I'm Going Slightly Mad 2010-02-28

I am back from a flying trip to Thailand; and preparing for another one.

On the last trip flying HSAWS, an AC11, I logged:

• 6 hrs
  • 4 instrument hours
    • 2 IMC; a mixture of Cu, SC, and haze.
    • 2 Hood
  • 5 instrument approaches
    • 2 ILS; VTUQ, VTBU
    • 1 LOC; VTBU
    • 2 VOR DME; VTUQ, VTBU
    • 2 hold entries; VTUQ, VTBU
    • 4 holds; VTUQ, VTBU
  • 6 landings; Bang Phra twice, Best Ocean Airpark, VTUQ, VTBU.
  • 3 go arounds; VTUQ twice, VTBU

The political situation in Thailand is a little unstable now so I may have to change my plans at short notice.

I am reading The Tender Carnivore & the Sacred Game by Paul Shepard. The book lacks references but sometimes Paul weaves external material into the work stating the Author and the Source. He has a passion for the subject of us regaining our humanity and makes good arguments. I can see that his writing is dated in some respects (first published 1973): hints of Freud, and incomplete nutrition knowledge. Often prophetic, he provides explanations for some of our social ills: e.g. adolescent gang culture. I recommend the book to those looking for how our cultures went wrong and how we might live.

I have my course notes for a Cessna Citation Part 141 Type Rating Course so I am again in study mode.

This week I have discovered:

• TaskPaper
• Notational Velocity
• WriteRoom
• Dropbox
• TextMate
• Markdown
• Simplenote
• QuickCursor
• Liquid Tension Experiment on CD

I will use some of these to aid my study. Notational Velocity is particularly useful. I sync it to Simplenote and keep individual text files in a Dropbox folder. I keep my main TaskPaper file in the SimpleText folder. I access my data with TaskPaper, Notational Velocity, SimpleText and SimpleNote on my iPod Touch, or any other computer, anywhere in the world, forever! FX [manic laughter]

This week I have discovered that sadly:

• The Canon Scanner Drivers for my MP996 Do Not Work! Strange. The printer works just fine and I can scan from Print & Fax provided the Canon IJ Network Scanner Selector is running. It worked in 10.5.
• PCCW never calls back.
• The ATMD has an unlimited supply of badly written, unnecessary, and ineffective Operational Instructions.
• Tacky CNY decorations are still up and people are still happy to have their pictures taken with the crappy glitter in the background.
• Alcohol has similar effects on the body as the poison Fructose; my halo slipped! View the presentation about the toxicity of Fructose by Rober H. Lustig, MD. Now when I look at a glass of Red wine I think can of Coke. Woe, woe!
• My apartment is surrounded by Schnauzer manifestations that yap, howl, and cry all day.

I was using Textile but I will give Markdown a go to see how I get on.

Live Long and Prosper.

Long Way From Home 2009-02-15

Interesting few days. I watched Avatar again. I read The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability by Lierre Keith. I read Coming Home To The Pleistocene by Paul Shepard. I worked on getting my paperwork in order for adding a type rating to my FAA Commercial Pilot Certificate. My MacBookPro died!

The MacBookPro disaster is the easiest thing to fix: I bought another one. Two days later I have my old user account copied over from Time Machine, Windows XP running in a Bootcamp partition, Windows XP running in VMware Fusion. I used the excellent winclone again to restore the last clone of my Windows XP partiton.

I hate having to run windows at all but aviation software that I use will only run in Windows. The new MacBookPro looks and runs great but I would have been happy to continue to use the old one for quite a while yet. The old Pro will get passed on after repair.

I recommend reading The Vegetarian Myth:Food, Justice and Sustainability. I do not have a vegetarian bashing agenda but the book contains so much helpful information about many aspects of eating correctly, agriculture, and civilization. A central theme is that for a human to live something else needs to die, and that when a human dies their body feeds the earth. This is a repeating flow of life from birth to death. The book is just excellent. I didn't have a problem with the Feminist views of the author myself but others might. I won't bore you or myself by trying to reinvent the wheel: read a review by Dr Mike Eades or Mark Sisson.

Coming Home To The Pleistocene is not as easy a read as The Vegetarian Myth but it is worthwhile. Paul Shepard writes about how humans do not live now as humans are meant to live. He offers pointers to what we can do to reclaim our humanness. I will read more Paul Shepard material before retuning to both of the books I've mentioned to gain a better understand of the subject: who we are, and how we should live.

I contemplate that caged factory chickens are like art reflecting our own lives: avian versions of ourselves. Too many humans in too small a space, diseased, and dysfunctional. We read of diseases of civilization: but the civilization is the disease. How do we not just step back in time but rediscover our essence and place in nature? Is there time for a rediscovery before we have destroyed our planet and ourselves? These questions are just the beginning.

The end apparently, really is nigh!