kitchenware that everybody has already said that they're not going to get me (which is a pretty personal choice anyway - god damn, you'd think that someone who spends so little time in the kitchen wouldn't be so picky, would you?). So that just about leaves jeans and shoes, and maybe those games.

The problem with this is that I think about all those things that I want, and go "Hey, I want some jeans and shoes!". So in the last week I've bought myself a pair of new shoes and jeans, which admittedly are very nice indeed. And I picked up those games while I was at it. To spell it out: if I want something, I usually go out and get it for myself anyway; and if you want to get me something for my birthday, it's best not to ask me what I want because I will work it out then go buy it for myself anyway.

Maybe this might help

I just went to take a look at my brothers website, and realiased that the site layout he based mine on (we sketched the layout for this together, but he had the initial inspiration) is almost exactly the same as his site. Sure, mine is cooler and stuff, but damn. Then again, his doesn't use pure CSS for layout, so he can suck my chocolate salty balls.

Interesting article on the state of computer science graduates. I pretty much agree with most of what he's saying.

Being back at an educational institution with some 'real world' perspective, it's somewhat frustrating to enounter problems with something as simple as saying "Just type in 'blah...'". "No, okay, fine. Press these keys: 'b', 'l', 'a', nonononono you fool 'b'! Lather, rinse, repeat. Of course, you expect to get that out in the 'real world' from people who don't have the 'benefit' of 'education', but not from those that are lucky enough to be 'educated'. If people are unable to understand or at least just follow simple instructions, then how are they expected to do anything more complicated, like learn something?

Part of the problem is that people are too used to having answers handed to them on a plate all the time. They're lost when it comes to thinking for themselves. In that respect, education should be about teaching people how to learn. I think another aspect of the problem, maybe something that contributes to the above problem, is that people don't understand that they get out of something what they put into it. I see this all the time, and now that I understand it I see it in my past self. You have to wonder, why do people go to uni if all they do is socialise, then complain when they fail to understand anything. I think the problem there is that they can't understand that you get out what you put in because they have always had the answers handed to them. I think that they won't understand until they're thrown into a situation where they have to start coming up with the answers themselves.

To paraphrase someone from Slashdot, the problem here is that the education system is being tailored to make it "equal for all", meaning that it's becoming so substandard that anyone can pass, so they don't get "discriminated" against by being "held back". A system like that positively encourages someone to demand the answer to be handed to them, simply because it has to cater to the lowest common denominator. Learning is by rote, not by understanding, and even then you're given every opportunity to have the answer given to you rather than working it out for yourself.

Unfortunately, I don't think a university environment is the place to learn this.

New site design! Woohoo! I'm trying to use CSS properly, and I think this site layout is a fairly good attempt at that. There's a whole bunch of nifty things that you can do with CSS, and every time I play with it I learn more about it. It's very useful.

I've been at the new job for a week now. The first week started slowly, and I felt a bit lost for a while, but I suspect some of that was due to the cold that I managed to pick up right before I started. Once I started to feel better work seemed a little better too. At least now I can think about the new environment instead of just experiencing it. I have a few ideas about what I want to achieve in the short term, and am starting to think about long term objectives (although it's *way* too early to have anything concrete there).

One of the nice things that work does is provide the tech staff with a Palm Tungsten-T3. Kinda makes my Sony Ericsson P900 a bit useless. I think in general, if you want a decent PDA, then the Palm based devices are the way to go. Out of those, I think the Sony Clie's are the way to go. They are very shiny and sexy looking. Not that I'm unhappy with my T3 or p900...