wafblog v3.0

I don’t think I’ll be blogging much for the next month. I’ve only got a month till my thesis is due (the written part) and the presentation is a week after that. *sigh*.

Think I might cut back on work as well, only go in one day a week. I’m fairly sure the next few weeks are going to be hectic. I’ll be glad once this week is over as I’ll be able to concentrate on thesis only and not have to worry about other stuff. I just wish the damn programs I’m using would bloody install properly so I can actually start *working* on something.

This is one of the funniest online games I’ve played in ages. The idea is to mix the right cocktail (a classic Cosmopolitan, actually) and then have it graded. Well, I found it more fun to throw weird combinations and see what the bartender did. Enjoy!

Read two movie reviews, am tempted to make sure I get to see them when (if) they are released here. The first one is Hard Candy. It sounds extremely depressing in some ways, and yet should be thought-provoking, although the subject matter may be squeamish? The second one is Love + Hate. I like British films, generally. They’re usually not as showy as Hollywood films and tend to have a different narrative style. Looks like I’ll be spending some time in Dendy eh?

King Kong arrived by mail today! Well, the DVDs at least. I took advantage of their pre-order deal and got the one with the free copy of the production diaries. Pretty good! I don’t really like these ‘tins’ EzyDVD has, they kind of look ugly actually. Which is kind of annoying, because I pre-ordered the Final Fantasy VII – Advent Children tin edition as well. My main gripe is that the tins don’t stack nicely with the other DVDs cos they’re bigger.

I have a mid-semester tomorrow which I really should be studying for. And damn, isn’t it dinner time yet?

HAHAHA. That’s kind of all I can say to that. Considering the first time I heard of the movie I did think it *was* a B-Grade 80′s flick. Scary.

So I was looking into RSS reader extensions for Firefox and found one that I like – Wizz RSS. I used to use the aptly named RSS Reader program, which displayed everything in the old newsgroup style. In some ways it’s a lot easier to just use a Firefox extension because the feeds are just webpages anyways. I haven’t tested its podcasting ability yet, as the only podcast I listen to I get through *shudder* iTunes. Guess I’ll have to look into that. I found the cool http://www.i-am-bored.com which could really have me procrastinating for the whole day. I think enjoyment of the Internet increases as the time to x is due decreases. Must snap out of this habit.

On a totally unrelated note, I had fish for dinner tonight. *ugh*. I think the number of times we’re having fish per week is steadily increasing. It used to be once a week. I swear it’s like two or three times now which means that I’m usually very hungry by midnight.

Ok, I am slowly, but surely, hacksing my way through bBlog. I do rather like this blogging/CMS tool. It’s fairly easy to use and most of the stuff is straight-forward. It uses the Smarty template engine and seems to make a lot of things simpler. At the same time, there’s lots that doesn’t work out of the box.

So far, I have fixed:
- menu bar (which does away with the navi section of the sidebar so that’s heaps good)
- side bar (yeay for icons and general linkage!)

Stuff I’ve half-fixed:
- comments (It’s very brute-ish. Comments containing the words poker, casino and viagra are currently blocked. But! I did manage to find this entry about adding spam protection, so I might try implementing it later)
- the calendar (I removed those stupid arrows that DON’T WORK. I think that they *should* work – but I’m fairly sure it’s my archives.php that’s causing the trouble)
- archives (it shows by month now on the sidebar but no in the actual archives page – again I think it’s the php page)

Things to work on:
- more content for sidebar
- the rss feed (I have no idea what to do about that actually o_O)
- the “Read More” plugin (essentially the same as an LJ cut)
- PhotoBlog (apparently there was a plugin in-the-making but doesn’t seem to have been released and I haven’t had time to look into it)

The main thing holding me back is a general lack of PHP knowledge. I’ve done ASP and some VBScript, but quite frankly it seems completely different to PHP. I’m not sure if it’s just cos I’m looking straight at the PHP files and haven’t properly sat down to understand the syntax but generally languages shouldn’t be too hard to learn. Hrm. I’m not sure if there’s anything else I’d really want to do with my blog. I won’t really have time to look into these things until uni finishes (two more months!) but even then I’m likely to lose interest and just makedo with what I’m using. It’s shame – bBlog seems like a great blogging tool but it seems that all development on it has stopped.

I’ll leave you with something that all programmers can relate to.

So people, do you really think Joe’s blog has much more influence than you think? I mean really – as someone who blogs, I don’t really think being extremely vocal on my site is going to do much. At the same time, I suppose if you take something like LiveJournal and think about how easy it is to make a community, some very strongly-worded icons and the like, then yeah… maybe bloggers are making an influence. But a few hundred people voicing their concerns about TV programs isn’t really going to make a difference is it? If it was why are we still watching reality TV? Not sure, I suppose I should be thankful that bloggers are seen as being ‘influential’, but if that voice is not being used for something meaningful, then really I think it’s just a waste.

In other news, I have gotten nowhere with my thesis lately. In fact, I pretty much haven’t started on that JSP. *smacks head*. What the fuck am I doing with my time? I have no idea – I’m slowly, slowly, slowly wasting away on LJ, Yahoo!Groups, and blogs. o_O Actually, it feels kind of pathetic. I really need to get out more but I’m too lazy to get off my arse really.

More importantly, I have a midsemester exam for Computer Engineering this Friday. It is somewhat annoying that this subject has the same name as my degree, because people ask me what subjects I’m doing and I’ll be like “Computer Engineering” and they look at me funny. It’s the subject dammit!!!! It’s a somewhat fun subject, but usually involves a lot of facepalming because my partner and I think too in-depth. We always forget that we’re not really dealing with the ‘circuit’ itself, moreso the ‘system’ and how it fits together. Anyways, it was cool to make the little LCD thing light up. I really would like to make a shift-adder or something though. I suppose writing words to the LCD is more cool or at least, the results are more… noticeable. I must start studying for this very soon. There’s no recommended text, just the two reading pack thingies we bought for the course. So tomorrow will be full on JSP *crosses fingers, closes all web-browsers not JSP related* and then Wednesday will be more JSP and possibly some VHDL. Wish me luck?

… which probably isn’t going to be that big.

The Easter Show
Word of the day: foul
Quote of the day: “ye olde pixelated graphics” – Travis in reference to cross-stitch

So, after much bribery and negotiation, Manda and Travis agreed to come to the Sydney Royal Easter Show which is held annually. It’s been like 8 years since I last went and I really wanted to go now that I can afford it! Only I realised at the end of the day that I really could *not* afford it :P Everything is so damn expensive now!

Anyways, whilst waiting for Manda and Travis, I got this lovely view of the Telstra Stadium (is that what used to be the SuperDome?)

I’d forgotten how big Olympic Park is, cos whenever I went there I’d go straight to the Aquatic Centre or the track. They have these metal poles with all the names of the athletes and the poles speak. It’s a bit eerie walking through them.

Anyways, first place we went to inside the show was the “Woolworths Fresh Food Dome”. Pretty cool, cos really the Easter Show is all about buying lots of stuff you don’t need but look good anyways. Those fruit displays are always pretty cool :D I can imagine they’d take forever to make and I’m not really sure how they manage to make the fruit last for so long o_O And then we moved onto the Arts & Craft section. They have these cake displays (again.. how do these things keep?) and even one section that said “perishables”. Unfortunately, looking at dozens of fruit cakes doesn’t excite me. So we quickly moved on to the scaled models and wood work. I thought this navy carrier was awesome:

but Manda didn’t agree ): Some of the artworks were pretty good, especially the kids’ ones. Sometimes I think kids capture art so much better than adults, maybe because their perception of the world hasn’t been made to conform to anything yet.

Now, it’s only because my parents would never read my blog that I feel safe in posting up the next picture:

I got one of those airbrush tattoos, cost me $10! But it looked pretty cool when finished :D Only lasted for a few days, but was fun anyways. I really wanted one of those ones that lasts for like a month. Bu it’s not like I could show it off considering it’s winter and my mum would probably kill me if she ever saw it.

I must say, the showbags sure aren’t what they used to be. I was actually worried before going in that I wouldn’t have enough money to buy showbags I wanted. Instead, I found it hard to actually find a showbag I *wanted* to buy! In the end, I got a computer magazine one for $10 (cos it had like 4 magazines in it) and I split the giant Cadbury one with Manda. Least I got lots of chocolate :P

It’s at this stage that I must mention the FOOD at the Easter Show. Manda assured me that “cheese on a stick” and “dagwood dogs” were foodstuffs that I must try at least once in my lifetime. Having parents like mine, they never let me have those sorts of things when I was younger… so I took this opportunity to try them. I must say, they do look rather… unappealing. And after eating half the cheese on stick all I could say was “foul”! Not that it tasted foul, more just the notion that I was eating something that was 90% oil *shudders*. After eating half the dagwood dog I felt rather ill knowing I had consumed stuff that was probably entirely manufactured. I had some nachos as well for lunch, and even though I was full, every time we walked past a good store I was like “ooh! hamburger! ooh! pancakes! ooh! german sausages!”. I finally succumbed and bought a corn cob. YUM!

Of course, no trip to the Easter Show would be complete without a visit to the animals. We saw sheep, goats, pigs, giant cows (ok, so they weren’t actually giant but have seen the size of them? they’re HUGE!!!!!), little baby animals, horses and cats. I was about to say I was sad they didn’t have a poultry section, but looking at the map now, it looks like we missed it. Shame, I wanted to see some chickens and geese. Oh wells ): Got this cool picture of a sheep (it won a few prizes from what we could see) and I absolutely adored this little Boer goat:

I don’t really know how people can go to the Show and not go see the animals. Maybe just cos I don’t normally get the chance to see them so it seems really cool to me. I did feel sorry for those cows though, all these people were patting them :P

I can’t really remember what we did after that. Oh wait, yes I can. We went on a bunch of rides. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a complete wuss when it comes to rides. I don’t like going upside-down and as I’m scared of heights most rides freak me out. Add to this that my stomach tends to feel ill if I’m sloshed around too much and well, there’s not many rides I’d like to go out. So, of course, Travis said he wanted to pay for me to go on the SlingShot. If you’ve seen this thing, you’ll understand my trepidation. Lucky for me, the darn thing costs $30 a ride (what a bloody rip off!!) and was thus deemed far too expensive for us. We went on the much tamer carousel (which I actually enjoy :D). We also went on the ferris wheel! It was a lot higher than I thought \: but it’s held up by 500 bolts so I guess I should have felt safe. heh. Manda and I also went on a rolelr coaster, that was a lot shorter than I expected but was actually pretty fun.

The ride that Manda and Travis couldn’t convince me to go on!

To top off our day, we went to see Alex Lloyd play live at The Shed. He was meant to start at 9:15 or something, but due to some technical difficulties (or something), we saw Bertie Blackman first. She wasn’t too bad actually, rather enjoyed her songs although I’ve never heard of her. By the time Alex played it was 10:00, so we didn’t get to stay long. I was really glad that he played “Lucky Star” as his second song though, cos that’s my fave song off his first album. Yeay for free live music!

Unfortunately for us, when we decided to leave, we exited out the wrong exit. And when we asked the security guard dude how to get to the car park he directed us but, didn’t tell us it would have been quicker to go back inside and walk through the show to the exit on the other side. So, we walked the entire length of the show from the outside… and kinda wasted 30 minutes. I wouldn’t have been too annoyed except for the fact that it was cold enough to freeze your tits off and thus not so fun. Well, least we’ll know for next time.

Other Stuff

Hrm, I haven’t been up to much else lately – besides job applications, uni, work, seeing a few movies. Which is all typical stuff really. The job apps are taking quite a bit of time and I’ve been to a couple information evenings so it feels like I’ve been really busy.

Oh! I am proud though – I made my first fanmix over the last few days. It’s a Draco/Hermione one and the graphics took me a while. I’m so not used to Corel PaintShop Pro X (last version I used was PSP8). So yeah, I had to go searching for cool fonts and stuff (man, DaFont is awesome). But, I was glad to have finished it and posted it on my LJ today. If you’d like to see it, it can be found here.

Anyways, I should go and do stuff for my thesis. I haven’t really been working on it for the last two weeks and I’m now getting a bit worried that I won’t finish in time. *sigh*.