Five Minutes

The hardest thing to deal with when it comes to exam results is waiting for them to be released. It’s worse when your university is the last one to do so. Plus, I’m still unconvinced that I passed one of the units, which isn’t a nice feeling when you went into the exam needing just 20%.

To take my mind off it (particularly since the results won’t be out until next week), I’ve been revising my enrolment for next year slightly. It’s a little scary to suddenly realise that you’re enrolled in all the units that you need to graduate — particularly when you’ve been working on the degree for eight years.

Now I just need to take my mind off that little fact. Well, I can always whinge about my timetable for next semester. Admittedly, it’s my own fault to some extent that it’s a bit crap; if I’d enrolled in video production to start with instead of adapted screenplays (what the hell was I thinking, enrolling in two scriptwriting units in the same semester?), I’d have gotten the tutorial time for video production that would have fitted in better with the rest of my timetable. Still, I’ve managed to keep the timetable to three days a week, so it’s not really that bad — bar the six hour gap between classes on Mondays.

Time to figure out some way of keeping myself amused at uni for a period that’s two hours beyond my laptop battery’s maximum endurance, I guess. Maybe the marvellous invention known as the tavern might help somehow…

(Thanks to napsilan on Ubuntu Forums for the Wine package and IEs4Linux 2.5 beta 1 for installing IE 5, 5.5, 6 and 7 packages. No thanks to Microsoft for producing such a lousy Web browser that I still have to test compatibility with.)

http://www.flickr.com/groups/firstgoatse/

It’s nice that we still have our rites of initiation in modern society. I just wish I’d thought of that when I had to write a script about rites of passage a few months back.

With thanks to my man Deg, who pointed this out: Worldometers.

Some of those are a bit depressing, really, like the hunger counter. I’m still not sure if I’d be happier with less perspective.

Last night, I went to The Big Shave, the graduate screening night for film students at super TAFE. (OK, that’s a little harsh. The film programme seems to be quite good, actually.) The best fifteen short films produced this year by graduating¹ students were shown, with a vote at the end for the best film.

Sadly, with work today, I decided to skip the after-party and announcement of who won, but it was certainly an enjoyable night. As you’d expect from a set of student films, things ran the gamut. There were a couple of pretty straight-up drama pieces, some experimental stuff, some obscure mood pieces — pretty much the array you’d be used to if you watch Shorts on Screen.

In the end, I voted for — and I’m risking bodily harm saying this — The Heretic, directed by Shane Bransby, which was a hilarious and inventive stop motion film using, of all things, Lego. I won’t give away the plot, since it features a wicked twist, but should the film ever find its way to some sort of release, even if it’s just Youtube, I’d highly recommend it.

There were a couple of other films that made me wonder what the hell is in the water supply at ECU, though. It’s not a student film night without those! (Also, there was a disturbing amount of location shooting in toilets, and I still don’t want to know where the sound effects in Flush’d came from.)

It was genuinely good fun, and it was nice to do something university-related that doesn’t increase my exam results anxiety. Two weeks to go…

¹Graduating is probably a misnomer, since there were definitely productions by people who weren’t actually leaving the university or graduating with anything, so far as we could figure out. Then again, the graduating classes lists were apparently wonky as well, so perhaps SCCA’s just using a different definition to everyone else for eligibility. Not really a big deal, particularly since I’m unlikely to do enough production work to qualify for it in any case, but curious.

Yes, I plan to finish transcribing the Mongolia journal entries soon.

Well, hopefully before my next trip, anyway…

My love of being fashionably late has apparently extended to buying music on-line. Well, not that so much, since I’ve ordered quite a few CDs on-line, but more buying actual music files. Really, it’s just that iTunes doesn’t run on Linux and that I’ve never been comfortable with AllOfMp3; besides which, I’m not interested in buying DRM-infested files when I can go and get a CD. Plus, I just kinda like the packaging and having something to hold.

Anyhoo, Martian Music (not affiliated with them, et cetera) has finally broken down that barrier by selling plain old MP3s. (OK, they’re not FLAC or even Vorbis files, but it’s still a hell of a lot better than anything encrypted and DRMed.) So, tonight I burned a little more of that bank card and bought some virtual music for the first time. If I’d known it could be that painless, I’d have done it ages ago.

For the record, I bought Roaring Trade by Razorlily (thank God for Unearthed helping me to find music, given my distaste for much of Triple J’s current on-air staff), Like Drawing Blood by Gotye (probably should have won the J award — sorry, Hilltop Hoods fans) and a CD that’s been on my I should get around to buying that some time list for at least seven or eight years, Eternal Nightcap by The Whitlams.

All quality music.