Regrets

Days without alcohol/soft drinks: 2
Sit-ups: 18
Push-ups: 18

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We all have them. Some are the results of a night of drinking too much, others are felt by simply looking back and thinking “I should of done that when I had the chance. Instead here I am with a bad case of herpes and a fridge full of leftover spaghetti sauce”. For me a lot of it is the former, by the way; my fridge is fairly empty.

But I wanted to talk about what I feel is possibly the biggest regret I have; that I have an inability to keep in contact with people I know. This is both friends and family, sad to say. I just lack the motivation to make a phone call or send a text. I find it hard to get out and hang out with someone for the day. I have many friends but I just don’t see them, ever. It’s not for lack of wanting to, it’s just that I feel apathetic about everything. I really feel like I need to pull my finger out and do something.
Same goes for my family; I periodically get letters from my grandmother who lives out in Berri. Yet for years (I’d go so far as to say a decade) I have never sent her a letter back. Back then it was okay because I saw her every school holidays, but now I’m working and don’t have the time it’s become painfully obvious that I need to do so. I haven’t seen her for a couple of years and the only contact we have is via the very occasional phone call.
You could call this a letter to myself about the matter, or an apology to those who are included in the above group of people (Hi Craig, Denai, etc). I promise to try and catch up with you soon.

What are your biggest regrets, if you have any?

BEDS – It begins.

Days without alcohol/soft drinks: 1 (woo)
Sit-ups: 24
Push-ups: 15

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BEDS! You lie in them, you sleep in them, but today and for the rest of the month, it means something else!

What? No.

Blog Every Day in September is an idea I stole from Tikken, who did hers in August. What makes my doing it far more awesome is that my ______ is that of a comfortable place to sleep. A place of piece, safety, and the like. Where as hers isn’t actually anything. But I won’t hold that against her.

So every day you will be subjected to a random blog post about something I’m not quite sure of yet, but I’m sure you won’t be interested in. Regardless, I will be inflicting these on you, and I hope that in the 30 days of content, that you find SOMETHING of interest to maybe say, comment on?

To coincide with this and give the posts a semblance of consistency, I am also giving up on alcohol, soft drink and fast food for the entire month. To top that off, I am going to, yet again, try and get some form of regular exercise regime going. So far I’ve been trying to dedicate myself to doing at least 20 sit ups and 10 push ups a day, but sometimes I can find myself distracted. Also when I feel less tired I’ll be jogging now and again.
So each post for the day, I will be throwing at the top a simply tally saying how many days I’ve been without these essential items, and how many of what exercises I did that day. You can see today’s up already at the top of the post.

As a final note, you should know that finding something to write about every day is hard. While this is obvious, what is less obvious is that you could help by clicking on the button that reads “Suggestions?”, and spending 30 seconds telling me what you’d like to see my write about. Even if it’s dumb or retarded, it’s still awesome to get a new suggestion.

Worms Reloaded Contest…thingy

Last night I tried having a competition over Twitter, where to win a copy of Worms Reloaded all you had to do was submit a 100 word story featuring a zombie to some capacity. Well, I got a whopping two entries (Two more than I expected, to be completely honest with you), and have put it down to a vote. The two stories are below, voting ends at 6pm tonight, have at it.

A very very long time ago there was a worm. But not that casual worm, no!… Well, he was normal earlier, but once he woke up infected! Infected by an unknown virus! At least he did not know anything about that before. Then he slowly started changing to something. Something horrible… All this happened like a nightmare. But it was real! He slowly changed to a zombie!… A zombie worm of course! He loved to play on his computer before. But now… he had to give up his favorite pastime cause zombies are not really interested in games. Poor worm!! :|

The man struggled into the bar. Well, anyone without a leg would. The bartender took a step back.

“Good lord, what happened to you?!” the old man asked.

The now disable man could only moan. The bartender rushed into the back to get some first aid. As soon as he was gone, the man missing his leg licked his lips. For he was a zombie.

He thought, “This geezer hasn’t heard about the zombie outbreak yet. Delicious.”

The bartender came back, but not with first aid. Luckily enough, he had seen the news about the zombies on his TV at the back of the bar. Instead of first aid, he had a pea shooter.

“Eat peas.” It was the last thing the zombie ever heard.

Fluoride and bullshit fliers.

In my hometown while waiting for the train, I stumbled across the following flier posted practically everywhere.

Click the image to enlarge.

I was intrigued because as we all know, I love taking apart stupid things like this as an excuse to inflict you with a blog post, so I took one down to check out whether what it says is factual at all.

A little bit about fluoride levels in our water.

For later reference, we’ll start by throwing some facts in your face. I noticed the information on the flier is obviously American given the choice of words, measurements and the website (which we’ll talk about in a bit) is majority American articles. So I decided to check American and Australian fluoride levels in the water. It seems our Government  has differing levels of fluoride present in different areas, as represented by this handy diagram I stole from the Internet.

We can assume that the fluoride level doesn’t go above 1.1 mg/L in these controlled conditions, which is just a little over one millionth of a litre. America has a MCL¹ of 4 mg/L, and the average levels works out to be similar to that of ours. I’ll work with the maximums for the sake of the argument, because results for that will be applicable over smaller amounts as well.

As little as 1/10 of an ounce of fluoride can kill a 100 lbs adult.

If we look at this so called fact, given that 1/10 of a fluid ounce is roughly 3 mg/L², we can say that the amounts present in our water are way less than that (given 1.1 is the maximum, and in places like where I live it’s considerable lower), and therefore not a threat in normal doses. While it is possible that that much fluoride could kill someone, we aren’t having nearly enough in a short enough period of time to have that effect.

1/1000 of an ounce can kill a 10 pound infant.

This one is difficult because babies grow rapidly, gaining and losing weight all the time. Looking it up though, apparently it is recommended babies not be given water to drink until they’re 6 months old since the water they need is gotten when they drink breast milk. So we’ll work on that.
I looked, and at 6 months of age the average weight for a baby can be anywhere between 15 and 21 pounds. Now, using the power of basic math, I can see that the child would need to be younger than 6 months to be the size needed for that level of fluoride to be poisonous. Since babies that are at that age aren’t meant to drink water, we can say unless someone was a really irresponsible parent the baby shouldn’t be at risk.

Fluoride is the active ingredient in most insecticides!

A type of fluoride IS used in pesticides, called sulfuryl fluoride, so this is sort of true. What this flier mysteriously forgets to mention is that this is not what is put in our water. What is actually put in our water is called sodium fluoride, a completely different thing. Sulfuryl fluoride is poisonous which is just one reason why pesticides have DANGER printed on them. So this fact is really a complete twist of the facts in an attempt to scare those who believe everything they read³. It frustrates me when people feel that the only way to prove their point is to obscure the truth (Especially when it’s not even for the lulz!).

Fluoride causes bone cancer. In your bones.

This one is true. To a degree. Too much fluoride will cause brittleness of the bones (Just as not enough will make them weak), and there are apparently scientific studies that link fluoride to the cancer⁴. Of course, these studies are years old and there are counter-studies showing no actual link between cancers and fluoridation⁵.
So really, this is another case of selective hearing. These people are taking only the studies that benefit their cause to try and scare people into siding with them. And on the flier they’re stating these studies are absolute fact, which is wrong. It saddens me that people do this rather than embrace all the facts and make an educated decision.

Water fluoridation doesn’t strengthen teeth or fight tooth decay.

This is the big one. Not only does the flier hate on fluoride with the above, but it then states that fluoride doesn’t even do the things it’s meant to do. This is despite scientific proof that it strengthens the bones and teeth, and there is studies proving the statistical link between fluoride being in the water and the reduction of cavities⁶.
This seems to be a case of not just twisting the facts, but outright lying. They blatantly ignore the facts and lie in favour of boosting their case. The fuck is wrong with them?

Hey, they have a website!

The flier points to a website to have the truth revealed to us. Now I don’t WANT to link to the site, but I have to for the sake of yes. InfoWars.com seems to be a news website in which the featured stories include conspiracies. At first look, there are no articles on fluoride, so I used the search option. The most recent articles about it completely ignore the studies I pointed out, tries to link fluoride to shorter lives, and is an overall idiot. Watching a video featuring Alex Jones (Creator and runner of InfoWars.com), when you get past the constant plugs for his website,  he claims everything he says about fluoride (some of which is covered above) is “absolute truth”, even though everything he claims can be debunked or at least can be reasonably doubted by several facts and studies.
Pure garbage. Just Google “alex jones is an idiot” and you’ll see plenty of examples of exactly that.

In short, the flier is bullshit. The “facts” it states are either outright lies, or twisted truths in an attempt to make it sound like Alex Jones and other conspiracy theorists are completely right. If they thought about it for two seconds they would realize that while yes in large amounts fluoride is poisonous, in small doses it is actually good for your health. You can’t convince these idiots though. This makes me sad.

I would also like to point out that what I’m basing all my information on is that found on the internet at varying sources. I link to a few studies for and against the point, but also read up on articles on water fluoridation on Wikipedia and other sources. The information is correct to the best of my knowledge, but I may of missed something here or there. If I did, I’m sorry.

1. Maximum Contaminant Level
2. Rounded up from 2.95735296
3. Basically, anyone who relies on The Advertiser and Today Tonight for news.
4. Of course, such studies are covered by Fox News.
5. What the ‘York Review’ on the fluoridation of drinking water really found.
6. http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/CRD_Reports/crdreport18.pdf

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Go see it if you haven’t already! That is all.

It is great day for Valve fan boy.

Oh wow, did you hear that Robin Walker has confirmed that an update for TF2 will be out by the end of next month, and will include not only the Polycount Winners that were announced, but one unannounced winner, trading, AND a new game mode.

Also, the Left 4 Dead team have said they’re announcing progress on the MAC version of the game and it’s sequel, the DLC for L4D that joins it to L4D2, and if there’s going to be any more DLC for L4D2.

I am so fucking excited.

Fair dinkum uncertainty

Election time has come around again, and I have come to my realization that I actually know nothing¹ about current politics and affairs. I also know fuck all about our political history, but that’s not the point. My knowledge extends to knowing Labour MP Stephen Conroy is trying to censor our Internet, Julia Gillard is our awfully monotone Prime Minister, and Tony Abbott says “Fair dinkum” too often in a vain attempt to come across as a ‘true Aussie’.

I know barely anything about the policies of either of the main parties or even those of the minor parties. In fact, beyond the names of the leaders and those who occasionally end up being newsworthy, I don’t even know what the party is.

I would read the newspapers, but they only pick what would be newsworthy and don’t actually detail everything Not to mention that papers like The Advertiser are either bias or don’t tell the whole story; either way I just don’t feel such a traditional medium would cut it. Everyone in my family is incredibly bias, and with half the news I get coming from blogs, I can be sure that what I read there won’t be everything either. While there are bound to be sources that state the straight facts, I don’t see myself having the mental drive to read through it all.

It’s difficult to get the whole picture easily without following everything religiously, and I just don’t care enough to. At the same time though, I want to make the ‘right’ decision for myself, and without knowing the facts I can’t. It’s a bit of a downward spiral². It’s probably the wrong mentality to take when I spend multiple paragraphs complaining, but that’s how I work.

I don’t know who I’ll vote for, and I can see myself potentially just flipping a coin when I get to the booth. Despite the fact that I’ll attempt to read up on everything, I know that I’ll get distracted by a game of Alien Swarm which I’m going to be honest, is just way more fun and satisfying.

1. Shocking!
2. And now I want to listen to Nine Inch Nails.

I CAN JUGGLE.

Alright, I’m a month and a few days late on my learning a new skill each month idea, but allow me to explain; I was lazy. Too lazy to make a video. UNTIL NOW.

The lighting isn’t greatest, and my face looks retarded, but I can juggle! Not very well and not as good at this guy, but I can. And this month I’m getting lazy with my next choice of useless skill to learn. I am learning how to fold shirts perfectly in two seconds. That’s right; exciting stuff right here. This particular way of folding shirts is an interesting way to do it, and I want to start doing it. Because I can.

So that’s that done. I feel better.

AvCon 2010

I went to AvCon with Brittany for the whole weekend. While we didn’t do much, we met some cool cosplayers and saw a couple of great “events”, including Aliyaki’s lolita parade. We spoke to some of the artists there, and I ended up with a fist full of new comic books.
While I could bore you with silly details of the walking around we did, here are the few photos I took of a few cosplayers and such. I didn’t think of taking out the iPhone much, because I was more focussed on looking around, and hanging with Britt.

In order: Iron Man, the Team Fortress 2 Medic with an Aperture Science employee, some guy called Harris, Silent Hill nurses, a little Airbender, I do not even know what this is, a four player match of Bomberman at the Retro Gaming panel, a Team Fortress 2 Heavy, Steam Punkers, and a nope.avi engineer.

Hammer Romance

My girlfriend decided to send me a message utilizing Hammer, the editor used for making maps in games.

 

The girl is awesome.

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