The Journal of Lee Davis-Thalbourne

Discovered in the Facebook Ads while going about my daily business.

On the one hand, it's a brilliant idea - Laser hair removal costs a ton, so why not create a home system? It's a perfectly marketable device.

On the other hand, You are giving an untrained a person a class 3 laser in an unsupervised setting, where they'll be aiming it directly at themselves, probably even near eyes or gibbly bits. Chances are excellent they'll be using it on themselves, meaning possible flinches that could lead to any number of ill effects, and possibly even putting such a device within reach of children.

What could possibly go wrong?

So, I've been noticing a distinct bias in a lot of the blogs that I read these days, mostly that they're very America-centric, except for a few electoral blogs. I seem to be very well informed on a lot of American Social and Political stuff, but have very little knowledge of what's going on in my own country!

So, considering how many of my friends are out there reading their own stuff, I'd like to politely ask if anyone has any suggestions for good Australian Blogs on the following subjects:

* Linguistics (surely there has to be one or two!)
* Sociology
* Law
* Queer Issues (of any and all stripes)
* Economics

Also, any Australian General Interest blogs that you've come across that should be read.

Anyone?

Those of you who were at all interested in joining in on the Lexicon game I'm starting up, just a reminder that the first turn ends on Friday, so you'll need to have your entries posted up by then if you're going to play.

Here's a direct link to the Lexicon's central page. Please don't be shy about joining! Don't think you have to be a good writer, or have to be overly witty, or anything like that - the point of the game is to practice some creativity in a nice, relaxed atmosphere - And, you know, have some fun while you're at it!

So, I was recently reading deird1's recent post on prompt communities, and a few things suddenly fell into place for me (as I write this, I notice how I verge into slightly different territory than deird1 did, still I think it's worth writing anyway).

Over the last year I've been noticing exactly how little creative work I'd been doing, and I think the reason is because, well, nothing's prompting me to do it. When I still roleplayed at MURP, I was often the GM, but I'd almost never plan a session, because I was much more comfortable bouncing off other people, but I also wonder whether part of the reason was because honestly, there are very few things I've done in my life that weren't banging right up onto the deadline. It wasn't that I rushed things, or that I did things without thinking, but that until I was made to do something, it just never got done. I've often noted how I could never seem to do essays until the day before they were due. It wasn't that I hadn't been thinking about the essay, or doing the research, I'd just... never had a reason to start writing the damn thing until the night before. It infuriated more than a few people in my life, but it was really how I worked. And I did well enough to get into honours, so clearly there was something going on there. My Psych even calls it being prompt-focused. I don't do things until I'm prompted, simple enough.

So, it's occured to me quite a few times in the last year that I should get back into writing, but I've never actually done more than an abortive attempt at creative writing. And I'm certain that I'm not the only one on my flist who's feeling the same here. I'd join a fandom community and start writing, but I have no fandoms right now, certainly none that I'm thinking enough about to want to write fanfic.

Then I remembered about Lexicons. As world-building exercises, they're not fantastic, but as deadline-constrained collaborative creative writing exercises, they're brilliant, and quite adaptable to a range of different writing styles.

If I started a game of Lexicon, would there be anyone on my flist who'd be interested in playing with me? I wouldn't be doing a full 26-turn Lexicon (maybe a phone-pad lexicon, those are just short enough to keep everyone going until the end), and I wouldn't necessarily be setting it up as encyclopedia-style writing. Just a way of giving everyone a neat prompt for some collective writing, and have a little fun while doing it. A way of getting my arse into gear and actually start writing again, even if it's only 200-300 word things. I'd even be really nice and make 1-week deadlines for everyone, just so there's as little pressure as possible while still having a tight deadline. Who's in with me?

Especially when they're geeking on my geekery:

It's long, about 15 minutes or so. But well worth it, because I agree with just about everything in it. The dictionary is not the language. It doesn't contain all the words and leave out all the non-words. It just has a set of words. And we can do so much better. We can capture every word in the world if we want to!

And as it turns out, the sort of site that she was envisioning has already begun, And it's name is Wordnik. And I gotta love a website that helps put words into context by putting realtime Twitter feeds into every word. That's just brilliant.

EDIT: OH MY GOD. They let you record your pronunciation of words. This is beyond awesome. I may be staying in tonight...

An interesting report on racial discrimination in the workplace focusing on Chinese, Italian, Middle-Eastern and Aboriginal groups.

It's quite the interesting study, actually, doing a few neat experiments and drawing a few not particularly pleasant conclusions. Basically, if you have a Middle-Eastern or Chinese name, you're going to have to work much harder just to get an interview, which does not bode well right now, seeing as jobs are getting thinner and thinner on the ground.

I would have been interested to see if the race of the person looking at the resume makes any difference to rate of callback in the jobseeker category, but I'm not surprised that such information wasn't available considering the setup of the test, and I'm sure if I had access to the literature databases again, I'd probably be able to find some tests on that.

Definitely a very interesting read, I recommend looking through it.

This came into my inbox today. Not sure whether it's to be a Docklands or Southbank-based job yet, but it's likely to be good work if you can get it, since it's a part-time version of my job :)

 

ICT Resource Centre Technician (10 hour per week)

Carrick is excited to announce the vacancy for an ICT Resource Centre Technician within the Melbourne campus to work 10 hours per week. Duties include but are not limited to the following:


Duties

• Assist with the daily operations of the Resource Centre, including assisting students with all resource material enquiries and requests.
• Organise and maintain the Resource Centre and supervise students within this environment.
• Assist students with use of computers and internet facilities (e.g. login)
• Ensure Carrick Information Technology policies for students are adhered to and enforced where applicable.
• Assist in all general cleaning and maintenance of computers and printers
• Additional duties as required.

The successful applicant will possess the following attributes:

• Provide excellent customer service to students and internal staff
• Strong communication skills.
• Ability to take ownership of issues
• Ability to display flexibility
• Ability to perform in a team environment
• Excellent time management skills
• IT Savvy

Technical Requirements

• Strong Microsoft Office experience, especially with Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Ability to trouble-shoot most basic IT issues.

Candidates with previous experience dealing with customer service experience in an IT environment will be strongly considered. Applicants with previous experience dealing with international students will also be strongly considered for the role.

Expressions of interest (CV of no more than 4 pages) should be emailed to jglover@carrickeducation.edu.au quoting reference number RCT-M-0609

Applications close on Friday the 19^th of June at 5:30pm

I've just put up another post in my sex-filter. Since it's been a while since I've done this, and there's plenty of new friends on my friendslists, If people are interested in looking at stuff on my sex-filter, you can post here and if I feel comfortable with you looking at stuff, I'll let you on. Also, if you're already on the sex-filter list and you want to get off (yes, very funny), you can ask me to let you off here too.

If you're not sure of your status, the post just below this one should be marked [SEX-TALK]. If you can't see it, you're not on the list.

I am stunned at this post. Really, I am. This is the stuff that Americans have to deal with in their banking? Good lord.

Is there similar dodginess in Australian banks? I mean, I'm (now) with a big-4 (stupid mergers...), and I've always been really pleased with the service I get from my bank. Do we have good enough regulation that this stuff isn't likely to happen to us? Or have I just been really lucky so far?