This is why people don't feel safe in Christchurch

Despite the figures saying we are the safest city in NZ.

Teens ambush pair in robbery

The 'low' crime rate makes the relevance of occurrences like these seem so much larger (rarity effect), whereas in say Auckland it's probably just another night.

Which doesn't make me any less angry, or helpless, that it happened at all.

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Bear with me...

A few days ago I followed a link from one of the increasing number of RSS feeds that I follow to Chris Guillebeau's blog The Art of Nonconformity, specifically to his new free e-publication 279 Days to Overnight Success.

Reading it was enough to solidify some thoughts in my head, mostly about communication and blogging not being the focus of whatever it is I want to do, but online communication being a part of. So there's the link back it asks for :) , but it's not what this post is about.

I was more taken with Chris's earlier piece, A Brief Guide to World Domination. I think everyone should download and read this, but it's also not what this post is about.

This post is about a video linked to in the Guide, the last lecture given by one Professor Randy Pausch at Carnegie Mellon University after having being diagnosed with cancer and given a short time to live.

Now I've recently bitched in this journal about not being able to watch many online presentations because they chew through my data cap. This one is 1hr 16minutes, but I took the plunge anyway and it was worth every minute. It's one really good communicator and educator distilling the lessons learned from his life into one last show. The virtual reality work showcased is a bonus :D

Here's the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo . If you have the bandwidth, you have the time (maybe not immediately, but in the next few days). If you don't, ping me and I'll see what I can do.

In the related videos panel I see a lecture also done by Randy on time management. It's of similar length so I'm going to let the cap recover before I watch it, but I will watch it.