Archived Posts for April 1998

4-Unit Maths Exam

“$#!+“. Would’ve been the first thought to cross my mind when I saw the paper (as was for everyone else). People who passed this exam would be doing really really well. I didn’t even finish one question out of 8 off completely. What a complete disaster… for everyone that is. Everyone wants to kill Mr Browne (the maths teacher) now. What slack sadisitic man. I think someone heard him say about the exams when they were being collected at the end, “Aren’t I nasty?” (with a mocking grin – which we could just make out between his facial hair), yeah and that’d be right. That test was HARD. Way tougher than HSC standard.

  3:40pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

English Exam

A pretty standard English exam – reading & writing sections, a Topic Area question, Diving for Pearls essay and a Bruce Dawe poetry essay. Questions weren’t tough, but I saw the 2U-Related paper, and it was quite tough… Just as well I’m not doing it anymore :).

  3:50pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Exams

As you can see, I haven’t made an entry in a while, and that’s because I’ve been cramming. The big week starts tomorrow, ending Monday week. I’ve got 7 exams within that period, kicking off with English tomorrow. If I get the time, I’ll write something about them.

  9:40pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Added Column 8 Link

For all the “fringe” news bits and anecdotes, visit the Sydney Morning Herald’s site’s Column 8. The link’s in the left column, or for Netscape 3 users, far down the bottom of the page. Netscape doesn’t like Javascript in tables. Grrr.

  2:00am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Site News  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Trek DS9: Accession

Not a bad episode for this week; it closes one loose thread (Sisko and him being the Emissary etc.). Wouldn’t it be a sight to see Sisko going on a power trip now he’s seen just what an Emissary can do? >:)

  1:16am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Star Trek  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

It’s just not his Year

Surely you must’ve heard what happened to “Uncle” Bill. At Comdex ’98, he was giving a demo of the plug ‘n’ play “capabilities” of Win 98… and it crashed on him (blue screen crash). I’ve even got the video file of it :). Luckily, it was a Beta, so he sort of managed to salvage this situation with the comment, “That must be why we’re not shipping Windows 98 yet,” to which his shaken assistant replied, “Absolutely. Absolutely.” I cracked up when I saw the video clip the first time. Windows was detecting the scanner, and when it dumped the assistant (who was doing the talking), to the blue screen, the assistant almost shat himself. Hahaha.

  12:15am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Business & Finance  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

CPU Rollout

So the 400Mhz chip was released… What’s next for Intel? Here’s a summary of what’s in the works. A 1Ghz chip… mmmm… All names are codenames.

ABC – The next round of Pentium IIs. However they will run on Slot 2 montherboards which have Level 2 caches that run at the 100Mhz Bus speed. They should debut at 400 and 450Mhz speeds. They can hold up to 2 Megs of L2 Cache. Should shipi n 3 months.

Mendocino – This is a Celeron-class chip which has an L2 cache on the actual silicon. The present Celeron model has no L2 cache. It should ship in the third quarter, 1998.

Katmai – It should debut in early-1999 at the 500Mhz mark. It’ll support MMX2, version 2 of the original MMX series. It may also come later on with a 200Mhz data bus (which’ll need new RDRAM – Rambus Dynamic RAM).

Geyserville – Due to be introduced in the 2nd quarter of next year, it’s a mobile version of the Katmai which will feature power saving in the form of variable speed settings (350Mhz on battery power, 450Mhz on AC power).

Colfax – Motherboard design incorporating a Pentium II processor and 2X AGP, support for RDRAM, have a 100Mhz bus, and the 440BX chipset.

Merced – Expected to start at speeds of 600Mhz, potentially reaching 1000Mhz, due late 1999. It’s a 64-bit chip, and also is based on a totally new design (that is, not based on x86 CPU architecture). Because of this, current OSes will not support Merced – you probably won’t be able to run Win NT 5 with it.

McKinley – Fast. The second-generation Merced should debut at 1 Gigahertz. Whoa. And it’s only around 3 years away. That’s a clock speed 30 times faster (in reality, even more than that) than my old 486-33DX, well within the space of a decade.

There ya go. Now I’m off to watch Trek. Tonight’s episode is “Accession”.

  12:15am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Computing  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Lost in Space

Saw the movie today. Pretty good “family type” movie that certainly had me entertained for a couple of hours. I don’t know anything about the old 60s tv series, but this movie brought the “Robinson Family” up-to-date, and made it look like they were really living in the future. Great special effects – especially at the beginning. Problem is the speaker system wasn’t working properly at the screen we saw LIS at… it was surround sound for a while, then it conked out for some reason… This movie plays with time, and any movie that plays with time (à la Star Trek: Generations) is going to have many plot holes, and it also makes it confusing. And there wasn’t any time to unravel along the way… you had to hope someone would give us an explanation of what was going on. And the themes and morals are there as well. Morals? I mean the exploration of, not the upholding of…

[Will Robinson pops his head over the ridge of ahill, with Dr Smith following behind]
Will: Oh shit.
Dr Smith: Boys [or was it kids??] of your intellect should never swear… oh shit.

Swearing is common. A 10 year old kid swearing on the big screen is not common… but funny :). 3.5 to 4.

  12:31am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Movies  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Intel CPUs

Yesterday CPU prices across the board plummeted as the new 350 and 400Mhz P2 chips running on 100Mhz buses were released (Cache not up to 100Mhz, though… have to wait for Slot 2 motherboards to accommodate that). The 450Mhz one is due July.

  12:31am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Computing  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Parrot Skit

Here’s the skit as it came out after being translated by babelfish.altavista.digital.com (see April 13th entry – Languages)… Original script coming (when I can be bothered). It starts from the beginning, with “Hello, I wish to register a complaint… Hello, Miss?” …

Aligned: Hello, I demand an objection to the registry…, Hello? Ms?
Exchange: Which thing you have the taste to say to difettare of?
Aligned: Hour of amp2ere, I, betruebt of a cold stay. It has wished to arrange an objection.
Exchange: Betruebt, closes them that we arrest the lunch.
Aligned: That before that it does not only give the shape to the new defective man, me
me I have loved the conclui’ I give these parrots that they load, than I have
not exactly bought the average-hour of this system.
Exchange: The OH, blue Norwegian. Which it is the problem with it?
Aligned: Legend I, that with it you are wrong. He is dead man, that is, than with it it is wrong.
Exchange: No destiller to it is interrupted, the temporary vision!
Aligned: Opinion my new man, I know the deads dark-brownen, if in order to come and in order lend
attention at this moment.
Exchange: Not no horseman honest, died. It is still arrested.
Aligned: Rest?

  8:40pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Miscellaneous  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Study

I’m bored. ICQ me to alleviate my boredom. Yes I’m studying for my half-yearlies… Yeah I’d even be happy to talk with you about whatever subjects I’m studying :). Gotta get Starcraft quick. That’ll alleviate the boredom ;).

  11:40am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Trivial Trivia

Did you know “mirabilis” is Latin for “wonderful”. I’m sure it’s somewhere on their site, but no one goes there except when they want to download the software, do they? If people visited their site, they’d stop sending that damn chain mail!!! Translation courtesy of Shish, Latin scholar – if you want Latin translated, mail him – I’d refer you to AltaVista’s brill translation service, but they don’t have a Latin<–>English service :). While he was over, we translated a bit from the Monty Python Parrot Skit from English to 5 other languages and back (that’s English to French, back to English, then to Spanish, Portuguese, German, and that other lanuage (can’t remember) and back to English after each translation). I’ll post the original and the mangled translation at a later time…

  11:40am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Miscellaneous  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Star Trek DSN

Deep Space Nine’s getting much better. There’s much more continuity between the plot, and you can see the development in characters (the “useless” sub-plots) that didn’t occur in the earlier seasons. People say that DSN is a “soapie in space”, but it I think the difference is that it doesn’t get bogged down by mundane relationship and behaviour problems, which is all soapies such as Neighbours seem to run on. The setting in space, plus all the races mean that DSN can cover many many more themes and issues than a normal soapie can (I don’t think a soapie does aim to cover themes, and issues – more like to give people something to look at while they eat dinner :), and it DSN is aimed at covering issues and current topics… with the occassional firefight! DSN has come a long way. Of course, #@!#$% Channel 9’s not showing Voyager, and we’re about two-three (even four?) seasons behind the US.

The episode tonight, “Bar Association”, was up there with the best episodes I’ve seen. It involved Rom and his co-workers at the bar striking against his employer-brother Quark (and anything with Ferengi in it is bound to be humourous). How appropriate, I was thinking, especially with the Waterfront Dispute going on. There was the main plot of Rom and the … the … u … uh … union :), then there’s that of Worf trying to adapt to DSN (and his crush on Dax :), and of course they manage to link the plots in a small way (the brawl between O’Brien and Worf over boycotting the bar). They develop O’Brien and Worf’s character, and Sisko gets a cameo role as Mr Grumpy for the second or third week in a row. This episode was really fun to watch, although the union “rally” scenes were a bit corny (especially the Bajoran Dabo girl (sidenote – if it was the Cleansing Festival, and she’s Bajoran, why was she still working??), but at least her presence meant we had something to look at =). If only we saw the wharfies parading around like that… hehe.

  1:41am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Star Trek  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Mail Form

I’ll be instituting a mail form (soon, hopefully) to make it easier for anyone to post in info about anything designed for this journal. People like filling out forms more than typing in email. :)

  1:41am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Site News  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

New counter

For some reason, I love statistics and graphs and stuff like that. Today I signed up with showstat.com, which provides info on who visits this page. Not a paranoia thing, but a curiousity thing. On my old page, I found that people were visiting from everywhere in the world, and I mean everywhere – for example, the United Arab Emirates among numerous others, can you believe?

  10:49pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Site News  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Languages

I reckon English will well and truly become the universal language – meaning really universal, like in Starship Troopers where even in Buenos Aires they speak straight English. Especially when 95% of e-mail communication (more so on ICQ nowadays – its quicker and more convenient than e-mail, which is what we were saying about e-mail vs snail mail only a year or two ago) is in English. Too bad the number of people in the world who have computers is less that 1% or something… and most third-world countries don’t speak English, but of course, this’ll change in the distant future.

  10:49pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Opinions & Observations  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Happy Easter

Well, Happy Easter and all that. I really should start studying now (still haven’t and exams are first day back at school, which is 2 weeks away from tomorrow :)

  11:47pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Miscellaneous  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Links

Freebies – did you know you could get lotsa free, albeit useless stuff, off the net?
Cap’n Jim’s 3D Stuff – Ooohooo this is an absolute treasure chest, full of high quality images that can be used as wallpaper. They have a Sci-fi theme, with lotsa Star Wars and Trek pics. I hit the jackpot this time :)

  11:47pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Miscellaneous  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Hard Disk

Two days ago, my cousin lost the equivalent of 10 times the amount of data that could be used to restart an entire civilisation. How much is that? 6.4 Gigabytes (the comparison is based on the conjecture that the Encyclopedia Britannica, which is 600+ megs on a CD, could be used to restart a civilisation… although in CD form it wouldn’t be helpful :). Yep, an entire 6.4Gb hard disk, gone without warning. It’s a Quantum Fireball ST 6.4 Ultra-ATA, and it had been making weird noises and creating bad sectors… not a good sign. Then, when he ran a Norton Speeddisk on it, the computer crashed, and when he rebooted, it dumped him to DOS. A few hours later he was up and running on his secondary 3 Gb hard disk, looking through the 6.4 one – the directory strucutre was for the most intact, but the files were gone. Incidentally, I have the same hard disk model, and it’s been making weird noises too… And I’ve heard problems with others who have Fireball STs… Not good.

  11:47pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Computing  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

“Holidays”

On holidays now, or at least I have been since Wednesday. Went to Yum Cha for lunch today in the city. Although the restaurant holds 800 people, we still had to wait two bloody hours to get in… what a waste of time. It was raining when we went down, but on the way back it was absolutely pissing down with rain. Lotsa mini-floods around the city too. It was funny, there was a section of the road where the water was flooding onto the footpath, and there are all these shopkeepers nervously staring at the water lapping at their welcome mats :). Also there was where two out of three lanes were basically flooded to a depth of 20-30cm, so cars were converging from three lanes into one lane and driving up onto the divider in the middle of the road to try and keep out of the deep water. Then this guy in a 4-wheel drive just plows through the water without hopping on the curb and he’s got this big smile on his face. Can’t blame him though – a 4-wheel drive would’ve been useful in those conditions.

  1:29am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Can you believe some of the freaks in the world?

From the Sydney Morning Herald of 10th April…

Greater Union challenged the Hoyts record for seeing Titanic — 103 times by David Gerada, of Merrylands, as of Tuesday. At the 30-screen Greater Union in Adelaide, a woman customer, who doesn’t want to be named, has seen it 112 times as of Wednesday, and has the stubs to prove it. She wants to see it 150 times. Fancy hearing My Heart Will Go On 150 times! Titanic shows eight times daily at the cinemas.

What idiots. Why??? 112 times = $1120 on seeing one damn movie. I haven’t seen it myself — I just don’t agree how they’re making a love story out of a friggin disaster where 1,200 people died. $1 billion plus in profit. If I do go and see it it’ll be for the special fx and the nudy scene ;). Which reminds me of a speech at the Oratory which came second. My friend Phil came up with a 6 minute speech totally bagging out Titanic. What a cack. Bloody funny. ICQ him at 825530 and I’m sure he’ll be glad to talk about it!

  1:29am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Movies  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

I’m still here…

I just have been too busy. Couple things. Regarding that Getright stat below, I realised that if I was using a cable modem, and say I was downloading all that stuff over 12 months, I’d be a fair few gigabytes over the limit. $2451 in excess (not to mention the $65 a month for the first 100Mb), plus other stuff like general web browsing and game playing… Maybe Cable isn’t such a good idea. Second thing, I gotta move March stuff to the archive, but I can’t be bothered right now.
[If you’re wondering “What GetRight stat?”, I moved it to the March Archive here. – 7:15 pm]

  7:16pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

BOOM!

Just like that. Dad turned on the computer and it blew. I was in my room at the time, but I still heard the small explosion. Yeah the computer blew a fuse yesterday, but luckily we got it fixed so it’s back home working again today. :)

  7:16pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

National Party

Let’s just say… I doing something for them, and I’m meeting one of their guys tomorrow at the State Parliament. Funny … I feel more nervous about the Oratory I have to go to afterwards than this meeting with a politician. Impromptu speeches. <shudder>. :)

  7:16pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Where did Autumn go?

34 degrees Celcius (there’s no such thing as Centigrade I think) a few days ago! El Niño must’ve done it :) (that squiggle on the n is called a tilde – pronounced “til-der”. So say that when you’re giving out URLs, not “that little squiggly thing”, or “that space eel” as I’ve heard it called.)

  7:16pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  •