Congrats to me, I managed to screw up both my math and chemistry. This is the second time I screwed my math and I think it is about time to consider spending serious time doing the math tutorials. But, on the bright side, I think I did well for economics and physics, so I suppose they will balance out the bad grades. AND, the exams are finally over, so it’s time for a short break from studying. Oh, and I am sorry for the server downtime a few days ago.
Some of you might be glad to know, I am continuing development of ALS v0.03B. New features to look out for in the next release:
AJAX Functionality!
Development Functions for developers
Download Protection
And of course, fully integrated themes and languages
As you can see, that’s quite a lot of features, so please be patient as I work on the script. I might release an update once in a while for you all to take a sneak peek at how development’s going.
Oh, and music of the week: The Blues by Switchfoot in their album Nothing is Sound
Off-topic: Wall-E is a very cute and touching movie. Definitely one of the best by Pixar. Of course, all the Mac references helped as well.
There are quite a number of songs that I like recently, and since I didn’t do a Music of the Week, I shall do two today before going to the library to study for tomorrow’s maths test. Both songs are dedicated to a special someone and they really mean something to me.
The first one is called This Is Not the End by The Bravery in their album The Sun and the Moon - (lyrics)
The second one is called I’m not Over by Carolina Liar in their album Coming to terms. It was featured in the movie “What happens in Vegas”.
P.S Both The Bravery and Carolina Liar’s albums are very nice. You can purchase them in iTunes here and here.
Good morning Hwachong. On the 26th of July, 2 teams from Hwachong took part in the Xsite web design competition held at the Science Centre. Despite facing strong competition from rivals such as Dunman High, Raffles Junior College, the team comprising of blah blah blah emerged 5th (which is actually the last place) while the team comprising of Sun Shuo from 08S6A, Jonathan Neo from 08S60, Tan Hwei Ee from 08??? and me myself, Wu Xiao Tian from 08S6J managed to emerge FIRST runner up. We would like to thank the school for its unwavering support and for giving us the opportunity to take part in this competition. Now, we would like to present the plaque to our principal Mr Ang. Thank you.
Yup, that’s right. XSite Finals was held today. It was quite fun actually, involving a “Amazing Race” style of game, where we run around the Science Centre looking for envelopes which contains clues to our next destination. In the end, my team managed to clinch the second place, losing only to the team from Raffles Junior College. Actually we could have been first, but we wasted lots of time clearing one particular station.
Coming to think of it, that station involved us debugging a file, where a SWF object could not be displayed. So, there we were poring over lines of code, trying to find out the problem. Apparently, the only problem was a simple file name error for a Javascript file, but we were “thinking too much” and looking in all sorts of places. Of course, there were quite a bit of confusion as well, when we misunderstood the game officials as well. (actually it’s all their fault. They were saying it’s a graphic file when it’s actually an animation file) But I suppose this happens when you are all hyped up from the competition.
Anyway, I think the competition had a huge sponsorship or something from somewhere. We started off by having a free T-Shirt for the competition, even though it was very plain. Then we had this little cool handphone accessory that is actually a strong LED torchlight. However, the competition was quite a waste of time. We had to report at 9AM, but we started at only 11AM. Then prize presentation was at 4PM, after another category played after us. So in the end, in between long waiting periods, we were shown movies. (2 random Jap Anime which totally doesn’t make sense, and Ratatouille which I have watched)
The prizes were good though. For the first runner up, we each got a medal, a team plaque and a Creative Zen each. The second runner up and the first teams got iPod Shuffles and iPod Nanos respectively. Not too shabby eh, considering each member got one, and there were 3 categories, so that is 12 iPod Shuffles, 12 Creative Zen and 12 iPod Nanos to give away. And there were some vouchers for playing some unglam game where you place your hands and feet on your teammates.
My Prize!
The tea reception for the competitors after the whole thing was also pretty good in my opinion. Well, too bad I got a physics lecture test on Monday and I haven’t started studying yet.
Music of the Week: Navigate Me by Cute is What We Aim For in their new album Rotation. (Personally, I like the acoustic version more, but I can’t find it on youtube)
After just 2 weeks of not running to study for block test, my running is like really screwed. Now I am desperately trying to rebuild my stamina again.
On the other hand, this is a very nice song. (Don’t bother about the video though, it’s terrible - but it wasn’t done by me. Just let the music flow.) By the way, the song is the acoustic version of the song “Scars” by Papa Roach in their album “Getting Away with Murder”.
Did the title get you excited? Then I am sorry to disappoint. The ALS patch will not be anything big scale, and only apply to the 2nd Preview Version of the Third Beta Series. Basically, it a newer version of the current English Language file. If you ever bothered to check your PHP Error Log, you might notice that it has gotten quite large, especially if many many visitors use the ALS everyday. This is because of the number of PHP Notices generated by poorly defined constants in the file, so basically, the update fixes that. In the long term, it may mean saving a few hundred MB of your space (depending on how often your error log is cleared). So look out for that.
I am also going to get an online store to facilitate the purchase of ALS source code. It’s starting to get troublesome to keep replying to emails with the same information every time someone wishes to purchase the source code from me. And it’s also a lot more convenient for the users too. I just need some time (which I hardly have) to find a suitable script and install it on my server. Will update you guys on this.
I love “Viva La Vida”,a new song by Coldplay, from their upcoming album,Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. First heard it on an Apple ad.
The second one is called I’m not Over by Carolina Liar in their album Coming to terms. It was featured in the movie “What happens in Vegas”.
