H.S to the Cizzle

Posted by Andrew Mon, 18 Dec 2006 01:26:00 GMT

(That’s a soft “C” by the way)

Anyhow, got my HSC (big angry end of school assessments and exams for all you international readers) results this morning. I went to bed a 4am last night because I was working on Festival of the Sun photos, so I didn’t plan to wake until a relatively sane 8:30 to find out my marks, rather than at 6:00 when the Board of Studies was due to send me an SMS announcing my fate. The station master at Pymble railway station had other ideas. I lost my wallet yesterday, and he found it on the tracks, and decided that 6am was a good time to call me and tell me. So, like any good boy who has spent 13 years being “educated”, I had a peak at my results. I was pleasantly surprised.

I was expecting some pretty shifty marks. I knew that I had only actually worked in the last week or so leading up to the final exams, and that my rank within my grade (which, along with the mark that got me that rank, is submitted to the board and combined with a final exam mark to produce a final moderated mark) was below the 50% line in all but one subject, so I wasn’t hopeful. When I got a set of, while not brilliant, but passable marks, I was massively relieved.

Here’s the breakdown:

So yes, I picked up 13 marks from my assessment mark to my exam mark in Physics, which is pretty impressive if you ask me… Everything else was pretty consistent, and Music 2 will hopefully get scaled up the wazoo so I should do okay. My 92.9 required for Media Arts and Communications at UTS is still looking a little shakey, but who knows….

Tags exams, hsc, school | 2 comments

Chairlympics: The Extreme Sport for Generation Y

Posted by Andrew Sat, 01 Apr 2006 10:52:00 GMT

NORTH SYDNEY: On Monday afternoon, just as most Australians were wondering if it really was the lead singer of Grinspoon who was lowered into the stadium during the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, another great sporting spectacle was unfolding. On a small patch of grass in North Sydney, the inaugural Chairlymics was held. Although there was no great pomp and pizazz in the opening and closing ceremony, the sporting excellence exhibited was of a truly amazing nature.

The Chairlympics is an event which has been pioneered by the year 12 drama class at North Sydney boys who don’t really seem to get much drama done during their classes. There were approximately 15 competitors who engaged in various events including hammer throw, shooting, bowling, the standing and sitting sprints, as well as rodeo and two unprecedented events which have yet to be named. The sporting arena which hosted this event was none other than the Bottle Yard lawns (now year 12 lawns) of North Sydney boys, which also plays host to games of soccer and cricket.

Our photographer managed to capture some of the action and it is featured below, with more shots in a gallery here.

Tags alternative culture, chairlympics, school, school sport, sport | 4 comments | no trackbacks

Blargh!

Posted by Andrew Mon, 06 Mar 2006 14:58:00 GMT

That pretty much sums it up at the moment… I’m feeling all over the place, and rather tired. Somehow I get the feeling a lot of it isn’t going to be solved by a good night’s sleep, which is what concerns me. I’ll try and fill you in, and not be too rambly, ranty or whatever, but you’ll have to forgive me, I’m not at my most coherent at the moment. This is the first of a possible four posts I have bouncing around in my head at the moment, how many of those actually make their way out, I just don’t know.

As you may know, I have some fairly diverse passions. Those are, most simply put: Audio/Music, Photography and technology. They’re fairly well developed passions, and a lot of that is owed to my parents who have assisted me morally and financially along the way. The problem is, while I feel that my passions are developed, I also feel like they’re stalled. There are both financial, time and motivational factors in this, but to a great extent it’s true.

Right now, it just feels like my life is stalled. I’m stuck at school for another six months, just so I can get a couple of pieces of paper that say that I can remember stuff which I’m never going to use again for an exam. Wow. I know why everyone loves it. Problem is, I don’t even know if I want to go to uni. While people insist that it’s worth it, if only for the community, I think screw it, there are better ways of forming community.

Right now, I would like nothing better than to pack up my laptop, my camera, my mic and other assorted audio gear, and my djembe and head off into a third or second world country and do something worthwhile. Something that isn’t sitting in my maths class, bored out of my skull, or in my english class, frustrated by the irrelevant sylabus. You get the idea. I could be a star performer at school. I proved that in year seven. When I was motived (delusional) I did awesomely well. Now, I have no motivation. I have no purpose in school, except to finish.

What do I do with that? I wish I knew? My current position is to plod through and finish this year, just for those hallowed certificates, then work for six months or so and then travel, for as long as I can support myself. I want to record, photograph and write throughout my time away, documenting what I see and hopefully inspiring others. The system says this isn’t what I should be doing. The System says I should apply myself for this whole year, get a 95+ UAI, go to uni, rack up some HECS debt and spend the next age paying it off.

Screw that. I don’t want to be part of the system. It’s not that I want to arbitrarily rebel against the system, or anything like that. The plain and simple fact is that doing things the way the system wants me to do them would be like giving away my soul. The way things are meant to happen directly opposes the way I feel like I’m built. Perhaps I’m impatient, perhaps I should wait and do what I’m told, but at the moment, I don’t see the point.

I’m just as qualified as anyone to go into a country and help out, whether that’s simple labour, photography, writing, or even audio engineering/music. I don’t much care. I just want to do something.

Now that’s off my chest, you can recover, and so will I. Perhaps another few posts, (less heated, less ranting, more directed) will come tonight, perhaps not. I don’t know. We’ll all find out soon enough.

Tags dreams, hsc, motivation, passions, ramble, rants, school, travel, uni, work | 3 comments

Extended Progress

Posted by Andrew Wed, 22 Feb 2006 15:52:00 GMT

Today I finally actually managed to get something done with my music composition. I’ve been spinning my wheels for weeks, months even, and finally I’ve got something out. It feels good. Here’s a sneak preview, which may give you some idea of what it will sound like. It’s not finished, and isn’t even close, it’s missing a melody, a guitar part and about a minute more of… Stuff, but I like it.. At the moment. What can I say? <3 Logic Pro :)

I’d almost like to be able to do this live, to have the piano miced up and run it through logic, if I can sync it up. It’s be a sick mandatory performance, although the one I’m looking at is also rather cool.

Tags composition, hsc, music, school | no comments

Well, well well... Don't fall in.

Posted by Andrew Fri, 09 Dec 2005 16:47:00 GMT

What a week. I got myself a job at Solutions First, a IT consultancy company, as a Web Dev and possibly later on doing some Linux sysadmin stuff. This is pretty awesome for me, because it means once again I have an income stream, and something for me to hone my programming skills with. The people I work with are really cool, and I really like the idea of coming in when I can and coding, knowing that I’m earning good money for it.

This however has made me realise even more that the whole SDD course is complete and utter crap. The software development process has been pretty much butchered by the course and the evolution of programming languages and the knowledge of binary arithmetic are completely useless to me in my job. I suppose that puts SDD in the long list of subjects marked as “Useless after the HSC” I think the only ones not in that basket are Music II and languages (excluding the classics which are universally useless).

Also, we have information that Dove Soap have approached Nat for a contract advertising their personal hygiene products. We will have more on the negotiations as information comes to hand.

Tags geekery, hsc, job, school, sdd | 1 comment