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The Voice of Silence, Delays and Expectations, Progess

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone, I normally apologise for delays, but I am not actually sorry. Any how lets get down to updates which I really wanted to record, hence giving you a video or audio blog instead of what has been referred to by my readers as addictive useful random junk and mountains of monotonous ramblings that cause sleep. University is back. I am doing 5 Subjects. 2 Maths and 3 IT. So far they are all equally awesome. I am doing TCP & IP , Unix Network Admin, Scientific Programming (aka C & C++), Data Visualisation & Analysis and Advanced Calculus. (dealing with multi variable and differential beasties) As I have […]

Riverside Gentoo minimeetup and other such fun….

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone, Just briefly blogging about the mini meetup we had at 2pm today, I got to catchup with fox2mike, Redhatter and ivanm from #gentoo-au, it has great fun. Redhatter has interesting non photogenic photos of me in his gallery. (I was picking up the napkins he dropped and the wind blew away.) We also received numerous unusual looks, as most city going folk haven’t seen four Gentoo geeks in a circle talking about computers, electronics, compiles and puns galore. Neither had the tourists seen 3 laptops in a row at the riverbank before, so they took a photo of us. LCA time seems to make all Australian Linux Users […]

Waiter Is there a bug in my Java ?, Ironic excursion into wilderness results in finding meaning of true hapiness and unintentional death, and some other odds and ends…

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone, How are we all ? Silent and uninterested as usual. This update like the last one should have been written and posted earlier, my apologies to anyone who suffered as a result of the delay in writing this. Java Blues (You can get blue coffee ?) I begin to realise know that most of the problems with my code not working aren’t due to typographical errors or silly mistakes but rather due to my unfamiliarity with the Eclipse Plugin Architecture and the Eclipse View Architecture and to a lesser extent Java itself. I also realise that if I had been in contact with someone familiar with either of […]

Wedding Bagpipes, The Child on the Bus, Protester Blacklisting,Broken Inside

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey Everyone, Long time no update, but it is that time of year. I should have another audio post for the new year and I would actually like to have some feedback on stuff so feel free to comment or email or contact me. First things first. Elaboration on the Title Topics. I have to mention the wonderful wedding of Elise & Darren’s that I attended in my purple suit. It was a very memorable experience, complete with sunshine, bagpipes, kilts, a buttonless black dress shirt (Only Buddy (A friend of Elise’s) can wear a shirt done up with only gold safety pins as the buttons mystically disappeared and Converse […]

Skit time, Out of time, stood on the Slipper, Peaceful Chaos, Can you remember, The Aftermath,Left behind.

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone, This post is long overdue I know but given all that I am upto, those who actually bother will understand if not tolerate. Invites are sent out. Currently I am sitting in an empty house, with no way to get down the range to the train station to get to the city. But I figure I know when the last train leaves & I have the phone number of the local taxi service, so I will properly get packed up & down there in time. My mood is frustrated but pensive with bouts of indecision, intensive loneliness & isolation and the occasional sprinkle of hope. I am listening […]

A Brave New World, Times are a changing, Go back three spaces ?, Fruit Salad … Yummy Yummy

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone, My break is just starting to get busy. I started my research scholarship yesterday. Its two days a week and it is great fun. I am working with Chris Savini, with Michael Lawley (lawley.id.au/blog/) as my supervisor. I will be most likely working on porting diff to MDA & Tefkat (no we didn’t try to fry a cat, it is a model transformation language (tefkat.sf.net)), or working on writing a visualisation or graphical editing tool using GMF, EMF, GEF or some other Java based visualisation library. Before that I was trying to recover my soul and psyche from the stress of exams and the year gone by. I […]

Sushi, Freedom, Honey, Cupcakes and other such mutterings

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone, Second year of university at an end. Just leaving me to hope and pray that I did ok on all the exams I studied and worked so hard for. I am now recovering my mind, soul and what is left of me :P, by attempting to relax, recooperate and then focus on all the other non-Uni related stuff. I have Gentoo updates to run, bugs to wait on, Eclipse to install, and a dev quiz to finish. I have so much other stuff as well but here goes. I had cupcakes and raspberry lemonade on the last day (not the best lunch, and I had butterscotch pudding for […]

The Joys of Studying Software Engineering

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone, Some things I have learnt in my almost two years studying IT / Software Engineering … People skills, teamwork and communication are very important in the developing relationships, friendships, software solutions Coding doesn’t mean Software Engineering, neither does Hacking Software Engineering is usually very much like a Sunday roast, either under done or over done Democracy works in teams, provided they are small odd number teams (Modeling the effort dispersion using odd sidded equilateral polygons) and the personalities and natures of the team member are either complimentary, similar or contrasting. Democracy in larger teams leads to bureaucracy and ochlocracy. Documentation and Code commenting / usability is only as […]

Sanitation Frustation, Updates and Blockers, Modelling love , New blue gift of growth

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hey everyone, I am currently sitting here, cleanly out my laptop’s 100gb hard drive, and updating as much software for my Gentoo as I can since I had to leave the software updates to the weekend as their were several blockers (packages that can’t be installed with other packages), but I believe I have them all sorted out now. Other current blockages include our toilet which has caused the most grief this weekend. Because it is a septic system it isn’t just as easy as using a caustic or acidic solution like Draino to unblock, and we are currently using an enzyme based solution which may or may not be […]

OPEC in Austria leaves Sydney secure but abadoned, 438 metres in which directon? Screwing uni doesn’t work…

Posted on by Benjamin Southall

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Hi everyone, I am very very busy and probably shouldn’t be writing this post, but I figure I may as well now that I have started. Anyhow, OPEC is on in Sydney, Austria and despite the city being shutdown and secured in order to avoid protesting and anything else productive, the Team from the Chaser (www.chaser.com.au) still manages to get past two security checkpoints and make the majority of us laugh. Apparently if convicted, they will face 6 months in jail. What defines humour ? what make funny funny ? I know that my funny isn’t your funny and vice versa. When is something comedy and when is it mere […]