I’ve really been on the go for the last couple of weeks although there’s been too many things to give any kind of credible rundown. I did manage to break a toe in a relatively minor way three weekends ago which has been slowing me down a little, but it hasn’t been causing me any real trouble. It’s all taped up and seems to be healing nicely. The only time I really notice any discomfort is when trying to sleep oddly enough. When it happened I had visions of myself relaxing and giving it ample time to heal, but in reality I’ve not yet managed a single day at home. -_-

I had to resort to a bit of plumbing lately. The toilet cistern had been leaking a little lately and got to the point it was not only wasting water but proving an obstacle to sleep with it’s constant dripping. I’d been trying to find replacement seals and washers for it for sometime to no avail. For some unfathomable reason the one installed in the house originally was a brand unbeknownst to every parts supplier I talked to. In the face of this I ended up buying an entirely new cistern for $120 which happened to come with a new seat and cover too. While installation may seem to be a difficult task these things are relatively standardised and easy to install so screw playing plumbers a few hundred dollars. The install was reasonably painless and all is good now. No more wasted water and plenty of nice unbroken sleep. ^_^ Needless to say the cistern I bought contained widely available Caroma internals should the need for parts arise again in the future.

I’ve decided to actively start learning Japanese again. I did a few courses in my last year at uni which I found difficult, but that was partly due to being away in the US for the first 2 weeks of the first semester which meant I was permanently two weeks behind the rest of the class for the entire year. I originally tried to keep the skills up after leaving uni, but without any real discipline my efforts soon dissolved away.

Why pick it back up now you ask? Well I’m finding with age I’m more comfortable as to where my interests lie and with some of these (i.e. anime, games) I’m finding myself constantly pissed off at having to rely on others for translation and all the effort stuffing around with region locking, languages patches and subtitle files could be better spent working to bypass these problems entirely. Obviously this isn’t going to happen overnight, but I figure I’ve only one life to live (that I know of anyway) and this is a skill I want to possess so screw the obstacles and if I have to achieve it through sheer willpower then I will do so.

I should add that despite this new statement of direction, I’m not planning to abandon the DVD subtitle rendering software I’ve been writing. I still see that as being extremely useful given how many Region 2 DVDs I’ve been getting these days.

I don’t normally post relationship stuff here (well not for a few years anyway), but I will say things have not been going well lately. Not due to the lack thereof so to speak, but more the wanting to run a mile variety. It’s my own fault for letting the situation get to the state it has, but it’s not doing anyone any favours to prolong things.