Messages

1531

Apple Talk / Re: prodigal son

« on: January 08, 2012, 06:57:42 pm »

This is not a very good reason not to learn ten-fingered touch-typing. Especially if typing is your job--Hungarian-English translator, I'm assuming?

i beg to differ

it is a very good reason in an important respect: it is, as far as i can see, the reason why i have not learned to touchtype

What OS do you usually use? There's various types of open-source/free educational software available that guide you step-by-step through learning to touch-type. And I bet it'd take 20 minutes per day, not hours

actually i figure a great deal more than an absolute newcome to the world of QWERTY

because i have about 20 ears of history typing increasingly fast in my own idiosyncratic manner and long habits break hard

windows, usually, i'm passionately against mac and have been lazy and to an extent also forced by my work not to switch to linux

have tried and liked ubuntu

Hey and if that's boring to do in your own time, maybe you can ask your work if they can give you 30 minutes per workday for a few weeks to work on that in the office?

thing is though, no 'office', no 'work', no 'workday' - i am and have always been self-employed

getting paid some small amount for learning to type would make no difference

i realise that styling myself as a sort of urban scum ronin is ridiculous, but it has meant that in between a small number of rather ridiculous bouts of self-exploitation i was actually almost always in fuck-you money territory on fairly little cash

You can easily argue that the time will soon pay itself back in typing speed and most importantly reducing strain on your hands so you won't get RSI (which would cost them loads of sickness benefit etc).

no sickness benefit either, i am sad to disappoint

i don't get RSI thanks to a combination of yoga and the Alexander technique and gym-ball chairs

Though frankly, I attribute my own not-getting-RSI more to the fact that I move around a lot when I'm behind the computer, that I don't tense my neck/shoulders when I'm stressed and that I always take care to keep my back and shoulders straight, not slumped forward. The latter two are benefits from no more than the first 12 weekly 1h low-intensity meditative yoga classes I took--that is, I learned keeping-my-back-straight and not-tensing-unnecessary-muscle-groups after the first season, I continued taking the classes for several years because face it, it's a lot more enjoyable than touch typing lessons

i know what you mean

thing is, i'm so desperately picky and hard-to-please when it comes to picking yoga instructors... i would just love to go to yoga classes that meet my expectations about once or twice a week... but none such exists

this is sure to change in bristol but i am already opting for kendo and kick-boxing as the first two things i want to try as i return to the metropolis

so thanks for trying to help but i actually think i'm pretty okay in that department, just a habitual bitcher about how boring it is, sorry

1532

Apple Talk / Re: networked tribal enterprise

« on: January 08, 2012, 06:20:55 pm »

i cannot actually see your link

the three years of maternity leave are true, though not on full pay, i think 80% in the first year and then a set, low multiple of the minimum wage for two years

actually, in a state that can afford it, i'm all in favour of it as an option, though i think it should be publicly financed

1533

Apple Talk / Re: Self and the New Year [videos]

« on: January 08, 2012, 06:16:26 pm »

i started with Krishnamurti vs Newland, always the sucker for a good fight

the old fellow didn't strike me as a particularly pleasant man, but the reaction, or rather lack of, of the reporter was telling

it put me in mind of the man tolle, here's a bizarre introduction to his thought

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oORUehs4s7Q

and here's him pontificating likeably about death:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWXpPGL55No

although this is worth taking into account:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbq1trGHlCA

or is it?

there's a good few topics in there

as for me, i do take comfort in the occasional spiritual teacher who doesn't smile all the time

then i started in on RAW, but couldn't quite hack the coppenhagen interpretation and all that, so i clicked on to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTYA5wXfdCo

which is pretty close to what i call hi jinx

and ended up clicking some more until i found this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMBUISw8wdY

which was utterly fascinating, all 105 minutes of it

thanks

once again, youtube = institutionalised serendipity

1534

Apple Talk / Re: The Below.

« on: January 07, 2012, 07:32:31 pm »

do go on!

1535

Apple Talk / Re: prodigal son

« on: January 07, 2012, 12:41:16 pm »

i see how you mean

i think i also figured it out

i have been a frontal lobe prostitute for about 17 years, exploiting my ability to speak two languages but, fundamentally, typing for money

kind of a 'seemed like a good idea at the time' thing, but it took me down a long and interesting pathway not devoid of suffering

and, while always taking care to acknowledge its many advantages, i've been hating my work steadily for at least ten years now

now i type pretty fast, but, being the lazy, thrill-seeking sod that i am, i never actually invested the few hours per day for a couple of week or so to get into ten-finger touchtyping, and my patterns are far from ergonomically optimal, in particular i show a strong preference for the left shift key (like all polar bears, i am left handed)

as a result, typing capitals and other characters requiring the shift key puts particular strain on my left hand, and the bodily sensation of this momentary stain has become associated over a long time with the unpleasant feeling of being bored while doing something tedious for hours in order to get cash

so when i am writing for pleasure, as i am here and other forums, i prefer to limit the use of the shift key

this accounts for the lack of capitalisation

the line-breaks are a different matter, i do that for discipline

i used to write a great deal on forums in the conventional mode and often got into constructing very long and complex sentences, which made sense but were hard to understand

this way, i find it easier to limit the size of interconnected chunks

to sum up: writing like this allows me to relax more while i write

could i get away with calling it a sort of functional disability and claim a free parking ticket?

1536

Apple Talk / prodigal son

« on: January 07, 2012, 08:33:36 am »

i am, as i said, in the middle of moving a rather large family to bristol

this involves a fair bit of moving objects around, as you may imagine

so i am not going to be wasting my precious time here as often as i would under other circumstances

but i just wanted to say: being on this forum, reading any of the threads i've opened so far, feels like home

sorry about being squishy-sentimental - but the convivial tone that seems to rule this place, while surely a thing that goes without saying and also a bare necessity for you, is a complete novelty and a tonic to my faith in mankind

thanks, folks

and sorry about the adolescent rebel typography

i haven't figured out, really, why i derive so much enjoyment from it, but i do

given shlain's ideas about the effects of linear, sound-based writing on the operation of the human mind, the answer could be a little distance away from trivial

??

1537

Apple Talk / Re: I never thought I would say this...

« on: January 07, 2012, 08:19:02 am »

Coyote had a long post in which he explained his position and then decided fuck it. holist is a screeching monkey, and so are a few of the other posters  in that thread. And this is why Coyote said fuck it, noob not worth it.

coyote jumped his/her guns

holist is a quiet and polite and unassuming bear

hatchet? as in bury it?

1538

Apple Talk / Re: networked tribal enterprise

« on: January 06, 2012, 09:36:03 pm »

That sucks dude. Yeah bounce as soon as you can.

we are all set, 4 weeks to go and we're out

1539

Apple Talk / Re: networked tribal enterprise

« on: January 06, 2012, 09:19:11 pm »

Why do you doubt your skills as a musician?

i don't doubt them, i know them

i love recording and i am interesting in music as a creative form of self-expression

but my aptitude for live playing for an audience is very limited - i led the circus band on keyboard and did a passable job, but i can't sing and play an instrument at the same time and all the others in the band were actually more competent, though i did write most of the music

Do you only know how to play stuff in a magyar key?

haha, will you also ask me if i'm hungry, or am i missing something?

Also is it the economy the political climate some other reason or a combination thats prompting the move?

hungary has a world record complexity to size ratio among nations

it is now turning into a dictatorship run by an incompetent and irritating dictator

the nazis have 13 percent in parliament, more in the street

inflation is so bad i can feel it week by week on the food

the three large credit raters have now all put hungarian state debt in the junk bonds category

and in order to explain all this, i would have to go back at least to the hungarian holocaust, if not a thousand years, when our nomadic predecessors rode their little horses into europe, scared a lot of people for a few hundred years, then got shafted

1540

Apple Talk / Re: networked tribal enterprise

« on: January 06, 2012, 08:57:35 pm »

this song has become a sort of micronational anthem.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAjtkyGVDxc

"we won't have to say goodbye if we all go"

1541

Apple Talk / networked tribal enterprise

« on: January 06, 2012, 08:44:01 pm »

a kind person by the name of LMNO suggested i do this

and mother-of-three Nigel seconded the advice, so i took it

*

i am a hungarian who got asylum in the UK at 17 (back in 1986), spent nine years there, working, drugging, rock-and-rolling, getting a couple of degrees in philosophy

then a love-affair in hungary made me move back, moved to the countryside, renovated adobe house, had three kids, all boys, and inertia moved me inexorably towards becoming a professional translator

work which can be done from home, on an independent timetable and which paid very well when i started it, going on 17 years ago

but it was work i call frontal lobe prostitution and the deep dissatisfaction with having to row a galley for a living did result in strain

after 13 years my wife decided she'd had enough

it was rough on me

but then i found the love of my life (with two kids in tow), and we have been very happily married for almost two years now, and we have a baby girl who is... well, not to beat about the bush too much, the future saviour of mankind and a well-critical mass of cute

only now we need to leave hungary, because it is sliding fast towards being a place we definitely don't want to live in

and we seem to have sort of half joined, half started a bit of an exodus

now three or four or possibly five large families are all moving together to bristol, a city we chose in a fairly complicated manner

we are taking all six kids, we spent 6 weeks in november and december in the UK, sorting things out and giving it a go, all eight of us

in the meantime, when i was doing some severe soul-torchlighting around the time of the divorce, i came to the conclusion that my three flaws are being lazy, cowardly and boorish

i immediately concluded that i don't in the least mind boorish and can live with lazy, but cowardly i don't like being, so i spent the three years since practicing brave, working up to making this move, which has been deeply liberating for me

but now my gut is telling me it's time to give up being lazy as well, and to stop punishing myself,  and to find a way of making a living out of something i actually enjoy doing

the other two dads in our little team are accomplished musicians, with not so hot english

i am a passable musician, though not a great player of any instrument, know the country, speak the language

our plan is "the school of expression" - a business offering arts classes (initially music, later also movement, dance, the fine arts) aimed to show people of various ages, talents and skills the opportunity to  experience creativity, improvisation, the joy of playing with others)

i bet it sounds outrageously hippie and infeasible, but we would like to give it a go, and the uk seems a good market still for this sort of thing

what do you think?

1542

Apple Talk / Re: I never thought I would say this...

« on: January 06, 2012, 07:47:35 pm »

The only problem *I* have with Holist is that he came looking for a fight.

He got what he came for.

*shrug*

quality company was what i came for (though i didn't really believe i would find it) - so you are wrong there...

but, amazingly, i did find what i came for! (so you are right there)

... Your Highness

1543

Apple Talk / Re: hello

« on: January 06, 2012, 08:32:00 am »

Well this noob is shitcanned as far as I am concerned.

riddance

1544

Apple Talk / hello

« on: January 05, 2012, 08:10:05 pm »

i dare say i am dumb and failed to find it but i have not found the place where people wandering in here have an opportunity to say hello

so hello