freshbytes

Well, the inagural Study Camp for 2008 has been and gone.

Sure, the study sessions could have been longer and more frequent, but it was fine. Really, it was.

Sure, there were 6 laptops there (and one most excellent Linksys WRT-54GL router w/DD-WRT), and Mr Lineage is more than correct in saying that they were just going to be a distraction from study – which they were. I’m glad I didn’t take mine.

Because of the Study Camp, I don’t have any pre-prepared content for y’all to enjoy this weekend, so I’ll just whip something up now…

On my last post, there was a comment from turkeybrain about how he doesn’t think that anyone else reads this stuff.

Now, he may have gotten that from the fact that y’all don’t post any comments, man! I mean, really! Go ahead. make a comment – for what it’s worth, they’re free and you can say whatever you like – internet anonymity is awesome for that kind of stuff. Of course, I’ll know who you are (depending on your screen name and whatnot), but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of posting on freshbytes…

Anyway, I can safely say that there are actually people who read this stuff – even if you don’t know about it. Just because there is a definite lack of comments doesn’t meant that this place is a ghost town, turkeybrain.

I fully understand that not everyone is into the whole “ooh, Internet!” thing. While I certainly am, there are those of you who clearly aren’t with the exception of the odd MSN/MySpace/FaceBook session. I get that, I do.

Another thing I understand is how geeky it is to have your own website, let alone two. That’s a topic for another time, though.

Anyways, I hope you’ll leave a comment on this post – if you haven’t left a comment, ever, why not post one on the Freshbytes Wall? It’ll show up on every page – it’s the little block on the upper right hand corner of every page. Hit the button to get started.

I’ve been wanting to post this for a while now, so here it is…

Ever since McDonalds bought out the new burger packaging that has the funky info on the inside, I’ve been wanting to know what the value of M is. You know the one that tells you how much beef McDonalds bought, how many Mmmmm’s that equates to, etc.

Well, Lumus from the MacTalk Forums managed to work out the value of M – as according to McDonalds. Unfortunately, his working was out by a factor of 16, but hey – his post on his MobileMe shows just how easy it is to create a quick website using Apple gear.

You can read his post here. (Original credit MacTalk Forums)

One last thing – there are 5 days of school left. Forever…

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: Blog, camp, mactalk, mcdonalds, School, study

So it’s that time of the year…

The time of when we fill out those forms for the Calvin Magazine (more on that later), saying who we are, what we want to be in 5 or 10 years time, etc.

So I came to the part labelled “What is your favourite memory from Calvin?”… and I paused.

Favourite memory from Calvin? There are far too many…

• Year 3 – there was an incredibly awesome teacher. She was also heaps pretty, too. Anyways, this incredibly awesome teacher was definitely the highlight of Year 3 – she made maths fun, for crying out loud! It doesn’t get much better than that – ‘cept when all your other year 3 subjects are fun as well! I don’t really remember much else about year 3 (apart from extra music below) – I was fairly good friends with Ben Steyne, and together we conquered the whole Primary campus with his 3-2-1 Thunderbirds! playset. It was awesome…
• Again, year 3 and it’s extra music classes. Now, because Ben Steyne and I were so damn excellent at Music (as a result of separate, private [piano] lessons), we were entitled to go to these special music classes for people who were musically gifted. Unfortunately, these weren’t so much extra music classes as much as they were bludge lessons – at the time, all Ben and I did when we weren’t practising for our next concert or whatever (which was 99% of the time), was socialise with the (at the time) Year 6 girls… Good times had!
• “Monkey”-ing around in year 5 (or 6) – imitation is definitely the best form of flattery. I was imitating someone in my class when she started to get really annoyed. I think the teacher then noticed it was annoying her and she (the teacher) then told me to stop being a monkey, ‘cos apparently, to monkey someone is to imitate them. I think it was designed to embarrass me, but I didn’t care…
• Year 6, and it was time for our buddies. Now, we got to choose partners, so that each Prep kid had 2 year 6 buddies. Not unlike when I was in Prep, we also had to write stories for our Prep buddies. I don’t have the foggiest idea what my story to my buddy was, but I do remember that I chose one friend over another… Callum A was his name, and I was fairly good friends with him as well. More so than another guy you all might know, Jaymes C. Somehow, I managed to pick Callum over Jimmy to be my buddy-partner, and I don’t think Jimmy ever forgave me for that…

…and that’s just Primary school!

I’m fully aware that some of you mightn’t have primary school stories as colourful as mine – there were definitely some other stories that aren’t really appropriate. Now is not the time, nor the place.

So, back to this leavers interview…

I’ve put down “Tamworth 2006, aka Science and Engineering Challenge 2006″ as my favourite memory from Calvin… It was completely epic. So epic, in fact, I’ve got a website (almost) dedicated to it… See here.

200+ Krispy Kream Donuts.
38 students.
3 teachers.
13+ hours of bus.
4+ hours of plane.
4 days.
3 parents.
2 hotels.
1 Grand Challenge.

Yeah – that’s pretty much the best excursion ever. No idea how you’d top it…

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: Blog, calvin, challenge, engineering, epic, interview, krispy kream, leavers, magazine, prep, School, science, tamworth

I’ve seen Definitely, Maybe (IMDB) and it’s a great movie.

I asked a friend if he’d seen it, and he said yes. I then asked him if he thought if he thought it was a chick flick, and he also said yes.

Now I’m not sure where this post is going – but I’m definitely sure that Definitely, Maybe is one of those “feel-good” movies that everyone can enjoy.

Running out of inspiration here, so I’ll just wrap it up…

Radi8 on Friday was awesome. I haven’t been to Woody’s Skate Center in quite a while (at least 3 or 4 years) so it was a little tricky at first. After an hour or so, I was blasting around the track

Speaking of Woody’s, I haven’t been there in such a long time – and they’ve completely revamped that place! They now have a fully-fledged LAN centre – all their cases are Antec 900’s (awesome, btw. If I was building my own gaming rig that would be my case of choice, so awesome it is) and they all have widescreen LCDs. Stephen M in particular was totally enthused by the computers, and tried to rope me into gaming with him for an hour.

Gee I was tempted (at $4/hour, which isn’t bad) but I knew that Radi8 was for me to *shock horror* socialise!

Ah well. All in all, it was fairly good night, what with mega smoke machines and laser thingo’s and whatnot, but yeah.

This week’s song for the week is Trouble, by Shampoo (iTMS). This brings me way back (well, I think I heard it when I was really, really young) and I recently heard it again, sung by Joe who drove me and some other guys to Woody’s.

In other news, there are 4 weeks of school left forever.

It’s scary.

I don’t want to leave – it’s not like I haven’t been at Calvin for long enough, but it’s genuinley scary to think that I’m probably never going to see Calvin. I’ll certainly never have the satisfaction of getting my brain crammed full of educational things like “but(t) fields” (ask Year 12 Physics for that one)…

One of these days, I’ll dig out a class photo from Prep so you can see us all… and laugh mercilessly.

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: Blog, definitely, maybe, radi8, School

Sheesh. If only I had a honey

Look, it’s the opening line and I’ve already digressed! That has pretty much set the mood for the rest of this post…

So, if you’re asking where the games are, the answer is, gone. I’ve removed the games. Not such a popular move I know, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find them on the internet, if you know what I’m saying…. Just gotta click!

If you’re looking for the snow and wondering where our snow day had gone like I was, I’m happy to announce that I found it. I’ve found the snow!

Most of the snow is currently located on the slopes of Mount Field, in Mount Field National Park. I went up there from the last Thursday and Friday of the holidays with the Radi8 Youth Group, and it was cool. Actually, scratch that, it was ice cold – Top Gear references for the win. This was the day after I bought my iPhone – more on that later.

For now, though, just read the report on the snow below.

So Thursday morning found myself and some 25 other people arriving bright and early at the Radi8 headquarters. From there, we packed the trailer full of our gear, and then it was just a small matter of fitting everyone in some form of transport.

Naturally, yours truly missed out on the “good seats” in the Patrol with all the guys (well, the guys that I was friends with), so I had to bus it up with the ladies. Of course, this might sound glamerous/lucky for me, but it was far from it. Screaming Year 7 girls isn’t anyone’s idea of fun – and it certinaly isn’t mine. My only solace was the awesome music, leading to my purchase of Break Me Down by Christian City Church, from their album For Your Glory (iTMS links).

I hid behind my sunnies until we arrived at New Norfolk. Here, I stocked up on supplies and the like, consisting of two packets of Starburst and a morning tea of an egg and bacon pita with BBQ sauce from Banjo’s. Mmm…

We eventually arrived at the Mount Field huts, where we the unpacked our gear, and so on. Frugus was the order of the day, being the name of the hut that Stephen M stayed in. Lunch then consisted of simple buns with various fillings. It was nice, the but real highlight was what came next: the snow.

We all got dressed for the snow. Some had ski-pants, others still had jeans and (Dunlop) Volley’s. We drove to the car park, and began our ascent up the mountain. Onwards and upwards was the motto of the day as we struggled though a clear feet of snow. Powder snow is really, really cool – you think you’re stepping onto snow that will hold your weight up, but it doesn’t and you get your foot stuck. Dangerous, but fun.

On the first day we hiked all the way up to the base of the ski slopes – a long arduous journey that involved a lost camera, an inner tube, 4 toboggans, a body board, and the mother of all toboggans. At the base, we made camp around some rocks, and while some others journeyed further up, a couple of us stayed behind to make tunnels in the snow, freeze our fingers off, and have an awesome time doing so!

When we were all freezing/had our fill of snow, we journeyed back down – whilst it was still difficult going down (we could fall on our faces at any time) it was far easier than coming up. It was then back to the camp to dry off and down some hot chocolate, and dinner was prepared. After a scrumptious dinner of burritos, we enjoyed a small chapel service by candle light.

It was then time for the most extreme Texas Hold ‘Em poker tournament. Yours truly got out really early due to a couple of failed bluffs – All In doesn’t have the same effect in real life that it does have in the Texas Hold ‘Em game on iPhone/iPod Touch – when you go All In on that, usually the other people are scared off and fold…

Redemption arrived in the form of a second life – someone dropped out, and asked me to take over for them. This time I wasn’t so callous with my money – I managed to win a couple of pots. However, the inevitable happened (got beaten with an open ended straight, WTF!) and I came around 5th. Nathan dH managed to take out the cup – snagging an ace-high four-of-a-kind along the way.

Bed ensued at 10:30. I think everyone slept far better than they thought they would.

Early the next morning, we had breakfast and then proceeded to pack our bags. We had to be out of the campsite at 10, so we hurried off to the ski carpark for more snow fun. This time, I didn’t journey up, but those that did were rewarded with snow. Instead, I stayed at the lodge and played poker with a couple of other guys – this time, I was doing really well – but I eventually dropped out to play Catch Phrase! with some other guys who had dropped out of poker beforehand.

It was then time for a creamy chicken soup lunch, with bread rolls and various fillings again. Tomato soup was also on offer, but chicken seemed more enticing. After we had packed up, it was time to leave the snow.

We arrived at the Russell Falls/Mount Field National Park info centre – and we walked to Russell Falls. A quick snack in the park followed, and by that time people were wanting to go home. So we did.

The girls were even more rowdy on the way back, requesting the infamous Do Wah Diddy song by Manfred Mann. While it is quite a good song, I couldn’t find it on Katrina’s iPod. The girls then had to wait until we hit New Norfolk for Dean’s iPod – and when it was finally playing, they didn’t even sing along!! The nerve! After that I ended, I managed to choose For Your Glory and stick it on repeat all the way back…

None too soon, we hit Hungry Jack’s Hobart – I had a double Stacker. It was sort of like a double cheeseburger, but nicer. That was dinner.

Finally, we arrived back at Radi8 HQ – a massive amount of R&R awaited us once we got home.

Apart from the aforementioned Winter Camp, school holidays have been great. Now it’s time to knuckle down for the last 31 days of school – the last days of school for me, ever.

I’ll finish with a joke -

Roses are red;
Violets are blue,
In Soviet Russia,
Poems read you!

Apologies if you didn’t get that. Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: apple, Blog, honey, iphone, iphone 3g, poker, radi8, School, snow, starburst, winter camp

If this is a little late appearing on the net, I apologise profusely. For once, it isn’t Chris’ fault as MySQL was down as of 11:01pm AEST, so apologies in advance. If you want to know more, head over to my other site to read all about it.

So I was at Youth Alive last Saturday night – and it was awesome.

The actual event was only half the fun, though. The bus ride up and back was very close to surpassing the actual event itself…

It’s no secret that I’ve been at Calvin for a while now – along with some other select people, I’ve been at Calvin ever since Prep in 1996. That was a while ago now, and while my memories of that period are sketchy at best, I do remember the physical stuff – namely a book that my buddy in Year 6 gave me.

It was entitled “Super (my full name here, haha)” and it was some story about how I managed to save the lives of 3 people, and all that… You know, the typical stuff that 5 year olds dream about. We all want to be superheroes at the age, we’re not obsessed about computers, MSN, or our MySpace/Facebook profiles (if only I had thought of social networking back then, ha!).

What brought me back to this book was our new youth group leader – Annika. One other guy asked her whether she knew his buddy when he was in Prep, and she replied yeah, but his buddy was a grade below her. Adam and I then piped up that she must have been one of our buddies in Prep, seeing as the guy who asked was one grade below us. Well, it turns out she wasn’t one of our buddies, but she was indeed in Year 6 when we were in Prep. She then also made the comment that she put everything into that book, and hoped that her buddy (who is also in Year 12 at Calvin now) still had it.

Well, I still have my book. Last night, I managed to dig out that Superhero Benny book – of course, I wasn’t known as Benny back in those days, only by my full name – but it did remind me of days gone by.

Reading through it, you could definitely tell that it was put together by someone in Year 6, no offence. My sister also has one of these books, made for her by a friend of mine. In terms of graphical quality, hers is definitely better. That’s not to say I’m not appreciative of the effort put into the book, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s an awesome idea, and hope it still goes in in Year 6 today.

However, there are elements in mine which I didn’t think were present at that level – such as the inclusion of a certain someone who I didn’t think I was completely obsessed with, even in Prep. Just goes to show how amazing she must have been in Prep! Not to mention how amazing she still is…

I know there wasn’t much of a message this morning, but comments below if you have any.

Here’s page 7 of the book – one of these days, I’ll put up the whole thing so you can giggle away. Interestingly, page 7 is one of the pages that doesn’t mention anything about my real name, nor does it mention that certain someone. As usual, click on the image to see it full-size.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: calvin, mysql, superheroes, youth alive

For those of you that didn’t get the title joke, read it as: “Mid Year Exams DO NOT equal FUN!”

Too geeky for you? I thought so.

Anyways, this week has been rather hectic – maybe it’s just me making up for all the study that I haven’t been doing during non-exam time, but it seems like I’m spending most of my day head down, reading from a textbook, scribbling a note in my information sheet every now and again, and then repeating this over and over again, day in, day out…

Luckily, though, I have a GREAT music collection to keep me company – The 100 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music. I bought the album off the iTunes Music Store for the sum of $10.49 – bargain! If you’ve got iTunes installed, hit this link for a preview…

Now, some of you would say that buying classical music is silly because it isn’t copyrighted, but that’s a topic for another day, unfortunately…

Onto Radi8 news and it was yet another upsized version of the fantastic youth group last friday… Bush donuts are great, and the winter camp (if I go) will be great too! Can’t wait for the bonfire this Friday – exactly what everyone needs in the cold Winter night…

It’s always struck me as a little odd that even though we’re getting more and more sun each day (as we’ve passed the shortest day of the year), the days are STILL getting colder! How does that work, because more sun should equal more warmth…but apparently, it doesn’t.

I blame Tasmania.

Time to go, but not before one more video… This week on the Radi8 Digital Scavenger Hunt, it’s Dave O, Thomas v S, Angelo O, Eliot P and Wesley H as they buy 10c of petrol (this was back in 2007), singing Jingle Bells outside a supermarket, doing cartwheels in Kingston Town – you get the idea.

Enjoy, and as usual, comments below!

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: classical, digital, exams, hunt, itunes, mid, Music, radi8, scavenger, store, year