Complimentary.

Don't you love the feeling when someone ACTUALLY compliments you?
Directly or indirectly.

It cheers you up and leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

What I hate is when people compliment for no other reason than to act nice to you.
E.g. "You're so funny" or "You're so beautiful" when you know they don't think that.

It almost makes it seem like they're doing it out of pity.
I've had those kind of compliments many times. It annoys me.
It ruins my life for about 10 minutes.

So this is a notice to all readers: DO NOT COMPLIMENT me without thinking carefully.

Anyway, what I want to know, is how to react to a compliment.
Do you smile and say thanks or do you deny whatever the person just said about you?
E.g. "You're so awesome" and in reply I would say "Oh nah, I'm just average"

Are you supposed to react at all?

I'm completely lost when it comes to compliments and I'll tell you why.
It's because I do not compliment people unless I have to do it to prove a point etc.

Now it's not because I'm evil or anything. It's just because I don't know how and it's not going to change how the other person thinks about me as far as I know.

I'm complimentarily-challenged. So I'm up for lessons on complimenting. Tutor needed, will pay high salary.

Intelligence fail.

I remember the days when I used to be nothing short of less than top of school.
However, these days, this is an unimaginable dream.
Too far to reach and impossible to contemplate.
I am now an average person. My one talent/skill in life, diminished.

I am not going to blame NCEA or anything else for that matter.
I have caused this failure.

My brain can no longer can keep up with the work by not studying.
I have to study to keep up with what the teacher is telling me.
As opposed to when I was 5-13. My brain it seems, has hit its peak.

Therefore I have come to the conclusion that there is nowhere for me to go but down into the depths of failure.

Only thing I can do is to slow this decline down by memorising pages of notes which ceases to be useful when exams are over. Study how to write an answer instead of what to write as an answer.

I cannot think freely anymore and I will put that bit down to NCEA.
I cannot write what I think the answer is in MY words. No, I have to write it down using the government approved sentence structure.

Freedom of speech is one thing but freedom of thought should never be stopped.

As I cannot think freely or confine myself to rote learning, I am stuck on this one-way road to failure.

Exams do not measure intelligence. No. What they do measure is a person's ability to confine themselves to a room and limit their thoughts to do what the government wants. And in that, I fail.

Discussion is not recognised. Although the questions might say "Discuss", what they really want is for you to write down what few sentences you have memorised as a result of one whole year of learning.

One paragraph of memorised sentences to account for one year of learning. One year where I have learned countless things. And to compress all that into a few sentences? Surely that is a disgraceful measure of what you have learned and how intelligent you are.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not saying that I am smart or can get high marks if it were not for NCEA.
What I am saying is that it is an inadequate measure for what a person has accomplished or is capable of.

And to think that many people, all around the world, lose their dream life or careers just because they cannot write down what they know onto paper the way the markers want it, is a horrible thought.

In around 16 months, my schooling would have come to an end. Thus an end, to the happiest part of my life so far. And with it comes the knowledge that my future has been decided by what has been written on around 50 pages of paper.

The brain has been estimated to have around 5 terabytes of storage capacity, to put it in computer terms.
That's 5000 gigabytes for the technologically challenged.

5TB is a heck of a lot more than 50 pages of writing.

Tell me what you think on this.

Australian Chemistry.

Australian Chemistry tomorrow.
Apparently we're going to be doing it in class.

I'm looking forward to it as I have an advantage of being able to do the Year 12 paper while having done Year 12 Chemistry.
Therefore, I SHOULD know more. But I probably forgot half of it.

Anyway, hope to see you there tomorrow and wish me luck.

SE Design Challenge.

I joined yet another challenge hosted by the Auckland University.
This time, the Software Engineering department.

Me and my teammate have to design a program/game for a cellphone that allows us to play scavenger hunt.
So far we have made good progress and on track for a winning entry.

What this post really is for, is to ask the readers (you), what feature of a scavenger hunt game would make it fun for you? (eg: a race feature, or timed feature)

CATS!!

There's a new neighbour.
And with that neighbour person, comes a cat.

This cat, called CHICKA according to the nametag is a grey and quite furry cat.
Very tame and nice to stroke.

I'll sell it to you for $200.

2nd Scholarship question.

Time for the 2nd scholarship question that Mr. Thompson wants us to answer.

See if you can help me out.

There is a bird in a cage. (The cage is like a normal bird cage, ie. barred) 

It is standing in the cage.

The cage is placed on a set of scales.

The weight is registered by the scales and it has stabilised by now.

The bird now starts flying inside the cage.

What happens and why? (I'm guessing he was referring to the weight)

I have a couple of theories but I don't want to influence your thoughts.

WEP/WPA nonsense.

I realised that my internet security is horrible as my wireless network is unsecured.

My job: Secure it NOW you idiot...

... as quoted by my dad.

It turned out harder than I thought it would be. 15 minutes turned to 2 hours as I racked my brains for all possible options and googled my way through 100's of pages.

In the end, I found a page on howtodothings.com that told me how to secure my network, with instructions specified for my modem.

It still wasn't enough. The instructions were quite a bit off from what I was seeing, and the picture of the modem was different. I'm assuming they are talking about the American version of my modem.

So I had to decipher the instructions and enter the settings so that my network would work.

And after all USB transfers to copy my settings to the laptop, it still DID NOT WORK.

By now, I was starting to question my understanding of my skill with computers. I thought for about another 30 minutes while repeating the H2DT instructions about 6 times.

Then it came to me. My laptop was incapable of connecting to WPA encrypted networks, which was absurd considering it was released after WPA encryption was standard through the industry.

So I changed the settings and network keys on my laptop, router and desktop to that of WEP encryption and it WORKED. Finally.

The moral of this? Persistence pays off.

Bruce Lee.

I was watching Enter the Dragon yesterday.
It's a 70's movies starring Bruce Lee.

It was the first time I saw it on DVD. I used to watch it on VCD.
The DVD quality let me see clearly for the first time how amazing Bruce Lee is.
He is like a muscle structure diagram. You can see every muscle in his body due to his low body fat %.

So thanks to Bruce Lee, I now have a goal.
Goal = To get my body like Bruce Lee.

Obviously, I know its impossible but I think I have the best chance out of all the people I know thanks to my skinny build. The first thing I need to do is get motivated.

Right. Motivation.
Okay, I give up.

New Zealand's Next Top Engineering Scientist

I entered a physics competition run by Auckland Uni. YAY!
Well, the happy bit of it is the prize and the exclusivity.

The school only lets people (it's a 4 man team competition) who have done 13PHX and calculus to enter the competition even though the competition itself does not have that requirement.

I talked to Mr. Dass and managed to let me and my Year 12 buddies to enter.
That's the exclusive entry part.

The prizes...
1st place = $5,500 (split equally between the team members)
2nd and 3rd place = $1800 (also split equally)

and also if you are in the podium placing and you choose Engineering Science as your specialisation during your Engineering degree; you will be offered a guaranteed summer internship at either Orion Health, Fonterra or the Department of Engineering Science...

which is nice.

The competition involves answering one open-ended question to do with physics and maths.
We have one whole day to research and answer. A report needs to be presented.
Winners should have a report that shows logical and creative thinking etc.

Our competition as far as I know from our school is the Year 13 team.

Team name: PMS (Perpetual Motion Squad not Post menstrual syndrome)
Abhilash
Michael
Tae
Nikhil

Each a genius in their own right with wide and varied abilities and skills.

Compared to this team, our team pales in comparison.

Team Name: Year 12's
Caleb
Me
William
Pranav

Looking forward to beating atleast one team in the whole competition.

Badminton season over.

Today was the last game of the season for my badminton team.
We went into the match as the team 3rd on the table.

1st was Lynfield.
2nd is Mt Roskill 1.
3rd is Mt Roskill 2. <---------us

So, the team we were facing? LYNFIELD.
The quality of the players was very high. They were all like Andy. GASP.

Anyway, I hadn't lost a match this season yet. I had been winning them quite comfortably playing No 1 Singles usually.

This time however, I did not want to play anywhere near No 1. Unfortunately the rest of my team "Baggsed" the No.s 2, 3, 4 and I ended up playing their best player.

Scoreline = 21-4 to Lynfield.

That scoreline was the reverse of the usual which ticked me off but it was fun and my game improved so I'm happy. The rest of my team also lost miserably and we ended up as 4th on the table.

Downside? - No certificate as we don't finish in the top three.

Time to think about table tennis for Term 3. Another $20 and 2 extra hours a week with Jordan though. Anyone interested in replacing Jordan in our team?

Internals.

So we have to interview a business about how they buy and sell goods and then write a report on it.
4 credits for that and its an internal.

Here's the dumb bit.
There are checkpoints that we have to strictly meet.
I have to have the business name, phone number and the name of the person I'm interviewing due in by 21st July.

I had everything except the person's name by that date.
The teacher gets quite mad and gives us one day to find out the name of the person I'm going to interview. So I go to my business (Resene Colorshop on Carr Rd) and ask for the name of the person I called in the holidays (the person who said it was okay to interview). Turns out that that person is not there and some employee from another branch is in charge for the day.

So I ask who the manager of this branch is and I get a name, Bob.
Now this is what I write down on the teacher's sheet.

What I don't know is if Bob is the person who I am going to interview and if BOB will tell me to interview another employee.
Let's say I happen to interview a guy called X. And then to check the authenticity of my assignment my teacher calls up and asks for Bob and it turns out I don't interview BOB and have instead interviewed X. Do I FAIL??

Random checkpoints do not help. The school should only ask for the person's name after the interview is done, not before.

The point of this rant? I don't like the HOD. I won't mention the name.

Badminton practice.

As a result of the knee injury from the cross country practice in PE (see previous post), badminton practice for me was quite painful. It lasted a bit over an hour and every minute or should I say second was painful.

I could not move without some pain and the little bit of jumping involved was worse.
By the end of it, my whole body felt like I had ripped every muscle and all the stuff I had to carry home does not help.

What is around a 12 minute walk home ended up being a 30 minute crawl.

As of now I hate cross country.

Physics question.

As mentioned in my previous post, I had to miss out on my scholarship class.
Anyway I caught up with one of my friends in the class and he told me that we got a question to work on during the week.

I found this quite hard and I hoped one of you might be able to help.

To understand the question you need to look at a diagram:
http://i26.tinypic.com/11j6hx4.jpg

The diagram shows a mass hanging off a thin string (String A). A thicker string is attached to the bottom of the mass (String B).

The question is:
If String B is pulled very gently, String A breaks/rips and
if String B is pulled very quickly, String B breaks/rips.
Why?

I am thinking this might have to do with elasticity constants and impulse but please answer with some reasonable detail. Thanks.

P.E. teachers.

P.E.
Physical Education.
Some readers might know it as gym class.

So the new school term started. Hurrah for Term 3.
Now exams get closer and therefore scholarship classes have to get started and they started today.
I was looking forward to it as I got to miss running cross country practice for PE.

So I walked into the physics scholarship class and got a warm welcome from the teacher and he wanted me to just check with my PE teacher if it was all right.

So I jog down to where my teacher is outside the Gym and I ask him.
"Sir, is it okay if I do my scholarship classes for Physics?"
and he replies, "No, I want you to take PE until cross country is over" (Cross country is about 4 weeks from now)

He sounded quite offended when he said it as well which ticked ME off.

Now my problem with this is, I do not think, that PE is anywhere as important as scholarship classes. Every class has a ton of things that I can learn from it and considering the fact that only around 3.5% of students get a scholarship, every week is important.

So why does my teacher think that cross country PRACTICE is necessary/more important than my physics scholarship class?

Yes it's nerdy but justified.

Well as a result of his answer, I had to jog back to my class, get my stuff and run back and then run around a kilometre which caused some knee injury.

Damn PE.

Visitors

So I checked back on Google Analytics after a while to see how the blog was doing. And guess what? It's doing incredible, by my standards anyway.

Visitors from 8 countries and 15 cities.
I even got visitors from Mexico and Russia.

I absolutely have no idea how they got to my blog. But they got to it and that's all that matters.

Cuteness...

I know I'm not allowed to say this as a guy but the following link has the picture of one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/cutestuff/2593225/Scooter-could-be-worlds-smallest-dog