Apologies for my Boring.

*Groans with boredom* If you are a reader of this blog/site… and have been for awhile… then I truly super-duper-mega 5000+ APOLOGISE for the mind-melting-ly boring flow of posts that I’ve written over the years.  If you’re a regular reader I really admire your perseverance, concentration… or stupidity… don’t panic, I’m sure it’s one of the first two!

You see I’ve been going through and fixing up the categories on all of the blog posts, because awhile ago they became corrupt – and it was screwing the website up.  Now I have to go through and re-categorize all of the posts… this means reading every post of mine right from when I started in 2005 to this very moment. So far I’ve read through about 180-ish posts and categorized them. And I have to say, I’m not entirely sure whether it’s a good thing that I’ve finished reading all of my early childhood posts or not. Because as embarrassingly illiterate as they were – at least they were short compared to my long ambiguous rant-powered posts of the late.

Of course, when I say Apologies for my Boring, I mean more than just my blog. A lot of my creations have been boring – many still on YouTube… others taken down and ‘virtually burned.’  Really I shouldn’t be apologizing, and I don’t think anyone should – we all need to start somewhere.  It’s the whole point of the learning process. The start of that process is always incredibly clear, for humans, the start is the most defined. It’s the end of something that is not always clear – or expected for that matter.

I thought it would be right to tell you,

YOU ROCK

Thanks so much for reading,

Ben

 

An Interview with Lyndon Riggall

This is an interview conducted, as part of my media course, with my awesomeness cousin, Lyndon Riggall – you can check out his blog  right here.

Ben: Today we have with us an inspired and very, (very) good literature driven Australian, who has so many online blog posts, and so many online book reviews that you could be reading all night.

In 2011, he went in the Australian Poetry Slam, where he went into the finalists, and eventually the runners up.  In 2012, he set off to travel 2224 kilometres, the same distance that Frodo travelled to Mordor in the Lord of the Rings series.  And recently he’s been reading lots of children’s books, because he’s part of the Children’s Book Council of Australia, which requires you to read every children’s book released in the past 12 months, about 400 books.  So Lyndon!

Lyndon: Hi!

Ben: Thanks for being on the show!

Lyndon: Thank you for inviting me.

Ben: So what inspires or introduced you to literature, and what about it keeps you pursuing it?

Lyndon: I think for me it probably began… I was really lucky that I grew up in the Harry Potter generation and so when I was a kid, Harry Potter came out and I was probably in Grade 2, and I read it and it was new and exciting and of course I’d like to say that now because ah look *I was ahead of the trend.*

But I read it, and I was completely in love with it.  And then as the years went by, everyone else read it and everyone else fell completely in love with it and the movies came out. And it was probably the first time… and in fact it’s still used as a benchmark for… it’s about as big as a book can get. And I think when you grow up through that it often has an effect on you, the things you grow up with… so for me…

Ben: Kind of the fact you get to watch it grow and expand.

Lyndon: Yeah that’s it, there was no convincing me that books weren’t important when you see something like that happen. So yeah.

Ben: So in the Australian Poetry Slam that you went in, in 2011, how was your experience with that? And for those that haven’t seen it, maybe you’d like to explain what your poem was about?

Lyndon: Yeah, so my poem was a little bit controversial, it was based on a true story about… it dropped into fantasy… but it was a true story about Jehovah’s Witnesses coming and door knocking on my door. And it was sort of about the attitude they have when they come to your door – because I find it a really strong and terrifying attitude, ’cause I’m not the sort of person who thinks that the world is ending… you know… and that we’re all going to die.  So for me, to wake up in the morning in your dressing gown, to go to the door, and to just be immediately hit with that is a really funny experience. So I wrote about that and performed it in Launceston and eventually got to take it to Sydney… and that was really scary. I performed on the stage at the Sydney Theatre where, obviously I wasn’t in a play, but people like Jeffrey Rush and Cate Blanchett and lots of really famous Australian people have performed there – and I didn’t get to take my family with me, so I was all alone, in front of this massive Sydney audience.  Which is nothing like you’d see here,  but it was amazing.  It was a room of thousands of people screaming and cheering over poetry… which is kind of nice.

Ben: Which audience do you think took your poem the best, the Launceston or the Sydney one?

Lyndon: I think probably the Sydney one. (The) people in Launceston are probably a bit more tentative about coming up and talking to you afterwards, and maybe it’s part of being in a small crowd, that they have people they came to the show with, that they’ll talk to them. But even as I was walking up the stairs after finishing it, people were trying to grab me and say, “My mum’s a Jehovah’s Witness and I need a copy of that poem so that I can show it to her, and she’ll find it really interesting.” And that was really exciting. Yeah, that was nice that people wanted to share that.

Ben: So quite a journey of course from Launceston to Sydney, not quite  as big as your 2224 kilometre trip. On the fan forums, the Internet, it said that apparently it’s estimated that Frodo took about six months. How long did it take you on your journey?

Lyndon: Yeah, I decided to try and walk the… it’s often confusing for people so I will explain. I didn’t try to go into the wilderness and take bread wrapped up in leaves or anything like that in the Lord of the Rings books.  But what I tried to do was, just to get a sense of how far that really is, how far that journey is.  I started on January the 19th 2012, and I wanted to finish by the day that the Hobbit came out, which was boxing day. And so I made it… but all I had to do to keep up with that was six and a half kilometres a day. But yeah, it took me twice as long as it took them.

Ben: Do you have any plans for literature driven journeys in the future? Not necessarily exercise based.

Lyndon: I would love… on that front, I’ve had lot’s of friends say, “Can we walk around Westeros?” which is the Game of Thrones world, and I would love to work that out.  But I was really lucky with the Lord of the Rings people, who have really nutted out all of those details. Tolkien inspires people to get really obsessive about tiny details, and so I was lucky that I actually had someone who had done most of the maths for me, I just had to convert it into kilometres and work out where I would have to be at each point to actually chart the whole journey of the books.

But in terms of my own literary journey, what I’m doing next, I’m trying to write a book. Which is probably much more scary than walking. Yeah, so I’ve finished a first draft but what’s interesting about books is that first drafts often aren’t anywhere near ready. So it’s still hiding from the world at the moment.

Ben: Okay, and finally your a member of the Children’s Book Council of Australia… what’s it like reading 400 children’s books?

Lyndon: *Laughs* Really interesting! So what the Children’s Book Council do every year, they give, and you may have seen them, their little medallions that they put on the books.  So they get a gold, if they’re considered the best of that year, across various categories.  And then there are honoured books, and notable books.  So I signed up and asked it I could perform that process for them, without really thinking the quantity of books you’d have to read.

I mean it’s logical that if you want to choose the best book that this country produces… you have to read every book that this country produces.  And I should have thought of that.  But sure enough, pretty much every two weeks, until very recently,  I get about 30 books in the post, and I go through them and make notes on them and send them off – and they gradually fill up all the space underneath my bed.  But it’s really hard, sometimes you get a box of picture books, and you know, it’s stories about babies and food and stuff like that and they take 5 minutes – but sometimes they are really big novels.

But one of the really good parts of the experience, is finding terrible books… and Australia produces very few really bad books, but everyone who wants to write – should read bad books.  Because when you read a bad book, firstly you teach yourself what’s wrong with it, and you know, some of the books I’ve read I start to see problems and I go, “Oh, that might be a problem in the book that I’m trying to write.”  And the other thing that’s really good about it is that you really get a sense that… (if a ‘bad book’ gets an award, that perhaps your book has a chance in it all.)

Ben: (Thank you) So this of course is Lyndon Riggall! You can check out his blog at lyndonriggall.com for more, maybe the rest of that sentence will come to light on the blog.  Thanks so much for watching, and we’ll see you all next time.

Hey guys!

Hope you enjoyed this painstakingly-written-out version of this interview I recorded for my media studies in school!
I just wanted to let you know that at some point I’ll be doing a major refresh of this site – as you can see it’s been a bit glitchy recently, and I think I know what I have to do to fix it.  MAKE IT A BLOG AGAIN.  I’m going to be getting rid of the social ‘Facebook Profile’ like area of the site because all it does is cause compatibility issues with every single theme I use it with – and I honestly don’t have the time to go through and code myself a theme right now that works.  So I’m going to remove the cause – get it out of the way – and get back to a pretty stable blogging site – all ready for Vlog my Blog 2013… I mean… what?

YOU HEARD NOTHING.

 

Ben,

Quick Update

Scribbles3Icon-400400Just thought I’d write a quick post to let you know that now, after finally figuring out what was wrong with ‘Scribble’s Notepad’ after it for some reason refused to open…  I am at last continuing with its development.  I’m not sure if I shall call this version 2.6 or ‘Scribble’s Notepad 3’ yet – I reckon that because I’ve added SO MUCH into this version compared to the last that I’ll probably whack a big 3 next to it.  I’m pretty excited about it, it’s turning out really nicely – and I’ve learnt how to make it really… really cool.

Yes, I am most definitely getting too hyped up over a Notepad application.  But AGH! I’m conceitedly gleaming.  I just can’t believe some of my crazy ideas that went into the coding of this program actually worked…

Quite irritatingly – I actually want to keep most of the details secret – the problem is the other half of me is saying, “TELL THEM EVERYTHING!!! DO IT!”

So I’ll meet myself half way and tell you some of the stuff that’s going on…

SOME OF THE NEW STUFF

1. Brand new customisable style system.  The last post that I wrote about Scribble’s I mentioned this – thing is, I’ve completely re-written that style system since then.  I’m onto something far nicer.

The new style system, or themes, allows you to create your own themes – but also – I can now host new themes that I create on my website for download within Scribble’s.  This doesn’t really sound that spectacular – but it took a lot of time and thought to get it working.  Downloading and extracting theme ZIP files from the Style Browser.

2. Now because I figured out how to download and install themes… I can apply this same process to the updater.  Scribble’s can now be updated hassle-free straight from… within Scribble’s.  Again, anyone that’s used mainstream software – this kind of thing is a standard no-brainer.  Something that’s not really to ground breaking.

3. Character count, word count and Hotkeys.  These are all things that practically every word processor has – even though Scribbles… is a Notepad.  I thought it obvious to include these things in.  Hotkeys were surprisingly easy to implement… quite annoyed that I didn’t add them sooner.  But the character count and word count are definitely one of those *must haves.*

I know, I know… still not sounding that ‘HOLY WOW MAN’

I’m just overly excited about my mild achievements in programming right now… so give me a break.

 

I shall keep you up to date with the changes – but this update is going to be good. =)

 

Thanks,

 

Ben.

The Case of the Missing $20

Holy cow, am actually on the internet after waiting for several months… (I’ll explain later)

Now usually on this blog I leave out as much as I can about my school life, it’s the same for social networks – I’ve never said what year of education I’m currently ‘enduring.’  I feel though that for this post to have any meaning I need to break my rules.  To a degree.

This is my first year of College, and I have to say, I’m pretty lost in the amount of freedom that’s available compared to that of High School.  What I do know is this free time will allow me to write things up, like blog posts, scripts for my YouTube videos – and when I get a decent laptop to use… *sigh* … perhaps even some of my graphic work and video editing.  The positive thing about doing this at College is that it feels like an atmosphere that is far more encouraging of productivity than I have found my room at home to be.  Perhaps it’s my own mental stigma that I’ve associated ‘home’ with ‘relax.’  Though just reading back a bit on what I’ve written now, it appears that even though getting myself to work at home is a much harder task… the quality of the work is greater. Let me know if you think that’s a load of old beef, and that I’m just using odd metaphors to try to stick up for my own placebo.

ANYHOW

I know, it’s been 246 words so far and not a single mention of this mysterious currency disappearance.  Considering the title I really just reeled you, the reader, in, and then left you hanging on the line.  So with all this free time, today I have a three-hour break mixed in with my other lessons, I decided that I would go by some more stationary, go grab a burger that is greedily taken advantage of by my teenage metabolism – and then go to the library where I would borrow a computer, write-up a blog post and then plan up an Uploadthedownload video to film and edit this afternoon.  My plans didn’t go… according to plan.

Went to get some more pens, it was going to cost me $11 for 3 packs of my favourite variety, (the kind I use every night to write in my journal) – In my mind, at that stage, my wallet had about $25 plus gold coins in it.  I took a look around further, considering buying a folder to keep all my maths books and equipment in… thankfully I saved myself… by deciding to put it down.
Went to the checkout, handed the items over to the lady… opened the wallet and blam, nothing but a measly $5 note, and $2 in coins… well, I guess I could have handed them my student card and said, ‘Is this acceptable currency?’

I asked if I could leave one of the packets of pens behind, and just purchased the others for $6.95 – but now I definitely didn’t have enough for that burger. Yeah, yeah – could have just forgotten about the pens and bought the burger.  But where’s the fun in that?  Now I get to test my strength and survive the rest of the day with only the small amount of food packed with the anticipation of a major meal later in the day.

I did have a $20 note, I remember fondling it as I came up with my ‘brilliant idea’ – and I most definitely didn’t spend it on anything else. Hmmm, could there be a robbery case going on?  I have heard that some Year 11s who tried to claim a locker had their little padlocks cut off with boltcutters by people who felt they owned the locker more.
Most likely the $20 note is actually in my jacket that I wore the other day – meaning it probably never made it into my wallet in the first place.  Great going Ben!

Hasn’t his been an exciting post! HAH! Deceived!  Worst mystery story ever!

Oh yes of course! The POTATO!  Where does that come into the story?  Did I find a potato in the ground and decide to eat it raw to suffice my now tingling hunger?  Nope.

This laptop that I borrowed from the Library… unbelievable… it is the slooooooowwweesst …. agh. *Head hurts*
Quite literally one hour of my 3 hours was spent waiting for this thing to actually log in – and when I opened up the web browser the whole thing froze on me… requiring… *sarc* A VERY FAST AND HASTY REBOOT! *sarc*
I have to say, I would have been better off plugging a monitor and peripherals into a potato to get this post written – probably would have been finished in half the time…

Well until the next time, when you are gifted with a boring College-based post.

See You Later,

Ben.

Sunsets and Closure

Sunsets and Closure

‘Sunsets and Closure’ – a photo of mine that I’ve released under Creative Commons on Flickr… so far it’s my first photo on there… but I hope to release more.  If you would like to download it as a wallpaper, it’s here too.

Greetings once again… I’d like to complain about my own lack of commitment when it comes to writing posts… but I fear that that would require – well, commitment.  Plus I’ve found that looking at everything you haven’t done but had planned on doing during your holidays potentially depressing.  Thankfully, being an Earth-dweller, I’m able to experience that magical conclusion of day that is, the afternoon. It’s at this time of day that everything meets it’s closure – mentally at rest, as the sunlight possesses all that it touches with it’s golden streams of warmth.  All worries about lost time, tasks incomplete… the clockwork of human life simply put on pause – as you observe something far more important.  It’s although the sky and the sun are sharing their colossal amount of wisdom with you for only a few moments before the sun vanishes beyond the horizon.

This all seems very naturalistic – some may think to themselves “bloody tree hugger”

But if a thought even enters your mind in that stance you’re not seeing it.  Because thoughts are human – opinionated, ignorant, categorized.  We label, blame and make up stories about leaders and control.  We assume and argue about wrongs – wrongs that have been formed and identified by ourselves.  If anything, the word ‘Human’ in the dictionary should stand for ‘complicated beings, who make up complicated things.’  Stand and bask in the afternoon’s closure.  There are no dark thoughts in the wisdom of the sky.  Even if the sky is engulfed by the moodiest storm clouds, the sun still shines brightly behind them. In the end… we fear each other.  Because the actions of a stranger can be unpredictable.

The life that Humans have created is one structured upon poisoned thoughts.

 

I get it, you may be upset that there haven’t been that many posts coming from me recently.  Let me save you the whole “I’ve been pretty ruddy busy” speech that I usually give when I start receiving complaints… and just show you that “I’ve been pretty ruddy busy” instead.

As you can see above, there is an image of Neb shouting at me.  This is actually one of the projects I’ve been working on for the past few months.  I haven’t been working on it full-time, hence the amount of time it’s taken – really right now though it’s the editing that’s the most time-consuming part.  At this point I can’t say when this video will go up.  But it will be going up on my new Vlogging channel – and I have decided that no other videos are allowed to go up before this one.  This MUST be the introduction to my channel.  That’s final, this channel is going to be special, awesome.  So I want to start it off just right.

Video projects at the moment are taking up a heck of time – unfortunately as I’ve mentioned on thee social networks – the more skilled you get in a field the more pedantic about what you achieve.  I want every video I make to be far better than the one before it – unfortunately this results in some inconsistencies in series I produces because I end up changing the titles or graphics or whatever it may be basically every episode. =/

I won’t go into details in terms of the video projects, I’ve already said a lot of this stuff in a previous post, though if you’re interested the image you see above is of a new series I’m working on called ‘JON JON’ (Yes, I’ve changed the spelling of ‘John’)- it’s going pretty damn well at the moment – but like I said before, I really want to make the most of this.  I have such a brilliant script for this series that I don’t want to screw it up – I want to make it the absolute best that it can be.

One of the things I really like to do to relax now and then is to work on my programs – programs that have been downloaded thousands of times on Softpedia, CNET and this website.  Scribble’s Notepad is my pride and glory at the moment, I’m so happy with the way it’s turning out – I’ve been developing the next version for months now.  I use Scribble’s daily when writing up notes for YouTube videos and homework, and whenever I come across a feature that I would really find useful, I implement it.  Scribble’s Notepad 2.1 or maybe even Scribble’s Notepad 3.0, depending what I decide to go with, is definitely going to be an awesome release.  I find it so useful.

 

Well, that’s my update for now – don’t worry this blog will get very busy in the next few months – I’ve been in contact with an animator, who will be helping me produce a pretty cool series.  But that’s a story for another day. =)

 

Thanks,

See you again soon.