So after a few years of listening and setting up a fan club (www.spoonmanfanclub.co.cc) I finally got my opportunity to meet the man behind the Microphone. If you purely listened to the show, you’ll probably form one of two opinions of him. The opinion will either be “this guy knows what he’s talking about, he shuts up the idiots and comes up with sometimes radical, but logically thought through ideas” OR you’ll think “what an arrogant bastard, always hanging up on and abusing callers he doesn’t agree with him”. Well when I met him, he is the nicest guy. I met him the day after the Labor leadership spill and the week had been a big one for the Spoonman with all the coverage and analysis that was needed and therefore he was tired, but he still spent 2 and a bit hours with my family and I taking us on a tour of the station, having a drink with us and just a good conversation about everything from radio to politics to just life in general. So that was probably my highlight of the year so far .

The next day I met up with my mate KG, who I only see if I go to Sydney OR if he comes up to Brisbane. He took showed me where he worked (Nova 96.9 Sydney) and we had a good chat and some lunch too. That was also pretty awesome and it’s always good to meet up with KG when I go to Sydney! The following day my family and I then travelled up the Sydney-Newcastle Freeway to Newcastle for Lunch and then up the Pacific Highway and The Lakes Way to visit Deanna at her house about 30 minutes outside of Forster/Tuncurry. It was lovely to see Deanna again and to see that she’s quite happy and doing well in Year 11. Finally after an overnight in Tuncurry it was time to drive back down the Pacific Highway to Newcastle and then Williamstown Airport to fly home! I will probably be posting a blog soon about the state of the Pacific Highway because roads interest me like that.

So that was my awesome four day holiday and it was probably one of the best holidays I’ve ever been on

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

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!!