A little place of calm

BiCon 2010, the 28th annual bisexual conference/convention took place from August 26th – 30th at the University of East London, Docklands campus. It was combined with the 10th International Conference on Bisexuality, and the first international Bisexual Research Conference. About 450 people attended, from 28 countries!

I got up ridiculously early on Thursday 26th August in order to take the coach from Winchester to London leaving at 06:30. The journey was smooth and I was at UEL by 10am, in time to check in and drop off my suitcase in my accommodation.

The research conference was utterly brilliant, full credit to Meg Barker and Christina Richards for running it. Most of the talks were of exceptional quality, and i feel i learnt a lot. I enjoyed hearing about Helen Bowes-Catton's research into how people perceive and visualise bisexual spaces. Kaye McLelland spoke about bisexuality in the works of Shakespeare, and i marvelled at how well my English teachers at school managed to hide it all from us!

I was thoroughly inspired by a keynote talk from Robyn Ochs, a public speaker, writer, and long-standing bisexual activist. Robyn spoke of the importance of the impact that we make when we create space for people to be comfortably bisexual. I was touched by Robyn's description of the reward when somebody tells us that we make a difference for them. I felt so proud at that moment that I helped to found Bi Wessex in Winchester: proud that people come along and gain something from the group, and that some of the members were there at BiCon.

On Friday i bought Robyn's book, Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World and attended the workshop where we heard from ten of the people who contributed to the book. They stood up and told us something about themselves and read an excerpt from the book. It gave such meaning to hear them speak personally, and when i reach their stories in the book, i will remember them. Their contributions will be particularly meaningful for me. I asked several of the contributors to write in my book, which they gladly did.

I enjoyed hearing Heidi Bruins Green and Dr. Nicholas Payne speak about the results of a workplace survey on bisexuality. It was very interesting to hear the results analysed and validated from a mathematical perspective. Their results showed that bisexuality is not a phase on the way to something else, but a valid destination point, as are many other sexual orientations. They had some interesting data to show that happiness at work is directly correlated with LGBT support groups in the workplace, and anti-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

Saturday's discussion about words and phrases for bisexuality in other languages was intriguing. I shared my Esperanto knowledge about the etymology of the word ambaŭseksema and the positive phrase borrowed from shipping terminology navigi per vaporo aŭ velo (to navigate by steam or sail). We learned phrases, both positive and negative in German, Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Sri Lankan, Welsh and Hebrew. Everybody contributed something, and the results will be published … somewhere.

I knitted a bi pride bracelet in the amazing craft room, and then on saturday afternoon i took some time out to visit Central London. I went to Covent Garden to visit the new Apple store (the biggest in the world) and enjoyed spending time by myself.

Saturday evening was the BiCon ceilidh which i enjoyed immensely. When it comes to dancing, i really like being told what to do! :) I made a new friend that night, somebody who i feel could become a very good friend. We danced together a lot and had some lovely conversations. Later on the music became too loud but i joined the Corridor Club upstairs where it was quieter and i enjoyed chatting to more people. We were actually the last to leave because we didn't realise when the music had stopped and everyone downstairs had left!

Sunday was the disastrous "Bisexuality in Science-Fiction & The Future" workshop. It was marred by the speaker being late, a church group being in the room we were supposed to use, the laptop being broken, the projector refusing to work, and the speaker's corny sense of humour which did not go down particularly well at 10am. I gave up and left after about ten minutes of technology fail, and went and joined the church, which i actually really enjoyed! Those who stayed said it only got worse, and by half way through several of them had started their own alternative science-fiction workshop out in the atrium!

The highlight of Sunday was "Smutty Storytelling" which was very well attended, and the storytellers did not disappoint! The stories were well written, and delivered with humour and enthusiasm! There were cheers and a standing ovation by the end! I sat with my new-found friend and mentioned that I had "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" on DVD, which we watched later that evening.

Monday morning seemed to go quite slowly. Things were winding down but there were still a few workshops left. I went to one on sensual play, which was well facilitated, and led to discussions of how we might turn the results into an amusing website! Later i went to have my photo taken professionally, so that hopefully i will appear again on the front cover of Bi Community News and maybe in other publications about bisexuality.

Before i knew it, it was closing plenary. Awards and thanks were given, we celebrated the success of this BiCon, and met the team of BiCon 2011 which will be in Leicester from September 1st – 4th. Registration is already open!

The bi community is amazing. So totally inclusive and unquestioning. I am so happy that i went, I am sad that it's over, but writing this is my therapy: recording my happy memories and celebrating the joys of the last few days.

Thanks so very much to the BiCon 2010 organising team – you did an incredible job!

These are the last few hours of my 30-day trial of various changes to my life. For the last 30 mornings i have got out of bed and got going at 7am consistently. I have completely cut out coffee, i have gone to bed at a decent time and i have prioritised my evenings more effectively, much reducing the amount of time i spend watching television.

By consequence i've felt a lot happier, more engaged, more enthusiastic to do my job and do it well. My weekends have seemed more structured. I've felt emotions that seem somehow more authentic, and i've looked forward to my bedtime, enjoying a good read in bed. I've often woken up before my alam sounds in the morning, and enjoyed dozing in bed listening to the birds and the weather. I've given up chocolate almost by accident, and i've no intention to start eating it again. I've come to absolutely love Rooibos Tea! :)

Several people have asked me: what happens next? Well, ideally more of the same. I spent 30 days exercising my self-discipline, forcing myself to follow a routine in order to establish a habit. I'd like to think it won't be difficult to keep it up now. I used twitter extensively, tweeting every morning that i'd got up on time. Some of my followers will be glad to hear that i won't be doing that anymore! Twitter is a great motivational tool, but i no longer need it. I think it would feel weird now to stay in bed after my alarm has sounded.

So the experiment has been a great success and it has set me up to continue the good habits that i've established. Thank you everyone for your encouragements during the past month. I've really appreciated it!

So it's been 10 days since i started implementing the changes to improve my life. I think it's time for a little progress report. On the whole it is going incredibly well, better than i even imagined.

The caffeine withdrawal symptoms were horrible. I stopped drinking coffee on Sunday 18th July. By Monday evening i had a heavy headache, not particularly painful but giving a compressing feeling on my brain, making me feel fuzzy and slow-thinking. Then i threw up. Just a little bit at first, but later on i threw up really horribly and painfully. I never imagined that i could get sick from lack of coffee! Funny, it explains why i've sometimes been sick when i go away to visit people. Looking back now, it's obvious it was the coffee withdrawals that caused it.

On Wednesday and Thursday i felt as if my natural emotions were returning. I began to feel a genuine sense of calm and happiness, quite unlike anything i'd felt for a long time. By Friday i was positively bubbling with wellbeing. It was amazing.

Going to bed on time has been quite easy. Without caffeine, i've felt ready for bed at the right time. I feel a genuine tiredness without the caffeine giving me an artificial sense of being awake. Some days i really look forward to bed time. With my routine, i've found i prioritize my evenings much more effectively. Knowing that i'm going to get ready for bed at 10pm means that i am much less inclined to watch television, putting off other things until later. I'm also delighted for the opportunity to read in bed, now that i've made time for it.

Getting up has not been a problem. The last 10 days i've been up at 7am sharp. I've written down my whole routine, so i do the same thing every day, including weekends. I found it useful and enjoyable to go out for a walk on Saturday and Sunday morning, at the time i'd normally walk to work. It keeps my routine consistent and means i've kick-started my day, getting useful things done early, and getting a bit of exercise.

A completely unexpected side-effect of giving up coffee is that i also seem to have given up chocolate, quite by coincidence! I guess i'm on quite a healthy living trip, so i felt if i was going to cut out caffeine, i ought to do it properly … but it's amazing how i've not even had any desire or craving for chocolate. Every time i've given up chocolate before it's been massively difficult and a big deal.

All in all, i'm feeling a whole lot better than before. My enthusiasm has returned, my lust for life is alive and well. I'm sleeping better, performing better during the day, enjoying my work again. I'm fairly sure this will prove to be the best thing i did all year! Maybe next i'll even find a desire to do some serious exercise! :D

Today i have made a few decisions, a few changes to make my life better.

What is wrong with my life? As it happens, a few things, but these are the most notable problems that i've known for a while and didn't have the courage to admit to:

1. I watch too much television
2. I stay up too late
3. I find it hard to get up in the mornings
4. I rely too heavily on coffee

Recently i've felt i've not been getting enough sleep, i feel tired and irritable a lot of the time, i have little motivation to do things, and i am useless without coffee. Caffeine disrupts my sleeping patterns, so the problem is cyclical and self-perpetuating.

So a few things have to change, and i think i've found the answers in Steve Pavlina's blog. Firstly, i'm going to give up coffee. I don't want to be controlled by caffeine, so i will switch to rooibos tea, which i love!

Secondly, i am going to practise getting up on time. I literally mean practise. Something Steve mentions that i've never considered before is practising getting up when you're already awake. You get undressed, get into bed, set your alarm for 5 minutes time and then practise getting up straight away, having a wash, getting dressed. Then you do it all again. It sounds funny, but it makes sense. Willpower alone is not good enough. Even with the best intentions, 7 o'clock aimee makes the wrong choices. My foggy brain gets confused and tries its very best to convince me to stay in bed. Therefore i need to train my subconscious brain to get up automatically.

Thirdly, i'm going to get up at the same time every day. I will get up at 7 o'clock for the next 30 days. This is something i've often said i will do; i've done it before and really felt the benefits. With proper training to get up straight away, i can make it work.

Fourthly, i'm going to get to bed at a good time. I want to be in bed at 22:30, reading a book until i feel tired and ready to sleep. I will turn off my phone to avoid the temptation to check twitter and emails in bed. I intend to be asleep by 23:30. To prepare for this i must do the washing up at 21:00, and start getting ready for bed at 22:00.

This is going to take discipline, but discipline is like a muscle: the more it is used, the easier it will become. Lately my discipline has been underused, which is why i've been finding things so difficult. I look forward to the benefits of discipline, having more time to read, watching less television, getting to work earlier to prepare for the day, having more energy, breaking my addiction to caffeine.

So with all that written down (so that you can all hold me to it!) off i go to practise getting up when my alarm goes off! :)

I've been unhappy with my blog theme for a long time now. It was slow to load, and i didn't feel the style was a good fit for me anymore. I upgraded to WordPress 3.0 last night and, as is so often the case after an upgrade, i like to look for a new theme. I've enjoyed the white and grey minimalistic style that i've had on twitter for a while now, so i looked for something similar, and i found this:

Minimalist theme by Joey Robinson

I really like the simplicity: the reduction of clutter. Both the posts and the sidebar expand when clicked, to show one section at a time. I'm finding it a bit hard to get used to the uppercase, but i'm not opposed enough to want to change it.

One particularly nice thing about the theme is that it's customisable. If you don't like it on white, you can change it to black, blue, grey or green.

Today i scanned several of my university lecture notes into PDF format. The ScanSnap document scanner makes this a very fast and easy process, and it includes text recognition. This feels good: i can save physical space by throwing away my notes, but still have them usefully available to me, in searchable format! yay!

Now that i've scanned these, i want to be sure that i don't lose them. I've never been much of a person for backups, to be honest. My idea of a backup is something i do just before i upgrade Linux! But i've started to think i'd like to get into at least semi-regular backing up.

With that in mind, i came across this article: What's Your Backup Strategy? by Jeff Atwood. The proposed solution works on Linux! Funny, i always assumed rsync was a ruby library: turns out it's a straightforward command line tool.

sudo rsync -vaxE --delete --ignore-errors /home/aimee /media/FREECOM\ HDD/

That was enough to get me a first backup onto an external hard drive. Now it's just a case of running that periodically to keep it up to date.

I'm not particularly interested in having a cron job because my computer isn't always on, and the external drive isn't always plugged in. So i just made myself a simple executable file to sit on the desktop and remind me to click it and synchronise the backup every so often.

#!/bin/bash
 
source=/home/aimee
target=/media/FREECOM\ HDD/
 
echo Backing up $source to $target
read -p "Press enter to begin."
sudo rsync -vaxE --delete --ignore-errors "$source" "$target"
read -p "Press enter to close."

See, i said it was simple! But a simple solution is better than no backup solution at all, right? :) Now that i've started with something i can tweak it as i find necessary.

By the way, i love the quote of Jeff's in that article: The universe tends toward maximum irony. Don't push it.

I am quite sure that nobody cares about this except for me, unless they happen to have a similar scanner to mine. I've had to do this process about 5 times now on different installs. I can guarantee that it works for Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and Mint. I thought i'd share it because i'll probably need it again and someone else might find it helpful.

First you need xsane to be able to scan things at all.

sudo apt-get install xsane

Plug in your scanner by USB. Attempt to scan by typing scanimage. It won't work, but you need to see the error message.

scanimage
[gt68xx] Couldn't open firmware file (`/usr/share/sane/gt68xx/PS1Dfw.usb'): No such file or directory
scanimage: open of device gt68xx:libusb:004:002 failed: Invalid argument

See that PS1Dfw.usb? You need to get that file from http://meier-geinitz.de/sane/gt68xx-backend/ but be aware that your computer might ask for a different file such as ps1fw.usb or ps1fw.usb. Whichever it is, find it on the page and click it to download.

Assuming it's gone into your Downloads folder, move it to the right place.

sudo mv ~/Downloads/PS1Dfw.usb /usr/share/sane/gt68xx

Now try the scanimage command again. With any luck your scanner will burst into life and a whole load of crazy gobbledegook will splurge into your terminal window. This is the picture your scanner is seeing, trying to be displayed as text! Don't be afraid to Ctrl-C to stop it once you see it working. Or you can just wait for it to finish.

You can also do this to ensure that your scanner is configured correctly:

scanimage -L
device `gt68xx:libusb:004:002' is a Mustek Bearpaw 1200 CU Plus flatbed scanner

Now to actually scan something! Open up The Gimp and click File -> Create -> XSane -> gt68xx:libusb:004:002

It comes up with this super ugly XSane interface, where you can make a preview, choose the scan area, fiddle with the colour settings and DPI settings, and scan an image.

When it's done, it'll come back to The Gimp ready for you to edit the scanned image.

Protip: If you lose one or more of the XSane windows, you can get them back again by going to the Window menu of XSane and ticking on the ones you need.

As of Monday, 5th July, these are the 38 pins currently available on Gowalla, grouped by category. I just made this because it's sometimes hard to see what all the pins are at a glance.

If you're curious about Gowalla, see my other introductory post: Gowalla tips.

Installing Gowalla

I Installed Gowalla

Checking in

	Wanderer	Check in at 5 different Spots to receive the Wanderer Pin.
	Sightseer	Check in at 10 different Spots to receive the Sightseer Pin.
	Ranger	Check in at 25 different Spots to receive the Ranger Pin.
	Discoverer	Check in at 50 different Spots to earn the Discoverer Pin.
	Explorer	Check in at 100 different Spots to receive the Explorer Pin.
	Wayfarer	Check in at 250 different Spots to receive the Wayfarer Pin.
	Voyager	Check in at 500 different Spots to receive the Voyager Pin.
	Epic Voyager	Check in at 1,000 different spots to receive the Epic Voyager Pin!

Read more »

Today, Nick Clegg has set the date for the UK voting referendum, giving us a chance to reform the badly flawed voting system.

If you're not convinced that the system is unfair, compare these charts: How we voted in the 2010 election vs what we got.

Unfortunately some backbench Conservative MPs are trying to propose a 40% threshold, meaning that at least 40% of all registered voters would need to support the reform. This is totally unrealistic and unprecedented: it's not the way we elect MPs, in fact only 35 out of our 650 MPs got support from 40% of their electorate.

Their fear is understandable: under a fairer voting system the Conservative party would probably not get an overall majority. But it is not right to use an unfair voting system to save another very unfair voting system.

The most important thing right now is to urge your MP not to support the threshold and to give the referendum a fair chance. You can do so here:

http://takebackparliament.com/stitchup

Follow the instructions to write a letter to your MP. A suggested letter will be provided for you; all you need to do is add in your MP's name (the site will tell you) and sign it with your name. If you personalise the letter more, so much the better.

For reference, here's the letter i wrote to my MP for Winchester, Steve Brine.

Dear Steve,

My first opportunity to write to you! :) This is about the Alternative Vote system referendum.

I really welcome a fairer system than the one we have currently. I led a debate at The Roebuck Inn recently proposing that First Past The Post is undemocratic. I did not vote for you, and my vote was discarded. It bothers me that 28,800 votes in Winchester counted for nothing. I won the debate, by the way!

Now that we have a real chance to get a fairer system I'm concerned that some backbench Conservative MPs are already trying to fight against it by trying to argue for a 40% threshold rule — that's 40% support from all available voters, even those who choose not to vote.

This doesn't sound at all fair to me, and sounds like a sign of fear. By the way, Steve, you only got 36.79% of the total available electorate in Winchester, so you should be able to see why this proposal doesn't make sense!

You may not be the representative i voted for, but you are now my representative in Parliament, and therefore i hope i can count on you to oppose this suggestion and give the referendum a fair chance.

Yours sincerely,

aimee daniells
twitter: @sermoa

After one afternoon already 1,873 letters have been sent to 548 of our MPs. It is important that we get the message to all 650 MPs, so please do your bit and support true democracy.

See also:
http://www.takebackparliament.com/
http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/
http://www.power2010.org.uk/

Gowalla.com is a location game that you can play on internet-enabled mobile devices. At its most basic, it involves visiting places and sharing them with your friends, but there's a lot more to it than that. There are many different ways of using Gowalla, and i don't think everybody knows about them all. So i thought i'd share what i've found out so far.

Read more »