Phlebas Considered: Cool things on the web

Since I've got my Ipod, I've increased my listening of podcasts. I kind of listened to a few just on my computer, but generally while I'm at my computer I'm doing stuff, so I wouldn't really pay attention. But with the it is easy to listen while traveling, so I listened to stuff while commuting around. The range of stuff I listen too is pretty broad as well. There's commentaries both official and fan on Battlestar Galactica, local current affairs, military history, for a while Russian lessons (it petered out after a while), weekly speeches by both the governator and George W, and some general geek discussion.

I've now started getting some videocasts as well. This is mainly because I found one that is very cool and well worth the effort of downloading. Ask A Ninja. A wonderful concept, and done well.

I'm unemployed right now. The basic story goes like this. I was a temp, on a seemingly ever extending contract. Back in about September/October they told me my contract had been extended again until the middle of January. Then at the end of December, they put out the January roster and I had shifts up until the 29th, which is well past the middle of January, so I thought, OK, my contracts been extended again. Then on the 16th of January, an email comes out to most of the temps, myself included saying that your contracts end on the 26th, so on your last shift make sure you hand in all the security stuff we gave you, and a comment that it was unlikely that contracts would be extended. At this point, I assumed that since my roster went past that point in time, the unlikely had already happened. But then last Monday the online timesheet system wouldn't let me log on, so I called the person responsible, and she told me to just email it to her, and to do the same on Thursday when I'd finished. I replied, but I'm rostered on for shifts after that, and her response was a that it was a business thing, and I was finishing on Thursday. Then at the end of Monday an email came out saying that we might be able to extend a few of the temp contracts, and wanted to know who was interested. At that point I'd kind of already moved on, and was planning to enjoy my third full weekend without work in over eight months, and finding a better job and not having to put up with all the crap work forced on you (stupid customers, stupid merchants, stupid policies) so I told them no. So now I'm unemployed. Fortunately, they paid me about 50% more than I'd usually spend, so I've managed to save a fair bit, so I'm not going to starve immediately (I can probably last about 16 weeks without having to be too frugal).

So now the challenge is to find something new to do to fill my coffers and my hours.

One of the ways I'm filling time is I'm learning how to use a 3d modeling program. My first project is to make a stargate from Stargate Atlantis. So far I've got some of the fancy bits that sit on the stargate done. I'll add more pictures as it gets a bit more developed.