Speckled Green

Ahh… having to listen to their stupid debates, horrendeous and overly negative ads which don’t tell you anything and lie straight in your face (way to misquote Labour!! You’re worse than the media! Sadly, it’s working…)… I could go on for ages, except I’m starting to grow tired of thinking of this aspect…

I just feel annoyed currently at the Communication’s policies of both parties. I say “YAY for NBN!”, but I also say “You have a good point there” to the Liberals. Whilst installing an independent FTTH system for a National Broadband system is most certainly the best idea there is, the cost of it, and the way it’s being managed (by bureaucrats, the 2nd worse type of managers) probably (and most likely) isn’t. $43 billion??? You sure it’s gonna cost us this much?? How much of it was spent on ‘consultancy’?? about 20%? Because that seems to be all Kevin Rudd ever did.

However, the Liberal’s proposal, spending $6.3 billion to ‘encourage’ the private sector to expand, upgrade and install new services, is the most dismal, lazy and stupid idea I’ve ever heard. Especially as they don’t actually have any plans on how to ‘encourage’ the private sector beyond grants as incentives for rolling out something. They want competition to encourage the rollout of faster and better internet in Australia. What competition?? We only have 22 million people. See what we currently have with competition? Now, tell me what I should expect in 8 years time on the Liberal’s plan. I don’t hear Telstra, Optus or any other telco planning on giving my area Cable or Fiber internet in the next 20 years. Bella Vista has cable internet, and they’re only 600m East of where I live!! Kings Langley has cable internet, and they’re only 400m South West!!!! So what makes you think a few incentives to the tune of a few million each will encourage the only two telcos with the size to do any cable laying are going to give me FTTH for my internet, phone, TV and gaming needs??

Yeah, well I’m done on that. I’m getting bored about yelling about it to the internet. Personally, I’d like to see an amalgamation of all the parties to be in power: the best ideas of all of them, with the worst ones thrown out the window. Unfortunately, that in itself is impossible. So, all I can do is keep on dreaming…

On something completely not related to politics, I would like to invent/develop/create/purchase a collapsible, capacitive multi-touch (4+ points of touch), 19″ OLED widescreen. The technology is available, it’s just stupidly expensive, and no vendor would even consider producing it, so it would have to be a custom order/design. The hardest part would be getting the flexible capacitive OLED screen, especially a 19″ one. Never mind building it, or making sure the thing doesn’t break with the slightest shake. I can forsee many problems with my idea besides those above, but I’d still like to have it. Imagine a 2nd screen you can keep in your bag, multi-touch input, low power, compact and portable. I suppose the bulkiest part would be where you keep the ports and where everything folds into.

EDIT: more raging. When the Liberals suggested increasing the use of wireless internet to cover broadband (woah, wait, you want me to pay $100 a month for 4GB a month?! I can get better on ADSL2+ from Telstra, let alone TPG), they were asked what spectrum they were going to use to deploy it on (people doing Physics will remember that the window for wireless technologies is getting smaller and more crowded). Mr Smith (the Liberal) said they could use the old Analogue TV radio spectrum. Immediately, flags start popping up exclaiming that this guy has no idea what he’s talking about (that, and the fact the this policy was only announced at 11am this very same day, and the press conference this debate was at was at 1pm the same day…)… *FACEPALM*

Anyways, I’d done now. Time to get back to studying =]

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

Still haven’t found my wallet. I have no idea if I misplaced it at school or home (although, after searching around at home, I don’t think it’s there), or if it’s been stolen. It hasn’t turned up after a week, so I’m thinking it’s stolen or definitely misplaced.

Oh, and I did rather badly on the Physics exam on Monday. Got my numbers mixed up and spent too much time trying to check them. I mean, it most definitely would not have 51A as the current if it were a parallel circuit… right? So, that was screwed over…

Oh, and after lunch, I have the UNSW IAC English Comp to do… wow, such great fun. And in Software, Mr. B. decided to enroll us into the National Computer Science School (NCSS) Challenge run by USyd. Yay, fun. Except that he enrolled us in the ‘Advanced’ course. And I don’t really know any proper programming. And the course uses Python. Which I don’t like simply because of its syntax (it’s soo different the the C/C++/C#/PHP syntax I like). So I’m going to have to learn a whole new language, whilst trying to teach myself C#, whilst trying to do all my school work, whilst I want to design and finish my WordPress theme, whilst I want to try and learn the advanced Javascript stuff called AJAX… Yeah, I’m kinda overloading myself XD

Anyways, the Firefox 4.0b2 looks good. The Appstabs are useful… if I could just work out how to keep them there. I need to read into the help files about that… Anyways, I should go now =]

Is that how it’s spelt?? Disoriented? I can’t tell, I’m too lazy too look up a dictionary, but the spell check says it’s correct! Anyways, that’s how I feel. The two weeks of holidays, and then pupil free day before returning to school on a Tuesday instead of a Monday, and then spending most of the day out driving around with my dad or at the Band comp today… it’s just got my mind all muddled up. That and I feel sad at finishing two stories this weekend. I finally finished reading Cardcaptor Sakura (yes, the manga, not the anime. And yes, I know it’s a kid’s one, but hey, I’m allowed to relieve parts of my young childhood aren’t I? Besides, I wanted to know what the story was. When I was a small kid and tried watching the anime series, I missed too many episodes and didn’t understand it. That and the fact that the anime changed many things from the manga). And today I watched the final episode of Monk (season 8) on Channel Ten. Yes, I know, as Kai pointed out to me, that it finished last year (actually the last episode was filmed in 2008), and it’s just taken forever to be aired in Australia, but still, it’s finally finished. After growing up with it, it’s sad to see it ending. I don’t seem to be able to believe that it’s over…

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Recently it was my birthday, and I’m just gonna gloss over some of the events: said happy birthday to Mivandi on Facebook at 7am, was wished happy birthday by my family, went to school, got wished happy birthday there whilst putting up with another uneventful Wednesday, came home opened my presents (3 shirts, a pair of pants, $120 and a cheesecake!!!! =] I like cheesecake), had dinner, had some of the cake, went to bible study, came home, answered Facebook, went to bed.

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I remember when I went to my blog during one SDD class, and as I checked my ‘spam blocked’ tab on the sidebar, Sticky pointed out to me how awesome, yet ironic, the number was. Yep, that’s right, it read 1337. D0n’7 y0u ju57 10v3 1337 5p34k? Read more »

I now believe that I have the most comprehensive blogroll of my friends’ blogs that any of my friends have, and probably now the most up to date one there is (as I did it only a few hours ago).

The sad thing I find is that many of my friends who do have me as a link on their blogroll (ohk, very few, but still) still link to my old address: www.pressing-on.net; or its sub-domain: blog.pressing-on.net. Come on guys!! For nearly a year I had a page there saying “This blog has been moved”! And if you bothered paying attention to the web address, you’d find I’d been redirecting you from pressing-on.net to here! Or am I the only person who bothers checking the URL every time he goes onto a web page?

In other news, I have officially lost my music assignment sheet. Martin, help, please?

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

It would appear that it is time that I update my blogroll (easier now that I’m using Google Reader to check on the blogs). This isn’t quite as easy as it seems, as some of the sites still do update… rarely. So, sorting out the dead from the rotting and alive, and finding where people have shifted their blogs to isn’t something I look greatly forward to. But hey! It’s more interesting than waiting for friends to go online on WLM or Facebook =] Read more »

Well, it’s only term 2, yet the English department are already treating us like its the HSC. Several exams are coming up, and writing practise essays (let alone real essays) hurts my head. You see, this is part of the reason I don’t like the subject English. That and the fact that I still don’t see any use for it in high school.

Anyways, I haven’t blogged in a while, have I?? I really should get back in the habit of doing so, just so this site is useful. And maybe I should continue my learning of C#? What I find the most annoying is that all the tutorials on the internet seem to be for C#1.0, C#1.1, or C#2.0. None of the really seem to hit on C#3.0 or C#3.5, let alone C#4.0 (although, I shouldn’t be surprised by that last one, it only came out this April). So, I keep on feeling that there’s something that I’m missing, that is simple and should be taught near the beginning, for C#3.5, except, especially if I were to talk to people who do know about the language, I’m sure that missing out something now is perfectly fine. Because I can just learn it later!!! Of course, I’ve had this experience where a tutorial on MSDN was written for C#3.0 or C#3.5, and I was trying something out (very basic mind you!!) in C#4.0 on Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (Beta), and it wouldn’t work!!!! Obviously since the last iteration, they’ve either changed the syntax for something, or just changed the function the tutorial was trying to get me to use… Read more »

Well, I haven’t been blogging much recently… kinda a shame. But mostly it has to do with either not feeling in the mood or just not being able to think up of something to write that wasn’t so mundane that it bored even me (and hey, I can read some really boring stuff sometimes).

But the thing that has been going over my mind the most is the new Doctor Who series (which, along with David Tennant leaving and Russell T. Davies leaving as well (he was the lead producer/scriptwriter/director for the 1st 4 series + Torchwood), brought about a new face and style to the series, hence their idea to completely renew it) which is now called Series 1 (again), with Matt Smith as the new Doctor (you know, when I first saw him, I thought he wasn’t going to be anywhere as near as good as David Tennant, but hey! He’s living up to David’s reputation pretty well!), the new Sonic Screwdriver (green? Wow, odd, like when the one Dr Lovesong (or whatever her name was) had in the Library… red with lots of extra parts), and the New Brand New TARDIS!!!! It’s like, childlike, fun, bigger! Kinda like the Doctor’s personality. At least, David’s portrayal of the Doctor… Read more »

I am going to say this quickly, as I don’t know how much time I have available to me.

I’m not going to be blogging much for the foreseeable future, as my mum has restricted my use of the computer (for good reason I guess). So, until I get myself an iPod Touch or the Nokia X6 or Nokia 5800, I’m not really gonna have much chance to properly blog.

So, as a quick update: Exam timetables are up!! Now I’m really starting to worry about how much I’m studying… I need to finish a prac. essay for English, and I haven’t done any homework for maths recently (been busy trying to practise piano while doing every other subject’s homework stuff…). I should probably write up a summary for Maths, rather than Phys and Chem, seeing as the sciences already gave us the Keep It Simple Science notes…

So, yeah. TTFN, Ta Ta For Now!! (But not for too long, I hope!)