Monday, August 9, 2010

Self Analysis

Where does all the time go? Maybe the problem is in the question. Time doesn't have location, so it doesn't have locomotion. It doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't pass by, it doesn't wind down, and it definitely doesn't depart.

I had an idea of how to manage my time better, so of course I went to Google. Turns out that the first page of results for "free time self analysis software" didn't have much that I was looking for, though I don't really know what that is.

I am going to try journaling. Start out with five minutes a day. Maybe use the voice recorder. What is the difference between my scheduled activities and my actual time wasting shit?

If I could just find out why I don't have any money, job, or wife, I know I could be a better man. I just don't have a clue. I make lists, I get depressed. I try, and I try. Still I am turning into that wreck of a creation: the has-been who never was.

Gotta get back to it. Cmdr out

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Mexico is better than Hawaii

I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.
- Isaac Newton

One lucky year my life included two trips almost on top of each other: Chiapas, Mexico and Kauai, Hawaii. First time to both. I figured that in Hawaii I would be swimming in coffee and pineapples and in Mexico not swimming at all -- a desert --. I packed my own coffee for the trip. Suffice to say for now that I had it all backwards. Hawaii exports 100% of its coffee, so anything you buy there has been shipped TWICE to get there and is from $20-$30/lb. Ditto for pineapples. The best price I found was some guy selling hot ones out of his car for $4 apiece. Chiapas, it turns out, could feed the entire planet. The lush rain-forest is shrinking due in part to commercial farming interests like Dole and Chiquita, but there is still rich farmland. Put a kernel of corn in it and you will often get 3 stalks of maize. One will shoot up. Harvest it - don't pull it - by breaking the stalk and letting the corn dry. Fresh corn is not often eaten in Mexico. It is the staple tortilla around which is built their entire rich menu. Another stalk will grow. Repeat. More later.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Mathematics definition

"Mathematics is the technique of discovering and conveying in the most economical possible way useful rules of reliable reasoning about calculation, measurement, and shape." Lancelot Hogben, "Mathematics in the Making"