really pissed that blogger still hasn't upgraded it's photo handling capabilities.
it really detracts from it as a platform for blogging, even with it's tight integration with picasa.
as a whole, this is one of the main reasons i've stayed away for so long.


so i'm in korea now, in case anyone cares or doesn't know.
and i went to bukhansan national park today with a couple of lecturers from the ISC program and a former student assistant.
this is definitely one of the "must go" places but i wouldn't recommend it unless you have a good guide.

it's really hilly, and it's more of a mountain range than a park.
the scenery is really beautiful, but most of the time i was too busy wondering if i would survive the climb to really take it in.

first i didn't pack a pair of shoes that were suitable for hiking, instead only wearing sneakers.
secondly, i'm not in terrific physical shape.
thirdly, it' s been drizzling non-stop, making the ground really wet and slippery, especially the rocks which are so smooth that they offer almost no footholds at all.

combine these factors and i'm lucky to have survived at all

but why am i complaining?
i had fun right?

true.
i took loads of pictures, got some much needed exercise, had really good gimbap (a korean version of sushi, rice and condiments rolled in seaweed, which i think is superior because it keeps really well) and i am still alive.
nothing like a NDE (near death experience) to remind you how precious life is.

my work/study area, a mishmash of odds and ends, a melange, a gallimaufry..... I'll miss it.

my dumbell, and the phone that doesn't work anymore (right under the curtain)

my shoes, which i leave anywhere that my feet happen to leave them

The time has finally come to move out.

I've gotten so attached to this room. It's my confidant, my friend, my fortress of solitude, my batcave.

Now as I'm stuffing my bags full of stuff I didn't know I still had (oh, so that's where my other sock was! etc.)

I don't know how you can describe the feeling of packing, it's like systematically deconstructing your identity, without realising it, my room has become an extension of personality, a part of how i define myself.

Restoring my room to its pristine state is like tearing down part of my life. I just can't continue writing.

This post is dedicated to the memory of my room, may you never have to be neat again.

Living in a hall can be fun, or it can suck.
usually it lies in between the thwo extremes, but tends to swing to the sucky side a bit too much for my liking.

One of the things you can't control is the people you live with.

Just at dinner today, the guy living in the room next to me runs out and asks me to help him remove a bug in his room.

picture this, a guy in his early 20s, needing help to remove a bug, an insect not even a quarter of a tenth of a hundreth his size.

turned out the bug wasn't even poisonous, just a leafhopper that got in by mistake (to a room on the 5th floor! no less, must have been a really high jump for a leafhopper)

oh, did i mention he was studying environmental science?
and that he mentioned that he did a vivisection of a grasshopper just the day before?

forget women, i'll never even understand men......

seriously.

wow, 3 months just flew by.

i haven't been committed to updating this blog, hence the dearth of posts.
it's not that i have nothing to blog about, rather i have too much to feel, too much to think about, but not enough resolution to put finger to keyboard to document my thoughts.
what a loss for posterity huh?


speaking of resolution, youtube now supports HD uploads of videos, and it just so happens i joined a TV club that makes movies.
we don't have the equipment to shoot in HD yet (come on, student outfit what)
but animation is another story altogether.

this is an animation i spent about 20 hours on, it's our opening credits, kinda like the ones you see whenever you see a film by 20th century fox or dreamworks.
yet for all the time i put in (20 hours, i'll be mentioning this figure for some time to come)
the final product is only 30 seconds long.

20 hours=30 seconds.
how does that even equate?

so anyway, bringing up that point about youtube being able to display HD videos now, i uploaded it to youtube for your viewing pleasure!
in HD!
remember to watch in HD, doesn't look good in low resolution.


please tell me what you think in the comments.


btw
this is a good indication of what i'm doing with my time for those of you interested in such things.

I recently got a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS4.

It would be a good idea not to ask where or how i got it.

Anyway, just having a copy of Photoshop isn't good enough.

You have to learn to navigate the maze that is photoshop's user interface.

I suppose for long time users, the interface comes as second nature, but to the beginner it is really really really intimidating.

Anyway, the best way to learn something new is to just jump in headlong and learn stuff as you go along, right?

That's a first effort, so yeah, it kinda fails in certain departments, creativity for one.

It's a poster I had to prepare for RCTV, an audio visual club in my hall, which I may go into more detail at a later date.

Right

Onto the tutorial!

For those of you who choose to stubbornly trudge on with the bloated, antiquated, sluggish beast that is Internet Explorer for your forays in cyberspace, let me first say that i pity you.

Truly, I do pity you.

However, for those of you stuck with it, for whatever reason, here's some news that you might want to hear.

There has been news of a security breach of Microsoft's vaunted IE, which could, I quote

"Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say."

You can tell I quoted it because it's in between those two squiggly lines.

Full article can be found here.

Fortunately (for you), there is a solution.

To prevent any further loss in market share, Microsoft had to be quick to release a security patch, which I recommend you download, post haste, lest you are a masochist, and enjoy living with the knowledge that sooner or later, someone will steal something from you.

Again I quote

"Security experts advised users to stay off Internet Explorer due to a serious security exploit in all versions of IE, and a third-party developer even pushed out an unofficial temporary fix, but you can now go grab the official patch straight from the source. The patches are available in several different downloads depending on what version of IE you're using and what OS you're running, and not all of the downloads are pointing to existing pages yet, but they should hopefully all be rolled out sometime today.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-078 - Critical [Microsoft]"

via Lifehacker.com

Or, you could save yourself some hair-pulling, and switch to any number of popular free alternatives to IE, such as Firefox 3, Google Chrome, or even Opera 9 (soon to be 10).

It's really simple really, not only is IE inherently unstable, with many holes for hackers to slip through, there are also a lot, and I mean a lot, like literally 70% or more of all computers surfing the Internet use IE. It's just economics, by cracking IE once, hackers gain access to the secrets of a greater percentage of the web browsing community.

It's the same analogy why Mac users don't "have" virus problems, it's simply not worth it to write a virus that targets such a small subset of the community.

What are you waiting for. Go update now!

And also contemplate the switch to a free OS, such as Ubuntu, which means you pay less money on the OS, and more money to souping up your hardware.

That's all for now.

what my room looks like on laundry day.

costs $4 per load >0<

just me looking like a complete fool for the camera

i'm much more yeng in real life

yeah

see what i mean

where i spend most of my time

too lazy to write more, and i'm getting sick of how idiotically difficult it is to upload images with blogger. may consider moving the whole thing to another platform.

oh the 'well built' guy below is the vice chancellor. yay

exhaustion