Anyways, the idea of the blog was for me to rant, put down ideas, mention things that have happened, etc. I suppose Facebook has taken over a large portion of the mentioning things that have happened, but I can still talk about stuff here, can’t I? Well, even if you said no, I’m going to do so anyway. It’s my blog, and I can do as much or as little as I want.

For example, in the last 2 weeks I have to had submit 4 assignments/tasks, sit 2 exams/quizzes, had 2 frantic homework/study sessions, slept through 4 lectures and barely listened to the rest, been late to my maths lectures twice in a row (8am Monday & Tuesday. The Monday was because I forgot about the trackwork being done, and so my train was late. The Tuesday was that I simply was too slow at leaving the house because of an annoying, high pitched whine that I had to track-down and eradicate before it drove me mad. I did. Track it down, that is. It was the device we use to monitor our electricity usage. The ‘brilliant’ designers in the UK decided that instead of a low battery indicator, they’d make it switch off its LCD screen and wail at the top of its lungs to get you to replace its batteries. It’s effective, I give you that. But it also seems plain stupid. Oh well), drawn on Eastern Avenue in chalk, had the deliciously cheep soft-serve cones from McDonalds on the way home from Uni, been up to Katoomba (spelt correctly? Chrome doesn’t speak Australian English) for KYCK with the youth group from Church (highly informative, challenging, and enjoyable!) as well as excitedly waited for the Galaxy S3 to be officially announced and detailed. Although the tech world is having an awful lot of fun with guessing, leaking, confirming, ignoring, whatever-ing all the rumours, image ‘leaks’, and other stuff, just like with the Apple iDevices! Minus the Apple, of course. Speaking of Apple, today my mum asked me just what the Inc. in Apple Inc. meant. Funnily enough, I’d thought she’d know, being an accountant, but it seems she was confused not on what it meant, but what it was short for (and more accurately, the spelling). Since we don’t really have Incorporated in Australia (no idea what we use in Australia. Propriety? Limited? Company? BTW, Chrome’s spell-checker is awful at making guesses to what you’re trying to spell. They should licence Microsoft’s spell check.

In other news life at Uni has been different. It’s nice to have the free time, but it’s also annoying to have so much time free between classes sometimes. And business is still just as boring as ever. And now I’ve got to include ethics in my case studies and assignments. Great. The assignments are really starting to pile up, with either a task, assignment, or exam on or due every week until the end of semester. And some weeks there’s obviously multiple things due at the same time…

I doubt my first year is going to be much above a pass for most of my subjects.

Well, I suppose it’s going to be a bumpy road for someone as lazy as I am.

Speaking of lazy, through my bad eating habits and sheer lack of exercise (and hence loss of muscle mass, or so I’d like to believe), I have managed, some how, to lose almost 5 kilograms in mass. I’d say weight, but that would be in Newtons, which I’m too lazy to try and remember how to convert to. Multiply my mass by 9.8 or something? That sounds right. Physics lessons aside, I’ve lost weight, and I attribute that to: a) empty stomach/bladder, having gone to the toilet just before I weighed myself; b) poor eating habits recently leading to less food being consumed; c) less proper exercise which would have maintained or perhaps even built muscle mass on my body, and I assume that since muscle is denser than fat, the loss of muscle mass would lead to a noticeable (really? This sounds like I’m grasping at straws. Would it really be that noticeable?) loss of weight.

Sometime in the future, I’d like to get a new phone. I’d love to get the Samsung Galaxy S3, but the SII (or S2) is also an amazing phone which I wouldn’t mind getting. I’m trying to convince my mum to buy it for me for my birthday, or more accurately, to help me pay for it, combining with some money I’ve been saving up for it. Oh, speaking of birthdays and presents, my brother got a Xbox 360 Kinect! We don’t use it an awful lot (because we’re not in the gaming mood too often, and because frankly we’re not home enough to really use it much, what with school/uni/work and other activities we do), but still it’s great to have the ability to play games which have me jumping up and down, or waving my arms about wildly, or both. Or the potential for gesture control, voice control, or various other things that will use it (like the gunsmith mode in Ghost Recon Future Soldier).

Anyways, I’ve forgotten what else I was going to talk about, so the brief mentions of all the above topics (and their semi-related side stories) will have to do until next time, which may be a very long time away. For example, this post is over a month after the last one, and according the word count, is over 1030 words long by the end of the post. I wonder if that includes the numbers in the post, and the things like S2, b), etc…

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

In other news, ENGG1805 and BUSS1001 are still just as boring. Although BUSS1001 is sometimes ever-so-slightly more interesting than ENGG1805. In fact, so far the most interesting part of the eng course is the prospect of building our own balsa wood bridge. That or the rather humourous week 1 readings. At least with BUSS1001 I learn something ever-so-slightly useful. ENGG1805 has taught me how to use MSWord templates, LaTeX (too complicated for my brain), MatLab (why on Earth would I need this as a IT person?), and how algorithms can be useful in engineering. Stuff that is either really basic, or I have already covered somewhat in high-school lessons. I suppose I should still pay SOME attention though.

Anyways, yes, that is my boring stuff. I have been maintaining a rather poor diet while at uni. Because I don’t wan to spend a fortune on food, and have no real desire to carry around a few kilos of the delicious fuel, I tend to skip breakfast and lunch, fasting until afternoon tea. I do so because I know that if I can manage to stave off my hunger until later, I won’t then eat all the food I did pack, leaving me starving as I am stuck at uni until whenever. Of course, I don’t always follow this, sometimes making breakfast for myself, or eating lunch at the correct time, or both. Or even being lucky enough to get food from a BBQ being hosted by some society on campus. Unfortunately most days there aren’t any places I can snag a free or cheap lunch because I’m stuck in a lecture or not part of enough societies to know/be able to receive the benefits. But still.
I think I’m going to end this post mentioning how I believe I’m going to be sick soon. Bloodshot eyes, runny/blocked nose, sore-throat, headaches. All signs of a cold/flu coming on. No thanks to my brother or all those sick people at uni. =[

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

Or how about the way the media takes rumours and then assumes that they’re completely true, without any concrete evidence? For example, the rumours about the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3 are that they’ll be quad-core phones. Considering that other new top-end phones announced by competitors are quad-core, it gives credibility to these claims. However, when they start comparing a phone that has no known details about it (even the announcement date is unknown) to phones announced by another company, and start ‘pointing out’ where the competitor ‘obviously went wrong’, that’s just becoming stupid.

Or how about in an episode of spooks I watched a little bit of recently. MI-5 was moving a laptop to MI-6 with some sensitive data on it, encrypted of course. The laptop get’s stolen (in a highly unlikely situation to begin with). Ok, plausible so far. The first file is decrypted by unknown persons within 3 hours. That’s where it became absolutely stupid. If it takes the NSA 2 or so hours to decrypt encrypted phone calls, or the FBI a week to decrypt some files from a laptop using commercially available (and hence legal, hence something they can crack relatively easily) encryption software, and they’re using supercomputers utilising quantum mechanical algorithms to break these binary encryptions (they’ve been doing it since the late 80′s, at least, so it’s nothing new to them really), then how on Earth can a group of people, who may or may not have backing from a nation-state such as Iran, China or India, crack military level custom encryptions in just 3 hours per file? Exactly. It’s a stupid plot element used to drive an increasingly stupid BBC show. Notice that the BBC seem to be dumbing down their shows over the years?

Oh, and my mum made this conclusion: the British like to portray their authorities (Police, intelligence services, etc.) as bumbling fools, slow idiots, or just plain silly so many times, whilst the writers in the USA enjoy portraying their authorities as ok, amazingly god-like (think CSI), or brilliant (think White Collar, Monk, Castle). Ironically, I think I prefer the USA style, the brilliant person helping or solving the cases (e.g. Sherlock, White Collar, Monk, Agatha Christie). But I suppose the choices of TV channel and time I watch, as well as what’s available to me, influences that.

Oh, and the first week of Uni, especially considering I’m a first year, was incredibly boring and exciting at the same time. It was exciting to start a new level of life, seeing new people, feeling like an adult, but it was also boring in the sense that the first lectures and tutorials were predictably “Oh, Hi. This is what we’re doing this semester. Go buy all this stuff that you probably won’t need, but we’re going to act like the world is going to end if you don’t give us your money for it,” and “Let’s start at the beginning” kind of basic stuff. Like vectors in Linear Algebra. Or the start of Java in Introduction to Programming. Although it is nice to be able to remind myself of stuff after not thinking since the HSC. Like the formula for finding the roots of a quadratic equation! Oh, and I’m finally learning about complex numbers. Needless to say, they’re slightly more confusing that normal numbers. The preconception that they’re confusing, hard, and weird probably doesn’t help at all, either.

Oh well, I’m gonna go to bed now. I’m feeling a bit tired, especially after all the early mornings for uni, and the late nights reading Halo: Primordium by Greg Bear, the 2nd book in the Forerunner trilogy (after Halo: Cryptum). Yeah, I enjoy Halo and it’s ‘extended universe’ (haha, using the extended universe from the Star Wars franchise), especially when the guy who’s directing 343 Industries (who are now in charge of making future Halo games for Microsoft) says that the books in the Post-War series (Karen Travis’s Halo books) and the Forerunner series (Greg Bear’s Halo books) have links with the plot in Halo 4.

Anyways.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

“You’re just complaining too much,” you may say to me. Sure, go ahead and say that. I don’t mind complaining about it on my blog, which appears to have been slightly neglected over the last two or three months. Job hunting, the expectation of university and actually deciding to do something besides sitting on the computer (that is, reading a book) tends to do that to me. Maybe Facebook had a hand in there somewhere. But part of me honestly could not be bothered talking about much of what has happened to me over the last 2 months. I suppose that comes from the fact that to my mind, I already know what has happened. Why should I go and tell it to myself again as I type it out?

But I’m sure as Uni starts up, and I get more things to do, I’ll be more and more inclined to write up a rant, or mention (even quickly) some of the many (or not so many) things that will have happened to me over the coming years. They say it’s the best years of your life. They also said that about High School, so who do you believe? Certainly not the people who say primary school was the most fun they ever had, because I’m sure that after University, if you consider primary school to be the most fun you’ve had, then you are sorely lacking in ‘fun’ experience.

Regardless, it’s nice to see all the different groups at Uni (why do I keep on capitalising Uni? And why does Ctrl + Backspace not work in WordPress/Chrome any more? Maybe I should use Firefox for typing this up), such as the sci-fi/geek group (Doctor Who, Star Trek, Sherlock, card and board games, video games… they really cover a lot that I like, and that’s not all!), or the IT society, and hey, they even had a Chinese Culture Appreciation society. Not that I joined that last group, since I don’t really appreciate Chinese culture that much. I’m more like “Oh, wow, that’s nice,” to most things. Chinese or otherwise (such as Scottish, or French, or Japanese), unless it’s technology related, then my interest is piqued.

One group I was happy to see was the Sydney University Wind Orchestra (kinda like the Concert Band from high school). It’d be nice to attend rehearsals, and be part of a band again, although I’m not overly keen on ending up in the city at 8:30pm by the end of rehearsal, but I’ve been later I guess. Not that I like the city late at night, it becomes a little daunting with all the people with alcohol about. Even if I don’t end up joining the wind orchestra, I still have membership, which allows me free admittance to their concerts, which would be lovely. I miss listening to band music. I still recall the time our Concert Band played Symphony No. 9: And the Earth Trembled. If I remember correctly, that was my 2nd year in the school’s Concert Band (the highest level band at the school), and that had to be the hardest piece we had ever performed, but it sounded magnificent, even if it did sound somewhat odd since it was about an earthquake. Or the time we played an arrangement of Jupiter, the Bringer of Joviality (I think that’s what it was called. It’s a relatively famous piece, from a suite called Planets or something, by and ‘American’ composer. I would call him a USA-ian composer, except that would make no sense. And yes, I stand by my stance that the people from the US of A are too ego centric when they think they are an entire continent or two. We’re the same size as them, and we are a continent. They still have Canada, Mexico and the likes connected to them) in the orchestra, which was an amazingly fun piece to play.

I think now would be a good time to mention that I feel utterly worn out, and so I am going to stop writing, or should I say typing(?), now.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

P.S. I should redesign this site, however I am completely unsure as to what design would be good. I wish I had someone who could do nice visual concepts. It’d be nice to try and work towards a goal I could see, like a print-out.

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!

So to start with, we have my HSC completed. That was simultaneously the most stressful and oddest set of exams I’ve ever done. They were odd in the sense that I treated them like my school exams, and spent way too much time procrastinating. But I simply could not bring myself to work anymore. School was over, this last hoorah was killing me. And I think when I get my results back, it will kill me. I dread the day they hand out our marks.

After the HSC, a period during which many people I know had a birthday (well, as my HSC took a whole month, I guess that isn’t too hard), requiring several parties (I sadly could only attend one for my friend, and one for my mum), I have exercised my laziness to it’s higher levels. I sometimes get a sense of guilt, thinking that I should be studying instead of playing games or going out, but then I remember I’ve been working towards this for 13 years now (although I may not have realised that when I was younger). It shouldn’t be surprising me, and yet it does.

I will be going on ‘schoolies’ with some friends on Friday, 5 nights up at the Entrance, which is presenting us with some interesting organisational challenges. Sometimes I wonder if the leadership stuff mentioned in my resume and principal’s reference is really applicable to me. I’ve never felt like I have shown remarkable leadership, whether it be in Band, Flute ensemble, Peer Support, group projects, Soul Purpose or DoE. But I suppose the idea of a resume and its references is to make you sound good, and that’s what the word ‘remarkable’ does!

Last night was the Year 12 formal, and what an awesome night it was. All the girls/ladies dressed up, their hair, faces and gowns looking wonderful. It may still confuse me as a guy why they would spend so much time and effort too look so wonderful, but I must admit that the end result is amazing. Not that any of them really need to go through all that effort to look wonderful, but women don’t seem to believe that on formal evenings. Or maybe it’s some preconception that society has created. Whatever. They looked beautiful, and that’s what counts, I guess.

They guys, all of us comparatively lazy and less stressed than the ladies, wearing our suits. I reckon the guys looked awesome. Nice and fine. I was never much of a suit person, but I think it may be growing on me. Well, the formal(ish) dress style is, at least. E.g. Collared shirt and tie on Band Tour (Se** and I said to ourselves “Why not?”) for the last day.

The evening was highly enjoyable. Mrs Pigram’s choice of Oatland’s house was highly beneficial (I do not wish to imagine where the committee would have chosen if not for Mrs Pigram’s experience of past formals, making her choose the place over any objections from some certain members of the grade), with the lovely scenery of the garden and sunset providing rather wonderful photos. The food was nice, and the time with friends was great. I still don’t understand the modern youth’s idea of dancing. Whilst bouncing up and down is easy to do, it isn’t that much of a dance, so when any of you did anything differently, it was nice to see. But whatever you did, I enjoyed watching you guys looking silly as you ‘danced’ while I myself was happy to not make myself look embarrassingly silly (in my opinion at least). I spent a large portion of my time standing around outside, speaking with people. And trying to not fall asleep. Towards the end of the night, I felt strangely tired. Don’t know why. The music was, as to be expected, loud and not of the nest taste. Knew barely any of the songs, and only the pulsing beat of the bass was interesting (must be some psychological thing, like why they use bass drums to excite soldiers in ancient society).

Hopefully I will be having my braces removed soon, probably early next year my orthodontist says. As I’m not entirely sure how much more my teeth need to move or be aligned, I’m going to leave that to his capable judgement. I must say that having braces is an interesting experience. I can now personally relate to other people who have had braces instead of just trying to imagine what it must be like (in retrospect, my imaginings of the experiences of wearing braces were woefully short of the mark, as to be expected). It has been painful at times, other time just plain annoying. Throughout it all, I have felt rather self-conscious about them, and I wonder how I’ll feel afterwards. In case you were wondering what the back-story of my braces was, long story short I had to have some teeth removed, and pull the ones behind them down my jaw to fill the gaps. If you want the longer version, ask in person. It’s a little quicker that way.

Closing off the long post, I’ll make a mention about my job hunting. Last night Mr Van Loon told me that most places have got their Christmas staff already lined up, or are conducting the interviews, making it much harder to find and land a job right now unless you plan to work for the longer term (e.g. throughout Uni), which would be hard when I’ll try to do full time study next year. Anyways, I have no idea where I’d find a job, what field it will be (probably as a cashier or similar) and if I feel like doing it. I’m actually afraid of getting a job. Not only does the idea of doing an interview make me nervous, I don’t like change, and getting a job is a change from my school life. But I suppose there are plenty of people like me, and most of them get used to the change, as shall I eventually.

Well, I feel like ending this post. There was probably a lot more I wished to talk about at some point, but it’s lost now. And besides, this post is getting long enough as it is. I’d just like to say a huge thanks to all my friends for the most wonderful 6 years of high school, and the immensely enjoyable night last night. I don’t know where I’d be without any of you.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

But, intriguingly, I’m wondering if I’ll decide to replace my iPod Touch with the “6th Gen” model or not. As this year’s model is literally the same as last year’s, only with White as an option, I don’t know when the official 6th Gen will come out. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a curious habit of buying even numbered Generation iPods (2nd & 4th Gen iPod Nano, 4th Gen iPod Touch). Conveniently they have also been every two years, with increasing capacity matching the rate I would increase my music library, although recently both my music library and the iPod sizes have stalled…

Anyways, all my non-procrastinating time is dedicated to studying for 2 & 3 Unit maths. So…

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!