Scott T: The Blog
"The time has come,"
Posted Sun, Jul 04, 2010 at 9:45pm by ScottTagged: everyday, uni
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... the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax; Of cabbages and kings". -- Lewis Carol,. The Walrus and The Carpenter
Another four months gone already? I do wish I was able to post a bit more often, but time certainly flies with a full-time job and having to cook every night. As much as I don't miss the Uni work every evening and being in close proximity to 200 other students, I somewhat miss having meals provided as part of the accommodation. I have become quite attached to cooking a stir-fry for tea though, since they're easy to prepare, can be scaled up to ensure left-overs either for lunch or tea the next day, and taste great. I've made a few more 'involved' meals on occasion, but otherwise I like to stay simple. Now for the rundown of activity since Easter...
There's two major events - the first of which is the fact I've now got a full-time job. The major difference I've noticed when compared to Uni life is there's less spare time - mostly based on the fact that at Uni I could get away with hobbies and such when I should have been studying *cough*. On the other hand, the people I work with are great, so I'm happy.
Secondly, I graduated from Uni (with First Class Honors). Although last year was rather hectic - particularly towards the end - I guess it's all been worth it. Graduation ceremony was at the end of April - although the ceremony itself seemed rush, it was great to officially close the 4 years off. Here's a photo of me (or at least my internet-friendly photo stunt-double).
On the slightly less exciting news front, I've also left the world of a simple mobile phone behind. After four years and two Nokias (neither died - both of which still work fine), I've migrated to a smart-phone. The phone of choice is the HTC Desire, which is nearly a hardware identical to Google's Nexus One. Photo below shows the box (with 1:1 scale Desire on the front), with my old Nokia flip-phone sitting on top.
I wasn't really sure what to expect, despite having the Desire in my mind as an 'I want' back in January or February. The touchscreen keyboard is different to get used to (I do quite miss the tactile edge between keys), and the inbuilt dictionary is quite impressive. HTC Sense and their 'FriendStream' app allow easy aggregation of FB and Twitter status updates, while the seemingly border-less tie-in of Google services is great. Although pretty good out-of-the-box, the power is the Android Market (much like the iPhone's App Store). The difference is that entirely EVERYTHING about Android can be replaced via the Market - don't like the default SMS app? Change it. Don't like the keyboard? Try a different one.
A short list of some useful apps I've found:
- 3banana Notes && OI Shopping List - No note taking ability by default, so I use OI for shopping and other "todo" lists, and 3banana for everything else.
- Setting Profiles - Automatically change phone profiles, turn features on/off, etc based on rules (time, location, battery state, etc).
- Android Agenda Widget - Small widget for the homescreen for your calendar.
- Call Confirm - Confirm if you want to dial a number before doing so - particularly while learning about the phone, I had a few instances where 'dial' was not the operation I expected.
- ASTRO + ASTRO SMB - File browser for the local or remote windows file shares.
- My Tracks - Keep track of movement via GPS (usually only enabled on a long driving trip)
- Wapedia - Easy Wikipedia access - 'nuff said =P
Overall, I like the phone - quite a bit of power at your fingertips, along with a semi-decent camera (at least it's substantially better than my old phones - still not as good as a dedicated camera), plus it makes phone calls. Battery life with my usage patterns will get 2 days at a stretch (a far cry from the 1 week I'm used to), but that seems pretty normal for a smart-phone. Especially considering it stays connected to WiFi for most of the day.
On a closing note, I've also bought a coffee machine for myself - as a result, the latte art is slowly improving. I expect to get a rosetta sooner or later.
Also, the temperature has been getting pretty low here some nights (at least compared to what I'm used to, though not as cold as some of my friends have to put up with), resulting in the occasional morning of ice on the car. A novelty for me, if nothing else.
Refilling of the Lake
Posted Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 5:11pm by ScottTagged: uni, water
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It's been a few months since the last post, and considering the events I'm about to cover occurred back in September, it is safe to say they are a little overdue. Ultimately, Uni got in the way of things but I have some spare time again now, since I've finished for the year (and, possibly, ever :D).
Anyway, back towards the end of September a partial re-fill of the lake began. After nearly 2 years of separation, the water had receded quite some distance.
The refill this time is supposed to be up around the 26 gigalitre mark (source: ABC Online). Instead of the pipes used at the end of last year, a proper gate has been installed which allows a pretty reasonable amount of water through.
As usual, the Lake Bonney gallery has been updated with a few extra photos.
Not Dead Yet
Posted Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 8:28pm by ScottTagged: this-site, uni
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It's been mentioned I need to update. So I am. Or at least plan to do some updates over the next few weeks. The main thing is that I haven't forgotten about my blog so no-one has to go to the trouble of deleting my feed just yet :p
The uni holidays started when I last posted and the following day I went to a LAN party at a friends place - by the time 6pm turned up there would have been 15 or so of us there. After a long night gaming and socialising, the Wednesday was spent mostly as recovery.
The following week, however, my work placement position commenced. As such, I haven't had much time to do a lot and that's not likely to change at any time soon with another 15 or so weeks left to go. I have been working on a few different projects during this limited time as well which I will also reveal when ready :)
Browsing Through Data
Posted Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 10:29pm by ScottTagged: games, programming, scummvm, uni
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(click to enlarge)
What can I say? 3 hours knocking up the core code and slightly modifying my GJD/VDX readers in C# gives me this useful little tool - a GJD browser. Basically, it scans a directory (specified on first-run) which contains the GJD and RL files from The 7th Guest and provides an interface to access the VDXs within. These can then be played as normally seen in-game, audio or video played separate, or even step through each frame individually - should come in useful when trying to get some of the puzzles working when I can see how the separate VDX frames start - and then work out how they should mix together.
Oh, and my last exam went well enough so at least that's done with for another semester. Or two - I've got work placement all this semester coming up so no exams at the end of the year. Only two x-thousand word reports and a seminar to present about it or something like that... *sigh*
Saturday Mahem
Posted Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 6:35pm by ScottTagged: on-the-net, uni
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Who puts exams on a Saturday?! It's thrown my internal calendar into a bit of disarray though - I keep thinking it's "yesterday". Having to do last minute revision on Friday night meant I thought it was Thursday (to the point I was confused as to why there was a Footy game being played). Similarly, Saturday night really felt like a Friday night. Oh well - I might get back in sync eventually.
Just to mess with my day further, the power was out when I got back from my exam (which at least gave an excuse to have Subway for tea) but once the power was restored we still had no Internet connection! *sigh* Fortunately things got restored early this-afternoon so crisis averted and I could check up on the forums I visit, get back on to MSN and IRC and so on. The spammers even managed to sneak a garbage message through Akismet during this time (they still seem to like this 7th Guest post) but a click of the "Mark Spam" button won't fix.
Only one exam left to go!
