Hey there!

Whoooah . . . rather excited/nervous . . .  basically because MyState has finally uploaded all the MyState Film Festival entrants to their YouTube page, and mine happens to be one of them. As shabby as it may be, and as much as it annoys me to see every little glitch and hear every little sound problem; there’s simply nothing more to do then to accept your effort and hope for the best.

But I won’t talk about that now . . . I’ll write a post about the film festival later on, for now I wanted to talk about this new change to the site, not just the visual change, but also in what I actually want this website to be.

You’ll notice the new theme, it’s bright, clean and lightweight. A look I’ve actually been trying to get for a long time now, when I’ve had the time to procrastinate of course. I tried many different lightweight, bright themes, but the problem is many of them simply weren’t the right layout for the content that this site produces. One of the themes I tried out is this one here:

 Yes it looks rather nice doesn’t it?

It’s a beautiful theme called Minimatica made by One Designs. I really loved this theme a lot, and actually considered ditching my entire site and just starting clean with it. But it really wasn’t a very thoughtful option considering I had many other authors using the site. Along with the added problem that every post requires pictures a picture for it to really look good . . . since I don’t usually post pictures in my blogs it would have been an extra inconvenience, resulting in fewer blogs. Nonetheless I fiddled around with this theme for a considerable amount of time, trying to integrate it with the social platform BuddyPress, which controls all the snazzy friendship, profile and wiki features on this site. However, finally I decided to just forget about it. I had things priorities elsewhere (the MyState Film Festival being one of them.) and really needed to just leave things as they were, leaving my dreams of clean, shiny interfaces aside for another day.

The current theme I’m using is a self-modified version of Frisco by David Carson. I stumbled across this theme the other day, the first decent looking BuddyPress-compatible theme I’d seen . . . ever . . . I added the theme, made a few tweaks . . . then decided I wanted it EVEN CLEANER.

So OFF WITH THE HEAD . . . er!

I removed the logo, the category navigation bar from the header, and placed them so that they only appear on the main page. One person kindly said that “it’s bad web design” to have the navigation and logo only appear on the main page. But I actually disagree, and also ask the question . . . Why?

What makes it bad web design? Why must we see the logo on every page of the website? It actually speeds loading times up by not having to load my jQuery logo slider (vSlider) on every single page, besides, it gives the site a great clean feel, and a quite unique feel at that. If you’re logged in, I urge you to click on your name in the sidebar, just look at how nice the profile view looks. No silly logos or non-relevant navigation bars in sight, just a beautiful large profile that actually makes you want to use it. It just feels right, no distractions.

For those that think I’m silly for setting the site up like this, that I’m “Doing it wrong” obviously haven’t heard this inspirational speech about being different by Steve Jobs, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA. When Steve passed away the other week I was shattered, he is without a doubt one of the most influential people this planet has ever seen. I don’t care if you have a thing against Apple, I don’t care if you have no interest in technology, and I don’t care if you don’t care. Without him this world would be a very different place. If you think otherwise then leave this site, because you’re obviously an ignorant prat.

BACK ON TOPIC

Basically the one thing that’s been annoying my about this site, is that unless I’ve got something to rage about, there’s not really that much content on here. I actually think it’d be a lot better if I actually wrote about things like videos I’m working on, songs, filming, photographing. Whatever it is I may be doing.

I want my posts to be more intriguing and interesting and less, raging and ranting.

Well, hope you enjoyed this “short” post better get back to work, I’ll post some cool stuff when I get more time. =)

Ben,

Hey there, sorry that I haven’t been posting recently folks.

As it happens, people such as myself that produce videos and media are in high demand all of a sudden. Perhaps it’s the film competitions that are on at the moment, or maybe they’re just requesting my assistance because they feel sorry for me. =) Nah, I’m too good for that. *conceited*

Now I don’t like leaving my website all alone in the dark . . . especially with no new content for weeks . . . and whilst thinking, “I should probably write a post soon,” I came across a brilliant idea. I think I’ll phrase it like this:

Maybe I should just upload that essay that I entered in that competition that I lost.

You see, last school holidays, like any normal school kid [Pffft] I set off to write an 1000 word essay on Tasmania, and World War 1’s effect on it’s society. Well, apparently the judges don’t like you writing about the society’s change, instead of writing about the entire change on the history of Tasmania, they obviously prefer something more personal, but never mind that, apologies for my lack of personal connection you judge folk.

Might as well just post the essay here right? They won’t use the same question again next year, and it’s an essay that didn’t place or get any mention whatsoever, an unimportant waste of time. So, here you go. Enjoy the read.

Continue reading “Frank MacDonald – Memorial Prize – Essay”

This post was written awhile ago, but not posted. . . my apologies, but that’s why some things may seem a bit weird.

Good day!

Well, uh . . . no, actually it’s a Thursday, so let’s pretend I never said ‘Good day’. The reason I say this is because my Thursdays happen to have the worst selection of lessons possible. Almost as if one mongrel of a man wearing a suit on the top of some education department skyscraper thought, “Oooh, these look like the worst possible selection of lessons possible,” and then he wrote them all down for my Thursday agenda.

No the real reason it kind of sucks that it’s a Thursday is that tomorrow is a student free day. Not that student free days aren’t good, I’m all for them, I’d just appreciate it if they didn’t happen to fall on my good days all the time. No offense to my History teacher, but I don’t like ending the week with a double period of your expertise.

Anyways! Back to the propper grit of this post, just as the title suggests, this is going to be a ‘little’ guide to being a good teacher. What do I mean by “The Student’s Guide to Being A Good Teacher”? Well I’m going to be talking about the kinds of things that students tend to respect in a teacher, just by observation, seeing the classes in which students play up and muck around, and then seeing the classes that they sit down do the work and act their age. (But then again, after a health lesson yesterday, I may disagree with my own hypothesis)

If you’re a student and you’re reading this, then well, there’s a few things you could be thinking right now. If you’re one of those lovely bogan twits that we are all so ‘privelledged’ to be accompanied by . . . then I’m sorry, but you must be incredibly ill, because you wouldn’t be on this website reading blog posts, you’d be out in the street, swearing, causing a public nuisance and generally being a pain for your own simplistic entertainment. But if you’re one of the few students that are actually capable of maintaining a thought process, well, welcome.

(Sorry about that rather bizarre paragraph, it’s the result of a bogan today that was picking on a friend of mine with on of the few words that he can remember.)

Let’s get started then . . .

So what do students like about teachers?
What are the things that make students “shhhh” and listen?

– Age
The first thing that appears to have the biggest impact on a student’s attentiveness is the age of the teacher, the younger the teacher, the better ‘connected’ the class feels. (Although, as I’ve made quite clear in an earlier post, I don’t really like the students to be ‘on-par’ with the teacher) Whether it’s to do with the mental maturity of the teacher and the students being simliar, or whether it’s the way they look, or the the way they act, it’s an interesting factor.
But then again, having said this, having a teacher that’s really strict, old or young, seems to keep everyone in par.

– Appearance
As sad as this is to hear, unfortunately many people do in fact judge by appearance, no matter how many times you say the “book by it’s cover” metaphor people will still continue to discriminate by aesthetics, this is especially particularly common in most school kids, and it plays another major role in a students opinion and behavior.

If a teacher walks in in crisp cut clothes, grey, dark or “drab” as they say, there’ll be a first opinion obviously, perhaps that they’re strict and wont take no for an answer. Their stride into the classroom may also contribute to the accusation. Things like physical appearance, clothing, hairstyle, shoes . . . these things, strangely, contribute to how the students react to the teacher.
But! It appears that the judgement of appearance can be counteracted by the personality, I’ve sat in classes where the relief teacher was laughed at upon entry, but once they started talking the class shut up, listened and respected them.

– Attitude (towards work)

Students really like the teachers that don’t make you do any work. This is so obvious that it’s a no-brainer . . . this is why in most cases, students will enjoy the presence of a relief teacher. Relief teachers usually have little work to give out, and they don’t use discipline when the class starts misbehaving. (Some DO use discipline, but it doesn’t necessarily have the effect that it should)

These are some key points about what students tend to respect when it comes to teachers, if I were to explain what a teacher would have to do for respect, in a few numbered points, it would be:

1. Be social with your students, if your students know more about you they’ll see you as a person, rather than ‘a teacher’ . . . for some reason it appears that teachers tend to be alienated against. Before we continue, on the behalf of all intellectual kids out there, I can’t say that teachers are always seen as another species, this is merely an event that can happen quite a lot with the average students.
2. Talk about things your students are interested in, this is a rather annoying one. But If you share similar interests with your students, you can get along a lot better. I’m not saying go learn about AFL, nail polish, latest fashion, how to smoke, motorbiking, fishing, computer games and whatever else it is your students do, that would be ridiculous. Find something to talk about that’s generally interesting to everyone, in most situations talking about funny moments in your life, funny things that have happened to your friends or what you think the future will hold, will normally interest the majority. Technology is also one that can interest quite a few teenagers, as mobile devices are a large part of their lives.”

Sporting a registered player count of over 5 million, Combat Arms is a free tactical online First Person Shooter by the company Nexon. Renowned for producing one of the world’s first graphic MMORPGs, Nexon gets its money by offering these free multiplayer games, with payable upgrades, there are always new items being added to the game along with a plentiful supply of updates.

The graphics are nothing to be sneered at either! There are numerous game play modes available, and the 5 million registered users guarantees you a game. Another thing to be noted is the servers, quite a few of them too! Best thing is I haven’t experienced any lag whatsoever, this definitely makes the game play a lot more fun.

	Now although this game is really quite addictive, there are a lot of aspects that could easily encourage you to just uninstall it and start playing WarSow or Alien Arena.The first problem, is there is absolutely no offline play at all, unless the game is cradled in the arms of an internet connection, you’re not going to have any shooting fun at all, the second problem is you can’t run the game from the start menu, in order to play the game you have to create an account at Nexon’s website and press a giant red “Play” button on the main page. This then taps into your computer and runs Combat Arms, which really sucks!
	Finally, the last problem, is with the time it takes from pressing the play button, to finally getting into the game, and playing a match. Nexon releases ludicrous amounts of updates, while this can be good, it really spoils your itchy trigger finger mood watching this screen waiting up to an hour as updates stream through and install.
	Overall it really is a great game once you’re in and playing, but the fact that it practically takes days to open the game really ruins it for me. I can’t jump in and start playing right away like I can in a game like Cube.Going onto the website, logging in, pressing the play button, waiting while the browser tries to access the game on your computer, waiting for the updates to download and install, waiting for the included cheat protection engine to turn on . . . it’s just too much hassle.

[review pros=”Great gameplay, always players online, neat game modes and no lagging” cons =”People that pay money have a better advantage, incredibly slow start-up time, too many updates downloading all the time, you can’t run the game from the start menu, no offline gameplay, item store sucks” score=65]

Hope you enjoyed the review folks.

Ben,

This game review was initially written for TasGamers.com

Aloha! . . . oh wow, that’s how you spell it? I thought that the spell checker was going to throw a fitzy at me . . . oh, there we go, “fitzy” is underlined in a blood red wiggly line, oh technology, you’d be a beech.

Okay, onto business! I’m here to tell you about a few new things that I’ve added/fixed with the site, this is the reason it was offline a few times . . . I ran into a spot of bother here and there . . . Here’s a little list of the things I’ve added:

CHANGES

There are other minor little tweaks and bits around the place. But apart from that, if you’re interested, I’ve stuck the main new features into this video here:

New Features – September

There’s another feature right in front of your eyes! See it?

There’s a small video icon next to the link above, hover your mouse over it and you get to play the video! Tadaa!

The point system is going to need a few tweaks, I obviously won’t be selling the NeWs! Tshirts in the store for points because I’d lose far too much money, and I’d end up selling my cardboard box to survive.

Things that you’ll be able to purchase is stuff like upgrades, pictures, games, music.

Legal of course, I’m not posting other people’s games or music, it’ll all be my own, or other members work.

Well thanks for reading and enjoy the new features!

Ben,