freshbytes

C’mon, we want SNOW already!

Look, I know this post is far overdue, but it must have somehow fallen to the bottom of the freshbytes blog pile…

Anyhow, it’s here now. We got some snow when we didn’t want it (driving to Mount Nelson with lots of snow is fairly good fun, though) and even though it did snow on a couple of nights, it didn’t settle and that’s why this post is here. It should have been here a long time ago, but, to quote Ned Kelly, “Such is life.”

I’m not too sure how my holiday plans are stacking up to what I thought they would be – the first week has been fully hectic, y’all, and the second week is only going to be more so.

I’ve been to one eighteenth (cheers Christo), worked three week days, and lazed around for the rest.

This week, I’m working one day, watching a movie the next. Some sort of a LAN with the NoSpoon fellas is also coming up after the movie. After that, it’s a toss up between Calvin Magazine 08 duties and a Radi8 Winter Camp. Currently undecided which one I’ll go to.

On top of all this, there is a large amount of study to be done. I’ll try and get it done this week, but no promises :p

I’ll try and grab some more pics of the NoSpoon crew at Chris’ – if you haven’t already seen the pics, head on over to the NoSpoon page.

Speaking of which, Apple news includes iTunes 8, iPhone/iPod Touch OS 2.1, new iPod Nanos, new iPod Touch refreshes, etc. I’m sure you can find out the info from a quick Google.

It’s almost surprising I’ve done little gaming these holidays, but I’m sure that’ll change at the NoSpoon LAN. I know some others of us have been trying to clock up those Commander Keen hours

I should be getting my iPhone soon, expect photos somewhere.

Anyways, if there’s anything I’ve missed, shout out in comments. Good news is a little thin on the ground.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: apple, Blog, calvin, holidays, LAN, magazine, NoSpoon, radi8, snow, winter camp

I know this person that is fairly weird. Let’s call her Sally*, cos I don’t actually know any Sallys. Now Sally isn’t a friend of mine, nor an acquaintance, but Sally is fairly weird. By fairly weird, I don’t mean socially awkward or anything, oh no. Sally socialises fine with her peers – irrespective of gender. However, Sally does have a quality that sets her apart from others – I’ll explain in a little bit.

I think it started when I showed Sally a clip off YouTube a couple of months ago – now the clip wasn’t bad in any way, but it did contain some coarse language, and while I thought the clip was uproariously funny, Sally did not. (If you cannot be bothered reading on, go and watch the clip here. Enjoy!)

Now, that was all well and good until Sally decided to give me a look that said “This isn’t funny and you’re not funny either. My opinion of you just went down a million points.” So maybe it wasn’t so much a look that said all that, more of a vibe… As the situation got increasingly awkward and uncomfortable silence set in, some other person chose another YouTube clip, and everything was okay again – phew! Or so I thought…

Fast forward to a couple of days ago, and the same scenario magically happens again. There Sally is, berating someone else for their sense of humour (or lack thereof, in this case). This time, Sally was saying “That’s not funny” repeatedly to someone else, and the someone else was ignoring this person – for reasons best unknown.

Now, it wasn’t about what Sally was saying, or what she was saying it about – it was the way that she was saying it. Direct eye contact, unmoving, hard, determined – and said with a steadfast conviction, like she REALLY didn’t think it was funny.

Well, Sally’s weird. It’s not like she doesn’t have any social skills or anything; far from it. She’s great with other people her age, especially of the same gender. No, it’s because she has some kind of conviction that she has, a steadfast conviction that allows her to act the way she does without being tagged a social outcast. It’s this steadfast conviction that permits her to be “the woman that voices her mind”, in the words of Christina Aguilera

If you thought the above message was cool, Transformers at Radi8 last Friday was far cooler. It’s the first time I’ve seen the Transformers movie even though I’ve got a Channel BT copy of it. Let me just say that Megan Fox wasn’t there for her acting skills… Transformers was followed by Die Hard 4.0 – something I had seen before. Now, if we were going to watch Die Hard 4.0, we should have seen Rogue Assassin instead – it’s a lot more violent, but it is exceptionally good!

By this time you would have realised it’s school holidays for us Taswegians – because that’s our demonym, yeah? Wikipedia is awesome.

On the Apple news front, there have been rumours of new iPod Nanos, iTunes 8, and even iPhone software 2.1 – whatever is being released, we’ll see it in three days (accounting for time differences).

The song for this week is Britney Spear’s “Radar” – iTMS link. I actually heard this song on the way back down from Launceston when I travelled up to Youth Alive. At the time, I didn’t realise who sang it – otherwise I would have gladly sung along :p

I’ll leave you with one last thought:
If you don’t have a kind of steadfast conviction like Sally does, I suggest you get it. Find it. Do whatever you have to do to acquire it, just don’t fake it!

Comments below.

* names have been changed to protect the innocent. It’s a small small world!

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: apple, Blog, conviction, die hard, radi8, rogue assassin, steadfast, transformers, youtube

I’m sorry about the delay in posts, once again you can blame Chris. Oh well, moving on…

If you missed the last post, head here to read it, or click the previous post button down after this post.

I’m fully aware that the iPhone 3G is a gadget in massively high demand, but it’s sometimes hard for Apple as a company to predict how much stock they’ll need for a particular product. Sure, the iPhone 3G has been described as “the second coming” or “the be-all and end-all”, but does it really come as surprise that the iPhone 3G is one of the most highly-anticipated smartphones to come out on the market, possibly being the best thing, EVER?!

Well, Apple apparently underestimated how popular the iPhone actually was.

ArsTechnica says:

There was a hilarious explanation given regarding shortages of the iPhone 3G. While Apple is “confident” in the ability create supply, it apparently is “difficult to predict demand.” Nonetheless, Apple is preparing a roll out in 20 more countries on August 22nd, and will be selling the iPhone 3G in more than 70 countries by year’s end.

Hilarious, indeed. How could Apple have mis-underestimated the popular iPhone 3G? Didn’t they go to all the trouble to create massive, massive speculation, “leaked” spy shots of the new model, awesome new features such as 3G, GPS, new design, the iPhone 2.0 software, and so many other cool features – it’s laughable that Apple couldn’t anticipate this. And they said Apple had “genii”….

Anyways, the weekend was pretty mad, if you haven’t already read my post at my other website, then you should go and read it now. I went to two 18ths, but three people had birthday parties – congrats to Felicity, Paul, and Ashley. I don’t know how much you drank, but I actually used my bottle-opening belt to open a bottle. I felt really tough after that, like I had just fulfilled another chapter in the Benny Ling saga. Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea what I was thinking when I bought that belt – it was a good four years or so ago though, so it’s not like it’s a new belt, by any means. Aidan just wanted something to open his Corona with, and I suddenly realised that my belt had a bottle opener. Handy.

Radi8tion07, “NagFest”, was a massive hit. Sure, Black team didn’t win – Adam wasn’t there, so maybe that was why – but we had loads of fun, and maybe even learnt something? I for one didn’t know that a horse was called a Nag. Sure, whatever. Since we’re talking about horses, I’m going to go ahead and wish them a happy horseday or whatever, because August 1 is the official horse day. No horsing-around, thanks!

The radi8 winter camp is coming up soon. It’s a winter camp, so it means lots of Skiing at Mount Field. It’s from September 18-19, and it costs $40/person. I’m not totally sure if I’m going or not – sure, it sounds like fun, but not really if you don’t have any friends that are going – and places are limited to 25, so hurry up and book!

Today’s parting video is brought to you from Paul’s bday party – video courtesy of Emily’s phone camera. Apologies in advance for the utter rubbish quality, my phone didn’t do so well either, and the iPhone, well, it can’t do video at all!

This firework was as big as your thigh, but about half as long, and it was called the “Underwater Fury”. It wasn’t actually underwater – and it was also far cooler if you were actually there – but you went to Flicks’ instead, didnt you?

Enjoy, comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: 3g, apple, arstechnica, bday, belt-buckle, Blog, bottle opener, drinking, fireworks, iphone, iphone 3g, party

No, you can’t have an iPhone 3G.

Why? Because Telstra in Tassie don’t have any more in stock; they only received something like 200 of these units, and they sold out sometime on Saturday afternoon.

No really, why can’t I have an iPhone on a different carrier? Well, because you can’t get Optus 3G reception in Tassie, as demonstrated by the following picture:

…does anyone else see my problem?! So even though Optus offer the best data plans out of all the three carriers who are selling the iPhone 3G, I can’t go with them because their 3G coverage in Tassie is non-existent.

So, dear reader, I find myself in a precarious position:

1. Go with Telstra’s $30/month plan, which gives me: 22 minutes of calls, 2.5MB of data (yeah, 2.5 MEGABYTES of data, on a 3G phone), and on top of that, I have to pay $399 upfront for my iPhone! To be fair, I do get free Wi-Fi at all Telstra’s Wi-Fi hotspots which equates to pretty much any Maccas, and some places in town…
2. Buy iPhone 3G outright for $847 (16GB) and just use it with my current pre-paid SIM. I won’t have any data this way, but at least I’ll have 1c text to all Telstra mobiles!
3. Buy iPhone 3G outright for $847 (16GB) and upgrade my current SIM to NextG pre-paid. Data costs are completely ridiculous, far more than the equivalent Optus ($14.95 for 200MB compared to $59 for 200MB with Telstra) or Vodafone data packs, but I’ll have the best coverage…

Choices, choices. I hate it how being Tassie makes us disadvantaged though lack of technology. When a telecommunications has no 3G coverage in an Australian state, that’s just not on. Intelligent Island? Give me a break. Mark my works, while Telstra has the monopoly that it has over the telecommunications industry like it has currently, Tassie will continue to remain the most un-intelligent island. For example, it currently costs Internode (an Internet Service Provider) SIX times as much to ship data (through Basslink) from Melbourne to Tassie than it does for them to ship data from Melbourne to New York. Again, corporate Telstra screws the small guy.

Telstra really is the epitome of a bloated telecommunications company. The things they do well – coverage – are more than offset by the things they do badly – price, service, value for money.

But enough of Telstra and their corporate monopoly. Now, how about we talk about something else not-funny? Something, say like the so-not-funny Year 12 funny photo? Picture after the jump – click on the link, if you don’t know what “after the jump” means.

Here at freshbytes, I personally respect Facebook over MySpace any of the day, as I’ve outlined previously. So it’s not a big surprise, then, that we have built, brick by brick, the Freshbytes Wall. It’s that little piece of ajax-love in the top right hand corner of every page, that sweet widget that allows you to post your comments about the site, do shout-outs, and all that kind of funky stuff. You can additionally view all the comments on the Freshbytes Wall page, where you can also add comments – and they’ll show up on the Freshbytes Wall (and consequently, on every page)! Cool, huh?

Speaking of freshbytes, the Freshbytes Forums are looking a little unloved. Why not register today? You’ll be able to chat with us supergeeks over teh interwebs, and discuss anything that comes to mind…

Radi8: We had the St Vinnies Ball this friday, and it was actually really good! Besides yours truly not making any effort what-so-ever to dress up, there were people there that looked fantastic in their St. Vinnies clothes, and then there was Adam… But really, it was a fun-filled night with the Life Dancers dancing to Greased Lightning, the Macarena, and many other great hits. It was excellent to see a few faces that I hadn’t seen before/had never seen before – I hope you continue to come to Radi8. There was one thing that was pretty amusing, though, and it was that with the exception of <8 people, the whole crowd was exclusively Calvin. I mean, really! Where are all you other teens going? Maybe to CrossEyed Youth?

Anyways, as we Calvin-ers in Years 11 & 12 prep for mid-years, I encourage to tell one person about freshbytes, provided they don’t already know about it.

freshbytes – the freshest bytes on the web, MUCH more than random zeroes and ones!

One last thing, before you get too bored: The Radi8 Digital Scavenger Hunt video for the week! This week, it’s Dean T, Paul C, Emily L, Blair T, Simon J and Danny T in a fun-filled adventure where they sing in Kingston Town, scale tall buildings, do the leap-frog in Franklin Square, and where boys try on girl’s dresses… Enjoy!

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: 3g, apple, calvin, digital, hunt, internode, iphone 3g, monopoly, optus, radi8, scavenger, telstra

I think I’m suffering from writer’s block or something, because I can’t think of what to write for this post. I had a few good ideas about where this was going, some punchy-one-liners, something profound, but now they’re all gone

So I’m going to start off with the tech news of the day, and no, it’s not iPhone-related. You can definitely expect something on that front next week though, when the holy grail of all phones is actually released…

Guys, VOIP is the word of the day. Get into it! If you have a computer with a microphone (USB or what-ever, doesn’t really matter) and speakers, you’re all set! All you need is a client (piece of software that lets you talk with other people all around the world – for FREE, all it uses is your internet connection) such as Skype, and you’re all set!
To the NoSpoon crew, I know we use TeamSpeak for group chat, but maybe we should cut out the middlemand and get VOIP-ing. So get Skype, get a Skype name, and get chatting! My Skype username is “bennylingbling”, (without the quotes) so whenever you want to chat, I’ll usually be there. If I’m not, contact me by IM and I’ll be on Skype faster than you can say Voice Over Internet Protocol!

Radi8, as usual, was awesome – the 4th of July meant that there was the movie Independence Day being shown. The games were based on Uncle Sam, so we had some US General Knowledge questions and a couple of other fun games. Unfortunately, Black Team didn’t win – we lost to some other team I can’t remember by either 4 or 6 points. On another note, the Radi8 website has been changed to incorporate a MySpace and a static (non-MySpace) page, where those of us who don’t have Spaces or Facebooks can see what’s going on – without all the extra crap that a MySpace usually has.

And on that note, MySpace is utterly ridiculous. I don’t know how people can stand using pre-built, shocking-CSS themes, but they just, look, horrible! In this blogger’s humble opinion, MySpace has degenerated into a [insert derogatory word here]-fest of people who don’t know their Verdana from their non-repeating backgrounds.
Facebook, on the other hand, is just an upper class version of MySpace – just without the crappy “custom layouts” and all that other junk. I really like Facebook, just because everyone uses the same layout, the design is clean, and there are cool things like “Walls”, “Pokes”, “Gifts”, and the insanely awesome Facebook chat. MySpace just pales in comparison.

ANYWAY, after that mini-rant, it’s time for what you all came here for: the moral guidance/deep and meaningful. That stuff that makes the world go around, that wonderful, excellent stuff that so few seem to have, and yet long for in the deepest, darkest corners of their hearts… Or something.

Now, I’m not one to be affected by change, but when it’s world-shakingly huge, I stand up and take notice. The 3G iPhone is a good example of this – it’s a device which has generated so much talk, yet has one of THE biggest pedalstools in the history of gadget-goodness. If it doesn’t stand up to be all that it’s hyped up to be, then Apple will take a huge hit because of it.

However, there is one aspect of change that worries me – the fear of the unknown. That part that’s completely open to interpretation, up-for-grabs, and all that kind of stuff. You never know what’s just around the corner in respects to change – that new employee might be a complete clown who doesn’t know anything, or just generally not a very nice person. I think it’s up the individual in regards to how they deal with change – accept it and move on, or rant continually on a small blog that they have… You can see which path I have chosen to take, ya?

There was this event on the weekend that I wasn’t invited to. Sure, I was just a little, tiny, tiny cut, (my ego did take a hit) but then I realised that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t invited. I had been to the ‘event’ two years ago, and yeah, it was awesome, but in that two years – mate, so much has changed! I know I’ve changed, I think that other people have changed, and people just aren’t the same as they were.

If I say any more, you’ll probably stop reading altogether, so I’ll leave you with one last thought and another video from the Radi8 Digital Scavenger Hunt:

“When times change, you’ve got to change with the times.”

This time, it’s Emily J, Lyndsey H, Hannah M, Rachel O, Lucy O, Laura V and Rachel W doing some crazy things, examples of which include: singing the National Anthem in front of a public Australian flag, breakdancing on a cardboard box, cartwheels on the beach, walking out of an elevator backwards, and some other crazy things… You’ll just have to watch the video.

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: apple, change, digital, hunt, iphone, radi8, scavenger, skype, time, voip

So I’ve been playing CS:Source a lot lately, and one of the best quotes ever went a little like this:

[CT One] “Don’t flash the tunnels!”
[CT Two] “Why not?”
[CT One] “Because I’ll be in there.”

Gold! Which is fair enough, if you’re going to be trying to kill people in the tunnels you DO NOT want to be team-flashed.

CS:Source is great, it really, really is. The Magnum sniper is so powerful it’s not actually funny, check this out:

That’s 443 damage in one hit – enough to kill 4 people with one round.

I’m suffering from a complete lack of news at the moment, so I’ll leave it at that for now. My sincerest apologies if you were expecting more.

PS. Two sleeps till the Australian release of the 3G iPhone!

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: apple, awp, counter strike, iphone, source