freshbytes

So I, along with 43 of my classmates, graduated last thursday.

Truth be told – it was a real anti-climax. Wow, I’ve graduated.

However – five things have come of this.

Firstly, I managed to pick up three awards. Stewardship in Physics, Excellence in Computer Science, and Excellence in Maths Applied. Now really – 5 minutes prior to the awards, I was having massive panic attacks if I didn’t win any awards – I would have been bitterly disappointed if I didn’t get any. However, as the time drew nearer, I figured that it didn’t matter if I didn’t get any awards, because, well, they’re just not as important as friendships and so on.
As it turns out, I managed to snag three awards. Afterwards – Chris J (the co-founder of this site), congratulated me on the Computer Science award, saying that I “fully deserve it”. Now, had our roles been reversed, I don’t know that I would have done the same thing. Sound familiar? Again, my moral compass points in a different direction to those around me. I’m not a hugely BAD person – just one who is a little selfish.

Secondly – friends like Chris J are awesome. I’m hugely glad to have friends like him – they’ll criticise you for pretty much anything, bag the crap out of you for no apparent reason, but at the end of the day – they’re good guys, and that’s all that matters.

Thirdly – it’s almost surreal to think that I won’t see any of those people again. Sure, we’ll facebook each other (facebook rulez, btw – sure, it maykes ppl talk lyke dis), but apart from that – very little face time, as I like to call it.

Fourthly – it’s awesome to think that we’re such a tightly knit group. Together, we’ve experience such delights as Adam vd B, Steven W, Rob M, and a whole heap of other people as well. Calvin 2008 was the only year group to have Miss v R as a teacher in 3rd grade, and really – that was awesome. At the graduation ceremony, we could all peg who was going to get what award, especially for the Art awards, all rounder awards, Long Tan awards, and so on. It’s this kind of close-knit group that will keep most of our friendships intact, even as we drift away from each other physically.

If I see you in the street, I’ll try and say hello, or at least tip my head in your direction, give you a smile, or whatever I do. If I don’t, leave nasty comments on my Facebook Wall, and I’ll endeavour to do better next time.

I think that’s about it. If you’ve got anything decent to say, stick it in the comments, please.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: awards, Blog, excellence, graduation, School, stewardship

So, I’m done.

No more school, ever.

We’re going to be continuing with the “I don’t want to leave school” theme, ‘cos after reading some comments on previous “I don’t want to leave” posts, I found I have some more things to say…(a rare occurence, indeed).

So if you’re too lazy to click the links, Jawapro said:

What’s really odd is coming back to your old school after a few years have passed. There’s a few faces you remember (who were much younger when you were at school) but it’s just not the same.

5 or 6 years later – and so much has changed that it’s hard to imagine. Teachers have moved on – classes have changed buildings (so has one of my old schools) – and only the very youngest people you knew are still around as students. It’s quite moving – and slightly depressing. That place you remember as being the best part of your life (if it was) no longer exists, and never will again.

I’m not sure if this is true, but really. I’d hate to see Calvin turn into some unrecognisable place, just another blot on the kingston landscape.

Now that school’s over (for college students, as well as year 10s), I have a lot of time to do a couple of things that need to be done.

I have made a facebook account. You can search for me, I’m Benny Ling, obviously. Add me as a friend, invite me to join a cool group, whatever.

I’ve heard that Social Networking is the best thing since sliced bread… I’ve also heard that it’s highly overrated.

I won’t make my decision until I’ve experienced more of facebook, though. It’s currently very cool, and a HUGE step in terms of interacting with friends. All sorts of friends.

I’m yet to figure out any sort of “facebook code of conduct”, which contain rules on who you can become friends with, what sorts of groups you can join, etc. Actually – I just saw this on Digg: Facebook Etiquette: Five Dos and Don’ts. Nice! Perfect timing. After looking over the list, I realise that it’s more or less common sense anyway – the only things I didn’t know where about business friends… Pfft.

Initial impressions of facebook include: hard to get used to. Complex interface makes simple tasks more complicated than they have to be. Far too many configurable options. A hell of a lot of Ajax and Javascript powers those pages. After a full day of facebooking, still unsure about certain features. Still unsure about the chat system. Ram usage high, or that could just be me. Facebook app on iPhone is awesome. Don’t understand how people would use both Twitter + facebook at the same time – seems like an overkill of social networking, if you ask me…

Oh well. The night is still young.

A quick shout out to Joe W – congrats on your 18th. Hope you didn’t get too smashed.

Radi8 news: apparently, my non-attendance has been marked. Apologies – I was working.

Our Year 12 Leavers Dinner is tomorrow night. Should be good. Afterparty? Meh. Pics to come (either on facebook or here, haven’t quite decided yet). Also need a camera.

I think that’s it. Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: Blog, digg, facebook, formal, iphone, iphone 3g, myspace, radi8, School

Heheh – two exams today, so this post is brought to you by the freshbytes lackeys who seem to have nothing else to do but study… Apologies for not putting it up sooner, I wanted to get some sleep.

You hear the horror stories about how calculators can die suddenly due to a loss of power during end-of-year exams, and you worry.

You hear how harsh the TQA are on spontaneous calculator battery death (as we’ll call it), and how they don’t tolerate any excuses for spontaneous calculator battery death.

You hear how someone was sitting on an EA before they went into the exam, but are now only going to get an SA because they suffered spontaneous calculator battery death.

Well, okay – so I made that last one up, but I’m sure it has happened to someone, somewhere at sometime in the past!

Right – so I wasn’t going to let that happen for me. No way. I needed as many points as I could get, and spontaneous calculator battery death would just lead to a whole world of pain – namely, year 13 at Calvin (that, in and of itself wouldn’t be so bad, but having to do year 13 in the first place would be)….

Anyway, as you shop for batteries, there are a lot of questions to be pondered, such as:

• What brand of batteries should I get?
  This question is quite important as if you’re paying for the brand, then you’re doing it wrong, especially when it comes to mundane things like batteries. I managed to pick some nice red evereadys as they have worked well for me in the past – and if good performance is for this particular brand, that’ll bring me back to that brand, time and time again.

• How many should I buy?
  This is also an important question – if you have other devices in your house that use a large number of specialised batteries, you should probably buy them in bulk so that you always have some of those batteries on hand when you need them. Running out of batteries sucks at the best of times, and well, you can never have too many batteries! Of course, there is a limit, so don’t rush out and buy cartons of batteries – after all, you need to be realistic.
  I ended up going for an 8-pack of AAA’s as they were on special.

• Should I buy rechargeable batteries?
  If you’re asking yourself this question, you probably should – provided you’re prepared to lay out the extra initial cost of the rechargeables, as well as a charger if you don’t already have one… Supposedly rechageables are more cost effective, but in reality, you’re paying for the power that you use to charge them, too!
  I didn’t buy rechargeables as the batteries were for a caluclator – and I’ll probably use it once every couple of months after exams are over.

Anyways, that’s about the end of my battery-buying advice. If you’ve got any more tips that you feel I’ve missed, then shout out in comments!

As for school, well, I’m smack bang in the middle of exams. Chemistry was last Friday, and I’ve got Maths Applied and Computer Science tomorrow (Monday). Thursday sees the Physics exam, and after that – the Magazine needs to be done, I’ll work a heap, and work on a couple of projects I’ve got planned… Yeah, my holidays are fairly jam-packed as is.

On the Radi8 front, we should have a couple of good events to finish up the year with, which should be good.

The song for this week is Michael Buble’s Everything – from his album Call Me Irresponsible. If you’ve got iTunes, hit the links – they’ll take you to the correct iTunes Music Store page.

Other that that, I’ve got nothing.

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: batteries, Blog, calculator, calvin, chemistry, exams, physics, radi8, School, shopping, study, TQA

These days it seems like I’m stuck in a rut:

Wake up, eat, study, eat, study, eat, study, sleep.

After rinsing and repeating for x number of times, you start to go a little crazy.

You start having weird dreams which have don’t reflect reality, but the truth is that your subconscious mind is processing information – stuff that you might have learned, thoughts you might have floating about, and anything else which it can lay it’s ever-reaching arms on.

Sometimes, your subconscious mind tells you things which you madly wish were true – ah, if only such things could happen in reality!

Anyways, if you haven’t noticed, I am, along with the rest of my known universe (because you guys matter to me that much) busy studying.

This has lead to what I call study syndrome – where you stay up really late every night, cramming examples, formulas, and just about everything bar the kitchen sink onto your information sheet, in the feeble hope that you’ll have enough information to take into the exam with you.

It’s exam week now, and everyone is in full study mode; in particular, I’d like to make a shout out to those lucky guys and gals who have Biology and Legal Studies exams today. I salute you for your valour.

I won’t, however, wish you luck – if you need luck at this point in time, you’re in the wrong reality.

Reality – you’re doing it wrong!

You can tell by the quality (or lack thereof) of this post that it’s very late (or is that early), and I need some sleep.

I’ll catch y’all sometime later.

There might even be something (better than this, to be sure) up tomorrow morning.

Heh, just noticed that this was Freshbytes’ 50th post. Wow, how utterly anti-climatic…

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: Blog, School, study, time

So on the study camp, we got a little brochure about study techniques and everything.

What I took away most was the fact that the little study camp book had a cool little man on the front – saying “Exam is here!”.

For those of you that don’t know, mid year exams != fun, and the same applies here.

Year 12 end of year exams do not equal fun. Exams in general don’t equal fun, but year 12 end of year’s are far more scary.

Unfortunately, this is the time of year when you can make or break your whole career. Sure, if you stuff up your exams really badly, you can always repeat and do year 13, but who in their right mind wants to do that?!

I suppose if I was looking to get a good job I’d need to get a good score – say about 90 or so to get into the degree that I want to do at Uni.

90 isn’t totally unreachable – I know people who are aiming for 100 or above, and someone else who managed to get 113, but it’s still going to prove enough of a challenge as it is.

Let’s see:

• 21.7 points from Year 11 Information Systems for an EA,
• 15.3 points from Year 11 Physical Science for a HA,
• some 20 points from Year 12 Maths Applied for an EA,
• some 20 points from Year 12 Computer Science for an EA,
• and some 13 points from Year 12 Physics for a CA.

Now, according to the Scaling Summary from 2007 (PDF link), (assuming that those values hold true for this year), I’ll need at least an average CA from Physics, which is completely achievable, and therefore inside the realms of possibility.

Indulge me – we’ll just assume for the moment that I’m insane and manage to get a CA in Chemistry – no mean feat, I assure you. In terms of points, that would garner me a respectable 11.9 – not enough.

However, if I were to get a HA in Physics, I would gain 17.4 points – which would be awesome.

Of course, I can’t predict the future, and I’ll just have to hope that everyone else that studies Applied is on the same level as the year 11’s in my Applied class – that being the case, maybe we’ll see something like last years scaling where Media Production was worth an incredible 28.5 points at EA level – just, WTF, especially considering that Maths Specialised, arguably the hardest subject in the whole TCE course list, was only worth 25.2 points at EA level.
The chance of this happening is low, however, as there are some others who are either repeating Applied, or people that have done methods previously and are now doing Applied for the points alone (like I am). If that’s the case, then Applied will be scaled down – and I’ll get less points as a result.

For now, it’s all a numbers game. If the right numbers come up, I’m in the green. If bad numbers come up – I’m in the red, and the likelihood of me repeating is high.

I’m praying for people to lose their minds just before the exams – I need those points.

It’s scary to think that my future depends on how well other people do in exams. I know roughly how my classmates will go, but I’m in the dark as to how other people will go. Of course, for myself to go well points wise I need other people to do badly, which is kind of weird. I don’t usually wish that people sucked at what they did, but really – if you do well at your exams, you’re hindering me!

In all honesty, I think that the scores will balance themselves out – and I’ll get into whatever course I want to at whichever Uni I want to. While my UMAT results weren’t crash hot, (in actual fact, they were below average, oops), I’m sure that people will see through the fact that there’s more to life than standardised testing, like the SAT’s or whatever those yanks have.

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: exams, numbers, points, School, subjects, TCE

[Quick shout-out to the last episode of season 4 of The O.C – The End’s Not Near, it’s Here]

So I had my last day of formal school last friday.

Last day of school – for ever.

For ever – it means no more BBQ Bonanzas from Bakers Delight, no more Ronson, no upper common room superiority, no shouting obscenities at innocent passers-by, none of that.

To think that I won’t ever run another assembly at Calvin again, nor ‘just hang’ with my mates outside the common room, taking in some serious sunlight.

Unless I see bump into my friends in town or something, I probably won’t ever see them again. I can guarantee you that there will be people from my year that I will never, ever see again (after the formal, of course).

Everyone says that they’ll stay in touch, but they never do – this is a proven fact.

It’s no secret that I’m really disappointed about leaving. Hell, I doubt you’d want to leave a place filled with people who care about you, a place where you’ve experienced the highs and lows of the best friendships of your life, or the place where you’ve never consumed so much junk food in any single day.

We say we’ll look onwards and upwards to Uni, or whatever we’re doing next year. In truth, we probably will, but we’ll never forget how good the upper common room smelled, how it felt, what kind of a vibe it had.

We say we’ll keep in touch, but the sad truth is that we almost never do. If we happen to bump into each other in the street, sure, we’ll stand in the middle of the road and catch up, but we’ll rarely go out of our way to dedicate some time to really catch up – usually because we’re far too busy doing our own things. Besides, that’s what FaceBook is for Speaking of FaceBook, I’ll be getting one sometime after exams. I detest MySpace with a passion, though, so I definitely won’t be getting a MySpace.

Alternatively, you can contact me through various ways – the easiest is to shoot me an email (bennglingbling [at] gmail [dot] com), but you can see other ways to contact me here.

Anyways, freshbytes is here to assist you in keeping in touch with your mates from Calvin – for those who aren’t into the whole “social networking” thing at all, freshbytes is here for you.

Visit the forums, or simply post comments on posts. I’d appreciate it

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: Blog, bonanza, calvin, facebook, forums, myspace, ronson, School