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You know what sucks?

Pulling upto where I leave my car for Uni, on a public holiday, and seeing no cars in the street at all. (Uni’s don’t follow public holidays’).

Could my opinion of Monash be changed? Or at-least changing?

So-far I have had two lecturer’s that seem to know what they are about, I have run into many people who I can just talk to.

There doesn’t seem to be as stand-offish as other people who have been at Clayton longer than me. I remember when we made the move from Peninsula to Caulfield, everyone seemed VERY stand-of no matter who you were or where you were from. Even which faculty you were from seemed to determine if you were spoken to or not.

At Peninsula, it seemed everyone was able to make friends with and talk to anyone, regardless of faculty, year group, or study level. Everyone was jst generaly chatt.

When the move was made to Caulfield, I figured it was because it was a much bigger campus, and the fact we were out-siders who were not part of the smaller friends groups that are bound to develop.

That is why its so surprising here. Clayton is so much of a bigger campus than Caulfield, but holy-crap, as I’ve said, how wrong can I be.

I might just enjoy this year.

I’ve come to relise that after tomorow… I will have no-one at Uni.

Everyone I know from 1st year, and that I’ve met at Caulfield will be moving on from Uni as of the 14th, I’m stuck there another 6 months.

I will have no-one to relate to at Uni, no-one who comes from the same time line as me, and no-one who seems to have the same, or more, passion for pure IT as we did.

Its scary, and there’s a huge empty hole in my gut now. Its sad, and I know that I am going to miss everyone so much. Its sad, I hope that I can keep in contact with everyone.

The personalities is one huge thing I’m going to miss. Everyone in this year seems to have an attitude about them of “This is who I am” where is all the other year levels seem to be some variation of “Look at me, I club!”

I know many of the people who have had such a huge impact on me, and are leaving Uni this year probably don’t read this. But thank you. Thank you all.
You have been amazing, and made Uni what it is today, without you guys, I know the next 6 months at Monash Caulfield are going to be darker each time I step onto the campus grounds.

Nah, not enough.

Yesterday, IE finished with a freakin HUGE bang! Got there wtih my kit at around 10:30am, and got all the last minute stuff done, like the power point, some printouts, and Jake and Pod’s belovid PIR. The whole time, the day had a sense of… well I don’t quite know what it was. That something special was about to take place.

So we get there, and start setting up, cables running everywhere, laptops not working so repalcements being brung in, etc. Cade having to run off to grab a power cable for us. The lollies set out.

Just a mind-blowing thing to get setup so quick.

 

See! Seirously, how cool do we look!

Anyway, there was some really awesome projects that people had come out with including:

I should include a picture of the Griefline porject here, Pete and Chandrika did an amazing job on that, but alas, not photos yet.

I also discovered that the mysterious Dorra that I kept hearing about all year happened to be Dorra from Peninsula, the IT receptionist who helped me with all the academic stuff back in 2006! So that was awesome catching up wtih her, and letting her know all her hard work hand’t gone to waste.

After all was done with the Expo, and everything packed away, Andrew Owen from IT Marketing at Monash came over for a chat, I had met him once before at the Atomic Live Forum 2008, and it turns out he would be fairly interested in running a Quake3 tournament as part i the next Idef expo! Chances are I’ll get to help out wtih that, so awesome!

Then came the after party.
Man, what an after party.
Lost every game of pool, first with Pete agaisnt Cade and Rick. Then me, Tai, and Cade taking Rick, Vic, and Nim. Then lost again JUST in a close game teamed with Luke against Rick and Vic. We had 5 balls left, they had the black. I sunk 4 of the 5 before screwing up the last!

Man so close (yes pics will come later on).

Then it was to the general socialising, and getting contacts from everyone who I didn’t ahve yet, and ofcourse lots of having fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Awesome year guys! Good luck with exams!

Well today was probably the best day of Uni I have attended. Let me re-phrase that, the best day of Uni at Caulfield.

Not only did I get a bunch of IE work done, but also… the feeling that was there at Peninsula was back.
I don’t know how to explain it, it doesn’t really make sense. At Peninsula, there was a layed back feel, where everyone got on with everyone else, and it didn’t feel…. big? 

At Peninsula, most of the time was spent talking. Not bullshit taking, but productive talking. Everyone is comfortable with everyone, even to the point of talking openly about stuff which… well hasn’t been mentioned since Peninsula. Its good.

I loved the Peninsula campus, there wasn’t alot of students, and it was a facility that was cornered off from the rest of Frankston, it was just so… what I expected of Uni, and its kind-of sad that Caulfield is only starting to feel like that.

I don’t think it has anything to do with everyone being friends now, or anything like that, I’ve known Craig, Yousef, Pranesh, Adam, Sarah, and Tina since Peninsula, and James since roughly the start of last year., and a bunch of other Caulfieldians that are too many to mention. We are all good mates, but… I don’t know, it was just the location seemed a bit stale…

I hope that my last 6 months at Uni next year are going to be like this. If they are, the academic motivation that I had the first year will defintly be there, and who knows, the marks might raise?

I really am. The amount of excitment I’m feeling is weird.
Not in a long time have I been involved in so many different area’s and posibilities that have gotten me this excited.

The last time I was like this was when GreentubeLAN broke free of Monash, and sitting down with Craig, Paulo, Mike, and Nick, working out where we were going to go, and what we were going to do.
It was amazing, and my head was buzzing, so many things to try out, so many things to do, so many posibilities.

We were doing something not just for our selfs, but this was something for the community, we were bringing something back to the Frankston area which hadn’t existed in over 4 years. We were doing this, but not just in any old way, we were adding new things, and conforming it to our vision of how a LAN should be fun.
As all the parts came together, the excitement that was in me just grew and grew. You can ask Craig and Nick, they had constant MSN and face-to-face conversations with me where I’d rattle off like Dave does in his lectures. I understand why Dave does those ramblings, its because he loves what he is talking about, and gets exicted about what it is hes doing.
Thats how I felt then.

Its how I feel now.

We have our IE project. At first we were all fairly quiet about it, after the meeting last Wednesday, but this week, I’ve had the chance to think over just what it was we are doing, what it is we are going to strive to achieve.
And to be quite honst, when (there is no if) we pull this off, its going to be absolutly amazing.
Its a huge task. The technical side of it, is not that great, but what the project is, what it will be, and what it will grow and hopefuly flurish into will be absolutly amazing.
But at the same time its scary, this project, its either going to go from strength to strength once its released, or its going to fall flat on its face and disapear.
Its something students and young people have been crying out for, for ages. Its something non-profit organisations are desperate for. Its going to be big. Really big.

It seems like a huge task, a really big task, but I honstly think we can pull it off. I have that confidence in my team. They all seem a little aprehensive at the size of this task, but every single one of this is extreamly smart from what they have shown me. Smarter than me, more into their given tasks than I could ever hope. I have alot of respect for them, and I BELIEVE in them. I can see it in my mind, every single one of them at the end of the year beaming at what we have achieved.
The challange is going to be giving them the confidence.
Tai and Cade are both aprehensive about what they can do. What Tai has shown me, and what he just speaks of casualy just drips of knowlage and brains, yet he wont acnowlage those skills himself. I’ve worked with Cade before, last year on a group assignment in Network Administration, its how we met, I know hes extreamly smart, I know hes extreamly brainy, and I know the work he does is top notch, his looks are decieving, that guy is smarter than he looks, someone who should be looked out for, and handles himself better than anyone in the group when you step back and have a good hard look at it.

There I am, rambling again.

This project, I can’t wait to see it come to life, to try all these ideas that are scribbled all over my notepad about it. Theres so many different parts to it, so much to do, so little time, but I want to get it done as quickly as I can just to see it.
We had a meeting today, going voer what needs to be done, setting objectives and goals, both short and long term.

I didn’t shutup, I kept walking around, talking, going over things, re-enforcing things. I’m sure the others are going to write blogs stating how much of a idiot I am, and that I should learn when to shutup.
Sorry guys, I know I got carried away, but this project really excites me, and I really really really can’t wait to get started on it, its going to be truly amazing, the whole idea of the Good Works, and Student Projects through Understandascope.
The idea of what this project will achieve, I really can’t understand why universities havn’t latched onto it yet, its going to be amazing, its going to affect the way students choose their Uni and course. Its going to change the way people apply for jobs.

There is going to be University students with realy industry experience in almost every field imaginable.

I’m bloody excited about it.

And, its not just the IE project that has me excited.
This year I decided to do Game Technology as a “relaxing” subject, and its opened my eyes very wide. I’ve always done more than just play games, I’ve always had to figure out how they work, and how to modify them. I’ve messed around with technologys from Additive/Subtractive CSG world building, to writing my own BSP Tree methods, basic scripting, both in 2D and 3D worlds.
Now, after a conversation with a friend, we are looking at the posibility of a new gaming technology that hasn’t been thaught of, or spoken about before.
I’m more than happy to post about it here, because quite frankly, I don’t really have the technical knowlage to make a fully working game/system for it, so hopefuly some developer finds this post and steals this idea, because I really think its the exciting that it should be stolen from me and developed by someone who knows what they are doing.
Its the idea of a MMORTS, or a ‘World Conflict’ system. The idea of a website, where palyers chose where they want to “invade”, and it launches a RTS game, based on the area/country with your armys / base and fight for the area.
Imagine having an entire map of the WORLD, and specific areas as the conflict zones.
Its something thats never been done, because it hasn’t been posible.
Why hasn’t it been posible? Web technology hasn’t existed to support it before.
PHP, Java, and ASP.NET now make this posible, so I’m researching it heavily.

Ok, enough rambling, I’m off.

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I posted this on my IE blog, I figured it was worth posting here, just for the last part. I really hope someone with more skill can devlope something like that.