Extension 2 proposal

Just to continue on an academic theme (heavily reflective of my recent life, in terms of workload…), I’m winding up my propsal for English Extension 2. As happens on a regular-ish basis here, I plan on posting the full text of the final document, once it becomes final. Until then, I’d love you if you could read the current draft (PDF, 31KB) and comment — please, don’t hesitate to say it’s poorly written/detailed/whatever; I’ve got a full day and a bit before it’s due, so there’s plenty of time left to re-write it!

Seriously, though; criticisms on the proposal itself are fine — criticisms of what it is actually proposing (content/plot) are not helpful at this stage. By all means, feel free to ask me why I plan on doing what that document suggests I’m spending the next 8-9 months working on, but don’t try and get me to change it — at least, not until after 8:30am Monday, when all this is over, and I can go back to being existing without worrying what the marking guidelines for breathing are like.

In the interests of accessibility, those unable to read PDF documents for whatever reason are invited to contact me, so that I may publish a text-only (XHTML formatted) version of the document here. In the interests of preserving my sanity and time, this shall only be done if someone requires it — don’t let that stop you from asking, though.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar, a utility released by Google for the purposes of research, looks moderately cool, and even more useful. First impressions are that there is a lot of high-ranking fee-for-full text websites on it, which is a shame, and somewhat defeats the purpose of it as an application for research — having said that, it does look useful for identifying relevant texts, criticisms, and other works which reference the same (thus, in some spanning manner, broadening the scope of material which may be investigated).

The “sites which reference this” thing is probably the coolest part of it all, I would think. I’ll play with it some more tomorrow some time.

Sosumi

Sosumi, an audio clip released with Mac OS back in ’91. I stumbled across this (don’t ask how… clicking Wikipedia links through articles is my new form of procrastination!), and found it oh-so-slightly amusing.

SACS the IT department and the AUC

SACS the IT department and the AUC

I, of course, had no part in any of this, as such a thing would be totally uncharacteristic and inconceiveable. I can see ASIO come running, now!

I’ll stop making bomb threats, some day. Like, when someone seriously misunderstands the intent behind a comment I make, and the AFP come knocking down my door in the middle of the night. Hasn’t happened, yet.

MPAA wants parents, teachers to rat on their kids | The Register

The reality isn’t as bad as the title would suggest, but still. There’s nothing like a Stalinist reference to make people jump up and down in paranoia. Except perhaps a Hitler Youth reference. Or a Nineteen Eighty Four reference.

You get the idea. The article is horrendously overstated, but the point still stands. Personally, I’m interested to run the software, just for kicks. I can’t wait until they bring out a Linux version of it!

*sits back in anticipation*