Archive for August, 2009

The Road Goes Ever On

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

/Start Emo Mode

When I first migrated to Melbourne over six years ago, I came not knowing anyone. The only person I know of is one that I just met over a dinner between two families, mine and my dad’s good friend’s.

Throughout Year 12, I met many great people of various backgrounds and ideology and form strong bonds with a few. But then that all came to an end when our VCE results were out and we were flung all over Australia, and some back to their home countries because they couldn’t get into the university they wanted to.

So I was back to square one in University. I met Chris during my first year in a tutorial. He in turn introduce me to Denise and in turn to the other members of our usual group of friends that we call FNL. Through the years it grew and last year it started fragmenting.

Chris went back to be with his fiancee (my cousin, what a strange twist of fate). Aliaa return to satisfy government bond among other things leaving poor Amir behind. Now, XW is going back for an interview with Prudential as they weren’t many job opportunities here in Melbourne at the moment. While she may not have made her mind regarding to work back there or here in Melbourne, we’re dreading the former.

Though we’ve known each other for almost five years now, I feel that it isn’t enough. I really regret not being able to talk to her more often, to get to know her more. It is said that man’s feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell. It is at the time of parting that we realise what we are about to lose. Why does it take a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye?

It fills me with a heavy heart having to see our lovely little group that has grown over the years becoming smaller again. Of course with me being selfish, I really hope that she would come back here to work and screw the other job.

I’ve always had the dream that after a few years down the road, when we’re all married with a good job and our own kids, we would still meet every Friday night for dinner and social, just like one big family.

Unselfishly, I do hope that she finds the path that would be the best for her. A poem that I like from JRR Tolkien comes to mind:

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

I wish you all the best XW!

/end Emo Mode

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Lossless

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

A long long time ago in a galaxy not far away, I used to own an Apple iPod. Not the fancy coloured touch screen ones those young ‘uns owns these days, but the ye olde black and white fat thick iPod which the iPod classic is modelled after. Back then not every Tom, Dick, Jane Doe and Grandmas know what an iPod is let alone own one. It felt unique and special to have one.

Sadly, it met it’s demise right after the one year warranty ended and I’ve never touched one since. Fast forward to today, I’ve started working and have the ability to purchase reasonably quality electronics. I’ve bought a dedicated sound card and 5.1 surround system for my PC and

I must say that quality sound does really brings new life and dimension to the games. I can hear every twig break and rustling leaves and I traverse Middle Earth. I can hear the pipes creak and subtle scurrying of creatures in the distant while exploring the creepy USG Ishimura in Deadspace.

Watching high definition 1080p Bluray movies with DTS 5.1 surround sound is another joy. Recently, my Nokia N95 8GB was dying. I caved in and gave Apple a second chance by replacing it with an iPhone 3GS 32gb. Its great to be rid of the sluggish performance that the N95 has been giving me for the past 2 years and I get and iPod to boot.

I used to use my N95 as a portable music player as well, although the interface wasn’t as good as the iPod. What made me search for an alternative was during an 8 hour flight, I realised I can’t use my N95 to listen to music! Thankfully newer phones have included a “Flight Mode” for us to use our smart-phones various other multimedia capabilities while traveling in the air.

Recently, I’ve ripped by The Fray CD into iTunes and by extension my iPhone, encoded in Apple’s Lossless format. Putting on my new Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5vi noise-isolating earphones with voice capability, I immediately noticed the difference in quality when listening to the lossless and lossy formats when played back to back.

Lossless data compression is a class of data compression algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data. The term lossless is in contrast to lossy data compression, which only allows an approximation of the original data to be reconstructed, in exchange for better compression rates.

Apple Lossless (ALAC) is an audio codec developed by Apple for lossless data compression of digital music. Apple Lossless data is stored within an MP4 container with the filename extension .m4a. It is not a variant of AAC, but uses linear prediction similar to other lossless codecs such as FLAC and Shorten. The only reason I’m using ALAC is because its the only lossless format that can be played on the iPod/iPhone as far as I know.

The songs that I used to rip are in 128kbps mp3s with some noticeable static/noise and occasionaly ‘poppings’. It annoyed me to no end for some reason. I think I might embark on a big project soon to convert my 6000+ songs library into lossless format. But first I need to track down those damn CDs.

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Competent

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Assignment: Competent
Exam: Competent

One subject down, 3 more subjects and a skill assessment to go. Boss is also pressuring me to complete all assessment and obtaine RG146 by June. I suppose the faster I get it over and done with, the more options will be open to me sooner.

Bring it on I say! Rawr!

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Happiness

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Happiness is just outside my window
Would it crash blowing 80-miles an hour?
Or is happiness a little more like knocking
On your door, and you just let it in?

Happiness feels a lot like sorrow
Let it be, you can’t make it come or go
But you are gone- not for good but for now
Gone for now feels a lot like gone for good

Happiness is a firecracker sitting on my headboard
Happiness was never mine to hold
Careful child, light the fuse and get away
Cause happiness throws a shower of sparks

Happiness damn near destroys you
Breaks your faith to pieces on the floor
So you tell yourself, that’s probably enough for now
Happiness has a violent roar

Happiness is like the old man told me
Look for it, but you’ll never find it all
But let it go, live your life and leave it
Then one day, wake up and she’ll be home
Home, home, home

- Happiness, The Fray

Someone once told me:

Happiness is based on circumstances, contentment is eternal. Happiness is unpredictable. Chase after it and it destroys you as you will be chasing after things that will only be temporarily filling the emptiness inside you. You aren’t chasing eternal joy. You’re chasing something that will forever change as it will never satisfy you long enough.

In this song, it says that “Happiness feels a lot like sorrow. Let it be, you can’t make it come or go“. Sorrow comes without warning. No one goes looking for it and yet it comes. It is a very sad thing to experience but nevertheless it still comes unbidden.

Happiness works like this to a certain extent. Try and try as you may, it is insanely hard to find true happiness. It comes when it comes, not when you’re actively searching for it. Think for a moment. When one is sad and depress, that person would be more likely to search frantically for a way to get out of it. Happiness that is found in this way is just cheap thrills and only lasts temporarily.

True happiness is like falling in love, or being with someone you truly love or an unexpected good news. It is because that we aren’t actively searching for it, it comes to you. We should just live life to the fullest and not worry about whether we can find happiness for it is random. It will come to you when you least expect it.

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