Tinfoil on the Windows

Hitting a point where I've got a laundry list of things I need and want to get done, and the job's finally getting in the way energy-wise.

- Investigate the Antarctica angle properly
- Get this wrist-thing sorted and then
- Get started on the fitness regimen
- Get kettlebells
- Sign on with St John's
- Take the first aid course
- Investigate and schedule the rest of the first aid stuff
- Get a driver's license
- Plan trip home for Christmas
- Finish the book
- Complete all  the remaining travel articles
- Research and plan the next trip to wherever
- Look into the possibility of traveling to Antarctica via a grant
- Work on some stuff for friends
- Catch up with people
- Narrow down the NGOs I'd be interested in working for and working out what skills I'm capable of acquiring that are relevant
- Calendar out cons and festivals worldwide

Fully fifty percent of my plans are going to fall by the wayside, that's inevitable.  It's really a case of asking myself how far I can realistically take a given thing.  In the end it may come down to the first plan: go places and write.  Which is fine so long as I can get more than one article sold a month in order to maintain a profile.

- Go through Writers' Market and list everywhere that might pay for something I've written
- Write those articles
- Submit them.
- Chase places that have already bought articles for payment.
- Get better camera gear (and laptop with a better screen because Christ the shots look different at decent res.)
- Get to Couchsurfing meets at least once a month.

I know I'm forgetting something.

I don't know how likely this is, but I'm hoping I can get qualified enough between now and 2012 to spend nine months at a research station in the Antarctic.  They need all sorts of personnel - the whole gamut - and I figure a paramedic is going to earn more than the guy cleaning the toilets.

But that'd be sweet.  Lots of free time, a good paycheque and no place to spend it. Plus, Antarctica.  With all that time I could work out and write, then come back loaded.  Probably two or three articles in the whole experience, tops, but that'd be ok for nine months.

One more thing for the list of possibles.

So I get paid this week. Looking into diverting funds into an Industrial First Aid qualification with a focus on sports and remote area assistance. Looks like that'll require me being in Sydney though, and this job won't allow that. So I might have to aim for next year. Which will tie in well with the remote area assistance element as it's only run once a year (numbers pending), and I think it happens around October.

After that I think a TAFE course will qualify me to work as a paramedic, but I need to look into that a little more.

There's an online 'Advanced Security In The Field' course (?) run by the UN that a contact in Darwin forwarded to me. I'll take a run through it as soon as I can get Shockwave to behave.

May have some more contacts coming in with aid workers who are in the Middle East at the moment. At the very least I'm hoping I can get a sit-down with one or two of them.

Looking into what NGOs are working where, and what qualifications they're looking for. Medical still seems the best bet and it's something I've always wanted to do.

I damaged my wrist the last week I was away and it's lingering. First time in my life an injury hasn't just repaired itself. Booked into a chiro DK recommended. Fingers crossed.

Have been recommended a couple of cross-compatible fitness regimens. Need to get a set of kettlebells and possibly look at getting a trainer.

All of this may result in my depleting my travel funds, but if it gets me competent and qualified in short order it'll be worth it. Still got to work out the driver's license thing as well.

For a while now I've been a bit concerned about my recall. I've always been utterly, utterly crap with names. Part of it's low-grade social anxiety, and part of it - I think - is the fact that I seem to have spent my entire life training up visual recall to the exclusion of almost anything else. On one memorable occasion, when doing a round of introductions, I actually forgot my own name. It had been a bad day, admittedly, I think I was tired, and I was under the gun to remember the names of everyone who was there and by the time it got to finally introducing myself my cortex basically just shrugged and said 'I got nuthin'.'

The side-effect of this is an excellent visual memory for detail. Last night I heard a piece of voice work and I knew I knew who was delivering it. The high way he grated the consonants, narrow and focused and diaphragmatic, threw a picture of his lips and teeth into my head... but the rest was fogged out. I kept replaying a few words, the words where he hit those consonants, urging the picture to blossom out, give me a nose, or a cheekbone, enough for my visual memory to grab it and flower out the rest (In the end it did, and it turned out to be the actor who played Tighe on Battlestar.)

But now it's gotten to the point where I have trouble remembering things I've actually studied. Like this morning I tried remembering the name of the Druze warlord who ran a lot of terrible operations during the Druze/Maronite conflict in Lebanon during the mid-1800s. I kept trying to call up the shape of the name visually. I knew it was triple-barrelled, but because I didn't have a face, or a memory of his cheek-stubble, or the cant of an eyebrow, or the way his fingers rested on a pommel, I had nothing. It's been twelve months since I had to look at the name. If it had been three months, or six, then the visual memory of the shape of the name would have been enough. In the end the name did just come to me, once I let go of trying (it was Said Bey Jumblatt.) The same way, I guess, if you forget a PIN it's best to just blank out and let it rise to the surface of your mind of its own accord.

My problem is that I need to retrain my head to store and recall things non-visually so that the details I need rise effortlessly when they're needed. I watch a programme like Q.I. for example and am envious as hell of the recall of many of the guests there (whose names I now can't recall even though I've seen six sodding seasons), or of many of the writers and broadcasters and public speakers whom I admire. They do it effortlessly. I know that were I in the same position now there would be flow-killing delays as my memory withholds the goods. It's hard to sound credible when any given name is replaced with 'that guy who did that thing.'

So now I'm making an effort to somehow assign different 'markers' to things I want to recall. The way you smell something before eating it, for example, is orthonasal. The way you smell it as you eat it is retronasal. Even in typing that I blanked out on orthonasal. I knew the prefix was related somehow to skin... or anthropology? Epinasal? Anthronasal...? But that was the marker my mind came up with: it's somehow related to some sort of human quasi-medical thingy. Swell.

I think my thinking is disordered. Or the filing system at least. My brain needs a defrag. There's research that suggests regular meditation jacks up visual acuity as well as mental, so I think I'll start there. Anyone got any advice? I can't be the only one who's had to deal with something like this.

I still haven't managed to get through to the Blizzard hotline RE my hijacked character. But Ben Peek linked to the opening Cataclysm cinematic, and it is pretty.

But it's still the same game, innit? Whack monster for bigger stick to whack bigger monster?

On that note I'll try and buzz them again.

Finally got the Graceland Too article written and up over on cameron-rogers.com. Loaded with photos and a long list of general weirdness and interest and guns and Christmas trees. I'm also experimenting with Facebook linky buttons, so if you felt like making use of it, that'd be fab.

April assures me that Southern gentlemen love to talk, and that if factual material is running low they’re not averse to going where inspiration leads them. Surveying the various chambers in Graceland Too with that in mind it’s easy to think of the entire place as one long conversation with Paul McLeod… about Paul McLeod. Which isn’t to say the details of Paul’s life lack veracity, but… y’know… sometimes nothing ruins a good story like a boring truth.

So anyway, the article's here. Next up will probably be Clarksdale, from memory: fried cheesecake in Morgan Freeman's joint, and the world's best hotel run by a man named Rat.

Applied for a job with Blizzard, writing for Diablo 3. Fingers crossed I at least get a look-in. Resume's fine, formidable even, but I'm never certain about what tone to strike with the sodding cover letter. Eh.

I'm halfway through prepping my article on Graceland Too, when April emails me this link.

From that room we visited his backyard, an homage to “Jailhouse Rock,” complete with a homemade electric chair.

To get visitors’ attention, MacLeod will whistle or yell, “Yo,” and he did just that, asking Rogers to go back and see the chair.

Rogers walked back to us near the door and said, in disbelief, “There is, indeed, an electric chair out there.”

I'd totally forgotten about that reporter.

Blizzard account recovery is a Byzantine maze of hyperlinks that don't work, 404 errors, and users in Australia being funneled into cul-de-sacs.

If you're on Proudmoore and saw me running around, and if I was a jerk, it wasn't me.

IE at work doesn't update, so possibly this antiquated version is preventing me accessing customer support as well as I might otherwise. I'll take another crack at it when I get home.

But yeah, sorry if my rogue toon has done anything antisocial. Hopefully this'll be fixed soon.