The Bacons And The Lady Next Door

This week, I spent some time with a couple I've known for ages, but haven't seen in a while. I shall call them Mr & Mrs Bacon, because their surname is a type of food.

Mr Bacon is a barely educated bloke who's never read so much as a newspaper. He and Mrs Bacon had their first child before Mrs Bacon had finished high school. They struggled quite a bit before the resource boom, but now Mr Bacon makes good money and Mrs Bacon runs a tight ship at home and is quite handy with managing the finances and all the other home-maker-y type stuff. They live on a small block of land outside of town and are both fantastic people, who have an amazing ability to tell stories about the most mundane and boring day-to-day things, but make them seem like epic tales that have you hanging on the edge of your seat or rolling on the floor with laughter.

I heard many stories about the shenanigans that go on around mining sites and gas fields and scandalous gossip from the local area, but the best story they told me was regarding the lady who lives on the block of land next door. Apparently, she has a reputation for having bedded all the single men in the district and a good chunk of the married men as well. Whenever she comes over for a neighbourly chat, and her and Mr Bacon are alone -- for whatever reason -- she starts asking him when he'll come over to her place for a little nudge nudge, wink wink. Mrs Bacon thinks she's harmless, and that the whole thing is a bit of a laugh. Mr Bacon is fed up with it, and wants to ban her from coming over.

Looking back at it, it really isn't such a great story is it? But I'll be damned if it wasn't the most hilarious thing I'd heard in ages when it came out of their mouths. It reminds just how much of a good story really is in the telling of it.

... And Situps?

... Continued from the earlier post on pushups. All disclaimers about me not being a fitness instructor still apply.

The trick I've found to getting the most out of situps, is that you want to have your hips do as little as possible and your gut do as much as possible. To that end, you should try to imagine that someone is standing on your bellybutton and forcing it into the ground; then "crunch" your upper body at the waist. Your lower back should stay on the ground (it's a surprisingly small movement). At the top of the motion, squeeze your gut muscles and hold for a count of three. When you go to the down position, avoid resting your head and shoulders on the ground. Try to keep your eyes focused on the ceiling so your chin doesn't come forward onto your chest.

Never put your hands behind your head. Start out with them folded across your chest. As you get better, stretch them out above your head.

In order to give your stomach a more thorough workout, you can also try "reverse situps". Basically the same as above, but you're bringing your knees up to your chest.

Eventually, you might want to try putting these things together into what I think is called a "v-up".

And then, if you're super keen, you can use weights with your "v-ups". That probably won't be for a while, though.

I spent today listening to the rain and it make me happy.

I was planning on writing a post about one of the towns I passed through the other day, but it was a bit downbeat and I don't feel like doing anything downbeat at the moment.

Actually, looking back at what I've posted here, I see this place has very quickly become an outlet for me to vomit up bile every time I see something that makes me a lit bittle bit cross.

So ... in order to offset this problem, while I try to come up with some happier topics to write about, I've decided to give the place a slightly softer, cheerier, girlier sort of feel.

Whaddya reckon?

I spent today listening to the wireless again ...

... and thought I'd throw out my two bob on the stories that, for some reason, seemed to have dominated the airwaves.

Tony Abbott Brings Back Knighthoods:

Normally, this is the type of thing I don't give a shit about. However, when I think about it, the process of handing out these things is probably going to involve a special awards ceremony, or at the very least, some sort of official paperwork. And since the country's apparently too poor to keep paying disabled pensions or additional support to war orphans, I don't see how they can justify <i>any</i> non-essential spending.

They can abolish all that "Order Of Australia" and "Australian Of The Year" bollocks while they're at it too, for all I care. That should save a few pennies, at least.

I don't mind somebody having a wank, but not on my dime, thank you very much.

George Brandis Wants To Change The Racial Discrimination Act:

I don't like George Brandis. I don't believe him when he says the ASIO raids on Bernard Collaery were a matter of national security. I hope somebody in the department leaks everything about that case to the internet. I hope one day he's hauled in front of an enquiry and grilled about it. And I hope it goes decidedly worse for him than that fucking farce of a thing that Howard and Downer faced over the AWB scandal (though, I'm not holding my breath).

And I'm certainly no fan of Andrew Bolt. I think he's vile, and I find the fact that anyone takes anything he says seriously disconcerting.

However, I agree that there shouldn't be any sort of law that protects people from being offended or insulted.

So I'm apparently for this one. Go figure.

There may be debate over whether or not Andrew Bolt is a racist, but it's hard to argue he's not a loathsome cunt.

How do I do a pushup?

Okay, melbs, here's my guide to working pushups into your fitness routine. All this stuff is based on personal experience and stuff I've picked up over the years, but I'm not a professional fitness coach or anything like that.

I was going to have a combined fitness post, but this was taking a while so I decided to post the pushup bit here. Situps will follow at a later date.

1. Kneeling Push-Ups

If you haven't done a lot of strength training, you might struggle to do a regular pushup right off the bat, so you might want to start with kneeling pushups. If you find these too easy, jump straight to the regular pushups.

 

2. Planks

As you're working up to doing regular pushups, you can also try to strengthen your "core" muscles by doing planks. The object of these is to hold yourself in the given position for as long as you can. Make sure your body is straight and don't bend or sag at the hips. The sideways type planks (2nd version) are good for doing while you're watching telly. 

Once you can do a minute or two in these plank position, have a go at this one.

And once you can do that for a minute or two, you're probably ready to try ...

 

3. Regular Pushups

All of the rules of kneeling pushups apply, only now, instead of bending at the knees, you have to keep your whole body rigid.

And once that starts to get too easy, you can increase the difficulty by increasing the elevation of your feet.

Eventually you might find yourself doing full hand-stand pushups!

Hope this helps you with your fitness.

Anyone got a good formula for making up fake names for people when you write about them?

I went to a funeral this week. Technically, it was sort of a relative, but not close enough that I would've went if I hadn't been in the area when he died and staying with someone who was going.

I'll call the bloke I've been staying with Uncle Stumpy, even though he isn't technically an uncle. (I'm pretty sure he's my Dad's first cousin, but anyway, that's not really important). Stumpy lives in a "house-ified" kit-shed on a property owned by a bloke I'll call Uncle Woolly (who's Stumpy's actual uncle). Stumpy's been working for Woolly most of his life and has been living in the shed for the last thirty or so years (I believe he upgraded from a much shittier shed when he married).

Anyway, Woolly's been in the process of dying for a while, and it just happened that during my stay with Stumpy and his missus (The shed's actually quite nice), he finally passed on.

The funeral was a simple, straight-forward affair: A small outback cemetery surrounded by gumtrees. A few folding chairs for the oldies. The opening line from his daughter's speech was, "A lot of people thought Dad was a mad bastard ... and he was". At one point, two hawks landed on the ground and squawked loudly at each other. One old bloke quipped that they were probably fighting over the body. They buried him with his hat. Afterwards, there were sandwiches at the pub.

And since nobody knew what the future of the property was, Stumpy decided to pull up stumps and move on. I've spent the last few days giving him a hand turn his family home into piles of fibro & colourbond sheeting, and load it onto the back of a truck.

I know that in one respect we're comparing a human life to a cheap kit-shed, but I honestly dunno which part of the whole thing has made me feel the most melancholic.

Why can't I watch Q&A anymore?

Last night I tried watching Q&A and ended up lasting about 10 minutes. Since then, I've beem wondering why I can't stand the show anymore. I used to watch it fairly regularly.

This is the best theory I can come up with ...

It seems clever and entertaining, right? But try rewatching that clip over and over for an hour every week. At some point, I'll bet it starts to wear a bit thin.

What are my options once Windows XP is kaput?

So, Microsoft is ending support for Windows XP in April, and that means any holes that get poked in its security after that date are going to go unpatched.
So, what are your options if you're still using an old machine with XP?

1. Keep using XP and hope for the best.


2. Take out a loan to buy a Mac.


3. Buy a copy of Windows 8; attempt to install Windows 8 on your old PC; find out your old PC can't handle Windows 8; Buy a new PC with Windows 8 pre-installed; find out you can't handle Windows 8; take out a loan to buy a Mac. 


4. Have a crack at running one of the hundreds of free and open-source *nix variations (most of which are flavours of Linux). (... and then maybe take out a loan to buy a Mac.)

If by chance you decide on option 4, here's a few tips to get you going:

Is a *nix system right for me?

The first thing to do is work out if a *nix system is going to meet your needs. If you're a hardcore gamer, you can probably stop reading right now. Likewise if you have certain applications that you absolutely can't live without, like Microsoft Office, iTunes, or Photoshop. On the other hand, if your needs are a little more generic and you don't care what programs you're using, so long as you can write documents, manage your music and edit photos, then the *nix world might be for you. Many of the programs that are front and centre in the open-source desktop ecosystem are also available for Windows, so you can give them a try before committing to anything. Example are:

• The Firefox, Chrome & Opera web-browsers: With any luck, you might already be using one of these.


• Thunderbird: A stand-alone email application. If you're still into that sort of thing.


• Open Office: More or less, a replacement for Microsoft Office. There's also a fork of the project called Libre Office. Try them both and decide which one you like best.


• VLC: Probably one of the best media-players going. Should handle virtually any unencrypted/DRM-free music or video file you throw at it, as well as commercial CDs and DVDs.


• Gimp: A poor-man's Photoshop. Having said that, it can probably still do most things that most people want from a photo-editor. (Actually, what most people want from a photo-editor can probably be handled by one of the photo management apps, like ShotWell or digiKam, but they're not available for Windows. (Technically digiKam can run on Windows, just not very well.))


• Inkscape: A poor man's Illustrator. Having said that, check out the previous entry on Gimp. Same applies here. It's what I used to do my avatar.


• MyPaint: A simple, but very nice, sketching and painting application.


• Pidgin: A chat client. There's also Jitsi and Skype.


• Evince: A PDF reader. (Never used this one on Windows, so can't vouch for it myself. Works great on Linux & BSD)  


• GnuCash: Simple accounting software.


• Scribus: Desktop publishing. 


• Calibre: Ebook management. 


• Blender: Video, animation, and post-production suite. Powerful, but hard to learn.

... and since we're starting to get a bit obscure, we might finish up there. Of course, there's many fine *nix programs which aren't available to try on Windows -- like music and photo managers, CD/DVD authoring & ripping tools, video/audio/image production suites, printing & scanning software, and various downloaders and bittorrent clients (if that's more your cup of tea). However, there should be enough crap on the list to give you a taste of what you'll be getting.

Okay, so which one do I get?

If you decide you'd like to go a step further and try a complete new operating system, Distrowatch is a website where you can browse through the most popular options available and click through to each project's website. There are literally hundreds to choose from, and for some people, the task of finding a decent distro that meets all their needs can be a bit daunting.

For people who've never stepped outside the Windows world, I tend to recommend Linux Mint as an entry point. I find it to be a distro that produces fewer than average headaches, both for the person trying it and for the person answering the whingey calls/emails when something goes awry (usually me).

Since your Windows XP machine has probably got a few years under its belt, I would suggest going with the 32bit XFCE spin.

At this point, I should talk a bit about release cycles. Every flavour of *nix handles updates and new releases in its own way. Each version of Mint has a lifespan of 9 months, with a new version released every 6 months (giving everyone a 3 month overlap in which to upgrade). Releases usually happen in May and November. The up side to doing things like this is that you get a fresh system with updated applications twice every year. The down side is that you get a fresh system with updated applications, twice, every year. If it doesn't sound worth the effort, fret not, as every fourth edition is a special "long-term-support" release, which gets security patches (and some application updates) for 5 full years.

Looking at the release notes, I see the current release of Mint has a problem with DVD playback and the coming May edition is scheduled to be a long-term release. So, if getting an LTS sounds like a good thing to you, you might want to download the current edition to play with, and then, depending on how you like it, download the next release in 2 months for the full install. 

What do I do with the file I downloaded?

Okay, so once you've downloaded the .iso file, you have to transfer it to either a DVD or a USB stick. If you know how to burn an ISO to a DVD and you've got a blank DVD and a program to burn it with (Usually Nero, or whatever came with your drive), then you're good to go. If you don't know how to burn an ISO to a DVD or you want to put it on a USB stick, you might want to look at UNetbootin. It'll handle both types of media and the instructions on the website are pretty straight forward.

Once Nero or UNetbootin or whatever you use has done its thing, leave your disc/USB inserted and restart the computer. Most desktop computers will boot of the CD drive automatically, but if your computer bypasses this and simply boots back into Windows, you're probably going to have to change your bios settings.

Usually, when your computer first boots up, you'll see a screen for a second with a picture or some shit and a few short instructions like "Press F12 for options". If it has something as straight-forward as "Press F11 for boot menu", press F11 and then select your device from the menu (CD or USB). If not, you're going to have to press the key for the options menu (F12 in this example) and then hunt around for something that says something like "Boot order" or "First boot device". Instructions for how to navigate the menus should be printed at the bottom of the screen.

Once all that's done, you should be able to boot Linux Mint off your live media. Have a play with it and see what you think. Work out if you could use it on a day-to-day basis. For most things, it should work just as well as if it was installed; only it'll be a bit slower and, if you're using a DVD, you won't be able to use the CD drive for anything else. There's an install icon on the desktop that you can use if you decide you want to keep it permanently. It'll even have a go at installing itself "beside" Windows, so you can choose which one to run each time you start your computer. Just be sure to back all your files up before you do any of this. (You should have them backed up anyway!)

That's it. Have fun. Let me know if you need any help. I might consider adding some screenshots if you think it'd help. 

Did you hear Troy Buswell just resigned from the WA cabinet?

 Good. Don't come back this time.

I wonder if there's going to be any serious investigation into whether or not he was intoxicated when he pranged his car.

So, why hasn't there been an update in over two months, young lady!?

Yeah, right, I know, not off to the best of starts ...

Anyway, it's not all my fault. For the last couple of months I've been out bush. Usually, when there's been time to sit down and write something, there hasn't been an internet connection. If I was really clever, I suppose I'd write a few things up ahead of time and then maybe make use of the auto-post feature or something.

Also, in hindsight, I probably should have brought some paints or a graphics tablet, or even some pencils or something with me so I could do some landscapes. On the other hand, a lot of it's pretty fuckin' bleak and depressing. Too many reds and browns and not nearly enough green.

Photos shamelessly pilfered from the ABC.

About the only news I'm getting is off ABC radio. I had a bit to say about the whole Conroy “cover-up” accusation thing (especially after speaking to my dad about it), but it seems like old news now, so I suppose I'll let it pass.
 

What a cunt.

In any case, the music collection on my phone has been justifying its existence. For some reason, at the moment, I find myself flicking between Kate Bush and Pat Benatar, depending on mood. Funny, I don't know if I've listened to either one in years, and now I can't get off them. I suppose it's cliched as hell, but there is something to be said for cruising along a deserted outback road, singing along to "Invincible”.

Crank it up, lean back in your chair and pretend you're driving. Go on!

And now, I'd like to use the remainder of this post to address some of Melba's comments from previous posts that sort of got left hanging:

1. If Blogger wants to be a cunt and eat your comments, I have a duplicate of this blog over at WordPress. We could go there if you like?


2. I do remember you talking about somnophilia, but I don't think you ever said you were interested in it; just that it had come up in a conversation you had. For me, the idea of someone “sticking it in” while I'm asleep freaks the fuck out of me, but then, two couples in the same room probably freaks a lot of people out too. There's no accounting for taste when it comes to the bedroom, I suppose. Did I ever tell you about the couple who were my best customers in the porno-days? Thos two were into everything.


3. Weight bearing exercises for beginners? Hmmmm. It's alright for young people; even if they're really unfit, they seem to be able to do anything without hurting themselves. I'm going to be boring and suggest push-ups and sit-ups to start with. I think a lot of women, even ones who go to the gym, tend to neglect their upper bodies. Worried about getting too big I suppose; which is silly, unless you're taking male hormones or something. I might have to do some illustrations on how to do them right, though. There's a hundred variations on each and it's easy to end up doing something other than what you intend. Come to think of it, planks might be a good one to start with on the basis of being simpler and harder to mess up. I also like chin-ups, but they're a bit advanced and you need a bar.

Also, I read what you said about getting a profile pic up and making it a cartoon. And then I thought, well, why not do a cartoon version of myself.

... So, here I am …

The likeness isn't great, but drawing with a mouse on a laptop is fucking hard.