Andrew's Inner Sanctum

Well it’s the end of the final school holidays and this has been a pretty good school holidays. I’ve balanced my ‘Andrew’ things with social things and managed to get lots done.

I saw the launch of 2 TV stations (7Mate on September 25th @ 5:57pm and GEM on September 26th @ 6:00am) which were historical events which also meant I saw the end of 2 TV stations (7HD and 9HD) as they were replaced by the 2 new ones.

I also witnessed the final release of the Windows Live Essentials 2011 @ 3:00am on Friday 1st October and installed it straight away. This is a serious improvement to the Windows Live Essentials, especially Windows Live Messenger which now gains Facebook Chat integration

I also got time to write 6 articles on my website, which had been neglected since July. If you want to read them they’re about the Internet Explorer 9 Beta, Windows Phone Developer Tools, Windows Live Proofs, Prepping Your Windows Live Profile For Windows Live Essentials 2011, How To Disable Facebook Places & Windows Live Essentials 2011 Review.

So they were all my ‘Andrew’ things, I also some social events into my calendar (a lot more than normal) including entertaining some Victorian friends, a tech crew social night, my friend’s (Nick) girlfriend’s (Toni) murder mystery birthday party and another of my friend’s (Rachael) belated birthday dinner as well as seeing my friend Alex today. I enjoyed my social events this holidays and was probably good prep for my university days

Daylight Saving started today in NSW, VIC, TAS and SA today, but not in QLD – very sad news and shows that Anna Bligh and Labor won’t listen to Queenslanders.

So that was my last school holidays and I think it was a damn good one! School returns tomorrow and in 35 days I will have graduated from high school and be on my way to university. Just gotta sort that English out this term….

I went to the QUT Open Day today, and I’m now quite excited about next year!

For the last year or so I’ve had it in my head that I’d probably be going to UQ for university in 2011, but after TSXPO last weekend and today’s QUT open day – I think I’ve got my heart set on QUT for university in 2011. Of the 3 courses they have in the IT area (Information Technology, Corporate Systems Management and Games & Interactive Entertainment) the Information Technology one looks the best because the lecturers there just presented such exciting opportunities. The best part is that in the Information Technology course, there will be elective subjects which let you drill into the area of IT that interests you (such as Enterprise Systems, Network Systems, Web Technologies & Digital Environments) and also the fact that you can enter into half year or year long paid work experience as part of the course, so that companies can see your skills and possibly want to hire you full time at the end of the course. That foot into the industry is such an advantage and probably the the main reason I think I’ll be picking QUT over UQ, as well as the flexible course design too.

While we were there in a presentation – there was this guy, who’s phone went off during the presentation (he hadn’t put it on silent), but what was the terrible bit, was that he answered it, and spoke really loudly to the person on the other end telling them where he was and the presenter had to stop. It reminded me of the Chaser’s, ‘Clive the Slightly Too Loud Commuter” segment, except this guy wasn’t doing a comedy skit, he was just being a bit of an inconsiderate jerk. Found that amusing

There’s another thing which impressed me today, the GoCard system. I’ve never used a GoCard before, I’ve just used the paper tickets, but today I used my GoCard for the first time today and it was just fantastic. For a trip to Carindale to QUT Kelvin Grove (so a distance of about 15km one way) & back it was $2.88. That’s awesome value. I predict that for next year, it will cost me $4.10 per day for public transport each day I have to travel to Uni, which I think is damm good value! The Busway network is also fantastic, with the South East Busway & Inner Northern Busway really really efficient and hopefully when the Northern Busway and Eastern Busways are completed, they’ll also be fantastic to use!

Next weekend I’m off to the UQ open day to see what they can offer me. Let’s hope they also present me with something great, but I doubt they’re going to beat what QUT has shown they have today. I think 2011 will be a Gardens Point year for me!

I came home on the bus with an excited buzz in me after today’s open day which I haven’t felt for a long time. I think I’m just excited about my future, the future that’s just over 15 weeks away, but maybe that might have just been the coffee I had…

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!!

Well, it’s Australia Day 2010, the last day of holidays before school properly resumes tomorrow and year 12 begins. It will be a busy year but on that day November 19th 2010, it will be worth it because school will be officially over. I hope to have time to keep blogging here, but school work might get in the way of that, I also hope school work doesn’t interrupt my Andrew Tech Help news and how to articles.

Today I had a number of different things happen. Sadly my digital TV will be off for a couple of weeks as the small adapter for the aerial broke off, so it will take at least a week to buy one off ebay I suspect. So that’s a bit disappointing, but not much you can do.

I did play with Microsoft’s Windows Virtual PC today. I had some terrible trouble getting it going though. Microsoft software was giving me some contradicting messages. One Microsoft utility said it was all working perfectly and another one said it was not working at all. I had to do a BIOS update and now it works perfectly. I can run applications designed for XP like Macromedia Fireworks 8 in a virtual XP mode which acts like a Windows 7 application. I shall hopefully write about it on my website soon.

I have a new sleep time of between 11:30pm-12:00am EST on school nights for the next 10 months and then I’m finally free from bed times! Thanks for reading this blog and yea – 10 months of school left :O

Tomorrow, the Last First Day of School!

Welcome To My Brand New Blog Everyone

As you may know, in November, my site Andrew Tech Help was taken down without notice by my then free webhost 000webhost. After this occurred I made the decision to move to paid hosting and for Christmas I received my account at the new host – JustHost!

Due to moving my site to a more capable server, I am now able to add a new section to my website, a blog.  I hope to update this blog  fairly regularly and this blog will just contain thoughts about things that are happening in the world for me. So common topics will probably involve school , radio stations and technology as well as errata in news and politics.

So if you plan to regularly read my blog, then I thank you for this and hope you enjoy the content. If you wish to leave a comment on anything I post, then go ahead – just keep it clean or the spam filters will remove it.

Andrew