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Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
I FINALLY beat the computer at Scrabble....hahaha. I've tied with it 4 times before...never won.
I'm super excited! We all know my vocab is pretty limited, but I've been using point strategy for awhile. Today was it! I got stuck with the Q without a U ...I played 4 hands and couldn't wait...I exchanged it. 3 pulls later I got the Q again...took 2 more times to pull a U...but then I made 'Quail' with the Q on a TL !!!!!! It was still close till the end bec the damn computer breaks out words I don't even know....hahaha...but I went out of tiles first and finished with "avail" on a DW. 278 to 208. Yah me!!!!
And yes...we all know how bad my spelling is (though it has gotten better)....so most of words don't go over 5 letters...hahaha...but take this win wit cha!!!!
HamsakagoosewhispererPolishing the 'just so'Veteran
@Hamsaka said:
Thanks for the reminder about Sam Harris's new book being out!! It's available on Audible.com, off to download . . .
Got the audiobook and 'listened' to it (while cleaning house, spinning yarn) and I not only enjoyed it for Harris's hilarious snark about Christianity et al's less noble aspects, but in this first 'pass' through the book, heard a LOT I'm going back to and some new stuff, too. New to 'me'. I recommend it and plan to study some of it more deeply.
@Hamsaka said:
Got the audiobook and 'listened' to it (while cleaning house, spinning yarn) and I not only enjoyed it for Harris's hilarious snark about Christianity et al's less noble aspects, but in this first 'pass' through the book, heard a LOT I'm going back to and some new stuff, too. New to 'me'. I recommend it and plan to study some of it more deeply.
It seems like Sam is Buddhism's latest convert. Hurrah! .
We just need Richard Dawkins to complete the set....
0
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
That shouldn't be too hard, as he quite likes Buddhism, apparently, but we have to be subtle about it... sneaky even.....
HamsakagoosewhispererPolishing the 'just so'Veteran
edited September 2014
@SpinyNorman said:
We just need Richard Dawkins to complete the set....
Sam Harris may surprise you. He is not a Buddhist by any stretch. He avoids even that designation. He spends just as much time relating his experiences and opinions about Advaita Vendanta and magic mushrooms and LSD, if not more.
His book is about Waking Up, after all -- not Buddhism or even how Buddhists do it.
If that turns you off then you really do need to read the book
HamsakagoosewhispererPolishing the 'just so'Veteran
Who else can I tell about what happened between my granddaughter and I?
This is the little gal who I 'branded' with the footprint of the Buddha, by drawing the shape on her forehead once I got her to myself for the first time. It was during a diaper change, so she got the Buddha's footprint on her tummy AND her forehead while I was at it.
So last night my son and I were sitting on their bed and I was holding Avalon while she smiled at her dada when her eyes slid over and found me. I felt her little body 'jump' and our eyes locked together for several surprisingly intense moments. Her little eyes got very round (I'm sure mine did too) and I was in that moment sure she seemed to RECOGNIZE me. She literally had a look on her six week old face much like "oh my god, it's you!"
It's been a whole day, and I still can hardly believe it happened the way it did. After several moments where we goggled at one another, so dramatic my son went out to grab his wife and the video camera, Avalon began to coo and vocalize, typical for infants her age, and still gazing right into my eyes. It was so intense!
I chuckle good naturedly when people tell me these kinds of stories :buck: . And yes, we got it on video, apparently it was the first time she'd really 'vocalized' in that cute little interactive way tiny babies do at about that age.
I have no interest in reading more or making more of it, and honestly I would be chuckling privately at mySELF if it weren't so shocking AND witnessed by her parents . I guess it was just beautiful and an affirmation that there is so much more to reality than my human brain can understand.
I don't understand @DhammaDragon ?? 100 hours / 24 hours/day = 5 days right?
Now it is up to 9 days or 9x24 = 216 hours..
It might seem odd that I post about not smoking 5 hours, but it is actually very hard to to break off. When unrestrained I was smoking about 10 times per day and then I cut to about 6 and I was stuck there for 6 months until I got a respiratory cold 9 days ago and I just took the cold as an opportunity to get off smoking.
@Jeffrey: my dad is the only person I know who succeeded in quitting smoking cold-turkey.
He had been smoking two packs a day since he was thirteen.
At 28, the day he married my mother, he simply decided to ditch the habit. Out of the blue.
Till the day he died, at age 61, he never ever touched a cigarette again.
1
Toraldris -`-,-{@ Zen Nud... Buddhist @}-,-`- East Coast, USAVeteran
@federica I got me one of those ayurvedic tongue scrapers today, piece of thin stainless steel, and my mouth thanks you.
@SpinyNorman said:
So will we end up with our head in the cloud? :eek: .
Funny and poetically prophetic. The 'God cloud', similar to a sentient akashic record beloved of occultists is beginning to come online . . . Still need to work on the human interface to plug into the inter-galactic and multi-dimensional versions set up by more advanced civil liasons.
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
I honestly wondered what you were going to say for a moment.... I take it that's not a euphemism.....?!
1
HamsakagoosewhispererPolishing the 'just so'Veteran
edited September 2014
Doing the 'low carb' thing, weight reduction that has worked very well for me in the past. The 'family knees' have announced their presence (as I've moaned about before) and I'm hoping a good thirty pounds off and kept off will postpone the 'family knee replacement scenario'.
The hardest part by FAR is the first three or four days until the metabolic pathway shifts from glucose-based to fat burning based. I am on day four now, and don't feel nearly so shitty as yesterday.
AND I got two pound of macademia nuts in the mail, just now. Low carbohydrate diets are the BEST because they allow and encourage such amazing oral experiences as macademia nuts, bacon, butter and cream. MMMMM these nuts iz good. Anyone else done 'low carb'? It's been years since I followed it faithfully, and there are so many more low carb foods that AREN'T giant slabs of cow flesh than there used to be. Its still primarily a protein and fat based diet, but it looks possible to do it WITHOUT the gagging amount of meat that low carb used to be. When I first did low carb fifteen years ago, I could barely find decent tofu in the local grocery store.
Today for the second time, I took a very strange bus route. Some of the time it doubles back on itself. Then it went the wrong way. The driver was new and under assesment. Passengers were not always let off, without prompt from the instructor. An elderly disabled passenger was almost crushed by prematurely closing doors. The 'driver being attacked' alarm went off. The bus terminated prematurely.
Now that may sound like a life vehicle but it also happened and like another passenger, I was able to assure the trainee, he was doing fine . . .
Even the instructor told us amusingly 'no extra charge for the detour'.
Humour, acceptance and patience, journey is part of the destination.
I would have paid extra to be on that bus . . . come to think of it I did . . . Paid and then it terminated. I 'had to get on the next bus', which was the same bus three minutes later . . .
Destination Samsara is Nirvana on some vehicles . . .
@lobster: I've been going deeper into your comments on the photo app you created.
I'm still useless with technology and don't take many photos anyway.
But I just wanted to tell you that it's a wonderful idea.
@lobster said:
Destination Samsara is Nirvana on some vehicles . . .
Buses?! Sheer luxury! We never had buses. We had to walk 150 miles to work in driving rain, constantly being attacked by aggressive sheep, then we had to put in a 26 hour day, and we had to pay for the privilege.... .
I'm currently organising a boat trip for some friends, we'll be going off-shore to some sand banks with ( hopefully ) lots of seals, also hoping to see some porpoises on the way. What fun!!
@DhammaDragon said:
lobster: I've been going deeper into your comments on the photo app you created.
I'm still useless with technology and don't take many photos anyway.
But I just wanted to tell you that it's a wonderful idea.
Thanks
I was really inspired to take better photos by pics posted here by someone who was a trained photographer. I was very much a 'happy snapper'.
Digital photography is open to everyone with a modern mobile phone.
I recently bought an inexpensive bridge camera, partly to inspire my sister to finally buy her compact camera. My sisters Panasonic has a 30x zoom lens, gps and wifi all in something the size of a mobile phone. Wonderful but expensive. The bridge camera a Canon (the company was originally named Kwanon - Buddhist Goddess of Mercy) I bought, also has a 30x zoom lens, added to the digital zoom (and sadly loss of quality) I can get 120x zoom from a tiny camera. Quite amazing. Pic example enclosed. On the whole I find the auto setting is best for my needs. I transfer and edit and store largely on the iPad. I did take some photos on the iPad, but it is cumbersome and I prefer my fifth generation of IPod touch. However a mobile phone is just as good, if not better.
I'm debating how many episodes of "Doctor Who" I should watch today. After I finish some dharma reading. "Doctor Who" is a perfectly acceptable way to reflect, right?
0
Toraldris -`-,-{@ Zen Nud... Buddhist @}-,-`- East Coast, USAVeteran
@Rowan1980 said:
I'm debating how many episodes of "Doctor Who" I should watch today. After I finish some dharma reading. "Doctor Who" is a perfectly acceptable way to reflect, right?
There's no such thing as "too much Doctor Who", so it's all good.
Another great British invention! I can still remember watching the first ever episode on a little black and white TV, it was quite scary at the time ( Dr. Who, not the TV ).
A bunch of my friends and I watched the first episodes a few years back. Really neat! I watched it off and on in high school and college and, according to my mother, as a little kid. So it's neat seeing the progression from the original series to the reboot.
0
HamsakagoosewhispererPolishing the 'just so'Veteran
@SpinyNorman said:
Buses?! Sheer luxury! We never had buses. We had to walk 150 miles to work in driving rain, constantly being attacked by aggressive sheep, then we had to put in a 26 hour day, and we had to pay for the privilege.... .
Ha! At least you have legs! And sheep!
0
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
My younger brother - 50 this year - still remembers being shyte-scared of the cybermen... when they were the proper cybermen, not the updated models they've got now... Like the Mini, Fiat 500 and Volkswagen beetle, they may say they're the new, updated modernised version, but honey, we all know different!
William Hartnell was amazing, Patrick Troughton - when he went they broke the mould....
0
Toraldris -`-,-{@ Zen Nud... Buddhist @}-,-`- East Coast, USAVeteran
I really liked Tom Baker, Peter Davison was good, hated Colin Baker thoroughly, Sylvester McCoy was funny, Paul McGann would've made an excellent "series" Doctor (the bit where he was running in place saying "these shoes fit perfectly!" reminded me of Martin Short), and I've loved everyone since (Eccleston, Tennant, Smith and now Capaldi).
I've watched a few of Hartnell's, but sorta lost interest after a while with all the history stuff and extremely slow pacing. Maybe I'll watch/finish 1-3 some day if I get a chance!
Comments
I FINALLY beat the computer at Scrabble....hahaha. I've tied with it 4 times before...never won.
I'm super excited! We all know my vocab is pretty limited, but I've been using point strategy for awhile. Today was it! I got stuck with the Q without a U ...I played 4 hands and couldn't wait...I exchanged it. 3 pulls later I got the Q again...took 2 more times to pull a U...but then I made 'Quail' with the Q on a TL !!!!!! It was still close till the end bec the damn computer breaks out words I don't even know....hahaha...but I went out of tiles first and finished with "avail" on a DW. 278 to 208. Yah me!!!!
And yes...we all know how bad my spelling is (though it has gotten better)....so most of words don't go over 5 letters...hahaha...but take this win wit cha!!!!
Managed to get a video of a kingfisher in Richmond Park
The camera is handheld . . . next in flight . . . with luck . . .
They're quite a bit bigger than I originally thought they were....
Thanks for the reminder about Sam Harris's new book being out!! It's available on Audible.com, off to download . . .
I am creating a Yinyana app that should run on phone or website. So easy to create . . . early days . . . :wave: .
http://www.adsy.me/yyuv2K9bIj
Got the audiobook and 'listened' to it (while cleaning house, spinning yarn) and I not only enjoyed it for Harris's hilarious snark about Christianity et al's less noble aspects, but in this first 'pass' through the book, heard a LOT I'm going back to and some new stuff, too. New to 'me'. I recommend it
and plan to study some of it more deeply.
Created an app on improving photo skills
http://adsy.me/wZtOB9BPdr
It seems like Sam is Buddhism's latest convert. Hurrah!
.
We just need Richard Dawkins to complete the set....
That shouldn't be too hard, as he quite likes Buddhism, apparently, but we have to be subtle about it... sneaky even.....
Best to just talk about "mindfulness" then.
.
Sam Harris may surprise you. He is not a Buddhist by any stretch. He avoids even that designation. He spends just as much time relating his experiences and opinions about Advaita Vendanta and magic mushrooms and LSD, if not more.
His book is about Waking Up, after all -- not Buddhism or even how Buddhists do it.
If that turns you off then you really do need to read the book
over 100 hours without smoking!
Who else can I tell about what happened between my granddaughter and I?
This is the little gal who I 'branded' with the footprint of the Buddha, by drawing the shape on her forehead once I got her to myself for the first time. It was during a diaper change, so she got the Buddha's footprint on her tummy AND her forehead while I was at it.
So last night my son and I were sitting on their bed and I was holding Avalon while she smiled at her dada when her eyes slid over and found me. I felt her little body 'jump' and our eyes locked together for several surprisingly intense moments. Her little eyes got very round (I'm sure mine did too) and I was in that moment sure she seemed to RECOGNIZE me. She literally had a look on her six week old face much like "oh my god, it's you!"
It's been a whole day, and I still can hardly believe it happened the way it did. After several moments where we goggled at one another, so dramatic my son went out to grab his wife and the video camera, Avalon began to coo and vocalize, typical for infants her age, and still gazing right into my eyes. It was so intense!
I chuckle good naturedly when people tell me these kinds of stories :buck: . And yes, we got it on video, apparently it was the first time she'd really 'vocalized' in that cute little interactive way tiny babies do at about that age.
I have no interest in reading more or making more of it, and honestly I would be chuckling privately at mySELF if it weren't so shocking AND witnessed by her parents
. I guess it was just beautiful and an affirmation that there is so much more to reality than my human brain can understand.
Just upgraded to iOS 8
It needed 5.7 gig of free space for download and install. Somehow found the space. Slowly finding great features such as pic rotate. Likes that.
Bravo brave and fearless nicotine ascetics. Bravo indeed :clap: .
Does anyone else remember the days when we didn't have hard drives? Or when a big hard drive was 20MB (megabyte)?
I hope we're not talking an hour weekly here..
:crazy: ..
I don't understand @DhammaDragon
?? 100 hours / 24 hours/day = 5 days right?
Now it is up to 9 days or 9x24 = 216 hours..
It might seem odd that I post about not smoking 5 hours, but it is actually very hard to to break off. When unrestrained I was smoking about 10 times per day and then I cut to about 6 and I was stuck there for 6 months until I got a respiratory cold 9 days ago and I just took the cold as an opportunity to get off smoking.
@Jeffrey: my dad is the only person I know who succeeded in quitting smoking cold-turkey.
He had been smoking two packs a day since he was thirteen.
At 28, the day he married my mother, he simply decided to ditch the habit. Out of the blue.
Till the day he died, at age 61, he never ever touched a cigarette again.
@federica I got me one of those ayurvedic tongue scrapers today, piece of thin stainless steel, and my mouth thanks you.
The first desk-top computer I bought was I GB hard drive. My current lap-top is 500 GB! Wow! Where will it all lead?
Net becomes so fast, everything becomes cloud-based, and basically such space measurements no longer matter?
So will we end up with our head in the cloud? :eek:
.
I saw 4 cormorants together yesterday, they were bossing around a load of seagulls.
They looked like this:
http://thecormorant.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/cormorant_icon.jpg
Funny and poetically prophetic. The 'God cloud', similar to a sentient akashic record beloved of occultists is beginning to come online . . . Still need to work on the human interface to plug into the inter-galactic and multi-dimensional versions set up by more advanced civil liasons.
As we Maoris from other dimensions say:
Kue Aura?
I would like to sublime like in an Iain Banks novel. Very Cultured!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sublimed
After 9 years (give or take the odd month or two) my H is finally out of the wilderness and HAS FOUND A JOB!!! :clap: . :rockon: .
Hurrah! Slap-up meal to celebrate? ( I'll just have a main course to keep your bill down ).
Congratulations, @federica!!!
Shall we have snails on the menu?
Escargots déjà-vu à la Fede?
With loads of garlic butter and parsley and hunks of french baguette to mop up the juices! Very sociable!!
.
We'll give the boys a big garlic kiss before dessert.
French.
(The kiss, not the dessert.)
Can I 'ave it after me afters?
.
Fede will provide the Ayurveda tongue scraper...
I honestly wondered what you were going to say for a moment.... I take it that's not a euphemism.....?!
Doing the 'low carb' thing, weight reduction that has worked very well for me in the past. The 'family knees' have announced their presence (as I've moaned about before) and I'm hoping a good thirty pounds off and kept off will postpone the 'family knee replacement scenario'.
The hardest part by FAR is the first three or four days until the metabolic pathway shifts from glucose-based to fat burning based. I am on day four now, and don't feel nearly so shitty as yesterday.
AND I got two pound of macademia nuts in the mail, just now. Low carbohydrate diets are the BEST because they allow and encourage such amazing oral experiences as macademia nuts, bacon, butter and cream. MMMMM these nuts iz good. Anyone else done 'low carb'? It's been years since I followed it faithfully, and there are so many more low carb foods that AREN'T giant slabs of cow flesh than there used to be. Its still primarily a protein and fat based diet, but it looks possible to do it WITHOUT the gagging amount of meat that low carb used to be. When I first did low carb fifteen years ago, I could barely find decent tofu in the local grocery store.
Today for the second time, I took a very strange bus route. Some of the time it doubles back on itself. Then it went the wrong way. The driver was new and under assesment. Passengers were not always let off, without prompt from the instructor. An elderly disabled passenger was almost crushed by prematurely closing doors. The 'driver being attacked' alarm went off. The bus terminated prematurely.
Now that may sound like a life vehicle but it also happened and like another passenger, I was able to assure the trainee, he was doing fine . . .
Even the instructor told us amusingly 'no extra charge for the detour'.
Humour, acceptance and patience, journey is part of the destination.
I would have paid extra to be on that bus . . . come to think of it I did . . . Paid and then it terminated. I 'had to get on the next bus', which was the same bus three minutes later . . .
Destination Samsara is Nirvana on some vehicles . . .
:coffee: .
@lobster: I've been going deeper into your comments on the photo app you created.
I'm still useless with technology and don't take many photos anyway.
But I just wanted to tell you that it's a wonderful idea.
Buses?! Sheer luxury! We never had buses. We had to walk 150 miles to work in driving rain, constantly being attacked by aggressive sheep, then we had to put in a 26 hour day, and we had to pay for the privilege....
.
I'm currently organising a boat trip for some friends, we'll be going off-shore to some sand banks with ( hopefully ) lots of seals, also hoping to see some porpoises on the way. What fun!!
I am attending a working bee on Sunday at the newly opened Newbury Buddhist Monastery about an hour from my house.
http://bsv.net.au/monastery/newbury-buddhist-monastery/
Looking forward to checking it out!
Thanks
I was really inspired to take better photos by pics posted here by someone who was a trained photographer. I was very much a 'happy snapper'.
Digital photography is open to everyone with a modern mobile phone.
I recently bought an inexpensive bridge camera, partly to inspire my sister to finally buy her compact camera. My sisters Panasonic has a 30x zoom lens, gps and wifi all in something the size of a mobile phone. Wonderful but expensive. The bridge camera a Canon (the company was originally named Kwanon - Buddhist Goddess of Mercy) I bought, also has a 30x zoom lens, added to the digital zoom (and sadly loss of quality) I can get 120x zoom from a tiny camera. Quite amazing. Pic example enclosed. On the whole I find the auto setting is best for my needs. I transfer and edit and store largely on the iPad. I did take some photos on the iPad, but it is cumbersome and I prefer my fifth generation of IPod touch. However a mobile phone is just as good, if not better.
:wave: .
^^^ Is that a pic of emptiness in form?
@lobster: I'm so useless with your app. I can't even use the example well.
My talking Tom is the only thing I can play with.
I'm such a fossil! :eek2: ..
Here we go again: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/25/isis-commons-vote-iraq-raf-bombing-michael-fallon
I'm debating how many episodes of "Doctor Who" I should watch today. After I finish some dharma reading. "Doctor Who" is a perfectly acceptable way to reflect, right?
There's no such thing as "too much Doctor Who", so it's all good.
Another great British invention! I can still remember watching the first ever episode on a little black and white TV, it was quite scary at the time ( Dr. Who, not the TV ).
A bunch of my friends and I watched the first episodes a few years back. Really neat! I watched it off and on in high school and college and, according to my mother, as a little kid. So it's neat seeing the progression from the original series to the reboot.
Ha! At least you have legs! And sheep!
My younger brother - 50 this year - still remembers being shyte-scared of the cybermen... when they were the proper cybermen, not the updated models they've got now... Like the Mini, Fiat 500 and Volkswagen beetle, they may say they're the new, updated modernised version, but honey, we all know different!
William Hartnell was amazing, Patrick Troughton - when he went they broke the mould....
I really liked Tom Baker, Peter Davison was good, hated Colin Baker thoroughly, Sylvester McCoy was funny, Paul McGann would've made an excellent "series" Doctor (the bit where he was running in place saying "these shoes fit perfectly!" reminded me of Martin Short), and I've loved everyone since (Eccleston, Tennant, Smith and now Capaldi).
I've watched a few of Hartnell's, but sorta lost interest after a while with all the history stuff and extremely slow pacing. Maybe I'll watch/finish 1-3 some day if I get a chance!