Discipline=Freedom

" Discipline equals freedom" Jocko Willink.

Last year I started a course to learn strategies and tools for coping with ADHD tendencies. The previous Christmases had been very unhappy times, and I wanted to break, which I did. I have no ADHD diagnosis, I just find the tools help me deal with imposter syndrome, and seasonal depression. I mapped my highs and lows in detail for 2 months last year. I uncovered symptoms which are, as far I can work out, caused by anxieties. Like the FOMO (Fear of missing out) from my last post https://zaphodikusrealm.blogspot.com/2025/01/gently-curious.html .

Anyway, one of the typical ADHD'er tendencies is a desire to optimise everything, and free up "CPU cycles" and so when someone says discipline equals freedom , everybody's brain just melts. That just sounds like a juxtaposition, not a truth. But my next two weeks are about routine establishment. By having routines, you can take guesswork out of small tasks that waste the cognitive and risk assessing part of the brain. We execute about 10 mini risk assessments every single day without knowing, what if you could roll just some of those into a practised routine? What if we could batch chores up, and do it in a way that ensures we don't forget any of them, in itself , that's a stress source. As someone with very little routine, because I am constantly guarding against my OCD tendency, I think I'm achieving a goal. Yes there will be a blog post about goals, I'm working through some of the course material backwards, Can you tell I'm a rebel?

Gently Curious

  If you are a bit ADHD, you will find yourself often getting into trouble with people. I say often and I mean often but for differing reasons, one of them is when a thing someone does just grinds you because it's just inefficient to do it that way.

Big triggers of grumpiness (anxiety) like lack of sleep, stress, technology that glitches, over-loading or even a food change are more general ones that we have some amount of control of. But some you have no control over. Like when a friend takes 20 minutes to eat lunch and you know it takes you 10-15 minutes and the train will be arriving exactly then. It grinds you, if the train runs early, you want to be on it early too dammit! I have always had FOMO (fear of missing out) which means I love to arrive early to every meeting. My FOMO however had started to drive my wife mad. I needed to teach myself to be less anxious about time itself. Last week I twice managed to actually run a few minutes late getting somewhere and a miracle happened, I did not end up driving faster. And I missed out on nothing at all.

Gently Curious

What grinds me, is not just people who eat slowly. I had to realise that my FOMO and wanting to get to every single meeting 5 minutes early was also stressing other people. This works two ways a lot, much more than I had realised. And just like my totally irrational desire to never miss things was not understood by my family, I often don't understand their quirks too. I very often fail to accommodate others, I mean why can't they just do things my way, the better way? Well, that's because everyone has different goals and different things they get out of the habits they might have. So how do I satisfy my unhappiness with the choices of others to do things wrong?

I used to just tell any person straight out, that that is not the best way! And when you turn it in it's head, and instead ask, what they are doing first, then ask why they do it that way, but without asking the why question, ask the how does this activity meet a need, for example how often do we all do "X" in a day for example? Almost in a reflective way, as if you are asking yourself, and then even though you will then learn why they do it the wrong way, and you will not be able to change them, you will understand the person better. Ever since I started being more gently, I have been building my own list of annoying things that I do, which I now work on, to minimise. It goes two ways.

New year resolution

How many people have you given dignity this Christmas? It's a rhetorical, so I'm leaving it there.

Words as Tools

The warning letter given me by my littlest angel.
"dad is not allowed
in my bedroom
until
in the morning"

Please excuse the grammar, but that is literacy at 5 years for you. Better than most, once we teach him the direction of the tummy facing for 'b' and 'd', he will be writing up the magna carta. For those who do not know what this kind of letter is, this is the Magna Carta according to Gregory. I just love it :-)

I think this writ was a response to my harsh words ejecting the aforementioned denizen from the parental bedroom. I found it stuck on our door, I also hope this means we can use words much more in the future.

Blog clean-up

Having decided to work a bit on my networking skills, here is another of the series of auto-posts. Auto-posts are detected by looking at the post-time, the minutes are set to 00, and I type them up, and trigger them usually a day or two hence, to post when I'm nicely warm in bed sleeping.

I've also added more widgets to my blog - but have a question now about audience and focus.

Boxing day meaning

It turns out that the origins of boxing day are lost in the mists so to speak, this is only interesting because where I lived, the name got changed to Day of Goodwill, in order to remove the colonial connotation attached to the holiday.
Because the history has been lost in the British observance , its particularly cunning to bring up the topic of how we treat our history. It's honestly moot, because even the origins of festival days 'adopted' by the christian faith seem to be lacking in effectiveness at bringing their point across.

For a long time I thought public holidays (called bank holidays in the UK after the abolishing of the slave trade) were just ways to get extra holidays, and undercut a countries GDP in a secret communist plot to make people believe they were getting a day off for free. That was a long time ago, a long time ago. I went on for a while to the idea that holidays were productivity devices, intended to make people work even harder in the run-up. It works well for projects that need to get out of the door sometimes. But my healthy paranoia has been proven unfounded time and again. It's just a in which day to recover from our own indulgences.

Brrrr it's cold outside

OK, can someone remind me, why I came to live in this icy cold place?













The snow is very powdery as you can see here. Not wet enough to roll up into a snowman without a whole lot of effort.










It's unusual to get snow before Christmas, if at all until Feb, but it has been pretty much fun.

Color your world

Here's a brave new product for a brave new world. I think we are always being told be brave, be bold and to "stand up for yourself". I wonder where that puts the meek?

All things in this world exist in balance, everyone has their own balance, now children can learn theirs too.



Go on, relive your childhood today.

black thief in my yard

the thief breaking in...
Yep, he's carrying something I think.
Definitely a nut!
And the black squirrel is gone

We love this country

I am talking about England, well really the United Kingdom, and its called that because it is more like a gathering of kingdoms, its not like United States, but more Like USSR than UK in some ways because it has so many tribes.
That said once you stop offending the natives, who are very friendly btw, there is a lot on offer. Like park&ride, which is a clever way to get cheap parking far from the city centre, and then ride the bus into town without really paying for a bus-ticket. It seems to work in most towns, Cambridge is one of them, and I now regularly use the city to just avoid the stress of driving in a built-up area. Yes, we love the countryside! It's green and safe! At least there are no dangerous wild animals (like in Africa LOL.) running about.
Well there are some dangerous things - dangerous if you are dumb or live in a city. The sidewalks everywhere are narrow and crowded, but with all this danger about, women are more likely to get beaten up by their partners than fall under a bus or suffer other vehicular incident.

Signing off, from the flattest bit of England.

Microcontroller projects

My first ever project, is hosted on avrfreaks.net http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?module=Freaks%20Academy&func=viewItem&item_type=project&item_id=1555
There is not a lot to say besides what you can see in the video. To get the source code login to avrfreaks.net - (you will have to. If you are programming an Atmel micro already that's a given) and to find a schematic.... Hmm maybe I will paste it up here too.


(diagram drawn 'ona' copy of the spec-sheet for the AVR microcontroller)


See also this digital solar powered clock done in basic on 2 CPUs:

http://www.cbaird.net

Comedy of errors

One is never too sure whether you get your moneys worth, but for a laugh, it's got to be a string of things going wrogn . It starts with

1. Register new game online, registration screen wants my street-address, so I fill in the normal -number "1234" -street "icicle lane" -state "south pole". Never ask me for my address unless it really is your business or you are a cop.
   
2. Next, the form crashes telling me I made a SQL error, normally users are not interested in: see dictionary (sql = school, shortcut to a word school)
3. ...I send off a mail to their support, the auto-response has a subject-line "2K Games USA Techncial Support", this is only getting sweeter. so I am at least laughing now.
4. The support login screen has been designed for visual impaired computer-gamers, see where I filled in my e-mail address in some kind of yellow. (browser = IE, with the form auto-fill on).

I log in, and get to manage my support query no problem, one more happy user.

Please do not get me wrong, I think they are a great crowd, and I want to do business, just not on the comedy-circuit. If you had a good chuckle recently why not decipher the little yellow box above and drop me a line.

How to wrap your presents when you own a Cat.

This applies to having children of <>
1) Clear large space on table for wrapping present.
2) Go to wardrobe and collect bag in which present is contained, and close door.
3) Open door and remove cat from wardrobe.
4) Go to cupboard and retrieve rolls of wrapping paper.
5) Go back and remove cat from cupboard.
6) Go to drawer and collect transparent sticky tape, ribbon, scissors, labels, ect.
7) Lay out present and wrapping materials on the table to enable wrapping strategy to be formed.
8) Go back to drawer to get string, remove cat that has been in the drawer since the last visit and collect string.
9) Remove present from bag.
10) Remove cat from bag.
11) Open box and check present.
12) Remove cat from box, replace present.
13) Cut paper to size, trying to keep a straight cutting line.
14) Throw away first sheet as cat tried to chase scissors and tore the paper.
15) Place present on cut-to-size paper.
16) Lift up the edges of the paper to seal the present, wondering why edges now don't reach.
17) Find cat between present and paper. Remove cat and retry.
18) Place object on paper, to hold in place while cutting transparent sticky tape.
19) Spend next 20 mins carefully trying to remove transparent tape from cat with pair of nail scissors.
20) Look for ribbon. Chase cat down hall and retrieve ribbon.
21) Try to wrap present with ribbon in a two directional turn.
22) Re roll up ribbon and remove paper that is now torn, due to cat chasing ribbon.
23) Repeat steps 13 to 22 until down to last sheet of paper.
24) Retrieve old cardboard box you know is right size for last sheet of paper.
25) Put in present and tie down with string.
26) Remove string, open box, remove cat.
27) Retrieve discarded sheets of wrapping paper, feed cat and retire to lockable room for last attempt, making certain you are ALONE and the door is locked.
28) At the time of handing over the present, smile sweetly at the receiver's face, as they try and hide their contempt at being handed such a badly wrapped present.
29) Swear to yourself that next year you will get the store to wrap the darn thing for you.

Next time you get a badly wrapped present, remember it could be from a cat owner !!!