Pingus

Lately I feel as if I have been becoming dumb. When I talk to people I just don't say interesting things anymore. This is surprising to me because when I was in high school and during my eearly days of university I was considered quite smart, and I also felt very smart as well. I suspect something has happened to me since then. My guess is that my life has gotten comfortable and I have been watching a lot of television and reading a lot of junk on the internet. As such I haven't really challenged my mind much, which means my brain does not get vital exercise it needs.

The solution to this problem is to do what I used to do a lot when I was young, which is to play lots of games, especially puzzle, strategy, or tactical games. I could always go out to the computer game store and buy some of the latest games, but why would I do that when there are so many free games for download over the internet.

One free game I recommend to people is called Pingus. This is a game I highly approve. It is very addictive. I managed to win the training quite easily and then finished all the levels. Some of them were challenging. The problem is that after I won all the levels and completed everything, I wanted to play more levels but didn't know how to. I read that you can download more levels to play but the problem is that I don't know how to install these levels.

District 9

This post contains spoilers.

I watched District 9 yesterday. It was a good movie. If I had to give criticisms I would say that I didn’t really appreciate the gore. I also thought the ending where the hero sacrifices himself to help someone is quite clichéd and very similar to the ending of Blood Diamond. I was also not happy with some of the unanswered questions such as what eventually happened to the hero. I do not like it when moviemakers deliberately leave questions unanswered in order to make a film mysterious.

Getting Tired of Sandwiches

I am so tired of bringing sandwiches to work. The problem is that when I eat the sandwiches at lunch, most of the components of the sandwich has already deteriorated. E.g. the salad is dry, the bread has become soggy, and the ham smells. The alternative is to eat at restaurants. The problem with this is that it often costs quite a lot to eat out and I feel guilty not saving money.

What I need is a simple-to-prepare lunch that is tasty and healthy. I am thinking of bringing to work sandwiches with Vegemite on them. I have heard that Vegemite has too much salt in it. However, the New Vegemite contains less salt and apparently it tastes better.

Poor Earphones on $30 MP3 Player

I purchased a 2GB MP3 player from Overstock Outlet. I purchased a new MP3 player because the battery in my old one is starting to die out. I have noticed this because whenever I charge the player up to the max, the battery runs out with a normal day's use. When buying MP3 players, I think it is much better to get one that has an inbuilt rechargeable lithium-ion battery rather than one that is powered by AA or AAA batteries.

Like many products from Overstock Outlet, this product is very cheap. I have not tried the actual MP3 player, but in this post I want to complain about the earphones, which I think are very poor quality. The plastic coating around the earphone wire is too hard and after normal usage the plastic starts to tear (see image below). Note the image below depicts the new earphones attached to my old MP3 player.

Buying Dumbbells Over the Internet

I have purchased a dumbbell set from Overstock Outlet. You get four dumbbells delivered to you by post. Two of them are 4 kilograms, and the other two are 2 kilograms.

These dumbbells are fairly cheap ($45 not including delivery costs), and the option of buying them over the Internet makes getting them convenient. The problem is that the handles are made of steel and feel cold and rough against your palm. This is easily fixed, however, by wrapping a piece of blank paper around those handles.

Days When People Die

I have just been to The Age and on the first page alone there is so much reference to death. Have a look at the image below, which is a screenshot of The Age website with the death-related headlines marked in red.


This is not meant to prove anything. It's just an interesting observation. The news of Michael Jackson's death seems to have overshadowed all other news. I happen to think that Michael was a great singer and dancer, and I especially liked his music when I was a child.

Increasing Bedtime Volatility

Above is a time series chart of when I go to bed. The date is on the horizontal axis and on the vertical axis is the hour at which I go to bed. Zero is midnight, -1 is 11:00pm, 1 is 1:00am, and so forth.

You can see from the chart that a major change in average bedtime occurred at the beginning of February 2009. This happened because I changed jobs from working part-time during the afternoon to working 9 till 5.

Normally what happens is I wake up at 6:30 in the morning on Mondays to Fridays. However, on weekends I normally stay up late, which is what causes those spikes to appear. About a week ago I went to a sleepover, and I stayed up till 5:30 in the morning for that. This explains that major spike towards the end of the chart. As you can see, I adjusted for that by going to sleep really early the following day.

What I have only just noticed from plotting the data is that the volatility of my bedtime seems to be increasing over time. My sleep is becoming more and more erratic, which may not be good for my internal body clock.