18 Mar 2005
In light of the pending English exams, Guy Betts has invested his time and effort to bring us all an enlightening set of essay questions, encompassing just a few of the many delightful morsels that the Board of Studies is infamous for delivering to its students.
(it’s a scan because it’s Guy’s handwriting, and I felt like doing things that way. Click through to read more for a plain text version of the image.)
Practice Essays
“The lion stalks his prey. The Gazelle becomes wary as the lion pounces. The Gazelle makes his escape. He is lucky, this time.”
Discuss this statement with regard to the imaginative journey.
Text type: Recipe OR SMS
“Melbourne – Rain and 23 degrees, Sydney – Cloudy and 25 degrees, Canberra – Fine and 23 degrees”
Discuss this statement with regard to the imaginative journey.
Text type: Smoke signals
“Yummy Kitchen House Chinese Restaurant”
Discuss this statement with regard to the imaginative journey.
Text type: Stop sign
“Present this coupon and recieve a complimentary Portuguese lesson!”
Discuss this statement with regard to the imaginative journey.
Text type: Morse code OR Movie subtitles
“Room 84″
Discuss this statement with regard to the imaginative journey.
Text type: A 621-page thesis on Norwegian trout-fishing practices.
“Have the porter fetch a mallard at once”
Discuss this statement with regard to the imaginative journey.
Text type: A tatoo
“Dry-clean only. Do not tumble dry. Do not digest.”
Discuss this statement with regard to the imaginative journey.
Text type: Trolley
18 Mar 2005
“Today, I ate a sandwich. It was a Certificate III sandwich. It featured many key competencies, including mayonnaise…”
– Nick
17 Mar 2005
Apologies for what’s been a bumpy couple of days here, as Michael’s hosting begins the shift to a FreeBSD-based server (for shared hosting… his own website’s been running off it for some time now). 
Just to make things perfectly clear, he’s hosting this website for free, and it’s absolutely incredible most of the time (especially considering it’s running off a consumer Internet connection!) — but it’s likely to have been a slightly sporadic time in terms of being able to access things, and in terms of things working properly… for example, the PhotoStack RSS feed and page itself was out the other day, which I’d have attributed to a lack of lib_xml and/or GD(2) support, but apparently this was just the fault of a certain permissions accident. Similarly, sendmail (or the equivalent being used) was out as a result of permissions — apparently it’s back up, but the contact form (which, incidentally, needs a recode) still isn’t working, and neither (so far as I can tell) is my moderation update emails.
For you, dear reader, this simply means that the contact form is temporarily out of action, and your comments may take slightly longer than usual to approve (yes, at this stage, all comments are being manually approved, to effectively combat spam. I’ll review the situation whenever I get around to switching to 1.5 — probably some time in the next two weeks).
14 Mar 2005
I picked them up from the local OPSM this afternoon… they’re weakest strength reading glasses (I’m very slightly long-sighted), and it’s the first time I’ve ever worn them (e.g. had glasses). The main reason for getting glasses was because of massive headaches I get, which eye strain may or may not have something to do with. I think it would have been cheaper to buy a nice LCD screen and ditch this CRT monster, but the glasses help with reading on paper, too, so there we go!
13 Mar 2005
It’s over. I have my life ba… err… I have exams in a week.
Hopefully more photos of viewable quality to come, when I get the two rolls of film developed and have time to scan and publish them.