Anyhows, I’m interested in IT. Decided that I was more of an IT person than Engineering, even if it was a computer oriented engineering course, and once again I’ll complain about how hard it is to type on my iPod Touch. Complaining done. USyd or UTS? Who knows. I like the sound of USyd more. It felt nicer to be at whenever I’ve been there. Is that another grammatical error there? My mum advised me to choose with my head, not my heart, when deciding which Uni/course to choose. Considering the options available (or should I say advertised?) to me and the advice from different people, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two universities. One is more industry ‘grounded’, with work experience and practical learning (supposedly) whilst the other is a more traditional academic approach. One purports a higher rate of graduates having jobs in the industry by the end, the other… Well, I didn’t ask as much at the info day, but the examples I’ve heard/seen/know suggest that it has a similar success rate for after grad jobs.

I think in the end I chose (preference wise) on my heart rather than my head, but I can use the excuse that it’s my life, and I can waste the opportunities the way I want to. I just feel so conflicted. And again, iPod Touch is annoying to type on. I think I’ll try to write up more on an actual keyboard. Another time then.
Oh, and my friends and I had another sorta-movie marathon. Don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it already. At the rate we go through movies, no thanks to Kausthub, we’ll be finished with our current list by the time we’re 25. And I don’t think that includes TV shows. I should also talk about my info day experiences later.

Anyhows, TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

So, let me see… I remember it was fun… and there was food. And friends. And fun. Oh, and at least 2 movies. And popcorn. And Skyrim. Lots of Skyrim.

Ok, well, first their was a friend’s belated birthday ‘party’, where several of us met up at Castle Towers to watch Puss in Boots (3D!), and then a rather enjoyable dinner at an Indian restaurant afterwards. Besides all the laughs, the conversations, and meeting new people, or eating a lot of food as I seemed to do, it was great to be with friends again!! Even if I had been with them just a few days before… You can never be with friends too often, right? Darn, this widescreen is messing up with my ability to judge how long this post is… Time for a blog redesign, I say! I just wish someone would do the visual designing for me, I’m awful at creating designs (I just find something I like on the internet, and make my own version of it).

I remember that there were some rather funny presents given to the friend (I remember saying that I would avoid naming people on my blog, because of the way the stalkerish internet works, so I’ll just name the friend Kau***. Those that know him should know who I’m talking about, right? NTS: go back over old posts and edit the names), who is a fan of Cricket (the sport invented by the English, and dominated by their colonies =P  That’s what they deserve, for never actually giving us the real ashes!)… Well, they gave him a box of crickets among other delicious gifts. Can’t quite remember how amused he was, but everyone else watching laughed our heads off, as he knelt on the ground, treating the box like a live bomb. And that was before he opened it.

Amongst all the outings with friends was video gaming, such as Half-Life 2, Counter Strike: Source, Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Counter Strike: Source, Skyrim, Counter Strike: Source, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Skyrim, Counter Strike: Source, Skyrim… you get the picture =P   Scarily (blasphemicly… that is now a word) I have not felt urge to play Portal 2. I think I need another HSC for me to play it late into the night and far into the early morning, trying to beat my friends best times on the different levels…  And maybe there was some Minecraft, Dead Space and F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, and some other games, in there as well. I don’t remember too well.

Regardless, I have my new PC now. It’s all mine! And I let my brother use it as well sometimes… Anyhows, It’s powerful, fresh, and heavy. I can certainly do all my work on it for several years to come. Sure, it’ll probably slowdown with all the bloat I put on it over the years, and with newer technology coming out to make it look slow. But still, it’ll be great for years to come! That’s the way I like choosing computers, a little extra oomph now to make it worth the 5 – 8 years you use it for (or sometimes longer).

And by heavy, the case alone is 11.3Kg, and I’ve no idea how heavy the components inside it are (1 DVD drive, 1 3.5″ HDD, 1 mobo, 1 CPU + stock heatsink, 1 PSU, 2x 4GB RAM, 2x GTX 560 GPU). But it’s definitely a strong case. And it’s got enough fans built in to be well ventilated (and also a dust sucker, but that just means I have to be bothered to clean it more often).

What else have I done over the last month or so? I remember a movie marathon at Sat***’s house, were Oreos, chips and drinks were consumed, until we went for pizza and microwave popcorn. We enlightened (read: forced to watch) BMCB about Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and also watched the first Matrix movie (for those that had not seen it yet, which is a surprisingly large number of 3 amongst the group of friends who were there that day). It was a highly enjoyable experience that I/we hope to experience again many times this year, and for many years after =P  Especially considering the list of movies/TV shows we thought would be great to watch, we may need a few years to reach the end of the list. And by then there’d be some new movies we’d like to watch as well XD

There was also the small matter of us receiving our HSC results and consequently our ATAR. Speaking of that, I’m still not entirely sure as to which university I’d like to go to, or which would offer me the best education/opportunity in the course(s) I’m interested in. I must continue to consult my friends who are all giving me different advice! And of course asking the universities themselves would be a little silly, as they’d try to sell themselves as the best.

There were carols nights (which I had mostly avoided because I didn’t feel Christmassy this year, except for one at my church, because my mum wanted me to give a gift from a family to both Pastors, simply because she didn’t feel like going herself and giving it to them). There were Christmas nights. Wait, only one Christmas night. And one Christmas day. There was a movie night with friends from church (PotC4! 2nd half of Robin Hood: Men in Tights!), and BMCB visited to see how nice Skyrim was on my PC. There were BBQ lunches at some point, and warm days, humid days, and cold days. Oh, and my mum decided it was a nice time to repaint the house. I managed to get out of doing a lot of work for that by being out with friends. Like at Dam***’s party/gathering/get-together in the city! Sadly I could not stay for dinner with them, but I did have a wonderful lunch at a noodle bar (I have totally got to try more foods so that I don’t stand there, looking at the menu and think to myself “Will I like that, or will it taste it and be like ‘…ehh… not eating that’?”) with the twins (why did they leave for James Ruse?! Also, I think I remember which one is And*** and Pet*** now). And then there was the Secret Room Cafe (Pictionary: 99.95 ATARs vs everyone else, with Dam*** hosting. We (everyone else) won =P  Actually, I don’t remember who won, but I remember it being close). Afterwards was internet cafe, and then they went to dinner at Blackbird (some restaurant of some type I guess? I wasn’t there at that point). Has*** asking for a fork at the noodle bar was highly amusing. Just putting that down so I don’t ever forget it.

I’m sure that there were more things that happened during December, but I’m at a loss as to what they were. Oh, wait, there was the annual Band Christmas party at Mar***’s house this year! Sadly it was a bit of a rainy day, but there was Pictionary, brawl, piano playing, poker, darts, food… friends, fun… any more alliterations I can use? Regardless, it was fun to be with friends yet again, be they from The Stoop, Backstoop, (umm… Matthew Wong group?), Band, or any number of the many groups of friends I have/know/hang-out with. Ahh… I would enjoy being in a band again, but I’m a little too shy to bother joining another one, and too lazy to really practise my flute playing. I remember on the night of the Band ‘Christmas Concert’ I finally admitted, in front of an audience which included the band committee, that I had not had a flute tutor since Year 8, despite the band member agreement stating that I should have one. Not that I think they cared. But it was still funny to see (or hear) some people’s reactions to it. And I was also an MC that night with Mag*** C. (haha MC with MC). Now, I don’t enjoy public speaking. I’m usually quite fine with handing it off to someone else. Be that debating, speeches, presentations, or in this case, ‘running’ a concert. In Yr 9, I was selected by Ms. Swe*** to be on the class debating team (funny story, because she knew I liked video games, she put me on the affirmative team for “Video games are bad for your health”. We won the debate), but I declined, because I was semi-morbidly afraid of having to debate in the next round of the inter-class competition (against Mr VL’s Yr 9 class, which our class lost? I cannot remember), because it would’ve been in front of more people, and required me to be ready to debate. I’ve never enjoyed being on a debating team. I like to have freedom with my debates (that is, I like to able to go on for hours, or just rant. As the year book says I do. Who wrote that anyway?). Funnily enough, since I’m continually told to lessen the amount of time I spend gaming, I knew plenty of arguments to use in the class debate…

Anyhows, this post is now really long. Looking at the word count, it has gone pass the 1550 word mark. Or 1570 work mark by now (the word ‘now’ just there is word 1571). I should stop that, it’s just making it longer. I remember an awesome Doctor Who Christmas Special (on boxing day for us Aussies, because the BBC cannot possibly let it air anywhere in the world before it airs in the UK……………….. WHY?! We’re your best customers outside of the UK! The Australian ABC has bought every single one of your episodes since you’ve been making them, and we’ve been doing reruns longer and more often than you have!). I also remember seeing a trailer for the new Hobbit movie, starring Martin Freeman (who until recently, I’ve only seen in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the BBC’s The Office (the original show, I might add. The US ripped it off with their own version)), who is Watson in ‘Sherlock’, which I am still yet to watch.

Oh, and I went and got some new soundtracks and albums during this time. And I’m going end the post here, as I’m off to Church right now, and, well, this post is really long. I’ll start a 2nd one when I come back from Church =]

If the world were to end now, would I have any regrets about my life?

And yet, despite the simple nature of the question, I find myself thinking that its answer is a very deep and complex one, an answer that causes me to think deeply, relive yet more memories, and an answer which I am finding it very hard to, well, answer. I suppose that like most people, there are things I do regret about my life, things that I wish I had done differently or not at all, but large portions of my life I do not regret at all. In fact, I’m quite glad to have such cheerful, supportive and fun friends, and I can only hope that we continue to be good friends throughout our lives and well beyond our high-school (or uni) years.

Then there are the moments that I ponder about, wondering, if I had done something different, then would these events have unfolded like they have, or would I be a different person (e.g., an obvious one, say I didn’t make it into Baulko, and I went to Girraween instead? What would I be like then?). I suppose one thing to do is to say “what’s done is done” and just look to the future, take the days as they come and thank God for the blessings he’s given us. Another thing would be to dwell on the past. But that sounds lonely.

But ignoring all this, I’m just going to briefly mention that I’m a little scared of the future ahead of me. I’ve absolutely no idea what it’s going to be like to apply for Uni, or even starting it. It’s just so different, and like most humans, I don’t like change. And looking for a job (I’ve mentioned all this before, haven’t I? This morning, I believe) is somewhat daunting. One of my friends is continually ‘worrying’ about not seeing any of us regularly, and I’ve just realised that this will be sadly true, since despite regular get togethers, it won’t be the same as seeing each other every weekday at school. I’m all grown up now, and I need to start taking on the responsibility that accompanies the independence that comes with growing up. Speaking of growing up, my mum spent 10 minutes this morning telling me how she was proud of how I’d grown up to be a fine young man (paraphrasing a bit). I’m wondering, do I really downplay my abilities? I don’t think I ever downplay myself, I’m just being honest about how I view myself compared to others.

Anyways, time for some well earned sleep. And I can return to looking through photos and getting a little emotional tomorrow.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

How on Earth are there 4,550 folders in my Documents library alone? Wait, I know how. Automatically created folders by programs such as iTunes and various games. Which probably end up holding a single 4KB file. Each. Anyways, I see I have a big task ahead of myself. Sorting through the hundreds of photos from my phones over the years is going to be a nightmare. Img0001.jpg, Img0002.jpg… Oh, wait, this phone labeled them Img001.jpg… and this phone labelled them 19102008.jpg, 19102008(001).jpg… I hope last modified puts them in a reasonably accurate order.

But enough about boring you with that. I’ll bore you with the thought that all those files did not include my music library. Thankfully though, that is an awful lot more organised (although I would like to eventually go through them and give the files a unified naming convention). And thank goodness for them being more organised, because there’s 7,178 files alone, measuring a massive 26.2GB. And I’m planning on adding more to that… Wait, I guess it’s kinda obvious to be planning to add more to a music library when new music is continually being released that may interest me.

My Pictures library, which I’m sure has some duplicates in it somewhere, has only 1,521 files (1.16GB) which makes me wonder just where on the computer I put the family photos. I suppose they’re still in the public folder… haven’t checked in a while.

Anyway, onto a different topic, I wish my friends and myself, along with every other student doing the HSC, the best of luck with their/our exams next week. I’m really not looking forward to the next 4 weeks. I am however looking forward to the weeks after those, so I suppose I can use the thought of “one last time” to get me through. Although that won’t help with spewing out 4 English essays and a short story, or remembering 2 years worth of Chemistry which I hate being tested on, but find an interesting subject. Or actually remembering what the stupid IEEE Floating Point standard is and how to work it out. Or remembering those maths formulae on the fly. ARGH!!! Uni is going to feel like this as well, isn’t it?

Anyhows,

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

So, latest big event to happen to me was I met Matthew Reilly at the book signing in Parramatta last Thursday (13th Oct.). He was very friendly, and warned me to not read the new book until after I finish my HSC. Advice I plan to follow. Sadly, it is awfully hard to do that, and I am continually tempted to pull the book out and open it up to find out what happens in the latest instalment of the Scarecrow series. I’m hoping I can at least manage some level of self control and not read it until at least near the end of my HSC. And speaking of the HSC, I’m trying to not think about the looming nature of it, hence the title. Yes, I know, that doesn’t make much sense.

So, besides that, this week saw public schools returning for Term 4, which meant that I decided to attend Concert band and Orchestra rehearsals again =]  They were plenty of fun (band more than Orchestra, because so few people turned up for orchestra). I really don’t understand my school sometimes. Because we’re a massive bunch of nerds, there seems to be this strange belief that they can just not show up for rehearsals when their exams are on. Partially it’s the students, partially it’s the parents. While their exams are important, only the year 12s (and to some extent the year 11s) should really be that worried about their exams. The year 10s aren’t going to be leaving the school, they’re all staying to the end of their HSC, so how on Earth is waking up a little bit earlier to go to school for a band rehearsal in the morning (which is probably more relaxing than worrying your head off about an exam) harder or worse for them to do than skipping it? For me, I find it relaxing, enjoyable, and a good way to wake myself up on Monday mornings. In Year 11 particularly, because the 1st lesson of the day would’ve been a double English session. Not fun at all. Band made my Mondays so much better.

In fact, thinking about it, the students of the school have a mixed level of willingness to participate in any extra-curricular activity. Plenty of them don’t mind spending heaps of time studying, doing practise exams, doing homework, or doing a job. Ok, a job pays you, and some of these kids may have the need to finish homework so extensively forced upon them by their parents that if they didn’t they’d be stuffed (AKA Asian parents. If you think I’m being racist, then I direct you to the plenty of Asians on the internet who concur with this, or even any of my friends). But many of these kids seem to have trouble participating in an extra curricular activity. Thankfully there are many who do participate, although a sad portion of these people only attend to get it on their report/resume. Then you have the amazing kids who are involved, and actually participate more actively. And then you have the crazy kids who are part of several extra-curricular activities, and participating actively in all of them (I am, I suppose you could say sadly, a member of the “crazy kids” group I just described, having actively participated or been a member of no less than 4 extra curricular activities, or up to 6, depending on how you wish to count and group the activities). And then you have the students who actually lead these groups. They are amazing in their own right, because they go through the trouble of organising the group and maintaining it (e.g. one friend leading the Baulko Bulletin, or another two running the Singing Group, or the group of my friends running Soul Purpose, or my friend who ran the Philosophy club…).

And I was going to try and make this a short post. In other news, I finished reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality this week. I can’t quite remember exactly when I started, but I do believe it did not take me more than 2 weeks. Mostly because I ended up skimming large portions of several chapters, because while it was funny, interesting and deep (and in some places rather observant of the absurdities of the ‘Harry Potter universe’), it was rather long winded, and I still got the gist of the story despite reading only a few words in each line of several paragraphs at a time… That author has a well developed vocabulary. Not because they managed to spout out many fancy words, but because they managed to continually utilise more specific, eloquent or uncommon words, which shows a higher level of English (because typically a person will only a tiny percentage of the words they know, with the people who have larger vocabularies utilising a larger variety of words more often than the average person).

Something else that I wanted to talk about has completely left my mind, so I’m just going to try and return to attempting to practise my English essays. That will not go well. My exam(s) are in less than 4 days. Then I get a tiny break before my Maths week, then the Science week, then last is my SDD exam. So while a large portion of my friends finish in the 4th of November (Physics or Geography), some of us are stuck with waiting for the last exam (VA on the next Wednesday, or SDD on the next Thursday). At least it gives me nearly a whole week to prepare for the exam…

Anyways.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

As I head towards my HSC, the distractions that a procrastinator looks for drives me to read stuff other than my text book. One of the things I looked up was the prices of unlocked phones. Needless to say, the prices for certain models have come down, although that has more of the fact that prices come down over time rather than the exchange rate changing, which recently has dropped us below parity with the US dollar, but that’s a whole other story. Anyways, what I want to know is why the Galaxy S II was listed on simplymobiles.com.au as $729, but the “Optus version” and white version are listed as $685. And they’re all unlocked and have the same specs listed. So what’s the difference in the price? Two got updated and someone forgot the normal Galaxy S II? Or is it about the popularity (supply & demand)?

But anyway. Another thing that has been bugging me is emotions. Why do humans have emotions? I don’t know. Other animals also have emotions. So why are they so annoying at times, and other times so wonderful? I also don’t know. And I can’t be bothered thinking about them. Needless to say, I don’t understand my own emotions very well sometimes.

Moving onto something less confusing, I’ve begun reading Harry Potter fanfics again, because some friends suggested a particular one, “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”. It’s a alternate reality (and hence has Out-of-Character characters) where Harry was not brought up in the Dursley’s family, but the family of a brilliant biochemist (who is science through and through). Petunia isn’t as cruel, and Harry is loved (and a child prodigy). It sounds, as far as I’ve read, that the author is using this comedic story to pick at points that annoyed them with the Harry Potter universe, or “potterverse” as some people would like to call it. While most of I find quite enjoyable, funny and accurate (the person has taken great care into planning the story and using real science, not stuff they just made up), there are some parts of it where I feel so pained by the responses Harry presents. Like after he observes Prof. McGonagall changing into a cat, he thinks about how the laws of physics can be broken down to different levels, and it’s all just maths, and can apply to everything. I think the author forgot Quantum Physics, which was devised to explain why ‘Classical physics’ wasn’t working in certain cases (and has gone on to explain much about the atoms, their sub-atomic and sub-sub atomic particles, and lots of weird stuff).

Anyhows, it’s funny, and I’m so far enjoying it.

In other news, I’m slowly trying to update my music library with new additions of recent releases, such as Owl City’s All Things Bright and Beautiful, and I need to remember to look up Switchfoot’s last few albums, and see if I can get copies of John Foreman’s solo works from a few years ago. Relient K are supposedly re-releasing their Is for Karaoke EP today, and the Apple “Let’s Talk iPhone” even or whatever is happening today in the US (so probably around 4am tomorrow, Oct 5th, for us Aussies). Facebook is causing an aweful lot of strife around the world once again concerning privacy (I’m starting to worry about Mark Zuckerberg. Where is he getting this deluded idea that we all want to give him every detail of our lives?). And Zuckerberg came up with “Zuck’s law” recently, which goes a little something like this: Facebook users double the amount of information they share with Facebook, every year. My response to that is as follows: Well, of course we double the amount of info we share with Facebook every year!! If you create more and more actions that we do on or with the site which are shared, then we share more information without even doing anything different. That statistical ‘law’ is so silly, that it’s like saying that each year, the population of the Earth will change. Of course it will change, people are being born, and people are dying, all the time!

Anyways, I should get back to studying.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

During the assembly, I felt mixed emotions. The songs were touching, the slide-show was great and nostalgic, watching my friends and I go up on that stage to receive our portfolios, after watching the years before us do it… I don’t think I can describe it now. The aftermath, the photos, signings, hugs, tears, laughter, well-wishes and snacks… It was memorable. It cheered me up (smiling supposedly releases endorphins, which makes you happy) smiling for all the cameras. It was nice to see the entire grade milling about, taking photos. Stuff.

Hanging out with my friends afterwards was great. We watched Johnny English Reborn, wonderfully funny movie, another great work from Rowan Atkinson (is that how his name is spelt?). I miss my friends already. Afternoon tea afterwards, for me consisting of a KFC Ultimate Burger Meal, followed by the group aimlessly wandering around Castle Towers, for an enjoyable day out, despite it being a school day =P

I honestly cannot thank my friends and grade, their parents and the support of the rest of the school (including teachers, students and administrative staff such as Mrs. Brown in reception) through the last 6 years. It has been a great time through thick and thin, and I can not, nor will not, imagine it with anyone else, any other way. The memories that you have imparted on me will last for a long time (or so I hope. I do wish to not forget any of you), and will serve to continue to shape me even beyond the life changing experience that is Baulko XI. I know that many of you won’t read this, and that is fine by me. I’ll still think of you dearly whether you see this or not =] Except you K. Z.. Not you K. C. Y. Z., the other one. Yes, you, the one who hit me in the back with a water-bomb yesterday. You. Are. Going. Down! Just as soon as I work out a suitable comeback.

As I sit here typing this, I see that on Facebook you are all crazily uploading your photos, with people tagging away like journalists trying to make the deadline (speaking of tagging, someone mentioned that they wished for our grade to attempt to crash Facebook with our uploading and tagging. Sadly, that hasn’t yet happened, and is very unlikely to happen), commenting, liking, and all the while, I’ve propped my iPod up beside me as I type on my mum’s laptop, waiting for Facebook to finish receiving my photos from the memory-card reader. So as I type, I hear the notification noise go off continuously, the screen lighting up telling me what has happened. And you guys are scaring me with the number of times that is happening. Is like half the grade on Facebook right now??

Anyways, back to what I was talking about. The relationships I have formed between my friends will probably not be replicated for many a year (because I won’t be seeing people for over 6 hours a day, 5 days a week anymore. I’ll be stuck with “free-roaming” at uni), and I will sorely miss seeing almost each and every one of you on a regular basis. And yes, I’m implying that I won’t miss some of you as much as the others, but that’s understandable, right? If not, too bad. I’m being honest. They say that you won’t really understand how much something means to you until it’s gone. I never realised just how much school meant to me until time itself wrenched it from my life (although I suppose having so far had an existence dominated by school, that is to be expected), leaving me with a feeling of “Oh my! What do I do now?!”.

I don’t believe that I’m very good at writing down what I’m feeling. Perhaps there is the partial fact that some of what I’m feeling is so deeply personal that I don’t really want to have the world hear it. Especially as anyone on the internet can read this. Hmm… should change something in this post then. There, done. Anyhows, I’m going to give up now, since I simply cannot express how I’m feeling, nor am I awfully good at writing sentimental, nostalgic and thoughtful messages (look at the message I wrote on Facebook for an example).

So I’ll say this to those from my grade who are reading this: Good luck in your HSC! Good luck in the times ahead! May you enjoy life to the full, have success in your life, and (at this point I would raise my hand in a Vulcan hand salute, which is easy by the way… I can’t understand how people cannot do it, probably because I can do it…) Live Long and Prosper. I look forward to seeing you at the formal (if you are not on holidays by then), especially my closer friends. I miss you all very much already.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

While a part of me is happy to be finally finishing my 13 or so years of schooling, to be moving off into the wider world filled with new amazing possibilities, there is a large part of me that is actually afraid of the future. Now that I no longer have a law forcing me to do something, I have to actually make my own choices. And the responsibility is scaring me. All this emotional turmoil is not helping my already stressed body. I continually find myself trying to distract myself from my work, from tomorrow, from the things happening around me, just anything that reminds me of what is coming. And it’s not working too well.

I wonder what it’ll be like tomorrow. Standing there, in front of the school for one of the last times ever. Getting my portfolio, performing in front of the school (in two separate items. One of my friends has actually managed to convince me to do some singing. Albeit as a tenor/bass, but still, I don’t really like singing in public much.), and then the Year 12 finale performance before we walk out the hall for a last time. What will I think as it sinks in that it’s over? That all I have left is the 7 exams spread over 4 weeks, countless hours of study leading up to them, infrequent meetings with my friends in the mean-time? One last Band Christmas Concert? I don’t know, but I’ll most definitely find out tomorrow.

I’m really going to miss my friends. I look forward to the Year 12 formal, a week off with schoolies (how does that even make grammatical sense? Schoolies? Is this some colloquial term that Aussies spell their funny way? Look, ‘Aussies’ has it too.), just hanging out with my friends every so often. When I was in Year 7, the older people told me that High School would be the best time of my life. I didn’t understand what they meant. Now I do. I wish that young minds could better understand what the older minds say, it would save older-younger-minds so much time trying to explain it to the new-younger-minds. Does that even make sense?

Anyways, this is has been a rather emotionally charged blog post from me, or at least more emotionally charged than I usually write. I think. I’m going to stop writing now and let my heart become queasy with surging emotional outbursts of nostalgia, happiness, sadness, longing and regret.

If only we had more time. But alas, our time has expired.

I wonder if I was quoting anyone? Even just paraphrasing? I’m sure my mind dug that up from somewhere…

Anyhows, TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

Regardless, I thought it’d be nice (for me at least) to mention a semi-funny happening during English this past week. Last week, Mr. Van Loon decided (or so I’d like to think) that he’d have a rest from teaching (read lecturing in his monotonous, odd, sometimes humorous-if-you’re-awake-to-hear-it, rather intelligent and informative way), and so tasked us to do presentations to the class to help in our English work. Some members of the class have come up with some wonderfully helpful presentations (I’d name people, but I’m wondering if they’d like their names splashed across my blog for the whole world to see…) about essay hints, areas to look at in particular modules, or ideas for quotes. Unfortunately, my memory capacity for English lessons is about nil. So if it isn’t written down (and I suck at taking proper notes), then I’m probably gonna forget it. But only for English (and maybe Chemistry).

So for my presentation, I couldn’t think of what to do. But at the last minute, I was browsing through some posts on my blog when I remembered a certain poem I had found from a certain Tumblr ‘blog’ I follow (semi-sadly my only link to Tumblr. Funny place. They love Nutella as much as I do!). This poem. So, I printed it out, and when I got to school, got to English class, Mr Van Loon (after a little bit of settling the class down) asked me if I had anything ready for today (long story short, I was supposed to go up a previous day, but I didn’t have anything ready by then XD ). I walked up to the front of the class, and my presentation went something like this:

“Now, since my English mark probably sucks more than most of you-” pauses to look around class, realises how wrong this statement is and corrects himself. “Actually, sucks more than all of your marks. Anyway, I decided that there wasn’t an awful lot that I could come up with that could help you out with your essays or such, so I thought I’d read out this poem I found. Some of you should recognise it.” And yeah, I started reading through it. Had a few interruptions thanks to a certain Noorty person putting chairs in the door handles making it awfully hard to open the doors, but I read through the poem, getting some of the pronunceations(? HOW IS THAT SPELT?! Spell check doesn’t seem to understand what I want) wrong, and earning some laughs from the class. Mr Van Loon liked it =]

So yeah, that was me skiving off of doing any actual work while actually not making proper excuses =]

In other news, I’m currently working on a webdesign for a rather temporary subdomain I’m hosting for my school friends, and I’m not getting very far. Partially because I haven’t done my usual drawing a dozen different concepts in a book that I normally do, or that I haven’t been bothered to work on it. Actually, I think the latter is the crux of the problem. I need a colour scheme. Stuff.

Anyhows, that is all. I think.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

Anyways, as I type away amazingly quickly (in my opinion. I know that the speed I’m typing at on my iPod is about average for the majority of tech savy people. Ha, an average of an average… Btw, I do believe that I’m still typing faster than the slide keyboard users, although I don’t really have anyone to compare to), I also wonder about the future of computing and how it will effect (or affect?? I never remember which is which) me in the future. Just 5 years ago, I wouldn’t have imagined I’d be lying in my new bed (at the time) typing on a 8.9mm (or so) thick Apple device (if I remember correctly, I had only had my first iPod, an iPod Nano 2nd Gen 8GB Silver, for 1 year by then). The idea of a smartphone was a Nokia N85, and I was amazed at the idea of the Nintendo DS (it had a touchscreen!). How things have changed. Core 2 Duo was just announced that year, the idea of a dual core CPU, for the mainstream consumers, being more efficient than the powerhouse 3.8GHz Pentium 4 (which could cook eggs, look it up on YouTube!) when it’s total clock only came up to 3.8GHz (equal, or approx 1.9GHz per core) was like “Woah! Really?!”… And now we’re looking at the next generation of Intel CPUs with their Tri-Gate 3D transistors supposedly bringing greater power and efficiency than ever before, with each of their new CPU generations improving at approximately 20% clock for clock (as in the 2GHz processor from the new Gen was 20% more powerful than the 2GHz from the last Gen) every year, whilst increasing he number of Hz they run at, and even adding more cores and multitasking ability (hyper-threading for Intel).

Or we look at how the mobile computing Market has evolved, the iPhone redefining how we look at the way we use our phones, tablets, and general portable devices (this iPod being an example). Many people believe that we’re entering the Post-PC era, where the PC will be relegated to a more niche Market of power users (e.g. Computing enthusiasts, developers, digital media creators) whilst mobile devices (e.g. tablets and smartphones) linked with cloud computing will take over from where PCs (and by association laptops, netbooks and ultrabooks) used to (and currently still do) dominate. While I can see what they’re getting at, I can still see how the comparative prices and abilities of what laptops and tablets can do allowing PC to still remain dominant for many years. Speaking of PC vs. Mobile, Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) believes that mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad will be he future dominate forms in the ‘Post-PC’ world, whilst Steve Balmer (Microsoft CEO) believes that the iPhone, iPad and similar mobile devices are still PCs, just in a different form factor, and that it is in fact the interface of the PC which is changing with the times. Speaking of that, some people with really weird ideas are saying that they believe that the trend of modern computing is touchscreen all the way, removing the mouse and keyboard. I think these guys must’ve been misquoted, because there’s no way in their right mind people with credible reputation could believe that a physical mouse or keyboard would be removed from heavy mainstream use. They keyboard is obvious as to why it won’t leave, but the mouse, it has so many useful applications it’s going to stay around for a while longer than these people are imagining.

One thing that makes me wonder about the sanity of the future is Microsoft’s approach to application design in Windows 8. For their tablet oriented OS, they plan on having HTML5 as the big development language. I can see what they’re getting at here: they want to use a widely popular, and relatively easy to use language as a programming base. But it was designed for WEBSITES for crying out loud! They’re just encouraging a growing number of people to believe that they’re great with the bastardised version of HTML5 that Microsoft will end up creating for their OS, and hence assume that they’re awesome at HTML in general, and start making websites that only work properly in Internet Explorer 10 (I do hope I’m extremely wrong with this deduction) without bothering to follow web tutorials and learn the differences between ‘programming’ in HTML5 for Windows 8, and writing a Standards compliant website in HTML5. If Microsoft however chooses to not bastardise it, however, that will be amazing (as amazing as the PR genius that said “let’s not get angry at the Kinect-PC hackers, but instead help them be interested in our Xbox peripheral that isn’t selling quite as well as we’d hoped, by releasing a PC SDK”. Ever since that guy had the brainwave to do that, the Kinect has been selling like crazy as people see and make all the amazing ‘hacks’ for it).

Lastly, before I decide to end this post and remind myself once again how nice it would be to have my own computer in my room to type this on, or a Bluetooth keyboard for the iPod Touch, I’d just like to say I laugh at the people that mistakenly believe that HTML5 will replace Flash. As it currently lacks a agreed upon Audio or Video codec, Flash still controls the video playback realm, and is still the only way to provide animation to a page without complex JavaScript scripts (as the canvas element in HTML5, while animateable, requires every frame to be programmed, as opposed to the scripted and computed ability of Flash to create frames on the fly). Until you can easily create things like Flash games without a third party plugin, Flash is staying in power on the web, regardless of how inefficient it is.

Oh well, time to go to sleep. Got my Physics Trial HSC tomorrow morning!!

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!