Speckled Green

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!

On Thursday 24th September, 2009, Year 9 students at Baulkham Hills High School started receiving their Lenovo netbooks. As I started writing this in a science lesson on Friday arvo in the library, I was talking to a friend in year 9 asking about them.

Aparrently, they have a program installed on them which prevents the running of exe files that haven’t been authorised (work around found within 2 hours of getting the netbook…). Internet Explorer 8 is automatically set-up to use the DET’s proxy server/internet portal. THEY HAVE RIGHT-CLICK ABILITIES (we at Baulko do not on the school comps…)!! They have (strangely) Windows Live Messenger installed on them already, but they aren’t allowed to use it… Office 2007 loaded in, and as far as I could tell, a fully licensed copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (I couldn’t tell if it was RC or not, but it looked like Retail…), Photoshop Elements 7, Google Sketch Up 7, and various other programs.

They get a free netbook and free software?! Grr… Anyways. The netbooks seem like pieces of junk compared to your usual laptop (13″, 14″, 15″, 16″, 17″ take your pick, they’re all better it seems), but then again, netbooks are meant to be ultra-portable, ultra-small, slimmed down laptops, so I guess that’s what you’d expect from them…

Talking about laptops, I wish Australia wasn’t so far behind the US with getting new hardware in computers. On Wednesday 23rd September (2009), Intel released the Clarksfield CPU, which is the mobile (laptop) version of the Core i7. At the time of release, Dell, HP, Asustek & Toshiba were the only people selling it. Dell immediately updated their laptop ranges, from Studio 15 upwards, to include the Core i7 as an option for the computers in the US. Australia? All we got was the top model of the Studio 15 and one of the Alienware laptops updated to include Core i7. I wonder how long till the other laptops get the new core… I’d like to my own laptop sometime in the next 4 months… But I need to study, so back to the science work (ARGH!!! SO MUCH STUFF TO REVISE!!!!)

I find heaps of things “Interesting”. WARNING: Computer Jargon, read at own risk!
Anyways. I found this “interesting”. My Line speed with BigPond/Telstra’s ADLS2+ plan. I currently hover around 14000-20000 kbps (Kilobits per second) or about 1.75MB/s (MegaBytes per second) on average, which is a bit less than what I should be achieving (counting in latency and distance from the phone exchange (only 1km away!!!), which is ok), I should be achieving around about 2.1-2.3MB/s, but due to this and that, my speed is only around 1.75MB/s. My upload is worse!!!! I SHOULD be getting around 110-125KB/s (KiloBytes per second), (EPIC! That’s as fast as the download on ADSL1) but I’m only getting around 80-90KB/s (KiloBytes per second). Yeah. I know. I shouldn’t be complaining. But, really, My upload is SO unreliable sometimes. Sometimes I achieve close to 105kB/s, sometimes I only manage 40 or 30kB/s (one site only gave me 8kB/s!!!). Weird… Anyways, I’ve finished complaining about it. It drops out a lot because it’s ADSL (it needs to Sync with the exchange server, and can often lose sync, so it looses the connection), but I guess I have to deal with that.

Gee… that was long. Now, Anthony. You might not be paying heaps for your TechNet subscription, but it still gotta cost SOMEONE at the radio station a fair amount (TechNet Direct 12 month subscription costs around AU$350-400 from the website, and apparently that’s without tax like GST!! That makes it near $450, nearly $500 a year. In my mind, that is a lot). So, in the end, it’s worth what you get for it, isn’t it?

Still need to get myself a 7-pin internal SATA cable with a right-angled pin on one end for my new HDD. Proving slightly more difficult to pick up than the RAM and HDD. Needs to be 2ft long as well… I wonder where I could buy one…

Shakespeare is being his usual self and managing to prove hard for me to memorise (I swear, if it were in modern day language, a comedy line and on TV, I could have it half memorised in one sitting…). I’m fretting. I’m panicing. I’m anxious. I am sure I am SO inadequately prepared for these exams from all my procrastination that I’m really gonna hate myself for the next 5 years. And my mum isn’t gonna be happy with me. Anyways, back to work. Spent enough time on this already.

Why is it SOOO Hard to update a Nokia mobile? Took me ages to get my phone to finally update its OS/Firmware… Oh, wait, that’s because my computer’s drivers needed reinstalling… OH MY…

Anyways, over the last 12 hours, I’ve learnt the new wonders of Nokia’s Phone Update software… interesting actually, because the firmware version for my phone WAS 4.84, and then became 9.40… where’d versions 5 through 8 go? Funny that…

Anyways, now my phone has better support for videos. It can now actually PLAY MP4s… before it kinda screwed up the video when it tried. I wonder what else is new in it… too bad it kinda reset the whole phone, now I have to restore the backups…

Yeah, I know, Clean Up Australia day is soon. I don’t know the date, just tell me when it’s really soon.

Yesterday I cleaned up my study/computer room. Now, with the new printer (it works?! That’s not supposed to happen!) placed ‘neatly’ under the desk (What my mum was thinking, I shall never know), and my tower case up ontop of the table, the cabling under the desk is a lot neater (ignoring that the mess has now moved up to behind my computer screen…).

Talking about the computer, I plan to upgrade it just slightly, with an extra 2GB of RAM, and a 2nd 160GB Hard drive. That should be plenty enough to play games while doing my homework… (plus, I could install Linux on the 2nd HD, except that I’m gonna install Windows 7 Beta instead.)

School is annoying me. Just as it’s annoying most people. Why does our first proper assesment have to be so soon? And why do I seem to have so much work? Maybe I’m not managing my time well…

Oh, and sorry this is late. Happy Birthday Aunty Hazel!

Christmas is drawing closer and closer, and today, as I’m writing this write now at 8:16am, my mum is preparing to leave for Hong Kong to have a 3 week holiday with her parents who are also over there right now. Yesterday we had a small family gathering with my father’s side of the family (uh, well, currently, they’re the only side of the family in Australia, let alone NSW). And last night I downloaded the new Release Candidate for Windows Live Messenger 2009 and had a annoying time trying to work out what was causing the error code 8100030d…

Read more »

Fun Counter Strike map =]  We were playing it in PDM (We, meaning the people who had finished their work, or in the case of everyone else besides Kai, Jeffery and I, ‘finished‘) There ended up to be 9 of us playing at one point (don’t know who 3 of them were though). Obviously, being the only person who really plays CS, I beat all of them with a good score. In fy_pool_day, Kai and Jeffery were being good with the auto shotty, so I decided to show them how to use a real shotgun. Pump action against the auto shotty. I won =]  Now onto more important matters. Read more »

Officially the 150th post published on this blog. And what is it about? It’s about me complaining about my horrible horrible performance in the recent exams, but on a happier note: THE EXAMS ARE FINALLY OVER!!!!! Just the IST topic test to do…

BUT NOW YEAR 9 OF BAULKHAM HILLS HIGH SCHOOL IS FREE OF THEIR MAJOR EXAMS!!! YAY!!! Read more »

WordPress has long been the best CMS (Content Management System) for bloggers. It’s what I’m using. I like the blog stats it has. And from about halfway through last year, a group of people had written a plug-in for the Admin to view their blog stats. Read more »

Intel will have released their new Core i7 line (actually, due to be released in November this year!!). Microsoft will have finally perfected the new Windows Live Messenger, Gmail will have 10GB of storage space, I will be in yr 10, and Matthew Reilly will release The Five Greatest Warriors (we hope)!! Read more »