Still As Life

John Williamson is a great guy, don't get me wrong, I like his songs (unusual for me, I know), he portrays the Aussie way so well, but you can only here the same albumof his so many times.

My boss has had one album of his playing at work for the past 2 weeks. The same album, over and over. It has some great songs on it,but you can only hear it so many times without starting to go slightly crazy.

Even if it was rotating with a couple of other CD's it would be fine, but in a 5 hour shift, you hear the same songs at least 5 times! That's a little much if you ask me. Especially after an ITB006 (Networking) exam at 8:30 this morning!

The exam went pretty well I think, there were a few things I couldn't remember, like how to do the working on a cyclic redundancy check, and a couple of other questions that I no longer remember, but aside from that it was pretty good.

Again it surprised me how much of it was exactly the same as from the two practice exams, but hey, who's complaining right? Even better, there was nothing from the practical tutorials, it was completely based on the lectures and the theory from tutorial's. Which is particularly good since I didn't actually go to all of the practicals.

I followed most of the lecture material fairly well so I didn't think the question's based on them were very hard, and 30 of them were multiple choice anyway, with the other 5 being short answer questions split into 3-5 questions each.

The most any individual question was worth from memory was 4 marks, with 1 and 2 each being the average marks per question so I think it should be a pretty easy exam to do well in.

I also donated blood after the exam. It's the first time since I moved up to Brisbane that I've been able to donate when I've been near one of the blood banks or the mobile donor centre's. Every other time, I've had to be somewhere in the next 5 minutes or so, or I've been sick or had a headache or something like that. I almost walked past it this time without thinking but they had a big sign up saying they particularly need O blood types at the moment, so since I'm an O positive that caught my eye and lo and behold they took my blood. Filled a bag in 12 minutes, that's a personal best!

Now everyone that's able, go donate blood! It's good, I promise. It doesn't hurt much at all and whatever pain you do get usually goes away within a few minutes anyway, so do it!

Labels: music, rants, university, work

From - Wikipedia

I have been looking into the whole taurine thing some more, on Wikipedia, isn't that a cool molecule?

Anyway, from what I found on Wikipedia, it would seem that while taurine doesn't have evergy giving properties, it reduces muscle fatigue. It's naturally found in the human body as well as many animals.

It is also an amino acid, technically an amino sulfonic acid. It would seem there is the possibility it can reduce blood pressure as well, but I couldn't see anything on Wikipedia supporting this. It seems that it is pretty much as the Choice website said, exactly what and how it does things is largely unkown. At the same time though, it seems it is needed by the body and is naturally occuring.

And here's a fun filled fact from Wikipedia regarding Taurine usage "In 1993, approximately 5,000–6,000 t of taurine (synthetic and natural) were produced; 50% for pet food manufacture, 50% in pharmaceutical applications." So...I guess it's good for something right?

So why the hair pulling? Well, I have done more today then look up Taurine. As I mentioned yesterday, I had an exam at 8:30 this morning on databases. Well...The exam is over, not without much hair loss though.

I set my alarm for 6:30am, but lo and behold, I woke up at 7:57 with my phone (my alarm) in my hand and my hand under my pillow and the alarm turned off. Seeing as how it takes some 40+ minutes to get into uni this came as quite a shock and posed a series of problems.

1. Do I take the bus like I was planning or should I drive instead.
2. I'm hungry but don't have time to eat.
3. The next bus leaves in 8 minutes.

So, I think that is the quickest I've gotten dressed and gone to the bus stop, ever. Still got there 20 minute's late, but at least I got there that soon.

I have a word of advice for anyone at QUT who is doing ITB004 in the near future, when they give you the practice exam, it might be almost a decade old, but the exam structure hasn't changed at all!

Seriously, I went over the practice exam a few times over the weekend, and the actual final exam that I did this morning was identical to it bar slight variation in the content of the questions, such as slightly different SELECT statements, slightly different criteria for Access database questions etc. Things like the "Lost Update Problem" were also updated with the most recent version of the diagram from the lecture notes, but apart from that its virtually identical, so pay attention!

So I think I went alright, maybe. There was a question on VBA which I don't remember doing and thus didn't study anything about, so it probably wouldn't hurt to take note of that.

Now I have a website to go work on...Or I do whenever my boss gets back from his meeting with the client so I can get an update on what I have to do. It's meant to be launching tomorrow, so when it's done, guess what! You'll get a link to it! How awesome is that?

Labels: special interest, university

From Wikipedia

So, I have been looking into this whole V Energy Drink causing heart damage when consumed in excessive quantities. Thus far, the only thing I have been able to find relating at all to it is the fact that it has caffeine and taurine in it.

According to what I have found, the research is basically the same as for anything with caffeine in it.

"Very high levels (that’s 1000 mg a day — equivalent to 11–12 cups of strong coffee) can be harmful. Research has shown links between heavy use of caffeine and osteoporosis, high blood pressure, heartburn, ulcers, severe insomnia and infertility." From - Choice

That's nothing new though, Choice also some interesting info on taurine that I didn't know about before.

"Most of these drinks have taurine as a key ingredient. We checked out the science and asked the manufacturers about its inclusion, but we’ve yet to see any convincing evidence that it’ll give you a buzz. Taurine’s used by the body in a wide range of protective and metabolic activities, but exactly what it does (and how it does it) is still largely unknown." From - Choice

So, basically, we are consuming something without really knowing what it does. Sounds safe to me.

I shall continue looking but so far this has been the most useful thing I have been able to find.

On another note, I've been at uni since 7:30 this morning (Sunday morning no less), and I have completed my KIB104 assignment. It's a video clip for Wolfmother's "Dimension" song. Due tomorrow, so hopefully it will be alright.

Anyway, I best be off and get going home so I can study for my ITB004 exam thats at 8:30 tomorrow morning!

Have fun.

Now, I best be off to home and eat and study and the like.

Labels: special interest, university

Well, I decided to come into uni on a Saturday night, that's right, a Saturday night, like the good little student I am, and of course, the one thing I need in order to be able to work on this assignment for KIB104 (Media Technology 2), is not available. I have 16gb of raw video, which I cannot transport between computers from the one I originally recorded it onto for a couple of reasons:

1. Mac's won't write to NTFS (extremely useful...not!)
2. FAT32 doesn't support more than 4gb in a single file.
3. My external hard drive is formatted as FAT32 because I need to use it on both Mac OS and Windows.
4. For the reason stated above, I cannot reformat the hard drive to a reasonable Mac readable file system so I can copy the video onto it.
5. I can't afford to buy another external hard drive, nor should I have to just for one assignment.

So, this leaves me at uni, on a Mac, at 9:22pm on a Saturday night, with nothing to do and my internet here is capped to 7kb/s. Excellent.

By the way, I hear excess quantities of V can cause heart damage! I think this is something that is worth finding out about. Guess what I'll be doing instead of my assignment until I decide to go home!

Labels: hardware, software, special interest, university

If you are an Australian uni student, like myself, you might be eligible for Microsoft's current "It's Not Cheating" offer available online only from http://www.itsnotcheating.com.au/

It looks like it's all pretty much the same as the previous years offer except it appears this year they offer backup CD's as well (I don't know if they did last year, but I never got one if they did). As you probably just guessed, I bought Microsoft Office 2007 last year with Microsoft's first "It's Not Cheating" offer. Basically, you just have to have a valid student email address at any of the participating universities and you are automatically eligible to purchase Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate on a one year subscription basis for $25 at the end of which you can opt to purchase a perpetual license for $50, or straight up you can buy it with a perpetual (lifetime) license for $75.

While I would not consider myself a big Microsoft supporter, if you are like me and have almost no money most of the time, this is definately a great offer and will save you a lot of money. It's probably going to be even more useful this time around than it was last time, as anyone else who bought it the first time they ran this offer would probably have experienced, many universities have not yet upgraded from Office 2003, so everything has to be compatible with 2003.

This is fine since 2007 allows you to save with backwards compatibility, but this is not the default so you have to check it, and occasionally, even when you do save it backwards, things just don't work in 2003 anyway. Additionally, for some subjects, such as ITB004 (Database Systems) in the Faculty of IT at QUT, where you are required to do work in Microsoft Access, the tutorials and lectures all revolve around Access 2003 still. As you may find, Access 2003 and Access 2007 have very, very different interfaces and some of the functionality in 2003 can be a lot more difficult to locate in 2007. Luckily, for students doing this subject, Access 2003 is available for free via Microsoft's Developers Network Academic Association (MSDNAA) and can be installed alongside 2007 without any hiccups.

In all though, I think it is definately a worthwhile purchase, I mean, you save $1075 Australian.

Now how could you pass up on that?

Labels: software, university

So it's the end of the semester, and thus the end of university for the year. With this I begin this blog. This blog where you will hear about things ranging from work, university, current projects, design's, fractal's, bass guitar, and more.

Web design, web development, computers, games and anything technological describe the majority of my interests.

I offer web design and development services through TerraMedia and sub-contract my services through a variety of other companies.

I am currently studying a Bachelor of Information Technology, majoring in Web Services and Applications, and a Bachelor of Creative Industries, majoring in Communication Design at the Queensland University of Technology. This gives me a background in both web development through the BIT and a background in web design through the BCI.

Having spent this week at uni working on assignments, and when not at uni, at home working on assignments, this weekend has finally come, and with it, I can have a break. The assignment I have been working on is for KIB102, Foundations of Communication Design 2. It's my final major assignment. Put simply it is an interactive Flash web site based on a movie that we studied for earlier assignments. While this is my first shot at a Flash based website, and I am far from a Flash expert, I will be posting up my completed assignment in the next few day's and will also be going through some of the thing's I learned that I had a hard time finding information on while I was doing the assignment, so hopefully they will be useful for someone else.

Of course, like many student's, I left too much to the last minute and so there are things in the site that are uncompleted, but you know, it happens. You would think I would have learned by now to start things sooner...

And with that I leave you as I have to get some sleep so I can spend tomorrow night and Sunday working on yet another assignment that is due on Monday and study for an exam that is also on, you guessed it, Monday. Busy busy busy.

Labels: art, music, software, university