Speckled Green

Well, last Friday we went to see a foreign film called “Welcome” in Leichardt. It was a French film, as was a fairly interesting one, if not an odd one (at least compared to the usual American stuff you get). After that, the grade was taken to an Italian restaurant in the Italian Forum near there. It was a brilliant meal, I loved the pizzas and the pasta, and the staff were lovely. Having booked a few weeks prior, they knew that we were a rather large group and had several more table and chairs out for us to sit at. I believe the regularly have groups come there, although not necessarily to that exact restaurant.

So, the idea of seeing the film was not only to fulfil a requirement of our English syllabus, but to also act as a stimulus for our creative writing assessment task, due tomorrow.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to be able to do too much major editing to the story as it is, so I’m going to post it up on my blog, in this particular post, and let you guys read it. If you notice any grammatical errors, hopefully by the time I print it off and hand it to my teacher I will have removed it =] I haven’t actually finished proof reading this version, so, you’ve been warned. At time of posting, it was 796 words long (officially, limit is 800). Read more »

In the past week, all it’s done is rain on and off, and then pour down like there was no tomorrow for a few minutes while everyone was trying to get on a bus (or round about then at least). Thursday, swimming carnival. Not much fun, cold day, wet and rainy, crowded, and I’m not a swimmer, so I wouldn’t have put myself in a race… and so I didn’t. It’s not that I can’t swim, it’s that I don’t swim well. I remember all those hours where the swimming instructors would try to teach me how to better perform my freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke… never got to the butterfly, thank goodness. I definitely don’t enjoy the racing type swimming either. I prefer just the lazy, relaxing swimming, playing with friends. Read more »

Wow, I didn’t think I would be, but the horror movie that a lot of people laughed through has really spooked me. Took till nearly 2 hours after it finished before I felt that I had been spooked. For the type of movie it was (horror??), it’s wasn’t the best, but it was still better than many of the first reviews said. The version being shown in cinemas around the world now is actually the 3rd version of the movie, interestingly.

Anyhows, today was a good day. After graduation, I went with my friends to Castle Towers, where shopping, browsing, general wandering, talking, eating, arguing and eventually watching a movie before going home was the activities of the day. I shan’t bother going into greater description of the day. I don’t look forward to the formal. Well, I do look forward to it, I’m sure it’ll be great. I just feel really nervous about it, I always feel nervous about social events like that.

Thanks to my friends for a great school year, btw!!

I hope I spelt the title correctly…

Anyway. I’ve finally got my Yr 9 PDM Term 4 video project to work on the computer!!!!! Finally, Windows Media Player can play full HD MP4, BEAT THAT QUICKTIME!!! Actually, I wonder if Apple updated Quicktime to be able to play HD MP4…

Anyways, with a video data rate of 13.5Mb/s (Mega Bits, not Mega Bytes), I guess that was why none of the players could correctly play it.

Anyways, now that I’ve got it working, I’m gonna attempt to upload it to YouTube or somewhere… after I cut the file size down from 578MB =] Oh, and I accidentally encoded it in 4:3 aspect ratio, not the proper widescreen 16:9… even though the camera could do 16:9………

Going to school soon. Just like to ask all readers this: If you find a feature on the site that doesn’t work, please comment on it, or tell me some how. I’d like to get them all fixed and working.

Cheers!! And remember, Be Positive. It doesn’t do well to be negative (I know full well how that feels….).

This was NOT a community announcement, but it was by Ant!

If I haven’t already mentioned it, I found this plug-in for WordPress which adds a ‘Like’ button. Thought it’d be pretty cool, so I added it. Now, just to add some custom CSS for it…

Recently been taking some of those “How Well Do You Know” someone quizzes on Facebook, and I’ve come to this conclusion after 4 quizzes: I don’t know my own friends. With my highest score being around 50%, that’s not that good really… After making my own quiz (25 questions long… I would’ve made it longer, but I wasn’t allowed to…) and seeing some of the results of my own quiz, I realise that many of my friends are like me, they only know (or guessed) one half of me correct. I guess we could all do with a bit of learning about each other.

That’s not to say that many of you could’ve easily answer many of those questions in my quiz if you had happened to read some of my blog posts where I blabbed on about this and that, unwittingly telling you (and the world) much about my life and myself. But I guess we can overlook that.

Having a quick glance at my blog, I’m thinking that I should go and find some plugins to jazz up my blog. Maybe some fancy AJAX stuff like what Facebook uses…

But now, about life. Not that much has happened. Went to the Sydney Opera House for the Pulse concert again this year, only this time I went as part of the School band rather than as part of the Occasional Orchestra (the orchestra formed for the Pulse concert each year). We were going to play ‘Spain’ (a latin song), but due to some mix up, the program said we were going to play Hopetown Holiday, so, that’s what we played. All the better for us, we felt. Instead of a small 2 minute song, we played a longer, 5 minute song (or was it 6 minutes?). Still, any time there is worth it. I mean, how often do you get to perform in the Sydney Opera House? Unless you become a good actor/singer/musician, not that often.

We were the only group there to not have the PULSE t-shirt. This year’s colour was purple. Last year it was that almost ugly teal. The year before it was red. I wonder what next year’s will be…

Maths common test coming up this Friday. Need to study, and finish assignments. So, TTFN, Ta-Ta-For-Now! (you just gotta love Tigger’s sayings)

After finally posting that last post just then, I’ve remembered that I have been rather neglecting my blog, and that I have completely forgotten if I had any planned use for my webspace other than a blog. Certainly, it isn’t costing me too much ($2.08 per month + $19.95 biannually) for it, so, I guess it isn’t a complete waste. Definitely more freedom associated with this plan.

Life has been a little busy lately. I don’t know what to do with myself. I feel so disorganised. If feel confused. What shall I do for Yr 11? Should I try Ext English and do only 12 units, or shall I do Music 2 and not Ext English? Questions swirl around my head. Like this one: What book should I read for English lesson next Tuesday? In all this confusion, I haven’t been able to keep up with saying Happy Birthday to people. I’ve absolutely no idea if anyone has had a birthday in the last… 7 or so days. So, if you have, Happy Birthday! If you haven’t, a Very Happy Un-Birthday to you!! Read more »

Well, up, it would seem to me that nothing (or close to it) has happened in the past week or two (well, nothing too interesting) for me to talk about. I suppose I’ll find something to talk about. Time for school again, and I’m beginning to wish the holidays were longer (only so I could get all my work done). I’m kinda bored with life really. I mean (and sorry to all you people who love english) English is an extrememly boring subject (or perhaps it’s just having to listen to a teacher like Mr Van Loon) with the studying analysing of texts from long ago (aka weird poets and Shakespeare). Seriously, Shakespeare’s stories are nice, yes, but I don’t see how they are so special at showing society, or as an example of the English language. I mean, he spent more time making up ryhmes that don’t make sense rather than actually telling a story. He’s like those authors who are paid on a per-word basis (thinking about it, he probably was paid for how long the play was)… There are plenty of other things we could read, so why do we have to spend our entire secondary education life (and afterwards if you do English later) reading and trying to make sense of his cryptic ramblings he stuck into plays, and then having to write long winded essays which everyone knows are a load of bull about them? Read more »

As we start to ease into the holidays, I take a quick look at my blog to see something I was expecting for two weeks now (You’re slow Kevin Zhu!). Kevin Zhu ‘spamming’ my website. In response, I have deleted his spam, and I will now check back every day to see what he’s come up with. He’s decided to cloak his IP address so that I can’t block him that way, so it’ll have to be the good old wait-till-you-get-spammed-then-clean-it-up method.

Read more »

Brain. Dead. Can’t think… I feel bored, but there’s work I’m supposed to do.

Well.. since my last informative update… actually, I don’t remember when it was, and I’m too lazy to find out when it was.

So, life has been… meh. And school has been… meh. Overall, … meh. Read more »

Time to catch up to life. Much like what I should do with my English gramma book =]

A late Happy Birthday to Bryan.

Congrats to the Senior and Concert Bands in the McDonald’s Peforming Arts Challenge. Senior came 4th in their division, and Concert came 2nd. Long story short, on Tuesday, very soon after school, the Senior Band members changed into their band uniforms and then boarded buses which would take us to our venue, Salvation Army Congress Hall. All nervous, as we came on stage for our performance, we played badly. The percussion and bass lagged behind, and the rest of the band followed. Our conductor wasn’t happy with us… Concert band went better though. On Wednesday, after school finished, we hung around, got changed, and then boarded a bus to get to the city. On getting there, we had some spare time, so most of us bought some food, and waited. When it was our turn to perform, we nervously walked onto the stage, got ready, and played. Overall, we played ok, a few mistakes here and there, but we still played well enough for our conductor to be happy. Afterwards, some of us left, while others stayed to watch and hear our result.

Tuesday had Yr 10 getting immunised for 3 diseases. Many people who had the injection complained about a sore arm afterwards. I’m not entirely sure what people were complaining about, I suppose my arm was slightly sore afterwards, but it didn’t really bother me… oh, except for when I thought about the needle, then I got an odd feeling in my arm where I was injected (conviniently in my right arm…).

Nothing else that interesting to talk about, off the top of my head.