Done! I acquired a tonkinese kitten – Thomas – in June, 2003 and am living happily with him so far.

Partly Done! With Skud I did extensive gardening/planting at our Preston house, but the gardens don’t count as “large”. I’m living in a flat now but with 31 (at last count) pot plants it almost counts as an indoor jungle.

Note: This doesn’t have to be my biological child, one of the things I’d like to do with my life is foster a child, or children, with disabilities – that’s why I worded the dream/goal like I did.

Done in 2000! I had three pictures and a short written piece in the ‘We Are Creative’ exhibition. That’s an exhibition for disabled artists that ran in Melbourne, Australia.

I’ve given them away as Christmas and birthday presents, but I’ve never sold one yet.

• (Added 2003) Coloured pencils.

  Done in 1997-2000! I drew nearly every day during this time. The cream of my artwork is available here on the web.

• (Added 2003) Watercolour pencils.
• (Added 2003) Oil pastels.

  Started in April 2003! Started drawing with my Oil Pastels but had to stop on account of severe wrist and arm pain.

• (Added 2003) Artist’s pastels.

  Started in May 2003! Started drawing with my Oil Pastels but had to stop on account of severe wrist and arm pain.

Done Lots!

Done in 1998! I got my first cheque for an article in November 1998. $50 from Grass Roots Magazine for an article about my family and about growing up on the very edges of suburbia. I had up to 29 articles published on the web site Themestream (now defunct) which went broke owing me about $300.

Done in the late 1990s! I haven’t formally studied this but I seem to have picked it up as I go along and I’m fairly good at it now.

Done in 1986-1992! I studied flute all of my secondary years and achieved AMEB grade 7 standard. Was unfortunately forced to stop playing because of an incurable wrist injury. I miss it

Partly Done in 1998 and onwards! I have been learning and playing a little since 1998, but as my health declines I can play so little that I never build up the required calouses on my fingertips. I do want to learn more though.

Slightly Planned! In early 2002, despite severe disability, I planned to take this trip, or a few-months shortened version of it during 2003/2004. Unfortunately by late 2002 it was obvious that I was so severely disabled that this trip was a sheer impossibility at this time, it has been postponed indefinitely.

• Melbourne

  Done and done! Born and bred, not to mention that I live here .

• Sydney

  Done in 1995/6! Visited twice in 1995, spent 6 weeks there in the summer of 1995/6.

• Albury/Wodonga

  Done! Spent several weeks there for various music camps.

• Brisbane

  Done in 1994! Attended a Pathways II conference there. Didn’t get to see much except the inside of the conference hotel though, so I’d like to go back and explore.

• Cairns

  Done in 1992! In our family there’s a tradition of taking
  each year 12 student to Queensland somewhere for the September
  holidays so they get a week off to relax and unwind before the
  end of year exams. Mum and I went to Cairns for mine.

• Darwin

  Done Lots! Several extended visits to the Peake’s: my Aunt, Uncle and Cousin.

• Alice Springs/Uluru

  Done! Visited there with family in about 1990.

• Perth
• Adelaide
• Hobart

  Done in 1994-5! I spent several months staying with a treasured net.friend there during my summer vacation.

Partly Done! I have been there several times, the last one in the early 1990′s. I’m planning to go spend at least 6 months up there doing art with my Aunt as soon as my health allows, which unfortunately looks like being a rather long time.

• Christianity – The Bible

  Done in 1983! Our class studied Christianity that year, and read the whole bible while we did it. It was a thick leather-bound family bible our teacher brought in, and in it the name ‘Rebecca’ was spelled ‘Rebekah’. I thought it was so pretty I changed my own name from ‘Rebecca’ to ‘Rebekah’ and used it (or the shortened version ‘Bek’) until 2003!

• Judaism
• Islam
• Buddhism

• Asimov
• Heinlein

• Einstein
• Hawking
• Newton
• Eddison
• Galileo
• Da Vinci

Mostly Done in 2000 and onwards! In 2000 I did a bit of studying about this area and felt I knew nearly enough to get started … but was not secure so I put my meager dollars into two managed funds (with different investment philosophies) instead. I’m happy with that for the time being.

Done in 1994! I’ve completed a major in linguistics as part of my cognitive science degree, finishing the linguistics major way before I finished the rest of the degree.

Done in 1998! I have a degree from La Trobe University in AI and I also did one honours-level subject in AI at RMIT University.

Partly Done in 1993! I studied first year discrete maths, which is where I got the taste for it. I’d like to do more though.

Partly Done throughout the whole time I lived at home with my parents! I know a lot of Australia’s IP law because of working summers with my Dad’s Patent Attorney firm.

Partly Done in 1996-1997! I started an Open Learning course in small business management. I only finished about 2 modules of it I think, so I’m hardly qualified, but I have a decent overview of what’s required. I may get back to it someday, as I still think small business studies is a useful thing to do.

Done! One of the modules in my Small Business Management course in 1997 has been bookkeeping.

• Learn Auslan (the language of the Australian Deaf community) to conversational level.

  Partly Done during the 1990s! I have studied up to second level (whatever that means) which was enough to make myself understood to a Deaf person, but not enough for me to understand them. I stopped because of being sick but hope to take it up again as soon as I can.

• (Altered May, 2003 to add Elvish, LOTR rules OK!) Learn Elvish, Esparanto or another “invented” language.
• Learn German to conversational level.
• Learn a “dead” language such as Sanskrit.
• (Added May, 2003) Learn Irish to conversational level.

Computers …

• Become proficient at programming in Perl.

  Done in 1996 and onwards! I started learning Perl in 1996 (can it really have been that long ago?) and was one of the senior perl consultants for Netizen (website now defunct) while it existed. I wouldn’t consider myself a Perl Guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve coded several modules of my own, know how to use other people’s efficiently and enjoy using the language whenever I can.

• Become proficient in C.

  Done in 1995! During 1995-6 I wrote several programs in DOS-based C and Unix-based C, including PFind which has been sold to several patent attorneys. I also wrote a myriad of other programs of various sizes. Usually I use Perl instead now, it’s quicker to code in than C and the speed of the resultant program is almost never important with the stuff I write.

• Become proficient in C++.

  Partly Done in 1996! I studied this at University for a semester, I have all the concepts but have not used it enough to be proficient. Not really interested in studying it further though, I’m too much of a Perl addict now!

• Learn enough about TCP/IP networking to be useful on a practical level, for example to set up a local network and connect it to the net.

  Done 1996ish! I learned a lot about this by doing most of the setting up of tertius.net.au, including applying for a C-class IP block and the domain name, setting up the standard services and the local Ethernet – everything except doing the physical cabling. In 2000 I was living in a different house and did all the RJ45 cabling to set up between the hub, my server, workstation and laptop.

• Figure out IP Masquerading.

  Done in 2000! After being irrationally terrified of IP Masquerading for ages I eventually bit the bullet late in 2000 and figured out how to set it up under both Linux and FreeBSD in under a month! It wasn’t nearly as hard as everybody kept telling me it was, and it even kept working after I rebooted!

• Learn to do LaTeX scripting.

  Done in 1999! Netizen (website now defunct) used LaTeX for a while to mark up all of their course-notes and I got to inhale ‘The LaTeX Companion’ to create all the macros and environments we needed for it. It was fun actually, although most of my work is destined for the web so I just mark it up straight to HTML now.

• Learn to do VRML scripting.

  Replaced in 1998! It doesn’t seem to be something that’s really taken off on the net like I thought it would and I have too many other things I want to do.