Dr. Memnus Lagbane Soultooth the Mad

I seem to get a little stir-crazy doing the same stuff for forty hours each week after week after week. It's fun stuff, absolutely, don't get me wrong. I'm thoroughly enjoying Android wrangling, but apparently I need more. I want real physical activity, I want consistent sunlight and fresh air. This will become much, much more of a problem in a couple months, when I start getting home after dark, and even worse a couple months after that when I'm leaving the office after dark.

I would love to be doing that part-time. Two or three days a week, or that many hours worth, I would do Android integration, porting, makefile ninjaing, and all that stuff. With support from that, I want to get my archery chops back up. Get back to shooting a thousand arrows a week, climb in the name of training, go to the gym for reals, tune myself back up. Convince my employer that it's good publicity to give me classy logowear and pay my travel expenses to tournaments. Oh, and keep my health insurance going at least until I can sign on to the public plan. If it helps, I'd be willing to be featured in a marketing campaign around the deal ... I'm not sure what it takes to be an Official Sponsor Of USA Archery but it sure sounds good.

I would also get back into the archery teaching, because I like teaching fun things and it's a great way to get free range time. It's funny, I have found no age of child - everywhere from eight years old all the way through puberty and high school, even in mixed groups - that does not pay attention to you when you have an easy supply of weapons and demonstrable skills with them. And are happily showing them how to use said weapons.

I don't know how possible any of this is ... implementation details are still fuzzy at best. I'd probably have to shave my beard, or at the very very least trim it even further than mere polite-company levels. Hair in bowstring = PAIN.

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Because lorimt reminded me that she'd taken these: Fire spinning pictures! Camera-phone quality, novice skill level, but still shiny.

( Cut for peekchures (two) )

I think I need more mad skills and an accomplished photographer with a useful camera (I may be looking at you, gdarklighter) before I have any more of these.

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Dreamwidth sent me an invite code for registering my openID, so I've finally created that account. It will for the moment be approximately as high-traffic as this one.

Same username as always.

If I ever do start posting regularly, I suspect it will be with somewhat more openness than I've historically shown. But note the if.

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If you're on Twitter and you haven't heard of Twitshirt yet, it's time you did. I won't do them the honor of giving an actual like, but they don't make themselves hard to find. The basic idea is this: You give them twenty dollars, and they send you a t-shirt with your favorite tweet on it, no matter who actually wrote it. They soothe their consciences by setting aside fifty cents for the author of the tweet, if they ever bother to go find out that there's some measly amount of money available to them. And of course you can block your tweets from being printed on t-shirts! Just send them your username and password.

If you're not a little angry yet, please read that again a couple times.

I don't know if there will be a shitstorm about this. On the one hand, I kind of hope there is, because then they might get the picture that there's some moral and perhaps even legal issues in their business model. On the other hand, the level of maturity I see in shitstorms on the internet is rarely what I expect to actually create change. So there's a few simple steps to follow.

1. Change your Twitter password. I recommend "DontShirtMeBro".
2. Go to the Twitshirt opt-out page and enter your username and new password.
3. Change your Twitter password back to its usual highly-secure self.
4 (And this is the most important one to me). Send them an @ message, DM, or email saying that their service should be opt-in, rather than opt-out. Be polite, and only use words you'd hear on the Disney channel. Be outraged, be forceful, but be eloquent.
5. Encourage others to do the same.

Presumably as their blacklist and @ reply box fill up, they'll get the picture.

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• 10:09 Landed safely at SFO, Latitude activated. Adventure beginning. #

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I seem to have fallen behind on my Livejournal posting. It seems like I don't have a lot to blather about besides work, though, lately, which is really a shame.

My supply of strenuous physical activity these days seems to begin and end with trips to the climbing gym. On the one hand, this keeps my upper body strength in at least a passable state, and is somewhat more of a balanced (no pun intended) exercise than archery, it doesn't do much for the cardiovascular endurance. Finally getting into lead climbing may do a little for that; actually doing something silly like "getting a bike" would be much better.

Speaking of archery, I haven't been. Like, at all. I have a target in my driveway, and my bow strung in my closet, and will go out and shoot 30-50 arrows maybe once every other week. By the end of that, the skin on my fingertips is extremely unhappy. Competing is out of the question, I'd have a solid week of tuning and hardware fixes ahead of me if I wanted to, and new arrows probably wouldn't hurt either. But unless I figure out a better motivation for it, archery will remain a footnote.

I'm going to San Francisco for GDC next week! It's looking like I'll be able to get evenings free to do whatever, so if you're up for dinner or hanging out I'm absolutely interested. I'll be staying downtown and happy to hop a train to wherever. I'll be in town from Sunday morning to Saturday afternoon (slight change of plans from the original, on account of unexpected San Diego events). My schedule's open unless otherwise noted.

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• 08:15 Experimenting with quieting down some, while leaving a potential broadcast avenue open. #

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Oh spirits, you are welcome here
Of comfort, friendship, joy, and warmth
Of kindness, mirth, and happy times,
Come in.

Take shelter in our humble walls,
Keep company with those within.
To you, we open now our hearts,
Come in.

There's more stewing in my brain around this, though it's not wanting to put itself to words. I remember that writing didn't used to be this agonizing. Yet all I seem to have recently is Twitter-level blather.

(Speaking of, do people hate/mind/ignore/appreciate/crave my loudtwitter spamming?)

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Hm. What to do in Escondido for an hour or two?