Blogging, is it what it is now?

Recently, a few friends of mine have switched over to Blog beta, something which allows you to set your blog to private, where only "permitted" users can view them.

To be honest, I laughed at the idea of a "private" blog in the first place.

Because, frankly speaking, there's no such thing as a private blog. It's not even how well you want to find it. It's merely how interested the other party is in finding your blog.

Why?

Firstly, blogs are published on the internet, a medium for all to view. It's like a newspaper or a book, where everyone gets to view it. You may hide the book, but if someone really cares, they'll find it anyway.

So then came password protection by idiots who truely believe that their blog is so special, it's only to be read by a select few. Java script, 32,64, even 128 hex-bit passwords are created just to keep their blogs from "unauthorised eyes".

Now comes blogger beta, allowing only invited users to read the blog.

Which then comes my question.

What is a blog?

First of all, a blog isn't your personal secret diary you hide in your closet. If that's the case, you can store your "blogs" on your harddrive, cd, floppy, whatever. Blogs are created for people to read. You make them, because you want this little sense of satisfaction that people are interested in your lives.

Or basically, a place where you can put your views for others to know.

And what's wrong with that? The Sony-DRM case was highlighted by a blogger. Podcasting made some london girl famous as she sang from her basement onto her way to the CD charts.

Hence, a blog is something which is open, something which you are interested in others to view. It is not something you hide in the base of your closet, hoping that your pesky little brother won't find it.

However, people want to be noticed. However, they don't want everyone to notice it. They want to swear at some dude who annoyed them, and let their elite group of friends know.

They password it.

Then, won't it completely destroy the meaning of having a blog? If you password it, isn't it the same as writing your thoughts on MSN, and telling it to your friends?

What's the difference then?

Moreover, some of this blogs I frequent don't have a lot of visits, but the owners password it, and spread it all to their friends, who are possibily the only readers of the site.

So again, what's the difference?

None?

Seriously, if you are going to password your blog and make it oh-so-secretive, get rid of it. You don't need it.

You should just go back to pen and paper.

Frog....

Is talking....





Yes, that is the toilet bowl.

That is supposed to be our resident frog, benny/jenny/whatever. It comes from my pipe, and sometimes hops in my toilet.

In my case, it came at a wrong time.

It was 2am, and I had slept at 8 due to an insane headache. I went into the toilet, still half asleep...

...and that green thing stared at me.

We looked at each other.

Then, the mind finally recognised that green thing as being "not part of the glory bowl". Like a chainsaw who's ignition chain was just yanked, I finally recognised that as the resident frog which I have been told about.

What did I do?

Take a piss. Close the lid.

Flush.

It was gone 2 hours later. :D

Hehe.

Inventions.

It's mere human nature to be lazy.

To look at the growing pile of work on your desk, and going "I'll do it tomorrow/next week/next year/next life".

To look at some random pile of food in the pantry, and looking for the easiest way to fill your stomach, but hoping that it's actually edible.

Laziness.

In come inventions.

Think of it. If humans aren't too damn lazy to walk, the car won't be invented. If they aren't too lazy to catch that deer using their bare hands, the spear would never be invented.

Laziness, can be good.

Except when you apply it to food.

...

Thus far, I've yet to have any decent lunch for weeks, and weekends usually consist of one very heavy meal in the evening, which combines breakfast, lunch, tea and supper all in one.

But hey, when you have food, you can have fun inventing.

Hehe.

For one, toasted bread with cheese and ketchup taste fairly good.

... once you are hungry enough to eat it.

As ever dinner come by, I open my fridge, close my eyes, and just grab what ever I can. As I'm used to wok frying/cooking back at home, the past few days were... amusing to say the least.

For example, I realised that beef can be grilled, and baked. When you put rice, minced beef, cheese and milk together, it turns out fairly nicely. Chicken soup with some instant noodles MSG taste pretty good as well.

While I have a high chance of success thus far, not everything goes exactly to plan everytime.

Like minced beef into some egg, and then tossing them into the rice cooker.

XD

Cooking thus far, is something like chemistry class, without the piece of paper in front of you telling you what to do. I never measure how much salt I toss into anything, usually simply flinging them into the food.

Of course, the results, vary.

However, it isn't all fun and games. I did learn how to cook (if you call THAT cooking...), and that pepper goes with just about everything.

Except coffee....

Uh...

Don't ask.

---

It's about time I went to the main campus in St Lucia, to see what the oldest university in Queensland had to offer. As I had to go to Chinatown to get stuff, it was the perfect opportunity to have a look as I passed by.

But damn, as Queensland experiences a dry season not seen since decades ago, it just HAD to rain on that day, didn't it? -_-

So, as me and a fellow classmate, Gillian, reached the place, it was raining as we walked towards the sports center as we had some interest in a shooting lesson a month later.

And man, that place was huge.

It is just an island on its own, with the government building a bridge just to get to it. More over, there is this ferry service called "Citycat" which has a stop just at UQ. It's a direct service right into the city.

Perhaps I should study there next year...



The Forgan Smith Building. Law, I think.



Part of the Great Court which UQ is famous for. It's like a huge park in the middle of the uni, surrounded by buildings.



Uh, yeah. Me. Desu.



The Citycat ferry! Goes around the main Brisbane town, but there's a station right at the University.



The bridge which is being constructed. No name yet, but if the University has their say, it'll be "University bridge".

Unique...



The only great thing about the Citycat is that there are observation decks at the back. The great thing about it is the wind. Nothing beats wind in your hair.



Me and the girl Gillian. Also my bridge partner. Long way to go before she becomes Gary's standard though. Hehe.



The pancake house. If there's one thing Aussies are great at, it's cakes. All sorts of them. Pancakes are included. It isn't like that piece of plastic you eat at Mackers, but it is a true piece of flour. Delicious. The fact that there are student discounts make it an even better place to eat at.



Time Crisis 4. I'm still at it. Too bad only Brisbane has it. Bah.



Finally, after buying all the stuff in Chinatown, I saw this on a train.

Fascinating isn't it? No graffiti, yet....

IMF Singapore.

Mmm. IMF Singapore.

Fun thing about news here is, our good friend Chee gets more air time than he would normally have in Singapore. He was shown on the news with his protest, and the Aussie news here even said "it raises the question about political freedom in Singapore."

Of course, Singapore wanting to forbid some groups from entering is kinda bad. Sure, terrorism threats is real, and security is important.

But really, if Seatle's IMF meeting is to be of any indication (close to riots back them), then stuff like these are rather expected for such a world event (same shit happens for G8 and WTO anyway).

With the world's spotlight on Singapore, it's not exactly the best time to really show the world police surrounding protesters.

Fascinating, television.

What I miss the most.

1:31am.

Beside me, the idiots are having a go in Red Alert 2 after someone unearthed it/torrented it/whatever. I'm just taking a break as the 9th man after we played an insanely stupid free for all.

Well, let's just say my skills are still fairly intact despite my lack of practise for over, a year or so.

Naturally, for free for all, I picked France. Turned out pretty well by turtling and building only grizzies and doing gay stuff like driving engineer-IFV into some dude's base and capping his MCV.

And to top it off, no one used America, so no one could parachute into my base. Korea got wiped off early because he was inbetween two soviets and STILL attempted to build 8 Black Eagles (which I introduced anyway XD), and by the time they realised cannon's can't hit harriers, I've got sufficient SAM and gap generators. In the end, it came down to a 3 v me situation.

20+ grizzies ran them over. Whehehehehe.

Micro macro. Micro Macro. XD

I think soon, some idiot will find a starcraft CD.

Incredibily, the lab is fairly crowded right now. Probably an assignment due tomorrow.

But looking at the people beside me, I think not. XD

However, I heard one of the girls asking a question:

"What do you miss most?"

(Yes, the girls do play Red Alert 2. But 10 Kivovs = ... sadness.

Well hey, I gave them a chance. 10 Kivovs isn't easy to make. But against Mirage tanks who didn't move an inch.....)

Naturally, most of the answers are "food", "friends", "family", "Boy/girlfriend", "Night life" and so on.

But after I thought about it, I miss plenty of things.

But there's only one thing I miss the most.

My cat.

Seriously.

Yes, like some of them said, I am quite attached to my cat. Nothing beats staring at your cat after she jumped onto the table, you pushing her down, only to have her jumping on the table and sitting on your lecture notes, staring, challenging you to a fight.

Damn, I miss those times.

But of course, I miss everything. Friends, family, her, food, culture.

Everything.

But my cat, > all.

Rawr.

---

Mmm, Peter Beattie won.

Surprise surprise.

Well, the opposition wasn't that great anyway. Lack of campaigning probably cost them, I guess.

Oh well. Time to fire people.

Why does Spring feel like winter?

With all that high winds, and a bit of rain, spring somehow feels like winter.

Brr.....

And also, 2 major aussie deaths in 1 week.

Damn. Big news here.

In any case, Footy finals begin, as does election.

Wonder who will win. :o

I want this mother****ing snakes off this mother****ing plane right now!

I think he added another **** somewhere, but who cares.

Yesterday was the Riverfire, which means there's a load of fireworks. I was ignorant of it, so I had planned to go to the movies with Gillian.

After we were informed of the riverfire, we decided to go and have a look. After all, we are tourists.

However, on the express train to Southbank (Gold Coast area), we decided that the crowd is way too much, and decided to detrain and run off to catch Snakes on a Plane as planned.

Too bad all shops closed at 5:30. I needed an earphone as mine died. Same goes for food too, as we ended up eating Burger King (Called hungry jacks here)

However, when we were going in, we realised that there's a major difference between here and Singapore.

For one, that damned place had no Nachos, although I'm sure every other place has it.

Another thing will be that there's a student price for movies. $6.50 is seriously FTW.

The third, is that it is free seating.

First come, first serve. You can't come here a full day before to get the tickets, and expect to get the best seats. For a good premier movie launch, you have to be there early if you want to get some kind of a decent seat.

Well, since it was the Riverfire night, the cinema is practically half empty. But, if it isn't, 2 seats aren't too hard to find.

The trick comes when you have a class outing. Everyone will most likely be split up, and you can't see who's a wuss at horror movies, and who's not. XD

In general, Snakes on a Plane was fairly exciting. One of the better action movies I've seen in a while, although they didn't protray the snakes as they should naturally be as well as I liked.

But who cares. Samuel L. Jackson rules.

"Xbox or Playstation?"

XD

And also, that movie is one huge advertisment. Thus far, I've seen Red Bull, Apple (iBook does very well to smack snakes), and I think what looks like a Nokia phone (It can take pictures, and send email. Even on an aeroplane!). BMW looks like the official sponsor of the cars, but I can't make it out too clearly.

Movies these days.

It's just one huge advertisment sign. Hehehe.

The media difference.

Because of the Queensland State election next saturday, my Accounting mid-sem test will be.... tomorrow.

Horray. -_-

However, as election is looming, I noticed a rather welcome change in the media of Australia.

Namely, the fact that the opposition party actually gets to speak up, unlike back in Singapore, where the media is hugely controlled by the ruling party, ie PAP.

Firstly, there are all these propaganda which amuses me to no end. For example, the current premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, who is from the opposition party (labour), appears on TV so many times, I've seriously lost count. On TV, he keeps talking about how well he has done, namely in areas of employment and health. On top of that, there are ads which show the coalition (which is the ruling party of Australia) being disunited, as their coalition "just lasted 3 days" and such.

More amusingly, the speakers of Coalition are always seen with grainy pictures which resembles something of the 60s and their sound seems to have been taken from a 32kbps mp3 file.

Fun. A refreshing difference.

However, this isn't the only difference in the media. There are a host of other differences other than the politics.

For one, the TVs just LOVE to have weird game shows. Nothing of the japanese type which is really weird, but most of the game shows are just people asking random trivia which allows you to win cash and prices. Soaps are another love, as you see them on almost every other day. Not a lot of action stuff like CSI and 24 (on another note, 24 didn't perform too well with Aussies as it struggled for ratings yet again).

Another major difference will be sports. Aussie rules football, ie footy as it is more commonly known here, is shown every weekend on live FREE TV. Same goes for the local Rugby league, and I can presume the same goes for the Australian football "A league". In fact, the government has worked quite hard to ensure that people don't have to pay extra to get FOX Sports just to watch their beloved local sports. While the English Premier League is on FOX Sports (which means I can't watch it. Bah), the local scene sports are kept free for all, although they have a LOAD of advertisments.

Compare this to Singapore, where even the local S League is shown on Channelnewsasia, not exactly a channel you'll flip to just to watch the soccer. Movies and serials are the key back in Singapore, as you see them every other day (Monday night movie. Saturday night movie, Sunday night special).

Aussie just has one movie or so a MONTH.

Culture difference?

Nah. It's just the interest of the media groups. With roughly 5 free to air channels, you have to work hard to win viewers so that investors will invest money in the channel for advertisments. Compare that to just Mediacorpse owning the free to air channel, and Starhub owning the cable. As Starhub owns the cable, they are allowed to do strange and crazy things such as those they did during the World Cup back in June. In Aussie, the World Cup was shown free, live, on SBS and also on Cable.

However, not all is bad about Singapore media. I'm not a huge fan of soaps, prefering more drama which can be found back in Singapore media. Some of the Singapore's homegrown shows are fairly amusing as well (PCK heads the list), and such shows the Singapore culture which cannot be found anywhere else.

But still, the political part of the media is sorely missing from Singapore. Every Sunday night, there's this very comical show which has people poking fun of everything, usually everyday happenings, Aussie swimmer who has won the gold medal, and politics.

Usually Johnny and his "I didn't know about it" lines ( Link ), and also the people who wants John Howard out (note that John Howard is the longest serving PM in Aussie history).

"I don't think he's an old bastard."

"I just think that he's just past it."

XD @ the rap these people even made up.

Too bad you don't get to see people poking fun at the PAP in Singapore though.

But hey, it has served Singapore very well thus far.

Don't fix the wheel unless it is broken.

---

Song of (whatever) switched to Setsunai Omoi from the rather surprisingly good Zero no Tsukaima Soundtrack.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for piano songs.

And oh....



There. I am perfectly fine, although I probably lost loads of weight as I eat 1 decent meal a day (laziness more than anything).

Now stop pestering me. LoL.