Día de la celebración

Sigh. It's getting near the end of term and the weeks are just dragging by. It seems that the days are getting longer and my somewhat blissful period of lazing about after school not doing any work is drawing to a close. The teachers at Shenton seem to be making up for lost time, probably because report time is coming up and they've got nothing to assess us on. I'm looking forward to next year though as I should be getting to choose some of my subjects (don't ever pick Japanese thinking it's easier than French ) and i'm looking forward to doing some computer assisted design and architecture stuff. My current T&E subject, Design & Technology, is fun and after using a scroll saw for the first time, I can tell you, making wooden toys unsupervised with a $600 finger-chopping death machine is really fun. The only really annoying thing about this year so far was that our new English teacher Mrs. Minuta (really nice, replaced Dianna van Straalen aka van Stalin, (side-note. The saying good things happen to bad people is true. How can such a manipulative bitch become the second most powerful education person in Australia? Actually I think I just answered my own question… But really, she is now Federal Policy Adviser to the Education Minister. May God help us all!) was sick for about 8 weeks out of a 20 week semester. So many weekends spent working hard as hell on assignments that never even got marked. The even more annoying thing is that after getting married in April, she's moving back to London with her new partner. I wonder who we'll get.

In other news to day was my Mum's birthday. It was pretty good. Yesterday we went out to lunch to celebrate and that was cool, and today we just had a barbecue in my family's backyard. I got her a bonsai tree and my brothers got her a book on how to care and shape it. My dad got her an A1 art folio to keep her paintings in. I think she really liked the presents because her two passions are art and gardening.

It's also the last week of the month and we've only used 1.3 gig of our 10 gig download limit for our ADSL account, meaning a bit-torrent party for me! I always buy CD's from artists I really like and yesterday I bought Stadium Arcadium. Talk about money well spent! This is definitely the RHCP greatest album ever. Even better than their "Greatest Hits" album. It was really good value too as it's a double album with 30 songs. That's pretty awesome as most bands are only releasing albums with 12 songs. Which brings me onto my next gripe: The iPod Shuffle. Don't get me wrong, it's a really good flash mp3 player and the problem isn't really with it, rather me. The thing is, to fit the advertised limit of 120 (give or take) songs you have to check the option allowing iTunes (god bless Apple) to convert every song above 128 kbps to 128 AAC to save space. The only problem is that I've only had my iPod for 3 months and every song I ripped before that is in at least 192 kbps MP3. The better way would be to convert my entire library to AAC so I only have to do it once, but when every song takes 4-5 minutes to convert plus the fact I'm worried about quality loss (not important on earbuds but really important for the computer) it's not really an option. The best solution would be to buy and iPod video but I don't have $500 lying around. (Sam does, that rich bastard).

Last but not least I submitted a picture I was playing around in photoshop to devART. I took it in the new East Perth redevelopment a few weeks ago. It's probably the best shot out of the bunch.

Check it out @ DeviantART

1000 Views…. Time To Parrr-Tay!

I wnet to check my deviantART account and was presented with this pretty cool screen. Very nice. Also, it's been up for 3 days and has already racked up 1,578 2127 downloads and counting…

Clicky for a full veiw!

Blogged with Flock

Vista Folder Icons

I had these lying around but I never got around to putting them up. Since i'm being a bit more active I may as well. These are made from some icons extracted from MacOS X and some others from stock icons I had on a CD somewhere. I made them using templates provided on FOOOD's site www.iconaholic.com. Enjoy!

Download & Preview @ DeviantART

 P.S. My friend Sam aka Mute-8 aka El Psycho finally made something. Check it out here. He's still learning the tricks of the trade so be gentle if you wanna comment.

Getright 6.0 Icons

Yay! I uploaded something. About time as well. Any way, I knocked these up in IconWorkshop for you to enjoy. They are Vista-style icons for the new Getright 6.0. You can use them in your dock (.png file included) or just as normal (.ico files are there as well) !

Download & Preview @ deviantART

Headcrabs On Ye Port Bow!

Today after a couple of hours of fiddling I at long last managed to install the Half-Life 2 demo. My experiences from this is that steam is the reincarnation of satan and it eats babies. Seriously, that thing is a pain in the arse. You shouldn't have to spend 3 hours updating to run a demo you already had on DVD. Oh well, it was probably worth it anyway. I can't really experience the whole gamut of visual effects it has because of my crappy computer but it creates such an eerie atmosphere. The interactivity is great also. I spent at least half an hour throwing various things at combine troopers and watching with a twisted glee as they shocked the bejesus out of me with their batons.

The demo also comes with Ravenholm. This level is filled with headcrabs and zombies. On the other hand, it is filled with a whole manner of ways to kill them. Chopping traps, car traps and flame pits are only a few of the many ways you can dispense of these unpleasant foes without even firing a single bullet. My favourite is to pick up blades with the gravity gun and shoot them at ridiculously high speeds, chopping the buggers in half. It's like F.E.A.R but with less urine-soaked trousers.
I would definately buy this game if I had any money (read previous post). However, money seems to be the least of our problems here in Perth. According to the weather dudes it is the driest winter ever. It suck a bit. Anyway, things beckon so I need to go. I'll leave you with one last note though: Flock is a really good browser. Buggy (still in beta) but good. WINDOWS VISTA BETA 2 MAKES ME HAPPY.

Idiots Need Not Apply

Why does it seem like no matter how much money you have, you always run out?I don't get it. As far as I can tell there isn't a trans-dimensional wormhole in my wallet so where does all go? I've been trying to get a job for some time now as a paper delivery person ect. but all my friends have beaten me to the punch. I tried calling Western Suburbs Weekly the other day about an ad in the paper, but like all the other times you give them your details and get your hopes up and never call back.

In other news my Dad just recently bought a new SLR digital camera to satisfy his hobby and maybe make a few bucks in the process. He reckons he can take photos of his friend's paintings to send to galleries and such. Larry (the painter friend) is fed up with the pros that do his work and Dad thinks he can do it better and cheaper. The camera is pretty damn cool. I took some photos at East Perth and they turned out really good. It looks hella paparazi with the telephoto (big zoom) lens attached. The reason you are reading this is because I recently got broadband and I must say, boy have I been missing out on something.

Anyway this post should be the first of many, proving a convenient distraction from iminent homework. Next time on the Chalkley Channel: Angry ticks fire out of my nipples!