Heard this term ‘the curse of knowledge’ and wanted to put it up here so I don’t forget it.

The curse of knowledge basically states that the more you know about a particular topic, the more you forget what it was like to be new to that topic.

This means you will assume that other people know what you know. You begin to forget that they are new just like you were new.

Just a thought.

Regards

-Simon

Here are the videos for week 3 and 4 of the competition ‘No More Weighting Around.’

For those of you that don’t know, it is a low budge, low skill rip off of the biggest loser.

Week 3

And week 4

Enjoy.

-Simon

So the contest between my friends Elmo and Henry is well underway.

I promised an update on the contest a few days ago. Here is the original post regarding the competition between Elmo and Henry.

Here are the videos from their channel. I’ll let you watch them without spoiling the results.

Rules:

Week 1:

Week 2:

If you go to the channel elmoandhenry you can see a short clip of Henry in a borat G-string. I wasn’t going to put that footage up on my blog. Viewer discretion is advised.

Will keep you guys updated with how this competition goes.

Regards

-Simon

So recently 2 of my friends ‘Elmo’ (Michael) and Henry decided to have a ‘biggest loser’ style competition.

Whoever loses the largest percentage of weight (compared to their original body weight) wins.

They are doing this to encourage each other to exercise and eat well. I was honored when they offered me a position as host of the show.

Videos of the first 2 weeks will be posted shorty (after I have edited and posted them on youtube).

This is their youtube channel.

This is the facebook fan page for this particular competition.

I will update my blog shortly with the first 2 videos of the competition (week 1 and week 2).

However, here are the rules of the competition.

It is a 5 week competition.

Initial weigh in determines their starting weight.

They then weigh themselves every week. The loser of each week (person who lost the least percentage that week) must buy $25 of tempting food for the other person (hopefully tempting them into eating it).

The winner at the end of the competition gets flights and accommodation to Melbourne paid for (by the person who lost the least percentage of weight).

Some additional rules:

- They are not allowed the help of a personal trainer.

- They cannot weigh themselves during the week (exception being the official weigh in each week).

I will keep you updated on their progress.

Regards

-Simon

Recently I have been feeling particularly nostalgic about the 1990′s (the decade of my childhood).

This happens all the time. I wish I appreciated the 90′s more. I guess the same can be said about the time we are living in now, perhaps I should appreciate the now more than I am.

Anyways.

I have an offer.

I will give anyone who has access to a time machine $1million if they can transport me back to the 1990′s and allow me to live a month there. I’d prefer early to mid 1990′s but late would also be acceptable.

Now I realize that, if you had a time machine, you would have simply gone back in time and told yourself the lottery numbers and made yourself more than just one million dollars.

This is true, but help your good friend Simon out (please, please, pleeeeaaaaase).

There is also another problem. I do not have $1million on me at this point in time. This is a major sticking point when it comes to me making this offer. Not something I can fix straight away but I’m working on it. Perhaps you could give me access to next weeks lottery numbers so that I could easily fix you up with the million.

Think about it.

I realize that in this offer, I have offered absolutely nothing of value while demanding value off the other person (wherever you may be).

To anyone who read this, I guess I owe you a few minutes of your time.

This should save you some of that time (if you are into 90′s games).

Regards

-Simon

2011 has officially started.

Why?

Because I now have a 2011 planner from the co-op book shop (the university bookshop where you buy your textbooks). These calendars are awesome. They are free and have a better layout than any other planner.

Regards

-Simon

I’ve been doing a lot of changing direction recently. I’m about to do it yet again.

At the beginning of this year, I started some new years resolutions. So far, these resolutions have allowed me to get more done. I did these things to avoid paying my friend $50.

However I have decided to forfeit the $50.

The reason for this is because I was making content simply because I ‘had to’. I was creating negative videos and blog posts. This had an effect on me.

I have decided to only update my blog when I feel I want to. Hopefully my month and a half of constant blogging will give me the know how and motivation to blog whenever I have something good to say.

I will be making videos a lot less. If I do make videos they will be good quality videos. Before I would scramble for a topic and then quickly make a ghetto video (that wasn’t very good quality.

I’d also skimp on doing proper SEO work on my videos.

I will be going through my blog and videos and deleting the negative ones.

Hopefully I will be making less, but producing higher quality content.

We will see how it goes.

Regards

-Simon

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak has resigned. The saga is finally over. It took 18 days of protests to end 30 years of Mubarak’s rule. The control of the country has been transferred to the military.

Now I don’t have a horse in the race. I am not particularly interested in Egyptian politics, nor do I care who won in the protests. I have however been analyzing the actions of Mubarak from a ‘political play’ point of view. Let met explain.

Obviously Mubarak wanted to stay in power. Nothing wrong with that. I analyzed the things he said in order to attempt to stay in power. He did a very good job in his attempt.

Firstly he said he would resign after September (when elections were held). When this failed he constantly refused to resign saying it would be bad for order in the country. After that failed, he attempted to transfer all power to his vice president, while keeping himself as president purely as a figure head.

To be fair to him, it was the best he could have done in the circumstances. He did a very good job of almost getting the protests to dissipate.

It remains to be seen how good (or not so good) a job the military will do in holding free elections. The Egyptian constitution states that in a situation where the president resigns, it is the speaker of the house who takes over. The fact that the military has now taken over is against the Egyptian constitution. Nobody seems to be complaining though.

In all this, the military has remained very well behaved and has done a very good job in keeping law and order. They have remained unbiased as much as possible in this situation.

Regards

-Simon

The situation in Egypt seems to be hotting up. President Hosni Mubarak has refused to step down despite massive protests and rumors that he would step down. As I type this, it is around 11am in Cairo (capital of Egypt). Protesters have promised to make this the biggest day of protests yet.

Things do not look good for the president. While he has been cleaver so far with his political moves, it looks like his luck has run out. I do not have a political view one way or another regarding the situation in Egypt. However I am giving my view based on how I view the political plays used by both the president and the protesters.

As I blogged about earlier, Mubarak has played this game very well. For him to win the game, all he has to do is wait until the protests die down. It does not matter what he promises in the mean time (since he will be able to break all those promises at a later date) just that he survives the unrest.

Once the unrest dies down, he will be able to jail the main instigators of the protest as well as mobilize the army to crush any further protests. He also knows that momentum for protests is a very scarce resource. Once that momentum has dissipated, it will never come back.

Mubarak claimed that he would not contest the Egyptian elections in September of this year. This was his first attempt at appeasing the protesters. It certainly did work in the short term, however people came to the streets to protest again. He then claimed that he could not resign because it would be bad for the country if he resigned before the September elections (he claimed it would lead the country into chaos).

Mubarak’s final attempt was to give all his power to his vice president and stay on as president, acting as a figure head. This was not accepted by the protesters, which is why Friday (today) is set to be huge.

Currently, we do not know where Mubarak is. I cannot blame him for hiding really. However the country must learn from Tunisia’s lesson. Tunisia had a large portion of their gold reserves stolen from them by the wife of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Having cash stolen is a pain in the arse, but will not lead to long term economic damage. Having gold stolen from them is devastating. If protesters are to be successful, they must protect their countries gold reserves (as gold is real money as opposed to the fiat money that is in the form of cash, $US etc).

More light will be shed on this situation tomorrow. While insignificant in the history of the world, it is certainly significant as an event of 2011.

Regards

-Simon

Recently I have been reflecting on my own mortality. We are all going to die in this world. Some may die sooner than others but eventually we (including those yet unborn) will pass on to the next world.

When we pass through to the next world, we will not get to take anything with us. Sure, we can be buried with all our possessions in our coffin (if we are really that attached), however we cannot take them with us to the next life.

We will die and not a trace of ourselves will live on long after we are dead. The famous people of today will be non existent tomorrow. It is only what we have done for God in this life that will live on. All else is irrelevant.

I have been reflecting on my own life. Some may say my life so far has been relatively short (I am 21 soon to be 22). I do not believe this to be the case. My life so far has been longer than many others throughout history. It was not too long ago that the majority of a persons life was over by age 21.

However I am not fooling myself. These 21 years have flown. Good times, bad times, the lot. I also realise that time is very short for each individual. Life passes everyone by. All of our lives are too short, therefore it is up to us to make as much out of them as possible.

In the time you have, you must serve God, humanity and your country as best you can before that time expires.

Like all years, 2011 has gone by very quickly. It is almost the middle of February. I had high hopes for 2011, as did many other people. We will see whether I achieved all that I should have achieved for this year.

Regards

-Simon