Why Havn't I Posted in a Long While?

Thanks to nobody for playing Risk with me.

Regular Roads

Just in case it's not self explanatory, this map depicts the roads I drive along weekly, and how much I use them. The thicker and lighter the road, the more I use it. If I travel on a road an average of less than one times a week, I have not included it on the map. I also haven't included city roads on the map, as they don't really fit into the space I have available, here. But other than that, this is basically everywhere I go in a week. My life exists (mainly) around these roads. And as I made this image, I was shocked to realize how contained my day-to-day experience of the world actually is.

It seems that my travels hover between work, church and my fiancé's, and all these places are within twenty minutes of my home. It really makes me wonder what my friend's Regular Roads maps would look like. And then wonder about the equivalent maps of other cultures and countries. But these are some wonderings for some other time. A good wondering for now might be trying to work out which roads are which, since I didn't name any of them.

Urination

Basketing Balls

Yesterday I finished my first ever season of basketball. Previous to this, basketball and I have had quite a sour relationship for more than a few reasons, but at the opportunity of playing alongside friends I cast this baggage behind me to give it a go. This timeline shows simply when I scored goals, committed fouls and shared a victory during our season. As it was my first run at the sport, there isn't all that many of said events, however I assure you I was at least helping out the team in other, less recordable ways. Next season, there will be a million more of everything.

Engagement

Last weekend I did possibly the most exciting thing I've ever done to date: Commit myself to one girl for the rest of my life, and then ask her to do the same. As this is some of the biggest news you can impart to others, my fiancée and I found it rather fun and interesting to see how people responded to our special announcement. The following is a graph showing some of these responses, however the data included is derived from memory only so don't base any thesis on this.

Yes, there were people who had a card ready for us upon our engagement—and they didn't even know it was coming. And yes, not one man cried! What is wrong with the world that one of the most important things in our lives doesn't warrant a single man's tears? Maybe I feel a post coming up about what does. Watch this space.

It's Not About Winning

This weekend was spent at State Youth Games, a popular Christian sporting event where it is well understood and well insinuated that fun—rather than winning—is the aim of the game. Meanwhile, I am one of the most competitive people I know, and struggle to compete without wanting to win.

And so I thought it would be good to take a few statistics during the weekend of how my sporting success affected my mood. I took some basic number notes after each match of the four sports I played over the weekend, and came up with the following results. Note that I've rounded off the would-be ridged line to give a more realistic interpretation of the two variables measured.

But this graph doesn't really answer the question of how much winning affects my mood. So I've taken these raw results and shuffled them onto a new plane. On this graph, the closer my measurements are to the diagonal line, the more related my happiness and success apparently are, or in other words, the more important winning is to me.

It seems that I don't stick too much to the diagonal line, but definitely do hover around it. I guess this means that winning helps my mood, but doesn't control it. There are many other conclusions that can be drawn from this chart, but I'll leave you to make them. I'll just note one thing I find particularly interesting, and that is that my mood seems to be most happy when I am at a particular level of success. So too much winning equals bad. Who would have thought?

Around the World

When it comes to world travel, I've only really occupied three major islands. Nevertheless, today I've deemed it necessary to document my various globe trottings. I've plotted here the places on Earth that I've been in terms of how many times I've been there and how long I was there for. Enjoy!

In a way, you'd think I would have visited a larger area of my own country during my twenty-one years on Earth, let alone the world. Apparently not.