the passenger seat

Oh my goodness. Jeremy didn’t post a blog yesterday? Outrage! Blasphemy!

You may be wondering what happened to my OCD-ness about having one blog each day. This can be explained by a few things:

• I’ve felt like the quality of my blogs has been declining over the past few posts. They feel forced and boring.
• School is boring, hence not much to blog about.
• I’ve noticed that school really drains me nowadays as well as homework (stupid maths which is hard), and so by the time I get to writing my blog I’m already really tired and can’t think properly. Maybe I should blog earlier. Or maybe I just need more sleep.
• Blogs take a long time to write- for me, anyway. I have concluded that the elusive “15-minute blog” is an impossible dream unless your name is Belinda Cheung. I usually take like an hour on average from when I start my blog to when I click “Publish”, and I decided that this was too long a time to be spending on it everyday.

So yeah, as much as I love to blog, I just don’t have the time or energy to do it on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong, I do thoroughly enjoy it, but therein lies the problem. It means that I end up spending too much time on it. Also, I’m a stickler for detail, and so I usually spend some time formatting and fixing up pictures and stuff. Yeah, a lot of me is OCD. This is a funny time for me to stop my daily blogs, since today Mawson made a note in Jason’s blog about me blogging everyday. I think you jinxed me!

But don’t worry! Although I am discontinuing daily blogs, I will now be OCD about blogging every two days. I think that’s a bit more reasonable, and I’ll have more interesting blogs since it will be an accumulation of two days’ happenings.

And now begins the random unrelated topics that are characteristic of my blogs. I shall subtitle them, for your and my convenience.

1. Netbooks (aka mini laptops)

After seeing a few people at school with these (Ambert, Carol) I realised that I really want one. Why not a normal laptop? Well, these are cheaper and smaller. Smaller being a good thing, since they’re easier to carry and just look cooler, in my opinion. Right now I’m hoping to get one before university starts; there’s no need for one in year 12 and, by Milo’s advice, there will be better technology and the likes if I wait. I just think it would be really handy to be able to take a small and light laptop around to use anywhere, especially with internet on-the-go. Heck, then I could blog from places other than my bedroom. How fun. Right now I’m actually the only person in my family without a laptop. My brother got a Dell Studio 15 last year, and my parents both have a laptop for work. My consolation is that I have this computer in my room, which is pretty awesome too. However, as much as I like the size for it’s aesthetics and convenience, I foresee a problem with that same characteristic that I am so lured in by: I have big hands. And you know what they say about people with big hands… Yeah, I don’t either, except that using a tiny keyboard may be a bit of a problem. Ah well, I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I guess I’ll have to put up with the RSI and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Anyway, if I were to get one right now, I would probably get one like Ambert’s. Compared to the other netbooks I’ve seen, his Lenovo S10 (the new S10-2 looks even better) has the biggest screen and keyboard, which are both pluses for me. I don’t want to ruin my eyesight either. Heck, if I went blind from looking at the tiny screen all day, I wouldn’t even have the strength in my hands to hold a guide dog or a cane.

2. The Chaser’s War On Everything

I didn’t follow the first two seasons of this show, but after realising my mistake I watched a whole lot of videos of them a while back. So, when Joseph profusely advertised the season premiere on the forums and his blog, I decided to start following this season tonight. It was a bit of a let down to be honest; not as funny as the videos I’ve seen. Although I did like the cracks on the Cronulla Leagues Club, Knox Grammar (I was disappointed that “Apple Chapel” wasn’t mentioned) and the “Chk Chk Boom” girl. The Quentin Bryce thing and the lawsuits segment were alright, too. The Shore rowing thing was so weird. Just the fact that theywent to Somalia and asked for money- that was kind of cruel, as well as the cracks at Palestine. Although I’d have to say it was made a little more interesting since I was watching with my brother, who goes to Kings. Throughout the Shore segment it was like “Hey, that was the GPS athletics carnival! I was there!” and “Haha, Shore sucks. Kings wins everytime.” Despite the unsatisfactory nature of the first show, I will continue to follow it every Wednesday night since it’s only half an hour out of my time.

3. Bloglines

I recently went searching for a better way to keep up to date with the blogs I follow, and investigated a good selection before settling on Bloglines. Bloglines is simply a way to organise RSS feeds and to keep up to date when new blogs are posted, rather than my use of Belle’s blog as a portal to other blogs. Also, it means that I don’t have to check those blogs that are not on Belle’s blogroll such as the art and design blogs I like to view. So far it’s pretty handy, except for the fact that it currently only updates hourly. However, I think I have no need for it anymore. I just realised today that the client for Windows Live Mail actually has an aggregator (i.e. feed reader) built in, and it can update every fifteen minutes. Also, it’s a lot faster and  easier to use since it’s not web-based, and I can check my feeds and email at the same time. So, I think I don’t have the need for Bloglines anymore. But for those that don’t have Windows Live Mail installed, Bloglines is quite a useful tool.

4. Sungha Jung

Sungha Jung became famous almost three years ago after his father posted a few videos of him on YouTube playing solo acoustic guitar (or fingerstyle) pieces by Kotaro Oshio, a very famous Japanese acoustic guitarist. He was eight years old at the time, and was already a much better guitarist than many older than him; I can’t play the pieces he played at that age. Now he is eleven, and an even more talented guitarist who has matured into someone who really understands the intricacies of solo acoustic guitar playing and understands what he’s playing. Not only does he play solo acoustic pieces, but he also plays his own solo acoustic versions of pop songs. He is now somewhat of an internet phenomenon, and has gone on to play with some of his idols such as Ulli Bögershausen and Tommy Emannuel, as well as appearing on many TV shows such as Korea’s Star King. You can find his YouTube channel here. His most recent video is his own version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” and is below.

Anyway, that’s all for today’s super-long post. But for now, I’ll see you all in two days.

“Champagne From A Paper Cup” is from Death Cab For Cutie’s You Can Play These Songs With Chords.

PS. I’ve been spending some time on various art and design blogs and also sites like NOTCOT, but does it float and eatsleepdraw recently, so expect an art post sometime in the near future.