Dec. 22nd, 2005

trixtah: (Default)
Here's an amusing "year in 10 bullet points" generator.

And here are my results:

My year in bullet points: 2005

  • Wasted money on paying off some debt.

  • Went to Hawaii and NZ. Came home.

  • Lightened load on national debt. No thank you note.

  • Stayed out of family feuds.

  • Memory of outstanding meal at Dijon's Restaurant in Canberra all but eclipsed by appalling swill at some crappy pie shop.

  • Lusted after Jodhi May. No result.

  • Anger management issues severely tested by John Howard, followed closely by G.W. Bush.

  • Voted for Greens. Better luck next time.

  • Lied in a quiz about my weight. (did not! I do weigh exactly the same as I did at the beginning of the year)

  • This year's resolution: to not make any resolutions.

  • Next year's resolution: try again.
trixtah: (Default)
Eee! I have now officially achieved an Australian Diploma of Project Management. So, there you go, I can officially manage, er, projects. Mobile email being the one that is on the horizon at present - it looks like I've won that argument at work. Will wonders never cease!

Also on the quasi-academic front, here's an interesting post from Cognitive Daily on high IQ vs self-discipline and their impacts on academic achievement. I for one can certainly vouch for the fact that the most important aspect is self-discipline. I am completely certain I have enough native intelligence for qualifying at the doctoral level, but I have fuck-all self-discipline, thus no university qualifications whatsoever. I amaze myself that I turn up for work every day, although I at least get paid to do so.

The only reason I got through school is that I read very fast, retain what I read, and have the happy ability to splurt most of it back in 2-3 hour exams. But the problem with that (other than my never learning how to study) was that my comprehension of a subject was in exact proportion to the interest of the textbooks. No one has yet written an interesting maths textbook, thus my indifferent (although still passing - I have no problem with mathematical concepts) results with that in school. I did attend a bloody good "Intro to Calculus" course at university, and got a B there. But they wrote their own course material.

Luckily, I don't seem to have a metabolism that is particularly susceptible to drugs, or else I'm sure I'd be instant addict material (not that I don't enjoy taking certain drugs, but I don't seem to have the kind of psychology/system that forms dependencies easily - I can take or leave any drug - which means, fortuitously, that I'm just lazy rather than addicted).

Still, there's an interesting note in the article that self-discipline is formed at an early age: Walter Mischel and colleagues found in the 1980s that 4-year-olds’ ability to delay gratification (for example, to wait a few minutes for two cookies instead of taking one cookie right away) was predictive of academic achievement a decade later.

I'm sure I would have failed at the two cookie test as well. So, constitution (sorry, "genetics" - I'm thinking homeopathically) or environment? I tend believe it's the former myself, although my mother works her arse off. My father was apparently a sailor, though. We know what they're like. :-)

Anyway, on a completely unrelated but somewhat useful topic, here's a cool method for creating one-off email addresses for use with your regular Gmail account. Excellent for those sites that demand registration for some arcane reason, but you aren't too confident of their ability to keep their mailing lists to themselves.

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Trixtah

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