An interesting word that I often use in word games is zloty, Polish currency. Apparently the plural is zlote for things ending in 2, 3, or 4 and zlotych for everything else more than 1. I found that interesting. Scrabble! At least, I hope it's on the wordlist.
Outing was fun! At least it was for me. I spent the rest of the day being enchanted about everyone and everything with a superbly optimistic outlook. Perhaps I went temporarily mad. My thoughts went along the lines of "my life is good, everyone is good, the world is good, why is everything so good?" There's probably a downside to excessive optimism, but I suppose that I can't see one yet.
Excessive optimism.
Then the next day my sister came back from her outing and she apparently played boardgames too and thought they were boring. So I became a bit disenchanted. But that's okay, because as long as no one thought the outing was a waste of time or anything then I'm quite happy.
----------------
School has started.
I was quite excited for school. I was also quite excited about the new timetable.
Yesterday year 7s were walking past and they were like "omg a year 12!" One came up and asked me where the gym was. I suppose because I was the nearest person at the time. I hope he got to his class alright.
If this was last year, I'd be like "sorry I'm new too I don't know hey do you know where the gym is?"
I'm quite sad.
----------------
Suddenly each step became a significant movement to him. It was as if he had just realised how much effort it took to walk, as if a portion of concentration was required for each step he took. Thump. He resolutely lifted his other foot and threw it in front of him. Thump.
Around him was a grassy plain. There wasn't a person in sight to break the monotony of grass. He knew there were people, people somewhere forward. If he kept walking, he would find people. But in that instant, in that brief moment he felt frozen by a strange clarity. For the first time that day, he felt truly alone. Time slowed slightly as he registered that he could no longer hear the thumps of his footsteps impacting the dusty grass.
But swiftly the moment passed, and he continued his journey, as a journey it had become. He felt as if he had long forgotten the reason that he took his tired steps. But he supposed it felt strangely nice, being able to walk forward in this perfect solitude. And for that brief part of his journey, he could imagine that there were no other people in the world, he could imagine that all he had to do was reach the end of his path. Then he'd disappear forever, his purpose in life complete.
The buildings he stepped through were deserted, but his solitude had disappeared with the plain of grass, now barely even a memory. But he didn't know that. He didn't know that he was already back in the cold reality from whence he came, the reality he smiled at because of the moments of warmth it offered him. A reality he readily immersed himself in. For he had already become too attached to the world, too attached to its people. It was one such attachment that dominated his mind as he crossed a lively street.
Slowly, he raised his hand to offer his friendly greeting.
"Hello," he said.
----------------
^I just realised that if you read it you probably wouldn't like it. You probably don't understand all of it. I should probably write less for myself and more for others. But I have my nanowrimo for that. My nanowrimo's definitely not written for myself. But to clarify, this story above was a story I wrote for myself. So don't expect to like it very much, I guess.
----------------
I feel like I'm not happy enough to properly be Mr. Happy. But that's okay, because Mr. Happy can do my smiling for me. Which is pretty convenient, since I'm also not a naturally smiley person. At least I don't think I am. Thanks, Mr. Happy.
If a genie appeared to me now and offered me three wishes, I could honestly tell him that I want nothing at all. I would tell him that the wishes would probably be better used in the hands of someone more benevolent.
Back to life writing I go.
Some thoughts.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Coruscating
Recently I've had a large amount of trouble thinking up appropriate post titles. When I used to blog, I used to get this little paragraph of inspiration including post title and then the blog post would just grow from there. But now it's more like "hey, I haven't blogged for a long time, let's go blog something."
So I picked one of my favourite words. I actually didn't know it was one of my favourite words and couldn't quite remember the word so I typed "corus" into google and it autocompleted for me and I was happy. Coruscating.
As for nanowrimo, I'm starting to dislike some of my chapters, because they seem too crazy and unable-to-relate-to and cliché. Perhaps it is part of writing that you hate some of your own work. At the moment I'm trying to rewrite chapter four and it goes like this:
- Delete sentence that I hate
- Replace with superior sentence
- Decide I hate the superior sentence too and it's actually worse than the first sentence
- Replace sentence again
- Figure that I'm probably going to end up hating all the sentences I write regardless because my plot sucks
- Try to adapt the plot
- Come up with a plot idea, then see my fail sentences again and rage and give up and go do something else
I think I'm spending way too much time editing my nanowrimo. Stories are actually ridiculously hard to edit, I've been spending like the whole holidays on just this and (in terms of work done) and I still haven't gotten past chapter three. I guess my perfectionist syndrome is attacking my schoolwork capabilities again.
School in ten days, guys! Don't worry, I'm sure much of the grade has done less work than you. Many people seem to be expressing the lack of work they've done.
At the start of this year the person chairing the assembly (I think it was harleen) was like "you probably haven't done as much work as you hoped" and at that moment I was thinking that I wouldn't do as much work as I hoped regardless of how much work I actually did.
I'm looking forward to year 12 camp. At least, I think there's a year 12 camp. There isn't one on the calendar.
I just had a 3 1/2-hour online blitz chess marathon. To clarify, they're 5/0 (5 minutes per side, no time bonus) and basically each game takes around 7 minutes on average to finish. That's 30 chess games (it divides evenly! makes sense though, because 3.5 is half of 7).
When I'm playing chess I'm often reminded of Kael's starcraft endeavours and his attempts to improve. Sometimes I feel like I should be playing starcraft instead of chess:
- Chess is often boring, there aren't any cool graphics really.
- Chess's strategy is very static and discrete. There isn't any room for trying out new strategies, because they're not new strategies. They either:
(a) suck
(b) have been played 100000 times before.
It's pretty restricting.
- Chess doesn't involve much manual skill. You could have two broken arms and two broken legs and play chess with your head. I kind of like the idea of reaction time and manual skill.
- When you get to a certain point, the game becomes kind of tedious to play. You're either completely decimating your opponents (facebook chess opponents are generally lower-skilled) or you're concentrating really really hard, and the game gives you nothing for your concentration except a draw, because you can't find the flaws of your opponent's defense.
- It's really quite frustrating to try your hardest, playing close to perfectly, and being unable to force a win because of a small oversight. If you play a perfect game in something like starcraft, you're guaranteed to have an advantage because a perfect game is such a hard thing to achieve. If you play a perfect game in chess, against a semi-skilled opponent the best you can hope for as white is a +0.53 positional advantage and equality as black.
- It's also frustrating when you lose a completely winning position because you make that same small oversight. But I guess that'll happen in all games, not just chess.
- It's quite hard to measure your improvement, as there isn't any concrete thing to show you how good you are. There are no online skill leagues, and grandmaster and master titles are just so hard to get because of the amount of tournaments you have to win to get the titles. You could have improved a ridiculous amount, then lose to a string of 2000-rated players who've just started playing blitz and are on their way up. And then you'd feel terrible.
Chess feels kind of like starcraft where both players have maximal control over their units and production and they can pause the game to assess the situation.
But on the bright side, I know I'm getting better. Loss after win after loss, and now I guess I can see everything on the board more easily. Suddenly knights have become a ring of 8 squares rather than actual pieces, and bishops have become the diagonals that they control. Rooks become the vertical lines that they are rather than just pieces.
Sometimes I can feel good, because I know that the Kings dude I lost to last time isn't half as good as the dude I just lost to. If I can play like that dude I lost to, I can win against the Kings dude.
On the non-bright side, I should stop playing chess and do work now.
Recently I've noticed quite a few people looking forward to university. I don't know what I think about this. Sometimes I feel like I never want to leave high school, but sometimes I can feel the uni-look-forward-to as well. Only briefly, though. I guess at the moment I don't really care about much.
I've been having a series of extremely weird dreams lately, one every single night/early morning (I think that's when you're meant to be getting dreams). But they make sense to me, because they're my dreams.
Hopefully I'll finish editing nanowrimo today.
Random exercise I thought up. Think of some people you know, and try to conjure up their faces in your mind and see how clearly defined it is. I seem to base my images of people's faces on random aspects - glasses shape, distinctive eyes/hairstyle, a memorable facial expression. A combination of all of them.
I can usually get everyone after a bit of effort, but one person's face refuses to come to me, no matter how hard I try.
So I picked one of my favourite words. I actually didn't know it was one of my favourite words and couldn't quite remember the word so I typed "corus" into google and it autocompleted for me and I was happy. Coruscating.
As for nanowrimo, I'm starting to dislike some of my chapters, because they seem too crazy and unable-to-relate-to and cliché. Perhaps it is part of writing that you hate some of your own work. At the moment I'm trying to rewrite chapter four and it goes like this:
- Delete sentence that I hate
- Replace with superior sentence
- Decide I hate the superior sentence too and it's actually worse than the first sentence
- Replace sentence again
- Figure that I'm probably going to end up hating all the sentences I write regardless because my plot sucks
- Try to adapt the plot
- Come up with a plot idea, then see my fail sentences again and rage and give up and go do something else
I think I'm spending way too much time editing my nanowrimo. Stories are actually ridiculously hard to edit, I've been spending like the whole holidays on just this and (in terms of work done) and I still haven't gotten past chapter three. I guess my perfectionist syndrome is attacking my schoolwork capabilities again.
School in ten days, guys! Don't worry, I'm sure much of the grade has done less work than you. Many people seem to be expressing the lack of work they've done.
At the start of this year the person chairing the assembly (I think it was harleen) was like "you probably haven't done as much work as you hoped" and at that moment I was thinking that I wouldn't do as much work as I hoped regardless of how much work I actually did.
I'm looking forward to year 12 camp. At least, I think there's a year 12 camp. There isn't one on the calendar.
---
I just had a 3 1/2-hour online blitz chess marathon. To clarify, they're 5/0 (5 minutes per side, no time bonus) and basically each game takes around 7 minutes on average to finish. That's 30 chess games (it divides evenly! makes sense though, because 3.5 is half of 7).
When I'm playing chess I'm often reminded of Kael's starcraft endeavours and his attempts to improve. Sometimes I feel like I should be playing starcraft instead of chess:
- Chess is often boring, there aren't any cool graphics really.
- Chess's strategy is very static and discrete. There isn't any room for trying out new strategies, because they're not new strategies. They either:
(a) suck
(b) have been played 100000 times before.
It's pretty restricting.
- Chess doesn't involve much manual skill. You could have two broken arms and two broken legs and play chess with your head. I kind of like the idea of reaction time and manual skill.
- When you get to a certain point, the game becomes kind of tedious to play. You're either completely decimating your opponents (facebook chess opponents are generally lower-skilled) or you're concentrating really really hard, and the game gives you nothing for your concentration except a draw, because you can't find the flaws of your opponent's defense.
- It's really quite frustrating to try your hardest, playing close to perfectly, and being unable to force a win because of a small oversight. If you play a perfect game in something like starcraft, you're guaranteed to have an advantage because a perfect game is such a hard thing to achieve. If you play a perfect game in chess, against a semi-skilled opponent the best you can hope for as white is a +0.53 positional advantage and equality as black.
- It's also frustrating when you lose a completely winning position because you make that same small oversight. But I guess that'll happen in all games, not just chess.
- It's quite hard to measure your improvement, as there isn't any concrete thing to show you how good you are. There are no online skill leagues, and grandmaster and master titles are just so hard to get because of the amount of tournaments you have to win to get the titles. You could have improved a ridiculous amount, then lose to a string of 2000-rated players who've just started playing blitz and are on their way up. And then you'd feel terrible.
Chess feels kind of like starcraft where both players have maximal control over their units and production and they can pause the game to assess the situation.
But on the bright side, I know I'm getting better. Loss after win after loss, and now I guess I can see everything on the board more easily. Suddenly knights have become a ring of 8 squares rather than actual pieces, and bishops have become the diagonals that they control. Rooks become the vertical lines that they are rather than just pieces.
Sometimes I can feel good, because I know that the Kings dude I lost to last time isn't half as good as the dude I just lost to. If I can play like that dude I lost to, I can win against the Kings dude.
On the non-bright side, I should stop playing chess and do work now.
---
Recently I've noticed quite a few people looking forward to university. I don't know what I think about this. Sometimes I feel like I never want to leave high school, but sometimes I can feel the uni-look-forward-to as well. Only briefly, though. I guess at the moment I don't really care about much.
I've been having a series of extremely weird dreams lately, one every single night/early morning (I think that's when you're meant to be getting dreams). But they make sense to me, because they're my dreams.
Hopefully I'll finish editing nanowrimo today.
Random exercise I thought up. Think of some people you know, and try to conjure up their faces in your mind and see how clearly defined it is. I seem to base my images of people's faces on random aspects - glasses shape, distinctive eyes/hairstyle, a memorable facial expression. A combination of all of them.
I can usually get everyone after a bit of effort, but one person's face refuses to come to me, no matter how hard I try.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Hey, guys.
Warning: never ever ever drag and drop an image straight into the blogger editor, it will screw up your post forever. (Instead of storing the image on the blogger server and linking to it like a normal obedient blog editor, it decides to embed the entire image into the html of your blog post. Which means it takes forever and ever and ever for your blog post to publish, and even if it does publish your post is broken and you can't even see it)
Firstly, and most importantly (relative to the other stuff in this post), blog outing! And everyone who wants to come is invited! But I guess the name implies that you've made a blog post sometime in your life. So if you've made a blog post sometime in your life, come! (I'm serious, half of the blogosphere haven't posted for like >2 months)
Anyway, we're going to go somewhere and do some stuff. The ideas we have had suggested currently:
- Board games + go to someone's house
- Bike riding
- City outing (activities: karaoke, lasertag, etc)
- Beach
Current opinions:
Boardgames: +3.5
City outing: +1.5
Bikeriding: +1
Beach: -6
(No particular preference: +3)
Random other opinions:
- Not monopoly
- Not karaoke (+2)
- Somewhere close to southeast area
- Somewhere not obscure (+2)
Basically, board games seems to be the most popular option at the moment. So we're probably going to end up doing that. But it'll also be good if we can think up other ideas or other activities we can engage in at someone's house.
People who have offered their opinion, which I (mostly) take as interest in coming:
William
Aaron
Daniel Li
Mark
Renee
Harvard
Nara
JM
Crystal
People that have a blog but I haven't gotten an opinion from (I don't think this is a comprehensive list, please tell me anyone I've missed)
TJ
Eunice
Andy
Elisa
Brendan
Beatrice
Alysha
Michelle
Isabella
today's letter is w
Also if you want to come just comment in the thingy below or tell me. People with private blogs (i.e. idk who you are) are also welcome! It would also be nice if you could mention your activity preference and your suburb.
I drew a map of our living spread, and it's pretty awkward.
Actually, now that I go blog-stalking around, there appear to be a ridiculous amount of people that I've missed. And I don't think they'll end up reading this blog post. I think I'll go cry in a corner now. Actually, just please help me extend my invitation to everyone that has a blog. Extend the blogosphere!
---end of outing discussion, start of normal blogging---
I think you should write a blog post, and just write about whatever comes to your mind when you're writing it. Because it should be very enlightening (when you read it later) about your personal qualities. Reading my previous blog posts, I seem to be highly self-centred, introspective, someone who thinks about thinking a lot, still very self-centred, and self-righteous (trying to avoid this lately). I do talk primarily about myself in this blog. Perhaps I should talk about other people. Perhaps I should discuss events. Or maybe it's just a temporary thing caused by the influence of the holidays and seeing other people on a fortnightly basis.
The need to do work is quite pressing. I suppose you could draw a graph where the amount of stressing over work is inversely proportional to the amount of days left in the holidays.
I don't actually have that much to say. The holidays are largely uneventful. I don't know if I want to go back to school. I guess I do want to go back to school. Woo, school!
Firstly, and most importantly (relative to the other stuff in this post), blog outing! And everyone who wants to come is invited! But I guess the name implies that you've made a blog post sometime in your life. So if you've made a blog post sometime in your life, come! (I'm serious, half of the blogosphere haven't posted for like >2 months)
Anyway, we're going to go somewhere and do some stuff. The ideas we have had suggested currently:
- Board games + go to someone's house
- Bike riding
- City outing (activities: karaoke, lasertag, etc)
- Beach
Current opinions:
Boardgames: +3.5
City outing: +1.5
Bikeriding: +1
Beach: -6
(No particular preference: +3)
Random other opinions:
- Not monopoly
- Not karaoke (+2)
- Somewhere close to southeast area
- Somewhere not obscure (+2)
Basically, board games seems to be the most popular option at the moment. So we're probably going to end up doing that. But it'll also be good if we can think up other ideas or other activities we can engage in at someone's house.
People who have offered their opinion, which I (mostly) take as interest in coming:
William
Aaron
Daniel Li
Mark
Renee
Harvard
Nara
JM
Crystal
People that have a blog but I haven't gotten an opinion from (I don't think this is a comprehensive list, please tell me anyone I've missed)
TJ
Eunice
Andy
Elisa
Brendan
Beatrice
Alysha
Michelle
Isabella
today's letter is w
Also if you want to come just comment in the thingy below or tell me. People with private blogs (i.e. idk who you are) are also welcome! It would also be nice if you could mention your activity preference and your suburb.
I drew a map of our living spread, and it's pretty awkward.
Actually, now that I go blog-stalking around, there appear to be a ridiculous amount of people that I've missed. And I don't think they'll end up reading this blog post. I think I'll go cry in a corner now. Actually, just please help me extend my invitation to everyone that has a blog. Extend the blogosphere!
---end of outing discussion, start of normal blogging---
I think you should write a blog post, and just write about whatever comes to your mind when you're writing it. Because it should be very enlightening (when you read it later) about your personal qualities. Reading my previous blog posts, I seem to be highly self-centred, introspective, someone who thinks about thinking a lot, still very self-centred, and self-righteous (trying to avoid this lately). I do talk primarily about myself in this blog. Perhaps I should talk about other people. Perhaps I should discuss events. Or maybe it's just a temporary thing caused by the influence of the holidays and seeing other people on a fortnightly basis.
The need to do work is quite pressing. I suppose you could draw a graph where the amount of stressing over work is inversely proportional to the amount of days left in the holidays.
I don't actually have that much to say. The holidays are largely uneventful. I don't know if I want to go back to school. I guess I do want to go back to school. Woo, school!
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Compilation
I was watching my sister play MapleStory. And I was remembering when I still played, and everyone was like "grats" when you levelled up. It was pretty hard to level up back then. But now they decreased experience limits or something. And no one congratulates you when you level up. Which I thought was pretty sad.
Yesterday I went running at like, 11:30 PM. I did it a lot before the exams, because I often felt that I needed to do exercise but it was already late. Anyway, the darkness used to be pretty scary. Darkness is scary. But for some reason I was like "actually, darkness is okay. Please be my friend." I think that's the name of a novel. I never liked John Marsden's cover art (hahaha I just typed "Jack Marsden" and was like "why can't I find anything in google"). And then I was like "it's okay, someone coming out to attack me at night is the least likely thing ever. get over yourself, davy." And then I felt pretty good, because the darkness felt friendly now. And then I observed the lamp posts and their light, and I liked the lampposts too, because they felt like my friends. And then I remembered JM's lamp story and was like "wow I appreciate that metaphor now."
It's hard to be friends with light and darkness at the same time. It always feels conflicted. I suppose it could be a symbolic representation of the difficulty of being objective. It's pretty hard not to take sides. It's pretty hard to be a good person.
And then I saw two people coming towards me and I realised my first thought wasn't that they were muggers out to get me. I don't actually remember what my first thought was, but my second thought was that my first thought wasn't immediately negative. Which was reassuring. Anyway, I'd never seen anyone out walking at 12pm before. I swear I could hear them judging me or whatever as they went past. I doubt they'd ever seen someone out running at 12pm, either. The woman made this funny noise as I went past, which I tried to decipher to no avail.
I'm getting increasingly concerned about how much I eat and how much I'm supposed to eat. Because I'd never cared about how much I eat and I always ate as much I wanted to eat. And I always wonder what my body's telling me to do. Because on some days I eat relatively less in a meal and then if I go running or something I get tired really quickly and I worry that my body's telling me to eat more and it's struggling without the aid of food consumption. And then on some days I eat too much and I feel extremely fat and worry that my body's complaining because of all the digestion it has to do. And then I get a stitch if I eat before doing exercise. But I guess it'll be okay, because having fat but not excessive amounts of fat is good from a health perspective and I'll get hungry if I need more food. And not eating enough was never a problem in a first world country. Or something.
I'm not sure if I'm glad of these holidays. On one hand, I'm glad of all the time that I have to do stuff that I wouldn't normally end up doing. But on the other hand I feel detached. I think I mentioned this before. Detached from everything around me. It makes me feel kinda hopeless.
After these holidays, I'll be glad to go back to school. Not to say I'll be glad of the end of the holidays, or that I don't like holidays, but I'll be glad to go back to school.
For Christmas I got two books from my sister - John Flanagan's Brotherband and George Martin's Game of Thrones. They're pretty good. I also got a christmas fluffy pen-thing. I haven't used it yet.
There are so many things I need to do, so many things I've done, and so many things I haven't even thought of doing. So many things I used to do a lot but have forgotten. Multitask, for instance. Forum-lurking. Watching online anime.
But I guess I shouldn't forget to look forward. The future awaits!
Also, editing nanowrimo, shall upload soon.
-
Yesterday I went running at like, 11:30 PM. I did it a lot before the exams, because I often felt that I needed to do exercise but it was already late. Anyway, the darkness used to be pretty scary. Darkness is scary. But for some reason I was like "actually, darkness is okay. Please be my friend." I think that's the name of a novel. I never liked John Marsden's cover art (hahaha I just typed "Jack Marsden" and was like "why can't I find anything in google"). And then I was like "it's okay, someone coming out to attack me at night is the least likely thing ever. get over yourself, davy." And then I felt pretty good, because the darkness felt friendly now. And then I observed the lamp posts and their light, and I liked the lampposts too, because they felt like my friends. And then I remembered JM's lamp story and was like "wow I appreciate that metaphor now."
It's hard to be friends with light and darkness at the same time. It always feels conflicted. I suppose it could be a symbolic representation of the difficulty of being objective. It's pretty hard not to take sides. It's pretty hard to be a good person.
And then I saw two people coming towards me and I realised my first thought wasn't that they were muggers out to get me. I don't actually remember what my first thought was, but my second thought was that my first thought wasn't immediately negative. Which was reassuring. Anyway, I'd never seen anyone out walking at 12pm before. I swear I could hear them judging me or whatever as they went past. I doubt they'd ever seen someone out running at 12pm, either. The woman made this funny noise as I went past, which I tried to decipher to no avail.
-
If you read this, start comment with rI'm getting increasingly concerned about how much I eat and how much I'm supposed to eat. Because I'd never cared about how much I eat and I always ate as much I wanted to eat. And I always wonder what my body's telling me to do. Because on some days I eat relatively less in a meal and then if I go running or something I get tired really quickly and I worry that my body's telling me to eat more and it's struggling without the aid of food consumption. And then on some days I eat too much and I feel extremely fat and worry that my body's complaining because of all the digestion it has to do. And then I get a stitch if I eat before doing exercise. But I guess it'll be okay, because having fat but not excessive amounts of fat is good from a health perspective and I'll get hungry if I need more food. And not eating enough was never a problem in a first world country. Or something.
-
The secret messages are back!I'm not sure if I'm glad of these holidays. On one hand, I'm glad of all the time that I have to do stuff that I wouldn't normally end up doing. But on the other hand I feel detached. I think I mentioned this before. Detached from everything around me. It makes me feel kinda hopeless.
After these holidays, I'll be glad to go back to school. Not to say I'll be glad of the end of the holidays, or that I don't like holidays, but I'll be glad to go back to school.
-
For Christmas I got two books from my sister - John Flanagan's Brotherband and George Martin's Game of Thrones. They're pretty good. I also got a christmas fluffy pen-thing. I haven't used it yet.
There are so many things I need to do, so many things I've done, and so many things I haven't even thought of doing. So many things I used to do a lot but have forgotten. Multitask, for instance. Forum-lurking. Watching online anime.
But I guess I shouldn't forget to look forward. The future awaits!
Also, editing nanowrimo, shall upload soon.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The holidays
Today I looked in the mirror and I thought "my eyes look dull". And then I realised my eyes felt dull as well. My whole body felt dull. I felt dull.
I started this blog post without any particular topic in mind that I wanted to talk about, except maybe my dull-looking eyes. Perhaps I feel that the holidays are dull, despite the large amount of stuff that I've chosen to do.
I wonder if perhaps staying in a house all day and not talking to any people makes you dull. I guess I feel disconnected. Perhaps I am losing my sense of people as people. The world seems dull.
On another note (I like other notes), who's up for another blog outing?
Dandelion suggested someone's house for board games and house-y stuff.
Because my world felt so dull, I decided to make something happy, to brighten it up.
The candles will be good friends. And yes, the wings are the same wing as on the banner on the top of this page. I remember when I used to do photoshop a lot. That was when I used tumblr. I remember that. I remember learning how to use the pen tool just so I could draw these wings. I like those candles. It feels like they're my friends, too. Not that my world feels very much brighter, despite the optimism of the candles.
Maybe I'm spending too long on the computer
Maybe I'm going slightly mad, haha.
I'd always liked anthropomorphist stuff. It's always been as if all the objects around me have feelings, too. I often worry that my possessions feel neglected if I don't use them. I wrote two anthropomorphist short stories in year 10 for my halfyearly and yearly exam. I got 14 and 13, despite how terrible they were. The first one was about a frog, the second was about a cat. I do not want to read them again.
But I guess it's doubtful that I'll ever write one of those again, with all the teachers heavily recommending against it and me sucking at writing them.
About a week ago I had a dream that I got my english essay back and it was 7/15. This week I dreamt that I got my english essay back and it was 13/15. I don't know what that says about me and my modes of thinking. I'm certainly no more optimistic than I was a week ago.
I'm going to finish editing my nanowrimo soon, and then I'll upload it. Reading over it again, I wonder how I could have written such terribleness. Although I've mostly only reread the parts that I completely rushed. I think it could end up under 50k after I finish editing.
My sister got 98.90. She's not happy, because she wanted 99. She also stateranked PD. I would be happy if I stateranked PD. And then she told me that I should get much higher than her because she didn't do that much work, especially in terms of maths (3u).
I'll do some schoolwork, after I finish my google code-in task for SymPy (I have to document an anomaly in the library) and finish making the database program my dad wants me to do for his company.
I have a feeling the holidays are going to pass pretty fast. I'm glad of that. I want to go back to school. I'm looking forward to everything, from the year 12 camp to the composition of the biology class to waking up early for extension 2 maths.
If you haven't heard, my bio class is merging with the other bio class in our line. I don't know why. But before I heard about it one day I was wondering what would happen if the bio classes merged somehow and I was imagining seating arrangements and there was me in my seat and this person on the opposite table to the left. And then I was like "lol, as if that's going to happen". So when I heard about the merge I was like "WHAT THE ALSKDJIDOAWJDIOJ" and it felt a bit like a dream.
Do you like your dreams?
City/karaoke on thursday. I find myself practising singing a lot lately, using a pc-singstar program called ultrastar dx. It's quite fun. My sister usually beats me, though. I can only win with luck or on the songs I know better, like Aladdin's part of A Whole New World, Hero (Skillet), Just A Dream (Tsui version), or songs that are better suited to male vocals, such as I'll Make a Man Out of You, Comatose (I'm still unsure how I should pronounce it. comb-a-tose or corm-a-tose?), and Dynamite (suitability debatable in the high parts).
I still suck at I'm Yours and Soul Sister (to a lesser degree).
I guess I should go back to sympy. Only ~17 hours left to finish it and I'll spend much of those 17 hours sleeping. Apparently I have to "document why unpickling a singleton doesn't return the singleton object with protocol 0 and 1". If you don't know what that is, great, I have no idea either. Apparently the singleton is pi and when the protocol is wrong cos(pi)=cos(pi) when it should be cos(pi)=-1. Something like that. Perhaps IT is not the best career choice for me.
I started this blog post without any particular topic in mind that I wanted to talk about, except maybe my dull-looking eyes. Perhaps I feel that the holidays are dull, despite the large amount of stuff that I've chosen to do.
I wonder if perhaps staying in a house all day and not talking to any people makes you dull. I guess I feel disconnected. Perhaps I am losing my sense of people as people. The world seems dull.
Dandelion suggested someone's house for board games and house-y stuff.
Because my world felt so dull, I decided to make something happy, to brighten it up.
 |
| The red candle merrily greets the blue one. Be friendly! |
The candles will be good friends. And yes, the wings are the same wing as on the banner on the top of this page. I remember when I used to do photoshop a lot. That was when I used tumblr. I remember that. I remember learning how to use the pen tool just so I could draw these wings. I like those candles. It feels like they're my friends, too. Not that my world feels very much brighter, despite the optimism of the candles.
Maybe I'm spending too long on the computer
Maybe I'm going slightly mad, haha.
I'd always liked anthropomorphist stuff. It's always been as if all the objects around me have feelings, too. I often worry that my possessions feel neglected if I don't use them. I wrote two anthropomorphist short stories in year 10 for my halfyearly and yearly exam. I got 14 and 13, despite how terrible they were. The first one was about a frog, the second was about a cat. I do not want to read them again.
But I guess it's doubtful that I'll ever write one of those again, with all the teachers heavily recommending against it and me sucking at writing them.
About a week ago I had a dream that I got my english essay back and it was 7/15. This week I dreamt that I got my english essay back and it was 13/15. I don't know what that says about me and my modes of thinking. I'm certainly no more optimistic than I was a week ago.
I'm going to finish editing my nanowrimo soon, and then I'll upload it. Reading over it again, I wonder how I could have written such terribleness. Although I've mostly only reread the parts that I completely rushed. I think it could end up under 50k after I finish editing.
My sister got 98.90. She's not happy, because she wanted 99. She also stateranked PD. I would be happy if I stateranked PD. And then she told me that I should get much higher than her because she didn't do that much work, especially in terms of maths (3u).
I'll do some schoolwork, after I finish my google code-in task for SymPy (I have to document an anomaly in the library) and finish making the database program my dad wants me to do for his company.
I have a feeling the holidays are going to pass pretty fast. I'm glad of that. I want to go back to school. I'm looking forward to everything, from the year 12 camp to the composition of the biology class to waking up early for extension 2 maths.
If you haven't heard, my bio class is merging with the other bio class in our line. I don't know why. But before I heard about it one day I was wondering what would happen if the bio classes merged somehow and I was imagining seating arrangements and there was me in my seat and this person on the opposite table to the left. And then I was like "lol, as if that's going to happen". So when I heard about the merge I was like "WHAT THE ALSKDJIDOAWJDIOJ" and it felt a bit like a dream.
Do you like your dreams?
City/karaoke on thursday. I find myself practising singing a lot lately, using a pc-singstar program called ultrastar dx. It's quite fun. My sister usually beats me, though. I can only win with luck or on the songs I know better, like Aladdin's part of A Whole New World, Hero (Skillet), Just A Dream (Tsui version), or songs that are better suited to male vocals, such as I'll Make a Man Out of You, Comatose (I'm still unsure how I should pronounce it. comb-a-tose or corm-a-tose?), and Dynamite (suitability debatable in the high parts).
I still suck at I'm Yours and Soul Sister (to a lesser degree).
I guess I should go back to sympy. Only ~17 hours left to finish it and I'll spend much of those 17 hours sleeping. Apparently I have to "document why unpickling a singleton doesn't return the singleton object with protocol 0 and 1". If you don't know what that is, great, I have no idea either. Apparently the singleton is pi and when the protocol is wrong cos(pi)=cos(pi) when it should be cos(pi)=-1. Something like that. Perhaps IT is not the best career choice for me.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Integrity
So I was reading a tumblr post that said "Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching." And I thought this was interesting. An interesting idea.
Awhile ago, I saw a person throw an apple core away except he missed the bin. Someone was like "dude go pick it up", and he's like "I'll do it later", despite the fact that it was obvious he wouldn't. At this moment I was considering the potential consequence of picking it up myself before Harvard beat me to it.
I was surprised. I thought, "integrity!". He didn't know that I was watching him and the apple core.
So next time when the bin was missed, driven by Harvard's own lack of inhibitions, I went to do the same thing as him. Except this time the core rolled pretty far next to this little person (I find it hard to differentiate between junior grades) and they, driven by some incomprehensible primal impulse, stepped on it until it broke into pieces. Anyway, at that point it wasn't as if I could go back and leave the mashed-up apple there or anything, so I went to pick it up anyway. And the kid looked at me like I was weird. But I didn't really expect anything else. Perhaps I have low expectations of people. Maybe that's why nice people make me so happy.
Next time you see a bit of rubbish on the ground, and you're on the way to the bin, pick it up! You can contribute to the cleanliness of the school. And you never know what younger kid might be watching and they'd be influenced by your example and everything would lead to a clean school.
Or maybe the consensus is that it doesn't matter because the cleaners will clean everything up anyway. If it is, then I think it's a retarded consensus.
This mini-rant leads me onto my next mini-rant. I guess they're not really rants. They're more like...philosophical reflections of internal and external phenomena.
What I was going to say is that you shouldn't be angry at people. I guess disliking someone or something someone does it out of your control, but I believe it is always good to make people happy, whoever they are. Because happiness makes happiness. I like being someone that can make other people happier, don't you? Even if you don't, it's important to realise that everyone is human. You could have been any of the people around you.
So instead of feeling a sense of annoyance at the person who refuses to pick that apple core up, or feeling angry at that person who didn't contribute a secret santa present because they couldn't be bothered, try to understand what they feel. Empathise. Because you can't judge someone's actions as bad before you even try to understand their motivations, their aspirations. I think people like Harvard or Eunice have good empathy. Reading their blogs, I've noticed a strict lack of judgemental statements and general negativity towards other people. Which is pretty cool! At least cooler than my irritated rants.
And this applies to wider everything too. Take all the hate directed towards politicians, without comprehension of their situation or their circumstances. Because if you don't know what they're doing and how they're doing it, you shouldn't have any right to judge them negatively. Because if you haven't even talked to them before, if you take everything from subjective media representations, you only create unneeded discord.
But yet, never forget that the people who judge others as mentioned in the previous paragraph aren't bad people either. I can understand their words and thoughts perfectly, I've often made such hasty comments without thought. They are just the same as you or me. But what if you can show one of those people their own lack of knowledge? What if you can argue with them without a trace of prejudice or judgement, and nicely convince them that it would be better to make less hasty judgements?
Then you are doing good, because you're reducing the conflict and general annoyance throughout the world.
Maybe you'll tell me I'm crazy, maybe you'll tell me I'm mad to think I can reduce the anger in the world by any amount. And I don't care. Perhaps you would give me percentages, tell me that if I worked for my whole life towards this cause, I'd change barely 0.001% of the world's population. And I'll simply reaffirm my lack of care. Because when it comes down to your own heart, your own purpose, numbers don't matter anymore. Do you think you really know the difference between 1 million and 10 million people? I know that I don't. My mind has no clue how many people 1 million is. Because when it comes down to my purpose, there are no numbers.
There is just hope.
Goodwill!
Posting BB article if you wanted to read it again:
But I’ve heard a lot of people cite the teachers of private schools as a reason to send their children to them. And this is logical. If teachers are paid higher in private schools, it follows that they should be better. However, I disagree with this. I’ve seen good and bad teachers at both schools, in my experience there is no correlation. However, I must also put this down to the students. A teacher will find it infinitely harder to teach when s/he needs to consistently tell the class to be quiet, and engaging teachers are simply rare. At my old school I had one brilliant Maths teacher, one brilliant French teacher, and three terrible English teachers. There is simply no consistency.
Well, guess what? I understand none of this at all. Well, except maybe the sexist attitudes. From my view, all the above arguments are complete twaddle (except, as I’ve said, possibly the sexist attitudes), and all the university theses are being retarded. I’m not sure exactly how much of it I can attribute to the school, but I can mention some things that I suspect are due to lack or presence of girls.
And the more I think about it, the more I realise that the people in the school are everything to it. Year 8 camp would have been awesome and not a hell of lost items and endless hiking if the less nice people in my group had been replaced by some from this school. I would have struggled through the ridiculously long hikes and stuff with a joyful spirit. I shall paraphrase a certain person here, who told me that everything’s fun when you’re with your friends. Never a truer statement. I like this school. I look forward to going to school, but only because there are nice people here.
Perhaps you still fail to understand the absolutely massive magnitude of the importance of the people in the school to how much you like it. Imagine you came to school and it was just you. You’d solo all your classes, you’d eat recess and lunch alone, and you’d be the only person on the bus home. Well, that’s what happens if you don’t feel a sense of *ahem* belonging with the other people in the school. That’s what happens when you don’t have marvellously nice people in the school. I mean, when a new kid came to our school one day and came to all our classes I’m pretty sure no-one said a single word to him at all. No one asked what school he came from, no one asked him if he liked the school until the teacher deigned to at the end of the history lesson.
I guess it's time to fix my NaNoWriMo so I can upload it in a semi-okay state, and prepare my Viva Voce and do stuff that I've written that I would do on my little to-do sheet.
Today I wandered around Parramatta shopping centre for a long time. I never realised it was so big. I also never realised that the information terminals were for information. I wandered around for a long time. I think I like shopping more when I'm wandering around, questing for my next objective. Questing is exciting.
Awhile ago, I saw a person throw an apple core away except he missed the bin. Someone was like "dude go pick it up", and he's like "I'll do it later", despite the fact that it was obvious he wouldn't. At this moment I was considering the potential consequence of picking it up myself before Harvard beat me to it.
I was surprised. I thought, "integrity!". He didn't know that I was watching him and the apple core.
So next time when the bin was missed, driven by Harvard's own lack of inhibitions, I went to do the same thing as him. Except this time the core rolled pretty far next to this little person (I find it hard to differentiate between junior grades) and they, driven by some incomprehensible primal impulse, stepped on it until it broke into pieces. Anyway, at that point it wasn't as if I could go back and leave the mashed-up apple there or anything, so I went to pick it up anyway. And the kid looked at me like I was weird. But I didn't really expect anything else. Perhaps I have low expectations of people. Maybe that's why nice people make me so happy.
Next time you see a bit of rubbish on the ground, and you're on the way to the bin, pick it up! You can contribute to the cleanliness of the school. And you never know what younger kid might be watching and they'd be influenced by your example and everything would lead to a clean school.
Or maybe the consensus is that it doesn't matter because the cleaners will clean everything up anyway. If it is, then I think it's a retarded consensus.
This mini-rant leads me onto my next mini-rant. I guess they're not really rants. They're more like...philosophical reflections of internal and external phenomena.
What I was going to say is that you shouldn't be angry at people. I guess disliking someone or something someone does it out of your control, but I believe it is always good to make people happy, whoever they are. Because happiness makes happiness. I like being someone that can make other people happier, don't you? Even if you don't, it's important to realise that everyone is human. You could have been any of the people around you.
So instead of feeling a sense of annoyance at the person who refuses to pick that apple core up, or feeling angry at that person who didn't contribute a secret santa present because they couldn't be bothered, try to understand what they feel. Empathise. Because you can't judge someone's actions as bad before you even try to understand their motivations, their aspirations. I think people like Harvard or Eunice have good empathy. Reading their blogs, I've noticed a strict lack of judgemental statements and general negativity towards other people. Which is pretty cool! At least cooler than my irritated rants.
And this applies to wider everything too. Take all the hate directed towards politicians, without comprehension of their situation or their circumstances. Because if you don't know what they're doing and how they're doing it, you shouldn't have any right to judge them negatively. Because if you haven't even talked to them before, if you take everything from subjective media representations, you only create unneeded discord.
But yet, never forget that the people who judge others as mentioned in the previous paragraph aren't bad people either. I can understand their words and thoughts perfectly, I've often made such hasty comments without thought. They are just the same as you or me. But what if you can show one of those people their own lack of knowledge? What if you can argue with them without a trace of prejudice or judgement, and nicely convince them that it would be better to make less hasty judgements?
Then you are doing good, because you're reducing the conflict and general annoyance throughout the world.
Maybe you'll tell me I'm crazy, maybe you'll tell me I'm mad to think I can reduce the anger in the world by any amount. And I don't care. Perhaps you would give me percentages, tell me that if I worked for my whole life towards this cause, I'd change barely 0.001% of the world's population. And I'll simply reaffirm my lack of care. Because when it comes down to your own heart, your own purpose, numbers don't matter anymore. Do you think you really know the difference between 1 million and 10 million people? I know that I don't. My mind has no clue how many people 1 million is. Because when it comes down to my purpose, there are no numbers.
There is just hope.
Goodwill!
Posting BB article if you wanted to read it again:
Different High Schools
Have you ever stopped to consider the qualities about
our school that we take for granted? I bet you just did. I transferred to this
school in this year (Year 11). As a person that has been to an exclusive,
private, single-sex boys’ school (the most expensive school in Sydney,
$22,000/year last time I checked) located in a super-metropolitan suburb with a
train station barely 200m from the school and an exclusive, selective, co-ed
school located in a semi-suburbia where trains do not even reach, I feel as if
I should be able to present a valid judgement on the unique characteristics of
the two schools. I shall put them into a list format to make them easier for
you to read.
1.
Discipline
and strictness. You think Dr. Bathgate complains too much about our uniform
standard? Imagine prefects being put on roster at the front gate of the school
giving detentions to people whose compulsory straw hats are not being worn
parallel to the ground. To give you an idea of what it’s like in a private
schools:
a.
Instant
detentions upon being late to class
b.
Compulsory
ties and blazers all year around
c.
Compulsory
hats worn during recesses and lunches
d.
Uniform
must be perfect at all times, even outside of school. Shoes must be polished,
belt must be a school belt, and bag must be a school bag. Compulsory straw hats
called boaters costing $50 each.
e.
Saturday
detention upon mobile phone ringing in class
The list could go on and on.
2.
Teachers.
When I was in year 8 (in the private school) I distinctly recall having a male
teacher for Maths, English, Science, History, PDHPE, Music, Design/Technology,
Visual Art, and Latin. In other words, every single one of my subjects. When I
started here in year 11, I had a female teacher for Maths, English, English
Extension, Physics, Biology, and Ancient History. In other words, every single
one of my subjects. Unfortunately (or fortunately) this year I picked up 4-unit
maths which means I now have one male teacher (shoutout Mr. Simmons!) (I also
picked up 4u English and History extension which means I have 3 more female
teachers as well).
But I’ve heard a lot of people cite the teachers of private schools as a reason to send their children to them. And this is logical. If teachers are paid higher in private schools, it follows that they should be better. However, I disagree with this. I’ve seen good and bad teachers at both schools, in my experience there is no correlation. However, I must also put this down to the students. A teacher will find it infinitely harder to teach when s/he needs to consistently tell the class to be quiet, and engaging teachers are simply rare. At my old school I had one brilliant Maths teacher, one brilliant French teacher, and three terrible English teachers. There is simply no consistency.
3.
Girls. Of course, I’m unable to comment on
single-sex schools in general, since I’ve obviously never been to a single-sex
girls’ school, but I think this is a massive consideration.
To consider this from a comprehensive perspective, the reason most schools are single-sex is because it’s traditional. In some countries it’s even religious. If you accept the main arguments put forward by advocates and opponents of single-sex education, the advantages of single-sex education lie mainly in distractions of sexual attraction post-puberty and that boys and girls require different methods of education and the disadvantages lie in decreased social skills and the generation of sexist attitudes.
To consider this from a comprehensive perspective, the reason most schools are single-sex is because it’s traditional. In some countries it’s even religious. If you accept the main arguments put forward by advocates and opponents of single-sex education, the advantages of single-sex education lie mainly in distractions of sexual attraction post-puberty and that boys and girls require different methods of education and the disadvantages lie in decreased social skills and the generation of sexist attitudes.
Well, guess what? I understand none of this at all. Well, except maybe the sexist attitudes. From my view, all the above arguments are complete twaddle (except, as I’ve said, possibly the sexist attitudes), and all the university theses are being retarded. I’m not sure exactly how much of it I can attribute to the school, but I can mention some things that I suspect are due to lack or presence of girls.
a.
As
I previously mentioned, sexism. While I’ve believe that many pubescent males
and post-pubescent males are sexist regardless of school, I must mention that a
lack of contact with girls likely causes boys to more often objectify females
and consider them more as sexual receptacles than as similar people. If you
were to hear the late-night camp discussions of single-sex school boys, you
would imagine that their idea of a girl was a collection of body parts rather
than a human. Of course, there’s some male sexism in this school as well, but
it’s not nearly as prominent. I think contact with females helps teenage boys
deal with girls as people.
b.
Once
my French teacher (the brilliant one) said that the boys in the class would be
a lot nicer and less generally annoying if there were girls in the class. I
suspect that it is indeed, true. I remember one particular ridiculous incident
that would be censored if I put it here. Nevertheless, the reasoning behind
this claim is that the guys would get cut down by the girls when they did mean
things to them or each other. And that reasoning sounds quite valid to me. But
more on how nice people are later.
c.
Focus.
It is also logical and probably inevitable that boys will concentrate more on
the opposite gender when in a school with more than a third of the people there
being that opposite gender. At the point you might say “But Davy! You just told
me that that argument was complete rubbish! You lied to me!” But no, I say, I
am still arguing that that argument is rubbish. While from my own experience, I
probably do think about girl(s) more, it’s hardly a hindrance to my schoolwork.
I suppose heartbreak and love problems
can have an effect, but it’s only temporary and counterbalanced by an
associated increase in motivation and competitiveness.
4.
Events
and Activities. Do you believe that we don’t have enough mufti days? Well,
imagine having no mufti days at all, for every single one of the ~200 days of
the school year. Something I have
previously thought about is the role of the prefects. In this school the
prefects run interesting and fun activities for everyone and make life better,
basically. High Resolves, the SRC, prefects, everything! But I think private
schools lack the idea of “fun”. There was nothing to make my schooling life
better each day, it was the monotony of class day in, day out. No one ever
bothered to organise events for Christmas, for Halloween, for Easter. There was
no one to look out for how happy the students were besides a lone school
councillor who I got sent to once for practising alliteration of D-words in my
diary (i.e. death, destruction, disease, despair, the list ended up being about
60 words long). And so my schooling life became focused around achievement, and
I got my fun from sitting in front of a computer screen playing games all day.
The lack of fun made school such a restricting place, a place where you simply
cannot relax.
5.
The
people. I left the main one to last, as it is interlinked with all the others. Its
importance is supreme. A school is, at its very foundations, made up by the
students that attend it. I believe everything above: the rules, the teachers,
the events are all just secondary
(see what I did there?). It’s difficult to consider all the people I know at
once (try doing it. It’s actually pretty hard) but my conclusion is that little
minority of people who bother to go out and be friendly to that new kid looking
a bit lost (shoutout to those people, you know who you are) revitalise the
school entirely.
And the more I think about it, the more I realise that the people in the school are everything to it. Year 8 camp would have been awesome and not a hell of lost items and endless hiking if the less nice people in my group had been replaced by some from this school. I would have struggled through the ridiculously long hikes and stuff with a joyful spirit. I shall paraphrase a certain person here, who told me that everything’s fun when you’re with your friends. Never a truer statement. I like this school. I look forward to going to school, but only because there are nice people here.
Perhaps you still fail to understand the absolutely massive magnitude of the importance of the people in the school to how much you like it. Imagine you came to school and it was just you. You’d solo all your classes, you’d eat recess and lunch alone, and you’d be the only person on the bus home. Well, that’s what happens if you don’t feel a sense of *ahem* belonging with the other people in the school. That’s what happens when you don’t have marvellously nice people in the school. I mean, when a new kid came to our school one day and came to all our classes I’m pretty sure no-one said a single word to him at all. No one asked what school he came from, no one asked him if he liked the school until the teacher deigned to at the end of the history lesson.
And
there are so many nice people in this school. It might be something to do with
the beneficial presence of both genders, I don’t know, but there is something
about this school where suddenly so many people are nice to me, giving me a
friendly wave or hello. I thought about this one for a long while, and
concluded that nice people generate nice people. Seeing other people being
friendly encourages you to be friendly, because being friendly is the thing to
do at this school. If everyone around you is in their own little circle of
friends, you’re going to either feel left out or you’re going to join your own
circle of friends and that other dude who doesn’t know anyone is going to be
sad.
I
can’t help you understand what private school boys are like. It’s hard to
understand a group of people, because unless you want to overgeneralise you’re
going to have to simultaneously understand each and every person in that group
and then understand them all together. And I doubt even Jason Ma could
simultaneously comprehend many thousands of people at the same time. Therefore,
I shall firstly inform you that the popular “stuck-up” image of private school
people that I seem to be getting from some people’s understandings is
misguided. I shall paint an image for you of the typical private school boy. He
isn’t stuck up, he simply takes money and monetary security for granted, as
many of you might. Because he only knows similar people - that is, rich,
European-descended, upper-class sex-driven teenage boys, he misconceives girls,
poorer people, Asians, academically talented people and the other general
minorities such as homosexuals,
physically or mentally disabled people, etc. He isn’t a nice person that
will stop to help someone else who has dropped their books. He’s a normal
person, a normal person influenced by the restrictions of his school.
But
of course, I am doing exactly the thing I thought I was meant to avoid, and I
am overgeneralising people. There are nice people in private schools too, I
guess it’s just the atmosphere of this specific school that allows the people
to be nicer, more accepting, and more friendly towards each other. I sense that
the people of this school are simply more willing to be friends with me.
Or maybe, as some
people have suggested to me, it’s just my grade that’s nice and all the year 7s
and year 8s are immature freaks that fell out of the sky after they decided to
jump out of an airplane for fun (I hope you realised that that was a joke).
Obviously I choose not to believe that.
To conclude I believe I shall give my opinion about the two schools and
then about private/non-selective/single-sex schools in general as opposed to
public/selective/co-ed. As you can probably tell from the overarching tone of
this article, I really like this school and believe single-sex expensive private schools are evil devil’s
spawn from the deepest ocean trench imaginable, but I will attempt to present
an objective, un-biased judgement of the schools.
About my old school. I felt not a trace of sadness when I left it. I
waved goodbye to the school name (which I’m not mentioning for obvious reasons)
above the main gate and felt not a trace of regret at leaving the place despite
its familiarity. But I have the feeling that leaving this school, I will be
seriously sad. Incredibly, devastatingly, mind-numbingly sad. Because the your
friends and nice people are the ones most important to you. Because for the
first time since primary school, I was happy going to school. Isn’t that funny?
This school inspires me.
And you know what? I was kidding about the objective judgement about
schools. I’m going to tell you private schools are completely terrible AND ONLY
SEND YOUR CHILDREN TO THEM IF YOU WANT THEM TO DIE A TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DEATH IN
THE DEPTHS OF THE HELL FROM WHICH THOSE PRIVATE SCHOOLS SPAWNED!
I’m glad I’m here. Go Baulko!
By Davy Jones, Year 12
I guess it's time to fix my NaNoWriMo so I can upload it in a semi-okay state, and prepare my Viva Voce and do stuff that I've written that I would do on my little to-do sheet.
Today I wandered around Parramatta shopping centre for a long time. I never realised it was so big. I also never realised that the information terminals were for information. I wandered around for a long time. I think I like shopping more when I'm wandering around, questing for my next objective. Questing is exciting.
Friday, November 11, 2011
H
I was going to title the post "Hope" except then I decided it looked weird and semi-clichéd and also I think I've already had a post titled "Hope".
I could make a list of things I need to do. That list would be extremely long. But it'd probably be pretty boring to you.
I have to keep myself from slipping into that dreary finality-containing tone that I used to use.
I've been typing a lot lately. Typing tests, typing races, typing speed. I don't know why, but it's sort of fun, I guess. Maybe because I've found websites that allow you to compete against other people. And then I can practise typing fast, which I think is making me faster.
The funny thing is, I can remember almost all the events that improved my typing speed.
I remember when I was about 10 or so, and then my dad got this really old program. It was called "Typing Tutor IV". It's a really really really old DOS program that attempts to help you improve your typing. I think that was when I started typing. Typing using three or four fingers, I believe. And my typing speed hovered around 5-15 WPM. And I really sucked at typing. But then I got better and could get 20 WPM occasionally. In primary school we did some typing, and my typing just naturally increased to speed of about 30-40 WPM. I guess at low typing speeds you don't need to actually try that hard to increase your speed because at that stage it's just finding the keys on the keyboard. When I got to highschool we had this ICT class in year 7 where typing was one of the courses. I learned to touch-type in year 7. At the end of the course 60 wpm was around the best I could do. I had a friend who could occasionally reach 90-100 WPM back then, which irritated me slightly because it was so high. I think I'm a bit faster than him now, though. And because of all the computer assignments and essays that I wrote in 7-10, my typing speed ended up rising to about 75, which I thought was pretty good.
Then at the end of year 10 I started using ridiculous amounts of msn to talk to people, and acquired an extreme adversion to typos. Which brought my speed pretty high, like 100-110 or so. I think that was the major typing speed increase.
And then one day Renee linked the typing speed thing on her blog with 500 points. And then I felt challenged, because I'm a challenged person. Challenged person? Anyway, I ended up doing ridiculous amounts of typing, and realised the massive impact typos actually have on your typing speed. And then I ended up doing typing sessions a lot, which probably took a lot of time from my schoolwork. But still, it was worth it, as a few months' practice has given me ~135 (125-145) WPM now.
I'm going to talk about my competitiveness. I become competitive about a lot of things, which usually do not include exam marks because I don't put that much effort into them. When I compete with another person, they seem to become a personal opponent to me and idk, they're just an enemy to defeat. It's the same in all competitions, in chess games, in crane-folding competitions, in typing speed competitions, even in shoelace-tying competitions I guess. Sometimes it's hard for me to recognise other people's achievements because of that.
I was out running yesterday and I was thinking that coming to this school has changed me in two major ways: firstly it has made me (slightly) less self-centred and secondly it has made me much more inspired. I was thinking of all the things that I wouldn't have done if I didn't come to this school.
- I would still be terrible at chess.
- I would still have a typing speed around 100 wpm.
- I would still be chasing after empty dreams on the wind.
- I would still be an unsocial reject, disliking all the people around me and being annoyed by their actions daily. I'd still dislike coming to school.
- I'd have done a lot less running, and would be much less fit.
- I wouldn't have had the confidence to pick up extension english (something I do not regret in the least, I like the genre of autobiography because I've done so much of it already in blogging and diary writing. Did you know that a personal blog is considered life writing?) or pick up extension 2 english or extension history.
- I'd still be, admittedly, a bit scared of girls.
- I'd still be unconfident walking around school.
- I wouldn't have started NaNoWriMo.
- I would be losing my motivation to do maths.
- I would probably have a terrible english teacher.
I could go on forever and forever about this. Renee told me that I have a very "romanticized [sic]" view of the school. I guess I do. I inevitably end up ranting about why this school is good and how the people in it are good. Or maybe it's just now. I remember a period awhile ago when I felt really sad and for an instant of doubt in my romanticism. But I'm happy now.
I guess humans have a naturally positive attitude towards things that make them happy, whether those things are good for them or not.
I could make a list of things I need to do. That list would be extremely long. But it'd probably be pretty boring to you.
I have to keep myself from slipping into that dreary finality-containing tone that I used to use.
I've been typing a lot lately. Typing tests, typing races, typing speed. I don't know why, but it's sort of fun, I guess. Maybe because I've found websites that allow you to compete against other people. And then I can practise typing fast, which I think is making me faster.
The funny thing is, I can remember almost all the events that improved my typing speed.
I remember when I was about 10 or so, and then my dad got this really old program. It was called "Typing Tutor IV". It's a really really really old DOS program that attempts to help you improve your typing. I think that was when I started typing. Typing using three or four fingers, I believe. And my typing speed hovered around 5-15 WPM. And I really sucked at typing. But then I got better and could get 20 WPM occasionally. In primary school we did some typing, and my typing just naturally increased to speed of about 30-40 WPM. I guess at low typing speeds you don't need to actually try that hard to increase your speed because at that stage it's just finding the keys on the keyboard. When I got to highschool we had this ICT class in year 7 where typing was one of the courses. I learned to touch-type in year 7. At the end of the course 60 wpm was around the best I could do. I had a friend who could occasionally reach 90-100 WPM back then, which irritated me slightly because it was so high. I think I'm a bit faster than him now, though. And because of all the computer assignments and essays that I wrote in 7-10, my typing speed ended up rising to about 75, which I thought was pretty good.
Then at the end of year 10 I started using ridiculous amounts of msn to talk to people, and acquired an extreme adversion to typos. Which brought my speed pretty high, like 100-110 or so. I think that was the major typing speed increase.
And then one day Renee linked the typing speed thing on her blog with 500 points. And then I felt challenged, because I'm a challenged person. Challenged person? Anyway, I ended up doing ridiculous amounts of typing, and realised the massive impact typos actually have on your typing speed. And then I ended up doing typing sessions a lot, which probably took a lot of time from my schoolwork. But still, it was worth it, as a few months' practice has given me ~135 (125-145) WPM now.
I'm going to talk about my competitiveness. I become competitive about a lot of things, which usually do not include exam marks because I don't put that much effort into them. When I compete with another person, they seem to become a personal opponent to me and idk, they're just an enemy to defeat. It's the same in all competitions, in chess games, in crane-folding competitions, in typing speed competitions, even in shoelace-tying competitions I guess. Sometimes it's hard for me to recognise other people's achievements because of that.
I was out running yesterday and I was thinking that coming to this school has changed me in two major ways: firstly it has made me (slightly) less self-centred and secondly it has made me much more inspired. I was thinking of all the things that I wouldn't have done if I didn't come to this school.
- I would still be terrible at chess.
- I would still have a typing speed around 100 wpm.
- I would still be chasing after empty dreams on the wind.
- I would still be an unsocial reject, disliking all the people around me and being annoyed by their actions daily. I'd still dislike coming to school.
- I'd have done a lot less running, and would be much less fit.
- I wouldn't have had the confidence to pick up extension english (something I do not regret in the least, I like the genre of autobiography because I've done so much of it already in blogging and diary writing. Did you know that a personal blog is considered life writing?) or pick up extension 2 english or extension history.
- I'd still be, admittedly, a bit scared of girls.
- I'd still be unconfident walking around school.
- I wouldn't have started NaNoWriMo.
- I would be losing my motivation to do maths.
- I would probably have a terrible english teacher.
I could go on forever and forever about this. Renee told me that I have a very "romanticized [sic]" view of the school. I guess I do. I inevitably end up ranting about why this school is good and how the people in it are good. Or maybe it's just now. I remember a period awhile ago when I felt really sad and for an instant of doubt in my romanticism. But I'm happy now.
I guess humans have a naturally positive attitude towards things that make them happy, whether those things are good for them or not.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Stuff Vol. II
I haven't posted in a long time. I could spend a lot of the time that
I'd normally spend doing unproductive stuff writing blog posts.
Alright.
Today I was doing the typing test again, and then my dad came and he was like "why are you wasting your time doing this stuff? you're not going to become an accountant or anything". And mentally I was just contemplating this and remembered that I do this because it's fun.
If you like doing something, then you should do it. Of course you need to earn money and stuff, and if you have no money you'll have no time to do stuff you like doing because you'll be too busy earning money, but if you have a proper hobby, a skill you want to train, then it's really good. But I think doing stuff actively is better than doing it inactively. I.e. playing chess is better than watching television even though you like watching television more, because you're actually thinking when you're playing chess and when you're watching television your brain is doing practically nothing. At least that's what I remember of the little television that I used to watch.
And of course, this makes no logical sense. Why is being mentally or physically active so much better than being mentally and physically inactive?
I thought about this for a while, and concluded it was because being inactive requires no effort. There is no measure of how good you are at watching television. There is no measure of how good you are at smoking either, now that I think of it. Before I mentioned that it is human nature to seek happiness. But pleasure for the sake of pleasure seems empty
I wonder at the sense of satisfaction that we receive at performing different activities. Why is it that we are made happy only for a short while at skilfully winning a chess game? Why does our happiness last longer when we complete an assessment task with confidence and receive a good mark? When we are productive for a whole day and complete much work?. Because we are happier when we do something productive that isn't empty, that isn't happiness for the sake of happiness?
So why is it that someone coming up to talk to you can cast a radiant undispellable glow on your entire weekend that persists despite all events that occur and casts everything into an optimistic light?
But of course without contextual details as to what I'm actually talking about you probably don't understand what I'm trying to convince you. Or maybe I'm trying to convince myself, as clichéd as that sounds.
Maybe we just don't understand happiness.
Maybe it's better that way.
--
The most recent paragraph in my NaNoWriMo (it's not too late to start!):
"Oh, me? This shop is just an apothecary. I make my living from selling medicines and herbs to people who need them. But now that I have all this extra money, I can afford to give away some of them without charge."
Sprint knew this to be untrue. She had been giving away medicines for free long before he had made his first visit to the clean, orderly shop.
The footsteps were coming even closer now and he realised he had not been paying attention. They were approaching the door to the shop now. Spring quelled his initial surge of panic with a breath, as he had done many times before. Panic would not help him now. But something else would, he was sure. He spun around, scanning the various items of furniture.
Alright.
Today I was doing the typing test again, and then my dad came and he was like "why are you wasting your time doing this stuff? you're not going to become an accountant or anything". And mentally I was just contemplating this and remembered that I do this because it's fun.
If you like doing something, then you should do it. Of course you need to earn money and stuff, and if you have no money you'll have no time to do stuff you like doing because you'll be too busy earning money, but if you have a proper hobby, a skill you want to train, then it's really good. But I think doing stuff actively is better than doing it inactively. I.e. playing chess is better than watching television even though you like watching television more, because you're actually thinking when you're playing chess and when you're watching television your brain is doing practically nothing. At least that's what I remember of the little television that I used to watch.
And of course, this makes no logical sense. Why is being mentally or physically active so much better than being mentally and physically inactive?
I thought about this for a while, and concluded it was because being inactive requires no effort. There is no measure of how good you are at watching television. There is no measure of how good you are at smoking either, now that I think of it. Before I mentioned that it is human nature to seek happiness. But pleasure for the sake of pleasure seems empty
I wonder at the sense of satisfaction that we receive at performing different activities. Why is it that we are made happy only for a short while at skilfully winning a chess game? Why does our happiness last longer when we complete an assessment task with confidence and receive a good mark? When we are productive for a whole day and complete much work?. Because we are happier when we do something productive that isn't empty, that isn't happiness for the sake of happiness?
So why is it that someone coming up to talk to you can cast a radiant undispellable glow on your entire weekend that persists despite all events that occur and casts everything into an optimistic light?
But of course without contextual details as to what I'm actually talking about you probably don't understand what I'm trying to convince you. Or maybe I'm trying to convince myself, as clichéd as that sounds.
Maybe we just don't understand happiness.
Maybe it's better that way.
--
The most recent paragraph in my NaNoWriMo (it's not too late to start!):
"Oh, me? This shop is just an apothecary. I make my living from selling medicines and herbs to people who need them. But now that I have all this extra money, I can afford to give away some of them without charge."
Sprint knew this to be untrue. She had been giving away medicines for free long before he had made his first visit to the clean, orderly shop.
The footsteps were coming even closer now and he realised he had not been paying attention. They were approaching the door to the shop now. Spring quelled his initial surge of panic with a breath, as he had done many times before. Panic would not help him now. But something else would, he was sure. He spun around, scanning the various items of furniture.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
I'm sorry for the repeated posts on your dash
But my blog is broken or something
Fastfingers speedtest has a new website! (note: login if you're aiming for a scoreboard highscore so it gets saved and you don't lose it.)
Pictures deleted because they screw up my post.
I found myself smiling randomly at gradelove posts, as I seem to have a habit of doing. I mean, actual smiling, not formspring smiling. Aimless smiling.
Since I am happy, I shall write about optimism.
When you think of something well it seems to throw a bright glow on it that will radiate into your brain and make everything seem perfect and good. It also works the other way, if you think pessimistically about something you have to do you won't like it at all.
Hey guys, NaNoWriMo starts in TWO DAYS even though I don't think anyone else wants to join me.
An interesting website I found:
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://icedtrees.blogspot.com is written by someone 18-25 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://twastheblurstoftimes.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://trustgravity.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://thelastthingtodo.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 26-35 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://tendercrysbeachicken.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://haveyoumetharvard.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://sunlitmemories.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://mokonasakaidono.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://yabbiesandlobsters.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://average-adayinthelifeofme.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://photograph---snap.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 13-17 years old.
I actually don't have that much to say. I guess I'll just post this.
Fastfingers speedtest has a new website! (note: login if you're aiming for a scoreboard highscore so it gets saved and you don't lose it.)
Pictures deleted because they screw up my post.
I found myself smiling randomly at gradelove posts, as I seem to have a habit of doing. I mean, actual smiling, not formspring smiling. Aimless smiling.
Since I am happy, I shall write about optimism.
When you think of something well it seems to throw a bright glow on it that will radiate into your brain and make everything seem perfect and good. It also works the other way, if you think pessimistically about something you have to do you won't like it at all.
Hey guys, NaNoWriMo starts in TWO DAYS even though I don't think anyone else wants to join me.
An interesting website I found:
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://icedtrees.blogspot.com is written by someone 18-25 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://twastheblurstoftimes.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://trustgravity.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://thelastthingtodo.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 26-35 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://tendercrysbeachicken.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://haveyoumetharvard.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://sunlitmemories.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://mokonasakaidono.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://yabbiesandlobsters.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://average-adayinthelifeofme.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.
The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://photograph---snap.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 13-17 years old.
I actually don't have that much to say. I guess I'll just post this.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Colourblindness for normal people, Part 2
Read Part 1 (below) first.
Did you know that there's no such thing as red-green blindness?
Red-green blindness is a form of colourblindness that encompasses protanopia
(red-blindness), protanomaly (less serious form of protanopia),
deuteranopia(green-blindness) and deuteranomaly (yeah).
Which means when you're talking about "red-green"
colourblindess you're actually talking about 99% of the people that are
colourblind, since tritanopia (blue) and other obscure types of colour
blindness are quite rare (e.g. Achromatopsia: total colour blindness and
inability to perceive any colour at all).
It's actually pretty hard to tell the difference between someone who has
protanopia and someone who has deuteranopia, which is probably why they're
often bundled into one thing.
This is
supposed to be a good test for colour-blindness, but it classes me as both
deuteranomaly and protanomaly, and I'm not sure if you can be both at the same
time. I'm also reasonably sure that I have protanomaly, but as I mentioned
before it's hard to tell the difference and some tests tell me I'm
deuteranomaly while others tell me I'm protanomaly.
These are
pairs of colours the look really similar to me. Not so much the fourth row, but
the other ones have some portion of red in them and I lack red colour sensing
retinal cells and therefore they're harder to distinguish. Not that I can't
tell that they're different colours. But say if I look at the third and fifth
rows in my peripheral vision they seem to be the same colour.
So what is
it like being colourblind? The first major change to their life that many
colourblind people will tell you is that when other people discover you're
colourblind, they instantly become "so what colour is this? and what
colour is this? and what colour is this?" and I'm just like "that's
obviously red, that's obviously green, and that's obviously yellow" and
they're like "so you're not colourblind?" You can imagine my
reaction. I suppose you get used to it after awhile.
Rarer but more
retarded is the "so you see the world in black and white?" response.
You also end
up liking some colours more than others as a direct result of your
colourblindness. There was this other colourblind dude who said that he liked
pale colours more than others because they were easier to differentiate for
him. Me, I like reds and blues more than greens. Pale blue is one of my
favourite colours, perhaps because I have no defect at all in my blue-sensing
cones and also because it's pale.
Something
amusing that results from colourblindness is the Ishihara tests. You know the
things that look like this:
(That's just a demo, it's obviously a 12)
Anyway you know those ads that have these things and go "tell us
what number this is to win something really cool!" and to normal people
it's really obvious what the number is and most people don't click on it
because they're not retarded. Well, I spend like two minutes staring at the
plate before giving up and continuing my scroll down the page. I thought that
was amusing.
Ishihara tests work by testing your ability to differentiate between
colours. The colours of the dots that make up the actual number are of a
similar hue to those of the background, and those who are colourblind have
difficulty differentiating between the dots making up the number and the dots
making up the background.
But after doing some research on the Ishihara test I found something
intriguing. There are actually four types of Ishihara tests.
--
Type 1 (most common type): Vanishing Plate. Those colourblind (I think
this includes both protanopes and deuteranopes) should be able to see nothing,
while normal people should see a number. I don't this test works for
tritanopes, however, because they're so rare.
(I see nothing. I believe you're meant to see a 6)
--
Type 2: Transformation Plate. Those colourblind are supposed to see a
different number to those not colourblind.
(I see a 21, but apparently normal people see 74.)
--
Type 3: Diagnostic Plate. This plate is meant to be able to diagnose the
type of colourblindness you have. I.e. protanopes should see a different number
to deuteranopes, etc.