Speckled Green

Time for the seemingly weekly Friday post I’ve been doing for the previous two weeks. Umm.. what can I talk about… Well, it’s the end of Week 7 of term 4 of 2010 (meaning just 1 week & 2 days until exams…), and I’m really starting to be worried. The tension is killing me. Why couldn’t life be simpler??

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is being addictive, and I want to finish the story, although finding all 101 Borgia flags seems too much of a drag, so I’ll just leave that alone till I have more time (and a lot more patience). Meanwhile… It’s kinda weird, this feeling of being on edge all the time, remembering the half a million assignments and assessment tasks ahead of me, it’s probably a bad way to think right now, but it’s also the only way for me to remember the ‘seriousness’ of this last year of secondary schooling…
Anyhows, this post from the ‘QuickPress’ box on the wordpress dashboard is getting long enough, and I’m intrigued to see how the formatting goes for this.

EDIT: How do you like this redesign/refinement of the theme?? It was worked out in two sessions, but spaced apart by about 6 months, so it’s like 2 days worth of work over 6 months… yeah, my productivity is odd =]  Don’t worry, there’s still more work to be done on the theme (like I lined out in the ‘Roadmap’), however, I probably should reschedule the AJAX ideas to halfway through uni, whatever year that might be (2013?), when I’ve finally decided to read up on AJAX methods and manipulation.

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

I was thinking about Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood which came out recently, and how it was effectively a Assassin’s Creed 2.5, and I thought back to how I became interested in the Assassin’s Creed series. Essentially, I thought the first game had an intriguing storyline and a fancy gameplay. I only really played it to enjoy a different game and to say I played it. However, when AC2 came out, it became a different story. Working on their marvellous previous game, Ubisoft Montreal (a subdivision of Ubisoft) built a new, more advanced game engine, and it was what brought me into the game. The graphics, the cityscape, the new features and game play, the ever expanding immersive  story, they all combined to draw me into a new exciting (or so I feel) series. So, when AC:B (or AC2.5) came out, I wasn’t sure what to think of it: it’s made some improvements, added a few new features (e.g. multiplayer), and continues the story line. I guess I’m gonna buy it like I buy the Halo series, because I like the story, and I like the game play. Why am I talking of this on my blog instead of something about my life? Well, in a way I guess it is part of my life (my brother plans on purchasing AC:B as soon as he can), and I don’t really feel like talking about much else in my currently unexciting life. Oh, and I decided on having Ant Hill on the back of my jersey (with Harry on the front, to amuse some of my friends who suggested something similar). Time to get back to my overly busy homework schedule which I’m not keeping to very well…. =[

P.S. what do you guys think of the changes to the theme I’ve made?? Personally I like it (duh, I made it), probably mostly because it looks different to the previous one, no other reason than that. I’d probably change 2 colours on it next year and like that more instead, also just because it’s different. I’m trying to follow my ‘roadmap of sorts’ in progression of ‘features’ in it (e.g. I’m currently calling it version 1.0.3, with plans to have a working 404 error page by version 1.0.5 and yes, I’m doing my development in stages like that… I wonder what kind of software development approach I’m using… little documentation, lots of prototypes… probably Rapid Application Development. See, I am learning something in 2 unit Minecraft… er, I mean 2 unit Software Design & Development. =P

Yeah, so it has been… well… I can’t be bothered working out how long since I last posted something here. Talking about posting, that reminds me that I have plenty of unfinished posts that I can’t be bothered finishing…

Reading different people’s blogs/facebook posts/tweets/tumbler blogs can be funny sometimes. Never really bothered checking out other pages…

Right now I’m in English Advanced (period 6)… right before lunch, and today we have a substitute teacher. Hashan & I have dubbed her the female version of Mr Hagan… yeah, we’re mean like that =P But we’re down in the library,  supposedly working on our English essays, which is rather hard to do as most of us left our notes at home, and haven’t chosen a related text yet (me included). At least I have an interpretation of the idea of belonging:  belonging is an psychological attachment we place upon people, objects and ideas around us as a way to define ourselves. Not entirely sure how I’m going to wrap that up with Romulus, my Father or with whatever related text I come up with

I really can’t be bothered to blog this week. Maybe I’ll come up with something about my holidays and the semi formal on one go…

Recently, Nokia announced their newest flagship phone, the Nokia N8. That was a few months ago. Even more recently, they’ve announced the next 3 Symbian^3 devices in the world: Nokia E7, Nokia C6-01 & Nokia C7. Interestingly (almost obviously with how Symbian^3 looks) they all seem rather similar, in both features & shape.

The E7, a successor to the Nokia E71 & Nokia E75, is rather similar to the Nokia N8. Whilst it may not have the 12MP camera with Xenon flash, or as many fancy colours or the fancy ‘N’ in front of the number, or ability to use memory cards, it does have a 4″ screen (.5″ larger than the N8), a hefty 8MP Dual-LED flash camera, and a slide-out qwerty keyboard. About the only differences you’ll notice between the two devices besides their names. That and the fact that the E7 is slightly larger & heavier.

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Well, it’s that annoying time again: exam weeks. The stress I’m going through, not to mention some of the others in my school, is amazing. It’s just High School, people say. It’s not gonna kill you if you don’t do well. Ohk then, you try being in an ultra competitive selective school like mine then, see how you feel then!
Anyways, now I’ve finally seen last month’s edition of the Baulko Bulletin, I can see what Aaron was talking about with the editing issues. I don’t know the exact circumstances around how Tonia designed the layout in Photoshop, but the errors and quality just annoyed me. Piece of advice to anyone who’s considering putting text in a picture: unless you have a high resolution picture, don’t use JPEG with text, the artifacts around the letters makes it hard and painful to read. Use PNG instead. (if anyone’s wondering, the difference comes down to the compression methods of each format, and what they specialise in. JPEG was designed for photographs with smooth gradients, not the stark contrasting lines that text create with their background. PNG is a lossless compression that retains the stark contrasts, therefor better for texts)
And one of the articles was a kid in yr 10 wonderfully explaining the technical definitions of words and people’s common misuse of them, e.g. the USB drive… People drop the drive part. But then, he wrongly described what Wi-Fi was, and I was like “argh!! Nooooo!!!!!” he correctly said that Wi-Fi isn’t wireless inter net but (where he went wrong) the way of distributing it. It is not the way of distributing it, but a radio technology allowing for networking between computers. Internet is just something it can send over the link!!
Anyways, I’m gonna go now. Typing this on an iPod Touch is becoming tiring.

Well, I know that there are many new things I’ll experience in life, but these yearly exams are just totally stressing me!! Oh, and I’ve tried a iPod Touch 4th Gen, and it looks and feels so awesome. It’s not just that it is thinner, it even looks and feels thinner! And my first time I’ve seen a retina display, well, let’s just say that it does look like a printed page. More later!

Why do my comments spanning over several months, include 5 different IP addresses that I’ve noticed?? I would assume the DET portal IP address stays the same, so, why would my home internet keep changing IP?? Is it something to do with the ADSL2+ router I have, or is it something to do with Telstra’s DSLAM server-thingy? Anyone have any clues? Just wondering.

Anyways, next week is exams, and the new iPods official release today in the US, so I wonder how long before they start turning up in Australia. I’d expect the Apple store in Sydney or Castle Towers to have them first (BTW, the Apple store in Castle Towers was selling the iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano and iPod Touch at discounted prices… I noticed the iPod Touch 32GB (3rd Gen) was priced at $339 (that’s $60 off the RRP. Funny how people only sell the Apple products a few dollars below the RRP, where-as they seem to sell everything else at least 5% lower than the RRP)… I wonder what the catch was =/ Anyhows, I look forward to the new iPod Touch turning up. I want to buy it. I seem to be following a pattern of buying a new iPod every two years at the moment. Except that I don’t plan on replacing my current iPod Nano, just supplementing it with the iPod Touch (iPod Nano for music, iPod Touch for videos & apps!! I just wonder how I’d do the syncing two iPods from the same iTunes. Yes, I’m gonna use iTunes, because I’m not bothered using anything else, and the iPod Touch works best with iTunes). Wow, so many iProducts mentioned there. It’s like Apple never realised the iRevolution fad kinda died out… well, they are brand names, so maybe that explains it.

Now I understand why people don’t post much on forums & blogs around exam time. Because you don’t do too much of interest, and because you’re so darn occupied with studying everything. Sometimes I wonder how wise the accelerated subjects students are… they do really well in 1 subject in their HSC because they concentrate solely on it, and then they have less units to worry about the year after during the rest of their HSC.

Anyways, not much is happening in my life, except that this is the last week before my exam-just-about-every-single-day-of-the-exam-weeks yearlies, and I’m stressed, tired, worried and definitely not studying enough. I can just feel the unpreparedness in my mind and heart… and it’s scary. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: it’s just Yr 11. Well, I need to do well now, because it’ll lead on to a trend next year!! I need to make good habits, and so far, they’re not as good as I’d like!

Anyhows, TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!