Miriam Parkinson

Since I decided to shave my head to raise money for leukemia I’ve been obsessing over whether or not I have a pretty skull. Britney Spears for example does not have a pretty skull. Not that she looks awful bald just not as good as some others… Natalie Portman anyone???

The trouble with the pretty skull issue is that you can’t really tell until after you shave your head so I guess we’ll just see.

Meanwhile in the spirit of the whole bald women theme here’s a link to Eight Women Who Look Better Bald Than Britney.

If you would like to sponsor me via credit card please do so here.

Today I decided to bite the bullet and register for the World’s Greatest Shave 2007. For those who haven’t heard of it its a charity event for the Leukemia Foundation. The idea is that people sponsor me to shave my head and the money is donated to the Leukemia Foundation.

The Leukemia Foundation supports patients with leukemias, lymphomas, myeloma and related blood disorders. The Foundation provides free support services including:

• Information and resources
• Education and support programs
• Transportation to and from treatment
• ‘home away from home’ accommodation close to major hospitals
• Practical assistance
• Emotional support/counselling

Its a really good cause and the donations are tax deductible so I would appreciate it if as many people as possible sponsored me. I’m shaving my head! I’d like it to be worthwhile

If you would like to sponsor me you can do so by credit card here. Just click on sponsor an individual, then enter my name and state (Miriam Parkinson, Vic) and enter how much and your card details. Easy!

I’ve never had the inclination to embed any streaming music on my blog before but I just had to recommend this song to everyone and its the best way for you to get to hear it.
The song is Ramalama Bang Bang by Roisin Murphy and you really do have to have a listen. She has a couple of songs on the podsafe network which is more than enough reason to support an artist as far as I’m concerned.

If you really like it it’s available to purchase on iTunes here.

I managed to dislocate my shoulder in my sleep last night. I’ve recently taken to sleeping on my side with my arm under my pillow and my head on top of my pillow and I’ve discovered that that’s not as sensible as it sounds. You see my joints are rather flexible and its not unusual for me to hear a crunching sound and then sink into the bed a little when I lie on my side but with my arm above my head the additional pressure caused my shoulder joint to hyperflex and sort of pop out during the night.

I woke up with a throbbing shoulder and unable to move my arm in the slightest. I actually had to scoop it up with my remaining good arm and sort of shove it back where it was supposed to be and hold it in front of me where it didn’t hurt as much.

This now officially takes over the dislocating shoulder whilst trying on a top in a store changeroom incident as the most stupid way I’ve injured myself.

Colin just bought www.miriamparkinson.com for me so I’m now running this blog off that. In other news I needn’t have been too bothered by the google rank issue because my wordpress blog is just behind this one already.

Several months ago Clarke Scott announced on the wHooiz blog that he was running a promotion where, by putting a wHooiz widget on your blog, you went in the draw to win a Wii… AND I WON!!!

I am unbelievably excited because I’ve been wanting a Wii for ages and Colin has been trying to buy one but they keep on selling out! I was beaming and hugging Colin when I found out that he’d even been trying to get me a Wii for Christmas so by excited I mean crying and shaking and jumping up and down with joy kind of excited!

So thankyou very much Clarke for doing the promotion and everyone should check out his site wHooiz.

Several months ago Clarke Scott announced on the wHooiz blog that he was running a promotion where, by putting a wHooiz widget on your blog, you went in the draw to win a Wii… AND I WON!!!

I am unbelievably excited because I’ve been wanting a Wii for ages and Colin has been trying to buy one but they keep on selling out! I was beaming and hugging Colin when I found out that he’d even been trying to get me a Wii for Christmas so by excited I mean crying and shaking and jumping up and down with joy kind of excited!

So thankyou very much Clarke for doing the promotion and everyone should check out his site wHooiz.

Because I’m just a bit of a masochist I thought I might screw around with my sleep patterns some more. This time; however, it’s a little less drastic and I have more scientific data on my side. I’m going to try biphasic sleep.

This time around I’m going to ease myself into it. Cut an hour off nightly sleep, take a midday nap; cut a bit more off the nightly, take a longer midday nap etc. Eventually I’m going to try a 50/50 approach.

There is some good reasoning to this: Firstly, circadian rhythms show that humans are naturally biphasic, secondly I can get alot more done at night when there are fewer distractions, but my third ‘its better for study’ theory is my favorite.

Think of it this way. We’re told all the time that ’sleeping on it’ can help you learn. So I go to uni, get home at 4ish, sleep until 7ish then prepare dinner, eat etc and study until 4am. I then Sleep until 7am get ready for uni and repeat. Good for the brain, good for the lifestyle, not to mention its middayitis killing potential.

The advantages of this technique over others is I believe I can still get by on less sleep than if its all in one lump, its far more flexible and less drastic than polyphasic sleeping and it fits natural sleep cycles. Each full cycle is 90min so I get two full cycles per 3hr sleep, theoretically meaning I should easily get used to waking up at that point and will feel refreshed and relaxed.

I’m not starting this today because I have to head off for a volunteer induction at uni this afternoon but I’ll keep you all posted.

Imported from my old blog

Tags: Experiment, Sleep, Biphasic, Polyphasic

 Over the past couple of days I’ve been dipping my toe in the water of other blogging platforms. The first thing I’ve discovered is that there is no perfect blogging platform. Typepad charges for membership, blogger has an annoying comments system and no inbuilt stats and Wordpress.com won’t let you fiddle with the CSS without paying for the privilege. I like the idea of Wordpress.org but I can’t justify paying for a server for my blog. All the other options seem a bit more ‘journal’ like and are filled with ‘Hi, I’m Catie and I’m bored…’ blogs… Not really the style of blogging I want to associate myself with.

I set up a Wordpress.com account and imported my blog and comments and I’m rather pleased with the result. Importing was easy, the only problems in translation were disappearing youtube videos (wordpress doesn’t accept javascript) and borked up web addresses associated with comments. Both problems were relatively simple to fix however the more obsessive compulsive types could spend a good couple of hours perfecting everything. All of the labels/tags/categories transferred across nicely too.

My main concerns with changing over are confusing readers and losing my google pagerank. At the moment I’m the first hit for ‘Miriam Parkinson’ but it took a good couple of months to get there and I don’t have a whole lot of regular readers so I need to keep every one I have

If I do change platforms I think the best plan of attack is to cross post for a while, start using my wordpress address when commenting on blogs and wait for my wordpress blog to creep up the google charts until its somewhere respectable and I can switch this one off.

Please hit me (not literally) with any advice you might have. Critiques of the new blog, pros and cons of wordpress I might not have noticed yet etc.

Imported from my old blog

Tags: wordpress, typepad, blogger, importing

I have just under 3.5 hours of my teenage years left and I haven’t even organised anything for my birthday yet.

Time flies.