sw’as

A while ago, I went looking for a good book to read on Australian Political History, and I’m still looking. I really didn’t manage to find one that inspired me to fork over $20-30. Most books on Australia’s Political History seem to be biography based, which really isn’t what I’m looking for and neither do I want something that’s detectably partisan.

So, while I’m still looking for the book^[1], I’ve found a resource almost as good. A team in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne led by Dr Sally Young, Senior Lecturer in the Media and Communications Program have put together a project called The Soapbox which aims to document Australian political campaigns from federation.

The result (and it’s only just beginning as I understand it) is an unbelievably impressive collection of speeches (and other political campaign material). While it looks like the material is still in the process of being collected and uploaded, it’s already well worth a look.

You’ve got to love this quote from John Curtin’s Policy Launch speech at the 1937 election^[2]:

The best way in which a widow with dependent children can do her greatest work in Australia is not by competing for wages, but by carrying on to the best of her ability in her home the work of mothercraft so that her children may be given the best maternal guidance to become the future citizens of a great Commonwealth.

Curtin went on to lose that election as well as the subsequent election in 1940. He then became Prime Minister in 1941 when two independents who were in support of the Coalition^[3] (and keeping them in Government) switched their support to the Labor Party.

The Soapbox via Democratic Audit of Australia ^[4]

1. Any suggestions gratefully received. [↩]
2. Download the whole thing here. [↩]
3. The Coalition here meaning the United Australia Party in coalition with the Country Party. [↩]
4. The Democratic Audit project is well worth keeping an eye on. I’m subscribed to the Audit Update emails which come out at the most readable and pace of about once a month. I’ve never failed to find something of interest and importance in the Audit Update emails. [↩]

We’ll my copy of Leopard is ordered and on its way. Of all the new features, I think I’m most looking forward to the Finder enhancements. Since I switched from Windows a few months back Finder has been one of the main disappointments. Cover flow and the document previews will be pretty damn good.

Here I am thinking all of this and then I stumble across this video:

Well, if only Leopard was a serious innovation like that.

It’s time for another no-TV stint, only this time the rules are slightly different.

Last year, inspired by a post on stevepavlina.com, I tried an experiment where I completely avoided watching TV for 30 days. I did that very successfully and as I noted back then when I was part way through, I was pretty happy with how it was going. I was pretty happy with how it went in the end.

Why

Last time I attempted this was because I felt the whole TV thing was sucking a whole bunch more time than it should have been and I’m doing it for basically the same reason this time. There is very little benefit to be had from watching most TV, and there’s probably actually a detrimental effect delivered by watching an amount of TV over a certain threshold or TV with a level of quality below a certain threshold. I think I’m breaking both thresholds on a regular basis at the moment.

The new rules

While last time I just made it a blanket ban on TV, this time I’m refining the rules a little to exclude some things from the ban. The purpose of refining the rules is to bring it closer to a set of rules that could be used at all times. Last year’s ban was never meant to be a permanent thing, and neither is this one, but I want to take it closer to something I think I’ll be happy maintaining over a much longer period of time.

Importantly, all commercial TV is included in the ban. This is important for a few reasons, but mainly because a 40 minute show will suck an hour from my life and I’d rather use that wasted 20 minutes for something a little more constructive.

The exclusions are:

• Movies which I haven’t seen before and I’ve gone to the trouble of buying, renting or downloading.
• TV series which I’ve gone to the trouble to buy (or borrow) on DVD. A strict one episode per evening will be enforced.

I’m also making a “no more than one hour of feed reading and subsequent pissing about per day” rule because the internet can waste a lot of time as well.

Let’s see how this goes.

One of my new favourite productivity/work flow/improving myself generally bloggers, David Seah, has just started a challenge which I’ve been struggling with for months…making early rising into a habit.

In a post today about feeling totally crap in the initial few days of being an early riser David wrote something that I’d never realised before, but really, totally makes sense:

The impulsive side of me enjoys the quest for knowledge as it is happening, so the reward is immediate. The application of that knowledge through process takes time, and the reward is deferred. For people that enjoy the mechanical process side of things, the reward would be immediate. In my case, I have to be aware that my brain is going to try to distract me with more immediately-gratifying things.

This is me down to a tee. I’m easily distracted because I enjoy the quest for knowledge. Just Doing Things (JDT)^[1] (as opposed to Getting Things Done) is totally my weakness. My brain will easily and joyfully slip into reading the news, or something on Wikipedia about which I previously new nothing or which I don’t yet quite understand.

Things that require me to just do some work are harder; especially when I know I can do the work and won’t have to research a bit of something new first.

1. Ok, that’s totally tongue in cheek, but why the hell not make up random acronyms? [↩]