Andrew's Inner Sanctum

Haven’t posted here for a few days and thought I’d better update the thoughts from my inner sanctum to you all. I’ve got a mini cold, one of those which is slightly more than my normal sinuses but not enough to stop me doing anything. It’s just annoying, but thankfully I’ve got the long weekend to make sure I come back to school ready for what will be a 4 day week, but one hell of a 4 day week.

I have a normal day Tuesday, followed by 2 exams on Wednesday followed by 2 days of QCS Test practice. I really really hate QCS and personally think it’s a band aid to a very broken system of senior assessment in Queensland. Then it’s holidays for 3 whole weeks before 17 weeks left of school :O – wow this year has gone fast (yet this term has gone slowly…).

This holiday will mainly involve me staying up late and co-hosting the Endeavour Online Afternoon Show with Daniel – so if you’re up late and want to listen to me just chat with Daniel and play some pretty good music, then check out www.endeavouronline.net. I’m also going on a mini holiday for a few days to visit the legend of Sydney FM radio: The Spoonman! If you’ve never heard of the Spoonman before, then he used to be a Sydney based radio talkback announcer who hosted a late night national FM talkback and rock music program. He was more edgy than the AM talkback and had radical opinions sometimes, but hosted the best show on radio at the time and usually nailed the issue he was discussing even if it disagreed with mainstream views. I’m also going to visit my friend Deanna who moved away from Brisbane in 2008 and so that will be awesome to see her again for a day

I have also spent a bit of time on YouTube and came across this awesome (but extremely random song) called Chicken Monkey Duck, so I thought I’d share this with you all!

Lastly, I have an urge for something, but I don’t actually know what it is – don’t you hate it when that happens, you want something, but you don’t know what it is you actually want?

Have a good night and thank you Queen for giving us a free holiday, I think you’ve contributed nothing else to Australia and bring on the republic, but I do thank you for a free holiday

Time to post again. A big sorry for my lack of posting during the school term, I decided to concentrate on other things so this blog kind of got forgotten. I’ll now give you a brief update of the last 9 weeks. Year 12 started off really well. I’ve posted 2 articles to my website in the last 9 weeks. One of them because I was annoyed at all the Vista bagging going on at school when I returned, and the other was my IPT assignment. The task was to write an argumentative  essay on whether or not Stephen Conroy’s internet filter was a good policy. I wrote a strongly worded essay arguing heavily against the policy and for that I got an A.

The rest of the term was just the standard types of assessments for year 12 students: reports, essays, exams and orals. I also have been keeping the minutes and agendas for the after school prefect meetings all under control and up to date. The term has turned out really tiring actually. It finished off with the QCS practise test, to see how much the in school tuition has improved our results. Personally I do not think setting an all day test on the last day of school is such a wonderful idea, but that’s what occurred. I also think that the Queensland education system and the way we examine and assess senior students across the state is fundamentally broken, because what everyone else in my subject or my school scores in a test, should not affect what my exit score should be. That gives schools with more resources and a better socioeconomic area a better advantage over schools who don’t have these positive factors, but that’s another story for another time. I also finished uploading all 419 podcasts to the Spoonman Fan Club. The Spoonman was an awesome late night talkback announcer on Triple M from 2005-2008  and when his show finished, KG and I decided to set up a central tribute/info website for him. It’s taken me nearly 1 and 1/2 years to upload all the podcasts, but they’re all there now.

I’ve also been following the developments in the tech industry, most of them by Microsoft. The Windows Phone looks absolutely fantastic and I cannot wait to get one next year. Good on Microsoft for starting afresh with their phones and trying something different, instead of just being an iPhone clone. The other big one for me is Windows Live Wave 4. I obtained a leaked copy of the Live Essentials for Wave 4 and so I may be writing an article about them soon. Here’s a sneak peak of  Windows Live Messenger 2010.

Windows Live Messenger 2010 Beta Milestone 2

These holidays I have a few things planned. It will be mainly relaxing, but I have a few tasks and little jobs to do that will keep me busy and also Sam and I plan to visit The Bryan Madigan of SeaFM 91.9 on the Sunshine Coast. He’s the guy who used to take the callers on the Spoonman show and also was one of the 3 announcers of the ATFS podcast. Lastly – on Wednesday when Windows Live Messenger had a bug in in when people were appearing offline when they were really online, I posted here the instructions on how you could get around that. I thank all of you who came here and read the post, I had nearly 3000 viewers in one night and so I’m really grateful and I hope you all stick around to see what I post and also for updates on my main website, which you can find at the top of this page.

Thanks for reading, leave comments as you wish and I’ll hopefully have holidays content to write here for you!!