If I had a brain, I'd be dangerous

[jadesfire]

As tends to be the way of these things, being busy means less posting around here. And I'm very busy right now. The library's financial year ends with July, so we're spending money like it's going out of fashion, which when added to the disturbing promptness of some of our suppliers (I'm sure it used to take longer than this to get books from Italy) means that work is completely nuts. Good, but nuts. So I'm reduced to list form once again, along with skimming my flist to keep roughly up to date with folks, even if I can't comment.

*I will post about London Zoo and Lille at some point, if only to show you all the pretty pictures. Both were much fun.

*The First Aid course was exhausting, but I passed and I'm fairly confident that I know what I'm doing with most things now. Apparently you usually get an emergency within 2 weeks of passing or 1 month of needing to requalify. I'm bracing myself.

*The Dreaded DPhil is handed in and we're just waiting to hear about a Viva (thesis defence). News from the job-front is varied, with lots of possibilities but nothing definite yet. Since we have housing (our letting agents have agreed a brilliant deal for us, whereby we're on 2 month rolling contract and they haven't put the rent up) and interim work (thanks to J's supervisor), we can afford to hold our breaths for a few weeks while things get sorted out.

*We've booked a holiday in Menorca for the end of August, which is just what I needed. Having something to look forward to makes the weeks go quicker.

*I'm not writing. At all. Make of that what you will.

*bringthehappy is chugging along nicely, bau_bigbang first drafts are due tomorrow, and I've decided that unless I have a brainwave this evening, I'm going to drop out of spn_summergen. Which is immensely frustrating, but how it's going to have to be. See point above.

*The insurance company has agreed to pay out for our stuff, which is good. We're now waiting for paperwork/negotiations, which is bad because I'm impatient and want my baby computer back in time for Menorca. On the plus side, our wallets were found dumped in a local bin store - they're damaged, so still need replacing, but I've got my address book, notes and little cards back as well as the pencil (which sounds petty, but it's a teeny organiser and the pencils are disproportionately expensive!) so I'm chuffed about that.

*My choir's summer concert went well despite the rain. My solo and 'assist' went well (I sang Raoul so that someone else could sing 'Think of Me' without an embarrassing gap in the middle), but the duet went rather wrong. Ah well. Next time.

*I want to learn something. Anything, pretty much. At the moment I'm trying to decide whether I want to do a creative writing type thing (I might want to do the Diploma/MA at some point, so it'd be as well to start practising), a science type thing (maybe Maths A-level) or a computer type thing (anything, really). Computer thing is probably most use, writing is where my heart is, but I'd love to do some advanced maths at some point. Thoughts? What could I teach myself fairly easily, and what would I need teaching? I'm still working on the flute, but I'm going to need to start setting time aside for that properly. All advice gratefully received!
ETA: Hmmm...I can get most of the computer tutorials I want through w3schools, so I probably don't want to pay for those...

My brain is struggling at the moment. It needs input and stimulation, and work just isn't quite enough. So come on, folks, what should I learn to do?

Comments

[in-the-bottle.livejournal.com]

Right, this is creepy. Just after I read your point about "Think of Me", guess which song started playing on my iTunes which is set to random...

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

SPOOKY! *looks over shoulder*

[in-the-bottle.livejournal.com]

I'M BEING STALKED BY THE PHANTOM!!!!!

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

knirirr passed his refresher 4-day First Aid course at 4pm on a Thursday. At 7.30 he was driving me to A&E because I was vomiting blood...

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

See! I knew it was true....

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

I wish I had the time OR the brain to learn something new. How about a new language? Always comes in handy sooner or later.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the time, but I tend to make time for the things I want to do, and I really want to learn.

Languages I'm not sure about. My French is passable, and I tend to pick it up when I'm in a country - my reading is pretty good for most languages thanks to Latin and Greek. I have some 'teach yourself Italian' tapes somewhere, though. They'd be worth digging out...

[blackmare-9.livejournal.com]

I am creatively biased and therefore will vote that you go for the writing. :-)

But, eh, that's me.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Heh, yes, I am leaning that way myself. Mostly because the others I feel I could do in isolation, teach myself or have friends teach me. But my writing probably needs fresh input from someone.

There's an online course I could do...

[mad-jaks.livejournal.com]

I am currently scanning the local Adult Edusation blurbs as they drop through my letterbox.

Creative Writing is a possible - it's run by the same chap who did the one day courses I did last year and he said then he's fairly flexible about people actually attending the classes. Which is good as far as it goes but then what if I am really stuck and still can't get his input????

Having taught myself some stuff I'm also looking at website design type classes but they all seem to use Frontpage as a matter of course, and I don't think I really want to go that route :(

And Japanese - I kind of like the idea of knowing some Japanese - I have no idea what I'd *use* it for though :S

I did A Level maths and Further Maths MANY MANY moons ago... Maths is *good*.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*g* That leaflet is what set me off too. Although from there, I'm looking at dressmaking, which is the only thing I don't think I can teach myself or get someone to teach me! And does appeal.

Learning languages is always useful - you never know!

[mad-jaks.livejournal.com]

I picked up my dressmaking skills almost by osmosis - I can't remember not being able to sew OR knit. Still can't crochet though.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I don't know, for years and years I had to take massive CPR and first aide classes for my lifeguard certification and never used any of the info at all.

I hadn't realized it was time for the criminal minds bigbang yet. Are you writing for it or just modding?

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Trust me, I'd rather it was that way! So far, so good...

I'm just modding for this one, having learned my lesson with tardis_bigbang. Since I'm not writing at all at the moment (and that's a whole other post), and we've got bringthehappy on the go too, that's possibly for the best!

[naye]

How are you with graphics and such? What program do you use? Because you could always take up tinkering in the GIMP! (And I only say this because I kind of got swallowed whole by an iconing bug a few nights ago, and now I can't stop...!) It's one of those skills where you can learn to get good enough to do nice things pretty fast, but then you can spend forever learning how to get even better!

Or there's always the old-fashioned drawing? I keep meaning to take it up, but I'm just not motivated enough.

If you're interested in super-basic Japanese or something, kanji characters are fun and pretty, and I'd love to give you a hand! ♥ (Japanese characters are originally Chinese characters - you might know this already, of course, but if you learn the meaning of basic characters in Japanese, they're usually pretty close to the Chinese meaning, too. So you get lots of linguistic mileage out of wrapping your brain around it! And it's less like learning a new language, and more like playing ciphers. *g*)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's a point. I do have Gimp but never found the time to get to grips with it. That could be a good thing to add to the list.

I pretty much can't draw a circle round a penny, so although I love doodling, that one's probably not going to happen.

Hee! I used to be able to write my name in Japanese characters (the ones used for transliterating Roman alphabets - I used to know what they were called). Languages aren't on my list right now, though. I don't know why, I'm just not in the right frame of mind - I think they require more patience and effort than I'm really up to at the moment.

You wouldn't recommend Swedish, then? ;) I'm pretty good with Romance languages and Germanic languages, but I don't think I know any Northern European ones...

[naye]

You can do lovely things with the Gimp! And I do love using open source, free software. There are some things I know I should know, but that I still haven't gotten the hang of - that's what tutorials are for, I guess! And it's fun - the more you know, the more you can do, and the easier iet gets!

The Japanese alphabets are called "kana" - there are two of them, hiragana and katakana. Today hiragana is mostly used for writing verb endings and particles and such, and katakana is used for transliterating foreign words and onomatopoeia. And if you can display Japanese characters, your name should look something like ローラ. :D

But I wasn't thinking so much about the language as about kanji - their structure, history, and capacity to carry information! If you're interested in the latter, have a look at this professor's page. He's an expert in "Kanji in the Information Age", which to me sounds totally fascinating!

Swedish - eh. There's only about 9 million Swedish speakers in the world. I wouldn't waste my time on it. XD (Um. I like using it myself, but - yeaaaah. If you want Northen European, go for Icelandic! They've preserved their language so well that you can still read the old sagas if you learn ti!)

[caersmane.livejournal.com]

If you ever need help with gimp, drop me a line. Also, I have many tutorials for it :)

*headdesk* That was supposed to be for Jades.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Heh, don't worry, I do that all the time.

And that's awesome, thanks. I think Gimp requires more patience than I've given it so far, but I would love to be able to at least use it. Art is not really my strong point, and probably never will be, but it would have been useful for work a few times! I'll definitely let you know when I need help :)