Tag Archives: lame

School

Posted on by

Being the last few days of our schooling life the school has gladly provided us with some useful talks on Sex, Drugs, Alcohol and Driving. In the three talks we had for the day they used a technique that I was first introduced to in English, and researched a little more about. It’s hard sell. Think of the smoking packets that contain the bad teeth or ads that contain gore. This is hard sell and it differs from soft sell because of they way the message is conveyed.

First I would like to thank the speakers for taking the time to come and talk to us, and it does help us. Although the problem I found with all three talks is that it was hard sell. The problem is, it is shown that hard sell does not work for our age group (15 through to 30) as effectively as soft sell.

We were shown car crashes, statistics and the works, however in the afternoon when it was time to go, a large number of people still left the school speeding, music blaring or driving dangerously.

It’s a shame to see all the effort of the talks being wasted, and no message being conveyed, so I think they need to work on their act a bit. If I had to make a clear judgement, I think the hard sell technique made a negative effect.

Board

Posted on by

I’m the idiot who would break into the post office to pop all the bubble wrap.

I’m the idiot who would break into a hardware store to zip all the zippy ties.

Not many days of school left and I’m trying to keep motivated. Currently struggling in Physics, this relativity stuff is horrible. You know the whole “If was standing on a bus that was traveling at the speed of light, what happens if I walk forward” and “If I’m traveling at the speed of light and I look in a mirror what will I see” type of stuff.

I’m struggling to understand and use the provided formulas correctly. Hopefully I’ll get this sorted before the final exam -_-.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share what’s happening with my life and school.

Last weeks of school

Posted on by

First day back from a so called 2 week holiday, which I really hated. I hated even more than usual. Over the 2 week holiday I worked for Data #3, for RTSS (Rio Tinto Shared Services) at BSL (Boyne Smelters Limited) for a much large pay than you typical KFC shift. Which is why my blogging rate has declined. It was nice working, compared to the usual grind of school.

The thought of how annoying school is compared to the work force killed me the whole time, although the day wasn’t all that bad. For school I have an English assignment that requires reading a biography about a person and then using that info to create a radio broadcast like clip. I’ve decided to do Richard Stallman, which is the creator of GPL and GNU and stuffes. His Bio is awesome so far and loving it, half way through chapter three and can’t wait to read the rest.

I suggest you have a read and check out his driving force to defeat closed source operations.You can get it here It’s a really good read and it’s released under GPL so you can download it for free :>.

In other news I got a Nvidia 8600GT graphics card, which I’ve put in my dads computer so I can play these new games, that my Macbooks Intel GPU couldn’t cope with. This calls for a LAN party to test it out, which will occur this weekend. We have aircon in the house now, so keeping the rooms cool will be easy now.

Swam in the pool today for the first time this season with a few of my mates. It was good fun and a good cool down. I expect it to get very hot this year.

Over and out.

TheSkorm.net Up for Sale

Posted on by

TheSkorm.net is up for sale for 4 times the amount that Cubestat has estimated, mainly because $1252 is enough to make me change to a different domain name. Cubestat estimated my domain name to $313.17 USD, which I think is an awful lot of money, and I can’t really see anyone buying this domain for more than $20.

I tried it on a few other sites and domains I own, and one of them got $900 USD, which is fairly nice, for such a basic site, with nothing to fancy.

The site is fun to play around with and test out domain names, however it’s estimates are fairly out their IMOH. It’s nice to think that your site is worth that much. Supposably if I were to put ads on here, I would get 0.40$ USD a day, however I know that won’t happen.

Anyway, start saving up to buy this domain if you want it :P .

National Broadband Network

Posted on by

“As a key element of its plan for the future, the Australian Government has committed to provide up to $4.7 billion and to consider necessary regulatory changes to facilitate the roll-out of a new open access, high-speed, fibre-based broadband network, providing downlink speeds of at least 12 megabits per second to 98 per cent of Australian homes and businesses.”

I’m all for Australia have a good Broadband network, but I have two problems at the moment. Who will own this network and what about international links.

At the moment I can see Telstra being paid by the government to setup this network, and give them the rights to charge huge amounts of cash for other companies to use it. It’s currently $80 for 25GB on 1.5MBit, which for me seems way to much money, considering the internet isn’t owned or run by them. They are making profit out of others work, correct? (and for your information it costs $150 a gigabyte after you go over your limit)

It’s all great giving every household 12mbit down links, until you realize that, every household with 12mbit will wanna access and download from places off shore. Currently we struggle to provide internet over these links as is, and giving people more bandwidth to use that you don’t have is just bad practice.

There have been many cases where one fiber break offshore have caused our whole national network to run at 5kbs, with epic lag. This problem needs to be fixed up.

That is all.

My GPG Key – Write this down

Posted on by
Start GPG

From this post onwards I will be GPG signing my posts to ensure there is no tweaking, the flickr image to the left contains my flickr key both in image format and in text format, and at the end of this post, I will include the gpg public key aswell. GPG is a brilliant way to ensure your shit is actually yours and nobody has tampered with it.

Everything between the start and stop blocks will be signed, not including the html.
My public key is…

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin)
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=/raH
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Stop GPG
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin)

iEYEARECAAYFAkin4S8ACgkQ2Tnf7yyC15vXEACg3NoZM0Y3hrwfFZ9edG20rijp
iCcAn2BaUjvTA5PADBKI1t2up125aORi
=p7AV
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Ford and Computers

Posted on by
Blah Blah Blah, IP addresses are running out, we need to be pushing IPv6 so we can all fit in blah blah blah…

It is true, IP addresses are slowly running out, and considering nearly all house homes are using NAT, we really need IPv6, but the fact of the matter is, we don’t need to rush such an important change. There are plenty of unused IP address, and some silly blocks that should be re sold off.

For example, Ford owns the 19.x.x.x range, and when I nmapped that subnet, I did not find one host that was connected, silly isn’t it. I’d like to see some of the larger subnets that aren’t being used sold off to make room for cheaper services.

VB .net

Posted on by
I was helping a friend out with his IPT assignment, which involved creating a educational game in Visual Basic .net 2005. He decided that he wanted to create a simple hangman game, which I thought was a good choice. Oh how wrong I was.

The last time I programmed in Visual Basics was about 3 years ago, and it was in VB 6. This was a big shock to me. The first step was to load a word list, and select a word randomly. Don’t get me wrong there are lots of information on the net about VB .net, but when your searching, it’s easy to pickup bits of information from VB 6. They changed Open filepath #1 as blah to FileOpen(1,filepath, blah) or something, why make the stupidest change.

Next was arrays, I wanted to put every line of the file, as a word in an array. Simple create an array, load the file by line, and append each line to the array. Not so simple, you first have to make a dynamic array, then tell it to resize to the size 0, then add an item, resize it one larger, add another line ect… Just silly, wheres the append function?

Ok, now we can make an control array of labels to display each letter. Oh, no control arrays. A bit of googling says everything is done in code now, and it’s better. Actually for me it was worse. I didn’t want to dynamically create controls, I just wanted 20 label boxes as an array. Now the websites were correct saying it was easy, but it wasn’t easier, and they neglected to say how to make the array. It took me several minutes to find the information required to make them.

The problems just kept coming and hangman took several hours to get to a very light version (no hangman yet).

So here I am thinking, I’m struggling, how is anyone else in this class gonna get this assignment done?

Silly VB .net, there is a really good reason I use python.

New shoes

Posted on by

My mum bought me some nice new shoes. I always find that when I get new shoes, they never feel like the fit until a week after using them, but these shoes fit so nicely and don’t have that feeling. They are Colorado Tangles and I’m really liking them. More pictures in flickr.