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Using Different Notebooks

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Quite a few people still use notebooks, it seems. I use them more than most. Unfortunately, most people use them for school. Composition and spiral bound notebooks are the most common everywhere. For most of the people using them, the only distinction between their notebooks is the class they’re used for and maybe the amount of subjects or the color of the cover. I use my notebooks differently. For starters, they are of all different shapes and sizes. Colors and bindings, too. I do have preferences, but I also want to find new preferences.

I use my notebooks based on their type. By that I mean I have a different one for every task. I have one for stories (several actually), one for sketches, one for my “drawing every day” drawings, one for story notes, one for general notes and cartoons, and many others. I’m not sure how many people do this or something similar, but I find it handy to be able to grab a notebook and know exactly what is in it. This over-specialization has backfired and it resulted in me combining several notebooks into one, leaving a few books without a home.

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Those instances are few and far between, though. In general I’ve found it good to specialize my notebooks. If I am doing a certain task I can take a small notebook that is suited for the task instead of a large one that covers everything. It also enables easy referral since I don’t have to constantly search the one and only notebook for something on a specific topic.

It doesn’t just come down to using different same-brand notebooks or even differently sized notebooks. I use completely different brands with completely different styles for my various books. I use Mead, Moleskine, Field Notes, Top Flight, Bienfang, Strathmore, Rhodia, Clairefontaine, and even military-grade Memorandum books. I use all different rulings from blank to dot grid, and I’ve even found a hex grid notebook.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, I just think it’s weird that I use notebooks like this. Is it? How do you use notebooks? Most of the people I know seem to use them in the way I described above, where they just have one that holds every thing. Or a large one and a pocket one. Either way, my giant bag of notebooks I take with me and cycle through my satchel will continue that way. And I will continue to write on paper notebooks. And I will love doing so. And I hope all of you writing on paper notebooks will love it as well.

I Don’t Get Much Sleep

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So I think I’m writing this at an appropriate time, by that I mean when I should be sleeping. I don’t sleep well, I don’t know why that is, but I don’t. My sleep schedule is better since I stopped drinking soft drinks, but it’s still pretty bad. I often find myself up in the midnight hours, working furiously to finish my work for the night. Though much of my work gets interrupted by my need for organization, last minute small projects, and the general distractions of the internet that we all experience.

It isn’t as if I wake up late. I wake up at eight every morning, sometimes as late as nine or nine thirty. At that moment I don’t really have to ‘go’ to work, but then I start working. I work, take walks, and do things on the internet the rest of the day. And then I still have to sit up to one in the morning finishing everything. I don’t know why, I don’t think I’ve ever thought I had the reason pinned down.

And I love sleep, I wish I could sleep forever, but I guess I wish I would get more done more. It just seems strange to me how I wake up tired and go to bed wide awake. Do other people feel this way? I mean I think most of the people I know go to bed sleepy and then wake up sleepy. Some people don’t even seem to wake up ever. I don’t drink caffeine (very often) and the sugar content of what I drink is, I believe, very low.

I know a lot of people are sleep deprived nowadays. But do they stay up late every night and get up early every day? (I should mention that I work every day of the week and only sleep in once a week on Saturday or Sunday) It doesn’t seem right, and though it does affect my work some it really doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, except to my mind which keeps telling me to get to sleep earlier.

It’s just strange.

Soda and Productivity

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A lot of people drink soda, or coffee or tea, or some other caffeinated drink. The usual reasons are the same: they either need the energy boost or like the taste (which means they need the energy boost and want an excuse). I personally don’t drink coffee and rarely drink soda or tea. But this wasn’t always the case. I can remember a time not too long ago (a few months) where I was drinking several sodas every day. Most people are fine with this or even need it, I know someone who gets almost sick when he goes through soda withdrawal. I went through withdrawal when I “quit” soda and it is terrible, but I managed to do it and here’s why I did it.

Back even longer ago I wasn’t getting much done. I subsist on liquids mostly because I’m either to lazy or not hungry enough to make food (I haven’t eaten breakfast in months). I only got soda when we went out, I had none at home because my house is the type of house where you only get things if you write them down on the list or ask for them just before (which is a good thing). I decided one day that getting soda would be good, and might even improve my productivity.

When I got it for the first week or two I was fine, nothing really changed, I thought. But soon things started to change. I started wanting more and more soda every day, kinda like an addict. I would save my soda for when I was working, which ironically made me work less because I would just drink the soda and then stop working. I tried to compensate for this by working only at certain times when I wanted soda, which cut my work times even more because I wasn’t motivated. The worst thing though I didn’t even realize was happening. I was staying up later because of all the caffeine, (or just the sugar) which meant that I was getting up later. As I have discovered, getting up and being fresh and awake is one of the major components of working and enjoying that work. Soda was slowly but surely destroying my sleep schedule.

Most of you don’t know me so I’ll just tell you that when I don’t get things done I start to get mad. Not getting things done infuriates me. I didn’t fully realize that I was now a tired, angry, and lazy individual until I stopped soda all together. I had been “addicted” to soda before and quit several times, but that was when I was in school and didn’t care about what I was doing (it also served as a good distraction when I was quitting). I finally quit again by reducing the amount I drank a day slowly. I then had about a week of head and body aches where I was even less productive and really tempted to go back to soda. When that ended however I got ten times as much done per day, I was more focused and even more alert, provided I had gotten enough sleep the night before.

I know that I’ve been making soda drinking sound very serious. It really isn’t and I’m sure it doesn’t affect some people. I still do drink soda when I go out or on a trip. But just be warned that it can cause some serious problems, and I believe that my life is better now that I’ve gotten it out of my house. Think of some things you “can’t” get through the day without and see if you really need them, or if they really are helping you. The answer may surprise you.

Lying to people who trust too much.

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This is going to be short, but I can’t think about anything else right now. This is making me feel so… such and unquantifiable feeling.

About a week ago I saw the worst fake documentary in history, Mermaids: the body found. It was on the discovery channel at some ungodly hour (after some investigating I found it first aired on animal planet). The thing was proposing the idea that mermaids were still around, blah, blah, blah. I thought it was like those other discovery shows that use the thinnest evidence to support the most outrageous conclusion that could possibly be drawn, and I am used to those, it is interesting to hear what little evidence they have to offer. And so I watched, just watched, casually thinking it was some lame program, and then this happened.

I am not joking, this is in the documentary. And yes it is purposely blurred in an attempt to distract from the fact that it does actually look that fake. I should mention that this comes at the end of the most professional looking “cell-phone” video of all time. By that of course I mean the most fake. The entire thing is obviously fake, and is completely unnecessary to the documentary. I mean they could have just done what all other Discovery shows do and just show people talking, but no, they had to show this.

Now, why do I hate this so much? I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if you were saying “so what if the creators want to show off a little crappy CGI, what’s so bad about that?”. I’ll tell you, because people will believe it. I don’t care how crappy or fake it looks and is, people from now on will be saying “no man, mermaids are real, I saw it on the Discovery channel, they had a video and everything”. Some people really are that gullible/stupid. And they could have done without it entirely, it’s irresponsible of the creators and the Discovery channel to show this obviously fake video and claim it’s real. Because someone will believe it. And while it’s not alright that they did that, they still went further. If you went to check on the story’s credibility and found the website that supposedly belonged to one of the people interviewed in said documentary you found this.

Yes, that is a very fake Homeland Security seizure. And let’s thank the officers seizing it for providing us with the very specific badge that says “Special Agent”, even though no agents are actually there. Of course we all know that “a” United Stares District Court is the most trusted U.S. District Court there is.

I hate this! It is, like the video, obviously fake, but if looked at from far enough away appears to be real. And since it aired on both the Discovery channel and Animal Planet people will believe it. They will believe that there is video of mermaids, and that Homeland Security is trying to stop the truth from getting out. It is a completely irresponsible usage of this Science Docufiction piece. And I can’t get it out of my head the fact that now, along with all the other stupid conspiracy theories, we have to deal with mermaids. Why, why… mermaids?

How Apple is a bad horror movie.

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By: Austin Smith

With the release of the new ipad, it has become very clear that we are all doomed. Apple is obviously trying to take over the world, and is looking increasingly like a bad hollywood writer’s confused sequel title array. The name of the new ipad is not something easy like the ipad 3 to come after the ipad 2. No its the “new” ipad. It’s like Alien: there’s Alien, Alien 2 and Alien Resurrection. Well, okay, there’s Alien 3 in there also, but that’s beside the point. Apple can’t even decide on a new name so they just don’t call it anything. Or perhaps it’s all a ploy to try to get you to forget that other ipads ever existed.

But this isn’t the first time Apple has done something like this. Remember the iphone? I do! The first time I saw it I said: “man ‘that long cool woman has it all’ will you ‘take me out’?” But do you remember how the iphone came first, then the iphone 3G. Like the Zombie movies. Zombie then Zombie 3, Zombie 4, and Zombie 5, Etc. At least in America, as the original Zombies title is actually Zombie 2, a sequel to a completely unrelated project. That would mean that the iphone was actually originally a sequel to the black berry and then renamed at the last minute. The next ones were then changed back to their original name, as it was technically the third iphone, to avoid confusion. Within…. nothing. It was pointless.

And do you remember when the Macs were called Apple computers? It’s like the entire thing was rebooted with a slightly different name. Like the body snatchers. Okay the body snatchers didn’t spin out into their own series but again you should get the point. They’re trying to make it seem as if they are a different company entirely, or they’re just bad at labeling things.

But the real problem is the ipod. The ipod is everywhere. Quickly, think, does someone you know not have a ipod? You can’t think of anyone, can you? Everyone has an ipod, literally everyone. It’s not like they all have mp3 players, they all have ipods. Mp3 players as a category don’t even exist, they don’t have a chance against the monolith that is apple’s ipod. Since their intro in 2001 ipods have split into so many ranges and different mini-sections of ipods. All based on the fact that the first ipod was good. Like how star wars has three good movies that sell everything else star wars related. So that would make the ipod classic the special edition of “A New Hope”. Well, I guess it was the new hope of all portable music players at the time. And the new ipod nano being “the Phantom Menace” makes sense to me. But moreover they have made it so that everyone can listen to music at any time. Like music is actually an important part of life for everyone. And since nickel and dime-ing people wouldn’t make anyone much money, they ninety-nine you out of a dollar a song. Again like  someone actually cares. Everyone just wants to show off that they have the newest ear-splitting pop song or their great music collection. For absolutely no reason, apple just makes it possible. 

But now that they have something in every household in america soon the sci-fi takeover will start. Or it has already started, they’ve already taken all our money with one dollar songs and cases since every one wants “their””leather studded kiss in the sand” i.e. leather iphone case. What’s to stop them from taking over? I mean you all could have already agreed to a license agreement that gives apple your soul. I’m one of the only people left that still doesn’t have a smartphone, mostly because I’m paranoid about how apple would track my every move and see where I hid the hookers. But also because they could very well kill me, and not just from cancer. But then as xkcd pointed out the takeover would be slow*. And the always correct reporters at Rooster-teeth have shown us that Siri literally kills people*. 

I’m almost prepared for the takeover (I have experience in breaking electronics). But to all the nonbelievers out there that think Apple is such a good company, you just need to think. Someone has to take over the world. If Microsoft tried they’d freeze up and keep rebooting, if linux tried they’d always be waiting for a better “take over the world” patch to come out, and Google would try to take over too many things at once while going too fast and end up disintegrating. That only leaves apple. Apple must take over the world and fulfill its destiny. 

And we can do literally nothing to stop it, I mean we’ve already seen how the future will end up. Even the starship Enterprise is a giant ipod. Or, since we never know where Skynet is or what it looks like (except in the gameboy game and in journey to sillius, but no one remembers those) it could just be apple headquarters with a bunch of iphones linked into each other.

But it really is a horror movie, bad names and all. It’s in everyone’s home, all the kids know about it but can’t stop it, all the adults know nothing or all about it and thus can’t stop it, and only crazy people believe it will hurt someone. We are all doomed, and it’s your fault for wanting that new LMFAO song, your fault.


*citation needed