I like reading. Always have. Ever since I was little. I didn’t have many friends growing up; and I was mostly deaf from the time I was 6 until I was nearly 8. So as a result reading became my thing. My grandpa had a subscription to National Geographic and whenever we’d visit I’d spend nearly the entire trip devouring each and every article. That and books on just about anything. When I was seven I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. As a child I liked the former better. Particularly the story about Tom and Huck finding the treasure. So early on I was a fan of early turn of the century authors. I also read anything technical related to aviation; I received a lot fo gift books about airplanes and theory books on aerodynamics. My science projects usually focused on principles of flight. I still have one of my favourite aviation books and hope to pass it on to my son. So I’ll give you, my reader a list of the books I feel are most important to read. This is going to take a little while. It isn’t going to be a list following any specific order of importance or chronology. I’ve read so many, text books, novels, personal development, comics. As they come to me I’ll tell you about them.
- The Bible. If ever there was a book that did more to shape the course of human history I don’t know it. You’d also be hard pressed to argue it. Being of two parts, the Jewish Torah and the New Testament (Gospels, Acts and Letters from the Saints) this book formed the basis for modern law and forms the framework upon which western society is based. It is also something I believe. I believe in the Jewish God Jehova and also in the divinity of His Son, Jesus of Nazareth. This belief forms the basis for my morality; I’m just not a good Christian. I fail at it all the time. But as John Chow says, success is the result of a long string of failures!
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. This book has special meaning to me because my father gave me his copy and this was where I developed my love of reading. As I said before, I was deaf, for a long time undiagnosed. Since I couldn’t hear the spoken word, and no one I knew used sign language, my affliction seems to have strengthened my ability to read and at an early age I read this and other classics. I also developed a love for Sam Clemens aka Mark Twain that has lasted to this day. I ahve many of his books on my shelf. The two origionals given to me by my father and others including The Prince and the Pauper (also received from my father) and a collection of his works called The Unabridged Mark Twain. My affection for the books of Twain would lead to Huxley, Golding, Knowles, Forester, Steinbeck, Conrad and so many others. He was a gateway to worlds I never knew.
- Aviation: The Story of Flight. By Bill Gunston. This was given to me as a Christmas gift by my grandparents Royle in the year 1986. I spent hours reading every detail in this book. I was eleven when I received it and it still sits on my shelf. I still open it and look at the details, the diagrams, and the read the articles within. It is history and science at once. It traces the myths of early man as to how to attain flight including the story of Daedalus and Icharus, to early experiments, photographs of experimental aircraft that never reached production to the science behind the internal combustion engine, the propeller, lift, fluid dynamics involving jet engines, the forces of lift, thrust, gravity and drag. It is an amazing book that stimulated my desire to get a pilots license. I attained that in 1999.
I had my first physiotherapy treatment today at ten forty-five in the morning. And I had no idea how bad it was. Meghen was my physiotherapist and we started in earnest. I filled out some forms, and then went into a curtained off section where she started asking me what hurt. What doesn’t hurt is the better question. So we started there. My feet only hurt after standing on concrete for long periods of time but have never really been a huge problem. My knees have only ever had accute inflammations twice and have never been a chronicn problem. But my hips, they don’t work. I have lower mid and upper back pain, all the time. My right arm will go numb, as will my left fingers but they don’t lose any strength or cooridination, just more of a tingly feeling. So we began our treatment. She moved my neck this way, got me to use my arms, manipulated my back and then came up with a diagnosis. I have really bad posture, but I blog, I use a computer all the time. That bad posture is putting a lot of pressure on my nerves around my last cervical vertabrate and my first thoracic vertabrate. What that means she said is that it is completely correctable. So today I got a heat treatment with a little zapper to fatigue my neck muscles and then some manipulation. I felt like a million bucks. So next she is going to give me a few more treatments and some exercises to do and we are hoping that in a month or two I’m going to have this pain licked. I can’t wait. And get this, Alberta health care will cover it! I love being Albertan!
Writing anything takes time. Writing well takes more time and the development of the ability to blog meaningfully takes a great deal of time. Between my job, my family and the requirement of sleep I don’t have much to spare. John Chow said he had developed his blog in about 2 hours a day over 2 years. That is I hope possible but I realize there is very little traffic to a blog like mine now since I have nothing to say. I need to develop a voice, I need to develop content and I need to figure out how to also make websites look fantastic. I never pay attention to the wordcount on the sidebar of this typing tool and I think it is about time that I started to. Two hundred words minimum. I’ll talk about family, about what I know. I work in Alberta. I live in Alberta. I serve in a militia regiment. I go to church and believe in Jesus. I like music and I like writing. I like cutting up steel with a torch and nailing wood to other wood. I like watching my infant son double kick with his strong legs and I like how he smiles for the camera all the time. I think I would like to write a series of books on my mistakes. And what I learned from them. There is a lot to think about. But I want to leave something behind. I don’t care to live life to survive because that is a losing game. No one survives, and surviving a little longer doesn’t mean anything. I will work to living a fulfilling life of service. And if the worse should happen, there is always the army.
I don’t know what to think right now except that a lot of people are going bankrupt right now. I don’t know what the future holds but recently Paul Newman died and I thought I would post two things he said that make a lot of sense in uncertain times:
“It is useless to put on your brakes when you’re upside down.”
“Just when things look darkest, they go black.”
Well things look like they are about to go black. See you on the flip-side.
Make Poverty History
One thing that bothers me about my Optio w30 is that the videos it shoots play back in Quick Time. And I’m not a fan of Quick Time. The reason is because Quick Time takes a long time to open as a program on my PC and everytime I open a new video a new Quick Time box opens. Actually sometimes I like that, but not always. I like it when I am going through various shots and want to compare. That isn’t possible with anyother programs. But it sucks when you are trying to view several films and each time you click a new one Quick Time reloads another window. Now as for being on the blog I am really unsatisfied with how my video of fish at Azul Beach Resort in Peurto Morelis turned out. I was hoping for a thumbnail that was maybe the first frame followed by it playing on the page. Not a name link called img#### that sends you to a new window! That sucked and wasn’t interesting at all. Unfortunately I’m out of time but I am going to attempt to post a new video to the site using ohter formats and see how that works out.
imgp1896
This is a small video at 3.55 megs that I shot with my Optio w30. Like I was saying earlier the optio is pretty good but has a mike problem. But that isn’t the point the point is I hope that I have finally got the vido function to work after having had problems yesterday!
