Things I would like to do:

Learn to play the guitar – to play cool songs – QOTSA, etc.
Learn to dance – for the laaaaadies
Learn to ride a skateboard – convenience, cool factor and to give insight if I want to design an electric version, etc.

So you think you’re fucked?

In response to tmimeh’s post: http://stirlace.blogsome.com/2007/06/06/oh-tim-will-you-ever-win

I don’t know what sort of situation you’re in, but it can’t be any worse than mine – I handed in my previous assignment 5 or 6 days late (depending on whether the submission cutoff is at 5pm, midnight or when Venus and Jupiter are in alignment) and thats at 10% a day. This is for an assignment worth 50%

Luckily it was decided to only remove it from the report which was late, not the model, so it’s only 60% off the report section which makes up 2/3 of that 50%. Still following? Anyway the end result is that I failed my assignment, although not as badly as I thought. It’s somewhere in the mid 40’s although I can’t be sure because we now get little sliders with a fat bar which indicates roughly where our mark is. No I don’t know why either :/

So here I am, with the next/final assignment due for this subject, which unsurprisingly is ALSO worth 50%. The good news is that it’s not due until tomorrow at 4pm. The bad news is that I have a cubic fuckton of work to do for it, on account of my plan to finish the other two assignments I had due this week (Monday and today) a lot earlier – ideally over the weekend – flying out the window in a trajectory I could only describe as “predictable”.

Jet…. Ah yes. At some point I forget when this was, despite having a reminder on my phone calender, and the assumed, and then <i>convinced</i> myself it was on Friday.  Because I also have an assignment due on Friday. If you’ve been counting, yes, that’s four assignments in a week. Yipeee. If you do the math, or if I do it for you, that works out to be 39% of my semesters marks all in one week. Anyway, I’m not sure if I will finish this 50% assignment by the 4pm deadline. In which case I technically have until 4pm the next day to make good enough to offset the 10% late penalty. This is hard because really all I need to get is a high pass mark to guarantee that I pass the subject, but to be honest my problem is that I’ve never been capable of producing work of such a low calibre deliberately.

And then there’s the other assignment due on Friday. If I have a report that is of an “acceptable” quality by 4pm tomorrow (definition to be determined at a later time) then I will go to the concert, come home after, do a bit of work and then finish it off on Friday no problems. I have a fair bit of work to do for it, maybe 5-6 hours at a guess. But I have until 5pm on Friday. But if I fuck myself up on the report, then the whole “offsetting the 10% late penalty” likely means that I need to put a lot more work into it, which then means that it’s unlikely I will finish my other assignment on time. I hate this stupid cascade effect, and often if an assignment is late I will endevour to make sure other assignments do not suffer because of it, but in this case passing the first one is much more important than passing the second, for which I am likely close to passing anyway.

If the report isn’t done by 4pm and I don’t think I can offset that 10% by the time the concert starts, Jet is out of the question bigtime. I truly hope that isn’t the case

6 wikis of seperation

A list of what I spent last night reading about. Thats a Jetpack, which is a web 3.0 method of storing links and images and other random crap. They (Jeteye, the people who off the service) claim they’ve been around for ages, but I think the Firefox extension and the web interface are both lacking in features, but for this kinda stuff it’s still cool. Anyway, thats a page of links, started off by the Comic Relief page (which I wiki’d from TheDailyWTF), quickly went to Dr Who, and from there to steampunk, League of Extraodinary Gentlemen, Batman and psychotropic drugs and… you get the idea. An awesome Firefox extension would be to have something track your wiki links and then compile them into a sort of map, which could be presented ala a Jetpack.

Birthday Goodnez
I don’t like advertising that it’s my birthday – it’s nothing to do with my age, I just don’t feel comfortable saying “O hay guyz, its ma bday in a week”. I think most of my uni mates found out through MySpace, so I ended up getting a few belated “Happy Birthdays you old fart” on Sunday. I think it sorta goes back to what I never said about consumerism (half a post is saved here but I can’t quite articulate what I want to say), if I tell people, they feel compelled to do things for me, or buy me things or whatever, and frankly I don’t need it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m human and I enjoy the odd bit of attention. And I’m not being rude when I say I don’t need it. I mean it in the sense of Want vs. Need. Personally, I feel that I am less of a consumer whore than a lot of people around me. Maybe I’m more aware of it, maybe I’m just a boring person, but right now I would say I need for nothing, and the things I want I could count on one hand:

1. New computer – it’s not my fault they double in jigawatts every year.
2. A new HDD – The above is a want, this is a bit more towards the need end of the scale, I only have a few GB left and thats only because I’m not dl’ing any pron
3. Digital Camera – Much closer to need, this would help a bit with uni stuff.
4. 4GB memory stick for my phone – cheaper than buying an iShit.
5. Books – Plenty to buy, but whether I have the time I’m not sure. Ditto magazine subscriptions.

That’s honestly it. Sure you could show me cool gadgets, flying toys and lego sets, cars or consoles and sure I’d drool over them, and probably consider buying them, but then I think of whether I truly need it and most of the time the answer is no. I don’t blame people for just giving me money for my birthday this year. Now that I think about it, it’s probably the first year it’s happened, and in a way its sad, but not many people would have picked or been able to afford the items on that list above. I also remember the first time I opened up a present and thought “Aw, it’s cool, but I’m never going to use it”. And its happened a lot since. I dunno, maybe I don’t have the time, or I’m losing my sense of fun, or a million other depressing thoughts, but I honestly can’t see how these objects are enriching my life. Sure its the thought that counts, and some of these pointless gadgets are funny and cool, but in the end they wind up in a drawer or box collecting dust and it makes me feel sad. On the bright side, I look forward to giving as much of this stuff to my kids.

Frankly, if I didn’t recieve anything at all except a phone call saying Happy Birthday I’d still be a happy guy. The money is nice (I think I’ll put it towards a digital camera), but its just money – I live at home and earn enough to be comfortable in the day-to-day, and I enjoy just going out at random, enjoying a beer or movie with mates. Sure birthdays are a good excuse to get the family together, but that’s only because there’s enough birthdays in a year to make it a regular event – getting together to enjoy company shouldn’t require a motive, or the need to spend money on each other.

And I guess that really explains why I’m not a consumer. I just don’t see the point. I feel no strong desire to buy things, to surround myself with the new, the shiny, the luxurious. I by no means live a spartan lifestyle, I’m no buddha, but one thing I do is respect things, both mine and others. When I buy something I buy with an eye for quality and longetivity. Fashion is something that changes, but style lasts. Buying something cheap and then buying another one when the first breaks is anathema, even if it works out cheaper in the long run. There are plenty of exceptions, but the thing that got me a while back was when we had to value our personal contents for insurance. In other words, what would you miss if your house burnt down? Computer, wallet, phone, watch, personal documents. Most of the other “valuable” stuff can be easily replaced – sound system, CD collection, clothes, furniture, tools and art supplies.

The thing that gets me is that people are so willing to throw things away. With a little bit of know-how I fixed a pair of headphones and a pair of earbuds. The drivers – the most complex bits – were totally fine, but in both cases the cable wiring had fractured. It wasn’t exactly easy repairing either, but it was definitely rewarding and I think they’re now as good, if not better than before, and we’ll get another few years of life out of them.

One thing that really shits me is that people don’t respect objects, especially when they’re not theirs. This is pretty apparant in the uni workshop, when people carelessly and ruthlessly operate machines that have been carefully tuned and are very expensive to repair and maintain. A little bit of understanding may instill some respect but it’s sad that it needs to be done at all. A lot of people also don’t respect models which always amazes me. If they stopped to consider how long they spent on their own models (ok sure, some people may only spend 10 minuts on a model) they would probably have a bit more respect and care, but they don’t. Despite their best intentions they leave fingerprints on paintjobs and knock the models over as they walk past. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see it happen, but how could you possibly feel angry when they turn around and say “sorry?” >_>

But even just respecting cheap ordinary items would go a long way to stem the tide of consumerism. Sure something is cheap, its cheerful, it does its job. Until you throw it around and fuck it up. By treating stuff with more care, or just being more aware of how we use things, most objects will provide a good long service life.

I don’t know. I’m an angry man and I don’t really know how to end this rant so I guess this is as good a place as any. TAKE CARE OF SHIT.

On being a Deviant

That may or may not be a subtle hint to check out my Deviantart page, which I’ve just updated with a few pics I rendered out for my CAD assignment due last Wed.

In case you didn’t realise, I had an assignment due Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and by Wednesday night I was feeling pretty terrible. I had a sore throat and bumpin’ forehead (yo!), neither of which went away the next day, or the day after that. Painkillers didn’t seem to do much about that either. Joy! I think I would almost prefer having my wisdom teeth reinserted and then removed again – at least those painkillers did something then. So I’m feeling somewht better now, thanks for asking, but I haven’t done much work since Wednesday. I’m temporarily burnt out. Boo hoo.

Anyway, more on being a deviant – check out this awesome page – they have heaps of awesome videos, particularly check out the laser tag and LED Throwies pages. The LED Throwies are the precursors to the Mooninite signboards that led to the Boston bomb scare (probably one of the stupidest over-reactions in recent times). I am seriously tempted to make a whole lot of these throwies and plaster them around uni. I’m quite sure that all of the ingredients can be had for fairly cheap over Ebay (ideally this would maybe cost under $100). Making signs from them would be awesome, but I wouldn’t want to be accused of creating a bomb hoax. My ideal target would have to be under the pedestrian bridge over Harris st between Building 6 and 4, or just randomly around uni. I’m wondering if double-sided tape would be as effective? It would certainly stick to more surfaces if it didn’t require too much pressure for application. The most important thing would be to put these in spots that are visible but out of the ordinary persons reach, since I don’t want jackasses just ripping them off the wall and nicking off with them.

Last link for the day- the piece de resistance. Imagine that, but hanging from the top of Tower Building. Need I say more?

How’s this for an idea?

Apologies for the lack of updates, I promise to write more. I know I can keep this promise because it’s an effecticve form of procrastination – for instance it’s preventing me as we speak from doin my assignment due tomorrow

Anyway, this is something I was trying to explain to Timmeh the other day (maybe at the Bavarian Bier Cafffffeeeee) but for the life of me had forgotten what my awesome idea was.

While listening to a somewhat entertaining lecture on interaction design the other week by this guy (yes his name really is Bert Bongers, he’s from the Netherlands) he flashed up a comic, in Norwedish or whatever they speak, that had the evolution of men hitting things, progressing from clubbing an animal, through to hitting an anvil and ending at a user hitting his computer. It wasn’t particularly funny, but as he said, in all of the panels leading up to the computer the person was actually acheiving something by hitting.

So I had the idea for something that would do something for you when you hit your computer. Specifically, I have in mind a large red emergency button that you plug in via USB, and when you hit it, it sends a ctrl-alt-del keyboard command to the computer. The button would be housed in a pretty hefty box that you could mount somewhere solid on your desk so you could give it a real beating.

Taking the idea a step further, you could have a second normal recessed button to restart your computer so you don’t have to lean down to press in the fiddly little one on the front of your case, or better yet it could be a switch that requires a key in it, or better still, one that requires two people to turn keys simultaneously. I think I’ve stumbled into an entire set of gimicky USB peripherals based on oversized emergency props taken from action thrillers.

Admittedly there is already this missile launcher but don’t tell me it wouldn’t be a million times cooler if you could launch it with this button:

Just so you know, I’m convinced this would be relatively easy to do – getting the hardware definitely wouldn’t be the hard bit. Watch this space

Things to talk about – A heart-warming tale of one man’s memory

So this is more of a meta-post than a real post since I haven’t had the time to actually update this blog since my initial post. And when I say I haven’t had the time, what I really mean is that I’ve been lazy. Lazy as all get out, if that makes any sense.

So this is a post to remind me of what I could potentially talk about as soon as I can next be bothered to make the two or three clicks it takes to create a new post, because frankly the effort-to-return ratio just doesn’t pay the dividends I expected. In fact it doesn’t seem to pay any dividends at all. O! the failure.

So I seem to be ranting. It would probably help if I posted that list now :

•    Furniture exhibit THE EDGE is coming up, I need my piece ready by the 8th of Feb – right now I’m about to email some dudes about getting most of the ply cut by computer aka CNC cutting.
• I really need to look into using my dad’s friends Fujifilm S2 Pro which he has kindly loaned to me, but the manual is at least 70 pages…
• I want to put up an essay I did on Slush Casting on Wikipedia – damn my altruisim!
• I’ve been exercising a bit – supposedly daily but it’s more like 3 or 4 times a week.
• Having ay kind of portfolio ready to hand out at THE EDGE would probably make sense – I think I need to treat these few weeks before like I am actually at work.
• Speaking of which the most stressful period of work I have ever experienced at Bunnings is finally over and I probably need to rant about that a few times before it’s all out of my system.
• Finally, random stuff I’ve been doing to pass the time in lieu of doing any of the above, including posting here. My life seems to exist as a series of fantastically interesting distractions. And now I must go and get my hair cut!

Hello world!

So I’ve tricked out this page a little (mainly added links) in a half-arsed attempt to make this page somewhat unique, although theres only so far you can go when you’re as lazy as me. In fact I could probably have gotten further if I had just fallen asleep and mashed my face on the keyboard, but its the thought that counts

So wordpress is weird, in that there seems to be so many options, which is something I’ve found with deviantart and myspace as well – I have no idea how to go about customising anything more than the basics, and the completely different page designs make it confusing, espescially when the concepts are the same (friends, watching someones page, linking).

Links here are kinda screwy, and it defaults to the “blogroll” section – wtf is a blogroll? sounds like a bloated creamy pastry dessert to me. anyway, hope it makes sense, I’ll be making more posts soon.

P.S. My new years resolution is to make this somewhat more readable than my LJ, which means more capital letters and more punctuation.