Er… that was a long break…

Sorries! ^^;

We finished our final exams earlier this month, and lately I’ve been taking a break from most stuff, and catching up on my artwork. Don’t worry, I’ll finish my blog series :D

Project Nelson 1.0 Build 19 is well under way, and I hope to release it next month. I’ll also be putting up some of the other stuff I’ve been working on, but I probably’ll have to do it next month as well.

Oh, and I finally bought a copy of Windows Vista! It’s here, sitting all nice and shiny on my main computer. It means I can work out all the bugs of PN on Vista, implement UAC support, all that rot. ;) (It also means I no longer have to test against a beta version on a old computer that still thinks it’s 2006… ^^)

The recent increase in male pregnancy is a big contributor to global warming.

Apparently, I’m in some video on YouTube:

It appears I’ve been a Asian immigrant from The China all this time and never knew it. :)

Tip o’ the hat to the people from 10ASJ.

Congratulations!!! You are that expert!

As the three of you who read my blog will probably know, our school just^[1] had its mid-year exams. Yay. It’s also almost time for winter holidays (next week..) Yays!

One of my problems with story-based word problems is that they seem too... kludgy, too contrived. I mean, why would some big-wig professional-type dude hire a kid who’s half-failing math as it is to do their consulting work?

The title, btw, is a direct quote from our Sampling test. Clearly, one exclamation mark didn’t suffice in conveying just how exciting mathematics really is.

Footnotes:

[1] The word “just” here meaning “over the period of about three weeks”.

English Exam

This post was originally posted at my Windows Live Spaces blog. [View original post]

MarkKB's Blog - Thu 29 Nov 2007

I hate myself. ^[1]

Last Thursday we had our NCEA^[2] English external exams. I did an almost complete repeat performance of the practice exams, where I did Unfamiliar Texts and Formal Writing^[3], and then ran out of time. But that's not why I hate myself.

After the exams, I hung around a bit outside, catching up with some of my friends in the English 100 class, who were also taking exams that day^[4], as well as some of the guys I had taken our exam with. We talked, joked, and so on.

By and by, I decided to walk home, like I usually do when I go home from school mid-day. (Study leave is awesome.) As I was making the turn just past Gallony Avenue, I saw someone lying on the ground, moaning, with tear-filled eyes. (I think she's from my English class.^[5]) Evidently, she had twisted some part of her foot, or something was making it unbearable for her to walk. So, like the dolt that I am, I asked her if she was OK. She didn't answer, possibly because she was in too much pain to do so, but more probably because she was too busy considering whacking me with a large mallet. So, announcing that I would go back to the school (to look for any of her friends that were still hanging around), I proceeded to do just that.

Now, sometimes when you're focused on something, it takes a while for your brain to process your surroundings. And so, it wasn't until I had reached the school gates that the cogs started whirring: Didn't I just pass two guys?

Looking back, I saw the afore mentioned dudes turning the corner. I backtracked, and sure enough, the two were doing what I should have done: they had flagged down a car and were now helping her on. At least, I think so, and that's what it looked like.

So, tell me: did I do the right thing?

Footnotes:

[1] By "I hate myself", I, of cause, mean "I hate the course of action that I'd taken", not "I'm going all emo".

[2] If you're not from New Zealand, you probably won't know what this is. It's the national certificate for New Zealand, and it's based on arbitrary levels of achievement designed to show your knowledge of a subject. You can either achieve (A), achieve with merit (M), achieve with excellence (E), or not achieve (N). Markers often write up a grid, showing you how much of each you got, which forms the word NAME across the page.

[3] Unfamiliar Texts is answering a bunch of questions on poems, extracts from literacy, "visual texts" (static images) and the such. Formal Writing is writing a x-word essay, where x=~200-300 words, choosing from an unknown list of subjects. The other two sections are film and book essays, the former being What's Eating Gilbert Grape, directed by Lasse Hallstrom, and the latter, Alex, by Tessa Duder.

[4] I am not in the English 100 class, instead I am in one of the many 101 classes, which are basically mid-range. Apparently, the reason I wasn't put into such a class was my lack of organisation, a decision with which I can't find fault with. You should see my room...

[5] Not naming names, of cause. I mean, it was rather embarrassing.

Age Before Intellect

This post was originally posted at my Windows Live Spaces blog. [View original post]

MarkKB's Blog - Sun 12 Sep 2007

I've updated my website. 'Tis at http://markk-b.sitesled.com http://www.markkb.com/. Yays.

OK, here's the other anecdote I promised earlier:

Mrs. Donnell, our English teacher, was talking to us about our upcoming external exam (1.6 - Unfamiliar Texts), and during this talk she revealed that she had started high school in 1975. It was at this moment that one of my fellow learner-peoples felt the uncontrollable urge to utter the following:

“Wait, that means you're older than me!”

'Cause everyone knows 12 is a popular age to start teaching...

NB
I have not posted the above mentioned student's name for a reason. Please, no guessing, no telling, and no mean words.

Updated 14/07/2013 to fix broken links.

What Mornings Do To You

This post was originally posted at my Windows Live Spaces blog. [View original post]

MarkKB's Blog - Sun 26 Aug 2007

I know, it's been a long time since my last post, but from now on I'll try to post with more regularity.

Having said that, I have two rather interesting anecdotes that I'd like to share with you guys... but I'll save the second for later. First, something from Tuesday about two weeks ago.

Well, I was late.
OK, I know, no surprise there. But this time I was super-extra late^TM, and so was told by Mr. Van Niekirk (the Te Henga dean, who was at that time performing a crackdown on lateness) told me to go to the sign-in window.

Now, the sign-in window is on the side of the office block opposite to the one facing the street. Most people take the (literal) high road/pavement, which went directly past said window; I, however, usually walk down the driveway and then up the stairs. I really don't know why.

Here's a map to illustrate. The 'most people' route is in red, while my way is in green. Not to scale, if you're wondering.

Well, anyway, I set off down the driveway, and after a few moments, Mr. Van N. shouted for me to go to the sign-in window. I shrugged my shoulders and continued. When I was about halfway to the stairs, he shouted again. But it wasn't 'till the third time that it clicked.

He thought I was going to class.

After shouting back something that resembled "I'm going this way!", I continued down the driveway, up the stairs, and to the window.

NB
This post is not meant to be hurtful to anyone. Please don't take it the wrong way, and, if you guys comment, please don't say mean things about anyone.
Oh, and sorry if I spelt Mr. Van N.'s name wrong.

Eh.

This post was originally posted at my Windows Live Spaces blog. [View original post]
MarkKB's Blog - Thu 10 May 2007
I really gotta write stuff in this more often. But then again, no-one ever comments.
News

• I've survived a term, the holidays, parent-teacher interviews, assesments and ringworm.
• Achieved with merit (M) on my static image. Yays.
• Still working on my website. I hope to get it out some time over the next three months.
• I really need to get organised - especially with Japanese. I'll be working on that over the next few weeks.

New year. Eh.

This post was originally posted at my Windows Live Spaces blog. [View original post]
MarkKB's Blog - Sat 27 Jan 2007
OK, I know I need to make a point to update this blog more. I'll try to do that, K?
what's new?

• For those who've been wondering where I got to for the last week, I've been in limbo. Actually, I've been trying to reinstall Windows XP. Fresh install didn't work. Tried installing Windows 2000 first - it wouldn't at first, but then it did. Hello 16 colours and 800x600. Bleh. So I've been booting into BartPE for the past week (works perfectly, 'cept there's no sound). And yesterday we tried swapping the DVD-RW with a CD-RW we had lying around - it worked. Eh.
• School on the 7th of Feb. NCEA. Oh, goody.
• I'm thinking of doing a little thing on YouTube - actually I've been thinking of it since 'round late November. Tell ya more later.
• Work on my website has taken a back seat, as have Project Nelson. I've been working a bit on meh fics, but other than that, I've been browsing on Slashdot or clicking every link I don't know about on Wikipedia. Eh.
• Got ringworm. Got anti-fungal cream. Delightful.

Thanks for tuning in! I look forward to seeing some of you back at Massey on the 7th.

Photo. Eh.

This post was originally posted at my Windows Live Spaces blog. [View original post]

MarkKB's Blog Tue Aug 24 2006

I missed the class photo. Yay.
At least I feel a lot better knowing someone, somewhere, missed theirs too. Yeah...
I blame my bed. Drat you, bed! And my clock which is four hours behind. Cliché, blaming the clock, I know, but eh.

Anywho, I'm planning to wipe Fedora off my main computer (read: the computer in my room who's monitor is currently decapitated because of my brother wanting to play networked AOEIIx 2v1 [i.e. he and his friend vs. me] and we can't find an extra monitor for the second computer) and install SuSE on it. (Fedora and SuSE are distros of Linux.) Maybe SuSE will network with the other two computers and my laptop better than Fedora... but I'm not holding my breath. (Yes, I always make a point to install SAMBA...) I'll tell ya guys how it works out! Not that anyone will read it...

C'ya!
--MarkKB

Go Go Gadget Laptop!

This post was originally posted at my Windows Live Spaces blog. [View original post]
MarkKB's Blog Tue Aug 15 2006
You may have noticed that I haven't been on the internet much these past few weeks (here, few means two), and there's a simple reason for that.
I've got a new laptop!
New in this case being I've just got it recently and it's actually several years old.
'Twas the day after my birthday (which was on the 28th of July, for all who missed it... bad people!) when my grandad came around to pick up some scrap metal to take to The Concource (that's that road that juts off Lincoln after you go over the motorway, the trash disposal center's up there...). Anywho, he gave me this bag, and inside is a laptop! What a birthday present...
No, I don't care it's so old it's got a Windows 2000 product key on the bottom. It works fine for me.
So, for those wanting the specs:

Processor: Pentium III 747MHz
RAM: 192 MB
Video: S3 SavageMX 8MB
HDD: Fujitsu MHS2020AT 20GB 4,200RPM
Optical: Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-C2302
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 (I'm not sure if I updated it to SP2 after I recieved it, or it already came like that...)

There's only an inbuilt dialup modem (which means I have to plug in our USB ADSL modem), one USB port, a network port in the form of an PCMIA card, a serial port, a parallel port, a monitor out, and a video out (for stuff like TVs.) There's also these tinny tiny speakers. Oh, and a speaker out and audio in. And an external floppy disk drive.
I can almost hear the laughing.
Well, in the first week, on... Tuesday morning, I think, the monitor started playing up. I started up in safe mode and found that there was something wrong with the video card's driver, so I disabled it. Unfortunately that meant that 3D programs were slooooow, and full screen video was more than a little choppy. Interestingly enough, at the end of the day, I reenabled it and everything worked. Strange.
Well, in the two weeks following, I've installed the basic things (Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3, Windows Media Playeer 11 Beta, Windows Live Messenger 8, trueSpace 3.2, Paint Shop Pro 5.01, Visual Basic, Age of Empires II and the Conquerors, Powertoys for 95 and XP, ect) and copied meh fanfics and alot of meh projects. Yay CD-RW!

In other news, I updated my site about two months ago and never got round to blogging about it. Oh well. To visit the site, click "MarkKB's Web" above or go to http://markk-b.tripod.com/.
deviantART has just recently celebrated their 6th birthday, and with it the release of dA v5, which features a revramped new look. It's kinda broken under IE7B3... oh well. deviantART can be found at http://www.deviantart.com/.
And, thanks to Tim O'Brien, 10TCA has it's own webpage! To visit it, point ye browsers at http://www.tca.zoomshare.com/. (Note to Tim if he reads this: I don't have SMS. I don't even have a mobile phone. Sad, ain't it?)

Random fact: Today signifies the 61st anniversay of the announcement of the unconditional surrender of Japan, thus ending World War II. (for more info see the Wikipedia articles for the Surrender of Japan and the Gyokuon-hoso (address to the people by the Emperor.))
Quote: I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. --Albert Einstein

C'ya!
--MarkKB

School and Geekiness

This post was originally posted at my Windows Live Spaces blog. [View original post]

MarkKB's Journal - 10 Feb 06

Meh... first blog post of the new year!
By the way, did you know that last year was:

• Bill Gates' 50th birthday (Bill Gates was born on Oct 28th, 1955)
• Microsoft's 30th birthday (Microsoft is co-founded and headed by Bill Gates, and was founded in 1975)
• Microsoft Windows' 20th birthday (Windows 1.0 was first released on Nov 20th, 1985)
• Microsoft Windows 95's 10th birthday (Windows 95 was the first version of Windows to feature the now famous "Start" button, "My Computer", "Network Neighbourhood" (now "My Network Places"), the "Recycle Bin", long file names, icons of the desktop, and a heap of other stuff, and was released on Aug 24th, 1995)

So... that's my geeky 'useless fact' tidbit for today...

So, yesterday was Year 10 'orientation day' i.e. we all got to find out what class we're in, what we're taking, ect, ect, and so forth. (Today is the Y9's OD...) I'm in the same class as last year, same teacher, same classmates... same school! (MHS has a 'school within a school' concept... why not just call them 'houses' and save the trouble? Classes are sorted into schools... so if you change classes, and your new class just happens to be in another school, you become part of that school. Schools are named after local beaches...We're Te Henga! Go green!)

The only problem with being in the same class is that the majority of the class are still girls (not that there's anything wrong with girls...) But last year there were at least 10 boys in a 30-pupil class... and somehow we've been whittled down to five! And to top it all off, we've had the extra addition of 3/4 girls! Ah well, I'll just have to live with it...

In other news, for the past week I've been using Windows Live Messenger 8. After months of anxious waiting, I've finally got an invite! I've been playing around with it and it is simply... wow-worthy. (For all those who have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, WLM is the next version of MSN Messenger...) for more info, check out the WLM blog at http://spaces.msn.com/MessengerSays.

I've also been using Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview, and I must say it's a heap of a lot better than IE 6, though whether it's better than Firefox is hard for me to tell. It introduces a lot of features IE has been sorely needing for sooo long (and other browsers have had for ages), but also goes a step further... and not just with features. There are also notable security measures added, so stuff don't get through. To get the geeky gloss, take a peek at http://blogs.msdn.com/ie, or to download the thing, go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7. Note that this is pre-release software, and as such neither me nor Microsoft can be held accountable for any terrors you may behold.

So... I guess that's it for this blog post... not to mention I've been working on programming and my website... and yes, I will upload it soon...

Quote of the post...

"Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Signing off,
--MarkKB

End of another year... (almost...)

This post was originally posted at my Windows Live Spaces blog. [View original post]

MarkKB's Journal - 15th Dec. 05

Ah... the holidays have arrived! (OK, yes, I know, obvious!) Time to kick back, relax and enjoy the sun... or some of us, at least.

I'm quite sure you've all heard this countless times (whether ye be at deviantART or elsewhere) but I'm pretty close to uploading the next version of my website (which is, for all who don't know, at http://markk-b.tripod.com/)... So, if you see a giant cloud over West Auckland at any point in time, don't be alarmed, it's probably just my computer working in overdrive. :D

A big shout to all those in 9TCA of Massey High School... and congrats for "surviving" meh. And to those from deviantART - Hi! :D And those from Room 7 of HIS '04 who have stayed in contact, or even if you've just stumbled upon this blog - nice to see you again. To ye all, wishing you a Merry Christmas and all the best for the new year - the (admitidly few) chats I've had with you guys have been enjoyable.

Ka kite, bonne chance, sayonara and aloha!
--MarkKB