Adam Luke

Summer 2010

I started writing this entry six months ago…but then things happened and I never finished it. This is an entry about all the Fun Things I did over the summer break.

Watching

Mad Men: I could say more, but I think the above gif explains a significant portion of the show. Pretty sure everyone needs a bit of Christina Hendricks’s ass in their life.
Community: it’s so meta and about ten different kinds of lulzy. I…I just love all the pop culture references and callbacks and continuity nods. Um, yep.

Reading

I stopped regularly reading fiction a long time ago. Non-fiction is where it’s at.

The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life by Richard Dawkins: as some of you may have realised by now, Dawks is one of my favourite people, and I would regard this as one of the best books I’ve read. It follows the course of human evolution back through time, from humankind to bacteria. It’s a longass book, and, admittedly, got a bit tedious towards the end, but it’s an excellent popular science read for a non-biology-studying person like me (and for biology people too, I imagine).
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson: we all find it hard to admit we’ve made a mistake. Cognitive dissonance is a well-established theory in social psychology and demonstrates that rather than owning up to a mistake or apologising for a hurtful action, people will instead start rationalising and justifying their decisions.
Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives by Richard Wiseman: a magician-turned-psychologist writes about quirky science of the everyday and various offbeat topics. For instance, did you know that there is an over-representation of marine biologists named Dr. Fish?

Playing

Diablo II: I get the urge to play this again about once every year or two. It’s still great this many years later, what with the hacking and slashing and all. Blizzard is great. I’ve avoided becoming addicted to their latest offerings, but I’ll definitely be playing Diablo III when it is eventually released.
SimCity 4: at first I was a slightly (okay, extremely) greedy mayor. Apparently it pays off not to tax the shit out of everything. Who knew?

June 17th, 2011 · Media · 2 Comments »

It turns out that working almost full-time while being a full-time student and having all my assignments due at the peak of this busy period is not conducive to having any sort of “life”. Having one day off in seven weeks and being busy with aforementioned work/uni/etc. all day and well into the night every single day is just exhausting. And wearing shoes for all that time gets painful.

But anyway, as a lot of you (if I do, in fact, still have readers?) know already, I lost my job amidst of all this (for reasons not of my own doing, in case that’s how it sounds..!). Which means I now have available this mystical thing known as ~the weekend~.¹

And I’m pretty sure I’ve been aloof around my university friends (disgregard friends; acquire grades²). But that can now stop, I suppose. I “celebrated” finishing my assignments by seeing a show for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with Lucy. Long story short, this happened to my arm, and fun times were had.

With which to catch up on all the schoolwork I’m behind in. Which is a lot. Argh!
Except not really…my grades may well be screwed.

May 2nd, 2011 · Daily Life, Money and Work · 1 Comment »

Rule 34b of the Internet

So you’re all aware of Rule 34 of the Internet, right? If not, I’ll just let xkcd explain it to you:

xckd comic first describing the phenomenon

Rule 34 of the Internet: If you can imagine it, there is porn of it.

Well! I recently formulated a sub-type of this rule. Rule 34b of the Internet states the following: If it exists, there is a Tumblr account for it.

I formulated this rule after marvelling at the sheer number of extremely niche Tumblr accounts that are floating around. For example!

Yep, so totally go forth and spread this rule to make it ~mainstream~ and stuff. Or not, or whatever.

January 30th, 2011 · Internet and Websites · 5 Comments »