Beware the spiderplants!

I have decided that in the event that the human population is annihilated by some random world war, then spider plants will take over the world. Yes, you heard me. I got given one two years ago, which one year ago decided to breed and gave me two more spider plants. I thought this was good, so this year I thought I would let them breed again and maybe have acouple... except they all decided to produce babies... so long story short I now have 26 little spider plants sitting on my windowsill. And that's after I gave 5 away...

So, it's been about a month or so - and I noticed today that one of them has another baby stalk growing! So yes, they will take over the world, just you wait! It's happening to my room rightnow! Well gotta dash I have to find my way through the jungle of spider plants before it gets dark...

Mediation, Meditation, Meditiation

So, today has been fun, if unproductive. Went flat-hunting in the morning, and had an interesting choice between a pokey little place in a good location, a single room and a cupboard kitchen and and spacious dark house miles from uni. So, none of thoooose places then...

Also, found an article toting the (rapid) benefits of meditation - a practise I've been interested in - though ironically never found the time for. Saying that I may have been doing it subconsciously it at work for months... not sure how much I believe change could happen in 4 days, in a culture where we want everything NOW that seems alittle idealistic. I'd be willing to put it to the test though, not much to lose there I don't think.

So, mediation is apparently "the art of silencing the mind ... [to achieve] ... inner peace in the midst of worldly turmoil" (ala here - it also says meditation teachers have described the mind as a "mad-monkey" which is a pretty awesome description for anything). It (hopefully) results in better concentration and health, and makes you more laid back and able to deal with lifes little irritations What's not to like? So, if anybody else feels similarly inspired to try something new, the steps to mediation (peeled out of various places from the above site) are:


-   sit with a straight back. Don’t try to meditate lying down because you are likely to fall asleep. [I have done that soooo many times]
-   you must learn to concentrate on one thing at a time
-   after you’ve practiced concentration and learned to focus on one thing at a time, you can proceed to the next stage: no thought at all.

So, it's that easy... Well, that's going to take muchos time I imagine. I'd still be interested to know if a weeks worth of trying really makes a difference though. According to the original article the participants of the study were put through a "broad battery of behavioral tests assessing mood, memory, visual attention, attention processing, and vigilance". Now, not knowing what tests they took, or being a phycologist, I have decided to turn to the wonderful world of the internets (what's the worst thing that could happen... >_>). If I just want to see if there's a change I just need to measure it against the same point of reference and compare my result. So, I'll come back in a week and do these again and see if anything's changed... (now I have the dubiousness of having mentalhealth.com on my history... however:)


mood 

used the awesomely named Goldberg Mania Questionnaire which gave me a score of 31 - or 'moderate mania'. Hmm, that doesn't sound very good lol... but it is mildly entertaining.


memory

I completed both a verbal and visual memory test from here ... I have a visual memory score of 50, which is pretty below the average score of 20-25 (apparently if I get a score of 60+ I'm worse than 75% of participants >_> However, 120 is the worst possible score I could get, so, not so bad then... 


The verbal memory was tested in two parts - verbal recall and verbal recognition. My recall score was 14 out of 40 words, which I thought was pretty bad until it was revealed 6-10 was the norm, and doing better that that put me above 75% or people ^_^ cool. My recognition score was 38 out of 40 which I think's pretty good ^_^ - which is exactly the average for that part of the test, and it's apparently normal that your recognition score be that much higher than your recall. So, anyway, jobdone...


visual attention 
considering this is a massive exercise in procrastination, it's probably gonna be small ;p Found a test for 'facial recognition' here which I think is about the right thing... of which I got 81% which is about average :)


processing 
only thing I could find was this link which analysed my brain and determined I was auditory 41%, visual 58%, left 41% and right 58%. Not sure what that means, or if it will change particularly, but it's the best I could find.


vigilence 
... what? ok no idea what that is :)

New Week, New Plan!

Typically, the first day of my new plan (see this previous post) missed the two straight weeks of glorious sunshine and so thus was a white, misty damp Swansea morning. Saying that I got up at 7 on the dot and went for a run and everything. I also have the full intention of going to tesco today to buy the food for my healthy eating plan, and have just spent about half an hour setting up a variety of things in excel to chart and measure and generally motivate me forward. This is a good beginning! For the record I'm a total novice, very unfit and overweight, with the only upside being I'm now gonna do something about it! So, I wanted to share with you the awesome thing which I think will be integral to my success in this endeavor... the ipod application 'Get Running'.

GetRunning ipod app :)

Essentially, it's a brilliant personal running coach, designed to get you from 'couch to 5k' in about 9 weeks by the looks of it. I don't mind how long it takes really though. It's done in intervals, to build up from even the most basic of levels (ie me) - so today it was run for a minute, walk for a minute and a half, repeat 8 times... It's very well done, with a 'soothing female voice' helpfully informing me when to run, when I'm halfway through, when I've got the last 10 seconds of running - a feature which was amusing to begin with but necessary by the end! (Yes, told you I was a beginner!) It also told me when it would be a good time to turn round halfway through the run to come home, which I thought was a nice touch. So well recommended, by myself and many others (which is why I thought I'd try the app in the first place). Oh and all this for only 79p! How awesome is that!

The mysterious Spinning Woman...

Been confounded for the last half an hour by this lady... who always spins (initially anyway) counter-clockwise for me (apparently this means I use the left side of my brain preferentially, which means I'm analytical). I suppose it follows that I've played with the image with my eyes until I can now change the direction she spins at will. Not sure whether this is strictly an IQ thing as suggested though - as there is a trick to it, which maybe bypasses the point. Still a vaguely interesting way to pass the time though, and intriguing if it's true... ^_^

Day three, I will not be defeated...

It occurs to me I have very little to say today, except *sleepy*. But a one-a-day blog will not be defeated by petty excuses such as these! Hmm, well what have I done so far? Woke up at half 6 (yey) but since a party yesterday evening meant I couldn't help but go to bed at 1am, have been extremely sleepy all day. Got some niggly things done, with the best of intentions to do more later - made eye appointments and house rental people appointments for Monday, made roast chicken impulsively and decided to clean the kitchen. But none of this is particularly interesting for any poor readers, so hmm... sorry, I'll be more imaginative tomorrow. Have a cat picture for your troubles :)

"unhappy chicken" courtesy of googleimages. Also woo, I can do captions now ^_^ (or should that be 'cat-tions'~

New day, New blog, New idea

Gorgeous day here today, ridiculously blue sky. Not sure if this is going to be a diary blog or a 'here's what I think about bees' kinda blog... maybe it will evolve over time.

Well, anyway, today I'm trying to get organised - and have a current to-do list for today of 26 things. This seems alot to me, but it's about the same every day somehow, and I'll do about 10 of them on a good day. I've been putting off other things for weeks... so maybe my organisational system is flawed. But ticking things off is always good...

Came across this on my twitter-following travels, which got me thinking. As I seem to be trending "new things" it occured to me I have many 'bad' habits which it would be nice

to change. The article does, however, seem to compare having a bad habit of, say, getting up late to the addictive bad habits of say smoking cigarettes which is hopefully stretching things abit... but anyways - things to change:

1. going to bed earlier and getting up earlier (I think this may be connected to a period of low motivation on my PhD, but I used to get up at 8, which has now slipped to 9 and even 10 lately. This is bad on all levels.)
2. total lack of exercise (I used to go running, but after-work tiredness meant I could only run before work, and long-story-short this meant I was getting up at 6am every morning. But them it got dark and cold (ie winter happened) and now I'm totally out the habit. But the old motivator had returned (weight, charity half-marathon) so this is one that may be worth taking up again. It also has the benefit of fulfilling (1.) aswell.)
3. eating badly (once a takeaway was a treat, now I get one because cooking seems annoying and my food unappealing. 'Nuff said, this one has to change - for my wallet's sake if nothing else!)
4. extra-curricular what? (once I spent my spare time doing stuff that was useful. I learned software, made websites, wrote stories, went out... but my energy seems to have been sapped and these things just fell away.)

So, I can make excuses for all of these. Many of them are half decent, on a short scale. But totally not on a long scale! Infact, looking up, these are all potentially connected. What I need is possible a life makeover or something. Or maybe, a life-return - I wasn't always like this after all... And the sky is blue, it's Spring, what better time to make a change for the better? So, ok, things which will change and the changes I will make. (Hopefully can bypass the 'change one-habit at at time' thing with the fact th all part of the same game anyway...)

1. aim to go to bed between 10-11 and get up at 7am to go running (not as drastic as 6am, and it'll get me up earlier. If I get into a regular sleep- cycle might make me feel more awake too)
2. next tesco shop order things from the old '10 day detox' diet I used before to get me started (yes, I know what you're going to say, but this really helped me get my meal sizes decent again, and into eating/making quick healthy food.)
3. do something different every evening (not exactly hard to stick to, I can fit in a relaxing evening after a crappy work day, work through a tutorial or two on the next night etc)

Great, I now have a plan ^_^ ... lets see what happens :D

First Steps...

Well, hi, didn't think it would take me this long to get this far. For the record the whole mysql/wordpress thing is much more of a headache than it's worth... two days of fighting with installation and terminal has meant total abandonment of that initial plan. Saying that, it's not all bad - I always liked the clean look of blogspot so I'm obviously where I should be! Hmm, starting my blog off on a negative I suppose is not the best way forward!

I have lately joined afew things which I'd been putting off for a while - such as Farmville and, lately, Twitter. That in particular seems to be mentioned all the time lately, and I figured something that popular must be popular for a reason... certainly worth checking out anyway. I had been under the impression I'd have to have loads of friends on Twitter to begin with, and as most of my friends preferentially use facebook (with status updates being very similar to Twitter) I thought it would be more of the same and that kinda put me off. How wrong I was! Having become almost immediately hooked, I now understand my previous reservations were totally misgiven. It's like a user-friendly incarnation of irc, and an on-the-pulse connection to worldwide info and opinions which I really find quite fantastic.

I also met a girl on there (@jenjeahaly) who introduced me to the concept of 'a blog a day' which seemed like a good idea. Figured it would give me the chance to get my writing skills back on par, try out this blog thing in general - and it would continue my trend of New Things which is always good! I was meant to start on January the first apparently - but better late than never!

So, er, hi...