Yes, that’s right – I’m putting The Big Box on hiatus.

I realise that this is a great outlet for my thoughts, whether for letting my friends know that I care, rambling about schoolwork, or just releasing a stream of conciousness. However, I feel that can no longer sustain this commitment in the face of other stuff (like those freaking exams!) and so, until my life turns into a bit more of a “structured situation” and not just a mess of teenage hormones, this blog will no longer be updated.

Thanks to all those people who gave me support in this project. In the words of Arnie the Terminator … I’ll be back.

Words are the building blocks of communication. Words are what make up this entry. Words are my way of trying to sound slightly more interesting on my blog, like Pandora does in her entries and their poetic-ness.

Words are what I look for at the end-of-term BBQ when my year 12 friends are about to leave. Words are what I try to use to express how much I’ll miss them. Words are what fail me for the very purpose for which they were designed.

Words, like “anaphora”, are what we use to describe the fact that I keep starting every sentence with the same… well, you guessed it, word. Words can be long, like “superfluous”, or short, like “lol”. Words can be debatably not words are all, but three-letter-acronyms.

Words inspire people, words demotivate people; words challenge, words conform. Words can make you want to change the world, or maybe just change yourself. Words can make you fall in love, and words can make you fall in debt.

Words are what you use to study for your three weeks of exams next term. Words will fill your exam papers. Words will be how you describe your performance in said exams. Words are how you plan your next moves after those exams when they’ve finished. Words are what you’ll put on your CV. Words are what you’ll be making in your future career, whether you’ll like it or not.

Words are printed in size 6 text in a book we call the bible, words are rendered in size 10 text in a book we call Wikipedia. Words can be spoken, words can be read; words can be written, words can be said. Words can rhyme like that, but they usually don’t…

And words are how we got to know each other. Words are how we became friends. And here’s a word for you, because friends do things to show that they care about each other, even if it’s something as random as…

And finally, words will tell you that I’m feeling too sentimental tonight. I hope you all have a lovely holiday.

On Tuesday, I visited my Year 12 friends Lee & James to return their copy of the New Testament. It was really saddening in a way, because it symbolised that they were about to leave the school.

The night before, I had looked around my house the previous night for an equivalent to read; however, this was ultimately insignificant, because Lee and James gave me a complete bible as a parting gift. It was extremely touching, but even more so when they read John 10:10 to me, as yet another parting gift.

They reminded me of what was really important in life; needless to say, that gave me hope.

On Thursday evening, I stayed up past midnight talking (albeit via instant messaging) with an old friend who I’d barely had a proper conversation with for a long time. I had hoped that I could spend the last few moments of my previous year of life talking with a friend, but I had certainly not, in my wildest day dreams, expected it to be this one. (You know who you are; thank you so much for your company.)

The next day, during recess, I walked into the usual room where my group of friends tend to hang out. The first thing I noticed was that it was awfully dark; the second thing that I noticed was someone jumping at me to shout “Happy Birthday!“. The next few moments were literally breath-taking, so much so that I cut cakes and hugged people with a brilliant emotional numbness, from this saturation of being happy.

But it’s not just the big things like that. The small things have lifted me higher just as much, like those Facebook messages that people posted on my profile. Every time someone wished me a happy birthday, whether virtually or in the real world, my day actually got that little bit happier. It’s the thought that counts, and all those thoughts counted.

To everyone who remembered and showed that they cared (in one way or another), thank you – so very much – for all the moments over the past few days that you have given me; thank you all for so much joy, so much fantastic numbing joy. These moments were so heart-warming that they could have been part of a dream. Sheer words cannot describe how loved you have collectively made me feel.

If you ask me the question, “how’s life?”, I might not be able to answer truthfully, if at all. But I’ll attempt to answer it right now, with one word: ambivalence.

Ambivalence is the state of having “simultaneous, conflicting emotions”. It’s how you describe your state of mind when you’ve just opened a folder with nineteen pages of French homework and a letter telling you that you got some sort of nice award. It’s how you describe your state of mind when you’ve just proudly finished catching up on two months’ worth of maths homework, only to be deflated by realising that you’re still a month behind everyone else. It’s how you feel when you’re wondering whether to call your friend or not, because she’s busy, only to have her parents pick up the phone and tell you that she’s away for the night.

It’s the thing of the now these days, as we’re all feeling so muddled up. We can’t even think properly right now, because there is all this smoke in the atmosphere.

Some odd folk decided that it’s a good time to do some backburning, which is basically intentionally burning plant material so that a bushfire can’t do it for you later. The advantage of this practice is that it creates a division zone – an area of land without any plant material, hence containing any bushfire that does emerge in the area.

Annoyingly, though, backburning has a lot of disadvantages that don’t really seem to be considered much. This may be naive, but I think the plant material should be recycled, as timber or fertiliser. It’s organic matter, and it could be useful. If we burn it, we’re just pumping gaseous carbon back into the atmosphere, and making people with asthma feel really sick.

On a completely unrelated note, I spent a great deal of the afternoon looking for a nice present for Bryan as it’s his birthday next Friday. Incidentally, that means that it’s also my birthday next Friday. It’s kind of funny how this blog was created around this time two years ago. Looking back, I realise that my style of writing has really changed. My post are longer, my sentences are longer, I’ve become addicted to semicolons, and I’ve mostly stopped using emoticons. It’s a far cry from my childhood days, when I would spam textboxes full of “:D” and expect to get away with it. Ahh, memory lane…

Anyway, back to the topic at hand – I looked around quite a bit. I was almost going to get an iTunes gift card, except that’s effectively buying data for someone, which just seems dodgy. in the end, I did end up settling on something, and I’m fairly sure that Bryan will find a use for it in his day-to-day life.

Speaking of birthdays, Kenny’s birthday was yesterday. Moby baked him a really cool (layered!) cake, and we all happily ate it; the caek [sic] was not a lie! It was the happiest thing that happened all week for our little group of friends.

To close off, I’d like to scream EUREKAAAAA!, because I’ve finally been able to install Windows XP on my Dimension C521. I used to be stuck with Windows Vista, because my Windows XP installer CD wouldn’t boot up, but for some reason, the CD worked perfectly tonight.

Hear me out before you call me crazy. I’d been using Windows Vista Home Basic since 2007; it was nice at times, but it was just so annoying, and always felt so bloated. The User Account Control feature, although quite good in theory, got really tedious when it came to managing stuff like the start menu. The biggest deal about Windows Vista was the Aero theme, but after a while, that simply lost its charm.

So, it is with pride that I finish this post with this appropriation of the (old) Mac vs. PC ads: My name is blair25, and I’m a downgraded PC running Windows XP. Hear me roar.

EDIT: Attached a screenshot to show the awesomeness of the Calculator Powertoy, Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (no more lag!), and virtual machines (that one in the top-right is running Xubuntu).

I’m posting two entries tonight! Allow me to explain…

I was really touched earlier this week when a friend of mine told me that she actually enjoyed reading my entries. It made me realise that many people have given me similar feedback. I guess that’s the thing about friends – they give you this kind of support.

So, good people – particularly Ri and Artydude – this double post is for you.

Now, the thing about friends, is that they’re all so brilliant in different ways. They’re all special, which means that none of them should really be considered superior or anything. This sort of resonates what ‘muff said to me earlier about how she considers everyone equally close. It’s not something I can personally relate to (I tend to get closer to certain people, as you’ve probably seen), but it’s great food for thought.

Although, I must say, the equality model of friendship really does make it tough when you are forced to select your best friends. It really saddens me when people get the wrong idea.

On a related note, because most of our grade was off at a camp, we spent the last two days doing practically nothing apart from watch movies. John Tucker Must Die was particularly amusing, despite being labelled a ‘chick flick’.

In some ways, it was disgustingly hilarious, because of the gross inaccuracies and stereotypes that were portrayed. In a particular scene, the titular character John Tucker is secretly fed oestrogen pills, and its effect was not expressed by having him literally having female characteristics, but by having him express emotions. Oh noes – a male with the capacity for feelings - because surely, emotions are inherently restricted to females, right? Gender equality has been flushed down the toilet with that scene.

What was fascinating about the film was that the protagonist, a teenage girl, loses her ability to determine who her real friends are, and yet, she finds real friends by the end of the film. This whole thing about the human condition, and self-discovery, should have been the focus of the film. But then again, it was supposed to be a comedy, so having any serious content would have totally killed the funny side of things.

Well, I guess adolescence sure is a funny time. When you’re not think about your friends and loved ones, you’re calculating the unreal roots of a quadratic, because you one day want to study law at some university, get a job, and be happy – right? I went to the Macquarie University open day today, and it really was an eye-opener. Apparently, to get into Law at Macquarie, you need ‘only’ an ATAR of 95 (and the minimum ATAR for scholarship is 98.5).

The whole future-career thing really puts me in awe, because I haven’t got a clue. I haven’t got a passion for anything in particular, and hence I’m going for law because it seems like a good choice for people who aren’t really sure about stuff.

Life… it really is like a boat. You can get lost so easily, but in theory, no matter which way you’re going, you’ll always find land. That is, unless you’re going around in circles.

Until next time, mes amis.

So, we were in geography class (or should I say, G-Yeo-graphy class) when our teacher decided that Google Earth would make for a fun teaching aid. The entire class sat in awe as we explored Taiwan (a particularly fun experience due to the fact that Richard and Joshua could read the traditional Chinese labels), Hong Kong, Surfer’s Paradise, and finally Sydney.

It was so fun that I had to play with it myself, so I downloaded Google Earth last night.

The first thing that I noticed was that the installer didn’t actually include the contents of the software, but instead contained a mechanism to download the contents of the actual installer to a place where it couldn’t be intercepted – presumably to protect Google’s intellectual property claims; not that it really matters, because you need a working internet connection to use Google Earth anyway.

Now, I realise that Google Earth is so 2005 i.e. around 4 years old now, but I found it absolutely incredible, albeit being more fun than useful. To illustrate my point, here is the Sydney Harbour Bridge according to Google Earth:

Firstly, you’ll notice that the bridge is rendered as a 3D model. Some brilliant person or group by the name of ilesoft used Google’s SketchUp program to do this. The blue squares represent geo-tagged photos, to a very decent level of accuracy (despite the difficulty in this sort of calibration). I think my IPT teacher would find this use of analysing quite hilarious indeed. The camera icons in yellow bubbles represent Google’s Street View feature.

Notice, however, the the satellite imagery of the bridge in 2D is hanging under the model. Very few things are actually rendered in 3D in Google Earth, but when they are, they look fantastic. This can be seen in a view of the CBD, where only some of the buildings are rendered in 3D:

Of course, this is absolutely peanuts when compared to some other cities, such as the famous Big Apple itself, New York City:

Although, you’ll notice, most of the buildings have a very simple, generic look that only has the shape of the building but not the texture – whoever did the Sydney buildings worked just as hard, but whoever did the New York buildings had quantity in mind.

Now as if that wasn’t mind-blowing enough, here is Paris – complete with Eiffel Tower. Note that both New York and Paris literally lagged my computer; I even had to turn off my music because it started stuttering.

Another really cool thing about Google Earth is that it even has a flight simulator with a virtual heads-up display. Here I am flying over suburban Sydney:

I have to admit, though, that flying the virtual plane is really quite hard; then again, my hand-eye coordination is not that great, and admittedly this thing was designed for joysticks.

Interestingly, 3D structures cannot exist in flight simulator mode. Here’s the Sydney Harbour Bridge again, this time from flight simulation view:

See? The brilliant 3D model is gone, so the phantom shadow looks rather awkward. On the other hand, it is probably for the better – flight simulator uses a lot of system resources.

Here are some other cool things that you must see:

Yes, that is London, complete with the London Eye, the Thames bridge, and Westminster, all in 3D.

That’s the Q1 building in Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland. Notice how it’s slightly off-position, but otherwise spectacular.

What’s the point of all this? I think the best thing about Google Earth is that it is humbling. Something about seeing the rest of the world in a virtual tour makes you realise how insignificant you are compared to the grandeur of the planet, and yet, at the same time, shows you how you fit in to this world.

So, to prove my point, I will conclude with a picture of Mount Everest.

I am posting on Sunday instead of Saturday because I was (attempting to) hardcore cram for an exam last night. In the end, I didn’t hardcore cram nearly as much as I should have.

This is my first September entry; September is a nice month, being the first month of the Southern Hemisphere Spring and all. It also happens to be the month I was born in (yeah, I’m biased).

Because I know you guys don’t want to hear me ramble on about sustainable plant and animal production in agriculture, this entry ends here. In order to minimise your disappointment, here is an image of (literally) a fluffball.

To all a good week. Keep smiling.

Yesterday, the good people from the University of Western Sydney returned to our lovely school with stacks of “anonymous” surveys, conveniently labeled with our given names, surnames, and spaces for our signatures and birth dates. A pusillanimous cacophony of doubt (as to whether the survey really was anonymous) ensued.

I’m disappointed to admit that I didn’t do as well as I could have in the calculations section. I feel really bad for my increasing reliance on my calculator; but then, maths classes these days would absolutely kill without one (I won’t even get into the exams part). The spelling part had way harder words at the end this time; I’ve thrown two of them into today’s entry. The sentence comprehension section was hilarious, not because it was inherently funny, but because Luna & ‘muff considered writing “when the light turned on, the room was filled with blood“.

Good luck to everyone doing the ASO Chemistry Olympiad; I’m personally hopeless at it (9-tert-butyl-8-ethyl-5-isopropyl-2,6-dimethylundecane… confused? I certainly elephant!), but some of my friends are totally into that sort of thing (Esther, I’m looking at you).

Daffodil Day was really nice (because supporting people with cancer is epic), and I’m really grateful to ‘nise & Aditi for their kind gestures. As a guy, it’s kind of embarrassing for me to admit that I like flowers; but whatever, I like flowers. It’s kind of sad how they’re dying now, but like with all ephemeral things, photographs rule for keeping the niceness alive. And to the person who I sent flower(s) to – I hope they made you happy.

So many people are emotionally lost these days, and I guess I’m one of them. Life is beautiful, but so terrible at the same time. My best wishes to everyone having a hard time. We’re all in this together. Finally, a big thank you to everyone who has congratulated me on my exam results; your words have been heartwarming and appreciated.

EDIT: Wow, I posted on this exact same day (August 29) a year ago. That’s kind of cool.

I am blogging early today, because I’ll be off eating rice at the Sydney Entertainment Centre later tonight. It’s taken a while for me to decide to actually go; hopefully, it’ll be awesome like everyone’s insisting it will be. Our IPT teacher offered to pay for me; how generous of him. Stuff like that gives me hope.

Speaking of hope, I encourage you all to visit Gives Me Hope, a large compilation of inspirational stories with happy endings, much like the Chicken Soup book series. Each entry is about the size of a Twitter tweet. If you’re having a bad day, this should be your first destination when you fire up your web browser. Thanks to Alley and Lia for (inadvertently) introducing this to me.

Life is interesting these days, which is a euphemism for, “it’s just the same old routine”. I’m seriously considering cutting off this blog from public access. It’ll certainly give me more freedom to talk about a wider range of topics – topics that would give away my identity pretty damn quickly.

On a completely unrelated note, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a fascinating story about a bunch of mental asylum patients held captive in their own world of despair and low self-esteem. It also exposes how terrible lobotomy is, in the most subtle way possible. Definitely worth a read, although the narration can be confusing, to say the least. I’m going to try to watch the movie some time soon, so here’s the promotional poster/artwork:

(Oh, the symbolism!)

I finally got to see the new tech support guy at our school. He walked in on our English class while we were discussing the aforementioned novel, and started upgrading the thick client computer with a service pack without knocking, introducing himself, or even explaining what he was doing. Now, that’s ninja! It’ll be interesting to see how he handles those curious little laptops that the young’uns are getting.

At this point, I’d like to point out something that the truly observant will notice – the title of the text we’re studying for English wasn’t underlined when I mentioned it earlier! That’s because, while underlining denotes the name of a text in essay-writing, it doesn’t mean anything on hypermedia systems (like this blog) apart from “please click me, I’m a hyperlink”. Ahh, conflicting standards. Gotta love conflicting standards.

Happy birthday to Anna & Amy (yesterday), Clay (today), Bach (tomorrow), and Helen (next Tuesday). Congratulations and great success! for being another year older; have fun driving and stuff.

It’s so relieving to have finished the last internal HSC assessment – the trial exam – for Information Processes and Technology. As I’ve said many times, it was like being squished by an elephant – just because that’s an amusing metaphor.

In case you’re an expert system with an artificial neural network that can rewire the links between its processing elements, this photograph from Wikipedia should give you an idea of what it feels like to be squished by an elephant:

Now, because I’ve included that image (provided by Wikipedia user Fir0002), this entire article is hereby licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License as stipulated by the photographer. Ahh, the social issues and ethical issues…

Anyway, I think it’s sufficient to justify the weird and mostly negative sentiment by saying that I finished the paper with only a few seconds to spare, after rushing through the last hour of the exam.

But you know what? It really weirdly brought people together. After finishing the exam, and watching the Year 12s leave, us Year 10s sat down on the concrete – yes, the concrete – and talked about how terrible it was, and how we were all thinking, “FML!”

A big happy shout to Andrew, Tony, and Jase for keeping me company during that deep and meaningful moment of post-exam surrealism.

And now, I’m in a state of “stoning”, as my friends would say. I’m not very aware of my surroundings or anything. The surrealism continues, so here are some random thoughts:

• Do you have Windows Vista Home Basic? If so, it appears that you can get Aero’s window decorator special effects by editing your msstyles file with a hex editor. How nice.
• The Master from the British television series, Doctor Who, looks like my French teacher. That is unusual for so many different reasons.

Okay, dot points suck on WordPress, so it’s back to good old paragraphs.

Between two worlds is a beautiful compilation of instrumental (piano) pieces by Maya Filipič. It is really relaxing and great as background music; best of all, it’s licensed under Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives). Go and download it, or at least have a listen to it by streaming.

That brings me to a related point – in this day and age, people don’t want to buy music anymore. They’ve become accustomed to download it without permission; however, they know that this is frowned up. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, they squeeze out of the valley of professional musicians and turn to the amateurs, who turn out to have a pretty damn good sound. Between two worlds is a great example, but there’s many, many more.

Now, as much as I hate advertising for big companies, I have to concede that I love Jamendo, the website that’s offering the aforementioned album. It’s a huge collection of free-to-download music, which I think is the way of the future. If the people don’t want to buy music and they don’t want to be accused of being pirates, then of course they’ll turn to truly free music.

At this point, I don’t think I can type anything that can be construed as meaningful, so here’s the English dub of Carameldansen, which seems to be the latest musical craze (or at least, what Bryan and Jase are dancing to). I warn you, though, it’s a little bit creepy.