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!

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!

Today happens to be the day of the Music 1 and Music 2 practical examinations. “Oh, you do music do you?” I used to do music, but I dropped it because it was too much work for me. I’m not that much into music that I would do an essay on something, or analyse the musical techniques used in a certain baroque piece (baroque is my least favourite era of the ‘classical’ music). I just like to listen to it, and to play it. I like to do music, not analyse music. Anyways.

I had this really long post written up, but then Google Chrome thought it’d be a regular jerk and delete half the post suddenly. Unfortunately, I think it has something to do with how Webkit deals with text-boxes and “Crtl+z”. That is, it’ll undo as much as you want. It won’t redo. I’m sure there’s a way around it, but I can’t be bothered to find out. In fact, thinking about it, all the webbrowsers suffer the same issue.

Anyways, long story short (you’ll probably thank me for this), a friend’s (I’m not going to post his name. I’ve decided I’ll just put nicknames or initals, to help protect their identity. I’ll one day retroactively do this to all names mentioned in the blog) Ext Music HSC piece requires an ensemble, and he chose the Concert band to play with him (a past Yr 12 did the same piece, so it was in our band music folders). So that’ll ben enjoyable.

Also, did I ever mention I like Star Trek? Well, I do. My favourite series is Star Trek: Voyager, partly because its’ the first series I remember watching, partly because it’s the only series I’ve watched in full, and partially beacuse I have seen barely any episodes of TOS, TNG, DS9 or ENT (that’s The Original Series (a name given to it after they made the animated series, and The Next Generation), The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, then Enterprise). BTW, whenever WordPress saves a draft (auto save), Webkit removes the focus from the text box, so I have keep on having the tryping suddenly stop when it auto-saves a draft. It’s really annoying.

Anyway, you probably may not know this, but some time ago I played Star Trek Online, a MMORPG based, obviously, on Star Trek. It’s set after the Star Trek: Nemesis move (hence after all the TV series), in the original universe (or Alpha-universe, distinct from J.J. Abrahm’s alternate reality that CBS/Paramount said he could create, which actually was a brilliant idea, because it lets him put his amazing flair to the entire franchise, hence the more compelling story of the 2009 Star Trek film). It’s an interesting game, not the best one around, but I like it, and it certainly has a very ‘Trek’ feel to it, and it has plenty of UGC (User Generated Content) I’ve yet to try, so that’ll be interesting.

Anyways, a technological aspect of Star Trek I’ve enjoyed is the OS that the starships run on from TNG onwards (ENT is a prequel series, set before TOS). It’s called LCARS (Libary Computer And Retreival System). More particuarly, I like the interface. Because the person that developed the idea needed to make a clean, simplistic, futuristic looking interface out of a TV show’s budget in the 80′s, he made these ‘screens’ out of plexi-glass with light behind them. Later on they became actual computer screens which the cast pretened to interact with as CRTs became cheaper to use (and graphics were easier to make). But I thought I could adapt the style of the Star Trek Nemesis/Star Trek Online LCARS interface and put it on my blog. Partially because it would be similar to what I currently have. Anyway, I’ve got to draw up my idea first, which is what I always do with my website designs. Speaking of webdesign, I was going to enter the school’s ‘Design the new School Website’ competition, but HSC and HSC trails got in the way =[  And the prize was $200. Defiantely worth it, considering web design is easier than painting. At least for me. I wonder who the winner will be… The competition said that aspects of the winning design would be used to create the new one, so, I suppose unless your design really impressed them, and actually conformed to their and the DET’s policies (not that they are overly strict, looking at different school’s sites), then the final product would only resemble your design. But who cares anyway? You’d have won the competition.

Anyway’s, I’ve got to go now. Eat some food before I get ready for the HSC music trial for my friend.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

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?

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…

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!

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!