freshbytes

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

Guys, the Year 12 Funny Photo was a COMPLETE disaster. So not funny, not funny at all.

Now I understand why they wanted to take the photos again, and Photoshopped the results… The lighting on that day was truly horrible.

For those that are interested, Grace C-A is apparently organising a “real” Year 12 Funny Photo with Mrs Grice – see her for more details.

Otherwise, enjoy the Year 12 Funny Photo. Or not.

Hit the pic above to see a bigger version (works for every image on the site), or for those that want to download the full version (4MB), click here.

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: calvin, funny, not, photo, year 12

Last Thursday, I went to a Documentary Drama preformed by the Year 9/10 Drama class. The docu-drama was entitled “The Cult of Celebrity”, and it investigated how celebrities affect our lives today.

Besides featuring a song by Britney Spears herself (to their credit, it was well choreographed – thank goodness), it was actually very entertaining and though-provoking. For those of you that weren’t there, (“It’s too cold”, “It’s raining”, “I have homework to do” – slackers, all of you) there was a scene where a couple of guys were doing a court session, where they argued the for and against points of having celebrities influencing popular culture. What they said was largely lost on me, but the ‘court case’ was eventually dismissed. We like our celebrities just as they are, thank you.

Anyways, the main storyline revolved around the preview that the class showed in assembly earlier that day – a “My child’s a star” contest between two child stars (forget their screen names, apologies), Megan Hopper and Emily Jansen. Emily won with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, and the rest of the story revolves around from there…they meet years later in a bar (with a hilarious bouncer), their friends comment on them behind their backs, while meanwhile fan-sites get a straight-A student seeing a shrink because she just isn’t coping…

If you weren’t there, you missed out. Luckily for you, there’s another Drama presentation on this Thursday 3rd July – this time, it’s a comedy by the Student Theatre Company, the excellent Drama class that runs after-hours. It should be excellent – please make an effort to be there!

On the freshbytes news front, you can now post comments in pages. Apologies this took so long to implement – I never realised it was so simple! So, if you’ve been wanting to comment on The Merchant of Venice, the Virtual Game, or even the funky Garageband tunes, you now can! In fact, I encourage you to do so.

One last thing – Radi8 on the weekend was awesome as usual, with an upsized Radi8. I am a little disappointed that the Radi8 website is now a MySpace page, but I do understand why it was done that way. Don’t worry, dear reader, freshbytes will remain WordPress powered for a good period of time – we will reach our target audience eventually

Anyway, in lieu of the Radi8 static-to-myspace downgrade, I’ve got a video for you all… The Radi8 Digital Scavenger Hunt videos from November 2007! This video is Tim’s team which included Tim P, Gemma V, Brendan J, Billy T and Callum M, but fear not – I’ll be posting the other videos each week, so if this isn’t your team – one of these weeks, it will be!

A little background: similar to the Wild Animal Safari held a fortnight ago, we were sent out in teams to do crazy things in Kingston/Hobart – things that included having your whole team in a tree, kissing chickens, singing YMCA with a whole bunch of strangers, getting strangers to spell weird words, walking out of an elevator backwards… the list went on forever. Enough from me, I’m dead tired from the Physics practical write-up, so I’ll shut up and let you watch the video. Comments below, as usual

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: Blog, calvin, celebrity, cult, digital, documentary, drama, Freshbytes, hunt, myspace, radi8, scavenger, School

Christian Perspectives 2008: Reflections

Well, camp is over for another year. The thing about Christian Perspectives that always gets me is the fact that it isn’t a REAL camp as such; no sleeping under the stars, no telling tall tales in the flickering light of the campfire, no cooking your own food and then getting poisoned. What Mrs Laning says is true – it’s a study camp, for Year 11’s and 12’s at Calvin to absorb some Christian Perspectives.

Anyways, after the gruelling one and a half hour bus ride up – people wanted greasies, whatever they are – it was back into the usual activities, where snooker/pool made a popular comeback, as did air hockey and fusball. Basketball was also popular. Others still retreated to their rooms to set up their gear and what-not.

Sessions were the order of the day, and after each session, there was morning/afternoon tea, a little bit of mucking around (with the obligatory cricket, fusball, pool, and basketball) and then another session. Rinse and repeat.

The speaker, Eric Wickmann was actually entertaining, keeping our attention with magic tricks that stunned all. I now know that there are actually FOUR types of people in the world – Beavers, Otters, Lions, and Golden Retrievers. His talk was based on “ASK”: Attitude, Skills, Knowledge. Having the right attitude, and the right skills only got you two thirds of the way. You had to have the knowledge to be able to use your attitude and skills in the right way – or else it just didn’t work. Or something like that anyway – I wasn’t exactly taking notes.. But maybe I should have!

A trip to the beach was the conclusion of activities for day one – where beach cricket, swimming, and beach volleyball reigned! – and after another session, dinner, and The Italian Job, we went to sleep, and that was it.

Bright and early the next morning, the early bird students had showers. The rest slept in. A session, followed by morning tea, another session, and lunch. Then it was down for another trip to the beach, where people enjoyed a game of beach cricket, beach volleyball, or just swam and sunbaked. Can anyone say ‘perfect’ like I can? I don’t mean the beach, nor the games, swimming, or the sunbaking…

Then it was back to base where there was another session. Free time followed, including the obligatory fusball, pool, and basketball. People started getting dressed for Fluoro night, and after some guys were spotted in inside-out dresses, well, it got to the point where it was pretty much anything goes. The Men-In-Black made an appearance, deciding to wear black clothes – we were the outcasts, for sure.

Fluoro night was an outstanding success, where Captain Fluro (Nathan Bosker) made an appearance, as did Used-Car-Salesman Tom de Hoog, Least-Effort James Goodricke, Councilman Ashley Page, plus People’s Choice Awardees Alex Hunt, Grace Campbell-Atkins, and some others…

After the novelty of Fluoro night had worn off, we had some concert items – Liam played and sung two songs for us, cat /dev/urandom piped to /dev/audio, as well as just cat /dev/urandom. It was cool – nothing that we’ve ever tried before, but still fun nevertheless. Chris Jacques then did some serious head-banging to Rammstein’s Du Hast – much to the enjoyment of all in Year 12, who were remembering the Year 10 formal. . Ash’s council talkback – posted here on YouTube. That pretty much summed up the concert items, so Mr Roberts went to Plan B: Mr Robert’s Lame-O Quiz 3! Well, that was the end. Nothing could have beaten Mr Roberts’s Lame-O quiz. The Apha Chief Warden team – but only after some heated controversy – you CANNOT see the Great Wall of China from the moon!!

Anyway, a rather weird movie Serenity followed, and after that, it was time to go to sleep.

The third day, and it was off to the showers again for those early bird students. A session, morning tea, another session, and then, all too soon, it was time to pack up and leave. We emptied the dorms, we cleaned the gathering space, we packed up our gear and loaded it onto the bus. A quick lunch was followed by a bus leaving early, and that was it, Christian Perspectives 2008 was now over, and the Year 12’s were never to be seen at that camp again…

Anyway, enough of what I thought about camp. I want to know what YOU thought of camp! You know the drill; post all of your comments down below…

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: 2008, calvin, christian, perspectives, School