"It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice." - John Cassis
Aaaaandy
17th February 2010 12:10:59 AM
(01:14:53) Andy: i got like a sore side of my big toe its got like swolen and tender and i wanted to like pop it. i dunno why but i held my knife up to my lighter and then stabbed it and all it did was burn my toe
About the last, say, 7 or 8 times I have gone to the city I have been recognised by someone who I don't know. Often they say these exact words:
"Are you Cameron Ball?"
Well I was in the city yesterday (it was a few hours ago, actually!) and I was just about to get on the train for the ride home, thinking to myself, "Whelp, no one recognised me this time!" when this dude walked down the stairs and said:
"Are you Cameron Ball?"
Turns out I had actually met this guy before, but I was asleep at the time so it kinda doesn't count.
But this has really got me wondering, how many people are there out there that know who I am, without me knowing who they are? I guess I am a pretty easy person to remember.
A lot of these people know me from the MATH1020 notes, or dancing games.
And perhaps people tell other people about the stupid crap I get up to, and include the description 'He looks like a crazy hobo', or words to that effect.
If you read this, and I don't know who you are, it'd be totally sweet if you'd let me know how you found out about me! I don't expect anyone to comment even though I know you're reading this... you sly bastard. I'm onto you.
Another cool thing happened a second ago! I was on YouTube and it showed me this (with the recommended for you thing):
Hell cute, huh?
I love how YouTube recommends me random Korean/Japanese singers or girl groups. Oh, and Swedish rave music, too:
So anyway, the point of that Ai Otsuka video was because of this:
Firstly, that 'little Asian girl', I actually met again about a year later, and I found out her name is Alina and she's really lovely and I now wear a bangle that she gave me on my right arm (you've probably seen it, it's one of the gayer looking ones). I think Alina is in Vietnam or something right now.
Second, Zombie Rising was the first OMG REALLY HARD song I passed on ITG. Now this:
It's weird, I'm really pleased that I am so good at ITG now that I could play this about 20 times non stop and still get scores over 99%, but at the same time it is kinda sad that I won't experience that "I JUST PASSED A REALLY HARD SONG!" feeling again. Nowdays if I pass something hard it's like 'Huh, well I knew I could do that, and I did. Nice job, Cam...'.
I miss not being so good at ITG and marvelling at Cynthia and James and CAMSTA4. Thinking 'I'll never be that good'.
Sigh.
Jenny's birthday was actually yesterday! So since I've done this for the last 3 years:
Happy 20th Birthday Jenny!
I'm happy to still be in touch with you 3 years after School finished! I hope you enjoyed being a happy prime last year, and being 20 this year is just as fun for you.
I sold her my old dance pad the day before, and set it up for her. I took $30 of the original asking price, because it was her birthday.
I hope you have a lot of fun with that, Jenny. I'd be no where near as good as I am now without the many hours I spent on that thing. If you become dangerously addicted to dancing games... COOL! I would love to have someone really good to play against, haha!
This is kinda going on and on, wow. I just realised something else significant about this post.
IT IS MY 200TH BLOG
This is by far the longest project I have ever kept going (apart from my maths and computer science studies, of course). So cheers to everyone who's been along for the ride. I know a lot of you don't comment, but I know you read it (I'm sneaky like that), and that's awesome.
Thanks for sharing 200 posts worth of my life with me!
So UNI starts up again soon-ish, and this has made me realise something bizarre. Since I moved out of home, I have missed surprisingly little about my old house (I mean I go there every Sunday so it's not like I don't see my parents or anything), but now that year 3 is just around the corner, I realise I am really, really going to miss the 887 bus.
I still have absolutely no idea why I have such a strong attachment to that particular bus route. I doubt the ones around here will compare to it. It's a shame. Cold winters on the 887 to and from UNI were the best.
So was catching the 887 on Saturday nights to play METAL SLUG at Orbit with Gareth. Holy shit I miss that.
I get attached to weird things, it seems. I am thinking of buying an ASTRO CITY CABINET and building me a MAME PC to run arcade classics like METAL SLUG. It will be like a small Orbit in my house, minus Time Crisis 4 DX (Orbit's one is actually about a 5 minute walk from my house now, haha) and the gigantic cabinet Orbit had Metal Slug 4 in. That thing was insane (and is in a video store now).
I think that's more than enough for now, props to you if you managed to stay with me this far.
Rock on!
Also:
Why does she have a tambourine, when there is not one to be heard in the song?
Edit: Good Lord, this did not go well at all. I was all like 'Go to bed after this, Cam'. It's now 6:23AM and I am still not really tired, or in bed.
So this new house I am in gets pretty hot during the day, and often stays hot at night and in the morning.
It's made worse by the fact that I sleep near the ceiling where it is quite hot.
I took a fan from my parents house, with the intention of sitting it atop my wardrobe and having it circulate the air in the top part of my room.
It would not fit. Unacceptable.
So I used my insane modding skills to mod the fan and make it fit.
It is totally safe and only clears the roof by a few millimeters.
The first step in the modding process was removing the metal grill enclosing the blades. To do this I needed a hammer and a screw driver. It became pretty clear to me that it was not designed to be removed.
It still wouldn't fit. So I took off this base plate, which involved a screwdriver and a hammer again (though the hammer wasn't necessary, I later realised).
It still didn't fit.
So I ended up dismantling the oscillation mechanism (the thing that makes the fan go left and right and up and down (yeah, this one can go up and down too!)). This was a shame because it is really cool, but sadly you can't just turn it off like you can with modern fans.
Once this was done I had to come up with a way to force the fan to point slightly downwards so that the blades would clear the ceiling.
The answer was clear, string.
Using the screws left over from the grill, I attached some string, and then attached that to a part of the oscillation mechanism. It actually took a really long time to get this right.
And now I have a highly dangerous fan atop my wardrobe. If anything ever goes wrong, it will cut up the ceiling in a very loud and magnificent manner.
Also the lowest setting this fan has is faster than many modern fan's fastest setting.
My Dad always used to save interesting articles from the newspaper for me to read (maths and science stuff).
Since I moved out he can't do this anymore, but today he sent me an email with a scan from a newspaper article (thoughtful hey!).
It was about Pi, that cool number that everyone loves. It has a lot to do with circles and the nature of our Universe.
Anyway, what the article was about was not important. There was this sentence at the end of it that caught my attention, it said:
"Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to diameter, kicks of with 3.14159... in a string whose digits are believed to never repeat or end."
Of course this is wrong. It's a fact that the digits never end, and never repeat. So I told Dad this, as I didn't want him to be misinformed. And he responded with something along the lines of "If they never end, how can we know they don't repeat somewhere?".
To me, a maths guy, it's obvious that this can happen, and you can know it for certain, but then I thought about what a regular person would think. If something does go on forever, you would intuitively think that you can never be certain about it, because no matter how much you explore that something, there is yet more to explore!
This is one of the things that I absolutely love about mathematics. We have this object, Pi, which we can never know in its entirety, yet I can tell you with absolute certainty that you will never see Pi's digits repeat, and you will never see it end. Ever.
Commenting seems to have gone out of fashion here, but I would like to ask, what do you think about this? Does this make some of you realise the sheer awesomeness (and I mean that in its actual sense, that is "awe-worthiness") of mathematics?
I already miss that 1 that has been the first number in my age for the last ten years. Oh well, 2 isn't so bad. I guess I'll learn to like him just as much as 1.
Unlike 19, there aren't that many cool things about 20. I can think of one off the top of my head. If you take the number of divisors of 20 (it's 5) and the number of proper divisors of 20 (it's 4) and multiply them together, you get exactly 20.
So I guess for this year, I am just 20.
I didn't do a whole lot to celebrate (I am sure by now most of you realise I never do), 'cos that isn't really my thing. I went to the movies and saw Sherlock Holmes (it was pretty cool) with Ray and Jenny. Jenny's sister, Wendy, and one of her friends were there too.
Jenny got me this terrific book! It's called "Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures". I haven't started reading it yet, but it looks terrific and full of mathematical goodness. I was so pleased she got it for me that I hugged her twice. Thank you again, Jenny!
After movies we ate food and went to talk to Mei-Ling at her phone place shop thing. But she was busy like usual and we didn't stay long. Then Ray went home and I took Jenny and Wendy home.
I went to my parent's house after that, for dinner and cake. We went to this place in Morley that has duck and pork and all manner of tasty things. It's called "Golden King BBQ Express". It's in Morley. I like it a lot.
Keeping with tradition... here is a video of me being very excited about my cake (which has been a chocolate cake for the last 20 years):
I sound really annoyed for some reason. I don't think I was annoyed, I think I was just tired.
Here's a picture!
And cutting the cake...
Last year I put up that video of my 1st birthday. So I thought this year I'd show you some photos of me from other birthdays which I found on Dad's PC last night. You know, for kicks.
Me at 15. This was actually taken at my brothers 14th birthday, so I am almost 16 here.
Me at 16. Taken at my brother's 15th birthday.
Me at 17. This was actually at my 17th birthday.
17 again, at my brothers 16th birthday. This is around the time that the baldness started to kick in =[
Not from a birthday, but this is when I got that maths award for really liking maths. I can't remember how old I was. Might have been 16. I think it was 16.
And here is me on my first day of school in 1996...
And here I am starting year 2...
Clearly not as psyched for year 2 as I was for year 1...
Interestingly, my Australian coin mechanism for ITG arrived today! Which was cool. It now takes Australian $1 coins, instead of $10 Hong Kong coins or whatever that old mech was.
Uhm, not a whole lot else to talk about really. I played some ITG earlier, tried to quad some stuff but it didn't happen so I decided to give it a rest.
Me On deviantART
I don't use this at all anymore. There's some really old stuff of mine here. In the future, if I want to showcase stuff I've made I'll almost certainly make a page on this blog.
Stuff By Friends Jenny's Blog
My friend Jenny's (tripple new and improved!) blog. She's pretty cool, go and have a read.
Jayce's Blog/Site
Jayce is a cool guy who plays ITG with me sometimes (quite often actually). He does web design and junk for money or something. Go look at his blog/site.
He also makes ITG stepfiles.
Scott Campbell
My friend Scott's personal site. He does web design and has some pretty neat stuff up there. Check it out.
Larrikin Photography
My UNI friend Brandon's photo site. He takes many a cool photo. Be sure to have a look and buy some if you like them! You can also hire him!
Stuff I Read XKCD
Fun little comic with stick people. Sometimes has maths jokes.
Ctrl+Alt+Del
I don't know why I still read this but I do. And it is for that reason you should check it out.
