Things difficult and easy about kickboxing

A few months ago I started kickboxing in London (terrible website, great people). I go to a great school that meets in various church halls and gyms around central London. It's not boxxercising or tai-bo or whatever, but actual kicking-people-in-the-head kickboxing.

Of course, I don't actually kick people in the …

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Inboxen

I have a bunch of places where all of the input into my life gets funneled:
1. My Gmail inbox 2. My physical in-tray 3. Files on my desktop 4. Files in "Downloads" 5. My Remember the Milk inbox
Every day I empty every one of these.
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Kindle

Some recent reading I'd like to share with you:

Next morning, after I had sucked down a thoughtful cup of tea, I went into Motty's room to investigate. I expected to find the fellow a wreck, but there he was, sitting up in bed, quite chirpy, reading Gingery stories.

"What …

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Smug

I just wrote a couple of cutting, incisive, witty paragraphs about the use of the word“enormity” that would have struck down all those who dare object to my opinion, which, by-the-by, is so obviously and manifestly correct that those who disagree must exist merely as a dark background on …

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Boganheart / Montreal

My mate Zac is in a band called H.M.A.S. Vendetta, and their single Boganheart is available to download from their website. Check it out.

I'm off to Montreal for two weeks. The first week is work, the second is play. I don't really know what I'm going …

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I love checklists

I love checklists, but I always have trouble sharing that love with other people. Luckily, there's now a great article on checklists on lifehacker. Now I'm going to refer people to that instead of David Allen's book or my own vague fumblings about life being too short to think about …

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Book of You and the Dammit List

I like Havi Brooks. A lot of her craziness rubs me the wrong way, and I'm pretty sure there's no way I'll ever be into Shiva Nata, but she's very much worth listening to.

She recommends keeping a [Dammit List](http://www.fluentself.com/blog/stuff/more-ways-to-use-the-dammit-list/) – a bunch of …
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Long time

Eleven isn't a very big number. Eleven days isn't a particularly long time. To be honest, I rarely think about time in chunks of eleven days. Seven days, yes. Thirty days, yes. Eleven days, no.
But if you want to put something off, then eleven days seems like a good …
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Books to read again

I've read so many good books over the last few years. Some of them seem to cry out to be read again. I know that if I read them again I'll enjoy them more, I'll know their excellences in a richer, deeper way than I do now.

Here are the …
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Verily

And King jml opened his mouth and spoke to the peoples of the land, and he said, "Lo! There are vendors of chips that are neither salted nor hot, nay, the chips are not even warm. The cooks and merchants who profit from such chips are evil, and ruin marks …

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A calculus of action

Bice just summarized a conversation that he and I had about the shape of our distractions. Between that conversation and now, I talked about completely different mental state malfunctions with Karl.

It makes me wish there were some rigorous way that we could talk about these states, the problems they …
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Fatal Shore

The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes is excellent. Everyone should read it, especially if they are Australian.

It's a well-written, intelligent history of Australia's convict system. It looks into the forces in England that led to the system and the settlement of Australia, it talks about the way Australian society …
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An Interlude

I've been in London almost six months now, although ten weeks of those six months have been spent overseas.

I love it here. Even though I've not been living the life or seizing every opportunity that comes along, even though I've been working too much and playing too many video …
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Electronic book reader?

I've just got back from a seven week stint in Australia and New Zealand. I left two books in Tasmania, but still managed to come back with eight books in my luggage. Books are big and heavy and I'm sick of carting them around the world watching them get damaged …
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Advance Australia Fair, part 1

Recently, I've been disappointed to notice myself becoming more patriotic. I don't know if this is a result of aging, or a consequence of frequent international travel. I don't know whether I should do anything about it, nor even what I would do if I wanted to change.

The patriotic …

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Advance Australia Fair, part 2

The Australian national anthem is called Advance Australia Fair. The anthem has two verses, Advance Australia Fair has six or three depending on who you ask. In almost every state and sporting occasion, only one verse is sung.
There are some occasions where singing both verses is required. No one …
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Fantasy Quest

Gene Wolfe's The Knight and The Wizard are both excellent. Likewise his Book of the New Sun cycle.

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Quick update

Life's going OK right now, but there's a lot of travel.

Just after settling into my flat in London, I've had to travel to Mooloolaba, which is in Queensland and is gorgeous. I've had a fun week here hacking with the Bazaar crew. Tomorrow morning I'm off to Dallas, Texas …
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Chess

The flat hunt continues.

Meanwhile, I walked back from a late, greasy dinner to my studio in Kensington. I stopped at a café where people where smoking and laughing on the outdoor tables and went in to see if they had cannoli.
I've been here before. It's a charming little …
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