Oh No, not again!

Greetings to all you avid blog readers. If you were expecting a long dissertation on the numerous varieties of succulent meats and mouth-watering desserts that I had the pleasure of sampling over this festive season, then I must disappoint you most grievously. For I merely wished to post this as an interim post, a mile stone or a transition point from A to B, from 1 2 3 or male to female in a lude cavortion of primordial sensuality and lust. But I do digress somewhat.

This Christmas I received a product from the Sound Professionals: A set of binaural microphones, Namely the BMC-12's. On receiving this gift - which I might add I knew I had secured for it was under my instrumentation that such a gift was arranged - I whipped out my Iriver H340 and proceeded to record the test recording linked below.

Download Link (format)	Size (MB)	Notes
Ogg	9.6MB	Requires Vorbis supported player (Winamp)
MP3	9.7MB	Supports most Audio Players

And now, I shall depart for it is rather early on this Boxing Day and I did hear in passing, the mention of breakfast.

Where is your stick?

It has struck me as something of a moot point that religions in opposition to each other will in their turn produce literature to ground their own views and the possible views on the faiths that either an independent person or a person of another faith may have on such faiths. This has been brought home to me in such a fashion through the article How to become a Jehovah's Witness by Kenneth Guindon. Throughout this article, Mr. Guindon - who is an excommunicated Jehovah's witness himself, now turned Baptist Minister - proceeds to rant on a bias diatribe against any potential supports of the Jehovah's witness movement - officially the Watch Tower Society. He likens the process of becoming a witness to seven crude steps through which he belittles every action that such people take. Now, I am in no way attempting to lean towards a negative nor positive side in this matter as at this point, I am observing from a reasonably disconnected point of view - as at the time of this writing I attend the Uniting Church of Australia. However, it is to my mind that I believe that if people find some solace in their dedication to their faith and that in doing such tasks or performing certain actions that their faith might dictate they feel a sense of forefillment or "oneness", then it is to their own responsibility and conscience that any repercussions should be placed. For all the time that I have spent subscribing to the doctrine of the UCA, I can say that though in the response to the fact that I am a Christian and that I subscribe to Christian beliefs, most people don't turn a second glance my way. But when announcing that you are one of Jehovah's Witnesses, you are almost always to be criticized and in some cases abused for your beliefs.

My apologies for my readers who are not particularly religiously affiliated, but I felt that I needed to have a little bit of a rant as it were. I also concede that this entry may spark some measure of conflagration amongst some of the more forthright of you readers, but I must mention again that I am in no way attempting to establish an official standing, simply making an observation.

I have proved to myself that it is impossible to actually do anything of substance throughout the holidays. IN a previous entry, I mentioned that I wished to finish learning Ruby, as it is increasingly becoming a frustration to me, my lack of programming ability. Well, true to my speculation, I have yet to even approach a ruby book to patch up those holes in my knowledge, which is to my own detriment. In addition to this, I have to finish a 1500 word Drama assignment where I am modernizing the Greek play The Frogs which was written by Aristophanes in 405BCE and a speech for English where I am in the roll of a political commentator debating the quote taken from an Australian text: "We all live in the same country but we're different".

I caught up with my friend Kathryn who I haven't seen for quite sometime and as events transpired, we have not hung out for about 2 years or so. Therefore, we managed to cover topics such as people, chocolate, death, people, computers, relationships, people, icecream, pets, MSN and people. IN doing so, we both unanimously agreed that people are generally a negative influence on the two of us and thusly they should mostly disappear on a global cataclysm of some description.

Well after that waste of 573 words, I'm going to go and play with my dog. Ever since we went for a walk this morning, he has been sitting around in a lethargic stupor. Maybe he hates people as much as I do. Hmm, ahh well, time will tell.

Squeaky Wheel

Sadness comes in many forms: ones that we see a lot in today's society are depression, suicide, rape and addictions, all attributed to some form of internal struggle within ourselves. We should be ashamed that we live in such a society that allows such depraved circumstances for our fellows to be ensnared within. Yet the statistics rise: teenage suicide, automotive accidents, depression and so on. I speak from personal experience, sitting on the sidelines watching helpless as people who I care about spiral into their own destruction.

I'm really going to have to stop starting these entries with such dismal openings. However dismal, they are accurate with painful clarity. I don't know what spawned such an emotional outpouring considering I was talking to someone on MSN about peanut butter and someone else about elvish. Ahh well, multi-tasking, streamed thought and all that.

Today I met guidedogs Queensland's newest trainer Katie Kerr - who was recently qualified as an instructor in the United States (California - Guidedogs For The blind). Though I know she may read this blog, Katie I would apologize if you find any of the following embarrassing. As a person - both professionally and personally - she struck me as someone with a lot of self-confidence and ability. From her younger stance, she has a unique opportunity to connect with those around her of the younger generation more essentially than other trainers - not to put any slight upon the working qualities or qualifications of other Guidedog Instructors such as my primary instructor Andrew Barnes. Considering that she is coming from a different school - compounded with the fact that it is an international school - she is willing to learn and adapts quickly. I think that she thought that I was going to bite her or something throughout our two short sessions today as she seemed to be slightly self-conscious of her and myself despite her underlying confidence that I believe she could exude. But beyond this, I would like to wish Katie all the best here and hope that she will find a home amongst the team.

School holidays are now in full swing - or as full as they can get with me - and I am still no closer to actually getting anywhere worthwhile. I do have a couple of side-projects going on this holidays such as helping my English Teacher - Adam Maessen - to edit his Novel that he is writing on his University Days and correcting it of continuity glitches and all that. I wrote an essay on two books for English - this being one of them - showing how gender and class are represented in Australian literature. I have attached it here for anyone who is interested - in Microsoft Word 2003 format.

As well as that, I head off to Melbourne in a few days to visit a few friends of mine and to check out the scenes. However, I don't know if it was entirely a good idea to do it now as the forecast seems to predict temperatures from 14-19 degrees Celsius (57-66 degrees Fahrenheit). Ah well, ya win some ya lose some... What can ya do?

Flack appears to be telling me that its either food time - which it isn't - or that he wants to go outside. So, in the ever present devotion to my dog, I will love and leave you readers. Its almost strange that I am updating in a semi-normal frequency, its not within my nature to blog so effectively. Hmm, its a conspiracy!!!!!!

Geek

Blogging!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have you ever noticed those blogs of people who think they're being cute when they post little one paragraph posts like "Oh my gosh, I bought a new T-shirt today! It was uber uber cool! And Savannah was all NO WAY and I was all YES WAY. Anyway, got to go! XOXO" Its these types of blogs which pepper Live Journal to the point of annoyance. You will more than likely find blogs of people who thought they'd be cool and create a blog in 2003, post one entry and then just ignore it in the intervening 5 or so years. It allows for quite a strenuous process of finding a username of choice.

For those of you who follow me on twitter, you would note that I finished a math exam to which I termed was "approaching like a bull on viagra". Being the last examination of the term, it left me at somewhat of a loss. I mean, I won't say that I am one of these studious students who come home every night and get right into the books and study for 1.5 hours per night or what have you, but I have done quite a bit of extra work over the last week and coming home yesterday afternoon I sat down with a math book open next to me and realized - in a moment of utter clarity - that I left the tap running all day. Ha, I bet you weren't expecting that now were you? Hmm? No, didn't think so.

I've been trying to work out how I might successfully use my time wisely these holidays. Because I usually end up with a distinct lack of cohesion by the end of the period - this time being 2 weeks. Although I am going down to Melbourne to visit my friends Cassie and Ashleigh so it should turn out to be quite enjoyable. But for the remaining time that's left to me, I'd rather like to get stuck into structuring some of the programming languages I have started learning over the years and then put down because I haven't had enough time to complete. My brother is pressuring me to learn groovy and grails, which - to put it crudely - is virtually a modified Java port with remotely ruby syntax. But when looking at the resources available, it requires more of an object orientated hierarchy understanding and personally, a bit of Java experience. So, putting that aside I really want to finish learning ruby as I never really got to consolidate it and then if I manage that, to go on to do ruby on rails and finally, WX ruby or ruby cocoa, depending on whether I am in a windows frame of mind or a mac frame of mind. Speaking of mac, I also need to familiarize myself with the applescript language as it would prove to be quite useful if I go into mac permanently. For those of you who don't use macs, I would probably liken applescript to something along the lines of batch scripting for windows or for linux users, I suppose bash. The annoying thing is that I want to learn so much but school tends to get in the way. At the moment, here are the languages that are on my todo list:

• applescript


• grails


• Java


• python


• PHP and MYSql


• Ruby Cocoa


• ruby on rails


• WX ruby


• XHTML

So, my work is kind of cut out for me at the moment.

Ah, I think I can hear some people stirring in the house, so I better get up and do something useful at least. This entry has been brought to you by Bootcamp and a reasonably smelly ... wait for it ... sock! Ha, another unexpected turn of events.

rumpdy dumpty

its amusing the competition that you see in the industry standard web browsers. I mean, today you are likely to see:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer


• Mozilla Firefox


• Google Chrome


• Opera


• Apple Safari

And there are probably a number that we don't see for such platforms as symbian, linux, BSD, et cetera. But it is a point to stop and consider what the motivation is behind such a number of competing sources to access a unified protocol (hypertext transfer protocol - HTTP). It simply adds new features and fancy dancy ways of interacting with Java, Ajax, flash , web objects and and the multitude of scripting languages out there. Granted, some of them may offer increased functionality with progressing web standards with their expansion plugins and so on but beyond the basic pros and cons of "its bundled with the operating system by default" and "its open-source" and "I like it, its shiny" there isn't much difference from one to the other.

So there you have it, my rant for the day. It has been rather gloomy today because it has been raining for the past 5-6 hours, so I decided that I might sit down and post a bit of a blog to bring everyone up to speed as it were.

I'm just coming up to the end of third term and man is the pressure on like no tomorrow. This tends to be the busiest term in the year as we are mostly uninterrupted by camps or long public holidays and nastily exhausting things like that. But personally, it hasn't been all that bad, at this point I have a persuasive oral for English, a performance for music, a seminar for drama, an exam for IT, an access DB for IT and an exam for math. So over all, it could be worse I guess.

For those who haven't yet discovered this service, I would strongly recommend that you take a look at ping.fm. It is a system through which you are able to unify all your services like live journal, blogger, my space, facebook and all that to post status updates, micro blogs and blogs. Helps for me as this entry needs to be posted on blogger, live journal and myspace so posting it in one location tends to minimize the posting process.

This paragraph is simply to inform you that I have chocolate. Although it wouldn't be a paragraph with out a second sentence detailing that this chocolate happens to be of the milk variety and comes in 1CM^2 squares. This paragraph would also not be complete without a link back to the point that Internet browsers are annoying.

I've also had the flue for the past week or so which has really put a dampener on my piano playing. For those who know me, this would seem preposterous but I didn't touch a keyboard for almost a week which was tragic, especially for my standards. I also managed to misplace my falsetto for the vast majority of that time also which irritated me to no end as I pride myself of having a reasonably strong range from a 2nd octave E to a 5th octave F comfortably.

Now with that, I will leave you with this minuscule entry and finish listening to digitally imported and Sky. For anyone who hasn't signed up to these services, go do it now, you know you want to.

Salutations

And now with a flourish, the ring master sweeps his cape in an expansive gesture as a cataclysm erupts within the big top. The audience hushes and all eyes turn to the portly gentleman standing with an imposing and yet unassuming stance amidst the sparks of some devised contraption which has - by its inventing - emitted sparks to which this gentleman is, well, standing in the middle of.

Alright, I may have slightly lost the imagery there but still, give me some measure of credit to start with a bit of melodrama. So, to this end and beside this minor digression, I would like to welcome one and all to this, my latest venture. I have recently migrated from utilizing services over at Live Journal on my journal here. To be frank, I found that blog an embarrassment as through my more naïve years, I have had less than respectable influences which spawned a certain level of immaturity in my mannerisms and interactions with those around me. That doesn’t mean to say that I have gained any future wisdom that has changed me in the intervening years, but I simply wished to separate myself from that which was and focus on that which may be.

On more serious reflection, I have to admit that I may laps into brooding tendencies to which my other blog was sporadically afflicted with and the odd period to which I refused to post for some reason or another – be it sheer stupidity or an irrational belief that I may effect some balance in the ether by my lack of input on worldly affairs or the bowel movement of the African Elephant.

I would like to mention at this point that Microsoft word has a ceremonial crash and I lost about 2/3 of the entry which I had prepared so, oh well, I’ll have to write it again. I really thought I had enabled the auto-save feature in this install but obviously, that was only on my laptop.

I have come to grasp some of the magnitude that people speak of when they refer to the penultimate year of secondary schooling. This year has really faced me with some challenges which have made me re-think past decisions that I have made – some for the better and some for the worse. It doesn’t help that I have an inability to say “no” to people who request my musical services – be it performance or compositional – for some project or another. I have had the good fortune to be included in the 2009 music team of the production of The Wedding singer being produced by a Gold Coast amateur theatrical company Spotlight. After the success of my school musical Little Shop of Horrors where I starred as Audrey II - a sadistic plant who has an unquenchable hunger for human blood and flesh – I found the drive that my arts director (Cilla Scott) refers to as “the theatre bug”.

About the time when I was doing the musical, I was lucky enough to be successfully matched with guidedog Q446 (Flack). He is a black Labrador male, just weighing on 33KG (72.6LB) and 55CM (22In.) to the shoulder. As his working goes, my trainer (Andrew Barnes) thinks of him as a “two-speed dog” for harness work, which my friends at school find hilarious; when I ask him to “straight on, let’s go” he seems to literally interpret this as “Come on, yeah yeah yeah, see how many times you can make me nervous whilst speeding past very imposing objects”. Flack’s program has had to be slightly modified to get the most out of our teamwork, considering that I am one of the youngest guidedog recipients in Australia. Further administrative errors in GDQ have compounded the irregular nature of the program: I was scheduled in June to be handed over to Joe Dutton – an instructor who was shipped up from South Australia due to the lack of resources that GDQ has to support its client base - however, he has been rendered legally unable to work with me has he has not been issued with a Blue Card – an initiative which ensures that the card holder poses no dangers to those under his or her care. Therefore, my trainer who took me through my program – who has been appointed field services manager and reassigned to the northern Brisbane district – has had to run back and forth from Brisbane to the Gold Coast to ensure that my program doesn’t fall ass over the proverbial tit.

Sheesh, it has taken me about 2 hours to write an 800-900 word post. Although, there have been several intervening interruptions such as a late lunch, phone calls and solidified Jell. This entry also seems to follow a trend to which most of my previous bloggings attempts seem to resemble – either nonsensical gibberish or a lot of different ideas crammed into a few hastily jotted down paragraphs. To that end, I do wish to bid you a jaunty farewell, or in the vernacular, cheers.