Jul 12

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. :D

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

Jun 14

This time next week, I’ll be home free. No more exams, study, or any of the nastiness for the next three weeks.

I have no sympathy for those about to go back to school tomorrow. Sucks to be you :)

Sadly, it’s not all fun and games. The vast majority of my friends are already on holidays (or will be in the next couple of days), and here I am, slaving over powerpoint presentations and listening to lecture audio, which seems to have been recorded at the “most horrible quality/more appalling than ah-paul-ling” setting… =/

Along with every exam period comes procrastination, and this particular exam period. I’ve done all I can to avoid studying over the weekend, but I managed to look at some Web Management slides. I’m so sorry, fellow procrastinators ;)

Anyway, couple of semi-important things – I’m poor. This has come from me buying lots of things (if it’s important, I’d show you).

I’ve also bought my first song off the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) in a long time, The Ting Ting’s That’s Not My Name. It’s quite catchy, actually. The reason I bought it was because apparently, it’s a heavily played song at the start of Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) sessions.

If you wanna watch the video, hit up this YouTube link.

Go on – you know you want to procrastinate! :D

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

Jun 08

Long story short, there’s still a lot of study to be done and not a lot of time for it to be done in.

Unfortunately, finding motivation to study is difficult, to say the least. There’s always something on the internet more interesting that studying, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, or anything else. Sure, I could just turn off these distractions, but then studying would become more of a chore – and the aim is to make studying something enjoyable.

However, it’s hard to enjoy something when you know you’re not going to fare excellently, either. While the KXT101 exam will be all about pedantics (and semantics), I know that I’ll get caught up, trip up, and fall. Hard.

I suppose it doesn’t help that some of the lecture audio is either missing, or of horrendous quality. I was listening to a lecture today where there was this constant hissing/static in the background – it was so annoying it made what the lecturer was trying to say unbearably difficult to understand. I had to stop it half way through – otherwise, my ears would have started bleeding.

In any case, the countdown begins – not only to WWDC 2009 (3am local time on the Tuesday 9th June for anyone interested), but also to the end of the exam period – my last exam is on the 20th, after which I”m home free for two and a half weeks. ^_^

I look forward to the holidays. Unbelievably so.

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

May 25

So… no updates for a while, huh?

As one of my Uni lecturers put it – we’ve now entered the business end of the semester. Exams are in 3 or so weeks, and there’s no time for blogging when you have 3 assignments due in the next 3/4 days, especially when each assignment is more than 50% of your internal mark… :(

So, no updates. Deal with it – I’ll try and update my personal blog, but Twitter’s where it’s at. ^_^

Comments below.

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

Feb 22

So, UTAS, huh?

… A year ago, the mere mention of the name would elicit a muffled giggle from me. Not because I thought the name was funny, or because of the way it was spelt, or anything like that. Nope – it was because it wasn’t one of those Uni’s that struck fear into the hearts of all that entered it hallowed halls, you know? They say that it’s in the top 10 Uni’s of Australia. Then they go on to tell you that it’s number nine. Out. Of. Ten. :o

In other words, it isn’t one of those respected/well-known Uni’s, like Monash, or Swinburne, (RMIT, etc – the list goes on) – certainly not by me, in any case.

You see, the “master plan” for a while now has been to go to the University of Adelaide and study Dentistry – Adelaide because they produce the best dentists, and dentistry because medicine is overrated, or something to that effect.

If you’ve been reading freshbytes lately, though – you would have seen that I just wasn’t good enough. With a TER of 88.9, and some embarrassingly awful UMAT results, I fell well short of what I needed to achieve. Even UTAS didn’t want me to do medicine!

I’m kind of over that now – the UMAT results hurt more than the TER (missing out by 1.1 points still sucks a lot, though). So for now, it’s the “time to do something random for a year and then apply again for next year” time.

My idea of something random is something I would enjoy, but also be able to do decently in – for higher education entry, I need a credit average or higher, with a solid UMAT score.

Something random would also need to be able to be turned into a career later on down the track.

Naturally, the only thing that fits both of these criteria would be a Bachelor of Computing. Sure, some general science degree would have worked as well, but some people I know are already doing Computing. Being one to follow the crowd, I am now doing Computing as well.

Orientation day for us Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology guys was on Thursday last week, and it wasn’t too bad. A tour of the facilities, lunch, sitting down in lecture theatres, and all that kind of stuff that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

You learn a little – but, just like high school, the most informative sessions is always a chat with mates, or with past and/or present students. They’re the ones that can tell you what you can and can’t do, what to do and when to do it, and more!

Final word?

UTAS seems okay. I’ll still miss Calvin, though*.

Comments below.

* Actually, I might have to go back on that. Stay tuned.

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

Jan 18

What a day. I’m starting to sound like Benny (apologies in advance :) ).

Wednesday, 14th of January. The ‘Acceptance session’ day for the University of Tasmania. Students-running-around-with-parents-day.

Basically, a day where you go and the Uni reps talk to a whole group of people interested in enrolling in Uni for this year. This day was specifically for the previous years’ grade 12’s (like me).  The main lecture theatre wasn’t exactly full, but there were enough people to feel ’surrounded’. Having at least 4 sessions throughout the day accounts of the apparent ‘lack’ of people. The Uni guys talked about the usual stuff, and then split us into groups based on degree areas. For example, the group whom I was a part of was one surrounding the computing department, and this included computing/info systems/game development and most likely others.

This was the spot where things got a little interesting. See, I had organised the day with my friend James to make things easier for the both of us. Now, once we were split into the computing group,James and myself were the only ones in it! SCORE! That, personally, made me more comfortable in the various wanderings around the department buildings. Dells and Macs. Meh.

The second ‘score‘ was the quick visit to the office of the degree coordinators’ office. Various thick textbooks on stuff like XML, but the one that really stood out was the textbook on UNIX! And this was after she mentioned that she teaches Computer Security!

Oh yeah, and for Benny’s sake, she has a mac laptop.

Then was the supposed final part of the session, the so-called E-tour (basically an online guide on how to enrol and do bits and pieces). After initially going into one wrong location, and then being given a location that had previously had the tours earlier (the signs pointed to it), we were finally told the final location of the tour. At this point, James decided to leave, and we were informed that the staff that directed persons to the specific areas (the guys out front) were misinformed about the location of the E-tours in the first place!

At least I (and my father) got a good tour of the Uni. I no longer feel like a ant on approach to a hay bale, if anything a human now on approach to the said hay bale.

During the session, I saw something on the computer in front of me to make me think of this day as weird in every sense of the word. Where , on the Uni site, they would usually have a picture of a student to ’sure-up’ the reality of going to Uni (or something like that), I saw a picture of a person familiar to myself and one of my good friends, Martin P. It was his (this is not confirmed, I am assuming this by previous data sent to me) sister-in-law. WOW, I couldn’t believe my eyes. And thus did the E-tour begin.

Now I thought that after this had finished, we had finished up for the day. How wrong I was. The most important meeting was about to begin.

On my way out from the computer room in which the E-tour was being conducted, who should I see at the entrance but two of the Calvin 2008 leavers, Ellen and Amber. They had a quick chat with me, and then we parted ways.  It took about 10 mins after we parted ways for me to finally realise something that was mentioned in great depth to me before I graduated from Calvin.  “You’ll miss them, You’ll miss the leavers”. The first time I actually realised this, was this day, the UTAS day. Was I really that close to the students in my grade that I’ll actually miss their presence?

That left me in a state of thought that I did not escape from for at least 2 hours afterwards. I still think about it to the present day. I must have been blind that day, ’cause I know I was the day I last saw the leavers.

And that was my day, the UTAS day, Wednesday 14th January ;-) .

/weed

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