BUTT IN MY EYE.

Very nearly, anyway!

Firstly, it should be known that within the confines of the courtyard in the place that I live, smoking is prohibited, and secondly, that smoking is allowed on balconies.  However, some apartments' balconies, open into the courtyard.

The other night as I walked out I noticed two European girls smoking on said balcony and as I walked under the balcony, minding my own business, what should I see fall merely inches in front of my face but a carelessly discarded cigarette butt.  One that could have, had my timing have been any different, very easily landed on my head, clothes, or, worst case scenario, in my eye.  Luckily it was none of those.

I have since sent a complaint to the UNSW Housing commission, the outcome of which is that the girls have received a 'formal warning' about their actions (or so said the email reply).

Hopefully a 'formal warning' is enough to have them consider their actions, and no longer smoke where they shouldn't (or at the very least, no longer carelessly discard cigarette butts into a place where they know not what damage they could potentially do).

If I catch them doing it again, I will simply complain further until noticeable action has been taken (because I'm like that).

- Ian.

CAMPUS DRINKS CHEAP.

If you go to UNSW, you'll find drinks no cheaper than at the on-campus Regency Chemist.  Last semester, the owner of the chemist asked all customers to sign a petition to allow him to keep selling drinks and goodies, as the powers-that-be of the university were threatening to prevent him from being able to do that, simply because he's out-competing the (the quite frankly, overpriced) on-campus, university run stores.

To me, it speaks volumes about what kind of a university this is that it is attempting to bully out their competition, rather than, as any good practitioners of business would do, compete with them.

In school, in business, in life, bullying tactics are not acceptable under any circumstances.

- Ian.

Semester 2, 2012.

If I don't pass at least two of the three subjects in which I'm currently enrolled, then this is my last semester at UNSW, and I'll be expelled.

Creative Writing I love, and if I do manage to pass both Creative Writing and Education, (or even Linguistics), I will change my degree completely to Creative Writing.

I got my first test for this semester back on Monday, and I got 28/70 (40%) for a Linguistics test.  It's not that I'm not smart enough to pass the test, it's just that I couldn't be fucked studying for it - I hate studying; I always have, and I always will.

In the mean-time, I'm looking for a job.  Hopefully I'll get something.

- Ian.

Living on Campus.

After all these years, I'm finally living on campus, with four housemates, all of which are Chinese.  There's two girls, both named Lin, and two males, Gordon, and Ray.

I get a long with C. Lin and Gordon the best, and Ray and X. Lin seem to get along the best of my Chinese house mates.

The apartment is self catered, meaning you have to cook for yourself, etc, and costs $205/wk, and there are on-site laundries, which cost $1.20 for washing and another $1.20 for drying (but I've noticed my housemates just bring the clothes in and hang them on a dryer, rather than paying to have them dried).

Mostly I don't see the other housemates, as I'm more often out of the house than in it, and use it only for meal times, if that, and somewhere to sleep - mostly I'm in the Main Library, because here I can get free internet.  If I want internet in my room, it costs me $2/GB and that's a complete rip off!

Anyway, break week this week, so should probably get started on my essay for Education, then we come back next week (second week of September) for Week 8 (and I have a presentation in Week 10).

Anyway, I guess that's all I've got to say for now.

See you later.  ^_^

Finally, an update! (My subjects and what might happen).

Let's face it; I've been pretty slack with updates on this blog, the last one, I think, being about linguistics.

Anyway, it's Saturday, September 1, and UNSW's "Open Day", so there are lots of people around, and plenty of things to do here right now, but come Monday, (or perhaps even tomorrow) it'll be as if it never was.  (It was pretty cool seeing a magnetic levitation train set, though).

Getting back to linguistics, I'm now doing the follow up course The Use of Language (the previous one being The Structure of Language) and am also doing Life of Words (i.e. Creative Writing) and am still doing education, this semester's course being called Social Perspectives in Education.

I'm not sure that I'll pass Linguistics, am fairly certain I can scrap by Education, and am pretty sure I'll pass Creative Writing with flying colours.

My problem is that right now, because of having failed so many courses so badly in the past I'm on what's known as Academic Probation.  In other words, if I don't pass at least two courses this semester, having already been suspended last year, they boot me out for good (and am unable to re-apply for two years).

I hope I do pass, because I'm actually really enjoying Creative Writing more than I've enjoyed any other course at this uni, so, assuming I pass, next year I'm going to change my degree to Creative Writing, which can apparently only be done as a minor, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

End.

Readings

There's quite a lot to read in an Arts degree,  (not to mention write) but most of the time, especially for Film, I just don't feel like doing the readings.

I'm seriously considering dropping Film altogether,  so perhaps I shouldn't've reattempted Film at all 1~

Thanks for reading.  ^_^

“Snoring” a poem by Ian Hollis

In our first exercise for Introduction to English Literature, we had to analyze a poem ... I don't like poetry at all, and while I did make a weak attempt at analyzing the poem, I ultimately go so fed up with it, that I just ended up writing a poem about how much I dislike poetry, and here it is:

“Snoring” by Ian Hollis

Poetry, I like it not,
I find it such a bore.
Hours come and hours go,
snore, snore, snore.

The teachers seem to think it magic,
these words of long ago
Myself I think it’s rather tragic
Please can we let it go?

In lectures and tutorials,
it’s all explained quite clear,
but just to me it all goes in,
and out the other ear.

Tropes, and meters, figures too,
and their specific explanations
all this stuff I care not about,
it’s such pontification!

Complex the definition words,
I’m discombobulated,
Sonnets, Odes and prose and such,
it all seems so over-rated.

I know I’m not the only one,
who feels such as I do
This stuff I learnt so long ago,
My God, am I back at school?!

Those school days, I remember them,
and remember them quite clear,
Having lunch with all my friends,
my memories all quite dear.

Oh, what, what’s that; it’s time for class?
I found them such a bore.
Those hours came and those hours went,
snore, snore, snore.

My first test scores back! (Linguistics and Educational Psychology)

Okay so for Linguistics I got 34.5%, which, considering I never take notes, and haven't really read the text book, I think is pretty good.

For Educational Psychology I got a much more respectable 50%, the difference here being that I've actually read the text book.

As for Film and English, well those remain to be seen.

Wondering

Given how unauthorative my Film tutor is, tomorrow I'll be sitting in on another tutorial to see whether or not it's my tutor's distinct lack of "presence" or if it's something inherently in me making me want to drop this particular subject.  Then again, I never was particularly functional at 9 am.

I skipped two lectures today! (Not because I didn't feel like going).

I'm a part of many social clubs here at the university which I attend, and one of those groups is a Japanese-related culture group, and today, students from Kyoto University, who are here for two weeks studying English, came to be shown around campus, after which we went into the city.

The previous paragraph was certainly a long sentence!  (No, I'm not going to edit it ... well not much, anyway).

Anyway, I made the choice to help out with part of the tour (and later, Sydney sight seeing) instead of go to lectures (which I can catch up on later on my page on the university's website).

We finished the day up with a trip to French Riviera (Here's a blog about it: http://grabyourfork.blogspot.com.au/2008/01/french-riviera-sydney.html) eating a rather tall ice cream, of which I didn't particularly like the flavouring (It's hard to describe, but the flavouring of this ice cream was somehow to different to your average, run-of-the-mill ice cream)

I think some of the others may have gone off and done other things after that, but I for one came straight home (because I'm like that).

Tomorrow, the first film from Introduction to Film (I know not yet what it is, but I'll tell you tomorrow).

- Ian.

My homework for this week.

Well, I have to read the first 22 pages of "Cognitive Psychology" for Educational Psychology, and some poems for English, but I'm not sure when I'm meant to start reading The Tiger's Wife, and I'm not 100% sure what I'm supposed to do for Linguistics ~ I think I log onto my page on the universities website "Blackboard" and it tells me there somewhere ...

Looks like I have to buy the latest edition of the text book for Linguistics, because apparently some chapters ~ a whole two of them ~ have been "extensively revised".  Do you think it's a coincidence that the two "extensively revised" chapters are the ones that we'll be using the most?

Fuck!

Everybody go watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww4m8GUK69E

That went well.

I'm glad that the lecturer we have for linguistics is different to the one we had last time; the previous one had some weird kind of a speech impediment that she seemed to refuse to acknowledge, where as our current one just has a strong accent from his home country,  which would be Africa, I think.

And in half an hour, my first Introduction to English lecture begins ~

Structure of Language ( Linguistics )

I'm sitting in CLB on the lower ground level waiting to go into my first linguistics lecture of the year. 

Some of you may remember that I tried thus in 2010, but because of ending up four weeks behind in all of my subjects, dropped this one, so here I am attempting it again in 2012.

Tomorrow is the last day before the weekend before 0 week (I guess that makes this week -1 week) :P

I'm looking forward to 0 week, actually, as there's always very high spirits that week =]

Anyway, right now the computers on Level 2 of the library (strangely, the ground floor), are used infrequently enough that it's relatively easy to find a spare one, however, when 0 week starts, all hell breaks loose, and there'll be a long queue of people waiting to book a computer, which they will then wait for until such time as an automatically designated becomes available.  (You can only use the computers for an hour, max, so at the end of your session, whether you used the whole hour or not, the computer is designated to the next booking in line.

The only real solution is to have your own laptop/netbook/tablet ... but then it's a matter of finding a place to sit.

F-ZERO vs. Wipeout (A Practice Essay).

Note:  Before I start, just let me say that I'm well aware that Wikipedia isn't considered a 'reliable source' for academic purposes, but keep in mind, this is nothing more than a 'practice essay', so I'm keeping it simple for now.

This essay is going to compare the video game franchises F-ZERO (Nintendo) and Wipeout (SONY), and argue whether or not Sony's Wipeout is indeed a 'shameless copy' of Nintendo's F-ZERO.

F-ZERO was a launch-title for Nintendo's popluar system, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (henceforth referred to as SNES), released in Japan in the year 1990, and was, ground-breaking it terms of using what Nintendo called Mode 7 (crude replication of a seemingly three dimensional world), giving players, for the first time in video game history, a well-simulated, high speed racing game.

Wipeout was released on the PlayStation, in 1995, a year after the PlayStation's launch, and five years after F-ZERO.

Both games feature "flying cars" in worlds that race on unique mag-lev/anti-gravity technology for their tracks, as opposed to racing on a more traditional road.

In the original F-ZERO you could choose from one of four cars, each different slightly in weight, speed, acceleration and handling.  However in the original Wipeout, you could choose from one of four teams, each team having two cars each, giving the player a total of eight cars from which to choose, again, each car having its unique pros and cons.

The designer of Wipeout, Nick Burcombe, admits that he "took inspiration" for the car designs from games "like [...] F-ZERO and Mario Kart"

F-ZERO, although ground braking for the time, was limited by the at-the-time inability of the SNES to emulate a true 3D world, meaning that the tracks were, save for a few jumps, entirely flat.

 By the time the first Wipeout game was released, video game technology had improved in leaps and bounds, allowing this game to exist more naturally in all three dimensions, with tracks offering the likes of banked curves, tunnels, loops and corkscrews (something that wouldn't be seen in the F-ZERO franchise until three years later with the release of F-ZERO X, on the Nintendo64).

Wipeout also offers, on some tracks at least, the ability to take an alternate route to the finish line, where as F-ZERO almost exclusively sees all racing participants holding steadfast on the one track.

As far as game-play is concerned, while both can be considered "arcade racers" (as opposed to racing simulators), F-ZERO encourages competition strictly through racing, where as Wipeout offers it, much like in Mario Kart (another popular Nintendo franchise, which also pre-dates the release of Wipeout, this time by three years), through the gimmick of items you can use to hinder your opponents progress (without rendering them helpless nor out of the game completely).

CONCLUSION:
Given that the designer for the Wipeout franchise openly admits that he got his 'inspiration' from games "like [...] F-ZERO and Mario Kart", and that Wipeout was released so long after the release of the original F-ZERO, it is plain to see that Wipeout is nothing more than a 'shameless copy' of Nintendo's F-ZERO.

- Ian Hollis.

So it's 2012, and I'll be moving back to Sydney earlier than expect.  Why?  Because I found a place.  A place that I thought if I let slip by, I might not get as good of a place in as good of a location at as good of a price if I waited to move at a later date.  It's an upstairs bedroom with an upstairs bathroom, for $200/wk.

I'll me moving on  Wed, Jan 18, 2012.

There's a family that lives down stairs.

It's 'central' in that it's around a half hour walk to either the university, or the nearest shopping centre (Westfield Eastgardens), except that they are in opposite directions to one another.

And, just so you know, I am now enrolled in the following subjects:

Introduction to English
Introduction to Film
The Structure of Language
Educational Psychology

I'm still keen on doing ESL (Teaching English as a Second Language), but I'm in the wrong program, or something, so will see one of those student guidance people to see what I can do about that.

And now that I'm moved this blog to the same central location as all my other blogs, I'll hopefully be updating a lot more often from now on!

Enjoy My Life as a Student, 2012!

Bye bye! XD