freshbytes

So I have this thing about apple juice – especially the local kind. I love it, it’s great.

If you’re not aware, Lucaston apple juice is the best there is. I’ve only found a couple of places that actually sell it, and yeah – it’s not cheap when you buy 330mL of it at some $4 a pop.

If you pop down to Margate to Meredith’s fruit place, you can buy it in relative bulk – $4.40 for 2L, WOW!

However, what I’m here to talk about today is friendship…

So when I was younger (think year 8/9) a couple of the guys from my grade (Dave L, Aidan J, Liam B?) who all lived in blacker’s would all come around, and we’d go biking together. This wasn’t hard-core downhill trailbiking, it was just “get-on-your-bike-and-pedal-around” biking. We never went anywhere in particular, just sorta hung around Blackers and surrounding areas.

There was this one time I remember, though, were we all went to Aidan J’s house and drank his apple juice. His sister wasn’t very happy about it (apparently because it was for their dinner or something) but it was a sign of Aidan’s friendship at the time that he let us drink his apple juice.

Now, I’m not sure how much this means in the grand scheme of things (especially seeing as it was apple juice, for crying out loud), but we were thirsty at the time, and Aidan gave his special dinner-only apple juice when

he could have easily given us water, or told us to go down the the beach to satisfy our thirst.

The fact is, he didn’t – he gave us bona-fide apple juice.

Now I recently went to see Wall-E with another friend. He’s a friend, but also a colleague – he’s an excellent guy.

Now William L and I now have this scheme on Saturdays where we pack our lunch and take it to work, therefore saving the $10 or so dollars that we would normally spend on lunch. Now, Will’s taken that $10 a week and bought a DSLR (a 40D, at that), and I’ve taken it to pay for my iPhone bill

Even though we pack our lunch separately, we take it in turns to buy the liquid nourishment. We’ve only just started, and Will was first – can you guess what he bought?

Apple juice? Nope.

If you guessed orange, you would have guessed correct.

There’s a pic of this orange juice below.

I have no idea how I managed to write link apple juice and friends, but hey – it’s tasty, and also informative = win-win.

On to the normal stuff, and I’m totally disappointed that Dean has decided to CAN THE 2008 DIGITAL VIDEO SCAVENGER HUNT for Radi8! Oh noes!
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out our video that I posted on YouTube here (or the freshbytes post that contains it here)- otherwise, join me in lamenting the loss of the week…

Juicy comments below, thanks. (Wow – the puns just keep getting better and better around here…)

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: apple, biking, Blog, digital, hunt, iphone, iphone 3g, juice, lucaston, margate, orange, radi8, scavenger, Untitled, Wall-E

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

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