about a year and a half ago I posted a list of 100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About…. I wrote the list when I was in a more active phase of my DIY Masters, a very slowly ongoing project which I can say has led to many good things in my life even if I haven’t yet earnt and given myself a DIY degree. Anyway, the list had a lot of random skills and activities which ranged from learning how to cook family recipes to more advanced work skills.

A couple of friends started to write their own lists and a couple even made it up to 100. Recently Pete Hindle, returned to his list of 50 things and updated it with comments as to what had been achieved and his current thoughts on his list. Pete almost died and so has a) a really good excuse for not finishing things on his list b) his life has changed drastically which definitely changed his opinion about some of his learning items. It will be interesting to see if the life changes I’ve gone through (finally meeting a good man, getting a job, getting another job, travelling away from Berlin a lot) have affected how I feel about items on my list.

100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About… Updated!

1. Botany
   Hmmm. I haven’t yet learnt to identify plants using a taxonomy. So. No.
2. A musical instrument: guitar or cello
   Let’s just say that 360 days ago I was given a beautiful guitar and can barely play 3 chords. So this learning task is active, but moving slowly. Actually taking lessons might be the next step.
3. Haircutting
   I can cut boys’ hair if they have some curl to hide the mistakes. The mistakes aren’t as often or severe as they used to be. But I haven’t learnt any fancy techniques (yet).
4. How to make a sponge cake
   Really, why would I make a sponge when there are so many other amazing cakes to bake out there? Not Yet.
5. How to maintain my bicycle
   In general I’m better at working with bikes thanks to a couple of sessions at Regenbogen Fabrik’s bike workshop. But my bike in Berlin is not currently maintained – sadly the type of maintenance I know won’t make it better, it will just keep it existing for longer.
6. How to make bagels
   Nope. One day, when I’m making brunch for people. I do finally have a recipe I want to use.
7. Throat Singing
   Hah. I find the idea of throat singing fascinating, but I don’t want to learn it that much. Let’s just say I may have still wanted to impress my ex at this point.
8. Bookbinding
   Not yet. I don’t have anything I want to bind at the moment, and it’s pretty easy to get amazing notebooks in Berlin.
9. Basic Arabic
   Nada. But my amazing new flatmate is doing Islamic studies and she can write essays in Arabic.  I know who I’m going to ask for help.
10. How to make better Karelian pies
    I’ve not made a Karelian pie for ages. I think that visiting friends in Finland and buying Karelian pies has to be higher priority than making my own… I’m getting really good at making Spinach pancakes, one of my other Finnish food desires.

    (more…)

the ideas behind urbicande counter cities with characters such as jules verne

the short story – adieu paris – that led me to helsinki

and the books of neal stephenson, particularly anathem (in which a character named jules verne floats through space)

implementation v you v posters from chris

from on .

My latest vodcast – as recorded on May 29th, 2009.

I only just realised that I could have included links to bands, projects and friends using the amazing power of titles.

Oh well.

My friend Marc, is the writer behind http://www.un-understand.co.uk.
The Australian band I mentioned was Brillig http://www.brillig.com.au.
And my friend Andy Gibson http://sociability.org.uk is the founder of Mindapples http://mindapples.org!

As part of my 100 Things I Want To Learn list I’ve made my first video blog post. I learnt how to export from iMovie and how to wait patiently while videos compress, get uploaded and then converted by Vimeo. So I guess I did learn more about 64. Video recording and editing to the level required for good vodcasting

from on .

Self-centered personal blogging ahoy!

I’m playing with my gifted video camera and the idea of different levels of honesty, intimacy and immediacy afforded by edited text and unedited video.

Also, I’m in the middle of trying to work out what happens next in my crazy life. Writing hasn’t worked so far. Maybe talking to an inanimate object will help?

So anyway the challenge is to know (with more certainty) by August, what I do next in my life. I’m not sure if I make much sense in the video.

I’m not sure what people’s minds were like before this whole internet thing came along, but one of the results of growing up alongside the internet and web is that I notice and want to record links between everything I learn and hear.

A slightly trivial example is that I was listening to an In Our Time podcast on the history of Heat the other day and my immediate response was “XKCD!”

There have been moments when the potential world of knowledge seems to concurrently shrink and expand as I make connections between seemingly disparate topics such as a war in Congo being related to minerals running out. A connection is made, but it opens up so many more questions and things to learn.

Other people are thinking this way and are developing tools with which to record these connections. We can connect the people we know in networked graphs and record similarities between musical artists. We can draw mindmaps on pieces of paper, or represent them visually through software like The Brain or connect topics with tags as on delicious.

But how can we make and represent these connections in the real world?

When I meet a person who has a similar interest to someone I already know, I immediately want to introduce them so that they can benefit from their ideas.

That’s one way of making a connection, but besides that introduction being recorded by electronic social media such as Facebook how could these connections (and their history) be recorded and ‘tagged’ physically?

I guess part of this thought comes from a fear/worry that if the internet suddenly ceased to exist I would have no connection to the 450+ people I am connected to on Facebook.

If that situation occurred, would I really care? Are all relationships meaningful enough to be recorded in the real world?

Should I tie thousands of kilometres of string to the people I care about and am interested in, or do I take a photo? Should I send 471 postcards a day letting people know my status, and would they send a postcard back?

To that end, for 150 Things I’m thinking a lot about making tangible tokens as a way of recording the relationships I have with people.

Yesterday I was the angriest and crankiest I’ve been in recent memory.

Seriously, it’s fortunate that I live alone otherwise I’d probably be up for manslaughter charges as a result of me destroying anyone who crossed my path earlier in the day.

For a young woman who is trying to increase the amount of happiness and joy in her daily life and making an attempt to spread positive feelings to the world at large – yesterday did not bring a good mental space at all.

You know what, I’m beginning to [re]learn that holding back from discussing issues for the sake of avoiding potential conflict is not always a good thing – even if it maintains a sense of order at the time. Those bits of frustration with the world at large and people nearby just build up and get stored away around one’s shoulders – kind of like the hump on a camel’s back. Of course – a camel’s hump has a positive moisture and fat storage purpose – but still, the irritation storage hump looks just as ungainly.

Oh! I admit that there was a whole lot more at work in yesterday’s hideousness than just held back conflict, boys of course, too much work lately and not enough sleep or good things like gardening and creating. I hold myself to some ridiculously stupid standards. And there’s always there’s the frustration that ‘most everyone else in the world is letting things get more fucked up and the few who make the effort are going to be left in the rubble with nothing to show for their lives. All of those things go into humps of their own – and not the sexy lady lump kind.

Eventually I guess you just have days when there’s too much stuff that you’re carrying around – and you just have to give into the weight and sleep the day away.

Luckily, [as this metaphor is getting kind of tired] – some of the particular straws that broke The Camel of Peace and Serenity’s back yesterday have been picked up and swept away. And you know what – The Camel of Peace and Serenity ultimately shouldn’t be burdened with a hump of negativeness, if it’s going to stockpile anything, it’s going to stockpile more goodness.

In a move almost as embarrassingly bad as crying out a previous lover’s name whilst shagging someone else, I accidentally wrote Ratbag Games on the delivery instructions for my new Nintendo DS Lite.

I have to admit that despite working in the games industry – I don’t really play games that often. Though, working on the principle that the DS has converted a lot of non-gamers to addicts I thought it might be a worthwhile tax deduction. But the DS isn’t just for games as I’ll be getting the web browser eventually, and one of those brain training types of games as well as Animal Crossing.

Luckily Nintendo industrial design is almost in the same league as Apple – so my shiny black DS will sit very happily alongside my iPod and presumably a black MacBook sometime in the future.

I’m no economist. I’m not a business person either. I’m just a modern day hippie who consumes and thinks about how she consumes. So, here are some thoughts about current responses to managing climate change:

Thought One:
Moving to more efficient and less polluting energy sources, adding in carbon dioxide emission taxes / trading etc will increase energy costs. I understand that increased energy costs will affect prices of everything leading to inflation and unemployment. But quite frankly, wouldn’t slightly increased energy costs help reduce energy use?

I don’t want to be harsh, but in general, people don’t seem to recognise how climate change will affect their future, they primarily care about how they will finance their futures. If mindlessly using electricity and gasoline has no immediate financial burden, consumers are unlikely to change their behaviour. Whereas, if energy were more expensive, wouldn’t consumers (both industrial and individual) be forced to use it more efficiently?

Thought Two:
Why on earth is the government not leading the momentum on increased standards for efficiency and reuse in design and manufacturing? For example, if there are requirements that by 2015 all white goods (fridges, washing machines, airconditioners etc) sold in Australia have to meet stringent efficiency requirements, won’t manufacturers produce such products leaving the consumers with no alternative but to just buy the device they prefer? And shouldn’t such standards require demonstration of closed loop recycling at the end of the product life time?

Thought Three:
Is it possible to blanket broadcast An Inconvenient Truth on all networks at once? Either people will watch the best demonstration of how f*&^%d we all are or they’ll switch off their TVs and spend time doing something else.

[see #19 of The List]

I haven’t had a chance to see and touch any howies® clothing in the physical world, but I’ve been returning to the website for about a year now. Not only do they make cool, practical clothing, but they have cool ideas that they actually act on.

One day I will earn the Pound and I will go to Wales and I buy something from howies®.