freshbytes

So.

Here we are again.

The start of a new semester looms large, and it feels like the holidays just flew past.

I doubt it had anything to do with the fact that I worked for the vast majority of the holidays.

Seriously, when I look back and see what I have (or rather, have not) achieved it’s kind of depressing. It all comes down to so much to do and so little time to do it in – whether it’s writing the Monday Morning News for Mactalk, or doing dodgy deals on OCAU, or assembling, testing, and benchmarking my not-so-cheap-anymore gaming rig, sometimes it feels like there’s just not enough hours in the day to achieve what I want to do.

In a perfect world, the sun wouldn’t set until I had accomplished everything I wanted to in that particular day – this would certainly make life easier. It might also help if there weren’t so many other factors that made my life difficult. Why can’t there be less variables to factor in? Why can’t the control be the perfect scenario? Continuing with the science theme, why can’t my hypothesis be correct 100% of the time?

I guess that’s just not how it’s supposed to be.

If everything was so easy, what would push people to do the extraordinary? That being said, what drives people to do the same thing day in and day out? Surely there’s something more than what we’ve been given on this earth?

Whatever it is, I can tell you now that there are a hell of a lot of people searching for it.

Anyway…

I saw the new Transformers movie today with a friend. It was pretty good – say what you will about the plot (holes), Michael bay’s performance as a director, but there’s no denying that however bad Megan Fox’s acting is, she provided ample eye-candy.

As did Isabel Lucas, I might add. She’s hawt.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: again, isabel, lucas, movie, semester, transformers, uni

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