According to tgrayst

LetterLearn Launched!

2009-06-12T12:37:00.001+10:00

If you look two posts down (yes, in April 2006, it's been a while) you'll see I posted about WordLearn, and that it had a webpage but needed a new name. Well it now has a new name and a whole new website. Introducing...

LetterLearn is educational software for teaching letter recognition and basic typing skills to preschoolers and children with disabilities. It started out as a project to help my younger brother who has downs syndrome. When I showed it to some teacher's aides and other parents of children with disabilities, they wanted to use it too, but it was too difficult for them to use at the time. Now that I've added features for managing the word lists and adding your own images, it's pretty much ready for others to benefit from it too.

I'm very excited about making LetterLearn available more widely. So far I've sold 2 licenses (to Glen Dhu Primary School) and I'll start an AdWords campaign just as soon as I'm happy enough with it. It's still in beta, afterall.

It's available for download right now (with no time limits!), not to mention purchase (for the low introductory price of only $19.95! Only until June 30, 2009). There's also a video that shows how it all works, so go check it out, and let me know what you think. :)

Take a look today at www.letterlearn.com.

Goodbye Scoretaker.com!

2007-06-28T17:09:00.000+10:00

My scoretaker.com domain name expires in one month, and I'm going to let it die. I registered scoretaker.com while in college to be the home of a website for the Scoretaker software I was developing at the time. Scoretaker was going to be so much. It was going to do everything. It was going to be the best software for managing school sports carnivals. Ever.

Alas, as with so many promising software products, Scoretaker turned out to be nothing but Vapourware. The development process itself, however, taught me plenty about software development. It gave me a lot of practice in Visual Basic, taught me about relational database design, and of course, development timelines. ;)

So I bid thee fairwell, scoretaker.com. May you rest in peace.

(The content of scoretaker.com is actually hosted on my old ISP, and should still be accessible via www.southcom.com.au/~tgray/. Other scoretaker.com subdomains included: Millionaire, Smadd Morphs)

PS. This also means that my scoretaker.com email addresses will no longer work after the 29th July 07. If you want my new address (and I actually know you!) please email me at my old address and I'll give it to you.

WordLearn on the Web

2006-04-26T16:53:00.001+10:00

A little software project I've been working on now has a webpage. :) The program is called WordLearn, though I'd like to change the name if I can think of something better... (suggestions, anyone?) It's a very simple game where the user types in the displayed word then a picture is displayed. Pretty much. OK, so a little bit more to it than that but that's the basic idea.

Check it out at tgrayston.googlepages.com/wordlearn, and please leave your suggestions on what to rename the program to in a comment! :)

You may notice from the address that I'm also checking out google's new page creator - a simple online webpage creation thingy. Not too bad, though also not very flexible. ;) Page Creator is still in the early testing phase though, so I'll cut them some slack. :)

Update 18/06/2009: This software is now named LetterLearn and is available for download right now, see full post.

I Just Bought a Car!

2006-03-31T19:20:00.000+11:00

It's a Toyota Camry Wagon, and I got it for $4500 - bargain!

Here's the original ad from the seller:
Toyota Camry Executive 1993 Wide body Wagon XV10 - Excellent car selling because we upgraded slightly - 252,000 kms - runs great, always looked after, all mechanically sound, cheap to run. Features - 2.2 litre DOHC engine, 5sp manual, power steering, power mirrors, air cond, remote central locking, immobiliser, cargo barrier, Alpine CD player, tinted windows, reg until July 06, an ideal cheap second car - $5,450 ono

Many thanks to Humphrey and Mark for helping me look at cars, and to Tas Engine Exchange for checking it out for free! - I highly recommend them, they know what they're doing. :)

So... anyone want an '84 Telstar with a dodgy clutch? ;)

St Joe's gig: Quadrant Mall for Crazy Day

2006-02-26T23:19:00.000+11:00

Hey there. St Joe's will be playing in the Quadrant Mall opposite Will's 10am-1pm this Saturday 4th March. If you're in the area come and say hi. :)

On a Summerhill far away

2006-02-11T13:05:00.000+11:00

There comes a time when everyone leaves the shelter of the home they've grown up in, and enters the real world. ...I've moved out of home! A little ironic (or something) that I'm now considerably further away from the uni than I was living with my family, but there are certain advantages. It should be a better study environment - at least, that's the reason I've moved out, as far as centrelink is concerned. ;)

So yeah, I'm now over in Summerhill, living with Humf and Matt. If you'd like the actual address and phone number you'll have to email me or call my mobile, as I'd rather not publish the address here. :P

In other news, the Oddsox Official Website is now at http://oddsox.blogspot.com/, so all those people who missed the "band" bit off the old address will actually find the right site now. ;)

Latest bits and pieces...

2006-01-12T17:20:00.000+11:00

Haven't written on here for a little while, so here's some of what's been happening, and what's up next for me in 2006:

The Oddsox tour went really well! Feels like it was ages ago though. We went and played the other day in Port Sorell - It was really great to get to play again. I think we were all having withdrawal symptoms from Oddsox. ;) See more over at oddsoxband.blogspot.com.
Went to see Narnia recently. Saw it twice actually, it was that good! ;) Once at Village, Launceston and again at Cmax in Devonport. Narnia draws some parallels with the Bible that I hadn't completely realised before, I don't think. Most notably, that I am Edmund. Or rather, we are all Edmund - We are traitors to Jesus having turned away from him and thinking we don't need his love. The 'deep magic' means that we therefore belong to the devil (the white witch). Only Jesus (Aslan) dying on the cross (the stone table), a completely innocent individual sacrificing himself for another, can set us free from satan's grasp. I found the film to be worthy of C.S. Lewis' original story, and very much superior to the BBC version - which was, afterall, made as a TV series on a much lower budget. Ok, so there were some sketchy bits in terms of special effects, but overall it was an excellent rendition. If you haven't seen it, go check it out!
I've been awarded an honours scholarship! They're paying all my uni and HECS fees for the year! Yahoo! Very stoked about that, as you might imagine. :D
CMS Summerview 2006 is on next week, so I'll be away 16-20th Jan. I'm really looking forward to it - I've been involved with the children's program at CMS for years, but have therefore missed out on the actual content of the conference. This year I'm part of the music team, which is great cos I get to play with some other great musos, and participate in the actual conference too. :) Oh yeah, CMS is the Church Missionary Society, so the annual conference, which is held in Bicheno, is about Mission. While there's an emphasis on overseas mission, everyone has a mission field where they live. When Jesus said to Go Make Disciples, he was talking about everyone - those in faraway countries, and those at home or in the workplace. The conference is about equipping Christians to fulfil that calling, in whatever place God is calling them to.
Uni starts for me Feb 6. I'm doing Advanced Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing as a Summerschool unit. I reckon it's gonna be pretty full on, being 13 weeks worth of content packed into only two weeks! Semester 1 then starts Feb 27

Thomas Grayston BComp

2005-12-20T11:12:00.000+11:00

I've graduated!! I now have a little piece of paper that says I know how to use computers. ;) That doesn't always mean they do what I want them to, I should add... I just finished writing this entry when windows crashed and I lost it. :( Ho hum, I'll try again.

The procession was fun - thanks God for holding off the rain until we were all safely inside the Albert Hall. :) The photo is of Stu, Humf and I at Inveresk after the ceremony.

In related news, I got a phone call yesterday from the uni. They told me that I've been offered an honours scholarship!! Which means they'll be paying my HECS fees for the year!! :D Awesome!! I've applied for scholarships in other years to no avail, but I'd say it's been worth the wait. :) I'll know more when their letter arrives...

Graduation Parade

2005-12-16T10:09:00.000+11:00

My Graduation Ceremony is this Saturday!! Launceston has a tradition that involves graduands processing through the streets of Launceston before the ceremony. If you're in town, look out for it. :)

At 10.30 a.m. the procession, with police escort and band, will move from Civic Square south along St John Street, east along Brisbane Street, and then through City Park, arriving at the Albert Hall at 10.45 a.m.

All the details here

Oddsox Tour

2005-11-30T21:04:00.000+11:00

Just thought I should mention here that I'm currently on tour with Oddsox. Ok, so by 'on tour' what I really mean is that we have a lot of gigs all at once (ten of them, spread over 2-3 weeks), but still. I've also been spending a lot of time making the Oddsox Official Website look cool and trying to keep it (or get it) up to date! We now have a logo, too, though the exact colours of the letters may still change... How cool is it!! (guess who designed it! :P)

So yeah, check it out... Don't keep reading this. I said check it out! - Now! You're still reading!! :P

[out]

Exam Results 2005

2005-11-25T12:27:00.000+11:00

Well, I'm pretty stoked about this. Didn't think I'd pull off such good results this time round, especially Paradigms, which I struggled with somewhat! So yeah, a very nice way to finish off the academic year. ...Now on to honours!! :D

Code	Unit Name	Sem	Mark	Code
FPM102	Aural & Ensemble 1A	1	88	HD
KXA351	Software Engineering Project A	1	80	HD
KXA358	Human-Computer Interaction	1	94	HD
KXA359	Knowledge-Based Systems	1	90	HD
KXA352	Software Engineering Project B	2	87	HD
KXA355	Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing	2	83	HD
KXA357	Programming Paradigms	2	80	HD
KXA362	Computer Security	2	85	HD

Template Accident!

2005-11-23T16:23:00.000+11:00

Due to a little mishap whilst working on the Oddsox Official Website, which is also powered by blogger, I managed to lose the template for my blog. :( I accidentally pasted the oddsox template into my blog template, and I hadn't kept a backup. :(

So I applied the original "TicTac" template and have tried to edit it back to what I had before... I think it's just about there. If you see anything wrong, let me know! :)

Where is... The Geography Challenge

2005-11-17T22:16:00.000+11:00

uh, well... it's here. ;)

Elly introduced me to the Geography Challenge, and as you can tell from my first attempt, I'm somewhat lacking in my geographical knowledge!
Yeah, so I got one right for ten points, and that's cos it asked where Australia was. :P The next go, it didn't ask where Australia was and I got zero. :O

After a little practice, however, I've improved somewhat. :)
I didn't cheat, honest! No outside help from maps or anything! ok, so I've been averaging 3/10, so 6/10 is a bit of a fluke, but still. :) As a friend of mine would say, "I feel like knowing about geography."

Test your skills in The Geography Challenge and let me know how you go in a comment. :)

St Joe's Concert Great Success

2005-11-12T23:16:00.000+11:00

Well, I really couldn't be happier with how the concert went! It was great fun to play with St Joe's on a really nice instrument (a Steinbach Grand Piano) (even though some of the keys started sticking towards the end! :S ). We played pretty well, if I do say so myself. :D Photos were taken, so hopefully I can put some up soon!

For those of you who were there, please leave a comment, tell us what u think. :) The floor's open...

Oh, and, St Joe's 160th Anniversary CD, 23 Percy Street is now available. Get yours today for only $20! ;)

St Joe's: Final Reminder!

2005-11-09T16:43:00.000+11:00

Final reminder: St Joe's is playing at the Princess Theatre this saturday!! Just finished designing the program handout. You like? If you're free and haven't got tickets yet, then there's still time! ;)

New Roland RD700sx

2005-11-05T18:02:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, following my final exam for my whole degree (hurrah!), I took the plunge and spent $3.7k on a new Roland RD700sx digital stage piano. It's SWEET!! It has 88 keys with progressive hammer action, which means that there's a hammer-like mechanism for each key, just like a real piano, and the lower keys are heavier than the higher keys, also just like a real piano. :D The sounds are fantastic, though atm I'm running it thru my logitech computer speakers, which don't do it justice at all. :S (These photos are of Stuart having a go on it, btw)

As mentioned in the previous post, St Joe's played in the mall this morning. As you might imagine, I took the roland along. It makes such a huge difference - you can play without having to worry about running out of keys, or compensating for bad piano sounds!

I've been playing with my new toy practically non-stop, checking out what it can do... I might even look at the manual soon! ;) To give u an idea as to how good it sounds, here's one or two recordings:

Grand Piano - "You are who you are" mp3 867 KB - 1:13

ok, so there's just the one clip atm. The others weren't as good (not real happy about how this one ends either, but anyway). Maybe I'll put some more up soon. :)

enjoy :)

St Joe's gig: Playing in the mall this sat

2005-10-31T23:59:00.000+11:00

St Joe's is playing in the Brisbane st. mall this Saturday 5th Nov 10am-12pm. Come and get a preview of what's coming up next week at our 160th Anniversary Concert at the Princess Theatre. :D

St Joe's CD coming soon!

2005-10-31T23:50:00.000+11:00

Some time ago we recorded our best charts for a CD celebrating St Joe's Big Band's 160th anniversary. We've been planning to produce a CD for ages and have finally got around to it. Stu did all the design work, and I spent most of sunday offering advice while we finished it all off! So, the designs are now at the printers', and the CDs will be available soon, at the low, low price of just $20 (from memory - don't quote me on that). :D

Oddsox gig: Mayfield Primary

2005-10-28T15:22:00.000+11:00

Oddsox is playing at a Family Funday at Mayfield Primary School on the oval from 11am - tomorrow!! (That's Sat 29th Oct 2005)

Come check it out! :)

Update 31/10/2005:
The gig was great! Read about it over at the Oddsox Official Website!

Project: Last Client Meeting - check!

2005-10-28T14:50:00.000+11:00

At long last, we've finally met with our client today for the very last client meeting (about 3 weeks later than we were supposed to). We handed over the Installation CD with all our hard work on it, and gave a brief demonstration of the software, again. :) A bit depressing really, to see just how little space our year's worth of work takes up on a CD. :S

Anyway, we're planning now to travel down to hobart after exams to assist with the actual installation of the software on their servers at Wrest Point. This will be paid work for one or two team members. So who are the lucky team member(s)? We shall need to 'discuss' this in due course. ;)

Stay tuned.

One More Exam

2005-10-27T13:02:00.000+11:00

So now Paradigms and Mobile are out of the way, I have over a week before the last one, which is Computer Security - but I'm not thinking about that just yet. ;)

One down, Two to go

2005-10-24T15:25:00.000+11:00

I got my Programming Paradigms exam out of the way this morning. Of the 15-odd people originally enrolled in paradigms (in launceston), only about a third of that actually made it to the exam! It actually wasn't as bad as I was expecting... I think Mark made the exam easier than in past years, seeing as how he's just taken over the unit this semester.

Anyhoo, next up is Mobile and Ubiq, which is a mere 1.5 days away. So, back to the books... erm... computer... then. ;)

So much for B.Comp!

2005-10-17T18:02:00.000+11:00

This arvo I finally submitted my last assignment (the second Haskell assignment using Hugs for Programming Paradigms). Actually I didn't finish it completely, but I preferred to hand it in slightly unfinished rather than lose marks for it being late! This assignment marks the end of all classes and assignments for my entire Bachelor of Computing Degree. :O ok, so there's the small matter of exams, starting next week, but other than that, I'm done!! I don't think this is gonna sink in for a while... Of course, I'm planning to go back and do Honours next year anyway, so it's not like I'm really finished. Just with undergraduate studies. :)

Just keeping all you readers out there up to date. ;)

My Graphics Assignment

2005-10-12T18:42:00.000+11:00

Seeing everyone finishing their graphics assignments (especially Humphrey's) has prompted me to upload mine for all to see! I did Computer Graphics and Animation last year, which is obviously before I had a blog...

I should mention that I am not the copyright holder of the music in my animation, nor do I have permission to use the character portrayed in it, but I'm not profiting from this, and I'd really like people to see it, and it's just not the same without the music, and it's not even the full track, and it's really bad quality anyway... Soooo, if u like the music, go buy the cd! ;) The music is acknowledged within the animation.

View my Winnie The Pooh Animation (.mov 8.6MB), created entirely in C++ using OpenGL.

...and come to the Graphics Movie Show!!

Upcoming: St Joe's Concert @ The Princess

2005-10-12T18:07:00.000+11:00

Upcoming event alert: I will be playing with St Joe's Big Band in concert at the Princess Theatre on Sat 12 Nov.

This will be the first time, at least since I've been in the band (which is about 2 years), that we've done a concert which is just us as a band. Usually we play to provide music for some other event. I'm particularly excited because it'll also be the first time I've played with St Joe's using a decent grand piano - I'm often stuck with a dodgy keyboard. :S Oh, and our CD should be available by then too, so you can even pick that up on your way out. :)

So yeah, proceed immediately to the Princess Theatre and purchase tickets!!
See you all there. :D

Update: You can now take a look at the concert program.

St Joe's Big Band - Concert Spectacular
Princess Theatre
Saturday 12th November, 7:30pm
"An evening of singing and swinging with a 20 piece Jazz Band."

Adults $15.00
Children/Concession $9.00

Tickets available from the
Princess Theatre Booking Office
57 Brisbane st
Launceston Tasmania 7250
Phone Bookings 6323 3666

Upcoming: Graphics Movie Show

2005-10-12T12:03:00.000+11:00

The Computer Graphics and Animation Movie Show is this friday (in Launceston) - come along and check out the awesome 3d animations students have made this semester, including Humphrey's much touted animation!!

The annual Computer Graphics and Animation movie show will be held this Friday, October 14, at 10:00am in the Centenary Lecture Theatre (Hobart) and at 3:00pm in the LT6 (Launceston). Please come along to see the results of the hard work of the students enrolled in KXA354.

Project: Demo Day: The Aftermath

2005-10-10T15:09:00.000+11:00

This is being posted a little later than I was hoping, but I've been somewhat busy with assignments and things! Having just submitted the second Computer Security assignment (a whole 30mins before it was due!) I thought I'd take a break from assignments and finally post about demo day, even though it feels like it was months ago!

Demo day was very successful! We had no technical issues to speak of, and demonstrated to lots of people who came through. We were pretty happy with our marks for it too. Nicole (the lecturer) commented that "[Launceston's] marketing this year was the best I have ever seen... and some teams were some of the best I have ever seen anywhere." So yeah, it was a great day! :)

Thanks to everyone who came along!

...so now I just have some documentation and a Haskell assignment, and then that's it! Degree over!! (...other than those little unimportant thing known as exams :S )

Project: Demonstration Day

2005-09-20T17:33:00.000+10:00

Demo day is NEXT WEEK!! ...Can you come??

Demonstration day is a special annual event where project teams set up stalls with information about their project. The general public is invited to come and see what we've been doing all year. Stalls usually include computers running demonstrations of the developed software, posters, pamphlets, handouts, and all sorts of other... secret weapons! It's kinda like a trade show. We get assessed on how well we present our area and how well we explain our project to the markers as they come round.

For those of you not in the know, Software Engineering Project is a big, ah, software engineering project that I've been working on all year with my team as part of my Bachelor of Computing degree at Utas.

Our project is called Helpdesk Analyser - come along and check it out!

Demo Day
Monday 26 Sep, 11am-3pm
School of Computing
University of Tasmania, Newnham Campus

Update: I designed our slogan poster, and we printed it today! You like?

Update: I'm on duty 1-3pm.

New Oddsox Website?

2005-09-16T21:42:00.000+10:00

Oddsox has been in need of a major revamp of its website, and I figured that Blogspot would be a pretty good place to set it up! It should make it very easy to maintain, just at the expense of being not very flexible or scalable! :S If you don't know what Oddsox is, hopefully the Oddsox Official Website BETA will shed some light on the matter! ;)

So, go check it out over at http://oddsoxband.blogspot.com/.

Also, there's been some mixed opinions over what the address for the site should be, so I'll turn it over to all you enwisened readers out there:

Where should the Oddsox Official Website live??

http://oddsoxband.blogspot.com/
http://oddsoxfiles.blogspot.com/
other (please suggest!)

Hugs all round

2005-09-15T00:25:00.000+10:00

"Hugs?" you ask? "Why is he talking about hugs, then posting a screenshot of a dos box?" Well I'm glad you asked! ...unless you didn't, in which case I'm not glad at all. :P

Hugs is a Haskell interpreter which I've finally got round to installing on my machine at home. Haskell is a programming language I'm learning in Programming Paradigms. We've got quite used to learning new languages in computing (we learn a new language or two for each unit, just about) but Haskell is fundamentally different in that it's a functional language... That's prolly all you need to know! ...and at present, that's just about all I feel like I know! :P Oh well, with any luck I'll come out the other side of the 1st Assignment being a little more confident. :)

Just thought I'd share.

Anti-Pesto to the Rescue!

2005-09-11T19:57:00.000+10:00

Today I checked out the new Wallace and Gromit movie: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit! It was awesome!! - I'm something of a Wallace and Gromit fan, and I thoroughly enjoyed this latest instalment!! :D Wallace and Gromit are long overdue for an appearance at the cinemas, and it wasn't a let-down. There was some concern that it wouldn't maintain its Britishness what with having Dreamworks in the picture, but I'm happy to say that that wasn't the case: it's still very British! :)

I especially love all the nifty (and totally excessive!) little gadgets that are all through their house and built into their car and stuff. My only criticism is that the story gets a little too far-fetched towards the end and doesn't really satisfactorily resolve one or two things that just magically fix themselves. (I won't spoil it for those that haven't seen it yet!) It's kinda like how in the Lion King, when Simba retakes his place at pride rock, the sun comes out and the grass reappears and the balance of the circle of life is suddenly magically restored! :P hmm, think I may have Lion King on the brain a bit atm what with seeing it recently in Melbourne... ;) (any excuse to link to a previous entry! :P)

Oh yeah, the other bit of excitement is that on the way home this arvo, someone didn't notice that a light was red until it was too late to stop!! :O Sorry, but I'm not at liberty to disclose the identity of the driver! :P It had been pouring with rain (as it has been the last few days on and off) and the water on the road meant that it was prolly more dangerous to try to stop than to just keep going... So yeah, luckily there wasn't any traffic going through the intersection at the time - thankyou Lord! (humf has more details - he was in the car too)

In completely unrelated news, I feel it's worth mentioning that I played Risk last night for the first time with Elly + Stu, Josh, and Elly's brothers, Will and Fred. Great game! Elly nearly won by taking out all Fred's forces in Australia, but Stu beat her to it by marching through South America, taking out all of Will's troops before Elly could finish Fred off! ...I think I'll be going back for a rematch in the near future. :)

And now, I really must get my head down and do some serious Project work before tomorrow's meeting! You're supposed to have 8hrs per week on average and I'm currently sitting on an average of 07:09. :S And when I say that you're supposed to have 8hrs, I mean that you start losing marks if you have less than that! :O

Time to vpn in to the uni through a vnc link to access the svn repository and get into some C# ASP.NET code... way too many v's and n's... :P

Melbourne Post-Mortem

2005-09-07T20:15:00.000+10:00

ok, so I was planning to make a few posts while actually in Melbourne, but I didn't get a chance after the first night - sorry! So here's the post-mortem!

First up here's me, Amelia and Laura (L-R) at Launceston airport waiting to board the plane. :) The flight over was uneventful, but pretty exciting for some of us who hadn't been on a plane for some years!

I spent the first two nights with family. I got to see aunties and uncles and cousins and my sister, Holly. Here's Holly on the right and my cousin Josie on the left.

Here's Alex, another cousin, who's having a great time with a sparkler some guys gave her who were having a birthday party on the beach at St Kilda! :)

Alex and Gabby (yes, another cousin) found this awesome rubbish bin with a dual flip-up lid at an ice-cream shop in St Kilda. Seriously, it was worth going to this shop just so you could use this bin! :P Actually, the ice-cream at this place was beautiful!! I had Pistachio and Ferrero Rocher flavoured ice-cream! If you're ever in St Kilda check out the ice-cream at 7Apples - it's great!

We went to the zoo for the good part of a day too. We checked out everything there was to see and took heaps of photos. Holly and her boyfriend Petey came, along with the team - it was great! :) I was hoping some others might come to the zoo too, such as Elly + Stu or Amelia and her sister Ele. Or maybe even Matt and Angela. Unfortunately we weren't able to coordinate our activities much, but we all had fun doing what we did. :) Check out what Elly + Stu got up on her blog in three parts starting with Part 1 - Bendigo.

The Aquarium was awesome! About 8 years ago we lived just a few train stations away from the zoo for three years and had a yearly family pass, so I'd seen a fair bit of the zoo already. The Aquarium didn't exist back then tho, so this was the first time I'd been there. It was fantastic! They had lots of small-ish displays which were cool enough, but then downstairs we encountered the biggest fish tank in the southern hemisphere! Again, we took about ten thousand photos between us. (ok, slight exaggeration!)

Finally, on sunday night we went to the Lion King live show at the Regent Theatre. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos, so here's a shot of spencer street from the window of the room we stayed in. ;) The Lion King was definitely worth the money and the effort of organising the trip! A very well crafted show! They stuck to the original story whilst adding just the right amount of elaboration. A new song that made it to the dvd release The Morning Report was in there, as well as a song from The Lion King II, He Lives in You. What more can I say: I loved it!! :D

After a great five days holidaying in Melbourne we finally found ourselves having coffee (or orange juice!) at Melbourne airport before jumping on the plane and travelling back to good old Tassie. After arriving back in Launnie, we got off the plane, drove home, then some of us had to head straight back out to uni for lectures and meetings that lasted til 8pm! ...and it's been non-stop ever since! It's straight back to reality, I guess. :)

So there you have it! It was great to see family, hang out with friends and see some of the sights of melbourne for a few days. For more info about our trip you can check out all the pics at Humphrey's Photo Gallery, you can read Humf's take on the trip at his blog, and you can head over to Stu's blog and get a sneak preview of our special-release DVD, Melbourne Mayhem, in stores now! ;)

Ciao for now :)

I am a robot!

2005-09-07T19:27:00.000+10:00

Well, Elly did another test following the Nerd, Geek, or Dork test, and so I did it too. :) Apparently I'm an unfeeling robot, although I'm also not far from being classed as a Hand-Raiser! :O Anyway, check out my results and follow the link below to take the test yourself! ;)

Robot
You are 71% Rational, 42% Extroverted, 0% Brutal, and 14% Arrogant.

You are the Robot! You are characterized by your rationality. In fact, this is really ALL you are characterized by. Like a cold, heartless machine, you are so logical and unemotional that you scarcely seem human. For instance, you are very humble and don't bother thinking of your own interests, you are very gentle and lack emotion, and you are also very introverted and introspective. You may have noticed that these traits are just as applicable to your laptop as they are to a human being. In short, your personality defect is that you don't really HAVE a personality. You are one of those annoying, super-logical people that never gets upset or flustered. Unless, of course, you short circuit.

To put it less negatively:

You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.
You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.
You are more GENTLE than brutal.
You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Class Clown.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hand-Raiser, the Emo Kid, and the Haughty Intellectual.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 56% on Rationality

You scored higher than 44% on Extroversion

You scored higher than 0% on Brutality

You scored higher than 6% on Arrogance

Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Melbourne is a Go!

2005-09-01T22:59:00.000+10:00

Yahoo! I'm in Melbourne! As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm spending the week in melbourne with some friends, including Stuart, Humphrey, Caleb, Laura, Amelia and her sister, Elly and Stu, and some ring-ins who also happen to be in Melbourne at the time, such as Matt and Ang.

We flew over on Virgin Blue, arriving at 2:30pm, caught a SkyBus into Melbourne, checked out and checked in to our accommodation, All Nations, and then wandered around looking for a bite to eat for lunch. We were pretty hungry by 4pm, so we couldn't be bothered searching very far and ended up at one of the many McDonalds in Melbourne's cbd... man, all the way to Melbourne and we go to McDonalds for lunch! :S Anyway, I then departed company with the team and caught a train out to Elsternwick to meet up with family: Liggy + co, Claire + co, and my sister Holly. :) I'm staying with Liggy's family tonight and plans for the next few days are somewhat hazy, so stay tuned!

ps. Yes, the photo above is taken from the web... Real photos to follow... promise!

Lots of visitors

2005-08-29T17:10:00.000+10:00

Wow, during the first 1.5 hours after adding the counter, I've had 34 page loads from 28 unique users! :O The fact that three of them left spam comments on the previous post advertising stuff suggests that they're mostly bots, but hey. ;) To stop junk comments from getting posted by bots, I've turned on "word verification" which just means you'll get asked to copy letters from an image when you post a comment. A small price to pay, methinks. :)

Hit Counter

2005-08-29T14:37:00.000+10:00

Yeah, I know I'm kinda copying Humphrey, but I saw his counter and thought - yeah, nice idea. So I've got one too! :P Check it out at the bottom of the page. It'd be subtle if I hadn't've written a post about it. ;)

Pure Nerd :S

2005-08-28T01:35:00.000+10:00

I found this Nerd? Geek? or Dork? test somewhere and was somehow intrigued enough to give it a go. So here I am the other side of the test, and apparently, I'm a Pure Nerd, which is a little disturbing... What's possibly more disturbing is that I scored more for Dork than I did for Geek! People sometimes call me a Computer Geek (and sometimes even ask me if I mind (...elly, amelia!)) so I'd've thought I might've scored more for it. Anyhoo, check out my results! :) ...and then have a go yourself!

Pure Nerd
65 % Nerd, 39% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 71% on nerdiness
You scored higher than 53% on geekosity
You scored higher than 79% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on Ok Cupid

Stuart, the Human Ticket Granting Server

2005-08-25T15:55:00.000+10:00

Today in Computer Security, Stuart (wearing black, holding the red and green sheets of paper) did an impersonation of a Ticket Granting Server as part of a practical demonstration of Kerberos, a computer network authentication protocol we're learning about. The demonstration mostly involved the guys here passing around notes wrapped up in coloured sheets of paper! :) I don't fully get Kerberos yet, but it was fun to watch nevertheless! ;)

Good Spot to Chat

2005-08-24T21:12:00.000+10:00

Here are my awesome friends in their fav chatting spot at home group - No, that's not a couch they're sitting on! ;) Amelia, Sandy and Elly thank you for the use of your bath, Mark + Di!

...I've uploaded this so Elly can use it as her profile pic! See How it is. :)

Alpha Weekend

2005-08-22T20:43:00.000+10:00

On saturday I went to the Alpha weekend - a special saturday and sunday's worth of alpha in the middle of the whole course. The weekend focusses on the Holy Spirit, who He is (yes, the Holy Spirit is most definitely a 'He') and how He relates to us. During the afternoon, we climbed to the top of St John's tower and I took some photos of the street below. Enjoy! :)

The story so far...

2005-08-15T16:23:00.000+10:00

Well, I figured it was about time to write a little update of what's going on in my world!

Ok, so here's the run down:

Nearly finished Bachelor of Computing degree at Utas up here in Launceston. ...just the rest of this semester to go! I'm doing Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing (mobile phones and stuff), Computer Security, Programming Paradigms (which I don't understand ANYTHING about yet - tough subject!), and...
Software Engineering Project is still going... no more submissions til the end of semester now, which is kinda good but also kinda scary, cos it's harder to judge whether we're on schedule or not! :S
I'm also still at St John's. I'm concentrating my efforts on music and not being involved in the children's ministry! (Well, not much anyway...!) Kudos to Di who's doing an awesome job at running that! :D
St Joe's Big Band recently recorded for their CD - finally! We've been planning to make it for years apparently. Hopefully it'll be out in time for our concert in November celebrating the band's 160th year! Put it in your diary now: 12 Nov 2005 at the Princess Theatre!
I've been taking a break from St Joe's for a few weeks in order to do The Alpha Course. We're about half way through and I've found it to be very informative. The content is very well put together, and well delivered. While I've been a christian pretty much my entire life, it's useful to go back to the basics and approach it anew. It's also great to see the enthusiasm abounding from those who are new to christianity. It can be very easy at times to settle into a routine and forget how amazing God is!!
The Melbourne trip is going ahead! After much complication in organisation regarding accommodation and who was going etc, we're now pretty much set. In the end there are about 7 of us going 1st-5th Sep. We're planning to stay at All Nations which is a really great price - only $15 per night, and lots of stuff included. I suspect they're able to make it so cheap by also running the All Nations Bar, right next door. If you're staying at All Nations for accommodation, you're likely to be spending a fair amount of money at the bar (unless you're like me and don't care much for alcohol!). They even offer guests a free beer on check-in! ;)

The idea behind this, originally, was to take Sandy to Melbourne to see the Lion King for her birthday. Unfortunately, due to one thing and another, Sandy is now unable to go... :( The trip has now largely become a Project Team + friends thing rather than a Sandy's birthday thing. Nevertheless, we still plan to go and have a well earned break from project work and uni and everything! :) While we're there we might also go take a look at the Melbourne Aquarium and maybe Melbourne Zoo. Who knows! :D

That'll just about do it for one post I reckon. Please leave comments so I know you've been visiting me! It might encourage me to post again! ;)

Until next time...

SGC concert at DOH - oops!!

2005-08-06T18:40:00.000+10:00

I've been looking forward to a Southern Gospel Choir concert at Door of Hope, but not knowing the time and prices and stuff, I found this article on the utas what's on webpage:

"6 August
Conservatorium of Music
Southern Gospel Choir - Launceston Appearance
A rare opportunity for fans from the north of the State to catch the Gospel Choir in a one-off show.
6 pm. Door of Hope Church, Launceston. $35/$20 available at the door.
Further information: 6226 7337"

I just drove out there, and the sign says it's at 7:30pm! :@ Man! So I drove home again. I'm pretty sure the prices are wrong too! I thought it said $30/$25 on the sign...

I guess I'll have something to eat and try again shortly. ;)

Post from Email

2005-08-06T16:38:00.000+10:00

I'm posting this blog by sending an email to my special address @blogger.com. That's a pretty nice feature. Makes it slightly more likely that I'll actually post to this! ;) Let's see if it works...

Hello all!

2005-08-06T16:06:00.000+10:00

Well, this is my first post! I never thought I'd give this a go, but I was reading one of my friend's blogs and thought - why not? I figure it's a reasonable way to let others who may be interested know what I'm up to... Also I can look back and see what I was thinking and stuff. Of course, what with being in the middle of Project, I really don't have time to be writing entries in a blog, but maybe it'll work out! Worst case scenario: I'll set it up, make this first post then never go back again! ;)

I guess time will tell... :)