Jun 03

Once again now…

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Yes, it’s that time of year again, that wonderful time of year when Study Time > Blogging Time.

Instead of writing some long-winded post that some of you may or may not read anyway, I’ll just link you to some phishing article over on my personal blog.

Happy holidays to all you school kids.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , ,

Feb 03

Yes, yes, I know.

I haven’t had a post on here in a while. For those who have absolutely no idea of what I’ve been up to…well, I’ve been on holidays.
No, not the same kind of holidays that most of ‘us’ are on now. A genuine holiday away from home.
Last week, I enjoyed myself in Scamander while it was nice and warm (borderline friggin hot). I quite enjoyed it, mind you we got out of there just before the hottest temperature was recorded there ;-) .42.2 degrees C, I couldn’t think of a better place to be in hot weather, mind you!

So, now I am up here (Ulverstone) with broadband access, unlike the free dial-up we got at Scamander (SLOW). And this would be the worst location to fry in the heat. Ok, maybe that’s not true, there is air conditioning here.

But anyway, on Saturday I went to watch my older cousin play 2nd grade cricket for Ulverstone in Burnie. 3 caught-behinds and some fantastic cricket shots by the better batsmen in the team, nothing better to watch. If only….if only the canteen was open all day and it wasn’t so bloody hot. That day, Burnie recorded a temperature in the 30’s which was higher than most of the temp’s in the state! Overall, a good days spectating.

Sunday was a little different. Cooler temps were a nice change, but the Ulverstone cricket ground is no more than 800m from the house at which I am staying. This time I was watching my younger cousin play 3rd grade. 1 caught-behind, plenty of ‘chirping’ and a steady 22n.o. with the bat later, it was a good day.  Mind you, for the group of which I hang out with, it would be a very different experience. These cricketing guys are fairly social beings, their friends hang around the club rooms to watch their mates and their mates’ mates play cricket. A little different to what I’m used to, that’s for sure. Offtopic for a second, but a good beer afterwards went down really well, I kid you not :-) !

Boag’s Classic Blonde, or something like that. Very nice. Even better when you don’t pay for it :D .

A good weekend of spectating cricket, and then to head home to watch the Aussies play cricket and Federer and Nadal in the Tennis…a really great day to watch sport. YUM!

Depending on what happens this week, I may not be able to publish another post. I’m away until Saturday, unless something changes. Hey, this looks like my shortest post in a while, WOW! Less than 450wds, wow.

Catcha later,

/weed

written by Chris Jacques \\ tags: , , , , , ,

Sep 14

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 :P

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: , , , , , , , , ,

Jun 15

Well, as the holidays draw to a close, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on everything that the holidays are…

The most recent event was the inagural -=(NoSpoon)=- LAN, where sleeping was optional, and pwning n00bs on CS:CZ was not. We didn’t get any sleep, but we did manage to clock up an awful lot of CZ hours… At this time, a special mention of the following people are in order:
((NS)) invASIAN: the one who was completely dead at around 10am the following morning. UT:GOTY now works on his machine, though! Stoked!
((NS)) Roarchas: managed to go home and sleep, was straight back into it the following morning.. Good work!
((NS)) Eudorus: had clocked up so many CS:CZ hours beforehand that it didn’t matter how well he went in games, just how log he could be seen “in-game” for… :D
((NS)) weedman: because you go to LANs to watch TV. Rabbit ears FTW!
((NS)) noobjuice: the newcomer to the -=(NoSpoon)=- LANs, he made a gallant effort in all games. His computer seemed so impressed it BSOD’d on command!
All in all, a good afternoon/night/morning had. Because, at the end of the day, it’s not about how much you won or lost – all that matters is that you played the game! YEAH!
Anyway, here are the totals for hours clocked up (most of us managed to hit a 10 – EAGLES SCREAM! Steam rating on Steam – bear in mind that some CS:S hours were clocked by other members… I blame Nick Jones for the amount of Half-Life 2 hours. Far out, Nick!
We also managed to chew through about 750MB of data, for those interested :D

-=(NoSpoon)=- Steam Rating

Anyway, there are other things to life besides gaming, they are outlined below:

Still waiting on my shipment of games from the US. For those of you that don’t know, PriceUSA is a great place to buy goods in the USA – basically, they buy the goods for you then ship the goods to your Australian address – handy for buying things online that don’t offer shipping to Australia. Really good stuff!

In terms of other social stuff from my social scene, there wasn’t much – I didn’t manage to go to many of my youth groups events, nor did I get much homework done. No, for me, these holidays were mostly about relaxing after the first term of year 12 – truly nerve-racking stuff!

On to the main topic, and it is the OC! In the holidays, one of the things I did manage to do was finish off Season Four of the OC. For those that don’t know, I actually purchase all four seasons of the OC on DVD at the start of this year in Adelaide… It cost me a bit, but boy, was it worth it!

Simply put, The OC is the best teen drama every made. Forget Home and Away, Neighbours, Degrassi, Dawon’s Creek, or any of those teen dramas you’ve seen, because The OC blows them all away. Search “teen drama” in google, and boom – The OC is second in the list. It practically defines teen drama!

Season 4 of The OC is awesome. It’s the culmination of the entire series, the spot where all the storylines are brought together and made so that you get to know what happens at the end. Does Summer marry Seth? Does Ryan go back to his old life? In a sense, the final scene of The OC brings the whole series back to the start – I won’t reveal any of the details here, but I will say that it’s really an apt finish to a great series – as was this post to the holidays.

Ooh – segue. See ya’ll tomorrow, comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , ,