freshbytes

So I have this thing about apple juice – especially the local kind. I love it, it’s great.

If you’re not aware, Lucaston apple juice is the best there is. I’ve only found a couple of places that actually sell it, and yeah – it’s not cheap when you buy 330mL of it at some $4 a pop.

If you pop down to Margate to Meredith’s fruit place, you can buy it in relative bulk – $4.40 for 2L, WOW!

However, what I’m here to talk about today is friendship…

So when I was younger (think year 8/9) a couple of the guys from my grade (Dave L, Aidan J, Liam B?) who all lived in blacker’s would all come around, and we’d go biking together. This wasn’t hard-core downhill trailbiking, it was just “get-on-your-bike-and-pedal-around” biking. We never went anywhere in particular, just sorta hung around Blackers and surrounding areas.

There was this one time I remember, though, were we all went to Aidan J’s house and drank his apple juice. His sister wasn’t very happy about it (apparently because it was for their dinner or something) but it was a sign of Aidan’s friendship at the time that he let us drink his apple juice.

Now, I’m not sure how much this means in the grand scheme of things (especially seeing as it was apple juice, for crying out loud), but we were thirsty at the time, and Aidan gave his special dinner-only apple juice when

he could have easily given us water, or told us to go down the the beach to satisfy our thirst.

The fact is, he didn’t – he gave us bona-fide apple juice.

Now I recently went to see Wall-E with another friend. He’s a friend, but also a colleague – he’s an excellent guy.

Now William L and I now have this scheme on Saturdays where we pack our lunch and take it to work, therefore saving the $10 or so dollars that we would normally spend on lunch. Now, Will’s taken that $10 a week and bought a DSLR (a 40D, at that), and I’ve taken it to pay for my iPhone bill

Even though we pack our lunch separately, we take it in turns to buy the liquid nourishment. We’ve only just started, and Will was first – can you guess what he bought?

Apple juice? Nope.

If you guessed orange, you would have guessed correct.

There’s a pic of this orange juice below.

I have no idea how I managed to write link apple juice and friends, but hey – it’s tasty, and also informative = win-win.

On to the normal stuff, and I’m totally disappointed that Dean has decided to CAN THE 2008 DIGITAL VIDEO SCAVENGER HUNT for Radi8! Oh noes!
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out our video that I posted on YouTube here (or the freshbytes post that contains it here)- otherwise, join me in lamenting the loss of the week…

Juicy comments below, thanks. (Wow – the puns just keep getting better and better around here…)

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: apple, biking, Blog, digital, hunt, iphone, iphone 3g, juice, lucaston, margate, orange, radi8, scavenger, Untitled, Wall-E

…that’s why they call it the present.

So I was watching Kung Fu Panda the other day, you know, the movie about the Panda who is chosen as the “Dragon Warrior” who eventually learns the secret to limitless power and conquers the evil snow leopard, Tai Lung.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of things that aren’t necessarily the most popular choice. For example, I [still, to this day] listen to Britney Spears – not necessarily because she’s a great human being, but because she’s a great artist. Same goes for any “unpopular” music. I’ll have to admit at this point that I did like Simple Plan for a while – but only because I was into their style of music at the time. I can now proudly say that I no longer like them – but I digress.

I do like children’s movies. Especially those feel-good ones that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Take Over the Hedge, for instance. It’s about a raccoon who uses cunning to lure a small forest family to scavenge food with him, eventually leading him and the forest family into all sorts of trouble.

Today is a gift because everything you do today matters, in some way or form. Pick up that trash, not because you’re too lazy to bend down and pick it up, not because you’re doing it to look ‘cool’, but because in someone’s eyes, you’ve just dropped a couple of points. Drop enough points, and you might just find yourself a nobody.

Anyways, after all the stress of mid-year exams we have just been through, I’d thought I’d come back to posting something a little less un-stressful – the complete explanation to life as we know it.

Just kidding – that’s far too immense a topic to be discussed here. Instead, how about we talk about how exams were? We can all let each other know how we went (results-wise) by the comments system here on freshbytes – sure, your results won’t be private, but you’ll be doing some sort of community service… I think.

The weekend was a little stranger than usual – a bonfire and an 18th. Dean couldn’t manage to light the bonfire with 4 litres of petrol – as you do – and it took the dedicated team of two to finally light it about 15 minutes on. Nathan made an awesome sparkler bomb (some 97 sparklers) which sadly, I don’t have video of. I’ll see if I can scrounge a photo of it or the bonfire later on, and I’ll stick it up here when I do eventually find one. And Dean – not being able to light a fire when you had poured 4 litres of petrol on it? And then trying to light it again (this time, with more petrol) and almost blowing ourselves up? Lesson learned: petrol + fire is fun!

Congrats to Shaun V for the 18 – hope your CRF (Car Replacement Fund) got a well-deserved boost.

Meanwhile, I’ve left the best Radi8 digital scavenger hunt till last – my team. Of course, we won, but that was just to be expected! I’ve FINALLY learnt how to center youtube vids, so here it is – starring Adam v S, Benny L, Jillian H and Karla V doing some seriously insane stuff. What on earth were we thinking?! Enjoy.

One last thing: I’ve lauched a new website. If you want to know the address, just talk to me at school, and try not to spread it around too much – thanks.

Once again, enjoy – comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: digital, gift, present, radi8, scavenger, today

For those of you that didn’t get the title joke, read it as: “Mid Year Exams DO NOT equal FUN!”

Too geeky for you? I thought so.

Anyways, this week has been rather hectic – maybe it’s just me making up for all the study that I haven’t been doing during non-exam time, but it seems like I’m spending most of my day head down, reading from a textbook, scribbling a note in my information sheet every now and again, and then repeating this over and over again, day in, day out…

Luckily, though, I have a GREAT music collection to keep me company – The 100 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music. I bought the album off the iTunes Music Store for the sum of $10.49 – bargain! If you’ve got iTunes installed, hit this link for a preview…

Now, some of you would say that buying classical music is silly because it isn’t copyrighted, but that’s a topic for another day, unfortunately…

Onto Radi8 news and it was yet another upsized version of the fantastic youth group last friday… Bush donuts are great, and the winter camp (if I go) will be great too! Can’t wait for the bonfire this Friday – exactly what everyone needs in the cold Winter night…

It’s always struck me as a little odd that even though we’re getting more and more sun each day (as we’ve passed the shortest day of the year), the days are STILL getting colder! How does that work, because more sun should equal more warmth…but apparently, it doesn’t.

I blame Tasmania.

Time to go, but not before one more video… This week on the Radi8 Digital Scavenger Hunt, it’s Dave O, Thomas v S, Angelo O, Eliot P and Wesley H as they buy 10c of petrol (this was back in 2007), singing Jingle Bells outside a supermarket, doing cartwheels in Kingston Town – you get the idea.

Enjoy, and as usual, comments below!

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: classical, digital, exams, hunt, itunes, mid, Music, radi8, scavenger, store, year

No, you can’t have an iPhone 3G.

Why? Because Telstra in Tassie don’t have any more in stock; they only received something like 200 of these units, and they sold out sometime on Saturday afternoon.

No really, why can’t I have an iPhone on a different carrier? Well, because you can’t get Optus 3G reception in Tassie, as demonstrated by the following picture:

…does anyone else see my problem?! So even though Optus offer the best data plans out of all the three carriers who are selling the iPhone 3G, I can’t go with them because their 3G coverage in Tassie is non-existent.

So, dear reader, I find myself in a precarious position:

1. Go with Telstra’s $30/month plan, which gives me: 22 minutes of calls, 2.5MB of data (yeah, 2.5 MEGABYTES of data, on a 3G phone), and on top of that, I have to pay $399 upfront for my iPhone! To be fair, I do get free Wi-Fi at all Telstra’s Wi-Fi hotspots which equates to pretty much any Maccas, and some places in town…
2. Buy iPhone 3G outright for $847 (16GB) and just use it with my current pre-paid SIM. I won’t have any data this way, but at least I’ll have 1c text to all Telstra mobiles!
3. Buy iPhone 3G outright for $847 (16GB) and upgrade my current SIM to NextG pre-paid. Data costs are completely ridiculous, far more than the equivalent Optus ($14.95 for 200MB compared to $59 for 200MB with Telstra) or Vodafone data packs, but I’ll have the best coverage…

Choices, choices. I hate it how being Tassie makes us disadvantaged though lack of technology. When a telecommunications has no 3G coverage in an Australian state, that’s just not on. Intelligent Island? Give me a break. Mark my works, while Telstra has the monopoly that it has over the telecommunications industry like it has currently, Tassie will continue to remain the most un-intelligent island. For example, it currently costs Internode (an Internet Service Provider) SIX times as much to ship data (through Basslink) from Melbourne to Tassie than it does for them to ship data from Melbourne to New York. Again, corporate Telstra screws the small guy.

Telstra really is the epitome of a bloated telecommunications company. The things they do well – coverage – are more than offset by the things they do badly – price, service, value for money.

But enough of Telstra and their corporate monopoly. Now, how about we talk about something else not-funny? Something, say like the so-not-funny Year 12 funny photo? Picture after the jump – click on the link, if you don’t know what “after the jump” means.

Here at freshbytes, I personally respect Facebook over MySpace any of the day, as I’ve outlined previously. So it’s not a big surprise, then, that we have built, brick by brick, the Freshbytes Wall. It’s that little piece of ajax-love in the top right hand corner of every page, that sweet widget that allows you to post your comments about the site, do shout-outs, and all that kind of funky stuff. You can additionally view all the comments on the Freshbytes Wall page, where you can also add comments – and they’ll show up on the Freshbytes Wall (and consequently, on every page)! Cool, huh?

Speaking of freshbytes, the Freshbytes Forums are looking a little unloved. Why not register today? You’ll be able to chat with us supergeeks over teh interwebs, and discuss anything that comes to mind…

Radi8: We had the St Vinnies Ball this friday, and it was actually really good! Besides yours truly not making any effort what-so-ever to dress up, there were people there that looked fantastic in their St. Vinnies clothes, and then there was Adam… But really, it was a fun-filled night with the Life Dancers dancing to Greased Lightning, the Macarena, and many other great hits. It was excellent to see a few faces that I hadn’t seen before/had never seen before – I hope you continue to come to Radi8. There was one thing that was pretty amusing, though, and it was that with the exception of <8 people, the whole crowd was exclusively Calvin. I mean, really! Where are all you other teens going? Maybe to CrossEyed Youth?

Anyways, as we Calvin-ers in Years 11 & 12 prep for mid-years, I encourage to tell one person about freshbytes, provided they don’t already know about it.

freshbytes – the freshest bytes on the web, MUCH more than random zeroes and ones!

One last thing, before you get too bored: The Radi8 Digital Scavenger Hunt video for the week! This week, it’s Dean T, Paul C, Emily L, Blair T, Simon J and Danny T in a fun-filled adventure where they sing in Kingston Town, scale tall buildings, do the leap-frog in Franklin Square, and where boys try on girl’s dresses… Enjoy!

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: 3g, apple, calvin, digital, hunt, internode, iphone 3g, monopoly, optus, radi8, scavenger, telstra

I think I’m suffering from writer’s block or something, because I can’t think of what to write for this post. I had a few good ideas about where this was going, some punchy-one-liners, something profound, but now they’re all gone

So I’m going to start off with the tech news of the day, and no, it’s not iPhone-related. You can definitely expect something on that front next week though, when the holy grail of all phones is actually released…

Guys, VOIP is the word of the day. Get into it! If you have a computer with a microphone (USB or what-ever, doesn’t really matter) and speakers, you’re all set! All you need is a client (piece of software that lets you talk with other people all around the world – for FREE, all it uses is your internet connection) such as Skype, and you’re all set!
To the NoSpoon crew, I know we use TeamSpeak for group chat, but maybe we should cut out the middlemand and get VOIP-ing. So get Skype, get a Skype name, and get chatting! My Skype username is “bennylingbling”, (without the quotes) so whenever you want to chat, I’ll usually be there. If I’m not, contact me by IM and I’ll be on Skype faster than you can say Voice Over Internet Protocol!

Radi8, as usual, was awesome – the 4th of July meant that there was the movie Independence Day being shown. The games were based on Uncle Sam, so we had some US General Knowledge questions and a couple of other fun games. Unfortunately, Black Team didn’t win – we lost to some other team I can’t remember by either 4 or 6 points. On another note, the Radi8 website has been changed to incorporate a MySpace and a static (non-MySpace) page, where those of us who don’t have Spaces or Facebooks can see what’s going on – without all the extra crap that a MySpace usually has.

And on that note, MySpace is utterly ridiculous. I don’t know how people can stand using pre-built, shocking-CSS themes, but they just, look, horrible! In this blogger’s humble opinion, MySpace has degenerated into a [insert derogatory word here]-fest of people who don’t know their Verdana from their non-repeating backgrounds.
Facebook, on the other hand, is just an upper class version of MySpace – just without the crappy “custom layouts” and all that other junk. I really like Facebook, just because everyone uses the same layout, the design is clean, and there are cool things like “Walls”, “Pokes”, “Gifts”, and the insanely awesome Facebook chat. MySpace just pales in comparison.

ANYWAY, after that mini-rant, it’s time for what you all came here for: the moral guidance/deep and meaningful. That stuff that makes the world go around, that wonderful, excellent stuff that so few seem to have, and yet long for in the deepest, darkest corners of their hearts… Or something.

Now, I’m not one to be affected by change, but when it’s world-shakingly huge, I stand up and take notice. The 3G iPhone is a good example of this – it’s a device which has generated so much talk, yet has one of THE biggest pedalstools in the history of gadget-goodness. If it doesn’t stand up to be all that it’s hyped up to be, then Apple will take a huge hit because of it.

However, there is one aspect of change that worries me – the fear of the unknown. That part that’s completely open to interpretation, up-for-grabs, and all that kind of stuff. You never know what’s just around the corner in respects to change – that new employee might be a complete clown who doesn’t know anything, or just generally not a very nice person. I think it’s up the individual in regards to how they deal with change – accept it and move on, or rant continually on a small blog that they have… You can see which path I have chosen to take, ya?

There was this event on the weekend that I wasn’t invited to. Sure, I was just a little, tiny, tiny cut, (my ego did take a hit) but then I realised that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t invited. I had been to the ‘event’ two years ago, and yeah, it was awesome, but in that two years – mate, so much has changed! I know I’ve changed, I think that other people have changed, and people just aren’t the same as they were.

If I say any more, you’ll probably stop reading altogether, so I’ll leave you with one last thought and another video from the Radi8 Digital Scavenger Hunt:

“When times change, you’ve got to change with the times.”

This time, it’s Emily J, Lyndsey H, Hannah M, Rachel O, Lucy O, Laura V and Rachel W doing some crazy things, examples of which include: singing the National Anthem in front of a public Australian flag, breakdancing on a cardboard box, cartwheels on the beach, walking out of an elevator backwards, and some other crazy things… You’ll just have to watch the video.

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: apple, change, digital, hunt, iphone, radi8, scavenger, skype, time, voip

Last Thursday, I went to a Documentary Drama preformed by the Year 9/10 Drama class. The docu-drama was entitled “The Cult of Celebrity”, and it investigated how celebrities affect our lives today.

Besides featuring a song by Britney Spears herself (to their credit, it was well choreographed – thank goodness), it was actually very entertaining and though-provoking. For those of you that weren’t there, (“It’s too cold”, “It’s raining”, “I have homework to do” – slackers, all of you) there was a scene where a couple of guys were doing a court session, where they argued the for and against points of having celebrities influencing popular culture. What they said was largely lost on me, but the ‘court case’ was eventually dismissed. We like our celebrities just as they are, thank you.

Anyways, the main storyline revolved around the preview that the class showed in assembly earlier that day – a “My child’s a star” contest between two child stars (forget their screen names, apologies), Megan Hopper and Emily Jansen. Emily won with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, and the rest of the story revolves around from there…they meet years later in a bar (with a hilarious bouncer), their friends comment on them behind their backs, while meanwhile fan-sites get a straight-A student seeing a shrink because she just isn’t coping…

If you weren’t there, you missed out. Luckily for you, there’s another Drama presentation on this Thursday 3rd July – this time, it’s a comedy by the Student Theatre Company, the excellent Drama class that runs after-hours. It should be excellent – please make an effort to be there!

On the freshbytes news front, you can now post comments in pages. Apologies this took so long to implement – I never realised it was so simple! So, if you’ve been wanting to comment on The Merchant of Venice, the Virtual Game, or even the funky Garageband tunes, you now can! In fact, I encourage you to do so.

One last thing – Radi8 on the weekend was awesome as usual, with an upsized Radi8. I am a little disappointed that the Radi8 website is now a MySpace page, but I do understand why it was done that way. Don’t worry, dear reader, freshbytes will remain WordPress powered for a good period of time – we will reach our target audience eventually

Anyway, in lieu of the Radi8 static-to-myspace downgrade, I’ve got a video for you all… The Radi8 Digital Scavenger Hunt videos from November 2007! This video is Tim’s team which included Tim P, Gemma V, Brendan J, Billy T and Callum M, but fear not – I’ll be posting the other videos each week, so if this isn’t your team – one of these weeks, it will be!

A little background: similar to the Wild Animal Safari held a fortnight ago, we were sent out in teams to do crazy things in Kingston/Hobart – things that included having your whole team in a tree, kissing chickens, singing YMCA with a whole bunch of strangers, getting strangers to spell weird words, walking out of an elevator backwards… the list went on forever. Enough from me, I’m dead tired from the Physics practical write-up, so I’ll shut up and let you watch the video. Comments below, as usual

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: Blog, calvin, celebrity, cult, digital, documentary, drama, Freshbytes, hunt, myspace, radi8, scavenger, School