Category: <span>Life</span>

Published August 26, 2009 by

Infographic of my life

One of my classes this semester is on Information and Interface design, we are primarily looking at information graphics and I’m loving it. It’s quite a lovely partnership of rational facts, logic, finding relationships between data and visual output. The first project was to create an info-graphic based on our lives, to encompass family, education, interests and to somewhat represent past, present, future (or at least leaves conceptual room for the presentation of the future).

This is mine. Now you can see what crazy things my parents did in dragging us to and from countries. Click for larger image.

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© Rebecca Matheson

Culture Design Life

info design information graphics

Published August 26, 2009 by

Weight and embodied water

coffeeA little while back I talked about Wii Fit Routines, since then I have used the wii fit relatively frequently – not quite as often as I’d have hoped but we’re getting there and definitely more effectively. Although no massive weight change, my efforts have paid off in how well I can do particular things such as the 10+ minute jog getting my 57% burn rate to a 112% (I don’t think over 100% is mathematically correct, but that’s for the machine and I to argue about, nor do I know how they calculate these numbers – I think probably on how consistently and steadily you run). The whole routine thing, now that I’m back at uni, is starting to settle in.

As you may have read over on Geoff’s blog there is now a ‘competition’ running with my in-laws to pull the body weight down before Christmas. Mostly as a bit of motivation. I don’t need to lose more than about 5kg so I probably can’t win, but the motivation of a competiton is a good one regardless of the prize (Which is good, but not the real draw card). Unfortunately I’m beginning to suspect that there is one little aspect of my diet that if I altered, could have a relatively decent impact without me doing a whole lot.

Cut the coffee.

I also discovered this past week that coffee has horrendously high embodied water which makes me quite sad (140L per cup!). Embodied water is all the water that goes into making something/a product. If you really want to save water, you can keep having those 3-4minute showers but you really need to work address embodied water as that’s where the biggest change can be made. Yes, your consumption of products affects water. And water is fast running out. We’re in the shits hitting the fan stage. It’s a much bigger problem than advertised.

So will I cut the coffee? Perhaps not all of it, but I will limit the intake somewhat and opt for tea. Although I hate paying for tea when I’m out, I always get the idea that I’m just paying for a little bit of flavoured water… but I guess that’s better than 140L buckets arriving at my table.

Check out more about embodied water on Water Footprint

the awesome coffee infographic is from here

Coffee Life Sustainable

Coffee embodied water running out of water sustainability weight loss wii fit

Published August 9, 2009 by

Backyard

We have a pretty awful and small back yard. There is this patch of grass – well weeds, to one side complete with carcass of dead bird. We periodically rip out the weeds in this section to pass rental inspections and it becomes dirt again. It’s a rental, I’m not interested in gardening.

Today it was sunny and I was inspired being my last day before I have to go back to uni, so I put a picnic rug down, grabbed a pillow and another blanket and lay outside and read Cest La Folie – a book about a guy who moves to France to reclaim life, challenge himself with starting out somewhere he knows no one and keep some chickens. The awful, small backyard was pretty lovely.

Perhaps I will move to France, reclaim some life, challenge myself, start somewhere I know hardly anyone and keep some chickens… but then it’s not half bad here at times.

Life

Published August 7, 2009 by

Stress and the INTJ

So here I am drinking tea and thinking about my INTJ’ness.

I am drinking tea because it seems to me to be a kind of cure-all. The real cure-all for an INTJ however is not tea, it is getting things done. And the source of angst for an INTJ is, not surprisingly, the inverse.

After a rather extended period of ‘angsty inverseness’, I put the kettle on, washed all the dirty cups in the short time it took for the water to boil, found the list I made early this week and crossed off the things I’d done. I then made a cup of tea. 15 things on the list, four left. Not bad considering this list does not have a particular end date. Things feel better.

I can verify that the following statements match whatever strain of the INTJ I happen to have in relation to stress and stressful things.

“A large number of INTJ folks reported that they often felt a strong desire to clean when under stress”

“If they do not take a project to completion, they may set themselves up for frustration and depression resulting from too much self-criticism.”

“They become frustrated if they are too tightly controlled.”

There is also an excellent description of INTJ’s on Urban Semiotic

Personality Page gives a good general overview of INTJ’s they also, naturally, give overviews of the other types.

And because only 2% or so of the population happen to be INTJ’s the you can take the test (Jung/Myers-Briggs) along with a stack of other interesting personality tests over here at Similar Minds. But only after you’ve made yourself a cup of tea.

Life Personality

INTJ Jung Myers-Briggs Personality stress

Published July 30, 2009 by

Capturing an Island

solomons

As you may or may not be aware, I had a slightly less than conventional childhood – growing up in the Solomon Islands as a missionary kid.

Danica was the ‘big girl’ of the SITAG’ers (Solomon Islands Translation Advisory Group) and we used to trail after her with our rocks and plans to beat the boys whenever there was a reason for a bunch of us expats to be ‘in town’ (Honiara). Danica’s experience of the Solomons was remarkably different to my own – her family lived on the furthererst atoll and mine lurked closer to population.  It is still a Solomons experience and a Solomons experience is one I have never really tried to put into words – I’m not sure why? Perhaps I don’t trust my memory?

Her stories are here, I could relate despite differences.

Life