Monthly Archives: February 2007

Many Things

★ Posted on at 10:28 pm ★

Been terribly busy of late. Would just summarise the last week in a few short sentences.

Still learning to drive and park properly. Already done 500km on my Jazz, and I just hope the poor car is holding up as I’m not a terribly efficient gear shifter at times (especially after a fair bit of driving) and I can hear the occasional jarring noise when I don’t push the clutch down enough. Ouch.

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Just bought another domain for another project I’m working on. Heh, basically just want to get some friends and get them to upload photos, like a photoblogging site. Once a week, or whenever you feel like posting. It’s meant to be a learning ground for friends to test out their photography skills to get feedback. Maybe a weekly theme of sorts, to get the interest going. Heh, sort of a motivational thing I guess. Looked around for many solutions, and ended up using WordPress plus a plugin as the interface for photoblogging. It was the simplest, most efficient way to do it. Now all I need to do is find time to make a theme that caters to the needs of this site. It will take a while (link for site to be up soon, when I’m happy to present it to the world).

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Watched the A-League semi final between Melbourne Victory and Adelaide United. Heh, it was a boring firsthalf but it was a thriller second half and finish when Melbourne scored a second goal in the dying minutes of added time, propelling them to host the grand final in two weeks time. I took a panoramic view of the stadium but the execution was a little off. Here’s a small pic (click to enlarge) to get a feel for the stadium grounds.

telstradome

The atmosphere was totally dazzling and you attend the match just to cheer along with the crowd, where they break out into rapturous applause at a goal.

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Have a knack for picking out hit songs. The most recent one is called “Mad World” which has done its round on charts and was popularised 20 odd years ago and has made a recent comeback. It is a haunting tune, and I first heard it watching the NineMSN ad and heard it again watching the Xbox 360 ad for Gears of War, both at the cinema. It caught my interest both times and I was keen to find out the name of the tune but never got round to it. I then heard it again while an episode of Smallville was on and when I hear it enough times, I have enough of the song’s lyrics to make a Google search and voila, discovered the title of the song and dug up interesting history on it on Wikipedia. Heh. If you have a chance, have a listen.

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Heh, still so much to do, with too little time. Just enjoying every moment of it.

Starting February

★ Posted on at 04:00 am ★

Already 1/12th of the year is gone, and I’ve just barely begun to soak it in

Friend got engaged, got excited. Bought a car, got excited. Got offered a job to New York, got excited but wary. Then it was just an entire week of emptiness, not knowing what to do, until just a few days ago, I snapped myself away from being moody, as it was affecting how I treated friends and it wasn’t my nature to be like that. Took on a positive note and started just taking a deep breath and taking things a step at a time. You just need to anchor yourself and work your way up.

Work deflated a bit over the end of last year as I was starting to get bored of the repetitive cycles. Ever since the promise of New York, I’ve started being enthusiastic again about learning things to be able to produce the kind of work that instills confidence in people about my abilities. Heh, I’ve been asked a million times when I’m going over. The truth is, I’m not sure or certain if it’s going to happen yet, if at all. I think I previously mentioned that over on my side, my company is prepping to let me go, and they’re trying their best to setup the path towards that destination. It seems the biggest hurdle now is making sure I’m up to the task as the person I’m replacing has more experience than I do in software programming and he’s the guy who makes all the IT stuff work.

After a rocky start, I’m making progress in learning basic programming again. I just got distracted by all the other things I preferred to do and that has become a habit of my lifestyle. You need discipline to face any task and after a few false starts, managed to get enough momentum to slowly set my mind towards the goal of getting the first programming task done. A long way to go in what I need to achieve, but I’ll get there, sooner or later.

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Taken up cooking again. Have a sort of agreement with some friends where I’d use his kitchen and cook dinners for everyone (four of us) and the cost of the food is shared out. I just like cooking, and it gives me a chance to perfect certain recipes while testing out new ones. Chinese cooking is smokey and involves a large flame. Ken’s apartment’s stove is quite fantastic for my needs as it heats up real quick and provides enough power to char meats to seal in the juices. The plus point is I don’t need to do the dishes at the end of the meal. Heh.

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Will be a fairly busy month ahead I guess. Lots of personal interests to pursue (hobbies mainly), work and extra-curricular work (if you could call it that), World of Warcraft if time permits, and just socialising with friends and family, especially during Chinese New Year this month. Heh, been told it’s the year of the Golden Pig to come, which I suppose happens once every sixty years.

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Just waiting for the end of the month when Vyanne comes back to Melbourne. Can go pick her up in my car, which is a first. Heh.