Each of these is a different person. You can guess and I’ll tell you if you’re right (although not publicly), but like I said before I doubt anyone’s gonna read this anyway. I do not intend to insult anyone with this.

1. You are AMAZING. Even AMAZING is not enough to describe you. All I can say is, I don’t know what I would do without you (or another 120 people or so, for that matter). I believe you’re undervalued quite often, and most people don’t truly appreciate how much you do for them – and although I try to tell / show you how special you are a lot of the time, I probably unintentionally undervalue you from time to time as well. I just want to apologise for all those times (if you happen to read this), and to let you know how brilliant you are.

2. Sometimes I don’t know what to do about you. I’ve made some HUGE mistakes about you in the past, and believe me when I say that if I could go back to before then, I would. As much as I want to be good friends with you, good friendship is two-ended, which isn’t happening right now. Although I don’t think about you as I did once, at times you just make me so… confused… I wish my perception of you would uncloud.

3. I love you, in a completely non-sexual way – and despite what I have said, it has always been this way (just took me a while to realise it). I want to let you know that first and foremost. Forget about what others think of you, I’ll always be there for you (and I’ve said this so many times), to care for you. I wish the best for you, and you deserve so much more out of life than life has given you so far. I hope things get better for you (they seem to be already), and even if they don’t I’ll try to make them better. You are my true family. Also, you will never read this, probably.

4. I don’t know what you think of me, but I can take a good guess that it’s probably not much. I have some BIG regrets about our past, and I just want to let you know that if I could change anything about my life, one of those things would be to be better friends with you, and to have treated you like I should have once upon a time. I’m sorry for this. HOWEVER as much as I have been unfair to you, in my opinion anyway you have been equally harsh to me sometimes. I don’t hate you and never have, but I wish I didn’t have to always approach you with caution.

5. Once a WSB, always a WSB. Now you definitely know who it is, oh shat. So much for not making it so obvious :O Anyway you will always have a place in my mind, body and soul. We have had some crazy-ass texting sessions, and have talked about the randomest shit ever – and I feel as if you know me better than I know myself, and vice versa. If I never met you, my life would be nowhere near as fun as it has been / is. Recently we may have talked less, but I’m always up for some more crazytime. Ohyeah and like a certain person’s father said once upon a time: Why is _________ so retarded?

6. I’m glad I already got to say this to another person (even if it may not have changed much), but I wish we were still friends. I can’t even remember anymore when this stopped, but one of the last things we talked about is why, and I was being a douche in denial. Well I know why now, and I apologise for what happened. If you ever want to be my friend again, I’m always open, and am willing to change. And, congratulations.

7. I don’t really believe in having best friends, but if I did then you’d definitely be one of them. You make me laugh, you’ve laughed with (and at) me many times, and I’m a happier person because of you. I wish I got to know you better sooner. Dead giveaway here, but I’ll always be happy to help you out with public transport, even though you should really learn yourself

8. Things shouldn’t be like this between us. It’s simply not natural. Sure, we have our differences in appearance, personality and culture, but I don’t think you treat me fairly, and as a consequence I don’t treat you fairly. I’d appreciate it if YOU appreciated ME more, and instead of pointing out my faults all the time, congratulating me on my strengths and helping me on my weaknesses. And PLEASE, stop assuming things about my life, which you obviously know NOTHING about.

9. This goes out to 2 guys. You definitely know who this is. The two of you NEED to start living up to your potential. You’re VERY intelligent, so you should start showing it. You act all cool and smug when you don’t hand in your work and get into trouble, but it’s not a laughing matter. Start pulling your weight this year before you get into the habit of not doing work, because from next year that’s not going to work out very well for you. As much as you’re very good friends with me, I’m not certain at times whether I can trust you with confidential matters, or ask for your help, because you seemingly can’t take life seriously at all (this especially goes out to one of you). The other one could try smiling more. Ohyeah and to one last guy, thanks for being such a good friend. Hope your life takes a turn for the better.

10. Don’t know what to write about you, seriously. Because if it’s all the reasons why you’re so awesome, this would be a 10k-word post. You’ve always been there for me, and even if I didn’t necessarily deserve it you’ve always trusted me and given me another chance. If I ever lose you as a friend, I don’t know what I’d do. That goes for after high school, too I’ll always be your personal computer-problems dude, and you’ll always be one of the only 5 people allowed to draw on my arm. Ohyeah, and all my stationery

11. Thank goodness I met you. You have cheered me up many-a-time, and sometimes I look forward to a subject just to go nuts with you. I feel really happy for you, and hope your fairytale works out just like I think it will I may be a tease at times, but I’m sure you know I don’t mean to be… mean… even if it may seem so. And, you always hurt me to get me back anyway

12. Not sure how to approach this one, since everything about you has been… spontaneous… As much as I think I’m close to you at times, I can’t even talk to you at other times. I should have been better friends with you a while ago, but never being in your class hasn’t exactly helped. I enjoyed the time we spent together, but I don’t know you well enough to say if it should be pursued with you further. I’m sorry if my uncertainty has ever disappointed you, but like we agreed, feel free to talk about it.

13. Wow I’ve run out of room already. Hmm I’ll make this the most mysterious then. I don’t know you well AT ALL, and you don’t know me well either, but even though I told myself (new year’s resolution) this wouldn’t happen, I think I like you.

That felt good

I simply DO NOT have enough time these days to blog. Just ONE average blog post takes an hour+ for me, and with the increasing workload this year (and since I’m more dedicated to my schoolwork), this has made blogging impossible. I have too many overdue blog posts which I very well know I will never finish (for the New Zealand / Discovery Tour posts, you can look at my photos here), and I just don’t FEEL as if I want to blog anymore. This also includes my Posterous, by the way, which I may update every ‘once in a while’ now.

Actually my plan is this: I will be converting my website to a portfolio site to showcase my web design work, since I plan on starting my own local web design business this year. I WILL have a blog page, but I might blog once a week / month – definitely not with the same frequency as now. I will auto-post these posts to my Posterous as well, and if I find anything worth posting about (e.g. a cool Youtube video or something) then this will be posted to my Posterous / Twitter ONLY. I will keep my website blog as a technical one, e.g. for code samples, to show off new designs or for the occasional technical review.

I am still working on a new vision for bthaxor.com – I was thinking of adding a downloads / tutorials section for all my Sony Ericsson mods, of having a lifestream page to show off my Twitter / Flickr / Posterous etc.

The one thing I AM certain of is that the new bthaxor.com will be NOTHING like the blog it is now. So if you are still interested in my life and want to know how Mielz’s birthday party was, or whether the 3rd Epping bus came yesterday or not, then I highly recommend either getting a Twitter account and following me at @bthaxor, or at least visiting my Twitter every once in a while, or following me using an RSS reader with THIS address (although you may have a hard time keeping up with my tweets ).

I will NOT put a time frame on when the new site will come, because I want to make sure it’s done PROPERLY, not QUICKLY. This blog will remain here (slowly rotting away…) until then (it’s actually receiving a record number of visits these days, which is weird), and even when the new site comes I will backup all of my posts and see which ones are worth PERHAPS restoring to my new site.

SO enjoy my blog while it’s still here, because I will not say when it will disappear. If you enjoyed reading my blog, then get a Twitter account and follow me at @bthaxor to keep up-to-date with my life. Thank you to everyone who’s been following bthaxor’s blog, and I just want to say DON’T delete your links to this site yet – the URL is staying the same, and the new site WILL come

Please feel free to comment if you have any questions / feedback

Goodbye.

What were you doing 20 minutes ago?
Taking a shower

Have you ever eaten raw pumpkin?
I don’t think so… O.o

When was the last time you wanted to punch someone in their face?
About 2 weeks ago when my W980’s charging port broke… I wanted to punch every bloody Sony Ericsson so hard they’d never even think of trying to make a phone with the FastPort junk ever again…

Do you miss your past?
Doesn’t everyone miss a certain part of their past? Definitely…

What are you doing tonight?
TENNIS! Sydney Medibank Private men’s singles final, Baghdatis vs. Gasquet

Do you believe exes can be friends?
Depends. I don’t think Roxio.exe would be good friends with Nero.exe… OK enough of the Ben statements Mhm indeed I do.

When was the last time you held hands with someone?
HAHA I think it was Ben at the NYE sleepover

Did you ever lose a best friend?
Yeah :\

What is wrong with you right now?
I have nothing to do

What are you listening to?
Fort Minor – Tools Of The Trade

Whose house did you go to today?
Noone’s. And I don’t live in a house, so I can’t say mine :O

Who was last to cook for you?
Umm we had Baker’s Delight for lunch…

Do you know what you’re wearing tomorrow?
Jeans and a shirt? Gonna basketball with Yilang

What is your current mood?
BORED.

Something you do a lot?
Browse the web, listen to music, watch movies, web development, social networking…

Do you want to see somebody right now?
All my friends :\ And there are a few people I haven’t talked to in a while, like Dom and Anu, that I’d specifically like to see

Who is the last person that made you smile?
Mitch Hedberg

Do you find it in your heart to forgive?
Yup.

Anything you’re looking forward to?
SCHOOL! It’s funny because when you’re at school you can’t wait to get home, and when you’re at home you can’t wait to get to school…

Did you ever waste too much time on a certain boy or girl?
Sadly I think I did :\

Are you slowly drifting away from someone?
I guess this happens to everyone, except we don’t even notice it some of the time…

Are you waiting for something?
I’m waiting for SOMETHING interesting to happen.

Thing that made you the happiest today?
Probably receiving 3 Zen Garden plants in one Adventure level in PVZ?

Would you kiss an ugly person for $500?
Depends on who, but probably…

Who gave you the last high five??
Bonnie

What was the reason you last received flowers?
Daffodil Day last year haha.

Have you ever donated blood?
Nope, although I wanted to last year – but too young :\

What did you do for Valentine’s Day?
I think it was a school day..?

Do you eat breakfast daily?
I skip it every once in a while

Are you Irish?
O.o

Have you ever been to Sea World?
Mhm, in Year 2 my whole family went to the Gold Coast

Is having sex on your mind?
Isn’t it always?

What movie do you really want to see?
INCEPTION. There was like a 30-second trailer just before Sherlock Holmes started last week, and it looks AWESOME.

What time will you be getting up in the morning?
No set time, but probably 9-ish? Feel like staying up late tonight

How are you feeling at this exact moment in time?
BORED.

What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?
Basketball with Yilang, and find something worth blogging about…

Any weekend plans?
See /\

Will you be in bed within twenty minutes?
I hope not :O

Anything annoying you right now?
MY BOREDOM.

How long does it take you to get ready?
I’m guessing this is dressing and all that, so probably 5mins?

Last person you hugged?
Hmm I think this was Mielz / Ben when we were saying bye during the last outing. Freaking forgot to hug Bonnie goodbye gah I’m an ass.

Last person to call you?
Can’t remember but I THINK it was Ben or Yilang…

Last person you called?
Probably the same as above.

When is the last time you took a nap?
I honestly don’t remember ever taking a nap during the day D:

What was on your mind mostly today?
PVZ

Who knows you the best?
Hmm this is a hard one… A lot of people know me well – but probably one of Mielz, Dom and Lian

What was the highlight of your week?
FINDING WORK EXPERIENCE!

Is your phone close to you?
Well that depends on where Sydney Cellular Repairs send their phones to be fixed… My guess is India ==’

Who was the last person to play with your hair?
Probably myself I’M BORED.

Your heart is racing, who are you standing next to?
This question isn’t worded very well O.o But… I don’t know right now to be honest O.o

Are you easily scared by horror movies?
HAHAHAHA horror is my favourite movie genre

Have you ever punched a tree?
*INSERT KEVIN TREE JOKE* in that case, yup

Anyone on your mind?
Lian, because he just tweeted that he has a bloody machete in his garage!? :O

If someone gave you 100 dollars, would you spend or save it?
Save it up until I spend it on the iPhone 4G

Are you currently happy with your relationship status?
I dunno…

Do you find the opposite sex confusing?
Haha not at all

When’s the next time you’ll see your best friend?
I think we’re having an outing this week

How has the week been?
BORING. Movies movies movies tennis tennis tennis… Tennis would be more fun if I didn’t have to watch it alone :\

Is there something you would like to tell someone but can’t?
For me, there always is haha…

On a scale of 1-10 how good is your life?
At the moment, 3 or 4 ==’ But generally I’d go for 7-8…

Are you mean?
Everyone has their moments :\

How many people do you trust (not family)?
Probably more than I should :O

When was the last time you were told you were beautiful (not family)?
HAHA I can’t remember but probably Mielz, because she says random things like that

Anything you’re giving up on?
Hmm I don’t think so O.o

Can you keep a secret?
Definitely!

Do you have trust issues?
Not as far as I know :O

Are you open with your feelings to people?
Generally, yes.

Have you ever done something to make trouble?
HAHA GOOD ONE.

What is the thing that you would most like to change about you?
I’d like to have good eyesight (glasses are annoying and expensive), and a smaller nose ==’

Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance?
Depends on the situation… I know there’s at least one person I wouldn’t give a second chance to…

Were you happy when you woke up today?
I was bored.

How long was your last phone call?
Don’t know, and I WOULD check if I had my phone…

Are you in a good mood?
Not anymore. Just realised how much I miss my phone AND THIS HAPPENS DURING THE TIME 3 HAVE FREE MOBILE TWITTER…

Do you want to have kids?
Eventually

How many pictures do you have saved on your computer?
I started searching half an hour ago, and I currently have 20,000 results, with probably 5 times that much pending. So I give up on that one…

Has anyone ever told you they’re in love with you?
Yup.

What’s the worst damage you’ve done to your home?
Hmm this isn’t me, but FREYA broke my blinds once

What time did you get up today?
8-ish…

What was the first thing you did this morning?
I think I went to the toilet…

When did you last argue with someone?
Argue argue argue… Can’t remember actually O.o

Where are you taking a trip to next year?
Apparently the next summer holidays we’re going to Bulgaria again… But… I think I’ll negotiate there…

What was the reason you last shouted at someone?
Don’t remember…

When did you last have a nose bleed?
I HAVE NEVER HAD A NOSE BLEED as far as I can remember See, big noses are useful for SOME things…

Anything planned for this week?
That outing I should organise, and I have a meeting on Thursday with my work experience employers, to fill out the paperwork

When I decided to redesign my website a week ago, I assumed it would undergo a few cosmetic changes, and perhaps a few code optimisations. I would NEVER have known it would turn out to become a complete overhaul like this!

Before I go into the technical details, I would like to WELCOME you all to the new BTHAXOR.COM!

The new website design focuses both on a very impressive design, however allows a lot of space for the content itself. It features many innovative elements such as the new comment system and a collapsible tag list, as well as scroll button on the side, to maximise your browsing experience.

So let me give you a quick insight as to what has physically changed! Each page is now made up of five elements: the left pane, the content in the middle, the sidebar on the right, the menu bar at the top and the footer. The home page now focuses on the post excerpts, so you have a good idea of what the article will be about. There is no longer any clutter below the post, and instead all the information is on the left side. Posts are alternatively colour-coded so they can easily be distinguished. When viewing a post, the left pane contains the post meta data such as time of publication, category, links to the next / previous post, a link to comment and tag lists.

In the actual posts, you can click on any image to view it in full size. At the bottom of each post are links to share the post on social networking sites like Twitter. Then the comments are displayed. You can now reply and quote other people’s comments, and they will be displayed in ‘nested’ style within one another, so you can easily tell who’s replying to who. There are a maximum of three nestings available, however the blog automatically puts the next replies one under another. When you’re posting a comment, you can now style it (e.g. make bold text) and however you see it in the textbox, that’s how the comment’s really going to look when posted! Admin comments (by me) have a thicker border.

The menubar is quite self-explanatory, so let me move on to the sidebar. At the top are listed my main social networking profiles (Posterous is the new addition to watch out for ), followed by a quick autobiography. Then a link to my RSS Feed, the search box and a collapsible tag list, which is sorted by most to least popular tag (only the most popular 30 or so tags are displayed). Then there is a new feature to my blog: the Lifestream. I have linked this to all my major social networking profiles, and it pretty much tells you the most recent 10 events of my social presence! You’ll probably see Twitter here most often Then are the usual categories, archives and tag cloud. The footer of the blog contains a copyright and (NEW) links to XHTML and CSS validation. I spent quite a bit of time validating my blog, so please click on those links to check it our

The other major change is that I now have a ‘Links’ page linking to friends’ blogs

Now we get to the technical details – some of the things you may not notice at first about the new design:

• I have spent a considerable amount of time running my code through Yahoo’s YSlow plugin for website optimisation, and this is where my blog really prevails. It achieves 80/100 for an advanced website score, and 100/100 as a blog! I will later outline some of the changes made.
• With Wordpress, you’d naturally want to make the most out of your blog through plugins. Although these do add lots of functionality to your blog, they SLOW DOWN your blog drastically! When these plugins call Javascript and CSS over multiple files (in my case, about 10 or so calls), you don’t think they’re that much of a deal – however combine all the files, and I received 500KB of Javascript being loaded on a page! Not to mention that it’s being called from multiple places which slows it down even more… So what did I do? This was a multiple-step process: I first combined ALL Javascript into a single file, and ALL CSS into a single file. I then used multiple compression methods for both of them to cut down my CSS from 50KB to 40KB, and my Javascript from 500KB to 300KB. I then ‘Gzipped’ these compressed files, which reduced my 300KB Javascript file (already compressed) to 80KB! Most modern browsers support Gzip compression, so what I’ve done is allow the Gzipped files to be called for those browsers, and the full files are called for browsers that don’t support Gzip. But the page size was STILL too large (200KB or more, as opposed to the recommended size of 60KB for a webpage) – so I incorporated a very clever caching system. Now although your VERY FIRST visit to the blog may result in a bit of extra loading time, the rest of your blogging experience should be a BREEZE! Your first visit may be 200KB, more than 3 times the recommended size, however CONSEQUENT visits are less than 10KB each! That’s nothing!
• I have a new Lightbox script for images! This one’s called Sexy Lightbox, and it truly lives up to its name The effects are very smooth, and images should load much faster.
• As previously said, comments now have a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get). This should make commenting a lot easier, along with the new replies system. I explored Twitter and Facebook Connect for a while, but they turned out to be fail ideas…
• What does valid code mean? It’s not just so you can show off your validated status (albeit one of the reasons to validate code ) – it means my website will work how it’s supposed to in even more modern browsers, which increases my potential audience.
• One exception to this, however, is that I am using the latest web development languages including even the (not yet released) CSS3 standard – this may mean that old browsers (especially Internet Explorer 6) will not see my website properly. But frankly, I don’t give a damn. Anyone still using Internet Explorer 6 (or Internet Explorer at all, for that matter) deserves to suffer
• Finally, over the next week I’ll be trialing optimisations to the mobile and iPod Touch / iPhone versions of the site. These will be opposite to the desktop version: I’m REMOVING all Javascript from these so they load faster, with the same features!

By the end of the holidays, hopefully, I should get those posts I’ve been promising for a long time now For those of you that have forgotten, this includes my birthday post (I KNOW!), New Zealand photoblog and Discovery Tour journal.

ONE FINAL PERSONAL NOTE: I’ve been a long-time user and supporter of Twitter, and I’ve found these two levels of publication (blogging here and microblogging there) to suit me fine. But recently, I’ve found myself wanting to post things which require more than a 140-character tweet to say, yet aren’t formal enough to post here. Websites like Tumblr and Posterous have been brought to my attention from numerous people, and after trying both I’m pleased to announce that AT LEAST once a day, I’ll be posting at Posterous! I’ve found it to be a great quick-blog service that took literally 10 seconds to set up (you just send an email), and you can post ANYTHING (e.g. photos, music, videos, links, even Youtube videos!) which then get cleverly embedded into your post, from ONE email! There are countless other features I don’t have enough time to go into now, for example auto-posting to other sites like Twitter, but for now, PLEASE check my Posterous at bthaxor.posterous.com!

So once again welcome to the new website! I’ve been working long and hard on this, so don’t hesitate to comment with feedback and possible further enhancements. And of course, please comment if you think the website’s not displaying as it should be.

Enjoy!

Of course I’ve had a number of Wordpress updates (currently at the latest 2.9), and fortunately those haven’t affected my customisation of Wordpress, except for the custom smilies which are back!

I’ve removed tags from the home page, so it’s less cluttered now. You’ll still see them in the actual posts though, so all that tag-spamming doesn’t go to waste

All of the images on my site will now open in a Fancybox for easy viewing, and this script itself has been edited to make it easier to use.

The mobile and iPod Touch / iPhone versions of the site have been updated, so commenting works alongside the spam protection. The iPod Touch interface is much smoother now, as well

There’s a lot of other technical stuff I’m editing as well, but one of the upcoming changes you will probably notice is the new commenting system. I’m looking for a way to integrate social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook into the comments, as well as comment replies and nesting comments. So stay tuned, and give the new system a try if you’re lucky enough to catch it while it’s being tested

Another change I will make in 2010 is LINKING TO OTHER PEOPLE’S BLOGS! I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now, and it’s quite easy, but I just haven’t been bothered… well I will do this soon, possibly even next week (I have to finish all my overdue posts first though, and that may take a while ).

OK HERE’S THE COOL PART: It’s the end of the year, so I thought, why not release my website statistics for 2009? So here are my stats for 2010 (surprisingly I already have quite a few visitors), and then total stats for 2009. I personally find the countries stats quite cool… it’s nice to know you have visitors from Jamaica

2010 stats so far (click for full size):

2009 summary stats (click for full size):

2009 country stats (click for full size):

Hope you found that interesting, thank you VERY MUCH to all of my loyal blog readers (yes, those five or so people), and I look forward to another great year of blogging ahead!

I know I already mentioned this in my previous blog post, but I hope you all have a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR – and welcome to 2010! For want of a better banner, I present to you the official Google Doodle for the new year And while I’m on the Google note, try going to the Google homepage today AND TODAY ONLY and clicking on ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’

We’re 1 day into the new day, and 1 day into the new decade. We’re 364 days until the end of the year, and 3651 days until the next decade. And apparently, we have a little under 3 years before the end of the world… Of course I couldn’t leave this numbers game without mentioning myself somehow, so it’s also 223 days, 5356 hours, 321418 minutes or 19285093 seconds (at the time of typing) until my birthday this year.

Why did I bother with all of that? Because to be honest, for me this is what the years have become. Just NUMBERS, lacking meaning. I remember a few years ago I actually CARED that a new year was approaching, and was excited by the prospect that something new might happen. But this year at least will be far from that: the same class, the same school (albeit with new timetables), and hopefully the same friends (with more to come).

I honestly don’t even care what year it is anymore, because life isn’t about thinking about how much time you have left in the world and planning everything out, but about the spontaneous things. Quote Zombieland: “Rule #32 – Enjoy the little things”. As long as I’m having a good time in life, like I did last night, the years can come and go for all I care. Eventually our time will all come, but that’s not something to think about from now.

Gosh I honestly don’t think this blog post will make much sense, because even as I was typing that previous paragraph I wondered if it made any sense at all… But I’m very hungry and very tired right now, so bear with me while I tell you how my New Year’s Eve was

Two days ago, as a matter of fact, I had NO NYE plans whatsoever… it was going to be the usual go-with-your-family-to-a-family-friends-place-and-babysit-or-sit-there-playing-quadra-pop-on-your-phone-or-stay-home-alone-for-the-new-year… Thankfully the b-hood soon changed that

Originally we were going to go to Mielz’s place (in Penrith) in the morning, then go to the city (?) and then go back while Yilang and Ben stayed for the fireworks… however that sounded stupid (more travel time than actual DOING time) and dangerous. So in the end, we decided on a full-night “sleepover” (/ movie marathon ) and the ENTIRE BHOOD came (Yilang, Ben, Lian, Bonnie, Mielz and myself) except for Anu (who is sadly still in India, coming back in 10 days or so) but HER PRESENCE WAS STILL FELT AMONG US.

I bought some food (GrainWaves, two packets of chips, 2 x Aldi chocolate and Vienna fingers), ate two Krispy Kremes for lunch and Yilang and I caught the train from Hornsby at 12:34 (nice time, I know!). On the way we met Lian (Epping, he walked straight past our carriage…) and then Ben at Eastwood (Lian got together with us there as well), and finally Bonnie at Parra. Ben found his dad’s deck of ‘Ralph Dirty Babes’ cards, and we played Big Two on the way to Penrith. We got there at 2pm, and pretty much as soon as we got there we already saw two mobs of teens get stopped and searched by police. Wow.

Mielz’s parents came with the two cars to pick us up, and then after we dropped off our things at her place and ate “a few things”, we went for a walk to some infamous park Mielz wouldn’t stop talking about… In the end it turned out to be a 5 x 5m children’s playground surrounded by five rocks. I found that quite funny .

Mielz and Ben wouldn’t stop making out the ENTIRE FREAKING TIME to the point that it kinda got annoying, so Bonnie, Yilang, Lian and I decided to ditch them at the park and ran off home. We got back home and did a wonderful job of making her parents think they’re missing (don’t worry, we told them we were joking soon after ), until they both arrived (looking quite ‘rough around the edges’, might I add…) soon after.

Here began the movie marathon – I brought my external harddrive, and that turned out being our main source of entertainment. We watched Zombieland (NICE), 500 Days of Summer (eww), some of Tropic Thunder (an awesome movie but the others didn’t seem to get it), The Man (on my request, everyone loved it), 1408 (alright horror movie) and I introduced the rest of the gang to ‘Fat Pizza’, which is an Australian movie on Leb life in the western suburbs of Sydney – I bloody love this movie and that seemed to be the general consensus, and we ended up watching this twice. Ohyeah, and we watched  5/9 episodes of the Cleveland Show. And perhaps even more which I’ve forgotten about… By the way none of those movies were in watching order, just the order I thought of them in And OF COURSE coconut rum was not in ANY WAY involved with watching those movies

We ate a LOT for dinner (ordered three large pizzas, and then had homemade garlic bread and vegetarian lasagne!), and later on Mielz’s cousins (including Lexan) came with two dozen Krispy Kremes (straight from the factory, literally melt-in-your-mouth)…

We’d just finished 500 Days of Summer and it was 10-15 minutes to the new year. It was retarded how Channel 9 had all these ‘Fat Blaster’ ads and ads for their shows in the new year… NOONE CARES! In the end they only counted down 10 seconds, as opposed to the usual minute. Sigh, sigh.

We watched the fireworks on TV (they were longer than usual, but apparently from next year they’re going to be a lot shorter), then went outside with at least 120 packets of sparklers! We burned them all out on the front lawn while hugging, talking and watching the local fireworks. And let’s not forget trying to out-shout the neighbours, or Lian trying to set everyone alight with his sparklers…

When that racket was all over, we went back in and put on some of the music from my harddrive, to which we attempted karaoke while watching photo slideshows of the year gone past at school

A whole night of movies followed here, during which everyone TRIED to keep awake, but in the end Bonnie and I were the only ones that managed to stay awake (?). Even Yilang had a nap in the morning… Ohyeah and Ben and Mielz were gone for an ENTIRE two hours while the rest of us were watching Fat Pizza. That’s as much as I’m willing to expand on that… SPEAKING OF BEN he fell asleep for quite a while, so we managed to get shaving cream DOWN HIS PANTS haha… and then while Mielz was trying to clean him up, we managed to put some on her ass too – and I don’t think she knows to this very day why Lian, Yilang and I were laughing so hard at her

I ate through the GrainWaves, one packet of chips, one Aldi chocolate and a LOT of water and coke, so I couldn’t eat cake or pancakes for breakfast the next morning, which I’m sure I’ll regret for a while to come…

We had breakfast while watching 1408, Ben and Mielz made out some more and before we knew it, the time had come… We got to Penrith station at 10:20 and then took the train together. Yilang and Ben went to Internet cafe with Kevin Yu and some other guys, and I went with Bonnie and Lian to Hornsby, and they went back to their stations after.

So as you can tell, the b-hood had heaps of fun this NYE

NOW AMELIA MUST SEND ME PHOTOS PLEASE!

So before I go on, I’d like to wish all of my blog readers A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR – and let’s see those resolutions work out for you…

It’s no doubt been a classic year, and probably my favourite year of high school yet. We’ve had our highs, and our lows. Canberra was junk (except for microwaving coffee satchets ), but the Discovery Tour completely made up for that (I still have to blog about that :O ). There’s been quite a bit of romance going on in our grade this year, some of it quite recent – good luck to you all! It’ll definitely be a year to be missed…

Hope you have something special planned this NYE, because it’s a year to be remembered. Whether you’re with family or friends, or the BROTHERHOOD ( ), I hope you have fun tonight

As for my plans, we have the AWESOMEST NYE party planned… I’m leaving in less than 2 hours, actually… I’m meeting Yilang at Hornsby station, and we’re catching a train to Penrith. On the way we’ll intercept Lian (Epping), Ben (Eastwood) and Bonnie (Parra). Mielz’s parents are transporting us to her place from the station, and we’re PARTYING ALL DAY!!! I’m bringing my harddrive for movies Then we’re ordering pizza for dinner (and we’re all bringing heaps of junk food for the rest of the time), counting down to the new year, and then having a movie marathon “sleepover” on the couch We’re having breakfast the next morning then catching a train back home… And it’ll be awesome because it’s the ENTIRE BROTHERHOOD except poor Anu But she’ll always be there in our hearts

So, once again, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I guess the next time I’ll be blogging is… next year!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

It’s actually quite difficult for me to believe that the end of the year has come already…

My brother got a PSP today, and he was VERY happy with it… it was for getting into OC. I don’t remember getting something for the same reason but anyway… ==’

Today I finished watching all of ‘The Cleveland Show’ episodes until now – it’s as good as if not better than Family Guy I reckon

Today since I’m really bored I might FINALLY write up that blog post for the Discovery Tour (even if it’s a BIT overdue)…

I’ll try keep this blog post short, but believe me when I say IT IS SWEET!

BECAUSE JUST FOR TODAY, IINET ARE REMOVING THE QUOTA FOR ALL CUSTOMERS! So for the next 8 hours, until midnight tonight, I have unlimited downloads!

So, WHO WANTS ME TO DOWNLOAD SOMETHING FOR THEM?

Note: this is my 69th post since opening my blog

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so, you would have heard of Google’s web browser, Chrome. If you keep up-to-date with tech news, you’ll probably have heard of Google’s plans to make an operating system based on Google Chrome, to be called ‘Chrome OS’. In July, Google officially launched the operating system, however a version for public use has only become available recently. This blog post will be separated into three sections: firstly a tutorial explaining how to try out Google Chrome OS for yourself (without making any changes to how your computer works at the moment), then some screenshots of my use of Chrome OS (not many, believe me), and finally my review on the operating system (quite short).


0 – Prequisites:

There are a couple of things to note when trying out Google Chrome OS. First and foremost, it’s important to remember that the operating system hasn’t been released officially yet, not even as a beta, so there’s a very high chance that what you see in this version will be a lot different to the final build. This is an ‘exclusive’, if you will. Secondly, you CANNOT use Chrome OS if you have a hidden Wifi network at home. I know this sounds very stupid for a web-oriented OS, but there’s nothing I can do about that… Which brings me to my final point – you CANNOT use Chrome OS without the Internet. It’s pretty much just a Chrome window, which uses online applications.


1 – How to try Chrome OS:

This tutorial will teach you how to boot Hexxeh’s version of Chrome OS off your USB, so you wouldn’t need to sacrifice your current OS or change partitions or anything like that. Think of this as a live CD.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN: I would like to reinforce that Chrome OS requires the Internet to operate, and does not support hidden networks. You will need a USB or external harddrive of 2GB or above to install Chrome OS on to, and you MUST BE AWARE that the USB will need to be reformatted.

First thing’s first, you’ll need to download a few things. Chrome OS, of course (BitTorrent for a fast download, or HTTP); Disk Image Writer to write the image to your USB (here); and Ubuntu 9.10 to restore your USB afterwards (here, for iiNet users it won’t come out of your quota – “ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso”).

Using your favourite archiver (I used WinRAR, you can find and download 7Zip for free) extract the *.tar.gz file (you may need to first extract the *.gz and then the *.tar from that), and you’ll have a 1GB *.img file. Run the Disk Image Writer, select the image (ChromeOS-Cherry.img) and your USB drive letter from the drop down box. Click “Write”. The install image will then be copied to the drive. Once it’s done, close the program and you can then boot from the USB drive.

How do you do this? You need to make sure your BIOS is unlocked and that you can change your boot options, shutdown your computer, plug in your USB and as soon as your computer starts, enter your BIOS options and boot from USB. This would obviously vary from computer to computer, but to give you an example, on my IBM Thinkpad I had to press the ‘AccessIBM’ button, then go to ‘other startup device’ and select my USB.

The log screen will soon show – in the final version you’ll be able to log in with your Google account, however for now use the username ‘facepunch’ with the password ‘facepunch’. Then enjoy looking through Chrome OS! Note that the first thing you should do is set up your Internet, since Chrome OS is dependent on this.

FINALLY, I’m assuming you’ll want to fix up your USB – so head over to Ubuntu, burn the ISO to a CD and boot from the CD, choosing to ‘try Ubuntu’ (although feel free to install it if you wish ). Go to System -> Administration -> Disk Utility. On the left-side panel find your USB, and after unmounting your USB delete ALL the partitions so it becomes entirely ‘unallocated space’. Finally, create one large partition from the unallocated space, formatted to NTFS, and restart back into Windows. When you get into Windows, format the USB back into whatever format you wish (it is readable now).


2 – Screenshots and Review:

I’ve decided to group these two sections since, to be honest, I didn’t really get to see much of Google Chrome… I’ll start off with the screenshots (there are only two of them), sorry for the crappy quality but there was no way to take screenshots from within the OS (click for full size):








So, why do I only have 2 ’screenshots’ to offer you? As I mentioned before, Chrome OS can only be used with the Internet, but it DOESN’T support hidden networks like ours at home, so I literally CANNOT use Chrome OS to tell you what it’s like! (Please feel free to comment with your own screenshots or experiences, I’m interested…). I am very well aware that this is not a final release, but in my opinion any operating system without an offline version is doomed to fail.

There’s only one other thing that puzzles me: why is an operating system comprised of merely a Linux kernel and a web browser (doesn’t come with any applications) a whopping 1GB, while Ubuntu, which comes with SO MUCH and is so well-developed, has always been and will always be 700MB? Something’s amiss here…

If you’re having any problems or would like to contribute to this post, please comment below… Otherwise, hope you enjoyed my 69th post!

Well as the title of this post suggests, school is finally OVER as of two days ago… along with L.A.W.K.I. (Life As We Know It), due to the dreaded yearly reports… And mine REALLY wasn’t that bad (I only screwed up in maths because of missing the stupid last question in the yearlies, but still managed to get into U for my maths class), however my parents and I weren’t on the same page there. They gave the usual raging and lectures, and it made me feel as if I wanted to run away yet again because they truly were horrible to me (they always act as if they know everything about my school and social life, and if I try to correct them they completely ignore me), and then they took my beautiful Aino (problem-less for a week now) and took it back to the store to refund it

Anyway yesterday a SHITLOAD of people went to the city for laser tag (although to be honest, that wasn’t actually the highlight of the day)…

I crept out of home at around 8:45 in the morning because of the argument with my parents, and met with Yilang at Hornsby station at 9am-ish. We were going to go back to my place for an hour however I discovered that my dad was still at home for some reason, so we quickly rushed back to Westfield… Stayed in Rebel for about half an hour, and then Alex came along too.

THIS IS WHERE THE CLASSIC STUFF BEGINS. Ben calls me at about 9:30 asking where we were – he said he wants to leave home now because he’s scared his dad will come home and he wasn’t allowed to come… So we tell him to come to Hornsby with us and he agrees. Then at about 10am he calls again, says he’s at Hornsby station and asks me where we are so he can come find us… And we decide to have some fun with him At first I tell him we’re in Rebel, and we hide behind a stand and watch him enter the store. Then when he calls again to specifically ask where we are, we tell him we’re actually in Borders… And we start cracking up because we’re watching him turn around and leave Rebel to go look for us at Borders… He calls back 5 minutes later swearing at me and asking where we are so I tell him I was joking, we were in Rebel the whole time. I tell him we’re in the basketball section when in fact we were at the other end of the store… So we watch him come in again and scratch his head at where we are… He called AGAIN and by the time we told him we were in the shoes section, we were already out of the store and watching him running to the shoes section to “catch up to us”. We ran to Dick Smith and then decided the fun wouldn’t end there… So we camped out in the ABC Shop instead (right next to Dick Smith) and told him we WERE in Dick Smith. We saw him go in and then back out again, and seized the opportunity – I told him we were in a store opposite to where we were, and while he was walking there we all ran into Dick Smith. Finally, we told him we were in Dick Smith the entire time and by the time he found us he was all sweaty That was definitely the highlight of the day…

We went to catch the train at 10:30. The ticket machine tried to charge me for $2 extra but I got refunded at the ticket counter… It was an express and we got to the city by 11am. Originally we were supposed to get off at Town Hall but Ben had the genius idea of going to Central instead… Needless to say, we ended up walking to Town Hall in the end.

We met with Mielz there, and walked to Darling Harbour. Maccas for brunch, and then to the Harbourside shopping centre… We went to KFC first for Yilang and Alex to have lunch, and then Lian came along too. And I saw SYLVIA (from primary school), she looked the same O.o

Seeing as we had nothing to do, we decided to go and check how much laser tag cost, and when we could eventually go. The guy said he’d give us under-14 prices as a discount, and we couldn’t help but going to play in the arcade section (it’s quite cool really). We played Initial-D for a VERY long time, and then air hockey for a while, followed by some (fail) Time Crisis. The others all came at 2:30, and after one last motorbike game against Yilang (I failed so bad, it took me a minute to realise how to start it…), we went on two sessions on laser tag.

Admittedly it isn’t as much fun with so many people, but it was alright I guess. We were in just two teams the first game, and the second game we got put into FOUR teams. In the second game the ‘purple’ team had set up base in one of the corners and despite ‘infiltrating’ a few times, 5 against 1 was never going to work for me… So I got three more of my team members to come help and in 2 minutes flat, we had them out of their base and had set up there ourselves. That was the highlight of laser tag, and a satisfying one at that I may not have been the top player but my accuracy was amongst the highest…

The other guys went to eat lunch, while Ben, Yilang, Ken and I went to play pool. I thought this would be boring but it was actually VERY FUN (I’d only played casually once or twice). I know how to play properly now, and if you don’t mind me saying so I’m not half bad I even won the first game for Ken and myself (we paired up)…

Meanwhile the others were at karaoke (eww), and they were almost done anyway, so the four of us that went to play pool went home… I got home at 6:30 or so. Overall, a very ‘noice’ day… Although I still can’t believe I managed to spend $50 in one day!

My parents went to watch Avatar in 3D yesterday and apparently it was AMAZING. I shall go watch it with someone next week, comment if you’re interested…

Holidays seem to be boring as usual, though. Today I pretty much sat around picking my nose (jokes?) and watching movies… It’s funny how when you’re at school you can’t wait for the holidays, but when the holidays come you can’t wait to get back to school…

Over the next few days I’ll blog about the Discovery Tour camp and New Zealand (yes I know both of these are way overdue), and hopefully find something else to entertain me at home…

Until then, chau!