Speckled Green

Been a little while since my last post (too lazy to find out when I did post last) and I thought I could just type out something quick. Although I’m not sure it’ll end up that way.

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. Read more »

Speeches were given, songs were sung, dances done, slide shows hung (hey, I was trying to make it rhyme). My graduation has occurred, and joining over 60,000 people across the state who over the last couple of days have done just like me, completed around 13 years of schooling (some more, some less), and have felt emotional, cried, laughed with joy, experienced relief, or something else. Read more »

It’s the evening/night before my graduation from High School, and I’m feeling a mixture of emotions. Part of me is obviously sad to leave a place I’ve grown to love over the last 6 years. The students there are all brilliantly smart (and awfully hard to beat in exams), mostly mature and responsible, kinda a sheltered haven from the rest of the world (filled with plenty of immature people, sadly). Part of me is further saddened to think that I’ll be losing regular contact with plenty of my friends, through the fact that we’d be going to different unis, live pretty far apart (one of the problems with academically selective schools is how everyone lives so far away from it), or just get out of contact. Read more »

So, it’s been yet another long span of time between this blog post and my last, but hey, I’ve been busy studying. OK, and also procrastinating, which this is in a way, but still. Stuff. I could semi-bore you with a rant, or detailed recounting of events of my life (wait a moment, isn’t that what blogs are typically for?), but I’m too lazy to actually bother to recall my life. Well, to talk, write or in some way present recollections of my life, but maybe some time in the future I will be more willing to actually spend the effort on that… Read more »

So, it’s been another long gap between by blog posts, but I guess that Year 12 does that to you. Actually, I suppose any final year in secondary or tertiary study would do that to you. Anyways, today I’m posting this from school, because I have absolutely no exam on today during this trail HSC period. Why am I at school then, when I could be at home studying? How nice of you to ask =P Read more »

Well, I’m gonna try and post more often, even if it’s about little things or just small posts, but I really lack the heart to talk about much. I like to keep to myself, or more accurately, I’m an introvert and I like listening to people rather than speaking out.

Don’t worry, I do speak out sometimes, just not a lot.

But right now, I’m impatiently waiting for Firefox 4 to come finishing testing and finally release. It’s going to be wonderfully better than Firefox 3.6, which was amazingly better than Firefox 2… But before that, there’s school work to get done, so now I shall return to revising a year’s worth of Maths which I barely remember and relearning the entire Yr 11 HSC Chemistry course (because I didn’t pay attention in class). Speaking of school subjects, I feel like dropping Music 2 because of a combination of reasons (advice from piano teacher based on experience from AMEB exams and his other students, my own experience and my mum’s advice from her quite recent days of studying at Uni and getting in the top 10 in her MRT course at USyd), however I also feel like dropping Chem (because I didn’t pay attention last year!! STUPID!!) and SDD (because the syllabus and the teacher annoys me greatly). But if I drop something, I’d only have 11 units, and I have to get signed consent from all the heads of departments regarding this (because my school strongly believes in you having 12 units as a safe minimum, and I understand their reasoning), and I really can’t be bothered with this. However, I also can’t see myself bothering with the immense amount of practise and work I need to do as well as I want in HSC Music 2…

Anyways, I’ll pray to God about it, and ask him what he believes is best. And continue to ask my teachers for their advice.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

P.S. Now why did I type all that up?

The NSW DET has got a contract for Adobe CS5 Master Suite and Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus!!!!!

I wonder if these are carried over from their standing contracts with Adobe and Microsoft, or if they’re new contracts based on the new software…

I know, because the new images on some of our school computers have them… I hope beyond hope that these were carried over from the previous contracts, because if not, the government just spent another few million on new software…

Well, it’s been a while since I last did an actual blog post (from the beginning of the month I believe). In all honesty, not too much of interest has really happened since then. I’ve been going to school, having a relatively normal school year. I’ve been considering dropping Music 2 (advice from my Piano teacher has basically made up my mind: it’s almost pointless for me to ‘try’ to continue in Music 2 when I’m not really trying in the first place, especially when looking at my previous attempts at ‘trying’ in music exams… 8th Grade AMEB piano exam comes to mind), I’ve gone to the only 2 sessions of Soul Purpose this year, I’ve seen the Encore concert (OH MY GOODNESS!! I ENVY THAT FLUTE PLAYER’S SKILL SO MUCH!!! HE DEFINITELY DESERVES TO BE PERFORMING AT ENCORE!), and I’ve spent only 5 days at school in week 3 & 4 (aka, last two weeks) because of camp, excursions and swimming carnival.

My brother has acquired a few new games (MA15+ meant that I had to purchase them for him =] ) and secretly been playing them while my mum’s not home. I myself have been enjoying the last few days of my Star Trek Online subscription before I don’t have it to play on, and I get stuck back into work work work (in reality, I barely get a chance to play it any more =[ but I’d most certainly go and buy a lifetime subscription for it after my HSC! Great work Cryptic studios!), and yes, I’ve been playing a MMORPG, like people play World of Warcraft (WoW), but hey, I’ve played Runescape in the past (still touch it every so often), and that’s an MMORPG, one of the 1st free ones I’ll point out.

Now, I’ve lost track of what I was going to talk about. I’ll just start talking about UIs. For my SDD major work, due early next term (yeah, I’ve really got to start on that), I’m gonna be writing my first real useable program that isn’t a console screen… good luck to myself! And I’ve been wondering about my blog’s theme. There are a few things I should probably change about it… Oh, and I was also wondering about the ergonomics and usability of the LCARS OS from the original lot of Star Trek (ST:TNG onwards), what with it being all black screen with white/coloured text and coloured buttons with its funny layout methods (remembering that it was originally designed for a Sci-Fi tv show, and was meant to look like it worked on a technology way beyond the tech of the 1980′s when the show was made, and later 1990′s and early 2000′s, I guess it makes sense). Anyways, I’ve seen some very nice versions of it around the web, and I was interested in creating a mash-up of some of its features with current UI ideas/designs/techniques/norms for my blog design. Anyways, I can deal with that on my drawing boards (that is, my book in which I draw up my ideas).

Got to get back to work now!! Hope this blog post keeps you occupied for at least 1 minute!

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

It’s my 2nd day of school, and I’m already tired. AND IT’S NOT EVEN LUNCH TIME YET!!!!

Anyways, as I sit here in the library trying to think up of what to do for my SDD major work, I wonder if I’m not going to go crazy this year.

If you’re wondering about my holidays, they were fine, rather relaxing, perhaps too relaxing, in that I didn’t do any work at all. Well, I did some work, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t go anywhere these holidays unlike some of my friends, however I did get to see Green Hornet. It was an alright movie, but now I should try and get a hold of a copy of Toy Story 3 and see how that was. Heard it was good.

As I get more and more work to do, particularly requiring the internet, I keep thinking I should move the desktop to my room, except that would an immense problem logistically… where would I put the horrid mass of cables when I have to clean up the horrid, yet organised mess of my room? That and it’d be awefully hard to have access to the internet in my room with out some really long and ugly cabling or a Wi-Fi adapter for it… and the modem/router we got from Telstra is a piece of junk Wi-Fi wise, although considering it’s free I guess it’s alright. Then again, you think back and see that over 2 years we’re paying them around $2000 for line-rental, internet and phone, and they have tonnes of customers who all pay thousands of dollars over 2 year contracts, all using the same central network hardware… and yeah, that’s why they’ve got profits of like several billion. Well, they profit has to come from somewhere.

So I was thinking I could convince my parents to get me a new laptop after the HSC. If I survive the HSC that is… (I mean asian survive, with marks like averaging 90%… yeah, not going to happen)

Anyways, back to school work for me. And lunch soon. I’ll blog more about stuff some other time this month.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

No. I don’t like them. Therefore Exnglish sucks heaps. Only because we’re forced to do it.